When my eyelids fluttered open, I was shocked. Fulda had crushed me, right? I was dead, nothing more than a red splotch my creation’s sock. She squished me without remorse, just as I had her to do countless other tiny people, either by directly describing it or asserting she had. A fitting end, I supposed, for me to wind up stuck to the bottom of her foot.
If I was dead, though, why did my chest hurt so much?
Hoping for an explanation, I looked around. From the absence of an enormous drafting desk against the wall I could tell I had not been transported back to her dorm room, nor did I see any of my familiar things around me. A gargantuan lamp loomed over me, making it evident I was still tiny, and I walked away to escape its bright light. I had awoken on a vast wooden platform, and a wide plain of white carpet stretched away until it met a tremendous white wall. No matter how soft the carpet was, a fall down to it would kill or seriously injure me, and I was not quite ready to give away my life so soon after realizing I still had one.
A look to my left cleared up a lot. Fulda sat on her bed, its dark blue sheets wrinkled under her weight and a pillow fully crushed by her broad shoulders rested against the headboard. Her feet were pulled almost to her butt, and a textbook the size of a parking lot rested open against her thighs. She was focused on the text, her blue eyes moving quickly over the black text, and paid me no mind.
It was likely she had no idea I was alive, much less awake, yet I hesitated to call out to her. I remembered well her demand that I never speak out of turn, and if she mistakenly thought I was dead, she may just finish the job. However, I did not know whether this was the same Fulda, or if I was the same person: if I really had been killed, everything could be different. Besides, I was small, but she was bound to notice me sooner or later, and I did not want that to be a surprise. Taking a deep breath, I got ready to announce my presence.
“What just happened?” I shouted as loud as I could. There was not so much as an ear twitch of acknowledgement from Fulda, so I prepared to repeat myself.
“Great, my new toy can turn itself back on,” Fulda said, her deep, powerful voice making my knees shake. She kept her eyes straight forward, not giving me one ounce of attention. “What do you want, man-bug?”
It was the same Fulda, and I was probably the same person. “I was just wondering what happened,” I answered. “Didn’t you smash me?”
“You sound disappointed I didn’t.” Fulda turned a page before continuing. “And I will if you keep bothering me. I’ve got a lot to read, and your squeaky voice isn’t making it easy to concentrate.” Not wanting to antagonize her further, I fell quiet. She turned another page before breaking the silence, asking, “Don’t you have homework, too? Or do they not give you any because they don’t want to read your tiny, tiny writing?”
Memories of the person whose role I had been forced into filled my mind with the answer. “Yes, but I can’t do it,” I told her. “I have to use a special tablet that’s still in my locker.”
“Damn, that sucks,” she replied blankly. “Probably should’ve grabbed it before trying to get the attention of someone a thousand times your size, huh?” From her voice, I could tell Fulda had more sympathy for a hangnail than for me. “Maybe they’ll take pity on you for being so small and pathetic and give you a pass. I mean, I wouldn’t, but they might. If I were your teacher, you’d be one missed assignment away from getting squashed.”
“Sounds like you’d be great at it,” I muttered sarcastically under my breath.
“I heard that, pipsqueak!” Stunned, I took a step back as Fulda explained. “I can hear everything you say and see you all the time if something isn’t blocking you from my eyes. So don’t think you can mouth off or flip me off or something just because you’re the size of a particularly small insect, because I’ll know. If you think I’m rough with my toy now, try being a little shit and see where it gets you.” Her point thoroughly made, I stayed quiet while Fulda continued with her homework.
Four hours, three books, and several notebook pages later, she was finished. Trapped on her nightstand at my diminutive size, however, I had nothing to do for all that time. There were only so many times I could pace around the ledge, and aside from the lamp there was nothing I could reach. This was the only way to spend my free time now, and since I was supposed to be her entertainment, I doubted Fulda would provide me with any.
Absent anything else to do I looked at Fulda, and after a few minutes I realized there was nothing I would rather do. Her braided auburn hair spilled down her back, with a small curtain of bangs tickling her thin eyebrows. I could get lost in her magnificent blue eyes both literally and figuratively, and the bridge of her round, aquiline nose was so wide I would have to climb it like a majestic redwood tree. Thick, full lips subtly moved as she silently read to herself, the room’s light glinting off her pink lip gloss, and a small cleft in her chin looked about as deep as I was tall.
Fulda was active and spent a lot of time outside, leaving her skin a light, golden brown that went perfectly with her hair. On most people her breasts would have been huge, but with her tremendous frame they looked about average, and her too-small tank top made them look larger. Her biceps were the size of hills for me, and had I not been shrunken, her thighs would have been as big around as my head. Her legs were so long that, were they stretched out, her size 16 feet would hang off the foot of the bed, and her toned calves were large enough for me to build a small house on. Up and down her 6’8” body the long, lithe curves of her powerful muscles were evident, and for me she was an expansive, hilly landscape.
It was not a surprise I would find her stunningly beautiful; I had designed Fulda to be my ideal woman. I would hardly be the first writer to become infatuated or even fall in love with one of their characters, either. As far as I knew, however, I was the only one to ever become their character’s plaything. Fulda had me completely under her thumb, and with how much she had shrunk me that was not just a saying. She owned her creator, even if she did not know it, and had decided he was just another toy to her. Though I had given her life, that would not stop her from snuffing mine out should the mood strike her.
“How long have you been staring at me?” Fulda’s rumbling voice jolted me out of my reverie to find her looming over me. Her face was close enough that I could see the tiny patterns in the skin stretched across the bridge of her nose, and her eyes seemed to stare at me from opposite directions. Trying to decide which gigantic eye to look at, I stammered for an answer while her eyebrows scrunched together. “I asked you a question, insect.”
I was still stumbling over my words, but when Fulda narrowed her eyes from impatience I found motivation to sort myself out. “A couple hours,” I admitted, still not sure where I should look.
“A couple hours?” Fulda repeated, derision dripping from her powerful voice. “You’re like those cowards who want to talk to me but can’t work up the nerve. Guess what I do with them?” I could guess, but she was going to tell me anyway. “That’s right, I shrink them real small so they’ll have more of me to look at. Though,” a quick laugh interrupted her and blasted me back with air, “I already shrank you. I could shrink you some more, but then you wouldn’t be much fun to play with.”
“You can shrink me more?” I asked. I knew she could – there was no limit to how much she could shrink someone – I was just surprised she had figured that out already.
“Is there a tiny echo in here?” Fulda teased and grinned. “I can make you however small I want. I can make you smaller than a speck of dust. I can shrink you until a grain of sand is a mountain to you. I can shrink you so the milk in my bowl of cereal is an entire ocean for you. I can shrink you until my eye is the size of an entire planet. I can make you so small that, for all practical purposes, you cease to exist.” As she detailed how small she could make me, I imagined how she would look from those sizes – in fact, I had described her from those points of view before – and felt a shameful twinge as blood rushed to my penis. “I can play with your size later, though.”
Fulda’s eyes widened with a sudden realization. “That reminds me!” she shouted, and I clutched my ears to protect them from the sudden explosion of sound. “I never checked how small you are! I’ve been waiting years to see just how small you got, and I almost smashed you before I found out!”
The nightstand rumbled when Fulda opened a drawer, and loud rustling assaulted my ears while she rummaged around in it. After a couple seconds she pulled her hand back out, grasping a ruler with several marks in pencil around the one-inch mark. She flipped it so it was vertical, with zero at the bottom, and stood it on the nightstand, flush with the lamp. While I watched her set it up, she placed a pencil that came up to my waist beside the ruler, then the wooden plateau quaked when she closed the drawer.
Fulda placed her left hand on the nightstand and pointed her index finger at me. It was tremendous for a finger, with each section longer than I was tall, and a short, manicured fingernail that came up to my neck. It rushed forward, and before I could react the tip of Fulda’s finger crashed into my body, pushing me backward. I was still stumbling away when she followed up, driving me further toward the center of the nightstand. With one last shove I nearly fell over, and the only thing that kept me on my feet was running into the strip of wooden ruler against the lamp.
As I reeled from her pushing me around I tried to see exactly how tall I stood, but all I could see were the black notches carved into the wood. Fulda’s hand closed with me again until her fingertip rested against my body, jolting my body straight. With a negligible amount of force she pinned me against the ruler, then stretched another finger to hold the it in place. “Act like you’ve got some pride and stand up straight, bug” she commanded, and I complied as best I could. “Precision matters, and every millimeter counts.”
I stood perfectly still with my back as straight as I get it while Fulda knelt until her eyes were level with the plateau’s surface. Her other hand came toward me, pointing the sharpened spike of a pencil at my head, and her finger holding me in place was the only thing that kept me from running in fear. The pencil lead set down atop my head and I clenched my eyes shut to keep from shaking. There was a loud scratching while Fulda marked another notch on the ruler, then I was shoved forward when she pulled the ruler from behind me.
Once I recovered, I opened my eyes to see Fulda looking at the ruler with a huge smile, showing off the top row of her straight white teeth. “Wow!” she exclaimed and glanced between me and the ruler several times. “I knew you were small, but you are small! Not only are you not even an inch tall, you’re barely half an inch!” She threw her head back and cackled, a loud crack that left my ears ringing. “I can’t even imagine how fucking gigantic I look to you!” Her words trailed off into another fit of laughter, and I was helpless to do anything about the gusts of wind and loud booms blasting me from her mouth.
Fulda took a deep breath to steady herself but was still smiling broadly when she turned to look at me. “I don’t suppose your parents kept records of your shrinking, did they? You know, stuff like height charts, doctor’s visits, dated comparison photos showing just how small you’re getting?” I looked up at her blankly and she elaborated. “Photos would be perfect, really. Whenever I shrink people it always happens so fast, I don’t get to enjoy watching them dwindle until they’re almost nothing!”
“No, nothing like that,” I squeaked while my character’s memories unraveled. “They weren’t exactly proud their only son was shrinking like they would be if I were growing. Aside from renovating the house so no one would step on me, they pretty much acted like it wasn’t happening. They even stopped taking me to the doctor once it was clear there was no medical reason for me to be getting smaller.”
“Oh. Bummer.” Fulda exhaled sharply, blowing a few strands of her bangs upward. “It’s just, last time I saw you, you were two feet tall, pretty short to me, but absolutely huge compared to you now! I was so disappointed when you got pulled from school. Every day I looked forward to finding you to see how much of a shrimp you were and how puny you looked to me! I would watch you climbing into that desk they brought in from the elementary school and wonder ‘Just how small will he get? Shorter than my foot? Shorter than my ankles? Will I be able to put him in my pocket? Is he going to stop?’ Then one day you were gone, and there’s a big gap in my data between then and today!”
“The scientific community mourns the loss, I’m sure.”
“What did I tell you about mouthing off, bug?” I gulped, realizing my mistake too late. “I’ll let this one slide since I’m so happy about how minuscule you are, but in the future I won’t be as kind.” Fulda stood back to her gargantuan height, shaking the nightstand when she pushed off it. She took a moment to relish towering over me, then turned and walked away. The whole room trembled with each of her steps, then she was out the door, leaving me alone on the vast wooden plateau of her nightstand.
When Fulda returned, her hair was down so it flowed over her shoulders, and she looked genuinely pleased with her situation. She turned toward me, making the room shake with every step again, then stood to revel in looming over me once more. Once she had her fill for the moment, she crouched so her eyes were merely a few inches above the plateau and stared down at me.
“I’m getting ready for bed,” she began, her rumbling voice making my whole body tremble, “so it’s time to put you in your toy box.” Before I knew what was happening her hand was upon me, with her long, slender fingers stretching further than I could see looking up. Her fingers curled inward, striking the wooden surface with a loud thud when they connected with it. The tip of Fulda’s middle finger struck my back, lifting me into the air, and drove me into the middle of her palm as the rest of her fingers settled around me.
Inside the darkness of Fulda’s fist, the only way I could tell where I was going was extrapolation. Her hand swung forward and back, making my insides lurch with each movement, and she turned sharply with each corner. The discomfort never lasted long enough for me to be sick, nor could I acclimate to it. Whatever Fulda had determined was her toybox must be inside her room, since she did not leave it, but I was yet to find anything that could fit that description.
Fulda’s knuckles thudded against something after a sharp descent, and I felt that my journey was at an end for now. Her fingers clattered against the surroundings as they opened, releasing me from my prison inside her fist, until I rolled down her finger and onto a plastic floor. The humongous hand withdrew, leaving me alone in my new surroundings, though Fulda lingered as she crouched over me.
It looked like I was in a bedroom designed for tiny people, though it did not quite line up. The knobs on the armoire were so high I would have to jump to reach them, and the shirts left out on the floor were large enough to be blankets. A trunk pressed against the window was tall enough I would need to jump to open it, and the window only gave me a view of the ceiling. When I reached the bed, I found it was positively gigantic to me. My eyes only reached the bottom of the sideboard.
“Fulda, everything in here’s too big for me,” I called out, making the titaness pause as she moved away. “I would have to literally climb into bed here. Do you have anything more appropriate for my size?”
Her head turned back toward me, and I felt he oppressive gaze of her eyes as she smiled. “What, did you think I’d build a house especially for your tiny ass?” she asked. “It’s my dollhouse from when I was a kid, it’s that or nothing.” Considering that nothing would almost certainly mean being squished, I accepted my lot of sleeping in Fulda’s tiny yet huge dollhouse.
Fulda, however, was not done teasing me. “Are you telling me a dollhouse is too big for you? Are you too puny to fit into a doll’s bed? That’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. Honestly, this whole thing sounds like a ‘you’ problem, and it’s keeping me from my beauty sleep.” Before I could get another word in Fulda stood up, then walked away and hit the light switch. The shaking floor tracked her movements, then there was a loud thud when she fell onto her mattress. I heard soft moans and rustling cloth for a while until she got settled, then everything went silent.
Without her watchful eye to mock me for how short she had made me, I grabbed onto one of the bed’s legs and started climbing. I could not do it in a conventional wa, and had to spread my arms and legs along the flat surfaces presented to gain any traction. Little by little I made my way up, digging my fingers into the wood grain for extra grip as I went. It was nothing more than a doll bed, and I still difficulty reaching the top.
Even then, I did not feel entirely safe. I grabbed the upper reach of the blanket and pulled back, churning my legs to make the massive surface move along with me. I had only managed to make it budge a few inches, but that was enough. The blanket’s fold turned outward, falling onto me, and I raced toward the nearest edge. When I reached it I climbed upon the pillow and ran up the resulting slope until I could poke my head out while the rest of the blanket covered me.
“Good night, Fulda!” I called out, and got no answer. In fact, the only response I got was her loud snore. No matter how excited she was, I realized, she would not be very excited about me. I was certainly not worth interrupting her beauty sleep. No matter how I phrased it to myself, she was the giantess in charge of everything, and I was nothing more than an insect to her, subject to whatever changes she decided to make.