It was a warm, summer day in the suburb of Eltham in
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. In a typical suburban house, which was located
on a quiet street where only one side had residential households and the other
side was dominated by large eucalyptus trees, light trickled in through a chink
in the window blinds. Inside the house’s living room contained a television, a
brown coffee table, and two large couches. The house was covered by wooden
floorboards, carpeted areas and white wallpaper.
On one of the couches a man was passed out drunk and smelled
like whiskey. This man’s name was 52-year-old Jack Walkins and he was a
warehouse manager. He had long shoulder length hair and a beard and was still
wearing his work pants, florescent vest and boots. After a tiring long day of preparing
spreadsheets and stacking boxes on shelves and trolleys Jack liked to have a
bottle of whiskey and have a nap on the couch.
Jack had two daughters named Emma and Oliva. Their mother
had died years ago so he was raising them by himself. Emma was a 21-year-old
physics university undergraduate student who had achieved a 97.8 ATAR and had
excelled in maths and science, especially physics. The same could not be said
for her 18-year-old sister Oliva who was the complete opposite of her sister.
The girl was extremely lazy and did nothing but drink and party all day. She
had even almost dropped out of school however her father had stopped her and
had barely passed school with a 54.3 ATAR. Unfortunately, Jack was too busy and
overwhelmed to stop his youngest daughter from continuing her reckless
lifestyle. Oliva had gone to Schoolies in Queensland with a bunch of friends 2
weeks ago and had only told her father about it after she had already left.
Upstairs, in the room on the right-hand side of the corridor
lay Emma Walkins room. Emma was currently working on shrink-ray matter
technology for an upcoming university honour-roll physics invention
competition. The winner of this competition would win $10000 and also would
have the glory and honour of being featured on the University Hall of fame for
the most iconic scientific minds.
However, she wouldn’t be able to plan and construct such a
complicated task alone so she had
invited her 24-year-old boyfriend Justin Lions along. Justin Lions was also a
recent physics graduate and had just undertaken work placement at an
engineering firm. He had medium length black hair and today was wearing a
red-checkered shirt, grey jeans and converse shoes. Emma on the other hand had
long straight brunette hair and circular-rimmed glasses. She was wearing a
white sweater with red stripes, blue jeans and was barefoot.
“Justin, could you pass the screwdriver?” asked Emma.
Justin glanced around at Emma’s room which was a complete
mess. Books, notepaper and stationery littered the study table, bed and even
the floor. Posters were plastered half hanging off the white wallpaper and even
shoes, socks and clothes were sprawled across the floor. It was as if a bomb
had gone off and scattered debris everywhere.
“Fucking hell” groaned Justin. “Emma how to you expect me to
find anything in this mess?”
“I will get it then” sighed Emma. She then pulled a
screwdriver out of a sock which was left on the floor.
Justin laughed and stated “You know for a girl your room is
pretty disgusting.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “You know with this project coming up
I don’t have time to waste with trivial things such as cleaning.”
Emma then turned her attention to the shrink ray protype
which was situated next to her study desk which contained an open laptop and
various notes sprawled around everywhere. The shrink ray device itself was
quite large, being a metre long and resembling a blue shiny cannon with a
trigger mechanism attached and a button control patten on the side with a small
calculator screen. The device was quite heavy as well, weighing approximately 7
to 8 kilograms.
Emma twisted the screwdriver vigorously, securely screwing
the screw into the base of the trigger.
“It’s finally finished!” she beamed at Justin. “Want to test
it?”
“Absolutely!” said
Justin enthusiastically.
Emma then punched some numbers into the control panel,
setting the size dimensions to approximately 10-15 cm. She then aimed the
nozzle of the gun at the spinning chair situated next to her desk.
She squeezed the trigger.
A bright blue light ray emitted itself from the device and
hit the chair. A sort of light bubble forcefield surrounded the chair before it
contracted itself, taking the chair along with it. Within 10 seconds the chair
reduced in size to about the size of a doll chair, the kind of toy chair you
would expect to find in a dollhouse.
“Holy shit Justin, it actually works!” she gasped.
“Let me try!” piped Justin with his hands eagerly
outstretched.
Justin gripped the device in his hands and aimed it at
Emma’s little dressing table which consisted of two drawers and a lamp. Once
again, he fired the ray directly at the table which quickly shrank to the
proportions of a children’s toy set. Justin placed the shrink ray down on the
floor and picked up the shrunken dressing table in the palm of his hand.
“This is real!” gasped Justin with eyes bugling widely. “I
don’t believe it; we are on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. We have the
competition in the bag!”
“You are absolutely right,” laughed Emma. “Justin, can you
pass the shrink ray to me? I need to photograph it for our report.”
Little did they know how pear-shaped things were about to
get……………….
Emma’s hands had
gotten quite sweaty due to the excitement of their success. Given the fact the
surface of the shrink ray was covered in smooth, polished copper; sweaty hands
and frictionless metal made for a very bad combination.
When Emma reached for the shrink ray it slipped out of her
hands very suddenly as if she was trying to grip a bar of soap. In a panicked
manner Emma thrusted her left arm to try and grab the nozzle to prevent it from
clattering on the ground. This resulted in her fingers grabbing the button
control panel and a series of decimal numbers being imputed into the calculator
screen.
The size dimensions had been set to 3 to 5
millimetres…………….
The shrink ray device itself was quite heavy weighing 7 to 8
kilograms. So, when Emma reached out to grab it, she ended up clutching the
shrink ray in an awkward position with her left hand, putting great strain on
her left shoulder. So, to stabilize herself she instinctively grabbed the
bottom of the device.
Unfortunately, that meant she grabbed the trigger by
accident. And an unlucky twist of fate would have it that the nozzle of the gun
was pointing directly at Justin meaning Justin was right in the firing
line………...
Justin screamed with a terror he had never felt before in
his entire life as his body took a direct hit from a blue electric light ray.
He saw a blinding flash of blue light followed by a strange tingling sensation
that he felt throughout his entire body. Then everything went black………
Little did Justin know that when he woke up, he was in for a
big surprise………….
“OH FUCK!” shrieked Emma as she witnessed Justin disappear
in a flash of blue light before her eyes. Within seconds of the blue light
bubble surrounding him he was gone within a flash of an eye.
Emma started hyperventilating for she knew that Justin had
not disappeared instantly as the illusion would like her to believe but instead
had been shrunk to miniscule proportions. With teary eyes she looked at the
calculator input screen.
4.17 millimetres.
Emma’s heart rate quickly accelerated to the point that it
was almost bursting out of her chest. She then realised that Justin had been
shrunk to the size of a small black ant. This meant he was barely visible to
the naked eye and judging by her the mess in her room it was going to be like
looking for a needle in a haystack. Her pupils dilated as she scanned the
wooden floor intensely and gingerly took a few barefoot steps forward.
Meanwhile…………….
“What the fuck?” groaned Justin. He readjusted himself
groggily and then hastily looked around. His eyes widened with horror as he
absorbed the sight before him.
Everything around was enormous. It was as if he had
teleported himself into a strange alien world. Breadcrumbs that would normally
be the size of his fingertips were now the size of basketballs. Various
assortments surrounding him such as pens, clothes and scrunched up pieces of
paper now looked like giant canyons and construction structures.
He looked up to the ceiling and realized that it was so far
above him it was like looking into heaven. He looked to his left and with dread
realised that the area covered by Emma’s bed was so large he had to squint just
to see another end. The bed legs themselves were so tall that from his
perspective they looked like mount Everest.
Then a very slight breeze blew over him and then came a
revolting smell. He suddenly felt nauseous and queasy and his stomach was
churning. He felt like he was going to vomit.
Then he turned his head to the right and realised the source
of that revolting smell. Emma’s converse sneaker and sock now the size of an
ocean liner lay about 20 metres in front of him from his perspective. When he
was normal sized, he hadn’t even been bothered by it but now that he was
up-close the odour had been magnified by about 100 times.
His knees were knocking. He couldn’t believe what was
happening.
BOOM. BOOM.BOOM. BOOM.
Then the ground began to shake violently. It was gentle at
first and Justin first thought it was an earthquake but the tremors grew
stronger and it seemed that the epicentre was moving closer and closer. Then he
realised the source of the tremors much to his utter horror.
With tears in his eyes, he looked up to see Emma’s bare sole
rising above him, attached to a blue jeaned leg which to him looked like a high
crane lifting a heavy construction load. Her sole was quite grey from
collecting dust, fluff and other bits of floor debris, some pieces which were
larger than him. This dirt on her sole was glued by a sticky coat of foot sweat
which covered the entire area of her sole. He started shaking in disbelief that
this was the girlfriend he was speaking to as an equal just a few minutes ago.
When she gingerly took a step, to him it was as if a
building had just collapsed in front of him. With a huge thwack her heel came
down first followed by the ball of her foot and finally her unpainted toes. The
force was so strong that impact of her foot settling down actually threw him
half a metre onto his bum. When he looked up about 3 metres in front of him
were five white lumps with ringed patterns. He craned his neck to the top to
see a long ivory sheet of sharp toenail which looked like a cliff face. He
pondered for a moment then the truth dawned on top of him.
He was directly looking at Emma’s barefoot which looked so
large it looked like it was a jumbo jet. He tried to squint his eyes upwards to
see her face but she was so large it didn’t even seem like she was a living
creature, more like an unstoppable force of nature.
And the smell had become 10000 times worse. The air reeked
of stale sweat and corn chips and this time Justin actually vomited on the
floor with all of his stomach contents emptying out. As he was vomiting, he
heard the cracking of toe joints and the scraping of dry skin which he realised
was Emma simply wriggling her toes. However, to him it sounded like rolling
thunder.
Then out of the corner of his eye he spotted something that
made his blood run cold………….
Emma wiggled her big toe upwards to reveal half of the
underside. As she did Justin spotted something squished, twisted and lifeless
plastered on the bottom of her big toe. Something that was about the same size
as him.
It was a poor ant. Crushed and flattened by an innocent step
Emma had probably taken earlier in the day it now had its guts and entrails
smeared all over her big toe. Dried brown and grey hemolymph (insect blood)
caked a small area around the main body of the ant where it had died.
As a normal sized human Justin hadn’t even thought of ants
as proper living creatures. They were just black dots running around which were
so small literally no one even stopped to take a glance at them.
Now that he had seen the corpse of an ant up close, he now
realized it was a living, breathing creature with arms, legs and organs just
like him. He started bawling his eyes out with the truth dawning on him that to
Emma and the rest of humanity he was on the same level of insignificance as the
ants.
Meanwhile………………….
After vigorously scanning the floor Emma finally
spotted a small red and grey dot twitching on the floor, around 15 cm in front
of her bare feet. She gave a big sigh of relief before a disturbing thought
crossed her mind; had she been a little less careful Justin would have been
flattened under her innocent
looking feet and become an unrecognizable red smear. He was so small that Emma
couldn’t even make out the detailed outline of his body let alone see his
facial features.
Justin looked up to see a giant human face blocking his
view. Emma’s face was so large he had to squint to see the sides of it; her
face was so large that to him it felt like a floating metropolis was above his
head. He could make out every little detail of her enormous face; her giant
circular-rimmed glasses, her moon-sized brown eyes and her gaping mouth with
white glistening teeth so large they looked like excavators. Her loose brunette
hair flowed all over the sides of her head as if it was the Amazon rainforest.
Justin’s eyes caught the sight of Emma making direct eye
contact with him and a small smile was emitted on her plush lips. He breathed a
sigh of relief. He had finally been spotted.
Aware of Justin’s vulnerable state Emma decided to whisper
to him in a low tone as to not to startle or alarm him.
“I am really sorry Justin but I didn’t build the device with
a reversal process. I only had the intentions to be testing it on inanimate
objects and never on living creatures. I never anticipated something like this
happening. Kind of stupid of me to be honest.” Emma confessed to a now
horrified Justin.
“WHAT THE FUCK EMMA?!” he shrieked. “YOU DIDN’T EVEN THINK
OF INSTALLING A SHRINK REVERSAL PROCESS?!”
Justin looked with bright red-hot fury at Emma then quickly
realised that Emma hadn’t even reacted to his enraged rant. He realised that
while Emma’s whispers still felt like someone was making a loudspeaker
announcement maybe she couldn’t hear him. ‘I can hear her but she can’t hear
me’ he concluded.
Red-faced and embarrassed, Emma looked at the unrecognisable
red and grey dot that was once her big man lover.
“Don’t worry Justin I can fix this” she reassured him. “Just
let me dig up some research mechanic papers out of the garage and I can install
a shrink reversal process within a couple of hours”.
She then began to lightly pad barefoot backwards before
giving Justin one final look.
“NO! NO! NO! DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!” screamed Justin. “YOU
CAN’T JUST LEAVE ME ALL ALONE SHRUNK TO A FEW MILLIMETRES IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR
FUCKING ROOM! I WILL BE COMPLETELY EXPOSED AND UNPROTECTED!”
“Listen Justin” Emma said as if she could read Justin’s
mind. “No one else is going to come into my room. My dad is going to be passed
out on the couch, drunk for several hours and we don’t have any unexpected
guests coming in anytime soon.”
With a final bow she hastily exited her room. Justin once
again felt those shaking earthquake like tremors only this time, they became
softer and softer. He still had a hard time believing that those godly
earthquake-like tremors were simply his girlfriend walking around.
Emma had no idea how wrong she was and soon she would be
eating her words……………….
Little did she know that an unexpected guest would be
arriving shortly……………
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
3 loud knocks echoed through the hallways of the house.
However, Emma was so pre-occupied deep in her father’s garage looking for
equipment and information that she didn’t even hear the knocks nor the voice
calling out.
“Hello? Is anyone
home?” called a younger feminine voice. Without a response from any human being
the voice groaned and responded “So glad I bought the house keys.”
The wooden front door opened to reveal a stunning,
attractive 18-year-old teenage girl who was much more attractive than her
undergraduate sister. She had very long slightly curly blond hair that reached
to her chest area, sky blue eyes and 3 freckles on her left cheek. Currently
she was wearing a white crop top, navy blue jean shorts and brown Birkenstock
open toed sandals that looked like they came from the last supper.
This girl’s name was Oliva Walkins.
Oliva had decided to actually come home early from her
little fiasco at the schoolie celebrations on the Gold Coast in Queensland
after police had exposed an illicit party pill drug bust among several youths.
To escape prosecution and association by guilt Oliva had quietly snuck on the
next flight back to Melbourne as quickly as possible. It had been one hell of a
ride for Oliva and a really close call.
Oliva popped her head into the living room, located directly
on the right of the entrance hall and saw her father snoring in his work
clothes and his long hair covering his face. She smiled, quite amused at the
sight of her father sleeping so peacefully.
Oliva kicked off her Birkenstock sandals near the shoe rack
at the entrance and wiggled her lime green-painted toes at their new found
freedom.
“Ah it feels good to let the old dogs bark free” she sighed,
cracking her toes at the joints.
Oliva then patted her right shorts pocket and felt a pink
lighter. She then brushed her lime green painted nails over her left pocket and
felt a 20 pack of cigarettes and smirked.
“Oh, I really need to fucking smoke……………...” she moaned.
Meanwhile……………
Sitting in the middle of Emma’s room, huffing and puffing at
his situation, Justin couldn’t believe how dangerous and unbelievable today’s
events had become. What had started as a scientific-engineering project had
quickly turned into a life-threatening dilemma.
Things were about to get a little more unbelievable.
Justin suddenly heard rustling and tapping behind him in the
shadows and thought he saw a black shape flash behind the train-sized pens and
paper-scrunched boulders.
Scared out of his wits Justin grabbed a tiny splinter, which
to his size was about the same size as a sword. His pupils dilated and his
forehead started sweating heavily.
“Whose there?” he barked. “Come on show yourself!”
Then he realized how stupid he sounded. It was impossible to
have any humans that were the same size as him. He was the only human to be
shrunk to this size therefore it was impossible to have any other non-giant
humans around him.
Then another horrible thought crossed his mind. It was probably
an insect. Most insects from his general knowledge were carnivorous and didn’t
mind feeding on other insects. From the insect’s point of view, he looked like
some exotic new bug that looked tasty and they couldn’t wait to try out.
Petrified he sprinted towards Emma’s country-sized bed and
hid behind one of those skyscraper tall bed legs. From this position he peaked
his head from behind his vantage point to get a better look at the creature
that was skulking around him.
His eyes fell upon a little black ant that had emerged from
the shadows. It had 6 black legs, beady little eyes, antennae and a small set
of mandibles. From his perspective the ant was about the size of a German
shepherd. It was scavenging for crumbs that had been dropped earlier by Emma,
grabbing basketball sized chunks with its mandibles.
But it is what came out of the ant’s mouth next that shocked
him to his core.
“Mum will love these crumbs I have collected. Maybe the
whole colony will thank me for my scavenging efforts”.
Those words of perfectly unbroken English had not been
spoken by a human being. It had been spoken by the little black ant in front of
him.
“No fucking way!” Justin gasped. “You got to be fucking
kidding me!”
He was well aware that ants were living, breathing animals.
But intelligent beings? ‘Ants don’t speak any form of constructed language’
Justin thought to himself. ‘Let alone English’. Just when he thought his day
couldn’t get any more bizarre it just did. Now he had just witnessed a talking
ant. For as far as he could remember talking animals only appeared in Disney
movies.
Suddenly Justin felt slight earthquake tremors that
signalled the sign of footsteps approaching closer and closer. ‘About time she
got back’ he thought to himself thinking Emma had come back to fix his shrunken
state. He was just about to come out of his hiding place when the door swung
open and a pair of younger feminine feet entered the room with squirming
lime-painted toes.
He raised his eyebrows and frowned. “Wait that’s not Emma……….”
he gasped.
“Sis are you in here?” called out a voice. “Are you home?”
Oliva Walkins had been walking around the house for the past
few minutes looking for her sister. As a result, she had walked into her
sister’s room uninvited and was now snooping around her personal belongings.
“This room is disgusting! Oh well she won’t mind if I add
one more piece of rubbish” smiled Oliva.
Oliva’s lime green-painted nails stroked and flicked at her
almost finished smouldering cigarette. She took the cigarette to her lips and
gave one final puff before flicking the cigarette out of her hand towards the
ground.
CRASH!!
Justin nearly jumped out of his skin as a bus-sized
cigarette butt crashed about 20 metres in front of him, from his perspective.
However, in reality it was only about 30cm from the bed leg.
Now unlike most other smokers Oliva didn’t mind
extinguishing cigarette butts with her bare feet. Oliva had been walking
barefoot for most of her life, even in the forest, so as a result her soles had
developed quite a thick hardy texture and high pain tolerance.
Justin looked up to see a giant brown sole hovering above
the cigarette butt. It was even filthier than Emma’s sole with every inch caked
in a thin layer of soil, glued on by a coat of foot sweat.
CRUSH
Oliva stepped on the cigarette butt with her right foot to
extinguish it, twisting the heavy ball of her foot over the cigarette butt to
fully put it out.
“Oh, that’s hot” she giggled as she twisted her foot side to
side and scrunched her toes.
Oliva then lifted her foot for Justin to see a flattened
piece of tobacco paper with ash surrounding it. He looked to see Oliva settling
her foot back into place and looking ahead.
“Oh, that was nice” she sighed.
Justin shuddered at her raw power, destroying something that
was almost 10 times his size.
Oliva then turned her attention to her sister’s messy study
table which was cluttered with design sketches, physics books, scrap paper,
stationary and her laptop, which was stacked precariously on a stack of books.
She raised her eyebrows at the sight, then cracked a smile.
“Still being a massive fucking nerd, are we Emma?” she
laughed.
Then out of the corner of her eye she saw something moving.
A little black shape twitching among the discarded breadcrumbs which littered
the wooden floor, just half a metre in front of her desk.
The little black ant that had been harvesting crumbs earlier
had now stopped and turned his attention to earthquake tremors that were
happening all around him. He turned around to see a giant pair of bare feet
belonging to a creature so large he could barely see her head, disappearing up
into the point horizon. From his point of view, she was tall as 5 mountains.
“Wow” he gasped. “I have never seen a human in the flesh
before. They are so much larger than they are described in the books”.
He focused his vision on a looming head coming closer and
closer to him to inspect him. He saw the knees bending at the joints as if it
was some kind of giant industrial machine. He saw her facial expression clearly
for the first time which transformed from an expression of amusement to one of
disgust.
Oliva saw a little black shape twitching among the crumbs in
her sister’s room. After bending down to take a closer look she was disgusted
to see it was a gross little ant.
“Emma!” groaned Oliva. “This is why Dad doesn’t want you to
eat in your room! It attracts bugs!”
She pushed the hair strands out of her eyes before narrowing
her eyes to look at the tiny little ant and cocked her head.
“We have a bug problem?” smirked Oliva. “Well, I have a
solution of the old-fashioned kind.”
“Hello human?” piped the ant from down below. “I come in
peace!”
BOOM! BOOM!
The poor naive ant could not predict what happened next. A
pair of ocean-liner sized bare feet crashed on either side of him, sending an
earthquake sized tremor that felt like a magnitude 8.8. The unfortunate ant was
flung backwards onto his back, twisting one of his legs.
“OWWWW!!” he screamed.
With tears he looked up to see the giant girl looking down
and grinning at him. In those eyes he could see the hatred and disgust in her
eyes.
The poor ant didn’t know this but Oliva wasn’t like most
other humans who would just crush bugs instantly on the spot when they saw
them. Instead, Oliva loved to torture bugs, playing cat and mouse games with
their lives. She enjoyed taunting insects, spitting on them and pretending to
miss them while trying to crush them. For her this was a satisfying taste of
power for an otherwise small 1.6m tall human girl who felt quite weak in terms
of physical strength and size with other humans.
Oliva raised her left big toe over the injured ant, her nail
glistening with that coat of lime-green toenail polish.
“OH MY GOSH NO!” screamed the petrified ant, desperately
trying to crawl away from his impending doom above him. “THE RUMORS ARE TRUE
ABOUT WHAT HUMANS DO TO OUR KIND!!”
He then closed his eyes for the end however Oliva’s big toe
actually crashed just next to his main body flattening two of his legs and
breaking them.
“FUCK!!” he shrieked.
Meanwhile from above Oliva snickered as she brought down her
toe next to him.
“Oops looks like I missed” snickered Oliva.
She then began tapping her toes around the ant giggling at
its panicked twitches, trying to avoid her toes.
“Where are you going to go little bug?” she laughed. “Where
are my big powerful toesies going to stomp?”
The ant was emitting blood curdling shrieks as her
house-sized toes danced around him.
CRASH!! CRASH!! CRASH!!
Somehow, he was able to dodge her toes every time but more
of his legs were broken with each earth-shattering close impact. It was a
deadly game of Russian roulette.
Meanwhile Justin was watching the ant’s suffering from
behind the bed leg with his mouth hanging open in horror. Sure, he had
confessed to himself that he had stomped on spiders and cockroaches in the
past. But he had made sure it was a quick death not like this with the ant
screaming in agony. It was like watching a fucking psychopath being made.
Oliva rolled her eyes and stated “Ok I am bored now”. She
had had her fun now it was time to finish off the little pest.
Crying, shaking and curling himself into a ball the little
ant looked up from his battered and broken body to see Oliva’s pink and brown
sole hovering above him, blotting out most of the light.
“OH, PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!!” he sobbed with tears trickling
down his face.
Oliva’s ball of her foot made contact with the little ant,
pressing his body into the ground. She then re-adjusted her foot before
applying more pressure. His exoskeleton popped first, then his guts and
entrails, with his haemolymph soaking
into the brown filth of Oliva’s sole. The little ant had been reduced to a
little spot of brown and black goo which was unrecognisable among the other
bits of brown dirt under her foot.
Oliva felt that satisfying exoskeleton pop then sighed; “I
love feeling you little shits pop under my feet”
She then closed her eyes then started giggling. “Ewww
squishy”.
Oliva then raised her sole to her knee and strained her eyes
trying to find the ant’s corpse. Finally, she spotted a tiny black dot among
the brown dirt of her sole.
“One disgusting bug down” she smiled. “Judging by Emma’s
biohazard of a room there are probably several more of them. I should squish
all of them before they start laying eggs, breeding and start a nest. I wonder
how many other bugs are around here……”
Her eyes started darting around the room, trying to spot any
more bugs.
Justin cowered behind the bed legs, shaking and was
horrified. For his entire life he had never seen death happen before his eyes.
Well technically he had with all the insects he had squished when he was
normal-sized. But now seeing a living, breathing insect up close with fully
visible and similar features to himself and speaking the same language as him
had given a whole new meaning to homicide.
Little did he know that his luck was about to get so much
worse………….
At that particular moment the clouds in the sky completely
uncovered the sun, leaving the orange rays of the afternoon sun to spread its
rays all around, completely unrestricted. This resulted in a shower of
afternoon sunlight making its way through the chink in the blinds and at just
the right angle, directly hit the bed leg closest to the window. It was just
Justin’s luck that he was standing next to the bed leg closest to the window.
This resulted in his body shape being illuminated, making him a lot more
visible.
Unfortunately for him Oliva had quite sharp eyes. As she was
darting her eyes around the room, she spotted a little red and grey dot
wiggling next to the bed leg.
“That’s a strange looking bug” she smirked.
Justin’s heart stopped dead in his tracks. He hadn’t thought
about it before but if a human didn’t bend down enough to have a really close
look from above, he just looked like an indistinguishable moving dot. An
unrecognisable moving dot which looked just like a little ant or any of the
other tiny insects that scavenge the ground.
He had just seen her ruthlessly squish that ant. Judging by
his appearance he looked just like that ant and would probably suffer the same
fate. He wasn’t taking any second chances.
In the fight for his life, he sprinted deeper under the bed,
the underside area of the bed so large that to him he felt like he was in some
giant underground cavern.
Oliva spotted the little ‘bug’ crawling at a surprising
speed underneath the bed. She started laughing and cocked her head to the side.
“Little buggy wanna play? Okay let’s play!” snickered Oliva.
Justin was now quite deep under the bed and was now
confident that Oliva couldn’t reach him. He could still see her pair of jumbo
jet sized bare feet pacing up and down and around the bed. Even though he was
quite deep under the bed he could still hear and feel her earthquake footstep
tremors every time her feet made contact with the ground.
“Oh, little bug!” sang Oliva. “Come out, Come out where ever
you are!!”
He then heard a
horrifying crackling sound that sounded like thunder. He looked to see that
Oliva was wiggling and cracking her toes at the joints. Her shiny lime-green
painted toes looked so erotic and yet so deadly to him at the same time as her
toes kept moving up and down and dragged across the wooden floor, creating a
low rumbling sound.
Oliva moved half of her left foot upwards and what Justin
saw made him start shaking uncontrollably. The little ant’s corpse that had
been crushed earlier was plastered on the ball of her foot. He could make out
every bit of grisly detail; the twisted and mangled body, the guts squeezed out
like toothpaste and the dried puddle of haemolymph surrounding it. He realized
there was a very real chance he could end up like that ant.
“I won’t hurt you little bug” sneered Oliva. “My feet just
want to give you a little kiss just like they did to your little friend!!” she
squealed with glee.
Oliva then crouched down, bending her knees to look under
the bed. From his position Justin saw first her knees and hands making contact
with the ground so that Oliva was on all fours. Then he saw her giant
moon-sized head lowering down to the level under the mattress to peep under the
bed. He could see every detail of her face; her sky-blue pupils, her loose
Amazonian jungle of blond hair and her giant smile with teeth and a gaping maw
so large he felt as if he was looking into the Grand Canyon.
Oliva’s arm extended out like a snake with a hand and 5
lime-green painted fingernails snaking its way under the bed. Her fingers
looked like a giant spider creature that was crawling towards him with fingers
extended towards him like claws. Luckily for him her arm couldn’t extend far
enough to his position so he was safely out of her grasp.
Oliva strained to extend her arm further and clutched her
fingers but she couldn’t reach the little pest.
“Shit, I can’t reach it” she groaned.
Then out of the corner of her eye she noticed something.
It was a wheel.
The bed legs had wheels.
Oliva faced palmed and quickly remembered that her sister
Emma specifically slept on a wheeled bed. This was because Emma was always
reorganizing furniture in her room to utilize space and this was so frequent
that her father had just bought her a bed with wheels to make things easier.
This way she could just push the bed across the floor instead of always calling
on others to help her lift the bed to a better position. Oliva couldn’t believe
she had forgotten about that detail.
“Oh, little bug, today is your unlucky day. Well for you
anyway, not for me” she giggled.
Quickly she sprang up to her feet, causing a magnitude 10
earthquake tremor that quite literally swept Justin off his feet. Dazed and
confused he looked to see what Oliva was doing.
Oliva grabbed the side wooden base of the bed and began to
push slowly.
From under the bed, he looked to his horror as the underbed
ceiling above him began to move backwards. Horrified he glanced to his side to
realise that the bed leg’s cylindrical base that he had seen was actually a
wheel. Shaking he realized that Oliva was pushing the bed to reach him.
“A BED WITH WHEELS!!” he screamed with tears in his eyes.
“WHO THE FUCK BUYS A BED WITH WHEELS!! “
Then the underbed ceiling above him disappeared completely,
leaving a flood of fresh sunlight hitting his eyes. Briefly blinded for a
moment he then realized he was completely exposed. Panicked he began to run.
“Oops where do you think you are going?” chuckled Oliva as
she stepped forward bringing her barefoot just centimetres from Justin. Oliva had now moved the bed completely to the
side leaving the little ‘bug’ crawling around near her feet, completely at her
mercy now.
As Justin was running a glistening white barefoot crashed
just in front of him with so much force it was as if an asteroid had impacted
in front of him. He was actually thrown back in the air several metres before
landing awkwardly on his legs. As he landed on his legs he heard and felt a
sharp snapping sound making him shriek in pain. He had fractured his ankle. Now
he couldn’t walk or run properly.
“SOMEBODY HELP!!” he screamed. “I CAN’T MOVE!!”
His eyes darted to see the other barefoot settling about 10
metres next to him however much softer and less forceful, creating a lighter
tremor.
He looked upwards to the distant face of a usually normally
sweet and attractive teenage girl who was 6 years younger than him. In any
other situation he would have found her cute and adorable but now as he looked
up into her malice filled eyes, he saw a fucking demented monster.
“I AM NOT A BUG!!” he shrieked. “I AM A HUMAN BEING!! YOU
HEAR ME YOU STUPID BITCH!!”
Oliva snickered at the helpless little bug twitching near
her feet, twisting and thrashing as if it was in pain.
“I got you now, you disgusting little insect.” Oliva stated.
“Maybe take this pointer on what happens to little bugs that invade my house”.
Oliva then began moving her tongue and sucking up the saliva
in her mouth to create a ball of spit in her mouth. She then narrowed her eyes
at the disgusting little red dot that she thought was a pest and without
hesitation spat a small ball of spit directly at Justin. The spit ball sailed
through the air downwards before making contact with Justin.
Justin screamed with a terror he had never known his entire
life as he was hit with a spit ball that was around 5 times his size. It was
like he had been hit with a dump truck water load. However, this wasn’t water;
it was human saliva that burned his eyes and irritated his skin. The saliva
texture was thicker than water as well, so soon he was encased in a gooey spit
bubble which he desperately treaded to keep his head above the surface and to
keep himself from suffocating.
Oliva was watching the little bug struggle in her spit
gleefully, giggling “Tee he he, look at it struggling, it’s so pathetic I bet
it wishes it was bigger!” she taunted.
However, the spit bubble began to break apart luckily for
Justin, the liquid residue spreading out across the floor, freeing Justin from
his spit bubble. Justin gasped a breath of fresh air as he collapsed on his
hands and knees, still tasting the stale taste of tobacco he had in his mouth.
Oliva raised her eyebrows and said; “Oh you are a resilient
little bug, aren’t you? Most bugs don’t survive that. Oh well, I know a sexier
way to die”.
Oliva parted her big and second toes and began sliding them
towards a stunned Justin.
“FUCK NO!!” Justin cried. “I CAN’T DIE LIKE THIS, IT’S TOO
HUMILIATING!!”
He watched helplessly as her house-sized toes, each toe the
height of a two-storey house, surrounded him, making him feel like as if he was
in an alleyway between 2 buildings. However, this was a lot more terrifying as
the inside facing skin of her toes trembled. The smell was 1000 times worse than
Emma’s feet, the air reeking of rotting cheese. He looked in between her toes
and saw dozens of basketball and beachball sized chunks of toe jam, oozing with
foot sweat.
He looked down at his pants and noticed a wet spot,
realizing he had quite literally pissed himself in fear.
Meanwhile Oliva snickered at the pathetic life-form between
her toes. Every time she squished one of these pesky little bugs, she felt so
powerful, like a goddess.
“Do you like my pretty little toes little bug?” she giggled.
“I like to get a pedicure and paint my toes so you worthless little bugs can
have something pretty to look at while you die!!”
Slowly she began closing her toes together, trapping Justin
in between them.
Justin wailed as the toes clasped around him like a vice and
began compressing him like the horrible job a trash compactor does when
flattening trash. He heard several of his ribs breaking and blood was starting
to come out of his mouth as Oliva’s toe pressure began to increase. He tried to
scream but was gurgling as more and more blood came out of his mouth. But just
when he thought he was about to pop the pressure suddenly stopped.
“His shell is kind of soft for a bug” said a perplexed Oliva
as she clenched Justin between her toes then changed her mind about crushing
him this way and released him. She then readjusted her toes, hovering her big
toe over Justin’s broken body.
Justin looked up to see a squirming giant house-sized toe
hovering a few metres above his head, the toeprint covering his entire perceptual
vision.
“Please” he cried with bloody tears. “I am not a bug; I am a
24-year-old human with my whole life ahead of me. Why can’t you see me”?
He curled up into a little ball as Oliva’s toe lowered down.
“Oh, please Oliva don’t kill me like this!!” he wailed.
Just before her toe made contact with him, he uttered his
final words.
“I love you Emma…………….”
Oliva smiled a cheeky grin as the tiny bug disappeared under
her lime-green painted toe.
“Oh, I can still feel you squirming” snickered Oliva. “I
will press down harder”.
As Oliva’s toe pressed down harder, Justin’s intestines were
the first to go. A giant gash ripped through his abdomen before his intestines
squirted out like a tube of toothpaste. Then his chest cavity began to cave in
with his chest splitting down the middle before his heart and lungs were
reduced to red mush.
Meanwhile Oliva’s eyebrows raised in surprise at the texture
of this new bug. Usually in the past when she had crushed insects, a loud hard
exoskeleton crush would be felt followed by a loud pop. Then a lot of gooey
liquid would be felt. But this crush was different. This bug was crushing in
the reverse with soft squishing material first with hard crunching towards the
end. Oliva didn’t know this but Justin was not a bug, he was a human being with
a skeleton on the inside of his body which unfortunately meant for him that his
death was going to be a lot more painful.
“This bug feels kind of weird and different compared to the
others,” said a perplexed Oliva.
Justin’s legs were the next to go, turning into an
unrecognisable mush of red meat and bone. The last body part to be destroyed
was his head where his skull cracked open like a nut before splintering into
shards. His brain was the last part of him to die turning into liquid jelly.
Oliva giggled as she felt a wet pop under her shiny
lime-green painted big toe.
“OOOHH I finally felt that pop. That bug was so soft
compared to the others. He’s so squishy and gooey” she laughed as she twisted
her toe into Justin’s remains.
She then raised her
sole up to her knee and placed her thumb on the underside of her toe to focus
her vision. She then looked to see a tiny red dot pasted to the bottom of her
toe.
“Huh? Why does the bug insides look red? Aren’t insect
insides meant to be brown or black?” she questioned herself.
Just then the door opened.
“Oliva?” gasped Emma. “When did you get home?”.
Emma had just walked in with a box of books, tools and other
equipment to start working on the shrinking reduction process. Apparently, she
hadn’t anticipated on her dim-witted sister showing up completely unannounced.
Not only had she entered the house without any warning she had also barged into
her sister’s room.
“Hey sis, I decided to come home early after a little
fiasco. Sorry for not telling anyone about my arrival” said Oliva to a shocked
Emma who stood there gaping and frozen with shock as if she had seen a ghost.
“This is my private room; you can’t come in here!” frowned
Emma.
“Oh, come on, it’s not a big deal,” laughed Oliva.
She then waved her hand around showing the utter state of
Emma’s room which was sinking under a mountain of books, paper and stationery.
“Your room is a living petri dish Emma. No
wonder it attracts so many bugs” lectured Oliva
Emma’s heart froze in fear. She remembered what she had told
Justin, that he would be guaranteed to be safe waiting in her room shrunk to
only a few millimetres tall. Judging by the unexpected visitor she wondered how
Justin had reacted to her sister clumsily stomping about. Another disturbing thought
was edging its way into her mind but she pushed it aside for now.
“I found 2 disgusting little bugs in your room. Luckily, I
taught those little shits a lesson they will never forget” snickered Oliva.
Emma’s lip started
trembling and her hands started to quiver. Now that thought had made its way
into her mind and she was really hoping her sister hadn’t done what she thought
she had done……………………….
“You killed bugs?......” trembled a quivering Emma to a
proud Oliva.
“Yes, I did” boasted Oliva. “You should be thanking me. I
know you don’t like me squishing bugs because you think its animal cruelty or
whatever but when you show these little pests mercy, they start breeding,
establishing a nest and before you know it those little cunts become a massive
fucking annoyance in your life”.
‘No No No’ thought a horrified Oliva. ‘Tell me she
didn’t……….’
“There was this one bug though” Oliva went on. “It was so
strange like his shell was so soft while I was squishing him with my toe. Also,
when I finished crushing him his insides were kind of red………...”
Oliva then raised her sole to a horrified Emma where she
could faintly see a little red dot on the underside of her big toe.
“That’s what you call girl power right?” snickered Oliva.
Emma fell to her knees in despair, dropping the box on the
floor and holding her face in her hands. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she
now realised what her sister had done. Her boyfriend had been taken away from
her forever by her dim-witted and cruel sister and there was no way he was ever
coming back.
Her younger sister Oliva had been killing and crushing
insects throughout her entire childhood. She didn’t like it but didn’t speak
out about it since she didn’t like conflict and naively thought that this
bloodthirsty habit would never ever have a severe negative personal impact on
herself. Now she realised just how wrong she was.
To the untrained eye Justin looked just like any other bug
when he was shrunk. And if he looked like a bug, he would get treated like a
bug…………………
Oliva was taken aback by her sister’s bizarre display of
emotional grief and raised her eyebrows.
“What the? ………. Why are you acting so weird? You are acting
like I just murdered a person” stated a perplexed Oliva without realising the
irony of her words.
Emma’s grief quickly turned into fire-hot rage by her
sister’s arrogant and inconsiderate attitude. She was so angry she felt red-hot
iron bars had filled into her body. With tearful angry eyes she glared at her
sister and let it rip.
“YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU STUPID BITCH!!!!” she screamed at
the top of her lungs. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!”
Shocked by her sister’s aggressive attitude Oliva didn’t
know what to say.
“Oh, come on sis they were just gross little bugs. I didn’t
know you would get so emotionally attached to insignificant little things that
crawl on the floor” defended Oliva.
Emma was so angry she wanted to scream at her more but the
anger had built up in her throat so much it felt as if she had a frog in her
throat. She had lost control of her voice box to say anymore words.
“I mean all I did was squish a few bugs?” stated Oliva.
“It’s just a bug”.