“What the? Why me?!” Micah exclaimed, indignant as most of his cadre faced him with their arms crossed.

"Perhaps because you're the reason we're in this mess?" Ms. Wraith threw out.

"No, I'm not! If anybody should be blamed, it's him!" Micah pointed a thin finger at Randy, who shrugged in response.

"What can I say?" Randy said. "When I see something glowing, I've gots to touch it. It's in my genes."

"Well Randy didn't set up a mad science experiment in the library backrooms," Iasmin countered, to which Micah sighed. 

"It's the backrooms! Nobody goes in here! You think I'd do something this crazy at my house?"

"Firstly, yes. Secondly, it was your idea to send someone out anyway!"

"Yeah, someone expendable! But not me.”

Ms. Wraith held up a hand, “Now, now, now. Nobody’s expendable.” She then leaned in next to Micah’s ear and whispered, “But as long as the machine is upturned, you are technically expendable. Besides --” she gestured to his phone in his hand, “Maybe you would get a better signal out there rather than here. No?”

It had the venom of a threat. Micah’s eyes flared as Ms. Wraith peered at him through his glasses.

A heat welled up in Micah’s chest as his classmates around him, oblivious to the insinuation, nodded and spoke in agreement as public opinion swayed against him. Quelling his anger, Micah took a deep breath as he thought for a long moment. He spoke, finally, and said:

“Okay, I’ll go. But I’m taking Aiden with me.”

Aiden, who had been in the back eating a pack of amoeba-sized Skittles, gasped out loud before coughing up the candy. “What the, why me?!”

“There’s no way I’m going alone. Plus, we technically both broke the rules. Sorry, buddy, but we’re doing this together.”

The rest of the students once again murmured in agreement as Aiden exclaimed, “Bro, why would you throw me under the bus like that?! That’s so--”

Micah darted to Aiden, cupping Aiden’s mouth with his hands as he grabbed him and began pulling him away from the group, announcing, “Anyway, my phone’s going to die any moment now, so we’d best be on our way.”

Continuing to cover his friend’s mouth, Micah led Aiden further away from the group and toward the monolithic gateway that was the open door to the south of the room, leading into the library proper. Once they had sufficiently achieved enough distance from the group, Micah finally removed his hand from Aiden’s mouth, who immediately said “-- uncool of you, man!”

Micah looked at Aiden, cocking his head in confusion, before brushing it off. Micah said, “Look, I’m trying to save you.”

Aiden stared at Micah, eyes widening, and he said, “Save me? But what about the rest of them?”

Beginning to stutter, Micah said, “I-I’m trying to save them too! But I need your help. We need to find my mom.”

“Well, where do you think she is?”

Pulling out his phone, Micah looked at the message. It was still sending.

“I don’t know. But I know where she’s going to be. We’re going to have to get some height.”

-----

After quenching her thirst, Sharon entered the classroom. It was sparse, with the occasional motivational poster hanging on the wall. A gopher hanging from a tree branch saying “You can do it!” elicited a chuckle, though she soon turned her attention to the empty classroom. Another sigh escaped her, and she wondered out loud, “Where is everybody? It is the 18th, isn’t it?” 

A brief check on her phone calendar showed that it indeed was the 18th. Despite this, she had seen nary a soul, despite the lights being on and the smell of food wafting from the cafeteria.

Frustration mounting, Sharon strutted to an empty desk, low heel on her flats clacking on the hard floor, and plummeted into it, sinking back to get as comfortable on the hard plastic seat as she could.

Of course, unbeknownst to her, another such student awaiting her evaluation along with her mother had been sitting in the seat prior to the inciting shockwave. As her mother stood over her, berating the younger girl for failing chemistry, the both of them were suddenly reduced to the size of beetles. 

The abrupt transition caused the stressed young girl to become nauseous as she stood up on the concave, yellow, plastic shell of a chair to get her bearings. “M-mom?!” she called out. “Where’d you go?!”

For a moment, there was no response. Then, “SWEETIE?!”

Looking up, the daughter could see her mother’s face peering out over her from the desktop. “MOM!” Joy filled the young girl’s heart for the first time in a while at seeing her mother’s face, though this soon turned to revulsion as she turned away and gagged, vomiting on the plastic before turning back to her mother. “Help me!”

The mom nodded. “Stay calm,” she called out. “I’ll get down there!” 

As those words left her mouth, it occurred to the mom that she did not know how she was getting down there.

She stood up on the wooden desktop and began to walk around the outskirts of the table, peering down at each drop that seemed to be hundreds of feet tall wherever she looked. She knew that once a height’s fall exceeded the person’s height, that was the point it started to become dangerous. 

Then she realized… this wasn’t a hundred-foot drop. It was a two-foot drop!

She dashed back to the edge of the desk to her daughter. “Sweetie! You need to jump off!”

“What?! Why?!”

“You’re going to make it, just trust me!”

Then the door opened. A woman appeared to step through. The pair turned and saw her mountainous visage as she stepped directly toward the desk they were seated in.

“Look, you need to jump off, now!” 

“But mom! It’s too high!”

It was quite the fall, and it was rather cruel to subject her daughter to something like this with no proof. So, she decided to give her some proof.

Taking a running start, the mother charged to the right side of the desk, the opposite end of the door as the woman stood in the doorway, surveying what appeared to be an empty room, and wondering why that was the case.

She leaped off.

The fall was a harrowing experience, wind blowing her hair and clothes until she abruptly and painfully stopped on the linoleum floor, now far below her daughter. Despite this… she stood up and dusted herself off.

“See? You’re like an ant!” she said as she saw her daughter step to the edge of the chair, agape. “You’ll be okay!”

Then the woman in the doorway began to walk toward them.

“Listen, you need to move now!”

“But what if I get hurt?!”

“You won’t!”

The footsteps got louder and louder. 

“I-I-I just… I just can’t!”

“NO!”

Then just as the colossal figure appeared about to sit down, she paused for a moment in the air. “Damn, I’m thirsty,” she said, and she turned back to walk. As she was walking, the younger daughter collapsed onto her knees, head in hands. The door behind her opened and then shut.

“Okay, okay! Alright, it’s fine!” her mother said. “Now, go ahead and stand up!” she called up to her daughter, who was now quivering in place.

“It’ll be okay!” she coo’d up, continuing, “I’m fine!”

“B-but we’re small! How’d we get here?! What’re we going to do?”

The door opened once again. 

“Okay, look,” the mother started, desperation seeping into her voice. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, but you need to jump down, now.”

“I-I-I--”

“Just fucking do it!”

The outburst shocked the girl, who took a few steps back, out of sight of her mother from beneath the edge. Despite this, she could see clearly the giant woman approaching, turning to sit down.

“A-are you doing it?!” she yelled out as the asteroid of a derriere overshadowed the seat. “Where are you?!”

Then there she was, having taken a running start to hop off the edge of the platform, but had tripped on the rough, slanting plastic near the edge, only her hand poking out over. She exclaimed in shock as the shadow engulfed her further, then yelled out, “I tr--”

SLAM!

The derriere descended with a frustrated ferocity, ample enough to engulf the entirety of the seat’s surface space. The outstretched arm morphed into a multitude of expressions of its own, reaching out with desperation from beneath the massive mound of humanity, curling and twitching its fingers, turning into a fist and shaking around, and -- the mother thought -- waving down at her goodbye. This was all the prelude to it gradually losing this life and becoming limp, letting itself hang down over the edge of the seat, droplets of blood dripping down.

“NOOO!” the mother cried. Desperation of her own becoming the operative factor, she hopped on the silver leg of the chair, shimmying her way upwards, seldom ever losing any progress back down. Despite this determination, it still took her several minutes before reaching the front right corner of the chair. Her daughter was on the back right, and there was no area on the seat not covered by a thigh.

Gulping, the mother gripped the taut nylons, and she used them to climb to the side, desperately hoping, praying that her daughter may still be alive. The new shimmy was itself tough, as her hand and footholds were as malleable as human muscle and fat, though at her size it was undoubtedly easier to grab onto the bound hooks and cords of the socks than it would have been with equivalent material at normal size.

She got closer and closer, now approaching the interior of the skirt. There was just enough light to see her… daughter’s arm… on the inside, but it was enough. She continued her sideways climb, a burning desire to check for herself. She had to know.

Then, something unexpected happened. The giant woman’s leg shifted from the seat of the chair to beside it.

What was once a simple if arduous sideways climb just completely changed dimension in the span of a second. Now the former mom was hanging from the side of thighs with the girth of skyscrapers, dangling from side to side as the woman swayed. The jarring transition was just too much, and her fingers gave out, sending her plummeting downward into…

A soft space. A dark soft space. A… frankly, slightly ripe-smelling soft space. A slanted soft space. Looking above, the mother could see a colossal mass in the light of day that continued above her into the terminus of this room, ending a few dozen or so feet in the direction of the darkness.

She was in her shoe. The woman was adjusting her shoe. And that could only mean one thing.

The mom quickly crawled up the small incline that was the shoe’s heel, but the heel of the foot was far quicker. It barricaded the mother in at first, but then it kept. On. Coming. It was the closest feeling to being buried alive she could ever imagine, unable to even push against the terrible, encased foot. Even before losing all mobility, she tried pounding on the limb with all her might, screaming and shouting against it, horrified and terrified at what was to become of her.

Then… nothing. The pressure stopped. She was alive, if only because there just was not enough pressure to break her while the shoe’d foot was dangling in the air.

Then one final idea crossed the woman’s mind. She could try to squirm into the toe section. It would be hard, but it was possibly the only place she would have a chance at surviving. 

Well, with one push, she propelled herself in this steamy grave about 3 inches. In her scale, rather than the giantess’s. But she continued. And continued. She grabbed onto the insole, scraping her body, ripping her clothes, and looking more and more like shit, but she kept on getting through. The foot was widening as she continued, telling her this was the right direction in the darkness of Tartarus.

Then, she finally made it. She passed beneath the toes of the foot, now within the toe of the shoe. There was space. Space! She could breathe again! It still smelled like a stinky foot, but it wasn’t all just a foot!

Letting herself rest on one of the giant toes, she caught her breath. She would have to get used to this for a while if she wanted to survive.