It was a big house, with more than enough space for the six of them. It belonged to the hostess Christine, and her fiancé Tyler. In celebration of settling the property she had decided to arrange a small housewarming dinner party for friends of theirs who lived close enough to the city to make it.

It seemed like everything had been meticulously thought out; the food was finishing up as the guests arrived and filling the house with smoky woodfire aromas. It was laid out in the dining room, which was warm and glowing with orange spots of candlelight, but otherwise dark around the corners of the room, and made Christine feel like they were all going to break out an Ouija board as soon as the sun went down. She personally would not have kept it so murky but tonight it was necessary.

The long mahogany dining table was covered in a tablecloth but only barely. It was instructed not to drape to the floor. This was to prevent it from creating a passage to the carpet – the carpet was out of bounds. The tablecloth also had to be jet black, which was personally a little dark for Christine’s taste; she would have preferred an indulgent, lustrous color, maybe red, but red was completely out; it was only a shade away from pink, and pink was a ‘problem’ color.

Added to that, they had all agreed to wear black – more tablecloth logic. Christine and her two female guests had all agreed to wear the same style dress: a black, long sleeve, form-hugging cocktail dress. It had to be skin tight and short-skirted; no ruffles, folds, or long flapping hemlines or anything that tiny objects could get lost or concealed inside. Their legs were covered by black pantyhose and they each had left their shoes at the door.

For Christine, who liked bright and pastel colors, all the black was a bit of a bummer. And, for that matter, she would have raised an eyebrow at the notion of identical dresses, but after everyone had turned up at the house and jokingly complimented each other’s senses of fashion, she had to admit it was kind of fun in a strange way, like they were all members of a secret club or coven or something.

The guys were also instructed to wear black, wearing snug black turtlenecks. The neck rolls infringed on the ‘no folds‘ rule, but it would probably be okay, as long as they didn’t roll their sleeves up and create folds in contact with the dining table. It was harder for the men to find formal shirts that were slim-fitting enough. But at least the guys did find things to wear in the end. Well, almost all the guys.

All of this slim-fitting apparel; Christine could see where it was leading and it brought her a pang of regret. The prohibition on long, hanging, draping things: it meant no jewellery. And what a shame: she had an eye-catching pair of dangly gold and crystalline drop earrings she had been planning to pull out for this very occasion. On the other hand, maybe it was better to keep the gold toned down with all the black, to avoid looking like an Egyptian funerary priestess.

She was wrong about the jewellery.

Dangly earrings? Her advisor interrupted. Great. Necklaces. Bracelets. Rings.

Why?

It’s climbable.

‘Climbable’? To Christine, this was already starting to sound like it was going to be a very interesting evening. She knew exactly what all these idiosyncratic precautions were for – had been thoroughly forewarned – and the mental images she was getting with evocative words like ‘climbable’ were utterly surreal. She had to confess she was even growing excited. Over the phone, she was reassured her expectations were probably inflated; that everything would be surprisingly more normal than feared. But it was hard for her to wrap her head around it.

All of this prior planning had required a long, engaging phone consult with her old boarding school friend to walk her through exact specifications, and it was probably one of the strangest phone conversations she’d ever had in her life – and considering who she’d been talking to, that was saying something.

*

“I wasn’t sure if other people still did this anymore,” said Christine, looking around the table at the others, illuminated by the warm candlelight. She had let her guests finish their meals before trying to make another serious attempt at conversation.

“Do what?” said one of the men. It was the older, Levi. Tyler had just disappeared into the kitchen to clear away plates.

“Invite friends over for a dinner party,” Christine answered. “It’s not too lavish?”

The others murmured no, and mentioned how thoughtful everything was, how smoothly it was going. If unusual.

Tyler reappeared, putting another bottle of wine on the table before returning to his seat.

Christine took the wine and went to top up the girls’ glasses. Tyler and Levi had already fixed themselves with a couple of Heinekens. Without thinking, she was about to chide them for failing to bring out a third bottle but caught herself.

Levi’s girlfriend, Katie, was still taking occasional sips of her earlier wine so Christine refilled Jennifer’s glass and then her own. With her big eyes, Katie had a girlish look, and a subtle shade of red hair which could pass for brown, particularly in the dim lighting.  People always complimented Christine’s honey blonde hair, but she personally envied the way Katie could get shades of lipstick to match the locks and eyebrows.

As for Jennifer – her long hair white-blonde, unlike Christine’s honey gold – well, she had dyed her hair now since Christine had last seen her, which was several years ago. Most of the hair length was dyed a lustrous midnight that shaded into the natural pale blonde at the tips. Not something Christine would have tried for herself – she was not nearly adventurous enough – but Jennifer was an exotic beauty; a striking blend of undefinable ancestry and her features enabled her to pull off the dual tones simultaneously.

And yet the hair dye wasn’t even the most striking thing about her old friend tonight.

The guys were now murmuring about something that had happened at Levi’s workplace, freeing the women to remark amongst themselves for the moment.

From her place at the table, Christine had a view right through the dining room and into the kitchen, to the window above the kitchen sink. Night had fallen outside; the window now glassy black. The same glossy bottomless color as, she observed idly, the ring band Jennifer was wearing. And Christine hadn’t been the only one to find herself drawn to staring at it, in lulls between conversation.

“I know I’ve said this already,” said Katie, the youngest woman of the three, turning in her seat to face Jennifer, the second youngest, “but I am in love with that ring.”

“You didn’t tell us where it came from,” added Christine, glad to let the conversation splinter off from whatever the boys were talking about. “It looks custom made.”

Jennifer straightened her hand flat upon the table, and the other two women leaned closer to admire it. The hunk of transparent, crystalline rock planted atop the black band was carved in the shape of a wild cat’s head.

“It is,” she replied. “They had to hollow out the head to create a little inner chamber.”

“That had to be a steep premium,” Christine said with a twinge of regret.

“Jerry bought it for me,” Jennifer answered, adding coyly: “Let his accountant deal with it.”

“Who’s Jerry’s accountant?”

“Me,” said Jennifer.

There was a titter of contained amusement.

She continued:

“Have to confess, girls: I might have been twisting his arm a little negotiating figures – metaphorically, of course.”

I would certainly hope so, Christine thought.

“He proposed?” Katie’s voice piqued with excitement.

“It’s not an engagement ring,” said Jennifer. “This one’s a little heavy on the tinsel.”

“Even for you,” Christine said, a little wry.

“Lara Croft wouldn’t have the ambition to steal that,” Katie chimed in, then looked across at her boyfriend, “—Levi, did I get that reference correct?”

“Nailed it,” he said, barely a pause from the conversation he was having with Tyler.

“He’s the gamer,” she explained, looking back at the other two women.

“I knew it wasn’t an engagement ring,” said Christine, shaking her head. “The black band.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” Katie piped up. “A black panther head on a light ring band?”

“The head had to be clear all through,” Jennifer explained, “otherwise Jerry wouldn’t have been able to see anything. Ladies, come on, function first.”

“Mmmm,” Christine said under her breath, not entirely convinced that ‘function’ had unquestionably dominated the purchase, particularly where Jennifer was concerned. “Classic Jen,” she looked away with understated amusement. “Fierce animal head, fierce price tag.”

“As long as it does what we got it for,” Jennifer said with finality, “it doesn’t matter what it looks like or how much it cost. When it’s on my finger, it’s priceless.”

“I think it’s romantic,” Katie admitted. “It must look gorgeous on the inside.”

“It is gorgeous,” Jennifer mused, as they all stared down at it. “And the ring isn’t bad looking, either.”

Tyler had caught the tail end of the discussion and now jumped in with question:

"But how clearly would you be able to see, anyway? The stone would refract the light and cause photo-visual distortions – wouldn’t it?”

Christine noticed the men had been taciturn on the topic up to now. Or, when they did remark, it was on the practical details, as if keeping the interpersonal side of it at a distance. She wondered to herself if there wasn’t a little insecurity from them on the entire arrangement; possibly mentally substituting themselves into the picture and finding it distasteful to their male egos. The fact that both men were taken in by Jennifer – yes, even Tyler, she’d seen his eyes creep from pantyhosed leg upwards the moment Jennifer had walked in the door – made it even more amusing. And that made her think of a tiny Tyler; he sure wouldn’t make so much mess around the house.

"Jerry can see through it,” Jennifer replied, “but if it’s too bright, then yeah, it apparently creates optical illusions. He said it’s like looking at a Rubik’s cube through a kaleidoscope.”

 “Oh!” Katie exclaimed with recognition. “It’s like a prison.”

Christine’s lips pursed in a faint smile.

“I think you mean ‘prism,’ sweetie.”

“Yes,” Katie nodded, “that’s the one.”

After a moment, Jennifer added:

“I know it’s a little showy, but I don’t wear it in the daytime because it gives him migraines.”

"Oh," said Levi, waving a hand straight up over his head, "that's why the ceiling light is off."

"Yes," Christine nodded. "And we lit up the candles."

"I thought the bulb must have blown and you guys were being too cheap for an electrician," Levi joked, and Christine made a sound of feigned disgust.

"I just thought the candles looked pretty," confessed Katie.

"No to the electrician and yes to the candles," Christine said. "But the main thing is that poor Jerry isn't having seizures while we're all admiring Jen’s ring."

"I couldn't do it," announced Levi. "I couldn't be attached to my girl at the teat like that, no offence, Katie—"

Katie shook her head at his choice of phrasing as if to say ‘knock it off.’

“How does the air get inside?” Tyler asked, trying to keep the discussion moving.

“They drilled a tiny hole under the panther’s mouth,” said Jennifer.

“You said it opens?” said Christine.

Jennifer nodded, capturing the panther head between her forefinger and thumb and stroking it affectionately, as if the feline were a living housepet. Her long nails gleamed in the candlelight, and Christine recalled something Jennifer had said earlier upon having her nails praised by Katie: that they had never looked better since she’d started dating Jerry again.

“The head unscrews from the base,” Jennifer replied.

“That’s one way to save the jeweller from jimmying around to reset the stone,” Christine remarked.

Now that dinner was finished, the fine wine had been praised, and the pleasantries and catching-up conversation had passed, the talk was heading in the direction they had all secretly been hoping it would go in, from the moment they had all arrived.

Of course, they hadn’t really been staring at the sparkling panther head, but had been in awe of the tiny smear of shadow barely visible within, naked, huddled up inside the transparent stone’s inner chamber, almost as if he was sitting on the panther’s silicate tongue, locked away behind its teeth…

. . .

The conversation thrummed through the dining room’s vast airspace. Every time someone spoke, the acoustic waves rattled the air. Voices beat back and forth like bees passing right by my ears, but magnitudes louder, deeper, and with the ‘drop everything’ immediacy of an earthquake. I was lucky if I got two seconds to breathe and put a coherent thought together in my head, let alone find some way to send my frail voice out into the immeasurable ether beyond the deceptively-angled glassy box that enclosed me, like a strange magician’s prop.

From inside the crystalline panther head, soundwaves were more reliable than light. Jennifer had not been lying when she’d said I could see out of the gemstone, but she had not specified whether I could comprehend what I saw.

The world arrived to me in a collection of fractured shards, which magnified objects from some angles and minimized them from others, while all things were silhouetted in a spectrum of shifting colors, and the flickering candlelight turned it into a wavering lightshow like some psychedelic James Bond opening sequence.

The fractured shards resembled how I imagined a fly saw the world; its compound vision a disorienting array of tessellating grids like rainbow-tinged fish scales. The allusion to an insect was an unfortunate coincidence, but wholly apt in my current predicament.

I currently stood no more than one centimeter tall.

Any time I tried to speak, my voice got trapped with me inside the iridescent chamber, fading away with a chiming echo. Throughout the evening, the droning conversation, as well as the deafening clatter of cutlery had effectively dampened any hope I had of being heard.

But I could hear the other guests with perfect clarity, as if an orchestra of human voices played right outside my prismatic cell. The problem was the sounds played within the hollow of the gemstone with horrible clanging effect. The big bright sounds bounced around the interior and resonated through my internal cavities as a medium; every single uttered word vibrated my insides like I was being played as a percussion instrument. The sensations this produced varied depending on the mood in the room; quiet murmurs were merely irritating and ticklish, but if the conversation grew lively, this became sensitively painful for my diminutive frame until I had to jump up and start shaking my limbs and bouncing on my toes as my bones twanged and my muscles started to feel like they were crawling around like worms, and a scream built up in my head.

Earlier on, one of the men had muttered a joke between bites of his meal, and there was a sudden explosive bloom of extended laughter in response. While their vocal amusement had rippled around the table, I was on my hands and knees gagging with giddy agitation, my organs twitching like dying insects.

After a blissful moment of quiet, a female’s great voice broke into the silicate walls through the hole of the panther’s throat, with that tuning fork chiming quality all sound produced when filtered through the cut, hollowed rock. The voice sounded like Christine, the hostess. She was a friend of Jennifer’s from high school, which itself was interesting.

Jennifer had a history of tending to drift somewhat capriciously between female friendships, as if she quickly grew bored of the company of other women, or the converse; the women felt ‘unsafe’ around her. Either explanation was equally likely. So, for one of her few female friendships to have endured for several years was, to me, a feat in itself, and I had been interested to come and meet this exceptional female. Though I couldn’t help but think she was probably just as interested to meet me, if for an entirely different reason.

Since arriving in her home, I hadn’t even seen what Christine looked like, except as a series of disconnected, glittery flashes of black fabric, and briefly, the porcelain shine of giant fingernails. But since the women were all wearing the same outfit, I couldn’t even be sure whether the fingers I’d glimpsed belonged to Christine and not the other guest, Katie.

From the conversation around the dinner table, I’d pieced together that Christine and Tyler were partners, and Katie and Levi were boyfriend and girlfriend. The latter couple seemed to have an age gap; boyfriend Levi sounded older than Tyler (and me) while girlfriend Katie sounded younger than Christine and Jennifer, who were almost the same age. Tyler sounded my age, but was apparently younger than Christine, meaning he was younger than me, but probably not by much. He sure wasn’t the shorter of us.

Obviously, I hadn’t sighted the men any better than the women, and couldn’t tell much else about them from their voices, except that they were evidently taken by Jennifer, though they tried to conceal it – with their own women present in the room, if for no other reason. I’d heard it in their voices when they’d been introduced to Jennifer by Christine. That didn’t take me by surprise; it was not my first ‘rodeo’ being out and about with Jennifer, I knew the game by now.

Her throaty purr was working its magic on them, even after they must have steeled themselves against her knockout good looks. She knew how to work her disarming voice like she was letting you in on a private joke, and it made grown men giggle like little girls at things that weren’t even remotely funny.

Eventually the guys’ voices had become a murmuring drone as they shared a discussion between themselves. Maybe they wanted to have a talk without the risk of one of their voices cracking.

After Christine started to speak, an instant later my brain was frantically interpreting her blaring articulation into something more resembling speech:

“JERRY’S BEEN SO PATIENT. YOU ARE INTENDING ON LETTING THE POOR LITTLE GUY OUT FOR LITTLE STROLL AT SOME POINT,” she was saying, “AREN’T YOU, JENNIFER?”

She had a warm, sparkling voice that was kind of motherly, even if her words had become loose and uninhibited. But then, fortified with wine and beer, everyone was relaxed and happy, and the conduct around the dinner table was becoming bolder, increasingly unchecked.

I was the only one still sharply, painfully sober, not by choice but because no one had yet been able to figure out how to enable me to take alcohol in a safe, measured way. Tyler had earlier suggested I be allowed to swim in a shallow serving of wine inside one of the glasses, to drink however little I could manage as I waded around, but Christine had shot that down, stating I was a guest, not a goldfish, while Jennifer had worried about the risk of me drowning – and I was too small for CPR.

Christine’s voice broke out again:

“I THINK WE’RE ALL LOOKING FORWARD TO A PROPER FACE-TO-FACE INTRODUCTION,” she said to Jennifer. “AND SO FAR I BELIEVE ALL YOU’VE GIVEN US IS A FACE-TO-SPECK INTRODUCTION.”

Another woman might have been patronized by the facetious intent behind these words. But not Jennifer, who, if anything, was every bit on Christine’s wavelength. She was, after all, the one exhibiting me on the tabletop as if I was nothing more than the jewellery I was contained inside. At my previous mouse size, I had bemoaned the sense of dwindling to the status of something like a keyring. With a shock, I realized even a keyring would be a step up from where I now stood. I might as well be a tiny, exquisite jewel set inside the stone.

At this point into the night, even I was keen to venture out into the wide wilderness outside the rock, if only to escape the echoing walls of the interior ring, which made sounds clang my nerves. But I had very little say over whether I left the rock or not, it was up to Jennifer – as almost everything concerning me now was these days.

Maybe Levi had been joking when he’d alluded to me being attached to Jennifer’s ‘teat’, but it wasn’t far off. I was practically as reliant on her as a tiny embryo. My previous mouse-sized self might have been horrified (to say nothing of my previous normal-sized self) by this extreme incursion into my independence, but at this infinitesimal size, personal liberties were luxuries that did not rain generously from the sky. Higher priorities prevailed. Like staying alive, for instance.

I depended on her virtually every waking minute, for everything: from transportation, and food, to physical protection. I would have loved to have added ‘physical affection’ to that list, but we were still negotiating how to do that safely at my size. So far, virtually all of our physical contact had been either for the purpose of my transportation, or to enable Jennifer to bring me close so she could make out my pinprick features and decipher the tiny squeaks of my voice.

But inconvenient lustful urges did not simply evaporate.

One time I had caught her looking at me (it was unavoidable, her face filled my visual field), her features caught on an expression that I recognized as a spontaneous desire to kiss me. Or, more specifically, it was the expression she had  been wearing on past occasions a moment before spontaneously kissing me: a look of lingering, thoughtful eye contact and slow, half-lidded blinks. As she seemed to teeter on the impulse for more than a second  – pausing for a moment too long as if she was seriously considering it –I felt myself staring in the face of two forking paths and utterly powerless which one I was destined for.

One of these paths ended in my death.

When Jen kissed she did it with passion or she didn’t do it at all. If she chose the wrong path, it was virtually certain her passion would be my reaper; in my mind’s eye I saw myself getting squeezed flat by the vacuum pressure of her lips, or getting sucked clean through their pucker, and down her throat to gargle and drown in her frothing stomach juices. And as she'd deliberated down upon me, the blood had rushed out of my face, the dread of imminent accidental consumption spiked, I let out a tiny whimper and wet myself. My stream must have been invisibly thin, because she didn’t notice. I was lucky that day: she had made the right decision; the lethal impulse had been curbed.

We hadn’t even talked about sex yet.

How could we? I was so small I was literally at the risk of being inhaled, if the force of inhalation was strong enough. To think the gravity keeping me tethered to the Earth could spontaneously reverse because Jennifer had indulged in a big yawn was a petrifying thought, enough to have me bolt upright awake at the sound of her quaking nocturnal sighs as she rolled over in half-sleep.

But this ever-present panic was necessary to keep me on my toes any time I was tempted to shrug off my humility and go flexing my individual rights far beyond the reasonable limits imposed by my puny height.

A moment after Christine had finished speaking, it grew dark, but the candles had not gone out. The lighting in the dining room had not changed at all.

Rather, my crystalline containment was cast in shadow by some enormous objects that flew in and pressed against its outer walls. Their blockage of light cancelled out some of the refraction effects, giving me a clearer picture of them. It was the giant pads of two fingers and a thumb. I could tell they belonged to Jennifer, because a wall of white keratin extended over the end of each pad; fingernails long enough that they identified her apart from the other two ladies.

I was so small that, lying longways, I could have fit into the shadowy gap underneath the nail, against the tip of the finger, and been held in place there, by the pressure of the nail’s underside. I knew this because she had even floated the idea with me as a means of carrying me while keeping me from harm, shielded by one of her fingernails; this was at least before she got the ring which made that idea redundant. To my secret gratitude. Because, I associated the underside of the human fingernail as the place where dirt and other particles got trapped, even if she maintained her nails more diligently than most. I had no interest in sharing lodgings with those dirt particles and potentially being mistaken for some of them.

The length of each finger pad was double my height, and reddened with the pressure applied against the panther head. As they gripped the transparent rock’s polygonal outer walls, there was a grinding sound, and the clear, tessellated walls began to glitter as they revolved around me; slowly at first, and then, rapidly, before, in a couple of grinding rotations, the entire rock lifted straight up into the heavens and seemingly vanished.

The refraction cleared, but having been exposed to it for over an hour, my vision now blurred like I’d just taken off 3D glasses. Blinking until the outlines of things merged again, I then stared around.

I was standing on the pedestal of the ring base, with the black band curving down around the finger beneath me, out of sight. Jennifer’s ring finger extended out before me like a pier, the minute – but to me, blown up – creases of her skin even resembling the wood grain of planks, which ended in the polished diving board of her ring fingernail. Below that was the interlocking weave of a black fabric tablecloth which seemed to run away in every direction until eventually dropping off into space.

Across the table, a distance some football fields away, stood a couple of wine bottles  stretched up like smooth glassy skyscrapers, the glass of one showing up its contents: plum red so dark it was almost black, while the other was clear and pure, transparent. Far beyond the black tabletop, the warm glow of candles floated in at me like distant wildfires from out of the shadowy gloom hanging around the corners of the room like faraway night sky. Taking a deep breath as someone about to jump off a cliff, I then forced my gaze upwards, as high as my neck would allow.

Interspersing my view of the blurry room walls, were four titanic sentinels, evenly spaced at the edges of the table, far out beyond me, each covered in the interwoven railroad texture of black fabric clinging to their forms. Each immense human shaped tower was comprised of rolling black fields suggesting the curves and bumps of muscles and fat deposits. There was no pretending not to notice the females’ busts when they were scaled up like hills and my neck creaked painfully trying to find their faces above. Anyway, I could not even see faces properly; they were glimpsed from below, at the angular jawlines like jutting cliff ridges, and up the twin dark culverts of nostrils. Not the most flattering angle, therefore I diverted my eyes from faces and focused on the black clothed bodies.

The four of them in my sight were not merely big but seemed supernaturally big, like gods and goddesses convening for a celestial meeting at the ends of this wide black plateau. Unimaginable that each figure was so big they were capable of effortlessly grasping up the skyscraper-sized wine bottles, displacing them from the tabletop and making them levitate in the air – from my point of view this notion seemed to break a law of physics somehow – even though, if anyone infringed any physical laws, it should have been me, at my diminutive size.

Looking at even a single one of the black sentinels made me light-headed as my eyes got lost amidst the expanse of endless fuzzy black landscape. Relative to me, the weight of each person was unfathomable, an accident of gravity on their part would have caused me to pop at the speed of light under a misplaced hand, foot or backside. With a small shiver it occurred to me that everyone in the room – except me – was at least a little tipsy.

Unseen, behind me, was seated Jennifer, at one end of the table, with the other four seated along the long ends.

Her voice hailed down at me as if from the clouds, like the voice of some Goddess of thunderstorms:

“JERRY, DON’T BE SHY.”

It was every bit as loud as it had been inside the panther head, but now, at least, lacked the painful chiming echo.

I didn’t move.

“HE’S VERY SHY,” she emphasised, as if to assure them it wasn’t their fault for being so big and terrifying, but my fault for being so dinky and delicate.

No one spoke for a long time. I felt like I was standing in a stadium with an unseen audience waiting for me to score the winning point. It only occurred to me now that I was naked. In fact I hadn’t worn a single article of clothing since being ultra-miniaturized a week ago. Having somewhat accustomed to the lack of clothes, I had to remind myself that being naked on a daily basis wasn’t normal. But what was ‘normal’ anymore—?

—I was the size of a grain of rice.

Stepping off the ring base, the soles of my feet came down upon the soft foamy flesh of the back of Jennifer’s straightened ring finger. Even at their magnificent sizes, the long feminine shapes of her fingers could be appreciated, given the illusion of further length by the sharp extensions of the nails.

She took good care of her body, and if anything, since my height had taken another hit, her self-grooming programme had become even more meticulous and exact. She wasn’t ashamed of her body; it wasn’t that she worried dirt and sweat would be unsightly to me, but that they created potential obstacles for my passage over her skin; making me slip or get stuck. Her natural terrain provided enough obstacles as it was.

In my path was a crease of flesh big enough to trip over; I stepped over it and continued along the springy flesh, heading towards the fingernail. The skin sunk underfoot like memory foam, reforming immediately as I lifted my weight again. It was so supple it would have been difficult to walk on such a surface at normal size, but my negligible weight made it easier for me to keep balanced, as gravity had less pull on me.

I carried on down the length of her ring finger. The creases on her skin were like thin shadowy lines in a sand dune. It even felt a little like walking on desert sand, or maybe the surface of a giant leathery balloon filled with sand; the skin sunk – if only minutely – under the soles of my feet with each step. Up close, the texture of her soft skin was grainy with the shedding of microscopic skin flakes, like sand particles. Treading over her flesh, my feet inadvertently kicked up these gossamer flakes, sending them swirling up into the air like road dust on a dry day, and sucked away again by the shifting air currents, whilst papering the soles of my feet.

The thermal activity of her blood vessels radiated warmth up through the epidermis contacting the soles of my feet. To her, this warmth was largely imperceptible as it was quickly wicked away by the surrounding air, but at my close proximity, her flesh was tropically warm, and sometimes had a tropical slimy dampness, too, from the shining dots of perspiration and sebaceous oil that oozed from the pinpricks of her pores.

The finger trembled, shifting minutely, too quick to have been deliberate. I dropped into a crouch, grabbing thick fistfuls of skin to hold myself steady.

“I HATE THIS,” came Jennifer’s voice, muttering through what sounded like a grim smile. “IT TICKLES.”

I froze. I already knew Jennifer hated being tickled, but gulped at the reminder. Attempting it could earn you a slap. And now I imagined she was doing everything in her power not merely to slap me but to flick me clean into space like an insect. I only prayed reason prevailed over her trigger-sensitive impulses. But she was naturally an impulsive person.

Now came the voice of the other female guest, Katie, which I distinguished only for sounding higher in pitch than either Christine’s or Jennifer’s voice.

“JENNIFER, CAN I ASK: HOW DO YOU PICK JERRY UP?”

Before Jennifer could answer, Christine suggested:

“YOU PLUCK HIM UP BETWEEN YOUR FINGERTIPS, SURELY?”

"I DON'T PINCH IF I DON'T HAVE TO," Jennifer said, adding dryly: “I’D PREFER TO NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS EARLY DEMISE IF THAT’S POSSIBLE.”

“BUT,” said Christine, “WHAT OTHER WAY IS THERE? APART FROM, PERHAPS, A DOT OF DOUBLE-SIDED TAPE ON THE END OF A PENCIL TIP.”

“CLOSE ENOUGH,” Jennifer said cryptically.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” said Katie.

A seat groaned – the sound of boulders grinding together – as Tyler leaned forward.

“IS IT POSSIBLE TO DO RIGHT NOW?” he said, his voice lit by a spark of eagerness, and maybe a trace of morbid curiosity.

“YOU WANT TO SEE?” Jennifer ventured dubiously. “IT’S KINDA WEIRD AND A TINY BIT GROSS."

"NO ONE'S JUDGING YOU, JEN," Christine rumbled in earnest. "I THINK WE'RE ALL A LITTLE IN AWE THAT YOU COME UP WITH THESE WORKAROUNDS."

From previous experience, I already knew what Jennifer was referring to but wished I didn’t. Unnerving that she was asking their permission to have it exhibited to them, but no one was asking whether I wanted to be the exhibit.

My feet were planted into the flesh bordering the long pink plank that was the fingernail.

Finally, I turned in a circle to face my girlfriend.

Before even a hope of meeting her eyes, my gaze was forced to scale, bit by bit, the flowing shape clothed in tight black that was her upper half. Her bust projected over my head, the globes of her prodigious breasts stretching against the black slim-fitting dress. At normal scale, Jennifer did not have whopping breasts, though they were tight and attractive. Technically Christine’s were bigger – as far as I could tell – but I had to score Jennifer the point for having the sexier overall figure up and down, an enviable hourglass that, in motion, arrested the eye with the hypnotic roll of her hips. But of course you say that about your own girl.

At the summit of this suggestively-shaped rolling black mountain, a gargantuan object covered the sky, like some great, sculpted moon. It was so big my eyes were slowed to a crawl, labouring to make the features out one at a time.

Closest to me there was a pale jutting ridge of skin which, further up, was split horizontally by two plump curving protrusions which shone a slightly darker shade than the surrounding skin. These were overshadowed by two round dark caves built into the underside of a long pointed vertical ridge that divided a pair of eyes like two big windows, or giant curving TV screens depicting the brilliant green irises, framed above by the dark strips of thorns that were the eyebrows.

The hair of this colossal vision was pulled back in a long neat ponytail, except for the thin whiskers of long loose strands hanging below the temples, just in front of the ears. The rolling field of hair framing the head was dyed midnight, becoming a gradually platinum blonde-tipped tail running unseen down the back. The scalp must have been like a plain of black cattail rushes, but never-ending in length and stretched longways as if wind-flattened. If I had been standing on her scalp, her hair would have been dense enough for me to get hopelessly lost in like an endless forest.

From my position, viewing close from directly below, she was so big that I had no hope of appreciating her whole face as one consolidated whole. It was a suspended landscape of disconnected geographical markers. My eyes had to rove around in wide panoramic arcs just to put together the full picture of her expression.

The planetary head was tilted down for the eyes to survey me. The long black curled pickets of eyelashes – each lash roughly as long as I was tall – shining with a faint coat of oil, batted softly as the inky black pools of the two pupils penetrated me; their abyssal night somehow even more blinding than bright suns. Her all-seeing gaze was calmly fixed on my tiny naked body and there was no escaping it. I’d burned through my solitary hours spent inside the panther head, and now my privacy was all gone.

And if I didn’t do something soon, she was about to steal the rest of my dignity as well.

Her eyes drifted away from me briefly as she began to lift one tremendous hand up off the table. I knew any second now it was going to start coming for me.

 “Jen!” I squealed, jumping up and down and waving my arms above my head, “Jen! Jennifer! Hey! Down here!”

Oh Christ, this is ridiculous, I thought, my stomach plummeting with shame. I sounded like a little kid trying to get his mother’s attention.

She didn’t tilt her head down but her pupils found me beneath her long lashes. She watched me jumping up and down for a second without comprehension, and then, smoothing the sideburn whisker strands of her hair back with her other hand, she turned her head sideways and inclined it down over me.

As her enormous head expanded even bigger in my direct view, eclipsing the flickering candelight in the horizon, I tried not to flinch, fisting my hands and even curling my toes into her flesh as if to keep myself rooted to the spot. With her face turned, the huge fleshy shell of her ear loomed over me; whereas I was small enough to have crawled into the dark tunnel into the depths of the ear.

“SORRY, BABE,” came her reverberating voice. “DIDN’T CATCH THAT.”

Cupping my hands around my mouth I began to yell at her ear:

“We don’t need to—”

***BANG!*** -- ***BANG!*** -- ***BANG!***

A series of rapid booming crackles dazzled my senses to the point of waking seizure.

Oh God, the world is ending!

There was a sensation all through my body like pop rock candy, but on a blinding level, fizzing up my entire skull, auditory tunnels, and chest cavity with rattling, sparking noise. It was so demanding on my senses and attention that I lost track of where I was for an instant before the noise fizzled out, leaving me clutching my stomach and trying not to throw up.

Jennifer had lifted her head at the sounds and now her attention was back on the others.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” came Katie’s voice.

“THE NEIGHBORS PROCURED FIREWORKS,” Christine said dryly.

“YEAH,” said Tyler. “THE PEOPLE AT THE END OF THE STREET ARE HAVING A PARTY.”

As the crackling faded, their attention promptly returned to Jennifer.

“SORRY, JEN, I BELIEVE YOU WERE GOING TO SHOW US—?” Christine began expectantly.

Jennifer didn’t say anything. Instead, by way of answer, there was a soft wet smacking sound from right over my head. Soft enough that the others must not have caught it, but it was more than clear enough for me to make out.

I had no recourse; still catching my breath from the firecrackers, waiting for my throbbing skull to settle down.

“No, no, wait—!” I croaked. Before I could help myself, my eyes were darting all over the table, as if looking for an escape route. But there was no easy exit at my size, just a never-ending sprint across the black tabletop, devoid of the hope of getting anywhere fast.

As a long shadow deepened over me, Levi’s voice boomed from another corner of the table:

"IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE TRYING TO SNAG A PRIZE WITH THE CLAW MACHINE," he said with idle amusement.

"TRY PLAYING WHEN THE PRIZE IS THIS SMALL,” Jennifer retorted. She had fantastic reflexes and probably could have blitzed the claw machine if anyone could. But in that moment I only wished that I wasn’t playing the role of the prize in front of everyone.

A huge, round shape dipped down from the sky, seeming to materialize right in front of me. It was bigger than I was, and backed with a hard polished shell on one side, while the inside facing me was embossed with spiralling ridges, and the whole face of it glistening with a clear, bubbly film reflecting the wavering candlelights. Before I could react, the spiralling face collided with my front, knocking my feet right off the table surface, at the same time lifting me into the air because my chest and face had, in an instant, become hopelessly glued to the bubbly, watery goo, keeping me stamped in place while the finger – precisely, a pointer finger – rose again, separating me from the table just enough to demonstrate to everyone just how well adhered the front of my body had become to her saliva coated fingerprint.

“IF I TAKE HIM UP LIKE THIS,” Jennifer’s voice vibrated around me, for the benefit of the others, “I DON’T HAVE TO SQUEEZE.”

There was a silence that made it very clear to me that everyone was watching with keen interest, although I could not see anyone, seeing as though the majority of my face was pasted into a sticky puddle against her flesh. The saliva was awash with the dry tang of red wine.

Finally Katie’s voice broke the silence:

“HE MUST ABSOLUTELY ADORE YOU,” she observed, “TO LET YOU DO THAT.”

“JERRY IS A SHAMELESS CUDDLER,” Jen proclaimed. Her voice made it sound like she was repressing a smile. “HE’LL BEND OVER BACKWARDS FOR ANY PHYSICAL INTIMACY WITH ME.”

“AWW,” came Katie’s voice, “THAT IS JUST SO SWEET.”

Then I was being lowered again, and as the tabletop rose to my dangling feet, the big, hard end of a fingernail (from Jennifer’s other hand) moved in and delivered a couple of sharp jabs at my legs, until my face and chest detached from her fingerprint with a sick squelch, and I dropped onto my side on the tablecloth fabric.

My front immediately started to chill as my wet skin was exposed to the air; I wiped my palms up and down my face and chest to get myself dry. I could have wiped myself on the tablecloth, but I was trying to salvage a little dignity, even if I had only very little left.

From closeby, there were three loud thuds. I jumped up to my feet in alarm. After the firecrackers, my nerves were razor sharp.

It had sounded like a full size refrigerator being bashed against the floor, but was actually the sound of a pointer fingernail tapping upon the tabletop, resounding sharply with the wooden surface, though the tablecloth fabric blunted the sound, but not enough for my delicate ears.

The brisk knocking suggested it had been done to get someone’s attention. Mine apparently. I looked across and made eyes with the long, pale finger curled, balanced gracefully on its point. The finger belonged to Christine. Or it was attached to the arm resting on the table, belonging to the behemoth figure sitting in the place I identified Christine’s thunderous voice as coming from. The nail was coated in shiny opaque beige polish, and professionally squared off with a trimmer, shorter than Jennifer’s nails.

As I watched, the entire mass of the giant hand lifted off the tabletop and the towering finger wiggled at me as a form of wave. It was intended as friendly, but had the opposite effect; the last joint of her finger alone dwarfed me. If the circles of her fingerprint had been each painted a different color, I could have used her fingerpad as a fairground Skee ball target.

“WELL, LOOK AT YOU!” Christine’s beguiling voice thrilled the airwaves. “WHAT A PRECIOUS LITTLE THING YOU ARE. CAN YOU GIVE ME A WAVE?”

In response, I gave her a big sweeping wave with one arm, and she gave me a warm gracious smile in return, which only made my heart palpate in fright. From my point of view, the pair of gigantic, silken pink ridges curled back to reveal a row of pearly block panels, like an impassive fence.  I did not smile back, not only because she would not have been able to see it, but because I was unsure whether to feel anxious or relieved.

Lowering to the tabletop again, the giant hand rotated right around as the pointer, facing me, curled inward a couple of times.   

Being beckoned with this elegant, stunning sized digit was a surreal experience; but I couldn’t decide if it was flattering or ominous. I only hoped Christine was not interested in seeing if she could replicate the ‘finger glue’ action Jennifer had just demonstrated.

“WANDER ON OVER TO ME, DARLING,” came Christine’s great rumbling intonation, “COME AND MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN. I PROMISE I WON’T BITE.”

The fingertip dropped back down onto the tabletop, and as I stared at it, something large collided into my back, pushing me gently forwards. It felt like someone had walked backwards and bumped into me from behind, but it was in fact the flat surface of the nail of Jennifer’s index finger, coaxing me forward with the insistence of a police shield. The others let out sighs of amusement at the gesture.

Plodding ahead of Jennifer’s nail, my legs began to pump over the thatch weave of the fabric, Christine’s hand seeming to rise up as it came closer and closer. It wasn’t that I was eager to reach it, but thought that I didn’t make some speedy trails it might inspire an impatient Jennifer to make another attempt at snagging my body in the makeshift flypaper of a fingerprint slimed up with saliva.

Christine’s hand loomed before me, a creamy dome resting on the wrist and fingertips capped with nails shining like marble tiles. The palm was raised off the table, created a natural shadowy dugout that I could have crawled into for shelter. But the hand quickly rotated again, so the backs of the fingers stretched against the table surface, the lighter-colored palm exposed like a softly bumpy platform.

As I stood back and silently demurred, Christine’s voice returned, now blaring out from directly over my head:

“YOU DON’T NEED ME TO DRAW A LITTLE TARGET ON MY HAND TO TELL YOU WHERE I WANT YOU?” she offered, a little facetiously. “FOLLOW THE LINES OF MY PALM. IT’S A ROADMAP THAT’LL TAKE YOU INTO THE CENTER.”

“DO IT, JERRY!” Tyler said in a ‘you know you want to’ voice. “GET ON UP THERE!”

Again, the prospect of slapping back against Jennifer’s wet finger came to mind – or worse, she might encourage Christine to try. I jumped forward against the soft edge of the giant creamy platform, at the outer point where the base of the pointer met the palm, and began scrabbling against the creases of her skin. It was a little like trying to climb a wall of firm clay; I had to dig my nails in and wrench myself up before the supple shifting skin loosened my grip. Then I hauled myself up onto the padded surface of swirling lines that was her palm.

As if by instinct, I followed her instructions, tracing my footsteps along the nearest crease which led me straight to the centre of her hand, where the crease intersected with others. Once I stopped, the fingers and thumb rose and curled inwards as the hand cupped, until the inside fingers were creating a padded fleshy awning shading over my head.

“NOW LET’S FINALLY GET A GOOD LOOK AT YOU,” Christine said, and with that, the palm was rising up off the table like an elevator, “GIVE ME A FACE TO PUT TO THE NAME. JEN HAS TOLD ME WHAT DASHING GOOD LOOKS YOU HAVE AND NOW I THINK I BETTER SEE IT FOR MYSELF.”

The air went cool as it rushed past, I threw my arms out for balance, trying to avoid letting my eyes wander up and outside the hand at the vertigo inducing surroundings.

The hand stopped in mid-air suspended some height over the table, the blurring air sharpened again. The shade lifted as the fingers stretched back, and my eyes flicked across the landscape of Christine’s magnificent face.

Her honey blonde hair was tied back elegantly, with a golden waterfall of loose strands draping down the side of her head. Her face was made up in subtle earthy colors, and her glossy lipstick was a shade of pink that was almost tan brown. A pair of earrings hung from her ear lobes like draping tapestries of tasselled crystal.

Only now, gazing into the foreign features, it properly hit me that I wasn’t in Jennifer’s possession anymore, but that of a complete stranger, who literally held my life in the palm of her hand. I trusted Jennifer, but I didn’t know if I trusted her trust of others, given her tendency to impulsivity and reckless disregard of risks – which, at times, nearly grinded my trust of her down to shreds.

The black pools of Christine’s pupils enlarged as they focused on me. As if in sympathy, my own eyes grew helplessly bigger, locked like an animal of prey in her all-surrounding target sight.

Remembering – again – that I was naked, I quickly cupped my groin. A moment later a hot, humid cyclone hit me front on, pressing in and shaking my body like a strand of filament. It was bitingly sharp with the scent of wine.

As the hot wind beat me forcefully, eyes shut and teeth gritted, I was reduced to staggering on the spot, blindly groping for balance. My arms had whipped out to my sides as I struggled to keep my footing. Exposed, my member was hit straight on by the next full force gale exhalation, and flicked around like it had been slapped. My hand reflexively went down to cup it again out of modesty, but the next monstrous breath pushed me back a step and had me whirling my arms up for balance like an amateur tightrope walker as my dick was being helplessly slapped all around my thighs. This forceful exercise got me erect quickly, and the increasing length and thickness only my member even more animated in response to each surge of wind.

Okay, I thought desperately. Can we say: introduction over? Put me down now.

I opened my mouth to say something, right as a tremendous vacuum of inhalation ripped the air out of my lungs. My mouth clamped shut again.

Christine’s blasting timbre rattled through my bones:

“OH. OH MY GOSH. JEN. THIS IS WHY YOU KEEP HIM IN THE RING; HE’S AN ABSOLUTE TREASURE. LOOK AT THOSE PETITE MUSCLES. I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M HOLDING HIS ENTIRETY IN MY HAND, ALL THAT BULK PACKED INTO SUCH A TINY PACKAGE, AND WEIGHS VIRTUALLY NOTHING.”

She paused speaking, long enough to bathe me in another long surge of hot wind, only to chill my body as she sucked it back again. These constant reversals of potent air currents; first clammy and hot, then sharp and cool, then hot again, pushing, sucking, pushing, were enough to make me break out with fever, and confined to the levitating platform of her upturned hand, positioned directly beneath her lips, I was stuck smack in the maelstrom with no hope of escape.

Then, trying to lower her volume, she said to me:

“HELLO, JERRY. I HAVEN’T PROPERLY INTRODUCED MYSELF. MY NAME IS CHRISTINE.”

“I know!” I yelled. “Hi!”

I couldn’t say much else. Every time I opened my mouth, air was either vacuumed out of or shoved down my throat, constricting my lungs or swelling them up to near bursting point. Either way it was painful. My diaphragm ached as I used it to keep my chest wall firm. Therefore, I had to cram my speech into the slim gaps between Christine’s breaths when the air flow seemed to halt. It wasn’t clear if Christine even heard me or not. Maybe the roaring power of her exhalations blew my voice clean away, extinguished it like a candle.

She was speaking again:

“YOU DON’T FEEL SNUBBED BY ME, DO YOU? I WOULD HAVE KISSED YOU ON THE CHEEK COMING IN THE DOOR LIKE EVERYONE ELSE EXCEPT I DON’T THINK THE ENCOUNTER WITH MY LIPS WOULD HAVE ENDED WELL FOR YOU.”

She then asked me to turn around, giving her a complete view of my body. I obeyed, keen for an excuse to turn away from her intense gaze and even more intense breath.

As her hot breath pounded against my back, an odd, low, rumbling sigh escaped her throat, which made me think she was looking at my butt. The others couldn’t have known this – I would have appeared as a speck on Christine’s hand from where they were sitting – which gave the moment an unnerving kind of intimacy, like she’d flirted with me and it had gone over everyone’s heads.

“SWEETIE…” Christine said down to me. She sounded a little unsure now.

I swished around to face her again.

“Yes?”

“I DON’T MEAN TO ALARM YOU, BUT YOU KNOW YOUR KIT IS SWINGING AROUND AN AWFUL LOT, LIKE A TEENY LITTLE INSECT ANTENNA. IT DOESN’T LOOK NORMAL.”

“I know. It’s not,” I sighed, thinking, tell me which part of this whole shindig does look normal!

“DOES IT DO THAT OFTEN?”

I swallowed, then said:

“It’s your breath, Christine.”

“YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP FOR US A LITTLE, SWEETHEART. THAT VOICE IS TERRIFICALLY TINY. IT’S NOT MUCH LOUDER THAN THE BUZZ OF A MOSQUITO.”

I sorely hoped she was joking, but she sounded lamentably sincere. And besides, it wasn’t a fanciful comparison; I basically was the size of a mosquito.

“It’s your breath, Christine!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, and hoping this would not be interpreted as rude, “You’re blowing on me—”

The great golden strips of the eyebrows lifted and arched while the dark lips parted in surprise.

“HUSH,” she interjected with mock censure, “BEFORE THAT SLANDEROUS LITTLE TONGUE OF YOURS GETS YOU INTO TROUBLE. I HAVE ONLY JUST MET YOU; YOU’LL HAVE TO TOUCH RIGHT UP ON YOUR SEDUCTION STRATEGY BEFORE WE MOVE ANY FURTHER, DARLING.”

The others can’t have heard what I’d said, but going by Christine’s jesting response, they took it to imply I’d made a salacious pass at her. There was a ripple of laughter around the room. It looked like not only did Christine share Jennifer’s risqué sense of humor, but more or less everyone else in attendance did, too.

Normally, I would have been at pains to correct the misunderstanding, but I was worried this too would be misunderstood and twisted around at my expense. Blushing profusely, I kept my mouth shut.

After the wave of air-trembling laughter had subsided, one of the wood chairs made a dull groan as weight shifted. Christine’s fiancé Tyler had leaned across to catch a better look of me, standing in the center of her palm.

Hovering just over the edge of her hand, where it dipped down to meet her wrist, Christine’s face seemed to take up the sky, her eyes still in deep wondering meditation over my remarkably reduced anatomy. Meanwhile, Tyler’s presence had made itself know via peripheral vision darkening with his lengthening shadow, like a stormcloud starting to pass over the sun.

The stormcloud then rumbled:

 “ALRIGHT BY YOU IF I TAKE A LOOK AT THE WEE FELLA?”

It wasn’t clear whether he was directing this question at Christine or Jennifer. Christine answered. It sounded as though Jennifer had been mellowed enough by wine to take a back seat and let the others peruse me at leisure like an enthralling book. Unless she was enjoying the spectacle just as much as they were. It seemed to flatter by proxy her attraction to attention.

“DON’T BE ALARMED,” Christine said to me, “WE’RE JUST GOING TO SLIDE YOU DOWN.”

The platform of Tyler's hand levitated up underneath as Christine’s hand began to tilt beneath my feet, and continuing to rotate until I was sliding down the cushy surface, where I dropped onto the slightly larger and coarser surface of Tyler’s palm. His palm moved over the table until the underside of his jaw came into position above the edge of his hand, like a rocky overhang pitted with black thorns of stubble. Above, his thick brows of longer hair tensed as his eyes narrowed, honing in on me, before widening again.

Suppressing the habit to go to shake his hand, I waved my arms above my head and yelled up at him:

“Hi, Tyler, nice to meet you!”

He had leaned right forward in his seat, a grin lighting up his features. Glancing up and around at the others, he addressed his response not to me, but to them, as if I couldn’t hear him:

“HE SPEAKS!” he exclaimed. “OR I SHOULD SAY, HE SQUEAKS!” He chuckled. “IT’S LIKE TALKING TO A BUMBLEBEE!” His eyes scanned me for an extended moment, shining with rapt curiosity, “THAT THROAT’S GOT TO BE TINY; THINNER THAN THE WIDTH OF A HAIR!”

The reason he could hear my voice at all was because of my enhanced musculature, the muscles of my jaw, throat, pharynx and diaphragm were so powerful I could project my voice further and louder than expected for my size. This was an unexplained side-effect of my first shrinking, and only more enhanced since my second shrinking.  

Framing my mouth with my hands, I proceeded to yell up at him, to explain this:

“See, what happened was, when I—”

His head was growing in my direct sight as it bent down closer and closer to hear me, bringing his lips almost parallel with my eye level, and—

It was like standing in front of a plane propeller. His partly open mouth sent an outgoing gust of air straight down at me, his lungs emptying their gallons before giving me a second of rest, leaving me trembling in the cold.

“HEY THERE, LITTLE GUY,” Tyler’s deep voice quaked through my skull. “NICE TO FINALLY MEET YOU IN THE FLESH. OR, I SHOULD SAY, ON THE FLESH.”

The massive pink globe of his pinky fingertip came barrelling in at me from space, seeming to punch my head over and over as it tried to poke at me with interest, until my side dropped against his leathery palm, where the pinky finally departed.

“GEE, YOU’RE JUST A PENCIL SHAVING OF A PERSON, AREN’T YOU?” he exclaimed cheerfully, totally engrossed in his examination of me. “I THINK I BETTER HOLD MY BREATH; DON’T WANT TO ACCIDENTALLY BLOW YOU CLEAN OFF MY HAND.”

But it seemed he wasn’t very good at holding his breath. Getting to my feet, I went to say something but his sudden inhalation whistled through my ears, sucking painfully through my sinuses as it ripped the air out of my throat, leaving me coughing and mute. Another fierce exhalation sent a wall of hot air crashing against me. It was even worse than being in Christine’s hand, Tyler’s lungs contained greater air capacity. As her colossal fiancé performed his innocent inspection of my infinitesimal body, his unstoppable breaths carried on with metronymic regularity, the flat of his palm quickly became akin to a sauna.

Each blast of his lungs dumped a reservoir of hot air at me, on me, and steaming around me until the tiny airborne flecks of his saliva – tapping against my skin like rain drops – were frothing up the copious sweat oozing from my pores. Following up every exhalation without fail, each and every cool vacuuming inhalation of ingoing air flow sent ticklish icy shudders through my shaft and balls, over my body and up my spine. My penis was swung around in the powerful sucking and surging air currents like a wrecking ball. Not only my shaft but the entire length of my spine was warm and pulsating with unwanted arousal. My whole body was taut, the hairs all over prickling.

The regular pulsing force had such a palpable effect on my frail frame that it seemed to simulate the thrusting of the sex act, only exacerbated by the violent shudder that ran through my shaft every time the great throbbing drum beat of Tyler’s voice issued from his throat.

This was beyond the flapping lifts my penis had been subject to by Christine’s feathery breath. It was like Tyler was fucking me just by breathing and talking – and he had no idea. It called to mind Tantric sex practices, where people allegedly are able to produce sexual sensations without even physically touching each other. To Jennifer (who thought sex without genital contact was like trying to ride a bicycle with no wheels) Tantric sex was ‘kooky bullshit’ and previously, I tended to concur. But this was possibly as close to Tantric sex in reality as you could get.

But it was only a mechanic, freakish facsimile of the act. In reality it felt like being attacked. The juddering vibrations of his baritone made my flesh break out all over with the sensation of worms buried beneath my skin; every word made my stomach crumple up in distress as if I’d been punched around the ears.

In fact the helpless painful arousal seemed to heighten the nausea. It was like struggling to orgasm through a raging feverish sickness; my nervous system cycled endlessly between sick unbearable pleasure and swooning revulsion.

With the power to freeze time, Tyler’s godlike eyes seemed to hold on me for an age, but in reality was probably less than a minute.

“HOLY…! Tyler exclaimed, his eyes narrowing. He pointed his little finger at me. “YOU GOT A SERIOUSLY THICK LITTLE POLEARM STICKING OUT THERE. YOU COULD HANG A TINY TOWEL ON THAT THING. I HAD NO IDEA YOU WERE STROLLING AROUND WITH THE GUN UNHOLSTERED THIS WHOLE TIME.”

His blaring baritone exclamations made my flesh break out with a queasy crawling sensation, for an instant putting me back inside the ringing, clanging panther head. His voice had such a bodily impact that it was only an afterthought to be embarrassed by what he’d actually said; I was more worried that his immediate volume would shake me to bits.

Tyler paused and blinked at me, his brow scrunching into shadowed trenches as if puzzled or bothered. “DOESN’T IT GET IN THE WAY?”  

There was a sigh of embarrassment from Katie’s end of the table and, grinning in spite of himself, Levi put his arm around her shoulder, giving it a squeeze in sympathy – a gesture that did not fail to make my heart twinge with envy, seeing as how I couldn’t do that with Jennifer.

“OH, BOY…” he said, sounding if as the conversation was swerving away from his comfort level. “I’M STILL TRYING TO DIGEST MY FOOD. LET’S NOT GET CARRIED AWAY WITH DETAIL HERE.”

I desperately wanted to cup my groin, but was terrified any direct contact (even with my own hand) would tip me over the edge into shuddering release.

Tyler’s eyes roamed my body up and down, sometimes moving his hand even closer to his face, just under the tip of his nose – his nostrils sucking at me with reckless force – before bringing me away again. His gleaming interest in me suggested he had detached from seeing me as a person, or just another guest at the table. I had become a bizarre little insect and he was seven years old again, the recognition that I had my own tiny little mind, my own viewing window into the world had fallen away somewhere. To his indiscriminate curiosity, my flagpole was just another fascinating piece of my scientifically extraordinary anatomy.

Meanwhile, his sweeping breath stole not just my voice but my lifeforce. I could only nod in response as I fought to keep packing air down my windpipe, but the papery specks of my lungs were in hopeless defeat vying for the same oxygen that the hot air balloons in Tyler’s chest cavity were ungraciously ripping out of my own trembling chest, as they were folding inwards in submission every time he took a breath in.

“PERHAPS IT WOULD BE WISE TO RECLAIM YOUR LITTLE MATE, JEN,” Christine murmured, “BEFORE TYLER PULLS OUT A MAGNIFYING GLASS AND STARTS JOTTING DOWN NOTES.”

Jennifer bantered back:

“RIGHT…I SHOULD HAVE SAID EARLIER: MY LITTLE MATE IS EXTREMELY SELF-CONSCIOUS ABOUT HIS SIZE.”

She had finally come out of her ‘trance’, which was something she did sometimes – vintage helped. It was ‘accelerate’ or ‘rest’ with her, there was no ‘cruise’ option.’ When we’d been going out the first time, I used to savor those rare moments of rest from her high energy nature – it was the prime opportunity to close in for uncomplicated cuddling – but since my recent reduction, a dangerous edge had developed to her ‘rest’ moments. If she was in ‘rest’ mode she became too complacent about my comfort or safety.

“YOU’RE THE MAN OF THE EVENING, JERRY,” Levi said in undertone, “EVERYONE WANTS A LITTLE PIECE OF YOU.”

Well, a ‘little’ piece was all they were going to get.

“YOU NEED TO HIRE HIM A P.A,” Tyler joked to Jennifer, “TO SCHEDULE VIEWINGS.”

“I DON’T THINK SO,” Jennifer replied coolly. “THE ONLY ‘VIEWINGS’ JERRY CAN LOOK FORWARD TO ARE NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION.”

Tyler’s palm conveyed me over the table, and with a tilt of his hand, I bounced over his leathery skin, dropping onto the softer palm of Jennifer’s cupped hand. It felt like being tipped out of one jumping castle and onto the springy surface of another.

Even without the visual confirmation, the identity of her hand was manifest in the signature scent of vanilla moisturiser, so familiar that my muscles drooped with relief. A love affair with hand lotions and moisturizing lathers made her hands velvety soft.

She drew back in her seat again, and my relief was short lived as I was promptly rolled out onto the tablecloth right in front of her.

Her fingers fanned around me protectively as I stood up, though the gesture on my level was intimidating, as her hand resembled some floating monster with multiple, multi-hinged necks, and glossy blades for heads. One such slender neck dipped low in my sights, bringing the lustrous nail panel careening headlong at me like a car bumper, and I jumped back. Slowing right down, the generous length of the white nail tip moved in whisper close to my naked front – Jen’s amazing hand-eye coordination allowed her to be tenfold gentler than Tyler’s blunt dodgem-car probing. Her squoval-shaped nails were long enough that if viewed side-on, they looked like claws. Not an optimistic comparison, though at my current size, less like claws, more like oversized ballistic shields.

Her aim was so forensically precise she was able to balance the tip of her nail on my swollen member. Which she demonstrated to me, in that instant. I was so tiny none of the others at the table would’ve seen what she was really doing – if they were even looking at me anymore. It might have looked like she was providing me a wall or surface to lean against. The easy-going conversation had resumed, anyway, churning the air with its droning noise.

Up close, the lustrous nail became my entire world. Literally, the nail plate was raised up in front of my face, and my palms pressed against its polished surface as if to push it away, but it was like pushing at a concrete wall. There was more strength wound up in Jennifer’s pinky finger than in my entire body.

The moment the white free edge of keratin contacted my agonized shaft, bending it downwards under the subtlest pressure, a shockwave of searing arousal radiated through my pelvis. My knees trembled, face collapsing into the nail. I could have walked out from under it, but I suspected this was pointless; her other fingers hovered outstretched above, twitching minutely, as if prepping to wall me in at any sign of flight.

It was surreal; an entire diving board balancing upright upon the tip of my erect dick. Her way of saying to me: acquaint yourself with my friends, but don’t forget, you belong to me.

Her finger twitched. Now it felt like someone was jolting the diving board.

I let out a pitiful shriek that no one heard.

High above, the staggering visage of her face, like a great sphinx, was studying me with the faintest trace of amusement. And also, pride, like I was rare goods and she secretly thrilled at the opportunity to show me off, and have the sole privilege of getting to take me home.

I wept sexually frustrated tears against the tyrannical shining nail, pounded my fists against it. None of it was heard.

Paining for escape, I began to shuffle backwards, but the nail followed me, mounting my shaft again with ease. Twitching harder now as if punishing me for trying to wander, tapping my glans. I was nearing peak and it felt like it was going to really hurt, particularly if the nail gave me a sharp tap the very moment I came.

One of the others told a joke and there was a hush of polite laughter. Levi let out a belch that, to me, harkened the imminent eruption of a volcano. Then – his inebriation having loosened his movements – he placed his bottle down on the table, which was as if the bottle fell from the sky and landed on the tabletop with ringing crash. The shock jolted me forward, smacking my face on Jen’s fingernail on the way down to the tablecloth, my dick getting painfully squashed beneath me, dispelling my erection.

As I lay groaning, both men got to their feet.

“WELL,” Tyler said, surveying everyone, “IF YOU LADIES DON’T MIND, LEVI AND I ARE GOING TO HEAD DOWN THE STREET.” His sweeping glance stopped at the other end of the table, where I was lying on my side, groaning. “DOES JERRY WANT TO COME WITH US?”

It sounded ridiculous, but I assumed he intended to carry me in his hand or maybe keep me his breast pocket, to jiggle blindly around, tangling in fabric lint with his powerful strides. It didn’t matter what I thought, anyway; he’d aimed the question at Jennifer.

Christine’s voice intervened:

“YOU THINK THAT’S A GOOD IDEA?” not turning in her seat, she swivelled her head around at Tyler. “IT’S VERY DARK OUT. WHAT IF YOU LOST SIGHT OF HIM?”

The neighborhood was spaced out between houses (another of Jennifer’s observations) and those spaces must now be gloomy patches overshadowed by the treelines.

For a second, neither man said anything. Levi looked at Tyler, and Tyler bowed his head in submission.

“AH, YOU’RE PROBABLY RIGHT. GOOD THINKING, HONEY.”

Avoiding Christine, his eyes swept over me on the table. Or, from his position, the dot vaguely resembling me.

The two men started to file out of the dining room. Levi bent to kiss Katie on the cheek as he went, as if without even thinking, and she demurely turned her head and closed her eyes a second to let him. The whole thing was so quick and fluid from comfortable habit. I averted my eyes, blushing, but not from embarrassment; that simple affectionate gesture was miles beyond my abilities.

“YOU MUST HAVE LOADS OF STORIES TO TELL ABOUT ALL YOUR ADVENTURES, JERRY,” Tyler said lightly, now to me. “YOU CAN KEEP THE LADIES ENTERTAINED FOR US WHILE WE’RE OUT.”

Satisfied with the compromise, the men marched out of the dining room, their footsteps pounding over the tiles like a departing landslide.

In the candlelit dining room, the women chatted for a little while longer. Christine was talking about Tyler’s work, and it made me feel wistful about drifting out of employment due to my size. I tried to content myself to lie on my back on the tablecloth, staring up at the shadowed furrows running along the inside of Jennifer’s palm, which was lifted up but curled protectively over me again, the previous teasing probably already forgotten, though my aching dick took longer to forgive. The big black chunk of Onyx glittered on her ring finger – the thing keeping me leashed to her finger while I was inside the rock; literally wrapped around her finger. Someone probably needed to update the postal service to forward my mail to my new postal address at: ‘1 Panther Tongue Cul-de-sac, Ms Tomlin’s Ring Finger.’

At a lull in the conversation, Christine stretched back in her chair.

“THIS SIDE OF THE HOUSE GETS COLDER AT NIGHT,” she said. “LET’S MOVE OURSELVES INTO THE DEN. THERE’S A FIRE GOING.”

There were the shuffling sounds of the women leaving their chairs, the wood chairs groaning. I had just gotten back onto my feet when the pad of Jennifer’s finger delivered a small tap to the crown of my head, only soft, but enough to nearly buckle my insubstantial frame down onto the table again.

“BACK IN THE RING, BABE,” she said, her fingers fanning over me like tree boughs as she started to unscrew the panther head. I stiffened, not wanting to so fast submit myself to the silicate cell’s ringing reverb and chromatic color scheme.

“YOU’RE NOT PUTTING HIM AWAY SO SOON?” inquired Christine. “WE’VE BARELY GOTTEN TO KNOW EACH OTHER.”

“IT DOESN’T BOTHER ME,” Jennifer insisted, “BUT JERRY’S A SENSITIVE LITTLE SOUL AND HE NEEDS HIS SPACE. I WOULDN’T WANT HIM TO GET OVER-STIMULATED.”

It was far too late for that, I thought.

Christine wasn’t convinced either. She fixed Jennifer with a patient smile.

“YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. KATIE AND I WILL TREAT HIM LIKE GLASS,” she looked across at the younger redhead. “WON’T WE, KATIE?”

“LIKE NATURAL PEARL,” Katie added, nodding solemnly.

So the panther head stayed screwed on, and I had a rush of perverse affection for Christine for standing up to Jennifer. She had a patient mother duck vibe, like she was the only person who could humble her impetuous friend with a gentle lecture.

The enormous floating hand flattened palm up on the tablecloth, creating an elevated stage awaiting my ascent.

“FINGER JOCKEY,” Jennifer said grandly, “YOUR RIDE AWAITS.”

A giant fingernail tapped against the table to motivate me to hurry up and jump aboard. Not wanting to risk another surprise French kiss with her saliva-slicked fingertip, I dashed on over and scampered up onto her hand. Her fingers twitched and flexed as I ran across the springy palm towards the center; my movement must have tickled her, but she managed to restrain herself from swatting me in a fit of irritation as she would have done to any other creature my size.

Chairs squealed like sirens over the timber floor as they were pushed back for the women to leave their seats. As Jennifer stood, the great fingers curled up slightly as her hand lifted into the air and began to transport me as if via levitation through the dining room, following the colossal – and, viewed from behind, curvy like a mountain range – waist-hip figure of Christine, leading out of the room.

It was kind of fun, I had to admit, like riding a huge magic carpet, and backgrounded by the dimness and the distant, eerie flickering orange candlelights, I could almost imagine I was floating along through Aladdin’s vast Cave of Wonders, though no magic lamp to wish me back to normal size.

“COME ON THROUGH, LADIES,” said Christine, beckoning through the archway out of the dining room. “AND KATIE, WOULD YOU PLEASE BRING THE BOTTLE…?”

“CAN’T FORGET THAT,” Katie said, taking the wine bottle and passing the kitchen to collect some wine hock glasses.

“UNLESS YOU’RE A BARTENDING WIZARD, TAKE THE SHORT FAT ONES – ” Christine advised kindly, “—THEY LOOK LIKE SNIFTERS WITH WIDE RIMS; THEY’RE STACKABLE.”

Stacking three glasses and carrying the wine bottle, Katie began to follow the other two into the living room, asking:

“WHERE ARE THE BOYS HEADED, ANYWAY?”

Christine replied:

“A COUPLE OF BLOCKS DOWN TO SEE THOSE PEOPLE AT THE END OF THE STREET. TYLER KNOWS SOMEONE DOWN THERE. I BELIEVE IT'S A WORK COLLEAGUE."

“LEVI WOULD BE IN IT FOR THE LEFTOVER FIREWORKS,” Katie groaned.

Christine gave a knowing nod, before she suddenly turned to Jennifer, her eyes dropping on me:

“OH, AND JERRY, I’M SORRY TO HAVE INTRUDED EARLIER. YOU’RE WELCOME TO JOIN THE BOYS IF YOU WISH. ONE OF US CAN TAKE YOU DOWN THERE, ASSUMING WE CAN PRISE YOU OUT OF JEN’S HAND, FIRST…”

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT, CHRIS,” Jennifer said immediately, “I’M KEEPING MY EYE ON HIM FOR NOW. BESIDES,” her voice tipped coyly, “HE WON’T COMPLAIN SHARING THE COMPANY OF THREE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.”

“A LADIES MAN,” Christine smiled, seemingly happy now that her offer was smoothly side-lined. “HOW VERY CHARMING. WHAT DO YOU DRINK, JERRY?”

Her towering upper form bent over Jennifer’s hand, the shadowy curvature of her huge ear becoming my ceiling as she turned her head to the side to hear me.

“Whiskey, thanks, Christine,” I called up to her. “And lately, lots of it.”

“JERRY’S A LIGHTWEIGHT,” Jennifer said quickly, “—NO JOKE; IT UPSETS HIS SYSTEM.” 

“HE DOESN’T HAVE TO DRINK IT, JENNIFER,” Christine said, with gentle reproach as she straightened again. “HE CAN JUST ENJOY THE AROMA.”

The den was warm and the light was kept off; the crackling fireplace providing the only orange light. To the side of the room, the curtains were not fully drawn over the full length glass window, showing the p-patio chairs in the moonlight, against the blue night sky (Christine’s estimation of the ‘very dark’ night was overblown, there was a full moon). The house had a railed wooden deck running almost around the entire house, offering a nice view of pine treelines (said by Jennifer during the drive in, obviously I had not actually seen them). Anyway, it was too cold to go out; Particularly for me, being naked.

While Christine slipped out to fetch me the liquor, Jennifer’s hand lowered and came to a rest upon the coffee table in the middle of the room, letting me dismount. I slid my legs over the edge of her hand and dropped down onto the wood surface, warmed from the fireplace. Without thinking, I began to pace around the tabletop, trying to get the blood out of my groin and into the rest of my body. My shadow stretched triplefold out from my feet as I walked – even my shadow was taller than me – but at least the black trail, flickering from the glowing fire and my walking motions, made me more visible to the women. For that reason, I was determined to not stop moving.

Christine sidled back into the den and carefully placed a teaspoon down near me on the coffee table, which contained a single drop of pale gold alcohol, to me like a big puddle in a metal basin.

“NO COMPLAINTS WITH JACK DANIEL’S?” she asked rhetorically, stepping back. “IT’S TYLER’S – " she gave the women a wink, "I ONLY TOOK A DROPLET, THINK HE'LL NOTICE?"

In silence, the three women watched with interest as I wandered up to the bathtub sized spoon and leaned over the inside, taking in the rich, malty fumes, before lowering my head to suck some up. The surface tension made it like honey, but not distasteful, kind of like alcoholic treacle.

High up, Katie’s inebriated giggles made the air ring:

“AWWW,” she said, “WHAT A DELICATE LITTLE SWEETHEART.”

Satisfied that I was not going to drown, Jennifer scooted up onto the armchair closest to the fire, turning sideways against the backrest and lifting her knees over the armrest, enjoying the fire’s warmth on her pantyhose covered legs. Katie and Christine slid onto the opposite cushions of the two-seat sofa, the former clearing a small stack of magazines to create space on the timber coffee table for the glass stack and bottle, which rested with a clunk that jolted up through my body, but I didn’t flinch; the alcohol was already having an anesthetizing effect on my nerves, which had been plucked at all night by the loud sounds and gigantic movements. Seduced, I slurped down mouthful after mouthful until my belly felt tight and my blood vessels were humming.

Once the whiskey drop was all gone, I stood, swaying, and then tried to resume my slow journey along the table, trying to keep doing laps, keep my mind active so I didn’t fall asleep.  

Not long after, Jennifer got up again and, assured I was properly supervised, headed for the bathroom.

Christine and Katie’s voices droned in casual conversation over my head. When the voices paused in thought, I turned and looked up to find Christine’s eyes following my ambling passage around the coffee table. Without realizing it I had been doing a lap around the edge of the table closest to where her great, poised form was sitting. My movement had caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She was still like a statue, but her eyes were locked on me. I assumed she was making sure I didn’t fall off the table.

She noticed me looking up at her.

“YOU’RE BETTER OFF STICKING WITH US IN HERE, JERRY,” she said idly. “THE WARMTH SHOULD BE GOOD FOR YOU.”

I stood there, not knowing whether to carry on my walk or hold her attention out of politeness. The sofa upholstery rustled as she slid forward over the seat, leaning over her knees until she was staring right down at me, a lock of stray hair – molten gold in the firelight – dropping down the side of her face, gold vines that I could have scaled. The silvery blue eyes studied me intently. In my peripheral vision, Katie was also watching me from behind her wine glass, which she was sipping at intervals. Her long, angular legs were crossed at the knee, one over the other, the lifted foot hovering just by the edge of the coffee table. The pantyhose must have been chafing or making her foot sweat because the toes – like creamy boulders – were flexing and straining against the fine black netting.

Christine leaned forward, bending low over her legs to get a better look at me. Her eyes narrowed as her plush pink lips thickened into a pout. Her great countenance swam before my tired eyes.

“POOR THING,” she fretted, “ALL EXPOSED. YOU MUST GET SO COLD.”

Her booming voice now sent pleasurable shivers through my numbed nerves. My penis twitched and lifted.

“Bare skin-to-skin contact helps me stay warm.” I blurted without thinking, not intending anything by it.

Her lips now twisted in the ghost of a smile.

“NAUGHTY LITTLE MAN,” she wagged a finger down at me. The digit was so massive its motion displaced enough air around me to create a palpable cool draught, giving me a flash of the cold she was ironically so concerned about.

“JENNIFER SHOULD HAVE WARNED ME ABOUT YOU. HERE I AM WORRYING ABOUT YOUR EXTREMITIES WHEN YOU’RE CLEARLY RECEIVING A LOT OF WARM BLOOD FLOW TO OTHER VITAL AREAS.”

The previously wagging digit now zoomed even closer for me, closing in to give me a small admonitory poke. Due to its sheer size, it bumped headlong into my face, torso and even made firm contact with my groin, which, due to its near painful sensitivity from being whacked by the earlier vacuums of wind, was building up with arousal again. I had the disturbing feeling of being bumped by a car moving at the pace of a harmless crawl.

I stumbled back as the massive digit withdraw again, Christine sent Katie a sidelong droll look.

“I HAVE NEVER KNOWN A MAN SO TINY TO BE SO EXCITABLY HAPPY.”

Katie giggled into her wine.

I put my head down and carried on my walk and both women went back to their conversation. A dark object loomed before me. In the dim light, I hadn’t been paying it much attention. It was the domed shelf of Katie’s toes, which had come closer to the coffee table, now gripping the edge, and I was heading straight for them.

“KATIE, DON’T MOVE YOUR FOOT,” Christine said, hushed. “I THINK JERRY IS LOOKING TO CLIMB ONTO YOUR TOES. WHAT DO YOU SAY?”

That’s not what I was going to do. I was going to walk around her toes and keep going around the table. But now both women had fallen silent and were staring at me with interest.

“HOW AM I GOING TO REFUSE?” Katie said, “THE POOR LITTLE GUY HAS NO SEATS HIS OWN SIZE.”

Her toes rubbed together as if in anticipation, distending and contracting against the hose. They had me frozen, hypnotized like a bundle of pale pythons writhing inside a big black net.

“OF COURSE YOU MAY HOP UP ON MY TOES,” the redhead said, through a shy smile. “I WOULD BE HONORED TO LEND THEM TO YOU TO LET YOU TAKE A LITTLE REST. I SEE YOU’VE BEEN MARCHING AROUND THE TABLE ALL THIS TIME LIKE A BUSY LITTLE ANT WHILE CHRIS AND I HAVE BEEN SITTING HERE ON OUR BUTTS GOSSIPING. THOSE TEENY FEET MUST BE SO TUCKERED OUT BY NOW.”

She’d lowered her wine glass and had leaned forward to view me better.

Not wanting to look rude, I continued up to the bumpy ridge of her toes, wiggling faintly, but calming with my arrival. With a deep breath, I reached up and dug my nails into the pantyhose boulder of the little toe, roughly as tall as I was, and pulling myself up, arm after arm, until my hands brushed the hard plate of the nail beneath the hose thatch. The nails were painted dark purplish red, and the tendons along the toes stood out as they were kept flexed hard around the tabletop edge.

Making the climb turned out not to be a wise idea after all, but it was only once I was standing on the nail plateau did I feel the stinging in my hands. At my size the pantyhose felt like a mesh of thatch and had scratched at the flesh of my palms and inside of my fingers. Once I was finally up, I checked my stinging palms to find them red with rope burn. My feet had also been digging against the hose, and lifting one foot, I found the sole similarly red with a rash. It was just a good thing I didn’t rub my dick against the abrasive fabric

Breathing deeply from my exercise, it became apparent the air was tinged with Katie’s sweaty foot odor, elicited by the warmth in the room and the stuffy enclosure of the pantyhose. It was sharp to me, but too faint for either woman to have been aware of.

I carefully made my way over the shadowy cleft separating the fifth toe from the fourth, although the springy floor of the hose provided a safety net against falling in between toes. Then I kept journeying, passing from toe to slightly bigger toe, trying to ignore the sting of my soles against the scratchy hose, until I’d made it onto the hard dome of the big toe’s mauve-colored nail.

The sofa groaned as Katie’s mega-sized hand parachuted down over my head, one long finger extending downward, as the nail tip began to dig and scratch around the toes. My passage along her foot must have itched her. Startled, I began to pace back to keep clear of the great index finger shovelling its nail around the agitated toes. The sound was like boots scraping concrete.

Maybe my tickling was making her feel giddy and reckless, or all her slow sips of her wine were finally getting to her, dissolving her inhibitions, as she now decided to have some fun with me.

"WATCH OUT, SILLY LITTLE TEDDY BEAR,” she cooed down at me, “MY BIG FINGER IS COMING FOR YOU."

Her index finger suspended its scratching to lift up and loom over my head warningly. As the nail angled down at my head, I stirred into activity, my feet scampering back and forth, leaping over each toe in turn as I desperately tried to avoid the probing digit. But It didn't matter where I ran, the fingertip tracked me patiently like a slender and incredibly mobile airborne missile.

Booms of feminine giggling trembled the air as my tiny pattering feet danced back and forth, seeming to make her itch all over again. The overhead finger made some playful swooping and dipping motions in my direction. Through peals of laughter, Katie said:

“STOP SKIPPING AROUND DOWN THERE AND ITCHING ME, AND MAYBE I’LL STOP TRYING TO SCRATCH AT YOU!”

Then the giant finger paused its chasing to rake around the toes again, causing the pantyhose fabric to pull and stretch under my feet, jerking me around a little. Without warning, the finger lifted up and, joined by a thumb, pretended to pinch at me. I jumped back, getting ready to run again, but the world seemed to tilt. My legs jerked around as I tried to keep my alcohol-affected sense of balance on the tugging fabric. Then one of my feet stepped down into nothingness and I was rushing down to the ground, turning head over feet. The women gasped.

The top of my skull struck the carpet and I bounced into the air before coming to a stop on my back. The drop didn’t hurt – even though I’d landed and bounced on my head – I was too small. Back when I’d been former size, I could survive a drop from the ceiling to the floor, though it hurt. Now, orders smaller again, I could probably fall from the ceiling without pain, and wondered how far I would have to fall in order to sustain injury, or even die. Whatever the case, if I did die by accident, I didn’t see it happening by fall.

Before I could get up, the sofa made loud rustling sounds as a great collection of fingertips descended from above and, as they entered my immediate proximity, blurred in my perception into giant fleshy spheres, which finally extinguished all light as they smothered my face and body and pulled tight around me – much too tight, like an anaconda had me in constriction. My limbs were forced rigid, locking my joints. The curve of my spine was being urged to straighten, causing vertebrae to grind, and driving pressure against my narrowing ribcage. Muscles all over were pulling, rubbing and burning. A scream was frozen in my chest; my lips were crushed against the rough ridges of a sebaceous-coated fingerprint.

Through the throbbing in my skull, came Christine’s urgent voice:

“KATIE,” she said, “MIND YOU DON’T PINCH JERRY TOO HARD. I KNOW HE LOOKS BREATHTAKINGLY MUSCULAR, BUT YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER, HIS MINISCULE BODY DOESN’T HAVE THE SUBSTANCE TO HOLD UP AGAINST YOUR FIRM FINGERS.”

“OH MY GOSH,” Katie gasped. The flesh walls separated again; the flickering firelight spilled, then I was slid over and bounced upon the creased, padded expanse of her palm.

“I’M SO SORRY!” She gushed, her voice loud and painful in my aching, throbbing ears. “CAN YOU MOVE? ARE YOU ALRIGHT? I DIDN’T HURT YOU DID I?”

Her face was oppressively large overhead, as she’d brought her hand right up to peer in at me. Her wide eyes scanned me anxiously while the dry fruity gust of her wine-suffused breath nearly had me intoxicated just having it rammed into my lungs over and over.

“It’s fine, Katie,” I said, raising a hand and getting to my feet. “Nothing broken. The carpet gave me a soft landing.”

“OH,” she gave a great big sigh of relief, hammering me with warm air that trembled my infinitesimal frame, “I’M SO GLAD TO HEAR THAT. YOU NEARLY HAD ME FREAKING OUT THERE.”

“BETTER NOT LET WORD OF THIS LITTLE MISADVENTURE GET BACK TO JEN,” Christine advised Katie in diplomatic undertone. “SHE’S APT TO... OVERREACT.”

Christine’s face came in over the edge of the giant hand, moving in beside Katie’s to briefly check I was alright, and her gaze hung on me for a second, half veiled by her lashes. Now I was getting buffeted by the gale forces of their breath combined, and worse, they weren’t breathing synchronously, so as I hunched up and weathered one exhalation, I’d get blasted by another stratospheric windcloud almost immediately. Then the air was wrenched out of my chest again by one inhalation, which doubled up, threatened to yank my lungs inside out, or tear them to shreds. My diaphragm was in anguish; felt like it had collapsed, given up trying to keep my chest wall firm, and leaving my lungs to flap like sails. There was no rest. I felt like a balloon being blown up too big, too fast, sucked out and blown up again to near bursting point. Added to that, my dick was purple and screaming for release, trapped in a never-ending cycle of being violently tugged, built up to agony by the sheer gripping force of warm air currents, squeezed by each inhalation and whipped by each exhalations.

Tears were running down my face and my stomach turned from the nauseous pungence of stinging wine-infused wind, while a clammy film of vaporous saliva was sticking to my skin like cling wrap. Ever the optimist, I had to be grateful that – so far – neither woman had sneezed, otherwise my head might have burst with the sonic boom.

“HUSH HUSH, ISN’T THAT RIGHT, JERRY?” Christine was saying in a low voice, meanwhile the presence of an enormous fingertip – also hers judging by the earthy nail polish – materialized to brush into my shoulder like a head-butt. “IF SHE KNEW YOU WERE HAVING A LITTLE TOO MUCH EXCITEMENT WITH US – WITHOUT HER – SHE MIGHT STUFF YOU BACK IN THE RING AGAIN...”

Katie looked at Christine curiously as if for elucidation. Christine’s eyes lifted from me and passed a quick look to Katie, with deceptive calm, as her head shifted from my sight again.

“JERRY KNOWS WHAT I—”

“JERRY KNOWS WHAT?”

It was Jennifer’s voice, sounding deceptively idle and unconcerned as she strode back into the den. After her eyes performed a preliminary search of the room to locate me, seeing that I was cradled in Katie’s palm, she returned to her armchair, with her legs drawn up on the seat.

“JEN, THERE YOU ARE,” said Christine briskly. “WOULD IT BOTHER YOU IF I TOOK JERRY OUT TO HAVE A QUICK WORD WITH HIM IN PRIVATE?”

Facing the fire again, Jennifer turned her head back to survey Christine with an expression of gentle vexation.

“I SUPPOSE,” she finally said. “PROVIDED YOU DON’T LET HIM OUT OF YOUR SIGHT.”

“I’LL HAVE HIM CLINGING TO ME THE ENTIRE TIME.”

Christine’s upper body sidled back into view above me as Katie’s palm slanted steeply, overturning into a sharp slide straight onto Christine’s cupped palm, awaiting just below. The way I was being passed back and forth between hands, getting blasted at intervals by breath had me feeling like a tiny canoe in a vast storm-whipped ocean.

I was starting to wonder if it wouldn’t be so bad to go back into the ring, even just for the opportunity to lie down and let my body recover. As I mulled this, the den walls were gliding past as Christine carried on through the house and into another room. I only saw rooms in part, with grossly magnified objects of furniture blocking most of my view, so I used surface materials and the handful of objects I could make sense of to inform me where I was. In this case, the tiled floor, polished surfaces, and a colossal glass pane shielding the shower cubicle. flashing past above the edge of Christine’s hand, indicated this was the bathroom.

Then came the sound of the door thudding shut.

Stopping before the broad mirror over what I guessed was the sink area, Christine glanced down at me in her hand. I was not only standing with my feet planted against her soft warm flesh, but my engorged member was standing to attention with palpable arousal.

With the hint of an uneven smile, Christine murmured :

"AM I ONLY IMAGINING THINGS OR ARE YOU EVEN MORE EXCITED SINCE COMING BACK TO ME...?"

She was manoeuvring a fingertip like a flying battering ram into my immediate vicinity, and bumping in playfully into my body, and my damning erection, almost tackling me off my feet. Her humorsome digit had been doing this a lot over the evening. It seemed like mere minutes would pass before the probing presence of another enormous digit hailed down to satisfy her burning curiosity of me, or punctuate a sly remark with a droll poke.

And she was not imagining things. The earlier concentration of airborne jets she and Katie had exposed me to had puffed my shaft up pretty bad, comparable to when Tyler had been holding me.

“IF YOU DON’T MIND, I’M JUST GOING TO TOUCH MY FACE UP,” she indicated. “MAY I SUSPEND YOU ON MY EARRING? JEN TOLD ME YOU’RE AN EXCELLENT LITTLE CLIMBER. AND I THINK YOU MAKE A GREAT LITTLE STUD.”

By ‘stud’ she was alluding to an earring piece; the additional double entendre probably appealed to her as well.

Before I could respond, her palm was bringing me up against the side of her head, taking me up to the tassel earring that dangled from her earlobe. It was like a set of crystalline chains; the glimmering metal-framed tassels provided me with natural handholds.

Crossing the elastic floor of flesh that sunk a little under my feet, I approached the bundle of chains, grabbing the nearest and wrenching myself up, wrapping my legs around it, and using my arms to climb. With my legs wrapped around one of the tassels, my erection kept dragging against the chains as I pulled myself higher, sending pangs along my shaft and into my balls. As my hands and feet ran up the chain, my palms and soles flared out again from earlier climbing Katie’s pantyhose, but I persisted.

I had no choice; Christine’s hand was no longer beneath me, she was now rummaging among bottles of product arranged on some bathroom shelving. If I let go, I would have fallen onto her shoulder, or – worst case scenario – bounced off and fallen onto the tiled floor. If she didn’t see me down there she could accidentally step on me. I’d survive the fall, and I might even survive being stood on, if lucky enough to get caught up under the spaces of her toes, sheltered from the brunt of her unfathomable weight, but the thought of the toes inadvertently scrunching, ripping me to shreds by the scratchy, sandpaper-like hose thrilled me with terror. At least death by fall or being crushed was instantaneous, but death by being grated like cheese between her abrasive pantyhose-covered toes might not be.

Finally, midway up the chain, I decided to stop.

Straight ahead of me was the bathroom mirror. The surface of the mirror was like the perfectly reflective wall of a high-rise building, lacking window grids. In it I saw myself, peering out from the glimmering crystal vines of Christine’s earring, clinging there, hopelessly dwarfed by the great flesh shell of her ear, positioned above me, not to mention her much larger head, and then her unfathomably larger body, the full extent of which the mirror and my perspective concealed. As for me, bundled in amidst the earring, most of my visible body was a tiny face, biceps and legs and a monstrous dick bulging out from between the tassels.

Christine was staring back at me in the mirror. It struck me – all at once – how bizarre I must look, and a wave of shame hit me; not just for my exaggerated anatomy but the fact I was reduced to dangling from her earring.  I looked away.

“You wanted to tell me something, Christine?” I inquired, trying to distract myself.

“OH! THAT’S BETTER,” she paused, taking pleasure in hearing me so close to her ear. “YOUR VOICE DOESN’T SOUND FARAWAY. AND WHAT AN ADORABLE LITTLE CROON YOU HAVE WHEN I CAN ACTUALLY HEAR IT PROPERLY.”

In the mirror reflection, I watched helplessly as her arm lifted, her gigantic hand shooting straight for me before her fingers blocked out my view, blundering around, trying to identify my tiny form amongst the hanging crystal chains. My stinging palms gripped tight against the delicate metalwork as the thin chains were jostled by her intruding digits, which knocked me back and forth like a chandelier in an earthquake. As the chains rattled and whipped my throbbing dick, a series of shuddering gasps escaped my throat. Then my chest gave a pained squeak as I was near squished between the digits as they recklessly bumped together in their quest to gently capture my feather-thin substance between them.

They withdrew again, letting the chains sway gently and come to rest, apart from swinging any time she turned her head. Whenever that happened, the crystal chains of her earrings quivered all around my rock hard erection, jiggling around me whenever she moved her head.

“CLEVER SPOT TO KEEP YOU, DON’T YOU AGREE?”

“Can’t think of a better one,” I gulped.

Turning her attention back to the bottle of foundation in her hands, and unscrewing the lid, she began more seriously:

"THERE’S A REASON I STOLE YOU AWAY,” she confessed. “YESTERDAY JEN AND I HAD A GOOD YAK OVER THE PHONE ABOUT ALL MANNER OF THINGS...LIKE YOU, FOR INSTANCE."

"Oh. Nothing bad I hope,” I said, trying to talk loudly and sound unconcerned at the same time, hoping the projection of my voice at volume would conceal my nervousness. Jennifer was a repository of all kinds of embarrassing factoids she could produce about me at whim, at the low, low price of my dignity.

"SWEETIE..." Christine paused as her eyes drifted thoughtfully, biting her lip as if formulating words in her head, "...SHE'S DONE RUNNING AROUND. HER HEART HAS SPOKEN AND THAT'S IT."

"Sorry?"

She was dipping a foundation brush into the bottle, and then turned the brush to check it. Keeping the brush suspended for a moment, her gaze in the mirror shifted across to me again, and she said kindly:

"SHE'S WILD ABOUT YOU. SHE THINKS YOU'RE THE ONE."

My mouth had started to go dry.

“I wish she had consulted me before she had that revelation.”

She dipped the brush into the mixture once more and then, putting the bottle on the countertop, began applying the foundation to her face, keeping her eyes on her reflection in the mirror.

"I THINK IT'S WONDERFUL," she went on. “THERE'S SOMETHING DIFFERENT ABOUT HER. SANGUINE. WHEN WE WERE YOUNGER, SHE COULD BE SO MOODY..."

"The moodiness is still there," I said. "Sometimes…"

"WELL, LISTEN, I KNOW SHE’S TEMPERAMENTAL. HER BOYS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TOYS. SHE’D BE ENTERTAINED WITH THEM A WHILE AND THEN IT WAS ONTO THE NEXT PLAYTHING.”

Checking the foundation on her cheeks, she quickly decided it wasn’t what she wanted, used a wipe to clear it away, and put the bottle aside before searching around the shelves for something else.

"I THOUGHT SHE WOULD NEVER SETTLE. BUT YOU'RE DIFFERENT."

"Well," I scoffed, "if you mean that I'm as big as a fingernail clipping..."

"AND BEFORE YOUR ACCIDENT?" she said, eyeing me briefly in the mirror. Then she remarked:

"AFTER GRADUATION WE DRIFTED APART, AND THEN YOU CAME ALONG. SHE’S NEVER BEEN ONE TO NEED A MAN. AND DON’T BE MISTAKEN, MY LITTLE STUD, SHE DOESN’T NEED YOU, STRICTLY SPEAKING. BUT SHE WANTS TO HAVE YOU. AND SHE WANTS TO HAVE YOU BECAUSE SHE CAN.”

Unsure of how to respond, I said nothing.

"I’VE NEVER COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD HER TYPE, BUT WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING,” she shuffled some bottles on the shelf, pulled one of them down and checked the label before putting it back again, “KEEP DOING IT."

"I appreciate your advice, Christine, but that doesn't help me in the size department."

"PERHAPS IT DOES," she said softly. "SHE’S ALWAYS FOUND COUPLEDOM TOUGH IN PRACTICE. BUT SHE TOLD ME, THAT WITH YOU, SHE HASN'T HAD TO GIVE UP AN INCH OF HERSELF. YOU ACCOMODATE HER MORE THAN ENOUGH. AND MAKE NO MISTAKE: YOU’RE A VERY CUTE LITTLE THING TO HAVE HANGING AROUND.”

Deliberating over some blush, she added coyly:

"IF SHE HADN'T CLAIMED YOU ALREADY, WELL, CAN'T SAY I WOULDN'T SNATCH YOU UP FOR MYSELF. I’M NOT CERTAIN WHERE IT WOULD TAKE US, BUT YOU DO MAKE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE EARRING PENDANT; SO DELICATE AND SUBTLE, YOUR TINY FACE PEEKING OUT THERE, AND NO ONE ELSE WOULD EVEN KNOW UNTIL I POINTED YOU OUT…”

She was murmuring to herself now.

I went silent again.

In previous experience, my size had a strange and potent effect on females. One part of the female brain interpreted my muscular physique as 'hot' while another interpreted my small stature as ‘cute’, like a baby animal, and both signals blended together to create an irresistible hybrid attraction. Women ended up flustered with indecision; not able to decide whether they wanted to rub and tickle my belly or engulf my face in steamy kisses. It didn't bother Jen: she normally compromised by doing both at the same time. The attention should have been flattering, except I had never liked being in the spotlight; usually it was an occasion for embarrassment more than ego-bolstering.

Christine’s voice came back, interrupting my distracted silence.

"DON’T YOU FORGET, THIS IS BETWEEN US,” she said, having dispensed with the blush to apply a coat of chapstick to her lips, but now pausing with the tube halfway to her face so she could speak. I watched the balmy flattened nub with cautious wonder; if it made contact with my body, I would’ve been caught on its sticky glossed tip like an ant on a glue stick. “SHE CAN BE HEADSTRONG IF SHE THINKS SOMEONE ELSE IS SLIPPING OVER INTO HER TERRITORY – YOU KNOW HOW SHE IS.” She gave me a small, humourless smile. “SHE WANTS IT TO COME FROM YOU."

"Sorry, Christine –” I butt in, “—she wants what to come from me?"

Now the graceful blonde had found some clear skin gel and was squeezing a blob onto her palm. She went on gently:

"YOU TWO HAVE ALREADY HAD SOME MISSTEPS – SHE’S TOLD ME. AND IT'S BOTHERING HER. SHE DOESN'T WANT TO SCARE YOU AWAY, SO SHE HASN'T SAID ANYTHING."

"About what...?" I was stalling, trying to figure out if I even wanted to have this conversation, if I was ready for it.

Christine let out a rush of breath, flashing me a brief pitying look.

"ALL OF THIS FUSS OVER THAT CRYSTAL RING…” she said, shaking her head, and sending me whipping back and forth, rattling around amidst her dangling earring. She looked at me. “SHE'S GIVEN YOU A BIG, BRIGHT HINT, JERRY. YOU MUST HAVE PICKED UP ON IT."

“It was never meant to be an engagement ring,” I said up into her lofty ear. “We’re both clear on that.”

“SO YOU SAY. BUT SHE HAS IT IN HER HEAD THAT YOU BUYING HER THAT EXPENSIVE RING WAS A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR ACT TWO. THE REAL THING."

When I didn’t say anything, she added:

“SHE ASKED YOU, AND YOU BOUGHT IT FOR HER WITHOUT QUESTION. SHE'S DOING THE CALCULATIONS IN HER HEAD EVEN AS WE SPEAK." 

Oh fuck… I thought with regret, thinking of her showing it off at the dinner table, with me inside. In fact, us coming to this dinner get-together in the first place; it seemed to all connect somehow, or not entirely be just another of her whims. Then again, I had been so wrapped up in my own problems navigating the world at my size, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to reading her behaviour so deeply. How could I see the forest for the trees when I couldn’t even see a single tree; my entire worldview was at the insect level, amongst the tree roots? It hadn’t even occurred to me that she could possibly be thinking about the long term right now with me struggling at my current size.

It made no sense, and I didn’t completely agree with what Christine said, even if she’d known Jennifer longer than I had. She made it sound like it was all a sly, elaborate test but, actually, Jen had tossed up the ring idea almost flippantly – as if ready to recant the idea at the first sign of my displeasure. I had eagerly green lit the whole thing because I was just happy to have some promise of being able to travel with her safely. It gave me proximity to her plus a shield around my body. It had seemed perfect at the time, but nothing more than a glittery carry case. Certainly not a subliminal signal that I was trying to send out. Yes, it had been overpriced, but my funds covered it; funds which I’d received to cover accommodations for me to achieve some semblance of a functional, enjoyable life. As far as I was concerned, the ring fit that category.

As for the big question…I loved Jennifer – always had – and I imagined that would be the case for a long time coming. But I didn’t know how I felt about turning our relationship into something else. Even when I’d been normal sized the idea of commitment frightened me, the idea of not having a space to call my own. Being tied up to her momentum as if by chain. She was utterly engaging but so vivacious that in her company, little time was left over for myself. I panted for breath trying to keep up with her impulsive exuberance.

“If she was serious,” I said slowly, “I think she would have made it clearer.”

Christine paused.

“THE POWER OF SUGGESTION: A LITTLE THING WE WOMEN DO WHEN WE WANT SOMETHING.”

“Jen’s not the subtle type,” I scoffed.

“I DON'T BELIEVE YOU'RE GIVING HER POWERS OF PERSUASION ENOUGH CREDIT. SHE CAN BE SUBTLE WHEN SHE WANTS TO BE." Her eyes twinkled, and she said kindly: “ASSUMING IT'S NOT YOU WHO IS THE ONE BEING A LITTLE ON THE OBTUSE SIDE."

The scaled up extension of a digit glided in and gave my head a small, affectionate tap with a handcream-covered fingertip, which accidentally biffed my head and caused my face to get stuck to her finger for a second, pulling me with its movement. Then I came unstuck again, but had a big sticky blob of clear fragrant cream sitting over my face like a jellyfish. I shook my head and wiped my face against the chains to try and clear it. I couldn't use my hands because then they'd get too slippery to hang onto the tassel.

“OOPS,” she giggled, adding by way of apology: “YOU’RE AS SOFT AND LIGHT AS POWDER, DARLING.”

Once my mouth was clear enough of gunk for me to speak again, I explained:

“The reason the ring cost so much was because of the work required to cut the stone into an interior chamber. It wasn't for show. I didn’t intend any mixed messages.”

“I MAY NOT KNOW WHAT YOU INTENDED OR WHAT YOU DIDN'T INTEND, SO LET'S PUSH THAT ASIDE FOR NOW. LET'S TALK ABOUT THE RING YOU'RE GOING TO GET HER WHEN YOU POP THE QUESTION."

"How do I give her a ring? How do I even fit a ring inside my hands? – I fit inside a ring in her hands!”

“YOU'E GETTING FLUSTERED, BUT IT'S OKAY. IT'S SCARY. TYLER WAS BLINKING AND SWEATING AN AWFUL LOT WHEN HE PROPOSED TO ME.”

“I’m not trying to be funny, but am I the only person who is able to see how insane this is?”

“EVERYONE FEELS LIKE THAT WHEN IT’S THEIR TURN.”

“But, I mean, people throw grains of rice at weddings – I’m the size of a grain of rice! And has anyone thought about the wedding photo? They’re gonna need a forensic analysis level of zoom! And then, if they get me in detail, she’ll be blurry, and if they get her in detail, I’ll be a blur. No way! It’d be a mess! Do you really think – ?!”

To get my attention, a humongous finger lifted and jingled the earring tassels, causing them to knock and tinkle around me, waving me around until I stopped talking. My palms started stinging again as I gripped the chains hard, and flexed my legs, wrapping them more tightly around the metal rope.

“SOUNDS TO ME LIKE YOU'RE BLOWING THE ISSUE UP. PERHAPS SHE HAS BEEN GOING THROUGH THIS WITH HERSELF ALREADY, AND THE IDEA OF SAYING ‘I DO’ TO A GRAIN-SIZED GROOM DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE DETERRED HER ONE LITTLE BIT." 

"But I don’t – I-I..." my voice was stammering.

“A LITTLE LOUDER FOR ME, DARLING. THAT SWEET LITTLE HUMMING VOICE IS BREAKING UP.”

"I'm in no position to get married right now,” I cried out. “I mean— " I let out a bark of nervous laughter, "—look at me!"

"THIS MUST BE SO OVERWHELMING FOR YOU, IT'S UNDERSTANDABLE. IT’S A VERY BIG THING TO ASK SOMEONE. BUT I REALLY THINK SHE’S ONTO SOMETHING. YOU'RE A GOOD INFLUENCE ON HER." She raised an eyebrow at me. “YOU STILL LOVE HER, DON'T YOU?"

"I love her more than anything."

She dabbed a tissue around her mouth to fix up some chapstick smear, and then put it down and held me in her steady gaze.

"IT'S ONE THING TO SAY THAT, BUT SHE'S TRUSTING YOU TO COME THROUGH FOR HER WITH ACTION; MAKE THE WORDS REAL." 

Action? I thought. My ability to undertake independent action was at an all-time low.

"I...I don't even know where to begin," I said, my muscles slumping a little before I was able to catch myself and tighten my grip again.

"HOW ABOUT YOU BEGIN NOW?” she said calmly, wiping product off her fingertips with a tissue. Her voice got low and discreet. “THE THING ABOUT JEN IS THAT SHE REFUSES TO BE KEPT WAITING."

“I know,” I sighed. “That’s…why we separated the first time.”

The crystal tassels swished against me and the great mirror swung away as Christine turned and tossed scrunched wads of tissue into a little pedal bin on the floor. Then, clinging tightly, I flew back around as she faced the mirror again, giving me a look of understanding.

“BETWEEN YOU AND ME, SHE’S HAD HER FATHER WRAPPED AROUND HER LITTLE FINGER EVER SINCE SHE WAS A YOUNG GIRL. I THINK SHE WAS A TEENSY BIT SPOILT FOR BEING THE ONLY GIRL OUT OF ALL HER BROTHERS.” 

Taking this in, I pressed my cheek against the metal-frame crystal chain I was clinging to.

“That makes sense.”

Christine smiled.

"IT'S ALL CLICKING INTO PLACE NOW, ISN'T IT?” She said facetiously, turning the sink water on and rubbing her hands under it. “SHE'S A DADDY'S GIRL. AND DADDY NEVER SAID NO.”

“I guess she can be a little…entitled sometimes.”

Christine gave a low, thrumming laugh.

“VERY MILD OF YOU, JERRY,” she said.

“Okay,” I exhaled. “She’s the reincarnation of an imperial empress.”

“THAT SOUNDS MORE LIKE THE JENNIFER I KNOW.”

Her reflection stopped and, gripping her hands on the counter edge, leaned in towards the mirror to fix me with a long look of veiled amusement.

“DOES THAT MAKE YOU HER REINCARNATED LOVER? MAYBE SHE’S BEEN AFTER YOU FOR MORE THAN A FEW OF HER LIVES.”

“I don’t believe in that kind of thing. Neither does she.”

Smiling to herself, Christine turned away from the mirror to take a towel up and started drying her hands on it. The tassels lashed me as her head turned. I grimaced as my hands and legs flexed tight to hold my grip.

“YOU HAVEN’T HEARD THE WAY SHE TALKS ABOUT YOU.”

Then I was whirled back around, the chain tassels shook and whipped against me a second time as she turned again to look back into the mirror.

“THIS IS UNUSUAL FOR HER,” she conceded in afterthought, absent-mindedly stroking her neck while tilting her head and causing me to fly face first into the underside of her jaw in a clatter of chains. “BUT…ONCE SHE GETS ATTACHED TO SOMETHING THERE’S NO SEPARATING HER FROM IT.”

She straightened her head again; her jaw angled away from me as the bathroom rotated back into normal position. As I steadied my grip again, what she had said repeated in my head: Daddy’s girl. My gut lurched.

“Oh, man…” I groaned, shutting my eyes and rubbing my face against the chain tassel I was gripping.

“WHAT’S WRONG?”

“No, nothing, I…” I took a breath, “…if I propose, I’ve got to get her father’s approval.”

“I SUPPOSE, IF YOU WANT TO DO IT THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY,” she gave me a small, perplexed frown. “BUT IT’S NOT A REQUIREMENT ANYMORE, AS A MATTER OF NORMAL PRACTICE.”

“This isn’t normal practice.” Setting my jaw, I emphasized: “Her parents need to be on board for it.”

What did I have to fear, anyway?  If her father refused, it would make for a very quick – if painful – conclusion. Would that be so bad? Good or bad, such a reaction made total sense to me.

How could I forget the look of pitying bemusement in Natalie’s eyes when she’d calmly foreclosed any possibility of someone my size being her groom? Somewhere deep down, I still nursed feelings of what might have been with her, if for her infectious smile and laughter – how easy it was to make her laugh – her non-teasing love, and warm, unconditional kisses and cuddles that didn’t hungrily probe for more. I even had a horrible gut feeling there was a normal size Jerry in a parallel universe somewhere enjoying an uncomplicated relationship with ‘alternate’ Natalie, and probably further into a planful future with her than I was with Jen. Anyway, the memory still brought on a dull ache, exacerbated by the words ‘marriage’ and ‘wedding.’

Now I was that much smaller again. To imagine the look on Natalie’s face if she saw me now, wrestling with the big question. The idea made my heart sink with despair.

How could I look up into the eyes of Jasper Tomlin – at my stupidly diminutive size – and convince him I made the best match life partner for his doted on only daughter? Surely, I would be lucky if he even heard me out without bursting into laughter. If he even heard me at all.

“ENTIRELY UP TO YOU,” Christine shrugged. “BUT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE SOMEONE’S GOING TO BE A BUSY LITTLE STUD IN THE NEAR FUTURE.”

“I have a lot I need to figure out,” I agreed.

Leaning against the sink counter, she observed me in the mirror a moment longer. I began to blush, feeling more helpless – pressed against her dangling earring, swinging in the faintest air current – more impotent than ever.

“TAKE MY ADVICE,” she began sagely, “DON’T RAISE THE ISSUE WITH HER TONIGHT. SHE’S GOING TO KNOW I PROMPTED YOU. HERE’S WHAT WE’LL DO: I’LL HELP YOU GET THINGS MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION; I KNOW JASPER; HE’S JUST A TIGER WITH THE HEART OF A PUSSYCAT. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR FROM HIM. JUST LEAVE IT WITH ME.”

“Thanks, Christine. I appreciate your help. Really.”

“DON’T MENTION IT, SNOOKUMS. AND GOOD LUCK.” 

The chains started swaying me around as Christine turned and we left the bathroom.

We came out from under the bathroom's glowing lights, down the dark hallway, and back into the dimly lit den, where Jennifer and Katie were talking.

Christine returned to her former seat on the sofa again beside Katie. Jennifer followed the blonde woman with her eyes, and now twisted around in her seat, turning her back on the fireplace to face the other women. The firelight danced in her green eyes, which looked at Christine, faintly inquiring. We must have been longer in the bathroom than I realized. I avoided Jen’s gaze, even though she wouldn't have been able to see me, hanging from Christine's earring, in the dim light. In fact, she was probably just trying to work out where I was, seeing as Christine had both hands resting on her lap.

“JERRY’S JUST MADE HIMSELF RIGHT AT HOME ON THE END OF MY EARRING,” Christine explained. “MAKES FOR AN EYE-CATCHING LITTLE ORNAMENT, DON’T YOU THINK?”

She turned her head to let the other two women admire me. At this, Katie’s head swung around to identify where I was, and when her searching eyes alighted on me, making out my tiny face amidst the sparkle of the earring tassels, she gazed at me with astonishment.

“OH, HE LOOKS LIKE A TEENY TARZAN!” she gushed.

“MMM,” said Jennifer, looking away for a moment. “WELL, I HAVE ANOTHER PIECE OF JEWELLERY THAT’S NEEDS ITS CENTERPIECE ORNAMENT BACK NOW, CHRIS, IF YOU DON’T MIND.”

She raised and displayed the back of her hand, the ring finger banded with the clear panther head, and rippled her fingers.

“I HAD A FEELING YOU’D SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT,” Christine said in undertone. She brought her curled fingers up to her ear, where they bumped around my body, sending me swinging on my chain. As the tassels settled again, the fingers held in place, waiting patiently for me to descend onto them.

“TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH, JERRY,” Christine murmured. “DON’T OVERTHINK IT.”

I let go of the chain, dropping past the tassels, landing onto the spongy flesh of the back of the last joint of a middle finger, near the nail cuticle, and quickly digging my nails in to hold onto what felt like handfuls of soft, creased leather. Christine’s flesh was covered in the faint trace of the clear gel she’d earlier applied in the bathroom. The cool sticky film made my tender, sore palms tingle. My slightly stinging palms were also in contact with the faint throbbing blood vessels beating up through the epidermal layer of Christine’s finger flesh. The warm air rushed around me as the fingertips swept me down to hover parallel to the ample boulders of her chest, outlined by the clinging black dress fabric.

On my opposite side, Jennifer’s titanic black-gowned figure loomed over us, her arm extended with her fingers straightened. She’d unscrewed the panther head from the ring band, so the inner base was exposed, like a flat, inky black podium.

The curled finger I was standing on floated over, lining itself up with the black band encircling Jennifer’s ring finger. Keen to give my inflamed hands and feet a rest, I stood up and made a leap from the end of Christine’s middle finger, onto the black platform. The polished surface felt cool against my stinging soles, providing some relief.

A moment later, the dim orange glow of the den, the majestic black forms of the women, and the entire world disappeared behind a curving glassy wall, capping me all around within an opalescent chamber, except for the small hole positioned at the panther’s throat.

That hole was blocked by the massive pad of a thumb as she screwed the stone head on tight again. I watched anxiously: that hole was my only air source. The walls shimmered as the prismatic chamber revolved completely a number of times, before stopping. The tremendous masses of the fingertips disappeared again, like clouds passing from the sun, letting some light in, though the den was still largely dim. As Jennifer shifted, the flickering orange firelight played like molten lava around the ring's glassy surface. I lay down on the ring base, but it chilled my back, so I hunched up with my legs crossed, ignoring the cool surface prickling against my butt and balls. Holding my head in my hands, I shoved my fingers in my ears as a measure of defence against the clanging voices. Male voices crackled; it sounded as though the guys had returned from their walk and Levi and Katie were now keen to get home before it got too late; Jennifer took this opportunity to make her exit as well. I heard them say goodbye to me, though I couldn’t respond.

Then thudding as the front door shut and the swooping glide of Jennifer’s walking motions. My eyelids started to close…

…car engine grumbling…Jennifer was saying something. I nodded out of habit even though I didn’t understand what she was saying. It sounded like she was telling me a story Katie had told her while I was in the bathroom with Christine. She must have turned the steering wheel because I found myself lifted off my butt and pitched into the side of the ring, before sliding down onto the base again. Her voice carried on over the car engine. I rolled onto my side and my eyes closed again…

*

—Cracks like gunshots.

I jolted up, staring around.

The vast walls of the master bedroom, lit up bright, surrounded me; I was lying on the wood bedside tabletop next to the queen bed. Not far away, an enormous hand rested on the edge of the tabletop, with long nails coated in transparent polish. As I stared, the nails rippled over the wood sharply, recreating the sounds I’d just heard. The wood jittered through my body.

I sat up.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at me. She looked ready for bed, had changed into a t-shirt and pyjama shorts. The past week, our bedtime routine was a little weird, to say the least, and I was glad she had not made me demonstrate it before the dinner party. The Scotch tape and scissors were already out, lying all the way on the other side of the bedside table.

But she didn’t make a move just yet. Her impassive eyes were watching me keenly through occasional, unhurried blinks.

I propped my head up.

"What is it?" I said, looking around.

She leaned back smoothly.

"I DON'T KNOW..." Huge plates of varnished nails glimmered distractingly as the mammoth fingertips massaged the bumpy ridge of domed pedestal-like knuckles of the other hand. “JUST THOUGHT I’D SAY…I LOVE YOU.”

“I love you, too,” I said, gazing down at my own knuckles, so comparatively small compared to her that they would be invisible.

When I looked up again she was resting her head on her hand, her long nails now framing around her jaw. The sharp green gaze was levelled down upon me. The cavernous nostrils flared with an extended draw of air that tickled the top of my head, sweeping my hair up. My heart pattered in alarm.

Another rumbling intonation from above:

“YOU THINK IT'S OBVIOUS?”

“To who? – Christine and Tyler—?”

“PEOPLE GENERALLY.”

Another sucking breath sent fingers of cool air through my hair, concluding with the downward pressure of warm air. I slid down, rolled onto my back, needing to feel the solid surface beneath my length. Then, crossing my arms in defence against the chill of another draughty inhale.

"It shouldn’t matter what other people think."

“SHOULDN’T, BUT DOES. YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A BUBBLE WORLD, BUT I DON’T.”

The resonance of her voice beat down upon my bones like I was a drum. My mouth pulled into a frown as I stared up at her face, a vision of feminine features on planetary scale, downturned over me with unbearably intimate focus, the massive green eyes seeming to burn into my insides, laying me wide open; the puny pitter-patter of my seed-sized heart, and queasy coiling of papery-thin guts. Did she see, lying on the table, her boyfriend, or an insect who looked vaguely like her boyfriend? It was so hard to read her expression at this size.

“I’m really busy trying to just be this size right now. I’m trying to adapt.”

“WE BOTH ARE. WE’RE MAKING IT UP – I DON’T HAVE A PLAN EITHER. AND THAT’S OKAY. I DON’T WORRY ABOUT WHAT I CAN’T CONTROL, I FOCUS ON WHAT I CAN CONTROL.”

“You’ve got a lot more control than I do right now.”

She looked away from me finally, rubbing her hand against her cheek. Her brow knitted together. Gazing up at the broad landscape of her face change expression was surreal; I could make out the faint tugs of facial muscles, the subtle shuttering of the black fans of lashes, the drawing together and pursing of her lips, the flaring of nostrils, the rapid, minute skips of her pupils as she thought. Even for this fine grain of detail I couldn’t read her mind; couldn’t work out the thoughts accompanying the inconsequential micro expressions.

“IT’S SCARY DOWN THERE.” Her voice was a low murmur. Her eyes squinted at me like I was a specimen caught in a jar.

I rubbed my arm.

“I’m doing okay.”

“HOW AM I DOING?”

“What do you mean?” 

“WHAT DO I DO TO MAKE IT LESS SCARY?”

“Staring down at me is a little intimidating.”

“SO I STARE UP AT YOU INSTEAD? LIE ON THE GROUND?” She was joking. Still, I said:

“No. Gotta get used to how big you are. Have to keep reminding myself you’re not some giant going to grab me.”

Her low vibrating chuckle made my bones twang sensitively, like they were being tapped with tiny hammers:

“WHAT DO I SAY TO THAT? SOMETIMES I DO WANT TO GRAB YOU…”

She extended her first two fingers, pressed a kiss to the pads and blew it down at me.

The corner of her eyebrow piqued as she considered me. I was held in the floodlamp of her gaze for another long moment, until shivers were arcing up my spinal column. Her fingerpads rubbed together as if her fingers were sparking with pent up energy. She said in undertone:

“I THINK YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I WANT TO KISS YOU.”

I cleared my throat.

“I think I can guess.”

“THE TINIEST SMOOCH,” she ventured. Her mouth curled subtly, even as I could make out the muscles of her cheek straining to repress it. She seemed to be relishing my discomfort. I started to tremble before I could help it.

Like a runaway train, her hand came smoothing over the tabletop to me, the pinky finger splitting off as if rolled over to me, for the curved white plate of the nail tip to prod daintily at my belly and hips. Because I was so light, it slid me back and forth over the smooth table like a tiny chess piece, like I was wearing socks on a polished floor, although my feet were actually bare. Then, the pinky lifted casting me its black shadow as it performed some delicate, clinical manoeuvre around the crown of my skull, positioning itself with attuned accuracy before carefully lowering directly down until the soft springy pad rested on the top of my head and kept me held there beneath its controlled applied pressure, calibrated precisely to be as much as my puny stature could support.

“BACK STRAIGHT, BABE,” she tutted, “YOU NEED ALL THE EXTRA POSTURE YOU CAN GET RIGHT NOW.”

I held my breath so hard my chest hurt; acutely aware that if she overbalanced and her hand slapped down onto the table for support, the pinky pad would drive me straight down into the table until I was glued there like a squished bug.

“This is as straight as I get!” My voice came out pleading.

The pinky lifted from my head, returned to its former position on the table surface before beginning to slid into me, taking me along towards the edge of the table, where her gargantuan form sat waiting patiently for me.

“YOUR VOICE IS SHAKING…ALL BECAUSE I WANT TO GIVE YOU A QUICK  PECK BEFORE BEDTIME?”

I stared wide-eyed at the plush pink ridges from which this gentle teasing was issuing from on loudspeaker. Her teeth beamed out every time she spoke, and they were singularly each bigger than I was, in between glimpses of a rearing red tongue that could toss and spin me like an angry whale if I was unlucky enough to end up slurped into its dark confines.

Her other hand came sweeping in, rotating against the edge of the table, exposing the padded leather surface of the palm, awaiting me as the pinky nail continued to ‘surf’ me over the table. And once I spilled off the table and landed on the palm, it would rapidly elevate me up to her lips. As I dreadfully watched the edge of the table grow closer and closer, my voice came out in an airless, pitiful rush, projecting as loud as I could possibly get it:

“No! I love you but I just don’t think that’s a good idea! Please! Stop!”

I was halted and the open palm rotated back down with resignation. The urging pinky nail slid in front of me, hemming me back away from the table edge again, and then began to again poke me gently back and forth, directionlessly, one way and another, as she contemplated aloud:

“THIS SIZE THING DOESN’T MEAN WE’RE ON PAUSE, MISTER.”

“Of course not. That’s not up for debate.”

The enormous ridges of pink bulged and flexed as she sucked her lips, and they emerged moistened, shining under the bedroom light.

“I’LL GET MY MOMENT,” she said with smug cheeriness. “THAT LITTLE MOUTHWATERING FACE. MY IRRESISTABLE LIPS. IT'LL HAPPEN.” Then, to tease me, she puckered her lips rapidly, making then squish and pop with such sharp wet reverberation that the sound actually made my tiny body throb. I flinched, my balls scrunched up into my body.

With this thought her form seemed to ease. She now began in earnest:

“YOU’RE TIRED; I CAN SEE THAT. A LOT HAPPENED TO YOU TODAY. SO…HOW ABOUT I TUCK YOU IN AND WE CAN TALK MORE TOMORROW?”

“Sounds good,” I said, tired as hell.

She brought her thumb right up against me for me to climb on. Scrabbling my tender palms over her flesh, I mounted the thumb by the long, glossy nail plate.

As she straightened her posture, her thumb then moved inwards against the wall of her stomach, while her other hand rolled her t shirt up to expose her bare midriff. Then she brought the extended thumb parallel with her navel, which doubled up as my bedroom, and held it there patiently. Without hesitation, I bounded off the thumb, through the fleshy opening of the navel which wasn’t much taller than I was, landing on my feet in the loose folds of the interior bellybutton. The wrinkles were lined with fine dust; broken down skin flakes that tended to coat my hands and feet by morning.

It was soft enough to sink into, like a plush leathery mattress. Like being inside a beanbag; forming a cocooning enclosure. Despite the compromising location, it was fantastically comfy and warm, heated by the skin’s thermal activity.

Turning around, I sat down with my back against the navel back wall, which conformed to my shape. The pockets of crinkles were faintly damp from perspiration. Facing out, my perspective from the back of the navel was framed all around by the ovular opening, like I was peering out through a rabbit hole.

A huge sheet of transparent plastic – actually a small square at normal size – was now being affixed over the stomach wall with Scotch tape, covering the navel opening like a glass pane. It was covered in holes from being stabbed with a big needle over and over to create a mesh sheet that filtered air through. The tape was my bedroom door – or window – and it prevented me from accidentally falling out during the night as Jennifer rolled over in her sleep.

Once the tape was in place, the soft folds of the fleshy enclosure stretched and contracted around me as she briefly massaged the tape. The whorls and rings of her fingerprints rolled back and forth over the clear pane, making the bedroom light flicker and flash. 

“LOVE YOU, BABE. YOU KNOW THAT.”

Then the giant bulbs of flesh departed, inadvertently leaving the plastic stamped with fingerprint ridge-shaped oil smudges that shone under the light. The world outside shifted around and tipped back as she slid herself down in bed and then all went dark as she tossed the blanket over herself.

I was lying on my back against the back wall of her navel, and I could tell she was lying on her back, too, though she didn’t sleep on her back. Her blood flow began to increase into excited thrumming all around, the vibrations running through my back, which was cradled by the deepest region of the navel. Her belly began to undulate as her respiration increased, the pressure of her deep breathing closing the walls in around me, then expanding them again.

She was touching herself.

This went on for an extended period, rocking me around in the blackness, slowly escalating as she reached an orgasm. Her hips began to buck, sending whipcrack shudders through my confined black containment, hurling me around between its padded walls and the plastering of plastic framing the blocked exit.

Trying to catch and sync myself with her rise, I rolled over onto my stomach and thrust my aching dick between folds of her navel flesh, fucking myself into her stomach, letting the thrusts of her orgasm and tensing, trembling abdominals seize and clench my dick. Her elevated heartbeat ran through her flesh, throbbing through my member. The soft, perspiration-sticky flesh rolled all around my shaft, and bathed my entire body until I was as slimy as if I’d rolled in mud, and had to keep wiping her oily sweat out of my stinging eyes, but it clung to me; surface tension made it seem more viscous to me because I was so small.

The powerful clenching stomach muscles effortlessly milked me until I was trembling all over and my balls were totally dried up. When I tried to pull my dick out, there was resistance. My appendage seemed to be tangled in some strands of lint that had been buried between crinkles of skin, and the lint was caked in with whatever slimy molds grew deep in this cave. Gritting my teeth, I poked my fingers into the crevice and worked away at freeing my dick before my semen dried and glued the lint to my shaft, keeping me trapped there for good. Tearing some of the lint strands, I managed to slide my now flaccid dick out, and then dropped onto my butt and curled up against the cushioned skin enclosure.

Now that she had come, she rolled over, emitted a great sigh, and wound down to go to sleep. Pulled up tight in a skin fold, and unable to determine up from down anymore, I nestled my head against the soft fleshy wall, and shut my eyes. On the other side, the stomach gurgled and squished right against my ear, then calmed. The folds of flesh, like warm dough, squeezed against me as she breathed deeply, sending me to sleep.

It was nearing midday. The room was bright, vast, and exposed.

I was standing on a thick, fuzzy, blue field of clumpy, shaggy grass. Where the field ended, there was a stack of fallen white lumber, across from that, a huge tank with a label stuck around it displaying a long list of esoteric words straight out of an organic chemist's dictionary.

Across from that stood a water tower, wide at the base and tapering up into a white top. The body of the tower was transparent, revealing it was three quarters full with a swimming pool volume of water. A tube ran horizontally from the white top down through the water, to the base.

There was a flush of cool air as a gigantic hand swept over my head, bigger and faster than a crop duster, and dived down to grasp one of the white logs up between finger and thumb. Another hand reached for the labelled tank, which was then unloosened from the ground as if by tornado, where it levitated in the air directly above my head, while its top was twisted off. Clenching my jaw, I stood still, uncomfortably aware that if the tank dropped, it would squash me flat. A moment later it was returned to its former position across from the blue fuzzy field, and its unscrewed top came to rest beside it.

The white log that had been taken now dipped down into the opened tank, and when it withdrew again, the flaxen nub shone with a dollop of shining gelatine fluid. It was a giant Q-tip covered with a drop of sanitizing body wash.

The blue grass field was actually a microfiber towel, folded and arranged on one end of the kitchen table. The microfiber didn’t just protect the table surface from body wash spillage, it also craftily prevented me from moving around too much. As I walked, my feet sunk into the soft blue tufts and it swirled around my legs. I had to wade through it like spongy marsh reeds, making it incredibly difficult to run away.

As the shining tip started making its way over the table towards where I was standing, Jennifer’s visage – which had been hovering high up – now descended upon me, moving in unnaturally close, like she intended to touch the tip of her nose to me, but stopping short. She was hunkered over the kitchen table, as low as she could possibly get. Her powerful breath bombarded me, lashing my face and front with warm air which fanned through my hair, slamming me almost with the force of a dull smack, and sending my dick and balls bobbing and swinging, and the startling proximity of her lips caused an incredible vacuum to roar up my shaft, stretching it with the compulsion of an invisible hand, igniting a ticklish throbbing in my hips.

I quickly cupped my groin. She was so focused in the task at hand she didn’t acknowledge it, and anyway, she’d done this several times before now, daily, in fact, since my recent miniaturization.

The fingers of her other hand snaked around behind me instinctively, but careful not to touch me. A gesture that could have been protective, or alternatively, restrictive.

“HOLD STILL…” she murmured, but even at this reduced volume her voice made my temples throb.

She’d rotated the lumber-sized Q-tip into a pencil grip with the soft nub sticking out, pointing at me.

Closing my eyes and willing my mind blank, I stood utterly still, sensing from behind my eyelids the end of the white ‘log’ thrusting at me like a battering ram until it was very close.

The lotion on the end of the Q-tip smelled like pine trees, while the scent of vanilla emanated from her fingertips. Not the commercially watered-down sugary vanilla of ice cream, but something rich, raw, pure and exotic, closer to the unadulterated spice as it must have originally been discovered in the jungles of Central America. And now, possibly even more intoxicating.

The fine point at the very tip of the white cotton head made contact with my front, and began painting its lotion over my chest and arms, then down my front, and briefly rolling over my twinging groin. The cold gel made my balls prickle, but at least the clear sticky resin caused my dick and ballsack to adhere to my thighs, and stop it bouncing around with the powerful surrounding air flow.

Lastly, the cotton probe slid down and around my legs.

At small scale, the cotton fibers felt less like thin filaments and more like threads of wool wrapped around the plastic shaft. Reaching the end of my legs, the cotton tip repeated its journey in reverse, smoothing the lotion up my legs, bumping over my bulge – my lathered penis briefly sticking and being lifted up towards my belly – and finally running up over my abdomen, before halting at my chest.

"I'M GETTING PRETTY GOOD AT THIS, HUH?" her voice thundered against me, her mouth quirking with a self-satisfied smile. “I DIDN’T EVEN KNOCK YOU OVER ONCE!”

Or worse. Six days ago, when washing me she’d accidentally covered the Q-tip nub in too much lotion, so when the tip made contact with my body, I’d gotten plastered onto it and, when she’d drawn her hand back again, I’d rocketed up into the air with it, glued to the end of the Q-tip. She’d then had to use another Q-tip to brush me off, making me feel like a bug being attacked by chopsticks.

But it was true: she’d gotten much better in the days since. I couldn’t imagine how delicate and precise she had to be to perform these motions, and judging from the long pauses between sweeping warm gusts, she was holding her breath for most of it.

“OKAY, TURN AROUND,” she instructed, having finished lathering up my front.

Opening my eyes , I stepped around in a circle until she was at my back, and now was facing the fingertips of her other hand, which lay upon the table in front of me, like a series of long fleshy ridges.

The pressure of the Q-tip returned, now at the back of my head, and moving down my shoulders and back, sliding over my buttocks and down my legs, plastering its gooey gel as it went. It had the pressure of someone leaning into me, but not enough to push me off my feet. With eyes closed, I liked to imagine I was normal size and she was kneading the lotion up and down into my bare skin with her forearms. Of course the illusion was shattered opening my eyes to see her massively blown up hand lying before me.

Reaching my ankles, the nub travelled back up, smoothing the gel up my legs, butt, up my spine, and once more making contact with my scalp, before drawing away again.

“BACK AROUND,” came the rumbling voice, now higher up as she had raised herself a little off the tabletop.

I turned again to face the human mountain as she rotated the Q-tip between her fingers and dipped the opposite end into the tub of lotion for another drop of gel. Then the sublimely-sized visage began to descend over the microfiber cloth again, the white bulb coming closer and closer, seeking me out with its battering ram motion once again.

I stared up at her desperately. To my surprise, she caught me looking at her, or at least the cotton tip halted, while her look of concentration broke.

Her eyes held on me, the black fans of lashes descended almost imperceptibly; a lingering thoughtful look that in any other context would have caught me off guard and effectively wrested  me away from wherever my mind was.

But now my heart was speeding up as the rest of the world seemed to speed away; dissipating into mist in the corners of my vision.

The great shiny masses of her lips seemed to swell towards me as she puckered them, advancing as if to kiss me. A jolt of terror clutched my chest as I realized with plummeting, dreadful acceptance that her passion had finally lost all its patience and now her lips were swooping in to claim my life.

Then, with a smooching sound she stopped short and her eyes fluttered open and surveyed me with anticipation.

“NOW YOU GIVE ME A KISS.”

As my heart palpitated in relief, I pressed kisses into my hands and made a big gesture of pretending to throw them up at her. In response, she flashed me a cute grin in spite of herself, and began to bring the Q-tip back over.

As she bent her head over me a little more, a strand of loose hair came tumbling down and glued itself against the sticky lotion covering my body. A burst of shampoo fragrance clouded my senses and I froze in alarm. If she raised her head, it would crane-lift me up off the table, and if she turned her head, I would go flicking off across the table.

Luckily, she noticed. Her brows drew and she made a small grunt of irritation, finely plucking the hair off me and sweeping it back again. Without pause, she stood from her chair, and left the room to find a hair tie, returning with her long hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Dropping her great upper body in front of me again, she took up the Q-tip from the blue cloth. Then the dazzling green eyes rained down onto me, intensifying, and I shrunk under their focus. The cotton tip came waving in at me; I tracked it with my eyes, my hands rubbing together, almost crushing my own fingers. I knew what was coming next and didn’t like it.

She paused, maybe sensing my discomfort, or recalling it from previous instances of this same routine. This was usually the time I’d twist around and try to bolt across the table, though escape was futile when she could effortlessly barricade me with a curled pinky finger.

“JUST STAND ABSOLUTELY STILL,” she said, “AND I’LL BE AS GENTLE AS I CAN.”

I put my hands up, palms facing her, and shook my head, taking steps back.

She just stared down at me impatiently, while a short stream of warm breath issued from her nostrils, bringing to mind a bull being teased. The sauna of her warm breath was already beginning to dry the sheen of lotion on my body.

Her urgent voice shook the air and rattled my skull:

"I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO SEE YOUR FACE COVERED IN DUST LIKE YOU'RE SOME PIECE OF LINT.” Then added coolly: “EVEN IF IT'S TRUE THAT YOU SPEND HALF THE DAY INSIDE MY BELLYBUTTON."

“That’s not dust!” I shot back, “That’s my beard!” I couldn’t shave at my size so my stubble had started getting scruffy.

She gave the cotton tip a tiny, disciplinary shake in my direction.

"SHUSH, YOU."

I dropped silent.

"LET ME DO THIS."

Suddenly she sat up and her head jerked sideways, the long ponytail whipping around, and the sound of a muted explosion – like dynamite blowing up underground – as she directed a sneeze into her shoulder.

I flinched and my throat tightened. Thick flying tresses had just whirled past my face like helicopter blades, almost flinging me into space.

"Maybe you should make damn sure that sneeze is not planning an encore!" I grimaced, huddling up as if to take up even less physical space.

She rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist, and shook her head.

"IT'S FINE,” she said flippantly. “DON’T WORRY. MAYBE THINKING ABOUT DUST AND LINT MADE IT HAPPEN."

And maybe, I thought, a little desperate, if it happened again and she blew me across the table it would give me a running start to escape.

She again held my gaze with intensity and no remorse, looking at but not really seeing my terrified expression, just seeing my face as another surface of my tiny body to be polished with the gelatine slush. Meanwhile, the cotton tip was stubbornly drawing closer, with delicate motions calibrating the angle to my face. This required intense concentration because, from her perspective, my head was little more than a dot.

As the white tip of the cotton nub bulged big in my line of sight, I shut my eyes and my toes dug hard into the microfiber cloth. Right then, the bulb impacted my brow and began to jab around my face. The first impact caused my head to snap back a little, like a shove, and as the probe carried on, its motions didn’t become any gentler than a slap in the head by a great lion’s paw.

At the same time, my face was quickly being coated up in the sticky lather which, at my diminutive size, had a fair bit more surface tension, making the gel hang onto my head like a bubble.

It felt like a plasterer was slapping cold clay over my face, trying to mold it for a cast, running a big bulky palm around my facial features, practically pounding and battering them flat. I had to hold my breath as the pine scented gel sealed my mouth and nostrils, though I was capable of doing that for a long time; a weird side-effect of my miniaturization. I held my breath and began to count as the cold, thick weight continued to press against my eyelids, and clogged up my ears. The cotton tip tapped and swirled around my head, simultaneously wiping off the existing lather, while at the same time, smearing a new coat on, and all around.

My head felt very cold and slimy now.  I stood in darkness, aware only of the Q-tip banging around my face. Needing it to end, I shook my head frantically, waving my arms. Without argument, the white pole nudging the side of my head disappeared.

My head was thoroughly lathered up now, anyway, sealed away inside one big goopy blob. My eyelids fluttered as I tried to see through the veil of lotion, though it stung my eyes.

The immense shadowy form of Jennifer’s upper body was now reaching across to grasp the giant object that looked like a transparent water tower with a white top. Actually it was a generic unlabelled plastic spray bottle. The white top was a basic depressor, like found on a spray-on deodorant, rather than a trigger spray head.

“ALMOST DONE, BABY.” Her voice resonated through the jelly, causing it to jiggle. “YOU’RE DOING GREAT. JUST KEEP BEING PATIENT FOR ME.”

She seemed to enjoy this next part. Normally I enjoyed it, too, if only because it signalled the end of the ‘bath.’ Or I usually did, but now I was skittish again, jerking around to watch the bottle lift up and rotate in the air, wading my feet through the shaggy microfiber as I paced around.

I wanted to yell at her to be careful, but the lotion had my lips glued shut.

Her eyes flicked back down to me.

“IT’S JUST WATER,” she reassured me, biting her lip to keep from smiling.

She was referring to the fact that, yesterday, while washing me, she'd accidentally blasted me with the wrong bottle. After aiming the first spray down at me, she’d wondered why I began hopping around, yelling and rubbing my face with the back of my arms.

She kept two identical-looking bottles, one filled with water to be used to wash me. The other was filled with pure lemon juice. At my previous shrunken size, whenever I’d craved some ‘me time’ and gone and hid from her in some confined space – such as under the sofa or behind a cabinet – she’d use the lemon juice to fire off ‘warning shots’ and flush me out again. She’d never hit me face-on with it, though, only to fill my immediate airspace with a sour disagreeable tang.

At my current smaller size, and correspondingly more delicate condition, being sprayed full-on with the lemon juice had been like having a canister of tear gas thrown at my head. My nose and my bloodshot eyes had been leaking for twenty minutes afterward, trying to bleed the caustic substance out via hot, stinging tears.

She had now aimed the nozzle up over my head, tilting it down, before depressing the top with her index finger. Thick, cold mist enveloped me, dripping down my body and causing the gel over my face to glaze. I knew immediately it was not lemon juice, and my shoulders sagged with relief.

She applied another few sprays, and then moved the bottle around to get my back. The nozzle continued to shift as it gave me another few blasts. From short distance, each blast sounded like a snare drum strike. To think it was only whisper soft to her.

The aerosolized water pattered against me like soft pellets, and the force of the spray cleared the remaining clumps of gel off my face and body, and dispelling the concentration of pine scent to a moderate trace.

As I wiped myself down, she put the spray bottle to one side, and then it was just her voice that rained down on me:

“DID YOU HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT EARLIER?”

“Yes!” I grunted, feeling self-conscious.

Ever since I’d been like this, she’d grown an obsession over my diet, specifically whether I was eating enough. Probably because I ate so little and she could barely make out my face while I chewed, or my belly filling up, it was difficult for her to monitor exactly how much I was ingesting. At mealtimes, she presented me with piles of food shavings that I could barely finish, and later, taking the food back, poked at the generous remainder with a toothpick to forensically analyze how much I’d eaten – or if I’d even touched it – as if I might have been stashing it uneaten in a miniature flowerpot somewhere.

“JUST CHECKING,” she drawled, now reaching for something else. “NOW TIME TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH.”

At mouse size I’d brushed with an interdental brush, which came in a range of increasingly small sizes, but even the smallest brush head was bigger than I currently was, so we used a different method.

Her fingertips had plucked up a single toothbrush bristle, coated in a film of toothpaste. The bristle was brought down and held in place before me, while I approached it, wrapped my mouth around it and chewed on it for a couple of minutes. Then she squirted me with some more water; while I opened my mouth and caught some to rinse out with.

*

Later that day, a call came through from a prosecutor's office, with the sole enquiry: would I be attending court to provide evidence in the trial against one accused, Samantha  J. Freddi? Jen fielded the call, since my voice tended to translate into a shrill unintelligible buzz over the phone.

“NO, I DON’T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND,” she was saying, for the third time, “JERRY IS ACTUALLY SO TINY THAT I COULD HAVE HIM BALANCE PERFECTLY ON MY PINKY NAIL…WITH SPACE LEFT OVER…”

Once she established that she was my guardian and that I was tenfold tinier than they realized, they didn't ask to speak to me.

They called back to say the trial could proceed without my involvement; the private investigators who discovered me would provide evidence on my behalf.

"IT'S BETTER IF YOU DON'T SEE THAT WOMAN EVER AGAIN," Jen concluded afterwards. "YOU DON'T NEED THAT RIGHT NOW."

Deep down I was relieved; not wanting to dredge up all the scandalous details of my containment to a bunch of strangers.

The microfiber towel was composed of soft strands, and as I rolled around on it to dry myself, the strands waved around me like fluffy bulbs of blue coral.

The bell at the front door chimed.

“Who’s that?” I said, jumping to my feet and looking around.

“OH, I HAVE TO GET IT,” Jennifer said, shifting her seat back away from the kitchen table. “DON’T MOVE, I’LL JUST BE A MINUTE.”

“Do you know who it is? What’s going on?”

“YOU’RE GETTING A CHECK-UP, BUB.”

“What?” I said, my mouth drying up. “Since when?”

“SINCE, LIKE, PRETTY MUCH RIGHT NOW.”

“By who?” my voice jumped up a pitch, “—a doctor?”

But she’d already dashed out of the room.

Then came the sound of the front door opening and an upbeat, young female’s voice chattering in greeting.

The voice hit me like a slap. My heart seemed to drop right out of my chest and plummet deep at the bottom of my stomach. I recognized the voice. I didn’t know her name, but I would have recognized the voice anywhere.

Jennifer returned, followed by a young woman wearing turquoise medical scrubs. She might have been considered cute – in an alternate reality where I was normal sized and still single, I might have even flirted with her. The notion made me cold.

It was the local veterinarian.

A backpack swung from the young woman’s shoulders, which she rested on the floor, while Jennifer showed her over to the kitchen table, where I was standing, watching them, my face going white and clammy.

"No – not again!" I screamed, putting my hands on my head and raking my fingers through my gel-slicked hair. "How could you—? Without telling me?! You can't do this!"

If my voice went up any higher in pitch it would cause dogs to stop and obey.

Whether or not Jennifer caught all that, she appeared to notice me jumping up and down and waving my fists. She briskly walked up against the edge of the table, her vast palm coming to rest upon the surface, her shadow falling over me everywhere as she leaned against the table, and turned to face the vet again. She said:

“JERRY’S ALL READY FOR YOU AND PATIENTLY WAITING JUST OVER HERE.”

As she said this, her index finger rose up, before bringing the nail down in a couple of sharp gunshot taps against the wood grain.

The vet’s form approached the table; her head dipping towards me as she bent over to take a better look. Her jaw dropped open as her eyes reduced to squinting in order to focus on me.

“HI THERE!” She said, and her bright chirping voice slapped my eardrums. “REMEMBER ME?  LAST TIME I SAW YOU, YOU WERE DRESSED UP LIKE A LITTLE SUPERMAN,” This caused her lips to break out with an entertained smile. “LET ME GUESS, YOU’RE ANT-MAN THIS TIME!”

Her teeth shone like castle battlements shifting up and down as she spoke. Between them, glimpses of a sizeable pale green, gooey lump. With a nauseous lurch I realized it was a big, folded-over hunk of chewing gum kept squashed up somewhere between the beefy red muscle of her tongue and the inside of her molars.

The wad of gum was the size of a golf cart to me, and between utterances, the white blocks of teeth masticated the gum which would not stay still: folding, squishing, stretching long and snapping again, and being probed by the tongue to keep in place. The view was intimidating, but she didn’t notice; chewing away with mechanical indifference while her attention was captivated by me.

Her open mouth was paddling me with a constant hot wind of spearmint that drizzled down on my head and ran down my face in clammy beads. There was no way I would never find mint cool and refreshing ever again.

Every time the lips parted and the gum appeared my nerves tightened. Apart from the slippery tongue, nothing kept the gum tethered in her mouth. If the wad escaped it would bury me alive and spell my end in an instant. Neither of the women would have any hope of extracting me again, as any attempt to shift the gum would probably only cause it to further absorb me into a tenaciously sticky, squishy, mint-infused ball.

Not taking her eyes off me, she said aside to Jennifer:

“INCREDIBLE! THERE’S SO LITTLE OF HIM – A SPRINKLE!” The pink, wet ridges of her lips pouted and cooed and grinned at me: “BUT YOU ARE JUST THE CUTEST LITTLE SPRINKLE! YES YOU ARE, AREN’T YOU! I JUST WANNA POP YOU ON A CUPCAKE AND LICK YOU ALL UP!”

Hey, watch it, lady! I thought, my heart palpitating with panic. Don’t go giving Jennifer any ideas…!

Alright, enough of this. Enough of the building block teeth snapping up and down, enough of the garden hose spray of saliva droplets, enough of the giant green pile of gum like melted, deformed rubber. I had fought my way through the shaggy blue microfiber and my legs were now pumping over the wooden tabletop.

“UH OH, WE GOT A RUNNER!” the vet smirked, without a hint of worry.

Five strides along, a set of tree trunks came crashing down to block my path, each tipped with long shiny plates. I spun and went the other way. An instant later, the same thing happened; a thumping collapse of long slender timber. Anywhere I turned, Jennifer’s fingers dropped down in front of my path. Meanwhile, the fingers on my other side were sliding inwards towards me. Dizzy, hemmed by the giant fingers closing in, I fell onto my butt; my legs shaking too much now to keep running.

“NO WE DON’T,” Jennifer answered flatly.

The vet had turned her back, now busying herself with something. She reappeared by the table edge carrying a device in front of her chest.

I stared at it, half fascinated, half terrified. It was like the frame or floor plan of a two-storey building, without walls or a roof. The lower floor was white and the upper floor black, holding a giant telescope like out of a big observatory.

It was a microscope.

The vet placed it on a clear space of the kitchen table, the impact jolting through my body.

Now, Jennifer brought her hands away, shifting to let the vet in, and a glass panel came down from the sky, coming into position on the tabletop next to me.

“GOING TO NEED YOU TO HOP ON, LITTLE CRICKET,” the vet instructed.

Anxious and bewildered, I didn’t move.

“DO WHAT SHE SAYS,” Jennifer said in a low voice, “AND WE CAN GET THIS OVER WITH.”

If I didn’t obey, sooner or later she was going to resort to using the ‘finger glue’ to transport me bodily onto the glass panel.

Breath coming out in deep huffs, I stepped up onto the thin glass sheet. As soon as my foot came down on the smooth glass, it skidded out from under me – my bare feet were still a little slick from the wash. My shoulder came down and crashed into the glass, the rest of me sliding along after it.

Jennifer made a small hiss of pity.

“JERRY, NO FOOLING AROUND.”

She thought I was trying to stall.

The vet was similarly unfazed, possibly thinking – like a tiny animal – I was incapable of shame.

Pathetically making the final crawl into the middle of the pane, I stopped and rested there in a sitting position.

The vet’s hand, now covered in a blue surgical glove, dropped from the sky, thumb and finger pincering around the edges of the glass, awash in the smell of rubber, delicately capturing it between fingernails, before I found myself lifting into the air, as if riding a glass-bottomed elevator.

I was zooming towards the two-storey ‘observatory’ before the glass came down on the black upper storey, sliding me up beneath a set of three steel revolving lenses, like cannon turrets, with me positioned in the firing line of the central one.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, I thought. The vet would look at me and that was it. No contact.

“NEED YOU TO BE AN OBEDIENT LITTLE PUPPY DOG AND ROLL ONTO YOUR BACK FOR ME,” the vet said to me.

I got down, tipping my head and shoulders back. The cold panel against my back made my skin crawl. Gritting my teeth, I placed my hands over my groin and stared up at the circular lens directly above my head. Reassuringly, I couldn’t see anything staring back at me through the lens, but I assumed the vet could see me. I felt a little like I was lying in an MRI machine, but without the enclosing walls.

 “GOT TO PULL THE MAGNIFICATION RIGHT UP,” the vet muttered to herself. Her voice was interspersed by the sounds of the wad of gum squishing and smacking between her teeth.

She fiddled with the dials on the side before looking back into the eyepiece.

“I SEE IT NOW,” she exclaimed. “TURNS OUT THAT FUZZY HEAD HAS A PRETTY LITTLE FACE ON IT! CAN THE WEENSY LITTLE FELLA LOOK UP AT ME AND GIVE ME A GREAT BIG SMILE?”

I didn’t smile.

“CAN I TAKE A LOOK?”

It was Jennifer.

Her interest had been piqued by the vet’s remark. Something was creeping into her voice, curiosity, but also a kind of shy longing that took me off guard.

“ALL YOURS,” the vet said, stepping away.

Then the vet’s shifting shadow was replaced by Jennifer’s as she stepped into place, and bowed her head to look through the eyepiece.

She let out a laugh. Not a deprecating laugh but a laugh of candid delight. That, too, caught me off guard, like a little twisting feeling in my heart.

“JERRY, I SEE YOU! I SEE YOUR FACE!..” She added with astonishment, “…AND YOUR NIPPLES…AND YOUR FINGERNAILS…AND YOUR BELLYBUTTON—”

The microscope body was blocking my view of her upper body, but it sounded like she couldn’t keep the grin off her face.

Then she abruptly stopped. It made me wonder if she was looking at my junk, or trying to, since it was covered by my hands. But she didn’t mention that. Instead, she said, in a startled voice:

“OH MY GOSH, WHEN DID YOU GET SO JACKED? YOU LOOK LIKE A FREAKIN’ BODYBUILDER!”

She didn’t sound excited anymore, or even impressed. She sounded a little perturbed.

I scoffed.

“No, I don’t.”

Sure, the miniaturizations always enhanced my physique as a side-effect, but as far as I was concerned, I looked the same as ever, more or less (literally much, much less). And even if I did pack a little more muscle since being shrunk again, so what? If anyone needed the extra bodily size and substance, it was me.

If she’d heard me, she didn’t say anything. She looked up from the eyepiece, and the vet took her cue to take over again, settling in front of the microscope and bending her head to stare through the eyepiece. She murmured matter-of-factly:

“ALRIGHT, I’M GONNA HAVE MYSELF A LITTLE POKE AROUND AND SEE WHAT WE’RE WORKING WITH, HERE.”

I stiffened all over and stared up at the lens in alarm. My extremities were drawing in towards my core, while my junk was kept protected beneath my hands, and behind my drawn up knees.

Movement flashed from the side. Something was snaking through the air towards me, angling beneath the steel magnifying lenses.

It was a long pole, one end had a feathery fine tip, the other end stopped in a tapered, round, blunted nub, like an eraser. The feather tip was pointed at me, swiftly getting closer.

The sight made my blood chill. I thought it was just look, no touch.

The soles of my feet were pushing against the glass, sliding my back along, trying to propel myself away from the oncoming javelin.

"NOW, DON'T YOU WIGGLE AROUND DOWN THERE, LITTLE WORM," the vet cautioned, "OR I'M GOING TO HAVE TO STICK YOU IN PLACE WITH SOME POSTER TACK."

I went still. Breathlessly still.

The blunt rounded tip began to probe my body keenly, starting with my arms and legs. With controlled, surgical precision, it manipulated my arms, pushing them out away from my body, sliding them along the glass. Worried resistance would tear my muscles, I didn't fight it.

With the same motions, the tip pushed at my legs, compelling them flat against the glass plate, and then separating them until I was lying spread-eagled, with my junk exposed.

The pole withdraw briefly to rotate, and then the feather tip came in, and – making use of its ultra-delicacy – began to manipulate my arms and legs, sliding them back and forth against the glass, pushing my arms to bend at the elbow and shoulder, and then stretch them out again, like I was some device and she was trying to figure out how I worked.

Likewise, the tip did this to my legs, folding them up at the knee, and poking my thighs back and forth to test the motion of my pelvic joints.

The insistent probing compelled my muscles to slacken, and only applying enough force to convince me that she understood my anatomy better than I did.

My toes scrunched as the tip swooped past my junk several times during trips between my arms and legs.

The nub gradually moved inwards to my torso. The massive end of the probe was brought down against my chest, weighing against my pectorals, bending my ribcage inwards, and tapping sensitively around my ribs.

The feathery-ended tip slipped beneath one of my armpits, exposed because my arms were stretched out on either side, and then ran down my side and started to palpate around my belly. My bulging muscles dimpled and flexed against the pressure as the probe tip burrowed against my abdomen like it was trying to push my liver out through my mouth. I couldn't speak; the probing was practically winding me.

Then, running lower to stop at my pelvis, the feather tip brushed my nutsack and then ran down my shaft. My breath sucked in tight. The tip now seemed to be trying to scoop up my junk and balance it to allow it to be seen better. The soft, somewhat prickly sensation this caused made my penis rapidly swell, and my balls grow tight.

The vet made a low whistleas she used the probe to lift my shaft up and angle it around to see it from all sides.

“TAKE A LOOK AT THAT THICK CLUB ON THE END," she muttered aloud,  clinically absorbed in her examination, "YOU COULD HIT A GOLF BALL WITH IT!”

Then it began pushing and poking at my member, trying to sweep it aside to better view my balls, but my erect member was so thick and obstructive, and kept slipping out of the grasp of the prong and springing back up into erect position again. So the probe tried a different tactic, coming in from below to sweep the member up and back towards my stomach, and pull my balls up into view. But a couple of times, my member slipped and dropped down, rebounding against the wand. Every time this happened, a sharp sensitive tap ran through my shaft with the impact. The wand then attempted a flicking motion, trying to flip my shaft up, but this only caused my weighty glans to reverse and come flipping down again, smacking into the wand, which responded by batting it back up. And so on.

Suddenly my penis was being batted up and down, and each impact was like a strike against my funny bone, shooting stomach-curling pangs up into my pelvis. Grunts escaped my throat as I pushed and kicked at the offending wand as it swung again and again, jerking my rod up and down.

“I’M TRYING TO GET A GOOD LOOK AT HIS TESTICLES,” the vet observed aloud, “BUT THE LITTLE GLANS IS SO THICK IT’S BEHAVING LIKE A PADDLE BALL,” she sounded almost morbidly fascinated, “IT’S SUSTAININING ITS OWN BOUNCE ON THE END OF MY PROBE.”

The vet rotated the probe to the blunt end and finally managed to get beneath my member, where the tip began rolling my balls around. My stomach started to shrivel up; if she wasn't careful, the probe could effortlessly punch my whole gear flat.

Hyper aware of the probe end bulging around my nuts, I began to get light-headed, and without choice, tried to force my body to relax, to slow and deepen my breathing. The panicked feeling didn’t pass until the probe finally moved its examination back up and divert its attention to my shaft again, probe head poking my swollen tip back and forth with idly curiosity.

Her shadow shifted as she seemed to straighten and refer to Jennifer:

"THAT LITTLE RED SUCKER'S UP AND DOWN SO OFTEN I'M A LITTLE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PRESSURE IT'S PUTTING ON HIS URETHRA. DOES HE HAVE ANY TROUBLE PEEING?"

Jen answered in the negative. Unsatisfied, the vet began adjusting the microscope dails.

“I'M GOING TO PUT THIS MAGNIFIER TO THE TEST,” came her amped up voice, “SEE IF WE CAN GET OUTSELVES A SIGHTING OF THE SNAKE’S EYE.”

“Jennifer – do something!” I spluttered. “Put a stop to this, right now!”

No one heard me.

Suddenly, the probe had swept under my shaft and tipped it up in the direction of the dim glass circle of the objective lens staring down at me, which I knew the vet was staring through, even though I couldn’t see her.

“AND WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT?” she muttered in a small gloating kind of way, “I HAVE IT RIGHT THERE,  WINKING AT ME…UH OH,” she exclaimed suddenly, “WE'VE GOT SOME SPILLAGE COMING ON…”

Even trying to clench my muscles and mentally distract myself, the beginnings of pre-cum was already trickling out from my tormented cock head. My body ached as it coursed with hot blood on rapid transit to my groin.

"I SEE YOU POINTING AT ME!" the vet said aside to me. "WAS I TICKLING YOU? IS THAT WHY YOU'RE POINTING AT ME?" 

Unhelpfully, the probe returned to keenly poke around my ballsack, as if trying to investigate the volume I had backed up. My balls tightened in agony.

"OOH," the vet winced under her breath, "THAT JUICY LITTLE PEPPER IS SO FAT WITH BLOOD IF I GAVE IT A PINCH AT THE BASE I THINK HE'D PASS OUT."

The end of the probe circled the base of my puffed up shaft, and I flinched, for an instant worried she really was going to try and pin it down.

The gum squelched as she went quiet, lending an stomach-turning soundtrack to my erection, and then her resounding voice deepened into an inquiring murmur:

"AND…WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT…BA-DUM…BA-DUM…BA-DUM—” she made a sound mimicking my rapid heartbeat, eeriely matching its timing, “—I DON’T EVEN NEED A STETHOSCOPE, I’M JUST GONNA GO RIGHT AHEAD AND COUNT YOUR PULSE STRAIGHT OFF THOSE FLICKERING LITTLE VEINS!" 

Behind the vet, Jennifer was making some restrained huffing sounds that sounded a lot like someone trying valiantly not to laugh, and had turned away to compose herself.

Meanwhile, the vet was going on with unwavering levity:

“OKEY DOKE, WELL, HE MIGHT BE TEENSIER THAN A RASPBERRY,” she turned away from the microscope to face Jennifer, putting her hands on her hips, “BUT OTHERWISE I’D SAY HE LOOKS PRETTY HEALTHY. THAT LITTLE OX HEART’S WORKING ITS HARDEST TO KEEP HIS SHINY RED TORPEDO AFLOAT. I’D SAY YOU COULD SLIP THE LITTLE FELLA IN A BATTERY SLOT AND POWER A WRISTWATCH!”

“HE'S VIRTUALLY INDESTRUCTIBLE,” Jennifer agreed. “BUT HE’S SO TINY AND HARD TO SEE, I NEEDED A SECOND OPINION.”

From where I was, lying on the glass slide beneath the lens, I could see the two great extensions of their torsos walling in my horizon. My head inclined back against the glass pane, my eyes closed, enjoying a measure of relief and rest now that the examination was over. Undisturbed for the time being, my penis was starting to go flaccid again.

“NOW, YOU HAD A QUESTION FOR ME?” the vet casually added.

Jen answered:

“ONLY...IF HIS MINIATURIZATION AFFECTED HIS SPERM COUNT.”

The vet seemed to consider this for a moment, then said more seriously:

“I DON’T WANT TO THROW YOU A CURVE BALL, BUT IT DEPENDS WHETHER HE WAS EXPOSED TO RADIATION.”

Jennifer gave a small sigh:

“LET ME ASK HIM—”

A shadow passed overhead as the titanic mass of Jennifer’s upper form rematerialized before the microscope. I stared up at the lens fixed in place over me, imagining that she was peering through the other side. My arms rested loosely on either side of my torso, leaving my still semi-swollen groin bare. It seemed a little late to be trying to cover it anymore.

“JERRY...” she began. Her voice didn’t seem to come from her so much as it throbbed the air everywhere at once. She seemed to struggle to word the question, before simply saying “...YOU HEARD THE VET. THE MACHINE WASN’T RADIOACTIVE, RIGHT?”

I gave my head a big shake. Before first using the machine, Remy had warned me the only side-effect was that I'd lose some height. Well, he hadn't been lying about that. But as far as either of us knew, there were no other side-effects which hadn't already presented.

She uttered a groan of relief, audible only to me, and there was a sense of the sun emerging from behind a passing cloud as she moved away from the microscope again, letting in the ceiling light once more.

“NO,” she answered, now sounding more relaxed.

“NORMALLY WE’D TAKE A SEMEN COLLECTION,” the vet explained. “BUT – OOH – WHAT A TRICKY LITTLE CONUNDRUM. HOW DO WE TAKE A DROP OF THOSE TESTE TADPOLES? OUR LAB GEAR GOES AS TINY AS HIS GEAR."

She deliberated for a long moment, then said:

“LET ME MAKE SOME INQUIRIES AND I’LL TRY TO GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT.”

“THANK YOU. IT MEANS A LOT TO ME – AND, I’M SURE, JERRY.”

“GLAD TO HELP.”

A giant thumb swatted down onto the corner of the glass pane and then the underside of the microscope was shifting sideways.as the pane was being slid out, with me lying on it. Then I was moving through space before coming down to rest upon the kitchen table again.  

The vet gave me a big grin.

“YOU’RE A FREE MAN AGAIN, MR SPRINKLE,” she said, lodging the gum into her cheek so she could flash me a big, terrifying parting smile. “NOW DON’T GO GETTING YOURSELF WHISKED AWAY BY THE FEATHERDUSTER!”

She gave me a wink with a swat of lashes which – ironically – were big enough themselves to ‘whisk’ me away if they’d made contact.

Trying to suppress a shiver, I got up and stepped off the pane, which was then lifted back into the air, before the vet hefted the great microscope off the table and put it into the backpack, which she then slung over her shoulders. Saying goodbye to me, she left the kitchen area, as Jennifer saw her to the door.

Their voices carried on talking for an extended moment on the doorstep. In fact, the front door closed as they carried the conversation onto the front porch; their voices turning into muted murmurs. Meanwhile, I stayed on the kitchen table, pacing briskly, trying to get the blood flow to return to my arms and legs, trying not to think too hard about what they were talking about.

“What did Jen say?”

I stared up at the giant fleshy conch shell-like shape that I currently hung from. My arms were wrapped around one of a thin bunch of gold chains which hung from some tiny blue topaz stones, which dangled from an ornate framework draped from Christine’s ear.

Earlier that day, Jen had inexplicably captured me inside the panther ring, announcing that she was heading out, but reassuring me that she’d be back some hours later. The ring was then stashed inside the toe box of one of her more well-worn pumps – with the reasoning that, if someone broke into the house, no one would think to look in an old shoe – while she was away.

Unfortunately it didn’t occur to her that the insulated ring interior would slowly fill with the leathery, musty stink of the dried sweat-infused insole, filtering in through the single hole in the panther’s throat like noxious fumes into an unventilated basement. Unable to escape the ring on my own, I had no choice but to tolerate it for what looked like hours, and settled in to take a long nap to spare my suffering olfactory sense.

At least until Christine came, her enormous fingertips rubbing around the glassy exterior to grind the head off and liberating me like some tiny ring-bound magic genie. It turned out she had been the one to organize a spa and massage for Jen. She knew where the spare house key was kept and after trying a couple of different places, managed to guess where I was hidden; apparently already familiar with Jen’s habit of hiding things in shoes.

Now we were driving into town; me riding her earring. The air-conditioning was up, defending us against the outside warmth. The cool draught rippled through the gold tassels, making me sway and spin gently. My hair bristled with cold and I found myself pulling myself up and down the chain in repetitive motions to keep my muscles in use, to stay warm. But I preferred the fan on than not, wafting with a cleansing apple scent from the air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, a far cry from the stuffy odor of the leathery pump.

“OH,” came Christine’s booming reply, vibrating from her immense throat just to my side, “DON’T YOU WORRY ABOUT HER, MY LITTLE STUD. SHE THINKS YOU’RE STILL SNUGGLED AWAY IN THAT PATENT LEATHER POINTED TOE.”

Today she was glammed up for a good impression, but making me feel sorely underdressed – or, literally undressed, as I was naked. And staying that way, unless someone figured out how to make a suit out of insect chitin.

“What if she comes back?” I cried up into her lofty ear, from my shimmering golden perch.

“MY INSIDE CONTACT WITH THE SPA,” came the rumbling smooth reply, “SAYS THEY’RE KEEPING HER BUSY FOR NOW, BUT THEY’LL SOUND THE ALARM FOR US IF SHE TRIES TO SPRINT AWAY BEFORE SHE’S DUE HOME. IT’S ACROSS TOWN SO I’LL STILL HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO SLIP YOU BACK INTO THE SHOE AGAIN BEFORE SHE RETURNS.”

The car slowed to wend around some construction barriers. The road was being resurfaced and a stretch unpaved gravel juddered the tires. For an extended period, I was jiggled on the end of the tassel like I was riding a jackhammer before the car crossed onto newly laid asphalt. Even on normal road the car engine and road contact sent constant little shivers through the earring chains, unnoticed by Christine, but palpably quivering through my tiny body.

Every other moment Christine turned her head as she drove, causing me to go swishing around through the air and bumping against the corner of her lower jaw. Apparently, this caused a feathery tickling sensation to her, because it would elicit her gentle, breathless laughter, before the point of an enormous index finger would rise up, gently flicking me away so it could scratch the area.

We were on the opposite side of the city to the normal places where Jen and I usually ate out. Christine had shunned all the fancy eating houses on the Bay, terrified a big gust of sea air would sweep me into the waves to be gulped down by a fish.

Once the juddering movements of the rumbling car stopped, the earring shifted in rapid pendulous arcs in time with Christine’s footfalls, magnified by her choice of footwear for the occasion; a pair of heeled sandals whose jolting strides bounced me on the end of her earring like a tiny yo-yo.

We entered the restaurant she’d selected; a lesser known place that assured us some space and quiet. The café interior was under a glass roof, sun pouring in, flowering ivy snaking around railing. The table she had reserved was in the corner, with cane seats, one of them a two seat sofa with cushions.

She took the single chair, cane creaking, lowering me through the air into a position to face the wicker sofa, suggestively empty for now. My thighs clenched around the gold chain, feeling faint all of a sudden. Christine’s neck glistened with pinpricks of sweat in the warm air. Whereas, the sweat on my skin was caused by nerves.

On the table across from us, there was a clear towering water jug topped with a reservoir of water left behind from the previous guests. My throat was suddenly parched, aching for a drop of the untouchable drink. Then tore my eyes away, inwardly despairing:

Why had I come out here? – Why had I insisted? Even Christine had gently indicated that I didn't have to.

But deep down I knew I needed to get past this checkpoint before taking any next step in the marriage action plan. It was not that I needed – or that Jen needed – the permission. It was that I could not, in my state, fail to get the permission. I had no idea how her father would react to my intentions and I didn’t want to find out too late. Worst case scenario, if he didn't want me in her life long term, he could effortlessly flatten me with a screwing motion of his thumb.

Checking her watch, Christine went quiet as she browsed the drinks menu. Across the café floor, people chatted quietly and laughing, no idea I was present.

I was swished through the air as Christine whipped her head around, and then back again, while her fingertips rose and brushed at me from below; intending her touch to be delicate, yet due to the sheer immensity of her fingertips, colliding with my body and swirling me around.

“JERRY,” she said under her breath, “HE’S HERE.”

An older man’s deep, smooth voice sounded over Christine’s bare shoulder, apologizing for being late, and quickly filling up the empty sofa space across the table. While he was distracted by Christine, I stared out across the table at the expansive landscape of his form and analysing his features in forensic detail.

He struck me as a 21st century sultan; with dark skin, thick dark eyebrows and salt and pepper hair, and a trim, impressively groomed goatee and moustache. Beneath his shrewd brow, his eyes twinkled with a boyish kind of capering delight. It was a friendly, candid expression, but I wondered, once he’d heard what I had to say, how long would the expression last?

“THANK YOU FOR MAKING THE TIME, JASPER,” Christine was saying. “WE’RE BOTH VERY GLAD TO BE ABLE TO HAVE THIS CHAT WITH YOU.”

“AH HA, BUT YOUR FRIEND,” Jasper said slowly, stroking his beard, “IS HE NOT PRESENT BECAUSE HE’S BUSY…?”

His accent was a little thick at times. Added to that, his deep voice crackled through my bones and bodily tissues like a stampede of rhinoceroses. And my head already swam with nervousness, or maybe it was the swaying of the earring in the warm draught giving me a queasy feeling.

Another wave of faintness swept over me, and my eyes dropped from his gargantuan face as if searching for stable ground below. The closest was the tabletop many meters down, where the giant poster of a drinks menu stretched over the corner of the table, close by the enormous resting masses of Christine’s long elegant fingers. At intervals, her other hand slid around a glass of latte, the surface like a foamy pool. I was enjoying precisely nothing to drink because there was no drink small enough – though my throat was parched and even a glass of water sounded like a sip of forbidden heaven. More than that, I could have used a shot of liquid courage right about now, but it was pre-lunch, too early in the day for that.

“DESPITE OUTWARD APPEARANCES, HE DID IN FACT MANAGE TO MAKE IT,” she went on gently, “AND HE HAS SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL HE NEEDS TO TELL YOU.”

And her nails were rising up towards her ear, assembling into a – literal – handful of painted beige platforms beneath my dangling legs, and holding in place.

I let go of the chain, dropped, before my soles slapped onto the hard curve of nail on the end of the curled middle finger.

“I’m down,” I said to her.

Then the air was whooshing past me, and I dropped into a crouch to hold my balance, but there were no handholds, so I got down onto my belly, spanning my arms across the width of the nail to hang on.

The air stopped rushing, but it was immediately replaced by a propulsion of warm air that whipped my hair around, and kept me flattened to the nail for a second. Then the wind reversed direction in an instant, switching from hot to cold. I took this opportunity to jump to my feet, and looking up, found myself standing naked on the plate of Christine’s nail, staring up at the colossal face of Jennifer’s father.

Suspended just above were the twin caverns of his nose, blasting a pneumatic spray of hot air every several seconds. Each exhale caused his thick nose hairs to quiver in excitation. Below his nose, his thick, creased brown lips were pursed, bordered by the black forest of his brambly beard. Much higher up, the humungous windows of his eyes stopped on me, freezing me in the black depths of his pupils. His brow scrunched with the effort of discerning my microscopic face. Then the great ridge of the brow and pair of spiky thickets that were the eyebrows lifted to reveal his eyes again, shaded below the oiled black palisades of lashes. At the same time, the lips suddenly peeled back to expose the gleaming white battlement of teeth as he grinned.

“AH, THE MOUSSEAU – JERRY!”

His voice hit me head on like a steam train. I flinched.

Still with a big grin, he pointed at me with the two great logs of his first and second fingers, and his thumb cocked, his hand making a pistol shape and lifting with a small jerk, as if pretending to shoot me.

In return, I gave him a big wave, but only with one hand – my other was cupped around my genitals.

“Hi, Jasper,” I called out. “It’s good to see you again.”

He chuckled good-naturedly.

“THAT VOICE,” he exclaimed, “IT’S JUST A CHIRRUP!” He turned his head to point the dark tunnel of his outer ear canal at me, and framing the shell of his ear with a hand. With delight, he instructed: “NO, DON'T STOP – LET ME HEAR THAT LITTLE CHIRRUP AGAIN!”

“I realize,” I sighed, trying to deepen my voice as much as possible, “I sound and look very different from when we last met.”

His head turned back to face me straight on.

“YES, I RECALL NEWS OF YOUR ACCIDENT…” the huge eyes narrowed again as he surveyed me. “BUT YOU ARE WELL?“

“Doing as well as I can,” I replied, flexing the fingers of my free hand somewhat compulsively.

“BUT YOUR BODY – YOU LOOK GREAT,” he said, completely serious, his bushy black eyebrows rising with sincerity. “A DIFFERENT PERSON. SHOW ME THE NEW ASSETS, GIVE ME A POSE.”

He lifted one arm and slapped his bicep. He had a muscular form that looked like it had taken a complacent downward slide in recent years.

In response, I bent my arm and tensed the muscles, and flexed my pecs. I could only flex one bicep as my other hand remained on indefinite duty protecting my groin. My chest bunched up on the one side and the attached arm rippled with striated fiber and popping veins. Ever since my second miniaturization I’d blown up even bigger, but it meant nothing. It didn’t count if people had to squint to see your biceps. I was big, but tiny.

“WORKING OUT,” Jasper murmured in approval, assuming I must have come by my figure the hard way. “IT’S ALL GOOD DISCIPLINE. BUT – AH – I AM A LITTLE SHORT OF THAT, LATELY…”

He leaned back and patted his belly, which was rounder than the last time I’d seen him. Of course, literally everything was bigger to me since I’d last seen him, when I’d been going out with Jennifer the first time, normal size. He was not what you’d call typically fat, but it just so happened his belly was so large compared to me it could have crushed me like an avalanche. 

He went on idly:

“YOU HAVE SHRUNK AND I HAVE GROWN. ALL HAVE OUR BATTLES. BUT WHAT A SURPRISE IT IS TO HEAR FROM YOU AGAIN.”

There was shifting movement somewhere below me. The great muscular brown hands clasped together, businesslike, on the table in front of him, the tendons flexing powerfully. One bushy eyebrow twisted up with curiosity:

I DIDN’T GET IT FROM TSARINA THAT YOU TWO WERE BACK IN BUSINESS…?”

‘Tsarina’ was Jasper’s pet name for Jennifer.

The lumberlike fingers rubbed against each other, massaging idly. The gold band of his wedding gleamed under the sunlight.

My stomach pulled tight.

Oh crap, I thought.

How was I going to wear a wedding ring? I was small enough to 'globe walk' a wedding ring band like a circus performer. Crazy that it hadn't even occurred to me until now. I had been too busy figuring out whether I was strong enough to lift an engagement ring. For that matter, how was I going to fit a tuxedo? I couldn't front up to my own wedding in the buff. Jen might have seen the funny side of it, but I did not.

Now it felt like a mass of eels was snaking around in my belly. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this after all. I was going to throw up…

With a sound like a rushing ocean wave; another typhonic wave of hot, coffee-bittered air escaped Jasper’s cavernous nostrils, battering the front of my body, making my cheeks and eyelids rattle. It was like a slap, snapping me back to reality and quelling my slithering insides. At the very tail end of this hot surge, I took a deep breath, stuffing my lungs full of fresh air, and answered:

“We’ve only just gotten back together recently. But,” I quickly added, locking my eyes on his, using every ounce of courage to return his gargantuan, unblinking gaze, “we’re serious this time, Jasper, and I—”

With a powerful jerk of cool air, the suction of inhalation wrenched across my body, causing my feet to shuffle forward as I almost lost my balance. Every time the air shifted, the pressure change caused my middle ears to click wetly, and there was a rapid build-up of painful pressure either side of my skull, squeezing like a depressurized soda can, that didn’t release again until the inhalation levelled out again. Relief was only temporary as it started to build all over again anew each time the air flow raced in either direction, which was every few seconds. It was like standing in an aeroplane mid-flight, and the emergency door kept malfunctioning, opening and shutting at intervals, seizing the air with a sickening yank every time it did so.

Setting my jaw, I patiently waited for the lull between breaths. Lucky he was nowhere near as anxious as I felt: his respiration was currently calm and slow. Last time I knew, he intermittently did boxing and weightlifting and I couldn’t imagine how unbearably bad it would be if he was panting from just having pounded away in the gym before getting here. He had a well-exercised set of lungs, and I was feeling every last cubic inch of their fearsome capacity.

Timing and catching the lull between his breaths, I raced on:

“—I love her with every fiber of my tiny being, which might not sound very impressive, because I basically only compromise a single fiber of being—”

The air turned into a tropical swamp again, as another thick, steaming stormcloud washed over me, dappling me with a mist of saliva like acid rain due to the double shot coffee on his breath; so black and bitter it made the sensitive epithelial membrane of my eyelids and the inside of my nostrils sting like they’d been hit with noxious fumes.

 “—But that’s the best offer I have to give right now. That, and incredible financial stability –”

The air went chill and the moisture evaporated as it suddenly changed direction again, welling up from below, and from behind my head, combining into a big dry ocean that was pulled like a great tide away, up towards Jasper’s nostrils again, and making an impressive attempt at snatching me up with it. My ears rang as the air whistled past. As the mega-vacuum passed over me – like I was nothing more than a pesky speck of dirt that needed suctioning up from a carpet – it shook right through the insubstantial filament of my frame. The inhalations were even worse than the exhalations: if I got blown across the table it might not be a tragedy: hopefully Christine’s reflexes were good enough to slap a hand over me before I skidded off the tabletop and onto the ground, to get lost amidst pebbles and dropped food crumbs – or pecked up by a passing pigeon who confused me for a grain of food. But to get taken by the cold drag, along the invisible rip tides of air, up into the twin black voids of the nostrils – what would happen to me, then? – I would stick to the gluey inner lining of the nasal vestibule, or get lodged halfway in a sinus. And that was if I was lucky. Otherwise I would be pitched down a long dark tunnel and roasted up in a bubbling cauldron of stomach juice. There would be no hope of being rescued by regurgitation, not before I was melted down into nothing more than a dollop of something like the hot froth that crowned Christine’s latte.

The danger was too abstract and ludicrous to occur to Jasper. His face hovered recklessly low over me so he could register my tiny ‘chirrups’ as passable human speech. He wasn’t bothered by such fantastical notions as his nose turning into a giant tractor beam.

Every time the air was wolfed down into the depths of his lungs, my petrified heart clattered between my ribs. As each sucking drag sapped my energy, the defensive flexion of my muscles was reduced to pathetic quivering.

As the air slowed, my tiny squeaks flitted back up into the older man’s face:

“—Which is why I wanted to meet you today, Jasper, because—”

Then another maelstrom of hot, damp air came gusting out, pulling across my skin and muscles, tight. My eyeballs were flecked with tiny moisture droplets before I could shut them, although my brow was already damp from perspiration. I ran my hands over my face then waited, using the moment to collect myself, wanting to ask all at once.

When the air settled again, I launched back into speech:

“—I intend to ask Jennifer to marry me, and I would be honoured if you were to give me your blessing.”

Jasper observed me for a moment, his eyes still bright and interested, his mouth relaxed. His broad, blunt fingertips played around his jaw, stroking the beard. Several gusts of wind spilled in and out, in and out of his nostrils, flapping against me each time. My toes clenched. Christine’s finger twitched beneath my feet, causing my muscles to tighten further in an attempt to maintain my balance.

Jasper frowned. Then his voice blurted out of his throat and exploded against my eardrums:

“TSARINA? MARRIAGE?”

Staring dumbfounded, his eyes flicked from me to Christine, and then back down to me again. Then he let out a sudden splutter of laughter that thundered through my body, making my muscles twitch and seize up. My teeth gritted as my hands clapped against my ears.

“THIS IS MY DAUGHTER, YES?” The mountain ridge of his shoulders rolled with a great shrug. “EASILY SOLVED. SHE DOESN’T WANT IT. BYE BYE.”

Up to this point, my mouth had only opened in strategically placed intervals, in gaps between Jasper’s respirations. Now I didn’t even think: my mouth fell open and I stammered for a second. This moment’s inattention cost me as, next second Jasper let out a big, amused breath; correspondingly, a flood of hot air spilled into my mouth, ramming down my throat before I remembered to close it again, but it was too late.

My airways went agonizingly taut, my lungs blew up until they trembled on the cusp of popping. With the panic of a dying person, I put all my effort in exhaling hard and squeezing my diaphragm to push the excess air out. Jasper’s coffee-scented exhaust seemed to have not only inflated my lungs but my stomach – and possibly other vital organs – as well. My heart began to palpate rapidly as the pressure in my torso put strain on my core and made my blood vessels feel tight and thick.

I got caught in a loop of coughing as my eyes tried to roll up into my head from the dizziness clutching my senses. My hands had started to tremor and my knees felt weak, about to buckle.

Maybe sensing my distress, Christine jumped in tactfully:

“IT HAS BEEN VERY RECENT, JASPER,” she conceded, “BUT JEN’S SENSIBILITES ABOUT MARRIAGE HAVE UNDERGONE A KIND OF PARADIGM SHIFT. JERRY HAS WOKEN HER UP TO THE IDEA, AND NOW IT’S FIXED IN HER MIND. SHE’S UTTERLY CAPTIVATED BY HIM.”

Jasper’s head had lifted to meet Christine’s eyes, and consider this in silence. At least this pulled his oppressive breath off me long enough for my aching lungs to recover. Then, like great shining boulders, his eyes revolved back down upon me again.

A low, serene resonation filled the cavities of my body:

"JERRY, DON'T SPEAK OF THE MARRIAGE NOW."

At the same time, his arm sent out the dark hovercraft of his hand, two bulky fingers extending towards Christine’s middle finger, until their tips made contact, establishing a bridge between her light middle finger and his dark pointer and middle finger. They held like that as Jasper’s baritone filled the airspace:

"GET ON. I WANT A CLOSE UP. EYE TO EYE.”

Taking several shaky steps forward, my feet touched upon the dark surface of his pointer nail, like a plate of glossy stone.

My view of his face scrolled up past his lips and nose until I stopped parallel to the keen surveillance of the bright brown eyes, mercifully sheltering me up and away from the cyclonic current of his breath.

His brow blocked out the sky, his head like some great rounded mountain face, flattening me beneath the weight of its sheer immensity. Although my legs felt like jelly, I managed to remain upright, and even stare back into the eyes.

The black tufts of lashes swatted the surface of each eye, each singular lash like a rope I could have grabbed and dangled from, though probably too slick with sebaceous grease for good grip. The voids of his pupils were even more intimidating than his nostrils, because I knew as they honed on me, they were feeding him with an image of my tiny, pathetic shred of being.

As his broad brow furrowed at me with concentration, I had the feeling of being an ant he'd just saved from being crunched under his boot, and he was now internally debating what to do with me.

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU GO TO THIS TROUBLE,” he muttered calmly, “AND WHAT YOU ASK OF ME...WHEN, I DON’T HAVE THAT POWER.” Though I couldn’t see his mouth anymore, the corners of his eyes creased now as if he was smiling, but only just. “THAT’S TSARINA. YOU DON’T COME TO ASK ME TO PULL YOU OUT OF THIS ONE, BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE THAT POWER.  ARE WE CLEAR?”

I stood there, lost for words. Finally, I got out:

“I’m sorry, Jasper, I don’t follow what that means.”

His voice clamoured on without pause:

“MEANS IF YOU TRUST ME TO HOLD YOU ON MY FINGER, THEN POSSIBLY I TRUST YOU TO TAKE MY DAUGHTER’S HAND. BUT,” he let this sink in, “THIS IS YOUR DECISION. YOU'VE WEIGHED THE RISKS AND DONE THE MATH…YOU UNDERSTAND?”

“I think so.”

Satisfied, the eyes seemed to recede their focus, and the twinkle returned.

“THEN IT SHALL BE!” he shrugged. “AND I WISH YOU LOTS OF LUCK!”

*

“WELL…” Christine said once we were back in her car, “…HOW DO YOU FEEL, SWEETIE?”

“I don’t know. He seemed uncertain. Why did he hedge like that?”

“SEEMS TO ME HE CARES FOR YOU MORE THAN YOU REALIZE.”

I stared at her for a moment in the rearview mirror.

“You sure?”

“IT MAY BE THAT HE’S CONCERNED JEN WILL ACCIDENTALLY HURT YOU.”

“Oh. Well,” I sought for something to say, then just said, “Fair point.” Then sighed with resignation. “I’m really tiny, aren’t I?”

“YOU’RE STILL UP AND AT ’EM,” she said. “DON’T TAKE IT THE WRONG WAY, BUT YOU’RE LIKE A FLY. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THIS AND THAT COMES SWATTING AT YOU, YOU KEEP ZOOMING BACK IN THERE FOR MORE.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“THAT’S HOW I MEANT IT. JEN TOLD ME ABOUT STUART AND REMY. IT SOUNDS LIKE A BIG, SCARY LIFE CHANGE BEING YOUR SIZE. AND THOSE TWO WEREN’T EVEN AS SMALL AS YOU ARE NOW. SHE’S AWESTRUCK BY HOW ROBUST YOU ARE.”

“What, uh,” I cleared my throat, “else has she told you?”

“OH, JUST IDLE THINGS GIRLFRIENDS TELL EACH OTHER. NOTHING FOR THAT EENSY LITTLE HEAD TO GET TOO WORRIED ABOUT.”

“Er—” I began.

“YOU MUST REALLY TRUST HER,” she said earnestly, “THE THINGS YOU LET HER GET AWAY WITH…”

“I don’t have a lot of say in any of it,” I said, a little too hastily, not even sure what I was defending myself against.

She tutted me with disbelief, rippling her fingertips against the earring, sending me flying around and, if anything, seemingly relishing my discomfort.

“DON'T TELL HER I LET YOU IN ON THIS,” she went on more seriously, “BUT THE WAY SHE MAKES IT SOUND, YOU CAME BACK INTO HER LIFE WEARING A RIBBON AND A GIFT TAG WITH HER NAME ON IT, AND SHE'S HAD OODLES OF PLEASURE UNWRAPPING YOU.”

I made a huffing sound.

"I'm not a toy!" I barked, blushing at the whimpering petulant squeak that was my voice.

"NO,” her throaty rumble humoured me, with a patient smile, “OF COURSE YOU’RE NOT.”

As if to move away from the subject, she went on:

“SOUNDS LIKE TSAR MIGHT BE IN FOR A TALKING; A LITTLE ‘FATHER TO DAUGHTER’.”

"But he's not going to spoil the surprise...?"

"I DON’T THINK YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. HE’S NOT THE TYPE TO BLAB. HE’LL PROBABLY JUST WANT TO ENSURE SHE CAN KEEP YOU OUT OF HARM’S WAY."  

The earring swayed as the car turned a corner and a brilliant green city park expanded out the window. I was silent for a little while, watching people jogging, walking their dogs, sitting on the grass. Behind the glass window, the car interior gave me a small sense of insulation from how oppressively oversized everything was. But I hadn’t seen people in days and was content to watch, trying not to over burden myself with envy at the sight of their feet freely tramping the emerald lawn and breathing the open air, under the natural warmth of the sunshine.

On a walking path bisecting the grass, birds fluttered over the grass, picking at food crumbs, with a jolt reminding me that I was no bigger than those crumbs. The birds flapped away as a leashed dog eagerly nosed the specks of food, before they were trodden on by the indiscriminate sneaker of the dog’s owner.

As the scenery scrolled by, the dog and walker disappeared, replaced by sparkling river running along the park with a couple of kayaks cruising down it.

It came out before I knew it:

"It's only been possible for me to survive at this size because of her."

Christine said softly:

"YOU DO LET HER KNOW THAT...?"

I was silent for a long time, thinking – of all people – of Natalie, and what she'd say if she could see me like this. She'd found me harmlessly cute at mouse size, but I had a feeling at insect size, I was removed from her world entirely, too little to understand and properly relate to. A romantic relationship had been unbridgeable before, and now, probably even a friendship would be. But nothing shocked Jennifer, not mouse scale, or even insect scale. She treated each downsize almost like an exciting new challenge to master, and provided a creative outlet for her fount of energy. She had never intimated so much as a complaint against my size, or even a wistful suggestion of what could be if only I were bigger. She had never made me feel bad, or different, or loved any less for being smaller.

Christine’s attention had returned to driving, and the landscape unfurling around us, and seemed to let the question go.

"I guess not," I said, finally. "Not enough."

I had mumbled to myself, but forgetting that – positioned so close to her ear – she could hear me. Blushing with embarrassment, I cleared my throat and said:

“Has the massage place contacted you yet?”

“DON’T PANIC, LITTLE STUD,” she reassured, “THERE’S NO RUSH. MY GUESS IS SHE’S STILL AT THE SPA, CONTENTING HERSELF WITH THE THOUGHT OF YOU SNUGGLED AWAY INSIDE HER SHOE.”

“What time is it?”

The gold chains tinkled against me as Christine’s head turned, her gaze drifting out the side window where a shining mall complex built up against the blue sky.

“IT MIGHT BE AROUND THE TIME YOU AND I GO ON A LITTLE SHOPPING EXCURSION…”

The little boat was alone on the wide, wavy sea.

The clear shimmering waves lapped and licked at the yellow plastic hull, bumping it back and forth with light batting motions that were almost playful, making it bob and turn helplessly.

My unsteady legs struggled to resist the constant swaying and bouncing of the brittle floor beneath my bare feet, as I followed a path around the box of plastic that was the inaccessible cabin down the sternside where I leaned over, staring out as far as I could see.

The sea was bordered on all sides by a white canyon that rose up vertically into the heavens. Some way into the depths, the clear waters ran into what looked like two rounded sandbars, that spanned along the broad sea channel. Not the actual sea floor, but a false bottom, which concealed the floor below.

Something made a wet splash on the other side of the boat, and then the air quaked with musical cadence that rippled through the tension of my skin, triggering muscle twitches in different places of my body. My body hair lifted and trembled to the disturbance. Never mind the source was something so mundane as indolent female humming. Intermittently, another falling missile made a wet splash into the sea, like a thrashing fish.

The water towards the boat’s bow churned as an enormous object slid in sending the boat into a hazardous little dance. As the boat settled, a great long extension like a dolphin probed up under the hull. It curled over rapidly and flicked straight again, sending a spray of water flecking against the plastic. I didn’t react fast enough, and a huge drop smacked into my front, slamming me onto the inner side of the boat, and the humming crackled into thunderous giggling.

The surface tension of the water had me stuck there, as if incredibly heavy, for an instant, before it drained off me again, allowing me to get to my feet. I ducked further under the paper umbrella propped up by tack in the center of the boat, actually a cocktail umbrella that shaded me like a commercial café parasol.

Something like a basketball plopped onto the parasol, and the flimsy paper buckled but managed to hold up. A shiny blob ran off the end of the paper shade, collecting on the plastic deck, clear but iridescent with oily colors.

The harmonic thunder broke suddenly.  Before I could help myself, I rushed to the bow of the boat, moving out from under the edge of the parasol to seize on the quiet, calling up:

“Hey! Caref—!“

A giant white blob came bombing down from the sky. My eyes bulged in alarm as it expanded at sonic speed before it hit, my back smacked into the boat floor and there was just frothing blizzard everywhere. A copious buzzing cocktail of oily petroleum and soap suds tingled my flesh all over, and filled my head with torturous bubbles that felt like they were taking scrubbing brushes to the sensitive epithelial membranes of my airways and mouth. I smeared my hands over my face and body, desperate to wipe it off.

Her booming voice made my eyeballs jitter in their sockets.

“DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?”  

She couldn’t see beyond the parasol that I was stuck to the boat floor, squirming in pain.

Rolling onto my front, I threw up a pint of frothing vomit, which seemed to burn through and clear my stinging throat. Then carefully waded through the puddle of oily bubbles and grasped the bow edge, craning my head up at the megalith emerging from the sea at one end of the pearly white canyon.

The sea encircled and clung to a pair of colossal, jutting boulders – breasts – rising and falling rhythmically upon the water surface. Further up, a dark stone protruding from each boulder; a nipple with a diameter equaling full height of my entire body, which I could have stood on like a platform. Soapy rivulets rolled down from the neck, over the breasts.

Somewhere in the water’s depths below the breasts, I was intensely aware of the shadowy crevice on the sea floor, like the entrance to some hidden underground cave.

My eyes climbed the staggering boulders to the humps of bare shoulder and the bony ridge of collarbone. A curtain of glimmering wet hair was pulled around the side, running down one of these shoulders. The matted jungle of ropes oozed big drops down the upper arm draping over the rim of the canyon. The other shoulder was cocked, the hand lifted to the head, threaded into the lathered bunches of hair, caught midway through massaging the scalp.

I was frozen and silent, mesmerized by the stupendous spectacle of her naked, dripping girth. As I watched, the lifted hand made an absent-minded combing motion, sending a tress of wet hair flicking out. I threw an arm up protectively as frothy spray hailed around the boat, pattering against the parasol.

My voice leapt out of my chest:

“You’re raining on my boat.”

The swift reply clapped the air:

“YOU KEEP CREEPING UP ON ME WHEN I’M NOT LOOKING.”

“Well, I can’t steer this thing.”

Every time her prodigious ass shifted against the tub bottom, or her thighs rubbed, there was a hair-raising sound; a grinding squeak, and the lap and suck of the disturbed water pulled my plastic vessel closer to the wall of her midsection.

The hand resting on the bath rim slid down into the water with a great crash, nearly spilling the boat over.

A moment later, a loud scratching sound started me. It came from beneath the boat, like the sound of hooks scraping against the plastic, before punctuating itself with a couple of sharp taps. I twisted over the edge of the boat to locate the source; a finger like some great sea serpent, the long flashing nail poised against the outer hull. I held my breathe. A flick, a twitch of the finger could capsize the boat. The nail tapped the plastic again.

Thinking she was trying to get my attention, I stared back up at her face.

The great eyes had become caught on the boat, and watched me curiously. Tiny droplets clung to her long lashes, trembling each time she blinked, or joining the thin trails of water running down her nose. The shining wet lips were pressed together slightly. Her expression was inscrutable, but fixated on me. Only her eyelids moved, blinking very slowly.

“What?” I called up.

“EVERYONE NEEDS TO CLEAR THE VICINITY RIGHT NOW. THAT’S YOU.”

“I can’t steer, that’s what I said.”

“WELL…CAN’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.”

There was a deep gurgling rumble sound from underwater like the eruption from a huge underwater volcano geyser. The water around the boat suddenly turned into a hot tub, gaseous jets stirring the water, displacing giant bubbles and shooting them up bobbing to the glassy surface, and exploding, sending wisps of spray against my cheeks and flecking into my eyes. I gripped the edge of the boat tight, knuckles whitening.

“Oh…gosh damn…” I said miserably, as the air brimmed with noxious sulfurous odor, “I’m going to suffocate and I’m not even underwater.”

Even as I drew breath to say these words, stink piled on stink until it filled my head and cramped my lungs tight and caused my eyes to water until they were red. My diaphragm spasmed in and out as I was overcome by a coughing fit. For an instant I was convinced I was melting like a candle in the sweltering oily fumes, and was afraid my hair had been set on fire. The steamy air made my vision blur, and then rumbled my body with inescapable words that I felt as much as heard:

“ALL PERFECTLY NORMAL, JERRY. IT’S AIR. WE ALL BREATHE IT, ALL THE TIME.”

I struggled to enunciate through the coughing.

“Th-that was not n-normal.”

“YOU ARE SUCH A LITTLE DRAMA QUEEN.”

“King.”

“YOU HEARD ME. AND IF I COULD DO LITTLE FAIRY PUFF FARTS LIKE YOU, BELIEVE ME, I WOULD.”

“My hair is smouldering.”

“FINE. LET ME GET YOU OUT OF THERE,” she offered. At the same time, the fleshy bridge of a finger extended down and hooked its tip over the edge of the boat.

Thinking she was offering to lift me out of the bath, I wandered up to it, climbed onto the shiny plate, like a shiny marble floor under my bare feet, and balanced as it rose up into the sky. The wetness of the nail should have made it more slippery, but actually caused my bare feet to stick to it a little, due to the surface tension of the sheen of liquid coating the keratin.

Half way in its well-intentioned journey, the finger succumbed to sudden whim, rocketing me higher than the bath edge. As the air whizzed past, her great face tilted back against the edge of the bath until neck tendons bulged and the hollow of the neck shadowed. My eyes widened as the floating plate platform oriented itself down over the upturned face, directly above the puffy pink ridges that were the lips. The nostrils blasted me with a gust of warm air before the nail tipped, I slid straight off and dropped into the crevice parting the puffy lips, where I had one terrifying instant to contemplate being sucked down into the crevice and fall into the dark pit which contained the tongue like a caged animal, ready to awaken with gleeful curiosity at sharing its cavernous quarters with a tiny playmate to flick around, examine and inevitably squash.

The next second I went flying up on a spurting fountain of water before spinning back down like a bottle rocket. My body struck a springy protrusion that had been sticking out in my downward trajectory, and stuck there. It was her nipple, like a leathery red pouffle but pushed out sideways.

Triggered by my contact, the red bulge throbbed faintly against me, which transformed into a vibrant shiver as bubbling laughter rang out from above.

“OH, REALLY?” her murmur beat against my eardrums, pretending to be scandalized, as if I had chosen my landing place, or was clinging to her nipple by choice, rather than surface tension. “I FELT THAT, YOU LITTLE PROVOCATEUR!”

She left me in place – affixed to the hardened erogenous nub like a picture on the wall – for the rest of the bath, and even for several moments as she carefully dried herself. Eventually, a fingertip bulged into my direct sight, lining itself up, and giving the nipple a little flick, sending me flying onto the ruffled cloth of her damp towel.

*

My upkeep routine continued to play out day after day: getting my daily standing ‘dab’ wash, doing my best to power through the piles of food I was given at mealtimes, being put to bed in the pillowy, if skin-flake dusted navel, climbing out each new morning.

Jennifer had taken time off work for the time being to look after me, but we didn’t know how long this was going to work out. It was another thing we didn’t discuss in depth. My funds covered us, but she enjoyed her work and got too much nervous energy being at home. However, she couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving me on my own, either. I was wracking my brains on how to work around this; or at least how to convince her that I could be trusted on my own, but I was coming up short. She had resolved to be my keeper – literally keeping me in her possession almost all the time – and she refused to budge on her position.

It seemed I had abundant free time with not much to do, but this was misleading. Because I was so tiny, it took forever for me to physically get anywhere or do anything, so much of my time was spent wandering, like some miniscule nomad in the never-ending desert of magnified surfaces; rustling carpet fibers (very rare because Jen wouldn’t let me on the floor), wood panel, glass top, and lush rolling surfaces of Jen’s body (also, admittedly rare, because my tiny ticklish movements vexed her).

On the tenth day since my second miniaturization, we got a surprise visit to the house.

It would not be the first surprise.

It started simply enough, with a knock at the door. I knew at once the visitor must be someone who’d come by the house before, because they ignored the newly installed door bell.

She got the door. There were rapid voices; frequent interjections by her. She sounded angry. The male voice kept doggedly muttering below her vehement exclamations. Then her voice went quiet – seemingly mid-sentence. There was muttering. Her voice had lost most of its volume. Then footsteps bounded up the hallway.

“WHERE IS HE?”

An older man’s voice, faintly tinged with a French accent.

Then a man burst into the living room, scanning the room with dark, purposeful eyes.

Remigus de Lautrec, we meet again.

I saw the machine tucked under his arm and knew it was him immediately, even before I’d seen his face. It looked different than I’d last seen it, some weeks ago, when it had the inconspicuous design of something found in a garden shed. I remembered it had a half-exposed steel canister fitted into a plastic outer casing that had dials and switches on one side, and a black handlebar.

Now the apparatus had undergone a radical makeover. The tough plastic outer housing had been upgraded to an alloy that shone like molten chrome, distorting reflections into rainbow moiré fuzz. The semi-exposed inner canister was now a multi-segmented black drum, one end glowing faintly. The dials were all gone. Where they used to be, there was just a sleek screen, whose lights projected up off the screen like a hologram, and looking like a table of numbers side-by-side as if converting time zones.

My eyes finally lifted to roam the extensive geography of the man’s facial features, and my anxiety jumped up, suspecting for a moment the man was a total stranger. It was Remy, but it didn’t look like him. Like the machine, he’d had a makeover, an extreme one, and not necessarily for the better.

His skin was coarser, tanner, brow lined, shadows under his eyes, and he had scars around the side of his jaw, which looked long healed. His widow’s peak had receded remarkably; the remaining hair around the sides of his head had gone silver. His brows were bushier and his eyes – which used to shift around nervously – were now grave and pensive. Last time I'd seen him, he seemed to have mentally recovered from his own excursion down to ankle height, but with the look of him now, maybe not.  He looked weathered, like he’d blown in from a terrible storm.

Even his fashion sense was new and alarming. He wore articles of clothing I couldn’t identify with any brand or style, and little of it matched: a strange-collared, sleeveless coat, jersey and pants made from something like leather but ribbed and ultra-flexible looking, sneakers with a sleek design almost like a sports car. A mechanical looking gold watch on one wrist, and on the other wrist, metal studs in a circuit pattern. I guessed it was some kind of jewellery glued onto his skin, except there was a similar metal design on the side of the machine, near the holographic panel – bizarrely, like an anode and cathode pair. He must really love the machine if he was going getting tattoos or jewellery implants in honor of it, I thought darkly.

My hackles had raised at his appearance, and not just for its eccentricity. Due to the routine of our previous run-ins, the stage felt set for a duel, rather than a genial reunion between old friends. And I’d been burned by this magic trick before.

Jennifer dashed out in front of Remy, making straight for me on the table. The world darkened, Remy, the living room, and herself lost to me, as her fingertips closed in like collapsing walls, making me feel as if I was being smothered all around by firm, vanilla-scented pillows. As the pressure increased, the pillows turned into mattresses. Increasing again, the mattresses turned into thick foam walls. Then brick walls, the ridges of fingerprints growing abrasive.

I could no longer breathe or move. My ribs began to bend inwards and my muscles were like overinflated balloons they were so tight. My body throbbed and stung like a zit being squeezed, and pretty soon more than just pus was going to explode out.

When Jen said she didn’t like to pinch me, well, this was why. In order to ensure I didn’t accidentally slip out from between her fingers, the necessary pressure she had to apply onto my body was intolerable for more than a minute or so. She would only pinch me in an emergency, and to her, Remy’s appearance must have presaged one to justify capturing me between her fingerprints. Even though it hurt.

My feet left the table. Then in one swooping go, the pressure released as her fingers opened again, I dropped through the air and landed on the cushioned bed of her upturned palm, trying to breathe through painful rib cramps and twinging joints. Long shadows stretched over her palm as her fingers curled up over my head, providing her hand with a natural canopy.

“Remy,” I started, when my body had stopped throbbing with pain, “how did you get inside?” I had to shout at the top of my lungs to ensure I was heard.

His footsteps thudded nearer as he must have seen me conveyed into Jen’s hand. He probably had not heard me, though; he had been too far away.

“GREETINGS JERRY,” he intoned somewhere over my head, and in a voice that was gruffer than last time we’d spoke. “ARGH…” he groaned under his breath, “…YOU ARE THAT MUCH SMALLER THAN I EVEN REMEMBER. THIS MUST NOT GO ON. WE ARE GOING TO FIX YOUR FUTURE.”

My brow creased in wonderment. Even the way he spoke sounded different. No more of the jarring, ‘trying-to-sound-hip’ slang I remembered, punctuated by blathering, nasally nerd-speak. Now his voice sounded firm and assured.

“You want to use the machine again?” I sighed.

“WE MUST. IT IS DESTINY.”

Jen scoffed.

“NO. YOUR DESTINY IS TO LEAVE. NOW.”

Remy ignored her.

“JERRY, WE MUST SPEAK ALONE.”

“JERRY'S NOT GOING ANYWHERE WITHOUT ME," Jen insisted.

“What do you want, Remy?” I said.

“IT IS TOO MUCH SIMPLY TO SAY,” he replied. “WE MUST UNDERTAKE ANOTHER PASSAGE. IF IT DOES NOT HAPPEN TODAY, IT WILL HAPPEN NEVER.” He gave a pained sigh. “OVERLOADING THE TACHYONIC COILS DURING THE GEOMAGNETIC FLIP WAS NOT A CLEVER IDEA—”

“You only realize the machine was a mistake now?”

“THE MALFUNCTION WAS NOT MECHANIC; MY INSTRUCTIONS TO YOU WERE VAGUE. BUT THE MECHANICS HAVE BEEN OVERHAULED; SHE IS NOW BOOTING A QUANTUM A.I. INTERFACE TO AUTOMATE EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS. I DON’T GIVE YOU INSTRUCTIONS ANYMORE, JERRY, WE START HER, I INPUT THE RESULT INTO THE PROGRAM, AND GO.”

As his rapid-pace words crashed over my head like a wave of incoherent white noise, my brow furrowed with confusion.

“Well…that sounds even more complex than last time, so count me out.”

More complexity could mean more things could go wrong, and Remy could have even less hope of knowing how to fix it, if there was even enough of me left over to fix.

The second time I’d been around the machine’s operation, I’d been reduced to the size of a mouse. The fourth time; the size of a rice grain – my current size — and I was now down to my last poker chips; I couldn’t afford to place another big bet on my size. Any more ill-fated jaunts of reduction and I’d end up trapped inside the fuzzy, moisture-logged microbial land of subspace. Then my immediate ‘destiny’ might include being snacked upon by one of the microscopic Demodex mites that lived on Jennifer’s eyelashes.

Now I found myself traipsing on the shadowy folds of the soft platform of the curled up hand without realizing it. This must have tickled the owner, because the overhead canopy of fingers twitched and rippled, before the giant index finger of her other hand slithered in beneath them and prodded at me, the extended white nail edge jabbing my shoulder, dumping me over onto my front, my fall cushioned by her soft, warm flesh. As the fingertip retreated again, I got to my feet and made an effort not to move.

My eyes traced the shadowy channels lining the inside of her palm, intersecting, splintering and curving off, and recombining. My brain was at work coming up with some persuasive reasoning to compel Remy to ‘undertake another passage’ over the front door’s welcome mat and down the front driveway. I knew from previous experience that when angry, Remy could snap and throw a fist, and I didn’t want to inadvertently get Jen in the firing line. In unarmed mano-el-mano (or, more precisely, mano-el-irmã), she could have dropped him on the floor with some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but he was armed with the shiny new machine and I wasn’t confident he wouldn’t try to shrink her down in self-defence.

The long-denied joy of holding her in my arms again held no attraction to me if it meant we were both stuck in this vulnerable position. The thought was too horrifying, too shattering to even consider. I would have gladly sacrificed myself to the Demodex than tempt a world which contained a Jennifer in miniature, even if I was normal size again. I would have never told her because it would have made her scoff or laugh or even pity me, but the thought that I could accidentally physically hurt her with my bare hands – particularly in an attempt to show affection – struck me cold.

Suddenly, something else Remy had said made an impact somewhere in my brain. My eyes went wide.

“Wait, did you say, ‘quantum’?” I blurted. “Since when does that technology even exist?” Then again, since when did time travel exist? Since when could people be shrunk?

Remy’s grainy voice hummed with electricity:

“I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, NO?" 

My eyes rattled over the holographic numbers flashing on the machine's panel, none of them projecting the current time or date.

“How long were you working on this?" I said. "It looks like it’s had you up all night.” That was an understatement; with his thinned gray hair and darkened, lined face, he looked like he was in recovery from a serious illness.

“AH, SLEEPLESS NIGHTS,” he said with brittle amusement, “MANY. BUT WORTH IT.”

There was a jostling motion. Jennifer had slid up onto the edge of the table, cradling her hand – carrying me – on her thigh. Maybe she was settling in to hear a big story.

Remy corrected himself:

“OR, IT WILL BE WORTH IT, ONCE THE LAST TANGLE IS IRONED OUT.”

I cut in:

“Assuming you don’t make me even smaller—”

“THIS...THIS PROBLEM IS BIGGER THAN YOUR TARGET SIZE, JERRY.”

There was quiet for a moment, as we waited for him to elaborate. It went on for so long that I wondered if he’d changed his mind about using the machine after all. But then he took a deep breath and began:

“I WILL TELL YOU A STORY,” he said impatiently. “FICTION, I PROMISE. ONE DAY, A MAN UNDERTOOK TO TRAVEL DIHEDRAL…”

From outside the cup of Jennifer’s hand, Remy’s voice started bounding around, suggesting he was pacing around the carpet now.

“…BUT THE PASSAGE OPERATOR – AHM – COMMITTED AN ERROR, AND INSTEAD THE WOMAN WENT DIHEDRAL...” 

I rubbed my palm against my face, closing my eyes.

Remy’s grizzled, ill appearance, his low, deadened tone of voice, his bizarre, mismatched wardrobe. It was confirmed: he was completely insane. He’d always been a little bonkers, and now he was more than a lot bonkers.

I hadn’t caught it at first because it wasn’t a flagrant type of screaming mad. It was a subtle crazy; you could almost make sense out of what he was saying.

For instance, in foggy memory I recalled ‘anhedral’ was the plane along which you reversed in time, but following slight angular deviations from the anhedral would cause you to reverse in size instead. At the perfect angle, you reversed in time with only a few millimetres height loss. Unfortunately, it seemed I flunked geometry: I had previously deviated from the correct angle, and shrunk to an extreme degree, without any corresponding time jump.

…And if travel in the vicinity of the anhedral plane caused downsizes, it seemed to mean that travel towards the dihedral plane caused forward time travel – hypothetically, at least – or corresponding physical upsizes. 

Remy went on:

“…BUT AH, SHE IS TOO DIHEDRAL. THE OPERATOR IS UP AGAINST THE WALL. THE MAN IS SNUFFED BY THE DISTORTION. IT WAS NEVER MEANT, AND MUST BE UNDONE.”

“Remy,” I interrupted, “I’m into this time travel stuff, but I’m not an expert. You have to dumb it down a little for us.”

He hadn’t heard me.

“MAY BE FICTION, JERRY,” he said, no longer rambling, but direct, “OR MAY BE NOT. IT IS UP TO YOU, FRIEND.”

Even if fiction, it sounded sinister. The words were making more and more sense, but the picture coming to light was too stark to be believed. Jennifer had been silent, I think she understood it even less than I did. She didn’t know about the anhedral and dihedral stuff.

What bothered me the most was Remy’s tone. In the past, whenever he’d propositioned using the machine with me, he’d always been breathlessly excited, like a little kid getting the excuse to goof off. But there was none of that boyish energy now, just urgent entreaty. He wasn’t propositioning we use the machine to satisfy scientific curiosity, but because something really bad was going to happen if we didn’t…But—

“How do you know—” I quickly changed tack. “How did you come up with that story, Remy?”

He paused, then said:

“WHEN THE FORMER AND THE LATER MEET, THEY MUST CANCEL OUT. MY FORMER WAS SET TO COME TOMORROW, BUT FOR MY DEVIATION. IT WAS NECCESARY. BUT NOW I, TOO, MUST PART.”

"What? You're not making sense."

Jennifer snickered under her breath like she thought that was just putting it too mildly.

“THE BACKWARD GATEWAY WAS VERY WIDE,” said Remy, solemn as ever. "BUT I AM HERE AGAIN.”

Suddenly what he was trying to say hit me with sickening clarity. The air seemed to leave my chest like I’d been punched.

“You’re not from here, are you Remy…?”

I was trying to remember to keep my voice loud. Just how wide was his backward gateway? His hair had not been gray when I’d seen him last, but black.

Now his voice had acquired a tone of relief, as if I was finally speaking sense.

“I DEVIATED HIM, JERRY, AS I TOLD YOU. HE WAS THE ONE IN MY STORY. HE WAS ONLY TRYING TO HELP BUT HE WOULD HAVE RUINED EVERYTHING. I SPEND MY ENTIRE LIFE REGRETTING IT. NOW, AT LAST, I AM BACK AND ABLE TO FIX THIS FOR YOU…BEFORE HE CAME.”

“JERRY,” Jennifer barked, losing her patience now with Remy’s obfuscation, “WHAT IS GOING ON?"

Letting her question hang for the moment, I said to Remy:

“Oh, no. You’re going to fulfil the cycle. You’re going to make –whatever it is—happen again, like a closed loop.”

“NO, NO. NOT CLOSED LOOPS. BRANCHING CHANNELS. THE QUANTUM A.I. STREAMS THEM. AND WE ARE SWITCHING THE CHANNELS TODAY."

This was getting too heady for me. I was half tempted to throw my hands up and race along with Remy, do whatever he said, just to make it all go away.

Jen must have picked up my indecision and it seemed to worry her. As I vacillated, she announced:

“NOT INTERESTED.”

She said this as firmly and dismissively as if Remy was a door-to-door salesman.

“Jennifer,” I cut in, “if I don’t do this, I think something weird is going to happen, and I’m going to die.”

Her face was blank, restrained, as she brought her cupped palm up, and me, right up under eyes, bathing me in long sweeps of her warm breath. It was like she was trying to peer into my soul.

“IT SCARES ME,” she said finally, unable to bring herself to say any more.

“The idea of spending the rest of my life like this scares me.”

“DON'T PUT THAT ON ME," she pleaded. "DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE."

“You don’t have to choose,” I said firmly as I stared up at her, balling my fists. “It’s my choice. Let me make it, goddamn it.”

Her eyelashes began to flutter with a succession of stunned blinks. Then her eyes closed and brow crumpled like she was trying not to cry.

I looked down, putting my hands on my head. She rarely cried and it threw me off guard. Also, her imminent tears were at risk of bombing me like water balloons.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pained. At the same time, how could I blame her without being a total hypocrite? If our roles were reversed I might have done everything humanly possible to keep her away from the machine, too. But then I wouldn’t want her to be perpetually stuck tiny either. It was too hard to even imagine.

“Look,” I added, trying to sound optimistic and reassuring, “I think Remy has got this thing working properly now. He understands it a lot more.”

—And thought: he’s had a whole lifetime to figure it out.

With her eyes still closed, she pressed a hand against her brow. Then, taking a breath and composing herself, she looked away.

“IF YOU MUST…BUT I’M GOING TO HATE IT. I’M GOING TO HATE EVERY SECOND OF IT. THE MOMENT – THE VERY MOMENT YOU GET BIGGER, YOU HAVE TO END IT.”

Remy had gone silent but, somewhere unseen beyond the cup of Jennifer’s hand, I could hear him fiddling with the machine.

Then he must have switched it on, because there was an electric snap that made all the hairs on my body rise, as a low humming filled the air, so powerful that it had vibrations coursing through my bones and my eyeballs were shaking inside the sockets.

“I MUST BE THE OPERATOR SO I WILL TAKE JERRY THROUGH,” he said to Jennifer. 

“Wait,” I stopped him. “Won’t that make you grow as well?”

“WE MUST SEPARATE,” he replied. “YOU ONE WAY, I WILL GO...ELSEWHERE.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling more confident knowing Remy would be diving into the deep end with me. Of course, it hadn’t helped back when he’d gotten himself shrunk, one time. But this Remy seemed older, wiser, and had a more mature, commanding presence, like he really knew his shit backwards and forwards.

Not seemed older, I reminded myself, was.

“I’ll do it.”

I clapped my hands together and began bouncing up and down on the plush surface of Jennifer’s palm, shaking my arms like I was going to go run a race. Then I stopped and gazed up at her, who was watching me blankly, her eyes beneath her long lashes, shadowed and remote.

“Let me do it,” I said. “Please.”

I got down on my knees, making a begging gesture with my hands, shaking them for emphasis. Acts of worshipful begging tended to open doors with her. I was probably overselling it, resembling some tiny naked pagan cultist in prostration to a great stone goddess come to life. But I didn’t care what I looked like, the practical reality was, I had no way off her hand without her assent.

She stared down at me in silence, her face drawn, not even a flicker of a self-satisfied smile. But finally, she gave a long, low sigh, and the world outside her palm bumped as she slid off the table. 

“WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO HIM?” she said to Remy, who replied:

“ONE BRIEF PASSAGE AND YOUR AMOR WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU FULL SIZE, AND I WILL BE GONE FROM YOUR LIVES.”

Judging by Jennifer’s cold reception of Remy, the latter part probably appealed to her almost as much as the former part. Possibly even moreso.

“’FULL SIZE’ MEANS…MY HEIGHT,” she confirmed.

“THAT IS CORRECT,” Remy said, somewhat distractedly. "WHERE HE STOOD PREVIOUSLY."

I hadn't stood at Jen's height previously – hovering a little shorter than her –but that was beside the point. 

Remy carried on:

"AND IT WILL BE AS IF HE WAS NEVER SHRUNK AND NONE OF THE PAST MONTHS EVER HAPPENED. ZAP!” He clicked his fingers, making my ears pop painfully. “ERASED! GONE.”

She looked away, and bit her lip.

He directed her to a spot in the room, where she placed me down on the carpet, by the big toe of her right foot. It had been several days since I had been on the floor – ten days ago in fact, when I’d first re-emerged from my previous ‘jolt’ in Remy’s machine, stared around the beige, dusty alien desert that was the carpet, and realized with a plummet of horror how truly tiny I was.

The view of my girlfriend’s face was immediately obstructed by the underside edge of her toenail, extending like a transparent bookshelf at my head, the underneath shadowed by the dark paste and debris that clung there. Maybe if she didn’t insist on keeping her nails a little longer than necessary the undersides wouldn’t attract so much mysterious, stomach-turning filth. At my size, I was small enough to have fitted in under her nail lengthways and that gunk would have adhered to me like glue.

Taking steps back, I got a view straight up her body that sucked the breath out of my lungs.

It was like looking straight up a mountain, immense legs converging to a torso that formed a complete wall reaching higher up into space. The carpet groaned as she transferred her weight from one foot to the other, and the bulges of toned calf and thigh muscles, paradoxically, like fluidly shifting boulders beneath the lush sandy expanse of her skin, peppered in the tiny dimples of pores and shiny white grass of tiny hair.

Clothing pulled around the form like the fabric of a hot air balloon, but extending in the suggestively adiposal globes shaping her hourglass hips and breasts. 

I had no hope of reaching her face from the floor; it ascended up to a ceiling hazy by distance, as if seen through a veil of clouds. She stared down at me as if from another world, somehow outside the planet – hovering up in the atmosphere – instead of standing on it. Her face was so far away I refused to believe she could even see me, or I must have been a mere speck – it was only that it was so comparatively big that I could still see it. Her brow was tense, scrutinizing, as if trying to figure out what I was. From her vantage point I probably did not even look human anymore, but an infinitesimal featureless blotch of color against the carpet, a blur, an upright-standing wheat grain. I could have been plucked up by a mother bird and passed down its baby’s gullet.

I’m an insect, I realized with a cold sweat, now more desperate than ever to proceed with the jolt.

Remy then directed her to go and stand across the room, out of the way.

She hovered above me, as if unable to wrench herself away. I waited for her to say something but it didn’t come. Instead, the tip of an enormous finger alighted upon the crown of my head, making an attempt to brush over my hair with as minimal interference as possible, but unavoidably causing my knees to buckle under its weight. My hair stuck to the finger; its surface faintly damp, as if she had kissed it.

Then it withdrew up into the sky again. She turned and padded back over the carpet, every gargantuan step causing the floor to quake, and carpet fibers to shiver around me, tickling my legs. I watched the creased underside of each mammoth sole lift, soar into the air, and drop as it receded across the floor.

“READY, JERRY?” called Remy’s voice. “I AM ENGAGING HER NOW. THE A.I. WILL CALCULATE THE OPTIMAL PATH FOR YOUR TARGET HEIGHT. ALL YOU MUST DO IS FOLLOW THE WHITE LASER. ONCE YOU ARE FULL HEIGHT, IT WILL POINT YOU OUT OF THE PASSAGE AND VOILÀ!"

“Simple enough,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me; from ground level, no one could anymore.

He quickly added:

“ONE FINAL DETAIL, BUT MOST IMPORTANT. YOU DO NOT EXIT THE PASSAGE BEFORE THE WHITE LASER'S DEMISE.”

“Got it,” I said, more to myself than anyone.

This could actually work, I thought to myself. And if it did – boom! – old me again.

My nerves were firing up, I was pumped, skin prickling. The danger made it even more attractive – exciting – almost irresistible. I had to try. I had to know.

It seemed Remy was aiming the machine now.

Or, I guessed he was. It was difficult to see what was happening, I was getting cricks in my neck from twisting it around and craning it back so much.

But I did see clearly what happened next.

Reality folded apart and curved around, revealing a dim tunnel where the faint traces of entering light speckled and smeared and bent like paint in the rain. As the walls of reality got closer to the tunnel, they bent and corkscrewed around the edge, most of it not actually penetrating the substance of the darkness.

At my previous sizes, the tunnel had been awesomely intimidating enough, but now it was a gaping leviathan; a celestial black hole that filled up my entire visual field when viewed head on, a wall of something purer and richer than darkness itself, darker than the moonless night sky.

Gazing in, I now found myself too horrified to take a single step closer; it was like stumbling upon the entrance to an abandoned mine shaft at midnight, and being told to run inside to the end, to see how deep it went. I was staring into a black maw that was intent on swallowing me alive, the only sane response was to turn and run the other way.

The terrible object staring blindly at me would have been entirely invisible to Jennifer, at least from where Remy had directed her to stand. Good thing. I had once asked her what it had looked like when I had shrunk the first time. From my point of view, I had tripped into the portal and awoken shrunk. But to her, there had been no bending of reality, black tunnels, or corkscrewing passages. Initially, this had me puzzled, but I’d come to understand that from most angles, the tunnel was invisible; walking around it caused it to fold up by perspective illusion, like a piece of paper being turned sideways. This was why it was important to aim the machine properly and position all third persons out of the way, so you got the open angle, and witnesses only got the folded up one.

Then I saw it running along in front of me: the gossamer white ribbon of the laser pointing into the tunnel along a slight diagonal angle, the only source of light not being bent or blurred by its proximity to the black sphere.

My muscles twitching with apprehension, I forced myself to start following the tunnel, trailing the white laser. At first nothing happened. In the past, these passages were practically instantaneous – ‘jolts’ we called them. But this one was taking longer. Was that bad? Was something wrong? My mind flitted anxiously. Then I remembered Remy’s instructions: don’t leave the tunnel before reaching the end of the laser. I took a deep breath, my walking pace relaxed. Just be patient.

As I kept going, and with nothing but the void surrounding me, my mind began to wander.

It was weird, Remy had never actually named his machine, like ‘time cannon’ or ‘portal splitter’ or something cool. Maybe he was figuring out the copyright.

Then I realized something odd was happening: the tunnel perimeter had shrunk, as if I was walking away from it, rather than travelling deeper inside. The closer I moved in, the more it seemed to move away.

But the tunnel was not actually shrinking; I was growing.

YES!

My heart trilled with joy. It was actually happening, after all this uncertainty and despair and frustration and waiting, I was going to rejoin normal human civilization again. No longer would I be an object of peculiar fascination, at the risk of being mistaken for a toy or a pet. I was going to get to be boring and normal again, unnoticed in groups of people; no more pity by the male sex, no more coddling by the female sex. I would be able to wrap my arms around Jennifer and lift her off her feet, we could go outside together hand in hand, and me in the driver seat taking her to her favorite clubs and restaurants and dance and sit across from each other, our eyelines level, kissing over the tabletop and holding hands underneath it, strolling down her favorite other haunt, the boardwalk by the Bay. I would take up new work somewhere – with a normal sized body I could be anything I wanted, anything – and be a normal boyfriend who went out the door at nine and came home at five and showered his girlfriend with affection in the normal way. Everything would be different, and we would finally achieve the kind of normal, settled, stable relationship that had eluded us the first time…

All of these thoughts zipped through my mind as I was running now, giddy, racing the white laser like a sprinter trying to obtain a new best record. The black tunnel perimeter continued to gradually constrict inwards as I grew that much nearer to my goal. Literally grew with every step.

I couldn’t see Remy anymore, but the surrounding room was all but forgotten anyway, there was just the dream zooming towards me with open arms, I was about to crash into normal reality again, so near I could almost taste it, could feel it’s warm, long-promised embrace enfolding my rapidly up-sizing body—

A flesh-colored wall-like object dropped in front of me, and I smacked into it face first. My feet scuffed over the ground, legs tripping over each other. Right before I ended up on the carpet, the wall curled fiercely around my torso, squeezing my ribcage in, pushing all the air out. Since I’d just been sprinting and puffing, this made my face go red.

My feet touched off the carpet as I was zoomed into the air. There was a sucking feeling, like the cling of surface tension, then the perimeter of the tunnel seemed to burst like a bubble; the colors of reality tumbling in like curling ocean waves, shrinking the black tunnel down into nothing.

In the tight embrace of my containment, I gasped for breath, blinking dumbfounded at the walls of the living room boxing me in; the walls, floor and ceiling closer, now with perceptible boundaries. Now the room was bigger, gratefully so, but it still wasn’t big enough. My head wasn’t up high up where it should be and my feet weren’t touching the floor – they were a long way up from the floor.

There was a flash of unpleasant déjà vu as I looked around at everything; the furniture, walls, objects lying around. I didn’t need to pull out measuring tape to work out how big I was. I was scores taller than I had been five minutes ago (if the tunnel had even lasted that long), but still only back to my previous size, approximate to a mouse. Not big enough. When the tunnel collapsed, all of my dreamlike visions and aspirations had melted with it, like mirages promising an oasis that turned up a dusty sand dune.

How could it have gone wrong – again? What had happened? I’d been so, so close.

All my giddy elation was twisting into raw frustration. My vision blurred as if my brain was refusing to accept the reality before me – actually caused by tears leaking from my eyes.

There was a dropping sensation, a ‘whumphf’ of impact, and I came to rest on Jennifer’s knee as she sat on the sofa. Her warm hand encircled my naked body, keeping me contained. No longer a floating titanic monster, just her recognizable hand, but blown up in size compared to me. Big but manageable; with fingers stretched out I could have laid on her palm like a single bed.

I twisted around inside her grip until, looking up, found her profile viewing me from just above. Even though she was still massive compared to me, she was paradoxically smaller – at least than I remembered. Smaller and bigger at the same time. It was like seeing double. I had to stare and blink at her for a moment until the illusion cleared.

She gave me a small smile.

“SURPRISE,” she said dryly. “IT WORKED.”

Her voice rumbled, but didn’t make my ears ring, as before. It was like there was white noise in my ears and everything sounded muted. But there was no actual noise, it was another perceptive illusion. Everything was quieter. My brain expected her voice to sound louder, by habit, and was trying to process that it didn’t, telling me that my ears must be blocked or something. Very disorienting. I shook my head, trying to get the feeling to clear.

“What??” I said shakily. “But…” Then I yelled out: “Remy! I don’t think it—!”

“BABE, REMY LEFT,” she said gently.

Twisting around in her grip again, my eyes flashed around the room. Sure enough, there was no one there. It was just us on the couch. No sign of Remy anywhere. Not even his machine.

“Where’d he go…?” I began, feeling faint.

“HE DID SAY HE WAS GOING TO LEAVE US ONCE YOU’D GROWN,” she reminded me calmly. “HE MUST HAVE LEFT WHILE I WASN’T LOOKING. DIDN’T REALIZE IT WAS SO URGENT, THOUGH.”

“No,” I said slowly, “he jolted with me, but he went somewhere else.”

“RIGHT,” Jennifer replied, unable to keep the disinterest out of her voice. “I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I’LL BE ECSTATIC IF I NEVER SEE THAT MACHINE EVER AGAIN.”

My mouth hung open as I tried to process everything through my stunned, sluggish brain. I said weakly:

“If you’d just waited another minute it would’ve made me normal again.”

She gave me a long expressionless look, then said quietly:

“I PRETTY MUCH FIGURED THAT, YEAH.”

“Then why did you pull me out early?”

“I HAD TO, BEFORE IT HURT YOU. LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO REMY.” She shrugged. “DO YOU EVEN KNOW? I DON’T. HE COULD BE DEAD.”

“I don’t think he’s dead,” I said slowly, as if saying it and believing it made it true. By her flippant tone, I don’t think she really believed he was, either.

“WHATEVER. ALL I KNOW IS, HE DISAPPEARED WHILE YOU WERE GROWING. MAYBE HE WALTZED OUT THE DOOR WHEN MY BACK WAS TURNED, BUT IT FREAKED ME OUT THAT SUDDENLY HE WAS GONE AND I HAD TO GET YOU OUT OF THERE BEFORE YOU WERE GONE, TOO.”

Her voice didn’t match what she was saying. She didn’t sound freaked out.

Ignoring that, I thought out loud:

“He must have jolted back in time – I mean, forward, back to his own time – back to the future,” I said before I could help myself. “That’s how the machine operates. That’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s a time machine.”

Maybe the ‘back to the future’ line was a touch hokey for her liking. She rolled her head right back with exasperation.

“I’M SERIOUS: IF I HEAR THE WORDS ‘TIME TRAVEL’ OR ‘TIME MACHINE’ OR ‘TIME WARP’ EVER AGAIN, THE ONLY ‘JOLTING’ YOU ARE GOING TO BE DOING IS JOLTING UP AND DOWN IN MY HAND AS I SHAKE IT.”

My mouth clamped shut again.

I’d told her before that the machine was a time machine but she refused to accept it. She had always assumed I had hit my head during the jolt I’d undertaken at the ‘Flip’ party and a resulting concussion had caused me to dream up the time travel aspect. She had never seen a demonstration of its time travelling power. As far as she was concerned the machine was a size-changing machine all along, if not a downright death trap. Only, Remy had looked older, but that could be chalked up to serious illness.

I changed tack:

“Look, I know this thing had risks. Big risks. But given the opportunity for me to be full size again, don’t you think the risks were worth it?”

“TO GET YOUR SIZE BACK?” she said flatly. “NO. IF THE RISK WAS YOU VANISHING INTO NOTHING; THEN NO.”

“That’s what this whole enterprise was for,” I said, a little hotly, “getting my size back. You’re acting like that’s a surprise.”

She said in an odd, quiet way:

“IT WAS A SURPRISE.”

The argument was hopeless. She looked different now, and not just deceptively ‘smaller’. It was her expression; the way she’d used to look at me when I’d first been shrunk, or the morning after, a dreamy kind of disbelief, and fierce coverture. It unnerved me.

It was a look of hunger; both the pain of it and the relief of imminent satisfaction in equal measure. Inconveniently, I remembered we hadn’t had sex since I’d been shrunk to a centimeter tall: ten days. That had to be a very long dry spell for her, intolerably long, nearly stretching back to when dinosaurs walked the planet.

Maybe the look she was giving me was only another perceptive illusion because it was quickly tamed again, subdued to something gentler. Her fingertip extended towards my face to gently scratch and tickle my cheek.

“WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT?” she said, sounding on the verge of laughter.

I sighed, slumping comfortably against her warm flesh as I resigned myself that this was my world now, and it wasn’t the best of all possible worlds, but it wasn’t a bad world either. There might have been realms worse – Demodex land, for instance, and other alternate ways Remy’s story could have ended, where I died and Jennifer never forgave herself, or even worlds worse than my death, where she was shrunk and I never recovered from the cataclysmic shock of it.

And in comparison, this didn’t seem half bad.

I lay on my back on the Queen bed in the master bedroom, lost in thought.

The disorientation was still coming down, and I found myself staring intensely at my open hand, trying to picture a reduced version of myself standing on it. Because that’s how small I had been before jolting; small enough to stand on the palm of my own current-sized hand. But the more I concentrated, the fuzzier and more abstract the image became, until it seemed totally incoherent. It felt like only moments ago I’d re-sized, but had been an hour.

A shadow seemed to shift over me, causing me to sit up. She was standing in the doorway.

“THERE YOU ARE,” she sighed, slumping gracefully against the doorframe, folding her arms. “TALK TO ME. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH YOU?”

I wrung my hands together, ultra conscious that her phone was lying on the bed nearby, and I had been just using it to coordinate something very secret and very important…

“I…I don’t know…”

Undergoing size alteration via Remy’s machine always seemed to affect my nervous system. The first time, giving me vertigo, the second time, a panic attack. I had neither of these reactions now, but my brain was still placing me in my newly sized surroundings, gauging the correct depth for everything. I kept reaching the end of surfaces and crossing the floor much quicker than I expected.  

“IT’S BEING ABLE TO SEE ME PROPERLY, ISN’T IT – ?” she said, sauntering slowly over to the bed with a lazy hip movement that got my eyes stuck half-way up her body. Her hips – her whole body – was perceptively smaller, but I could take it in with one sweeping look, and it didn’t look like geography anymore, but, suggestively, like a magnified woman’s body.

Her voice quickly pulled me back to reality.

“—IT’S A LITTLE…SHOCKING?”

“Yeah…I guess so…”

Maybe not ‘shocking’ so much as a huge relief that I could read her expression instantaneously and without intense scanning and concentration.

Now I fought to keep my eyes on her, and not on her phone lying on the mattress across from me, like so much crime scene evidence. Would she bother to scroll through the recent call list?

The mattress buckled beneath me slightly as she climbed onto the bed and slid down onto one side, drawing her knees in and flexibly curling herself around my much tinier body. Leaning on one arm, the other draped down and poked my shoulder, getting me to shift around in place until I was facing her.

The tip of a pinky finger nudged up under my chin to gently tip my head back.

But her phone was in my peripheral vision, right next to her. If one of those numbers called me back to confirm anything she would pick up. I couldn’t meet her eyes, but I forbid myself from looking at the phone, and my eyes ended up darting around with indecision.

The pinky nail tickled my throat to bring my attention back to her.

“CAN I HAVE MY MOMENT WITH YOU YET?”

I blinked.

“Er, what?”

“DO I GET TO KISS YOU NOW?”

She didn’t wait around for my answer. A hand wrapped around my torso, my butt lifted off the bed and suddenly my face was rushing up towards her lips, which were puckering in anticipation. I was pulled in so fast in fact that my face made a soft smack as it hit the moist bulging lips, and stuck fast by its passionate massaging suction.

Her throat crackled with a husky eruption of uninhibited bliss that made me rock hard in seconds.

Then, with another moan, her lips suddenly parted, moving past my ears, and there was a hard clasping feeling over the crown of my head and up under my jaw, and tightening until my head was immutably locked in place, as in a bear trap. Then her tongue came pounding out with such restless amore that it practically punched me in the head with its impact, then draped heavily over my face like a warm wet towel, before it began to apply firm, sweeping licks, starting from my chin up to the hairline above my brow. My features were squashed and pulled by the fierce ardour of its wet bumpy grinding, as her thick, rapid breath beat in my ears, keeping my face moist with saliva.

She was quickly getting carried away; the grip of her incisors was cutting close around my skull, straining my temples; the cartilage in my jaw grinding. Then it was too painful and I let out a cry.

The vice relaxed and withdrew from my head, while the rubber seal of giant lips slid away from the perimeter of my face, leaving me blinking through a veil of bubbly fluid which cooled rapidly in the air.

“YOU LIKED THAT, DIDN’T YOU?” she said in a low voice. She must have interpreted my noise as a cry of pleasure.

The pad of her pointer finger swirled over my stomach for a moment before trailing down to my erect member, playfully wagging the tip with repeated flicks of her finger, delighted at the robust bounce of my achingly swollen member.

Meanwhile, a second finger had probed out to tickle and play with my balls. There was a kind of numbness at my tailbone and beginning to reach up my spine through my butt.

“PRETTY EXCITED ABOUT YOUR NEW SIZE, HUH…?” she was murmuring, “…MAYBE I’M A LITTLE EXCITED ABOUT IT, MYSELF...”

One of her fingertips delicately slid under my glans, lifting my shaft so that she could leisurely inspect and stroke the head of my dick. Satisfied, she gave the throbbing tip a gentle squeeze between fingertips, and kept it in her grip while the tip of the ring finger. I desperately needed to ejaculate but couldn’t while her fingertips had my tip pinched shut.

She didn’t seem to want me to come. She was content just toying with me. She wanted me to beg her for it. But I had already begged her for something once today, and – trying to hang onto some shred of self-respect – once was my limit.

There was a giggle as she surveyed me, quietly delighting in my anguish.

“ARE YOU ANGRY AT ME? WHAT CAN I DO TO CURE THAT LITTLE FROWN?” One of her fingers brushed back and forth over my mouth as if trying to rub my expression off. “AWW, COME HERE. GIVE ME ANOTHER KISS…”

I was brought up against her lips a second time, while her fingertips kept the squeeze up on my glans, gently rolling it around.

I started to groan and protest.

The soft dragging pressure of the lips left my face, only for a fingerpad to replace them, squashing my mouth for an instant, muzzling my voice. My throat tightened and my voice died just, staring at the ivory razor of her fingernail pointing up, seemingly inches from my eyeballs.

“SHHH,” she said, seriously now, overtaken by another wave of steamy compulsion. “JUST LET ME MAKE IT ALL BETTER…”

Then her fingers were all over me raking my chest, massaging my pecs and abs. I was dazed, swimming in the thick cloud of her perfume, the heated currents of her breath, and the luscious warmth of her lips nuzzling my face. The more I struggled, the more enjoyment it elicited for her, as my body flexed in her grip, and my head mashed against her lips.

The pinch of her fingertips on my glans had now shifted to the base of the shaft, and began moving back down, tugging my dick with it, until it reached my tip, then repeated the motion, building me up unbearably until my overworked dick couldn’t take any more teasing.

There was a feeling of pressure racing out of my dick, and my brain and vision altogether imploded into a white nothingness, like a blizzard, erasing my consciousness for a timeless instant. When I came to, panting for breath, her lips were no longer around my face, they were hovering just above me, spilling torrents of warm air onto my damp hair. I found myself tilted up under her face, which was surveying me.

“YOU OKAY?” she said with some tentativeness. “LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE GOING TO HAVE A SEIZURE OR SOMETHING THERE FOR A SECOND...”

My heart, which had been racing in my temples, began to slow down again. I ran my hands over my face, massaging the weird tingling numbness out of my features, and brushing my damp hair back.

Seeing I was alert, the huge lips hovering over me began to smile.

“THAT LITTLE OX’S HEART’S STILL POUNDING AWAY,” she said, as a fingertip came over and tapped my chest.

Then her eyes grew soft.

“DON’T GO ANYWHERE. I’M SERIOUS. I MISSED YOU SO MUCH.”

The rounded underside of a thumb ran over my face, keeping the nail turned up as the soft pad traced my features, something she couldn’t do when I’d been smaller, if she could see my face at all. As the pad made its way over the ridge of my brow, I shut my eyes just before it swiped down in front of them. Then I felt myself being moved forward, but couldn’t open my eyes with the thumbpad covering them. It remained against my brow, keeping my eyes closed while the puckered masses of lips snuck in to stick a surprise kiss against the bottom half of my face.

This moment of tenderness was only fleeting. The pressure of lips and thumb disappeared, and when I looked up her eyes sparked with a sudden idea.

“LET’S CELEBRATE!”

“I think I’m gonna need a little time to process this—”

“I’M TAKING YOU OUT!”

“This just happened really fast, right now, and—”

“I’M GOING, YOU’RE COMING!”

Lowering my eyelids, I massaged my fingertips into my eye sockets.

“Why don’t we just both take a—”

“PLEASE!”

“I need to—”

“COME ON!”

“But—”

“COME ON!”

“I—”

But I was being lowered until my back pressed against her thighs, while she apprehended me with crafty determination.

Then, an array of nails was brandished and shaded over my body, poised. Unseen, there was a clamping feeling around my temples – her other hand had grasped my head and held it still, so I was unable to escape. The flying nails descended on me, now tickling me properly, without mercy, with the fullest intent of making me as uncomfortable as possible. A long nail tilted my head back so the others had access to my exposed neck, my arms were lifted, pulled away from my sides to expose my ribs and armpits. My legs were lifted to provide access to the vulnerable insides of my thighs.

“S-top!” I gasped, kicking and thrashing my arms. My ribs cramped in pain as I took quick rapid breaths. “Please!”

But it didn’t stop.

So I bent up, huddling to protect myself and my sensitive areas but the insistent force of her fingers opened me, smoothed me out again, forcing me stretched out, spread-eagled, and jabbing nails into my palms and my forehead to pin them to her thigh as the nails of her other hand gently poked and scrubbed at my flesh, giving my whole body a tender, aching workout.

“Okay!” I barked, as my stomach convulsed like I was going to vomit. “I’ll go out with you! Anything you want!” 

Satisfied I had been conquered, the hands ceased their torment.

She removed herself from the bed and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom entrance, shutting the door behind her. Next second the shower was blasting.

Her phone was still lying on the bed. She had barely even noticed it. Rolling over, I dragged myself across the mattress, reaching for it once more.

I had another phone call to make.

*

Le Bistro Rabelais was an elegant French restaurant with long white tablecloths, tall black chairs inside a stylishly French Restoration barn frame surrounded by big open windows to view the coastline of the Bay. Each table was topped with a tall lit candelabra and wine glasses. We were lucky to get a same day reservation; a function had been postponed and it freed some tables. It was designed to be a night hub: with no central lighting in the barn, just the candelabra for lights, it got a shadowy ‘candlelit’ romantic atmosphere once night fell, with the windows turning smoky blue.

This cut a little too close to the dusky glowing interior of Christine’s house for my liking – and the associated memory of being mosquito size – however, our table was not inside, but out on the patio overlooking the boardwalk that ran along below, pink sky overhead, and turquoise water backgrounding a line of date palms.

A waiter stopped by us to plant a water jug on our tabletop with a small clunk that ran through my tailbone, as I sat on one side of the table on a couple of folded up napkins for seat cushioning, with Jennifer sitting in the seat opposite.

“FIRST DATE?” the waiter said in a small professional voice as he looked between us.

Reasonable guess. My hair was styled – earlier, by Jen’s hair-foam covered fingertips – and I was wearing a midnight blue suit. Jennifer was wearing a black, figure-hugging dress with a half-length cascading skirt, and black and white stilettos. Her hair was down, lashes thickened, and lips glossed. She was achingly beautiful and the sight of her made my heart pound like we really were on a first date. I couldn’t stop staring at her: savouring that I could drink in her appearance as a singular recognizably (if giant) human woman, and not a sprawling, moving geographical terrain.

The waiter didn’t blink as his eyes passed over me. His assurance in the face of my startling stature suggested he recognized me from my previous TV appearance. But if he did, he didn’t say it.

“First date in a while,” I corrected, grateful for the lack of response, until –

“MR MOUSSEAU,” he said levelly, and quiet.

“That’s correct,” I replied, casting a self-conscious glance around at the other patrons at their tables, before trying to send the waiter a look that said, ‘not so loud; don’t ruin this for me.’

Taking in my expression without remark, his shrewdly narrowed eyes then glided over to Jennifer.

“AND YOU MUST BE MISS TOMLIN.”

“YES, THAT’S RIGHT…” she said slowly, staring at him in surprise. She wasn’t typically identified when someone recognized me in public, even though she’d had a cameo on the TV special.

Without more, the waiter gave us our menus and then, and with a millisecond’s hesitation, took my water and wine glasses back up.

“I WILL REPLACE THESE,” he said smoothly, leaving us.

Jen’s hand came reaching over to flip my menu open for me, and I began crawling over it on all fours, deliberating over the items, trying to picture size and portion. I didn’t want to fill up on so much food that I wouldn’t be able to speak. 

The waiter reappeared with the wines; one red and one sparkling, plus a miniature cheese platter, for me, being the resident cheese sampler. The one and only time I'd tried introducing Jen to cheese and wine tasting at home, she'd scoffed all my tiny, meticulously arranged cheese cubes down on a single skewer, in one bite, and washed it down with a single gulp of wine, and bringing the tasting to a swift end.

Right now my appetite was inconveniently absent, but I needed to keep my hands busy so they didn’t start to shake.

“OH, WE HAVEN’T ORDERED ANY DRINKS YET,” Jen indicated to the waiter.

The waiter confirmed the vintage order under my name: Zinfandel, and champagne. Jen scanned the labels before a look of candid bewilderment struck her. She then stared across the table at me.

"JERRY," she said in undertone, more confused than ever, "THAT'S TOP TIER."

"It’s taken care of. Try some."

She looked unsatisfied with my answer, but went quiet, letting the waiter pour her a glass. He also poured me a squirt of red in a shot glass shaped like a little goblet, a perfectly miniature version of Jen’s normal-sized one.

Pulling my arms around the glass, I began the task of turning it onto its edge, listing it enough to drink from without tipping it over. Suddenly the whole glass lifted out of my grasp, up into the air and stopping to hover over me.

She manipulated the miniature shot glass between her fingers with careless ease, tilting it up against my mouth, letting it gently drain down my throat while, at the same time, she took swills from her own glass.

Neurons firing, I tried to lose myself in the fumes for a moment, and clear my thoughts, but my brain kept rattling by the same few phrases, rehearsing them over in my head until I got flustered and lost the gist of what I meant, then started over again, only for the same thing to happen.

The wine warmed my insides, but when I pulled my head up from the glass, the briny sea air was chilling against my perspiring brow. I reached for and tore off a corner of my napkin, trying to wipe my face and neck without flagging attention or concern, but it wasn’t nearly as refreshing enough; what I really wanted to do was rip all my clothes off, run off the end of the pier and dive into the cool water to shock the nerves.

Jen’s voice was backgrounding my anxious thoughts; she was advising me that if you got up at 6am Saturday morning (which was tomorrow) for a jog along the boardwalk, they held a yoga class on one of the catamarans – apparently the listing waves made for a challenging but rewarding balancing activity – but if you were really lucky you might see someone botch a ‘tree pose’ and go toppling over into the water, and this, at least according to her, made the early wake ‘totally’ worth it. She didn’t like yoga.

I let her talk without remark, but apparently my silence went on for too long. Next thing I knew she was looking at me questioningly. I tried to meet her stare with nonchalance.

“I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG,” she concluded.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“YOU’RE SO RED AND YOU’RE SWEATING – DO YOU HAVE A FEVER?”

Her hand extended over my head like a canopy as her thumbpad dropped down to delicately press against one of my cheeks, and then shifted around my brow, feeling my temperature. As she did this, the inside of her thumbnail swept past my eyes. I blinked rapidly, trying not to flinch.

“I’m fine.” But my voice sounded tight, strained. My suit also felt too tight all of a sudden.

“THAT MACHINE MADE YOU SICK,” she surged on with guilty realization, “AND I DRAGGED YOU OUT HERE…”

“That’s over now. Really.”

“YOU’RE NOT NORMALLY THIS BAD AT LYING.”

“Just relax and enjoy the atmosphere,” I said, sliding a hand down the nape of my neck to get some cool air under my collar.

She turned her head away, resting it on her hand, but her brows were still drawn in thought.

“IS IT ME?” she said suddenly. “IS IT BECAUSE—”

“Not you,” I said. My sweating palms were now planted on my thighs, one thumb digging into the muscle a little too hard.

“WELL, WHAT THEN? THE VET CHECKING YOU OUT? GIVE ME SOME KIND OF SIGN I’M GETTING WARMER.”

The waiter appeared beside the table and lowered the plates of food: one normal size, and one miniature dish normally for cream but right now carrying my meal. They didn’t have cutlery small enough for me so I requested some little wooden toothpicks to skewer my food with. They seemed a little bothered by this, maybe embarrassed by their inability to provide me basic utensils, but I insisted.

Once the waiter had departed, I grabbed up a couple of the wooden toothpicks and began stabbing at my food, and tearing it off, happily stuffing my cheeks.

Pushing at her own meal with a fork, Jen went on:

“SO THEN—?”

“No talking. Eat.”

About halfway through my meal my pace began to slow. Across the table it looked like Jen was almost finished her meal. She paused.

“YOU KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH REMY?” she said, with a slight perplexed frown. “HE LOOKED PRETTY SICK OR SOMETHING,” her eyes flicked across the table at me “—DON’T YOU THINK?”

I couldn’t answer ‘time travel’ because that topic was now off limits, so I just shrugged and said:

“Homesick, maybe.”

“HE WENT BACK HOME?” she said with surprised interest. “I THOUGHT HE WAS FROM QUEBEC.”

“No.”

“OH, YOU THINK HE’S FROM FRANCE?”

“No. Even further.”

“HOW OLD IS HE, ANYWAY?”

“Older than I realized.”

“I HOPE WHEREVER HE IS, HE’S HAPPY HOW IT ALL TURNED OUT, ‘CAUSE I SURE AM.”

“Gotta be glad it didn’t go some other way,” I concluded aloud. “Like pulling someone else down into my world. They might not like it…”

She reached for her wine but, holding the glass in her palm, was still for a long time, long enough for me to notice and look up. She was staring into the glass, thinking.

Finally she said:

“I WOULD TAKE ONE NIGHT IN YOUR WORLD. I MEAN,” she bit her lip, peering past the wine, into my eyes with something more than curiosity, “IT CAN’T BE THAT BAD…”

“It’s not bad,” I decided aloud. “Just different.”

She was calm again, thoughtful. Then smiled.

“THIS IS A NICE FIT, THOUGH.”

“What is?”

“YOUR SIZE, YOU DOPE.”

Folding her arms over the table, she dipped her head to look me in the eye directly, as if she was about to let me in on a secret, and my gaze got caught by her long eyelashes, moving in time, up and down with their hypnotic fluttering motions:

“IN MY HAND. IN MY PUSSY. IN MY MOUTH. YOU’RE PERFECT.”

I had a horrible feeling the waiter was standing right behind me and recoiled, my head whipping around in horror, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight.

“Jesus, not so loud!”

She stretched back again in her seat, laughing under her breath, then took up her wine glass for another sip.

“Not sure that’s how I would have put it,” I mumbled, after my pulse had winded down a little.

She brought the glass back down to the table again.

“MAYBE IT WAS AN ACCIDENT WHEN IT HAPPENED THE FIRST TIME.” She gave her head a gentle shake: “I DON’T THINK OF IT AS AN ‘ACCIDENT’ ANYMORE.”

I chuckled grimly.

“It was just an accident.”

“OF COURSE. BUT…IT WAS LUCKY.” She shrugged in a self-evident kind of way, and then was silent for a moment. Then she reconsidered: “I’M LUCKY.”

Her eyes fixed on me again, now analytical.

“DON’T YOU THINK IT’S A LITTLE…” Her words pulled away.

“Yes…?” I grunted.

“PROVIDENTIAL.”

“What does that mean?”

“ARRANGED—”

“Not arranged,” I said quickly, ruffled. ‘Arranged’ made me think of arranged marriages – not a helpful image right now.

“NOT ARRANGED,” she corrected herself quickly. “WRONG WORD.” She gave a small sigh, then said more lightly: “…AND I’M ALL OUT OF WORDS. NEVER MIND.”

She looked up and out across the water, tugging one of the long dark-dyed whisker strands in front of her ear and idly twirling it between her fingertips. The strands were kept out of her ponytail so often that they formed their own separate tresses even when her hair was down, like now.

“ANYWAY,” she said, not looking at me and sounding unconcerned, “WHAT WOULD YOU CALL IT?”

“An accident.”

Her hand stopped halfway through the strand, before she let it drop from her fingers as her hand lowered to the table again. She made a small exasperated snort.

I folded my arms.

“Okay. A lucky accident.”

A speedboat revved through the water, streaking up the glittery black surface of the bay. Yachts sailed past, interior decks lit golden within, silhouettes of passengers shifting inside. Distant, ghostly music played from one of the boats.

There was a cool draught being carried in from the bay, but at least it was drying the perspiration on my brow. Across from us, a couple were enjoying drinks, the drone of their relaxed voices mildly distracting. Our plates were now empty and Jen had drained the last of her wine glass, though there was still plenty more in the bottles. We’d had some time now for the food to digest.

Trying to stall for time, I tried to smooth my countenance and asked her:

“What are you thinking about?”

She shot me a look, her eyes gleaming out from the candlelit darkness, the look alone made the question seem naïve and unprepared in retrospect.

“LET’S GO FOR A WALK,” she said suddenly.

My countenance faltered in an instant.

“Uh…where?” I stuttered, “Why?”

“IF I PUT YOU DOWN ON THE BEACH,” she began with a devlish smile, “THINK YOU COULD OUTRUN THE INCOMING TIDE?” She added: “SUIT OFF, OBVIOUSLY.”

"Just wait a minute." I leant back on my hands, trying to look around without turning my head.

"WHAT?" Her expression went quizzical. Usually I liked to be the first to leave a venue.

"I just want to sit here a minute. Uh...more wine…”

She topped up my shot glass.

I pushed the glass rim to my mouth, let the rich cherry hit my nostrils and lap my lips but swallowed much less than it looked like. I didn’t need to get drunk right now. That could wait.

Over the top of the glass, my eyes darted into the restaurant’s windows, searching the dimming interior. There was sweat on my brow again, but I stopped my hand running through my hair just in time; didn’t want to mess it up.

Where did the waiter go? The sun was starting to dip below the horizon. We had to get this thing rolling now before the night time crowd swept into the barn! Plus, any moment now Jennifer could get to her feet, snatch me up off the table, leave the restaurant and stalk off into the night, following whatever fey whim snagged her attention.

Not late or early, the suited maître d was like Gandalf the wizard, just suddenly there, standing at the table holding a silver cloche. Jen didn’t look as startled as I felt; maybe she thought it was the check, sometimes they presented it to you in this way, under the silver dome like it was another course.

The man stood patiently to one side as I got to my feet, managing to avoid the temptation of leaning against my glass – or downing more of its contents – for support.

The surrounding restaurant evaporated away, the background music, chatting voices, and clinking cutlery sounds all dimmed. Or maybe everyone really had gone quiet. Either way, the moment seemed surreal and staged somehow, or my diminutive size gave it some added sense of magnitude and naked exposure.

Jen was staring at me with that puzzled look again. Squeezing my hands together, I forced myself to hold her gaze.

“The first time we met,” I began, “I fell in love with your gentleness. You were the only woman who sat down beside me, even though I was in a bad mood, and talked to me and laughed at my jokes. But I was so insecure I didn’t realize what a good thing I had right in front of me and I let you get away. The second time, I didn’t recognize you, but I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. The third time, our first date, you were even more beautiful than the second time, and it was the most sexually charged night of my life. But I am still deeply in love with the gentle woman that I met the first time, with the buoyant, playful sense of wit. I know she is always in there somewhere; I try my hardest to bring her out.”

The broad silver cloche slid down onto the table behind me, like a landing UFO. I went up to it as the maître d lifted the dome to reveal the ring box, which he tactfully opened for me, exposing the ring nestled in the pillow; a white gold band with intricate gold metalwork and prongs surrounding the domed, prismatic center diamond made it look like some miniature exotic imperial crown. Christine had helped me pick it out right after I'd gotten Jasper's approval. She had a better grasp of Jennifer's tastes; God knows I had more experience being a ring, than selecting one.

I walked over the platter and could have sat on the satin ring cushion like a seat, but chose to get down on one knee beside it, taking a deep breath to calm myself and ensure my words didn’t come out in a breathless rush.

Kneeling in front of her great looming upper body, I felt like a little cult member making some ritual offering to appease a Goddess. Not the first time I’d felt like this, but this time I actually had something to offer:

“Jennifer Sofía Tomlin, will you marry me?”

She looked startled. The night buzzed with conspiratorial silence. Out on the water, even the outboard motors' chugging seemed to have paused. There was just the gentle swish of the sea breeze, the soft lap of the tide. 

“JERRY,” she murmured, “I WOULD MARRY YOU NINE TIMES OVER.”

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

“YES! IT’S ON! THIS IS HAPPENING!”

The tables around ours broke out with cheers and clapping. I had no idea who any of these people were, but had a funny feeling they all knew who I was, and revelled in their applause all the same; the relief coursing through my body was more potent than the sedative of wine.  

Then my body was crushed in her palm and raced upwards off the table before my face was buried beneath her lips in a long kiss that was so forceful it left my cheeks and lips aching.

Once the soles of my shoes came back down against the tabletop, I returned to the platter and, with both hands, took the ring out from the satin cushion and carried it over to her hand, the fingers spreading and straightening, hovering just above the tablecloth.

Her other fingers were in the way of the ring finger so, without hesitation, I climbed up onto the back of her hand and knelt, reaching forward to pull the ring along from the opposite side of her hand.

Her voice beat against the back of my head, thrumming with excitement:

“WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET IT? I MEAN, HOW—?” I could hear her mind working away.

“My secret,” I said, tugging the ring band firm around the proximal phalange of the ring finger. Then, with the ring secured, I slid down from her hand and onto the table again. Admiring it, casting the stone under the moonlight, she said:

“AND YOU CHECKED NO ONE’S LIVING IN HERE...?”

“Very funny.”

*

It was full dark as we returned to the car and began the drive back home. On the way, Jennifer got some rum.

The shadows ran over my head as the car rumbled down the streets, sometimes street lights curved in as the car turned, causing my eyelids to flicker open for a second. My head began to drift back until it settled against the top of her silky dress hem covered mound. She had pushed her dress hem right down between her legs to create a pocket and then tucked me right up at the base of her thighs. Now I lay inside that pocket with my back supported by her crotch because I could barely keep myself upright. My stomach was commanding all my energy to digest my meal, plus portions of hers she had playfully tried to feed me – which I now realized I should have refused – plus samples of the wine.

The dress fabric was like silk sheets and her warm thighs vibrated with car’s purring engine, massaging me to sleep. She was silent for the drive home. It was as if she was as full, placated and tired as I was. But I knew from previous experience, her silence did not mean she was full or placated or tired at all. Silence was merely the calm surface concealing waters that ran deeper and flickered with dark life below.

Her fingers kept dropping down against my head, stroking my hair, running her fingerpads around my temples, and thumbing my scalp, and with her long nails making me feel like my skull was being investigated by bird talons. Due to where I was positioned, held tight in the crevice of her thighs, the only thing separating me from being inside her was the silky curtain of her dress hem. If she’d moved her hand back and down a little more she’d have been stroking herself…

*

Back home, out of the dim, vibrating car interior and under the bright living room lights, with the TV buzzing in the background, my brain was in motion again, enjoying that the fuss was all over for the night, but still trying to take it all in.

It didn’t seem so long ago I was sauntering around the Portugal lobby, pretending to enjoy the ‘Flip’ party and, even moreso, pretending not to notice Jennifer inconveniently in attendance, in the corners of my awareness. Back then I had somehow convinced myself that it was over, we’d both moved on, and now here I was – I was going to be married to her. It was still surreal.

She was in the kitchen pouring more wine. She’d kicked off her heels and changed into her pyjamas. She seemed to be levelling down into ‘rest’ mode and I guessed it wouldn’t be long before she would come in, scoop me up, lie down on the sofa and give me a deep tissue massage that seemed to work to calm her as much as it did me. Then I would fall asleep mid-way through the massage and she would put me to bed, and I would awaken the next morning, newly a fiancé of Jennifer Tomlin. Surreal.

“YOU WANT SOMETHING TO DRINK?” she called out.

“I need a hit of whiskey – now!” I cried, hoping the alcohol would dull my racing thoughts.

“ARE YOU FEELING OKAY?” she joked. I didn’t usually drink, more specifically, I didn’t usually insist on it.

“Better than okay.”

“WELL, THEN,” she said in a quiet voice, almost inaudible, “LET ME FIX YOU UP…”

She ambled back into the living room, wearing a top and shorts covered by a fluffy robe that she didn’t bother to wrap up, and over to the sofa I was sitting on. A shot glass filled with molten orange liquid was placed onto the edge of the coffee table. Her own tumbler was neither white nor red, but black, and smelled like smoky cinnamon caramel. It was the rum.

She slid into a seat on the sofa next to me, the relaxed impact of her posterior onto the cushion bouncing me into the air.

Crawling to the edge of the seat, I made a leap at the coffee table. The wood top flew up too fast against my hands and legs, jolting me over onto my face. Evidently my body was tired, even if my mind wasn’t.

“CAREFUL.”

She put her feet up onto the other side of the coffee table, her bare crossed legs forming a natural bridge that I could have used only moments ago to cross the divide.

I walked up to the shot glass. It was salt-rimmed and the tiny crystals crunched in my mouth, not something I normally did for drinks but it made it more palatable and anyway, I appreciated the fuss. However, this time the whiskey hit the back of my nostrils like gasoline, and the burning made me cough.

“What is it mixed with?” My voice came out a ragged gasp.

“IT’S STRAIGHT,” came the idle reply. “YOU DIDN’T SAY YOU WANTED IT MIXED.”

Wiping some salt off my face, I replied:

“I never take whiskey straight.”

“WELL, YOU DIDN’T SAY THAT,” she answered. “I DON’T EVEN THINK WE HAVE ANYTHING TO MIX WITH WHISKEY. UNLESS YOU WANT SOME MILK AND LEMON IN IT OR WHATEVER YOU PUT IN – GROSS.”

“I meant cola. You don’t put milk and lemon in it. You put milk or lemon in.”

“STILL GROSS. ANYWAY, LIVE A LITTLE.”

“Living ‘little’ is pretty much what I do best,” I sighed, and was dismayed to hear my words already beginning to slur together.

Meanwhile, she hunched forward, sending the huge glass bubble of her goblet towards me and clinking it gently against the much smaller shot glass cradled between my hands.

“SALUD!”

After her goblet had withdrawn again, I tilted my shot glass, bowing my head to take another drink. Unless I was imagining it, the fumes were already making me start to feel woozy. On second thought, the salt probably wasn’t doing my hydration any favors, either, and made a mental note for my next drink to be taken straight from the kitchen faucet.

Three minutes later, once the alcohol was all gone, I forgot the water.

Abandoning the empty glass, I stood with the edge of the table pressed up into my soles, then slid one foot back, poised to make the jump to the sofa. Every time I blinked, the world seemed to disappear for an instant too long behind my eyelids, like my brain needed an extra fraction of time to catch up after each saccade.

Concentrating for what seemed long enough, I launched out. The sofa seat flew forward at me but suddenly rose sharply over my head. My arms stretched out desperately and just managed to grab the edge of the cushion and hold there, the front of my body pressed against the upper base just below the seat cushion. But now I was stuck; lacking the muscular tension in my arms to climb up, plus the couch was swaying even though I was still.

Then, my shoulders pulled tight and upwards as a giant hand took the back of my collar and lifted until I was dangling in the air, before my feet came down onto the couch again. As soon as my collar was released, my balance went with it; I dropped down to my knees.

The alcohol’s anesthesia was beginning to seep around my body, tingling my nerve endings into a pleasant numbness. I was about to get up and try wandering over to her, climb onto her thigh and press myself against her stomach, while she wrapped a hand around me and massaged me against her – this was our version of hugging – but then her legs pulled down from the coffee table, sofa frame groaning, she stood up and wandered out of the living room.

So I sat where I was, legs crossed, digging my nails into my ankles in an effort to stay awake. The living room circled around in my vision and began to fade…

—My eyes snapped open. There were rustling noises coming from another room of the house. Then padding footsteps, out of one room and into another. Then nothing.

Suddenly, it occurred to me out of nowhere: there had to be some interesting cheeses in the fridge to pair with the Zinfandel.

No, it was too late. Time for bed.

I gingerly got to my feet and the world swirled around me. Alarmed, I lowered again, crawling on hands and knees to the edge of the sofa, extending my legs out over the side, and hauling myself down. It was as if I’d forgotten how to climb; I hung off the edge, not able to figure out what to do with my feet. Impatient, I let go.

The rug flew up and the impact jumped through my spine and then I was lying on my back. Groaning, I rolled over and began to crawl across the rug towards the other side of the room. Halfway along, I pushed myself to my feet. Again the room whirled.

Suddenly the floor struck my butt and I was slumped forward with my legs out straight. Taking a deep breath, I let my eyelids droop. This was only for a few seconds, but ended up being a minute. Then two minutes. My breath relaxed …

—A sudden presence; a feeling of someone else in the room.

My eyelids opened, head jerked up and the room flickered back into view. Or, view in part.

A humungous shadow was blocking my vision, poised like some gigantic wild cat about to pounce. Giant hands pressed against the carpet some distance on either side of me, the upper body hunched down, head turned to the side, cocked to peer into my face.

Her eyes peered in at me questioningly. When I blinked and my pupils focused on hers, a slow smile spread over her lips. Her face blurred and then sharpened, and then swam out of focus again.

“HI, THERE,” the blurry silhouette said in a low, hushed tone, but weirdly thrumming in and out of my hearing. 

One huge fingertip stuck itself into my immediate visual field to prod at my shoulder, investigating my balance.

Result: not good.

I went back, and back, until my scalp bumped into the floor. And lay there, blinking stupidly against the vibrant ceiling light.

“OOPS,” she giggled, and gracefully rose back up onto her feet again until she towered over me. Her giant bare feet bordered the perimeter of my body, toes turning inward at me and pausing. Her dark silhouette stretched up at the ceiling as she surveyed me.

“A LITTLE HEAVY ON THE SAUCE THERE, DON’T YOU THINK? THAT’S OKAY. I’LL TAKE CARE OF YOU…”

She was still giggling, shaking her head faintly as her feet then padded away over the carpet until it seemed it was just me in the room again.

I strained to sit up but the moment I moved, the walls rotated around like I was inside a giant hamster wheel. In defeat, my back went down against the carpet again as if it weighed a ton.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Horrible déjà vu. Like a waking bad dream.

Cold sweat on my face, on the back of my neck, my palms, down my sides. The ceiling light was too bright, snapping at my eyes, forcing them closed.

Don’t fall asleep, Jerry…Come on, man! Keep it together!

Last time I’d woken up after feeling like this, I’d been treated to my head being rammed up her rear like a suppository.

But this time was different; I got her the ring and took her out and I proposed to her—

—what have I done wrong here?!

I took a deep breath.

It was nothing. Just paranoia creeping in…

Lethargy was closing in, too, the world receding further into mist with every passing second…

—Thudding over the carpet. A shadow stretched over my body, blocking the ceiling light again. It made it easier for my pained eyes to see but I didn’t want to look.

Something clasped around my ankle and the floor started sliding along, bumping beneath my spine as I was dragged on my back by one leg. Then the floor dropped away entirely as I was lifted upside down into the air by one leg. The blood ran down my torso and started filling up my head, making me feel heavier than ever, like a ball on the end of a chain.

The living room rug was swaying far below my head, my arms limply stretched down as if reaching for it. The rug turned to polished tiles.

More soft feminine laughter, the floor went dark and the world disappeared into fuzzy white oblivion…

A flat surface was pressing hard against my back. My limbs were leaden and wouldn’t obey. They were pulled into strange positions and I couldn’t compel them back: my arms were spread out on either side, bent at the elbow with my hands above my head, causing my pectorals to be stretched taut. My legs were pulled straight, connected at the ankle and wouldn’t separate.

All my clothes had been removed since I last remembered: I was naked except for a pair of briefs. In retrospect, even the allowance of that tiny modesty was generous.

Something soft but thick clogged up my mouth, keeping my incisors separated and I couldn’t spit it out. It felt like a wad of cloth and was stuffed in deep; any further and it would have been gagging my throat. In fact, it was; rammed against my tonsils, I just didn’t realize it: hadn’t yet passed my eight minute breath limit.

Apart from the dizziness of intoxication, making my limbs heavy and limp, and itching my eyes with fatigue, the weirdest sensation was the anomalous tingling numbness radiating out from my left pectoral, like a cold pack had been left there too long. So cold that it made the rest of my body feel clammy and hot by comparison.

“Ahhhhrrrgghh!” I cried into the gag.

Because that’s what it was, I now realized. A gag. Not like it had ended up there by accident.

There was an electric pain and coppery tang on one side of my mouth; I must have accidentally bit my tongue, and hard. It must have been before the gag was put in, maybe while I was hanging upside down, unconscious. Tears sprung into my eyes and I shut them.

When I opened them again and my mind was a little clearer, I made out the kitchen ceiling expanding out far above my head, lighting up the bizarre scene.

I was stretched out on my back on the dining table, lying on thick white napkins placed over the table surface. The things pulling my arms out were binds of thick cotton twine, like rope, and the spool was across the table; the same spool that had once been used to string me up to her hand like a human puppet. The ends of the pieces of string tying each of my limbs were weighed down by heavy books to keep them taut.

Only now it became apparent there was an ice cube sitting on my left pectoral, just beginning to melt. It occurred to me: below the left pectoral was the heart.

Oh God what was this.

The wine may have relaxed my body, but not my insides, which were writhing in mounting dread and nausea. The whole scene being put together before me had my hair beginning to stand on end: the way my limbs were pulled out in the cold with my belly exposed, almost like the fucking Vitruvian Man, didn’t so much strike me as sexual, but surgical – or like a frog about to be turned into a biology class lesson. A vision flashed in my head: having my heart cut out and eaten.

Had I bet on the wrong horse all this time? If she was crazy, why was it only coming out now? I’d known her for years, and I mean, yeah, she acted ‘crazy’ sometimes – how you’d offhand describe someone who was weird or extreme – but not a literal institution-escapee kind of way.

My thoughts were racing ahead of themselves in panic.

No, I decided. She wasn’t crazy like that. I would know. Jesus, I’d known her long enough. Did people really just snap, go psychotic, from the sheer excitation of a marriage proposal? Had that ever happened in history, like even once?

But the logic did not cut it for my instincts. There was always that first time. Sweat was spilling down my temples, and down my armpits, mixing with the melting ice, and pooling beneath my back, making the napkins itch. I shifted my shoulders up and down rapidly, trying to scratch my back against the table, and the napkins made a plastic rustling sound.

They weren’t napkins. It was a big, thick medical absorbent pad, the upside cotton, the downside plastic – the kind of thing you’d throw down in a hospital to catch body fluid spills. At this recognition, my gut pulled tighter than the string binds restraining my wrists and ankles.

The tumbler of rum, now drained, stood at the other end of the table, along with a wine glass, the bottom stained with deep blood red, the Zinfandel. She didn’t get drunk easily. But when she did, she got reckless and delirious. How many previous drinks had been poured into those glasses up until now?

The chilled tingling started up in my chest again. I wrenched against the binds, trying to shift my chest enough to jar the ice cube until it slipped off my chest onto the sheeting. But this seemed to make me even colder.

Actually, the cause was a cool draught sweeping in from an opening doorway across the room. There was a muted padding across the floor and then it stopped nearby, leaving the sense of unseen presence hovering over me, like an episode of sleep paralysis – the kind that spawned myths of succubae visitations – not to mention I was paralyzed by the string binds.

Small, panicked moans escaped my throat before I could stop them.

"JERRY, DON'T STRUGGLE,” came Jennifer’s low voice. “YOU'RE TIED UP FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. WHAT I'M ABOUT TO DO, IF YOU MOVE, YOU COULD REALLY HURT YOURSELF."

‘What?’ I tried to say, ‘What are you doing?’ but it came out something like: ‘Mmm mmm mm mmmm?’

She got the gist of it, and explained:

“MARRIAGE IS AN AGREEMENT, SO THIS IS LIKE MY SIGNATURE. AND IT’S GOING TO BE PERMANENT.”

Her voice was oddly calm, pensive and not entirely sober.

She moved around the table and into my sight, wearing just a t-shirt, underwear and – by the sound of her muted footsteps – socks.

With a clunk, a hand-held object appeared in view on the tabletop just past my feet. One part looked like a black pen, with a thicker shaft, and the tip of the pen ended in a sharp silver dart shaped a little like a quill tip. The pen’s ribbed grip connected to a multi-part, device with metal bolts, springs, and a small motor. A miniature rotary device like a handheld sewing machine.

Just looking at the sharp pen tip and my stomach sank. The gleaming steel tip underscored my suspicion of medieval surgery. At my size, the device looked like a piece of manufacturing plant equipment that had been ripped out of the wall.

She was now unwinding a power cord which was had been plugged into the wall socket, a jack at the other end slotted into a DC power supply unit connected by a cord into the rotary device.

A pair of rubber surgical gloves was snapped over her hands; her long nails still visibly pushing out beneath the rubber fingertips. Then a paper square was ripped open, containing an alcohol wipe, which she dabbed over my pectoral, where the ice cube had been sitting. My numbed chest felt neither the dampness nor the pressure of the rub, but the wipe sent a burst of pure, sharp ethanol sting into my nostrils, not unlike the earlier wine fumes but minus all the sweet fruit flavor and calming vibes. It made me feel dizzy, and deepened my dread.

One gloved hand gripped around the ribbed pen shaft, lining up the tip with my chest. Up close I realized the needle tip was comprised of several tinier needles bunched together.

She switched the machine on, and contrary to expectation, it emitted only a whisper soft humming, which meant I could still hear my heart pounding in my ears. The motor was rotating, causing the needles to lance rapidly in and out of the pen tip. If her hand slipped the sharp nub would lance right through my heart.

‘You can’t be serious!’ I tried to scream, but it came out in another incoherent stream of gagged moans.

“KEEP STILL,” she said, “IT’LL JUST BE LIKE A TINY SCRATCH…”

This wasn’t reassuring, in fact, even more disturbing was the dreamy haze of her pupils from the rum and wine.

Her great upper body leaned over me, loose ponytail keeping her hair out of the way. A couple of rubberized fingertips of one hand pushed against my solar plexus, pulling the skin down, keeping it taut while her other hand held the pen grip, aiming the needle at my heart, which was flapping around inside my ribs like a dying fish.

The gleaming steel lance continued to grow and grow in my perception, heading straight for my heart.

"Aaaaaaaargh!" I screamed into the cloth stuffed in my mouth, trying to kick my heels against the ankle binds, managing to jolt my torso against the table.

She paused, drawing back. The fingers tensing my solar plexus lifted and a sharp nail gave me a cautionary poke in the belly, but so hard it winded me. She’d only meant it gently but the length of her nail combined with her inebriation made her misjudge her own strength. Now fighting an abdominal cramp for air, I tossed my head, bumping my scalp against the tabletop, then whipped it sideways, the shining quill tip, a little nearer every instant, too unbearable to watch. The smell of latex descended as one giant rubber hand descended over my head as a thumb print settled against my forehead, gently pinning my head to the tabletop and holding it in place, which also kept me from moving my torso.

The micro needle tips punched repeatedly through the topmost layer of my numbed chest, creating a buzzing sensation and tiny spikes like insect bites.

“Gnnnggngg!” My jaw grinded around the gag, sparking up the pain in my bitten tongue.

Over the next several minutes, the tips bit into my skin again and again. Her eyes were glued on my pec, in another world of focus, on the marks being drawn into the skin and filled out by injections of ink.

I couldn’t see – didn’t want to see – what she was drawing but it felt like a curving line, another curving line, some straight lines, and some sharp stabs like dots. As her face hovered low over me, her hot alcoholic breath steamed against my brow, until sweat was dripping down my face and my head swirled feverishly. She reached across for a tissue and dabbed my temples.

Now my lungs were growing achingly tight; the eight minute window was over, and I realized the gag was stuffing up my throat (probably the result of one of her long nails accidentally driving it in too far).

I tried to yell again but could only get out choking noises. She ignored this for a few seconds until realizing it was serious, and pulled at the gag. A wad of cotton emerged from my mouth, white stained with red. It wasn’t a gag; but a small wad of bandage.

“YOU BIT YOUR TONGUE,” she said gently.

I went to say, ‘No kidding,’ but it came out in an incoherent mumble; I couldn’t move my tongue without it breaking out in searing pain. At least the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

The needle tip dropped against my chest again, delivering its prickling buzzing.

She finished the tattoo and then the quill was pulled away and the machine was switched off.

My whole chest wall swelled in and out in jerks, my respiration so heavy it sounded like I was sobbing as I groaned for breath. Her massive form seemed to collapse over me as she lowered herself over the table to press kisses to my brow.

“IT'S OKAY..." she soothed, vibrating the tunnel of my ear, before letting her tongue lap around my temples as if to wipe away the perspiration, but it was so big and sticky that it accidentally swiped and gripped at my eyelashes as it did so, "...IT'S DONE."

She straightened up again, and with her thumb no longer pinning my head, I tucked my chin in to glance down. The skin where the pen had just been applied was reddening, surrounding the new tattoo. From my perspective the ink was upside down, but to an observer it was a brand stamping my chest that read ‘J.S.T.’ in stylized flourishing font suggesting it had been done by a female hand.

My head fell back and I stared up at the ceiling, not really seeing anything. The after-effect of the wine wasn’t a sense of relaxation and wellbeing anymore, but queasiness. Apart from the stinging, my chest felt light; a misplaced sense of relief: my insides weren’t going to be hacked into with a scalpel…

…well, not tonight, at least. But I was not to know that, in less than twenty four hours, they would be.

“I’LL BE BACK IN A SECOND,” she said, unplugging the machine, bundling up the cord and device in her hands, “JUST GETTING SOME BANDAGE TAPE.”

As soon as she’d disappeared from the room, I began wrenching with ungodly might at the arm binds, using all the strength in my back. Joints and vertebrae groaned, muscle strained, and pectoral flesh stung in anger. I gritted my jaw, doing everything possible to stifle my voice. Jen had an uncanny sense of hearing, and she might catch even a small high-pitched cry from outside the room.

Ignoring the pain, I felt the strings sliding from under the books. As they loosened, I used the increased freedom of movement in my arms to pump them against the string, tugging out even more, until my left arm made a sudden jolt of motion as the end of the string came out from under the book. With my newly freed left hand, I grabbed the string around my right arm and used the strength of both hands to work that free, then sat up and used my tiny delicate hands to undo the knots that bound my ankles.

With all limbs free I jumped up and raced over the table to the edge, the strings around my wrists draping after me, as if just begging to have me made into a human puppet again. In fact, I was worried that’s what might happen if I was caught, but I couldn’t undo the strings on my wrists using only one of my hands at a time.

Leaping down from the table onto the seat of one of the chairs, I then slid down a chair leg like a fireman down a pole, and once my feet hit the shiny tiles, started sprinting across the floor. A cool draught swept along the ground, waking my brain up.

In the living room, the floor was built up with the mega-sized forms of the couches, coffee table, and TV stand. Running up to an armchair closest to the door at the other end, I dropped to my knees and crawled underneath, commando style, the furry rug brushing against my front, making the irritated skin around my tattoo itch. The black sheet of underside fabric blotted out the room except for the perimeter of light surrounding the base, providing a view up to ankle high; a view of feet if she were to come into the room. But she hadn’t returned yet.

One of my arms snapped back, grabbed by something, and my heart nearly burst out of my chest.

The end of the string had gotten caught on one of the metal hinges on the reclining mechanism. In a panic, I seriously considered gnawing at the string like a rat, but decided to use my human brain to work, patiently unraveling the braided strands until it frayed and came loose. Then I wound the strings around my hands like a boxer’s handwraps so they didn’t catch on anything else.

The air was still and silent. I braced myself just below the edge of the chair, then rolled out and began sprinting across the floor to the entrance leading into the hallway. It was lit, totally exposing me as I ran over the tiles and veered into the open guest bedroom.

Maybe I slept in the master bedroom, but I thought of the guest bedroom as mine, if only because she rarely came in here – except to look for me. Under the spare bed, hidden behind an empty shoe box, I’d been secretly working away at a cracked section of the wall, now an open panel held together with tape, which could be folded inward like a cat flap, leading into a dark slot on the other side of the drywall. One of the problems with being shrunk was that nothing was made for my size anymore; sometimes the bedrooms were just too big and exposed to provide a true sense of privacy. The hole in the wall might only lead into a dark, drywall dungeon, but at least I knew I could be properly alone in there to change clothes, jerk off, goof around, whatever.

I clicked on the miniature flashlight lying on the ground just inside the hole, which illuminated my Batman costume stored within – appropriate; it was a cave – which I started to pull on. I wanted some ‘armor’ to protect my tender, stinging chest, and the soft leather padding making up the muscled bodysuit was the most rugged clothing I had, plus offered my face and hands extra protection in the cowl and gloves. Also lying on the ground was a modified grappling rifle that I’d been working on before I’d been miniaturized the second time

The barrel was a small air compressor which shot out the line, attached not to a hook, but an adhesive strip; a couple of spare strips I kept tucked in the belt of my costume. A separate cord reel mechanism retracted the line, but if the adhesive was glued to a surface some feet away, what it actually did was send me speeding at the surface, as was intended. The gun wasn’t perfect: every time it was activated the adhesive strip had to be replaced for another use, which wasn’t possible if it was stuck against a wall or ceiling and I was dangling off the end. Plus the reel tended to over-extend and jam and refuse to retract. Most inconvenient, with the dual bulk of the compressor and the reel attached, it was too big for me to carry around easily; I had to drag it over the floor with two hands, and a tiny Batman dragging around an oversized grapping gun didn’t flatter the image I was going for, but it was better than nothing.

First, I spent a moment patiently working at the strings wrapped around my wrists, using each hand and my teeth, until finally the knots loosened and the binds came free.

Then, with the suit on, I wedged the flashlight into the wall flap to hold it open while I began to drag the gun out—

And froze.

“JERRY?”

Her voice floated into the room, originating some rooms across the house. She must have returned to the kitchen area and noticed I’d gone, which was a breach of house rule number one: don’t run from Jennifer Tomlin. Now I was going to breach house rule number two: don’t hide from Jennifer Tomlin.

Footsteps thumped over the tiles, with rapid purpose.

Without another moment’s hesitation, I crammed the gun back inside the hole, pulled the flashlight inside, clicked it off and pushed my shoulder into the back of the flap to shut it, and hold it there.

Another echo down the hallway, low and ironic:

"THE FIRST NIGHT OF OUR ENGAGEMENT AND YOU'RE ALREADY IGNORING ME."

The night was made complete when you said ‘yes’, I wanted to say, now don’t push your luck.

“JERRY, IF I SAID SOMETHING OR DID SOMETHING THAT OFFENDED YOU, THEN I APOLOGIZE.”

A long pause, straining for my response, if any.

“TELL ME WHAT I DID WRONG…LET ME SWEEP YOU OFF YOUR FEET AND KISS YOU AND MAKE YOU FEEL ALL BETTER.”

Her voice was much louder, closer, while the footsteps slowed as they entered the hallway, measured and as light as possible, though slight vibrations ran through the wall panel pressed against me.

"THE TATTOO LOOKS GREAT," she tried again, now forcibly calm, "I PROMISE. JUST GIVE IT TIME TO HEAL. LOOK, BABY…” she made a small huffing sound of irritation, “…NO ONE HAS TO KNOW. AND SO WHAT? IT TELLS PEOPLE THAT I LOVE YOU."

The guest room door hinge groaned, the light switch flicked, casting cracks around the wall panel with a glowing outline. The thumping became fuzzy onto the carpet, and even more cautious as it seemed to move around the bed. Then pause. She must have been kneeling down to look under the bed. 

The rubber cowl was growing slimy against my face and my heart hammered. I was charged up with thrilling dread, like I was being hunted. She was my girlfriend – correction, fiancée – but she was also ten times my size and strength, and a tendency to flaunt it.

The room light clicked off again.

My eyes closed, though in pitch black it didn’t make a difference.

Wasting no time, I flicked on the flashlight and propped it under the wall panel to keep it up, while I dragged the cumbersome gun through. Then continued to drag the gun over the carpet and out of the room. With a preliminary glance out the doorway, checking that the hallway was empty, my pace increased with the gun sliding more easily over the polished tiles.

Only then in the hallway I realized: the flashlight was still switched on, and half wedged in the wall. To be as fast as possible, I’d have to drop the gun on the floor and run back, in which time she might come by and snatch and confiscate the gun, which I had been working quietly away at for weeks, a personal hobby horse.

I kept going back down the hall, pushing the gun in front of me, my pace increasing to jog.

Lifting one end of the gun off the floor, I started trying push it along like a wheelbarrow (without a wheel). But it accidentally flew out of my hands and made a clattering noise against the tiles which, in the silence, seemed to echo out like sonar signal. My heart dropped.

The air was still, the pounding in my head was only my racing blood.

Yanking up the end of the gun, I pushed it past the end of the hallway, the living room expanded panoramically into view and, at the same time, from somewhere behind, the sound of a door being pushed aside until it banged into the wall, with the urgency of someone halting, dropping everything, and—

Thud thud thud THUD THUD THUD –

A rapid string of quaking noises, like an oncoming train pounding over rails, louder and louder, bowling straight at me from behind. She’d heard the gun drop and she was racing back down the hall – actually physically running because she had surely now seen me.

There was no time to look back. Grunting and wailing with my exertions, I shoved the gun across the floor with all my might. My sweat heavy cowl was slipping over my eyes but kept moving, half blind, guided by the feeling of the tiles turning to rug. Having lifted the end of the gun gave me extra speed, but it wasn’t enough, I was panting, out of breath, and the footsteps were almost on top of me—

I pointed the gun’s muzzle into the shadowy floor beneath the two seat sofa, and taking aim at the inside of one of the legs, pulled the compression trigger. With a sharp hiss the line burst across the floor, the adhesive stamped into the inside sofa leg and held. Normally I gave the adhesive a second for the gel to firmly seal against the surface, but there was no time. Praying it wouldn’t jam, I pulled the release catch for the reel, which whirred into life; recoil jolted through my arms as the line yanked me off my feet and clumsily dragging me and the gun over the carpet (and, unfortunately, not Batman-style through the air).

Next instant I was in the dark rectangle beneath the sofa, up against the inside leg.

Her voice rang out from above:

“WHAT THE FUCK—?”

The rug fibers whispered under my bare feet; the rubber boots had come off as I’d been dragged over the floor. They lay across the rug some distance behind, until a pair of giant, smooth bare feet trod next to them, shadow deepening before the boots were each captured between feminine long nailed fingertips and plucked up into the air.

My hands were now scrabbling over the adhesive strip, disconnecting it from the line, the damn leathery gloves sweaty and sliding around my fingers. Frustrated, I yanked the Velcro straps back and ripped the gloves off.

The rug-muffled thuds halted immediately beside the sofa, then rustling as she dropped down to the floor, thrusting an arm beneath to snake after me.

Her rumbling grunt came at my back, as her hand fished into the dark under the seat frame for me:

“JUST GET OVER HERE, WILL YOU?”

Fingertips scratched at the hem of my cape as they made a frantic snatch, but just missed me. But any closer and they might have swiped my ankles and flipped me over onto the ground. Foiled, the hand withdrew again. She could have gone around the other side of the sofa, but maybe she was worried I’d try to shoot her with the gun, not that it would do any good.

A moment later, the footsteps receded over the tiles as she stalked off, back down the hallway, her pace driven and purposeful. It wasn’t an excuse for respite. She’d be back, sooner rather than later. She would return with an ‘extraction tool’, such as a broom.

I pulled a fresh strip of adhesive out of my belt and fitted it onto the line, then pushed the gun out from under the sofa and began sliding it along the tiles leading into the master bedroom, and deciding not to deploy the gun again unless as a last resort; the compressor’s sharp hiss would be like a siren telling her immediately where I was.

Outside the room, the rustling sounds from the living area. She was back, poking around under the sofa. This went on for about a minute. While she was distracted looking under the chairs, I scrabbled up the overhanging quilt onto the queen bed and grabbed my miniature pillow amidst her giant ones – unused in over a week now – then raced back over the bouncy mattress and slid down the overhanging blanket again.

I planned to smuggle it back to the ‘cave’ in the wall and sleep there the night; get a moment of peace to wind down from the rush of proposing, intoxication from the wine, and the adrenaline of getting tattooed, then return to the bedroom in the early morning, once she had come down from her own proposal high.

Once the rustling, probing noises beyond had stopped, I began pushing the gun back over the floor into the living room, which was now empty again. Moving between each chair in turn for cover, I was eventually heading back down the hallway.

As I reached the entrance to the guest bedroom, the sound of footsteps came from the other end of the hallway, from what sounded like the laundry, which was at the opposite end of the house to the master bedroom. She had probably been looking for another ‘extraction tool’. It no longer mattered; I was home free inside the guest bedroom now, and pushing my gun along the carpet, under the spare bed towards my ‘cave’.

Then stopped in dismay.

The empty shoe box had been pushed aside. The wall flap was no longer propped open with the flashlight. The hole was shut and sealed up with overlapping strips of mounting tape. Rushing at it, I began pulling at one of these strips, the topmost, trying to peel it away, but it was so gummy I wasn’t strong enough…

The bedroom light clicked on, turning the whole room intense vanilla. I blinked as, behind me, soft steps came onto the carpet, ominously unhurried, as if knowing the game was up. Her murmur surrounded me:

"SORRY,” she said vaguely, “BUT I'M GOING TO CALL A PLASTERER TOMORROW. REALLY ATTRACTED TO TIGHT, DARK SPACES, AREN'T YOU…?"

Without thinking, I spun around and raced along under the length of the bed. In a heartbeat she was on the ground, stretching forward stomach to floor, crawling in on her forearms before sending a hand surging after me.

My cape yanked back, pulling me up off my feet, then I was hovering along just above the carpet before zooming way up above the bed as she straightened up again.

There was jerking sensation like being shot out of a cannon as the grip on my cape released, the bedroom walls became a blur as I was zooming through space again, much higher, until the ceiling came spinning at my face. My arms and legs paddled around helplessly in mid-air as I tumbled back down, before I was jerked through the air by my shoulders as my cape was snagged again, pulled down, and then my entire body rocketing back up, spinning madly, and falling back down to earth...

My shoulders went tight again as the cape was snatched and yanked, tossed up into the air, and as the cape unfurled, it was then seized victoriously in a fist, whirled around, and thrown up again, pulling me along with it, like a tiny hammer throw. As I came down, she missed my cape and in an effort to keep me airborne, bounced me on her fingertips to launch me up again.

This went on and on for several minutes, until my stomach was practically turning itself inside out with nausea. I groaned and my voice was immediately ripped out of my throat by the whooshing air as I went somersaulting down, back into her awaiting hand, which caught my cape and sent me shooting up towards the ceiling again…

This time, as I fell, she missed my cape with both hands, and on impulse, brought a thigh up just in time, pumping it smack into my front, crushing the air out of my chest as it bounced me high into the air again.

“SO CLOSE…!” she teased, and her voice seemed to spin around my head.

This was too much for me.

“Stop!” I squeaked breathlessly. “I need a rest!”

I collapsed into a limp, black leathery ball onto the palms of her hands, and remained there. The room seemed to swivel around me even though I was still. I was dizzy; couldn’t run even if she’d put me down onto the floor and gave me a head start. One of my hands drifted clumsily against my chest, battering at the padded leather covering my pectoral; the sweat running down my chest was making my tattoo itch and sting.

Her hand lifted until I was cradled against the wall of her chest as she flicked off the bedroom light, and then the walls were wobbling around, she was traipsing out of the bedroom and back down the hallway, my body bobbed limply, her breast against my back. She continued to switch off lights through the house until we came into the master bedroom.

She dropped into a seat on the end of the queen bed, placing me down on her thigh for a moment, her upper body leaning over me as her nails worked into my costume, digging beneath the leather to peel it away from my flesh. It was less elastic than my Superman costume, and required more force to remove, my extremities strained as she pulled at the bodysuit. Struggling got me nowhere, and in fact only helped shift my limbs out of the sleeves and leggings. As the fingers shifted around my body, nails dug painfully into random vulnerable areas. A pair of fingertips pinched one of the ears of the cowl while another pair clasped my jaw and pulled, peeling the cowl off my head before the entire bodysuit could be slid down my torso and exposing my naked flesh to the cool night air.

The suit finally came free from around my ankles, and was put over onto the bedside table, as her fingers wrapped around my back. The thumbnail dug into my jaw, tipping my head back so the thumb could slide in and gently massage my throat, seeming to savor the feeling of my carotid artery throbbing rapidly against the sensitive thumbpad.

I swallowed against the pressure at my neck.

“So you want to have sex.”

“KIND OF THE POINT, JERRY.”

“Is it? I like to look at you. I can’t see you when I’m inside.”

"COME ON. A GUY WITH YOUR BODY. I'M NOT GOING TO PUT YOU IN A GLASS CABINET TO ADMIRE. YOU ARE MADE FOR MY USE.”

Swallowing, I stared up into her eyes, which surveyed my face as if from a distance, already in contemplation of things I couldn’t even imagine, but whatever thoughts on her mind not being revealed in her deceptively calm expression.

Beige walls surrounded on all sides, with sunny overhead lights shining over the gleaming metal faucets and towel racks.  We were in the bathroom of the master bedroom, Jen was curved over the edge of the bath rub, its porcelain basin more like a swimming pool at my size, and deeper. She ran her hand through the rising water, checking the temperature, and then disappeared out of the bathroom for a moment.

In the meantime, I stood up on the polished resin surface of the sink countertop overlooking the bath, watching the water climbing up the inside edge.

She reappeared, now bundled with the roses of earlier, and, shutting the water off when it was very deep, began plucking all the petals off, tossing them in into the bath, until the water was dappled with curled, crimson pads like a lily pond. At my size, the petals were as big as lily pads.

She stepped over to me at the sink, her wet hands outstretched one moment and sliding around my torso the next. I was wrenched from the countertop, whirled around to face the bath tub and then – with a sickening plummeting – felt myself leave her hands, flying, falling, my arms pinwheeling, before – splash! – the water roared up over my ears.

I broke up through the water, velvety red petals sticking to my head, and began to tread the surface, while she towered over the bath, removing her t-shirt and underwear. Then her long smooth legs were sliding into the water, followed by a wall of toned stomach, her muscles flexing powerfully as the rest of her form sunk into the water to fill up one side of the bath while she stretched her legs out along the bath floor until her feet burst up out of the water on my other side, tendons flexing as the soles pressed against the inside edge. With her arms draped along the sides of the bath, she gave a deep breath as her form relaxed against the ceramic, her breasts heaving gently just on the surface of the water, red petals clinging to the undersides, nipples even darker red and pointing at me. She let her posture relax like this for a moment, her face still faintly flush with alcohol, and eyes dilated.

The pair of long, toned legs wavered around dimly beneath the red petals, stretching and shifting below the water, while at the end of the bath, the toes curled and wiggled. Starting to tire of treading water, I was about to lean back and float on my back for a little while when her massive form rose and scooted forward along the basin floor until her knees came up and surfaced out of the water, stuck with petals, on either side of me, whilst both of her arms came shooting towards me like two pale anacondas. Each hand gently clasped each of my palms between the velvety soft fingertips of her pointer and thumb, holding me level with the top of the water. Then she drew me back across the tub, dragging me through the water by my arms. As her straightened arms began to bend inwards, drawing me towards the swollen mounds of her chest.

Just as I thought she was going to lift me up onto her chest, she began to straighten her arms again, gently taking me backwards with her hands, moving me away from her. At the same time, she extended each of her middle fingers outwards against either side of my ribs to stabilize my torso, the long nails of each middle finger digging a little into spaces between my ribs, sharply uncomfortably but not painful. Then she sent me a tender smile that sucked the air out of my lungs.

When her arms were straight again, she began to gently draw me in towards her chest once again. She did this repeatedly, sweeping me in, and then out, tugging in and moving back, until I felt, a little uncomfortably, like a baby being taught how to swim or being accustomed to water though – even more uncomfortably – it struck me I was even smaller than a baby, much smaller, closer in size to a toy that a baby might play with.

Tilting my neck back until the water was lapping against my scalp, my eyes ran lazily over the enormous features of her face, and her dark dyed hair with white-blonde tip falling around one breast into the water. Telling myself this was the woman I was going to marry didn’t make it feel any more real. She continued to tug me gently in the water, I basked in her affectionate smile and her amused delight of steering me back and forth in the water by my arms, letting her enjoy the cuteness of it, even if it made me blush at my own tiny helplessness; unable to get my hands free of her grip if I wanted to.

Letting the hypnotic motion carry on, my relaxation deepened into sleepiness, my eyes wandered, she lost my attention for a moment and one of her middle fingers stroked my ribs, trying to draw my eyes back to her face again. Even getting these small spontaneous rubs below the water’s surface, without warning, thrilled me into awareness.

As she kept me held on the surface, it gave my legs and arms a much needed rest from treading water. Only my shoulders cramped a little from my arms being tugged back and forth, but I was too embarrassed to tell her to be any gentler when she was being incredibly gentle already.

Above, the air quavered with her soft humming as she continued to push and pull me in the water. The thrumming tones dampened my awareness again, my eyelids fell shut. My arms tightened as they were tugged forwards, and then the tips of her middle fingers gave my ribcage a soft, pincering squeeze, one on either side, I blinked and stared up at her again, and then my arms were tugged forward…

Suddenly I was being lifted by my hands out of the water, rising up past her breasts until I was suspended, naked and dripping, right in front of her eyes, which fixed on my face with curiosity.

“WAKEY WAKEY,” she said, her voice booming directly into my face, “WHY ARE YOU SO SLEEPY?”

“I’m…I’m just relaxed,” I said, unable to shrug with my arms stretched up over my head. I didn’t understand her question; it was nearly bedtime and I’d been running around; I was entitled to be sleepy.

“CAN’T HAVE THAT JUST YET, DARLING…” she muttered as she lowered me.

She placed me down on the edge of the bath while she slid forward and fitted an extension cord over the faucet, attached to a handheld spray nozzle.

"What's that for?" I said, after she’d slid back against the other end of the bath, and placed me down in the water again.

"THIS,” she answered, “IS MY MAGIC WAND. IT'S GOT A LITTLE JOB TO DO. SO DO YOU, IN FACT."

She eyed me calmly, resting her arms over the sides of the bath again, gripping the nozzle in one hand.

"NOW YOU HAVE A CHOICE. ONE OF YOU IS GOING TO BE TAKING CARE OF MY BOOBS, WHILE THE OTHER IS GOING TO BE FIXING ME UP DOWN BELOW. THE WAND DOESN'T HAVE A PREFERENCE SO...WHICH IS IT GOING TO BE?”

“The first one,” I said quickly.

“DON’T BE SO HASTY. WE’RE YET TO DETERMINE WHETHER THOSE TINY LUNGS CAN BEAT OUT MY WAND.”

“What?”

“WELL, IF YOU’RE SO KEEN ON STAYING ABOVE SEA LEVEL, YOU HAVE TO WALK THE WALK.” She smirked. “OTHERWISE YOU’RE GOING TO SWIM THE SWIM.”

I was lowered past her body, and rotated until I was staring into the bath water, brought so close my cheek was almost lapped by the surface.

“TAKE A BIG GULP AND WE’LL SEE WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF.”

Leaning out past her hand, I sucked in a mouthful of water, and pulled my head back. With my cheeks puffed out, I was lifted again, as her ballooning breast filled up my visual field, her swollen red nipple approaching my chest before I was stopped, meters away.

“GIVE IT YOUR BEST SHOT.”

I held the red bulb in my sights, concentrating, trying to line my head up.

“I’LL COUNT YOU IN,” she said, “ONE…TWO…THREE…GO!”

At ‘go’, her thumb dug up under my ribcage, causing the water to spill out of my mouth in a series of convulsive coughs, falling far short of her nipple and into the bathwater below.

“Y-y-ou—” I spluttered hoarsely, “y-you che—” my voice broke up into a breathless wheeze.

She observed me without reaction.

“AW. NICE TRY. BUT I THINK THE WAND CAN TAKE IT FROM HERE…”

As if rub it in, she angled the nozzle around at her breast, and depressing the trigger, sent out an eruption of pressurized stream that I could never match with my mouth. It struck the nipple and her eyes acquired a dreamy cast for an instant. Cutting the water again, she rounded on me again:

“—AND YOU, LITTLE SQUIRT, ARE TAKING A DIVE.”

“I can’t hold my breath over than eight minutes – what if you take longer?”

Again she depressed the trigger on the handle, this time sending a sharp spurt of water that tapped at my head with a hiss. I shook my head and coughed.

"THEN…MAKE EVERY SECOND COUNT."

The smooth back of her hand came parting through the water, then fingers were slipping in close, manoeuvring my middle dexterously between them to get optimum grip. The blunt pad of a thumb braced against my groin, stirring it to life. I managed to take one deep breathe before the world did a complete one eighty revolution, and the water became the ceiling.

Water was surging past as I was shooting down, as the powerful masses of her thighs parted, a gush of water sweeping inwards. My member was given an anticipatory tickle by the thumb, right before my face was touched to giant fleshy folds, which peeled apart slightly.

Rather than penetrating any further, the flesh was made to pass back and forth across my face repeatedly, as if she was trying to identify and hone in on the sweet spot. The knob of the clitoris bumped over my face, immediately followed by a small ring that must have been the urinary sphincter, and then the larger and more familiar purse slit. My face was rimmed around the slit to the bottom, passing over the perineum below, pausing here for a fraction as if to playfully suggest my face was on the cusp of being driven to that even lower orifice, before drawing back the way I came, repeating my path in reverse.

At frequent intervals, my stiffening penis was rewarded with powerful strokes by the thumb, ensuring my pleasure was inextricably tethered to hers, training my rod to respond to having my face buried in her neitherregions as the height of pleasure, my tiny soft body being compelled back and forth as a sensual pussy rag.

As my face was used for this delicate exploratory probing, her great lower body responded in delight; the flesh quivering and tensing as the bordering thighs twitched, rippling the water. With each lap up and down, the clitoris tightened almost stone hard, the urinary sphincter scrunched, and the vaginal rim getting thick and rubbery as it swelled up with arousal. As these various organs massaged my face, at the other end of my body, I was receiving a separate massage to keep me writhing into her swollen flesh. The flat of the fingerprint was rolling back and forth and around the end of my penis in a polishing motion, sometimes switching direction without warning. Holding my breath to this was torture, but she wasn’t yet finished.

The process was speeding up; water surging past, soft flesh grinding back and forth until I felt like a giant eraser was trying to rub out my face, and little by little, air quality stored in my lungs rapidly diminishing…

My head was pushed inside the vaginal tunnel, probed around, and then continued to the bottom of the slit, passing over the perineum. But this time, instead of pausing teasingly, my head was forced down, her pillowy buttocks pressing in on either side of my cheeks, hugging my head. My face was touched into the wrinkled fissure, which puckered tight. As I was stroked into it, it responded with a series of shivering muscle twitches, pinching my cheeks and brow as it did so. At the same time, at my other end, the thumb was revolving around my girth, twisting it, as if grooming me to not only enjoy this intimate face time with the darkest part of her anatomy, but take rapturous pleasure in it. 

My face was now being handballed between four different erogenous zones, each with a startlingly different texture and response to contact with my face, but all equally greedy for my touch.

I was traced back up along one of her engorged pussy lips, and shut my eyes a moment before the pulsating scrunched up urinary orifice passed over my brow. The rock hard clitoris bumped my chin, and she spent a moment using the angle of my jawline to scratch at the throbbing nub, trying to work my chin in under the clitoral hood. Then I was moving back down, over the pee slit, which sucked and clung at my face like a defensive sea anemone, around the rim of the pussy, before my head being driven between the giant moons of her buttocks, which flexed me inwards, and my face landing square on the tight puckered anus. Then back up…

The rubbing motions sped up, then slowed right down and sometimes paused entirely, savouring a plateau to prolong the climb. To give her achingly sensitive clitoris a rest, she would pause my head against her pee slit or anus, either of which, at the physical contact, would screw up tight and grip my face. Meanwhile, one of her other fingers had looped around to join the thumb at my groin, capturing my member between them and rolling it back and forth between the pads. As my hips bucked, the motion slowed until I was calmed, and then started up again.

My heart hammering in my chest, I turned my head, keeping my eyes shut, and at each pause of activity, praying each time the motions would start up again soon. I was running out of breath.

But my raging hard-on was soaking up blood flow, and demanding more fresh oxygen to sustain itself. I was running over eight minutes and my lungs were trembling and sore. As the pee slit scrunched over my face again, I squeezed my diaphragm as hard as I could, and sent a jet of stored up air squarely into her clit. My diaphragm muscles were powerful enough to make an impact: her pelvis seemed to seize up and my head was mashed against her ferociously until my ears rang. Then the water was rotating back around until my head broke the surface and I spluttered for air.

The creamy boulders of her breasts hung right in front of my face, bobbing and jiggling over the water as she took great shuddering gasps, her face flushed and radiant, her back slumped with relaxation against the inside of the bath.

“HI AGAIN, BABE,” she finally sighed, flashing me an easy grin, “SURE DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME, DO YOU?”

Studying me calmly for a second as she recouped her breath, she then muttered:

“GAVE MY TINY WATERSLIDE A LITTLE ACTION, TOO.” She was referring to the urethral opening that had moments ago been scrunching excitedly over my face. “KINKY. I LIKE. THAT I LIKE.”

At my back, the water surface rippled as the creamy dome of a knee lifted up out of the water to create a platform which I was lifted and put upon while she recovered.

“CATCH ANY FISH WHILE YOU WERE DOWN THERE?” She gave my belly a jab with her thumb, which then crooked under my erection and pinned it to my belly.

“Just sea anemones.”

“UNDER MY PUSSY…YOU KNOW..." she was referring to her butt, "...THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE SLIPPED AROUND A COUPLE OF TIMES…PURE ACCIDENT…”

I scoffed in disbelief.

She knew that I knew that she was full of bullshit and didn't care. Her lips curled with a smirk. Her thumb rolled my shaft back and forth against my stomach, coaxing me to get even harder, while the nail tips gently teased my scrotum. Now that she was satisfied, she had no motive to finish me quickly.

I rocked around on her knee, clawing at her fingers as they took me to the limit, then stopped, squeezed my shaft hard and held it, capping my ability to come, before I was relaxed enough for the process to repeat, pressure varying experimentally to elicit the response she wanted. This happened in seemingly endless cycles, my balls getting insufferably tight, before the teasing strokes finally made me yield my load, while the energy seemed to drain out of my body with it.

As the air chilled, I slid down her thigh, splashing back into the warm water and swam up to one of her breasts, pressing myself against it and taking the nipple in my hand to secure myself, and an instant later, splayed fingertips skimmed through the water surface, playfully fanning warm water into the back of my head.

She spent some time washing herself as I treaded around in the water above her thighs, so tired I could barely keep my head above the water. As globs of body wash and foamy suds began to sprinkle down like hail, I paddled clumsily to the other end of the bath for refuge, where her feet emerged from the water, pressed against the ceramic inner basin and rubbing languidly against each other.

Clambering against her right foot, I hooked my arm in around the second toe for stability, and she helpfully splayed her toes for me, and once my arm was secured, gave it an affectionate squeeze with a gentle flex of her toes, keeping me gripped in place so I didn’t have to tread water.

Once she’d finished washing herself, she collected me up and began scrubbing me up and down with soapy lotion, practically moulding my pliant flesh between her fingertips, and dipping me underwater at intervals to rinse it off. Cradling me in one cupped hand, her fingertips massaged my neck, and then lowered to my chest. As a soapy fingerpad smoothed over my left pec, inspecting the tattoo with curiosity, it ignited the inflammation again. I winced, and the fingerpad hesitated.

“STILL SORE, HUH?” she said gently.

“It stings a little.”

“YOU AREN’T ANGRY AT ME…?”

“Guess it’s done now.”

I was too tired to argue, and anyway, she was now peering into my face with a look of tender sympathy; it stole all my remonstrations.

“IT CAME UP PRETTY NICE,” she offered, as if in condolence. “JUST HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE REDNESS TO GO DOWN.”

With one last look at the tattoo site, her fingertips kneaded more soapy lotion into my belly, and without a pause, captured my penis and began scrubbing and stretching it to full length in the process. My feet skidded against her upturned wet palm as I squirmed, which she ignored as she continued to stroke me, whilst using the pad of another finger to work more lotion around my balls. As I came again, she dipped me underwater, and while I was helplessly submerged, she swiped her fingertips around my aching glans one last time to clear all the ejaculate, and ensure I was milked completely dry.

Out of the bath and towelled off, she applied some Cortizone cream to her fingertips before rubbing them around my left pec to attend to the inflammation. Then I brushed my teeth with an interdental brush, and she with a regular toothbrush, and then she put me down on the mattress and went back into the bathroom. As the hairdryer began to whine, my feet padded over the velvety satin sheets towards my side of the bed where I lay down. Actually, it was a mistake to say one side of the bed was ‘mine’; I took up so little space that either side of the bed was hers to claim, and my body fit in whichever nook against her that was leftover.

My eyes began to shut.

The hairdryer switched off.

The mattress depressed as she mounted the bed and on all fours began to crawl past her own side until her shadow passed overhead. My tiny body rocked back and forth as pockets of the mattress sunk under the pressure of huge palms and knees. Her form descended until her belly came to rest against the mattress while her upper body was propped up on her forearms directly above. Like me, she was naked, and the dark length of her hair glittering, still slightly damp.

A giant hand swept into me to flip me onto my back with ease before each of my palms were pinched up between the massive fingertips, spread out and pressed against the mattress, not different from the position of earlier, stretched out on the kitchen table.

Her huge visage hovered directly down over me, more sober than before. With her hands busy restraining my arms, it allowed strands of hair to fall down past her shoulder and against my legs, the tips brushing against and tickling my groin.

“Come down here and give me a kiss, gorgeous girl,” I said, straining to project my voice as more confident and self-assured than I felt. Gut instinct was telling me that if I sweet-talked, she might go easier on me.

She just watched me idly as if I hadn’t even said anything, her eyes roaming my naked body, my biceps bulging up in strain against the restraint of her fingertips, and tiny ribcage going in and out with my breathing, with the black label of her initials plain on my pectoral, my member starting to expand and rise. In spite of my attempted flirtation she was in control and knew it.

Her mouth twisted in a faint smile.

“HERE I COME…”

She kept my arms still against the mattress as she dipped her neck over me so it seemed my face was zooming towards her plush expectant pout. I had no power to stop it even if I wanted to, and there was no time to even think.

Her lips were all over my head, taking it in a soft suctioning grip, stamping sticky, newly applied moisturizing lip balm all over my face in repeated nuzzling motions, indiscriminately embossing my delicate features with pink luster until I felt like my head was drowning in hot, melted wax. Sharp toothpaste mint condensed on my skin, keeping the balm moist. The tongue worked around my face leisurely as if trying to polish it in a film of bubbly saliva. My lungs were able to seize two quick bursts of air in a tiny gap before the tongue tip began keenly tracing my features, trying to identify my eyes, nose and mouth, and lingered over my mouth, nudging with a slight flicking motion, as if trying to goad me to respond. I opened my mouth to return the kiss and got a thick mass of bumpy tongue between my lips as it smeared over my face.

My hands were then released and I turned my head sideways, trying to roll my body, but a fingerpad mashed at my brow, turning it back into the path of oozing tongue which lapped twice before I could wrench my head away again. But the finger came back, poked my head back into position, ready for another point-blank licking by the greedy red tongue, and pausing only for a microsecond for me to take a breath.

Then the tongue careened into my temple, pushing my head sideways, quickly squirming under my jaw to force my head back in order to push my head the other way, where the tip drove down powerfully against my cheek, over my ear, relishing in keeping my head pinned sideways to the mattress as if to underscore my defeat. Straining all the muscles in my neck and shoulders wasn’t enough to liberate my head.

With enough of this, the tongue lifted, I turned my head face up only for the lips to ring my face in a perfect seal, forcing the surface of the tongue flat against my whole face, and conforming to my features like a wet towel. A huge bear trap of incisors rapidly drew inwards against the top of my head and under my jaw, enough to give my skull one rapid, alarmingly firm squeeze. My breath hitched; I still couldn’t breathe with her tongue masked over my face. Grunting, I smacked at her chin – the only thing in my reach – in response, the teeth began to grind my head a little between them, with the slightest force. Still, it unnerved me; my skull had no chance against her jaws if she was too rough.

As the teeth continued to grind, her hot breath gusted my hair around, fingerprints shifted restlessly over the flesh of my lower abdomen before a fingernail scratched lightly along my erect shaft, tickling like mad, and I thrashed my spine in an effort to dislodge my head from the steel trap of her teeth.

Finally her jaw loosened while the tongue unstuck from my face and thrust my head out from the seal of her lips. The mattress slapped up against my back and my lungs working in and out.

Propped up on her folded forearms, she gazed down at me serenely under her lashes, brushing her hair behind her ears while I stared at her, dazed.

“GIVE ME A LITTLE MORE FIGHT,” she said coyly.

I looked up at her in puzzled amazement.

“That’s what I’m trying to—!”

Her lips glommed onto my head once more, pulling my face between them with powerful sucking force. As soon as my head popped free with a wet smack, I thrust one arm straight between the lips, clawing for the tongue, grabbing the tip and holding on for dear life. A spurt of surprised hot air rapidly issued into my face, followed by a giggling rumble.

A finger hooked around my arm and squeezed my bicep, the constriction increasing gradually, weakening my grip until my hand released. And as if in punishment the flat of the tongue ran with leisure squarely over my face.

Upping the ante, firm fingers were bulldozing around my torso, effectively ironing out every last cubic inch of my breath. It seemed to go on forever: smooch after aggressive smooch against my face, and dense wet licks, over and over without pause between, so powerful that they rocked my head as they swept over my face, all inadvertently sealing up my mouth and nose with the smothering flexion of her impassioned tongue muscle.

Drowning out my panicking cries were the exultant moans erupting from her throat, sounding more dramatized than candid, as if to provoke and annoy me.

Can’t breathe…Need air…!

The ceiling went as dark and cloudy as the night outside…

The world came back with a whoosh, a tingling numbness all over. Silky softness at my back, and pulse throbbing in my head, in my bones, and my brain – as if drunk all over again – felt like it was stuffed with wool.

Large objects moved against me, pressing against my cheek to turn my head to one side. A big rounded object swiped against my brow a couple of times as if trying to brush my eyelids open, before giving up again. Another object pushed against my ribcage on the left side, holding there as if trying to feel for my heart, then moving to the side, pushing my arm up to access my armpit, trying to get close to my heart that way. Pressure shifted around my lower torso, depressing my belly and kneading around, but – to my relief – not going lower.

I blinked and light burst into my eyes, right as a giant fingertip hovered in front of my face and delivered a couple of light taps to my cheek.

“JERRY, WAKE UP!” Her voice vibrated in my skull, thrilled with panic. “YOU BETTER NOT BE KIDDING AROUND RIGHT NOW!”

My face felt shiny with balm and saliva, and now cooling by the air exposure, but a warm blush bloomed into my cheeks as I realized I’d passed out. That didn’t normally happen during make-out sessions.

Above, her eyes were surveying me in alarm, and then she relaxed.

“YOUR WHISKERS ARE GETTING LONG, FUZZBALL,” she murmured, as a thumb stroked back and forth along my beard. “I FEEL LIKE I’M TRYING TO EAT A LITTLE PRICKLY FRUIT.”

Meanwhile, since I’d blacked out, the fork of my underwear was pointing up, and she only then gave it notice. Her cool expression unchanging, a couple of fingertips came into contact with my bulge, capturing it and giving it a small squeeze, as if wondering what it was. Her eyes then returned to mine.

“QUICK RECOVERY,” she deadpanned.

I didn’t reply; now unable to meet her eyes, because whenever I lifted my gaze too high my head swam, and the bloodflow surging out of my brain to my groin wasn’t helping.

She gave my bulge another squeeze and I groaned.

“TIRED? THAT WAS JUST A LITTLE FOREPLAY EARLIER. WE’RE BARELY WARMING UP.”

Her hand lifted from me as she leaned over the bed to reach for something. I rubbed my hands over my face, still oiled up with lip balm.

“Okay, but let me pace myself, I need to fllff—!”

Even before I’d finished talking, an enormous, cold blob of jelly came out of nowhere and plopped onto my face. Next second, firm bumps were rolling around my features, smearing all over my head. It was lubricant.

Another cold blob was pressed on my chest and massaged all around my torso. More cold splotches were run up and down my arms and legs. Still in the dark with my eyelids pasted shut, I felt my penis get plucked up between jelly coated fingertips, to be pinched and pulled, the cold jelly like ice up and down my shaft. My flesh began to goosebump. Some of this jelly spilt onto my quivering nutsack, which was then gently rolled back and forth until it was completely coated.

Her fingers kept dipping into the lubricant and sliding around my body parts until I was all lubed up.

“THERE,” she said, satisfied. “SHINY NEW PAINT JOB AND READY FOR A TEST DRIVE.”

I wiped jelly from my lips, blinking rapidly to clear my eyes until the room came into focus again. The bedsprings creaked as she lay down on her back, spreading her legs apart on either side, knees bent, exposing the reddened slit. One hand slid down to peel the pussy lips back, and the fingers running up and down the lips as if invitingly.

“FAST,” she instructed, “LIKE YOU JUST CAN’T WAIT TO GET INSIDE.”

I jumped and tried to thrust my body inside all at once with a flying kick. My feet spilled out, flew forward and I ended up upside down, with my legs up, kicking at the air in defeat, and my spine bent back, and head jammed below her slit at a weird angle, my face wedged into her butt cheeks and – I sensed – come to rest calamitously close to her anus, which puckered against my scalp in surprise.

There was the sound of her laughter bubbling from above. She may not have seen what I’d done, but she could evidently feel I’d made a serious wrong turn somewhere.

Digging my elbow into a padded surface of flesh, I was able to free my face from the bottom of her crack, the lubricant making a sick squelching sound in my ears, like I was a sticker trying to peel myself off her just in time to see at the other end of the bed, framed on either side by her drawn up legs, her toes curling into the sheets with pleasure.

“OH, SO, THE OTHER WAY?" she said with mock surprise. Then purred suggestively, “I REALLY DON’T MIND.”

Cheeks growing hot, I decided the best response to was to pretend I hadn’t heard that.

My palms slid over mound flesh, looking for handholds before clenching around trimmed hair. This was a mistake; it must have tickled, as a glistening nail appeared in front of my eyes and flicked gently against my chin.

“AH…NOT LIKE THAT,” she cautioned gently, brushing her nails at my hands, effortlessly sweeping them off the short spikes of hair.

Grasping at bare flesh, I began pulling at the rim of her vagina, which worked to slide me in deeper. The rubbery walls tightened as my entry stimulated her. In response, I fought against the increasingly narrowing enclosure, flexing my shoulders and arms, bucking my legs, running my feet up and down the tunnel wall as hard as I could.

Her legs began flexing over the mattress.

“OH GOD….YOUR LITTLE COCK IS POINTING INTO MY G-SPOT. OH MY GOD, IT FEELS AMAZING.”

Long nails rapped at my skull.

“FUCK ME, JERRY. FUCK ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN.”

The tip of my rail stiff dick was buried into her flesh, which had tightened and begun to quiver, twitching around and tickling my glans. I started grinding my hips, dragging my dick back and forth against the moist canvas of sensitive G-spot membrane, and she let out a wailing moan over my head, her hips shifting with pleasurable convulsions. Entirely encircled by her pelvis, I was lifted and dropped, and bounced against the mattress as her hips bucked, while I continued to thrust inside her.

Pressure came down against the top of my head and my face began to slip past the fleshy folds surrounding her slit. Lost amidst the sensations, she was pushing down on my head with her palm without realizing it, basically ramming me deeper as I fought weakly to keep my head on the outside of her pussy.

Then, as she climbed to the peak of fulfilment, her vaginal sphincter drew intolerably tight and stiff around my neck like a cincture, while her muscular thighs collapsed inwards around my skull as if trying to crack it like a nut. My shoulders and ribcage began to buckle inwards, a rapid set of convulsions sending shockwaves of pressure through my entire body. During one of these her pussy walls seemed to grasp and squeeze the near life out of my dick, I came in an instant and my ejaculate was ferociously vacuumed out by the squeezing pull of the giant flesh straw surrounding me. Then it was over; the stress collapsed as she finished climaxing – as much a relief for me as it was for her.

As my strained neck relaxed and my head dropped back against the bottom of her slit, the wet folds of pussy lips were now slackening, settling over each side of my face and resting there like two, soggy pillows.

“DON’T LAUGH,” her contented throaty burr rumbled across the bed, “BUT…YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WERE MADE EXACTLY FOR THE SHAPE OF MY PUSSY. JUST LET ME KEEP YOU THERE FOR A LITTLE WHILE., ‘CAUSE IT’S LIKE—” she let out a small purring moan, “—PURE HEAVEN.”

Following this, an extended silence. Her legs shifted restlessly, buffeting me back and forth a little. There was a soft raking sound as her long toenails clenched the sheets. She seemed to be waiting for something, a response maybe.

Finally she said, more quietly:

“IF YOU FEEL THE SAME WAY, JUST SAY SO. I WOULD LIKE THAT A LOT, IN FACT.”

“I love you,” I gasped breathlessly from beneath her swollen, reddened labial folds, currently luxuriating in the tender sensation of me panting for breath into them, and with no immediate intention of letting me up anytime soon. “Of course I do.”

I couldn’t say any more; I had to keep shifting my head around to line up with the air admitted through the gash, the folds kept sliding back into position over my face and sticking there, shutting it up again.

She got specific:

“YOU LIKE MY PUSSY, THOUGH, DON’T YOU, LITTLE GUY?”

“I wouldn’t be down here if I didn’t.”

“WELL, SHE LIKES YOU. I MEAN, IF SHE WAS A PERSON SHE’D BE SMOTHERING YOU IN KISSES RIGHT NOW.”

“She pretty much is smothering me in kisses right now,” trying to speak through the tail end of post-climax fluid dribbling out and down my face. “Anyway, I’m getting married to you, not your pussy.”

One of the labial folds peeled back from my face, admitting the tip of a pointer finger to snake in and brush over my lips.

“I WOULD BE SMOTHERING THAT LITTLE FACE IN MORE KISSES BUT NOT WHEN IT’S COVERED IN GOOP. BUT NEVER MIND THAT…” her legs drew in as she adjusted her pelvis over the mattress, causing me to be bobbed around. Her voice became softer as her legs opened slightly, “…MORE IMPORTANTLY: YOU NOT TOO SQUISHED…?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Just remember to take me out.”

Satisfied with my answer, she said:

“SCRATCH MY G-SPOT AND I’LL REMEMBER.”

Then everything went black as the blanket swooped over my head, settling with a heavy ‘whumpf’ sealing me in the tight, moist, sticky darkness.

*

The daylight then rained down and, from inside the church, an organ was playing.

My old friend Scott was standing at my side, no longer in his signature leather jacket, but looking scrubbed up in a suit and tie, his previously shaved head now grown out enough to rock an actual hairstyle, his hair gelled back over his scalp.

“Feels good to find the right person, doesn’t it?” he grinned. “I knew it would all work out for you; just got to be patient.”

He gestured to the church’s façade ahead.

“She’s waiting for you. Get in there, man! Hurry up! – And good luck!”

He slapped me on the back as I dashed through the gaping open, arched church doors .The dim stony narthex transformed into the open, lit long corridor of the nave.

Only to find it was not a church interior, but a staggeringly vast cathedral, walls drifting up into the heavens and polished marble floor spanning out across a football field, at a scale rivalling something grand like the inside of the St. Vitus Cathedral, except the rows of wooden pews similarly stretched up over my head. Looking straight ahead, my immediate sights were thick with bare ankles, pant hems, shiny leather shoes and women’s heels, shifting restlessly over the shining marble floor, the owners all probably wondering where I was and why I was taking so long.

Trying to take a step forward down the red carpet, my foot wouldn’t lift. When I looked down at the floor my feet were replaced with a pair of pink clawed paws. My hands were also soft, pink and clawed. In fact, my whole body was covered in brown fur, bristling with growing horror. A long pointed pink tail twirled and flicked around my ankles.

Then my pink paw hands were dropping to the floor until I could no longer straighten, and remained stuck on all fours.

I screamed, but only a squeak came out.

*

There was a whoosh of cool air as the blanket flipped back and the world tilted over until I was looking sideways at the wall, grainy as my eyes adjusted to the dark. The heavy weight of a thigh lifted up off my head as the giant leg bent upwards. The inner thigh flesh peeled like a sticker against my dried, slightly gummy cheeks, then came free as the inner thighs separated.

Somewhere off the bed, over on the bedside table, digital numerals glowed out reading 3.37 AM.

“YOU FEEL KIND OF DRY AND STUCK DOWN THERE,” she whispered, and then grunting a little as she shifted around, causing me to tilt around with her, as she reached over for the jar of lube. A moment later a thick slab of cold jelly plopped down over my face and was massaged around. The firm blunt fingerpads travelled down my jaw and began kneading against my neck, trying to wedge in and separate it from the surrounding vaginal flesh, which was now like a gummy, close fitting collar around my neck. I groaned as, more than a couple of times, the pointy nails poked me in the throat a little hard, cramping my Adam’s apple, or that’s what it felt like.

While this was going on, her probing hand accidentally pushed my face up against the tight fold of her clitoral hood, causing my nose to accidentally poke under the hood and tickle her sensitive nub.

The deep machine-like rush and pull of her breathing caught.

The hand went still.

Trying to extract my nose, I tossed my head to the side, accidentally brushing the hood with my cheek as I did so. Then I held my breath and froze.  It had been so close; she had almost been about to pull me out. But too late.

She was aroused again.

Her hand slithered away as if stunned, and her voice returned, merely a clandestine whisper:

“MMM…I THINK I WANT TO HAVE YOU ALL OVER AGAIN…CAN I INTEREST YOU IN ANOTHER TASTE…?”

Wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, I was again running my feet up and down her tunnel wall, whilst eagerly working my tiny tongue up under her clitoral hood, taking it in my mouth and pulling at it. This had immediate effect.

The air clamoured with desperate wailing as the mattress revolved around my head as she rolled over onto her stomach, arching her back and clawing at the mattress, burying her head into the pillows.

My face was repeatedly being pounded downwards at the mattress as her hips grinded, battling a building dizzy spell I kept probing my tongue around under her hood.

In a heightening fervor, she wrenched at a pillow and jammed it between her legs, needing to squeeze her thighs around something as she was being built up, but accidentally walloping my face full-on with the pillow and smothering me under it as it grinded back and forth across my head. My tongue worked away faster, and the thighs became brick walls compacting my head inwards until I thought my temples would burst.

But her desperate moaning urged me to fight past the pain and continue. She was saying ‘yes!’ and ‘Jerry!’ and ‘don’t stop!’ but it was incredibly muffled through her thick thigh flesh clamped like headphones around my ears, my tiny face was almost entirely swallowed up between the surrounding borders of her thighs, mound, lips and the pillow she was straddling tightly.

Her passage was bear hugging my body, crushing me narrower and narrower, cramps quivering up and down my muscles as they fought to reduce the physical space ever further, while I was so oiled up in female fluid I felt like I was being turned into a melting candle, hot and dripping. And, no mistake, her tight tunnel was doing everything it could to compact me long and thin like a candle.

With one brutal spasm, the muscular opening of her vagina then drew so tight around my vulnerable throat that blood vessels twitched and thumped painfully in my brow. My airways were pinched shut from neck down as her lower anatomy vacillated leisurely on the peaks and troughs of the orgasmic waves, trying to soak up every last second of build-up before hitting the climax, while my face quickly turned tomato red and the blood vessels in my eyeballs strained. The recent orgasms had not diminished her vigor.

The vicious scrunch held around my neck for what seemed like an agonizingly long time – everything lower had gone numb. Then it relinquished, letting my airways open up again, and my ribcage expand. She let out a deep, satisfied sigh, while I opened my mouth gratefully to suck in oxygen, but instead got a copious hot slushie that poured down my esophagus before I could stop it. As the tunnel had loosened again, warm sticky fluid kept gushing over my face freely, like a dam had burst.

As I choked back this unsolicited mixture, she separated her legs a little, the pillow rolled across my scalp as it was pulled out and put aside. Then she let out another long sigh, and went still, leaving me staring straight down at the mattress.

*

The organ music had faded to leave the vast cavernous cathedral hall in stony silence.

My eyes dropped down at whatever body materialized: now human hands, black shoes, a tuxedo. I sighed in relief, and then, with a gulp, started forward, heading down a long red carpet – broad as an entire room in itself – through the intolerably large space, the air humming with nerve-wracking silence. The weight of all the air stacked in the dizzying ceiling space above seemed to press down on me from above.

At the end of the carpet stood a white apparition: bright against the red carpet, a plume of bridal dress tapered up into an hourglass waist and veil down the back obscuring the head. She was turned away, facing the altar, not even having heard me as I’d entered, nor hearing me approaching, as my tiny footsteps made no noise on the soft carpet.

An older male’s voice thundered across the room from somewhere at the Chancel:

“HAS ANYONE SEEN THE GROOM…?”

Above a chorus of irritated chattering, random voices provided various curt, mumbling answers:

“NOPE.”

“NOT EVEN A PEEP.”

“I KNEW THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA.”

“WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN HIM?”

“IF SHE CAN SEE HIM AT ALL.”

My heart squeezed with dismay, but I forced my legs forward, keeping my eyes straight ahead on the silky white train gracing the floor.

“I’m here!” I cried, but again my voice came out as a mouselike squeak, and this time I clenched my eyes shut, refusing to look down and see what had happened to my hands and feet, and everything else.

*

Stirring movements, heavy weights rustling around against the silky sheets. Warmth and feeling had seeped back into my limbs. Her tunnel was cocooning me, but her legs must have been spread apart; my head was free.

Then I gagged. The air was eye-wateringly stale: a thick and stormy brew of vaginal musk, the strong scent of her sex, sweat, and – I suspected – silent emissions of nocturnal gas. As I squirmed, her pelvic floor tightened around me as if remembering that I was down here. From the other side of the blanket, a confused sleepy groan.

Then the satin sheets were being stretched and whispered over my face, before flipping away completely, cool air tickling my skin. The fresh air swept in, giving my cramping lungs reprieve.

The thighs gripped my ears as she rolled over, turning me around with them until I was facing the wall, where the bedside clock said 4.42 AM. The numbers flashed only for an instant before a big log slammed down on the side of my head, trapping it in an iron sandwich. Her lifted leg had unconsciously dropped directly against the other, clamping my tiny head between her thighs. Pain shot up my neck into my temples, and stunned, my legs started kicking frantically.

Get up! I was begging internally because my jaw was locked up under a ton of pressure, Get up! Get off my head! Arrgghhh…!

The stretchy cocoon flexed around me as my convulsive motions agitated her still tender nether regions, inadvertently goading her libido back to life. Even as I thrashed and my feet skidded around inside her, the walls were thickening with her glandular honey.

The throaty groan came again, now not so sleepy and confused but swelling with lust.

“YOU’RE SO FRISKY…!” her voice crackled with an undercurrent of excitement, “MUST HAVE READ MY MIND…”

Her touch was now rough and clumsy from sleepiness; fingers caught my temples between them, giving my head a faint twist like it was a jar lid she was trying to unscrew, before a thumb blundered over my brow, accidentally grinding my eyelids beneath the ridges of the grippy print.

“READY FOR YOUR NEXT FLIGHT, PUSSY PILOT?” she drawled groggily, and let out a low laugh. “JUST START THE ENGINE AND I’LL TAKE YOU FOR A LITTLE RIDE.”

Her moist tunnel drew inwards, squeezing me like toothpaste until I began to squelch towards her opening, before the flat of a hand drove down upon the crown of my head, driving me back up the tube. Another powerful pelvic flexion sending me back down the tunnel towards the slit opening, before impatient fingertips caught me, battering against my head to poke me back inside, this time deeper. Another hip thrust and I was squeezing back out, but the hand was waiting, immediately pushing me back inside…

Alongside each thrusting motion, my legs kicked and my shoulders strained, fighting to keep the tunnel walls collapsing in around me, though they inevitably did, forcing me along the dripping chute. Each spasm of her swelling passage bent my ribcage narrower and narrower, sucking the air right out of my lungs, and increasingly enfeebled my struggles for ever-diminishing space.

The world spun as she rolled over and stacked pillows up and bent herself over and around them, experimenting with different positions to heighten her pleasure, all while I worked away inside her musk-fuming furnace, kicking my legs and flexing my shoulder and arms, puffing the hot stale air into my aching, tight lungs, sweat pouring off my body and my heart bursting in my chest, feeling like a hamster sprinting full pelt inside a wheel, pushing my body to the limit whilst being fixed in place.

My dick grinded rawly up and down her shuddering walls until I squelched down the tunnel once again, as if teasingly about to escape, only for the vaginal sphincter to scrunch around my throat at the last second as if to stop me, gagging me for the duration of her shattering climax. I grew light-headed as her pelvic convulsions stimulated my dick to breaking point, tightening against my bulge, then loosening, then tightening again, and again, faster and faster. The exertions managed to milk my overtaxed balls of yet more; by now it felt like my life force was being drained out and one more gruelling ejaculation might snatch my life away by cardiac arrest.

Meanwhile, at the same time, fluid was pooling up around my chest, and the instant the muscular ligature released my throat, the stream broke, spilling over my face in warm bubbly ropes.

Pushing the stack of pillows aside, she collapsed onto the mattress, coiling the sheets around her legs as she arched her back and moaned with contentment, riding the afterglow. She murmured something to me, but the blood gushing through my ears drowned it out. The soft sheets rubbed back and forth across my face, wiping the goo off. With my skull throbbing but cushioned between her blush-red, climax-puffy labia, tiny face nestled up under the folds of satin fabric, wound between her faintly shifting legs, my breathing relaxed and my head began to slump…

*

The organ had started up again, Wagner’s Wedding March straining through the air.

The bride stood immobile at the other end of the room while I continued to pad down the red carpet. My shoes were back, and the rest of me, in my tuxedo, but I kept my eyes straight ahead, reasoning that as long as I didn’t look down, my body wouldn’t change again.

But the rest of the building did. With the next step the bride’s expanded form strangely seemed to shrink a little, and a little more, and the walls of the church were scrolling down, as the tops of the pews came into sight, and the backs of peoples’ heads. As I drew closer, the bride continued to shrink in perspective until I was staring at the back of her head, parallel with her, our heights perfectly matched.

The woman turned, first her head, and then seeing it was me, her whole body spun to face me, her bridal veil shifted out of the way to give me a glimpse of her face. My jaw dropped.

Her fair-hair was long, voluminous, the sides pulled around her head in a half-up chignon, the rest ran down her back in cascading curls that made me think of some modern day Rapunzel. She didn’t just look ‘girl next door’ cute anymore, she looked positively beautiful, mature and glamorous, better than I remembered, and her eyes were warm and filled with affection for me.

She gave me an irresistible, radiant smile as she pushed forward against me, throwing her arms around my neck.

“I always said he was going to stand at my side,” warm breath tickled my neck, “and here you are.”

As her arms slid down again, something warm and soft burrowed into my hand; her own hand which squeezed and interlinked our fingers. I slipped my other arm around her waist as her other hand came up against the back of my neck and we shared a long kiss. 

The hall erupted with applause, and turning briefly to cast my eyes back through the church pews I could make out familiar faces in the crowd and see they had all made it to the wedding: Scott, Tasha, Stuart and his girlfriend, Remy and his boyfriend…and…and…

*BANG!* – *BANG!* – *BANG!*

Rapid booms made the cathedral walls shiver, disturbing clouds of dust from the vaulted ceiling to tumble down, glimmering in the sun beams shining through the windows.

The bride and I broke apart as people gasped and wailed from across the church, voices echoing in the stony cavernous interior.

The bride’s eyes spanned the walls in confusion and then, finally, stopped on me with a look of dread and, for some reason, accusation.

“What was that?”

My voice refused to come out, although I knew the answer to her question already, because the hairs on the back of my neck had begun to rise in a very particular way. It was like someone had knocked on a door but grossly magnified, obscenely loud as if from an abundant reserve of energy and impulsivity. Or something else.

Then a horrible crackling sound around the ceiling, more dust spilling down, before a thunderous ripping, the pouring in of air and sunlight on us all as the entire roof of the church was torn away.

Screams rent the air as people jumped up and fled down the carpet and out of the church.

The light dimmed and there was now a gargantuan shape looming over the edge of the cracked church walls, eclipsing the sun.

Long nails curled around the broken wall edges to steady the gigantic looming form as the dark shape tilted in over the building, inclining down to better view the now chaotic proceedings inside, as it did so, a long ropey tail of dual-colored hair dropped down the inner church wall like a tapestry banner.

My eyes flicked back to the bride, and her face was on me, aghast.

“Run!” I said.

And in that instant a shadow collapsed upon us as a giant arm telescoped down from the ceiling and onto the bride, plates of long gleaming nails passed right by my face, capping the ends of huge, long fingers that transformed into a flesh manacle flexing around the white plume skirt, drawing around her legs.

She tried to lunge free and dropped onto the floor as her legs were held in place.

“Jerry, don’t leave me!” she screamed, as she clawed at the red carpet.

No, I thought, goddamn it, I am not losing you again—!

I dove at the floor, making a grab for her hands and hold on, next second she was whipped up into the air over my head.

When I jumped up to look, she was dangling upside down high above the busted church walls, while giant fingertips pinched the end of her white skirt where her ankles were, the bridal veil trailing down in the air.

A pair of huge green eyes scrutinized her with dispassionate curiosity, like she was a plaything, while, below, a pair of massive lips sucked inward briefly, thoughtful and savoring.

A low feminine voice shook the air:

“I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO THIS…”

A shiver of horror raced up my spine.

“No!” I screamed up at the sky, balling my fists, “Stop! You’re going to kill her!”

But the mammoth head was tilting back, the throat convulsing to swallow the tide of building, anticipatory saliva, eyelids drifting closed as the jaw stretched open, preparing for the small squirming shape of the bride, dangling upside down being lowered towards the curled back lips…

This was the last sight I got before I could will my eyes closed, but didn’t think to block my ears soon enough not to hear the moist sucking gulp.

When I next could stomach a look, the bride had vanished, the giant lips were sucking inward again, smacking.

In helpless despair, I stared around at the now empty church pews.

“You’ve ruined everything!”

“IT WAS RUINED AS SOON AS THE BUFFET RAN OUT OF MINIATURE ÉCLAIRS,” came the quaking response. “AND HERE’S A TIP FOR YOUR WINE CATERER – COGNAC. IT’S A DIGESTIF. AND AFTER THAT,” her eyelids closed for a second as she suppressed a burp, “I THINK I’M GOING TO NEED IT.”

“No! No cognac! Get out of the roof!”

"HOLD IT, MISTER."

She lifted a finger at me in warning. Then her eyes focused on me with laser precision, the stare of a cheetah right before it lunges at prey.

“LET ME FINISH OFF THE SECOND COURSE.”

The architecture let out groans of protest as she shifted against the external framework, her head bowing down into the ceiling airspace, eyes locked onto me, the enormous arm snaking down again, fingers opening to grasp –

I spun around and was running back down the red carpet even knowing with final dread it was too late.

“Aaaargggghhh!”

*

The mattress groaned as heavy weight stirred and shifted, causing the surface beneath to bump around like a water bed.

Cool air fanned over me; my face was free of the satin sheets again, and the rest of my body felt loose and light, now outside her tunnel, my back against the mattress. To the side, the clock numerals glowed out through the darkness, reading 5.14 AM.

A croaking breath issued from my throat.

She moved up against my side, lifting her head, propping herself up on one arm, sliding her other hand over the mattress towards me to rest the pads of two fingers against my chest. It was not nearly enough pressure to keep me pinned to the bed, but the symbolic gesture was effective enough.

“LOOK AT YOU! SO PERKY…” Her voice came out a threadbare murmur of astonishment, and she was so sleepy she could barely get the words out straight.

I stared at the ceiling dumbly, as the fingers lifted off my chest, trailed downwards and closed around my erection, tugging with gusto, lifting my pelvis off the mattress for an instant, making my tired, sore balls screw up tight in fear.

“…I LOVE IT!”

My dick was rolled back and forth as she awaited my response, shaft being stretched almost painfully, and grinded around between the grippy ridges of her fingerprints, teased until it was achingly tender.

“Uhhh…” I groaned.

Before I could say anything else, my chest was squeezed up in anxiously grasping fingers, lifted from the mattress and drawn into the depths of the stuffy oven beneath the blankets. Massive movements played around in the darkness; her enormous form rolled and steadied into a comfortable position on her back, thighs spread out, one hand opened the slit and the other jammed my feet into it.

Pressure driving downwards on my head, sending my body slipping down her damp crevice, though less quick to moisten now, she needed to apply more pressure to manipulate me up and down. Her hand shadowed over my face as fingers pinched my skull and yanked, dragging my face over her clitoris.

Her hand slapped over the bedside table, scooping up lube which was then slapped over my face like a moisturizing mask, roughly patted around my features before gripping my head, drawing my body out to receive more chilled lube which was roughly patted around my body before I was slid back in. As I shivered inside her tunnel, it screwed up around my torso and head, defensive and irritated by the cold, as if trying to smother the life out of me in punishment for the unwelcome stimulation.

Then the walls were in fierce exercise, pounding in at me like gnawing jaws, scrunching my muscles and flexing my spine. The top of my head bumped against the inside of a cupped hand which was simultaneously stroking her clit and rimming the lips.

The world disappeared behind a fog, my body must have continued to writhe even unconsciously, then I was awake again, muscles still pulling and jerking, still being chewed up in the muscular jaws of her pelvis as she approached the height of ecstasy. Now the vaginal opening had slipped into position just beneath my jaw, too comfortably as if by habit, and when it pulled around my throat and held there, stars flickered in front of my eyes before the world went dark again.

In an instant, it was back, the band of muscle still around my neck, throbbing, flexing my overburdened throat muscles, and the pressure of building fluid rolling up along my body towards my head, ready to burst. The band of tension around my neck snapped, the dammed up fluid gushed out, bathing my face in cloying, watery glue. Meanwhile, her thighs tensed as she stretched powerfully and let out a big, satisfied yawn. Suddenly, the world flipped as she turned over, and the sheets rustled as she gently raked her nails over her aroused breasts before settling and going still.

Exhausted beyond reason, and in agony for air beneath the slow moving, syrupy spillage gluing up my airways, my eyes rolled back into my head…

The dim ceiling filled up the sky, though I couldn’t remember opening my eyes. It was like I’d just been transported here in an instant. The night felt hazy and dreamlike. For a second I was so disoriented I couldn’t even figure out where I was or what day it was.

The clock said 6.48 AM. The bedroom was no longer dark, but fuzzy gray.

It hurt. Everything. All over.

Muscles were tight and stiff like hardened clay. I pointed my feet out and made a pained gasp as my legs stretched like brittle wood boards, like I’d never stretched them before in my life. The motion triggered a cramp beneath my ribcage. And – ouch – the skin was so tender. Felt like bruising down there. The friction of inflamed muscles rubbing together felt like sandpaper.

Pulling my legs in again, I went still in a fetal position.

Blood was smacking through my head like I’d been struck with a block of wood. Giddy nausea rolled up my insides but held back at the last second.

“Uuunnggghh…”

I groaned, laggy from sleep loss, wondering if it really was morning. It didn’t feel like a new day, but like I’d gone back in time one day, not forward, as if jet-lagged from crossing a time zone.

Unrested by the shallow catnaps I’d managed to catch throughout the night, my brain craved long, deep, uninterrupted sleep. And my heart needed rest; fluttering at off-beats like a startled bird.

Next to me, a deep, low, purring sigh, completely uninhibited; not yet fully emerged from an enviously deep restfulness, at least far more than I felt. The mattress rocked and a depression built up on my side, tilting me towards the center. Even this shallow motion shook me with another flow and ebb of nausea.

The mattress groaned. Then, after a long outpouring of hot stale air pushed against the back of my head, a sedate, throaty rumble just behind my right ear:

“HELLO DOWN THERE, HANDSOME...”

Her voice slurred like she was still half asleep. Then, a pair of pillowy lips pressed clumsily against my shoulder in a kiss that applied too much of the weight of her head, driving me down beneath it, flattening me against the mattress for an instant.

As the weight relaxed again, her head settled right next to me, radiating my back in warm breath. A couple of fingertips swept over my legs and began probing around an erection I didn’t even realize I’d had. I shifted restlessly. Like her kiss, her touch was sleepy; heavy and unfocused, my dick getting half squashed and stretched as the digits roamed around over it.

“HOW DID YOU SLEEP?” she mumbled, then paused as she examined my motionless body from beneath bleary, half-lidded eyes, “…DID YOU SLEEP?”

“Doesn’t feel like it…” I said, absent-mindedly rubbing my pec, which still stung a little.

“HMM…” she said distractedly. And then a moist sound. A moment later, a wet, sticky pressure and soft digging feeling against my cheek as it was brushed by a saliva-stained fingertip, gently scratching to wipe away some mark. It turned out to be some bed lint pasted to my cheek by dried female ejaculate, which she flicked from her finger with disinterest.

Then her breath returned in great warm flaps as she moved in close at the back of my head.

“IN THAT CASE…” her sleep-heavy words halting, “…YOU MAY HAVE ALL THE SLEEP IN THE WORLD. BUT FIRST…” her conspiratorial whisper thrummed in my ear: “…LET’S SEE IF YOU CAN MAKE ME CLIMAX BEFORE THE SUN RISES…”

Before I could react, my ankles were snatched together and I was already being dragged down along the mattress on my belly, the ceiling covered by the blanket as I was sucked down into the stuffy depths of the bed. Her enormous body shifted around in the dark, radiating intense warmth on every side, positioning itself to receive me. The masses of her legs lifted and parted – I only knew this because the displacement of air created a cool breeze on my face that tricked me into thinking it was fresher down here than it actually was.

My chest was pincered in by blundering digits, clumsy with impatience and recent slumber, lifting me off the mattress, rotating through the cool early morning air, but this time, angling me around for insertion. In the past when we’d done penetration, she ensured I went in legs first, for my comfort. But now my body was turned the wrong way, with my feet facing away from her slit. It wasn’t clear she was aware of it; she was so drowsy maybe she thought I was the other way around. My legs paddled uselessly for a second.

Then the puffy lips were sucking moistly on my face as the crown of my head was slipping past the smooth rim of her vagina. The tunnel walls pulled in, cradling and gripping, conveying my body further and further with satisfied scrunching motions, as if sucking me up through a straw, whilst washing me up and down in its warm fluids.

My arms were pressed against my sides, severely restricting my ability to struggle. The tunnel walls had my thighs pinned together, I tried to kick my feet but could only roll my hips.

Fingers pushed against my buttocks – maybe confusing it for the top of my head – with a wet slurp I disappeared inside her until just my feet stuck out. Another battering shove, this time against the soles of my feet drove me inside her completely.

The hips flexed as the vagina grew tighter, clenching my shoulders, but the passage was drier and even through the pressure, I held in position. Fingertips entered past the slit and poked at the soles of my feet again, the slippery walls caressed my cheeks as my head budged along, jamming up even deeper into the stale dark.

And then, further along, something strange happened. The interval between contractions lengthened, and each contraction was dampened, until the motions dulled to faint twitching, and then, cessation of motion.

“Uh...Hello…?” I murmured in the dark, feeling kind of cartoonish, but I didn’t know what else to say. It was like she’d changed her mind, but the tapering off of her arousal was too gradual; like she’d changed her mind in stages, which didn’t make sense.

There was a rocking sensation and I was bodily turned along with her as she rolled over onto her side.  The flesh walls clamped in, at first gradually, then by alarming increments, a little more and a little more, and in mere seconds becoming an intolerable vice, the inside of a constricting python. Her whole body was relaxing, and as the muscular weight of her hips and rump slackened, they closed the tunnel inwards.

My body sagged in sheer disbelief, like a deflated balloon, as the realization clicked: this final attempted orgasm had done it: she’d been tired out. She was falling asleep – if she wasn’t basically asleep already.

By some tiny mercy, there was an air pocket trapped in the tunnel, and with my tiny lungs needing less oxygen, it could probably provide sustenance for a little while longer, before I had to start drawing on the eight minute window, or however left I had to hold my breath. I gulped the sour, sweaty air down like it was magical elixir.

Now consciousness wavered in and out in snatches; made incoherent by the pitch black. Moments ran together timelessly, or split into disjointed snatches of sudden alertness, then blanks of micro amnesia. It wasn’t certain from moment to moment whether I was awake, or how much time had passed. A cramp pulled in my chest, as my head was floating one second, panging with a headache the next.

Awareness dissolved into black…

Then sensations were back; her slowed heartbeat sending its subwoofer through the length of the tunnel, each pulse making my cramped muscles twinge painfully, the musky invasion of sweltering air, a headache like my skull had been snapped up in a mousetrap. I made one last attempt to cry out; but heard no noise, my ears were filled with static.

Then blackness again…

*

Still pitch black.

How was that possible? Something in my brain sensed it should be morning. But I had no real idea.

My heartbeat sounded in my ears. A rubbery skin-tight tube, warm as an oven, pressed against me from every angle, soaking me in pungent musky slime sweating down the faintly pulsating walls.

“Help…” I croaked. My voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well.

There was no response. It was like having wandered in the desert; I was hopelessly confused, a thundering headache and thoughts spinning on the brink of delirium. Couldn’t remember five minutes ago let alone how I got here, where ‘here’ was.

There was a disorienting revolving feeling, like motion through space. Then pounding bumps gripped my body over and over – a shuddering walking motion. The shuddering stopped with a dropping sensation before all movement jolted to a halt.

A strange feeling started at my head and raced down my feet. It was a distinct feeling of pressure, like someone poking their finger (not normal sized, but proportionate to me) into the top of my head, and drawing a line rapidly down my body: down my forehead, right between my eyes, over my lips and chin, then down the center of my chest, belly, along my shaft. The moment it hit my feet, a sound broke out, muffled, the soft pattering of a hose stream hitting the inside of a bucket.

Realizing what it was, my mouth scrunched. Jennifer must have gotten up to use the bathroom. She was now sitting on the toilet, with me still inside her pussy. Inflated with containment, her vagina pushed out against her urethra, which was right next door. The front of my body pushed out against the urethra so much that, as the pee ran down, I could feel the neighboring tube firm up, pushing back against me, as it inflated with pee.

She uttered a throaty sound that made my dick twitch. It wasn’t just a sound of relief, it was vaguely sexual. Whether she knew it or not, my captivity seemed to be giving her stream an unusual, sensual feeling.

All I could do was wait it out. But with all the wine and rum she'd ingested the previous night, this took an extended moment. The muffled spraying sound played for what seemed like a long time, with the pressure of her ‘tiny waterslide’ digging along the center line of my body the entire time, and the warmth of the pee radiating through the dividing membrane, making me sweat. Meanwhile her pulse thrilled up and down my body with a happy, relaxed cadence. I willed myself to remain silent and still. However, the warm pressure of her stream pulsating right down my shaft was making my groin tighten up.

Finally the pressure running down my body subsided, and the stream sound dwindled to drips, and then nothing. But it was not over.

There was a muted sound like crinkling plastic wrapper, and the vaginal tunnel tensed below my feet, seeming to pull apart. I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, she was pulling me out.

Right then some blunt object came ramming up into the soles of my feet, smacking at them, too imprecise to be fingertips searching for my ankles.

“Hey…!” I cried, trying to squirm, but the rubbery walls were so thick and my body so fatigued, it didn’t do any good; I couldn’t move an inch.

The object stopped for a second, then came back, smashing into my feet again, and this time the force spread my legs, and swept them against one side of the slimy tunnel, allowing the object to blunder into my nuts, and make a forceful nudging motion, as if trying to grind them up like a pestle.

The floor of my stomach seemed to shake apart and collapse; I wheezed in pain as the object clumsily probed around my butt before retreating.

Now it seemed to have gone for good. A ragged gasp escaped my chest. My nuts still rang with pain but I was just glad they hadn’t been demolished. Through a dim haze, it occurred to me that I was trapped inside her pussy, but I couldn’t figure out what was attacking me. It was roughly the shape of a slender finger, but it couldn’t be, it was too rigid, and too small to be a dildo.

The tube seemed tighter all of a sudden, the musk choking up my lungs as I was forced to rely on it for oxygen, while the poor air quality kept me dizzy and stupid. It struck me only with concerted thought: the object must have been a tampon. That confirmed it: she didn’t know I was in here.

Wow… I thought, my nerves firing, close call. If she’d managed to insert it, it would have sealed me inside her like corked up wine.

During this time, a minute must have passed. Maybe the sense of relief was premature: I still needed to get out of here first.

Then the blunt object came back with a vengeance, smacking into me from below like a bowling ball, and now startlingly cold: the tip covered in slippery gel to ease its passage.

“No…!” I screamed, trying to flex my shoulders and rely on torso strength to shift around, seeing as my hands were pinned to my sides. “I’m in here!”

My voice was drowned out by a much louder, deeper sound: a husky feminine voice that came from the other side of the tunnel, groggy and half slurring with sleep.

"UGH, DAMMIT…”

Even at a mutter her voice muted my pitiful, muffled screams.

The tapered tip of the tampon continued to batter at me, sliding up my legs, sweeping them out of the way until they were plastered against one side of the tunnel, and then knocking away against my butt repeatedly with the force of a bludgeon. The ribbed shaft was thinly lined with lubricant, which was smeared over my legs and around my butt, and then as my butt cheeks were pushed apart, the cold gel ran up my crack.

It seemed I was even more flexible than I realized. One more battering blow into my butt cheeks and the pointed tip parted my anal passage and sunk in deep. There was a sickening plunging as the tampon raced upward, swelling up everything in its path as it went, before hitting some internal barrier and stopping.

The resulting intolerable pressure had my entire genital area weighing a ton, my anal sphincter felt like it had been attacked by wasps – it must have torn.

As if sensing something was wrong, the tampon now decided to make a retreat again. There was a small pulling feeling around my butt – I grimaced in despair – as she wound the string tight around her finger and tugged. But the tampon didn’t budge.

She tried again; pulling harder. There was a weird, nauseating feeling like my insides were stretching down. I was gritting my teeth so hard my gums hurt.

But the tampon still didn’t move. She gave a deep sigh of irritation.

“SHIT…” she murmured under her breath, then, after winding the string more tightly, it was given one almighty yank.

A scream tore from my lips as it felt like a fist buried inside my stomach was trying to punch down through my bowels. Then my body slipped, shot down and, with a wet pop, emerged into the cold air, spinning upside down on the end of the tampon string.

The inside of the toilet bowl encircled the horizon as I dangled helplessly between spread thighs, before rising above them, up under the notice of a pair of green eyes which stared down at me in horror.

“OH, FUCK—!”

There was an upward jolt, the walls of the bathroom rapidly rotated into view, then I was lowered, my head bumping a towel, with rest of me following, angling down until I was in a lying position, the terry cloth pressing against my cheek. Then the corners of the towel lifted on either side of me, taking me up into the air like a giant hammock as she carried it out of the bathroom.

A moment later, a hard surface pressed up beneath me as the towel was spread over the coffee table

Her massive form loomed over me to inspect the damage. The fingers of one hand slid around my lower belly, which was distended and rock hard. Starting at my lower ribs, the thumb made a series of palpating thrusts towards my groin, trying to coax the head of the tampon back down my chute. When that didn’t work, I was gently rolled onto my front while her thumb repeated the process down my spine to my tailbone. Then the thumb and fingertips moved to either side of my belly and began to pinch inwards, and roll back and forth over my cramping abdomen. Already unbearably firm, every squeeze made me feel like a car being compacted between hydraulic plates.

The fingers of the other hand captured the string and began to tug gently, until my insides were searing with pain.

“Stop!” I cried, gripping the towel so hard my knuckles were white. “Stop!”

“I KNOW IT HURTS,” she soothed, “BUT WE’RE GOING TO FIX THIS, OKAY?” 

She jumped up again and strode out of the room.

“I NEED SOME TONGS…” she muttered, more to herself.

“No…” I uttered weakly, not knowing what I was in for except that it would occasion more horrendous suffering.

When she returned she didn’t have tongs, or any other medieval tools, but she had washed her hands and put on some clothes.

“WE’RE GOING TO THE VET,” she said, collecting her car keys.

“No!” I wailed.

The corners of the towel rose up, carrying me up into the air again in a giant sling. I curled my fists into the cloth, burying my face against it as I was conveyed through the house, out the front door and into the car, finally coming down to rest again on the passenger seat.

The car rolled out of the driveway, and shivers wracked my frame, running through the car upholstery, up through the tires, and churning my tender insides. Over the car engine, bubbling cries of pain issued from my lips, and over that, her repeated utterances of assurance.

The stiff bulk stopping up my internal cavity was putting pressure on my organs, which were in turn pushing against my lungs. Air raced thinly in and out of my chest, but not enough to fight against a growing dizzy spell that had my vision going dark.

*

The neighborhood dogs had gone crazy; yipping and barking at some unseen stimulus. I was lying in bed, wrapped up in sheets.

The dogs kept baying; so loud like they were up against the bedroom window. Animal nails raked at hard surfaces.

“Keep it down, I’m trying to sleep!” I groaned, rolling over.

The dogs went quiet for a millisecond, and then started up again.

“Jen…” I grumbled, “…could you please close the window…?”

A cat yowled.

My eyes cracked open. The comforting master bedroom walls were nowhere to be seen, and it wasn’t the queen bed mattress below, but the folds of a towel on a hard surface. Wrapped around my middle were not sheets but gauze bandages, all around my torso and over my butt, and beneath them I was naked. The smell of iodine antiseptic filled the enclosure, and when I coughed, an ache ripped up my stomach.

A shadowy room enclosed me – and strangely small, or, as big as a normal sized room compared to me. Even more strange, one wall was a barred gate. A prison cell?

It seemed like the setting for a surreal nightmare, but I was too alert to be dreaming.

The dogs quietened, listening. There were noises coming into earshot, and getting closer: the padding sounds of huge feet stepping linoleum. The noises tapped over the floor towards my box.

Like a light switching off, the bright wall out beyond the barred gate went dim as something huge passed by it and stopped. The massive form cast me in darkness.

My eyes narrowed and focused. It was the face of a young woman. The vet.

She clicked her tongue at me as if I was just another pet in a cage, and getting my attention, she then grinned.

“NOW, THERE’S A FAMILIAR FACE,” she cooed in at me. “SEEMS BIGGER THAN LAST TIME WE CAUGHT UP. NOT A LITTLE SPRINKLE ANYMORE – MORE LIKE THE FULL CUPCAKE. BUT JUST AS CUTE!” 

“W-what happened?” I mumbled.

“SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAD A WILD NIGHT,” she exclaimed. “YOUR PARTNER SAID IT WAS A BACHELOR PARTY STUNT GONE WRONG. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR BUDDIES WERE TRYING TO PROVE, BUT THEY MANAGED TO STUFF YOU LIKE A FAT LITTLE TURKEY. I HAD TO SNIP YOUR BELLY OPEN TO POKE AWAY AT THE STUFFING SO I COULD SEND IT BACK OUT THE WAY IT CAME.”

My head dropped back against the towel in disbelief, while a giant hand wearing a blue surgical glove shaded me as it went to flip the spring lock and the barred door gave a tiny squeal as it was rotated outwards to allow the hand to enter.

“AND THE ENTIRE TIME I WAS WORKING AWAY ON THE OPERATING TABLE, GUESS WHO WAS POKING UP PROUDLY?” Her gloved forefinger gave the head of my penis a tap. “THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO NEED TO STICK A CLAMP ON IT TO KEEP IT OUT OF THE WAY,” she added with a wink.

The gloved hand caught my glans between a forefinger and thumb, rolling it back and forth for inspection.

“WHAT A RIPE RED CHERRY,” she murmured, giving my glans a squeeze. “DON'T GET TOO EXCITED; YOU’LL POP!”

The vet fussed over the yipping occupants of the other enclosures – which I now realized were pet carry cages. Disturbingly, she used the same cheerful cooing voice to them as she did me. The animals mercifully settled down again after she left the room to attend to other work.

Sometime later, she returned, striding right up in front of my cage.

“SOMEONE’S LOOKING FOR YOU, MISTER CUPCAKE,” she sang, as her hand grasped the top of the cage, where there must have been a handle, sliding the box out, and then it was floating through the room at her side, the white clinic walls swaying past jauntily with her strides.

The hallway ended as the clinic lobby expanded around outside the bars, then the box rose like an elevator and clunked onto the surface of a long reception desk.

Jen appeared on the other side of the barred door, bowing down and peering in at me with concern. Seeing that I was conscious she gave me a small smile.

“HE’S A LITTLE FUZZY RIGHT NOW BECAUSE OF THE PAIN RELIEF,” the vet was saying, “AND I STARTED HIM ON A COURSE OF ANTIBIOTICS. HE’S GOT A FEW STITCHES DOWN THERE SO HOLD BACK ON THE BELLY RUBS, BUT THEY’LL KNIT RIGHT UP ON THEIR OWN. AND THE BACK PASSAGE AND THE CHUBBY LITTLE BUNDLE AT THE FRONT MIGHT BE A TINY BIT TENDER. BUT APART FROM THAT,” the cage walls thumped as her hand gave the roof an enthusiastic slap, “HE’S A HARDY, FIT LI’L FELLA AND I THINK HE’S ALL GOOD TO GO!”

Back home, the pet crate came down on the living room sofa. The barred wire door swung open and I took numb, wobbly steps out onto the seat while Jen put the cage away. Each step caused a lance of pain up my anus and deep into my stomach, so I began to gingerly lower myself down into a sitting position as she came back into the room. Crouching down by the sofa, she slid her fingertips under my jaw and delicately tilted my head up to examine my face, look into my eyes, then, satisfied, pressed a kiss against the top of my head.

Noticing her athletic wear, I asked:

“What did you do while I was at the vet?” My sense of time was shot, since a chunk of hours had jumped ahead while I was under sedation. It was now midday.

"I WENT JOGGING,” she shrugged, looking away, “HAD A SHOWER. HAD A LATTE, GOOGLED SOME WEDDING DRESSES. IF YOU HAVE AN OPINION, I MADE A LIST OF DESIGNERS."

"While I was in surgery,” I confirmed, “hovering between life and death, you were looking at wedding dresses...?"

"OH, SHUSH. I DIDN'T PUT AN ORDER DOWN. JUST GETTING A VISUAL, FIGURING OUT A PRICE POINT."

"I can't believe you..."

“OH, AND I TOLD CHRISTINE ABOUT YESTERDAY. SHE’S GOING TO BE MY MAID OF HONOR.”

"Please don't tell me you told Christine about this..."

"OF COURSE. SHE'S BACK IN MY LIFE NOW SO WE TALK A LITTLE. AND YOU'RE BACK IN MY LIFE SO I TALK ABOUT YOU."

"Uggghhh. I need another hit of something. Do we have any ibuprofen…?”

“ENOUGH MEDS!,” she cautioned, after bringing me a plastic shot cup filled with water from the kitchen, “YOU’RE DOPED UP ENOUGH. YOU CAN BARELY SIT STRAIGHT.”

She tilted the cup as I took a couple of small sips, not drinking too much; worried about filling up my carved up stomach. The cup was put aside on the coffee table as I burped and then collapsed forwards in a wince as it elicited a small spasm of pain in my gut. She just chuckled and there was a sharp trace of vanilla as she brushed her thumb over my lips to wipe my mouth.

Pausing to examine me for a moment, she said:

“PERMISSION TO CUDDLE, PILOT?”

I sighed.

“Granted. But don’t touch my stomach.”

“LIKE THIS—?”

Lightning fast, she gave my belly a light tap with her fingernail, triggering a tiny stab of pain in my gut. I hugged my arms around myself in defence.

“Argh – Yes! Don’t do that!”

She did it again.

“Don’t – Stop it.”

I swatted my arms at the nail as it returned, but it successfully darted around my arms and pushed against my stomach lightly.

“Gah! That hurts! Knock it off.”

The nail was coming back.

“Permission denied. No cuddling.”

The nail curled up and withdrew again.

“OKAY. NO MORE.”

Standing, she kicked her sneakers aside and pulled off her running jacket, leaving an athletic crop top that left her stomach exposed.

Cupped hands positioned themselves down on the seat in front of me, I crawled unsteadily onto the velvety soft, vanilla-scented palms, moving slowly so I didn’t ignite pain in my belly. Then she dropped onto the sofa, reclining against propped up pillows and placing me onto her abdominal wall, forming a natural mattress.

I collapsed onto my side as her fingertips curled over my shoulder and began to massage, taking care to avoid my tender stomach while she checked her phone with her other hand. Her stomach expanded against my cheek in gentle, rhythmic waves as she inhaled, and below the wall of muscle, emitting faint gurgles.

“THIS MORNING,” she said, sounding chastened, “I DIDN’T REALIZE YOU WERE DOWN THERE.”

“I know,” I mumbled.

“FORGIVE ME?”

“It was an accident. There’s nothing to forgive.”

Her stroking fingers paused, she seemed to be in thought. Then she went on:

“I DON’T KNOW IF YOU ARE AWARE, BUT,” her voice lowered as if to let me in on a secret: “WHILE YOUR LEGS WERE STICKING OUT, YOUR COCK WAS PUSHING UP INTO MY CLIT, AND IT WAS ACTUALLY KIND OF BEAUTIFUL: YOU WERE CUPPING ME, YOUR COCK WAS THE BIG SPOON, AND I WAS MAKING YOU THROB LIKE CRAZY. IT FELT SO GOOD THAT I…MAY HAVE TRIED TO KEEP YOU IN THERE A LITTLE LONGER THAN I…PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE…”

Her voice trailed off, awaiting my response. I listened patiently and understood everything she said, but it made little impact; my senses were dulled from the drugs. Lacking words, I gave a dry, resigned laugh.

She hesitated as if not sure how to interpret this. With her fingertips resting on my shoulder, her thumb curled over my head and began tousling my hair.

“HEY…” she declared, “I REALLY LOVE YOU. I COULD JUST EAT YOU UP LIKE DESSERT.”

“I love you more.”

A forefinger and thumb gave my head a soft, grateful squeeze.

“I ALREADY KNOW THAT. I RECALL THAT YOU ATE ME UP A NUMBER OF TIMES LAST NIGHT. MOST EXCELLENT STUFF BY THE WAY.”

She was on her phone then for a little while, letting me rest. I was asleep almost as soon as my eyelids closed. Suddenly it was a little later, her voice rumbled back into my awareness, a finger tapping my shoulder to get my attention.

“OH, I WAS GOING TO TELL YOU,” she was saying, “A GUY CALLED ME; SOUNDED LIKE HE WANTED TO MEET UP WITH YOU.”

“Did he say why?” I muttered, voice hoarse from napping.  

“JUST THAT HE WAS FROM A FILM AGENCY OR SOMETHING.”

My eyelids cracked open and I blinked.

“Oh…” I said, with realization. Sounded like another media outfit looking to shoot another interview.

“So he wants to visit us?”

“I DON’T THINK SO,” she said slowly. “HE WANTS TO MEET YOU IN TOWN FOR A DRINK.”

Well, that sounded less confronting than a ready camera crew knocking at the door.

“Did he say where or when?”

“HE ACTUALLY CALLED EARLIER IN THE WEEK, BUT WITH EVERYTHING GOING ON I’VE SORTA BEEN BLOWING HIM OFF. BUT IF YOU’RE INTERESTED, I’LL GIVE HIM A CALL BACK AND SEE IF WE CAN SET SOMETHING UP.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Maybe I’m crazy but I think I want to.”

Compared to the nerve-wracking meeting with Jasper at insect size, a meeting with someone – potentially anyone else – at mouse size seemed like nothing.

She began to scroll through her phone, looking for the guy’s details.

“WHAT IF I COME WITH?” she said. “FOR SUPPORT. I MEAN, WE’RE TOGETHER NOW, SO WE DO THINGS TOGETHER.”

“I don’t see why not,” I said, feeling a small surge of brightness through the haze of the anesthesia and fatigue. I nuzzled against her belly, closing my eyes again. “Thanks, babe.”

A thumbpad slid over the nape of my neck to the crown of my head and rested there, applying faint downward pressure that was unmistakably possessive, but also warm and somehow relaxing, lulling me into sleep again.

“I GOT YOU, LITTLE MAN.”

We were headed into the inner city.

Jennifer drove, with me squeezed in place between her thighs. Normally she let me ride shotgun in a specially made harness, except when we were doing something new, or she was anxious. Today, it was both.

It was unfortunate I could not drive; I was the patient, considerate driver. She was not. With reckless abandon she pounced on gaps, openings, and head starts, as if these scored you bonus points in a standard driver’s test. When I, normal size, had driven her, she’d given cocky drivers’ scandalized death glares from the passenger seat and tapped me, urging things like, ‘You see that, guy? – Beep him!’ and then reached over and slapped the horn because I never did. Yet, if an irate driver had marched up to my window and tried to wrench me out of the car, I didn’t have the same confidence that I could karate chop him.

Now, from my low vantage point at seat level the speedometer was too high up to see, and probably that was a good thing. Under her watch the red needle tended to creep up and up. And at my size, the forces of physics felt amplified, making turns feel like riding a crazy mouse coaster. Each sharp turn her thighs would grip me even tighter. Then the thigh muscles flexed subtly against my ribcage every time she prodded the accelerator down, or relieved it. Each tap of the brakes was accompanied by my chest being scrunched inwards. At one point, a rapid, last second application of pressure to the brake pumped my chest between her thighs so fast it winded me. There was a tiny breathless squeak as the air whooshed out of my lungs, and I squirmed frantically, fighting the pressure of her legs to try and get my chest to expand back to normal size.

“OOPS,” she murmured, reaching one hand down from the steering wheel to brush a couple of soft fingertips against my scalp, “SORRY. FELT YOU SQUISH A LITTLE THERE. IT’S THE TRAFFIC…”

The morning commute sounds played around over my head while, caught in place between her brawny thighs, constant vibrations ran through my tiny body from the bumpy road contact. Not uncomfortable, actually like sitting in an electric massage chair. The vibration of my butt cheeks and lower spine was a little tender though. Luckily her vibrating thighs were not pressed against my lower front, otherwise it probably would have enlivened my dick, and I really didn’t need to make such a memorable first impression on my breakfast host.

We were in an uptown, leafy green part of the city, with plenty of walking space, and a quiet day, so Jen had no hesitation carrying me up the paved streets in her hand. Some guys’ made eyes at Jen and, passing, their heads swivelled to follow, but they didn’t notice me. She kept her eyes front but she must have noticed them. She pulled me in a little closer to her body until I was sheltered just below her bust, while her thumb began to stroke my spine.

I had my own apprehensions to contend with. From the elevation of her hand, the green maples came at me with a lurch of déjà vu: it was somewhere around these park-lined, open paved streets that I had sat up in a rooftop café on my first date with Samantha. As to how well that turned out, I was pretty sure she was in a courtroom somewhere turning the charm up to eleven to convince some antediluvian old judge out of rapping her with prison time.

It turned out the venue was past the maple park, down a narrow street lined with ethnic food houses and bright signs. It was uptown, but not on stage; the narrow streets and terraced façades provided a measure of privacy. The destination was a breakfast house called Nineteen39 with black and white façade, plain white sign with typewriter font, housed in a building so inconspicuous and narrow we missed it the first time until the lot numbers had us turn back to find it had unexpectedly materialized in a lot we thought we’d already checked.

We headed inside; the café was bigger on the inside, extending out into outdoor dining space. A man in a casual suit and Ray-Bans, sitting at one of the closer tables looked up from his phone call and waved us over to a table at the side, in the corner.  He was bald with tanned skin, a pencil line chin strap beard and moustache, and expressive, fast-moving eyes that made him look younger than he probably was – either that, or the half-drunk espresso on the table in front of him was not nearly his first for the day.

He stared at me as we approached, his eyes lit up.

“JERRY!” he said as if we knew each other – but admittedly not an unusual reaction for a stranger ever since I’d done a TV special on my miniature condition.

I wrenched my arm out of my containment in Jennifer’s fist and went to thrust my hand into the air so he could shake it between his fingertips but he was too fast for me. His huge fist was already swinging through the air towards me, his pointer finger slightly extended, making a curled up hook at my chest level. I stared at it a little disconcerted; it looked like he was aiming to punch me with a pointer knuckle jab, but then he said:

"BUMP ME, LI'L BRO."

I bumped my fist into his knuckle.

"FARRIS FRANKLIN,” he introduced himself, lowering his hand again. “FARRIS, NOT FERRIS LIKE FERRIS BUELLER. DON'T QUOTE IT TO ME; I KNOW ALL THE QUOTES."

He briskly pulled out a seat at the table for Jennifer, and went around the other side, sliding into seat opposite her. The polished wooden table surface came up under my feet as she took her seat and placed me down directly in front of her.

“This is my fiancée, Jennifer,” I said, patting her hand which was resting on the table against me. It suddenly occurred to me that I was leaning on the back of her hand like the armrest of a sofa. I quickly scooted away and sat up straight, concentrating on Farris’ face, trying to model my features on his; cool and friendly, but not unbusinesslike.

“AH, YOU’RE THE OTHER HALF,” he nodded, shaking her hand over the table. “AND LET ME GUESS, YOU’RE THE ONE WHO PULLS ALL THE STRINGS.”

“NO,” Jen replied. “ONLY MOST OF THEM.”

Farris grinned and then his voice was firing down at me again:

“JERRY, YOU’VE BEEN ON MY MIND. BUT YOU HAD ME STRAPPING ON MY NIKES TRYING TO FLAG YOU DOWN." He had his arms over the table, patting the pads of his fingertips together idly. His eyebrow quirked. "DON'T YOU READ EMAILS?"

"I was sick last week," I replied, after a pause. 

He shook his head.

“AND I WAS IN MADRID LAST WEEK – TRUE. BUT I’M BACK, AND YOU’RE BETTER. LISTEN: ARM YOURSELF WITH AN IPHONE AND DON’T EVER LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT IT. WANNA TALK ABOUT WHAT I DO: I’M WITH A MIDSIZE TALENT AGENCY AND AT THE MOMENT WE’RE IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH A FILM PRODUCER WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN SIGNING YOU ON FOR SOME WORK.”

It didn’t register at first. I stared back at him as if waiting for him to say more.

“YOU MEAN ACTING?” said Jennifer.

“PERFORMING,” Farris clarified.

“Don’t I need some kind of training for that?” I asked.

“YOU'RE A SPECIAL CASE, JERRY,” Farris said. “YOU DON'T HAVE A PRE-EXISTING BODY OF WORK, BUT YOU HAVE A WORKEABLE BODY." He made a vague hand gesture at me, like an up and down wave to connote my size. "YOU'RE UNIQUE AND YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT.”

The young female server passed by our table with cappuccinos which we hadn’t yet asked for – apparently Farris had ordered them for us before we arrived. Mine was in a proportionately correct ceramic mug, and I took it in wonder and appreciation that I could hold it by the handle and drink from it like a normal person. It must have been a toy or something, but it functioned as a cup perfectly fine.

After serving us, the young female server’s eyes got stuck on me. My heart seized up with dread. Then her eyes met Farris and he gave her the faintest of looks, but it seemed to make her pass away again without remark to me. In any other context the woman would have made a small scene over me, except for Farris's subtle intervention. Being recognized in public was one thing but some of these encounters resulted in being picked up, stroked, and even tickled by – usually young women – who totally lost all their scruples about physical contact at the sight of a miniature human being.

My esteem of this guy just kept rising and rising. I gazed back up at him with growing interest.

“THINK: VERY PARTICULAR ROLES,” he was saying. “IF WE COULD CLONE YOU, WE WOULD. BUT THERE’S JUST ONE OF YOU AND MY TEAM WANTS TO SNAP YOU UP.”

“Will I be walking around on movie sets?” I asked, feeling awestruck. Farris interpreted this question as a fitness concern.

“GOOD QUESTION. FILM CREW WILL HAVE PEOPLE TO HELP YOU OUT. BUT STAYING ON TOP OF A FITNESS REGIME'S A WISE MOVE. I CAN LINK YOU UP WITH A PERSONAL TRAINER – ALSO A JERRY, SO YOU ALREADY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON.”

“Sure.”

Inwardly, I had no interest taking up this offer, fronting up to a man Jerry to stare down at me, gauging, trying to put himself in my shoes, thinking there but for the grace of God go I.

The other man shifted in his chair.

“I’M BEYOND INFORMATIONAL. DON’T WANNA TURN UP THE PRESSURE, BUT IF YOU’RE INTERESTED YOU NEED TO RACE BACK TO ME ON IT, SO I CAN SET YOU UP.”

A set of tanned knuckles brandished over the table like a speeding car, the fingers unfurling to grasp my hand. We shook while Jennifer was rummaging in her handbag for her purse to pay for our drinks, but Farris put a hand up.

“STOP RIGHT THERE,” he said. “ALL ON ME. I KNOW THE MANAGER.”

He stood up, tucking his chair in.

“HATE TO LEAVE YOU GUYS. GOT A BUSINESS ERRAND. BUT JERRY,” his bright, keen eyes peered into mine as he lifted his Ray-Bans off his head, “THINK ABOUT IT. GET YOURSELF A PHONE AND HIT ME UP. MAKE ME YOUR FIRST CALL.”

He moved towards the front exit.

“KEEP THE MUG,” he said, turning back in the doorway to me before he left. “IT’S YOURS.”

He strode out the café door and headed up the street.

I rotated the mug in my hands to find it stamped with his name, agency and contact details.

We stayed in the coffee house a little while longer, because Jennifer wanted to eat something. She came back to the table with some toast, parts of which she tore off  and tried to feed me. After chewing some I gave up, too distracted to eat. The nerves suppressed my appetite. If I accepted Farris’s offer did that mean I had a job? I hadn’t thought there might be a line of work for someone my size.

“ARE YOU JERRY MOUSSEAU?”

A young female voice gushed from just over my head. Blinking and looked up, I found the young female server standing over the table, gazing down at me. She had returned.

“Yes.”

“FARRIS IS SO COOL – YOU KNOW HIM?” she asked, with rising excitement.

“I do now,” I shrugged.

“CAN I GET A SELFIE WITH YOU?” she asked, already pulling out her smartphone. “I WANT TO PROVE I MET YOU BEFORE YOU GET FAMOUS!”

At this, Jennifer chuckled quietly.

Meanwhile the girl was bending over the other side of the table until her butt was in the air, bringing her face down while she angled the phone in front of her.

“COME HERE A SECOND—”

Suddenly her other arm was covering the distance towards me, and in one swoop her cupped hand hooked around my shoulders and was effortlessly sweeping me away from Jennifer, and towards her own big looming face.

The polished table surface was rolling under my butt before I bumped softly into her cheek and – snap – she took the picture, her fingers fenced around my front with the pressure of her thumb against the back of my head. I lifted an arm and did some air horns as she winked into the camera while taking the second shot.

The enclosure of her hand released me as she rose off the table again. Then she flipped through the shots she’d taken.

“AW, THAT IS SO, SO SWEET!” she mewled, her cheeks slightly pinker. “YOU ARE SUCH A CUTE LITTLE BABY MAN – MY FRIENDS ARE GONNA BE SO JEALOUS I GOT TO TOUCH YOU!”

One of my hands was nipped between her fingertips and lifted in a gentle, grateful shake, before she left the table again.

I stretched my legs out, intending to stay where I was on the opposite side of the table, reminded that this is where I would have been sitting if I’d been normal size. But Jennifer had other ideas. 

Her arm lunged across the table, one curled pointer finger turning upwards not to do the come hither gesture but to hook the long nail up under the bottom of my shirt. Even with my loose fitting clothes there was barely any more room and the hard nail slid in firmly against my bare belly, grazing the healed but still slightly tender incision wound. Then the arm was retracting again, taking me with it, my butt once more sliding over the frictionless table surface until I was back on her side of the table.

The fingertips of her other hand came in to squeeze my shoulders so she could slide her pointer out from against my chest, and as the nail curved out from the hem, it not only irritated my stomach again but inadvertently nudged the crotch of my pants.

The ease with which I could be slid back and forth over the tabletop like a chess piece was unnerving, but I didn’t say anything. My brain was still hung on the talk with Farris.

Her attention returned to her food as she said:

“SO, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?”

“I’m still trying to figure it out,” I said, tugging and smoothing my shirt down.

“YOU WANNA GO FOR IT OR WHAT?”

“It’s just—”

“OPEN UP, CUTIE—” a corner of buttered toast materialized in front of me, conveyed by a giant hand, and bumped into my lips. Without thinking, I bit off a chunk and started chewing. Satisfied, the hand withdrew again. She said:

“IT’S JUST WHAT?”

“It’s come out of nowhere.”

She paused in thought.

“I DON’T THINK SO,” she said slowly. “THE WORLD IS CATCHING UP WITH SOMETHING I’VE KNOWN FOR A WHILE ALREADY.”

“What’s that?”

One corner of her lips quirked in a smile.

“YOU’RE WORTH HOURS OF ENTERTAINMENT.”

“It’s different. This is in front of lots of people – total strangers. And I need—”

Another torn off toast crumb was bumping my mouth.

“HAVE SOME MORE,” she insisted. “DON’T MAKE ME FINISH IT ON MY OWN.”

I quickly forced it down.

“SORRY, YOU WERE SAYING?”

“Preparation. If they just let me work some things out around it first…”

“YOU’RE HOT STUFF RIGHT NOW,” she shrugged, giving a small nod in the direction of the female server who was across the room, over at the counter. “MAKE THE MOST OF IT.”

She held me still with one hand as her other patted at my face with a napkin. It gave me a flashback to the dab washes, but at my current size, her touch wasn’t nearly as vigorous. Once the paper had stopped stroking around my face, I said:

“I thought you’d try and talk me out of it.”

She frowned faintly.

“WHY?”

“It means being out of the house for hours at a time.”

“SO? YOU’RE CAPABLE OF THAT. YOU’RE DOING IT RIGHT NOW.”

My butt was beginning to get numb on the hard tabletop. I shifted my weight, trying to get comfy again.

After I’d first shrunk, I’d wanted nothing more than to escape Jen’s house, but dating Samantha had shaken my confidence about foraying into the outside world.

“Yeah. Guess I am.”

“YOU WANT IT OR WILL I?” She was referring to the last strip of toast. Then, before I could answer, she shot:

“TRY AND TAKE IT FROM ME.”

And, capturing the toast between her teeth, her head angled down in front of me, closer, until there was contact, and she tried to tickle my face with the tip of the toast. I wrapped my mouth around the end and tugged, trying to tear a tiny piece off. As soon as my jaw closed around the bread, her lips pursed powerfully and the toast was wrenched deeper into her mouth. My head jerked into hers until my face was caught by the crevice between her lips like a baseball in a mitt, and pressed into her big wet pucker, holding it there for a moment by pure sucking force, basting me in her saliva and warm surges of her caffeinated breath.

My head came free with a small wet pop, and I hastily began scrubbing the saliva and tiny toast particles off my cheeks and mouth.

She smiled with exasperation.

“YOU’RE MAKING A LOT OF EXCUSES AND I THINK YOU SHOULD JUST BE MORE LIKE ME AND BE SPONTANEOUS AND HAVE FUN.”

I looked away, not saying anything. She didn’t understand that at my size, you couldn’t afford to be spontaneous. You had to plan everything; even a walk down to the mailbox needed to be timed to avoid being trampled by a passing jogger.

*

Things happened fast, and then it was the night before I was due to leave. I would be staying at an apartment in the city while I worked, coming home every few weeks, if possible.

Jen washed me with a warm hand wipe in preparation for cleaning my stomach wound. I lay on my back on a towel laid on the table, and she hovered over me. Some minutes passed as she kept a small wet sponge pressed to my stomach, then, after my wound was soaked, she began to peel the tape and gauze off. Since she couldn’t touch my torso, she held me still by gently clasping my head between her fingertips – an unavoidably convenient handhold – while her other hand pulled at the bandage which now separated from my flesh as wet cloth.

Luckily, she wasn’t squeamish. But I was a little squeamish, sometimes. Just stupid, minor, harmless things. Such as the slow unwrapping of bandages, not knowing what would be underneath; knitted together new skin, or a huge hole and a raging infection. Not only that, but if anything looked amiss, she would have carted me straight back to the vet for examination.

“Jush…mm…mmmphf,” I muttered, just as the edge of her thumb accidentally slipped around the side of my head and smushed my lips, as well as my nose and one eye.

She quickly corrected her grasp, sliding the thumb back against my temple, brushing my ear back and forth apologetically. At least it was more tolerable than the ‘dab wash’, where I had been so tiny that an accidental slip of her thumb could have squashed me flat.

“Just be careful,” I stammered. It was hard to remember she was capable of being gentle when her hands were so big and tipped with sharp nails.

“SURE,” she murmured, overly focused on what she was doing.

She bent low over me as she inspected the wound, her warm breath swept over my wet skin. It didn’t appear to be so bad; the slash was closed up, the stitches had been removed a couple of days ago. It was red and itchy, but not sore. Satisfied, she took up a pair of tweezers and began plucking at the broken off stray threads of stiches. My stomach twitched every time the tweezer prongs darted close, though she was expertly delicate. Finishing, she decided it didn't need to be covered with bandage anymore, it could be left bare.

“EXCITED YET?” she said, moving to the sofa while I stood on the coffee table.

“It’s excitement or it’s nerves.”

She let out a sigh.

“BIG STEP FOR YOU, HUH?”

“This was always going to happen. I was packing to move away before the Flip party. It’s harder now, but it’s happening, somehow.”

“IT’S HAPPENING,” she repeated, more to herself. Then she went on with a murmur:

“WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITHOUT MY LITTLE CO-PILOT?”

“Plane’s not going to crash.”

“THE COCKPIT MIGHT GET KIND OF LONELY.” She propped her head up on her hand, observing me coolly beneath her lashes. “THERE’S ALWAYS THAT RETURN FLIGHT.”

“Can we…” I sighed, “…not talk in metaphors?”

“YOU’RE FLYING OVER TOMORROW,” she pointed out. “SO, RELEVANT.”

Then she looked away, uttering a kind of long groan and taking a deep breath. She rubbed her palms over her face and then smoothed her hair.

I stared at her cautiously.

“Are you…okay?”

“YEAH…” She gave me a faint, slightly forced smile. “A LITTLE MEMENTO FOR MY LITTLE MANLET?”

“What kind of memento?”

She squirmed her finger to beckon me.

I padded over to her.

Her hand reared up, snatched me and flipped me onto my back, and my pants were yanked off with a careless downward flick of her thumbnail, which then set upon my thighs and pelvis, wiggling to tickle me, getting as humanly close to my member as possible without actually making contact. As my dick began to harden, I yelped in breathless laughter, kicking and struggling.

Before I could free myself, her tongue was sponging up from my feet, along my bare legs before touching upon my groin, and tugging my member upwards to my stomach as it briefly stuck to the bumpy surface. As my member sprang free again, the wet mass of her tongue carried on up my stomach, and smearing over the incision scarline. The slimy pressure of her tongue’s passage over my abdomen made the scar break out in tingling itchy pain. I huffed in discomfort, next second the red lumpy mass surmounted my chest and humped over my face, burying my vision in warm, bubbly darkness.

The tongue swirled vigorously around until my facial features ached from the stretch, and my eyes and nose ached from being squashed down by the forceful muscle. It’s sticky surface peeled my eyelids and lips back, and indiscriminately ran over my delicate eyeballs and the tip wormed its way into my mouth, flicking up against the roof of my mouth, flattening my own substantially smaller tongue beneath it. As the tip of her tongue departed my mouth, the powerful suction caused a burst of pain to shoot through my head.

Groaning, I tried to sit up, but her shiny nails collected all around my peripheral vision as they attached themselves to my skull to secure my head. My body jerked tense as her lips glommed around my shaft and began to pump it with alarming vacuuming force, so great that it caused my hips to buck back and forth between her mouth and the towel. Her fingers hooked around my legs, drawing them together tight to prevent me from kicking, and in doing so, accidentally stretching me painfully taut until I was reduced to a quivering whimper as the muscles across my body rippled and seized up in a blinding orgasm.

The pressure of her lips remained around my member for a moment longer, as the tip of her tongue toyed with my spent dick, roguishly flicking and nuzzling my aching tip, and gently sucking on my balls, tormenting my desperate need to rest. She indulged in one last unbridled lip-smacking flexion of my length for what seemed like an ungodly long moment, and finally I was let go, sinking back into the towel in utter exhaustion.

As I lay back limply against the table, panting for breath, an alcohol wipe was dabbed over my prickling, sensitive stomach to clean up the bubbly ropes of saliva.

Later, in bed, I curled up against the pillow, with a fold of sheet covering my body, and Jen lying on my other side.

“I DON’T WANT TO TIRE YOU OUT,” she said, as her great form rolling to face me, “YOU NEED TO BE FIT FOR TOMORROW. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN WE CAN’T CUDDLE.”

“Of course,” I replied, beginning to shift closer to her, grateful for the offer of warmth and soft affection.

Suddenly my hands were clawing the mattress as I was being dragged by my ankle below the dark ceiling of the blanket. My body inclined, humping up over her warm lush surfaces, and I was quickly disorientated in the darkness. Warm air whispered past me as an arm bumped me, a nail accidentally poking my back as it went to hook under the hem of the expanse of pyjama t-shirt, creating a cave which I was speedily ushered under. The air pressed in, sweltering, balmy, lightly spritzed with body odor as I was trapped beneath both her t-shirt and the blanket. On my other side, her supple midsection seemed to work back and forth all over me, but actually I was being massaged into it.

Still dragged by my ankles, I was whipped up a lush hill. Here, the grasp around my ankles climbed to my ribcage, and, ensconced in her commanding grip, I was manoeuvred back and forth in wild, joyous arcs around the plump mammary. The nipple pricked up and poked me in the face several times as I was bulldozed over her flesh in dizzying laps while she used her other hand to work herself up down below. My lungs pulled at the humid, stuffy air until they ached and my head swam. Her moan of pleasure vibrated against me through her chest wall. The ‘cuddling’ part of the deal was quickly forgotten.

Sweat was making my body slick, and my body slipped a little. The insistent force of fingertips quickly nudged up my chest and captured my neck. But now my throat was accidentally squeezed shut while she manipulated my head against her raw, tender nipple, urging for me to suck on it. I couldn’t speak; my larynx was virtually flattened between two fingerprints. Made stupid by the dwindling air, I lapped and gummed it the nipple like a starving baby animal.

Below, her legs parted, creating a great canyon between her thighs into which her other hand dove to heighten her pleasure. I was rolled from one heaving breast to the other and back again, rising up the mass on either side, urgently being latched onto the aching nipple at the summit, then returned to the previous breast, all the time feeling like a bear trap was viced around my neck.

For all this effort, she let out a wail, while her nails bit into my body, pinning me to her right breast for the duration of her climax. Finally the pressure around my neck subsided as she readjusted her grip of my body. Now that we were both spent, I was summarily poked down into the perspiring pocket of cleavage until hemmed from every side, with only my head sticking out. A pointer finger alighted upon the crown of my head, pushing downwards until the dull pressure of her breasts rolled in place over my cheeks and forehead. In lieu of saying goodnight, the pointer scratched the top of my head affectionately.

My torso swelled and sunk inwards in rhythm with the expansions of her mighty ribcage, which caused the walls of her mammaries to collapse in against me, and relax, over and over. Groaning and straining, feeling like a fish stuck in the slimy gullet of a bigger fish, I fought to get my head to pop free, only for her sleepy pointer to return and poke me down again. A minute later, I repeated this exercise, only to get poked down again. Minutes later, I tried a third time, and now she was asleep, her finger didn’t return. Within another short period, I was asleep too.

Jennifer’s hand was tense around me like a spring coil, her gait brisk and energized. I could sense she was anxious. Her pulse throbbed through her thumbpad, pressed into my chest, at times making me confuse her rapid heartbeat for my own. But mine was probably not going much slower.

I didn’t need to hand anything over at the baggage handling desk; my luggage was so small it fit in a single carry-on bag which would come aboard with me. After checking me in and getting my boarding pass, she took a seat in the corner of an airport café, offside the main walkways of public exposure, putting me down on the table. One of the things about being so small; people didn’t tend to see me unless they stopped and looked hard, plus Jen had the tendency of cupping her hand around me to forestall unwanted attention.

Now she rolled up my shirt hem and delicately ran her pinky finger over my stomach, probing in an exploratory way. Fuzz was starting to push up over my stomach since the Vet had shaved it off. The incision line running along my lower belly was red in areas and prickled a little at her touch, but the wound was closed and the stitches were gone. Still, I must have recoiled unconsciously at the physical contact, and she’d sensed it.

“DOES IT STILL HURT?” she enquired quietly.

“No,” I said, self-consciously pushing at her hand.

“NO AIRPORT PHARMACY,” she lamented, “BUT YOU STILL HAVE SOME REMAINING OXYCODONE,” – the Vet had prescribed me this after my surgery “—I GOT IT IN MY PURSE IF YOU WANT SOME BEFORE YOU GET ON THE PLANE.”

“I don’t need it. But why is it in your purse…?”

She scoffed, feigning indignation.

“DON’T WORRY, YOU. THE AMOUNT YOU WERE PRESCRIBED IS LIKE TABLE SALT TO ME.”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt.” I rolled my shirt down.

“GOOD,” she tickled under my chin and gave me a quick wink: “AND ANYWAY, I’M MORE OF A VODKA GIRL.”

After we passed through the security gates, we went to a customer service reception, where an assistance officer would escort me onto the plane. She took a seat in a waiting bay, holding me on her thigh, her fingers curled behind me like the backrest of a chair. One of her fingers was tucked against my front, but roaming me as if to satisfy an anxious compulsion, and kept sliding under my top up to trace the scar on my belly with her nail, as if needing to check it again had all healed properly. I didn’t squirm, but just let her do it, enjoying her warm touch, which was calming my own nerves, while trying to ignore the prickling sensation of her nail against my slightly tender wound area.

Looking around she suddenly exclaimed, glibly:

"HOW CAN YOU BE SO SMALL AND YET SO BUSY AT THE SAME TIME? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?”

“Well, I have a job now.”

“YOU ALREADY HAVE A JOB. YOUR JOB IS TO STAND AROUND AND LOOK ADORABLE.”

"This gives me an outlet. And a wage."

“YOU HAVE MONEY.”

“I’m getting paid for doing something other than just being some sad little tiny person.”

"I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE BREADWINNER HERE!” she said, feigning annoyance, “I'M THE ONE WHO GOES TO WORK AND YOU’RE THE LUCKY LITTLE GUY WHO GETS TO MASSAGE MY FEET WHEN I GET HOME."

“You told me I should try it,” I pointed out.

“YEAH,” she said slowly. “I KNOW. I MEANT IT. THERE’S JUST A LOT GOING ON; I WANT YOU TO BE READY FOR IT ALL.”

“I will be.”

“CALL ME WHEN YOU LAND, LITTLE PILOT.”

“I promise.”

I reached my hand up towards her, making a grabbing motion. She could already read my mind, and brought me up against her lips for a relatively chaste kiss, a peck, although, due to the sheer size of her lips compared to my face, even a chaste kiss could be steamy and overpowering on my end.

“Love you, kitten,” I said after turning my head to the side.

Her eyes flew open and I was dropped from her face again. She didn’t like that one. A fingernail flew forward and uncurled rapidly in front of my face, giving my nose a small flick.

The assistance officer appeared, wheeling a cart with a booster seat in it. I was strapped into the booster seat.

"ALL SET…?" Jen said, observing me, “SURE YOU DON’T NEED ANYTHING?”

"I’m fine, really," I grunted. "I'm a grown man." Yet, it was painfully obvious I was strapped up in a tiny seat like a small child. And I was much, much smaller than a small child.

"YOU'RE A MAN," she said, giving my cheek a teasing poke, "BUT I NEED SOME CONVINCING ON THE OTHER PART." 

"I can figure it out." She was acting like I was a little kid going off to my first day at school. Or, a baby going off to playschool.

Then the officer was wheeling me past the boarding gates, through the glass-walled jet bridge into the plane. At the plane’s entrance, the officer took me up in the booster seat, and carried it down the plane aisle to a seat at the back, just outside the galley, the area where the food was stored.

The officer attached the booster seat to the regular seat, and I was given a special little remote to control the TV, and an earphone which I draped around my neck.

After take-off, I soon drifted to sleep. During the flight, I was awoken as one of the flight attendants with a powdered complexion emerged from the galley bringing me tiny packeted meals and drinks.

She knelt by my chair and, with everyone around either sleeping or with headphones on, she said in a hushed voice:

“EXCUSE ME, ARE YOU JERRY MOUSSEAU?”

“Yes,” I replied, warily eyeing her suppressed smile at the sight of me.

“DON’T MEAN TO BOTHER YOU, BUT I SAW YOU ON TV AND JUST WANTED TO SAY HI. NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE YOU HERE. YOU’RE AN ACTIVE LITTLE GUY. BUT IT’S REALLY NICE TO SEE.”

“Thank you.”

She stroked my arm with a finger and then stood and departed again.

Growing up, I used to be a bad traveller, the childish impatience of waiting. Now that I'd grown down, I loved it: the waiting was tinged with anticipation of something different, something more, something bigger. The flight was calm but I was too anxious to sleep, or even pay attention to an in-flight movie. With some music playing through my earphone the plane touched down at the big, lit up St Palma airport.

As most of the other passengers disembarked, one of the flight attendant’s detached my booster chair, and carried it – with me still strapped inside, plus my carry-on bag – off the plane, where I was transferred to another customer service officer, who wheeled me on a cart to the arrival gate.

The guy with sunglasses and gel-slicked hair who strode up to us wasn’t even carrying a sign that said my name, he rightly knew I’d be instantly recognizable. Farris had set me up with him; he was arranged to be my driver, or as Farris had put it ‘Gofer.’

“HEY THERE, CHIEF, SO…” he said somewhat awkwardly, sizing me up with his eyes. It made me wonder if he’d seen the TV special about me, or if this was the first time he’d seen someone my size.

"Hi," I said quickly, "Rafael Simon, right?"

"LET’S JUST GO WITH RAF. AND YOU'RE JERRY. COOL?"

"Cool," I nodded.

He extended the pad of his index finger upwards at my chest and I slipped my hand onto it to shake his ‘hand’. Then he hefted the booster seat up – me still inside – and took it out into the parking area, along with my carry-on.

“LIGHT,” he joked, “BARE ESSENTIALS ONLY.”

He put the booster seat into the shotgun position, but, unsatisfied, stacked it onto a duffel bag and strapping it in place to the headrest. The bag’s elevation enabled me to look out the window.

Although warm, light rain pattered against the roof of the white Chrysler while Raf turned the radio up, music from a station I’d never heard of before.

“YOU WANT ME TO TURN THIS JUNK OFF,” Raf indicated, “JUST LET ME KNOW. TOO HOT? COLD?” He indicated the air conditioner dial – vents currently fanning out mildly cool air – it had just occurred to him the controls were out of my reach.

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said.

The car rumbled down the streets to the Tiferno District, just outside the main St Palma metro area.

Car lights blurred and streaked past the windows. The sun was disappearing behind the skyline, gradually being replaced by the orange sodium street lights flicking on, and I was already feeling the first pangs of homesickness, plus a jolt of disbelief at myself that I’d agreed to make such a big move – if only during weekdays, or whatever my work schedule required. It was as if someone else had inhabited my brain and signed me up for it, and now – with the new cityscape scrolling past too fast to acclimatize to – the magnitude of it was in full swing.

Now that we were heading through a residential area of Tiferno in the foothills – my apartment was supposed to be around here – Raf began detouring to give me a general lay of the land.

“THAT’S THE BOWLING ALLEY,” he was saying, gesturing out the window at a passing building with a retro-styled glowing block-lettered sign, “BUT – ERR – ” he seemed to realize what he was saying, “MAYBE NOT YOUR STYLE.” He quickly gestured somewhere else. “OH, THAT’S THE GYM. MY EX WORKS THERE, SHE’S A PERSONAL TRAINER. YOU ALSO GOT A POOL, SPA, SAUNA...” he paused, as if trying to imagine how I would physically use any of those facilities.

I stopped him.

“Would your ex see me?”

“JUST GOTTA BOOK AND TALK TO HER. YOU GOT A PHONE? I’LL GIVE YOU HER NUMBER.”

I did have a phone now; a miniature phone, one of the tiniest on sale. It wasn’t a smart phone, but a flip phone, and the inside of the panel that flipped up made a functional touch screen. To me, it was as big as a tablet or laptop, but I could carry it around, if not in my pocket.

The car turned into a cul-de-sac and pulled up outside the small beige stucco apartment building; my lodgings while I was in town. It stood up on an incline overlooking residential streets that ran down the valley into the Tiferno commercial strips, and I fell in love with the elevation above ground level, looking down on all the inner city-dwellers. Plus, it had a weekly cleaning and laundry service – for me, absolutely necessary.

Before we went inside, Raf input his ex’s number into my phone, then took me inside my room. It was the smallest in the apartment, cramped by normal standards, a single room doubling as kitchen and dining space. He then helped me set up some string ladders packed in my carry-on; one for the bathroom sink, kitchen counter, bedside table (from which I could then leap onto the normal sized bed). He also installed some bathroom sink valves that turned with feather soft touch, so I would be able to easily run myself baths.

There was a slight complication with food prep: I couldn’t open the fridge. For now, Raf went downstairs to the street corner café right next door to the apartment and brought me up some food, enough to last me for the rest of the day, plus leftover. Before he left, he left a slit open in my bedroom window for a cool breeze.

That evening, after running a bath to check the sink valves were functioning properly, I lay on my bed with some food as the typical city smells wafted in through the gap in the window: gasoline fumes, petrichor on concrete from the previous rainfall, cigarette smoke from pedestrians passing by on the pavement below, burnt rubber of braking tires (accompanied by screeching sounds), and the sultry food aromas from the corner café’s vents.

I sat on my normal sized bed and settled into my bedroom, hunched over my phone, lying on the mattress before my crossed legs, and then dialed Jen’s mobile.

“Where’s my little man?” she said.

“I’m at the apartment. Raf picked me up at the airport. He’s my gofer – I mean, driver. What are you doing?”

“Just had dinner. Tell me about your pad.”

“The layout is a little cute and generic. Like a dollhouse but it's giant – I mean, from my point of view – which is weird."

Later that night, I took a warm bath to relax, and then searched for my superman costume, which I used as a pyjama onesie, but it wasn’t among my luggage; I must have forgotten to pack it.

Outside, the night had come to life, the air shimmered with urban noise: the traffic droned past the street below the window, and even once the sky got dark, when, if anything, it was louder; including the revvs and turbocharger pops, whirling emergency sirens. Even throughout the night I stirred to sounds, continually rediscovering myself – not back home – but alone, tucked into my swimming pool sized bed, the neon sign casting a wan artificial light patch, while jarringly animated 2 AM apartment deck conversations pattered outside, with occasional dogs barking and rattling chainlink fences.

Sometime after 2 AM sleep became more peaceful.  Back home, Jen’s body heat was great to burrow into on cold mornings, but sharing the bed as we did also came with the risk of being accidentally squashed under a relocating arm, rolled around by mattress depressions, or blasted by a furnace of morning breath.  It had been a long time since I’d slept on my own in a bed. With my eyes closed it was almost like being big again, the nostalgia was not completely unwelcome, and as it overcame and swept away the homesickness, I eased into sleep.

“Welcome to St Palma.”

Farris's ever-bright voice rang through my phone early that morning, telling me to get over to his office. He was not, as he’d requested, my first call on my new phone – that title belonged to Jennifer the day I’d arrived. But he could claim the title of first incoming call.

“If you’re wondering where the seasons went,” he rattled off, “we don’t have any. But something tells me you hate snow. Just a hunch.”

Raf picked me up, we got breakfast, and I scoffed it down before we showed up at Farris’s agency, Talent Corp. It was situated in a pristine, reflective office complex, with no sign advertising the purpose of the building, just a big chrome number 80 (the lot number), as reflective as the windows.

We entered the building, the receptionist barely looked up and so did not notice me, cupped in Raf’s large hand, gripping his thumb for stability. Farris’s office suite was up some mezzanine stairs surveying rows of IT-laden desks, shielded behind a glass wall that was so reflective it effectively screened out the other side by the dazzling glare from the intruding golden sun. I was beginning to notice an almost constant St Palma murky vanilla sky. Or it was smog.

The rocking gait of Raf’s footsteps softened as he stepped over the furry patterned carpet, stopping across from Farris, who sat at his desk fielding a phone call, and barely looking up, gestured for Raf (and I) to take a seat facing the desk. The wall behind Farris’s desk was wholly glass, viewing another opaque windowed, multi-storey complex. The window was tinted blue, as if to paper over the vanilla sky with a deceptive blue shade.

Raf dropped into the black leather chair, bringing me down to desk height, and bringing the rapidly yammering Farris into frame against the tinted window backdrop. We waited patiently for him to finish.

"JERRY,” he said, plonking the phone down and spinning his chair to face us. “GAMELANDIA. IT'S PITCHED AS 'JUMANJI MEETS LORD OF THE RINGS.' KIDS GET SUCKED INTO A SWORD AND SORCERY BOARD GAME.”

"Anything in there for someone like me?" I asked, perking up at ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Sounded like blockbuster material already.

"PRODUCTION IS STRUGGLING TO RETAIN ACTORS; THERE’D HAVE TO BE SOMETHING IN THERE FOR YOU. MAYBE A FAIRY, PIXIE.” He waved a hand in a vague way.

I leaned back, staring at him for a moment. Then brought my hands together and squeezed them.

“Great!”

He stared at his hands, steepled on the desk while one side of his mouth turned up somewhat distastefully.

"HONEST OPINION? THIS THING IS A DEAD DOG; I WOULDN’T TOUCH IT WITH A POLE. IT’S BEEN DOING LAPS OF DEVELOPMENT HELL SINCE MILLENIA GONE BY, RE-WRITES, HAND-BALLED BACK AND FORTH BY MULTIPLE DIRECTORS, BUDGET BLOW-OUTS, ON SET SPATS. IN SHORT, A HOT MESS. MY ADVICE: PUT YOUR ENERGY IN BANKABLE PROPERTIES.”

“Ah…sure.” I folded my arms, and bowed my head, trying to seem shrewd – like him – and not emotionally involved. “Makes sense.”

“ON THE BRIGHTER SIDE,” he went on, “BEEN LOOKING AT GETTING YOU A LEAD ROLE IN A FILM CALLED ALPHA. FINANCE IS LOCKED DOWN AND IT’S ALREADY ATTRACTED SOME TALENT.”

“Really?” I leaned forward in Raf’s hand. ”What’s it about?”

“WHY DON’T I LET THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER TELL YOU HIMSELF?”

“Huh—?”

“LUNCH DATE AT ONE TOMORROW. YOU, ME, MR. EXECUTIVE PRODUCER. AND MR. SIMON, OF COURSE,” he added, nodding at Raf. “WHATEVER YOU’VE GOT LINED UP, CANCEL IT.”

“Of course. I’ll be there.”

He gave me a fist bump over the desk.

“STELLAR. JUST RELAX AND BE YOU.” He turned away, busy with his phone. “AND I’VE GOT TO TAKE THIS—”

*

It was a green, uptown part of the larger city, the streets a fusion of white stucco modern and Victorian style fixtures, old black lantern posts lining the streets. Along a street shaded by identical café canopies, the restaurant had a pagoda roof, dark wood lattice front with white neon lettering that said Bunka Bocho.

Farris sat in one seat, with me sitting close by on the table in front of him. No Raf today; Farris insisted he take me, not wanting too many people in the restaurant distracting from the point of our meeting.

It turned out not to be Mr. ‘Executive Producer’ sitting opposite us, but Mr. ‘Associate Producer’s assistant’, Stanley Shuster, sitting opposite us, a black goatee, glasses, and wearing a casual t-shirt and black suit jacket. Still, he grinned a lot and I immediately felt at ease, able to imagine him wandering around at a comic con or other fan convention.

Food was spread out over the long pale sushi table: a variety of tiny, multi-colored edibles, dips and sauces served in an array of miniature bowls. Stan and Farris operated their chopsticks deftly, while I worked into my food – less deftly – with a pair of toothpicks.

"CLASSY PLACE, STAN,” Farris remarked, and gesturing to the tiny delicacies: “ALWAYS TRUST THE JAPANESE TO MAKE THINGS COMPACT AND CUTE.”

“AH, YEAH,” Stan said, as if it had only just occurred to him that I was tiny. He leaned back, smiling down at me: “YOU COULD FIT INSIDE ONE OF THESE!” he laughed in surprise, lifting a small, ornate tea cup. It was true: it could have seated me like a tea cup amusement ride vehicle, and I was inwardly relieved he didn’t ask for a demonstration, or photo. Putting the cup down, he leaned back in his chair, shaking his head a little as a he sighed with amusement. “ONE LOOK AT YOU AND MY WIFE WOULD JUST LOSE HER MIND.”

“SHE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE,” said Farris, launching into his energetic patter. “THINK OF THE BROAD DEMOGRAPHIC DRAGGING THEIR BOYFRIENDS INTO THEATERS TO SEE LITTLE JERRY ON THE BIG SCREEN. BUT, NOW, THE BOYFRIENDS ARE MORE LIKELY TO TAG ALONG BECAUSE JERRY ISN’T AS THREATENING AS A REGULAR SIZE MALE LEAD, SEE…?”

Stan clapped his hands together and his voice became frank, all business:

“SO, WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE RYAN KAINT CHARACTER? IT’S THE DOG. THE MALE ROMANTIC LEAD IS TAD – DIFFERENT CHARACTER.”

"TAD IS THE HUMAN," Farris said slowly, "RYAN KAINT IS THE DOG."

Stan gave curt nod.

"EXACTLY."

Undaunted, Farris went on:

“CLEARLY WE’RE NOT TALKING ‘TOM CRUISE’ SMALL. JERRY IS A LEVEL OF SMALL YOU WANT TO SHOW UP ON FILM. THAT’S HIS MARKETING ANGLE: HE’S CUTE. PLUS, HE’S GOT THE RIGHT BOYISH HEARTTHOB LOOK THAT THE GIRLS WILL GO CRAZY FOR. BUT HE’S GOT THAT EXTRA LEVEL OF CUTENESS NO OTHER MALE TALENT CAN COMPETE WITH.”

Farris swirled his miso soup with an undersize, even kitsch, soup spoon, but his eyes remained on Stan.

“PLACE HIM STRATEGICALLY,” he emphasized to the producer’s assistant, “AND GIRLS WILL – WHAT DID YOU SAY EARLIER? – LOSE THEIR MINDS.”

Stan ran his hand over the table in thought, as if compelled to draw up an invisible diagram:

“SO, THE MALE ROMANTIC LEAD IS TAD, HE’S BEING PLAYED BY ANOTHER ACTOR.”

"I SEE,” said Farris. “BUT THE DOG STILL PLAYS A PART—?”

“A BIG PART. HE’S RIGHT THERE IN VIRTUALLY EVERY SCENE WITH THE FEMALE LEAD, LACEY. WE’VE GOT NICOLE BROOKES SIGNED ON TO PLAY HER.”

Nicole Brookes was an up and coming young actress, and I’d heard of her, though I couldn’t remember any films I’d seen her in, but then I wasn’t a movie buff. But recognizing the name, I perked up, showing more interest in my prospective character.

“Why does the dog have two names?” I said, in earnest, thinking there must have been some deep psychology going on.

Stan stared at me.

“WELL,” he said, fiddling with his chopsticks, “YOU KNOW, NO ONE HAS EVER ASKED THAT BEFORE.” Then he quickly composed his answer on the spot: “THE DOG GOES BY BOTH NAMES IN EVERY SCENE THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SCREENPLAY. IT’S A COMEDY,” he added, looking at me plainly, as if this explained everything. I nodded obediently, as if it made perfect sense.

“WHAT JERRY IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND,” Farris pushed ahead, leaning over the table, “IS WHETHER HE’D BE PLAYING AN ANIMAL OR A PERSON-AS-ANIMAL.”

“IN THE SOURCE NOVEL,” Stan explained, “RYAN IS ACTUALLY A MAN WHO IS TURNED INTO A DOG-MAN, CALLED KAINT, WHO IS THEN ADOPTED BY LACEY. BUT IN THE SCREENPLAY, IT’S JUST ‘RYAN KAINT’ AND HE’S ALWAYS BEEN A WALKING, TALKING DOG.”

This got my attention.

“I’d have lines?” I piped up, then quickly correcting myself, “—I mean, the character has lines?”

“SURE," Stan grinned, "ERGO, THE TALKING PART OF THE EQUATION. BUT ONLY TO LACEY. SHE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HEAR RYAN KAINT TALK.”

I was about to ask why – more deep psychology? Or just the law of comedy? – and then decided not to. Stan filled the silence:

“THIS HAS BEEN IN DISCUSSION SINCE EARLY DAYS. OUR SCREENWRITER VISUALIZED RYAN KAINT WITH YOU IN MIND, JERRY,” Stan was appealing directly down to me now, “A LIVE ACTION PERFORMER. IF YOU’RE UNABLE, THEN I DON’T KNOW…WE’RE BACK IN DEVELOPMENT: THE SCREENPLAY’S GOING TO NEED REWORKING AND WE NEED VFX TO GIVE US SOME CGI TEST FOOTAGE…SHOOTING MIGHT NOT START FOR ANOTHER COUPLE OF YEARS, AND BY THEN WE MIGHT HAVE TO RE-CAST.” 

He squared his shoulders, looking down at the table, letting the information sink in.

It sounded like the whole film now teetered on whether I signed on or not. It wasn’t clear if Stan was deliberately trying to stroke my ego or just stating the facts, but if the former, it was working.

“I think I like it,” I said. Well, the role, anyway. I had no idea what the story was.

Stan brightened.

“I’LL SEND YOU THE CURRENT SCRIPT.” Looking between Farris and I, he went on, with an almost indiscernible wince: “AND ON THAT NOTE: IF YOU SAW AN EARLY VERSION WHICH REFERS TO WOMEN’S TA-TA’S AS ‘TOMMYKNOCKERS’ AND OTHER – AH, OH DEAR – INDELICACIES,” his lip curled down bashfully, “DON’T BE DISCOURAGED: THE NEWEST WRITE HAS BEEN TIGHTENED UP, WITH A LOT OF THE COLLEGE HUMOR REMOVED.”

Farris said to me after we’d left the restaurant:

“HE’S NOT GOING TO BUDGE ON THE LEAD, BUT I DON’T THINK THAT COULD’VE GONE ANY BETTER,” he sounded untroubled, as if he’d already forgotten about the role mix-up. “YOU’VE GOT SCREEN TIME TO PLAY WITH. BUT I’M GOING TO BE BLUNT, YOUR ROLE MIGHT SUCK. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE COSTUME. AN INTENSIVE COSTUME CAN MAKE SHOOTING HELL.”

“What do you think," I said, as the street bobbed up and down in step with his brisk gait, while I was captured in his hand. "Should I take the role?”

“NORMALLY I’D SAY TAKE IT OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL. BUT BECAUSE IT’S YOU, IT’S DIFFERENT. NO ONE ELSE CAN DO THE ROLE; AS STAN SAID: IF YOU DON’T, THEY’LL ANIMATE THE CHARACTER…OR SUSPEND PRODUCTION. IT’S UP TO YOU.”

This was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted his unequivocal insistence that this role was perfect for me and that I would be an idiot if I didn’t take it.

…but if I don’t take it, I thought to myself, then do what? – go back home with nothing to show for myself but the admittance to Jennifer that I didn’t cut it in the big, bad world, and I was destined to forever be a tiny, dutiful house husband, at the ready to rub her feet when she walked through the door home from work. What disturbed me most about that possibility was that I suspected she had not been joking about that proposition, and would be all too eager to see it materialize, and massage me into the role. Literally.

“I’ll do it.”

*

It was dark and late, but the full moon and the forest of street lighting made it seem like daytime. Further down the valley, the city light spread out, from this high up, everything was small, pinpoint focused, and bright. I sat out on the deck, on the patio table with a view of the land below, imagining what people were doing down there so late at night, bright as noon. There was a tiny thermos in a backpack next to me, which I intermittently took sips from. Raf got it for me after he saw me trying to rope-winch a cup up onto my bed one morning.

My phone was lying in front of me, with a copy of the screenplay open. After running through a couple of scenes, I called Jen to tell her the news. There was a whoop on the other end of the phone.

“What do we do now?" she said. "Celebrate?”

“Hold on,” I said. “I haven’t even started.”

“Well, the nice wine is out, and I will pour you an honorary shot.”

I told her a little about the role, though there was no way of avoiding the plain fact that I was playing a dog, talking, walking, or not. It didn’t seem to faze her.

“It’s what you wanted,” she said, “so I support you, one hundred and ten percent. Whatever happens. If it works out, or if it doesn’t. Whatever.”

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

Over the phone I heard her take a sip of drink, and then she said:

“You’re missing out on this.”

We talked a little about what was going on at her end. She was catching up with Christine and Katie, work, the usual. Then she said:

“The vet called me; she wanted your new number. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“She hasn’t called you yet, then.”

“Guess not.”

“If she calls, keep me posted.”

I hesitated. Then piped up:

“Medical confidentiality and stuff?”

“You’re the patient," she answered smoothly, "but I’m your guardian.”

“Okay,” I said, resigned. “Sure.”

“Oh, and, I'm just going to toss it at you: who are you thinking about RSVP’ing?”

“For the wedding? There’s heaps of time,” I replied.

“Well, kinda, no,” she said abruptly. “There isn’t.”

“Only if you want to get married yesterday.”

She gave a small sigh.

“If I leave everything up to you, I know it’s not going to happen.”

I made a small grunt.

“Fine. Scott. Tasha.”

“And who else?”

“There is no one else,” I said quietly.

She considered for a moment.

“What about Stuart? You guys had a thing.”

“He’s your ex.”

“But he’s your friend.” She paused, and then carried on in a rapid mutter: “But then if he’s there, the girl is there, so—”

“Is there a problem? Because—”

“No. Even if she’s not on the list, he’s probably just going to sneak her in anyway, just like he snuck her in—”

“There’s a problem,” I sighed.

“Making a note of Stuart and Stuart’s guests,” she spoke slowly, emphasising every syllable, “on the ‘maybe’ pile.”

“I do have someone else, actually,” I murmured, and for no reason feeling my heart speeding up, as if I was about to propose something incredibly stupid. What came tumbling out of my mouth next was impelled by pure, raw impulse:

“Natalie. Just a friend.”

“Who's this? From work?” she inquired casually, then interrupted herself: “Wait, wait, is this Natalie Sommers…?”

My jaw dropped open and I began to stammer through a very dry mouth:

“How did you – Where did you hear that?”

It turned out, while I’d been kidnapped, she’d found Natalie’s number on the call log on her phone, and a P.I. had a skip tracer identify the owner. I thought Jen should have forgotten that now, except that she had an unfortunate tendency for this kind of inconvenient recall.

“So,” I began, “you still have her number in your call log?”

She replied under her breath:

“I might and I might not, darling…”

I was pretty sure that was ‘yes’.

“You can have this girl’s number,” she relented. “And you can do something for me. And then we’re both happy.”

“What?”

“I’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”

“Sure,” I said, feeling too restless to stay on the phone. “Anyway, I have to go. I need to learn this script.”

She interrupted me:

“You know what’s weird?”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you: the way your voice sounds through the phone. I've never heard it before. It’s ‘pre-tiny’.” She laughed. “Kind of like a bad dream, actually. Not a fan.” She made a smooching sound. “Mwah. Love you. Bye.”

Googling ‘Natalie Sommers’ on my phone led me to a number of social media accounts listed under her name, and clicked the first. A gut reaction even before I’d properly recognized her in the profile photo: a girl on a tennis court with a racquet, her fair hair pushed back by an athletic headband. Then I saw what it said under location: St Palma. She must have moved here.

There was a bang outside the window like someone kicking a dumpster, as glass crashed and broke. Youthful spluttering laughter, some of it vaguely flirtatious. Then distant sirens.

Once the sounds settled, it was just the soft roar of blended urban noise again, and above it all, my still thudding heart. I took a deep breath as I looked back at the phone screen. Now I’d seen her, I’d sated my curiosity, hopefully I could switch the webpage onto something else. Only problem was, looking her up – re-opening that chapter in my life – was like peeking inside Pandora’s box. I just had to go back and keep pulling at it, determined to open the whole thing up, even if it brought only pain.

And seeing that she was in St Palma and I was in St Palma…

It was kind of…

…providential.

No, wrong word.

A coincidence.

At the back of the apartment there was a sunlit communal yard, and from mere inches off the ground, it extended out in every direction like an emerald ocean. The weekly gardener had been by and the grass was razored, the texture bristled against my bare feet and ankles as I paced, waiting for the personal trainer to arrive, checking the time on my phone, which was lying on the grass.

The other tenants were out during the day, the yard was normally empty until way after dark when those anomalous, 2AM conversations on deck chairs stirred up outside my window.

My phone buzzed with a text. Before I could read it, there was a rattling sound.

“HEY! YO!” a young woman called. “IS THIS THE RIGHT PLACE? I CAN’T GET IN!”

The rattling sound came again. It was coming from the barred fence running around the yard, and the gate was locked from the inside. I couldn’t open it, she couldn’t open it. D’oh. Terrible start.

You had to be buzzed into the front gate to get into the back. I couldn’t buzz her in; I was too small. I’d have to call Raf to come around, but he’d need time to drive over. Or, I could try getting the attention of one of the other residents – if anyone was home. Then I had another idea.

I jogged over the lawn to the barred gate, easily slipping through the bars to the other side, where the woman was standing. She was a pair of white, boulder-sized sneakers standing either side of me.

She must have been looking down at me, her sharp, but cheerful voice descended as if from the clouds:

“WOW. I LOVE A CHALLENGE. BUT YOU, ARE A PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY.”

I craned my neck as, at the same time, she crouched down. Her visage, backlit by the bright sky, seemed to hover down over me like a landing spacecraft. She was a young, striking woman with a sunkissed tan and gold hair in a messy ponytail, a couple of tresses wound up in a thin braid. She wore a black tracksuit and pair of fingerless gloves on her hands. I could imagine her sunbathing on a beach, or riding a surfboard, wavy straw-colored hair streaming behind. A small duffel hung off one sunny shoulder.

Her eyes stared down with unsuppressed shock, before, unable to help herself, she beamed at me. My body relaxed, as usual when confronted with a stranger’s bald, curious gaze, mitigated by a friendly gesture. And she was bathing me in unabashed friendliness.

“SO YOU’RE JERRY,” she said.

I held her gaze even though my neck muscles were twinging.

“That’s correct.”

To give my neck a rest I lowered my head, only to be met by the sight of the tight crotch of her athletic pants, pulling between her slightly parted, muscular thighs.

She rubbed her hands on her knees with enthusiasm.

“CAN YOU GIVE ME A SHAKE, LITTLE DUDE?”

She offered the broad, slightly tanned expanse of her palm, with her first few fingers and thumb poised to grasp my own, even doing a quick, casual ‘come hither’ gesture with her first two fingers.

“PUT ‘ER THERE!”

I placed my palm onto the pads of her first two fingertips, before her thumb lowered, squashing my palm slightly between as she – a little too enthusiastically –experimented with how much pressure to apply as she shook my hand.

“WHAT A WEE MITT!” she breathed.

Unable to withdraw my hand, my eyes were drawn up near her bare shoulder, which extended down into a toned bicep.

Her gaze, likewise, appeared to have been temporarily snagged by the pint-size flex of my bicep, which was flexing quite a bit more than hers as it struggled to defend against getting whipped up and down in the handshake.

She cast a puzzled look at the gate, following its perimeter with her eyes.

“STOP ME IF I’M POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS," she said, "BUT WE’RE OUT HERE, AND WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THERE.”

She nodded her head towards the back yard of the apartment complex, where I'd just sprinted from.

“Lift me up,” I instructed. “I’ll open it.”

“YOU WANT ME TO—?” Her fingerless-gloved hands opened before me, cupping instinctively.

“Yeah,” I said, and before she could react, stepped over and climbed into them.

“YOU BALLSY LITTLE OPERATOR,” she drawled. “COULDN’T EVEN WAIT TWO MINUTES TO PLANT YOUR BUTT ON MY HAND.”

Me ballsy? I thought. She was the one making sly remarks. She could give Jennifer a run for her money.

The bars of the gate were running past as I was lifted while the trainer stood to full height.

Once her hands stopped, I stood on the leathery padding of the gloves, getting my balance, then turning to look into her inquiring face.

“You need to hold me upside down,” I said.

She appraised me flatly with her intense gaze.

“OKAY, EITHER THIS IS GOING TO WORK OR YOU HAVE A STRANGE SENSE OF HUMOR.”

I dropped into a sitting position on her hand as her fingers curled around my ankles.

“I JUST LIFT…?”

“Yeah.”

The black leathery surface of her palm disappeared in stages; my legs rose up over my head as the rest of my body followed, the world re-oriented the other way until I was looking down at my hands draping just above the glove palm.

“—AND…?”

“Put me over the gate; there—” I pointed out the direction and next second I was heading that way, rising up over the top of the gate and swooping towards the lock mechanism. While dangling from my legs, my arms worked the lock mechanism, until it clicked. While I held it open, the woman pushed the door in, stepping into the yard. Then I was moving through the air until I found myself dangling right in front of the woman’s face, her broad smile lighting up my immediate view.

“NOW I SEE WHY YOU NEED ME,” the disarming smile said. “YOU HAVE TO PLAY MISSION IMPOSSIBLE TO GET INSIDE YOUR YARD.”

She dropped her duffel bag onto the lawn with a plonk that jolted through my body. It was getting warm, so she put me down on the lawn while she unzipped her track jacket and put it to the side, underneath a black spandex crop top which left her stomach bare, exhibiting the faint shadows and bumps of an emerging six pack of abdominal muscles. My eyes were stuck on her abdominals for a moment. I had a six pack, too, but having never seen one on a girl, it was something of a novelty.

Suddenly, the white boulders came thumping over to me again, and stopping in front of me, she stood with her hands on her hips, admiring me a second, leaning down slightly.

“I’M LARISSA. KNOW WHY I’M HERE?”

“You’re my workout trainer?”

She nodded.

“WE’RE A TEAM NOW. IT’S MY JOB TO PUSH YOU TO WORK HARDER, AND IT’S YOUR JOB TO WORK WITH ME. SOUND SIMPLE?”

“I believe so.”

“YOU BELIEVE SO?” She straightened, putting a hand on her hip. “CAN YOU SOUND A LITTLE MORE ENERGIZED FOR ME?”

I rolled my shoulders awkwardly.

“Uh, looking high-spiritedly forwards to it.”

She quirked an eyebrow.

“GREAT TO HEAR. BUT I KNEW YOU’D SAY THAT. OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. BECAUSE YOU ALREADY KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND THE GYM,” she nodded down at my chest, indicating my bulked-up shape. “AND THAT WORKS FOR ME; IT MAKES MY JOB EASIER.”

I took the compliment without saying anything. In actuality, I rarely so much as touched a dumbbell anymore because—

“Everything I pick up gives me a workout,” I shrugged.

She raised her eyebrows as if impressed.

“OBVIOUSLY. YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE IN PRETTY GOOD SHAPE, ANYWAY. BUT LOOKS CAN LIE. SKINNY DOESN’T MEAN HEALTHY, AND JACKED DOESN’T MEAN FIT.” She paused. “BUT SHORT DOESN’T MEAN WEAK, EITHER.” She nodded down at me. “GO AHEAD AND PROVE ME RIGHT.”

Casting her eyes around the yard, she strode under the lavender canopy of a Jacaranda to evade the sun’s glare, threw down a black foam mat, then turned and noticed me racing along after her. She stood still, clasping her hands behind her back and admired me, and finally, could not hold in her amusement any longer.

“HEY,” she said, giggling at the sight of me leaping over the grass to catch up, “TRAINING FOR A MARATHON? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Hopping onto the foam mat, I slowed, my footsteps making tiny tapping noises over the rubber. Confused, I said:

“I was following you.”

“DON’T OVER-EXTEND YOURSELF TOO FAST. YOU’RE JUST A TEENY LITTLE GUY AND WE’VE GOT A VERY NOT TEENY LITTLE PROGRAM TO RUN THROUGH.”

As she waited patiently, I hesitantly came up to her shoes, wondering how close I should get. In the background, traffic hummed along the highways leading into the metropolitan hub.

Some feet away (on my scale) an abandoned and dirt scuffed baseball sat on the grass, and bigger than a beach ball to me. Larissa was staring at it when I looked up at her, then her eyes passed over me, making an unavoidable size comparison. The ball was even taller than I was.

“YOURS?”

“No.”

“DIDN’T THINK SO.”

She gave it a small punt with the toe of her sneaker, I watched, enthralled, at the sight of the angular white boulder of her sneaker swinging and colliding with the white boulder of the ball, sending it hurtling away across the lawn. This caused a pigeon to rustle in the branches above, giving itself away amidst clumps of purple foliage. My muscles tensed, Larissa barely looked. A guard dog barked from another property two lots down. My muscles tensed again; and I checked the fence gate was shut, even though it swung shut and latched automatically.

Something was slid out of the duffel bag; a square glass plate with rubber pads, like a giant hoverboard, which was placed on the grass.

“WEIGH-IN TIME,” she announced. “UP!”

I hefted myself up the edge of the scale, my tiny feet made a small ‘plink’ noise as they tapped over the glass, which elicited laughter from above.

I stood still on the scale in the trainer’s immense shadow as she crouched over me to read the scale. Her toned bronze thighs fenced in at me, blocking everything.

By pound, my weight came up less than a pound.

“MY SCALE JUST CAUGHT YOU,” she remarked in earnest, her light eyes wide. “BUT ANY LIGHTER AND YOU’D CEASE TO EXIST.”

A different contraption was withdrawn from the bag, looking like a giant pair of tweezers. Callipers, she explained, for measuring body fat percentage.

The prongs snapped in front of my face and I recoiled. They looked like they could’ve snapped up my head and plucked me like an eyebrow.

“NOPE! TOO BIG,” she decided. “I’M GOING TO DO THIS MANUALLY.”

The callipers disappeared into the bag and I watched her shins stiffen and flex as she rounded down on me again.

“NOW, GENTLY, I’M JUST GONNA ZOOM IN UNDER HERE—” she murmured, as her hand launched at me, one finger delicately scratching at the hem of my top, rolling it up to reveal my stomach. Her eyes caught on the middle of my abdomen, where the fading scar was.

“WHOA, DID YOU RUN INTO A SHARPENED PENCIL? WHAT HAPPENED?”

A blush was creeping into my cheeks as I stuttered for words.

“Uh…big operation.”

The nail tip was now tracing up and down the scarline with soft strokes, and the ticklish sensation on the old but still tender wound site made my junk twitch. The slim-fitting athletic shorts I was wearing already made my bulge project, thickly and unavoidably, from the fork of my legs, like I was smuggling contraband in my pants.

Her nail tips were neatly trying to capture a roll of belly flesh between them, and I shuffled uncomfortably in place on the scale, as the plucking motions sent little nips and prickles all over my torso. Then her broad fingerpads were rolling in circles around my stomach to gauge fat deposits. The pressure followed a continually moving target that explored closer and closer to my pelvis as it methodically went down from my bottom ribs. I sucked in my breath as the edge of the thumb accidentally gave my bulge a soft swipe, before drifting upwards again. Then, the forefinger and thumb spread on either side of my waist and my middle was caught in between and squeezed experimentally as if I was plush toy. The pincer created by her fingertips felt like two strong magnets trying to touch each other through the medium of my stomach.

After, I stretched and did a warm up, jogging over the lawn while the giantess trainer casually sauntered beside me, every footfall jolting through my bones. After a couple of other exercises, she paused, kneeling beside her bag and sweeping an hand inside.

“MY LIGHTEST DUMBELL WOULD PIN YOU LIKE A PAPERWEIGHT,” she said lightly. “BACK TO THE MANUAL APPROACH.”

I lay on my back on the ground while her flattened palm dropped over me like a ceiling. She instructed me to raise my arms until my palms pressed up against her substantially larger one, pushing against it to ‘lift’ it until my arms were straight. Several reps later, the activity switched so that I was crouching, and ‘lifted’ her palm over my head until I was standing with my arms straight up.

“OKAY, HERO,” Larissa exclaimed, getting my attention back to her. “LET’S FINISH UP WITH SOME INTENSIVE STRETCHES SO I CAN SEE YOUR FLEXIBILITY IN ACTION.”

She instructed me to get down. The razored pelt of grass itched my back as I lay face up. Her enormous figure entered my viewline like a passing cloud, shadowing over the sky, expanding in frame as she crouched over me until there was nowhere else to look but up at her face.

The thin braid fell down her shoulder and she brushed it back behind her ear. Pinching each of my ankles, my legs were straightened, then carefully rotated.

Her smooth touch guided my leg to lift straight up while she braced her thumb against the underside of my thigh. The tip of her thumb accidentally squirmed in between my thighs and brushed my sack from behind, lifting it. I fought not to react. For an instant, it was balanced there, before the thumb shifted away, getting a better position under my thigh. Then my leg was lowered again, and my other leg was guided into repeating the stretch, and the thumb tip once again touched to my balls.

With the growing discomfort of entrapment, I felt two of her fingers curve around my side to my front, where they began to probe my lower belly, tracing the muscles, naming the muscles as she went. Then she paused.

“YOU’RE BUILT LIKE A PINT-SIZED BELGIAN STALLION. “ She tapped my ribcage with a fingernail. “I THINK I COULD LOCATE EVERY MUSCLE ON THE HUMAN BODY JUST DOING LAPS OF YOU WITH MY FINGER!”

The firm pressure of her touch began to sweep across my stomach, below my navel, before identifying what it was looking for.

“THESE BANDS ON YOUR HIPS ARE YOUR OBLIQUES. GUYS CONSTANTLY TELL ME THEY WANT A SIX PACK TO ATTRACT THE GIRLS. BUT LADIES LOVE OBLIQUES. MAYBE ‘CAUSE THEY POINT DOWN THE PEVLIS. GO FIGURE.”

Her nails were stealthily tracing each of my ‘obliques’ and it was tickling a little. At the lowest part of each oblique, the sensation crawled alarmingly close to my groin, and my penis was beginning to stir. I shifted my weight back and forth, scrunching my toes, my muscles stiffening against her touch.

“DOESN’T LOOK LIKE YOU NEED MY HELP WITH THESE ANYWAY.” Her fingers travelled back up my body, now running back and forth along my shoulder blades, down along my sides to my outer hips, and back up again.

Suddenly, she exclaimed:

“YOU’VE GOT A REAL LITTLE HORSE’S BARREL GOING ON.”

One of her fingers delivered a playful smack to my belly. Trying to push my discomfort down, I gave her a quizzical look.

“Is that good or bad?”

“I MEAN, YOUR RIBS AND ABDOMEN FEEL SURPRISINGLY RUGGED.” As she said this, she subjected my middle to a quick series of firm, experimental squeezes, as if testing the flexibility of my ribcage. “KINDA LIKE A TINY LITTLE HORSE. YOU LIKE HORSES?”

“Can’t say I do.” I was thinking of how big their teeth were, and how a single hoof could stomp me down into a human postage stamp.

“I LOVE ‘EM. YOU CAN’T KEEP ME OFF THEM.” She chuckled. “DON’T MIND ME THOUGH—”

Her fingers continued down my abdomen and down one thigh, which was shortly gripped between two fingerpads and given a gentle squeeze. My breath caught at the proximity of her fingertips to my groin. I tried not to move a muscle.

“THIS IS YOUR SARTORIUS MUSCLE IN HERE, IT RUNS DOWN YOUR THIGH. IF YOU GET KNEE PAIN, THIS MAY BE THE CULPRIT, PARTICULARLY IF YOU HOLD A SITTING POSITION A LOT, BUT IF IT’S A PROBLEM I CAN TEACH YOU SOME STRETCHES TO PREVENT STRAIN.”

Her fingers attempted to sweep back up to my tummy, but misjudged the precise positioning and next thing I knew, the pad of a finger was rooting around my lower – lower – belly for more bands of muscle to identify, but accidentally captured and made an inquisitive investigation of my thickened shaft before she realized what it was and drew her hand back.

“WHOOPS,” she said, “GAVE YOUR LOVE MUSCLE A LITTLE POKE THERE, DIDN’T I?” She grinned. “WELL, IT FELT LIKE IT GAVE MY FINGER A LITTLE POKE BACK! SORRY, BUD, MY BAD!”

She ruffled my hair in a good-natured, ‘no harm done’ kind of way. When my eyes dropped from her face and I failed to respond, she went on.

“AW, NO NEED TO GET ALL CUTE ABOUT IT,” she went on breezily. “IT’S NOT THE FIRST TIME A CLIENT HAS GOTTEN A LITTLE EXCITED DURING A WORKOUT. IT HAPPENS.” She shrugged, flashing me a small, but unselfconscious smile that didn’t exactly help my groin to deflate.

She got to her feet, hauled the duffel over her shoulder and I trailed her across the yard. Pausing at the gate, her towering legs bent in a crouch.

"SO YOU KNOW RAF? WE USED TO DATE."

"He takes me place to place."

"A MODERN DAY KNIGHT. OR KINDA LIKE YOUR HORSE, GIVING YOU LITTLE RIDES. THAT'S GOTTA BE FUN."

"Guess you could put it like that."

"LAZY, THOUGH," she threw me an easy grin, "MAKING HIM DO ALL THE WORK. NO WONDER YOU NEED ME."

I scoffed, even I was charmed by her blasé attitude.

“SEE YOU NEXT WEEK,” she said. She seemed inclined to make contact with me somehow – an upper arm slap, or a shoulder squeeze – but unable to do that, her fingers shaded me and the undersides of her extended fingers rubbed back and forth against the top of my head.

“IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS BEFORE THEN, HIT UP MY NUMBER. OR EMAIL. YOU’VE GOT 24 HOUR ACCESS TO ME, CHAMP.” She gave me a wink that was unabashedly flirty. Then she surveyed my apartment complex, and looking back at me, cocked an eyebrow.

“IS THIS THE PART WHERE I LOWER YOU THROUGH YOUR BEDROOM CEILING ON THE END OF A CABLE?”

“I’ll take it from here.”

“BYE, JERRY.”

“Bye Larissa.”

Phone call from vet, medical procedure

Later on I received a call from the vet.

“There’s a trial running for a new treatment,” she said, “and it might stimulate your system to go from teeny little to big.”

My spine went straight up off the mattress and I stared at the phone laying on my legs.

“You mean it might increase my height?”

“I’ve never had a patient with your condition before. But with your superb health, I’d make a case that you’re a perfect candidate to give it a try.”

“What does it involve?”

“You need to scurry in here so I can give you a little feel over. If everything checks out, I can start stuffing you with pills per regime. It could be a big adjustment for a petite little thing like you...”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Whatever’s involved, I don’t care.”

“Had a feeling you’d be keen, you feisty little go-getter. But we have to watch your physical exertion.”

“I’m seeing a fitness trainer,” I answered, eager to dispel any concern.

“That’s good,” she said this in a strained way, “but this therapy is going to make your body work hard. I don’t want you to come wheeling into my office needing me to rub your tiny heart back to life. And I know you don’t want that either, Mister Cupcake, as much as you love coming in to see me!” 

I made an appointment to see her next time I was home. After the phone call, my attention was suspended, dazed over the prospect of possibly being big again. Keyed up, nerves jittering, I ran myself a bath to wash off the grime from the earlier physical workout, and try to relax my racing thoughts.

Later, I considered calling Jen and telling her about the vet’s news; she would need to know eventually, she would be the one driving me to the vet clinic. But something – a tight feeling in my chest – held me back. I tried to tell myself it was the desire to keep it a nice surprise. But I didn’t really believe that.

The dewy night melted away in the early morning warmth. Outside the sky was just lightening to yellow.

I felt wide awake even before I opened my eyes, and, even with spare time, got up and moving, unable to sleep. Raf wouldn’t come by to pick me up for some hours. After getting showered and dressed, I went down the elevator past the lobby towards the cornerside café adjoined to the apartment lobby. Being so early, the place was clear. A waiter put me on a table and took my coffee order – specifically in a bottlecap. As I drank the regretfully weak coffee, I studied my phone, checking emails before texting Raf my location. The coffee was so disappointing I ordered another; but that one, too, tasted exactly the same. So I had some water. The white Chrysler soon rolled up out the front.

It was warm when we arrived on set, the sun high in the cerulean sky. The set was a private house, quaint Colonial-style, being rented out by the production company, and currently crowded with film crew. The streets were lined with cars so Raf parked some blocks away, where the trailers were set up in a clear park area. One of these trailers had the costumes and changing rooms.

"JERRY," the set costumer said, "I’VE GOT FIFTEEN MINUTES TO TRANSFORM YOU INTO A PUPPY. BUT YOU'RE ALREADY TINY AND CUTE, SO I SEE A LOT OF POTENTIAL."

She directed me to my costume, stored separately so it didn’t get lost amidst all the full size costumes.

There was no other way of putting it: my costume was...interesting. Staring at it, blank-faced, it was apparent in an instant what Stan meant when he said Ryan Kaint was a ‘walking talking dog’. It was a realistic dog creature suit; styled like a bipedal white Alsatian, a miniature bodysuit covered in white fur, with padded paw hands and feet, and a disturbingly life-like dog head.

With the costume on, sans the head, standing on the make-up counter and gazing at myself in front of the light-bulb surrounded mirror was disturbing. The special effect technology these days was more advanced than I realized. With the head on, I was virtually blind, as the head had detailed eye effects, with the slimmest panel of mesh around the eyes, out of sight beneath the eyelids, to provide slits to see out of, and only then in direct light source. Standing in shadow, the mesh panels were useless.

Offside, an assistant director quickly coached me on how to walk and move with the suit on, and gave me some pointers for conveying my character through movement. The AD then introduced me to some of the other actors, in particular Nicole Brookes, the actress playing Lacey, Ryan Kaint’s owner. Throughout the film, her character had to pick me up and hold me, and behave naturally doing so. Crew were keen to get us to establish a bond so she didn’t act surprised by me while shooting was taking place. She also had to get familiar with holding and touching me, so that it came across as natural once cameras started rolling.

“HI!” said Nicole, staring down at me in wonder, now costumed in the dog suit and sitting in Raf’s hand.

Nicole had an easy, confident drawl that endeared me to her almost immediately. Not to mention, she’d already been run through hair and make-up and come out the other end looking pretty damn sleek.

“I’M NICOLE.”

“I’m Jerry,” I said.

“I HONESTLY HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO EXPECT,” she exclaimed, her eyes roving my costume, “BUT OH MY GOSH, WARDROBE HAVE DONE SUCH A GOOD JOB – YOU LOOK JUST LIKE A PUPPY! – BUT ON TWO LEGS!”

Then I was transferred from Raf’s hands to hers.

“OHHH, BUT YOU ARE SO SMALL,” she said, feeling my weight, and unable to resist pushing her fingertips into my fur covered stomach, and stroking it, “AND SO SOFT!”

I was technically too small to be even a puppy, but some scenes were going to mask this with forced perspective, and VFX were going to manipulate the rest. A hasty screenplay update clarified that Ryan Kaint was the ‘runt’ of his litter.

“AM I GOING TO BE HOLDING YOU THE ENTIRE SHOOT?” Nicole said with thinly concealed eagerness, glancing at the assistant director, as if for permission.

Instead, ‘Lacey’ needed to be coached how to walk with me in tow while not breaking from her acting, and whilst fighting the urge to look down where I was all the time. Because of my suit’s head impaired visibility, I kept accidentally walking into her ankles and making crew laugh. She fought the urge to scoop me up and rub my tummy or kiss the top of the head of my costume; a couple of times she relented, and sometimes the director was so pleased with the fluidity of these spontaneous interactions and how naturally they fit into the context of the scene that it was decided they would stay in the cut.

To combat the poor visibility of my costume head, the script supervisor had the idea to spray a trace of sharp perfume on Nicole’s ankles to help me locate her while in suit – if not by sight. I was dubious about my ability to track by scent alone but the director loved it: claiming it would make my performance more method, forcing me to navigate and experience the world more like an actual hound, by my nose. With my head almost desperately pointing in the direction of Nicole’s ankles – actually straining to catch her perfume – and the tail motor running like an eager wag, it gave the appearance of an ultra-attentive pet hound enamored solely with his owner, and the production team were over-joyed with the illusion.

Even between shooting sessions, I had to keep the costume on, and even with the camera not rolling I was receiving regular pats to the head and stomach rubs from the actors and random members of crew, and all encouraged by production, to facilitate my staying in character.

*

One day, my bladder began to cramp while on set. I’d drank too much that morning and now my jaw began to grit in anguish and I had to stifle a groan every time Nicole’s fingers wrapped around my middle or queasily stimulated my lower belly with a playful tickle or poke. I did my best to stay in character and respond with the starry-eyed affection the script called for, even as my bladder raised an internal siren for release.

The next time the director yelled ‘cut’ and there was a break between shooting sessions, I began to hurry over in the direction of Raf, sitting off to the side, chatting with an assistant. Before I could get his attention, something closed around the neck scruff of my costume, lifting me up into the air like a crane. My stomach pulled tight with surprise, and I wondered if I’d been snagged on some stage machinery, before rotating to find myself looking into a pair of wide, youthful eyes. It was a young girl, maybe seven. In fact I’d seen her earlier around the perimeter of the set, touring with an aide, and guessed it was one of the crew’s kids, but hadn’t paid a lot of notice before now. Worse, it didn’t seem she’d noticed me before now.

She peered down inscrutably like some childlike omniscient deity, trying to figure out the tiny features and mechanics of my dog-head mask. My head was parallel with her lips, which were partially open in dumbfounded interest. Rhythmic blasts of stale heat rushed between the lips and directly against my tiny face, fanning through the dog ears and synthetic fur. She beheld me as if I was some strange insect she’d just discovered and it was making me incredibly uncomfortable. For a moment I could do nothing but stare dumbly as she stared back down at me.

Then, I was nearly deafened by the girl’s thunderous roar:

“TINY DOGGY! I’M GOING TO KEEP YOU!”

Her voice chimed inside my skull like a gong, triggering an instant migraine.

“No, kid,” I said weakly, “please let me go—”

“WOW! YOU CAN TALK!” Her squeal of excitement blared in my face. Cringing, ears ringing, I answered:

“I’m not a toy, I’m a real person.”

A scaled-up finger pointed right in front of my face – more accurately, it was a thumb. And the large, long nail edge was angled right at my eyes, which weren’t well guarded in the dog head. The nail looked jagged; roughly trimmed, and had specks of dirt trapped underneath. For that matter, the thumbprint was smudged faintly with dirt or dust, outlining the circular thumbprint. My heart hammered in fear as the blown up digit came right for my face. At the last second it darted under my jaw to jab at my neck. The long thumbnail delicately hooking into my throat, searching for a non-existent speaker installed there. The thumb and finger rubbed back and forth, scrubbing my face around between them in some enthusiastic act of petting.

“I – no – ack –!”

I could barely enunciate words with the added pressure being placed on my larynx. As the pressure shifted back and forth around my neck, it felt like my head was about to be unscrewed – and not my mask head, but my real head.  Desperate and out of words, I emitted some panicked yelps and the hand drew away from my head, allowing it respite. But the huge child face was still staring at me with wide-eyed wonder. Then she grinned, filling me with dread:

“YOU’RE A TALKING PUPPET!”

“No, I’m a person, like you.”

Then my neck scruff was released while my waist was pinched, I was flipped around, clumsily readjusted in the girl’s grip as there was poking and prodding against my tailbone, forcing open the zip on the back of the costume which allowed a rod to jam itself up from my butt, along my spine, stopping at my head. Not a rod, but her pointer finger. My body was snapped straight as the suit pulled taut like I’d fattened up. I was rotated back to stare up helplessly at the kid inspected my improvised fit upon her pointer finger, the inside of which my spine was stretched out against, with the fingerprint rammed against the back of my head. I winced at the increased pressure of the suit now straining my bladder.

The pointer of the other hand came like a missile at my face, poking and pushing to marvel at the added tightness of my costume, and the feeling of my body and insides beneath the dog suit. Puppets weren’t supposed to have insides. My chest was prodded, and then a hammering fingertip tapped around my belly. As my abdomen was subjected to this I nearly peed myself as my bladder was squished around beneath the indiscriminate probing. Before I could complain, the finger departed and the world jerked up and down as the other finger, which I was wrapped around like a sailor tied to a mast, was wiggled back and forth.

“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!” she sang out, continuing to rattle me around through the air with the wriggling motions of her finger, ignoring my kicking legs and groans for help.

The sky dropped under my feet and the air rushed about as I was suddenly upside and staring at the ground zooming by where the sky should be, bobbling and flying helplessly at the little girl’s hip as she ran. The world bounced and whirled past with dizzy unpredictability, while my arms and legs swung and whipped all over the place like a ragdoll.

I’m being kidnapped by a seven year old, I realized absurdly.

The ground jarred to a halt as the girl cried:

“DADDY!”

“WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO?” an older man’s voice said.

“LOOK WHAT I FOUND, DADDY!”

The world spun back upright as I was shoved up towards the face of one of the assistant crew members I’d never seen before. Even after the girl’s hand stilled, the sky continued to circle slowly, nauseatingly, and for a minute I couldn’t speak, fearing I’d throw up.

“WHERE DID YOU FIND THAT?” the man said, squinting down at me.

A pair of thick fingers captured the muzzle of my face between, giving it a squeeze, and then turned my head to the side to peer at my scalp. I cried out in alarm.

“HOW DOES THIS THING WORK?” he said, interested by the sound I’d made. “I DON’T SEE A MOTOR ANYWHERE. LET ME TAKE A LOOK—”

His enormous stubby fingers surrounded my head, closed in and drew tight, capturing my skull between them. With one fluid yank, I slid off the girl’s finger by my head, and the world was sent tumbling around as he rolled me back and forth on the slightly roughened surfaces of his palms.

His thumb ran back and forth over my stomach, as if stroking the fur of my suit, but as his fingertips bumped my stomach it produced spasms of bladder pain.

“Uggggh…” I groaned, trying to fend for my gut from his curious probing. “Please stop, I’m not a puppet! I’m an actor, I’m working here – this is my costume!”

“OH, I KNEW THAT,” he said, unable to conceal his surprise, “BUT I THINK YOU FOOLED MY DAUGHTER A SECOND. YOU LOOK MORE LIKE A PUPPY THAN A PERSON,” and reconsidering, “AND MORE LIKE A PUPPET THAN A PUPPY.”

He chuckled.

“JOKING OF COURSE,” he grinned, as his fingers subjected my middle to a friendly pinch, “WELL, NOT ABOUT THE PUPPET BIT – YOU DON’T WANT TO BE A LITTLE PLAYMATE FOR MY DAUGHTER?” he said suddenly. “SEE THAT; SHE’S UTTERLY FALLEN IN LOVE WITH YOU, AND YOU’D BUY ME A COUPLE OF HOURS TO WATCH THE GAME.”

I thought he’d say ‘joking’ again, but he was staring down at me like he expected a response.

I swallowed, my throat suddenly achingly dry.

“THERE’S A PAID GIG IN THERE FOR YOU,” he went on, “THINK ABOUT IT: YOU PLAY BOTH BABYSITTER AND TOY! WHAT COULD BE MORE CONVENIENT?”

I started:

“Sorry, I—”

He tapped my belly several times in an impatient attempt to get my attention again. I grimaced.

“NO DEAL? WHAT ABOUT HIRED ENTERTAINMENT AT CHILDREN’S BIRTHDAY PARTIES? DOES THAT SOUND MORE LIKE YOUR STYLE?”

“I’ve got to return the suit after shooting,” I said quickly. I didn’t know what would happen to the suit after filming was done, but it provided a convenient way out. Plus, he seemed to need reminding that I was a grown man, and that the suit was just a costume and not actually part of me. And little kids would probably have even more trouble making that distinction, if they recognized I was living person at all, and not a talking toy.

Costume department actually had four identical Ryan Kaint suits in storage, but I decided not to mention that.

Unable to drum up interest in his ‘side hustle’ the crew member gratefully released me again, and I made a mad rush at Raf, who accompanied me to one of the portable toilets that had been set up in the parking area down the street.

Finally, at the end of the shooting day, Raf drove me back to my apartment, picking up some dinner on the way. My skin felt gritty, covered in dry sweat from wearing the dog suit all week, and my muscles twinged from the unusual physical activity demanded in pretending to be a dog, plus occupying certain positions for extended periods of time while standing on set.

I had a quick rinse in the sink, and then came out and ate some dinner with Raf, not a home cooked meal, but still the best thing I’d had all day.

“THIS DRINK; NO DEAL FOR ME. TAKE IT, MAN.”

He held out an aluminium can in his hand, platinum-colored with a label that said ‘Kolade’.

“Gimme,” I nodded without thinking, assuming it was soda. “What is it?”

“ENERGY DRINK. THEY RAN OUT OF RED BULL AT THE STORE, BUT I DON’T KNOW MAN, IT’S CHOCOLATE OR SOMETHING. I'MMA PASS.”

I wasn’t an energy drink person; preferred a hot drink like coffee for a caffeine hit. Also, it was very late for stimulant; the sky was a rare shade of blue with the rapidly encroaching nightfall – the only time in the day the sky was properly blue in St Palma was not in daytime, but night.

Still, the chocolate made me think it probably wasn’t very strong.

“I’ll try it.”

He poured some into my miniature Nineteen39 mug and I took a sip. It didn’t taste like an energy drink anyway, but like – not chocolate – but iced coffee milk with a carbonated fizz and the very faint tang of Coca-Cola. Weird, but not bad. I guzzled the whole mug down and looked up for a refill.

“GOOD STUFF?” Raf observed, pouring me some more. I quickly downed that, too.

“DON’T WANNA OVERDO IT,” he said. “NO MORE SPACE!” He poked my substantially undersized gut to illustrate.

He was about to put the can away in the fridge without thinking but I stopped him, anxious not to see the end of the Kolade until his next visit.

So, he poured out the remainder into several plastic shot cups he’d bought at the store, and put wrap over the tops like drum skin, and each held on with an elastic band, and left them on the table for me. If I wanted one, I just punched the wrap with a toothpick, and tore it at the edge to create a drinking hole, like a self-fashioned can lid.

The next morning I popped another shot of Kolade before showering, and it had me wide awake once I was towelling off. Then back to the set of ‘Alpha’ for another day’s shooting. Invigorated by the energy drink, the dog suit seemed a little less cumbersome, my nose became more sensitive to Nicole’s perfume, my lines a little more familiar, my brain even racing a little ahead in the script.

We carried on doing the occasional behind-the-scenes ‘method’ bits to stay in character during shooting breaks; if we saw each other in passing she would hail me down, I would gallop adoringly up to her feet, the little tail on my costume wagging mechanically (it was triggered by motion, I had no control over it) she would scoop me up, flip me over in her hands and scruff up my stomach, coo at me, make kissy noises.

During moments between my takes my body automatically tensed up, always with anxiety mounting up to my next line – would I remember it? Was it going to sound right? I’d do my part, the director would yell ‘cut!’ and then it would be the same thing, re-take.

Then break, only for my muscles to be hot and wire-tight. With sweat rolling down inside the dog suit, I asked a technician to let me linger around the big circular wind machine, hoping someone would switch it on for a test, and the air flow would cool me down (if it didn’t blow me away).

Before we went back on set, Nicole found me pacing around restlessly, stretching and swinging my arms and asked me if I was nervous.

“No,” I lied. “Just tense.”

The more experienced actor, she didn't appear to have this problem, but took pity on me. She scooped me up in one hand, clasped her thumb and forefinger around my neck and began rolling them into my shoulders. I eased into her hand, grateful she was not such a famous actress that she had walled herself off from genuine interaction with co-cast.

Back for another week of shooting. I was becoming a recognized, integral member of the shoot and there were no more solicitations for a side gig as hired children birthday party entertainment. In between shooting, Nicole would whistle, and I would come running, tail wagging, before getting plucked up by the scruff of my neck and hoisted up to her beaming face as she tickled me with an outstretched index finger while I squirmed, dangling from her hand, and tried to remember to bark and huff, and not squeal. She playfully pushed the muzzle of my costume with a fingertip, scratched my ears, stroked my spine, pressed her nose into my neck. All in the name of ‘staying in character’. But it worked. I was being molded – groomed – into my role like the so called Pavlovian dogs. I didn’t think about Ryan Kaint’s motives anymore; I put the costume on and became him. Nicole’s perfume had lodged so stubbornly in my unconscious by now that I could have located her in the dark. Even the wagging of my tail seemed tuned to it.

“SOMETIMES I FORGET THERE’S A LITTLE PERSON IN THERE…” she chuckled down to me, as I lay sprawled in her cupped hand, peering into the face of my costume as if trying to see the human eyes behind the realistic dog face, “…SOMEWHERE.”

“That’s good,” I said. “It means we’re doing a good job.”

When I put the costume on, I was Ryan Kaint, and when I took it off, I was Jerry. It was an easy transition. But I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the affection in her eyes was Lacey and how much was Nicole. I also wondered how much of this off-camera ‘character enrichment’ would make it onto a special feature on the DVD. And whether Jen would ever see it.

* * *

It was evening, the sky glowing magenta. I’d just returned to the apartment from shooting and decided to call home.

Tearing open a wrapped shot cup of Kolade, I sat on the wooden surface of the bedside table, which Raf had helpfully slid against the bedroom window, so that I could sit by the slit in the window, catch the cool – if acrid – breeze wafting over the foothills, and gaze through the glass onto the dusky purple street below, where pedestrians strolled up and down with the leisurely ease of the twilight hours. Farther, the city skyline was black through the haze.

To get the wrapped cup onto the table, I’d tied string to the elastic band and ‘winched’ it up. The wrap over the top had kept the liquid spilling out. A Kolade after the work day was quickly becoming a cherished habit, even though energy drink past afternoon hours probably didn’t do my sleep cycles a favour, but after a busy day shooting I often had difficult shifting gears into downtime late in the night anyway.

“Hey there, you,” Jennifer’s flirtatious voice came from the phone in my lap. Out the window, the hydraulic hiss of truck brakes.

“Hello,” I replied, and humoring her: “is this my gorgeous girlfriend speaking? I was just—”

My voice hitched in my throat.

I had adjusted the phone settings allowed me to hear her at normal speaking volume and now a spontaneous wave of dizziness overcame my senses, and my chest seemed to cramp up like I might cry. It had been several weeks since I’d seen her, and though we spoke on the phone regularly, I was still struck in unguarded moments by random zaps of homesick longing for her. But it wasn’t just the homesickness. Hearing her at normal volume on the phone created the illusion I was talking to her at normal size again. Not seeing her physically present for several days now only completed the illusion, plunging me back into a past time when we’d been dating at same stature. The déjà vu and the homesickness all bound up together made my heart literally ache.

“….Yeah?” she cut in. “You still there?”

I swallowed hard and the feeling subsided again.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “Sorry, my brain is just busy, I guess.”

“What is this, seven thirty?" she said, sounding concerned. "Don’t let them push you too hard, okay? You’re still new at this.”

“I’m finished up shooting for today," I said hastily. "Just mentally unpacking what I did today.”

“Oh…” she went on, sounding hesitant, probably not entirely sure herself what it was I did, exactly, “well, you know, you’ve been out of work for some time now so you’re probably going to have to get used to it again. You still feeling good about it?”

“No regrets. I needed to get out of the house.”

Her tone immediately became brisk:

"Okay. So, who's got you?"

My brow crinkled as if I hadn’t heard her properly.

"Huh?"

"Who's looking after you right now?"

"No one. Not right this instant, I—"

She cut in, with a slight edge in her voice:

"No one's looking out for you?"

"Just me here and I'm relaxing."

"There's got to be someone, like a personal assistant or something. They can’t just leave you alone. No. What happens if you need something?"

“I've got Raf."

“Where is he?”

“His place. It’s late. Anyway, it's fine. I don’t need anything. I like the quiet.”

“Well, find someone and speak up about it to them. Get them working a little for you.”

“Who’s ‘they’? The agency?”

“Whoever you’re working with right now; movie people, whatever.”

“You’ve got it backwards: I work for them.”

“But they owe you legal duties. They have to look after you, it’s the law.”

“I know,” I sighed, regretting I’d said anything. “Everything’s fine. Why are you worried all of a sudden?”

She let out a breath, and after a pause:

“If you say so...” Then she added: “I can’t help it. I miss you.”

“Miss you, too. What are you up to, anyway?”

“Ah, usual stuff, work, and…I keep cleaning the house even though it’s clean,” she muttered, “all the weird stuff you stash in little nooks and crannies… —Oh, I started learning Latin dance.”

“Cool. You still do martial arts?”

“Yeah, I need to burn the energy. But the dancing is kinda like…a martial art set to music, I guess. Fighting…dancing…” she considered, “…maybe not so different.”

“I would go with you,” I suggested tentatively, “– to the dance classes – but…you know.”

I shut up again before the ridiculous mental image caused laughter to spill out of one of us.

“We'll dance at home,” she surged on. “I’ll teach you. You can practice on my hand.”

“Is there something wrong with the floor? That’s, you know,” I added, “the normal place for dancing.”

She countered:

“If you dance on my hand I can tell exactly where you’re putting your feet.”

Considering this, I said:

“You’ve given a lot more thought to this already.”

She was quiet for a second, then admitted:

“The classes are…weird. It’s fine." Her voice spilled out in a run-along drawl: "But my partner’s holding me and he’s pretty strong. Guy’s from, like, Bahrain or something. Stamped on my foot a couple of times, too.”

I smiled to myself, then said seriously:

“He's gotta be strong enough to lift you and do the male role stuff. What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re right," she replied, "there are roles. A lot of acting involved, you could say. Anyway,” she yawned, “I had a class before and I’m kinda tired now, so maybe I’ll let you have your quiet time,” she dramatized the word ‘quiet’ like this was some unusual predilection of mine. Then she said: “When are you going to be home?”

“If everything goes fine and shooting can wrap up, I should get a short break and be home free for the weekend.”

“Exciting – I’ll make sure to leave space in my tummy for you,” she said coolly, but I could hear in her voice the genuine smile she was trying hard to suppress.

My eyes drifted by the window, at the clouds floating over the moon.

“Well....First problem with film-making: nothing goes just ‘fine’. We’re still looking out for some rain to crash the party for the rest of the week.”

“Mmm…and what do you get up to outside of work time?” Her voice tipped with curiosity.

My mind flashed up Natalie’s social media profile page, and my mouth was already half-open, seriously teetering on spilling it to her that Natalie’s campus was in the city.

But I caught myself at the last second.

Maybe Jen knew less about Natalie than I thought; Natalie had denied knowing me to the police. Of course, Jen wouldn’t be so gullible to believe that, but maybe she contented herself that Natalie had been just a friend or even less; someone who let me couch surf in her place.

Did it matter what Jen thought, or knew about my interest in reconnecting with Natalie? She wasn’t here right now, so what good would it do? What if I was wrong, and she did get sulky over it? I’d already heard her dark muttering about Stuart’s new girlfriend, deep down, that still bothered her on some level. And I'd witnessed her rage first hand when she met Stuart's new woman in the flesh.

But if it bothered her so much, why would she give me Natalie’s number? What did she expect I’d do with it? If I then rang the number, wouldn’t that be her fault, in a sense…?

—And I was already thinking up excuses and rationalizations for something I hadn’t even confessed to. Or done wrong. Was I done anything wrong? Oh, screw this crap.

Was I that guileless? I couldn’t even keep a secret – No, not a secret – I couldn’t even keep some things about myself private anymore. If our marriage was going to work at all, I needed to enforce those boundaries. She had her world at home, and her leisure pursuits, her dancing. Well, I had my world now, too, and my pursuits. I was entitled to some privacy even as a married man.

Her voice rang through the phone, snapping my attention back:

“They’ve got to give you free time!” she groaned. She had taken my long silence to mean I’d failed to comprehend her reference to time ‘outside’ work, as if it was a totally foreign concept to me now.

“I’ve got it right now," I said gently.

She said:

“You're busy," she said flatly. "I can tell." She gave a small sigh. "Well...I won't keep you. Stay safe for me while you’re up there, and we’ll talk again soon.”

“Of course.”

“Always love you, baby.” She made a smooching sound against her hand.

“I love you, too. Bye.”

Later I got a text from her that said:

if u were here right now…u would be such a little throbbing mess kissing and fucking my cervix while i watch TV and eat dessert, and a flame emoji.

I replied with a blushing emoji.

On set, day twenty-something.

It had been a long day and we were currently taking a break between takes. The actors cleared the scene while some carpenters and technicians were dismantling some structures. Meanwhile, I had wandered off seeking a quiet backdrop to call Raf and let him know when we’d be done so he could drive in pick me up, and take me to the airport to fly me back home.

I liked to knock down all my phone calls between shooting breaks; it made me feel important around the cast and crew seen engaged in many phone calls, and maybe beguile some relevant industry figure that I was an incredibly sought after person of interest.

There was one other phone call I wanted to make before I clocked out and headed home – and it was one I really didn’t want to make once I got home.

“Hey!" I said, trying to sound like I was on top of the world. "It’s Jerry Mousseau,” Then I quickly added, “we met on the dating site. I stayed at your place—”

“Oh, Jerry, of course I haven’t forgotten you!”

My heart swelled at Natalie’s effervescent voice. When she was thrilled it broke with a small scratchy squeak that was strangely erotic. I could just picture her beaming her opalescent smile like she was sitting in front of me.

She went on:

“How are you doing now? How did it all pan out?”

“Where do I begin? I’m in St Palma right now, soaking up the ‘sometimes’ sun and – oh hey, I nearly forgot, I’m acting in a film now!”

She had a gorgeous laugh; vibrant and unpretentious. I drank it in like cool water on a simmering day.

“That’s so great! But why am I not surprised?” she said. “First time I ever saw you it was on screen. So, just when are you planning on making your red carpet debut, Mr Mousseau?”

The ground quaked as a pair of giant's boots stomped right past my eyeline, shoelaces flicking dangerously. I flinched, hoping the quaking didn't pass through the phone line to her end.

"Hey!" I yelled. The giant barely threw a look over their shoulder. Unless you were a lead actor, you weren't shown much special attention.

"--What's going on over there?" came Natalie's voice, slightly concerned.

"Never mind me, what are you doing these days?”

“Guess what? I’m in St Palma! Both struck by the same bolt of inspiration, huh?  – great minds.”

I had a nanosecond to decide how to receive this information, and chose surprise.

“Oh, wow—!” – and nearly said ‘small world’ (good grief) but managed to stop myself—

“Small world, right?” she said. And before I could answer she went on: “I skipped campus to study here at SPU. Not quite as glamorous as you, but I can be up here with my boyfriend, which is really…nice."

A beat. The white noise of crew member discussion bubbled at my back.

"Sounds busy," Natalie noted.

"Uh huh," I sighed. "So, you're in a relationship?"

“That’s right. Grant and I have been dating now for – Gawd, like – ” she seemed to think for a moment, “four months? Let me think…When did I last see you—?”

“Gone and over before you know it,” I sighed. “Ever since I’ve been up here, I’ve barely had time to stop and think.”

“That’s your excuse for not getting in touch before now?” she jibed. “You’re a big, important movie star? Better watch it doesn’t go to your head!”

“Yeah…I’m sorry, Natalie,” I said sincerely. “A lot of things got in the way.”

“It’s fine!” she said. “Things must be moving so fast for you. When we last spoke, you were in a sort of in-between place and not quite sure what your heart was telling you...?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“So, what happened? You just appeared to run out the door on me, big guy.” She said it teasingly, but – was I imagining it? – there was something in her voice; an undercurrent of something genuinely curious, but restrained.

She then told me about how she had to talk to police after I'd left – correction, been snatched – from her house. It didn’t sound like she had a detailed picture of how I’d spent the month I was at Samantha’s house, except that she suspected something weird was up.

“I was worried,” she admitted. “I mean, since you left me no number to contact you. But it worked out?”

“Not with Samantha,” I said, now secretly keen to get off the subject, “but my ex-girlfriend and I are back together. She’s home.”

"I may be the one behind the eight ball here," the words came slower, "but, is this the same ex-girlfriend you were telling me about...?"

"Well,” I said, wringing my hands, hating to remember what exactly I had said, "I made her sound like some kind of two dimensional cartoon character. But she'd different in real life."

"Oh," Natalie said, sounding like she was smiling again, possibly not fully understanding, but all the same, seeming relieved. "Bumpy road, but you got there."

“With your help,” I said suddenly. “I really appreciate it, Natalie, and, uh…” I cleared my throat, “…there was a…something I needed to tell you…my girlfriend and I just got engaged, and I’d really like it if you could…” I took a quick breath, “…want to invite you to our wedding, if you happen to—”

“Oh my God!” she gushed. “That is so wonderful! Really, Jerry, I’d love to.”

“Thanks,” I said, somewhat mechanically. What did I expect her to say? – Oh no, has the S.S. Jerry really sailed out of the harbor? Am I too late?

I glared at the ground, disgusted with myself.

She was jumping ahead of me:

“When are you holding the ceremony?”

“We don’t know yet,” I replied, feeling stupid all of a sudden, “we have to figure out size before we can move forward to the next stage.”

Maybe sensing my anxiety, she said in a consoling way:

“Don’t stress out over those little details, okay? Pay too much attention to size and...you’ll miss the full picture.”

“It’s also about her,” I said, too quickly, and then paced myself. “I don’t want to run the whole show.”

“But – I don’t know – some girls might like that, have their man take care of it all. And you’re a pretty capable little mover these days aren’t you? Leaving home, starting a new job…”

Still can’t open a refrigerator, though, I thought before I could help myself.

She said something I didn’t catch; her voice segueing back into my awareness:

…and,” her voice slowed for emphasis, “surely it wouldn’t be outside your abilities to meet up soon, would it?”

I blinked.

“When are you free?”

“Well, when are you free, Mr. Movie Star? How about the weekend after next?”

I heaved a breath.

“I’ve got yoga on Saturday, and I can’t shift it.”

It was forecast to be warm that day, and for whatever reason, Larissa said our workout needed the warmth.

“You take yoga?” Natalie interrupted. It was a hobby of hers. “What did I say; great minds!”

“Just one session. I’ve never done it before.”

“Well, what would you say if I was your yoga buddy for the day? Make you feel not so new at it?”

“I’ll let my personal trainer know. But if you came as my chaperone I’m sure she’d let you buddy with me.”

“Oh – I’m Mr. Jerry Mousseau’s chaperone now!” she said faux self-importance. “Call it a date!”

“Absolutely.”

I sighed inwardly. Whatever it was we were doing that day, it probably would not be a ‘date’ – as much as I secretly wanted to. We said our goodbyes and she was gone and it was just me again, before the director’s assistant called me back onto set.

*

“YOU NEED A WAKE UP.”

I’d been daydreaming and now once again found myself supported on all sides by the soft interior fabric of the dark drawstring pouch. My shoulders bumped into the thin walls as the pouch slid and jostled back and forth. An announcement blared over the intercom: one of the other flights was now boarding and passengers were being directed to the correct departure terminal. My flight wouldn’t be long now.

The smell of hot food and coffee wafted into the pouch opening just above my head, interrupted by Raf’s cologne.

Gripping fistfuls of the fabric lining, I poked my head up out of the drawstring opening to be met with the sweeping white airport lounge, people bustling past in all directions over the polished tract of flooring, and snatches of buzzing conversation. No one noticed me, and even as I stared, I picked out a couple of other travellers with small bags or wallets hanging from straps around their necks, carrying not little people but passports or currency or cameras.

“Sorry?” I said, blinking around.

“YOU LOOK TIRED, CHIEF. COFFEE?”

It was the evening, but in St Palma, time of day was no barrier for caffeine. Not that I needed it; I’d been slowly chugging Kolade over the course of the day to keep pepped up.

“No thanks, Raf. Maybe I’ll have something on the plane.”

“SURE? I COULD GO FOR AN ESPRESSO.”

“Get yourself something. I don’t want to need the restroom mid-flight.”

He bought a coffee from one of the airport cafés, but quickly decided I needed safekeeping away from his chest while he drank it, so none spilled on me.

The pouch was lifted from his neck and turned upside down and I slid out gently into the palm of one of his enormous hands. The other cupped around me to shield me from view as I was lowered down his body and slipped inside the hip pocket of his jeans. The world went dim as my feet settled at the base of the pocket, which pressed around me like a rugged sleeping bag. Then I was moving around blindly with his thigh as he took each juddering stride. When his foot touched down on the hard floor, the impact coursed up my spine. It was like riding horseback, but sideways, and with a sack over my head.

Since I mentioned it, after he drained his coffee he took me into the restroom, and in a cubicle, put me down on the seat, with a square of toilet paper to stand on, and he turned away while I relieved myself into the oversize bowl.

Past the boarding gates, and through the glass walled jet bridge into the plane, he handed me and my booster seat over to a flight attendant who was designated to look out for me during the flight. She took me to my seat; located near the galley. I had no carry-on this time; my stuff was back at the apartment.

The flight attendant carried me to my normal-sized seat, strapping the booster in, giving me earbuds and TV screen control. It was difficult to watch a movie; I kept focusing on the actor and the line delivery. Then I came to, to find half the movie was over; my brain kept staggering off into nothingness, floating higher than the cloudy dream world out the window. I hadn’t only refrained from coffee that day, but also Kolade, and having since had it every morning to pep me for work, my nervous system noticed the absence.

But I couldn’t achieve proper sleep, my mind just drifted, I snapped awake again, then drifted. Then snapped awake.

It was dark outside when the announcement came over the speaker that we were descending, the upward rush pushed against the plane as we came down, then the bump of landing.

Once most of the passengers had exited the plane, a flight attendant detached my booster seat and carried me over the jet bridge, transferring me to a customer assistance officer, who took me over the automated people mover. The tall glass windows scrolled by before we reached the arrival gate.

With the bright flare of her perfume, the hairs on my arms stood to attention.

“Hi,” suddenly feeling very small, half my size.

Appearing to the side of the cart, she undid the booster harness and then her thumb and middle dug beneath my armpits and squeezed my chest before lifting me up into the air. Her lips expanded rapidly in my view and then covered everything as she drew me in for an unselfconscious kiss, at the same time, massaging my ribcage between her fingertips, a simulation of a crushing hug. I drank in her recognizable perfume while her lipstick caressed and oiled my face and it occurred to me she had neatened herself up a little beforehand.

Actually, that was an understatement. She seemed to glow from within and radiate sensual warmth over my hug-constricted body, totally powerless and exposed to her fierce, barely contained lust.

“YOU’RE MINE AGAIN, LITTLE PET,” her voice rumbled right in my ear.

“Jen…you don’t have to…ugh…” I whimpered, squirming between her forceful fingertips as they made their immodest exploration of my body.

The customer assistance officer – who had not made any direct physical contact with me – watched with wonder at the cosy familiarity with which Jen handled my little body, like a cherished toy, and then took the cart one way while we went another, out through the airport.

*

Back home, I made myself a bath, put on a pair of pyjama shorts and afterwards, wandered through the rooms of the house, marvelling at the expansive floor space compared to my apartment, which I’d never really noticed before.

Bathed, I walked back out into the living room. The oven hummed from the kitchen, where Jen was making up dinner, baked salmon. She must have glimpsed me entering from the corridor.

“HEY,” she called out. “I COULD USE A LITTLE COOKING ASSISTANT OVER HERE.”

I hesitated. She was usually happy to accomplish all the cooking on her own – she loved cooking. Not that I couldn’t cook; she wasn’t the only food lover in the household; and I had capably cooked for myself before I’d shrunk, but it wasn’t clear what place there was for me in the kitchen.

“What do you need me to help you with?”

“JUST SO YOU KNOW, I’VE GOT EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL,” she said lightly, “BUT IT’S NICE; WE CAN COOK TOGETHER.” Maybe my hesitance had sounded in my tone. She paused. “YOU DON’T WANT TO?”

“Just tell me what I can do.”

She soon had me up on the kitchen counter with the end of a long thin knife up above my head, which I swung repeatedly down upon a bok choy and shallots like a tiny vegetable executioner.  When I finished and turned to ask her for the next vegetable, she was leaning against the counter, watching me with the faintest smile. My brow creased; I assumed she was about to make fun of me for ‘executing’ the shallots wrong.

“What?” I grunted, feeling self-conscious.

“OH, NOTHING. VERY SPICY LITTLE MAN, THAT’S ALL. DO I GET A TASTE TEST?”

She poked her tongue out at me.

I concentrated on the vegetables again.

“Trust you to get hot to a knife being swung around.”

“YOU DON’T FEEL THAT HEAT THAT I’M FEELING?”

“It’s the oven.”

She turned back to the baking dish she was lining with paper, and her tone became serious:

“SO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR NEIGHBORS; WHAT’S IT LIKE UP THERE –LOUD?”

“Kinda loud outside.” Then I emphasized: “But very peaceful inside.”

“HMM. AND I BET THE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY.”

“Watch your language! They’re…different.”

Once dinner was ready, I sat up at my usual place at the dining table, at a right angle from Jen’s usual seat, on the dining mat where my plate would have been, if I’d been seated at the table normal size. In the middle of the table, tongues of candlelight wobbled and flickered on their white wax stalks upon a wrought iron holder.

Her nail tip snapped briskly against the wood grain of the tabletop to get my attention.

“YOU’RE GOING TO SIT RIGHT HERE AND EAT FROM MY PLATE.”

I looked up into her green eyes, which returned my look with calm expectation.

“What? Why?”

“BECAUSE IT’S FUN. AND I’D LIKE IT IF YOU DID.”

When I looked at her unsurely, she added:

“JUST TONIGHT.”

I crawled over the table on my hands and knees over to the side of her plate, while she began cutting up slices off her meal and sliding them over into a neat pile at the nearest edge of the plate. I speared it up with toothpicks, and satisfied, the huge glistening silver fork then swept around, shovelling up portions of larger, sliced up food. As I went in to lance up more food on my toothpicks, I had to watch not to get my hands caught in her fork prongs as the giant utensil drove itself through the meal like a plow.

How strange that lurking just behind the beautiful veneer there was a great machine, and anything close to my size that went in there was invariably crushed, ripped apart, and disposed of into an acid-filled waste pit. I couldn’t ignore the soft smacking sound of morsels being squashed down, and the sound of air displacing via the muscular flex of her throat as she swallowed.

For her, this might have been romantic, but for me, it was a little unnerving. This may have been why I ate more slowly than usual, meditating on every bite that was acoustically magnified right over my head. She finished before me, and while I chewed the last of my salmon, something hard nudged over my scalp. The faintly food-greased fork tip was lightly brushing through my hair teasingly, and then it lightly scratched down under my jaw, probing my throat. My spine tingled.

“LUCKY YOU,” she said dryly, “NO WASHING UP.”

“Only fair – I didn’t use a plate or cutlery.”

Once I finished, she took the kitchenware over to the sink.

“THERE’S PLENTY ELSE YOU CAN DO FOR ME.”

We moved to the bedroom. ‘Moved’ meaning, she snatched me up and flew me there.

“I’m the biggest thing you’ve ever done, right?!”

My arms were out with puffed up bravado, making sweeping gestures at my body, on naked display as I strutted around on the queen bed mattress. This was somewhat ridiculous as our respective figures were very different, the beef in her musculature outstripped my own for miles. There was a moment where I inwardly considered if it wasn’t too late to switch on a movie and just cuddle. But she'd insisted, and when Jennifer Tomlin insisted you didn't refuse, or you'd be physically chased down and pinned.

All the mental pictures of her that had sustained me the past few weeks were nothing compared to the gargantuan vista of naked femininity; a real life, vastly scaled up Venusian sculpture sprawled out, in front, around, and past me, on the endless coils of silk sheets that covered the queen bed (the 'matrimonial bedchambers' as she had facetiously taken to calling it).

Nearest me, the massive soles of her feet slid lazily over the bed as she stretched and crossed her legs, arching and wiggling the toes, before the legs rose at the knee, the soles met the sheets again, and clenched, gripping the sheet, threading it between her toes. These small, anticipatory stretches and restless, almost reflexive movements accompanied her readiness of my body making contact with hers and finally, being consumed by her substantially larger one.

Her great womanhood bared itself to me without a trace of self-consciousness: the spiky pelt of the labial mound bordering the slit now beginning to glaze with a drizzle of its own self-produced luster. Every so often she shifted with repressed arousal, throwing me glimpses of the doorway slit as it pulled tightly between her legs, sometimes twitching with a flare of nervous anticipation. Her breath heaved as her back arched while her butt shifted position, making the mattress tug under my feet. It looked like irritation; like a tiny bug bit her or something, but actually was the desire mounting between her hips; it was starting to agonize her, like an infuriating itch. Her eyes met mine and there was a look I'd seen countless times now before, like I was a piece of food: her lips sucked in and her throat convulsed as she swallowed, while her mind wandered, only half interested in what I had to say anymore.

She leaned over gracefully, propping her head up on her palm. The engorged fruitlike masses of her breasts undulated faintly with each relaxed sweeping breath, hovering just above the mattress. If she lowered a single one of those lush, painfully tender organs onto my prone body, it would cover me up entirely, and probably sink the air clean out of my chest. The reddened swelling of each nipple was tightening with every passing second as her unblinking gaze held on my tiny body.

I began to flex my muscles, as – on the inside – I was sweating for an answer to my question – or in anticipation of what might be to come. What thoughts she had relied on to sustain herself during my absence?

“TRY: THE BIGGEST ‘FULL PERSON’.”

“I’m the only full person you’ve ever done.”

She mock winced.

“SLIGHT CORRECTION: YOU’RE NOT A ‘FULL PERSON’. YOU’RE A NOT-QUITE-PAST-THE-DECIMAL-POINT PERSON.”

“Harsh!”

I turned my back on her and strode to the end of the bed. A foot rustled over the sheets after me, as smoothly as a snake; the angular toes lifted and spread as the nail of the big toe whispered over my spine, trying to tickle me. I jumped away. The foot swung out again – she evidently couldn’t be bothered to reach for me with her arms – while the big toe angled at me, trying to deliver a tap against whatever part of my body was within reach, but aiming specially for the part of my anatomy most accessible to her raised foot; my head. I dived away as it came for me, narrowly missing. But she was faster; when I got to my feet, I found myself face to face with the ridged pad of a ballooned up big toe, and intimidating overhang of gleaming white nail tip pointed at me. Even as I stared it darted forward and delivered a soft tap to my temple that made me stagger on my feet.

From somewhere behind the great obstructing presence of her big toe, at the other side of the bed, she watched with leisurely amusement as I tried to jump and dive away from her foot and grasping, angular toes, which each singularly beat out my biceps for strength.

“Leave me alone!” I squeaked, dashing over the mattress, her foot in close pursuit. “You think this is romantic? It’s not!”

She let out a derisive laugh, her foot swooping at me again, the long leg creating a wall I couldn’t hope to jump, while the big toe angling out again, going for another tap at my temple, but I managed to twist my head away. Unfortunately, the toe tried to forestall me, also moving at the same time, trying to catch my temple at the new location but, in trying to outwit my evasion, accidentally delivering a sharp tap into my eyes. The pad of her toe was too big to insult the delicate surface of my eyeballs, but the sudden stamping sensation shocked me, I recoiled as my offended tear ducts made my vision blur.

“Eugh,” I grunted, patting my face.

For her the gesture might only have been careless and reflexive, but she didn't realize that her toe blocked out my view of everything, like some rude stranger jumping up in front of me as I was having a conversation with someone else. The fact that it was indiscriminately making contact with my facial perimeter only deepened the offence. Her toe pad was a surface of her body that she pounded unthinkingly on floor, dirt, scum and floorborne trash particles, yet she had no objection to treating my face as just another kind of floor surface for the toe to touch down upon. And she enjoyed every second of my belittlement.

But now that I’d stopped ducking and dodging her foot, she tired of the game. She shifted; with fluid gymnastics she drew her legs in and curled around on the bed until her forearms framed me on either side. One hand cupped around me while the thumb of the other tenderly dabbed around my eyes, consoling the sting.

“I HATE TO TELL YOU, DARLING, BUT—“ with my back to her, her first two fingers,  coming from behind,  hugged around my chest lightning fast while her ring finger slipped between my legs and tucking my bulge in the crook of the joint, “—YOUR GRAND WORLD RECORD FOR SIZE ISN’T FOR MAGNITUDE.”

I scoffed, slapping her fingers with resentment; the first two of which were keeping me enclosed around the torso while the ring finger swatted my member around.

Warm air trickled directly down over me as she kissed the top of my head, and added sincerely:

“YOU ARE THE BEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO MY G-SPOT.”

Frissons of pleasure shivered through my member as it was swatted and tugged about with the idle flicks and flexion of her ring finger, even as the sight of the long varnished nails glimmering so dangerously close to my balls made my insides skip.

Her voice grew keen and penetrating.

“WHAT’S IT LIKE IN THERE, ANYWAY?”

I didn’t reply at first. Impatient, the fingers lifted delicately as the nails of the first two fingers began to drum against my ribs, and into my diaphragm, trying to playfully beat a reply out of me. It tickled and slightly winded me at the same time, and I wrestled with her hand, trying to liberate myself. The tiny touches and twitches of her strong fingers had such an alarming impact on my tiny form, gentle pushes displaced me bodily, and I lifted so easily from the bed, I was a mere toy between her hands.

“It’s like trying to swim through a wet blanket.”

She laughed, her breasts jiggling over my head like giant coconuts about to spill from the tree. Her weird sense of humor made her difficult to offend even if I wanted to.

“REALLY."

She said this in a smugly satisfied way, like I'd just told an outlandish, entertaining story and she wanted to hear another just like it.

“Yes.”

The air was thickening with a musky aroma. It was becoming painfully aware that this entire magnified vista of feminine sex was growing tired of my blathering attempts to stall. She was hot with laser concentration on my form, as the sole catalyst for imminent carnal release. Just the thought of my cute toy body being squished in never-ending vaginal bear hugs was making her butt clench with desperate restraint. The only thing that stood between her and unadulterated euphoria was me; and the only serious question in her mind was how quickly she could persuade me to line up and enter her tunnel of delight and submit totally to its vigorous munching.

“I THINK I CAN BEAT THAT.”

“What?”

The ring finger returned between my thighs and cranked upwards until I was practically riding it.

“IMAGINE, LIKE YOU’RE TRYING TO SWIM UP MY PUSSY,” she explained, as the inside of the finger rubbed along the inside of my thighs and under my buttocks, attending sensitively to my balls, “BUT THEN YOU DISSOLVE INTO MY BLOODSTREAM AND SPREAD OVER MY BODY. AND, YEAH,” her voice got a slight flutter like she was smiling or holding back another laugh, and my balls were given a little tweak, “THAT'S WHAT IT'S LIKE FOR ME, SO I DON’T THINK WE’LL BE SWITCHING ROLES.”

She extricated my member from the joint of her ring finger, and now slid the thumbnail in at my thighs, sweeping up my shaft and balls until they rested on the glossy plate while she examined my expanding girth with interest, loving the physical proof that she’d got me to rival her arousal.

Then fingers clambered eagerly around my back, sharp nail prods materializing in various places as my anatomy was variously probed with curiosity. One of the nails – accidentally or not – stuck itself between my butt cheeks and slid along my crack, causing my balls to hunch. There was something about my size that seemed to make feminine fingers apt to wander with disregard and stake claim over my physical terrain, like I was a little piece of Play-Doh and the giant invasive hand had an ache it was keen to knead away.

As if I was nothing more than a little toy, her fingers spun me around with incredible ease to face her again. Directly in front sat the shelf of her breasts, pressed together against the mattress, creating a center cleft big enough to have swallowed me up whole into the tight throat of her cleavage. The red knots that were the nipples made rhythmic, almost imperceptibly faint jolting motions in time with her heartbeat, it has a hypnotic effect and I lost myself, staring.

Breaking my trance, the tip of a huge index finger hovered close, blocking the view as it tilted in underneath my jaw, to make contact with my left pec and stroke the tattoo affectionately.

“HAVING A STARING COMPETITION WITH MY NIPPLES?” she said lazily. “WHO’S WINNING?”

“Uhh…”

The bed groaned as she lifted herself onto her hands and knees. Nearest me, her palm sunk the mattress down, causing me to stagger.

“THE BOOBS CAN WAIT. I HAVE ANOTHER COMPETITION FOR YOU, AND THE PRIZE IS YOUR FREEDOM.”

Her forefinger and thumb plucked up my chest and then my head was shooting at the cleft between her thighs, touching the center of the slit with a wet smooch, and driving powerfully inside. The hot damp purse flesh folded in around my body, admitting me further while sticking and contouring to my shape. The slit glided down my torso and legs. Finally, she let go of me, and tickled the bottom of my feet with her pinky, forcing me further inside her to escape it.

The walls of the muscle flume trembled. Then pulled utterly tense. 

I had no defence, my puny body surrendered wholly to the whims of her mega anatomy.

My penis had swollen up and was forced to grind along the taut tunnel.

The inside of her vagina was structured like a play tunnel composed of connected rings, except each ring was a muscular band that pulled tight like a drawstring loop. A persistent tapping sensation ran through the walls and down my length – a pounding pulse rate – and unbearably through my groin. As the pulse amplified, I came in a sudden spasm and the tiny emission was immediately lost, blending into the generous soup of musky fluids pumped like machine oil all throughout the tunnel. I was awash in it; all over my skin, through my hair, in my stinging eyes, up my nose and in my mouth. It squelched under my armpits and between my legs, and caused my body to make a sticky smooching sound every time the walls collapsed against me, making me feel and sound like a wad of gum crammed beneath a tongue, getting sucked and smacked on.

In the hot heavy dark, it was hard to tell what was going on; I could be still or in motion, and be anywhere in the labyrinth of Jen's build; her mouth, her stomach. Because of her earlier association, I had the strange thought that I had been injected beneath her skin via hypodermic needle, to fill a tight space between layers of flexing muscle. Or pushed into her bloodstream to flutter in loops around her system to the rhythm of her cardio workings. I was struggling to beat back waves of light-headedness, and the delirium made it increasingly difficult to differentiate myself as an entity separate from her. She was pressed so tightly to me I felt like part of her body, a tiny extra slab of muscle enlisted to contract in shockwaves in time with her building climax. As a section of the tunnel cinched my waist and groin, one of these shockwaves rippled through my penis, forcing my balls to expend even more.

The tunnel was oozing generously with fluid, until her elastic tunnel was nearly bulging trying to contain both me and all the fluid running from her glands. I struggled to wipe the goo from my face, but she could appreciably feel my vigorous but ineffective struggles inside her all-surrounding anatomical prison, it only stimulated even more fluid.

As the whole tunnel was gushing, I began to slip up and down her chute freely, sluicing through her juices, but never entirely out. Her twitching vaginal opening had amazing reflexes and always caught me just as my head popped free, drawing tight around my neck and holding until another series of convulsions vacuumed me back up into the darkness, and if her opening did not, the top of my head quickly received a last-second poke to send me back where I came from.

She managed to plateau, further delaying the inevitable and extending my ordeal, taking me through another series of crushing manipulations. Every time the muscular wall drew inwards like a compression sleeve, my body turned to dense stone, locking me stiff as if I'd been frozen in ice. My chest turned into a scrunched fist, unable to expand even a fraction to breathe. Every time the muscular wall released, a wave of pent up juice sluiced down my head and body. This cycle carried on in rhythmic oscillation, getting faster, the contractions morphed from gradual squeezes to sudden snaps of immediate pressure. The contractions were so sudden that each snapping pinch winded me a little more; my chest became too cramped to expand for breathe even when the pressure lifted briefly, I was being pushed to the brink of passing out even as she, by pure impulse, indulged in another act of climactic delay, resulting in another round of being pumped by the vice of her pelvis.

The tunnel enlarged, shuddered, then in one quick movement pushed into me with the force of a tackling football player, halving the circumference of my ribcage with one blow, and cinching hard like a tourniquet. The wind squeaked out of my chest as I gritted my teeth in pain, begging for the pressure to relax.

From outside, Jen let out a wail that almost sounded like an expression of my pain, except she was sunk into an enviable ecstasy, and sinking further, and with rocking thrusts, I was released only enough to plunge further up her canal, drawn along the trail of her slimy secretions. My penis was briefly caught between wrinkles in her tunnel, and transformed into a series of thick pulses and blinding jolts of sensitivity by the raw power of her pelvic contractions. The stimulation pushed me to come again, my balls being exercised beyond rationality.

There was a buzzing noise and suddenly the tunnel turned into a shaking washing machine. The pungent fluid bubbled and churned all over, foaming over my face in a thick whipped lather even as I shook my head to clear it, it came frothing back.

My thoughts were scattered and blurry, but I had just enough sense left to realize she was working her clitoris with the vibrator to finish herself off.

The tunnel was seized by a powerful jerk; the walls attempt to slam together, catching me in the middle and almost knocking me stupid. I twitched helplessly.

Her climax roared like the ocean, accompanied by the squeaking, bubbling sound of fluid in my ears. Her knees squeezed together with pleasure, as she rode the climax down, her pelvis hugged in on me, running me towards the end of her pussy like a spurt of toothpaste, until my head emerges with a small squish. The soft, wet pussy lips stuck to my face; I pushed them out of the way with an arm, before the rest of my body pulsated out from between her thighs, onto the bed, dripping in her warm syrup.

The air grew cold as the moisture on my body was cooled immediately.

The canyon of her thighs spread apart; and craning my head back as far as I could see, far out past the canyon walls of her long legs, at the other end of the bed, her feet shifted idly, the nails of one row of toes scratching the arch of the other foot’s sole. Then the feet rolled over the mattress, scooping up bed sheeting to slip beneath. The canvas of sheeting under my back rippled and began to drag me. As one of her feet yanked the sheet up, the whiplike snap of sheet created an improvised trampoline, flipping me into the air like a pancake. I let out a startled yell before crashing into the meat of her thigh, and bouncing onto the mattress in a heap of limbs.

Her body slumped as she fell into surprised laughter.

Then the satisfied rumble of her voice intoned with emphasis:

“CONFESSION TIME…”

But my brain was whipping forward: ‘confession time’ with her sounded like a risqué game of truth or dare. I twisted around, whipped the parachute like sheet over my head and began to run along the mattress into the dark.

 “—NO YOU DON’T—!”

What felt like a mattress dropped from the ceiling, collapsing my body against the bed in an instant. She’d slapped her hand straight down upon my moving form, which must have looked like a fleeing lump under the white sheet. With the weight resting powerfully against my body, keeping me trapped in the dark, under the sheet as if it was cling wrap, her other hand rustled in after me, poking me unceremoniously with fingers to distinguish my body parts. One of my feet was grabbed and, as the weight lifted against, yanked from under the sheet. Next second I was swinging gently upside down from one ankle. The air was cool, and then rushed with warmth from her breath as she spoke again:

“NOW, HOW DO YOU THINK YOU DID?”

“Better than last time but not better than next time.”

The mega lips quirked. The soft surface of a pair of fingerpads rose up under my head, creating a gentle platform for the crown of my skull as the other hand had its grip on my leg and suspended me from above. A nail from below tapped the side of my head idly.

“IS THAT A PROMISE OR A DARE?”

“Can I sleep now?”

“GETTING AHEAD OF YOURSELF. TELL ME SOMETHING YOU LIKE ABOUT ME,” she insisted. I wished she’d stop. I didn’t want to talk, just drop dead asleep. And with the blood rushing to my head, I was starting to want to pass out, too.

“I like your smile.” If only because her lips were right in front of my face and my thoughts were blank.

“WHY?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Why? It makes me hard.”

“PRAISE SOMETHING UNUSUAL.”

Groaning, I swung my fists at her mouth and she retaliated by directing a surge of hot air into my face until my lungs ached, and made me even more dizzy from the resulting hyperventilation.

“What do you mean?” I said tightly.

“I MEAN IT WAS A BORING ANSWER. TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.”

The fingerpads supporting my head regrettably disappeared again, leaving my head hanging from my spine once more. The hand didn’t vanish, but a slender pointer finger uncurled, straightened and the nail tip began tickling around my thighs and waist, not at my groin but deliberately close, without touching. My spine jerked and single free leg kicked at the finger.

“How about I tell you something I don’t like?!” I gasped, flapping around in the air.

She compounded my vulnerability by running a nail up and down my back to tickle my spine, until my voice was reduced to a series of sputtering gasps. Only once my body hung limply, like a cut of meat, completely spent, the ordeal ended.

“I guess…I like your tongue.”

Her eyelashes batted at me with sarcasm.

“CLASSY.” 

“I was going to say something nice!” I shot back. “Being in your mouth would be kind of lonely if your tongue wasn’t there. It’s like a big, affectionate puppy. And it reminds me in the dark that you’re out there, somewhere.”

“AND IT GIVES YOU FREE BLOW JOBS THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE SAYING.”

“Well, you say something about me.”

“MMM, OKAY THEN…” she said, as her brilliant green eyes ran over my body like I was a tiny piece of dangling food she was contemplating dropping onto her tongue.

“…I LIKE YOUR EYELASHES.”

“What?” There were probably a bunch of other things I had expected her to say.

“WELL, YEAH. THEY’RE KINDA LONG AND MAKE YOU LOOK REAL CUTE.”

This answer disturbed me, but before I could ponder over it, her thumb was suddenly right up against my face, stroking my brow, trying to brush against my eyelashes. Even though she was being incredibly delicate, my toes still curled at the proximity of her long nails as her thumpad attempted to stroke at my eyelids, the traction of the print tugging and stretching my brow and cheek.

“Arrrgh!” I swatted and slapped at the shiny keratin invasion and then shielded my eyes with my forearms in defeat and the probing stopped.

“DON’T LIKE MY ANSWER?” her voice came lazily. "SO THEN IMPRESS ME WITH ANOTHER PART OF YOUR ANATOMY." 

There was a moist smack followed by wet pressure around the base of my shaft. This was gradually transferred to the tip, pulling my entire body forward with a small tug as it did so. Reaching the tip, there was a tight screwing sensation ringing around the glans as her lip sucked with maximum force, before the pressure returned to the base, and began climbing the shaft to the tip again, and screwing tighter and tighter, to unbearable levels, until it felt like my whole body was going to pop and take all the air and life and organs out of me, deflating me to one tenth my size. I twitched and grasped at the puffed seal of her lips as they continued to pump my member, and give the tip a pinching twist causing it to throb helplessly in her grasp.

Once my balls had hardened to cement, the pressure lifted from my shaft, and then I was being tickled again, up and down my ribs and spine. I kicked and moaned with frustration as her exultant, teasing laughter beat in my eardrums.

“Goddamn it,” I grunted.

A nail tip flicked my belly, snapped downwards against my half-erect dick.

“OKAY, LITTLE MAN, I’M GOING TO MAKE A TINY MESS OF YOU. AND IT MIGHT HURT A LITTLE BIT.”

“It already hurt—urrgh!”

Her lips parted and her tongue spilled out, at the same time she brought her hand towards her, zooming me through the air upside down until my face impacted the bumpy wall of her tongue with a soft slap, and everything went dark. The burly muscle flexed over my puny face, indiscriminately squashing my soft, sensitive features as it went, rolling over my jaw, slimeing down my chest, driving itself stubbornly straight to the fork of my legs, swirling my member up before it was captured in a tight moist embrace between her lips.

Her lips drew in viciously around my girth, slurping my entire length in until my hips jolted against her, and keeping me trapped me there as a series of mind-numbing vacuums ran up and down my length. Her mouth utterly subjugated my tiny manhood, lashing it with her tongue while repeatedly commanding it to stretch as long as possible, puckering her lips tighter and tighter, drawing out every inch of my erection. My hips bounced and grinded violently against her mouth with bone-shaking jolts.

There was an almighty pull and this time it did not let up. Twitches ran through my body as my shaft was forced into an unnatural stretch and held there for a long time. Drops of saliva rolled down my belly and chest, finally running thickly over my face like honey. With my rod achingly taut, the tongue wagged sharply, applying a couple of deft slaps to the tip of my dick, and the pressure in my balls released in a rush.

The lips gripped my shaft for an extra few minutes, tugging to ensure I was completely spent, and sliding around the tip to clean everything up. Then the cool air ran over my shaft as it came free, and before I could react, I was lifted slightly so her lips could press a kiss over my face, painting it over with a soup of my own fluids intermixed with her saliva.

As I heaved for breath, my back was laid upon the mattress, while she rolled over and got comfortable under the blanket. The light went off.

While she drifted into uncomplicated sleep, I rolled over, stared at the ceiling. Rolled over again. Beside me, deep, steady breathing with the tug and flow of ocean wind. I huffed, and kicked the sheet off. Then, as the hair on my legs stood up, I wrenched the sheet back again. The combination of Kolade I’d chugged earlier that day, plus all the tickling and sexual stimulation had my blood freighting around my system by bullet train. My thoughts raced and skipped.

Debating internally with myself for several seconds, I finally had enough: I jumped up and plodded to the end of the bed, and, scrunching the sheet in my hands as a handhold, climbed over the edge and dropped onto the carpet. The soft carpet fibers turned into frigid tiles as my path took me into the bathroom.

I scampered up the shoelace rope ladder to reach the sink, and crossing the counter, came to a stop at a small cosmetics travel case. Gripping a side handle, I wrenched it with all my might, until the bag overturned onto its side, contents rattling. Diving my upper body in between the sets of zip teeth, I dragged out a foil sheet with half its foil bubbles still intact. Prescription sleeping tablets. Not a surprising bounty for someone with Jen’s breathtaking energy spikes, though she typically medicated herself with physical activity, and only failing that, wine.

I drew my fist back and punched one of the unopened foil bubbles with all my might. The aluminium crinkled and split, tearing the seam open to access a white tablet, which I rotated between my hands like a sports ball, sucking my lips in as if contemplating eating a lemon.

My jaw worked around the tablet, grinding it away between my teeth, bit by bit. As the granules wore away they coated my tongue and throat. Tiny fragmented rocks of tablet were swallowed whole. With a chunk of the tablet gone, I left the rest on the counter and went back down the shoelace ladder. The rote descending motions began to hypnotize my brain. Over halfway down, my feet slipped out of position and the air was suddenly whizzing around me. Next instant the tiles slapped my back. Groaning, I staggered back into the bedroom, and began pulling myself up the bed.

For a moment I was sorely tempted to just call out and get assistance, but then, with one last nauseating wrench, I surmounted the mattress, but the swaying climbing motion carried on even after I was upright. The tablet was kicking in, fast. A muted, druggy kind of horror began growing in my gut; I had ingested too much tablet for my diminutive metabolism.

In a growing fog, I stumbled in what my dimming orientation was telling me was my side of the bed. Then crashed face first into a sheet covered hump, which turned out to be Jen’s foot. The foot responded in blind slumber by jerking into action, plowing me over the sheets, like a small animal caught in the scoop of a front-end loader. Her foot retreated again as I crawled rapidly up my side of the bed to the pillow and whipped the sheet around myself.

Letting out a deep sigh, I closed my eyes. As my respiration eased and my thoughts spaced out, the darkness behind my eyes was filled up with a vivid scene summoned up as if by its own power.

Jennifer was holding her hand out to me, but instead of stepping onto it, I grasped it and we were walking side by side. Then she started forward, but I was frozen in place, her grip surged out of mine and her open hand flew up way above my head as I was crashing down to earth, screaming like I was falling, but my feet never left the ground, and yet I was going down and down and down…

The dim ceiling of my bedroom had vanished, revealing an open, fuzzy white sky above. A broad, pale plain stretched out beyond.

I was standing on a hard shiny pink plateau of flat stone as big as a tennis court. Shallow ridges ran in straight lines down the faintly curved surface.  Crouching, I ran a hand across the surface. It felt smooth but faintly gritty, like it had been sanded, and gave off a faint shine of reflected light.

It was daytime, I was outside, only that was clear. I lifted my head skyward, but instead of the recognizable blue, cloudy sky, found the air misty and off-white, in every direction. Warmth beat in tiny currents up from the ground like timpani drum patter. The air carried a confusing rush of scents: a surface fragrance, raw and sweet, seeming to mask a richer odor of vintage cheddar, bitingly sharp. I took a deep breath, waiting for my olfactory sense to filter out the heady nasal cocktail, as the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up.

At one end, the plateau ended in a white, slightly curving bar that seemed to drop off into the air. A dead end. At the other end, the stony plate fused into a strange plain of something like tanned couch leather. Dazed and entirely lost, I began making his way towards it.

The landscape was like nothing I’d ever seen before. What was I even doing out here? – there was nothing; it was a barren, beige wilderness swathed in fog.

i stopped at the edge of the stony plate, which seemed oddly to be emerging right out of the barren plain. Then stepping forward, my feet touched down onto soft, cushy padded ground, it felt like a soft leather sofa as much as it looked like one.

The soles of my feet quickly grew warm, even through my shoes; the unidentifiable surface radiated with heat. I bent again, running a hand over the soft flexible ground, wondering vaguely if it was a desert, but the warmth wasn’t coming from the sky – the air was fairly cool – the warmth instead seemed to be radiating from up within the ground, like there was a volcano buried under there or something.

Up ahead the ground had a long crease running through it, perpendicular to me, like the channel of a creek bed, with no water in it. Actually, that was not entirely true.

Water shimmered out from little holes in the ground, regularly spaced along the ground. At least, it looked like it was water, but when I crouched over one and dipped my fingers in, my nose crinkled in response. The blobs of fluid that clung to my fingers were thicker than water, slightly gelatinous. It looked like a thinner kind of Vaseline.

I dabbed my tongue experimentally against the fluid, expecting it to taste like water. For the most part, it did, except for a lingering oily aftertaste that turned me resolutely off trying another sample.

I stared across at the field covered in holes, bemused. It looked like someone had taken an auger out here and been drilling for oil or water. Well, judging by the taste of the gelatinous fluid, they got both.

It must have been a machine that did this, I decided; the holes carried on as far as I could see. No one could have done all this on man power alone.

Up ahead of the long crease in the ground, there was a wide but shallow bulge, and out of the bulge grew a handful of tall pale stalks, like bamboo, but the tops of the stalks tapered into points, far above my head. Each stalk grew directly out of one of the holes. I gauged that he could have shimmied up one of the stalks, if not for the thin sheen of gelatin fluid oozing along the trunk of each stalk, making it glisten.

I reached out for one stalk, feeling the papery bark, and wondering if it was tree sap. It had a very faint yellow tint, like very pale honey, and was a little sticky. Again – struck by some desperate need to understand – I brought some to my mouth, and nearly vomited for my trouble. It tasted even worse than the fluid in the holes. It was salty. You didn’t expect something that looked like honey to taste salty.

Passing the tree stalks, I kept moving.

To the left the ground plunged down a valley and out of sight. Across that way I could see there were other stone plateaus, a row of them, each smaller than the one I’d been standing on. Ahead the pale plain expanded on and on. I kept following the plain, which seemed to carry on to the horizon. I began to run.

My running pace carried on comfortably without breaks or over-exertion. Not only was I not getting tired at the normal rate, but I wasn’t getting tired at all.

The minutes stretched into what felt like an hour. The sky never dimmed or changed. It looked as though it was covered by clouds, but it was still as bright as a sunny day. It didn’t make sense.

My thoughts had muted into a numb acceptance of where I was, even if I didn’t understand where that was precisely. I was here, wherever here was. I was only aware of my pumping legs, the satisfying impact of the ground, the insistence driving me that the seemingly endless plain must lead somewhere.

A couple of times my reverie was broken when I accidentally slipped on some fluid and went skidding, or landed on my butt. But the soft ground was forgiving, even springy, like a jumping castle, and I didn’t injure himself. When I fell over, a haze of fine white particles puffed up around me, some kind of dust, which was strange as the ground looked like it was made of leather, not earth or stone.

I was following a gradual incline, until, eventually, the plain abruptly ended, and I was met with a confounding sight. The horizontal ground did not actually end, but turned at a right angle and carried on up a vertical face. A couple of creases, thick like pale truck tires, ran along the junction where the ground met the wall.

It was a bizarre sight, like something out of that movie, Inception; the ground rising up at a right angle. It made me shiver. Just when I was starting to get a grip on the scenery here, it had to turn around and freak out on me again. Once again I was troubled by the question: where the hell am I? It was some barren nether-nether desert world of alien architectures and there was no obvious way out.

I was trapped.

Impelled by desperation, I started climbing the wall. Although the wall ran straight up, it wasn’t difficult as a typical rockface. I grabbed handfuls of the spongy surface, dug my feet into it, and was surprised how rapidly I was capable of ascending. It was easier than normal rock-climbing, or even bouldering.

The springy wall enabled me to bounce a little, giving me extra lift. It grew so comfortable and second-nature to me, I began to feel an exhilarating feeling, like I was Spider-man flexing his powers.

Like the plain below – probably so far below now that it was too dizzying to imagine – the wall was specked in holes. I avoided touching these, and the short stalks that grew out of them, as they were covered in oozing oily fluid.

I fell back into a steady, mindless momentum, and maybe because I enjoyed it so much, I seemed to be moving up the wall faster than I’d crossed the plain. Again, I found myself not growing tired. I felt like Superman, and dimly congratulated myself for being persistent with the Roburfortis. Or maybe it was a side effect of drinking so much Kolade.

Time passed without notice. The hair on the back of my neck was prickling even more sharply.

The wall began to jut out into some big rounded outcropping, like a huge bulge. Climbing up onto this, I found it was pitted and gashed with creases, which made it a little easier to cross, as I could work myself into the grooves. Huddled in one of these, I dared to peer out over the edge, and saw only mist. There was no way of telling how high I was. No idea of determining how long I’d be falling for if I leapt off the edge.

Then again, why would I do that? I was having too much fun climbing. And there was something primitively satisfying in scaling the face for the sake of itself, just because it was there, as they said about Mount Everest, or the Moon.

Passing over the jutting bulge, I came upon, and began ascending, another very long section of the wall. At this point, it seemed like it had been countless hours since I’d started this mysterious journey.

Then I did something I hadn’t thought of until just now.

“Jennifer!” I yelled out.

My voice raced into the sky and seemed to drop away into nothing.

There was no response.

Then again, I hadn’t really expected one. I seemed to be totally alone out here. Yet, I had this niggling feeling that my fiancée was awaiting me at the top of the wall. No reasonable justification, just a strong intuition. Or, I needed to believe that there was something worthwhile waiting for me at the top of my ascent.

Sometime later, the climb took me up to a point where the wall met another intersection with a deep crease where the intersecting walls met at a kind of vague ‘T’ bend. In order to scale this section I would have to cross the crease onto a somewhat bulging area of wall which was covered in more bamboo stalks, only these were shorter, spikier, and dark, like little black spears. They glistened wetly, so I made a mental note not to touch them.

As I neared the spiky bulging area, I noticed a great shadowy cleft running down it, a huge crevice, below which segments of the wall drooped down. Each of these segments, or edges of the crevice, were a darker pink color than the surrounding wall. At first, crossing over onto one of these drooping segments seemed to be a mistake, as my head spun and eyes watered as I was hit by a thick, sharp wave of indescribable odor. Whatever was in that crevice was radiating a fierce clammy, hot mildew-like scent, like some exotic pungent flower that grew in the middle of a dark, dense, humid jungle. I guessed it was a cave overgrown with some strange plants.

This served as my first real challenge, as the waves of odor beat over me with ruthless persistence. The cool air did little to clear the smell, and try as I might, it was too foreign and overpowering for me to get used to. The heat and odor made me giddy, my head throbbed in weak protest at the olfactory assault. I thought of nothing else but keeping my grip and moving up, up, as my eyes threatened to roll up into my head.

But there was something familiar about the smell. It was meaty, sweet, and briny, like human body odor, but intensified to a savage degree. Below that, barely within consciousness, the scent of leather and moisturizing cream.

Using every ounce of willpower, I scampered up the bulge in the wall, avoiding the oily black spikes, and desperate for fresh air. It was as effective as motivation as any to hasten my ascent, and soon enough I came to a new part of the wall, where the ferocious smell had faded significantly.

The wall flattened out now as the spiky hairs grew sparser and disappeared. Around here I could make out an interesting geographical marker in the wall above me, and maneuvered myself up towards it.

It was a big hole in the wall, curving inwards, as if a chunk of the leathery substance had been pulled or sunken in, like a sink hole, but sideways. Gripping the edge, I pulled myself up into the cave to pause for a moment. At the far end the back wall was folded up into big crinkles that I easily could have slipped into.

The acoustics in here produced an echo, conveying a dull thumping noise which seemed to resound through the walls themselves:

ka-THUMP…ka-THUMP…ka-THUMP…

The sound beat up into the soles of my feet, like bass thumping out of a subwoofer, but that simple beat was more instinctively familiar than any pop song. It was the sound you heard when you exercised strenuously, or got embarrassed, or swooned in love. It was a heartbeat.

The flashes of memories of my climb up here started clicking together like jigsaw pieces, and then the realization crashed over me in an instant:

I was inside a gigantic bellybutton.

Not just gigantic, but unthinkably big – leviathanic. If this cave was the bellybutton, then I was hopelessly miniscule, microscopic, smaller than a flea. I was less a millimeter compared to the owner of the wall of flesh I was huddled inside. Less than a bed bug. A microscopic fleck; each follicle of the body hair was almost my width. I could dig my foot into one of those holes dotting the surface of the skin; a pore.

Earlier, I’d recklessly tried eating that gelatinous fluid in the pores, which I realized was sebaceous oil. Now my stomach turned at the thought. The salty honey-colored stuff on the hairs must have been sebaceous oil mixed with sweat.

Judging by the passage up between the legs – and my encounter with the sickly sweet crevice, the body belonged to a female.

How was I supposed to reach out to anyone out here? – unless there was someone else trapped here on the wild wasteland of this woman’s body with me. But even if there was another person, they could be anywhere.

I needed to figure out a way to communicate. Heading to her ear seemed the obvious method of doing this. No need to get closer than necessary to her face – imagining a great gaping maw awaiting me somewhere up there – but at the moment, I had no choice.

Pulling myself out of the yawning bellybutton, I carried on up the wall which was the bare flat expanse of the woman’s stomach. My fantasies of being Spider-man lay ruined, now that I knew I was actually in the incredibly humbling position of being a skin mite – more like a literal spider man.

The climb took me up a great curving bulge, much bigger than the previous spiky-haired covered one. There was a great crevice running underneath where the wall met the bulge. But I was too distracted by thoughts of how I’d get the woman’s attention and what I’d say to her, to notice where I was going. I wondered vaguely if I’d come to an arm; the bulge of a deltoid muscle, or a shoulder. With everything scaled up, it was difficult to recognize anatomy by pure sight alone. To identify where I was I needed to remember where I’d been and keep a tally of the distance I’d travelled, and which direction on the body I was heading in. All I knew was that I was still somewhere in the vicinity of the torso.

Clinging upside down to the underneath of the bulge, I moved along as if crawling along a ceiling, and proceeding around a long gentle curve until I was upright again and the wall was vertical again. A red hill loomed before me, pushing out sideways from the skin wall. Without thinking, I climbed up onto it, and sat on top of it. There were furrows in the skin encircling the red hill. I stared at the object in wonder, trying to place it on the human body. The bass thumping was even louder here than in the bellybutton, and caused the flesh to jiggle under me with each steady thump.

With a jolt, I realized where I was, and it was a great cause for discomfort, and in another sense, absurd thrill.

I was sitting on top of one of the giant woman’s nipples. The nipple was so immense over me, her breast must have been positively gargantuan, a mountain of soft flesh. I had no way of seeing it in full, tiny as I was.

A sound made me jump:

“I know you’re there. Interesting choice of destination.” Adding, with mock accusation: “Provocateur!”

It was Jennifer’s voice, as close and clear as if she was standing right behind me, tantalizingly normal size.

I spun around but she was nowhere in sight. Maybe I’d hallucinated the voice, like an aural version of a desert mirage. There was no one for miles in this desert of flesh.

But her disembodied voice came again as before, somehow surrounding me at all sides:

“You know how we thought Remy had gone?” she said brusquely. “Well, we were wrong. He came back.”

Her voice was originating from inside my head, like thought being beamed into my mind by psychic power. There was no explanation but I didn’t question it.

“Where are you?” I said, blinking and staring around across the pale flesh surface, and then out into the white bleary clouds.

“I’m here,” she said. “And you are in the best possible place right now, baby.”

“Yeah? Where’s that?”

“Let me finish, and stop moving around. It’s distracting. I said you shouldn’t use the machine again but,” she said blithely, “you didn’t listen. And now where’s it got you?”

Unable to recall using the machine, I said nothing.

Her voice softened, but remained at businesslike distance, like I was a protégé and she was my mentor; and her affection for me was ousted by her responsibility over me.

“This is you, babe, I’m sorry. This is not my fault and I can’t fix it up for you. But I’m determined to make this work out. And it will, and we can even have some fun. But it’s not always going to be fun. Actually, it’s going to be pretty hairy. There are twenty-four hours in a day and you’re going to need all of them, and if you want to sleep –” she chuckled as if amused at her own audacity “– you’ve gotta work that in somewhere else…or ask nicely. And remember to lay it on thick.” Her voice fragmented into low laughter again, she was outright teasing now. “Praise something unusual. Never hurts to be original. Like, my pores…” more laughter.

“Twenty-four hours for what?” I called out. “What am I doing here? – this is an accident!”

She was silent, awkwardly so, as if trying to figure out which of us was grossly mistaken about the current situation. Then, plainly:

“For your survival.”

She explained dryly:

“A little misstep here, a tiny miscalculation there…and we might be in serious trouble, Mister.”

“Hey!” I grunted. “I’m your fiancé!” The sight of her blown up nipple, like a towering, fat, crenulated red boulder, was starting to make me sick with dread; the only immediate land marker and a shocking visual symbol of how hopelessly miniscule I was. At my smallest I had been a centimeter tall. Now I was a millimeter tall. I must have been virtually microscopic. With this realization, the hair all over my body was prickling with static. I pivoted from the red boulder and began to race over the springy flesh floor.

“No!” she hissed, like I was three years old and about to touch an electric fence, “Jerry! – I said stop moving! You know exactly what’s going to happen!”

Her voice made me run even faster. There was groan of feminine vexation.

—And a colossal object dropped from the sky like some spacecraft landing on the surface of the flesh ground. It was like the plate I’d been standing on way back when I first came to consciousness on her body. That had been her big toe, I now realized, and this new object was similar, but something else again. A flesh colored plate with a white tip; a gleaming monolith, the shape of tombstone. The flesh was pulled taut and depressed under its weight.

The air rattled with a dry crackling sound, like a rake sweeping concrete as the monolith came racing at me with insane speed, faster than I could ever hope to run, sending up gossamer puffs of dead skin particles, so much dust I was immediately destined to become.

“Noooooo—!”

 “—Noooooo!”

The whine tapered off as my eyes snapped open. The desert landscape of flesh evaporated, leaving me in darkness. Only the scent of leather and moisturizer remained. A sound had burrowed into my awareness, causing me to wake.

“JERRY?”

It was Jennifer; her voice warbled in from down the hallway, bright with curiosity and faint concern.

“Uuurrrgh…” I grunted in response. Thought was fuzzy and indistinct; I was still too tired to figure anything out. A headache had lodged behind my eyeballs. Plus, something was pushing up against my front, squashing my insides. The bedsheet had been kicked away. I struggled to roll over, my body felt like a log of lumber. Too much sleeping pill and my metabolism was still trying to process it.

Driving my body with my shoulders, I managed to turn around until I was lying on my back, only to be met with a confounding sight, and for a second my brain simply refused to compute.

There was a huge, straight crack running down the bedroom ceiling like a lightning bolt, through which the white daylight streamed through.

But Jen was already up and about, so why had she not noticed it when she’d first awoken?

I continued to blink up at it stupidly. Something else was wrong.

If daylight was streaming in through the crack, why was the room dark? It shouldn’t have been dark, crack or not; it was morning.

Or was it? I couldn’t figure anything out; my brain was running at half speed.

I closed my eyes, hoping more rest would cure my disorientation, and hopefully the crack would have disappeared the next time I closed my eyes. Seconds later, I opened them again.

The white crack was still there, bright as day against the surrounding darkness. My nostrils crinkled and flared; the room smelled like someone had dumped hand sanitizer on the carpet, and the leather scent – shoes? – leaked out of the cupboard. I reached blindly for a bed sheet that wasn’t there.

“JERRY? JER-RY!"

Jen’s voice came in irritated spurts, echoing in from down the hallway. She was fast growing impatient. “SOMEONE BETTER GET THEIR LITTLE BUTT OUT HERE, OR SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET A LITTLE SPANK…”

She was making it sound like I was misbehaving – hiding from her – when all I was doing was keeping curled up in bed. I was sleeping in – so what? It was Saturday.

Bristling at her tone, I rolled onto my side, drew my knees up to my chest and shut my eyes again.

"UGH,” she groaned, “I AM NOT DOING THIS RIGHT NOW. I’M HAVING LUNCH WITH CHRISTINE AND KATIE, AND YOU’RE WHEREVER YOU WANT TO BE, AND WE’LL COMPARE NOTES LATER!”

Bright rhythmic claps punctuated the air, the sound of her high heels crossing the tiled floor. I waited patiently for the quiet again, but for some reason, the sounds were not growing further away as if heading towards the front door – but drawing even closer, until each clap shocked my eardrums. The mattress even began to tremble as her clacking heels announced her presence in the room, the driving clack turning to a dull thud muffled by the bedroom carpet, and…

...she’d found me after all, in the bed, where I’d been all along, and was now heading straight for me.

I shut my eyes and feigned sleep.

Neither of us spoke.

The mattress dropped out from below and my breath sucked in. I clawed around blindly in the dim light for purchase, but – bizarrely – some flooring was still there beneath my side and flailing hands – even as I could now feel myself flying through the air.

My chest tightened as the soft flooring lurched sideways like a car swerving around a corner, and then whipped back and forth through the air. I was rolled one way, bumping into unseen objects and entities that sprung up in my path out of nowhere, then, as the thrusting motion reversed, rolled back the other way, into and over more objects; most of these hard and uncomfortable as they connected with my legs, ribs and elbows. In mere seconds I was a passenger of a sinking ship; bumping into sliding tables and chairs that knocked into indiscriminate body parts, jangling my bones and grazing my soft vulnerable areas, while my head swam as if I was already in the depths of a black swirling ocean.

“Wh–where are you –?!” I groaned, bumping up and down on the constantly moving flooring, but my voice bounced and shook to pieces, and was then muffled by the sharp staccato heel blasts as they traversed back over the hard floor tiles. I went to yell again, louder, but the hard pointy corner of an object stuck itself into my soft, unprotected stomach, stealing away my voice.

Meanwhile, a door handle and lock clanked very closeby, the door banged shut again and the heel taps, rubber tip on concrete, were now scraping over outside paving. The dark ceiling overhead burst apart and light poured down, piercing my eyes. I shut them an instant before sensing a huge shadow hovering down over me.

Sharp-tipped probing masses swept over my body without stopping, grazing my head, torso, and groin, pinching and tweaking each of these body parts as if trying to tactilely memorize my body surface. Just as quickly, they shuffled me aside with frightening, careless impatience. A metal and plastic rattling came from one dark corner before a metal bar struck and scratched over my leg. I yelped, tucking my legs in as the shadow lifted, taking the rattling thing up over my head, into the bright light, and vanishing.

The car beeped to unlock – the thing that scraped me had been the car keys. Then a car door opened and shut, while the surface I was lying on became firm as a weight pushed up from underneath until I was resting on it. The local motion of rising and falling in the air stopped, almost at the same time, another type of motion started, a vibration which expanded into uncontrollable acceleration in some direction, swerving. It was simply normal car movement, but my puny size made these mundane motions seem more impressive than they actually were. It was like I stood on a deck, feeling the boat accosted by powerful waves, but I actually knew I was in a car, specifically, resting on the passenger seat, lying at the bottom of Jen’s handbag.

But how had I ended up there?

At some point in the night, during uneasy sleep, I must have sleepwalked through the bed, and tumbled out off the side of the mattress, straight into the bag, which must have been lying open beside the bed, either knocking myself out from the fall, or passing back into sleep once I’d landed. Anyway, it wasn’t so important how I’d gotten inside. It was important how I was going to get out.

I should have called for her attention, but was still so tired and nauseated, embarrassed and in disbelief that I’d ended up here, now wanting nothing more than to curl up in the darkness of the soft bag and go back to sleep. Now that I was in the car, I worried that if I called attention to myself, she would spin the mishap to her advantage; seizing the opportunity to turn it into a big, exhausting shopping trip, employing me as her tiny shopping cheerleader. Every passing second made it less likely that she would return me home, as we drove further from the house.

The car engine shut off and the bag was lifted and sent swinging through the air before slapping into a firm, moving surface. She had the strap set long and the bag was over her shoulder, forced into a repeated elastic bounce against the side of her butt as she walked, sending me trampolining around inside. The springy turbulence enlivened my nausea, and worse, the pendulous motion set the various possessions dancing again, like people bumping into me inside a bouncy castle.

Objects blundered into me from all sides: packets and containers and cosmetic tubs and tubes, until I felt like just another forgotten object of possession being conveyed in the bag. A plastic packet somersaulted over me, and multiple objects spilled out and looped around my arms and legs – hairbands. I kicked my legs and whipped my arms out, trying to disentangle myself. Then another object came rolling at me, a phone charger, I booted the side with my foot, narrowly avoiding getting struck with the metal prongs. Then a box of Advil tumbled over me, a corner jutting into my shoulder, the inside foil sheet rattling. With the galloping motion and steady pounding of Jen’s heels, I felt like I was stuck in the saddlebag of a horse.

The motions finally slowed as the voices of Christine and Katie approached, and greeted each other, then I was being bounced along in tow with them. Bright light – even brighter than before – slanted down from the crack between the partially open zip above, and into my eyes – even flickering and dancing as I was tossed around like salad. The sun had come out from behind a cloud and beamed straight down.  

“YOU LADIES DON’T MIND THE SUN?” Christine offered. “WE CAN SIT INDOORS.”

No one protested, and then, chair joints creaked, grinded, and scraped over concrete as the women took their seats, before firm backing rose up and planted itself into my spine. The handbag didn’t have a firm structure, but was floppy and relatively shapeless, like a big leather pouch with a shoulder strap. When the bottom came to rest, it collapsed and folded, making the hard ground distinct against my body.

When the bag had come to rest, I guessed it must be beside Jen’s feet. The unzipped opening had folded over, leaving a small unfolded gap through which bright light filtered in. I got the briefest glimpse of shining nail tips forking into sight before my eyelids shaded in protest. These nail tips rattled painfully over my skull before I was nudged aside, and then a long object like a black sack flew into the air and disappeared. A moment later, my sight went completely dark as the black cloth sack – now empty – dropped onto my head and slipped down my upper body, to my waist. A cloth bag for storing sunglasses. I ripped it off and threw it into the corner.

The women chatted, while I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and soon their voices comingled with the drone of voices of all the other people in the vicinity of what seemed to be a restaurant or café. But the urban noises kept interrupting my rest. Rousing laughter came from another table, while the metallic clangs of cutlery and rings of ceramic dishes, interspersed with intermittent clomping footsteps, sometimes sounding alarmingly close to my bag campout. Further off, there was the crackle of a moped idling at a street light before the light changed and it departed in a burst, a car horn, and a booming car stereo system playing through open windows, before being swallowed up by the chorus of traffic rumbling. Then the squeal of a baby seemed to pierce the tiny, sensitive membranes of my ears, making my insides crinkle.

Eventually, I abandoned sleep, my attention returned and the conversation sharpened into focus again:

Jen was saying:

"I’VE GOT HIM FOR THE WEEKEND. HE FLIES BACK MONDAY.”

“HOW IS IT ALL GOING THERE?” Christine asked.

“HE WAS FINE LAST NIGHT, BUT WHEN I LEFT HIM THIS MORNING HE WAS IN A MOOD."

"WORK PRESSURES," said Katie, sounding as if she was speaking from experience. "DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY."

"WHEN HE'S HOME,” Jen mused to no one in particular, “I PLAY WITH DIFFERENT WAYS OF GETTING HIM INTERESTED."

"THING IS," answered Christine, "YOU'RE AN ACTION GIRL. SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO WEAVE A ROMANCE WITH WORDS."

“SO, I USE MY BODY – WHAT IS NOT ROMANTIC ABOUT THAT?”

"SEE, WITH ME," Katie chimed in, "THE OPPOSITE PROBLEM. BUT IF I DIDN’T TALK, LEVI WOULD SPEND HOURS ON HIS TECHNICAL DRAWINGS IN SILENCE."

"COOK HIM HIS FAVORITE MEAL," Christine offered, to both Jen and Katie simultaneously. "OLD-FASHIONED BUT IT SOLVES ALMOST EVERYTHING."

"HE PULLS AWAY IF I ASK FOR TOO MUCH," Jen went on, carrying on a self-propelled spiel. "IT'S LIKE, PUSH-PULL. THEN HE HIDES."

"I’D GO CRAZY," Katie sympathized. There was a clink of cutlery as food was forked around a plate. "HAVE YOU HEARD OF PRE-MARRIAGE COUNSELLING? I LOOKED INTO IT, BUT LEVI DIDN’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH TALK THERAPY."

“IT MIGHT BE YOUR APPROACH, SWEETIE,” said Christine. “YOU GIVE HIM DISCIPLINE WHEN HE WANTS DELICACY. YOU WANT TO MASTER AND TAME HIM, BUT MARRIAGE ISN’T CHECKMATE.”

The chair squeaked as Jennifer shifted, and her shoe scraped the ground. The bag opening rustled and, opening my eyes, her hand was hovering over me, nearly making me start. Her nails grazed indifferently over my face – I used every ounce of willpower not to move – trailed over my body, poking, prodding, inadvertently jabbing me in the gut as they felt around for something. Making a sweeping motion, her hand shoveled under me and flipped me – plus a couple of other objects – over to the side of the bag in its single-minded search for something else distinctly not shaped like me.

Plastic wrapper crinkled as she found a tissue-packet and withdrew it. A moment later, the plastic packet, still half full of tissues, flew down through the bag opening and bounced on my face. I winced.

“I GET IT,” Katie offered. “HE'S HAD A TASTE OF LIFE AND YOU’RE SCARED HE WON’T COME BACK.”

“WHY SHOULD I BE WORRIED?" Jen scoffed. "HE’D DO ANYTHING FOR ME IF I ASKED HIM.”

“IT MUST BE HARD,” said Christine. “THE SIZE BACKFLIPS, MY GOSH, IT'D GIVE ME WHIPLASH. DOESN’T HE MOURN HIS PREVIOUS FORM?”

“AND WHAT ABOUT ME?" Jen challenged. "I'VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER.”

“YOUR FACE GIVES IT AWAY. AT MY HOUSE YOU COULDN’T STOP SMILING.”

Jen laughed with the recollection of Christine’s dinner party.

“I’D BEEN DYING TO SLIP JERRY ON MY FINGER ALL DAY, THAT'S WHY.”

“HE LOOKED STUNNING ON YOU,” Christine agreed. “NOT TO MENTION, HE MADE A CHIC LITTLE EARRING.”

“ARE YOU GOING TO STAY HERE?” asked Katie.

"I NEED TO, WITH WORK,” replied Jen. There was a pause as if she was considering it more seriously. “BUT THE HOUSE SEEMS BIGGER, QUIETER. ORDERLY.”

“YOU LOVE IT HERE,” Christine remarked. “CLOSE TO THE BEACH AND THE BOARDWALK.”

“I DON’T KNOW,” Jen murmured.

"WELL, YOU LOOK GOOD. FIT."

“JOGGING. DANCING. OTHERWISE I’D BE CLIMBING THE WALLS.”

The conversation shifted to diet, and exercise and sleep, and my mind drifted again. They talked about work, Jen mentioned her own work issues. Then she said:

“WE HAVE ENOUGH FOR LIVING DECENTLY SO I THINK ABOUT HIS MOTIVE.”

“TO WORK?” Christine laughed a little. “LET HIM. MEN LIKE THEIR PROJECTS.”

"THIS," Katie agreed. Then elaborated: “WHEN LEVI WENT TO JAPAN, HE CAME BACK SAYING EVERYONE NEEDED SPIRITUALITY IN THEIR LIVES. THAT LASTED A WEEK. SOMETIMES MEN NEED TO GET THE ‘ADVENTURE’ ALL OUT OF THEIR SYSTEM.”

The musical ding of a church bell echoed in the distance. This spurred the women into talking about the wedding, Christine (already engaged to Tyler, but in no rush to officiate) ran some ideas past.

“ARE YOU GOING TO CHANGE YOUR NAME?” asked Katie suddenly, “– ‘JENNIFER MOUSSEAU’?”

“NO,” Jennifer said firmly. “LIKE I’M CHATTEL. BUT I WOULDN’T REFUSE IF HE CHANGED HIS NAME.”

The moment she’d branded the ‘T’ on my chest she’d made that painfully clear to me, literally.

There was a storm of furious vehicular honking from some nearby street, and footsteps passed very near, a little kid’s voice rang directly above, “MOMMY! MOMMY!”

I flinched, but mother and child must have passed right by the table. Mostly, day-to-day I didn’t have anything to do with kids – plus bad memories of being a bully target of neighborhood kids – and the thought of tots who would now tower over me was disturbing. I hated to imagine the scene if I’d been spotted. I released a heavy breath in relief that the danger had passed, and remained in the bag, happy to continue to lie low for the time being.

“HAVE YOU TALKED ABOUT IT WITH HIM?” Katie was saying, in response to a context I’d missed, being distracted by the kid.

“SHE’S GOING FOR THE SURPRISE ATTACK,” Christine chuckled under her breath.

“NOTHING IS A SURPRISE ABOUT IT,” Jennifer replied with a mock scoffing noise. “I MEAN, IT FOLLOWS NATURALLY.”

“WELL, YOU QUESTIONED HIS MOTIVE FOR GOING UP THERE,” Katie said meaningfully. “MAYBE HE’S SCARED.”

“SURE,” said Jennifer, “I’VE BEEN DISCREET ABOUT IT BUT I HAVEN’T BEEN DISHONEST.”

The conversation had moved on. One of the women said something funny; Christine let out an ebullient laugh. She must have tossed her head back because her earrings chimed – my hearing was so fine I picked it up. It seemed long ago I had been swinging from those very earrings; a bizarre thought. I felt a little more alert now, my nausea migraine had dulled.

The chairs scuffed the ground and then I felt myself being hefted up into the air in one shot, like I weighed nothing. I tumbled around against her hip, and then the bag yawned to let the sun in, and an outstretched hand whose nails tapped over my body parts as they journeyed unconsciously for the purse, which was quickly retrieved so Jen could pay at the counter. A moment later I had the wind knocked out of me, almost buried beneath a leathery mattress that flung out of the sky. This was the purse, which instantaneously flattened me before bouncing off to the side as the bag interior repeated its earlier washing machine cycle of tumultuous motion, as a result of the bag’s vivacious rebound against the buxom curve of Jen’s posterior, until my stomach was curling with nausea again.

The bag swung and dropped onto the padded car seat, before the door clapped shut and the engine came to life. The bag’s possessions stilled where they dropped and mercifully stopped tackling me like football players. The floppy leather was vibrating all around as the car rolled down the road.

“WEIRD DREAM LAST NIGHT,” Jennifer was saying, and I wondered if she was now on the phone, “LIKE SOMEONE PAINTING A LINE, STARTING AT MY TOES AND SLOWLY SPREADING UP MY BODY, STOPPING AT MY NIPPLE. TOTALLY RAW, PURE TOUCH. BUT IT ENDED RIGHT BEFORE MY FAVORITE PART.”

There was a weighed silence.

“YOU WOULDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT, WOULD YOU?”

After more silence:

“THE GAME’S OVER NOW. I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE.”

“How did you know?” I grunted, hauling myself into a sitting position.

“JERRY, I KNOW WHAT YOU FEEL LIKE.” She continued: “YOU HARDLY HAVE TO GO TO THIS TROUBLE IF YOU WANT TO JOIN ME FOR LUNCH. YOU COULD HAVE JUST ASKED. WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS, WHY YOU’RE NAKED.”

“Bad sleep. I must have sleepwalked or something, I woke up in here. “

“AW, YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHERE YOU WHERE?” she said with earnest sweetness.

“I worked it out. I was just napping.”

She sighed with amusement.

“YOUR VOICE SOUNDS SO CUTE COMING FROM INSIDE MY BAG, LIKE I’VE GOT A LITTLE GREMLIN LIVING IN THERE.”

Worried she was in no rush to displace me, I cried out:

“You have to take me home.”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M DOING?”

Relieved, I lay back on the soft interior fabric. After a minute of silence, she said:

“YOU HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SAY?” There was a lilt of expectation in her tone.

“Like what?”

“HOW MUCH DID YOU HEAR EARLIER?”

“I was napping.”

Next morning’s arise was substantially less bizarre, but not less busy.

Birds called outside. The room was still dim, the curtains drawn.

It was cool, the sheet was off, pulled over to her side in the night and wrapped around her luxuriously, leaving me bare. Inevitably she would notice and cup a hand around me, sweeping me into her body warmth. But for now she was still.

I got up and padded over to her head, emerging from the blanket like a big sculpture in a state of repose, elevated enough off the mattress that I had to climb the pillow to reach her.

Long draughts of warm air buffeted me as I walked along the pillow to her forehead. My hand was extended, prepared to reach out and make contact with her brow, when a rumbling moan escaped her throat, the timber so deep that it resonated in my bones. The mountain range of blanket created by her length seemed to hunker in against the mattress. For an instant I thought she must have awoken and was contemplating the thought of arising with extreme distaste. But her eyelids remained shut, except for slits of eyeball just visible beneath the black fans of lashes, and the eyes were flickering blindly in a dream state.

A shelf of the mountain range rustled, sweeping gently around; her arm, buried under the blanket, made a searching motion against her body and my body went tense as I realized. She was touching herself in her sleep.

I stood, frozen, as another sultry groan rang through my skull. Her breath built up, caught, and then gushed out in off-beat rhythm. I wondered if she was thinking about me. Or maybe having a weird dream like I’d had the other day.

Then her arm stilled, and I seized this opportunity to begin grazing my fingers through her eyebrow until she went still all over, before the eyelids peeled back, but still fuzzy, half-asleep. Then the pupils found and focused on me.

“Can you get me to the vet’s clinic in about twenty minutes?” I said. “Uh…Please?”

The eyes held on me. I continued to knead the fur of the brow. 

Her voice crackled out groggily:

“REASON?”

“The vet wants me for a…standard medical thing.”

The eyes held. The brow sharpened.

“THE VET IS YOUR FRIEND NOW?”

My shoulders rolled.

“Sure.”

The eyes veiled behind the lashes for a moment.

“I COULD TAKE YOU…OR I COULD MAIL YOU THERE AND SLEEP IN…”

The blanket humped up as one long, slender arm emerged, flying up at me to bop me in the forehead with a straightened forefinger. I shut my eyes before the pad made contact with my brow, the same hand she had been pleasuring herself with only moments before; her touch was scented and oiled with her natural lubricant, although she didn't know that.

Then her head lifted, she sucked in a lungful of air and let out a yawn right into my face, dowsing me in a cloud of hot, moist air. Realizing, she stopped and giggled.

“SORRY, BABE. I WASN’T TRYING TO EAT YOU.” Her head reared back and her eyes dropped to the tattoo on my chest, and then her lips were drawing in close to press softly against my left pec in an apologetic kiss, giving the hunk of chest muscle a quick probe with her tongue before her lips pulled away again.

She lifted and propped her head up on one arm on the pillow, and her eyes came to a rest on my groin. Her hand slid over the mattress with inescapable power and speed, straight at me. It stopped at my feet, one finger lifting to brush against my dick, which was inconveniently erect.

“DO WE HAVE TIME FOR A QUICKIE IN THE SHOWER?”

“Maybe not this morning,” I said, shifting my feet as her fingertip played with my member, pushing and wiggling it back and forth like a toy, “I really have to—ugh—” the flat pads rolled the head of my cock around with dreamy softness and my sleep-suppressed heartrate now began to accelerate to a vigorous jog. The corner of her lips curled.

It was somehow erotic seeing the sharp razor nails pass so close to my agonizingly sensitive, bulging tip without actually making contact. The nails could be devastating yet her touch was soft and controlled; my dick was putty being shaped by her warm fingertips, inadvertently painting a faint sheen of her own fluid up and down my shaft.

I took a deep breath.

“I have to go now…”

She observed me with the disinterest of someone still recovering from deep sleep.

“YOU REALLY DON’T LOOK READY YET,” she inclined her head, pondering. “I THINK WE SHOULD GIVE IT A COUPLE MORE MINUTES.”

She was right; after several more minutes of heart-thumping agony, I was in desperate need of a shower.

*

“WELL, SOMEONE BOUNCED BACK AFTER THEIR LITTLE RUN-IN WITH MY SURGICAL SHEARS!”

A soft folded towel pressed against my back as I lay face up on the veterinary table. The air was cool and every so often I tried to repress a shiver, while my naked skin had broken out in little bumps. Jen stood beside the table; the gleam of her nails were visible in peripheral vision, fingers curled around the table edge. I looked across and met her eyes, and my head was then shaded by a huge hand as she delicately ran a finger over my hair.

The female vet’s humungous face hovered directly above, blocking out the ceiling light. Her hair was tied back out of the way and her gaze analysed me with clinical interest. Her pink, moist lips smacked on a wad of gum, and my eyes became warily transfixed, dreading that at any moment the gum would fall out. Due to the position of her downturned face, if the gum dropped, my face would be the accidental target.

I couldn’t shift out of the way, because her hand held me down, gently pressed against the tabletop as her rubber gloved fingers journeyed over my bare torso, palpating my insides along the faint scar on my abdomen.

“LOOK AT THE TONE ON THAT BABY BREADBASKET.” She gave my stomach a gentle, admiring prod. 

The vet then listened to my chest with a stethoscope that felt like a plate of ice, and virtually dwarfed my torso, then flipped me over and listened to my back. She took some tiny hammer-ended tool and began tapping about here and there, as if to test the resonance in the air spaces of my body. Pinching my shoulders together, she propped me up into a sitting position on the table, and a tiny cuff squeezed my arm to get my blood pressure, before she shone a miniature torch in my eyes, ears and throat, as I wondered what animal these miniature tools had last been used on – a rat, mouse, or a frog? The deft manipulation of my supine body and bulky intrusion of the tools in my direct visual field definitely me feel less than human.

Then I was laid on my back again while she poked and pushed with a pointer finger, virtually dwarfing the body parts and organs it was attempting to identify. Two broad fingerpads spread about against my front, rubbing my skin to stretch it taut and capture whatever organ or body part lay underneath. A pointer finger moved around over my skull, pinching my head and gently lifting it up off the table to slide under and examine my scalp. Then it worked methodically from my neck to my armpits, then down to my torso, tummy, legs, and finally my groin. Although she was trying to be gentle, the sheer size of her fingertips compared to me made the groin palpation more vigorous than intended, and I finished the examination rock hard and pointing up at the ceiling.

Without warning her gloved fingers began to curl and extend against my shaft, engaged a game of trying to snatch at and poke it.

“WHAT IS THIS, HUH?” she said with mock surprise, playfully catching my tip between two fingers, letting it go, and then catching it again. “WHAT IS THIS? YOU GET SO EXCITED COMING IN TO SEE ME, DON’T YOU!”

As I kicked and struggled between her hands, she appraised Jennifer calmly:

“I DON’T THINK IT’S NECESSARY TO PRESCRIBE HIM ANYTHING OFF THE SHELF TO RELIEVE THAT TUMESCENT LITTLE TICKLE STICK. LET’S JUST TREAT IT AS AN EXERCISE IN SELF-RESTRAINT.” She crouched against the table to bring her gaze down level with my face, fixing me with a big grin, the gum in her cheek squelching as she chewed.

“IT’S SO BIG AND YOU’RE SO TINY!” she cooed. “HOW’D IT GET SO BIG?” She flipped my member drolly against her fingertip while making some affectionate kissy noises at me. Then, leaving my member panging outrageously and straining up at the ceiling, the vet turned peeled off and disposed of her rubber gloves, and deliberated over her computer for a moment.

“I’VE GOT HIS BLOOD TESTS FROM BEFORE HIS NIGHTY-NIGHT JAB LAST TIME,” she said, cheerfully. “NO NEED TO WORRY: ALL NORMAL. BETTER THAN NORMAL; HIGH VITAMINS, HIGH IRON, STRONG IMMUNE FUNCTION.” Her gleaming eyes fixed on me with excitement. “HE’S A PERFECT CANDIDATE!”

There was a beat. Then –

“CANDIDATE FOR WHAT?” Jen said.

The vet gave her a strange look.

“THE ROBURFORTIS THERAPY – THAT’S WHAT WE’RE DOING HERE, TODAY.”

Jen’s eyes flicked from the vet down to me and back again. I shrank under her keen gaze.

“JERRY, WHAT IS THIS,” she said slowly, “WE CAME IN HERE FOR A CHECK-UP.”

The vet spent a moment explaining the therapy to her, the same as she’d done over the phone to me. Jen’s face remained impassive as she took this in, though her eyes seemed to shade over.

“AND THE SIDE EFFECTS?” she said.

“THE BONE GROWTH PROCESS MAY BE PAINFUL,” the vet listed off, “THERE MIGHT BE SOME SWELLING AND INFLAMMATION AROUND THE JOINTS. IF THE PAIN ESCALATES WE CAN BRING IN SOME PAIN RELIEF, AND PLAY AROUND WITH THE PILL DOSE SO THE POOR LITTLE GUY’S SYSTEM ISN’T RUNNING ON THE BRINK OF EXHAUSTION.”

Jen stepped up to the table, pressing her palms upon the edge and leaning over until I was staring straight up at her face, and couldn’t avoid her penetrating gaze.

"WHY IS THIS THE FIRST TIME I'M HEARING ABOUT THIS?"

Unnoticed by the vet, her voice now became tacitly sterner, and came at me in particular, like a dart.

I shivered under her scrutiny, my insides coiling, and looked to the vet for help, an explanation. The vet smiled innocently, misinterpreting the question.

"HAVE TO SAY, I'M A LITTLE EXCITED TO SEE HOW IT WORKS OUT, I'VE NEVER COME ACROSS IT BEFORE, EITHER."

One of the palms near me lifted, the hand combing through the dual-tone hair, but only succeeding in mussing it.

“JERRY,” she fought for the right words, “EXPLAIN TO ME. BECAUSE I DON’T GET IT. I DON’T.”

“W-what part don’t you get?”

“WHICH PART OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE?”

The vet looked between us.

“WHAT IF I GIVE YOU GUYS A MINUTE?”

“No!” My eyes fluttered around the ceiling. Jen’s brow distinctly hardened.

“JERRY, THE RISKS. PAIN, EXHAUSTION. YOU’RE THAT DESPERATE?”

I glared against the ceiling light, hating the word ‘desperate’, trying to ignore not only her face but the inflamed tower of my dick pointing up at her, making a very inconvenient presence.

“All medical procedures have risks. I’ve got to at least try it, or I’m going to be kicking myself.”

“WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO IMPRESS? THE FILM PEOPLE?”

“It’s nothing to do with them. It’s me. I want it.”

Her face screened up like she hadn’t heard me. She left the tableside, dropping into the aluminium frame seat at the side of the room, in the corner, staring ahead as if trying to make out some tiny invisible writing on the wall. Then her eyes went to the floor and stayed there. I watched her, waiting for a reestablishment of eye contact, but it didn’t come.

Then my head dropped back until all I saw was the ceiling, the harsh buzzing fluorescent strips as the vet typed away at the computer.

I wanted to get up off the table, take her hand, squeeze it, rub her shoulder, something, but was stuck staring up at the ceiling, lying face up on the towel, with the vet’s gargantuan upper body hovering around the edge of my vision, feeling less like a patient and more like a helpless animal that had just been born. If this all worked, I would be able to do all of those things; rub her shoulder, take her hand, hug her. I fixated on that thought.

“I’LL FIX UP A PRESCRIPTION AND GET SOME SENT TO YOU,” the vet said. “JUST NEED TO CONFIRM YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS.”

I gave my Tiferno Apartment address, while, at the same time, Jen listed off the home address.

“St Palma,” I insisted.

"BAYSIDE," said Jen.

"I'LL STICK THE CITY ADDRESS IN HERE, OKAY?" the vet chirped.

Jen exhaled slowly but said nothing.

The vet was now rifling through drawers of medical equipment. My muscles snapped to attention and I pushed myself up off the towel. The towering wall of her back facing me, she announced, cheerily as ever:

“NOW, YOU ASKED ME ABOUT WHETHER THE LITTLE FELLA’S WAND WAS FIRING AS IT SHOULD BE.”

She was talking to Jen.

Jen drew herself up in the seat to return the vet’s inquiring look. The vet went on:

“HE WAS JUST A CHIRPY LITTLE TWINKLE ON THE TABLETOP, WASN’T HE? STILL CHIRPY, BUT NOW HE’S BIG ENOUGH FOR MY DELICATE EQUIPMENT TO HAVE A TEENY FEEL AROUND FOR ANALYSIS, AND MAYBE, IF WE’RE REALLY LUCKY, HE’LL LET ME TAKE A STEALTHY SAMPLE.”

She turned away from the drawers to face the table again, and flexed her hand in a way that suggested it was the ‘delicate equipment’. A buzz raced up my spine.

“What are you doing?!” I cried.

“EASY THERE, CUPCAKE!” she chuckled. “I’M JUST GOING TO PUT YOU THROUGH YOUR PACES.”

“No more tests! I’m healthy – you said so!”

Jen now chose this moment to leave the seat and return to the tableside to lean over me, bringing a couple of fingers flat over my chest like a harness, while her thumb extended up behind the top of my head to stroke my hair in an effort to calm me down.

"DO THIS FOR ME, OKAY?” she said, then, more softly, as her thumb gently brushed against and flicked my ear. “IT'S NECESSARY, BABE."

The vet was snapping on another pair of rubber gloves, before squirting gel on her fingertips and rubbing them together, calmly addressing Jennifer over my head.

“THE USUAL METHOD FOR THIS IS DIGITAL STIMULATION.” She considered me on the table, shifting around under Jen’s steady, firm hand. “I NEED A GOOD, BIG SPURT, BUT I’M PRETTY CONFIDENT IN MY TECHNIQUE TO COAX HIM TO EXHAUST EVERYTHING HE’S GOT. AND YOU DOWN THERE—” she now leaned right over me, looking me in the eye, “—YOU’RE IN GOOD HANDS. OR, I SHOULD SAY, HAND.”

She winked at me, giving my ankle a gentle touch as if in reassurance, but the coldness of the rubber glove made me flinch.

My tongue turned heavy in my mouth as my thoughts raced for arguments.

“There has got to be some kind of–eep—!”

Fingertips wrapped around my shaft and began gliding up and down with confident strokes, asserting total, unhurried control over my reproductive function.

“OOH, OUCH!” the vet sympathized, “AND I’M JUST MAKING IT WORSE AND WORSE, AREN’T I? POOR LITTLE GUY…”

The pressure grew denser, then released and became light, unbearable and irritating, then intensified again, and carrying on like this in cycles. Every square inch of my member was explored with indiscriminate clinical curiosity, and stroked thoroughly, squeezing and stretching, and stroking vigorous circles into the tip until perspiration was dabbing my brow and my eyes were practically rolling up into my head. Sharp gasps and moans were coming out of my mouth and I couldn’t stop them.

“LET'S SEE IF I CAN MAKE YOU WORK A LITTLE HARDER, NOW…THAT’S IT LITTLE GUY,” the vet was murmuring, “YOU CAN DO IT...A LITTLE MORE...WHAT A BIG UNIT YOU HAVE! BUT YOU’D MAKE ME SO HAPPY IF YOU GOT EVEN BIGGER FOR ME…JUST A LITTLE MORE…”

At intervals her big pink lips puckered at me, making wet popping kissing sounds, not in a flirtatious way but as if I was a puppy she was cooing at.

There was intermittent pressure around my balls, not merely from inside but on the outside; as if a fingertip was rolling around them, measuring, trying to gauge by touch how much fluid there was for her to take.

It was torture. My head was thrashing about until the warm weight of her thumbpad planted on my brow to pin my head to the table.

I took deep ragged breaths as the constant pressure became like a powerful sucking feeling right through my shaft. The vet was so confident and clinical in her technique she was powering away without regard to my comfort, skillfully maneuvering me through a monstrous climax.

“NOT GIVING UP EASILY, EH?” The vet smirked at Jen. “HE WANTS ANOTHER COUPLE OF ROUNDS OF TUG-O-WAR,” She murmured, unfazed, total concentration on my expanding, twitching organ: “BUT I’VE GOT HIM RIGHT WHERE I WANT HIM…”

Giddy pulsations of bright euphoria began exploding through my loins. I let out a series of breathless squeaks as my hips began to buck against the examination table.

“HAVE YOU NOW, LITTLE FELLA!” the vet gloated down at me. “GIVE ME A NICE BIG SQUIRT.”

Multiple wads shot out of my dick and were zealously captured in a sample cup by the vet.

“AH HA!” the vet crowed in victory. “WE HAVE SURRENDER!”

Screwing the lid, she held the jar up to her eyes, squinting in at it, rotating the jar to catch the ceiling light, and in that innocent, earnestly clinical way of hers:

“LOOK AT THAT! WHAT A BEAUTIFUL BIG DEPOSIT. WHAT MORE CAN I ASK FOR?”

She pulled out a tissue and dabbed my face of perspiration, while I took deep calming breaths and stared at the ceiling, unable to meet the eyes of either woman.

*

Back in the car, I could tell something was wrong. Jen was an easy conversationalist, and right now, she was driving us home in silence, not looking at me. Of course, she had to keep her eyes on the road, but she wasn’t acknowledging me.

She flipped the radio on, surfed the stations undecidedly, made an audible sigh, then turned it off. She was a great actress except for when she was pissed off, then her performative nature seemed to depart her entirely.

“SO YOU’RE GOING TO START THAT TRIAL?” she said quietly.

I weighed my words.

“I’ve definitely thought about it.”

She considered this.

“WELL, HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT IT’S GOING TO MEAN FOR YOUR CAREER IF YOU GET THOSE SIDE-EFFECTS? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PERFORM IF YOU’RE IN PAIN?”

“The vet said she’d give me pain relief if it came to that.”

“YEAH, AND OVER-MEDICATE AND MAKE YOURSELF SICK.”

I shifted uncomfortably between her thighs, which, in response, clenched me firmer.

“You sound upset.”

“I’M NOT UPSET,” she said. “BUT I ALREADY TOLD YOU HOW I FEEL.” She added impatiently: “I THOUGHT WE WERE PAST THIS.”

“Past what?”

“OH, YOU KNOW,” she grunted. “THIS…THIS SIZE THING.” Then blurted out: “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU!”

“But there is something different, and I’m just trying to reconcile that.”

“WE’RE GETTING MARRIED NOW.” She lifted a hand from the steering wheel and flexed it. “THIS RING ON MY FINGER ISN’T A TOY; IT SYMBOLIZES THE PROMISE WE MADE TO HAVE EACH OTHER AS WE ARE. SO, WHAT, YOU’RE GOING TO RUN AWAY FROM THAT AND DO THIS, AND THROW YOUR PROMISE TO ME OUT THE WINDOW?”

“I think you’re being slightly dramatic. People all around the world have a normal wedding where the bride and groom are roughly the same size. Would it be such a disaster if I actually look you in the eye when we stand at the altar?”

“WELL…” she interrupted herself with a huff of exasperation, “…WHAT DID YOU THINK IT WAS GOING TO LOOK LIKE? YOU DON’T WANT TO STAND IN MY HAND? WHERE ELSE WOULD YOU BE? THE FLOOR LIKE EVERYONE ELSE?”  

“No,” I said quickly, “No one should be crouching or kneeling or craning their necks or standing on stilts, that’s all.”  

“THIS IS THE WEDDING WE’RE TALKING ABOUT, RIGHT?” she said tersely, “NOT SOMETHING ELSE?”

“I’m just trying to put myself in the picture where I fit.”

“YOU FIT AND IT’S GOING TO WORK OUT,” she said flippantly. “STOP COMPLAINING.” Her thighs rippled with a breathtaking flex calculated to squeeze me into submissive silence. 

“YOU THROW THIS AT ME,” she said after a moment, “AND IT’S LIKE; SINCE WHEN?”

My mouth opened but nothing came out.

Since when—?

A spurt of anger hit me inside like a tiny grenade, and I barely managed to contain it before I blurted something I’d regret. There was already of a spike of emotion in her tone and if I fed it, the conversation was going to deteriorate into animal snarls.

Some minutes passed. Then I said:

“I’ll think it over.”

"OKAY. GOOD. FINE."

Engine sound filled up the silence.

My thoughts were disturbed by the thunder of trains as we passed a station. Buried between Jen’s thighs, the windows high above, I imagined people streaming off the train, a trample of feet on granite floor, scaling unimaginable distances in heartbeats. I had to stick with Jen at home, stick with Raf in St Palma, there was no way for me to make a spontaneous transit, jump on connecting trains, planes, buses, cabs, see where they took me, with no one waiting at the other end to pick me up, relying only on my feet and my brains. 

I flew back to St Palma, and Farris called me into the agency for an update. I texted Raf and had a shower while waiting. My prescription for Roburfortis had arrived in the mail, so I took it with me and then we were rolling downtown in his car, coming to a stop outside the manicured emerald lawn fronts of the Talent Corp complex, with the neighboring buildings reflected in its glass panels.

As Raf took me through the building, a couple of office staff looked up and followed me with their eyes.

"HOW'S LIFE ON SET?" Farris asked with his usual flashing smile, as soon as we entered his office.

“It's different," I replied, as my feet touched down on his long espresso oak desk, and from behind, a chair squeaked as Raf settled into it. Across the desk, Farris swiveled between looking across at me, his phone, and his computer.

"THE CORRECT ANSWER IS, THIS GIG HAS ITS UPS AND DOWNS. THE CORRECT ATTITUDE IS, Perseverance. A LOT HINGED ON SECURING YOUR FIRST ROLE. I HAD TO CONVINCE SOMEONE TO TAKE A RISK. NOW IT PAID OFF, YOU USE THE CREDIT TO SPRINGBOARD INTO MORE."

I leaned back, rocking my weight into my heels to keep Farris’s bald head and rapidly shifting eyes in my direct view, from my reduced viewing platform on the corner of his desk. A normal sized person, like Raf, could keep Farris in view without moving but because I was so small, every time Farris swivelled I needed to turn my head to follow.

"Great. So, what next?"

He placed his hands flat on the desk, but his fingers kept moving.

“WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT. WHERE DO YOU WANT ME TO TAKE YOU?"

“Into more roles, if I can get them.”

“SAME SAME OR SOMETHING DIFFERENT?”

My hands slipped in my pockets and I fought to keep them there. Watching the agent’s zippy energy was sparking up my own sympathetic nervousness. Or I was genuinely nervous about expressing what I actually wanted.

“…How different?”

"YOU MUST GET SICK OF PEOPLE THINKING SMALL.” He said, matter-of-factly. “I DON'T MICRO-MANAGE, I MACRO-MANAGE; FOREST AHEAD OF TREES. WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WORKING ON IS A ‘LITTLE GUY’ ROLE. PURSUING MORE OF THE SAME IS GOING TO GET YOU TYPECAST.” He added: “NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT IF YOU LOVE IT.”

“I’ll do that role, but…” I faltered.

Farris swivelled around to face me head on.

“YOU DON’T LOVE IT.”

“…it would be cool to be a lead…”

I’m not big enough to be a lead, said a voice in my head.

“…with a romantic interest.”

There is no actress small enough, the voice concluded.

Farris nodded.

“Perseverance,” he repeated, somewhat flippantly. “ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE.”

Then he changed tack:

“REMEMBER I GAVE YOU THE LOWDOWN ON A FILM THAT I SAID WAS A SHAPING INTO A BOMB—?”

“I honestly don’t remember,” I replied in earnest.

“THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO HEAR! THE NEWEST INSTALMENT IN THE GAMELANDIA SERIES JUST HIT THE SHELVES AND INTEREST IN THE FEATURE FILM ADAPTATION HAS SKYROCKETED. PRODUCTION IS ON THE GROUND AND RUNNING AGAIN: NEW DIRECTOR IN THE PILOT SEAT, ROCK-SOLID INVESTOR BACKING, BIG SCRIPT CLEAN-UP, ALL SYSTEMS ARE GO. SO FORGET EVERYTHING I SAID; I’M PUSHING TO GET YOU IN.”

“So what happens now?”

“WE’VE GOT A MEETING OF MINDS WITH THE CO-PRODUCERS AND WRITER TEAM. I GIVE MY LITTLE PITCH, WORK MY MAGIC MOUTH, TILT THE BALL INTO THE BASKET – YOU WEAR SOMETHING NICE – AND GOAL!”

Later that day we picked up some Roburfortis at the pharmacy. To me, the box was big enough that it could have contained a large painting. At home I withdrew the foil sheet and punched one of the tablets out. The prescription had been mailed with instructions for regime: one quarter of a tablet per week. I gnawed the tablet until three quarter remained, and apart from some odd muscle twinges that night, didn’t feel any different.  

*

We were scheduled to meet the production players at noon. I put on a suit and tie and rode my booster seat in Raf’s car into the St Palma arts district. We pulled up, early, across from Zaatar Garden, a hip, faintly bohemian Israeli restaurant café, and milled outside the façade until Farris appeared. Raf handed me over and Farris took me through the café into a tea garden out the back, with creepers twining around the beams and trellis walls.

Then the four of us sat at a table – I sat on the table. Sitting together were husband and wife co-producer team, Executive Producer, Joe, and Screenwriter and Associate Producer, Deborah. With woollen sweater and glasses I initially confused him for the writer, while Deborah (formerly in marketing, editing and PR) was fashion-conscious, hair in a stylish bun and distractingly bright lipstick – everything I thought a writer didn’t look like. Not to mention, she was possibly fixated on my ‘image’; her eyes kept flying down at me mid-conversation, as if trying to figure out ways to draw me back into the conversational limelight. My gaze was repeatedly caught by the passage of the waiters gliding past, and in the un-drenched garden, there was nowhere to hide.

Sitting on the tabletop, my head didn’t even clear the height of the tall soup bowls. Unlike the finely cut morsels of Japanese cuisine at Bunka Bocho, the food here was sliced into formidable chunks. There were flatbreads and sweetbreads that could've wrapped me up like blankets.

Bright white dining plates like showroom platforms, gleaming silver cutlery that could have run me through like jousting polearms. Worse: shish-kebabs spearing diced chunks of lamb that could’ve passed for my cooked body parts. Sitting upon the table amongst the servings, it was hard not to feel like just another strange appetizer laid out for evaluation.

The writer, Deborah’s lashes fluttered as she took me in.

"WE THOUGHT THERE WAS A MISTAKE WHEN FARRIS GAVE US YOUR HEADSHOT,” she said, smiling. “ALL THE BLANK WHITE SPACE SWALLOWED UP YOUR FACE, HON.”

"HE'S THE ONLY CLIENT I'VE EVER HAD WITH A TRUE-TO-SIZE HEADSHOT," Farris said. “HE’S A WALKING SPECIAL EFFECT.”

“JERRY,” Joe fixed me with an earnest stare, “DON’T LISTEN TO THEM. COMING FROM SOMEONE NOT QUITE SIX FEET, IT’S ALL IN GOOD TAILORING. OWN IT AND DON’T TRY TO CON WITH A POOR FIT.”

“OR ELEVATOR CUBAN HEELS,” Deborah muttered with a sage look askance at her husband, who shied from the look, turning his head down at me with amusement:

“IF SOMEONE DOESN’T WARN YOU, JERRY,” he said rapidly, his thick eyebrows jumping and posturing a lot when he spoke, “I WILL. THIS WOMAN IS CRIMINALLY FLAMBOYANT: SHE HAS A PRESSED ENSEMBLE OUTFIT FOR EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. YOU’VE GOT TO GO OVER ANY SCRIPT CORRECTIONS WITH A FINE COMB BCAUSE SHE’LL WRITE THESE CUTE LITTLE OUTFITS INTO YOUR PART, I’M TELLING YOU.”

Deborah shook her head with mock exasperation. Getting serious, she said:

“THERE HAS BEEN A SLIGHT TECHNICAL FAILURE TO LAUNCH BECAUSE THE COMPANIES TAKE ONE LOOK AT THE STORYBOARDS AND ALL GONE ‘NUH UH’, WE WANT PG FOR DEMOGRAPHIC COVERAGE. OF COURSE, ANYTHING LESS THAN AN R-RATING IS GOING TO KICK UP A STINK IN THE FANBASE.”

Joe threw a conspiratorial glance around before adding:

“IF YOU ASK ME, IN EXEC WORLD, IT’S UPSIDE-DOWN: THEY’LL BACK AWAY FROM A SCENE WHERE A KID’S BONE POKES OUT, BUT THEY’LL GIVE THE THUMBS UP TO A SCENE WITH A SKELETON WITH ALL IT’S BONES SHOWING.” He made a snort of disbelief.

“SO WE’VE HAD TO MAKE HUGE CHANGES TO KEEP THE EXECS HAPPY; PUSH THE RUGGED ELEMENTS TO THE BACKGROUND AND BRING THE LEVITY UP INTO THE FOREGROUND, DRAW THE KIDS IN AND KEEP THINGS COMMERCIAL. NOW,” he spread his hands in a grand gesture, “NO MORE DEALBREAKERS.”

“IF I MAY INTERPOSE,” Deborah said, “THE BOOK IS CHOCK FULL OF MAIN CHARACTERS. THE SCREENPLAY HAS CUT AND COMBINED THESE DOWN TO FIVE LEADS—” she glanced at Joe, “—GIVE THEM YOUR REASONING, HONEY.”

“NINE LEADS IN LORD OF THE RINGS,” he rattled away, “MINUS FOUR LEADS IN JUMANJI, EQUALS FIVE LEADS.”

My brow scrunched at this logic, but I said nothing.

“ALL LEADS ARE SIGNED ON?” Farris said quickly.

The two of them nodded.

“THESE KIDS ARE GREAT,” said Joe. “NEW TALENT BUT YOU WOULDN’T KNOW IT, AND THEY’VE GOT A REAL COMRADERY GOING ON OFF SET, ALREADY.”

“I HAVEN’T HEARD A SINGLE PEEP FROM MR. MOUSSEAU, THERE,” Deborah observed, her gaze sweeping down the table and stopping on me. “YOU MUST HAVE QUESTIONS FOR US?”

“Yes,” I cleared my throat. “Uh…What is my role?” Seemed the obvious first place to start.

"CAN YOU PLAY THE BAD GUY?" Joe raised one of his thick, almost comically expressive eyebrows.

My imagination galloped ahead. Me as the bad guy up against regular-sized cast? I was about as intimidating as a thumb. Was this a joke or a serious proposal?

"SO," Deborah said, interrupting my thoughts, "THERE'S A CHARACTER CALLED MIKE. HE BECOMES JEALOUS OF THIS GIRL, MADISON, WHO TURNS INTO A GIANTESS. HE USES MAGIC TO MAKE HER EVIL AND DO HIS BIDDING, BUT IS DEFEATED IN THE END BY THE MAIN PROTAGONIST AND MADISON’S LOVE INTEREST, ADAM. YOU’D BODY DOUBLE MIKE.”

Deborah’s eyes were suddenly fixed on me keenly and I blushed under her interest. She gave me a probing smile.

“WOULD YOU LET ME SWEEP YOU OFF YOUR FEET, MY LITTLE DARLING?”

“Uh…okay.”

Before I could react, her hand arranged itself at my front to clasp my chest and lift me from the table. Next moment I was deposited on her other hand, palm upturned.

“LIGHT AS A CLOUD,” she breathed. “YOU ARE A DELICATE WINGLESS SYLPH – FAIRY,” she added, glancing up at the other two. “OKAY, EMBARRASSING, BUT I USED TO BE OBSESSED WITH FAIRIES WHEN I WAS LITTLE, SO THIS IS ACTUALLY KIND OF MAGICAL FOR ME.”

A thought struck her, and she beamed at me suddenly.

“NO, I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE; I USED TO HAVE THIS TINY BIRD AND YOU ARE HIS EXACT SIZE AND WEIGHT. IF I HAD MY EYES CLOSED I’D THINK YOU WERE HIM.”

“THERE’S STILL TIME, JERRY,” Joe joked, “GET OUT OF HERE. SHE’LL PUT YOU IN A LITTLE FEATHERY COSTUME AND MAKE YOU SING FOR HER.”

“OH, STOP,” Deborah said.

Her hand rose and fell gently like an elevator over the table as she amused herself weighing me.

“YOU WOULDN’T MIND IF ALEXA CARRIED YOU?” she asked, peering down into my face. “SHE’S IS SIGNED ON TO PLAY MADISION, YOU’LL ABSOLUTELY LOVE HER.”

Taking a sip of water, Joe added with a reminiscent grin:

“AS SOON AS SHE WALKED INTO THE AUDITION, FROM THE FIRST WORD, WE KNEW WE HAD OUR MADISON.”

Farris stroked his jaw.

“DO I HAVE THIS RIGHT: ADAM’S NOT A GIANT?”

“YES,” said Deborah. “ONLY MADISON.”

The fingers of her other hand came flying for me, pinching around my ribs and lifting me slightly to reposition me on her hand. She repositioned me experimentally like this several times as Farris went on:

“SO THE LEAD MAN AND THE GIANT GIRL GET TOGETHER AT THE END…AND JERRY DOUBLES THE LEAD MAN?”

“ADAM HAS NO SHARED SCREENTIME WITH THE GIANT MADISON. SHE TURNS BACK AND THEN THEY REUNITE.”

“YOU LOOK NOTHING LIKE A BAD GUY,” Deborah suddenly noted, stroking my chin to turn my head to assess my physical suitability. “YOU’RE SUCH A SWEET-LOOKING LITTLE THING.” She looked sideways at Joe, sitting next to her. “MALE ingéNUE?”

“I can do a bad guy,” I piped up, puffing my chest out and trying to sound tough and confident even if my chin was balanced daintily on Deborah’s fingernail.

“THE FILM LAB WILL MAKE HIS FACE LOOK LIKE MIKE,” Joe answered. “THE REAL ISSUE IS THIS—” He prodded my pec with a fingertip.

“WHAT’S YOUR THINKING, JOE?” said Deborah.

“HIDE IT UNDER COSTUME OR,” he pantomimed doing a dumbbell curl, “GET OUR MAN PLAYING MIKE TO HIT THE GYM.” Then he waved a hand dismissively as if to say ‘we’ll figure it out.’

“YOU TRY SOME OF THAT KNISH, DEB?” Farris said.

“IT’S DEEP-FRIED, AND I’M WATCHING MYSELF WITH THE FATS.”

“BETTER GO EASY ON THAT ONE, JERRY,” Farris warned me. “OTHERWISE YOU’LL WAKE UP TO FIND YOU’RE A PING PONG BALL.”

“OH, BUT WOULDN’T THAT BE SO CUTE?” Deborah gushed, her hand snaking forward to give my stomach a ticklish poke. “I LIKE A LITTLE BIT OF MAN-TUMMY.”

“IF YOU CAN’T TELL,” Joe wiggled his furry eyebrows.

I just had one other question.

“Will I have to work with any horses?” It was a fantasy-styled movie, so I naturally thought knights on mounts.

“WE WOULDN’T PUT YOU ANYWHERE NEAR A HORSE, HONEY,” Deborah.

Joe’s eyes went wide, his eyebrows flying up jauntily.

“YOU’D GET MUNCHED UP LIKE CUD, KID!”

“CUD’S THE CRUD,” Farris shook his head, “JERRY WOULD MAKE A VERY NUTRITIOUS MEAL; ALL THAT IRON AND FIBER.”

It took me a moment long to recognize he was joking.

*

“THIS ISN’T LIKE YOUR PREVIOUS SIGN-ON,” Farris was saying as he drove me back to the Talent Corp complex. I sat in my booster seat in the passenger side, texting Raf so he would pick me up outside the office.

“THEY’RE NOT DESPERATE. IF YOU BAIL, THEY’VE GOT VFX IN THE WINGS. BUT I’VE GOT THEM INTERESTED: YOU’VE GOT A UNIQUE MARKETING ANGLE IN LIVE ACTION INTERACTION BETWEEN MULTI-SIZED LEADS.”

Meanwhile, I was thinking: this was a fantasy film; what kind of strange make-up effects would they have me sit overlong in the chair? Then again, it surely couldn’t be worse than the dog costume.

“NO GUARANTEE,” Farris added, after some thought, “BUT THERE’S SEQUEL POTENTIAL IF THIS REVIEWS WELL; THEY MIGHT CALL YOU BACK ON.”

That was great for stability, but still, I hated being pressured. Farris picked up my hesitation.

“YOU’VE GOT NOTHING ELSE ON YOUR AGENDA RIGHT NOW, BUT SHOULD I FIND YOUR ROMANTIC LEAD, YOU’LL BE THE FIRST TO KNOW.”

Later, Farris got a hold of a copy of the screenplay for me to read.

"Let me make some calls,” he said. “Just sit tight, kid. I'll get you in somewhere."

*

It was late; the windows flung open to let in the cool night air. I needed the air against my face to feel like I was moving, as in a speeding car, even though the air was stifling and still. Every so often there was a warm shift, but it was from a mechanical, not natural source. The ghostly sounds of rock music played up the street.

Outside the windows the sky was smoky, black and lit up with the city skyline. I was buzzed, hungry, jittery, couldn't sit still, even though I was supposed to hit the bed within two hours, if I was fastidious about that kind of thing. Problem was I had the energy to do anything, but the attention span to accomplish nothing. I took my phone and dialled.

“What’s happening?” I said.

She said provocatively:

“Guess who I was talking to recently?”

“Who?”

“Stuart.”

“Why?

“What do you mean ‘why’? You said you wanted him to be at the wedding, so I called him. I didn’t have to…”

“Oh,” I said, now remembering. “What did he say?”

“He’s coming. With his new girlfriend. You wanted him to come, so I said fine, okay, sure.”

There were a bunch of different things I could have said in response, but I just said:

“Thank you.”

“So, who’s up there? You must be bumping into some interesting people now.”

“Well, no one up here from before I got shrunk.”

I used to use euphemisms like ‘accident’ to refer to what happened – there was something about direct terms like ‘shrunk’ and ‘miniaturized’ that were cartoonish and unbelievable, and made me self-conscious to use, but it was futile running from it; that’s what had happened, I had been shrunk.

“Makes no difference.” But her tone had mellowed somewhat.

“I’m the tiny guy to them,” I patiently explained. “I’ve always been the tiny guy. Back home, people remember me as the guy who used to be normal sized.”

“Jerry, repeat after me: it shouldn’t matter and it doesn’t matter.”

“But—”

She huffed, bored of the topic.

“Is that therapy happening yet?”

“Patience, my love. I just started it.”

“If it works, you’re going to need a whole new wardrobe,” she said dismissively.

“If it works,” I said slowly, savoring the words, savoring the possibility, “you’re going to need a whole new wardrobe, because I’m going to rip your clothes off you.”

She pretended she hadn't heard me. But, later, she sent me a jpg that was totally black. Thinking the picture had corrupted or failed to load properly I asked her to retake or resend the image. Her next text elaborated:

where i’d put u if u were her…mouth? V? A? wanna guess?

She looked much the same when she came by my apartment to pick me up, except her skin now radiated with a sunny blush. It must have been the St Palma sun doing favors for her constitution…alternatively; she was enjoying the honeymoon phase of her relationship with new boyfriend Grant.

Seeing her again made feelings swell up inside me, and not altogether pleasant. A vague feeling of loss; something like the rushing deflation of spent energy trying to chase a train gradually receding into the distance, and heavy finality hanging over my head; the realization I needed to stop running. She was gorgeous as always but there was an invisible membrane separating us; creating an uncanny sense of unreality, like she was from another era, or time, or even universe, forever only a visitor in mine, and would inevitably have to return to her own.

She kissed me on the cheek unselfconsciously, drenching me in flowery perfume, and then swept me into her car.

Our destination today was a fitness studio with a mirror running along one wall and windows along the other. Mats were laid out on the floor. When she carried me inside, it was empty apart from Larissa, who was going around pulling shades down over all the windows until the whole room was dim.

As we stared from across the floor, she went to the side of the room and clicked on a switch. Strips along the ceiling lit up, and judging from the heat pulsing out against the top of my head, they functioned as heat lamps. In the dim, wooden studio, the heated light gave the room a candlelit appearance.

Larissa came over and stood before us, wearing booty shorts and an athletic crop-top. Her face lit up and she held her hands out in a friendly gesture like she was going to hug me, though her arm span was manifestly gargantuan.

“THERE’S MY POCKET POWERHOUSE! HOW YA DOING, LITTLE BUDDY?”

“Hi, Larissa,” I said, genially. “And this is my fiancée, Natalie.”

“UHHH…MIGHT HAVE THAT MIXED UP,” Natalie said.

I slapped a hand to my face, shaking my head urgently.

“I definitely have that mixed up. Natalie’s m-my friend. She’s the chaperone I told you about.”

Realizing the error, the trainer laughed.

“JERRY WAS JUST A BEANPOLE BEFORE HE STARTED SEEING ME,” she said with mock self-importance, “NOW LOOK AT HIM.”

“I used to be six foot, too,” I shot back, “but she made me do too many overhead weights. Now look at me.”

Larissa laughed and crouched with her hands on her thighs, bringing her face close to mine.

“THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T STRETCH BEFORE A WORKOUT, PONYBOY.” She punctuated this retort by tapping my nose with her little finger. Then she straightened and took a position on a mat before us.

The world gave a faint back and forth rocking as Natalie shifted on her feet, and her soft grip tightened in an unconscious squeeze for a fraction of a second. I sensed she was nervous or uncomfortable, though I didn’t know why. Maybe the banter; she’d never been comfortable poking fun at my size. Particularly since it was the front on which she’d initially rejected me. It was one aspect of her where I sensed slight friction between us, slight incongruity, even though – to me – the rest of her was buttery smooth.

“OKAY, POSITION!” Larissa said, and then, “OH, NO MATS IN YOUR SIZE, JERRY,” her brow scrunched in thought, “UNLESS YOU WANT TO USE A MOUSEPAD—?”

This time it didn’t sound like a retort, but a legitimate proposal. There were three mats, one for each of us, all normal sized. From my position suspended at Natalie’s chest level, peering down at my mat, which I could have used as a long jump track.

Toes scrunching on the mat as she restlessly waited for my answer, the side of Larissa’s mouth quirked faintly as she added:

“—OR MY SOCK?”

Her sneakers and socks were up against the wall at the side of the room. It was early morning and she can’t have worn them long, but the warmth of the day made me question whether her socks would be laundry fresh.

Before I could reply, Natalie’s voice beat against the top of my head.

“YOU’RE NOT REALLY THINKING OF DOING THIS ON THE FLOOR, ARE YOU?”

Her thumb rolled across my shoulders, giving me an impromptu massage. In the wall-high mirror across the room (the studio doubled for dance classes) I saw my tiny head poking out from her fingers, the comparatively large thumb supporting my back, sweeping back and forth behind the nape of my neck, making the muscles in my neck bulge slightly. Seeing myself dwarfed in people’s hands – warm, soft hands that were massaging me at the same time – still caught me off guard. From my point of view, I was not small, but other people were huge. The mirror dissipated that illusion; it was me that was the wrong size, and getting contained and molded around by powerful fingers like a tiny human shaped piece of dough.

I looked up at her reflection in the mirror quizzically, as she ignored the mirror and stared down at the top of my head with a look of concern.

“Why not?”

“WELL…” she started awkwardly, “…IT'S A LONG WAY DOWN, THAT'S ALL.”

I laughed.

“You realized?”

When I’d lived with her, she usually carried me around from place to place, and lowered me onto elevated surfaces of furniture, such as her bed or desk, or couch. She’d been uncomfortable about me making transits across the floor, and would quickly scoop me up and ask me where I was headed. I hadn’t complained at the time; it was an excuse for physical contact with her, but I only got free run of her house while she was at work or university.

Meanwhile, Larissa had strode over to her sneakers, plucked up a white ankle-high running sock, and lay it down upon the mat set out for me, smoothing it flat with a palm.

“NO DRAMAS, THIS IS A FLOOR-BASED ACTIVITY. "She said brightly. “HOP ON AND WE’LL GET STARTED!”

She patted the sock as if I was a puppy she was training, and I wondered if she’d seen Alpha, but then remembered it hadn’t been released yet.

Once she had stepped back, Natalie crouched and the soles of my bare feet were gently placed down on the downy surface of the cotton sock. Then, Natalie’s huge form extended upwards again, I saw this in the mirror, one side of her mouth was pulled as if in thought; her reflection suggested she regretted raising the issue.

Satisfied, Larissa stood with her hands on her hips, apprehending us both.

“ALRIGHT! WE’RE DOING SOMETHING A LITTLE STEAMY TODAY: ‘HOT YOGA.’

Natalie turned to stare down at me.

“YOU NEVER TOLD ME YOU DID BIKRAM!”

I shrugged.

“No one told me, either.”

I didn’t even know what Bikram was.

Natalie eyed Larissa warily.

“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO STAND ON US, ARE YOU?”

Larissa let out a knowing laugh.

“WHAT, YOU DON’T WANT TO PLAY PEOPLE TRAMPOLINE?” she joked. “NONE OF THAT INTENSE STUFF WITH ME. I’D BE TERRIFIED OF HURTING YOU.”

Her eye then cast over me, hesitating.

“OH, BUT JERRY? YEAH, I’M GONNA WALK ALL OVER HIM. STAND ON HIM LIKE A TRICK RIDER. LOOK AT THAT MUSCLE TONE. HE MIGHT NOT BE NORMAL SIZE, BUT I THINK HE CAN TAKE IT.”

She gave me an inconspicuous wink.

“’NORMAL SIZE’,” Natalie repeated. “IS THAT CORRECT? IS THAT…PC?” She looked at me for clarification.

“Doesn’t bother me.”

Maybe I still had a crush on Natalie, but it didn’t mean her impulse to rush in and ‘bubble wrap’ and ‘quarantine’ the scene of offence to my stature wasn’t irritating sometimes, embarrassing, even if it was well-intentioned. Could a girl be a ‘white knight’? A ‘white princess’?

Larissa instructed us through a number of initial warm-up standing poses which required more balance than flexibility. Then we proceeded to a pose where we had our legs stretched straight out, and had to push our faces down against our knees. Being a practitioner in her spare time, Natalie had no problem with this, but I began to struggle.

Since first shrinking I’d been incredibly flexible, but it seemed an after-effect of the medical procedure was to steal some of my athletic flexibility in exchange for firmer, tighter muscles. My chest was so beefed up, and my ribcage like a tiny musclebound barrel, and at some thirty-degree angle I began to feel the muscles pull and protest against any further extension.

The next pose was something called ‘the rabbit’. Belying the name, the pose was not nearly as cute and cuddly. It required curling up into a ball, with head down, except you had to keep a gap between your chest and legs, bowing and stretching the spine. And my spine was buried under straps of tense beef. Larissa had to apply the pressure of fingertips against my butt to get my hips to lift properly, and slide a finger below my midsection, to support my chest from caving down against my legs.

Then we completed something called ‘the camel’, which required balancing on the haunches while bending backwards – basically a reverse rabbit. Again, my tensed back refused to stretch generously enough to complete the pose properly and Larissa had to place a finger against my chest to work my spine backwards, massaging my muscles to tease them out. I began to wonder if she felt like she was posing a doll.

All of the studio fans were kept off and the windows wide open to maintain the conditions of typical ‘hot yoga’ practice. In the heat, sweat was rolling down my sides, and my heart was hammering like piston. Earlier that morning, I’d run out of milk to make oatmeal for breakfast, and too lazy to call Raf, I just substituted the milk with Kolade to create some chimeric carbonated cereal. Now it felt like I’d poured ten cups of coffee into the oatmeal instead.

Sweat was beginning to roll in lines down the womens’ smooth bare legs, and at my height, the scents’ of perspiration were inescapable.

“JERRY, MIND IF I TRY SOMETHING?” Larissa asked suddenly.

She was crouching over me, smooth golden calves tense, and a faint sheen of perspiration glittered over her skin. The row of her shiny toenails stared me in the face.

“What?”

“OH, JUST THINKING OF USING AS YOU A LITTLE EXAMPLE,” she replied with keen anticipation. As she rocked forward on the balls of her feet, the lengths of her tanned toes flexed . “YOUR BODY IS A COMPLETE DIAGRAM OF MUSCLE ANATOMY, I HAVE TO SHOW YOU OFF.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what she intended, but figured it couldn’t hurt.

Then she was manually coaxing my body into some kind of pose like I was play-doh. She rolled my limbs in the sockets to the edge of their limits, flipped me onto my front, kept me pressed there, my face against the sock. The cotton fibers emanated the odor of Larissa’s foot directly into my nose, and worse, she inadvertently had my face pressed like that with the effortless application of pressure against my shoulders and one finger resting atop the back of my head. She meant no harm: the odor must have been indiscernible to either woman, even up close, but my size and delicate, sensitive smell made me an attuned radar for trace odors that were undetectable to normal sized people. And I was too embarrassed to point  it out, so I endured in silence.

Still, my muscles began to ache. I grunted, my cheek pressed into the mat; I could see myself in the wall-high mirror across the room, a tiny human pretzel glued to the floor by the unhurried pressure of Larissa’s fingertips which were working and manipulating my limbs with fascination, trying to stretch me and test my pliability. She took my hips firmly, while keeping my shoulders pinned beneath her other hand, and began to tug and manipulate my spine. Vertebrae groaned and popped as her fingerpads roamed my spine, pushing and kneading out the muscles.

“A LITTLE BURN IS GOOD,” she reassured, “BUT IT SHOULDN’T HURT.”

Warmth seeped back into my limbs as they were relaxed again, and blood tingled back into my extremities. I started getting to my feet, but Larissa’s fingers were speedier, suddenly rippling around me, flipping me onto the mat again, and holding me there, the warm fingerpads seeming to walk up my body to keep it in position. The sock odor seeped back into my nostrils; the tang of sweat and rich scent of dank insulated flesh. Lying forwards with my head pressed down against the sock, and the weight of her hand against me, I was at rest while my limbs were plucked and stretched for demonstration, and Larissa vocally marvelled at what a perfectly tiny model of human form I was, as the earlier energy drink kept my head immersed in a pulsation of excited blood wavering in my ears. I started to feel faint and closed my eyes, counting mentally until the feeling subsided.

Larissa began tugging at my elbows, rolling my shoulders, asking me to use my feet and back to push against her while she had my arms. My tendons started to twitch in an uncoordinated, ineffective way, and she settled me again, pushing firmly on my back to prevent me hurting myself.

“THIS NEXT ONE MIGHT BE TOUGH EVEN FOR YOU, HERCULES,” Larissa said. “YOU’RE SO TIGHT AND I WANT TO LOOSEN YOU UP, SO WE’RE GOING TO BRING IN A LITTLE MEDITATIONAL TRICK. IMAGINE YOU’RE A MAGIC CARPET, AND I’M GOING FOR A RIDE ON YOU, BUT YOU’RE SO LIGHT AND FLEXIBLE IT’S NO SWEAT.”

Her fingertips danced over the muscles of my back, tapping in places.

“LUCKY YOU’RE SO TINY, OTHERWISE I’D BE RIGHT UP THERE,” she stroked around my shoulder blades, allowing my muscles to depress  and support the weight of her pushing fingertips, “ONE FOOT ON EACH RHOMBOID, TO HELP YOU MEDITATE. DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT,” she rocked back on her heels, lifting one hand to rest on her thigh while the other traced up and down the span of my spine as if to rub in my unimpressive length, “YOU’RE NO CARPET, BUT THERE’S DEFINITELY ENOUGH HERE FOR A TOE PAD, MAYBE.”

She took my legs and began trying to bend them back over my head, and I had to suppress a gasp. This required some manual dexterity from both of us, and the pressure of her determined fingertips squashed my lungs a little, which were grasping for oxygen. Natalie asked a question and Larissa answered, keeping me locked in position, the pressure up on my body and chest, disallowing me to shift even an inch. My diaphragm had turned into a cinch and wouldn’t expand, more air was slipping out of my lungs, but it didn’t worry me; I could hold my breath for eight minutes. Plus I didn’t want to alarm the women. Embarrassing to call myself out for suffocating under the gentle pressure of a thumb. And in front of Natalie.

I waited patiently.

Keeping up the pressure on my back, Larissa began idly rotating and stretching my limbs, but, distracted by what she was saying, she was putting too much pressure on my chest. My lungs were starting to get tight now; it must have been five or six minutes.

I strained against the pressure below my shoulderblades and a fingertip settled down against the back of my head, gently pushing my face into the mat, trying to keep me in the pose.

Finally the force eased up as Larissa called for the next pose. I jumped up to my feet again to catch my breath before she could manipulate me once more.

The pressure of holding the pose caused a cramp or a strain in my chest, preventing my lungs from properly expanding. They trembled and burned for air. A wave of tiredness swept over me.

“Don’t stop,” I said, slurring, “I just need to rest…”

Then sounds became an unintelligible tremolo. A fuzzy feeling was rapidly climbing up from my toes, towards my head. I was dropping, dropping, and then my front hit the mat and pressed there. Larissa gave a halting shout and Natalie shrieked. Then sounds faded out altogether and darkness swallowed everything.

...

—What seemed like only a moment later, I was launched back into the world, wide eyed and gasping for breath. My eyelids fluttered weakly, letting in vague snapshots of painful light, almost immediately shutting again.

Below, the foamy yoga mat, and the sock was gone. The world seemed to tip back and forth sickly, as if I was on a boat. And no sound except for an oceanic roaring. My face was sultry and wet like I’d overstayed in a sauna, the rest of my body clammy, but dry. There was a sweet, oily substance coating my lips. It tasted like lip gloss. For some reason my windpipe ached, all the way down into my lungs, like it had undergone an intense yoga stretch of its own.

I tried to open my eyes again, but only for an instant; the visual world tilted nauseatingly, tiny spots of color burst in front of my eyes. I shuttered them until I was seeing the world through a dim horizontal bar below my eyelashes.

There were two pairs of blue eyes peering down at me in concern. Vision steadying a little, the eyes blended into a pair of gigantic faces hovered low, their magnified features blocking out everything: Larissa, her wavy blonde hair spilled forward over her bare shoulders, and thin rogue braid dangling over my head like a rope. Higher, the tight black spandex-covered shelf of her chest, and tan midsection divided into the faint grid of her abs, tensed as she hunched over me. Natalie’s slightly darker hair pulled back in a ponytail, and porcelain skin and smaller, leaner frame, sweat now darkening the pits and neck of her tight pale t-shirt, and beginning to run in tiny rivulets down from her temples.

Both women were kneeling on the yoga mat, staring down at me with alarm. I caught their lips moving as if in speech, but there was just the roaring, as if on a beachline.

They reared back, speaking to each other. Someone shifted, making the yoga mat jerk. Drops of sticky saline pattered onto my brow, running down the sides of my head, and trickled in under my eyelashes, making my eyes sting. Sweat, but I couldn’t tell whose. I wanted to rub my eyes but my muscles trembled like jelly.

Oh no, I realized with a dropping sense of shame, I passed out. And in front of Natalie. How embarrassing. It didn’t occur to me to be any more concerned than for my ego. Maybe I could still put my acting skills to use playing it off like I’d tripped, or better; I’d been meditating so intensely they’d confused my transcendental fugue for unconsciousness.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and was just about to apologize for their superfluous concern, when Larissa’s tanned face raced down to me at supersonic speed, so fast it was a blue and her plush pink lips parted as they swallowed my entire world. Fruity-tasting lip gloss smeared onto my tongue as the lips latched around my face and created a tight rubbery seal, blocking out all sight.

A jet of warm air was propelled onto my face, blowing my lips wide open and started pumping what felt like a torrential storm of air straight down my windpipe into my lungs. The ache in my windpipe flared up again as it was forced to expand with the dense cubic volume of this warm torrential influx, my lungs flaps in and out like sails. An overflow of air was shunted aside, pushed down my esophagus and inflating my stomach to near bursting point.

Then the air was sucked back again, and I wanted to scream as my lungs felt like they were going to turn inside out and get vacuumed out of my body.

An instant later, the process reversed again and more air was roaring into my body, filling me up like a balloon. I felt like I was trying to breathe through a plane propeller on full blast. This cyclonic process repeated several times, before the moist lips broke their seal over my face and rose swiftly back into the air.

The world was spinning madly around my head as my body tried vainly to process all this rapid gas exchange. My eyelids flickered with exhaustion as the great shadowy masses loomed high over me, shifting restlessly as they examined my condition. I was completely limp, stunned.

But it was not over.

A large object slammed down upon my chest, rose up a little, and then slammed back down. And again, and again. It felt like a full grown person was jumping up and down on my chest. And hurt just as much.

My blurry vision focused just enough to see the giant fingers – pointer and middle finger – tanned and sheathed in black fingerless spandex gloves, belonged to Larissa, and in the process of trying to palpate my ribcage for CPR, albeit painfully. Each finger battered with pinpoint precision at a tiny target on my bare chest, around my sternum. My chest cavity clenched in and out rapidly under the pressure driven by the massive flesh battering rams, so incredibly strong, and yet, paradoxically slender, feminine, and trying to do its utmost to keep me alive.

Tears of pure helplessness sprung into my eyes and my throat choked up as I watched the blunt fingertips fly over my head, angle slightly to ensure the fingerpads made contact with my chest. A tiny mercy; I could scarcely imagine how much more painful it would have been if the tips of the nails were making contact instead.

My heart skipped a beat as those massive fingertips oriented down again, racing towards my helpless supine bare chest with increasing speed. It seemed like the steel bar of a triggered mousetrap was flipping down at my breastbone. Then they struck my chest, pushing down sharply.

My eyelids fluttered in shock, the air shot out of my lungs with a whoosh. My ribs buckled and creaked inward. The fingers were rising into the air again…

I tried to make a sound but the larynx in my strained, over-stretched throat flapped uselessly. By the feel of it, I was in for a world of bruises tomorrow.

The fingers drove down again into my chest. There was a snapping sound as at least one of my ribs gave in to one of the many tremendous strikes, breaking like a wafer. The world seemed to perform a revolution around a point on the ceiling. I wheezed in terror as pain jolted through my chest.

Neither girl noticed or ignored it. The fingers carried on methodically, driving down again and again against my sternum. Every blow sent pain spasming through my torso. Cold chills wracked my limbs even in the warm, balmy air. I was conscious now, but felt too conscious. The unconsciousness was peaceful compared to this.

I opened my mouth to yell out when the giant face came flying back down at me, Larissa’s huge glossed lips zoomed in and once again wrapping securely around my face like a nozzle, and once again sending billowing gasps of air into my aching, screaming body.

With my newly shattered rib, this was pure agony. With each blast of air, my lungs bulged, flexing my broken ribs outward, sending ripples of staggering pain throughout my chest. I felt like I was going to puke. 

Finally, the ocean soundtrack diminished and from the other side of Larissa’s head, came Natalie’s voice, rapid and quaking:

“—PLEASE WAKE UP, IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, JERRY, CAN YOU—”

The heavy mass of wet flesh relented, lifted off my face, letting me get some air in. I was trembling. There was a warm glob of saliva trapped in the back of my throat, which I quickly had to swallow before I could get much air in. I had a weird feeling it wasn’t mine – maybe because I couldn’t possibly have produced such a thick copious amount so quickly.

Larissa leaned over me, with one tanned, tree-trunklike arm held straight on either side of me. I went to say something just as Larissa turned her head back down to me, and without warning, the blonde’s head plunged over my body as she went to press her ear against my chest – practically covering it – while burying me alive under a soft pile of strawlike hair. Seeking to clear my face, I weakly fanned my arms through the silky strands like an explorer attempting to part bamboo shoots. The enormous head held lightly just upon my chest for a moment, balancing without applying pressure, as she listened and timed my heartbeat, keeping me positively dwarfed under her head and drowning in her hair.

Satisfied, her head finally lifted back into the sky, revealing the room again. Her keen eyes observed me for a moment longer, then her limbs flexed powerfully as she lifted herself up onto her feet, but remained crouched. She wiped her brow, brushing the wavy locks of her long hair out of her face.

I rolled over, clutching my side and feeling fractured bone protest at the touch. My breaths came short and painful, but I was breathing. The wood studio floor spanned around the yoga mat like an ocean around an island, but at least the world wasn’t tipping back and forth anymore, it was level and my vision was clear.

Now Natalie’s hand reached down over my face, the thumb planting itself against my forehead and swiping around my temples, gently wiping away the sweat and moisture. Her hand was even more delicate than Larissa’s, and her pale skin was lightly flushed.

Larissa seemed to grow towards the ceiling as she stood up, took shaky steps back. Her height over me, lying on the ground looking straight up, was dizzying, so I looked away, but was still too weak to move, and afraid to stress my ribs.

“DUDE,” she said, stunned. “I THINK YOU JUST GOT PULLED BACK FROM THE DEAD!” Her stadium-voice thrummed in my eardrums. She observed me staidly. “YOU NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL. STAT!”

Natalie shifted onto her feet, her tone tight and driven with worry:

“AGREED. I’LL TAKE HIM.”

“I’m fine,” I groaned.

“NO, BUDDY,” Larissa exclaimed. “THAT WASN’T ‘FINE’. THAT WAS SOMETHING ELSE.”

She bent over me, shadowing me, her soft finger extended in front of my face to give my chest a perfunctory, reassuring tap – accidentally igniting rib pain.

“I KNOW I’M SO HOT I’VE GOT YOU SWOONING,” she said matter-of-factly. “BUT GET YOURSELF CHECKED OUT BEFORE YOU ASK ME OUT, OKAY?”

*

I sat in my underwear on the patient bed while the doctor examined me, taking my blood pressure with a tiny cuff, listening to my heart with the oversized stethoscope. I’d just had an X-ray down the hall and was waiting for the results to come back. My chest flared up with pain every time I sucked in a breath, not helped by the doctor’s cold fingers exploring my ribcage to identify my pain, trying to keep his giant, stubby fingers from applying too much pressure to my delicate organs and shattered bones.

Natalie sat to the side of the room, in the consult chair, explaining what had happened to the doctor – I winced inwardly as she specified it was a strenuous course of yoga, couldn’t she have lied and said we were mountain climbing? – but the doctor didn’t react, until she explained I’d been unconscious and seemed to not be breathing for at least six minutes, then I realized why she and Larissa had been so worried. Neither of them were aware I could hold my breath for eight minutes.

The doctor shone a penlight into my eyes, having to rely on a magnifying glass to make out my pupils and check my reflexes and awareness were fine. From my position on the other side of the magnifying glass, his face appeared to be blown up – as if he needed to appear any bigger to me. Finally, the X-ray results came back, confirming his diagnosis of rib fracture from the CPR. At Natalie’s blanched expression, he explained calmly:

“SOMETIMES IT HAPPENS. AND JERRY IS SO REMARKABLY SMALL, IT WAS PROBABLY INEVITABLE. I COMMEND THE TRAINER FOR ATTEMPTING SUCH A DELICATE PROCEDURE, AND OBVIOUSLY IT PAID OFF.”

He gave me some aspirin. It turned out I’d suffered a minor heart attack. He also filled me in a a prescription for pain relief – per tiny dosage – for my rib fracture.

“REST,” he emphasized, “DON’T OVERDO THE PHYSICAL EXERTION, AND YOU SHOULD BE FINE IN ABOUT A MONTH.”

But I wanted to get back to work as soon as possible.

I countered:

“But my metabolism. My file says my body heals itself more efficiently since I was miniaturized.”

“YES,” he considered, “THAT PROMOTES FASTER REPAIR OF THE BODY’S TISSUES AND BONES. BUT ALL THE SAME, TAKE IT SLOW. WHATEVER IS WRITTEN IN YOUR FILE IS AN INFORMED SUGGESTION, NOT A CAST-IRON DIRECTIVE. MEDICAL SCIENCE DOESN’T FULLY UNDERSTAND YOU YET. THIS IS NOT A MEDICAL OPINION, BUT A LITTLE GUY LIKE YOU SHOULD BE ON THE END OF A SAFETY HARNESS.”

While he wrote up a prescription for pain relief, I queried him about the Roburfortis I was on, as if that could have made my bones break more easily. He didn’t know what it was and had to look it up.

“IF ANYTHING, IT SHOULD STRENGTHEN YOUR BONES,” he remarked. “NOTICE ANY DIFFERENCE SINCE YOU STARTED TAKING IT?”

“That depends. Have I grown at all in the last few months?” I asked.

He pulled out a tape measure and stretched it out beside me as I lay supine, drawing myself up tall as much as possible in spite of my rib pain.

“THE TAPE DOESN’T LIE,” he said, comparing the result to the height recorded in my medical record. That meant no.

“ONE MORE REASON TO TAKE IT SLOW. THIS MEDICATION CAN AFFECT YOUR CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM. A BIG INJURY; MUSCLE TEAR, CUT, COULD LOSE A LOT OF BLOOD AND IT COULD BE LIGHTS OUT FOR GOOD NEXT TIME.”

The end of a towel came out of nowhere, flapping over my head and trapping me in a dark terry-cloth lined pouch. Natalie had scooped me up off the bed with the utmost caution, unwilling to even touch me, allowing me a generous pocket inside the towel, enabling her to carry me without exerting any pressure on my ache-riddled body.

She left me on her car’s passenger seat while she redeemed my prescriptions at a local pharmacy. Once the pain reliever kicked in, it settled my pain down to the occasional sharp twinge. Shifting gingerly within the towel pouch, I was able to poke my head out for a view of the oversized car interior, and, across the humungous gear stick, the skint tight surface of Natalie’s yoga pant clothed hip.

She was driving back to my apartment, the car seat jiggled beneath me as the wheels trundled rapidly over the road. My phone lay on the seat next to me. I inwardly debating on what to text Jennifer – if anything.  Natalie said:

“IF YOU WERE MY BOYFRIEND, YOU WOULDN’T BE UP HERE ON YOUR OWN. I COULDN’T LET YOU.”

I didn’t look up from the phone.

“My girlfriend and I figure it out.”

“GREAT,” she said, but there was a twinge of doubt in her voice, “AND NOTHING ON YOUR GIRLFRIEND – fiancée I MEAN – IT’S YOU. I GET DIZZY JUST CONTEMPLATING IT; HOW YOU CHOREOGRAPH ALL THIS AND KEEP YOURSELF SAFE.”

“Good planning and I can eliminate most risks.”

She went on:

“THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN IF YOU KEEP COMPARING YOURSELF TO – HOW YOU PUT IT – ‘NORMAL SIZED’ PEOPLE.”

As much as I resented her ‘bubble-wrap’ rhetoric, I empathized with it – painfully – as well. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a normal-sized me advising a tiny, wilful Jennifer not to take so many impulsive risks because one day she was going to get hurt, and feeling crushed with the inevitable prospect of it. But, try as I might, I never imagined myself in the ‘Jennifer’ position, being told off for my risk-taking. I had never been a risk-taker growing up. Maybe living together had made our personalities start to bleed into each other. Or maybe it went one way; her bigger, dominant, more headstrong personality was quashing my submissive one, and transforming me into a tiny, unquestioning clone.

Mistaking my silence for disgruntled disagreement, Natalie’s tone softened as she went on:

“OKAY, I CARE,” she said, voice weirdly exasperated as if being called out for wrongdoing. She was staring intently at the street ahead, but also not seeing it, looking past it, “AND – NO OFFENCE TO ANYONE – BUT FROM WHAT YOU’VE LET ON ABOUT YOUR fiancée, YIKES, I WORRY. EVEN THOUGH I KNOW IT’S NONE OF MY BUSINESS. YOU GUYS ARE BRAVER THAN I AM.”

“It’s my height.”

“IT’S NOT. IF GRANT WAS ON CARDIO MEDICATION, SAME THING. WISH YOU’D TOLD ME; THERE ARE GENTLER YOGAS, YOU KNOW.”

“It’s not cardio medication. And it sounds like it’s not even doing anything.”

“IT’S THE DISTANCE THING, TOO, AND IT’S ME AND MY INSECURITIES. BUT YOU’RE FRAGILE AND IT’S FREAKY – DON’T THINK I’M BEING CONTROVERSIAL FOR SAYING THAT. I STILL FEEL HORRIBLE I LEFT YOU WITH THAT GIRL…”

I shook my head and said swiftly:

“I asked you to.”

She didn’t reply at first. Then, after a beat:

“AND HERE’S THE FUNNY THING, JERRY, IN SOME WAY, I…” she paused, made a disgruntled sound, and started again.

“YOUR DATING PROFILE; THERE WAS AN EXPERIMENT GOING ON IN MY HEAD. IF YOU WERE SITTING RIGHT HERE, ‘NORMAL SIZE’ – THAT PHRASE AGAIN, BUT WHAT ELSE DO I CALL IT? –…I WONDER IF I’D WISH IT WAS ME AT THE ALTAR WITH YOU.”

My chest pulled in until I could feel my heart thudding painfully.

“Right…” I said slowly. “But…?”

She sighed.

“THERE I’D BE TRYING SO HARD TO KEEP YOU OUT OF DANGER, I’M NOT EVEN SURE WHAT KIND OF TOGETHERNESS WE’D HAVE LEFT OVER. ROMANCE NEEDS SPONTANEITY…”

“So it is my height.”

"SEE..." she bit her lip in thought, "...UM. NO – IT’S STUPID. REALLY, REALLY STUPID. IF YOU WERE TALLER THAN ME, IT MIGHT BE OBVIOUS."

What she’d said took a second to get through.

"What would be obvious?"

"I…LIKE TO BE THE PRETTY ONE IN A RELATIONSHIP.” Then, as if hearing herself, she giggled self-consciously before she could help it, or possibly to soften the blow.

All I could think was, God, I love the sound of her voice. When she sounded light and cheerful and carefree it was like she was about to start laughing and say ‘Oh who cares? Let’s get icecream!’ Just hearing her talk was like therapy, even if I didn’t like what she was saying. That was how goo-goo headed my crush on her made me. And probably the fuzzying sedative effects of the medication were kicking in.

My brow scrunched, realizing what she’d just said.

"I’m pretty.”

"JERRY!" she said in a 'oh, come now!' kind of way, "UM, YES!" She giggled again, her cheeks even growing slightly pink. Then she giggled.

“OH MY GOD, I CAN’T BELIEVE I SAID THAT! TELL ME I’M NOT THE FIRST PERSON WHO’S EVER SAID THAT!”

I took a deep breath.

“What do mean ‘pretty’, exactly?”

"YOUR EYES. YOUR EYELASHES..." she waved a hand, laughing. "I DON'T KNOW!”

She changed the subject.

"WHERE I WOULD FIT WITH YOU...? MAYBE...NOWHERE?"

"That's not..." I began, but couldn't conclude what I meant.

“IT’S ACADEMIC,” she said, still self-conscious. “YOU’RE A SOON-TO-BE-HAPPILY-MARRIED MAN AND I AM A SOON-TO-BE-HAPPILY-ATTENDING-YOUR-WEDDING UM…PERSON.”

“You’re a little more than just a ‘person’ to me,” I ventured.

“I…FEEL LIKE YOUR BABYSITTER SOMETIMES.”

She somehow found new and creative ways to shock my ego. Her dulcet, earnest innocence made it somehow even more painful than if she’d closed the door outright with a glare. Her smiles and laughter, and voice brimming with love.

God, I really am a masochist, I thought. Surely only a masochist would continue to chase her like this, hoping for a little something more than she was offering.

The car rolled up outside my apartment and she bundled me up in the towel and carefully carried me inside.

“IT’S CUTE,” she said approvingly, glancing around the confined spaces, then cast me a bashful look. “SORRY…”

I shrugged a shoulder, trying not to move too much.

“It is.”

I was placed down to rest on my bed, and she curling the sheet over me somewhat maternally. Then she paused. Her profile unfocused. I blinked, pushing back the oncoming sedation.

“Thanks for taking me home,” I said.

“NO MORE STUNTS. YOU’RE GOING TO GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK.”

I reached up, beckoning with my hand for her to come closer.

“WHAT?” she said shyly, getting low.

I was on my feet, approaching her face to kiss her. She ducked, and then pet my hair as her great form rose above the bed again.

“CATCH YOU SOME OTHER TIME, JERRY.” She moved to the door. The car pulled away.

She’d left my phone nearby. I pulled it towards me and rang Larissa, letting her know I was fine, but she instructed me to get some sleep as I was slurring my words. I pushed the phone aside, and my eyelids began to droop with medication-induced fatigue…

It was part of the zany new program Larissa had set for me.

She thought I was beefing up too much on top and needed to redistribute some intensity to my legs, so I didn’t end up looking like a ‘balloon animal’ man on toothpicks. But after running so many laps maybe the ‘balloon animal’ remark was apt; my body felt weirdly rubbery, and I was wet and slimy with briny perspiration all over. But there were countless laps still to go.

Every lap, the room swirled in a never-ending panorama all around me, the great glass windows of the gym gazed out to a broader room beyond, with white walls, a door and a window to a blue sky. As the bare white walls grew nauseatingly dull, I focused on the blue sky outside the window, like a portal of escape, even if I never grew any closer to it.

My body grew slimier and rubberier as I went around and around doing my laps, until I could no longer feel my arms or legs, and my neck was too stiff to turn, my legs limp and wobbly.

As the blue outside the window darkened, the white walls dimmed to gray, while the various pieces of gym equipment seemed to gradually disappear from view, as my focus held on the window, and my thoughts receded in my head until I felt like a dumb animal.

I shouldn’t have been exercising; I was sick. My mouth was swollen and unusable like I’d had recent dental surgery. It must have been extensive, when I tried to speak, no sounds came out, only bubbling gurgles. I stopped moving.

The only thing left to do was sleep. I decided to close my eyes.

—I couldn’t close my eyes.

Blurry light danced and shimmered and wiggled, my open eyes forced to watch it for some time.

The walls were literally wavering around me. Oddly gelatinous, but thin, soupy. The stuff wasn’t just on the walls, it filled up the entire room, and whatever it was, I was embedded in it.

Yet, there was an expansive airspace beyond it, a space receding into an indefinite white blur of distant walls. Not the gym, but a room in a house – a familiar looking room, though the walls distorted and wiggled through the slimy film covering everything.

For the first time, I didn’t deviate my path in a revolving lap, but heading straight ahead as far as I could. A moment later, my face connected with a hard, invisible wall, and slid along the smooth surface with a tiny squeak. The glass window was much closer than it looked. In fact it curved tightly around me in every direction. It was some kind of glass coffin filled with very thin, transparent soupy jelly.

I tried to turn my head to look down at myself, but every time I did, my entire body followed the movement. No matter where I looked, my body was directly behind me.

The world stopped revolving as I froze in place, trying to figure out what to do. There was a feeling of constriction at my neck, which began to spasm. There were gashes on either side of my neck and it felt like blood was flowing out, but there was no blood, only water.

I started moving again and the constriction eased, my mind cleared. Bubbles issued thickly from my lips, which felt so stiff and impotently rubbery that it honestly felt like I must have submitted myself to some now botched facelift. Surely I hadn’t been so dumb. But I sure felt dumb, then. It seemed I could barely retain a train of thought for more than about three seconds.

But three seconds stretched into three minutes, to thirty minutes. Then it seemed like an hour passed…two hours…three hours…I could no longer be sure.

Thunderous vibrations rained down from above. There was a storm building. So, I was outside. That was unexpected. I’d had the instinctual sense of being inside, but it occurred to me I’d never actually seen the ceiling.

Maybe if I re-oriented my propulsion I could actually get somewhere. Instead of travelling horizontally I angled myself vertically, travelling up, and up – there actually was a white ceiling after all – but suddenly, to my shock, I broke through an invisible soupy surface, and unable to control myself anymore, flipped right around back into it.

There was noise, muffled thudding sounds. The airspace vibrated with each thud –but too thick and slippery to be air.

A giant pair of bare feet crashed down next to me, but somehow slightly below where the floor should have been. Or I was floating slightly above the floor.

The feet were attached to a lofty pair of bare legs that folded down, bringing into sight a torso that canopied just overhead, crouched, long strands of hair being pushed back over the shoulders as the looming head turned down.

She gazed in at me through the wavery filter.

I continued to lap around the glass, but becoming unsettled as her eyes followed me. A thrill went through my spine, but weirdly, somehow bypassing my neck entirely, with no gap.

Her long nails came in at either side, shoveling in beneath until the floor had been replaced with the inside palms of her hands as she scooped up my globular space and lifted it up. Her head bowed and her lips met the glass window and squished up in a flattened imprint. An affectionate gesture, but I glared back; paranoidly convinced she was mocking me somehow.

Like a compulsive habit, I gulped the thin, bland soup into my mouth only for it to gush out of my neck again.

The space all around me jittered as a nail tapped the curving glass panel again to get my attention, and I looked before I could help it.

She puckered her lips at me again, and then smirked. It wasn’t affectionate or flirtatious, I realized in dismay. She was making fun of me, I was sure of it. My own unworkeable mouth was a rubbery pout and mimicry was her weapon of choice. She was trying to tell me what I stubbornly refused to see.

Trying not to let my agitation show, I started going around again, faster, so many rapid revolutions I should have been running a trench into the ground by now, but there was no ground anymore, only water, ahead and behind, up and down.

Her attention followed me, now with the Zenlike patience I no longer enjoyed. She was prepared to wait for a very long time.

I tried to fly up out of the glass again, but, once over the surface my body transformed in an instant to a leaden stone, flipping and dropping back into the warm, calming soup. Except it was not so calming anymore.

Outside, she watched with satisfaction, knowing what I had intended – and failed – to do, and that I was getting closer to submitting to this reality.

There was no escape.

Now, one hand slid up from beneath the glass as she extended a finger overhead, dipped a finger in the water and was swirling it around, tracking me.

My eyes boggled, I swam faster.

The finger pursued, matching my speed.

I twisted around and went the opposite way. The finger effortlessly went with me.

In a panic I twisted around again but bonked my face into the globular window. My body compressed for an instant like it was made of rubber.

Something snatched my floppy, flexible legs and dragged me backwards before retreating.

Then the finger appeared on the other side of the glass, dripping wet.

I halted, the gashes in my neck started to flap in building agitation as she raised the dripping hand to her mouth and, keeping her calmly eyes locked on mine the whole time, plunging the extended wet finger deep into her mouth, wrapping her lips around it and slowly withdrawing it again.

I began to circle again, blindly, madly, my eyes practically rolling in the sockets as the water jiggled around me with her booming laughter…

Both palms pressed on either side of the window, the fingers spanning around the glass. The room started wobbling all over the place, knocking me off balance. Actually, the room was still, my enclosure was listing back and forth as the globe window was slid along the floor, being drawn into her as the powerful thighs spread, framing the window on either side and pressing in tightly, clamping it between.

A hand was outstretched over my head, fingers twitching with preparation. Each of the fingertips were armed with its own sharp blade tip, against which my soft, rubbery body had no defence.

The fan of fingertips parted the water, paddling it like a series of oars, creating eddies in that swirled me upside down. As I flippered around to right myself, the oars swept in and collected my tiny body in one deft snatch.

The water broke over my face, casting me into a world that was chill and airy. The fist enclosing me was like a tight barrel, only my face visible. Before I knew what was happening, the fist was subjecting my body to a series of firm pumps as if examining my organs. Her thumb dug into my soft underbelly while her first two fingers clamped against my spine, while I twitched, helplessly suspended just below her face.

Even as I knew what was going to come next she was content to play with me, drawing it out, distracting herself with a game of trying to elicit from me increasingly desperate reactions for her own amusement.

Unable to speak, my mouth could only open in a silent plea for mercy.

Rather than mercy, there was instead there was a shattering pressure around my middle as she pinched my body to see how supple I was, sending water dribbling out of my mouth. She spluttered with accidental laughter, and then mimicked my face with puckered lips, which fluidly turned into a kiss as my mouth was impulsively mashed against hers. As I was drawn away from her face again, she tickled my lips with the tip of her tongue.

The flat ridges of a pinky fingerprint began to grind back and forth against my puffed up lips, calmly investigating the soft rubbery texture. Every fiber of my being willed my non-existent eyelids to shield my eyes from the razor nail tip flashing in front of my face.

She made a gesture at me then: pointing at me and then pushing her nail against the inside of her cheek like a hook.

My stomach plummeted into what seemed like my feet, only I couldn’t feel my feet anymore, but a floppy tail.

She finally decided she’d had enough teasing. A finger summarily tapped my forehead – or, lacking a forehead, above my eyes – as if to say ‘so long, little buddy’

Her face grew bigger and bigger as I was brought closer until it loomed oppressively large, crowding out every other part of the featureless background behind it.

She pouted her lips one final time, not to mock me this time, but to apply them against my own lips and suck my face with relish. It was not flirtatious but hungry, keen to satisfy only the base instinct to consume – with my body, as squishy and defenceless as a bath toy, lined up to provide the raw material for satisfaction.

Unable to turn my head away because I had no neck, I helplessly as my tiny rubbery body was smacked and tugged by the flexion of her cheek muscles. Worse, having no eyelids, my eyeballs were forced to endure the queasy intimacy of her bumpy wet tongue’s passage as more and more of my head was sucked into her mouth, which stung with her hot breath steamed against my delicate scaled skin.

The rubbery ring made by her tight lips slid down my body as more of me was pulled into her mouth, drawing my body inwards like a pressure sleeve as it went. As my tail entered her mouth, her lips snapped shut behind me, throwing me in pitch darkness. My soft weight triggered her tongue to automatically form a curving slide which sent me inescapably towards the plummeting tunnel of her throat. A pulpy extension – the uvula – struck my head as I went sliding on through darkness, something else wet and spongy banged into my eye – one of her tonsils – while puddles of saliva swished back and forth over my face, some of it dribbling between my lips, and lacking water, I desperately sucked it into my mouth for respiration.

My head breached her throat and became caught for an instant. Then the muscular throat walls responded by narrowing in a single crushing blow, so fast it winded me. Dislodged, I became giddily weightless, shooting down and down—

Aaaaaargh!”

I wailed into the night, and the pitch of my voice must have shifted up so high it made a dog bark out the bedroom window. Once the dog noise settled, there was the low thrum of churning air driven by the fan of a ventilation unit outside.

I was sweating under the blanket, and the orientation of the room jarred me until I remembered where I was. Slate gray bedroom walls surrounded me at every side. It was grainy and charcoal out the window, but judging by the stirring traffic and street noises, probably not for much longer.

My phone lay on the bedside table; if I was normal size I could have reached over and checked the time, but I was too small and couldn’t be bothered clambering up to look. Next to the phone, a tank-size can of Kolade.

That was the culprit. For some reason that bubbly mocha trash made my dreams ultra-realistic and bizarre.

Breathing heard and wiping the sweat from my brow, I turned over and went back to sleep.

We sat in a waiting area, me encircled by the fleshy safety bar of Raf’s thick fingers, held on his thigh. My insides squirmed a little with nerves. Photographs were plastered on the sterile white walls, portraits and headshots in black and white and color. 

The Talent Corp publicist had fielded a request by a designer to shoot me for their new line. Underwear, and probably big enough for me to sit in like a hammock and mimic the bulge – which, I hoped, was not the image they were going for.

An impeccably dressed assistant came out to get us, faltering a second at the sight of me. Trying to maintain a professional smile, he led us into the bright white studio that smelled of chemicals. Strobe umbrellas and circular reflectors were arranged around the room, and other lighting modifiers and diffusers, arranged around some plain white backdrop rolls.

While assistants set up the lights and adjusted the dollies and stands, and the previous model finished up, the photography duo came over and introduced themselves: Keith, the photographer, a man in flannel and a backward cap, and Peta, photo editor and former model herself, also doing make-up today because the make-up girl away. She shuttled between reviewing the laptop at the side of the room, tethered to the camera.

Unlike the assistant, neither showed surprise at my size, though Peta showed especial interest. She asked me to stand full height on Raf’s upturned palm, as I turned around and posed, while she studied me a moment.

"YOU'RE A HEAD TURNER FOR SURE,” she said, and I thought to myself, I definitely turned heads ‘down’ though that’s not what she meant. “BUT NOT A TYPICAL LOOK. YOU’RE ORDINARY AND UNUSUAL. YOU HAVE THE SHAPE BUT NOT THE SIZE. THERE ARE ALL THESE PARADOXES AND I LIKE IT.” She looked at Keith.

“OF COURSE, I DON'T SEE A FUTURE ON THE RUNWAY," she said this as if it was obvious, “NOT WITHOUT ROLLERBLADES.”

She was joking. I think.

She squinted at my chest, an instant later, the blunt probe of her finger came up and brushed over my left pec, as if confusing my tattoo for a smudge. When it reappeared untouched beneath her shifting fingerpad, she looked up over her shoulder for guidance.

“HE’S GOT A LITTLE INK ON HIS CHEST,” she said, the clap of her heels stopping as she spun to face Keith. “WHAT DO YOU THINK, RE-TOUCH?”

Not looking up from fitting a camera lens, Keith replied:

“THE CLIENT’S NOT GOING TO LIKE IT.”

She looked back down to me.

“WE’LL NEED TO AIRBRUSH AWAY YOUR CHEST ART, MY LITTLE POWDERPUFF.” As she said this, her fingerpad circled my pec as if the ridges of her fingerprint were enough to rub the ink off. My nerves jangled at this, for some reason, more than her soft touch, I wondered if Jen would see the finished spread with her name erased.

Moving away from Raf and I, Peta continued, forthrightly:

“YOUR AGENT TOLD YOU THIS WAS A COLLABORATIVE SHOOT?”

“Oh,” I said, glancing around the room as I squeezed my hands behind my back, trying to keep my posture straight. “I didn’t realize.”

I had assumed the other model already in the studio was finishing up a shoot, but now appeared to be waiting patiently to be introduced.

“OH, DON’T BE NERVOUS,” said Peta. “SHE’S AN ABSOLUTE PROFESSIONAL AT THIS, RIGHT KEITH?”

“I’VE WORKED WITH MISS XU BEFORE,” said Keith. “SHE DOESN’T BITE.”

The porcelain-skinned, raven-haired model, called Vianne Xu, was a vision of towering splendor on legs, and my very opposite: possessing the ‘size’ I lacked, and while she didn’t have so much ‘shape’ she had ‘direction’: up.

She glided over and came to a stop before Raf, surveying him up and down with faint interest, seeming to think he was me, or maybe she wasn’t sure whether to greet him or me, or both of us. Then her eyes travelled down to his open hand where I was standing. Her expression didn’t change but froze a moment longer, and there was an almost indiscernible questioning in her eyes, like she was trying to figure out where my motor was housed that made my legs work.

I went into a cubicle to get changed, though not into other clothes, but out of my own, to be replaced only with a pair of briefs. Vianne was advertising clothing, whereas I was playing a tiny man fawning over her to promote the marketing concept that the model was a kind of Goddess.

Then the photography duo began directing us for the shoot:

“WE WANT SOMETHING WITH YOU, VIANNE,” said Peta, “HOLDING JERRY IN YOUR HAND, LIKE THIS—” she demonstrated with palm up, arm brought inwards, close to the chest. “YOU’RE COMFORTABLE WITH THAT?”

Her cool, snakelike eyes held on me, Vianne uttered:

“OF COURSE, IF HE IS COMFORTABLE WITH ME.”

“IF YOU’LL ALLOW ME, JERRY—” She had turned to me with an inquiring stare. There was a professional urgency in her voice, like she didn’t expect me to refuse.

“Err, sure,” I said, uncertain what I was agreeing to.

“UP WE GO, LITTLE MAN.”

Her fingers swept around me without hesitation, pads orientating strategically around my torso to scoop me up off Raf’s hand, fly me through the air, before depositing me on Vianne’s upward facing palm, mimicking the pose Peta had described. The skin was silky and cushioned beneath my bare feet, and slightly cool, like she’d just applied a hand gel.

Peta quickly dusted up and down my front with a make-up brush. I sucked in my breath and shut my eyes . There was something crowding and overwhelming about having one girl pampering my body with products while I could feel the soft plush surface of another girl’s hand under my feet. And Peta’s professional assurance over me was intimidating, like I was a little figure she was keen to prop up in a scene and pose.

The platform of her hand tilted with her motion as she maneuvered under the bright lights, against the white backdrop roll, causing me to stagger and stumble over. The fingers of Vianne’s other hand quickly plucked up my chest, lifting me back onto my feet again without a break in her poise. Her cool touch against my bare skin was startling. I shivered.

The shooting commenced. It wasn’t like acting, which was about motion and fluidity. This was all about holding natural appearance for unnatural lengths of time. Vianne had command of a range of smooth and precise postures, all while riding out the shoot with regal calm and poise.

During a break, a passing assistant offered me a bottlecap filled with water, which gave me something to distract from my nervousness, at least. My hands trembled slightly from holding poses, I tried to drink slowly, taking care not to dribble it on myself. Having cameras pointed at me constantly made it feel like everyone was staring at me, even though they weren’t. On set, my job was to ignore the camera, but here, for certain shots I had to look straight into it.

Also, Peta had no reservations about coming over and physically manipulating my body into the pose she wanted, which meant having my arms and legs moved, or being lifting and placed me multiple times, from Vianne’s hand onto the floor, by her foot, on her shoulder. There were several props that entered the scene; including a champagne flute which I was dropped into while Vianne pretended to sip from.

For everyone here, it was another normal work day. Vianne cruised through as if it was rote and her mind was elsewhere – actually, it seemed, more often than not, uncomfortably, on me. Or at least I sensed her keen gaze on me at odd moments, still with that faint suggestion of questioning.

Sometimes her lingering gaze seemed to be surreptitiously trying to get my attention, as if she was trying to beam psychic messages into my head or playing a game of getting my attention under the radar of the photographers. I didn’t know how to respond, and pretended to ignore it, trying to remain professional-looking, unflappable, bored even.  

I was probably just being too self-conscious and reading too deeply into everything; after all, everyone’s attention was more often on me, because I was the novice.

During a break in shooting, Vianne sauntered up to me, folding her pale gazelle legs into a crouch beside the table I was standing on, where the laptop was, while a delicate, slender hand with glazed fingernails curled around the edge of the table, close to my feet.

“WHAT WAS THE APPEAL IN HAVING A SIZE REDUCTION?” she asked.

I stared at the distant white wall, my brow scrunching, confused.

“I basically just woke up like this.”

She smiled faintly.

“YOU HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR. REFRESHING.”

My hands drifted to an imaginary pair of hip pockets, but because I had no pants on, they settled on my hips, akimbo.

“Humor’s good. At my size, I can’t afford to make people angry.”

I was joking but she didn’t react. Her gaze held on me. It turned out she was staring at my chest.

“THAT’S A SUPERBLY TINY TATTOO,” she remarked, as her fingers lifted slowly from the table edge. “THERE’S A LITTLE PIECE OF WRITING. MAY I…TAKE A CLOSER LOOK?”

“Sure,” I said, sounding much more confident than I felt.

Her hand hovered in front of me as her little finger extended, and delicately outlined the underside of each of my pecs, and feather soft, trailed over my abdomen, so fluidly it was hard to tell if it wasn’t accidental.

“LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?” she said suddenly, her almond shaped eyes piercing into mine.

My heart thudded.

“Uhhh…I…”

She gestured to the laptop screen, showing a grid of the stills we’d just been shooting.

“WHAT WE DO IN HERE,” she clarified. “DO YOU HAVE ANY AMBITIONS OF FOLLOWING THIS THROUGH LONG-TERM?”

“This is totally new to me and, to be honest, I think I feel more at home with moving images.”

Nevertheless, she gave me her number, and in return, I gave her mine, tearing off a scrap of paper.

Then Peta slid into the chair behind the table, sliding up against the table.

“WE’RE TAKING A SHORT HIATUS,” she explained.

“How’s it looking so far?” I asked.

“IF YOU LIKE, TAKE A LOOK AT MY PORTFOLIO FOR A SENSE OF END PROCESS. NOT SURE IF I HAVE A DISTINCT VISUAL STYLE COMING THROUGH. SEE FOR YOURSELF.”

And she was already clicking away into various directories and sub-folders. I wandered over to the side of the laptop, the display extending out like a movie projection screen at a drive-in cinema, with the LCD flashing and scrolling through blown up photos, one after the other.

There were a lot of photos and they snapped past rapidly, before I barely knew what I was looking at. At my size, the pictures were too big to see in full detail; my eyes flicked over portions. Even a fraction of their real life size, the girls in the images were still taller than me. I was too embarrassed to ask Peta to slow it down, and she wasn’t paying much notice of my reaction, muttering to herself as she navigated the folder, seeming to search for particular images, clicking through reams, occasionally pausing on a shot.

“It’s good,” I said, unsure how to critique photography, struggling to identify themes across the pictures I could compliment: lighting, angles. Virtually all the girls had smoky bedroom eyes but I couldn’t compliment that.

Then, across the screen flashed one pair of fuck-me eyes that hit too close to home.

A breathless sound leapt out of my throat, as if ripped out by force, and the scrolling came to a halt, on a photo of a woman in boho style and head sash, draped over a park bench with the sun flaring the outline of her hair gold.

“Uh...back two slides,” I said, trying to affect professional nonchalance.

Two mouse clicks later, the scroll stopped on a black and white photo of a young woman in a trailing ruffled black dress, on a marble tiled landing, backgrounded by white Turkish Mosque spires like white rockets, which gave the scene a chess-like vibe, as If she was playing the black queen in a real-life game. The grayscale made the woman’s dead-straight hair look jet black and her skin ivory, though in real life it was dark brown, and skin olive. Her dark, smoldering eyes stared down the camera, one of her waxed eyebrows slitted.

Peta was silent, her finger tapping the touchpad, as if waiting for a question on technique.

“I think I know her,” I muttered, embarrassed for my reaction and secretly wishing she’d resume scrolling. But she didn’t. Worse, I could now sense Vianne somewhere behind me, her great invisible presence almost palpable on my tiny form. She must have been watching over Peta’s shoulder.

“MODELLING IS A SMALL CIRCLE WITH SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION,” Peta said, sounding unsurprised. “OR LESS. IN SAYING THAT, THE SUBJECT’S NAME ELUDES ME. BUT I RECALL WE SHOT THIS THREE YEARS AGO, AND BLACK AND WHITE WAS THE BIG THING. IT’S ONE OF THOSE COMBINATIONS THAT JUST KEEPS COMING BACK.”

“DARKNESS IS NEVER PASSE,” Vianne’s voice murmured directly above my head.

Peta swiveled her chair to follow the photographer as he was striding past, having returned inside from making some calls.

“KEITH, DO YOU RECALL THIS ONE?”

He paused to glance at the laptop screen.

“OH…” he said with recognition, as if that was enough.

Then he beckoned at me. Raf took me and followed him around outside, to the back patio of the building, with an unenviable view of a truck parked along the loading bay road, the sky blocked out by the featureless grainy plaster slab of the next door building, with snaking aluminum ductwork leading up to the rooftop HVAC units.

“SMOKE?” he said, slipping out a cigarette.

Raf and I refused. Keith eyes me for a second, and then turned the cigarette around between his fingers.

“MAKES SENSE,” he decided. Then shrugged. “GUESS YOU COULD STILL BLOW THIS THING LIKE A BAMBOO HOOKAH OR SOMETHING.”

Even if I did smoke, my mouth was too dry for it right now.

“Are there any vending machines around here?” I asked, thinking of Kolade.

Keith scanned the sky.

“WE GOT MINERAL WATER IN THE FRIDGE. AND THERE’S A 7-ELEVEN A COUPLE OF BLOCKS AWAY.”

Raf could already guess my train of thought.

“YOU’LL BE BUZZING AFTER MIDNIGHT!”

It was late. He was right. The surprise of seeing the photo had me responding with snap second nervous impulse.

“Never mind.”

Keith took another drag.

“YEAH, I REMEMBER,” he drawled, “A ‘FEW WORDS’ KINDA GAL. WHIP-SMART THOUGH. OR, SEEMED IT." A small smoky stream issued from between his teeth and he gave a grim smile. "THE COPS WERE SMARTER…”

“Oh...um…”

“HEAR WHAT HAPPENED TO HER? – BANG,” he mimed a heavy door slamming, which I probably would not have picked up if I hadn’t already known.

“Yeah…”"

“IMPRESSIVE PORTFOLIO COMING ALONG. VIANNE KNEW HER WELL," he jerked his head back to the studio door behind him. "ASK HER.” He dropped the cigarette into a drainage ditch running alongside the road, then, contemplating the smoking ash, shook his head. “NOW SHE DONE FUCKED IT UP.”

I swallowed, then said:

“What did you hear?”

He said flatly:

“HEARD SHE WAS KEEPING A MALE SLAVE IN A SEX DUNGEON IN HER BEDROOM.” His brow raised without a hint of surprise. “WELCOME TO ST PALMA: STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED. SHE JUST GOT CAUGHT.”

Working my tongue through my dry mouth, I went on:

“Did they say who the guy was?”

“NOPE,” he said under his breath. “WHOLE THING WAS HUSHED AND PUBLIC RECORD GAVE HIM A PSEUDONYM. AS YOU’D WANT, IF YOU WERE THAT SORRY SHMUCK...”

“So, how do you know about it?” I said a little more loudly than was necessary.

“LET’S JUST SAY SOMEONE BLABBED VICTORIA’S SECRET.”

Without another word, he swung around and ducked back inside the studio. After they were finished with Vianne, they got another couple of shots with me solo before finishing.

“THAT MODEL WAS MAKING THE MOVES ON MY MAN!”

Raf grinned when we left the studio.

I shook my head.

“She was just networking.”

“YOU’RE A TINY CHICK MAGNET! ZAP!” He cackled, giving me a poke me in the ribs.

“Whatever you say.”

The set was buzzing with activity: actors, makeup artists, stylists, and all their assistants, stage technicians: camera operators, professional tradesmen, people passing back and forth on walkie-talkies. It was like being on a construction site with pop-up buildings that were propped up and pulled down as the shoot required.

Gamelandia was a bigger film than Alpha and, a fantasy, required some more elaborate set designs, a combination of soundstages, and CGI. And overseas location shooting for the plot’s multi-setting ‘level’ backdrops, which I was not needed for, because I doubled in close-ups where background wasn’t a focus.

Earlier that morning, Raf drove me past a guard gate into the shoot location: a soundstage built inside a converted factory, and one of a number of production-owned block buildings which was now busy with noise and people in the throes of film-making. No trailers like on the set of Alpha; here each smaller building was set aside for the various departments: production, wardrobe and make-up, and back lot for shooting.

The exterior looked like a logistics operation for a warehouse distributing photography equipment, rather than a film set. Vans lined the concrete roads intersecting the factory buildings, down which golf cars rolled, technicians armed with cabling and equipment stands passed by, people ran back and forth,  aides chattered into walkie talkies with driven strides, avoiding eye contact.

We were met by an assistant director who pointed us past some traffic road blocks, towards offices set up in rooms conjoined to the main factory. Make-up and wardrobe had fitted out one of these offices with a row of light-bulbed dressing tables. The tables were filled and weren’t ready for me, so we moved on down a hallway lined with various crew members to the holding area, a brightly lit room filled with fold-out chairs basically a waiting room for actors until they were called on set. Seats were filled with extras in baroque period-era fantasy regalia, and seeing elves and goblins draining bottles of coke was still a novelty I hadn’t yet gotten over. But the room itself was drab, noisy and didn’t help take my mind away from my racing thoughts. First day on set of a new movie always felt like first day at a new job.

So we went through where the room spilled out into a brick-paved patio area with benches and tables shaded by expansive, square commercial parasols, as at an outdoor café, but no food, though there was supposed to be a catering tent around here somewhere. Raf took a seat, placing me down on one of the tables.   

A kid with impeccably styled sandy hair, age somewhere in the realm of eighteen, loped over, like he was journeying around the set, rather than actually having a strict destination in mind. I guessed he was one of the leads, he looked like he’d come from make-up. He lifted his head and eyed me with interest. We met eyes and he said:

“HEY. THE LITTLE DUDE.” He gave me a quick eyebrow raise. “SIN?”

“Sin?” I furrowed my brow.

He stared at me blankly. Then something seemed to register.

"LOTTA PEOPLE ASK ME,” he said, “AND I ALWAYS SAY: ONE WORD: INSOLE LIFTS. WELL, THAT'S TWO WORDS. BUT THAT'S ALL I GOT. SORRY."

Then he walked away.

Nonplussed, I stared at Raf. He just stared back at me and shrugged.

“DON’T TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY.”

A dark-haired girl wandered over, and like the guy, young – younger than me at least. All the kids playing the leads looked fresh out of make-up and evidently, the make-up team were doing utmost to make them look as glamorous as possible for a bunch of kids running through wild forests and hinterlands.

“ERIC,” she said dryly. “HE’S PLAYING MIKE. WE WERE DOING LINE READS AND HE’S STILL IN CHARACTER. FULL MIKE.”

There was an in-joke in there I didn’t get. But then again, I never bothered to read any of the Gamelandia books. I had no lines, so I could get away with it.

But I nodded sagely, struck by a sudden, inexplicable need to not look novice or dumb; I mean, all these kids were new and I was the one with previous acting experience under my belt, if only one prior movie. Not to mention, the girl was flashing me a stomach-fluttering smile and putting me in a very vulnerable position. She had a disarmingly forward, friendly manner and one of these smiles that lit her face right up, no surprise the casting director signed her on. But I guess I had grown a little cynical to engaging smiles since Natalie.

In the intervening moments, she gave Raf the faintest look over – as if trying to discern if he was my body guard – before taking a step closer to the table, and me.

“I’M ALEXA. AND I’M MADISON.” Then she explained: “WE HAVE THIS GAME; WE’RE TRYING TO MATCH CAST TO ONE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS. I SAY ERIC IS WRATH.” Her hands slid into her pockets as she shifted her weight back and forth between her feet, appraising me. “WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

“My sin?” I clarified. “Can I answer in multiple?”

“NO,” she laughed. “AND YOU CAN’T ANSWER FOR YOURSELF. I MEAN, FOR ME; WHAT DO YOU SAY?”

How the heck was I supposed to answer that? I’d just met her. Although, her radiant smile had hushed to a smirk, as if she didn’t expect a serious answer. What even were all the deadly sins; her smile was so bright it short-circuited my brain.

“Um…I don’t know – vanity?”

“LAST I CHECKED, VANITY ISN’T A SIN.”

“You could be a spokesperson for Porche.”

“QUITE THE LITTLE CHARACTER, AREN’T YOU?” She shook her head. I couldn’t help think I was a few years older than her, but she was talking to me like I was the younger one.

“I’m the expert on playing little characters.”

Her smile broke free again, while my heart simultaneously seemed to break free and somehow float out of my chest before I could stop it. She seemed surprised I would be so defiantly upfront about my size, and not unpleasantly.

“YOU MEAN PRIDE,” she corrected gently. “WE’VE ALL PRETTY MUCH DECIDED THAT JAKE IS PRIDE – JAKE’S PLAYING ADAM.” She watched me again, with that calm, mildly amused expectation.

Well, what else was there? Sloth? She was too coltish to be sloth. But, that moment, my brain felt like sloth. I hadn’t felt this peppy and venturesome since meeting Jen at a party (correction: second time we met) and impulsively manufacturing a selfie with her.

“I’d like to buy a vowel, Alexa.”

“YOU KNOW WHAT,” she chuckled, whirling away and pushing her hair back, “I’LL LET YOU THINK ABOUT IT.”

She gave me the subtlest ‘eyebrow jump’ over her shoulder before she left.

“SEEYA JERRY. ADIOS.”

I looked back up at Raf, but he was checking his phone, rapidly thumbing the virtual keypad, texting something.

“KNOW YOUR SINS, JERRY?” he said, chuckling. “SHE WAS FISHING.”

My eyes scanned the vicinity in desperation: crew members passing two and fro, carpenters and electricians doing the rigging, laying cabling, testing spark effects, adjusting camera equipment, rigging pulleys in preparation for the wire stunt work.

My throat was inexplicably dry as a desert. I’d seen a coffee cart on the way in, but I wanted something cool, like Kolade. Ultimately, I settled for a bottlecap of Raf’s mineral water.

We returned to make-up, and I spent some time sitting on the vanity counter in front of one of the mirrors while getting made-up to look like Mike. This involved taking all my clothes off, except for my underwear, and then being powdered up to look alarmingly pale, with a bluish tint, especially my lips and around my fingernails, which had to be dabbed with a very fine, precise brush. Staring at myself in the towering mirror, I wondered if Mike was supposed to be some kind of zombie or space alien.

Then I was heading to the set, the soundstage inside one of the larger buildings, an expanse, high-ceiling warehouse divided up into walled off areas called ‘Stage A’, ‘Stage B’ etc. Raf kept my phone while handing me over to an assistant director who would help place me around the stages, not before facetiously stressing I was an actor, not a prop.  

The aide carried me into a big, open floor studio with lime green walls. Mounds, steps and ramps made of props covered in green sheets were built up to look like small hills to me. A crew member explained it would be a snowy mountain in the finished film.

We were between takes. Members of crew had cameras and equipment in position, various department heads being consulted on footage already shot.

“HEY HO, IT’S PAPA SMURF. HUGE FAN OF YOUR WORK, MR. SMURF.”

Alexa had wandered over, and I nearly didn’t recognize her. She must have just come from wardrobe and was in full costume: ornate midriff-exposing armor, prosthetic elf ears and arcane tattoos. Then I noticed her feet were bare.

“Where’s your shoes?” I asked.

She glanced down, lifting and wiggling her toes, contemplating.

“YEAH, HAVE YOU SEEN THE BOOTS ON THE ELVES? THAT’S SOME WICKED KNEE-HIGH MEDIEVAL PRADA RIGHT THERE. I GOT SHAFTED BY WARDROBE, DEFINITELY.”

I stared at her ear prosthetics.

“Aren’t you an elf?”

“YOU READ THE SCREENPLAY, RIGHT?”

“Through a haze.”

She feigned alarm and disappointment.

“WELL, I HEARD YOU WERE A PRO.”

“But, young lady, speed-reading a script while multi-tasking ten other things is what all we industry long-timers do.”

She folded her tattoo engraved arms.

“BUT, TINY MAN, DO YOU KEEP YOUR TINY MOTORBIKE IN A TINY GARAGE, TOO?”

“I don’t have a tiny motorbike.”

She rocked back on her heels and swished away from me.

“THEN HOW DO YOU SPEED READ?” she said over her shoulder.

“Oh.”

 “OH, ZING.”

We ran the first takes of my scene: a frozen Mike was buried in the snow and the elf giantess Madison dug him up and conjured a fire with magic to warm him beside until he melted, and then – with more magic – resurrected him, though he lost one of his three game lives. The script supervisor suggested this is not what happened in the source novel, but I hadn’t read it, so, not a problem.

I was required to lie on the ground ‘buried’ under some sheeting, while Alexa dug me out, plucking me up delicately around the waist. As Mike was frozen, I had to keep my limbs and head stiff while my waist was snatched up, which was difficult after several takes. So, support rods were attached to my back and limbs to keep them straight, and removed once Mike had been melted. I played limp while Alexa ‘resurrected’ me, and then acted out some takes with her (though my lines would be dubbed over by Eric’s voice in editing).

Apparently, Eric would be running through the same scene but with props to stand in for the scaled up body parts of Madison’s which he would be interacting with. Editing would splice these scenes into a composite.

This dual-style shooting of me doubling Eric carried out throughout the shooting for the film.

*

I’d been working on Gamelandia for some weeks.

Raf strode up to collect me from set, after another long day of shooting. Getting off set as the sun was going down, we missed the worst of the clock-off peak hour traffic, but it was not much lighter. While I bumped around in my harness on the vibrating vinyl shotgun seat, car engines grumbled past the window next to me, like passing steam trains.

The car pumped forward to chase down a green light, causing the harness to jerk, digging into my chest before relaxing again. It suddenly struck me that I’d been taking the Roburfortis consistently every week, one quarter tablet as prescribed, but the booster seat harness still fit me snugly as always, unless Raf had slackened it while I wasn’t looking.

“Hey, Raf,” I asked, “do I look bigger?”

He frowned in thought, trying to interpret my question.

“BEEN PUTTING LIFTS IN YOUR SHOES LIKE THAT GUY SAID?”

“I mean, larger.”

“NO WAY, YOU’RE NOT FAT. LARISSA WOULD BE ON YOUR BUTT OVER IT, TAKE IT FROM ME.”

“I mean,” I sighed, hating to emphasize it, “taller, broader, wider; bigger along every dimension. The last few weeks, maybe you’ve noticed something – anything – different about—”

“OH, YOUR PHONE BUZZED WHILE YOU WERE ON SET,” he interjected at a sudden thought, “SO I TOOK A CALL FOR YOU; LISTEN, THIS CHICK WANTS YOU TO CALL HER BACK.”

“For a movie?”

“NO, NOT WORK…PERSONAL.”

“What was her name – was she with a business?”

“NOTHING. NEITHER. JUST A NUMBER.”

“Weird.”

Raf threw me a sideways look.

“MY BOY IS GETTING BOOTY CALLS BY WOMEN WITH SEXY ACCENTS!”

I laughed.

“You serious?”

“I DON’T KNOW, MAN, BUT SHE DIDN’T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY. SHE WAS ULTRA COOL, LIKE STEEL, NO MESSING AROUND, LIKE—”

“But—”

“—THAT’S WHY I THINK IT’S, YOU KNOW… BOOTY. GONNA CALL HER BACK?”

I looked away, stared into the distance, fidgeting with my phone, wishing it was small enough that I could slide it into my pocket and forget about it.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I said. “I’m engaged.”

“BUT JUST GET BACK ON IT, SEE WHAT SHE WANTS, IN CASE I HAVE IT WRONG.”

It was too late today. I planned to do it tomorrow. But then tomorrow came, my thoughts were on work, and I forgot.

*

It was a break on set. Raf sat at a bench, and me sitting on a table, eating some morsels from the catering tent as I scrolled through my phone’s recent list looking to see if Farris had called me recently with any updates. Most of the received numbers were the same: Jennifer, Raf, even the vet, to confirm a prescription refill, and imploring me to make a follow up appointment to review my regime – been dodging that one for a while now…

…And a received call for a number that, at first, I didn’t recognize. It was the mystery call Raf had fielded the other week, the suspected ‘booty call’. I’d been so busy I’d forgotten about it until now. What if it was serious? – A job related offer. My hand hovered over the ‘dial back’ option.

Then, looked up.

A member of crew was calling for me: costume fitting; my butt had to be in front of the camera.

As I got to my feet on the table, and Raf lifted himself off the bench, I said:

“Raf, could you do me a favour?”

“TRY ME. WHAT DO YOU NEED?”

“You remember the woman who called for me? While we’re shooting, could you call her back and see what she wants?”

“AH, BUT I ALREADY KNOW WHAT SHE WANTS,” he chuckled, “SHE WANTS YOU.”

When I didn’t say anything, he added, more seriously:

“I CAN TRY, CHIEF, BUT…I WOULDN’T COUNT ON GETTING A STRAIGHT REPLY.”

“Well, if she wants me that bad, she has to give something up: a name, or organization. Otherwise, no deal.”

*

Later, I was hanging around off-set. The outside patio from the holding room was a common meeting place during odd hours. If Raf or one of the aides took me there, I usually bumped into one of the kids before long.

Today it was Alexa and Cody. Cody was playing Tony, a character who assumes the role of a wizardly mentor. Off-set he and Alexa were quite close, even though her on-screen romantic interest was played by Jake (playing Adam), and she technically had the most screen time with Eric (playing Mike). And since I doubled Mike, some of that screen time was with me.

Cody knew one of the technician crew members, and he told us some funny stories and anecdotes about his experience working on sets with celebrities. It was nearing the end of my scenes for the day, and Raf arrived to pick me up, but I was waiting for the okay from the director’s aide to go.

Alexa went off to make a phone call, and Cody began shifting on his feet, pacing a little, sucking in air. I wondered if he was rehearsing lines in his head.

Then he turned to me, and said:

“IF I DON’T TELL SOMEONE I’M GOING TO MESS MY LINES. CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?”

He had a closely shaved head, but was still wearing a wig of long, braided brown locks, plus a short beard, for his wizard character.

“About what?”

He nodded in the direction Alexa had gone. Now his voice was charged, almost humming:

“THAT GIRL COULD CAST A SPELL ON ME ANYTIME. ALREADY HAS.”

“Who? Alexa?”

“HER ENERGY. YOU FEEL IT?”

“She’s got a cute smile,” I admitted. “And yeah, she’s pretty.”

I felt a bond with her, if for no other reason than her audacity and roguish sense of humor made me think, vaguely, of a slightly younger Jennifer.

Cody shifted on his feet, throwing a look down at me and then looking away again. His voice lost its spark, becoming self-conscious.

“CUTE, HOW?” he repeated, distracted. “REALLY, GIRLS MUST SEEM LIKE VERY PRETTY DINOSAURS TO YOU.”

“You've seen giant girls on billboards?” I shot back. "You don't think they look strange."

“JERRY IS A HIT WITH THE LADIES,” Raf said. He’d seen female crew members gushing over me, convincing him to let me take a ‘ride’ in their hand, putting me in their pocket for a selfie, coloring my palm with ink to press against my signature on a business card, while they squeal-laughed over the tiny imprint.

“SO...” Cody began, “…I’M GOING TO ASK HER OUT. IF YOU'RE SUCH A SUPERSTAR ON THE OPPOSITE SEX, PLEASE ADVISE."

“Probably take the wig off, first.”

Cody pulled at his wig self-consciously.

“THEY SET IT WITH SPECIAL GLUE, AND IT’S A BITCH TO RE-APPLY.”

“That’s okay. Maybe she’s into Vikings.”

Cody suddenly spun around and began pacing erratically again.

“OH SHIT, SHE’S COMING BACK,” he hissed out of the corner of his lips. “WHAT DO I DO?”

“Pretend she’s already said yes.”

“ALEXA, HI,” Cody announced, clapping his hands together. Alexa gave him a strange look; they’d just been talking not long ago.

“I’VE GOT LIKE, FOUR MINUTES,” she interrupted, “AND THEN I HAVE TO BE IN MAKE-UP.”

Cody cleared his throat.

“RIGHT, UM…SO, ALEXA, YOU UP FOR GOING OUT WITH ME LATER? LIKE, FRIDAY NIGHT?”

She frowned.

“WE’RE GOING TO THE RED STAR FRIDAY NIGHT. JAKE, ERIC, MEGAN – YOU STILL COMING?”

“OH YEAH…”

She laughed.

“HOW COULD YOU FORGET? IT’S OUR THING THAT WE DO!”

He butted in hopefully:

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEXT WEEK?”

She pivoted around fully at him, marking him down with an appraising stare.

“CODY, ARE YOU ASKING ME OUT ON A DATE?”

I heard Cody’s throat trying to work as he struggled to meet her confrontational manner.

“THAT IS INDEED WHAT I AM DOING. SO…”

“CODY…”

She looked away for an instant, put her hand against her forehead, sweeping her hair around her shoulder, twisting it.

“I LIKE YOU BUT…THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE.”

“OH. RIGHT.”

What he was thinking came through in his tone: a girl as hot as Alexa; of course she must already be spoken for.

Biting her lip, she turned and left.

Cody stared after her, then letting out a long breath that he’d been holding in for a while.

“BE HONEST,” he drawled. “I TOTALLY BLEW THAT, DIDN’T I? IT WAS THE WIG.”

I shrugged.

“It’s not endgame. Once this film comes out, you’ll be drowning in female fans.”

“I LIKE YOU BUT I LIKE SOMEONE ELSE,” he repeated, mulling it over. “BUT REALLY? – OR GIRL CODE FOR ‘NO CHANCE.’”

“I don’t think she’s speaking in codes. You guys dating and working together could be weird. She’s got romantic scenes with Jake.”

He pondered on this.

“MAYBE SO, TINY BRO.”

The director’s aide briskly appeared for me.

“JERRY. STAGE C.”

“Sorry, Raf,” I said, as the aide picked me up. “I thought I was done.”

“NO SWEAT, LITTLE CHIEF. TELL ME WHEN THEY CALL IT IN.”

*

Raf reclaimed me from set, gripping me in one hand, while his other hand fiddled with my miniature phone in his pocket. It was darkening outside. His steady lumbering strides carried me back towards his car in the parking lot, and then the downtown streets were rolling past.

“OH RIGHT,” Raf remembered suddenly, “—WHILE YOU WERE ON SET TODAY, I GAVE THAT LADY A CALL–” quickly adding, “—WELL, OKAY, I TRIED.”

“You couldn’t reach her?”

“NO, I GOT HER, IT’S JUST THAT SHE IS COOL,” he accented this the way a guy would call a woman ‘hot.’ “WON’T TALK TO ME – TOLD YOU – SHE WANTS YOU.”

“Did she give you anything?”

“YOU WANT ANSWERS YOU’VE GOTTA TALK TO HER.”

“Okay,” I sighed. 

Right at that moment there was buzzing from inside his pocket.

“OH,” he exclaimed, as if to say ‘well, there you go.’ He yanked it out and gave it to me. I answered the call.

“Look,” I said, and immediately demanded, “you need to be upfront with me or I hang up, right now. Starting with a name.”

“I-it’s Natalie,” came the reply.

“Oh.” My cheeks went red. “You didn’t try to call me earlier?”

“Bad time? I know it’s late, I only just—”

“It’s fine. Never mind.”

“Are you sure? You sound…” she deliberated on the word, “…tired.”

“No, I…I thought you were someone else.”

Then there literally came the sound of someone else, a male voice grunted in the background. My brain flatlined for an instant. Then it hit me: her boyfriend, Grant, right? My nerves skipped at the sound of his timbre, so much deeper than my own. I tried to imagine, of possibilities, what he had said: want a snack from the refrigerator, Nat? – Here, let me open it for you with my big, strong arm…

Her voice snapped my mind back.

“—break coming up, Grant and I are going to be visiting some family and friends in Bayside, so I wanted to put the suggestion out there – ‘cause I know—“ a microsecond delay, “—Jennifer is back there, right? So if you’re down that way we could, maybe, get together, the four of us.”

“Makes sense,” I mumbled, not knowing what I was responding to.

“Great! We’ll talk sooner and figure it out. Say hi to Jennifer for me!”

Too late I thought: hot yoga with Grant? Shoot me.

Not quite, but something arguably worse.

I was finishing my final scenes for Gamelandia, and once my shooting was done, Farris said he planned to take me to Skyros. It was a big, high-end nightclub smack in the center of St Palma’s film district. It maintained a highly restricted door policy, but Farris assured me he was a familiar face their and not to buy a ticket. He’d get us in. This made Raf incredibly excited, so he was all set to chaperone me. I preferred being carried around by laid-back Raf anyway, rather than Farris, who had a tendency to talk rapid-fire and shift his fingers around my torso restlessly as he gripped me.

Meanwhile the main cast of Gamelandia were planning drinks of their own, albeit less ritzy. Every so often they met up at the Red Star Bar in the city, and tonight was one of these nights.

While I sat on a table under the shade of the prop-up cabana tenting at the catering area, Alexa wandered past. Maybe she’d just come from a scene, she looked distracted. Her eyes glanced over me and then did a double take.

“Young lady,” I nodded.

“TINY MAN,” she perked up, wheeling around. “I WAS LOOKING FOR YOU.” Ambling over, she lowered herself, hands on her knees, bringing her face down in front of me, bathing me lightly in her minted breath.

“WE’RE GONNA HIT UP THE RED STAR TONIGHT. AND…I…” she gave me one of her little eyebrow jumps, “…WANNA SEE YOU THERE.”

“Oh yeah?” I said.

“WELL, ERIC’S DITCHED AND…WE NEED ONE MORE PERSON FOR FIVE PERSON DRINK DISCOUNTS – ABLE TO HELP US OUT?”

“Guess so,” I said, thinking about for a moment. It might be nice for a rest after the shooting week. “Count me in.”

She beamed at me, straightening up again, leaning on one leg as her posture relaxed.

“AWESOME. YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND IT? IT’S JUST UP FROM THE MARINA.”

“I’ll find it.”

Her eyebrows briefly turned down in a ponderous look.

“YOU NEED SOMEONE TO TAKE YOU THERE?”

Her hand slid into her hip pocket and rustled around, doing a quick inspection of the interior dimensions, before her eyes lifted to me suggestively.

A natural, innocent suggestion, but from my point of view, the pocket was spaced right next door to her crotch, too close for comfort.

“It’s fine. I’ve got my own wheels.”

She grinned again, trying to bite her lip to stop it, but it didn’t work.

“TINY MOTORBIKE. GOT IT. ADIOS.”

*

“RED STAR,” Raf nodded, peering through the cars lined in front of us. Rows of commercial windowfronts surrounded us on either side, signs flashing out of the dark from quaint café balconies. Mopeds buzzed past the car window like insects, almost tauntingly. “WITH THE BEAD CURTAIN.”

“It’s got a half price drink special for groups of five people,” I said.

“FIVE FANS FRIDAY?” her perked up with recognition. “BUT THEY STOPPED DOING THAT LIKE TWO YEARS AGO.”

“Oh…Weird.” I threaded my fingers through my hair, which was faintly slick with gel. “I think they still expect me.”

Passing bodegas we pulled up on the street and Raf carried me to the outside venue, a Cuban bar. Gladly, there was no seedy bead curtain anymore, just an opening  with the doorway propped open, smoky fumes and golden light spilling out onto the street.

“Put me down at the door,” I said, on impulse. The ‘tiny motorbike’ jab came back, and suddenly I didn’t want to enter cradled in Raf’s hands like a baby.

“SURE?” Raf hesitated.

“I’ll walk this part.”

He stuck his head through the doorway, and deciding it wasn’t too busy and the floor was relatively clear and well lit, put me down in front of his enormous sneakers.

Inside was a warmly lit speakeasy. With my phone under one arm, I bounded over the wood parquet floor, craning my head up to scan the handful of people sitting at tables that were elevated way over my head. The tables blocked out my view of any faces, but the sounds of youthful voices and laughter drew me towards one side of the interior.

Stopping beneath the edge of the table, I was met by a collection of mega-sized shoes tightened up with laces and straps that could have effortlessly bound me. As I stared, the shoes slid and grinded over the floor in sudden unpredictable jerks, and one of the shoes was bouncing. One of the girls was wearing tall boots which towered over my head. The sole of one of the guys’ sneakers lifted up, balancing on the toe, exposing flecks of dirt-caked gum. Deciding I’d seen enough of the floor, I called up:

“You guys! Down here!”

The seats groaned and the feet shifted before the faces of Alexa and Jake leaned out over the table edge and stared down at me.

“MADE IT!” Alexa called down. There was a tugging sensation around my collar and my feet lifted off the floor. I whizzed up through the air and the scaled up figures of the Gamelandia leads greeted me, or their top halves seated around the table. And Eric had showed up after all.

The face of Alexa loomed closest of all, her cheeks faintly blushing from alcohol. She flashed me a grin.

“TINY MAN.”

As I hovered in the air, she casually blew me a kiss in greeting before placing me down on the wood tabletop. I put my phone down on the table, where it was immediately snatched up by Jake, who began turning it around between his fingertips, squinting at the screen.

“OH MY GOD,” Megan said, staring at the phone, “WHERE DO I GET ONE?”

To her it must have looked like a toy. She snatched it off Jake and then the phone was getting eagerly passed around for inspection. I watched it jump from one huge hand to the next, hoping some of the texts and photos Jen had sent me were not among the phone’s open windows.

The kids were talking about what their plans after filming wrapped. Cody reached for a can of Stella Artois the size of a small water tank and slid it towards his place at the table. The ring pull lid was snapped and the pressurized air escaped with a hiss.

He took a draught and grinned at everyone.

“JERRY’S MODELLING.”

“WHAT?” the girls said in unison.  

I stared at him in surprise, and Cody looked down at me, shrugging.

“RAF TOLD ME,” he explained.

“It was one gig,” my shoulders relaxed and I tried to sound casual. “It’s…um…underwear.”

“OHHH…” The girls made knowing noises.

“MAKES TOTAL SENSE TO ME,” Megan shot Alexa a look across the table. The smile clung to her lips as she thought of me, I presumed, in my underwear, doing little poses. The two of girls were taking me in, up and down, as if assessing my profile.

“Not like that,” I said, running my hand through my hair, worrying it sounded like Playgirl pin-up stuff. I was still standing so began to step over the table towards an empty space to sit down. Then stumbled into a wall that made a ringing plink sound as I struck it. It was Alexa’s glass tumbler, filled with red liquid and ice blocks.

She giggled, and her hand dipped down from the sky to pluck the stringy orange zest out of her glass. The wisps of vapour made my head ring.

“MEZCAL?” she offered, waving the zest around under my nose as if to tempt me.

Without hesitation she signalled for a waiter to bring over for a small glass, and they returned with what looked like a tiny glass bottle for storing herbs.

“WE WERE JUST PLAYING TRUTH OR DARE OR SWITCH,” Jake said, as Alexa poured a fraction of her drink into the bottle and got a kick out of presenting it to me, standing in the center of her upturned, flattened palm like a silver platter.

“I’LL BE YOUR TABLE,” she said, keeping her palm held before me.

The surface of her palm depressed gently wherever I put my feet.

“I’ve never heard of that.” I said to Jake, bowing to heft up the tiny bottle.

“NORMAL TRUTH OR DARE,” he elaborated, “BUT YOU CAN COME IN AND SWITCH THE DARE UP.”

As I swilled from the tiny bottle, a subtle blast of warm air raced down the nape of my neck and down the back of my collar. Certain that Alexa had just blown at me, I stared up at her, but she was looking straight ahead, with her fist pressed to her mouth. 

It was currently Cody’s turn.

“TRUTH OR DARE?” Eric asked Cody.

“DARE,” he said.

“YOU HAVE TO GET SPAT IN THE FACE BY ALEXA.”

Cody leaned back in his seat, and then shrugged. His show of hesitation seemed slightly forced.

“OKAY.”

“MOUNTAIN DEW,” Eric clarified.

“I CAN close my eyes and mouth?”

“No – eyes and mouth open.”

“SCREW you – I’m closing them!”

“SWITCH,” said Megan. “FOR BEING A SMARTASS, you NOW have TO HOLD YOUR mouth open WHILE ALEXA SHOOTS MOUNTAIN DEW INTO YOUR MOUTH.”

“SWITCH: MINERAL WATER,” said Cody.

“CAN’T SWITCH YOUR OWN DARE. DO HER DEW.”

“MOUNTAIN DEW LOOKS LIKE PEE,” Cody argued.

“You said that,” Megan flicked her hair. “not us.”

“MOUNTAIN DEW MAY TASTE WORSE THAN RAW SPIT,” Jake jokingly sympathized.

“JAKE KNOWS WHAT ALEXA’S SPIT TASTES LIKE,” Eric said, probably referring to the fact they played the film love interests.

“NO DEW,” Alexa suggested, pouring herself a glass of Pepsi. No one responded. “Pepsi. BUT NO Dew. I CAN’T STAND IT.”

“I CAN’T STAND CODY’S FACE,” said Eric. “MAKE YOUR AIM BAD.”

The kids laughed while Cody shoved him.

“FOUNTAIN!” one of the kids suggested.

“GUN,” she said simply. “THE ONLY WAY. OTHERWISE HE’LL DUCK.”

She took a big mouthful of Pepsi and then leaned forward towards Cody, lining her mouth right up with his face. His eyes were locked on her, glazed with apprehension. His shoulders had stiffened, fighting the subconscious impulse to move. Alexa swished the drink around her mouth for dramatic effect, never breaking his eye contact, delighting in letting his dreadful anticipation build.

Then let fly fierce stream. The same moment, Eric swung over, clapped his palm on the top of Cody’s head and pushed it down and the stream of Pepsi went into his eyes. Eric straightened and the kids taunted him for being an asshole while Cody reached for a napkin and wiped his face.

 Attention quickly went back to the game.

“WHO’S UP?” Jake eyed everyone in turn, before his gaze rested on me. “JERRY?”

My skin tightened with dread.

“TRUTH OR DARE?”

“Dare.”

Did I think they’d go easy on me because of my size?

“YOU HAVE TO KISS ALEXA,” Megan said, jumping in before anyone else had a chance to suggest something. “ON THE MOUTH.”

Alexa’s chair creaked as her shadow glided over the table surface, closer to me.

“SWITCH,” Cody said without break. “JERRY HAS TO KISS YOU, MEGAN.”

Megan flicked her hair back, her eyes pinning me and her lips curling.

“READY IF YOU’RE READY, ‘TINY MAN’,” she drawled, mimicking one of Alexa’s eyebrow jumps.

The Mezcal must have hit my brain because I found myself taking assured steps towards the girl who was now sinking in her seat to bring her great face down to the table. Her face expanded in view until it blocked everything out, and mere inches from mine, hot, cocktail-peppered breath pushing my hair back and rippling in my ears. As I drew my face closer, the shiny pink lips wrinkled up as they pushed forward to meet me. Shutting my eyes, I inclined my head the last stretch until my face touched upon the puffy, slightly sticky surface.

At the moment of contact, the lips pulled into a sucking pucker that gripped my face like she was trying to slurp my head into a spaghetti strand. My face was screwed up by the muscular grip of her pucker, while the gaseous fumes of her drink pounded into my eyes and nose, making me woozy. The room shrank away into a tight black ball of nothingness, I was aware of nothing but my heart drumming in my ears and the greater girthed girl immediately opposite, glued to my face. Or rather, I was glued to her mouth, literally unable to detach myself. Her lips were wrapped around me like a tight, hot, clammy latex mask.

My hands patted at her chin, then began pushing. It was like my face was stuck in a big vacuum nozzle. I made a weak whimpering noise. It was drowned out by the sensual groan that erupted from Megan’s throat, surely dramatized for the game, but the sound and the rumbling vibration against my lips and cheeks sent blood plunging into my groin.

Something large bumped around my body, running around my shoulders, down my back. One of my buttocks was pinched, the force of the probing spreading my legs slightly and bumping my balls. Meanwhile similar pressure stabilized itself against my lower belly, accidentally capturing my member and softly grinding it against my thigh. I whimpered again into her mouth. She was acting out a heavy petting session, stroking my body while her lips suctioned at my face.  

Without warning, her cheeks drew in tight and swelled as if she was blowing bubble-gum, and a fierce spurt of warm air came gushing into my face like a smack, and I went flying backwards until my spine hit the table, my head conking the wooden surface.

Megan and Eric laughed, while Jake and Cody winced, and Alexa froze up.

“Ugh,” I groaned, sitting up and rubbing the back of my head, but the mezcal had dulled my nerves. Plus, the hardening bulge in my pants distracted me from any pain. I yanked my legs up in an effort to hide it.

“OOF,” Jake said. “OUCHIE.”

“MEGAN!” Alexa huffed. “NOT COOL!”

Megan’s brow cocked apologetically, her lips parted as if she was about to say something, but Eric got in first:

“JUST A LOVE TAP.”

This caused a ripple of chuckling, and another helpless giggle from the inebriated Megan.

Alexa surged up off her seat and swept away from the table. I stared after her, nonplussed, while the others shrugged or averted their eyes.

“HEY, ROMEO.”

A big object bumped my shoulder. It was Megan’s fingertip. Her head hovered low over me, for one instant I thought she was going to try and kiss me again.

“MAYBE YOU SHOULD CHECK SHE’S OKAY,” she said in a quiet voice, though she didn’t sound very worried.

Snatching at the chance to extricate myself from the game, I ambled over the table and before anyone could offer to help me, I leapt down onto Alexa’s empty seat – still warm, and I tried not to think too hard that her butt had just been pressed on it – then backed myself over the edge, bear hugging a chair leg and sliding down to the floor.

The wood floor was dappled in light and shadow. I trailed the lit areas, automatically heading under a chair for protection. My shoes pattered with a tiny ‘tap tap tap’ which was drowned out by the music. Eventually I passed through the propped open entrance doorway, coming out against a wall of surprisingly warm, blustery air.

From ground level, the world was an endless, stony, gray world of monolithic buildings and roaring, honking, blasting traffic.

It was dark, clouds had rolled over the sky, releasing a spontaneous shower, filtering the world behind a smoky haze. Drops darted in under the awnings and thwacked and popped against my skin. 

It took a moment to locate Alexa, because she’d crossed the street. She was talking on the phone, swinging along the street at a loose stride, down the opposite sidewalk. To me, the narrow road was an asphalt river, and more dangerous to cross unless I sought an instantaneous death beneath a spinning car wheel.

I jogged up the gritty wet cement, keeping my eyes locked on her, and called out, but rumbling engines of passing cars muted my voice. Without realizing, I was nearing the edge of the sidewalk.

Then my foot slipped on a crack and I stumbled. Suddenly the concrete dropped away, a swooping sensation climbed up my body, before I crashed into cold water, and my stomach curled like a fist. Water captured me in its sucking momentum, sending me down a gushing gray river. The flash downpour had flooded the gutters bordering the roads, one of these gutters now conveying me in rapid transit down the street like I was embedded in the drive belt of a powerful machine.

Now passing the shop façades going back the other way, I passed the open doorway of the speakeasy, and kept going, pushed back and forth amidst the surging waters like a cork. A series of passing car tires spun through a big puddle, sending wave after wave of water over me, causing my head to get pushed under the surface of the whirling gutter stream. Then my head broke up again, coughing and sucking in air.

The churning waters jostled me as I waved my arms, trying to convey myself by swimming sideways to the concrete ledge, but the chill water numbed my body and enfeebled my kicks and strokes. Ahead and rapidly approaching: a big, black letterbox shaped maw of an open drain entrance, big enough to swallow me whole.

My jaw dropped in horror and gutter water gushed into my open mouth, spilling into my stomach. I wanted to puke but swallowed and kicked my legs with every last ounce of strength. It was a dark mystery what awaited me in the drain, but I guessed once I passed the threshold, there was no coming back up. My eyelids shut as the water roared over my head again and this time I failed to surface before the last of my breath was pulled out of my lungs, quickly replaced with a mouthful of dirty water –

Something swooped down and snatched around my head, yanking me up high into the air. Firm pressure was stamped over my face, blinding me, but I could feel the air racing and chilling my wet clothes.

The world seemed to revolve as I was flipped over, upside down, ending with my back dropping onto a cushy mattress, with a thick blanket wrapping securely over my front. Once the pressure left my face, I found myself gripped in a giant hand, feminine fingers keeping me enclosed.

Alexa’s voice came out in a shaky start:

“NO, N-NOTHING, I JUST GOT STARTLED.”

As she said this, her thumb lifted to brush the raindrops away from my face and smooth back my wet hair. Reassured I was okay, she breathlessly segued back into the phone conversation, while chewing a piece of gum.

From my view, looking straight up at her, she was a dim outline with features that wavered and speckled under the intense streetlights, but I could tell she was snatching glances down at me every so often, even if her facial features were a drizzly blur.

Shivers ran through my body. Maybe the discomfort showed on my face, because her thumb began to stroke my chest in gentle reassurance.

Ending the call, the phone was slipped into her pocket, and suddenly the inside of her jacket swooped over my head and wrapped around my shoulders. She spent a moment rubbing me around inside her jacket until I was mostly dry. Then I was brought out again to be bathed in her full attention.

“SO WHAT JUST HAPPENED?”

“You saved me.”

She made an annoyed grunt.

“THEY DARED YOU TO JUMP IN THE DITCH?”

“No, I tripped.”

A fingertip grew big in my sight, swiping my brow, flicking my damp hair back. Then her laughter swelled in my ears, seeming to thrum through my skull.

“I almost died!” I exclaimed, disgruntled.

She kept laughing.

“THEN THEY’D HAVE TO GET ERIC ON HIS KNEES LIKE A HOBBIT TO PLAY YOU.”

“I was looking for you.”

“YOU WERE LOOKING FOR ME,” she repeated.

Her breath caressed my hair. I was compelled to continue:

“Just making sure you’re okay.”

She scoffed.

“ARE YOU? YOU’RE THE ONE TAKING A SWIM WHILE BUZZED ON MEZCAL.”

Her eyes softened and she aborted the conversational tone immediately.

“LOOK, SORRY, I KNOW I TEASE YOU A LOT…”

She sucked in a breath.

“IT’S ALL COMING OUT NOW…I…LIKE YOU, TINY MAN.”

I wrung my hands.

“I’m engaged.”

She nodded, her lashes falling wistfully.

“I GOT THAT MEMO…RAF.”

“Speaking of Raf, I should probably go back inside. My phone – I need to indicate a pick up time.”

“SURE. JUST ONE THING.”

She brought me barreling at her face, my eyes snapped wide open just in time to see a pair of huge pink puffy masses projecting at me before I was hit with a fierce channel of warm air spiced with mezcal and Pepsi. My face was seized and tugged inexorably against her mouth, and for a moment it seemed my head was being scrunched up by a huge compressing, vacuuming machine. My heart fluttered in a panic as her lips seemed to grasp my face like strong hands and mold my pliable flesh around like clay.

With my face tight in the depression between her smooching lips, her tongue eagerly flicked over my lips and sponged around my eyes. It probed my features delicately, working around in tiny massaging circles, and then began flattening itself over the span of my face, squashing all my features simultaneously. With one last wet, wrenching smack my head came free again, I felt myself withdrawing and being lowered through the air.

But something was wrong my eyes were open but it was still dark. I could still feel the moist, all-excluding  pressure of the kiss even though I’d been lowered. Only, now it felt heavier, like a big wet hand towel had been thrown onto my face, trapping it tightly under his folds. Except the towel was sticky, slimy, and elastic, but not too elastic; somehow like big bands of masking tape stuck over my face. I couldn’t move my facial features without effort; couldn’t open my mouth or shut my eyelids while I was wearing this huge blob as a face mask. My eyes stung, helplessly exposed to the wet offending mask, and an undeniable minty smell clung to my nose; spearing into my nostrils, as well as the smell of rubber. I couldn’t wipe it off because her grip constrained my arms. I shook my head but the pressure persisted, stuck my face like glue.

As I wondered how Alexa could have left so much lip gloss on my face, and how it was so thick, she let out a gasp, followed by the sound of helpless laughter.

A firm object came in and brusquely swirled around my face, clearing off the wet mask, which was actually chewing gum. My slimy wet skin turned cool instantly in the air.

“I WAS TRYING TO KEEP YOU OUT OF THE FIRING LINE, TINY MAN,” she explained glibly, after getting her breath, and flicking the gum away. “CAN YOU DO ME A FAVOR AND PRETEND THAT DIDN’T JUST HAPPEN?”

“I’m trying to.”

She began to walk me back over to the lit entrance of the Red Star, music spilling out faintly.

“SO…BETTER THAN MEGAN?” she insisted, rising an eyebrow.

“Better,” I agreed, catching my breath, “until the end.”

“UH UH – NOTHING HAPPENED, REMEMBER?” she joked, giving my scalp a rough rub with her knuckle.

“For what it’s worth,” I mumbled, “I think you’d get along with my fiancée. If you’re ever around Bayside, you should visit us.”

“OH, HONEY,” She said dismissively, and smirked as she contemplated my offer. I thought of her bar walkout moments ago, and bowed my head, guessing what she was about to say before she said it. Jen had such difficulty clicking with other women – God knows how she’d operate around a slightly younger doppelgänger.

“I’M KINDA A JEALOUS BITCH LIKE THAT.”

The release of Alpha lifted my profile, and now a media outfit wanted to interview me, and get a word from Jen as well. So, while I was home, Jen and I went into the arts district of the city, not far from the café where we’d met Farris, and visited the studio where the interview would be held.

It was a little smaller than the modeling studio, but contained a similar set-up.

I sat in a fold-out chair while my face was hit with a burst of light as the aide angled one of the standing softboxes. The back of the chair stretched up like a monument behind my head. Possibly a deliberate prop: empty air filling the chair above me, and lack of presence, was more eye-catching than if a famous celebrity was sitting in it.

There was a blue screen Cyclorama behind us, and a man in headphones had a boom mike telescoping overhead like a black crane arm. Behind him, the camera operator and aide were readying their equipment; of two cameras, obvious which one was trained on me; it was angled downwards on its stand. Suddenly the white bulb point of a Q-tip was bulging and bobbing into my direct perception as a make-up girl and all-round ‘toucher-upperer’ crouched over me, lathering over my face with a light application of cool cream while having to lean in so close that my head was made the target for concentrated streams of warm air from her nostrils. I was still, playing as a living sculpture as much as possible, a tiny doll whose facial features were being painted on; at this point in my career I was used to having my face was used as a tiny canvas for a make-up person’s artistic sketching.

Seated in the opposite chair, the journalist interviewer, who said her name so fast that I didn’t catch it properly, her skin lit up angelically by exposure from the other softbox, fresh-faced, but not industry-naïve. Her chair was pulled closer to mine than usual, due to my size creating an illusion of distance to her, and the camerapeople seemed keen to get us both in the frame, for the size comparison.

The female interviewer crossed her legs so that one businesslike black heel rose into my eye level, and twirled in mid-air as the foot rotated.

The make-up artist gave her face one last touch up before one of the camerapeople gave a signal for the surrounding chatter to mute and the crew and technicians to settle down.

Farris had referred a publicist for me to schedule my modeling shoot, and the same publicist had fielded the interview team’s request and reviewed the list of questions they intended to cover.

The female interviewer scrunched her brow as she made a last second survey of a clipboard. She beckoned over a harried-looking assistant, handed him the clipboard and he hurried out of the frame before the cameras began rolling.

“OVER TO YOU, JERRY,” the woman turned her head to face me and leaned in, her hands crossed over her lap. “WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO ACTING?”

She spoke in clear, polished sentences . This wasn’t a shy, coy or fawning interview and was keen to dive right into size-related matters, straight off the bat.

I straightened my spine and turned my head up to meet her eyes. Her leg was still crossed and foot hovering off to my side, performing slow loops in the air, level with my head, but I kept my gaze locked on her face. 

“The production for Alpha asked me to play a dog and I said yes.”

Some of the people behind the cameras guffawed quietly.

“I like roles that explore life at my size, what it’s like to be me, how it feels at this size. Films that get the audience to think this could actually happen to them, and think about what they’d do if it did...” Then I blurted, “That I’m real, not a special effect – or just a spectacle!”

The questions rolled through my biography: upbringing, family, schooling. Then the interview moved to the miniaturization.

The female interviewer’s lips pursed, drilling me with a level stare.

“LET’S PRETEND THE SHRINKING DIDN’T HAPPEN. WHERE WOULD JERRY MOUSSEAU BE RIGHT NOW?”

My thoughts reeled back to pre-GPR days. I huffed, so quietly no one could have heard it. Jen shifted, clamping her thighs together, squeezing a hand on her knee. Something inside me twanged unpleasantly.

“After the party,” I began, “I had planned to make a clean break. Move away. New job. Basically get myself a whole new life.” New girlfriend, a tiny voice in my brain added, but by now my lips had clamped shut.

“BUT INSTEAD A NEW LIFE FOUND YOU.”

“Heh. You could say that.”

I coughed but it didn’t alleviate the irritation in my throat. My eyes got stuck on the interviewer’s heel, completing a slow whirl clockwise, then clounter-clockwise. I wrenched my gaze away, to meet her eyes, now narrowing in a way suggesting another serious question.

"GIVEN YOUR ACTING SUCCESS FOLLOWING YOUR MINIATURIZATION, WOULD YOU WANT TO REVERT TO YOUR PREVIOUS HEIGHT IF IT MEANT RECEDING BACK INTO OBSCURITY?"

"Guess I'd just have to get a normal job. I’d make the trade-off."

"ACTING IS NOT A NORMAL JOB? TELL ME ABOUT THAT."

"I think my co-stars would agree. I miss the daily routine; that's one thing. There’s a lot of scrutiny.”

“PRESSURIZING FOR ANY ACTOR, BUT FOR YOU IT MUST BE LIKE GIANTS WATCHING YOU. DON’T YOU FEEL LIKE A ZOO ANIMAL?”

I laughed, which turned into a cough. Yes, some levity, please, the tiny voice whined. It’s a press cover, not the therapist’s chair.

“Guess that’s why I became a performer. I must like it or something.”

“YES…” she rejoindered with a suggestive tone, “…THE ATTENTION CAN’T BE ALL BAD…”

Her foot was now bobbing and angling with excitation. The shoe’s toe was unconsciously pointed at my head, its steady rotations drawing an invisible circle around me.

“HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN A CRUSH ON ANOTHER CAST MEMBER?”

Jen had gone very still as if the question had been directed at her and she was pondering an answer.

“Yes,” I said.

Then ran my hand down the nape of my neck. My face was clammy with sweat but the outside warmth was being efficiently swept through the ceiling ductwork and pumping out the fans droning on the rooftop. Those whirring rotor blades seemed to be rumbling loud in my ears.

Then I realized the interviewer was staring at me expectantly, waiting for elaboration.

“But I won’t say which one.”

“CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF SETTLING DOWN AFTER ACTING?”

I shifted in the seat, swallowing. I coughed again. One cough turned into three, and my throat was still raw.

The cameras cut while an assistant brought me a bottle of water, tipping up the lid and handing it to me. I guzzled it as Jen draped her arm over my chair and the faintly mirrory surfaces of her polished nails brushed against the side of my head.

Then the female interviewer repeated the question.

I answered:

“I don’t think very far into the future. Acting is my world right now.”

"WILL WE SEE A MOUSSEAU JUNIOR ANYTIME ON THE HORIZON?"

How ‘Junior’ would a ‘Mousseau Junior’ be? I wondered. A baby proportionate to my size would be as big as a normal-size thumbnail. The sheer thought made me queasy with worry. My heart banged around in my ribcage like an animal trying to escape confinement, and – with a chill flash – I realized the beats weren’t coming regularly.

After a micro pause, I emphasized:

“Uhhh…see my answer to the previous question.”

The crew tittered, and then the interviewer’s attention turned to Jennifer, introducing her as my other half.

The cameras paused while a crew member skipped forward and plucked me up off my seat, placing me in Jen’s lap. Without looking down, her hand swept over her lap and met me by instinct, and the fingers narrowed in, allowing the bumps and bulk of my form to contour the insides of her curled fingers comfortably. Her pointer finger lifted to stroke my head, and as it daubed across my forehead, it paused, as if alerting to the copious perspiration flecking my face. But as she became distracted by the next question, the finger lifted away from my brow and decided to just rest its firm weight on top of my skull.

“THAT LITTLE REVELATION IS BOUND TO BREAK SOME HEARTS,” the interviewer remarked. “HOW’S IT FEEL TO BE ENGAGED TO JERRY MOUSSEAU, THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN?”

Now my torso was being absent-mindedly massaged. As she considered her response, my ribcage was squeezed and flexed in a curious and explorative way – as if it was an object she’d never felt before – my heart fluttered in pain. I wriggled in alarm and she tightened her grip without thinking, until my cardiac organ felt like it was being rawly pinched between her fingertips. More sweat trickled down my brow. My vision flashed white and red for an instant.

She answered smoothly, and without a beat:

“LIKE WINNING FIRST PLACE IN A SPRINT AND GETTING THE GOLD TROPHY.”

“HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR RELATIONSHIP? MANY PEOPLE WOULD SAY YOU TWO MAKE AN UNUSUAL PAIR.”

“OH, JERRY’S THE NORMAL ONE. I’M A STORM AND HE’S THE CALM IN THE CENTER.”

The interviewer levelled some other questions at Jen. My awareness snagged as my heart started firing like an automatic gun, sending blood fluttering throughout my body.

The interviewer appeared to note my flushed, sweating countenance and called a short break. I stared up and identified Jen’s face against the bright, swimming lights. She was biting her thumbnail, faintly troubled. I couldn’t say why because I couldn’t recall the previous two questions. My awareness was bouncing and flashing.

“Got any aspirin?” I asked, and heard my own voice inside my head through what sounded like a wall of water.

Her eyes drifted down to me, brow tensing slightly.

“YOU OKAY?”

“Joint pain. That medicine I’m taking…”

Her expression turned to steel, but she said nothing. She dug into her handbag and broke a tablet out of the foil sheet. I gnawed at the tablet desperately, until a corner had been worn away, and threw out the rest.

One of the assistants stepped out the door, and the incoming stream of outside warmth was like a soothing balm against the unflinching cold of the thermally-controlled studio. I asked to step outside. Jen gave me a look, shifting forward in her chair as if to stand. I shook my head and waved her off, padding over to the door, held open by the assistant.

The studio’s chemical agent smell dissipated out the back door into the fresh air of the gated car park, which dried up my perspiration immediately. The air quickly turned harsh with the smoke from an assistant who’d come out with me for a cigarette. I paced around to get clear of the smoke trail and then propped my laptop-sized phone against a brick wall. I didn’t have a cigarette to look busy with, so I tried to look engaged with my phone, checking if I’d received any calls while my phone had been muted during the interview.

The screen scrolled through my recent call list and stopped on a number I didn’t recognize, from some weeks back, the one Raf had caught. Wanting to look like a phone call was the reason I’d gone outside all along, I pressed the ‘dial back’ option, and waited for it to pick up. Then, staring out across car park, I waited for the call to pick up.

Even as the number was dialling, a thought occurred to me: where had the woman even gotten my number? I didn’t go handing out business cards.

The phone was still dialling.

I wracked my brains for any memberships I’d signed up to recently and willingly volunteered my phone number. There was only the personal training – could it be Larissa? But she would have left her name, and I doubted Raf would have described her accent as ‘sexy’ or even an ‘accent’. It had to be a work thing, I decided, regardless of whatever Raf said. One of the modelling people, a fashion editor, clothing brand representative, or entertainment journalist. Not strictly ‘work’ but ‘work-related’.

The phone still wasn’t picking up.

Alternatively, I knew that, for a fee, you could source people’s contact details via contact or ‘skip’ tracers. Jennifer had told me about it, based on her own enquiries with a private investigator. But that gave me a creepy feeling. As the phone rang the final time, I’d already firmly decided it was not some creepy fan stalker, but was a media rep with a legitimate business enquiry. So, while the phone rang, I put on my business face.

The phone picked up and a woman’s voice answered:

“Pronto. Listening.”

She had to be a secretary. People in entertainment didn’t dial direct. Wanting her to flip me onto the real string-puller, I launched right in without pause:

“Hi, this is Jerry Mousseau. I received a call from this number about some business.”

“Jerry. Thank you for returning my call.”

It was a half-British, half-Italian accent, and I was awash in an uncanny feeling like in a dream; the kind of dream of somehow, impossibly, stumbling into a room with no doors. Even a booty call wouldn’t have had my heart galloping like this. And this wasn’t something aspirin could fix.

She was speaking again:

“The business in question refers to a proposal of mine, to you: if you are not too busy, I suggest we meet somewhere soon.”  

My throat tightened as I tried to say something, nothing came out.

The voice on the end faltered.

“…Could you…give your response now…?”

Now my throat was working again, but my mind was blank. It didn’t even occur to me to end the call.

From the other end, barely audible:

“Cazzo…”

“I heard you,” I said, but with a weird, disconnected feeling like someone else was talking, “there’s a lot going on right now, I’m not sure I understand where you’re going with this, and I could be called away again any second—”

“Then I will keep it brief: what time were you planning to depart Skyros on Friday night?”

My jaw dropped.

“Where did you – How did you know about that?” I gasped.

“Your secretary told me, eagerly.”

Raf? I thought. Well then, he needed a better ‘front-office’ screening system for incoming calls, I decided – ‘sexy accents’ got far too much priority.

She remarked in her brisk, disaffected way:

“I must say a casino would not be my first preference locale for rendezvous.”

“It’s a nightclub,” I grunted. Then: shut up Jerry, don’t give away even more details.

“Where are you?” I demanded.

She didn’t say. Instead:

“I travel. It would not be difficult for me to reach you.”

I had nothing to say to this. It did not compute. In the meantime, there was a small murmur on the other end, like she was thinking.

“If I was to catch you there,” she went on, “it wouldn’t inconvenience?”

My brow screwed up as I closed my eyes.

Inconvenience who – me? What about her? Where was she calling from, a prison cell? ‘Catch you there’ on what – her parole? What the heck was going on—?

“Um...I’ll be with a group. It’s on them.”

“Then, another time might be more suitable? Or, perhaps our paths will cross elsewhere.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I punched the hang up option and then stared down at the phone warily, as if it might lunge at me like a wild dog. My breath felt thin like I’d just been running, and my brow clamming up, even with the warming beams of sunlight stretching down past the clouds. But the aspirin must have kicked in, my chest soon calmed.

Still a little shaken, I returned to the studio. Jen looked at me but I avoided her eye. I was lifted back onto my chair and the interview quickly resumed.

“HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOUR FAMILY TO ADJUST?” The interviewer's eyes were piercing into mine. I tried to keep my gaze on her face, even as her enormous shoe was bobbing large to the side of my vision.

“My mother died when I was younger," I answered, "and my dad and I never really saw eye to eye,” I replied. “My shrinking compounded that –” literally and figuratively, I thought. “He has a life with a new woman.”

“LET’S GO BACK TO THE WOMAN IN YOUR LIFE. YOU MET YOUR fiancée BEFORE THE SHRINKING.”

“We ran into each other by accident three years ago, and we haven't been able to be rid of each other since.”

“AND SHE WAS AT THE PARTY, SO…SHE SAW IT ALL HAPPEN?”

“Yes.”

“THAT MUST HAVE BEEN SO AWFUL.”

She directed this enquiry at me. I paused and then answered:

“I was unconscious. Only my fianceé knows what it was like. But it sounds like it was completely…“

The rest of the words wouldn’t come.

Jennifer had once given me an abrupt, breathless summary of the GPR night. But she’d told me the parts I already knew; that I’d been shrunk and ended up at her house. She’d never actually said how she’d felt about it, what had been running through her mind the moment I’d shrunk. And why it specifically occurred to her to take me to her house.

“Well,” I said hastily, “it sounded like it must have been…It seems like from her point of view it was…I mean, if you asked her, she’d probably say it was—”

All eyes were on me. The cameraman shuffled in place, anticipating an imminent ‘cut’ to put me out of my misery.

“You’d have to ask my fiancée,” I concluded.

So the interviewer did.

“UNEXPECTED, FOR SURE,” said Jen. Once she started, her slightly husky voice got its own upbeat, propulsive momentum as she became quickly comfortable talking in front of the camera. “IT WAS—”

“—Exciting?”

She narrowed her eyes at the twilight sky, as if the answer to whatever he’d just said was spelled out up there in the clouds. It was bright, violet, but soon it would be full dark, and whatever answers were up there would be unreadable and lost.

“What did you say?” she mumbled, trying to bury the fact she’d just spaced out for the last couple of minutes.

“That Flip whatsamadoojit.”

She opened her mouth to say something, then frowned and shut it again.

Stuart just chuckled in that good-natured way of his.

“Annnnd I’ve lost you. That’s okay.”

He reached one hand over from the steering wheel to pat her knee; the gesture devoid entirely of flirtation or sensuality, and she tried to force a smile, but it came out too tight. Stuart was so like a big brother sometimes, too much so. He was safe, and what was not to like about that? But he wasn’t…What?

They parked the car around the side and followed the footpath to a big, garish yellow Pombaline trying-to-be-Mediterranean restaurant, and former Hotel. It was called the ‘Portugina.’ Not ‘Geena’. ‘Jai-na.’ Everyone who had a shred of dignity left in this sun bleached, skater-kid town hated the name and just called it the ‘Portugal.’ The place was too pretty and quaint and made her feel antique and womanly, and not in a good way.

Out the front, children were running and weaving around the ‘rustic’ (meaning cracked) pillars of the portico. Her mood slumped a little further, reclining into the fantasy of the now booked-up Le Bistro Rablais and its elegant lack of shrieking kids.

Why did people bring their kids to a party? You went to a party to get away from kids. Depressing to think the dreariness of settled suburban life was encroaching into the party scene now: there was no escape.

There was a back entrance with a fountain that lit up beautifully at night, they should have snuck in that way, but too late now, up the landing steps and they were inside.

It was packed to the walls, people chatted, laughed, loitered. She took Stuart’s hand and pulled him out a side door onto the al fresco area where buffet tables were lined up with an array of appetizers and snacks. Food was a good place to start if they didn’t recognize anyone, and the catering was decent: if the world was going to explode, a last meal of salmon canapé and a cocktail was nothing to be upset about.

The two of them remained there for a little while, catching the eye of some people they recognized, and chatting in between drinks. Then, direct vision sharpened and the peripherals hazed out. Her eyes had seemed to radar out in that direction and pick him out of the crowd without her even knowing how her brain had done it. A buried part of her brain lit up like a forgotten instinct, so fast and familiar it was scary. As soon as she saw him she quickly looked down, distracted herself with the tendons flexing on the back of her hand, pretending to admire her nails. She turned, brushing her hand against Stuart’s arm to get his attention.

“Over there,” she indicated, keeping her voice smooth. “That’s Scott – he invited us.”

Of course, Scott wasn’t alone.

“Well then, let’s say ‘Hey’!” said Stuart, and accompanied her over with an eagerness that secretly pleased her, because it made it look like going over was his idea.

Scott greeted the two of them. Jerry did not.

Wanting his attention, she looked at Jerry to catch the precise moment he figured out she was there, but he seemed to be working out who Stuart was.

The voices in the background had receded. She could hear her own voice, speaking, and calmly.

The conversation burbled back into awareness, as if it had skipped ahead. The two men seemed engaged in other things, they were quick to part again, almost like she and Stuart had buzzed in and pulled them away from something more important.

As she and Stuart passed between the dining tables, searching for a place to sit for a drink, she had the disgruntled feeling of being overlooked. He didn’t even ask her how she was. Yeah. Ouch.

“Did you know that other guy?” Stuart asked.

“That,” she said, trying to sound casual, “was Jerry.”

“Oh. Jerry.”

He chuckled.

“He’s little shorter than I pictured.”

“What did you picture?” she inquired. She had herself pictured a flattened, 2D, almost cartoonish character from irascible post-breakup memories, only to be met with the unstoppable, indescribable rush of warm, fuzzy nostalgia…

“Me? The way you talked about him…”

How did I talk about him?

She didn’t ask.

They migrated past the tables to the garden area, where they found Scott’s girlfriend Tasha and some of her female friends. The women chatted for a little while Stuart went to hunt down a non-alcoholic drink for himself. Tasha and Scott were relocating; by implication, circling in on marriage. She replied: oh, how nice, and all that—

“—and, Jerry’s here,” said Tasha.

A waiter stopped by with a tray of mouth-watering samples: miniature, bite-sized Tiramisu cheesecakes. Tasha and the other females each took one, but she had to pass–lactose intolerance.

“We’ve crossed each other,” she finally replied, composing herself.

Tasha didn’t say anything; as if waiting for elaboration. There was nothing to say. Jerry was obviously healthy and looked well and nothing seemed out of shape in his world. Now she was staring intently at the tiny cheesecake Tasha was eating.

“He looks delicious!”

She’d blurted it out.

“I mean, that looks delicious. Jerry looks like he’s well.”

“Does he?” Tasha was eyeing her, squinting. “Well, that’s interesting.”

Stuart seemed to be taking a while, so she left Tasha and the women and went back in search of him. He was at the bar trying to decipher some weirdly named cocktails. Something made her turn and found herself suddenly watching Jerry – now alone – and she marvelling at how her quick reflexes kept pulling her into this trouble.

Actually he wasn’t alone, but chatting up some woman who was probably drunk; throwing her head back every time she laughed, which was a lot.

Oh dear, she thought. Jerry flexing his game? Dinner and a show…

He was in the deep end, engaging a woman who was an intimidating package, had to be over six feet natural, plus heels. Meanwhile, the tall girl’s friends stood off on the side, also tall and having a mini convention critiquing their friend’s determined – or crazy – admirer.

Watching their smirks and tittering, she didn’t feel so amused anymore.

Now Stuart had turned to watch too, plus other people along the bar, while the drunk woman had begun to raise her voice, and Jerry was raising his voice in response. There was something of a slinging match coming on and she suddenly didn’t want to be standing there, playing voyeur to this coming Hindenburg. But if it was the Hindenburg, she had train wreck syndrome: she couldn’t look away.

From the raised voices, it sounded like Jerry’s height was being torn into with gusto. God knows she herself had uncorked a few zingers at his expense in that department. Jerry’s height insecurities were like the gift of comedy that just kept giving, (‘let’s make out; I’ll even let you sit on my knee…’), but he was only a tad shorter than her, barely noticeable, unless she wore big heels, which was like all the time, and with relish.

This woman’s ultimate crime was, she just wasn’t very smooth or funny at turning down a guy. Just mean. And the woman wasn’t about to stop, in fact, her friends finally had to swoop in and extracting her like a decaying tooth.

Trying to look disaffected, she and Stuart collected their drinks, found a table, and sat down, but almost as soon as she put her drink on the table, she was stretching to her feet again.

“Bathroom,” she said. “Don’t wait up.”

She pivoted away, and wandered as if looking for the bathroom, even though she knew exactly where it was, scanning tables vaguely, even asking herself what she was doing, and replying again to herself: she just wanted to talk. She wanted to see if he was doing okay. He didn’t always know how to shake himself off and just laugh, like she did. He went into himself and it concerned her, and she’d feel the need to reach in and pull him out.

Now Stuart would be wondering where she was. She returned to the table.

The live music cranked up, the two of them moved in for a better seat, but instead of sitting back down, started dancing in the paved garden beyond the tables with the festoon lights strung up. Here, Stuart actually surprised her; he knew how to dance! – if only a little, and taking it slowly, and with her firm guidance.

She fixed her gaze at Stuart and kept it there, trying to filter out the crowd. Her eyes were smoky and her lipstick very dark, burgundy, and Stuart he was tall, pale, soft spoken and academic.

He got flustered at the prolonged eye contact and concluded it by kissing her brow and looking away as if bashfully.

A brow kiss? She wasn’t lying on her death bed just yet.

“Hey, where’s the bathroom?” he mumbled. She pointed it out and he went off.

Jerry must have scurried home by now. Well, she was here with Stuart, she was enjoying herself, and not in a wild way but just enough to keep sane.

Later, after dark, parents mercifully took their kids home, the crowd thinned some, and Scott invited them to his house for eleventh hour drinks.

They sat out on the patio, while she went into the kitchen to top her drink up and, on impulse, started rooting through the cupboard, suddenly recalling the cocktail shaker she’d once gifted Tasha with,  curious to see whether it was still up to the task of carrying out its life-sustaining duties. Then Jerry walked in on her.

She was struck by that lightness of earlier, like exhilaration, the feeling of dropping suddenly, tinged with frustration like contained panic. Maybe she hadn’t given him enough credit, thinking the tall lady had defeated him. He didn’t look cut up or anything.

But he still didn’t look at her.

“Staying for the Flip?” she enquired. You couldn’t be certain; Jerry loved his nightly hibernation, and while she loved sleep too, she loved being awake more, and it won out every time she had any choice. Eight hours was a heck of a long time without some reminder that you were still alive.

“Of course,” he replied. “Can’t miss it.”

She asked him what he was planning and he made a joke that everyone would get ‘flambéed’ by cosmic radiation. She only wondered if he was taking cooking classes. It would have caused her jealousy meter to spike. Then she laughed before she could help it, a laugh of relief. Was that a note of bitterness she detected from him? Did it sound like he was still nursing break-up wounds? Was that why he avoided her this whole time? She hated to be smug, but…well, no she didn’t, it felt good.

They exchanged some words, and her voice didn’t even sound like her own. He got a glass of water. It was like he needed a millimeter of space between them at all times; he was so close he should have been touching her but she couldn’t feel it. He left the room again.

Damn that guy. She’d laughed at his dumb cosmic flare joke, why couldn’t he humor her now? Meet her eye, show interest in Stuart, be a grown up. And he’d sounded smug, like he was going places and she wasn’t. He always sounded like he was subtly making fun of her, talking down to her, and it was infuriating.

She felt angry and seriously turned on, and wanted his attention. Not for him to look at her like a used toy, like he’d had his fun with her and was now looking for someone serious.

The homebrew cocktail – an improvised lime Daiquiri with no lime, but slices of orange and lemon and white wine vinegar – ended up startlingly more alcoholic than intended. She couldn’t take it out to the others, it was too much. She drank it all.

She still had the baggie, too. The one Stuart had asked her to dispose of. The party wasn’t over…

She slunk into the living room, where the TV was on, but the room was empty. He must have been in here; on a small table by one of the chairs there was a glass of half quaffed rum.

She wanted his attention and she was going to get it. She felt crazy, in a good way. Or did she feel good in a crazy way? Hard to tell. The seconds snapped along like separate frames, she saw herself acting ahead of time before she could stop it. Saw the baggie in her hand.

Next second the powder had tumbled into the drink, melted into the deep dark liquid void of rum.

Suddenly she was back in the kitchen, like Alice come out of Wonderland, wondering if it was real. Only one way to find out.

There was some sherry in the pantry. Fully wild, she tipped the bottle back, letting the bitter syrup spill into her mouth until it nearly induced her to gag.

A short time later she hovered at the living room entranceway, very drunk, and saw Jerry out of his seat, standing as if dazed. His face was stonier, eyes glazed and unfocused. But she wasn’t looking into face anymore, and was no longer interested in whether he was looking at her. She was looking at his body, his groin.

She leaned around the entranceway and beckoned him with her hand, and put a finger to her lips to shush him. He stumbled across the room after her, looking totally out of it.

The house was still empty, they were all out on the porch. Down the hallway, she met him in a bedroom. She leaned against the wall, folding her arms, trying to look casual, like they’d just bumped into each other by accident. He didn’t play along, but stared at her with foggied expectation.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he slurred. She smiled. He reconsidered: “You always do.”

“Come here,” she said, pointing right at her feet. He stepped in front of her. The drug had kicked in, his view of her seemed misaligned.

“You came alone didn’t you?” she said.

“What?” He paused. “New perfume.” He sounded enticed. “Different.”

He was wrong. It must have intermixed with other scents at the Hotel, but it hadn’t changed at all.

“It’s hard meeting new people,” she sympathized. And with a small smirk, added: “Especially girls.”

She ran her hands under his shirt, letting his torso glide against the flat of her hands. It struck her how much she loved the feeling of his body against her palm. Not hugely toned, but familiar, an old chair she wanted to sink into.

“You’re drunk,” he said, somewhat stupidly.

Speak for yourself, she thought.

She kissed him, trapping his voice in his throat. One hand slid down the crotch of his pants, capably surrounding his shaft and squeezing, and slipping further until she was cupping his balls. She took one of his hands and passed it against her breast for a teasing instant, just long enough to tell him her nipples were erect, before drawing it back again.

“Get on the bed.” Her lips vibrated against his. “Now.”

“Jenfff—” he grunted, but she kissed him again, and bit his lip and held it.

“You were looking for action all night,” she said plainly, holding her face oppressively close to his. “You got it. You want me. Now you’re going to fuck me.”

“We are not—” his voice stopped as she rolled his balls in her hand. Gripping them, she felt like she had him on a leash, and if he kept refusing her she could twist him until he relented. Her heels had her looking down upon him.

“Just a kiss.” Drunk or not, he knew her too well to believe that. She was waiting for him to pass out, and she would keep going. Easing her hand around his balls, she was already dipping her head again, puckering her lips, but he turned his head at the last second. His reflexes were terrible, and her lips smeared across his cheekbone.

“No.” For an instant he looked panicked. “This is Scott’s house.”

“What if it was my house?”

Her hand had tightened around his balls again. He gulped in air.

“I’m going to pass out.”

Without warning he shoved her off him, surprising her with his roughness. Before she even realized what she was doing she slapped him hard across the cheek. He staggered a little, screwed his eyes, and after a little start like he’d come out of a trance, he blinked and, like he can’t remember what just happened, left the room.

Her eyelids dropped, shutting the world behind a curtain of black, orange and blinding blue.

Composing herself, she went and found the others on the patio, and didn’t want to be alone anymore, but wanted to melt into the group like she’d belonged the whole time. So when they all left their seats and traipsed into the living room for the countdown, she went too, tangling her thoughts in abstractions like; since when did geomagnetic polar reversals have countdowns, to the second? They were unpredictable. It didn’t make any sense.  

The glass tumbler by the chair – now empty.

“Everyone, please be quiet.”

Right at that moment, Jerry walked in front of the TV, flourishing a strange looking machine, affecting this pretence of profundity like someone about to unveil the secrets of the universe:

“You are about to witness something incredible.”

He was grinning in an un-Jerry-like way.

“He’s not fooling around,” said a guy called Remy, a friend of Scott’s.

“We need witnesses,” Jerry went on in a rush, his eyes flicking around at everyone wildly.

There was a ripple of anticipation: Remy was jabbering on, but fell silent once Jerry switched on the machine. It made a low frequency buzz that was soothing and sinister at the same time. The TV continued to play, a mindless noise in the background.

Someone nudged her arm. It was Stuart, at her side. She’d barely noticed he was right there.

“This looks like it’s going to hurt,” he muttered. “Hurt someone, anyway.”

There was something lofty, parental, in his voice. She had the flash of inspiration that Jerry was trying, bizarrely, to get her back, and maybe prepared to hurt himself in the process. Bad.

“What are you doing, Jerry?” she barked.

His face was blank again, the grin had gone, as if he didn’t know the answer himself. She waited a moment but he didn’t reply. The silent treatment again. He was hiding from her in the one place she could not get him – inside his own skull.

“Jerry, look at me.”

Stuart nudged her arm again.

“Has he ever done this before?” he muttered, sounding faintly concerned.

She just shook her head. She didn’t even know what ‘this’ was, only that she didn’t like it. It must be the machine causing her flesh to prickle and hairs on her arms to stand up.

“Don’t do it,” she said, but her voice came out breathless; even as she said it she saw in Jerry’s determined stare he wasn’t listening to her, all his focus was on the machine and there was no stopping him.

In the background, the TV was chanting with the countdown. She recalled the horror stories about people taking bad trips, doing incredibly stupid things. Yet none of the horror stories prepared her for the kind of trip Jerry made.

He held out the machine like he was presenting it to some invisible person as a gift, and at the last second his hand wrapped around what looked like a gun trigger, squeezed, and there was crackling snap around the room, like static. Jerry’s stare became focused on something in the distance, but there was no distance; just empty air.

The room acquired a strange resonance like a huge cavern, but it was only for a moment, and as the countdown reached its end, Jerry took steps forward – where he was planning on going wasn’t clear; there was just blank wall opposite him – but it didn’t matter, as he never arrived.

It was the most ludicrous thing she’d ever seen. He tripped and in the same instant, there was a bang like a firecracker and his body seemed to pull inward at all sides, all at once. At the same time, he dropped to the floor. Or, what was left of him lying on the floor; a single thumb wrapped in a scrap of cloth.

They all stood there and it seemed, somehow both like ages passed and time had stopped.

Remy launched forward first, breaking the collective trance of wonder, and dropping beside the machine that had tumbled over the floor after Jerry had disappeared. He tilted it between his hands, examining its condition, muttering darkly.

Dazed, everyone else traipsed over to the tiny object lying where Jerry should have been lying.

She didn’t want to get any closer but she was drawn, as if magnetically, step by step over the carpet. Stuart’s hand swept around the crook of her arm, trying to hold her back, but she brushed him off, crossing the room until it lay at her feet. As she stared, the features on the tiny object grew by perspective, sharpening into something familiar; something she dared not believe.

The object on the ground was Jerry. The whole thing, all of him. He was miserably tiny. And his clothes, and they were tiny too. Was he still alive? There was no way.

Minutes passed as they stared, asking hollow rhetorical questions. Remy babbled with projected assurances while Scott peppered him with questions that hung in the air without answers.

The room swam, the gasps and alarmed protestations of the others, now crowded around Jerry’s body, deepened into a muffled drone, like she had plunged underwater. The chunk wedge heels on her feet suddenly felt like toothpick-narrow stilettos as her balance faltered—

—then caught herself and the world cleared up again. She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the horrifying notion that if she’d fainted, she would have squashed Jerry flat under her incredible weight.

His now tiny head shifted to the side like he was trying to roll over while asleep. He was still alive. The relief was like jumping out of the way of a speeding train; she felt good only because she’d narrowly escaped feeling much worse. She had been certain he was dead – worse than dead, body obliterated. It was as if he’d been spared, like by divine intervention or something. What other explanation was there?

While she was trying to hang on to her breath, the others were remarking in stunned voices, also realizing Jerry was alive.

On the ground, the Jerry-shaped person let out a faint, breathless whimper and vomited.

“Jerry?” said Scott. “Can you hear me?”

Jerry didn’t respond; his head had flopped back down against the carpet.

“I don’t think he can hear us,” said Tasha, sounding worried as she exchanged glances at the rest of them.

Another small, pained squeak came from the floor.

“Is he awake?” Tasha went on. It wasn’t clear; he was shifting in an uncoordinated way, and his eyes were closed.

“i said i can hear you!”

A tiny voice had projected up from the floor. Realizing what it was, her lips pursed while her chest suddenly felt tight. Not in a bad way, but in a ludicrous, inappropriate way – she found herself trying to hold back incredulous laughter. Only some of it was from her earlier, giddy relief. Mostly, the voice coming from Jerry’s mouth was just so unbearably cute.

“Oh my gosh, did you hear that?” Tasha exclaimed. “Was that him?”

The tiny voice came from the floor again:

“scott? tasha?...remy?”

“What’s that on the ground?” Scott pointed out, “Is that…vomit?”

She’d noticed it, too, but she was too distracted by Jerry’s size. Now something got through her head: Jerry was alive, but was he sick? She was, after all, herself, a little sick just looking at him.

“Yeah,” Remy said, squinting down at the floor. “He threw up.”

He said this in a strange, clinical, slightly fascinated way, like the whole thing was a spectacle, and she remembered: hadn’t he been the one to set Jerry up to this in the first place? She glared at him and all her anger and giddiness and fear tumbled out into her voice:

“You! – What the fuck did you make him do?”

The others all stared at her. Even some part of her own mind shrunk away: the part subconsciously comparing the thunderous volume of her own voice to the delicate voice that had come from the floor.

Remy cowered under the look she shot him.

“I didn’t do anything.” Previously babbling calculations and estimations previously, now this was all he could utter.

Her glare softened as she stared back down

“Jerry, say something,” she said. “Please.”

Say you’re fine, sweetie.

A part of her just wanted to hear that tiny, cute voice again, just to make her feel better; the sound of it was like an instant rage soother, an acoustic stressball.

But Jerry didn’t reply. He had sat up; his eyes were wide open and he was staring up at each of them in shock, utterly unable to comprehend. He now looked on the verge of screaming.

Scott went very still as if something had just occurred to him. Then he said:

“Does he…Does he know who he is?”

Jerry’s eyes found Remy:

“remy,” he said. “what the fuck happened?”

Hearing that tiny voice say ‘fuck’ nearly made her laugh again. He was obviously in a state of panic but she had the sudden urge to grab him and lift him up to her ear, let that sweet trill lullaby down her ear canal.

Remy then said some things that honestly made no sense, and only confirmed her hunch that neither he nor Jerry had known what they had been doing. On top of that, it became clear Remy didn’t know how to fix the situation. When he heard this, Jerry’s tiny body was wracked with trembling sobs.

“the solution is just going to come to you while you’re goggling at me like an idiot?” he screeched up from the floor.

She couldn’t suppress the urge anymore. It was clear none of them had a better idea about how to handle the situation.

She stepped closer to the tiny figure, trying not to alarm herself at the insane size comparison between either of her wedge heels and her ex-boyfriend’s miniature stature, and crouched, saturating the gesture with gentleness so she did not frighten him into mental breakdown. She couldn’t even imagine the terror he was in right now, but his tearful eyes and tiny chest quivering in and out rapidly gave some indication.

“Jerry,” she said, as steadily as possible, “calm down. You’re tired and sick. Let’s get you off the floor.”

He couldn’t be trusted at that size; the powder was still in his system and he wasn’t thinking clearly. He could still make a berserk run and, in the stampeding chaos of a pursuit after him, accidentally end up so much mulched grit under someone’s tread.

That thought invigorated her more than anything. Without thinking about it too hard, she cupped her fingers around him, drawing his entire body against her palm, and – so he could not thrash and spring free – kept him wrapped there in a gentle fist, before lifting him.

He was so incredibly light that it almost made her panic; there was so little of him, barely anything. He separated from the floor so easily she almost had to check he hadn’t slipped from grasp.

Her entire ex-boyfriend was wrapped up under her fingers, she thought, stunned, and her own feelings confused her. There was the sheer cuteness of it: holding her ex in the palm of her hand – literally. And she was self-conscious of the full power over this tiny person; his whole body was subject to the manipulations of her fist. His whole world was her fist. Amazingly, he wasn’t even struggling, wasn’t fighting against the inside of her hand to get free. He totally trusted her. Or he was too tired to resist her. She was swamped by the affection she felt towards him, as if in picking him up she’d staked a claim of ownership. She was utterly dizzy with disbelief.

She held him protectively to her chest, turning her hand so she could see the top of his head in the crook of her thumb, and on impulse, touched the soft hair on the crown of his exposed head with the fingers of her other hand. His body had relaxed now, and she could feel his tiny heartbeat pulsing against the inside joint of her middle finger. It was so – lame as it sounded, there was no other word for it – precious.

And he felt good inside her hand; fitted, contoured. She was tempted to squeeze him out of pure contentment, but refrained.

The others were debating what to do with him, and she let them; feeling there was nothing for them to debate: if someone had tried to lift him out of her hand right there she would have slapped them, or worse.

*

“Tonight did not go the way I thought it would,” she said quietly and with such a serious tone that Stuart laughed, thinking she was deadpanning, but she was serious.

They were in the car, driving away from Scott and Tasha’s. Jerry was curled up asleep in her hand, which she kept rested on her lap, as Stuart drove.

She kept staring down at him in disbelief, while cupping him and stroking him; couldn’t keep her anxious fingers away from him; he was so tiny and delicate looking, and his hair was so soft and felt so good rubbing and forth against the sensitive pads of her fingertips. It was weirdly therapeutic and somehow totally right; she’d been running after him all night and here he was, literally in the palm of her hand and not going anywhere.

“We’ve got to get him to the hospital,” said Stuart.

“And what?” she looked up, eyebrows drawn tight. “Does this look like something a doctor can fix?”

“Well, no, but…” the rest of the reply never came.

She noticed they were taking the road home, like Stuart was heading there by default, sans any better idea. She didn’t complain.

They had to take Jerry to get checked over by someone. But the thought of normal sized medical equipment poking and tapping around his tiny body bothered her. And what if the doctors admitted him as an inpatient for investigation, or a science lab? But what other choice did they have? Who else was qualified to medically examine him, just to sign off on his health status, without wanting to take him away from her..?

“I’m about to say something utterly ridiculous,” she admitted. “But what about the vet?”

“You really think so?” Stuart flashed a glance at her.

“Stuart. Look. He’s the size of a mouse.”

“That doesn’t mean you show him to a mouse specialist.”

She stared fixedly out the window.

“First thing tomorrow, I’m going to make an appointment.”

It was 1 AM when they arrived back at their place – rental – no time to sit around and have a languid tea party over the ‘Jerry question’. That would have to wait. But first, they needed to figure out where Jerry would sleep.

With spontaneity that even surprised her, she perked up:

“He would fit on the bedside table!”

It was so cute, and a crazy thing to wake up to every morning; Jerry’s tiny face tucked up in—

—Every morning? Whoa there, girl. Just how long would he be staying with them?

Stuart just gave her a puzzled, strained smile.

“Honey, I’m not sure how he’d feel about that.”

But she was only joking. Half. Sort of. Not.

After rustling around the laundry and spare cupboards, he came out with something else.

She raised an eyebrow.

“A sponge?”

“Got to admit,” he half shrugged, “it works for size, right?”

She said nothing as he placed it on the table in the space dividing living room and kitchen, and close to the master bedroom. Close enough, she thought, that if Jerry screamed out in the night she would hear him from the queen bed.

This was insane, she chided herself. He was tiny, not a child. And she was sure as hell not his mother.

Still, she didn’t want to leave his side.

They both stared at Jerry, lying on his side on the sponge, with a hand cloth for a blanket. He looked peaceful, at least. The ‘blanket’ was wrapped around him, except for one of his bare feet, which stuck out. She stared at it, utterly charmed.

Then, to her amazement, Stuart extended a pointer finger down and gave Jerry’s exposed foot a tickle. Jerry snorted in his sleep, kicking his foot away, but didn’t awaken. Stuart stepped back, chuckling.

“What do you think, Jen?” he murmured. “What have we got ourselves into?”

With a bewildered sigh, he retreated into the bedroom.

She remained a moment longer, running her eyes over his miniaturized features, still telling herself that the tiny person didn’t just uncannily resemble her ex-boyfriend in miniature, like a perfect replica doll, it was him, in every way. Everything that Jerry was previously was contained in that minute frame. She rolled his top up and thumbed his chest, searching for his heartbeat. He looked so peaceful she wanted to be certain he wasn’t depressing into cardiac arrest. The incomprehensibly tiny heart beat into the sensitive pad of her thumb. Satisfied with his pulse rate, she smoothed the blanket back over him.

With another of those impulsive moments of hers, she bent and kissed the side of his head, not so much wanting to kiss him as wanting to see what it would be like at that size. It wasn’t weird or self-conscious at all like she’d expected; his cheek fit into the crevice between her lips and it was totally natural. His head shifted against her lips as he stirred in his sleep. She quickly drew back, not wanting him to wake.

Stuart called from the bedroom. She turned and left, switching off the light, meditating to herself on everything. She had survived the night’s misadventures and decided it wasn’t a disaster after all.

In the bedroom, Stuart was good for one roll in the hay, but it took some cajoling and was over quickly. He seemed disturbed that, in the midst of everything, she would even be in the mood.

But, for her, the sex was so outrageously inappropriate in the circumstances and somehow that made it unbearably erotic, perverse and thrilling. She was startlingly wet, even after Stuart had come and finished. He went to sleep and while he snored softly, she gave herself a second helping in record speed: it was as if her sex drive was a firecracker that had been lit up by a match. What was happening to her? What was this? It was kind of…

…exciting.

It was the afternoon and sea birds squawked overhead. The plain of turquoise ocean was foaming like whipped cream with the coming of each surging wave crest.

Down past the boardwalk we followed a path along the shoreline of the bay, to a bench looking out at the snowy waves. Taking a seat, Jen placed me down on the grainy wood benchtop. As a stream of people sauntered down the path past us, I cowed against the meaty wall of her thigh, as if for protection.  

As Jennifer flipped through her phone, there came gritty scraping as footsteps crossed the path, heading towards us. I looked up.

Natalie was wearing sunglasses and a bikini, without clothes her body was slender and willowy. She walked hand-in-hand with a man heads taller who had a towel slung over one shoulder and a slight paunch. Their pace slowed as they approached, both looking Jennifer up and down. Neither had seen her before.

Then Natalie’s eyes fell onto me and went tender and warm.

 “JERRY! HOW ARE YOU NOW?”

“Busy. But fantastic. You?”

Her lips pursed and her head tilted to one side.

“FRAZZLED,” she huffed, “BUT TRYING NOT TO BE. EXAMS.” She introduced the man:

“GRANT.”

I smacked a hand against my fiancée’s outer thigh.

“Jennifer.”

She stood to greet them properly while Natalie’s eyes had narrowed on me, receding into analysis. She dropped onto one knee, bringing her face down to my eye level. I was only wearing swim shorts and she wasn’t staring into my eyes, but at the faint scar line running over my bare abdomen.

“YOU HAD A HEART OPERATION,” she said through a squint.

“No, that’s just…” But that had been an excellent cover story, and in my haste to answer I had just blown it, “…just a minor accident at home.”

This was not reassuring. Her breath sucked in and she bit her lip.

Jen was radiantly mischievous.

“DON’T BE FOOLED BY THIS MAN,” she said. “AT HOME HE THINKS HE’S AN UTTER BADASS DAREDEVIL.” Her thumb aimed between my shoulderblades and gave a small shove, making me stumble a little.

“GOOD TO MEET YOU, FINALLY, JERRY, JENNIFER,” said Grant, in his crackling low timbre. His gaze lingered on Jen’s bikini-clad form. He gave a curt nod. “NICE FIGURE. VERY BAYWATCH.”

With a start, I realized he was talking about me. I had no words. Nice figure? Overstatement of the century. More like, nice figurine.

Across the shore, a volleyball was piffed over a net.

Giving Natalie a sideways glance, Grant’s immense shadow rippled as he bent right over me, feigned letting me in on a secret:

“THE GIRLS DON’T UNDERSTAND. IT TAKES PAIN TO GET WHERE YOU ARE.”

“You got that right,” I grimaced, maybe agreeing with him for a different reason.

‘The girls’ pretended to ignore this exchange for different reasons: Natalie trying to ignore my life necessarily entailed pain, Jennifer ignoring that Grant assumed she wouldn’t understand something because she was a girl.

Grant was well-proportioned himself, his face squared and angled, hair perfectly parted. He looked like one of these guys who headed student societies at SPU. Then again, Natalie seemed like a student committee girl herself. He put his arm around her shoulders and pecked her cheek at the appropriate times.

We carried on down the path along the Boardwalk. Walking behind Natalie and Grant, who were admiring the Boardwalk –which Natalie had not seen in a while, and Grant had never visited – Jen fiddled with me a little, adjusting and re-adjusting her grip, as if she was anxious. She was not. One cautious, sensual fingertip made a passage over my belly, running a nail with delicacy under the waistband of my little swim shorts, and making a small scooping motion for my shaft. The prickling of her long nail tips was like tiny insect bites all around my torso, I wiggled around, which seemed to amuse her even more. The nail slipped out by accident, but resolutely peeked in again under my swim pants.

With a cool burst of shame, I realized what she was doing, and began to panic, staring around at the beach without really seeing any of it. She was checking I didn’t have an erection since Natalie had shown up. Despite my insistence that we were merely friends, she must have sensed something between us, the flicker of a flame that had not yet burned out. She was perceptive like that. Or paranoid. If I thought our engagement would squash her jealousy, I was wrong.

My heart started to thud and I wrestled with her hands as the fingertip kept returning, trying to tweak my manhood to gauge its firmness. Finally, desperately, I gave up and stopped moving. The determined fingertip pushed around my balls, taking the shaft beneath the weight of its pad, and satisfied, left me alone again.

We secured a picnic bench looking out towards the water. A row of stalls and food houses extended along the opposite side. Grant and I waited at the table while Natalie and Jen went and got some food and drink to bring over.

Next moment I was being prodded awake, just in time to hear Natalie’s concerned inquiries about my heart, dismissed by Jen, who was only slightly more able to hide her concern, but not much. Under the bright sun, I must have started to nap. At least, that’s what I told them. Some Kolade perked me up and I was back online. We talked and ate.

Grant cleared his throat.

“YOU GUYS ARE TOGETHER, TOGETHER,” he looked between us for clarification. “HOW DO YOU—?”

“WHAT GRANT IS TRYING TO SAY IS,” Natalie interjected, bumping her shoulder into his, “DATING SUCH A SPECIAL LITTLE MAN LIKE JERRY MUST COME WITH CERTAIN OBSTACLES TO...ROMANCE.”

"THAT HAS NEVER BEEN JERRY’S STRONG SUIT," Jen shook her head dismissively, "OUR FIRST DATE, HE TOOK ME TO THIS WESTERN RESTAURANT, A COWBOY THEME, she exclaimed, "IT WAS BIZARRE, AND SO UNROMANTIC I ALMOST WENT STRAIGHT BACK OUT.” She looked down at me, pursing her lips in a smile. “AND THEN WE WOULDN’T BE SITTING HERE. BUT HE SHAPED UP.”

“She’s lying,” I piped up. “She wasn’t going to leave. She had to ride the mechanical bull,” I explained, “…for the third time.”

“NOT WHAT I REMEMBER, BABE,” she saidlightly.

“We couldn’t leave until she’d mastered it.”

Natalie let out a polite chime of laughter.

“YOU GUYS MAKE A CUTE COUPLE.”

As she said this, her pinky finger lifted and comfortably wrapped around my bicep, giving it a quick squeeze, as if she’d done it many times before. An easy, friendly gesture, and if I’d been normal size, she would have squeezed my arm with her entire hand. Realizing this, my insides blushed, and I couldn’t help but think by ‘cute’ she was specifically referring to my half of the couple.

Even after Natalie’s hand departed again, Jen’s eyes were suspended on the space where it had just been. Then she sipped her drink serenely.

"ARE WE ROMANTIC?" The unspoken end of this question: ‘…enough?’

"That’s a luxury I don’t have a lot of time for anymore.”

"IN MY CASE IT’S EITHER ROMANCE OR SCREW IT.” She shrugged. “AND SCREW IT WINS. BUT WE STILL DO DINNER TOGETHER, AND JUST HANG. JERRY IS A BIG FAN OF JUST HANGING – LIKE, FOR INSTANCE, FROM MY PONYTAIL. OH—" she stared down at me, "—YOU HAVE SOME FOOD ON YOUR..."

Halfway through a mouthful of Kolade I slapped a hand around my face with impatience.

"AH, NO, BABY...RIGHT THERE--"

She dipped her head, in a flash jabbed the tip of her tongue into my cheek with a sharp poke. Drink spurted out of my nose in surprised embarrassment, and she straightened in her seat, laughing and rubbing one finger up and down my back as I coughed and panted.

Natalie and Grant glanced at me, startled.

We went down to the beach, found a bare stretch of sandy carpet to claim as ours. Natalie and Jen lay down on the sand, Natalie on her back, Jen on her front, and Grant sitting upright. I was dumped over Jen’s shoulder, to sit just below her scalp. She bunched her hair over one shoulder to keep it out of my way.

They talked as I remained quiet, feeling extremely shy. Now that Jen had recognized the depth of my feeling to Natalie, anything I said could be potentially used against me later: that Natalie used to bath me in the sink like a baby rabbit, or playfully ‘toe wrestle’ me on her bed.

Jen was saying:

“…I RUN OUT THE DOOR ON GRANOLA AND YOGHURT.”

Natalie offered:

"JENNIFER, I KNOW A BREAKFAST SMOOTHIE THAT’S SUPER QUICK. SOMETIMES I DRINK IT WHILE DRIVING TO WORK."

A bottle of lotion came after me, rudely spurting its contents at my feet until a glistening puddle lay squarely between the massive shoulderblades.

“HELP ME OUT, BABE,” came the casual utterance, in between a conversation with Natalie and Grant. “THOSE HARD TO REACH SPOTS.”

Getting down on my belly, I took a deep breath, shutting my airways to the lotion’s overripe coconut perfume, and began to roll back and forth in the runny spill, coating my entire body. The surrounding flesh gave a small appreciative shiver. An insect droned past but the lotion aroma drove it away.

When I looked up, Natalie was watching me with a small smile that was remorsefully amused, as if she wished my predicament were not so funny. Catching my eye, she reached over and stroked her pinky up and down my face to wipe dollops of lotion and clear my vision.

I launched forward, doing a mudslide right down to Jen’s tailbone, leaving a trail of lotion, and coming to a rest at the curve of her posterior. In response, she hunched her shoulders and drew in a deep breath, my passage over her back tickled slightly but for now she tolerated it, so I could fulfil my lathering duty.

Crawling on hands and knees, I retraced my path back up her spine to the back of her neck, and once more slid down the smooth slope of her back. Working up and sliding down slowly smoothed the lotion into her back.

"HONEY," Jen continued, getting into the generous spirit, "I COULD TEACH YOU A MOJITO THAT'D MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE."

“OHHH…” Natalie drew breath sharply as if to say ‘don’t tempt me.’

Treading and crawling around the small of Jen’s back, I massaged the lotion around, and her butt cheeks firmed, sending a faint ripple through the bikini bottom. Spitting out some lotion, I said:

“She used to work in a bar.”

“WE’RE BOTH ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW,” Grant muttered, leaning towards Natalie, “WE DON’T NEED THE EXTRA INDUCEMENT TO DRINK.”

Natalie turned in her seat to him with a small encouraging smile:

“IT IS SEMESTER BREAK…”

With so much lotion now coating Jen’s back, my next flight down her spine was fast and frictionless. In an instant, her glorious ass cheeks grew immediately in direct view until they blocked out the sky, and it seemed like a pair of mattresses clapped in on either side of my head, making everything go black. As I rotated my head, the lotion squelched and smacked, but otherwise I couldn’t move.

Then something pinched my ankles and gave a gentle tug, but too gentle, it escaped my slippery body, and came at my ankles again. It tried this three more times before finally getting enough grip to retract me with a tiny wet pop that played deafeningly in my delicate ears.

Lying on my front, the massive globes of ass rose over me. directly below my face was the top of the tight ravine separating them, just visible over the bikini waist, a plunging, suffocating drop which my head had just been plucked free of, and not by Jen’s generosity.

Natalie's soft finger alighted upon my head to pet me, but accidentally pushing my face down, and with the lightest ease, my lotion-greased head slid perfectly back into place between the ass cheeks. The world seemed to shrink into a dark skintight sheath.

There was a small gasp, and once again my ankles were anxiously pinched and pulled, until my head burst free again. I blinked up at her through a white mask of smudged lotion. Trying not to laugh, she looked away.

My face had grown very hot with a blush as I wondered what it must have felt like to Jen: that I had pushed my head into her crack twice, and wiggled around, for no apparent reason. Her thoughtful silence was almost worse than laughter.

Grant had changed the topic, still fascinated by my size and asked how I managed getting around the house.

Jennifer answered:

“WE HAD DOOR ELECTRONICS PUT IN. JERRY’S FUND TOOK CARE OF IT.”

“OH,” said Natalie, perking up, “SO YOU COULD HAVE ALL KINDS OF THINGS—”

“LIKE, LIFTS, STAIRS, RAMPS,” Jen listed off, “YES—BUT HONESTLY, WE DON’T NEED IT. JERRY LOVES CLIMBING. VERY GOOD AT THAT, BABE,” she cooed down at me, “AREN’T YOU?” There was something concealed in her voice.

Natalie’s mind was working away now:

“BUT YOU COULD HAVE A WHOLE PREFAB FLAT SET DOWN FROM SCRATCH WITH ALL THE FACILITIES IN SCALE.” Her face shone with the revelation. “PICTURE THAT, JERRY;” she said to me, “OPENING THE DOORS, USING THE FURNITURE.”

I’d never thought of that before. Four walls and a ceiling to fit, a tasteful shutter on the giant, noisy outside world.

“Cool.”

I said it without thinking.

Jen had gone silent. In my peripheral vision, her head bowed over her straightened hands, one resting flat over the other, the clear polish of her nails glinting under the sun as her fingers flexed. She was twirling the stick of an icecream, trying to look like she was thinking though she’d already made up her mind, possibly a long time ago.

“IF YOU MEAN 'COOL' AS IN…'COLD'," she muttered.

"It’s an option,” I said. “Not saying I actually want to live in a tiny house." But even to me the way I said ‘want’ sounded strained and forced.

"HOW DO I VISIT YOU, HUH?” She shot back. “HOW DO I EVEN TAKE A STEP THROUGH –"

I burst out laughing, unable to help myself. She reached back, nimbly found my skull between forefinger and thumb squeezed it enough that I made a small sound. Once free, I crawled down and rested against her butt, out of her reach.

Her back flexed impressively, and when she spoke her voice was impassionate.

“I SUPPOSE IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE ON PAPER, BUT PERSONALLY I THINK IT’S A LITTLE RIDICULOUS TO EXPECT JERRY TO DOWNSIZE INTO SOME KIND OF GINGERBREAD HOUSE IN THE BACKYARD.”

Natalie stared at Jen, puzzled.

“IT WOULD HARDLY BE, LIKE, A DOG KENNEL,” she giggled a little at the mental image. “IT WOULD BE A RESPECTABLE PLACE OF RESIDENCE FOR A SLIGHT-STATURED ADULT MAN. REMIND HIM HE’S NOT SO LITTLE, YOU KNOW?”

“JERRY IS LITTLE,” Jen said, swatting an insect out of her face. “IT’S A FACT OF LIFE.”

“Swimming,” I said, bounding up Jen’s back, “who’s game?”

Everyone went quiet. Natalie and Grant stared at me, their brains whirring with vague probabilities.

Jen arched her back, lifting herself onto her forearms like a graceful Sphinx. My feet went shooting out from under the lotion-slicked floor of her back, tumbling head first towards the mount of her rump, face sliding right down the gentle crease of her spine, the mount of her rump seeming to rise up over my head. With a small wet squish, my lotion lubricated face slipped snug into the uppermost portion of asscrack exposed just above the pantyline. Again.

There was a sharp jostling back and forth and I came free. She had given her butt a tiny, irritated wiggle to dislodge me. Then I was plucked clean into the air as she got to her feet.

“RACE YOU TO THE WATER,” she said to me. It was a joke; I was stuffed in her fist, with my head peeking out, but trapped stubbornly under the weight of her thumb. She was gripping me extra tight because I was as slippery as a wet bar of soap. Her thumb pushed down on my head affectionately, and the weight made my neck groan.

Grant jumped up. Natalie stood warily, her eyes scoping Jennifer’s hand, identifying my tiny face peeking out from beneath her thumbnail, like I was a lighter and my head was the switch.

She worried the sea was too big and open for me, but Grant found an inlet, like a finger of turquoise water at a right angle to the sea, bordered by sandy rock walls, where the water was placid with no swells.

The water was cool and the sun warm on the top of my head. I had my arms stuck in some tiny inflatable rings, and floated about, unable to swim very fast, and constantly poked in the back by one of the three to steer me around. Sometimes Jen plucked my head up between forefinger and thumb and manouvered me around in the water like a chess piece. Their splashing cast hails of briny water drops over my head, in my eyes and mouth, while the motion of giant bodies sent out waves that spun and bobbed me about madly and unpredictably. In order to have fun I had to relax and let their swelling currents drag and pass back and forth like a helpless bath toy. I tried to remain in the shadow of one of the women, but not so close that I was in danger of being accidentally kicked or paddled.

Jennifer casually mentioned that I could hold my breath for at least nine minutes. Actually, it was only eight minutes, she had mistakenly tacked on an extra minute.

At this, Grant proposed they see who could hold their breath the longest. Jen swiftly took him on. Natalie was reluctant, looking to me as if for permission. The gentle appeal in her eyes, as if my opinion had some kind of power over her, had me lost for words. It occurred to me that if I’d asked her to leave the water with me, this instant, and take me back to the car – or, potentially anywhere else – she would have done it without question, possibly over Jennifer’s objections.

Noting Natalie’s concern, Grant’s low, dull voice broke the moment:

“JERRY’S THE JUDGE: WHO’S UP FOR AIR AND WHEN.”

The sun’s glaring warmth seemed to beat into my skull.

“You don’t think I can?” I shot.

“JERRY,” Natalie said pleadingly. “YOUR HEART.”

Jen’s figure treaded up to me, and bringing her face down very low in the water to look straight into my face.

“YOU’RE BASICALLY AQUAMAN,” she murmured, very low. “YOU DON’T NEED TO PROVE ANYTHING TO HIM.”

Below the surface, my groin was given a teasing stroke by the back of a nail, as if to remind me of potential I had unknown to Grant. I relented.

The three of them got into position, counted down, and submerged.

I started counting. I was bobbing with every wave crest, suddenly all alone on the sea as the gentle waves scrolled by. Then the quiet got boring. I kept counting.

The coast appeared as I ascended every wave crest, then rose away. It was far ahead of me, too far to swim. Treading, I circled away from it, and focused on the horizontal blue ribbon out ahead, trying to find where the sky met the ocean, but at my size, the emerging wavefronts kept it hidden. So I watched the wavefronts to anticipate each oncoming flush of the tide.

The water grew darker. My pulse quickened. As I stared down into the inky depths below my feet, I wondered if the sea was thick with shoals of fish. Or bigger creatures that could snap me up in one bite.

The darkness seemed to shift around, surrounding me. It was too coordinated to be a group of creatures. My stomach churned in knots as I watched it.

There was a roaring sound as a wave of water stirred and foamed right in front of me. I sucked in a breath as the wave expanded into me, sending me tilting into the water and bouncing back up again. A giant pair of bare feet had parted above the surface in a kick and darted back down, like a whale’s tail smacking just above the water. The spray flew up and rained down a second later.

Who was that? I had no explanation: the three of them were all supposed to be holding their breath, not swimming around.

Then I realized I’d lost count. It didn’t matter.

Right before my face, a massive, round shape thrust up above the water, sending me into a mad bobbing action. I shielded my body as a pair of enormous eyes emerged from the sparkling blue depths, followed by the ridge of a nose, and then a big pair of shining wet lips. The entire head emerged, lifted up by a long, slender neck. The giant figure only stopped once her shoulders showed, just hovering above the water level. Her skin shone under the sun, and a short, gleaming mane of reddish brown hair ran back over her head. She flicked it back, whipping flecks of water over me.

I treaded helplessly, becoming acutely aware that, the shadowy bulges of the woman’s colossal chest lay, scarcely contained in the stringiest bikini possible, like a pair of underwater boulders straining against ropes, and each dark protruding nipple standing in the cold water. The underwater shelf was practically below my feet.

Where were the others? They should have been below me. In fact, they should have surfaced by now. At my size, the ocean looked never-ending. It was difficult to gauge where I was. I must have drifted away from them without realizing, to the end of the inlet, or even beyond. My thoughts began to whizz in my head like a disturbed flock of birds. How far had I drifted?

The woman made a noise of surprise and glided backwards. The swell of her receding motion tugged me towards her as if by an invisible bind.

Now I could see her face again; her expression went from surprise to inquisitiveness, blinking at me as if trying to figure out if I was real. Her mouth opened – anticipating an expression of remorse for startling me, I raised my hand, preparing to wave off her apology – just as the air charged with her blaring voice:

“OH MY GOD! JERRY! JERRY MOUSSEAU!”

My hand froze in the air. I twisted around, trying to make distance with an inelegant, panic-driven freestyle, my body whipping and jerking more than paddling, fighting the tilting green surface at every instance, which suddenly seemed thick and unyielding like slippery sand.

“WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?!” the woman’s voice rang out behind me. “YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN ME AN AUTOGRAPH YET! THERE’S A PEN IN MY CAR – LET ME TAKE YOU!”

My heart raced as the water splashed and rippled behind me. I urged my body into overdrive but the inflatable rings – designed to keep me safe – were now hampering my escape.

There was no time to react. I just caught sight of the glimmering wet fingers as they closed around me and ripped me out of the water. My heart was no longer just hammering away, it was in freefall.

 “SO I KISS YOU AND IT’S GOOD LUCK,” the suggestive trill of her voice hammered into my ears, “OR SO THEY SAY.”

Blinking and staring, I was struck dumb. I’d never heard anything like that before. But people could be saying anything about me online. I tried not to Google myself.

Before I could ponder it, I was flying up into her rapidly magnifying face, while her shining wet lips dived down and smacked around my face like two pool inflatables. Just as quickly the vacuuming pressure departed, her head drew back and bowed over me, giving my body an up and down inspection.

“SO,” she began, “IS THE OTHER RUMOR TRUE?”

Her eyes honed in on my groin, and a finger uncurled from my body and pushed downwards against my swim shorts.

Then stopped as a voice barked out:

“JERRY!”

It was Jen’s voice. If you didn’t know her very well you’d think she sounded angry. But I knew the urgent growl in her voice actually meant she was afraid.

The woman’s head swiveled around, and then rested upon me, smiling smugly.

“LOOKS LIKE I GOT YOU FIRST! NOW…” her eyes were drawn along to the mouth of the inlet, where it met the rocking wave wrests of the ocean. She looked like she was making mental measurements, and then made up her mind. My stomach crumpled up in utter, dismal dread. Clutched in her hand, I was helpless as a landbound fish.

Jen’s voice resounded, even more urgently:

“JERRY—!”

I let out a shriek:

“Jennifer—!”

“…CATCH US IF YOU CAN!” the woman gloated.

With a cymbal-like crash, the world collapsed forward in a powerful dive. My head was thrust underwater.

I’d only been out of the water seconds, but the chill shocked me all over again. A thick blue fog of water pressed in at me from all sides, droning in my ears. The woman’s giant feet kicking chugged heavily from somewhere behind, like huge rudders.

My whole body was dragged down faster than if I had an iron ball manacled to me. One of my inflatables slipped off my arm and was lost from sight. One overlong arm paddled in great sweeps while the other clutched me close to the torso. I caught flashes of the eye-popping breasts, so oppressively large they blocked most of my view. Below that, the enormous toned belly and dark navel. Below that, the long bare legs blurred and darkened into receded depths. It came through my panic that I might not be dealing with a totally sane fan.

As I flailed and floundered my arms, the other of my inflatables slipped off my arm. A burst of speed accompanying a powerful set of kicks caused my swim shorts to wrench off and disappear into the watery gloom.

Then there was a sense of rotation – the woman tipped her head up to take a breath, and raised her arm so my face penetrated the surface alongside. I gulped down air, though I could hold my breath for much longer.

The woman’s hand shifted to grasp me better, but slipped as she descended again. With quick reflexes her fingers caught at whatever they could get. It felt like something big and firm snapped around my ankles and then the world went dim and cloudy blue as I was dragged below, alongside her body like a mere child’s bath toy.

Another kicking surge, another sweep of the paddling arm, and I was streaming along underwater backwards by my ankles, and wickedly fast like I was being dragged by a boat – so fast my body felt like it was stretching painfully and I could barely tell up from down. The woman was an accomplished swimmer.

The woman began using both arms to stroke, inadvertently whipping me back and forth underwater. My body ached as it was wrenched this way and that, and the sea depths became a quivering blurred shadow world, until I shut my eyes in solace from the building nausea.

A dark shape passed by, very close. A soft wall brushed right past me, and on instinct, I pushed my hands out, scrabbling against it. Then the wall slammed into me, and the fingers clutching my ankles spread, releasing me so that I found myself unmoored in the depths, with no sense of direction. Without my inflatables tugging me to surface, my body was suspended in green limbo.

I kicked towards the light, before my head finally burst out of the water, sucking in air gratefully.

Only a moment later, huge shadows grew over my body before, seemingly out of nowhere, a huge object descended on me.

There was a shattering pain in my skull. It felt like two boxing gloves had punched in on either side of my head at the same time, and held there fast. The objects were so big their edges crowded around the perimeter of my vision, blotting out my peripheral sight. Pink grooves indicated it was a pair of giant fingertips.

Dazed from the blow, my jaw worked furiously as I felt myself rising up out of the water where the chilled air blew across my naked, wet body, for a moment too stunned to take a breath.

Then the arm holding me shuddered as if struck. I was shooting back down into the water, with the pressure still resolutely fixed around my head. My captor was attempting to dive back under the waves, taking me with her, my head neatly pincered between forefinger and thumb.

I was hardly able to suck in a breath of air before the water crashed over my head, bubbling against my face in angry spurts.

I was jerked sideways and then shooting like a rocket in some unknown direction, pushing through the currents, the water tugging heavily at all sides, stretching my body. I was limp, couldn’t fight or move against the tremendous force of momentum. It was like my head had been slammed in a giant mousetrap which was now being dragged along. The pain circling my skull in pulsing waves as the fingerpads pressed my head even harder, if possible, adamant I remain in possession. I clung to my mouthful of air but its value was continuously trickling away.

The arm whipped up, attached to it by my head, I briefly rose out of the water before falling back down under the waves.

For another half-minute or so, I was caught in a constant, unpredictable rollercoaster of movement as to leave me in a state of numbed shock.

The great arm jerked again, I felt a whip of cool air on my face, before sinking underwater again within a matter of seconds. Then I slowed and felt myself turning. What felt like a thick blanket wrapped around my body and cinched tight, squeezing my precious air out of my lungs, out between my lips into a stream of bubbles that flew up past my head.

Through a sickly veil of nausea, I realized the anaconda around my torso was actually a couple of fingertips and a thumb. One of these pressed on my groin, and as I was pulled and shifted about through the water, made a sliding rubbing motion up and down over my shaft. As the fingertips slipped and flexed, my shaft was pulled towards my belly, and then nearly squashed by an unbearable grinding pressure. I tried to focus on something – anything else – but it was inescapable; my shaft began to throb sensitively, asking for relief.

Then I was flying up in the air, upside down. But as my head was still being pinched, this was unspeakably painful, pulling me in different directions, until the fingertips around my torso slipped away. My body flipped around freely in the air, putting strain on my immobile neck. I took a breath before I was pulled underwater again, and the previous fingertips found me again as if by sonar, compressing my body once more in their insistent lust for my possession.

It seemed two titanic figures were struggling in the water, at the same time trying to claim me. While one retained a solid grip on my head, I endured the simultaneous feeling of broad flat fingerpads dancing over my most vulnerable areas. It was like being jostled in a crowd of people. The thumb continuously massaged my back, sometimes poking my butt, while the pointer and middle finger shifted around my front, poking my chest and belly, and brushing back and forth over my crotch.

One of the fingers slipped, running down my stomach, before attempting to flick back up to its former position, inadvertently scratching a nail over my front. My long-healed abdominal scar gave a sharp, painful pulling sensation as if trying to draw inwards for protection. From groin to chest my entire front was alive, coursing and throbbing with attuned sensitivity.

The offending fingers curled, tucking my into the cushioned creases of the inner finger joints, squeezing to the point of making me cry out underwater, losing most of my held breath in a stream of bubbles. Now I could feel my ribs creaking inwards.

Ah God…! I thought, willing my thoughts out into the yonder above the water, you’re going to crush me!

Then, all thoughts fled as the fingers against my torso began to tug me away. For one horrible instant I was moving through the water, but the manacle was still around my head, my neck pulled at the weight of the arm capturing me. Then the arm tried to take me back. There was a brief instant as my muscles strained and screamed, finding myself in the vulnerable, hopeless position of being pulled at both ends.

My body felt like it was being teased out and caving in at the same time, my organs getting pressed into paste under the pressure, lungs and stomach flattening…another second of this and my head would surely be ripped off…

The water shuddered, as if there was some massive blow and the dueling grips on my body both released at the same time. Without thinking, I used my remaining energy to swim to where the light danced, and with my breath running out, my paddling turned into desperate clawing before I finally came up to the bright sky for air.

I waded, my limbs spread out, limp, chest heaving and aching. My ears rang and the sea sounds wavered in and out as if I was still underwater. Dazed, I scanned the landscape of blue green crests running to shore. I was still some way off the coast, but too tired to do anything. My head fell back, neck muscles scrunched and hurt. The sky wheeled around my head dizzily.

With my face up at the sky, I didn’t see the giant leg come surging up at me from beneath until it was too late. It smacked into me at full force, the sea dropped away as I went flying. My stomach collapsed as the world spun past my eyebrows. The cold air seemed to somersault around my bare body while I tumbled up, body turning in rapid circles, with no energy or ability to direct myself.

The spinning slowed at the height of ascent, before my face turned down towards the water. The forms of the two women awaited directly below, shifting and butting each other in the water in an anxious bid to position themselves beneath me. They were gripping each other and simultaneously trying to shove the other out of the way. Jen seemed to have the upper hand, with an arm around the woman’s neck and one of the woman’s arms pulled behind her back, but her head was turned up, her eyes watching my rapid descent with the hypnotic focus of a determined athlete, but weirdly disconnected, like I was an object – a spinning ball – and she was a player in some vicious, winner-take-all sport match. For an instant the tip of her tongue poured out of her mouth and ran around her lips, licking them with anticipation. I somehow knew what she was thinking before it happened.

She was going to try and catch me in her mouth, and keep me locked behind the jail bars of her teeth, where the crazy fan couldn’t get me.

The women grew in size as I dropped through the air, like I was zooming down a tunnel and their faces were at the end. Jen launched herself off the woman’s body, springing straight up out of the water like a dolphin, her mouth opening in preparation as I fretted over the safest way to impact her tongue – flat? Curled into a ball? – and hoping to God I didn’t smash my head on her teeth.

At the height of her ascent, right at the last second, the other woman jammed her elbow against Jen, knocking her sideways. I impacted the water somewhere between them, the water crashed over my head and pulled me into it, deep. I began to swim without direction. The giant forms of the women’s bodies swept around me like giant thrashing mermaids before I lost them, and they lost me. Then found myself floating, drifting vaguely underwater, and completed a slow circle around, trying to locate the surface.

I came face to face with Jen, who must have dived in search of me. Her dual-tone hair streamed behind her and her lips were pursed in concentration. Her green eyes identified me and widened. Without hesitation she pulsed through the water at me, long legs pounding behind her.

Relief began to seep throughout my body as I paddled towards her giant, oncoming face. I was so weak now I felt utterly dependent on her rescue. I would happily forgive all the rough groping of earlier as long as she got me safely away from the crazy fan.

Her speed slowed gracefully until she was hovering directly in front of me. A giant hand swept forward and poked my forehead to tip my head back, turning me vertical, before lunging forward to press a kiss against my face, and gripping my head in her lips’ suction, playfully dragging me in her direction.

Releasing me again, she shot a stream of bubbles into my face before withdrawing and mouthing ‘I love you’. In case she had trouble lip-reading my tiny lips, I made a love heart shape with my hands. Then she extended a finger towards her lips. For one absurd moment I thought she was going to follow through with the hooking gesture from the fishbowl nightmare I’d had. Instead, she pointed insistently at her mouth, which pulsed suggestively with a slurping motion – a silent appeal for me to enter for concealment from the fan. All the same, my stomach crinkled up with dread, like I’d just had a premonition.

My response stalled. With impatience, she was already gliding forwards, her lips parting, preparing to work them around my head and take me in—

Over her shoulder, something moved. The length of the other woman’s form darted out of the deep blue, barreling straight into Jen from behind, a last resort attempt to get the upper hand. She struck with a muted thud, like distant thunder. Both women jolted forward. Everything was a blur. I had no time to get out of the way.

The world shattered into disarray. I was racing along with a current of water, passing through a long dark tunnel, all sense of direction exploded. Something – a mushy wall – came speeding out of the dark and went splat into me, jerking me to a stop. To my disgust, the wall appeared to be somehow porous, containing folds like purse slits, because the force of my movement pushed my head a little inside the wall. It was like my head was pushed inside the hole of a damp sponge. For what seemed like a long time I couldn’t breathe, and frantically tried pushing against the wall that encased my head, but my hands kept slipping over the rubbery, frictionless surface.

With one final grunt of effort, I wrenched and my head came free with a wet pop. I stumbled back, blinking in a pitch black space, my feet squelching through puddled, spongy floor.

My first thought: I’m not dead. That brought a rush of such relief that I thought I might cry. The relief quickly ebbed, leaving behind a building sense of danger. Not immediate danger, like the situation I had just escaped from, but something uncertainly menacing, like kayaking over a river that might be filled with piranhas.

The wet spongy ceiling was low. Crawling on my hands and knees, I patted the ground for direction. It was mushy like the wall I’d impacted, with rubbery crevices I could fit my arm into. Water pooled around my ankles and it was difficult to move without accidentally plunging a hand or foot into the rubbery, porous folds, so I stayed in one place.

A steady beating sound came from above, throbbing through the walls. The cadence was unmistakable: it was a giant heartbeat. The blood started running out of my face. I must have been swallowed and was now sitting inside the soft surrounding anatomy of Jennifer’s stomach.

A wet guttural sound filled the air, like a dog barking, and my skull hammered with every blast. With a jolt I realized it was the sound of Jen coughing, the sound amplified and bassy due to the size difference and the fact I was hearing it resounding down her esophagus and echoing inside the pit of her gut.

“JERRY…”

Her voice throbbed around the stomach lining like a cave echo. I slapped my hands against my ears as her voice drummed through my head.

“I’m here!” I shouted as loud as I could, cringing at how my tiny voice echoed.

“HANG ON, BABY!”

As the deafening sound surged down the throat towards me, I covered my ears and sunk my head down into the porous folds of the stomach lining in an attempt to further mute the painful sound.

Some kind of liquid came spilling down, splattering onto my head, disgustingly bitter. I gagged as it ran down my face, then waded over to a section of the stomach wall, a mass of furrowed flesh, and in desperation, began punching and kicking the spongy folds. The problem was, the flesh was so soft and moist the blows didn’t strike, but sunk in deep. If the stomach wall had been taut, like an ear drum, the beating might have made an impact, but as the flesh absorbed the impact, it probably did little good.

Another load of bitter liquid spattered over my head.

The calm was interrupted by a groaning sound, and then the stomach walls began to convulse, stirring up squishing, splashing sounds, quickly transforming the space into a bubbling cauldron.

I jumped up with terror as the warm air began transforming into a sauna. The walls of the stomach were clenching and jiggling, causing puddles of fluid to froth like a bubble bath, and the bubbly froth was slowly climbing the walls, creeping up over my face until I was lost in it. It got in my eyes and was accidentally sucked up my nose. Coughing and wading, I fanned my hands, anxiously trying to clear the screen of fizz – bitterly scented with whatever liquid had spilled down.

The stomach’s jiggling turned into powerful flexing motions, sweeping the fluid around in a whirling vortex. Not only did this whip up more froth, but sucked me into a powerful eddy of bitter stomach juices which were starting to make my skin tingle and burn. The building maelstrom spun me and tipped me around under the froth. My head jabbed into another porous fold, became wedged there, and as I kicked and flailed, squelched free again. Completely disoriented, I accidentally breathed in more burning, acrid froth, making me feel like my body was being gnawed at from inside out. Flicked around and turned upside down, blood raced into my head. The blackness was all-encompassing, entering my head, I was about to black out…

More bitter liquid spouted down onto my face and then the stomach compacted inward violently, the interior pressure became too much, and I was shooting upwards like toothpaste being squeezed out of the tube, gargling and squirming—

I burst into the world as naked and dazed as a newborn baby, riding a spray of bitter liquid and thumping onto a towel.

I wiped my eyes and found dark liquid running off my body, before the towel humped on either side and enfolded me, rubbing me up and down vigorously, rolling me over, scrubbing me, and rolling me again. Powerless to resist it, I relaxed, letting the powerful motions flip and massage me about.

Finally the heaps of towel lifted, and I was staring up at Jen, who was leaning over me. She was sweating and blanched – positively ill looking – and panting. Later I learned she had drained ipecac she kept in her bag and stuck her finger down her throat to induce herself to vomit. The ipepac made her look feverish, but five minutes later she was back to normal.

The edges of the towel lifted, rose into the air and landed on Jen’s lap. I was again set upon between two towel-covered walls, rolled and rubbed back and forth, and too exhausted to resist, let myself be flipped around and around between her towel-covered palms as they feverishly worked me like a twig and she was trying to rub a fire into ignition until my skin was practically red raw.

Finally, I gasped for a breath, pushing against her palms, and she stopped, dropping me back into her lap. One hand slid out of the towel and cupped around me protectively, her fingers running over my chest for my heartbeat – even as she didn’t realize she was doing it – pushing under my armpit and probing around my neck for the reassuring throb of an artery. Her thumb must have found it, it remained buried under my jaw, stroking my neck.

“DID YOU…” Natalie’s voice floated over, sounding shaky, as her footsteps thumped down in the sand nearby, “DID YOU JUST…” She seemed to be silently begging Jennifer to interrupt her with a flat denial. But when the other just pinned her with a defiant ‘yup’ look, she clapped a hand over her mouth and took a step back, the whites of her eyes too visible.

“OH MY GOD!”

“WHOA,” came Grant’s voice, an understated deadpan. “OKAY THEN.”

The sunset was like melted gold on the water, and the surrounding beach was going dark. People were leaving the water. No one else seemed to have realized what had just happened. I blinked across the shoreline, looking for the woman, but she was nowhere in sight. She must have swum away when Jen got out of the water.

*

“The whole time I’ve been at Tiferno,” I said. “I’ve never come across crazy like that.”

My reverse passage up Jen’s digestive tract had put a prompt end to the easy mood of the afternoon. After a quick goodbye, Natalie and Grant had returned to their car, the former’s cheeks blanched as if she’d swallowed a bottle of ipecac herself and was thinking of mimicking the act.

Now we drove under the night sky. No booster seat; Jen’s thighs were acting as my harness. I stared into the darkness beneath the steering wheel, while she navigated the streets leading back home.

“Now I see why you stay here. You like crazy,” I finally said, under my breath. She still heard me.

“NO KIDDING. I LIKE YOU.”

I scoffed. Touché.

“You don’t want to move. But I’ve always wanted to leave the Bay. Now you see why?” I was referring to my pre-shrink plans, which I’d contemplated up to the GPR party.

“AM I NOT ALLOWED TO CHANGE MY MIND?” she said smoothly.

“The problem is, your mind changes like a traffic light. A lot.”

“I’M ALSO RUNNING A LOT MORE TRAFFIC THROUGH MY MIND THAN YOU ARE, PIPSQUEAK.”

I went quiet. Satisfied, she let the silence settle in.

The scent of her sex – just behind me – was starting to thicken over my face, clinging almost like a wet blanket. The earlier insertion had triggered her womanly glands to start drooling in hunger for me. She had a particular scent; spicy, foreign, dominating. It speared up my nostrils and into my brain with unavoidable suggestion. Whether or not she could help it, my unexpected tour of her stomach must have enlivened her kink. Maybe she was savoring the phantom sensations of my punching and kicking around in there, and head poking into the membranous folds, like some weird stomach massage from within – savoring the memory even as we spoke.

“Hey,” I piped up.

The plush muscles gave me a squeeze of acknowledgement.

“TALK TO ME, CUTIE.”

“Think I might invite Natalie to the wedding. Actually…I already have.”

“OOH…OKAY,” she said simply.

“Not a problem?”

“I DON’T KNOW. IS THERE?”

“No. I mean…Just thought you’d want to know.”

Her thighs gave me another reassuring squeeze, which made my tired out muscles twinge.

“YOU DON’T NEED MY PERMISSION FOR THAT. I MEAN, WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I ASKED YOU FOR PERMISSION FOR ANYTHING?”

She had a point there.

My eyelids grew heavier and began to drop. The car jerked and swerved, a car horn blared very closeby. My eyelids cracked open again.

She made a small, tutting gasp. Her thighs clapped into my ribs like a mousetrap, and then grinded against my body with vicious friction as her foot tapped the break a few times. Air whistled out of my lungs as they deflated like balloons.

“YOU SAW THAT, RIGHT?!” Then she remembered. “OH.” Her thighs mercifully loosened again. “DOESN’T MATTER; I’LL GIVE YOU THE SHORT VERSION: THAT GUY WAS AN ASSHOLE.”

I let out a long, steady breath. Any more of that and I was going to end up pasted around her inner thighs like paint.

As the car engine filled my head, my eyelids began to fall again.

“SORRY,” she said, calming. “IF YOU WANT TO THROW UP BECAUSE OF HIM, I WON’T BLAME YOU. JUST GIVE ME THE WARNING FIRST, AND I’LL HOLD YOU OUT THE WINDOW.”

It was not my stomach, but my mind that was stirring with unrest.

“What was it like?” I said suddenly.

“WHAT?”

“Me being in your stomach.”

“WHY DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?”

She was smiling.

“Why wouldn’t I want to know? How many people get that experience?”

She laughed.

“’GET THAT EXPERIENCE’? LISTEN TO YOU. MY STOMACH LINING HAS NEVER BEEN GRACED BY SUCH CELEBRITY.”

I rolled my head against her leg.

“You know what I mean. Just answer the question.”

She answered in a low, pensive voice:

“NOT WHAT I THOUGHT.”

“What do you mean?”

“I COULDN’T TELL YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR COCK. SO THERE’S THAT.”

“You liked it, or not?”

“WHEN YOU’RE IN MY MOUTH,” she began, “I CAN SUCK YOU, CURL YOU UP, FLIP YOU AROUND, MAKE YOU DO TRICKS. WHATEVER I WANT, BASICALLY. YOU’RE JUST A SOFT SQUISHY LITTLE TOY IN THERE, AND YOU DO WHAT MY TONGUE TELLS YOU. IT’S FUN AS FUCK, THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING.”

“And me being in your stomach is not.”

“DOES IT MATTER? YOU’D NEVER GO BACK, ANYWAY.”

“Just asking.”

She was quiet for a long time. And then, suddenly she was talking again, as if she’d never stopped:

“YOU WERE TOO FAR AWAY. KINDA SCARY EVEN. BUT IN MY MOUTH…IT’S SO INTIMATE.” Her voice acquired a kind of moan as if she was talking about a favorite dessert. “MORE THAN A HUG. MORE THAN SEX. GOD, I FEEL YOU ALL OVER MY TONGUE. AND YOU’RE INSIDE MY HEAD, AND I HEAR YOU LIKE YOU’RE INSIDE MY BRAIN. ANY CLOSER AND YOU WOULD BE ME.” She added, now exhilarated: “SO HOW MANY PEOPLE GET THAT EXPERIENCE?”

“You got me there.”

“YUP. I GOT YOU ALRIGHT.”

A hand descended and gave my skull a soft squeeze, waking me up a little, and staying there to comb through my hair and tweak my ears.

“EVER WISHED YOU WERE ME?” she casually inquired.

I gave a small spurt of laughter.

“Can’t say I have.”

“LIKE, ROLE REVERSAL.”

“No, no, and no.”

“GOOD ANSWER. WE’RE ON THE SAME TEAM, JERRY.”

“We’re getting married,” I said obviously.

“THAT IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. ANOTHER GOOD ANSWER.”

“Is this Team Mousseau, or Team Tomlin?”

“NO, NO, THIS IS TEAM JERRY FITS IN JENNIFER’S HAND.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “I didn’t say anything about us not being the same size.”

Her hand lifted from my head, returning to grip the steering wheel.

Without any warning, she pulled the car over in a shaded strip, and with the engine shut off, put me down on the passenger seat.

She took out some liquid hand soap from her bag and used a tissue to wipe me down.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I FORGOT TO CLEAN YOU EARLIER.”

“Can’t it wait until home?”

“I BELIEVE THIS IS TOTALLY DESERVED SINCE I SAVED YOUR LIFE.”

She was still only wearing the bikini, and was now anxiously undoing the strings at her waist.

My body was grasped up and swooped down again. She stretched and shifted over the seat, with wide open legs, plunging me into the puffy glistening lips for a drawn out French kiss, with my body as the tongue, slipping into her purse. The passage was already so wet it was like being eagerly slurped in, and I was in pitch blackness in an instant, my body completely out of sight again. She restarted the car and resumed the drive, meanwhile, my lungs pulled at the air, my muscles beginning to wring and stretch.

The passage was a threshold marking the transition my body made from independent person to throbbing organ working synchronously with the great machinery of her sexual anatomy, every muscle in my body worked throughout the drawn out rise and fall. Like a factory it was noisy, steamy, every surface was oozing oily lubricant. the pelvic floor pistoning in and out against me like collapsing walls, causing the ribbed fleshy sleeve of her tunnel to pull tight around until I was stiff as wood.

My face got caught in one of the shallow pockets of ribbed fleshy folds, like the segment of a scrunchy tube, and the contracting muscle walls became a rock-hard, migraine inducing helmet. Glandular run off sweated along the walls, had began to pool in the fold and squelched around my ears, trapping my head in what felt like a rubbery moisture filled bag. She was running like a leaking faucet, every rapid contraction splashed and dunked my head around the sweating puddle. As I coughed and gasped for air, more of it surged down my throat.

Her back arched, and butt drove hard into the seat as she came.

“SOOO NICE,” she moaned.

All my sensory organs were drowned in her sexual organ, so I had no idea whether she was still driving, or had pulled over the side of the road, or was home, parked in the garage, or even, was back inside the house. It didn’t make much difference; I spent much of the rest of the night wholly embedded in the bewitching, pitch black, anti-gravity chamber that was her pelvic crypt. The post-climactic twitches made my muscles ripple and pull at random. Then she felt me touching her, somewhere deep and out of sight between her hipbones, and decided to go again.

I was back in St Palma, my scenes for Gamelandia had wrapped. Now it was late evening.

It was time to party.

Rising up against the sky, was a multi-storey building with a stony dated façade and windows that glowed red. From the outside it looked like the outside of a macabre-themed museum, or some haunted theme park ride. Above was a suspended walkway heading on through glass doors straight into the second storey of the club.

I’d never been a big clubber, but I’d developed a taste for it since being shrunken; as I’d discovered during nights out with Jen, a nightclub was one of the few places I could glide around masses of people unnoticed and undisturbed, feeling like just another venue patron in the crowd.

“NOW, YOU FELLAS ARE WITH ME, ALRIGHT?” said Farris, to Raf and I. “IN THIS PLACE THE ASS IS WORLDCLASS.  STICK WITH ME AND I’LL SHOW YOU HOW TO GET YOURSELF A LITTLE PIECE OF ACTION.”

There were no bollards or stanchions or rails or other perimeter security guarding the front door. Ahead, our path was blocked by a bouncer wearing black up and down: suit, shirt and tie, and impeccably shiny black dress shoes.

“IF YOU BOYS COME HERE ON YOUR OWN TIME,” Farris was saying, “DON’T PULL ANYTHING WITH THESE GUYS. THEY’RE NOT ALLOWED TO HIT YOU, BUT THEY WILL.”

Farris and the doorman nodded to each other.

“LOOKING SHARP, WAYNE.”

“RIGHT ON THROUGH, MR FRANKLIN.”

Past a set of double-wide walnut doors, the interior club was huge – larger than any I’d ever seen. Three separate bar areas and the dancefloor was not one single central square – as I was familiar with – but a collection of rectangles around the interior, connected by aisles walkways. If you didn’t like the faces or vibes in one of these dance areas you just followed the closest walkway to the next group of bodies. It was a wonderland of pulsing lasers, and intricate elegantly styled shifting neon lightwork displays, shifting along the color spectrum, neon panels sometimes spelling out words or displaying symbols.

Bronze, oil-skinned, scantily clad women danced on podiums spaced around and high above the dance floor positioned in the center of the whole space, which was centrally linked by aisles to all the other dance floors. I didn’t even realize podium-topping disco girls existed outside movies, let alone expect to find myself visiting a club with them installed.

There were tables and chairs around the perimeter of the central floor, and a big glass pane to one side which separated the mix board and turntables of the live DJ setup. Up railed stairs to the second floor there was a mezzanine that ran around the ceiling – linked by floating walkways – overlooking all the action, and up here were the VIP lounges.

We stopped at a roped off set of tufted black leather banquette seating by the balcony railing viewing the dancefloor below.

Farris greeted the two guys sitting over here: a dark-skinned guy wearing a suit and a baseball cap, and a dark-clothed, bearded guy in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing hairy forearms, and a neck tattoo rising above his collar.

“JAIRAJ MANN,” Farris introduced the first guy, and then the second: “AND CLYDE GALBRAITH.”

“THIS IS JERRY,” Farris said to them, “HE’S MY NEXT SENSATION.”

The two men dropped their eyes upon me, or my tiny head, poking out from Raf's huge hand. He lifted me up and out towards them as if to say 'here he is, the one and only; look!' I was starting to get the sense this was going to be a very different experience from the easy anonymity I enjoyed clubbing with Jen.

“IF HE ELICITS A ‘SENSATION’,” Clyde said dryly, “IT’S A TICKLE.”

“JERRY,” Jairaj repeated, with a grin. “DON’T LISTEN TO HIM. ALL HE MEANS IS, YOU’RE JUST A LITTLE SLIM JIM OF A FELLA. HOW ABOUT WE MAKE IT COOL, YOU KNOW, ‘TJ’?”

“What does that mean?”

“TINY JERRY.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t a dishonest nickname.

“I guess so.”

“TJ IT IS.”

“MY KIDS LIKED ONE OF YOUR MOVIES,” Clyde remarked. “BUT THEY THINK YOU’RE A MUPPET. THEY SAY ‘DAD, WHO’S CONTROLLING HIM?’”

“NO PUPPETEER,” Farris grinned at me. "ISN'T THAT RIGHT?"

I rubbed my hands together.

"Not tonight."

"SO, WHAT'S YOUR STORY, TJ?" said Jairaj.

I guessed he was referring to my height, but that was a sensitive, somewhat embarrassing subject for me to dive into with strangers, so I played dumb.

“What do you mean?”

"EVERYONE HERE HAS GOT A STORY,” he explained. “RUNNING AWAY FROM SOMETHING, MOSTLY. BAD JOB, BAD FRIEND, BAD GIRL—”

“DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY,” Clyde added.

“THAT’S NOT BAD. JUST SAD,” Jairaj said, then his eyes turned back down to me for a response.

“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, none of those. I’m not running away from anything.”

The men all eyed me, a little too keenly, as if trying to work out what I was even doing here.

“WHERE’S YOUR GIRL?" Jairaj finally said: "YOU GOT ONE?”

“Yeah. She’s back home.”

“IS SHE THE FULL FIGURE OR LIKE YOU…?”

“Definitely the full figure.”

In fact – though he was seated – I suspected she would be taller than Jairaj, if not the even taller Clyde.

At my answer, Jairaj’s eyes widened and he looked around at the other three.

“AM I HEARING THIS RIGHT?”

“IT’S TRUE,” Farris proclaimed. “—THE WOMAN IN THE CAFÉ, JERRY?”

“Right.”

Eyes now narrowing in boredom, Clyde pointed a stubby, nail-bitten finger down at me:

“HOW YOU END UP TITCH ENOUGH TO SMUGGLE IN A POCKET?"

“A time machine.”

They all chuckled quietly like this was a sarcastic retort. Clyde let out a single amused bark.

“WELL, HE’S GOT PLUCK.”

"YOU EVER SNUCK INTO THINGS?" said Jairaj, raising an eyebrow. "YOU COULD END UP IN ALL SORTS OF BIG SHIT, BACKSTAGE LIVE SHOWS, CELEBRITY BEDROOMS…"

"YOU'D MAKE A HELL OF A SCANDAL SNAPPER,” added Clyde. He seemed distracted; he had now stood up and was leaning against the balcony railing, intermittently looking down below into the dancing crowds.

“’THE POCKET PAPPER’,” Farris grinned, not sounding at all serious.

“PAPARAZZO,” enquired Raf. “I HEARD THAT’S ITALIAN FOR ‘ANNOYING FLY’.”

I chuckled in spite of myself:

“My girlfriend called me that once – don’t ask for the context.”

Farris laughed; his super white teeth flashing in the darkness.

“MY WIFE’S CALLED ME WORSE.”

“OR P.I.," said Clyde, back down to me. "I GOT YOU YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT; I SLIP YOU IN THIS LADY’S HANDBAG AND YOU GO HOME WITH HER FOR THE NIGHT; SEE IF SHE'S KEEPING STRANGE COMPANY."

Jairaj groaned.

“THE LITTLE ASIAN MAMA AGAIN? MAN, GET OVER HER.”

He leaned over in his seat, reaching for the ice bucket on the nearby chrome glass serving cart.

“TJ, TRY THIS,” he said, unscrewing the lid of a bottle of Cognac. “TELL ME IF YOU DETECT THE CURRY. ‘CAUSE I DETECT CURRY, AND MY FRIENDS ALL SAY I’M CRAZY. BUT DAMN, IT’S THERE.”

He began pouring glasses, mine in a shot glass.

“AND ONE FOR THE WINGMAN—”

“RAFAEL,” said Raf.

“RIGHT.”

He slid the glasses over the table to Raf and I. Then watched me take a sip, and then when I lifted my head from the glass rim, he raised his eyebrows:

"CURRY?"

"It's there."

Jairaj shook a finger at me and turned his head around at the others.

"HE KNOWS. HE'S GOT A TINY TONGUE; A SENSITIVE PALATE."

“Have you got any Kolade?” I ventured.

“BOMB SHOT,” Jairaj offered, pulling out a chilled black can and checking the label —AND TEQUILA?”

“Just a shot, but no tequila.”

"KOLADE NO TEQUILA?” he drawled back. “NEVER HEARD OF THAT ONE."

"WHAT'S THAT, UH, AN ENERGY DRINK?" Clyde raised an eyebrow.

"A MIDNIGHT RUNNER,” said Farris, leaning back and sliding his arm over the length of the headrest. “YOU DANCE, JERRY?”

“I don’t think I’m cut out for a career on the dance floor at my size.”

Jairaj turned to look out over the railing into crowd on the floor below.

“I THINK MANDI’S BEHIND THE BAR TONIGHT. DON’T TALK TO HER WHILE SHE’S ON THE CLOCK, SHE’LL PRETEND SHE DOESN’T KNOW YOU, BUT CATCH HER IN DOWNTIME; SHE’LL SHOW YOU HOW TO CRUNK RIGHT UP ON THE TABLE. GIRL’S WHOLE WAISTLINE IS LIKE A COASTLINE – WAVY.”

“THE LITTLE MAN DOESN'T NEED A DANCEFLOOR,” Clyde suggested. “TURN A TUMBLER UPSIDE DOWN YOU COULD DANCE ON THAT.” He lifted his glass as if for illustration.

“YOU SEE MANDI TELL HER YOU’RE WITH JAI.”

The guys then called over a coterie of improbably hot young women – who I later learned were models hired by the club for promotion. Their perfume preceded them like the fumes of spicy wine. Not noticing me at first, they slipped onto the banquette beside the guys. I scanned them nervously, but it was no line-up out of Peta’s portfolio, no one I recognized.

Jairaj was dipping back into the ice bucket.

“POP A CRISTAL AND ONE FOR THE LADIES.”

“HEY…” one of the models piped up, a long legged blonde beauty. Her eyes had stopped on me, narrowing, and focusing sharper and brighter than any of the lasers oscillating around the floor below “IS THAT…?”

My stomach lurched; there was no one else she could possibly have mistaken me for. There was a couple of squeals and next thing all the girls descended on me like a flock of flamingos, bending and craning for a look. There were gasps, delighted exclamations, and suddenly Raf had a model pressing him in on either side as the fascinated girls were leaning right in to get a better look at me, with reactions like I was a baby sitting on his father’s lap, and being cooed over by a gaggle of baby-crazy young women.

I tried not to react as hands swooped in to stroke my scalp and remark how soft my hair was, pluck at the hems of my clothing and exclaim how cute and tiny my outfit was, tweak my muscles and compliment my shape, and playfully poke my belly to see my reaction. There was no escape; the girls bordered me at every side, while the guys laughed. A couple of the girls had settled into their places by the guys, and had taken up drinks, and accidentally making eye contact, was fixed with a moment of lingering eye contact or lip curl, or eyebrow raise or some other signal that went outside notice.

A fingernail was tapping my shoulder. I turned my head to find the blonde hunched forward in her seat beside Raf, her forearms pressed against her knees, her head turned to implore me demurely:

“HEY THERE, GOOD-LOOKING,” she smiled at me sweetly, “I’D LIKE TO HOLD YOU IN MY HAND. WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

Holding me was not her intention. Suddenly I found myself rising up her body to suspend in front of her face as her eyes ran all over me, her breath fluttering my hair.

The guys laughed again at her brashness.

“YEAH, HE’S REAL,” said Jairaj.

"WHO BROUGHT THIS GUY?" Farris waved a hand at me. "RAISE YOUR HAND AND I'LL BUY YOU A DRINK. OH, WAIT, THAT WAS ME! ISN’T HE GREAT?”

“YOU ARE JUST ADORABLE!” she said, rotating me a little. “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU EVEN EXIST!”

Suddenly all the girls were expressing interest in holding me. The models were hired by the club to act interested in the VIP patrons and flirt with them, but it was difficult to tell who was acting anymore.

“YOU HAVE THE TINIEST, CUTEST LITTLE EYES,” a girl said as a pair of fingertips tilted my head up so that she and another girl could peer into my face. One of these girls dissolved into giggles.

“HE LOOKS LIKE A PAST BOYFRIEND,” she explained. Apparently the idea of this past boyfriend being my size was incredibly humorous. Her fingers explored every inch of my body, utterly fascinated at my uncanny resemblance.

“HE LOOKS LIKE A FUTURE BOYFRIEND,” one of the other girls muttered, giving me a sly wink past her wine glass.

With alcohol, some of the girls became more venturesome.

One of the girls had me sitting in her cupped hands, and said she was going to ‘tell me a funny story,’ as I was lifted up right before her face, before her lips swooped in, meeting my face and sticking there a moment as she planted a big kiss, withdrawing again to ruffle my hair, before placing me back in Raf’s hands.

The guys were chuckling again.

“THAT BOY’S TURNING INTO A BIRTHDAY CAKE,” said Jairaj, “‘CAUSE HIS FACE IS ALL FROSTED UP PINK.”

Oh Jesus. I scrubbed at my cheek furiously, if someone took a picture and Jen saw it, I would be in a hot cauldron of trouble when I got home.

Raf had to get up to use the restroom, putting me on the table, leaving me utterly vulnerable to whichever model was bold enough to snatch me up first. They were listening to the lazy conversation going on between Farris and Jairaj, but their eyes kept wandering down to me, as if trying to catch my eye.  One of the girls gave me an incredibly muted ‘come hither’, just enough for me to see it and no one else. I started taking resigned bets with myself as to which girl was planning to make me her ‘right this instant boyfriend.’

Then Clyde stepped away from the railing and came towards me, leaning down, his hands on his knees, revealing small tattoos on his fingers. He can’t have drunk much; his pupils were too focused. He seemed to be vibrating with some weird energy.

“VIP TAKES THE CAKE DOESN’T IT?” he said quietly. “BUT LET ME SHOW YOU AROUND THE GROUND FLOOR FOR A DIFFERENT VIBE.”

I knew how he felt; the Kolade was fizzing in my bloodstream, I was keen for something to do with the flush of energy, and replied with urgency:

“Sure!”

Without another word, a huge, lined palm hovered over me, thick fingers snatching up the back of my jacket collar and tugging my feet off the tabletop. Then, as Clyde stood up, I was racing up through the air with him, while he hooked a thumb in his breast pocket and slipped me inside. I came down right beside a ballpoint pen, and the top of the pocket slipped up over my head as my feet sunk to the bottom. Reaching my arms up to grab the top, I pulled myself up until my head burst out again, with the top of the pocket coming up under my armpits. The models let out groans of disappointment that their entertainment had been snatched away.

“THAT’S CONVENIENCE,” remarked Jairaj approvingly, referring to my storage. “YOU COULD HOLSTER THAT BOY.”

Clyde turned back before leaving:

“LET THE CHAPERONE KNOW THE WEE LAD’S WITH ME,” he said to the remaining two men.

His footsteps trembled pendulously as he left the table behind, and the pocket shuddered as he took the dark aluminium stairway down to the ground floor,

“IT’S ALL THE SAME CREW IN VIP,” he said, as I bounced against his chest with every downward step taken, “BUT ON THE FLOOR IT’S A DIFFERENT CROWD EVERY NIGHT. SO, IF YOU WANT TO BE ANONYMOUS, YOU’RE BETTER DOWN HERE – WHERE THE FLOOR IS CUSTARD THICK – THAN YOU ARE UP THERE.”

To my surprise, we veered past the central dancefloor, busy with moving bodies and the scantily clad women gyrating on raised platforms. We were moving along the wall, avoiding the dancefloor altogether. Clyde’s voice was rumbling out of the noise:

“THOSE GIRLS ARE LOVELY BUT I PREFER THE CHALLENGE OF A WOMAN WHO IS NOT BEING PAID TO SMILE.”

Up another couple of stairs, visible in the dark only by strips of white neon light like a zebra crossing, we were on the other side of the central dancefloor area, entering a much lighter, quieter space where the acoustic was muted to bass throbbing. The walls were not hidden behind darkness and lasers, instead patches were lit up by warm orange like sodium street lamps, with a brick bar in the middle, and a pool table across to the side.

With a small bump, Clyde dropped onto a padded stool lining the bar, but immediately twisted around so his back was to the bar’s glass walled drink display. One of his fingers tapped the top of my head to subtly get my attention, as he muttered:

“WHEN I TURN AROUND: LADY, TWELVE O’CLOCK.”

Then he casually swivelled in his seat, giving me a panorama of the room: along a row of crimson seated bar stools, polished wood tabletops, and across the other side of the room, where two people were leaning against the brick wall, talking. One of these was an Asian woman with a lustrous sheet of ebony hair ending in curls at the tips. The platform pumps on her feet were striped red and white like candy.

The walls swivelled back again before Clyde said:

“HER NAME’S ZO SASAKI. SHE’S – OH! FUCK IT—!”

He hissed, jumping up like he’d been stung, and we were suddenly crossing the room at speed, then heading down a dim corridor, before a men’s room door swung out of the way and we came into a more warmly lit bathroom.

The upper half of Clyde’s enormous profile stood directly in front, reflected in the mirror, and parallel, my head and arms poking out from his breast pocket. I tried not to stare at myself, though it was hard. I loved ‘riding’ people for the adventure, but I hated seeing myself in their possession, it reminded me how tiny and helpless I was.

“SHE’S JUST LEFT,” Clyde explained.

His chest wall expanded deeply against my back as he took a big breath and let it out slowly, as if we’d just leapt out of the way of a speeding train. He seemed about to speak but the door thumped open, admitting a man who went straight into a cubicle. Clyde shifted back and forth in the mirror, and made a show of washing his hands, before the man finished up and left again. As soon as the man was gone, Clyde ripped a poster advertising safe sex off the wall, and, flipping it over against the mirror to a blank white side. His fingers rose up as if to snatch me out of the pocket, but instead withdrawing the pen, which he then used to scrawl ‘OUT OF ORDER’ in big capital letters, covering the entire poster. Then he stuck it up on the other side of the restroom door with the poster tack.

“YEAH, SO,” he was back in front of the mirror, speaking casually again as if he’d never been interrupted, “I NEED SOMEONE TO KEEP AN EYE ON HER.”  

 “You said she left.”

“GONE TO TEAR UP THE DANCEFLOOR. MARK MY WORDS; SHE’LL RETURN FOR HER SAINT LAURENT OVER-THE-SHOULDER. IT WASN’T ON HER, SO IT’S STILL AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE, PROBABLY WITH HER FRIEND.”

“Are you…” I began nervously, “…into this girl?”

“NOT SO SURE ANYMORE,” he said in a veiled way. “RIGHT NOW, I’M TRYING TO GAUGE HER COMPANY.”

His black pupils trained on me in the mirror until it made me blush.

“HAVE YOU EVER HAD A GIRL SAY SHE LOVES YOU BUT HER EYES SAY SOMETHING DIFFERENT?”

No, I wanted to say, but I’ve had a girl assure that we were ‘just really good friends’ in between smirking eyelash flutters and an ironic laugh. I got the feeling he couldn’t relate to that one. But I got the gist of what he meant, or the root of his concern. He liked a girl who hid her intentions from him. I could relate.

“Something like that.”

“THEN MAYBE YOU CAN HELP…”

“What do you want me to do?” I said, growing wary.

“GET STUCK ON ZO AND KEEP YOUR EARS OPEN FOR MENTIONS OF OTHER MEN. RUN THEIR NAMES BACK TO ME, OR ANYTHING THAT SOUNDS OUT OF PLACE. AND WHO SHE’S GOING HOME WITH, IF YOU CAN.”

“What if she catches me?”

His reflection in the mirror appraised me with a straight face:

“SAY YOU LOST YOUR WAY TO THE BATHROOM AND TRIPPED AND FELL OVER HER SHOE."

"Literally anything is more believable than that," I scoffed.

“YOU SAW THOSE WHOPPING JIMMY CHOOS,” he countered, “THEY’RE SPEED HUMPS.”

“But really…”

“SAY IT WAS A DARE,” he shrugged a shoulder. “OR DON’T EVEN MAKE A PEEP; SAVE ALL SALIENT DETAIL TO YOUR MEMORY HARDRIVE,” he said, giving the top of my head a poke, “AND TAKE THE SMARTEST COURSE OF ACTION.”

“What’s that?”

He hesitated as if he hadn’t expected that question. As if I was an idiot for even asking it.

“WHAT ANY SANE GUY HERE WOULD DO. RUN. AND JUST BETWEEN YOU AND ME, MOST OF THE GUYS HERE ARE TOTAL PUSSIES, I DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE—”

He cut himself off. Then his expression blanked and his voice calmed again.

“I CAN’T PULL THIS OFF AT MY SIZE – YOU SAW I JUST BARELY AVOIDED DETECTION. THIS IS IN YOUR LAP. YOU HAVE THE BIGGEST BALLS IN THIS PLACE, MATE, I SWEAR, OF ANYONE HERE.”

“I’m not so sure about that…” I said, wondering if that was a joke at my expense.

He raised his eyebrows.

“YOU’RE HERE. IN THIS CLUB.” he said, as if that proved it.

“But I-I…” I began, hating myself under his intense stare, “…I-I’m so tiny.”

He nodded.

“THE PERFECT NINJA.”

The Kolade was making me feel bubbly and exhilarated now. I wanted to prove him right.

“Fuck it,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

Outside the restroom again, Clyde was back at his stool at the bar, casting a look around the orange lit room, which, compared to the main floor, was intensely bright. But Zo Sasaki hadn’t yet returned. It was obvious why he was so jumpy. The ‘orange room’ was quieter than the main club. The other people scattered about here didn’t seem as interested in dancing, but chatting quietly at the booths with drinks, more like a café interior. It was easier to be spotted or overheard. That was great for an eavesdropper, but bad for him; he didn’t plan on loitering and botching his own scheme.

“HERE’S HOW WE’LL GO ABOUT IT,” he said to me, sitting in the breast pocket of his shirt. “I’M HEADED UP TO THE NEXT FLOOR TO LOCATE HER,” he pointed his arm up at the railed balcony overlooking the central dancefloor, “WHILE YOU WAIT HERE. WHEN SHE’S FINISHED OUT THERE, I’LL GIVE YOU THE SIGNAL. THEN YOU BECOME OPERATIVE.”

He snatched me up and put me down on the polished bar tabletop. Then checked his wristwatch.

“YOU SHOULDN’T NEED MORE THAN AN HOUR, AND I’LL COME BACK FOR YOU HERE.”

The bartender, a young dark-skinned woman, turned briefly and flashed Clyde a sidelong smile.

“HI CLYDE,” she said.

“I WAS NEVER HERE,” he said coolly, keeping his eyes on the dance floor. Then he rose and began to cross the room, and down the couple of lit stairs back out to the central floor.

My stomach screwed up with nerves as I watched him get further away, until eventually he was swallowed up by the flashing darkness and crowd. I didn’t have to do this; I could just ring Raf and –

But my phone was gone. It must have been at the bottom of Clyde’s pocket. Oh damn, looked like I was stuck in the orange room for the next hour, regardless.

The bartender was sending me curious glances When I caught her eye, she continued to watch me levelly, and then carried on wiping the table down.

“AMANDINE,” she said, pronouncing it the French way, ‘Ahmon-dee’ – “WHO MIGHT YOU BE?”

Her politeness veiled whether she actually recognized me or not.

“Jerry.”

“AND WHAT’S THE LATEST DISPATCH WHERE YOU’RE FROM, JERRY?”

“Uh…long night.”

Picking up my tone of voice, she said:

“YOU’RE TOO PURE FOR THIS PLACE, ANGEL.” She gave a casual shrug. “ALL CUT AND THRUST HERE. DOESN’T SLOW DOWN FOR ANYONE.”

I frowned.

“I might be tougher than you think,” I said trying to flex my biceps without it looking deliberate.

Leaving this unremarked, she gave me another smooth, polite smile, and said:

“CAN I ASK: WHAT BRINGS YOU TO A DANCE CLUB IF NOT FOR DANCING?”

“How do you know I don’t dance?”

Someone waved in my peripheral vision. My eyes flicked up to the second balcony railing, which Clyde was now leaning against, surveying the crowd below. He wasn’t looking at me, or reacting to anything in particular. It must have been someone else waving for their friend. The entrance into the orange room was clear, no sign of Zo.

I looked back at Amandine.

“DEPENDS…DON’T OR CAN’T?”

“Okay. Both.”

She just smiled as if to say ‘I was right,’ and turned back to the bar. My eyes were magnetically drawn back up to the balcony, where Clyde had his forearms folded loosely over the rail.

“IT’S HOW YOU HOLD YOURSELF,” Amandine finally explained, giving me a sidelong glance. “YOU’RE TENSE…” She cocked her head slightly at me, as if hating to be honest, “…JUST A LITTLE BIT.”

“You take dance lessons?” I said with interest.

“I’M ONE HALF OF STUDIO MANAGEMENT,” she corrected.

I turned from the entrance of the orange room to face her with interest.

“Are you running classes right now?”

She looked away.

“POSSIBLY…”

"How do I join up?" I said, thinking of matching Jen's lessons.

She paused, her brow drawing together.

"OH...NO, SWEETIE."

"Why not?"

“WE’RE ALL BOOKED OUT," she said hastily.

"Oh...What about next season?"

She cleared her throat.

"SOME FAST-PACED STUFF WE GOT GOING ON." Shuffling on her feet a moment, she finally turned to look at me. "SOMEONE YOUR STATURE MIGHT...FIND IT A LITTLE TOUGH GOING..."

"I'm fit," I said, making a show of flexing my chest and rolling my shoulders. "More than I've ever been in my life."

She gave me another askance look as if waiting for me to laugh and play the whole thing off like a joke. When I said nothing, she said quietly:

"I'VE GOTTA INSIST ON A HEIGHT CUTOFF…HEALTH AND SAFETY LAWS. I DON'T WANT THAT LIABILITY ON MY BACK."

Putting my hands on my hips and bowing my head, I turned back to look at the balcony for a long while. Clyde remained at the railing, watching the crowds somewhat boredly. Meanwhile, a couple of people materialized out from the darkness of the main dancefloor, into the sharp illumination of the orange room. No show from Zo.

Then it occurred to me: when she re-entered she might come up to the bar for a drink. The foot traffic in the orange room was pretty light right now; there was no one for me to hide behind.

“I should be on the floor,” I mumbled, accidentally saying it out loud.

Amandine hesitated, seeming to think I was headed to the dance floor to start dancing.

“WHY DON’T YOU STAY BACK AND MAYBE I’LL COACH YOU A LITTLE,” she offered.

“Okay,” I said, shuffling around on my feet with unspent energy.

She put a bar towel aside and evaluated me.

“WHAT DO YOU ALREADY KNOW?”

Not knowing what she meant, I tried to mimic some moves I’d seen out on the dance floor earlier.

“MM, NO.” She immediately shook her head. “NO DANCING. STOP THE DANCING. YOU’RE TRYING TOO HARD. START IT SIMPLE. MOVE TO THE BEAT. WALK TO THE BEAT. TIME IT. WALK WITH ME—”

She began walking in a popping, gliding, shuffling way. I watched enviously. She wasn’t even dancing, she was just walking, but doing it in a dancing way.

I tried to do what she was doing, slowing my movements down.

As if forgetting I was there, she was murmuring the song lyrics to the club music, adding her own little vocal flourishes. Her voice was smooth; she’d obviously had vocal training. I stopped, getting distracted by her singing, then started into walking again, remembering I was supposed to be watching her dance, not listen to her sing.

She turned to see I’d stopped moving.

“NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS…” she said coolly. “PICK IT UP. COME ON, WALK, TIME IT …” her voice transitioned into a murmuring song again.

I tried to mimic her with my eyes closed, trying not to be so self-conscious. If a stunt coordinator directed me to jump from a burning building I could probably do it, yet I couldn’t dance in front of a stranger. Not even dance; walk.

She was laughing now. I opened my eyes to find she’d stopped moving and was just standing watching me.

“WHAT ABOUT THIS…?”

She transitioned from glide into a series of popping and locking crump moves, and then back again, accented with some Bollywood-esque flourishes.

“That’s too fast,” I said. “I need formal instruction.”

She shook her head.

“NO ONE HERE IS SHOWING OFF WHAT THEY LEARNED IN DANCE SCHOOL. THEY’RE JUST JAMMING. THERE’S ONLY TWO THINGS YOU NEED: THE ABILITY TO KEEP TO THE BEAT. AND CONFIDENCE. AND THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT. NOW SHOW ME THE MOVES.”

“I can do a standing backflip,” I shrugged, shuffling my feet awkwardly.

“THAT’LL HELP FOR LATER,” she conceded. “AND YOU’RE FLEXING GOOD. JUST WATCH AND PRACTICE. PRACTICE UNTIL YOU STOP THINKING IT. WHEN YOU FORGET THAT YOU’RE DANCING, THAT’S WHEN THE DANCING WILL HAPPEN.”

With a tight, impassive smile she added:

“…AT HOME. THE FLOOR’S TOO CRAZY HERE.”

The Orange room was practically empty.

"Crazy? There's only one other person in here."

She fixed me with a look

."ONE IS TOO MUCH FOR YOU. AND DON'T YOU DARE GO OUT THERE--" she nodded out to the central floor, "--UNLESS YOU WANNA GET FLATTENED BY A PARADE OF SHOES. THEN I'LL BE THE ONE SCRAPING YOU OFF THE FLOOR BEFORE CLOSING TIME."

I sighed, bowing my head.

“Fine. Thank you, Amandine...for showing me that stuff.”

“OH, NOW WE’RE CUTE,” she said smoothly. “BUT YOU SAID YOU WERE TOUGH. GIVE ME SOME ATTITUDE.”

“Um…” Lost for words I started flexing my arms again.

She leaned over the bar and swatted one of my raised fists with one finger.

“AND WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BEAT DOWN WITH THOSE LITTLE MITTENS?”

On impulse, I tried to channel Jennifer and send a high karate kick into her palm. With perfect reflexes, the slender fingers caught my ankle mid kick, I trembled on my standing leg for a moment before she let go.

“YOU’RE ADORABLE,” she chuckled, poking a finger under my armpit to tickle me before lifting her upper body off the bar again, “AND NEXT TIME, IT’S MANDI.”

A woman’s voice came from across the room:

“WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN TEACHING HIM, EM?”

Another dark-skinned woman came over, looking from Mandi to me. “HE’S GOING HARD.”

“RIGHT?” exclaimed Mandi, “HE’S MY NEW CREW MEMBER. GOING TO BE BACKUP DANCING IN MY NEW MUSIC VIDEO.”

They both laughed.

“I’M LIANA,” the woman said, traipsing over to the bar, and, standing in front of me, brought a fingertip down to nudge around my head with uninhibited curiosity and affection.

“YOU ARE THE DAMN CUTEST LITTLE THING,” she chuckled. “AFTER SHE’S FINISHED WITH YOU, YOU ARE GOING STRAIGHT INTO MY CARRY AND I’M GOING TO HIT THE FLOOR WITH YOU.”

Mandi’s face went flat.

“NO, LIA.”

“NOT ON THE FLOOR,” Liana amended, turning away from me to face Mandi. “HE’LL BOUNCE AROUND MY TOES. I’LL KEEP HIM ON A SHORT CHAIN.”

Amandine blinked with incredulity.

“HE’S TOO SMALL—”

“WE’LL BACK UP, GET A CIRCLE HAPPENING—”

“IT’S DANGEROUS—”

“WHY ARE YOU SCHOOLING HIM IF HE CAN’T USE IT—”

As the women continued to debate their voices were muffled by a rumble of talk and activity as a large group of people swept into the bar space. Mandi swished away to prep for incoming drink orders. The group drifted apart, some of them fronting up to the bar, others drifting around the room for empty booths. Amongst the crowd, a flash of striped shoes made me start.

I’d missed Clyde’s signal and now Zo was back in the orange room. My heart thudding, I leapt down from the bar, onto the padded seat of one of the stools, and slid down one of its four legs like a pole until my feet hit the resin floor, shiny like a bowling bowl. The people pressed up to the bar were busy debating drink selections and hadn’t noticed me.

A metal footrest rail ran around the bottom of the brick bar curb to a sharp corner at the opposite side, in the direction Zo had gone. A new song had started pumping in from the main floor, making voices indistinct; tones and buzzes. The air was clammy at head height but on the floor there was a sweeping, sucking cold draught that ran straight into my shivering flesh.

Now I had to rely on my own two legs. Past the brick bar, the floor seemed to expand out everywhere; it was virtually all that could be seen, apart from huge blocks that were the dark chairs, and poles that were table legs. The low music thumped through the floor, through the soles of my shoes, as I weaved amidst dim patches, avoiding areas of intense orange light, dashing under cover of huge wooden benches as I went.

With the influx of people the space turned into something like a tourist attraction, a crowd of foot traffic flashing past the orange globes of light. The air danced with sounds; chanting, crackling voices, piercing clinks and clanks of bottles and glasses, combining in a thundercloud of noise to my delicate hearing.

The room was filling up with towering legs; in motion and pressed against wooden chair frames.

Between the tables and chairs, enormous pairs of shoes vaulted through the air, thumping the ground in front of me and launching off again past me. As shoes swung through space, they tilted, exposing me overhead to unnatural glimpses of soles and worn off treads caked with clumps of dirt, a mashed, dirt-stained wad of chewing gum, wet grass, trampled foot particles, some dry and others shining with moisture. My pulse clapped on as half undone laces cracked against the hard flooring and flew out past my face like whips, connected to sneakers with soles so dirt-stained they were like black railroad tracks.

The floor was alive with bizarre obstacles; a challenge I was intent on mastering: the Kolade and the dancing practice had my nervous system jittering and this espionage mission struck me as the perfect outlet for all that nervous energy. I was keen to impress Clyde with a bounty of classified information only I was capable of obtaining, slipping in and out like a ghost. No one else in this club had that superpower: it made my ego surge.

“OH—!”

Someone gasped in surprise and I thought I’d been spotted.

As if dumped from a tank, a thick spout of chilled runoff slapped onto my head, nearly driving me down to the ground. It seemed to be water. Drenched and staggering, I leapt back under the bench, right before glass exploded into glittering pebbles against the floor. I dove onto the ground, pulling the hood of my jacket over my head before any of the shrapnel struck me.

“OOPS, MY BAD,” a voice said – but not to me – amidst gasps and laughter.

Out from the tables and chairs, I ran, swerving blindly to avoid the shoes that slapped down on almost every side; attached to mind-bogglingly long legs that pistoned up and down. My comparatively tiny legs jolted to a halt as a giant sneaker slammed down inches from my face and – my heart skipping – launched up into the air again and then out of nowhere–

Whap

—one of the thick white cords of the shoelaces snaked out and slapped me square in the face as it flew by. My hand shot up to my cheek as tears blurred my eyes. An instant later pain registered up through my nose and seemingly into my brain.

I stood stunned, rhythmic quakes getting nearer by the second. Then, from the side, a series of bone-shaking clops. I turned to see what looked like a fleshy mocha missile, wrapped in black leather straps with a fierce pointed tip delivering a set of bulb-tipped toes through the air – straight for me. I didn’t even know open-toed heels could have sharp points – until I saw this one zooming for my face.

My scream was immediately cut off as the pointed tip clapped onto the ground once more, lifted, and as it swung forward and up, it hooked up under my jaw, lifting my feet from the floor.

For one loathsome instant, the tip of the clammy mocha bulb that was the big toe slipped forward along the shoe sole and jammed against my face with the suffocating intimacy of a French kiss suffused with foot odor.

Next second the foot’s breath-taking momentum had unloosened me and I was cartwheeling through the air.

The ground slapped my cheek and I bounced and rolled over polished patterned tile. Meanwhile, the shoe was rapidly tapping away over the floor.

From way above, a woman hissed with irritation.

“OH, EWW…”

“WHAT’S WRONG?” came a male voice.

“I NEARLY STEPPED IN SOME TRASH ON THE GROUND,” the woman muttered as her heels clapped away. “SOMETHING TOUCHED MY FOOT, AND IT WAS DAMP AND GROSS AND SQUISHY...”

Their clamorous voices just added to the swell of din, combining with the clapping pain in the bony plate of my brow and ridges of my eye sockets, which oddly felt like a tiny high heel was stamping on my face over and over. The woman’s toe had also been damp, and judging from the briny sting in my eyes, it was not from water spillage, but her sweat.

I stopped at a dark patch on the floor, thinking it would conceal me, but this was a mistake. Now a shadow was dropping; the expanding sole of a shoe, deepening to black as it collapsed over me –

—but at the last second – with an inhalation of surprise from above – the stretched black cello shape of the shoe’s bottom gave itself a small boost, a last ditch attempt to clear the dim shape I cast on the floor. And almost did; everything – toe and arch – connected with the floor with a nerve-rattling crash, but the hard rubbery back edge of the sole caught the very top of my head, dragging me down to the floor and keeping me pinned beneath the rapidly shifting giant’s mass.

The giant’s weight tilted towards their toes, as they did their best to avoid me – to avoid smushing the crown of my head to their treads like gum. But for an agonizing second the person’s heel was balanced there, fighting against my skull for dominance. Then the weight lifted and the shoes, and person, were gone again.

Pain ringed the crown of my head. I groaned up at the ceiling, where the orange lights were becoming unfocused.

More thudding rapidly approaching –

No time to catch my breath. At the urgency of my racing heart, I jumped up again and pumped my legs, slipping and skidding wetly over the shiny floor until I reached my destination, between pairs of shoes, the underside of a table rolled over my head and I was draped in shadow.

I was aching and panting for breath, but also deep into the espionage now, it would waste the risks I’d taken so far to leave now without something to show for it.

Given time and space to catch my breath and let my mind racing stop to think, I stared around.

The warm ceiling of the orange room was blocked by the underside of a table, which cast a pool of shadow on the floor. I wasn’t alone. The shadowy space was occupied, on my left, by a huge pair of men’s lace-up shoes, a pair of scuffed sneakers, and on my right: a pair of pale pink kitten heels, and a pair of candy-striped pumps.

Outside Jen’s closet, I’d never seen so many giant, feminine heels this close up.

I was shivering and uncomfortable; my jacket was saturated with water, so I pulled it off and tossed it aside. At least my t-shirt was still dry.

Out from the table, the air was loud and dense with tremulous music and chatter. Smells came at me, thick and sharp, rolling along the floor with draughts. Each of my tiny inhalations swept in a multi-textured garden of olfactory stimulants; and many of them unpleasant. The pleasurable scents of alcoholic drink were way up out of reach. Under the table, the smell of sour leather, foot odor, sweat-soaked sock, and stinging nail polish swirled around. Down this close to the floor, it was an unaffordable luxury to be squeamish, so I moved in deeper, towards the center of the table where the central support column was, and unconsciously heading onto the side of the floor where the candy-colored heels were.

Above the table, the people seated were chatting away amongst each other. I kept my ears pricked for suggestions of deceitful dealings, but they seemed to be laughing over harmless anecdotes.

From above the table, there came a resonant feminine yawn. There were some titters at the girl’s expense, while she protested she was in fact not sleepy, and did not yet want to leave.

“I’M FINE. JUST NEED TO STRETCH MY LEGS. MOVE YOUR BUTT OVER ZO!”

The twin pairs of heels shuffled along the floor. Then the pair of smooth bare legs wearing the pink kitten heels lifted and extended forward, ankles rotating leisurely. As they did this, the closed pointed toe of one of the shoes delivered a solid bonk into my head, and my skull erupted with pain. Next second I was sprawled on my front, staring dizzily at the dark floor, sticky under my palms from alcohol spill. Anymore of these monster shoes pinballing my head around and my skull was going to crack like a nut.

I rolled onto my back just in time for another pair of heels – the striped platforms – to descend directly onto me, and the weight of one chunky toe box settled heavily on top of my torso. Air rushed out as my front compressed until my ribcage managed to put up the last bulwark of aching, trembling resistance to keep my heart and lungs from bursting like grapes under pressure.

The flat smooth sole of the toe sat there, heavy and cold, like a boulder of ice on my quivering body, while my head throbbed with pain from the most recent blow. The pressure was so great I couldn’t move or speak, and my arms were pinned to the floor.

“DID SOMEONE DROP SOMETHING?” came a young woman’s voice – Zo.

The other voices piped up with denials.

“WHY?” said an indifferent male voice.

“OH, NOTHING. IT JUST FEELS LIKE THERE’S SOME WADDED UP LITTLE PIECE OF JUNK STUCK UNDER MY SHOE—”

The shoe shifted experimentally, tilting forward and accidentally sinking its mass deeper into my chest for a moment as it attempted to ascertain what I was. I gasped and choked on my own breath, flailing my arms around as the toe box shifted precariously onward, beginning to flatten my throat as it made its way towards my head…

“—FEELS LIKE A SCRUNCHED UP NAPKIN,” she decided. The oppressive weight shifted back again, grinding over the skin of my neck, pushing down against my pectorals, and the ankle rotating subtly, the shoe turning about, using my diaphragm as its springy supporting fulcrum to balance upon.

“SLIDE OVER,” Zo told the other girl, “AND I CAN PICK IT UP.”

My thoughts screeched to a halt as the weight of the shoe seemed to be sinking me into the floor.

“IT’S STAYING THERE,” the other girl said resolutely. “YOU ARE NOT BENDING OVER. NOT IN THAT DRESS; YOU’LL SPLIT A SEAM.”

Zo let out a bashful giggle and the two engaged in a heated teasing match for a moment. Then one of the guys said:

“WE’VE GOT MORE NAPKINS IF YOU WANT THEM, RIGHT HERE—” and that settled the issue.

Without releasing its weight, the end of the shoe began to slide backwards, dragging me along the floor with it. My t-shirt rode up to my armpits, and next second flipped over my head and was left lying on the floor, out of reach. Then my bare back muscles were spasming in pain as they were rubbed and molded like firm clay against the cold hard wooden floorboards. It felt like my back was a half slice of orange being ground against an orange juicer.

The shoe stopped and settled again, leaving my back red and stinging as I grimaced in pain. My vulnerable, exposed flesh sunk and contorted, forced to mold itself to conform with the heels' tread.

One of the voices overhead made a remark, causing an outburst of laughter. Mere seconds later, the shoe shifted against me while a series of sharp knocks emanated from within its confines. The confined toes were flexing with nervous energy, causing the toenails to rap against the walls of the inner shoe.

Then the shoe’s toe box bobbed anxiously, using my abdominal muscles as a trampoline, so forcefully in fact that my body and limbs jerked a little against the hard floor with every bounce, from the shock of muscle tension. And yet I was just glad that my head was getting a rest. Surely my skull could not sustain that kind of springy punishment for very long.

The knocking sounds resumed – the toes tapping inside the shoe –this time the small knocks were tapping against my torso, vibrating inside my sensitive, aching chest cavity. Each sharp knock ignited a pinprick of almost ticklish pain somewhere on my torso, as if the rapping toe was delivering a series of tiny punches into my delicate flesh by its pure resonance through the shoe medium. Focusing on keeping my abdominal wall firm in defence against these battering taps, I took deep breaths to ward off the haziness building in my head. I could barely focus on the rapid, excited conversation surging on above the table, at intervals, interrupted by alcohol-aided laughter.

The toe box of the striped shoe lifted and stamped a couple of times onto my chest, causing me to emit several small squeaks of breath. As I desperately tried to suck more air into my lungs, the shoe would dig into my ribs again and again, forcing my breath out with a whoosh. Or shift its weight, digging into different areas of my torso, depressing my ribcage with a sickening bone-grinding sound, or rolling its weight lower, causing my stomach muscles to fold inwards. It felt like a cannonball was rolling around on top of my midsection. I prayed the shoe’s roaming, shifting weight would not eventually visit my tiny, vulnerable prick and balls, which would have been pulverized by the shoe’s unfettered adventuring across my surface anatomy.

Rapid thudding sounds approached, more shoes materialized and stopped right at the edge of the table. Excited voices greeted each other. My brain barely kept up with the exchange of new names. It sounded like some of them were being invited away.

The girls’ bare legs were beginning to shift. One last time, the striped toe box dug into my liver, before the weight lifted as the legs slid sideways, the shoe and its mate repositioning itself, clunking down beside me as the girls slid along the banquette to leave the table.

“WAIT, MY BAG’S DOWN THERE,” said a girl’s voice.

“OH, AND GRAB MINE, TOO, HANNAH,” Zo piped up.

The banquette vinyl squeaked as the girl, Hannah began bending down under the table.

To avoid imminent detection, I jumped up and, on impulse, dove headfirst into the leather handbag nearest the striped heels, tumbling into a black void, thick with perfume, onto a fabric lined floor.

Next moment the fabric floor rose into the air, bump against a firm surface, and began to sway like a huge pendant, sending me sprawling along the interior, knocking into unseen objects one way, and then sent rolling back into more objects the other way. In pitch black, I couldn’t tell where I was headed – maybe even out of the club entirely, and I began to feel sick, with both vertigo and mounting dread. A dim part of my brain was thirsting for more Kolade, until I remembered that’s what had impulsively sent me dashing into this situation in the first place.

Outside the bag, the thrumping music swelled up as Zo and crew must have re-entered the central area. I wondered if they planned another dancing session, but if so, the bag would have been left behind, like last time.

The bag rocked like I was on a boat on the sea and objects shuffled back and forth, banging into me as they switched places. I went careening into the back wall of the fabric interior, then rolling into the front, and then spinning into the back, and again, and again, until my ears rang.

Much rocking around later, the music lowered to a humming timbre, as if heard through a wall. My heart sank, convinced we’d left the club, a speeding taxi cab imminent to shuttle us across the city and undoubtedly far from my apartment.

A hard surface bumped against my body as the bag came to rest again. Then, to my immense relief, the sounds of vinyl seats squeaking. We were still inside the club.

Stretching up, I poked my head warily over the top of the handbag, though outside the bag it was scarcely lighter or clearer.

This looked like a completely different place, not the orange room. It was as dark as the central dancefloor, but instead of laser effects, the neon lights here didn’t flash. My sense of direction had evaporated while in the pitch black handbag. I couldn’t tell if we were still on the ground floor, or had ascended to the second floor, or which corner of the building this was.

A big striped high heel moved up close to collide into the side of the bag, sweeping it -- and me -- discreetly out of the way until it bumped into the bottom of the banquette. Then the bag was pressed in on either side by the high heels, to keep it in place.

The conversation above the table droned on for what seemed like a long time, without getting any closer to what I was after. And now the thrill was coming down; I was feeling less like a little ninja and more like an invader, if not someone outright sitting on a ticking time bomb that would detonate if I got caught. 

"I SAW CLYDE."

It was the voice of the other girl, Hannah.

My ears pricked up and I began to silently pray to the Gods of juicy gossip to toss me a bone so I could pack up and get out of here.

"OH, HE'S AROUND," Zo said, sounding completely unsurprised.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING,” Hannah answered, “WE WOULD HAVE GONE TO INFINITY INSTEAD.”

“UH-HUH,” Zo said dismissively, “THEN – OOPS – HE’S THERE, TOO. OR, NOT INFINITY. EIGHTY-SIX. OR, NOT EIGHTY-SIX. PUSSY IN BOOTS.”

“PUSSY IN BOOTS ISN’T A NIGHTCLUB,” Hannah muttered, “IT’S A STRIP BAR.”

“EXACTLY,” came the low, dangerous reply. Then she went on, “WHY DO I CHANGE MY PLANS? – LIKE I’M THE ONE SNEAKING AROUND? I’M MOVING ON, GIRL. BETTER THINGS.”

She let out a scoffing laugh:

“THE BREAK-UP WAS THE BEST THING TO HAPPEN OUT OF IT. GAVE ME CLARITY.” She said in a breathless rush: “YOU KNOW THE STRIPPER GIRL HE WAS BANGING WAS CALLED…GUESS WHAT…?...‘CHASTITY’. NOT HER STRIPPER NAME, HER ACTUAL NAME.”

There was a long silence. Then Hannah burst into regretful laughter, and Zo joined in.

“YUP,” Zo said tightly, “I JUST LAUGH ABOUT IT NOW.”

“WHEN DID HE COME CLEAN?” said Hannah.

“PFFT!” A scoff. “THAT WOULD BE THE DAY. HE WENT THROUGH MY PHONE SO I WENT THROUGH HIS PHONE. THAT’S HOW I FIGURED IT OUT. THERE’S NOTHING ON MY PHONE ANYWAY, BUT HE KEPT THINKING THERE WAS.” She groaned.

Hannah murmured in sympathy and began talking about her own similar past relationship issues.

Meanwhile, my interest in the espionage had deflated like a spiked balloon. If I told Clyde his suspicions were wrong, I wondered if he’d even believe me. In fact, Zo wasn’t the only one with clarity. I had some a moment ago like a slap and now wondered how I’d even ended up huddled up, cold, under a table like this. I needed to go. Now.

In a flash I vaulted out of the bag opening and dashed over the dark floor to the outward facing edge of the table, stopping to stare around and get my bearings.

Like the orange room, this area had a separate light scheme; heavy UV blue like a forensic crime scene, with curving surfaces of seating and tables matte black. Only the three stairs leading up into this ‘blue room’ and the bar's drink display glowed a warm infra-red kind of pink. My eyes were submerged in the deep light scheme for some seconds before adjusting. It was like being inside a futuristic space ship.

At ground level I was facing a wide black jungle of bar floor, an entire village of tree trunk chair legs, some paired with an occupant’s legs and shoes, while walkways between conveyed the sudden, unpredictable passage of lethal foot traffic.

Out in the open, paralysis struck: I didn’t know whether I wanted to stay or go anymore. Clyde said he’d give me an hour to get information, but in all this weirdness my concept of time had exploded, and I couldn’t check my phone. The Kolade didn’t help; it made time seem to move in bursts. Plus, I didn’t know the way back to the orange room; it could be anywhere amidst the sea of shoes brimming around the endless floorspace.

Anyone could stumble by and squash me flat any second, and realizing this, I felt so helpless, like a baby, just wanting to collapse and cry, waiting for someone to come along, pick me up, and make it all better, and the gut reaction mortified me, so I pushed it down.

Maybe the hour had ticked over and, if I was lucky, Clyde or Raf might even be looking for me right this instant. Hopeful, I strained my ears to try and hear my name being called out, but there was just the blood rushing in my ears, the music oozing through the walls, and drone of human chatter.

It was so cold on the floor; the skin of my bare forearms was creeping.

Footsteps charged up to the table, causing me to jump. The girls’ conversation tapered off with glass clanks as drinks were placed onto the tabletop.

“WHAT’S THAT?” Hannah said.

I froze.

“A BLOODY MARY,” one of the guys’ replied.

As the guys slid onto the banquette besides the girls, I hazarded a couple of steps out from the table, and stood, paralyzed with indecision, needing to get away from the womens’ bulldozing stilettos, but not sure if the outside of the table was any safer. The passages between tables were a minefield of potential stomping by distracted, blundering, half drunken shoes, but if I could sprint under another, unoccupied table and hide there for a moment…

“HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT A BLOODY MARY IS?” the guy was saying.

“WHAT’S IN IT?” said Hannah.

“TOMATO JUICE.”

“FUNKY. IS IT LIKE A SMOOTHIE? GIVE ME A TASTE—”

The guy gave a stifled chuckle.

“YOU ASSHOLE!” Hannah spluttered. “YOU POURED A LOAD OF PEPPER INTO IT!”

“IT’S TABASCO SAUCE. IT’S RIGHT THERE ON THE MENU BOARD!” he protested.

“HANNAH IS ALLERGIC TO SPICY THINGS,” said Zo, sounding both disapproving and subtly amused.

“OH DAMN,” said the guy.

“I’M NOT ALLERGIC,” said Hannah, “BUT IT MAKES ME…UGH…” Her voice diminished into an irritated grunt. Then she let out a gasp like she was trying to hold her breath. Then, with preternatural, unavoidable speed, ducked her head under the table—

My heart tripled its pace as I caught a glimpse, just in time, of the giant silhouette of the girl’s head, a shadowy faceless mass under the dark table, partially backlit by a neon white strip running along the top of the banquette, right before—

“AHHHH-CHOOOO!”

An explosion erupted into my face.

“BLESS YOU,” said Zo, as Hannah’s head rose above the table, out of sight again. She hadn’t even seen me.

Oh God! I thought miserably, wrenching my eyelids shut with all my strength as my stomach heaved.

It was like getting a spurt up and down with a garden hose, except the cloud of moisture was flecked with generous helpings of viscous slime and a soup of spicy red splatter. My eyeballs felt repulsively wet and slimy and even bubbly from an infiltrating film of foreign saliva.

I stood with my eyes and mouth shut, feeling hopeless, the sticky sauce running down my face, and praying the girl hadn’t seen me. The seat squeaked as she must have sat straight again, and with no mention of me, I must have gone unnoticed.

But now my face was on fire from the infiltration of Tabasco sauce, liberally swished with warm, foreign saliva, spearing into my eyes and nostrils. I bit my tongue as tears streamed down my cheeks. With my lips clamped shut, my lungs started to tighten, I inhaled through my nose and got a thick channel of slime straight into my nasal cavities, burning my throat.

My forearms had also been blasted by the noxious cloud, and were starting to tingle, raw as if inflamed. The warm saliva was sending the Tabasco into the pores of my arm like moisturizer. My already raw, tender, heel-pulverized flesh sprung up in pain again. Now I regretted taking my jacket off and leaving it uselessly crumpled under some table in the orange room. In desperation, I scrubbed my hands over my face and forearms, trying to wipe off as much fluid as possible. 

“I’VE GOT TISSUES IN MY HANDBAG IF YOU WANT SOME,” came another girl’s voice, a newcomer. “JUST WAIT—” the vinyl groaned as she began to lean and reach down under the table…

Oh shit!

Without thinking I spun around and burst out from under the table. Feet pounding madly over the dark floor, the world blurred past like a black forest of ankles and calves, table and chair legs, and black vinyl couches topped with pink neon strips like dark hills backlit by the rising sun.

Since vision was limited I relied on my other senses; straining my ears and body for sounds and sensations of metronymic pounding vibrations, which indicated a giant was approaching, in whichever direction was opposite any hammering thuds.

The Kolade binge had me in such heart-racing fear or being kicked or stood on that I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.

Seeking any floorspace free from giant shoes, I was magnetically drawn to a darker, quieter corner of the blue room where there were some empty tables waiting for me to hide beneath, at least until my itching, bloodshot eyes stopped streaming with tears and I could put together some plan of escape. Most of all, I sorely needed rest: my lungs cramped for breath, my muscles were tense like wire, and tremors squirmed up and down my cold, sweat-slimed flesh.

In the farthest corner of the blue room, the central floor’s invading music was its lowest, quiet enough to make out an odd little tapping sound, like someone tapping two erasers on the end of pencils against wood floor.

Within another second I realized what it was: it was the sound of my feet pattering against the dark timber.

And I wasn’t the only person who’d heard it—

“OH, GROSS, A MOUSE!” a woman’s voice rang from somewhere above.

I didn’t need a zoologist to tell me that the woman was mistakenly referring to me. The deep UV atmosphere and dark walls and surfaces rendered me as little more than a tiny shadow scurrying around on the ground, while my pumping feet emitting tiny scratching patters on the wood boards. Not to mention various patrons suffering intoxication-induced visual distortions. It was a wonder anyone saw me at all.

There was no time to wait for someone to pull out a magnifying glass and amend the misidentification.

Twisting around, I started dashing in the opposite direction from which the voice had originated, but it was too late. The woman’s cry had alerted all those closest to her, and they promptly went quiet, making my pattering footsteps audible to them, too. This caused them to jump up from their seats, which caused those sitting nearest them to fall quiet and look, and hear my skittering movement. As the voices of other nearby patrons hushed, it left my rapid pattering audible to more and more people, kicking off a domino effect of growing alarm to ripple across the blue room. Everywhere I ran, a Mexican wave of growing disorder was pursuing hot on my ankles. Everywhere I turned, more outcries:

“MOUSE!” someone shrieked.

“OH, CRAP, I THINK SAW IT!”

“IT RAN OVER THERE SOMEWHERE!”

“IT’S FAST!”

“WHERE DID IT GO?”

“HIT IT WITH A BOTTLE!”

“JUST SQUISH IT!”

Giant feet thundered in and out of my path. Dense shadows danced about me, wavering back and forth like towering black flames. Tree trunk legs jerked out into my path, casting crenulated soles over my head, ready to grind me into the floor, and dropping like anvils, smashing down to my left and right, and directly in front of me. Each failed assassination by shoe inspired my muscles to burn anew with feverish exercise, pushing me to run faster than I ever had in my entire life.

I squinted along the matte black floor, the neon lights above reflected in it like city lights on a black pond, dazzling my vision, making it hard to navigate. I seemed to be heading towards the entrance of the blue room. Or, I hoped I was. The black, light-stripped bar was in the way.

The floor was suddenly wet with spill and my leg went skidding out from under me, pulling a muscle. As I limped forward—

A black tapered stiletto point fell from the sky, nearly skewering me on the barbaric lance of its heel – for an instant I dove, wedging through the gap just beneath the steep slanting arch, directly underneath the sole—

“OH MY GOD, GET IT AWAY FROM ME!” came a quaking feminine scream from above, histrionic from intoxication.

The shiny black high heel lifted over me and stamped down on the wood floor with a second deafening tap, this time just to my side, sending a jolt through my skeleton. Then I was in motion again, pushing my legs to their limits to get away from the woman when—

—another shoe appeared out of thin air and booted into me, sending me spinning through the air. The black floor spun up and struck me, and I was bouncing and tumbling blindly, stars whizzing past my eyes, but before I could clamber to my feet—

A different shoe curved into my path, making a wide sweeping motion, collecting me and sending me zooming over the floor and straight underneath the shadowy underneath of a table.

“IT WENT UNDER THERE!”

With a dry rustling, an enormous object like a gigantic eyelash, with a horizontal set of thick black strands shot beneath the table like a pinball plunger, heading straight for me. It was a push broomhead the size of a living room rug.

The thick straws of brush jabbed me, almost needling my bare skin like porcupine quills. My feet were literally swept out from under me, and striking my shoulder on the floor, I was sliding along, the bristles pushing me, trying to claw me back to the broom pusher.

I jumped up again, diving away from the broom and sprinted out from under the table. Now back on the open floor, I managed to pass the bar and the throbbing music got louder as my path was taking me within reach of the blue room’s open entranceway back to the central floor.

A chilled shower burst down and something hard thunked onto my head – an ice cube, with several others hailing down onto the floor. My skull pounded with pain. Someone had thrown their glass of water at me, maybe in an attempt to stun me. Had they been successful it would have given the broom pusher enough time to bring a foot or the broomhead down on me and squash me like a pancake.

Nerves shocked with electricity from the chill, I fought to stay lucid and not pass out.

At least the water washed the Tabasco sauce off. As my body dripped over the floor, I kept running and the chillness disappeared with the frenetic exertion. Ducking my head, made the last mad dash, passing out of the blue room and back into the wall-pumping bass music filling the central floor.

A cursory glance up and down the endless polished aisle floor showed less towering foot traffic on my right, so I turned and began to race up that way. The music shocked my feet as I followed the aisle along the wall filled with stray people heading up and down. Darkness and lasers flashed like lightning. I was invisible on the floor; my only hope was to try and pass the shoes without being stood on.

Then footsteps came bounding out behind me. Some of the people in the blue room must have seen me run out. My chest panged with dread; I couldn’t outrun normal sized people charging at me full sprint, and out in the central floor there were no tables or low hanging surfaces to hide under; it was just dancefloor and the railings that bordered spaces, with big chubby vinyl cushions placed around the edges.

High above the central dancefloor, the scintillating laser lights were connecting at right angles, creating grids in mid-air, diamonds, prisms, cages, and suddenly I was thinking of Jennifer and what she was doing right now, and wondering if I’d be able to get out of here alive to see her ever again.

I screamed at the top of my lungs but no one heard me.

A swooping sensation climbed up my body, my stomach curled like a fist and vomit projected out of my mouth but my legs kept pumping. The swooping sensation vanished with the contents of my stomach, a load of undigested Kolade. I felt better, but not much.

Down the aisle bordering the dancefloor, I passed giant shoes; some of these stopped and shuffled around to follow my path, and I thought I heard gasps from above, just over the beating music.

The footsteps behind me seemed to have stopped. I turned back to check: no pursuers. I turned around again to keep running.

And there was a pair of giant high heels blocking my path. 

I kept running, my brain overloaded with adrenaline and fear, and tried to leap between the oversized high heels directly in front of me. There was a gap between them; if I could just –

The towering figure above seemed to bend over – for one fear-blinding second I thought she was tripping over me and I was destined to be squished under a collapsing breast or stomach – but the ‘fall’ was too controlled and transformed into a graceful crouch. The giant black shadow of an outstretched hand came parasoling over my head, and I watched it, stunned into stillness, too late realizing the hand was not looking to stabilize itself flat against the floor, but looking to unloosen me from the floor.

The hand disappeared over and behind my head before there came a pinching at the back of my waistband – pulling painfully tight around my groin – and my upper body dropping forward as I was yanked up into the air by the back of my pants. As the air whooshed and bass beat thumped, my waistband pulled so tight around my lower belly that I couldn’t breathe properly. My arms waved around as I dangled, seeing the floor rapidly descending, and the dark bodies continued to dance all around, like a forest of wavering trees, no one having noticed me.

The air whizzed past, more long, flexible objects hooked around my shoulders, pinning my arms to my torso. Still wet from the tipped glass of iced water, I almost slipped through the sweaty flesh, but the hand responded immediately; tensing even more around my torso, compressing it inwards, making me gasp for oxygen into my increasingly squashed torso. My diaphragm fought against the increasing cinch of pressure; I took rapid, small breaths, trying to expand my lungs as much as possible. If the fist continued to tense, it could easily snap my bones. I couldn’t thrash against it, and trying to scream, only a tiny whimper escaped, muffled by the blasting club music.

The world tilted around until I was looking straight up at the face of a girl; her face shadowed in the dim light, the unseen eyes must have been locked on me, as mine were locked onto hers.

The fingers surrounding me then loosened slightly to allow a firm object to start working away into my chest; I tucked my chin in, peering down vaguely to see the tip of a giant thumb kneading up and down against my ribcage, powerfully enough to make my ribs groan and shift around.

The ironing motion of the thumb drove the fingernail a little too deeply into my gut, connecting painfully with the curving bands that were my bottom ribs. In the giant girl's urgency to rub my chest – maybe to calm me down – she apparently did not appreciate the potential strength in just her fingertips compared to my puny anatomy. My bottom ribs were accidentally being leveraged up by the probing thumbnail, making me fear for an immediate bone fracture any second.

I gave a yip. The thumb halted, resting on my solar plexus, and I inwardly sighed in relief, and my head tilted back to apprehend my captor. Lasers had been wandering all around the room and for an instant, gleamed in her eyes and sent me a flash of her twisted, triumphant grin and in an instant I was sickened with fear. My legs began to paddle pathetically in the air, my arms trapped against my sides beneath her sweaty palm flesh. My throat ripped with a hoarse scream.

One huge thumb humped over my chest and settled heavily on my mouth, preventing me from screaming anymore.

“SHHH,” she murmured conspiratorially, her voice galloping with exhilaration. “DON’T TELL ANYONE.”

Her other hand had slipped down to her handbag, surreptitiously working the zip and holding the widening slit open, while sending me inexorably towards the gaping black threshold, past which point I would be zipped up again and lost from view, and no one would know I was trapped in there.

Or, almost no one.

Out from the darkness there was a feminine growl:

“STOP THAT.”

A hand clamped around the girl’s wrist, jerking me away from the open bag.

“UHHH, EXCUSE ME?!” the girl yelped, glaring up into the face of her intervener.

“YOU WILL LET HIM GO. THIS INSTANT.”

“WHAT, LIKE YOU OWN HIM?” she scoffed, with her free hand trying to yank the zip shut again, and then anxiously fix her hair.

“AND WHO ARE YOU?” the other woman, the intervener, demanded.

“I AM…” the girl huffed as if reluctant to provide a name, “…I AM OVER THIS! UGH. LAY-TERRRR!”

I was dumped, almost upside down, onto a soft palm incensed with complex, expensive perfume, as the girl swished around and stalked off through the crowd. As I sat up on the palm, the fingers of another identically fragranced hand curled around me, tanned and elegant, with French manicured nails. My Kolade coked up heart skipped with lust before I could stop it. The fingers arranged around my ribcage to hold me firmly in the palm, while the thumb gently hooked around my head.

Then I was being drawn in to a black cocktail dress. I was cradled against the soft dress fabric covering a wall of taut belly, with the inside fingers cupped around my other side. The abdominal wall expanded against me with each inhalation as I was pressed against it. With each of my own inhalations I got a head full of perfume. The ruffled fabric whispered and tickled against my cheek as body heat radiated against my somewhat squashed front.

The world started swaying in gentle motion over the floor, not in time with the music and the dancers, but an assured gait that was now heading away from the music. From beneath the thumbpad semi-obscuring my vision there were glimpses of tall dark bodies passing on either side. My keeper moved strategically amidst the throngs, pressing me against her dress to shield me from attention, while the thumbpad idly padded over my face, continually blotting my vision, while tilting my jaw, compelling my head to face her, or, away from people, or softly planting itself over my features and holding there until people had passed by.

In a moment of pause in a patch of shadowy floor, I was lifted up the lithe torso of the woman to stop just above her strapless bust, sheltered at her neck, where her perfume was the most intense. She tilted her head down close to my face like I was a phone she was about to speak into, while her dusky eyes continued to wander the crowds, Alizarin-painted lips pursed and betraying nothing. There was nowhere else to look, I was walled in by the the extensive physical landscape of the woman’s poised face, framed by a silky curtain of dark hair like a glossy waterfall at midnight.

In the cool air, her alcohol-spiced breath warmed my shoulders and neck. Panic prickled along the nape of my neck. I wriggled to try and free myself of her grip, but her fingers closed in, giving my midsection a small but commanding pinch, extinguishing all my efforts to escape.

“MI SPIACE, DOLCEZZA,” came a low murmur right in my ear, as the thumb affectionately stroked my jawline. “LOOK AT ME PAWING YOUR FACE LIKE THIS. IT'S AN EXTRA MEASURE OF ANONYMITY FOR YOUR BENEFIT. YOU ARE, AFTER ALL, INCONVENIENTLY EYE-CATCHING, DON’T YOU THINK?”

As we moved through another crowd and people hemmed in from both sides, I tried to shift my head out from the thumb to see if anyone had noticed me, though the lack of surprised exclamations already told me they hadn’t. The fingers responded to my squirming, tightening their grip, while the thumb began to stroke up and down my face as if in reassurance, sometimes gently scratching at my scalp.

"SILLY LITTLE MAN," she intoned, barely audible, "YOU CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO KEEP YOURSELF OUT OF TROUBLE…”

At the end of the floor, we ascended the small set of stairs up to another area, one I hadn’t been to yet. Dim lit, raised area off to the side, with a view of the central floor without being in the thick of it. In the corner of this floorspace, there was a corner booth and a lone young woman sitting on the banquette, watching us approach. Her light hair was tied back and she was wearing sandal heels and a champagne colored dress; the light, peaceful color emerging out of the dim lighting like a reprieve on my eyes, or maybe it just distracted me enough from the person holding me. She had bright, curious eyes and a friendly smirk. There were a couple of cocktails on the table, and a small paper cup of French fries with dipping sauce.

The girl leaned forward, relaxed, stretching both arms over the table, her eyes tracking me as I was brought closer.

“WHAT DO YOU HAVE THERE, SAM?” the girl said with a small, puzzled smile up at my keeper. “LOOKS LIKE A LITTLE PERSON.”

As the girl’s curious eyes dropped back down to me, her smile dampened while her eyes widened.

“OH MY GOD, IT IS A LITTLE PERSON.”

“HE HAS A NAME,” came the response, composed but not unfriendly, “AND I BELIEVE HE WOULD PREFER IF YOU WERE TO USE IT. THIS IS MR MOUSSEAU.”

“ISN’T THAT JERRY MOUSSEAU?”

My feet came down onto the firm table surface as the tanned fingers uncurled, while I stood shakily for a second, and the banquette rustled as the seat directly behind me was taken up, at a right angle from the other girl.

“No. His twin brother,” I said.

“PLEASED TO MEET YOU, WHICHEVER MOUSSEAU YOU ARE,” the girl played along. “DARCY.” And one of her hands came sliding over the table towards me.

“UHM, HOW DO WE DO THIS…?” she said, extending her fingertips as if to shake my hand. Instead, I bent and planted a kiss on the reflective nail dome, which elicited an impressed smile from the girl, as she said:

“OH. A TRUE GENTLEMAN.”

“JERRY IS VERY MUCH THE GENTLEMAN,” the poised voice conceded behind me, as a finger brushed my back and began rubbing between my shoulder blades.

“SO, SAM…YOU NEVER TOLD ME YOU KNEW JERRY…!” the girl exclaimed in surprise, looking between me and up above my head. “HOW DO YOU GUYS KNOW EACH OTHER?”

No one said anything for a second. The finger at my back hesitated, curling so the knuckle rested against my spine.

“Mutual work acquaintances,” I said, shifting my weight on my feet, putting my hands into my pockets. “I did a modelling shoot and we bumped into each other.”

The fingerpad made a firm smoothing motion over my left shoulder, like a hand giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Then it went back to rubbing my backbone.

“OH,” Darcy went on, as if uninterrupted, and leaned over the table towards me, “SAMANTHA AND I ALSO MET THROUGH WORK. A WORK FUNCTION.”

She took Samantha’s other hand across the table and squeezed it, and I said:

“You guys are dating?”

“THAT IS CORRECT,” Darcy replied coyly. "HOW ABOUT YOU?” she said, pulling a fry out of the pile, dipping it in sauce and eating it. “IN A RELATIONSHIP?”

“Yeah. I’m engaged.”

“OH, CONGRATULATIONS!”

Samantha said nothing.

A huge forefinger – Darcy’s – extended into my face to gently prod my chest, coincidently where my tattoo was. 

“YOU’RE TOO CUTE TO BE SINGLE,” she decided aloud.

Looking away for a moment, Darcy shifted in her seat, folding her arms over the table while leaning towards me eagerly:

“I DON’T WANT TO SEEM LIKE SOME CRAZY ANNOYING FAN,” she said with an anxious smile, “BUT COULD I, YOU KNOW, POSSIBLY GET YOUR AUTOGRAPH?”

“Sure,” I said, grateful for the distraction.

She whipped a pen and notepad out of her handbag, tearing a blank page off and placing it on the table in front of me, and then, with some hesitation, put sliding the pen into my awaiting hands. I stood it up on its tip and gripped it like a flagpole.

“SORRY,” she said, “I DON’T HAVE A SMALLER PEN.”

“It’s fine,” I said, holding the pen a bit like a shovel and dragging it over the paper. I wrote out a short, personalized inscription before signing my name.

“HEY, JERRY…!” Raf’s voice cut through the room, and then he was striding up to the table, letting out a sound like his chest collapsed in relief. “LOOKING ALL OVER FOR YOU, MAN!”

“I’m sorry, buddy,” I said, presenting the pen and autograph back to Darcy. “I lost my phone.”

But he pulled it out of his pocket and held it up, clamped between his fingertips:

“NAH, MAN, I GOT IT. IT WAS ON CLYDE.”

His eyes flicked over the two women as if only just noticing them.

“WHOA, UH…DID I JUST WALK IN ON SOMETHING?”

“We’re just talking,” I said quickly.

“OH,” he sounded relieved. “JUST CHECKING IF WE’RE COOL TO HEAD OUT, BRO, BUT YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE—”

“No, I…” I began, dusting my sweating palms off on my thighs, “…I guess I should probably be getting out of here right about now…”

The vinyl banquette emitted a low sound as Samantha shifted forward, before a finger smoothly angled around my waist and held there. Her accented burr vibrated behind my head; as if she had hunched over me.

“I WOULD CARE FOR A CHAT WITH YOU FIRST, JERRY...”

And then, in afterthought, the finger stroked my belly as if to soften the gesture.

“…IF THAT’S ALRIGHT WITH YOU, OF COURSE.”

I placed my palms down on the finger, which was surprisingly warm and accruing a sheen of perspiration on the inside of the joints. It made me wonder if she was as anxious as I felt. I twisted around and looked up warily. It seemed as though my memory had cheated me: she was more disquietingly beautiful than I had recalled. Her head was turned down, dark eyes examining me with interest.

Then I looked across at Raf, who was staring at Samantha.

“Maybe I’ll hang back for now.”

“I WILL TAKE CHARGE OF HIS TRANSPORT A LITTLE LATER ON,” Samantha offered to Raf, while her fingers squeezed my neck in a massaging way.

“WELL, IF THESE LADIES HAVE GOT YOU ALL COVERED,” Raf said down to me, shuffling awkwardly on his feet, “I’MM’A ROLL OUT.”

He gave me a wink.

“Sure. See you, Raf.”

He put my phone on the table, saluted me goodbye, and went back down the steps onto the central floor, heading towards the club’s exit.

Darcy took another fry and coated it in dip.

“SO, JERRY, HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS PLACE, ANYWAY?” she asked me, casting a brief look out towards the dancefloor where Raf had last been seen. Her smirk returned as her head turned back to me. “YOU SEE THOSE GIRLS UP ON THE PODIUMS? LIKE A GO-GO BAR.”

“Think I’ll check out a smaller club next time.” I rubbed my sweaty hands together. “Does anyone have a hand wipe?”

Samantha removed a sanitizing wipe from her handbag and gave it to me.

“SHE KEEPS A WHOLE STASH OF SUPPLIES IN THERE,” Darcy commented.

I also knew this from personal experience.

The wet wipe was a tiny folded up square, but unfolded, was to me more like a towel, damp with ethanol antibacterial. I began to run it over my hands, and then my bare arms and face, as well as the back of my neck. The women were silent, watching me. Then—

“JERRY…” Darcy said suddenly.

I looked up from the wet wipe to see her smiling down at me, shyly.

“…UM…IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A SEAT, YOU COULD ALWAYS SIT IN MY HAND. IT’S FREE RIGHT NOW,” she waggled her fingers, adding eagerly: “NO RESERVED SIGN, SEE? I WOULD HURRY BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE TAKES IT.”

She held her hand open, palm up against the table as I wandered over – her smile becoming less shy and more pronounced – and climbed onto the platform of soft, crease-lined skin, stretching my legs out and resting my arm along her cocked thumb, nail coated in ruby red polish. She giggled as my fingers and heels dug against her flesh, it must have tickled.

“LET’S GET A PHOTO, THE THREE OF US!” she said. “GET IN, GET IN!” she said, sliding up against Samantha.

Sitting in Darcy’s palm, I was lifted up just under the women’s faces as Samantha took the photo with her phone. The women shifted and rustled on the seat and I sensed them exchange looks and conspiratorial gestures behind my head, but before I could turn my head to see what they were doing, I had the instantaneous impression that my head was about to get crushed between compacting walls; as both women came in swiftly, one on either side, their sultry lips ensconcing my tiny head in a moist smooching embrace. It was captured in photo, and snatching Samantha’s phone for review, Darcy laughed bashfully; my face was so perfectly enclosed between the lush padding of their combined lips that it looked like they were kissing each other just above my headless body.

As Samantha put her phone down again, and I self-consciously wiped the mask of saliva and lipstick and lipgloss off my features, Darcy gently lifted her hand, and me, up and down in experimental fashion.

“I’VE NEVER HELD A BODYBUILDER IN ONE HAND.” Then to me: “HE’S SO LIGHT!”

“AND VERY STRONG,” Samantha muttered in earnest.

“I’m not a bodybuilder,” I frowned, trying to visualize what my body used to look like before I’d shrunk, and disturbed that I couldn’t. “I just work out.”

Darcy laughed and shook her head as if she didn’t believe me.

“NO, I WORK OUT. YOU’RE A MINIATURE MUSCLE MAN!”

Her other hand swept in close, fingers extending towards me with hesitation.

“CAN I HAVE A LITTLE FEEL, THERE?”

“Sure,” I said, holding out my arms.

Her fingertip began probing around my shoulder muscle, and giving my bicep a small pinch between forefinger and thumb. Before I could react, one of her fingers smoothly rolled over my chest so she could inspect my pecs.

“OH, IS THAT A TATTOO?” she cooed. “THAT IS JUST GORGEOUS – SAM, LOOK AT HIS CHEST!”

Samantha hunched down and stroked a thumbnail over my pec to pull it taut, her brow narrowing as she read the little brand. As she did this, I could feel one of Darcy’s fingertips now probing around my back muscles with interest, and tracing my ribs with a nail.

Then she grinned down at me:

 “NICE INK WORK. IS ‘J.S.T’ YOUR…LET ME GUESS, FIANCEE?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I HOPE SO, OTHERWISE THAT WOULD BE A LITTLE EMBARRASSING.” Then she sighed as if reminiscence, and said innocently: “BUT WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES WHEN WE’RE IN LOVE, DON’T WE?”

I avoided all eye contact for a moment.

Darcy then challenged me to a wrestling competition between my arm and the pinky finger of her free hand. I won, so she switched to her thumb, and then I lost. Samantha watched with amusement, and then, satisfied I was being supervised, slid out from the table, and turning back to us, said:

“CARE FOR SOMETHING FROM THE BAR? I’M JUST GETTING A DRINK MYSELF.”

“NO, THANK YOU, SAM,” Darcy replied, raising her half-finished cocktail for a sip. “I’M STILL TAKING MY TIME, HERE.”

Samantha’s eyes then fell upon me. When I was silent, she said, businesslike:

“HAVE SOMETHING. I WON’T INSIST THAT YOU DRIVE ME HOME.”

“Anything with whiskey,” I relented.

She melted into the dark crowds.

Darcy started dipping french fries again, while I sat in her other hand, slumped against her thumb, letting my body rest from all the running earlier.

“YOU’RE SUPER CHILL,” she observed out loud, mid-fry. “I SEE HOW YOU AND SAM CLICKED. SHE DOESN’T TALK MUCH EITHER.”

“You guys come here often?” I said, lazily watching each fry in turn get withdrawn, dipped in sauce, and taken up to her mouth to be mulched.

“HONESTLY, THIS IS NOT OUR SCENE,” she replied, “BUT SHE WANTED TO, SO…” Glancing around, she shrugged.

“Well,” I said, “she’s full of surprises.”

“YEAH,” she chuckled, and then, hesitating for a moment, lowered her voice. "SHE MIGHT SEEM TOTALLY MODEST AND, LIKE, THIS PERFECTLY PROPER GIRL," then, wiggling her eyebrows at me, "BUT SHE'S SAVAGE IN BED."

"I'll take your word for it."

"DON'T SAY ANYTHING; SHE'D BE MORTIFIED IF SHE KNEW I SAID THAT."

"I would never.”

In gratitude, she squirmed her finger under my chin to tickle me, and accidentally painting the underside of my jaw with the French fry grease coating her fingertip.

“OH,” she giggled, slightly tipsy, “I’M GETTING MY FINGERPRINTS ALL OVER YOU. HERE, LET ME—” She took the wet wipe from earlier and passed a corner of it around my face to wipe the grease off.

“I’m glad she’s found someone—” I said, once the wet wipe had stopped blotting around my face.

“AHEM, I AM NOT JUST ‘SOMEONE.’” A fingernail jabbed into my ribs, catching me off guard. I staggered on my feet and into the soft inside of a cupped hand that had quickly swept around me to catch me again.

“Of course not.”

“I’M ONLY TEASING,” she grinned, leaning forward and snatching up another fry. “SORRY. PLEASE CONTINUE.”

“She’s found someone who brings the good parts out.”

Darcy was quiet, distracting herself with the dip before looking at me again.

“YOU THINK SO?”

“I hope so.“

“I HOPE SO, TOO…” Darcy looked away, considering her words, “…YOU’VE KNOWN HER LONG?”

“I wouldn’t say long, but we were close…” then, to deflect suspicion about the past tense, quickly corrected myself: “—I mean, are close.” That didn’t sound right either, but too late, I’d said it.

Fumbling for words, I went on:

“I mean, she’s very delicate and you have to treat her carefully…or else, big trouble.” Then words failed completely and I clamped my jaw shut until my thoughts stopped babbling.

“Don’t say anything to her,” I mumbled, “or—”

“SHE’D BE MORTIFIED?” Darcy raised an eyebrow, “WELL, I THINK IF SHE KNEW YOU FELT THAT WAY, SHE WOULD JUST MELT.”

“No, I’d be mortified.”

“BUT IT’S SO SWEET,” she insisted. “YOU’RE LIKE HER LITTLE GUARD DOG, JUST MAKING SURE I TREAT HER LIKE A LADY OTHERWISE YOU’LL COME AFTER ME.”

She looked away with a small smile.

“I COULD TELL YOU GUYS WERE TIGHT EVEN BEFORE YOU SAID ANYTHING. SAM DOESN’T LET HER SOFT SIDE SHOW. BUT SHE’S ALL OVER YOU LIKE YOU’RE HER FAVORITE BABY COUSIN.”

That struck me dumb. Darcy seemed to sense my awkwardness and dropped the subject. To smooth over the quiet, she offered me a French fry, and then giggled as I tried to bite into it like a corn cob.

“WATCH AND LEARN, SMALL FRY,” she said, taking a small handful and ate them in one mouthful, over my head, just to tease me.

Samantha returned from the bar with two Manhattans, mine in a shot glass and another in a martini glass garnished with a black cherry, for her.

As I stood and tilted my drink to quaff it, Darcy talked about how she and Samantha met at a party and connected. My mind followed the upbeat sound of her voice even while my body stiffened at the familiar pressure of Samantha’s touch, which had subtly found its way over the table, back to me. As Darcy recounted funny anecdotes, two fingertips rested against the small of my back. Somewhat unnerving, not only because it reminded me of a gesture people did at parties with their partner – but at normal size, with their entire hand – but also because it was startlingly seductive. The whiskey was warming my insides while, at the same time, her insistent touch warmed my back. I pretended not to notice as the gentle pressure carried on with small rubbing motions.

Soon she was no longer rubbing my shoulders but actively probing around the musculature of my back and arms. Last time she’d seen me I’d been lean and somewhat wasted, and now I was even beefier than ever. Then the thumb tip was nudging around my ribcage with the insistence of a nuzzling animal.

With a straight face, Darcy insisted:

"NOW THAT SAM'S FOUND BUDDHISM IT'S CHANGED HER LIFE."

Samantha laughed, looking away as if embarrassed.

"IT WAS A SINGLE RETREAT, DARCY. ONE DOES NOT CONVERT SO EASILY."

“I TOLD HER TO QUIT MODELLING,” Darcy explained to me, “THAT WAS MY HUSTLE, TOO. YOU BECOME DISTANCED FROM YOUR BODY, OBSESSED WITH SIZE AND CONTROL, AND ALL THESE METRICS. IT SPIRALS INTO SOMETHING UNHEALTHY.”

Once the drinks were finished the women started talking of parting. Darcy called a cab for herself and then grinned down at me:

"IS IT WRONG TO SAY I WANT TO STUFF YOU IN MY POCKET AND SNEAK YOU HOME?” The volume of her tone now rose and fell exuberantly; unable to hide her tipsiness.

“You don’t have a pocket,” I pointed out.

“SHOOT! YOU’RE RIGHT!” she giggled, and began patting around the folds of her dress. “BUT I BET I COULD FIT YOU IN HERE SOMEWHERE…”

She shot Samantha an impish look.

“SORRY, SAM, BUT YOU KNOW I’M GOING TO KIDNAP HIM AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!”

For a moment, no one said anything. The vinyl banquette squeaked awkwardly and there was a rustling sound against the floor, like shoes grinding against the resin floor.

Darcy’s impish smile dropped.

“WHAT?”

Samantha’s fingers were tensing around my waist like a vice.

“I PROMISED,” she said gently. “THEREFORE HE IS WITH ME.”

Before I could react, I went shooting up into the air as she shifted out from the table. My waist was tightly kept between her middle finger and thumb, her forefinger pressed against my chest, incredibly assured that I was in place. However, I was not as assured, and wrapped my arms around her fingers in desperation.

She took my phone off the table, gave it the briefest amused glance, and without any fanfare, dropped it into her handbag. But I could only feel a stab of relief at not following it inside.

The giant hand adjusted its grip around my torso as it drew me up against her body, fanning the other hand around me protectively.

Outside the club, people were smoking and talking in the shady street,  orange in the street lights. The air was settled and cool. Down the street, people had spilled out of a lit bar and onto the sidewalk, drunken laughter echoing. It was very late now, and the streets were largely empty.

The cab pulled up, and Darcy gave her goodbyes, before the champagne-colored ruched wall covering her body closed in at me on its way to hug Samantha. As the two women embraced and kissed, I was on the verge of being sandwiched between the enclosing walls of their upper bodies this time, but at the last second found myself saved in the crevice of a few inches with an abdomen on either side, but so close the streetlight was filtered out and the combined radiation of warmth and perfume clouded my head for an instant.

Stepping back again, Darcy patted my head before jumping into her cab, and then it had pulled off the curb and insinuated itself into the intersecting car lights in the distance.

I was left bumping against Samantha’s torso again as her heels clapped over the pavement. I took sucking breaths of the mild night air, trying to think of something to say even though there was no urgency for conversation, my thoughts were racing and my brain needed focus. It was like I’d suddenly found myself in this position and had little memory of how I’d gotten into it, and even less plan of how to extricate myself from it.

On either side, the street inched by, paving lit by the cool streetlights as if washed by the moon, though the moon was invisible behind the cloudy dark sky. The smear of urban noise made the air buzz; car engines growled some blocks away, streetlamps hummed, a distant dog made an enquiring yap, which turned into a growl.

“HEY, GIRL,” a man’s voice rebounded across the empty street. There was no drop in the bumping pace, which continued with the steady clap of heels. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

The stride did not slow, but the arm holding me lowered all the way until I was parallel with her mound, while a big fold of the pleated skirt was bundled up with a discreet sweep of the other hand and dumped over my head like a curling wave, trapping me in its soft ruffled layers.

I spluttered, waved my arms, trying to free myself and clear my view, but to no avail. I was held tight in the pocket of fabric in her hand, bumping against her mound with her rolling saunter, like I was balled up underwear rocking around in the washing machine.

From behind, shoes scuffing rapidly over the road, and heavy, male breathing.

"TOO GOOD FOR ME, HUH? LISTEN WHEN I TALK TO YOU, MAMI."

Many things then happened all at once.

The world came to a jarring halt and whirled around. The man must have grabbed her and yanked her. The break of momentum caused me to briefly get crushed against her crotch as her hand tightened over me.

“GET OFF OF ME,” came Samantha’s voice, “DON’T YOU DAR—” a halting grunt that told me she was being restrained.

Her hand squeezed around me erratically, painfully, the dress folds rubbing all over my body. It felt like being trapped inside a sleeping bag that people were crawling over, and their arms and knees were digging into my body – except the arms and knees were her shifting fingers, struggling to keep me wrapped up.

Samantha screamed and there was a jolting shockwave sensation, though I was insulated by her palm and the pouch of dress fabric. The air thickened with the sound of grunts and heavy breathing. Her hand slackened for an instant, a gap of dim light appeared through the folds. I squirmed madly out between the vice of her fingers, moving like I’d been electrocuted.

Without warning I was falling free; my hands clawed and snatched up silky fabric and I was dangling from her skirt, clinging like a little monkey.

“JERRY—!” Samantha’s voice came for an instant before she was forcibly muffled.

“SHUT UP,” said the male voice. “NO ONE IS COMING.”

Adrenaline seemed to make time slow down and my brain put the scene together with lightning speed. He had corralled her into an alley and had her thrust up against the wall, his body pressed against hers, and hand covering her mouth. I leapt from the silky dress folds onto a sweatpant covered tree trunk and scrabbled up to the baggy juncture.

“Hey!” I yelled out. “Back off!”

“THE FUCK IS—?” the man’s voice thundered from above. The sweatpants rattled me as he jumped back and the shadow of a huge hand came swatting down while I leapt around the thigh to the outer hip—

A start ran through the man’s body as something, far above me, collided with a smack with his head. The swatting hand jerked away, lifting to shield the face. I looked up to see a leathery wrecking ball – a handbag – swinging away and then come flying back into man’s head, and connect with a crack. A million and one cosmetics rattled inside the floppy leather, as efficient as a sock filled with ball bearings. The thigh unbalanced and shook me as it stomped around to get out of the way.

“Get your hands off her!” I sought to get his attention back to me. “Hey, down here!”

For an instant his eyes burned into me with rage, and his hand was shooting down again, reaching around towards his outer hip where I clung, every intention of snuffing my life out—

There was a thump and his whole body tensed up while a whoosh of air rushed out of his lungs, followed by a groan. Samantha had expediently kneed him in the groin. He wheeled back and staggered, as the thigh I was clinging to started to collapse, the concrete was rising up to meet me, but before I could leap off, a hand wrapped around me and yanked me free.

Then I was flying through the air, the streets whipping past. The rapid steps didn’t clap sharply, the high heels now gripped from the other hand.

A block down, the building silhouettes cleared and expanded out onto the charcoal field of the outdoor carpark next to a glowing gas station, a couple of SUVs lined up, and people working the pumps, filling up. The pace slowed, I was smushed up securely against the soft wall just beneath her bust as the bumping motion steadied.

There was pressure around my temples as my head was given a quick rub.

“GRAZIE,” she intoned softly.

“I didn’t do anything,” I muttered, feeling like a liability, while fear and anger burned through my bloodstream.

“YOU GAVE ME A FRIGHT,” she countered, as if that was enough.

I went silent, thinking about the desperate way she’d called my name earlier. I had only heard that startling, jagged emotion in her usually composed tone once before.

It had been back when the investigators had stormed her house to take her into custody and bust me out of her lingerie drawer. It had sounded like she’d gotten enraged at them for finding her out and detaining her. But maybe that hadn’t been the true source of her anger. Maybe it hadn’t been outrage at getting caught.

Maybe it had been outrage at being separated from me.

Motion ceased in front of a black Lexus coupé with tinted black windows. She swung the car door open and slid into the driver seat, shutting the door and engaging the lock. Only now my racing heartbeat began to stabilize again.

She didn’t put me between her legs, as Jen would have done, but kept me in her hand, held up just under her face, which searched the black interior before glancing down at me, nonplussed. Her respiration was still elevated, breath hitting me with a repeated warm push.

“WHERE IS IT YOU WOULD NORMALLY PERCH?”

The last time she had driven me anywhere had been from the inside of her handbag.

I explained:

“A special seat in my driver’s car.”

Of course, her car did not have the booster seat. She inquired:

“AND WHEN YOU’RE NOT COMMUTING…?”

I looked down, beginning to blush.

“Between my fiancée’s legs.”

She hesitated, her eye contact held on me, dark and intensely scrutinizing. I struggled to return it. It made my stomach flutter helplessly.

“THAT DOESN’T SIT WITH ME,” she murmured, “AND I MUST THINK YOU ARE FED UP WITH MY LOWER PELVIS.”

Then she was silent for a moment, thinking.

“I HAVE AN IDEA, IF YOU WOULDN’T MIND…”

“Yes…?” I said, thinking she was going to suggest the handbag express. But instead she answered:

“INSIDE MY BRA CUP. IT WOULD KEEP YOU RESTRAINED AGAINST MY CHEST. I UNDERSTAND IF IT WOULD MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, BUT WE’RE NOT FLUSH WITH OPTIONS.”

“I’ll take it,” I shrugged, too tired to argue.

She paused to glance around the windows to make sure that no one was passing. Satisfied, she pulled the top of the dress bodice away from her bust and pulled out a silicone cup, one half of a stick-on bra, or basically a pair of inserts.

Holding the cup concave up in her palm, her other hand began to slide me into the cup, arranged so my back was against the concave insert. The bust was opened again, the cup carefully slid back in, with my feet first. As she eased the cup down into position, the soft curve of her breast slid up my front, and as it rolled up towards my head, seeming weightier and weightier.

Just before the warm weight of her breast covered my face, she stopped to grasp my head between her thumb and fingers, and gently tug me upwards, and holding me like that as she shifted the dress back into position.

With the fabric released, the top of the dress drew in tight against the back of my neck, keeping me pinned in position on the protruding gentle slope of her chest wall, with my body hugging the smooth, creamy flesh of her right breast.

The dress bust was designed to be incredibly close fitting, and each time she took in a breath, the mammary expanded against me, squashing me against the silicone cup. At the very height of inhalation, the pressure was near intolerable, but this was only for a fraction of a second, before the mammary shrunk down again with every exhalation, giving me a burst of relief before the next hit of building pressure.

Her heartbeat pattered against my ribs, which became calming, while her perfume clouded my brain and started to make my thinking sluggish.

“IS YOUR SEATBELT ON?” she said wryly.

Assured with my positioning, my apartment address was input into the GPS and then the car was rolling down the streets. With the engine running and the car wheels spinning over the road, minute vibrations ran up through the seat, and through her bust as a medium, sending vibrations through my body like my flesh was shivering. Without thinking, I squirmed against her breast, trying to stretch my arms and legs, and release a little of the pressure digging into the back of my neck. As soon as I moved, there was an interruption in the rhythm of her breathing as her chest wall seemed to stiffen.

I froze.

A hand drifted away from the steering wheel to give my head a forgiving squeeze. I turned my head to the side, resting it on the plush surface of her chest, feeling her heart beating into my ear. To the side, glowing car lights flashed past the window.

The outside lights started to burn against my eyes, and they began to close in protest. Her chest continued to expand into my diaphragm as she breathed, which became less uncomfortable as I learned to time my breathing so that we were not inhaling at the same time, otherwise her substantially larger chest would squeeze my lungs empty like tiny sponges.

“THANK YOU FOR NOT MAKING A FUSS TONIGHT,” she said in a quiet voice.

I blinked, managing to catch myself before I stretched or shifted around. Outside, long strips of lit apartment windows flashed past, punctuated by glowing traffic lights, and street signs too dark and blurred to read.

“I’m onto other things in my life now.”

“SÌ – I’M VERY AWARE OF THAT.”

“And I wasn’t in court, so…whatever the outcome was…I just—”

“IT’S COMPLICATED AND TEDIOUS,” she carried on smoothly, even with an air of disinterest, “BUT MY LAWYER EXPLAINED THERE WAS A LEGAL TECHNICALITY. YOUR SIZE CREATED SOME SUGGESTION THAT MY CONDUCT WAS INTENDED TO PROTECT YOU. SO THE SENTENCE WAS RELAXED.”

“I don’t understand…”

“IT WAS UNUSUAL,” she admitted. “MY ADVOCATE WAS GIVEN THE MOST PREPOSTEROUS REASON FOR YOUR ABSENCE.”

It struck me as unfair for her to decide to canvass this solemn subject when I was helplessly draped over her left breast, and with the skin-tight bustline biting into the back of my neck, unable to free myself.

“BUT MAYBE FOR THE BETTTER,” she mused. “COURT IS NOT THE MOST PLEASANT PASTIME…”

“It’s forgotten," I insisted, if only because the subject made me so uncomfortable. But she seemed keen to go on:

“OUR TIME TOGETHER WAS NOT WELL SPENT, AND I…I WAS…I NEVER…IT WASN’T APPROPRIATE.”

Her voice was cracking now. She took a deep breath – in doing so, her bust applied a sharp pinch of pressure to my body. Her rapid heartbeat throbbed into my spine.

Painfully embarrassed, I said:

“You were going through some stuff. I was too.”

There was a long moment of quiet. I assumed the conversation had ended. But then, in a calmer, more agreeable voice, she said:

"THE TRIAL GAVE ME A NEW PERSPECTIVE…I AM DESPERATELY EAGER NOT TO REPEAT IT.”

She went on meditatively, but at some point during the ride I entered the ‘Kolade crash’; the rapid downward rush of energy after the stimulant spike. My eyes drifted shut to the smell of car leather and her rolling accent, which seemed to carry on unconcerned that I was no longer replying.

“SHE IS QUITE TAKEN WITH YOU,” she was saying, referring to Darcy, “AND IN MY OPINION, YOU LOOK ENTIRELY AT HOME IN THE PALM OF HER HAND. IF WE HAD NOT LEFT WHEN WE DID, SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN KEEN TO MAKE THAT FUZZY LITTLE TUMMY OF YOURS THE BENEFICIARY OF A SOFT RUB.”

I got the sense she was teasing me, but as she said this in a straight tone, it was hard to tell. If she ever made a joke she made it in her regular speaking voice, and didn’t intend anyone to laugh.

When my eyes opened again, the engine was off and the car still, and her dark eyes were fixed on me.

“WHAT ARE YOU DREAMING ABOUT, LITTLE ONE?” she said, with a half-smile. “HOW VERY WARM AND SNUG THERE YOU LOOK. I’M SORRY TO HAVE TO BRING AN END TO YOUR NAP…”

Still cradled in her bra, she took me into the building, and to my door, where I gave her the door code and we went inside. The walls of my apartment passed by dimly and then I was placed on my bed.

She was silent for a moment as she watched over me, as if to satisfy herself that I was going to be alright on my own. I expected her to leave then, but instead, she slipped out of her shoes and then slid down gracefully until she was kneeling at the bedside, bringing her face down to my level.

Fixing me a tender look as a lover would, she brought her hand against my face and began brushing her thumb against my cheek, and then my lips and brow. Inwardly burning with discomfort, I wrapped my hand around her thumb and stroked it awkwardly, waiting for the moment to pass.

“I ACTUALLY DO CARE FOR YOU.”

When I didn’t reply she lowered her hand to the mattress, and began idly prodding at my feet with her ring finger, went on:

“BUT I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU’RE KEEN TO MOVE ON AFTER WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN US. SO AM I.”

“I’m not going to go sell my story to the magazines, if that’s what you mean.”

As if for some distraction, she was now trying to scoop up my toes onto the white overhanging edge of her thumbnail, not playfully but absent-mindedly, as if my foot wasn’t attached me. 

“It’s over,” I said, trying to slide my foot away from her grasp. “If you say it’s over, it’s over.”

She paused and lifted her eyes back to my face.

“BUT IT’S NOT WHAT I SAY. IT’S WHAT YOU SAY.”

She pushed against my bicep with a finger, the white tip of her nail causing the muscle to dimple inward.

“IS THIS OBSESSION COME ABOUT BECAUSE OF ME?”

“It’s not an obsession!” I said, pulling my arm away. “It’s just a hobby.” Then I quickly corrected myself, “Actually, it’s not a hobby. It’s a side-effect of working out. That’s all.”

She was quiet for a long time, but her eyes didn’t leave me, like she was weighing the plausibility of my words.

“THAT IS ALL,” she repeated to herself. Then: “I HAVE YOUR TRUST AGAIN?”

It was unclear whether this was a question or not. I answered anyway.

“I…guess so.”

She responded forthrightly:

“THEN IT WOULD BE ALRIGHT WITH YOU IF WE WERE TO END THE NIGHT ON A KISS?”

I stared up at her, frowning, thinking I must have misunderstood, but her face was impassive.

“A GOODNIGHT KISS,” she clarified.

She hadn’t said it with any inkling of flirtation, so I shrugged and mumbled:

“I guess it is.”

Deep down, I was grateful for her looking out for me and driving me home, and not sure how to say ‘no’ without ruining the nice vibes.

Before I could muse on this, she pinched my chin delicately between fore finger and thumb to keep my head still as she considered my face for a moment. Then, her thick black lashes lowered demurely over her dark brown eyes, while the shiny Alizarin reddened lips pouted with anticipation.

My stomach flipped around as the bright red puckered lips expanded rapidly before my eyes, coming straight for my defenceless face. There was no feasible way the sheer mass of her enormous lips could aim anywhere on my face with precision, without capturing a whole lot else besides.

At the last moment the fingertips steered my head to the side before a puff of breath warmed my cheek, an instant before the thick plush lips made contact, painting the side of my face in liquid velvet lipstick.

My cheek seemed to be stuck in place against her mouth for a moment longer, suctioned gently as she puckered, while her breath beating into the top of my head from her nostrils, before she drew back again.

Her thumb slid under my chin, lifting my head and keeping it balanced on her nail as she appraised me.

“MMM, WHAT A DIVINELY SOFT, KISSABLE FACE.”

“I use moisturizers,” I said, blushing. And then added, “Well, my fiancée springs them on me.”

“SHE MUST LOVE YOU DEEPLY. I KNOW YOU’LL MAKE A GALLANT LITTLE GROOM. HAVE YOU CONTEMPLATED A WEDDING DATE?”

“No. it’s probably premature, but…” I had to pause, trying to get my throat to work against the subtle pressure of her thumbnail, pushing against it, as she still hadn’t let go of my head, “…I’d be okay with you coming. And Darcy, if you want to bring her as a guest.”

Her thumbnail began to rub back and forth against my neck with gentle affection.

“I WOULD BE HONORED IF YOU WERE TO INVITE US TO ATTEND YOUR WEDDING, JERRY.”

“Well...okay. No date yet, but I’ll keep you both in mind.”

Her thumbnail finally slid away. But now she had noticed by the way the crotch of my pants was beginning to point up, which in turn, made me intensely aware of it, and my blush deepened.

“THIS IS ABOUT THE TIME I MUST BE LEAVING YOU,” she said, adding with a coy smile, “AND LET YOU ACHIEVE SOME QUALITY OF SLEEP.”

She paused, looking away for a moment, becoming distracted by her white-tipped nails. She might have been smirking but it was hard to tell.

“BUT…I WONDER IF YOU’D BE GENEROUS ENOUGH TO LET ME GET AWAY WITH ONE LAST KISS.”

I shifted in place as I contemplated this. My balls were starting to really ache.

But she didn’t wait for an answer. She bent low over me, and bracing the back of my head with two fingertips, this time not bothering to aim for my cheek, just going straight in for my lips. My face was entirely engulfed in the soft, waxy masses of her lips, my eyes squashed shut by the powerful flexion of her puckering kiss, my nose flattened, my lips crushed, while her breath beat against the top of my head from out of her nostrils, blowing my hair around hotly.

The soft flesh of my face was gripped slightly by the suction of her lips, and gently pulled at my cheeks and mouth. A couple of fingertips came up from behind and supported the back of my head, but also working to push my head deeper against her.

Her lips parted briefly as the tip of her tongue probed my face, sponging it over in warm film of saliva. With her lips parted the suction became so great that for one terrifying second I was convinced my whole head was about to be slurped up.

But then the giant lips sprung free with a small wet smack, gratefully relinquishing their domination over my head, leaving me shaky and panting, and my face painted bright red and lined with lip crease marks.

Without saying anything, she withdrew a make-up wet wipe from her handbag and used it to gently dab at my face to clear away the lipstick. I closed my eyes. The soft massaging pressure of her thumb against the wipe, running around my face startled me and started making the fork of my pants even tighter.

Examining my arousal coolly, she gave my bulge a gentle nudge with the tip of a finger. Then shifted, preparing to stand.

“FAR TOO LATE FOR ME,” she muttered.

I cleared my throat.

“You don’t have to drive tonight,” I offered. “I don’t use this bed. It’s practically yours…” I wrung my hands as she surveyed me, pondering my suggestion impassively. “…if you want.”

“YOU TEMPT ME AND I SHOULDN’T,” she murmured, turning away. Then, regaining her full height, she left the bedside and went as if to leave the room, switching of the light.

Returning to sit on the bedside, she removed her heels, peeled the sheets back and slid her long smooth legs in. As she rested her head on the pillow, her hand swept around me, gently lifting me from the mattress and sliding me up onto the pillow towards her face, allowing dusky eyes to effortlessly drink in my miniature features.

“THE FLOOR IS COLD…IF WE HAD THE TIME, I WOULD SOAK YOU IN HOT WATER AND SCULPT YOU INTO MY TOES,” she said softly but without a trace of self-consciousness, while her thumb traced its way around the perimeter of my head.

I was then flipped over and her thumbpad came to a rest pressed between my shoulder blades, and other finger pads are secured against my front, including my groin, ignoring the fact my semi-hard member is buried beneath one of them.

“SLEEP NOW, LITTLE ONE,” her throaty intonation throbbed in my ears. Warm air ruffled through my hair as she kissed the back of my head, and then kept me held there against her lips, with her breath buffeting down from her nostrils onto the top of my head and over my face. Warmed by the palm of her hand curled around my body, I went to sleep.

When I woke up, it was daytime and she was gone and the sheets were pulled up like she’d never been there.

The air churned with the morning peak hour transit noise. Raf’s white Chrysler sat at the red light as cars on the perpendicular road streamed into the junction. It was Monday, and I was on my way to the set, glancing ahead at the traffic streaming right past the front window. A car slunk up next to us into the neighboring lane. In my elevated booster seat I was plainly visible to the driver, who was using the red light to apply lipstick in the mirror. Then, as the traffic lights continued to stall on red, she checked her phone and put it back. I shrank a little in my seat, but she didn’t see me.

“Have you seen any media on me from last night?” I said.

“LIKE, REPORTERS?” Raf asked. “I DIDN’T SEE ANYONE. WHY?”

“Like…” I gestured vaguely, though, to avoid drawing attention to me, he didn’t look down at me, “…photos....”

“NO CRIME IN BEING OUT, BRO, HAVING FUN.”

“I’m just a discreet person, that’s all.”

“SKYROS IS REAL EXCLUSIVE. IF PEOPLE SAW YOU THERE, IT ADDS DIMENSION TO YOUR PROFILE. A LITTLE MYSTERY’S A GOOD THING, YOU KNOW?”

“I’ll take a lot of mystery. There are things about my life I’d love the public to not see.”

He wrinkled his eyebrows at me.

“BUT I CAN LET MY BUDDIES KNOW I WAS VIP AT SKYROS WITH YOU?”

“Sure,” I shrugged. “I just don’t want my fiancée finding out about it.”

“ME, TELL? BARELY EVEN SAID WORDS TO YOUR GIRL.”

“If she found out I was strolling around on the floor of a big nightclub and diving into women’s purses, I don’t think she’d let me near any nightclub ever again.”

“WOMEN’S PURSES—?”

“Forget I said anything.”

“KNOW IT EXACTLY, LITTLEST BROTINO – BEEN THERE. GIRL’S BUZZING, TRYIN’ TO FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU ARE, WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO.”

“The problem is…she usually knows exactly where I am…most times.”

Then I stammered out:

“I don’t need her permission, just…I had a really cool time last night and I want to have more nights like that. Maybe a quieter place that’s not going to get me into trouble.”

“YOU’RE THE MAN. I KNOW PLACES. JUST GIVE ME A TIME AND I’LL TAKE YOU THERE. GOT A PLACE IN MIND, ACTUALLY.”

“Cool. Whatever it is, next time I get a break, we’ll do it.”

Speaking of things I didn’t want my fiancée finding out, later that week during a shooting break, I checked my phone to find a message from Darcy:

Thrilled to meet you last week
and thinking you could come over
this Fri night if not busy,
we cook, you eat,
you know you want to ;)
xx Darcy and Sam

I was going to be in St Palma over the weekend and didn’t have other plans, the distraction might be welcome.

On Friday, while on set between shooting, I worked the phone keys with my whole palms, writing out another text, letting her know I’d still be coming but might be a little late due to shooting stretching on past originally prediction.

*

Finally, the director called a wrap on my last scene of the day and I texted Raf, letting him know I was done. An aide carried me into the holding area room, where Raf appeared and took me out to the parking lot to his car.

It was a hazy evening, the sky was gas flame blue and the clouds moist and intense pink like candy floss, burning with the last remaining rays of sun, and warm rain sprinkled over the car windows. The streets were full of grumbling cars anxious to get home for the weekend, motorists’ hands hovering reactively close to their horns. I settled back into my booster seat, trying to remain relaxed as Raf cussed and gesticulated at other drivers.

The air was thick with hot gas fumes, and made my head spin. My mind began to drift as the streets scrolled past the window as the sun slunk lower below the shop blocks and terracotta roof tops. The old-fashioned, iron-wrought streetlamps flicked on, one by one.

Before leaving the set I had changed into a smart casual outfit – a gift for the modelling shoot – my hair looked good thanks to the set stylist, and Raf had even sprayed me with one of his colognes, practically turning me into a walking bag of scent. If anything, I was overdone – this wasn’t a date, just a friendly visit. But I had a public image now, even in private settings I was anxious to impress.

The neon yellows of a restaurant flashed out of the darkness, advertising its licence to serve, and giving my brain the bright flash of realization that I was forgetting something. Helpless to stop the car, I began to bounce against my booster harness like an impertinent baby.

“Pull over!”

It was a small liquor store down the street. Inside, Raf strode up and down the aisles while I perused the wine offerings from my position in his hand; my head turning back and forth in futile effort to make sense of so many lines of giant bottles. Different wines went with different foods, the problem was, I didn’t know what was on the menu.

“Recommendations?” I asked, feeling lost amidst countless missile-shaped bottles that could have squashed me flat like glass logs if I’d tried to pick one of them up to present as a dinner gift to anyone.

“FOR A WOMAN?” He cut in over himself: “DOES YOUR fiancée KNOW ABOUT THIS?”

“Two women.” I quickly added before he got the wrong idea: “Dating. I’m invited as a friend.”

“OH,” his tone completely changed, ignoring that I hadn’t answered his question.

“Yeah.”

“ALL COOL.”  He deliberated. “BUT…THE LADIES FROM SKYROS, RIGHT?”

“That’s them.”

“OH,” he said again. “SEE, I READ THAT SITUATION ALL WRONG. IT LOOKED LIKE, UH…”

His steady pace halted as he became distracted scrutinizing some bottles.

“THIS,” he said suddenly, pulling a bottle up off the shelf. “NOT ME, BUT MY EX LOVES IT.”

“Larissa?”

He made a flippant swatting motion with his hand.

“THE ONE AND ONLY.” He scanned the label, then took the bottle up to the front, placing it down on the service counter, but the server was nowhere in sight.

Suddenly, I was coming down to rest on the counter, too, while the warm, reassuring squeeze of his huge hand departed. I spun around to stare up at him inquiringly.

“TWO SECONDS, LITTLE BUDDY!” He appeared to be getting something for himself; it was Friday evening after all. I turned back, putting my hands in my pockets, rocking on my feet.

The store’s automatic sensor doors swished open, admitting a rush of surprisingly warm air into the cooled, temperature controlled shop interior. At the same time, a flurry of chatting and laughter bowled in through the glass doors as a gaggle of young women entered, dressed up as if they were going to, or coming from, a party.

The girls began to stride past the counter towards the aisle. As the flock passed by, one of them tossed her head sideways at the last second, her eyes glancing over me. Then she demurred, the head whipping back around and stopping, her high heels pounding the floor in an arrhythmic way as she jarred to a standstill. Her friends noticed her, vaguely at first, but slowing, and finally noticing me. Then the murmurs started:

“IS THAT—?”

“THAT’S—!”

“OH MY GOD IT’S JERRY MOUSSEAU!”

“HE’S SO TINY!”

“SOMEONE STOP HIM – GRAB HIM!”

In an instant, there was a storm of bodies clouding around the counter, I began to back away but there was nowhere to run, and now the wall of young women had eclipsed the last known sighting of Raf at the beer fridge, and the tall shifting forms closed me off from him.

“Uh, Raf…?” I squeaked.

Arms were shooting out over the counter which had now turned into a military zone with giant hands launching out of the sky to seize me. I ran and dived and pivoted out of the hands crashing out of the sky and snatching for me, as the girls jostled and shoved each other, giggling and squealing.

A pair of fingertips plucked at my waist, sending me up into the air, but I narrowly slipped out again and tumbled back down onto the counter. Then another hand was barrelling towards me, sliding in a cupping gesture to sweep me over to the towering form of the hand’s owner.

“LADIES!” Raf gaped, striding over, “LADIES! BACK UP, PLEASE! WE’RE JUST TRYING TO BUY SOME DRINKS!”

His hand dropped through the air and snatched around my torso as tight as a life jacket, before I was whisked off the counter and zoomed through the air towards his chest. Then the front of his t-shirt blocked out everything as his hand enfolded me against his firm chest wall, cupping around me completely so I couldn’t be seen and kept out of reach by the women.

The server must have appeared at the noise, a barcode scanner beeped and I was shifted slightly against Raf’s chest as his other hand dove into his pant pocket for his wallet, which he juggled to extract money, while keeping me shielded behind his cupped hand. Then I was bumping against the inside of his palm to the syncopation of his gait, speedier than usual as he sought to escape the store.

We broke away from the lines of traffic and were then passing open paved walking areas, people walking their dogs home, rounding into a residential area as we then came to a wide road lined by the shade of trees shading the road and fences bordering yards. Meanwhile, with my phone sat up in my lap, I texted Darcy to assure her I was still coming.

When I looked up out the window, I could see only black. My eyes had to adjust from the bright phone screen. The street seemed to keep going and going, straight into the night like a highway, but then we swerved off down a side-street and pulled up outside the house just one of several receded on razored, manicured lawns.

Raf stopped the car and came around the other side to my door, released me from the booster seat and lifted me out of the car in one huge hand; and I went eagerly, not wanting to be seen by the women strapped up like a tiny tot. The sky had now darkened further to indigo, the shadows stretched down the street, which was empty, and quiet enough to hear the faint insectoid whine. From the end of the street, a dog barked from a back yard.

In brisk steps, the house got progressively larger as Raf strode up to the front door, with me in one hand and the wine in the other, and stopping on the landing, rang the doorbell, and then we both waited.

The door swung in, revealing Darcy slim pants and a stylishly baggy sweater. In the bright clean light of the foyer, rather than the dim, accented night club, I realized how attractive she was; high cheekbones, bright inquiring eyes, and soft pouty lips. Her eyes flew down to me, cradled against Raf’s chest, and she grinned.

“HEY! COME ON IN! – OH, NOT NECESSARY!” she exclaimed kindly, as Raf handed her the wine, and then, his muscular thumb hooking around my midsection and the inside of his hand curving around my back, I was separated from the wall of his chest and flew through the air, before my butt landed on Darcy’s soft upturned palm, warm and scented. I blushed a little, his perfunctory transfer made me feel – like the wine – as just another dinner gift being handed over.

“LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU’RE READY,” Raf said, “AND I’LL PICK YOU UP.”

“Sure, Raf. Thanks.”

He closed the door for Darcy as she had her hands full, and as she turned from the doorway, the foyer rotated into view. The house was clean and roomy, faintly sultry with perfume, not personable but welcoming, somehow like a hotel room conveying the sense it had been waiting for me and some part of it was indefinably mine for the duration of my stay.

Then, from the foyer we swept into an adjoining walkway laid with a red and black Afghan rug, where the wine bottle was put down on a side table, Darcy anxious to get me in a more secure clasp than simply sitting on her open palm. Her freed up hand came for me, the fingerpads sliding around my chest, under my armpits, and then hefting me up into the air towards her face.

Lips brushed over the side of my head as she didn’t hesitate to press a greeting kiss against my cheek, giving me a rush of the wine spritzer on her breath. Half buried against the warm weight of her lips, I got a fluttery feeling, and stroked her thumbnail, since I couldn’t squeeze her shoulder or hug her back or some other polite reciprocal gesture.

“Nice to see you too, Darcy,” I mumbled. “Sorry for being late. Work—”

“IT’S NOTHING!” she said, drawing me back and giving me a megawatt smile. “COME ON, HAVE A DRINK, SAM WILL BE AMPED YOU CAME—”

Then I was being swept through the rooms, along with the wine, and on into a dining area adjoining a stainless chrome and white kitchen.

“AND LOOK WHAT JUST SHOWED UP ON YOUR DOORSTEP…!” Darcy announced, confirming that this sterile palace was in fact Samantha’s house, or at least her current place of residence.

“—THIS SPARKLING, DELICIOUS LITTLE NUMBER, AND – WHAT ELSE DO I HAVE HERE – OH, CAN’T FORGET, THIS BOTTLE OF WINE.”

I instantly blushed at Darcy’s effusive voice, which rang with the grand proclamation of someone announcing a birthday, and – as I was flourished through the air – inadvertently putting me in the position of the birthday present being given.

Across the steamy kitchen, stood Samantha, wearing an ecru sleeveless turtleneck halter, her raven hair down her back in a tight braid with a very long loose tail. She looked up and surveyed me with a practiced eye, holding my gaze for just a fraction longer than a polite greeting. Either Darcy’s joke had elicited an amused smile or she had just sent me some kind of obscure look that had melted away again the moment I registered it. I dismissed it was a mirage caused by the wavy steamy kitchen air.

Darcy slid onto a bar stool, bringing me down onto the end of the snow white granite counter surface, like a slab of fractured ice, cool despite the warmth on the ceiling.  She nodded at the kitchen, uttering with mock grandiosity:

“OUR COOKTOP QUEEN WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE IT READY WHEN YOU GOT HERE BUT SHE’S LAZY AS SIN.”

Samantha made a ‘shoo’ gesture with her hand, while her back was turned.

“BOTH OF YOU.”

Darcy then made a show of whispering down to me in a poorly concealed way intended for the other woman to overhear:

“IT’S VEAL,” she said this like it wouldn’t have been her first choice of meat. “FINGERS CROSSED.”

Shaking her head, Samantha muttered some inaudible Italian. Then she changed her mind and decided to call on Darcy’s help. I was placed down onto a placemat on the dining table while Darcy went back into the kitchen to help serve up.

The sizzling sounds dampened and dishware clattered. Some moments later the women ushered into the dining room to serve up.

Laid on the table before me was a bone white replica of a ceramic dinner plate, almost perfectly fit for my size. I wondered where it had come from – dollhouse? But it seemed like a proper piece of china, albeit greatly undersized. It was so small that Samantha had the edges of the plate between her forefinger and thumb; the perfume on the inside of her wrist caught my attention for an instant before her hand drew back. My portion of food had been fastidiously cut small.

I was seated at one end of the table, with each of the women at a right angle from me, facing each other. As we ate, the conversation quickly turned to my work as Darcy quizzed me about my experiences on the movie sets and how I operated around the normal sized actors and crew. I fielded the questions, and Darcy talked shop about modelling, while Samantha made the occasional understated remark.

While Darcy launched into a story about some overseas travel she’d done when she’d been modelling, I became aware of a growing ache in my stomach. My serving had slightly overestimated my appetite. It was an easy mistake; people struggled to apprehend how truly small my stomach was. Even Jennifer still tripped up from time, concerned I wasn’t eating enough.

Darcy was describing the time she’d walked into a glass door and the bruise started blooming mid-shoot. Samantha upped her with a shoot when the fire alarm accidentally triggered during a shoot, the sprinklers flicked on, and everyone had to run out of the building before a five minute timeout for the electrical strike security doors trapped the photo team inside. Unbeknownst to everyone, the building was a former vault. The photographer later sheepishly admitted he’d gone ahead without getting the proper access code to be in the building, his friend had let him inside.

When I joked it would be cool to play James Bond Darcy  brought me a tiny novelty martini glass (plastic) filled with water. She scooped up an olive from the salad and put it in. The olive was so big it filled up the entire thing, leaving virtually no space for the water. I stuffed some salad feta inside and poked the olive with a toothpick and ate it.

The conversation shifted and there was a lull. I paused from my meal and lifted my head. Samantha was observing me, in between long, deliberate draughts of wine. Resting the glass on the table, her hand slid up to me and gave my hand, resting on the table surface, a tentative prod with the tip of a nail.

“TOO POLITE,” she said, “YOU EAT SO LITTLE.”

“I’m on one of these St Palma fad diets,” I said. Then, seriously: "It’s great. I just – I honestly can't eat any more."

Darcy intercepted with a ribbing:

“DON’T MIND HER. SHE’S ON A MISSION TO MAKE YOU ROUNDER THAN THE MOON.”

She paused to giggle at the thought – this even provoked mutual laughter from Samantha – and I repressed a shudder, recalling Remy overstuffing on pizza.

My phone, on the table, across from me, buzzed. There was a text from Jen, with an attached jpg.

my taco is missing its meat. what r u up to?

Yikes. Leaving the jpg unopened, I scrolled the screen away and edgily took a big gulp of water from a tiny plastic medicine cup, and for the first time wondered if I should be here. And then pondered what I would have been doing if I wasn’t here. I gazed across the room at the tall dining room windows, curtains drawn over both, with slits revealing the black night outside. It was difficult to excuse yourself when you couldn’t open the door to leave the room.

As dinner finished, I announced:

“I shouldn’t be hanging around like a stray animal. Probably the time I should be letting you guys go.”

Abruptly, Samantha shook her head, and without a word, pushed her chair out and left the room, sweeping my plate away.

“YOU AREN’T STAYING FOR DESSERT?” Darcy fired back. She nodded down at me, giving me a gentle poke in the chest: “SWEET ENOUGH, RIGHT?”

“Oh,” I said, not realizing there was more. “Guess I’m staying.”

The sound of Samantha swishing back into the dining room cut through my thoughts. She had dessert bowls on a long wooden board; two normal sized and one tiny one. Like the plate, the bowl put down in front of me was a perfect replica of a normal bowl, down to proportionate weight and texture. Even though I was full I wanted to respond to the effort by eating the entire serving, or trying to.

I dug my spoon in. The first spoonful was rich, but I treated it like a medicine, taking in measured mouthfuls. Then everything after went down light and buttery smooth until I found myself at the bottom of the bowl, scooping up the last crumbs.

Night had settled in, the windows had shaded into black mirrors. The clouds had released another small burst of rain, which scurried over the windows like sharp claws.

Soft clattering came from the kitchen, the women were washing up.

I sat on the sofa armrest, the TV was playing softly at the other side of the living room, the one with the Afghan rug and its hypnotic red and black patterns. I had leapt over to the remote and switched it on, if only to forestall the heavy quiet in the spacious white room. The more I focused on the IMAX sized flatscreen, the more the moving colors blurred together as my consciousness tried to burrow back inside my skull.

The weight of the food I’d eaten pressed in at my gut, and drowsiness was creeping in. I lightly considered texting Raf, but now it was so late I felt guilty hauling him out and into the night and the rain. Darcy’s offer became more attractive by the second.

The pleasant, slightly nauseous feeling wasn't just having eaten too much. The marsala had contained wine and, from the tell-tale bitter aftertaste, there must have been alcohol in the dessert as well. My nerves were numb, warm and tingly. With my eyes closed, my awareness was teetering on a cliff edge, desiring to drop right off.

Searching for a distraction, I scooted over the armrest and leaned over the edge of the remote, reaching for the button to switch the channel. My weight came down on the remote clumsily, and as the arm of the sofa was rounded, not flat, the remote shifted out from under me like a fish, shooting off the sofa. Automatically reaching after it, my mass then cantilevered over the edge, and the air was whisking all around me.

The floor sprung up at my face. I’d missed the Afghan rug, instead the wood panel floor gave my face an almighty pounding, which seemed to echo around my skull for an extra moment. The numbing alcohol kept the pain at bay.

As I lay in a crumpled, groaning heap, the floor trembled against my cheek with a series of thudding sounds that rapidly grew closer, before a giant umbrella seemed to cast over me. Warm objects probed up under my armpits, grasping my chest, taking me up into the air. For a moment my ribcage was being pinched too tightly to expand properly, my breath escaped in short gasps. And then my ascent levelled out, my butt came down on the soft, padded surface of an open palm which clouded my liberated airways with perfume.

She braced my shoulders and scalp, and a fingertip brushed my throat to tip my head back as she peered into my flushed face. My vision tilted unless I concentrated. Her visage wavered dimly before consolidating under the bright light.

"TOO MUCH AMARETTO." She made a sound somewhere between frustration and regret. "MMM. I AM SORRY.”

“No,” I mumbled, unable to blame the alcohol when it had generously clouded the pain of my fall. “I get drunk easily because of my size.”

It took a moment longer to click. Amaretto was a liqueur. I stared up into her eyes, held on my face with gentle inquisition. Only the alcohol gave me the fortitude to unflinchingly return her confronting, intimate stare.

"You like liqueurs?"

She betrayed a small smile.

"A LITTLE."

Her face rose from sight as I was lowered to her chest, and her smooth gait began to carry me across the floor. The living room area receded past a corner of the house I hadn’t visited. She clicked the switch and light filled up a bedroom, white walls and dark floor. The air was cooler in here, and I realized how heated and charged my skin felt, like a light bulb.

I was gently dropped onto the satin throw rug on the duvet, and as she moved away, she gave me an ironic glance over her shoulder.

“DON’T PEEK.”

I stood frozen on the bed as, without any warning, she began to undress, slipping off the halter to a lacy, mesh, flesh-baring bra, and peeling the pants down to slinky matching underwear.

As I fought for composure, she rummaged vaguely – I eyed her lingerie drawer with a flicker of unease – before pulling out and changing into a black slip that fitted tightly; her breasts hung full against the bust, and jiggled faintly as she walked, the underwear clung around her butt.

I ran my palm against my perspiring forehead. The room seemed too airless and too bright, giant and somehow too small. My skin flamed from the alcohol.

She paused in front of the cheval mirror in the corner of the room, ran her hands over her breasts, adjusting the bust of her bra, absorbed, as if I wasn’t in the room.

I considered clearing my throat, but it was so dry, it wouldn’t obey the command. And my eyes were stuck on her reflection which faced me, though her eyes were on herself.

It was then I realized her body was different than I remembered; when I’d been kept in her house, the little of her I’d seen under light, anyway. Back then she had been lean and lithe. Now, she had filled out a little around her hips, abdomen and chest. Her belly was not slightly sunken but flat and firm, legs meatier, breasts lush and projecting, her whole shape curved subliminally. She looked better, and I hated to admit, more sensual, intensely desirable.

“IT HAPPENED SO QUICKLY.”

She was speaking so softly, barely audible, that at first I assumed she was muttering to herself in Italian, until I understood the words.

“YOU MUST HAVE BEEN VERY AFRAID.”

The chase at Skyros? I wondered. The run-in with the guy on the street outside the club? It took a moment to register what she was referring to. She was talking about the initial miniaturization during the Flip party. Maybe she had seen the interview; I’d opened up more about the Flip party than in the TV special.

“I CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE.” Her voice was analytical, like a psychologist.

“My body creates more adrenaline,” I explained. “More energy and a dopamine kick in response to fearful situations. So, it balances out, I guess. The world is scarier at my size, but the effects of the miniaturization allow me to cope better.”

She stared past the mirror, contemplating this.

“FORTUNATE...IN A RELATIVE SENSE.”

“I guess so.”

“BUT IT MUST BE DIFFICULT,” she went on. LONELY. NO WOMAN TO FOLLOW YOU OUT OF THE MACHINE.” She voice lilted coyly. “I ASSUME THE PROSPECT DID NOT SEDUCE YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER…?”

“That’s not happening any time soon,” I said sadly, rolling my shoulders in a shrug. “And I wouldn’t want it to.”

For a fraction of a second she seemed taken aback. My answer seemed to catch her off guard. She quickly recovered.

“What’s the draw?” I pointed out. “It’s a big, dangerous world.”

I went quiet again, deciding to let her imagination fill in the implications of that suggestion, for shrunken women in particular.

“WITHOUT QUESTION,” she said smoothly. “WHAT SINGLE ADVANTAGE IS THERE BEING YOUR SIZE?”

My brow hardened at her frankness.

“I didn’t say there was nothing good about it.”

“THEN, PLEASE SHARE THE GOOD NEWS.”

“I see detail normal-sized people miss.”

“AN EXAMPLE.”

“You look good. I mean, better. It’s more obvious at my size, I—” I fumbled for words. The truth was, I saw her body bunch and flex when she moved, her tanned skin seemed warmer and richer, the darkness of her hair and eyes more lustrous, seeming to shine with light from within.

The compliment glanced off. She turned from the mirror and faced me, folding her arms.

“GOOD? JUST TELL ME.”

“What?”

“PEOPLE. WHAT THEY REALLY LOOK LIKE.”

“You really want to know?”

She looked at me intently.

“YES…I WONDER.”

I lay back, staring up at the ceiling, thinking for a moment. Maybe because of my position, I said:

“It’s like you’re lying on the ground looking up at people. But they’re not just tall, they’re wide, too.”

There was a frown in her voice.

“THAT’S TERRIFYING. IT MUST BE.”

“Adrenaline,” I reminded.

The mattress groaned and bounced me as she slid onto the bed. I continued.

“It’s hard to describe, because I don’t think about it anymore. It’s just…normal.”

She had brought her head close to survey me, her warm breath hitting one side of my body in soft waves.

“HOW IS IT NORMAL?” she said. “YOU ARE AT THE LEVEL OF THE TOENAIL. HOW ARE YOU NOT THOROUGHLY SICK TO DEATH OF FEET?”

It was a joke. Or maybe it wasn’t. She had a point, but I couldn’t explain how the exposure to feet had hardened my sensibilities. At home, if I walked around on the ground, a passing Jen had no hesitation about playfully poking me with her toe as her giant strides took her past and over the top of me, as if to tease me for being unable to match her walking speed.

“Nothing shocks me anymore.”

She thought over this for a moment. Then a varnished fingernail extended to tap softly against my temple. I turned my head shyly.

“THE NIGHT AT SKYROS, DOES HE RECALL WHAT I SAID TO HIM?”

Now she made a seamless transition into being analytical again.

“Uh…Basically, yes.” 

“AND WHAT WAS IT I SAID?”

“That we were going to move on from—”

“NO, AFTER THAT.”

Her dark eyes burned into mine, scattering all my thoughts.

“Um…The wedding. You and Darcy—”

“YES, BUT LATER.”

As my brain raced for recollection, my eyes traced the waxed fur of her left eyebrow, the slitted one. I dumbly wondered how many of my tiny fingers wide the slit was, and impulsively wanted to stroke her eyebrow to check.  Anything not to stare into her penetrating eyes, half veiled by the long dusky lashes.

The fingernail stroked behind my ear, grazing, coaxing me to continue, but now I sensed it was growing slightly impatient.

“You said the court pro—”

Her long eyelashes shaded almost fully as she gave a nearly imperceptible shake of her head, while her thumb brushed my lips, silently imploring me to stop talking.

Then her eyes held on my face again like she could beam the correct response into my head.

“BEFORE YOU FELL ASLEEP IN MY HAND, I MADE NO IMPRESSION WHATSOEVER?”

“You said a lot of things,” I said weakly, “and I was drunk.”

“MUST I REPEAT MYSELF?”

“You could give me a hint.”

Some cryptic expression passed her face, fleetingly, possibly a smile, or just a muscle twitch.

“BUT YOU PROVIDE THE HINT ALREADY.”

As she said this, her hand came in to poke and tickle at the soles of my feet with her pinky nail. I kicked my legs away and tucked them in.

 “Yeah, I seem to recall you saying something weird about your feet.”

She paused.

“’WEIRD?’…NO. THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID AT ALL.”

Her gaze held on me like a laser, daring me to object.

“Okay, not the right word. I don’t like the underside of a foot to fall from the sky without warning. That’s my only concern.”

The bed frame groaned and wobbled softly as she gracefully slid up into a sitting position on the mattress, with her legs folded like she was going to cross them, but instead brought the soles of her feet together.

Her outstretched hand covered the ceiling as it dropped over me, fingers curling tight around my body. The mattress pressing against me was quickly replaced with her cool bare soles, slightly separated to allow my body to slip in between them, my head positioned between the soft pads of her big toes, which moved in, cushioning my skull like a padded helmet.

With her toes pressed in on either side of my head, I could feel the pulse running through the bottom of her big toes, tapping at my cheeks. It was weirdly relaxing, like a head massage.

My arms and legs were pinned by the firm balls of her feet, and my head was fixed in place between her big toes, forced to stare straight up at the ceiling, and her face, which abutted the bottom of my visual field. She surveyed me with interest, waiting for my reaction.

A little unnerved, I began to struggle, but my extremities were rigidly locked in place, like I had set in concrete. The muscular walls of her feet calmly shifted and tensed against me, effortlessly hemming me in.

"YOU’LL TIRE YOURSELF OUT," she murmured, giving my head a small squeeze between her toes in a way that she probably intended as comforting, but only made me feel even more helpless and in her control. "BEHAVE FOR ME. BE STRONG."

“What if Darcy comes in…?”

“THEN WE SAY THIS IS A LITTLE GAME OF OURS,” she answered lazily, continuing to tense and flex her feet, squeezing and moulding me like a tiny wad of clay.

The large boulders of her toes began to move in my peripheral vision, their firm pressure against the sides of my head increased subtly as they began to move in circular motions. My powerless head had no resistance, and was forced to rotate along with them, like a tiny cog being turned inside a machine. I let my neck go limp, to prevent neck strain, letting the toes take my head by whim. My head was turned completely to one side, and flat, grainy toepad rested there for a moment, keeping my head held still. My stomach churned a little in nervousness with the blown up toe completely having dominated my entire world, blanketing it into darkness beneath its impassive pressure. Then my head was rotated  once more, to the other side, where the opposite toepad settled over my features for another period of brief stillness. And this carried on several times.

The foot massaging loosened her up. She started to murmur:

“WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER, I WAS INDISPOSED TO BE TRULY MYSELF AROUND YOU, BECAUSE…I WAS AFRAID I WOULD FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU.”

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t; my body was immobile between her feet, and my face was buried beneath one of her big toes.

A big soft object began handling my shaft, plucking it out from between the upward-facing, inside edges of the balls of her feet. My member started to pound with arousal as it was idly stroked and fingered in a thrillingly affectionate, feminine way, like my member was a curious little animal whose trust needed to be elicited. Then the sensation stopped, leaving me achingly firm, dick twanging with desperate need.

Despite the strange position I was in, everything about her was very cool and graceful, as if I was being propositioned for a business deal. Her manner was businesslike, as always, but with a subtle touch of intimacy, which, the more I tried to ignore, the more it called attention to itself. And she intended to make it clear who was the subordinate; sandwiched between her feet, where I was forced to crane my neck up to look at her, while she surveyed me without expression, while subtly stroking her lips in consideration – admittedly a little unnerving – as she slowly rolled and compacted me between her feet.

Finally she gave me a small smile and in a silken voice, murmured:

“YOU HAVE A SEAT AT OUR TABLE ANYTIME YOU WISH.”

My face was rotated out from under the big toe of the left foot, and I took the opportunity to gasp:

“That’s…very kind…” I said, and my voice came out thin and strained as a result of the slight pressure on either side of my throat. “…Thank you.”

“BUT – I SIMPLY SUGGEST – THERE MIGHT BE SOME KIND OF SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT BETWEEN US…?”

I hesitated, wondering if maybe my intuition about the business deal was accurate.

“What…do you…mean?”

Her fingertips swept down to me – the same that had, moments ago been stroking her lips – patting my belly and lingering there a moment, tickling softly.

“JUST US,” she emphasized softly. “HOW WOULD THAT BE; FOR US TO BE CLOSE AGAIN? – BUT NO MORE WILDNESS.”

Her soles somehow felt narrower, tighter, claustrophobic, even as their soft surfaces titillate 

“No!” I spluttered, unsure if I was comprehending her meaning correctly. “We’re both…in relationships...I’m engaged!”

“I WRONGED YOU, YOU LOVED ME AND I HURT YOU. IT PLAYS ON MY MIND STILL…”

“Samantha,” I said, “I’m not here to…for that. What about when were together?” I shot, feeling a surge of frustration, “you weren’t…interested then.”

Her feet muscles became tense like clamps on my comparatively weak body. My head was slowly rolled to the side where a toe pad planted itself perfectly on my face and held there. Everything was dark, the commanding pressure of the toe pad was like someone sitting directly on my face. With my head held, both toes exerted a couple of subtle squeezes upon my skull, seemingly unconsciously. She was thinking.

“I MUST ADMIT,” she said flatly, “THE NOTION OF A TRADITIONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A MAN BORES ME…”

My face was rotated back to gaze up at her, but carried on rotating to the opposite side.

“Yeah. Precisely—oof.”

The opposite toe pad came to rest upon my face, squishing my features down.

“BUT—” a soft finger palpated around my belly again “—DID I SAY YOU AND I WOULD MAKE A TRADITIONAL RELATIONSHIP? SOMETHING ELSE IS OPEN TO US.”

The finger slid down to my semi-erect penis and resumed its stroking, until I was fully hard. My chest seized up and a shudder ran through my body. The soft fingerpad stroking my shaft then slipped smoothly down to the underside of my balls, trying to scoop them up between the gap of her feet.

My balls, balancing on the tip of her finger, were filling with irresistible pressure, an aching longing to ejaculate. My head was also filling with pressure, as the big toes were absent-mindedly pushing in and out against my head, making it feel like it was throbbing. I tried to moan in protest but my voice was locked up; the pressure of her toes squeezing my throat.

My shaft was once again targeted; the soft, warm fingertip was drawing circles into the tip of my penis. My head was spinning, balls seeming to swell, so tight and dense I thought my heart might fail. I wanted to scream but was totally, hopelessly mute.

There was an agonizing stretch throughout my entire body now, as my member was tugged over and over, faster each time until I was practically mimicking sexual thrusts, but unable to move my hips. The feeling endured, over and over, and building until it peaked with a series of blinding, pleasurable jolts that ripped through my shaft, until I was drained.

As I panted hard, the soft walls enclosing me spread gently to admit grasping fingers to carry me up from the bed to come to a stop against the soft flesh of her mammary. As if unable to help herself, she massaged my head against her nipple, until I began to blush and struggle in her grip, breaking her meditative trance.

The world rocked and swayed while she got to her feet and stepped back down the hall into the main room. Darcy scrutinized us – and me in particular, wrapped up in Samantha’s hands, held against her chest. Eyeing us, she said:

“THE HOUSE IS SO QUIET…WERE YOU GUYS CUDDLING?”

Samantha didn’t say anything, but she must have thrown some kind of understated look because Darcy’s face lit up as she found this adorable, and she laughed.

“YOU HAVE TO WATCH YOURSELF, JERRY,” she said, cocking an eyebrow at me. “NEXT THING YOU KNOW, SAM’S GONNA ADOPT YOU.”

She reached down and stroked my face with the tip of her fingers, as if I was a little gerbil. In fact, the small conspiratorial smiles they were giving each other over my head were beginning to make me uneasy. I called up Raf to pick me up, and noticed my phone had more missed messages, all from hers truly.

Half an hour ago:

weird day? busy, not, whatev, just lmk. not hard, just courtesy.

ten minutes ago:

because im such a bad person checking where you are??

And five minutes ago:

or fine just leave me in suspense…

The tactile impression of Samantha’s toes against my cheeks felt stuck, like it had made imprints in my flesh, hot and heavy.

*

Back home I rang her, telling her I’d had dinner with friends, and played it off like my phone was in one room and I was in another. Due to my size, such excuses were reasonable, if in this case, not entirely truthful.

“You can relax,” I said soothingly. “I’m home.”

If I was ‘home, home’ and not ‘Tiferno, home,’ I could have soothed her with my body; crawling onto her lap and pressing myself against her stomach for a hug. She usually could not resist this, even if it was just the pathetic spectacle of her vastly diminutive boyfriend struggling to encompass the breathtaking breadth of her hips in his puny arm spread.

But now, through a phone line I felt even more impotent to my gigantic girlfriend than usual.

Then I realized she was talking:

“…around new people? Or is it just, like, the escape?”

She had this analytical way of acting like she had you all ‘figured out’. It was incredibly sexy when she was coming on to you, like she’d been observing you for a while before deciding to make the approach, but it was exasperating when she did it to assert a difference in opinion.

“I think you’re being slightly moralistic,” I said, aware how strange it felt accusing Jennifer Tomlin of being ‘moralistic’. “You’ve had more than your lifetime of buck-wild, unaccountable Friday nights.”

“Oh, please stop,” she huffed, “I don’t care if you were running naked through central SP. That is so fucked up of you to suggest my moral compass is broken.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“It is just so sexist to say when a girl is having fun it’s a moral thing, like it’s abnormal or shameful. It’s a double standard. You’re a pretty smart guy so I’m going to pretend you didn’t mean that.”

I promised when I came home we’d do something fun together. She one-upped me, saying we’d do something fun together – in Tiferno. Next weekend, she’d fly up with me and stay in my apartment. She insisted.

The line was snaking around the block even before we’d approached the building, as if a celebrity was going to show up. Raf’s white Chrysler followed a black stretch limo around the corner, and as the limo disappeared, we pulled up in the parking lot, then we followed the line back up the street to the front of the building, along a brick wall advertising posters of the live music, an act called Zarsky Raitaro: a DJ and female singer duo.

At the front, a ritzy double-storey façade like an Art Noveau Hotel or Theater, but accented with neon lights, and freestanding neon lettering that said Club Galaxy with a glowing satellite dish sending out waves.

“I KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE,” Raf was saying as we walked up the street. He was dressed as Han Solo, “IT LOOKS LIKE MADNESS. BUT TRY TO ACT NATURAL, YO.”

I barely heard him, too busy trying to unwind the twist in the white twine handcuffing my wrists. It was in theme with my Spider-Man costume, except the other end was also strung around Jen’s engagement ring, which was stubbornly anchored to her finger. The twine ensued that if I slipped from her tenacious grasp, I would not fortuitously steal free, but dangle helplessly by my wrists from her ring finger. It had been her personal addition to my costume.

“JERRY,” she now huffed, “WHAT HE SAID: NATURAL. DON’T FIDGET.”

She’d come dressed as Mary-Jane Watson, in a cheerleader costume that clung to her body. She’d dyed her hair red, which came up dark and wine-colored where the black dye was, lightening into fuchsia where the blonde was. Because her hands were occupied by me, the costume pom poms were attached to the waist of her short pleated skirt and bounced with small papery flaps, somehow more eye-catching than if she’d held them.

As she spoke, the nape of my neck was made the site of a couple of sharp taps with a nail tip to try and get me to still. Then I was pressed inward against her bust as she looked up. Instead of a football team emblazoned over her boobs, it said ‘ANGEL.’

“GO ON.”

She was talking to Raf. He looked back at us with a grin that seemed uncharacteristically nervous.

“MY GIRL’S HERE; I WANT FOR YOU GUYS TO DO SOME BONDING.” His eyes fixed on me in particular. “DON’T STRESS. YOU’LL SEE.”

“She’s here tonight?” I said, as a group of both costumed and casually-dressed people attached themselves to the end of the long line running outside the club.

“WITHOUT A DOUBT. SHE MIGHT BE INSIDE ALREADY.”

“WELL, TELL HER TO HAVE ANOTHER DRINK,” Jen sighed, “THE LINE’S NOT GETTING ANY SHORTER FOR US.”

“NO, SHE WORKS HERE.” His voice got urgent. “BUT YOU’RE RIGHT – I DON’T WANT TO WAIT OUTSIDE, EITHER.” He stood back to allow us to both survey the full snaking conga of people collecting around the perimeter of the building. “NOT TONIGHT.”

“Alright.” I rubbed my red webbed gloves together. “Take me to the front. I’ll see what I can do.”

The hand gripping me gave me an affectionate squeeze as Jennifer whooped.

“YOU’RE GETTING US IN VIP?!”

Raf gave her a regretful look.

“NO BOTTLE SERVICE HERE.”

Her exuberance deflated. But knowing her, it would recharge very quickly.

Raf squared his shoulders and began striding up towards the front entrance, with Jen coming eagerly behind, and me bumping against her chest with every footstep.

The bouncer stood between two roped bollards, observing us without reaction. He was wearing a black t-shirt exposing his tattooed biceps.

 “WITH JERRY MOUSSEAU,” Raf said, and Jen held me out as if I was a special pass.

The bouncer stared down at me without expression. Maybe he thought I was a Spider-man doll.

“Farris Franklin’s guest list,” I said.

He unclipped one of the rope bollards and we went through. He hadn’t even asked for my ID; then again, my height was practically my ID. No one could possibly impersonate me.

Down a low-lit, faintly purple corridor, I was lifted until the soft pressure of lips planted a kiss on the top of my head, or at least, my mask.

“THAT WAS SO AWESOME,” her whisper rumbled my ear as she kept my head close, rubbing my scalp against her mouth in an affectionate way, but made me feel like I was being nuzzled by a giant animal.

Back home she snuck me into clubs, in her handbag, or even inside her mouth. The favor had been overdue.

We came to a dingy, rickety railed stairway, followed it down through a basement floor with a twin set of steel fire escape doors which opened into the cavernous retro bar. The name was fitting; it was like stepping onto another planet. The interior was saturated with technicolor like a surreal 80s horror movie, people shaded either red, pink or blue, with lime green lasers splintering overhead, glancing off hanging silver disco balls.

Fake cobwebs were draped around the corners of the room. Costumed, bodies flashed out from the dark like trees during lightning, this alien planet was populated by vampires, skeletons, demons, witches, zombies, soldiers, punks, Elves, doctors, nurses, little red riding hood, Austin Powers, Jokers, Harley Quinns, Supergirls, Playboy Bunnies, and cat-eared girls.

With Raf in front, we weaved through the room, along some less crowded aisles, coming to a long vinyl pink banquette so puffed it looked like a balloon, and squeaked like one as Raf sat down. Jennifer took a seat next to him, and placed me down on her thigh. I stood upright and she brought her forefinger and thumb in on either side of my belly to hold me still. If anything, someone needed to hold her still; I could feel her muscles tense and flexing beneath my feet. She wanted to get up lose herself in the atmosphere. I wanted to get my bearings first.

“How do you and Anya know each other?” I asked Raf. He’d never mentioned he was in a relationship.

He leaned forward, rubbing his thighs and scanning the crowd, and for a moment, looking confused by my question.

“I SAW HER ONCE AT LIFT – IT’S A CLUB.”

I hesitated, taking this in.

“You don’t know her?”

He smiled in a lopsided way, his eyes running back and forth through the crowds.

“SHE’S SO BUSY ALL THE TIME, YOU DON’T JUST BUMP INTO HER.”

I swept my gaze from the left pit wall to the right, swamped by costumed bodies everywhere between.

“Well, it looks pretty busy tonight, so I don’t see how…”

“WE GOTTA PICK THE RIGHT MOMENT AND GRAB HER ATTENTION.”

As I considered this, Jennifer’s fingers stroked my stomach. I ran my hands over the shiny surfaces of her nails, watching the ghostly reflection of my hands flash across the gloss as the lasers oscillated.

“I think you need an air horn to get past all this noise.”

“DAMN RIGHT! I CAN BARELY HEAR YOU.” He bent his upper down, his face growing large as it leaned in at me, his voice coming out breathless but determined:

“WHAT IF I ASKED YOU A REAL TINY FAVOR? WHAT IF YOU WENT UP TO HER AND PUT IN A GOOD WORD ABOUT ME?”

My eyes jumped back and forth behind the bar, searching for the bartender, expecting to see a young woman back there shaking a cocktail, but so far the only bartender I could see was a tall, broad-chested guy with very steely looking eyes. Maybe it wasn’t her shift yet.

“You want to ask her out on a date.”

Raf’s eyes went wide.

“NO! SHE’LL SAY NO.”

“You don’t know that. You have to try first.”

“COME ON MAN, THIS IS REALLY SERIOUS.” He sounded almost painfully sincere, like the mere suggestion of rejection would make it happen. “YOU’RE MY ONE AND ONLY SHOT, AND THAT’S IT.”

“What does she look like?”

“OH!” he said, as if embarrassed it had not crossed his mind. Cradling me against his chest with one hand, he juggled his phone in his other, flipping through some pictures before stopping on a picture, and holding his phone up for me to see. It was a photo of a young woman with porcelain skin and doll-like features, her hair bleached and eyes surreally silver, close-fit pants and baggy, rock band t-shirt. A white-haired lowkey goth. I couldn’t blame him for crushing; she wasn’t my usual type, but there was something entrancing about her.

Unable to wait any longer, Jennifer then asked where the bar was, and Raf pointed it out. Then I was rising into the air and we were swishing around submerging into the dark crowd again. Tall, strange and extravagantly-attired bodies weaved, shifted and parted on either side.

I stared up at passing people baldly, enjoying the double-whammy of anonymity from behind my mask, plus my inconspicuous size – hovering against Jen’s abdomen, with her hands shielding me. If anyone’s eyes found us, they were pulled to Jen like a heat-seeking missile. And Jen happily soaked up the attention as a cat soaks up sunlight.

The bar loomed out of the flashing dark, and halting before the counter, I rose up against her face and was held there like a microphone so she could speak to me.

“THIRSTY?”

As she said this, her broad thumbpad rolled back and forth over my abdomen very fast, and slightly too rough, heating my muscles by the sheer friction.

I shrugged and said:

“Whatever you’re having.”

She stared down at me a moment longer as if distracted. Then sidled over to the side of the bar, and a moment later I came to rest on the bar countertop. As her hand came down on the bartop beside me, the strings around my wrists trailed around my feet, coiling until they wrapped around her engagement ring. I tugged at the strings with some discomfort, looking around to see if anyone saw me, but they weren’t looking; it was dim and her towering body and huge hand shielded me from view. The green lasers oscillated, backlighting her eerily, and her hand resting hand was suddenly airborne, coming for me. She began trying to tickle my stomach with the working of an impatient pointer nail.

"Hey! What are you doing?” I exclaimed, dancing away from the finger trying to dart in at me, but I couldn’t run very far because I was attached to the string. Her stringed hand moved in, snatching me effortlessly, pinching my waist to hold me still. A curtain of red hair rained over me as she bent her head close and revealed her intentions:

“SLIP THIS THING OFF. YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF A VIP PASS – INSIDE ME.”

She was not trying to tickle me, but trying to locate a shirt or pant hem in order to peel my costume back, but there was no hem, it was a full body suit. And ‘inside’ was referring to her mouth.

Jesus, she was so casual about it; I was starting to feel like some orthodontic device, like a retainer or something she poked inside her mouth without shame. I wasn’t wearing anything beneath the costume. And what if Raf came looking for me? Was I supposed to poke my hand out between her lips and wave at him to tell him where I was?

"No!" My face was going as red as my mask.

"WHAT'S WRONG?" It was too dim to see, but, from her tone, I could tell she was frowning.

I folded my arms over my chest – taking care to avoid knotting up the string – avoiding eye contact to scan the crowd nervously.

"Not tonight. Some other time."

Her brow appeared to harden with impatience. Hovering just in front of me against the bar counter, pointing out against the bust of the cheerleading cut-off, level with my face, the hardening nubs of her nipples glared at me.

"OH, LIKE, IN FIVE MINUTES?”

“Not here.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, but the tendons of her hand, resting on the bartop (the one attached to the string) twitched as her fingers extended and flexed. Her frustration was palpable in the dark, like a wild animal in a cage. She loved clubbing but more than that, because of her kink, she loved clubbing with me in her mouth, and I was denying her. It was like telling a man to visit a strip bar wearing a blindfold the whole time.

She angled her head close, bringing her lips right against the side of my head.

“DO THIS FOR ME AND THE CUFFS COME OFF.”

“’Cuffs’? What cuffs?”

She withdrew, fiddling with her engagement ring.

“WHOOPS, I MEANT STRING, SPIDER-WEB SHIT, WHATEVER.”

“We just got here; I want to enjoy myself, too.”

The dark outline of her posture relaxed subtly as if in accession. I gave a small sigh.

Then, in one instantaneous motion her hand whipped up and flipped around. The binds around my wrists went tight. My arms jerked up and I was flying through the air, at the same time, being pulled around in a centripetal arc by the rapid twisting motion of her hand. I flew right around like a yo-yo before zooming back down onto the palm of her hand, where her fingers curled around me, trapping me against her palm. The catch was so fast and startling and perfect that I just lay back giddily, unable to get up. Then my spine began to pat her soft palm in repeated jerks as she bounced me gently, baring a curling, triumphant smile directly over my head, like I was little trained pet doing exactly as I was taught.

I didn’t want to reveal that, in a strange, resigned way, I liked being tied to her hand. Not liked, but preferred. Felt okay. It made me feel like I could turn my brain off and just enjoy the atmosphere without worrying about keeping myself safe. Without a doubt it beat running around on the floor of Skyros avoiding wayward stomping shoes and the broomhead.

Coiled in string and fitted into the soft contoured palm, her face lowered close over me, ominously, eyes narrowed.

“THIS IS NOT OVER, SPIDER-MAN,” she said with a low dramatic flair.

As if to punish me, or remind me who was really in charge, her breasts ballooned as my face was brought level with her chest, and stopped unduly close to the doming face of one spandex-stretched jug. The nipple, budding with arousal, wiggled and danced right in front of my eyes with the bounce of each of her powerful steps.

In order to meet her eyes I had to ignore this pornographic close-up. She gave me a lazy blink from behind the obtruding mammary, before her head turned up again, becoming distracted by the crowds. Costumed figures loomed over my head as they swept past, and we became easily insinuated amidst a gaggle of dancers, and she became one of them, falling into some familiar rumba-like hip gyrations, accentuated by the flick of the pom poms at her waist.

Meanwhile, stuffed in her hand with my body turned inwards towards her, I was forced into distraction by the hypnotic gymnastics of the great flapping breast and nipple spike that seemed to be straining to sucker me in the face.

"HEY, MJ!" a man’s voice passed by, "GO GET 'EM TIGER!"

Jen – to whom ‘Mary Jane’ was foremost, slang for weed – whipped her head down to me, mystified at the comic book reference. The only reason she came as MJ was to partner my costume, and for the excuse to dye her hair. I’d first had to advise her on what that Mary Jane bimbo (her term) actually looked like.

"I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HE JUST SAID."

"I think he means to say he’s a Spider-man fan."

Her eyes narrowed.

"NOT ON MY WATCH--"

Her fingers rippled around me with muscular efficiency, squeezing and adjusting me until I was further buried in the cushioned padding of her closed hand, with the dull weight of her thumb resting on top of my head, keeping me driven down out of sight. With her hand turned in against her body, the dancers were shielded out. My limited view was filled solely by the rebounding breasts, trampolining against the spandex sports top. If my head was any closer to the whumping erogenous organ I would have gotten whiplash, if not a broken neck. It jumped in time to the sub-bass, and seriously threatened making a landing pad out of my comparatively diminutive face. Given its blown up size, that would be like a one-ton punch. Sometimes ropey strands of red hair flung down her chest before she ran a hand over her head, flicking them back over her shoulder again, but not before some of the silky tresses flipped me in the head.

She was too distracted by the men emerging from the crowd, to dance up close, drawing themselves up against her, grinding her from behind. These tall shadowy forms materialized in my periphery, around the edges of her ever-present bouncing breast that commanded my direct view. I caught glimpses of costumed arms and jutting shoulders, and inhaled hits of cologne and sweat. Once one man had his turn, another quickly sprung in for a round.

As the music hit a quieter part, we were back at the bar and she ordered a slim-lined bottle. The bottle was taller than I was, and the way her fingers were wrapped around the neck was probably not dissimilar from the way she sometimes held me, pinched between her fingertips. Watching the ease with which rim of the bottom – approximating the size of my head – slipped in through the crinkled scrunching lips and disappeared from sight, I shivered a little. Five minutes ago that would have been me slurping into her mouth, if I hadn’t dug my heels in.

I was bobbed and swayed around in mid-air until the song ended and there was a quiet part. I was becoming duly sick of this rotation of random men swishing in and out for a dance with my beloved.

“Hey,” I called to her, “I’m still here, remember. Under your boob.”

Lowering the bottle, she looked down at me in with skepticism. From my position, tight at her midsection, the dyed red-framed edge of her head was just visible beyond the horizon of the bloated up breasts.

“UHMMM, NOW YOU WANNA JOIN IN?”

“Just a friendly neighborhood reminder not to pound my head flat.”

Her exhilarated voice ran a little ahead of itself.

“WANNA STAY ON MY GOOD SIDE? GOTTA DO WHAT I SAY, SHORTSTACK.”

“Undo the string first,” I countered up at her intruding chest all, which heaved in and out with tantalizing pulsation, from her physical exertion. Beyond, her forehead, barely glimpsed, glittered with perspiration under the Technicolor light.

Fingers shifted and tapped, making my ribs buckle inwards.

“ON THE FLOOR,” she said impatiently “OH, AND—” Her chest dropped below my feet as my face soared up to pause right in front of her lips, allowing her to beat my tiny ears with her provocative rumbling murmur: “—HOW MUCH YOU BET I’M COMMANDO?”

“I’m not playing this game.”

“YOU’RE ALREADY PLAYING. AND IF YOU PLAY IT RIGHT, YOU’LL WIN A PRIZE. ANYWAY, WHAT ARE YOU WRAPPED IN DOWN THERE?”

She reached down and spread my legs to stroke my bulge with a fingertip. My balls screwed up and I shut my eyes as the fingertip poked it back and forth like a kitten pawing a toy until she’d deduced I wasn’t wearing anything beneath my costume.

“YOU’RE NOT JUST COMMANDO, YOU’RE READY TO FIRE!”

“Jennifer…!”

The darkness of the night club, shifting walls of distracted people, and my negligible size all worked as a conspiracy to permit her mischief.

“NO SECRETS FROM ME, BUB.” A nail tip dug itself into my left pec, where the tattoo was, as if to reinforce that the branding of her name designated my body as her property.

“We’re not even married yet! You can’t just – ”

Her hand assumed a pecking shape, the long nail tips forming the ‘beak’, before closing with a snap around my skull, subjecting it to a rapid squeeze, and I quickly went silent.

She unwound more string from her finger until it stretched over half her height. I was placed down on the resin dancefloor and her upper body soared back up towards the ceiling, to rejoin the dark shifting pillars that were the other partiers, leaving me woefully vulnerable at shoe level, so small I almost felt like I was one of her big toes, helplessly stuck in a crowd of stamping, squeaking shoes. The closest of these, hemming me on my immediate left and right, were her white sneakers, either of which I could have sat on like couches.

The floor seemed to swell in undulations beneath my boots, in time with the music reverb and hundreds of shoes mashing into it. This must have been what a bowling pin felt like before a bowling ball charged it down. I felt like at any minute one of countless huge shoes was going to materialize out of the dark and pirouette upon me, grinding my musculature into so much gum to coat a heel or tread. Only Jen’s hawkish supervision separated me from that fate; I had no ability to outrun or ultimately resist anyone’s momentous weight.

The giant white sneakers began to tap around in front of me, bizarre such huge things could move so lightly and gracefully, more than I felt I could. The grand curtain of her pleated skirt flapped far above my head, and like a fan, sending whuffs of air over the top of my head. She was not commando, but only a thin, dark stretch of thong fabric veiled her mound, and it puffed out slightly in a camel toe.

“CARE TO DANCE, NOW?” she called down, as one shoe came thumping down in front of my face, nearly making me jump out of my skin. “OR ARE YOU JUST GOING TO STARE UP MY SKIRT ALL NIGHT?”

I was too afraid to dance in case I tangled up the string around my wrists and tripped over myself, and couldn’t say so, because she couldn’t hear me anymore, over the bursting club music.

Anyway, there was no time for dancing; I was forced to dash and dart around as her feet stamped closer and closer to my insignificant form, while she lost herself in her sultry, hip-swaying routine. But her steps were too close to be accidental. She must have been throwing me glances because every time a sneaker dropped in front of my face and met the floor with a quake, and I skidded and twisted away, laughter hailed down from the ceiling, in sharp spurts in between the music beats. She seemed to be playing a disastrously reckless game of seeing how close she could tramp around my body short of pancaking me. Maybe she was still pissed off that I’d refused to go into her mouth, and was trying to make every place that wasn’t her mouth look unwelcome—even hostile—by comparison.

Then, out of nowhere, one of those flat-bottomed white missiles came flying down with unavoidably lethal intent. The white toe came barreling at my head like the nose of a crashing plane and I was paralyzed, stricken with terror as it seemed to be playing out before my eyes in slow motion.

Jennifer…I thought, feeling sick and betrayed and horrified…how could you…?

She was actually going to do it; she was going to crush me. My heart was in such disbelieving agony it was like a barbed cincture had drawn tight around my chest, and I could no longer breathe.

There was no Jennifer anymore, no people, and no club, just a white sneaker growing monstrously large in view, taking up the entire ceiling like a horrifying eclipse, caused by the whim of an arrogant, punitive Goddess amusing herself by squashing the life out of some lowly mortal.

My heart skittered like I’d slipped on something. At the last second my arms yanked tight over my head and I was flying, kicking my legs as I spun and swayed alongside the twin smokestacks of her smooth bare legs, being carried like a marionette by her ring finger.

She was laughing again, thrilled at her own nerve.

“HEART RACING YET? FEEL ALIVE?” she whooped over the music.

More accurately, I felt narrowly not dead.

My brain had crashed. As I stammered in shock, my bulge was captured and given a prickling pinch and, just before they departed, the tip of a finger flicked against my groin, generating a lasting spasm of sensation.

“REMEMBER TO SAVE A LITTLE EXTRA CIRCULATION. JUST FOR ME.”

“Sure,” I said weakly, by now totally cowed by her. Maybe lucky the string was holding me up, I had no muscle tension in my legs anymore. They quaked like jelly.

The soles of my boots united with the floor again, and were now jolted up and down against the floor as her hand lifted and dropped me, and jiggling me back and forth in an unbalanced way to suggest dancing. In time with the music, I was bounced and leap-frogged around – and even on – her shoes until I felt like I was a human yo-yo. My limbs kicked and twisted sporadically as I tried to pull off some dancing of my own, difficult when I was flying and swooping around like a fish on the end of a fishing line. Soon my shoulders and back muscles began to seize and twitch with the strain of dangling from my wrists. Sweat ran down my sides and I gritted my teeth in pain.

The giant white sneakers roguishly directed more close stomps around my suspended body, and again, zoomed me into the air to safety at the last second. Each stomp surged with a clap of air and frightening bone-shaking presence that blasted into my face like a bomb going off. These crush fake outs brought her no end of amusement, and shocked my heart into a gallop, but I recognized it was the drink talking and she probably wouldn’t even remember she did it the next morning.

But I was sober enough to admit that, I recognized in the darkest recesses of her psyche she was aroused by her lethal impulse over me. But she no more wanted to actually kill me than an extreme tightrope walker wants to fall and die, as much as their actions look to some outsider otherwise. Dying is, in fact, the last thing they want. She wanted me to marvel at the power she had over me, and that meant awing me that she could just as easily take my life as she’d so often saved it. She liked to flaunt that she had the power of both readily within her grasp.

Tens of meters of her form scrolled down past me as she wound the string around her hand, drawing me to a stop before her looming face, which flashed successive shades of vivid Technicolor under the disco lighting. Hovering in space, with the bass pulsing through my skeleton, I was surrounded by a frightful display of masks which bobbed and jeered in and out of my perception.

“WOW. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” she said flatly.

I was spinning slowly from my wrists in front of her eyes. Her face was in view, then rotated away behind my head. Then it rotated back into view, but her expression hadn’t changed, it was still a flat glare.

“What?” I exclaimed. “Uh, what are you doing?”

“YOU’D RATHER DIE THAN DANCE WITH ME. I’M CUT.”

“You’re trying to erase me from existence, big lady!”

Her lashes lowered and the corner of her mouth twisted in a humorless ‘nice-try-wise-guy’ sort of way.

“YOU STEPPED A LITTLE INTO THE PATH OF MY SHOE. YOU WERE TRYING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN FASTER.”

“We both feinted,” I blathered tiredly. “We both pretended to step away but then reversed without warning.”

She expressed how disappointed she was with this response by choosing not to respond to it. She was yet too impatient to dance.

Suspended from the floor, I was now flung and twirled around her body as she carried on dancing. The club became a whip-fast overload of sharp, beating lights; something resembling David Bowman’s journey through the Star Gate. I shut my eyes at intervals to avoid seizuring or passing out.

When I opened my eyes, the bulging shelf of her bust writ with the stretched enscription ‘ANGEL’ in large, flew out of the dark and pumped into my head like a pair of massive air bags. The shock of impact coursed through my spine and I rebounded in a mass of flailing limbs, wheezing and dazed. The string twirled me around and over like a shoelace being done up, gelled floodlights switched places and then her ass was expanding in direct view, bigger and bigger, and gyrating. I was momentarily lost in the flicking pleats of her short skin before her ass seemed to slap me across the face, swatting me away again. I spun like a boomerang, inevitably returning to her mega dancing form, now pummeling into one of her outer thighs.

By now she not only had my attention, but several random onlookers delighted in my spinning, bouncing dance – not to mention the ironic juxtaposition of gargantuan Mary Jane toying with a tiny Spider-Man. People eyed me and grinned as I was dipped and dived past their shimmying legs. Giant hands dived down and plucked at the string before Jen could stop them, wrenching one of my arms until I feared it would tear off. I found myself flying through the air whipping away from the greedy grabbing hands and kicked my legs for stability as I aeroplaned around in the flashing colorful lights, trying to look unperturbed and in my own zone, like Peter Parker swinging serenely from skyscrapers in a glittery, colorful night.

It became clear why I had been allowed to fling with abandon into random dancers. Jennifer had been dancing with her eyes closed. She opened them and looked at me, her eyes whirled with the red and green and blue light.

“I LOVE YOU JERRY JERONIMO MOUSSEAU!” she yelled into my face with such agitated declaration I seriously feared being either snarfed into her mouth or snorted up her nostril like a line of coke. Lucky I was not insect-sized or – in the swelling electricity of that moment – she might have attempted the latter.

As the music wore on, giant legs started to hem me in from all sides. Oscillating body parts twisted and turned around past me, knocking into me, sending me spinning away again. Half the time the body parts didn’t belong to my fiancée. I bounced off foreign shoulders, breasts, stomachs and thighs.

Airborne fingers extended to poke me, sending me swinging around in mid-air. Jennifer’s irritation at the unwelcome attention peaked, and then we broke away from the ocean of bodies and were weaving through the crowd as she moved off the mosh to the seats at the side, and reclining in one, not resting but watchful.

My body came to rest on the brawny floor of her pressed-together thighs, but only for an instant as I was progressively winched up into the air as she wound the dangling strings tighter around her palm, until her palm hovered low overhead like a huge sunshade, leaving me very little dangle room.

She leaned forward in her seat. Suddenly I was diving through the air like a dying insect as she reached with both hands for her bag. My body careened into the side of the soft leather, lifted again for the bag to plop onto her lap.

I kicked and groaned as my tiny body dragged against the leather, feeling like an incidental accessory that happened to be attached to her hand, like some keys.

“PATIENCE, LITTLE LOVER,” she assured me.

Then I was thrust down into a dark cauldron suffused with creamy lotion smells. Plastic containers and tubes and packets slapped me in the face and jabbed into my torso as her hand searched around. With my arms stretched up over my head, my soft belly and sides were cruelly vulnerable to pounding by hard lid edges and pole-like depilatory wands and cosmetic instruments. Air leaked out of my lungs.

Suddenly I was soaring again, and stabilized in front of her face, and the dancing lime lasers lit up the whites of her eyes, which were widened in earnest surprise.

“SLIP OF THE HAND,” she said in an alcohol-smoothed tone. She hadn’t meant to thrust me into the bag, it had happened by instinct.

Then she noticed my hand at my side, rubbing gingerly. Her pinky finger raised and tenderly waved my hand away, giving my insulted stomach muscles a soft poke.

“LET ME TAKE A LITTLE LOOK, TOUGH GUY.”

“I’m okay.”

“WHAT IF I TAKE THE STRING OFF?” she offered.

She reached into her bag again (with her other hand) and held a shining steel pair of tiny scissors. My muscles stiffened in alarm, but presented my wrists to her to delicately snip the binds off.

Then her nails swept around to my back and began to scratch and pinch gently – the sharp edges prickling my shoulders – until the Velcro seam tore apart. Hooking a nail into the back to stretch it up, she lifted and pulled at the stretchy fabric to help me de-clothe. To stabilize me, two fingers and a thumb automatically tightened around my midsection, placing strain on my tender stomach. I winced and she loosened her grip.

Even with my chest exposed, she continued to tug, until the costume legs slipped free and I was left quivering and naked against her hand.

She directed a flick at the tip of my member.

“I WAS RIGHT – COMMANDO,” she said, and, not entirely seriously: “YOU’RE BRAVER THAN I AM.”

Then her soft fingertips were sweeping around my front, pushing in soft circular motions, testing for sensitivity. Wherever there was a sensitive spot, the muscles twitched and trembled, and it caused my back to arch in discomfort.

Keeping me still on her lap, her hand disappeared into her bag again. I wondered if she was retrieving me a painkiller, but instead she pulled out a tube of pink guava lip balm and, twisting the top off, ran it swiftly over her lips. I should have taken this as an ominous sign but I was too distracted figuring out how to get my costume back; it was balled up in the fist that poised the balm in front of her pursed lips.

Without warning, her ring hand lifted, yanking me up into the air, and with precision, directing my face to land on the tight moist bud of her puckered lips with a wet squish. At contact, her lips pulsed and contracted like flexing muscles, latching onto my face, pinching and smacking to test the balm, and probably also attempt to distract me from my stomach pain. I had only just enough time to shut my eyes before the monstrous sucking masses applied itself to my forehead and began sucking with enough force to scrunch my brow. It felt like some alien orifice had attached around my head and was trying to suck my brain out through my mouth.

Meanwhile, her head was tilting back, and back, jaw angling upwards, and I had no idea…

Suddenly the moist supple bulwarks weren’t there anymore. They parted like an air vent flipping open. I was poised over her face with my ankles clasped, hanging in mid-air. For an instant I was tipped down like this, my chin balanced delicately on the tip of her tongue, which flicked rapidly like a snake’s tongue against my throat, tickling mischievously. The balm oiled opening stretched wider. Then I was bob sledding down the chute of her curled tongue, pulled inexorably into the darkness. I let out a surprised squeak before her tongue pushed up into my stomach, clamping me against the soft, wet ridged palate, snuffing out my cry.

With her lips shut, it was pitch black inside her mouth, yet there was a paradoxical feeling of constant surveillance, a sense of all-seeing gaze that lay me out, totally exposed. Everything I came into contact with – from my palms, the soles of my feet, my butt – was sending her immediate signals of where I was, what I was doing, how my body was positioned inside her. There was nowhere I could go to escape her, and she enjoyed an omniscient awareness of every move I made. I was like a stone in her shoe; impossible for her to forget I'm there. Everything felt magnified, scandalous by the fact no one could see me. I was a plaything for her tongue, flipped over at whim, idly explored and enjoyed without apology.

The weight of the beefy wet muscle on me was sensual and hot as it traced all over my body. When it wanted access to anatomy out of reach, I was bucked and flipped over without warning, or scooped out of her cheek and swished about, head over feet, gargling a wave of thick saliva before hitting the opposite side of her mouth, and sticking in place behind the wall of molars.

For fun, she tried tucking me underneath her tongue, and then delicately holding me sideways in place between the row of her incisors, running the tip of her tongue from my temple, down my body to my foot.

She made great sucking motions as if to click her tongue, and the oral walls squeezed me in and out like a squishy toy, putting my muscular tension to the test, working my flexibility to the limit until joints creaked and my vertebrae strained. Then a wall of shadow fell over me as the oral entrance closed again, shutting me away in a dark, humid prison with no easy means of escape.

The internal heating system roared to life with her exhalations, warm air stirred up from her lungs and rushed at me, condensing over my flesh with clammy mist. Every time she exhaled it puffed my lungs up with her warm, second-hand air, and every time she inhaled, it felt like my airways were being pinched shut as the air was suctioned out again. It was as if she had taken control of my breathing, carrying the air in and out of my lungs.

The air in this hot confine became weighted with moisture as it collected saliva, and this airborne moisture was also packed inside my lungs, which I had to cough and spit up.

Then the enormous grainy mound of her tongue unexpectedly tensed, reaching up and easily batting me to one side of the mouth. My back hit the inside of a cheek, skin sticking with a small wet squelch. For a moment my soft bare body moulded to the inside of her cheek like a wet tissue, before sliding down. I curled into a ball as drops of saliva rained down the moist walls of her mouth, rolling over me in waves, conspiring to glue me in place.

She must have re-joined the dancing, I was stuck in place for some time, and it didn’t necessarily get any easier or more comfortable. She liked me to be packed in her cheek like a tight wad so her mouth was free for other things – drinking and making out with guys.

Her loud heavy breathing gusted around the inside of her mouth like a great wind preceding a storm. I soon grew very warm and wet, as my skin softened and wrinkled, which seemed to only mould me even more against the inside of her cheek. Unfortunately, this correspondingly made me even more comfortable for her to carry inside her mouth, slightly squishy and flexible. The tip of her tongue entertained itself by pushing against different parts of my body, satisfying itself with the give of my puny body to the strength of the oral muscle.

My brain tuned out while an unknown period of time passed. The monotony of my predicament was muted with some light sleep, distracted by a dream I was back in my bedroom, normal size. My carefree slumber was ripped apart by a groaning sound that tumbled out of the unseen throat somewhere behind me. I awoke with a snap, remembering where I was, and some dread washed over me again.

The groan was not her voice, but something else, not so friendly…

It came again: a rumbling, bestial growl and the air at my back seemed to flare and sizzle as if a furnace door had opened up. In a span of nanoseconds a burst of gaseous pressure pumped into my sinuses and the airspaces in my head, like my head was swelling and going to explode, leaving my temples throbbing.

“Whoa,” I gasped, holding my head between my hands, giving myself my crushing massage. “Don’t do that again.”

The rows of teeth divided as she spoke, letting in flashes of laser beamed dancing body parts.

“AW, DID I MAKE YOU JUMP?” she said, treating me to disappointingly brief views of the outside world from between her two rows of teeth as she uttered words. “JUST THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING A LITTLE COLD IN THERE.”

 “Well, that was a whole blowtorch of heat.”

Refreshingly cool air rushed in as the lips parted to speak again. The movement of her jaws as she spoke was unnerving, as it simulated a munching motion. I pulled my body tighter to ensure I was all clear of her snapping molars.

“ACTUALLY, I WAS TRYING TO PUFF YOU UP AND POP YOU; BECAUSE, SEE, FOR A SECOND I CONFUSED YOU FOR A TINY HUNK OF BUBBLEGUM. YOU’RE SO TIGHT JAMMED IN THERE.”

“Yeah, tight,” I scoffed. “I’m clapped up in a brazen bull. And you’re cooking me alive even before I hit your stomach juices.”

Her tongue swung at me, accidentally battering my head into her rubbery cheek pouch and causing it to rebound, as the wet muscular mass tried to drape itself across my shoulders in a consoling way.

“OH, LIGHTEN UP. IT WAS JUST A LITTLE HICCUP. SIT BACK AND LET ME STROKE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS AWAY...”

I grimaced. That was bullshit. It was a burp.

“If that was a hiccup, then I—mmf.”

The tip of her tongue flattened itself over my face and pressed hard, squashing my head against her inside cheek, extinguishing my voice. Once satisfied I’d abandoned my argument, the tongue retracted again, settling back in the center of the cavernous mouth.

But the sudden aromatic airbursts happened several other times, particularly as she continued to ingest the alcohol and spill back more fuel onto the metaphorical fire. And every time caused a small gaseous explosion of rapid air compression behind my eyeballs, causing them to water. The hot fizzling air didn’t just light up the sensitive nerve pathways in my nasal cavities, but rapidly expanded my windpipe and lungs to painful capacity, until my whole body seemed to be stinging. It was the sharp pain of carbonated bubbles shooting up the nostrils, but across my entire body. If she’d just opened her mouth, it would have prevented the explosive, rapid-fire compression that tore through my body tissues. But every time, she held her closed mouth against her hand. Her desire for discretion trumped my comfort and caused me major, literal headaches.

“Open your mouth!” I screamed in pain, after the fourth time in fifteen minutes.

“WHO DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?” she shot back, oblivious to my suffering. “SOME KIND OF BOORISH INBRED?”

I groaned in defeat, just as another burst rattled through my head, making my ears pop

“Why is this happening?”

She mistook it for a non-rhetorical question.

“IT’S A THING THAT HAPPENS IF I DRINK AFTER EATING LACTOSE,” she answered in a low, somewhat bothered voice, as if self-conscious. “NOW GET OVER IT.”

“Well, make it stop, I—ulfff!” my voice squeaked and died beneath the stampeding grumble of another wave of hot air, drowned out by the sharp wet popping sound in my ears as my head fought to equalize the intolerable pressure. My eyeballs itched painfully, feeling like they had been on the verge of exploding.

Now so much air had built up inside the airspaces of my thoracic cavity that my torso felt stiff and wooden. I thumped my fist into my stomach, trying to deflate myself, until I made myself burp.

The oral cavern thrummed with her laughter.

“You’re doing this!” I said, trying to burp again to relax the strain in my abdomen.

“ANY MORE TALK AND YOU’RE A HYPOCRITE,” she said smugly, before giving my face a flick with the tip of her tongue. Then stopped, thinking, and the tongue dropped into my lap and began massaging my belly as she did so, unconsciously or not. I secretly wished it would press harder to help deflate me, but then it slipped away again so she could conclude:

“WHERE’S THE WATER…?”

Sizzling gas or frigid liquid? I couldn’t decide which was worse. But with all my facial features ringing in pain, I doubted anything could be worse than another infernal alcoholic belch. And I thought the water would extinguish what felt like bubbles crackling inside my brain.

“Please, yes. Anything.”

Her voice rang through the dark chamber of her mouth as she conveyed her order over the bar, and giving me a surreal view of the bartender’s face appearing and disappearing repeatedly between the frame of her top and bottom teeth as she spoke, awash in the vivid lights and flickering shadows.

Everything went black.

Again, her upper and lower incisors, like silhouettes of castle battlements, parted, not to speak, but to admit the glassy edge of a tumbler to protrude in. As it tilted, its clear contents curled over the edge like an ocean wave breaking into her mouth. With a good mouthful sucked in, the glass edge tilted away as the upper and lower teeth drew together, blinding me again.

There was an ominous hissing sound as a river surged in over the tongue, and as the ocean tide of water rolled over my body, I sucked in my breath a fraction too late and got a nose full of freezing liquid down my throat. There was only an instant to register I’d made a horrible mistake before my head exploded in agony.

It was carbonated water – explaining the hissing – and the hateful cold did not merely pierce but snapped and bit like teeth as the bubbles burst inside my body. The shock of the sudden temperature shift shook up my delicate epithelial tissue into inflamed overdrive.

“Aaaargh!”

It felt like I was being immersed in liquid nitrogen. My stomach began to convulse in a mime of regurgitation. The icy wave lapped down my face, swishing sideways, the immense pull of the wave threatening to wrench me sideways with it, but instead I was hugged against the slick rock of molar wall, keeping me in place. I spluttered underwater, then, as soon as my head was exposed again, I let out a scream:

“Stop—!” then the wave of bubbling frosty drink reversed direction, slapped down over my head, dumping me under another dizzying world of mind-numbing ache. Then flipped away, before crashing in over my head, smacking the inside cheek wall, the flipping to the other side with a wet slapping sound, before careening back into my face. Again, and again.

She must have been swishing the water around, I thought dismally. Maybe she thought it was helping me, but it was making things worse. Each cold wet slap to the face thrust my head under a wall of frigid bubbles that sluiced up my raw, sensitively enervated nasal passages, tearing them open with pain.

Finally the torrent drained back towards the void at the back of the cavern, and the throat muscles squeezed to pull the water down. The rapid compression caused by her vacuuming swallow delivered me a walloping climax of facial nerve pain.

The tongue searched for me in the dark, probing tip slipping under my jaw and affectionately stroking my neck, or checking my pulse, or both.

As stars seemed to fly around my eyes in the dark, her lips parted again, exposing a panoramic disco lit view of the outside world, framed above and below by the dark, crenulated ridges of teeth. At the same time, the neck of an open bottle was pointing in at me and—

“No, no, no!” I yelled.

--the cavern tilted back, the bottle neck tilted down, and a pressure hose of cooled fizzling water came spilling in at me again, dunking my head under a . It felt like I was made of ice and someone was trying to carve me up; my head was clanging like the worst dental surgery in the world.

I must have passed out for an instant. When I awoke my cheek was sliding and squeaking down the inside wall of her cheek, while something like a huge fish was flicking in my face. It was no fish, but the tip of her tongue, probing around my neck for my pulse again. The tongue disappeared and then there was a bass rumbling in my bones; her voice, and as commanding as if it was booming out of the nightclub’s sound system.

“—TO PLAY THAT GAME?” her voice segued back mid-speech, “WELL, I CAN PLAY, TOO.”

She thought I’d gone silent on her.

As soon as she finished speaking, the mass of her tongue curled around and the wet tip mashed into my face, poking me in the eye.

I wrenched my head away, and the tip ran down my chest, brushing my groin briefly as it identified my waist. Each stretch of my anatomy was pinpointed and palpated by the dribbling bulk of spongy muscle. I imagined her visualizing my anatomy as she probed me, using her ultra-sensitive tongue as the interfacing medium to maintain a 3D map of my body in her head, a tiny model of male anatomy, helpless but to lend itself uncomplainingly to her infelicitous exploration and manipulation, and delight in its automatic biological responses; a quickening heartbeat, softening, stretching muscles, and stiffening organ.

The massive tongue touched to my hipbone and stopped. It began trying to rock my hips, sliding beneath my butt and cantilevering my body side to side, half smushing me into her cheek. As her tongue ran loosely around my pelvis, thrusting me, using force to buck and bounce me, it accidentally slipped down my lower belly and squashed my penis, sending barbs of twinging sensitivity up the shaft. I yelped.

Suddenly the tongue was battering all around me as if in a panic, practically smothering me. It seemed to be trying to vigorously dislodge me from her cheek, hooking under my arms to lift me, poking my hips back and forth, but also in effect, ramming me further into the cheek. It's was like her tongue was trying to poke me to death. It made scooping motions up under my butt, causing me to bounce wildly and painfully, head whipping and teeth and eyeballs rattling inside my skull.

I felt like a little kid being bounced on his parent’s knee, but this wasn’t fun; it was out of control and humiliating. My joints ached as they were jolted and jarred together with the stress of vigorous bumping.

A pathetic wail issued from my throat:

“S-s-s-stop-p-p i-t-t-t J-J-J-en-n-i-if-f-fer-r-r-r-r-r!” But my voice clacked into incoherence. A strange rumbling squeak trickled out from the invisible gullet. She was trying not to laugh at the silly sounds I’d made. I must have sounded like I was yelling into fan blades.

Disoriented, I fought against the tongue, until it occurred to me my bobbing motions were timed to the loud music throbbing outside her mouth. She was trying to bounce me with her tongue to make me 'dance' in time to the music.

The paddling of her tongue caught my erection numerous times, flicking and bouncing it with solid strikes. It was caught and stretched by the gluey, saliva-soaked tongue muscle, and battered to and fro like a tennis ball. Every stroke sent an aggressive, striking pounding sensation from the tip of my penis into my balls. My body was filling up with hot blood.

One of these strokes sent my dick beyond the limit, and my balls screwed up so tight I thought they’d explode. My load burst forth, splashing indivisibly into great bubbling globs of saliva, and I fell into a relieved slump. The tongue continued to bump and grind against me, trying to make me buck to the music, but eventually she seemed to get the idea I’d become an exhausted, leaden wad, and her tongue departed again.

I scooted my butt into the cheek wall, hugging my knees up to my chest as my stomach somersaulted giddily.

Outside, the song was winding down to a crossfade into a new piece of music.

To get my attention, the tip of the tongue clambered over and performed a manic drumroll against the tiny drum of my ribcage. I groaned in utter dismay at this new, painful subjugation. My torso was so sensitive and raw from the slightly acidic saliva, my flesh and muscle quivering from all the exertion, that my body felt paper fragile against the energetic spearing of her tongue tip, like it could have popped my abdomen like a balloon.

The new song was starting to climb to the first chorus and the ravers were ready to erupt at the beat drop. The tongue swept away for an instant so she could breathlessly exclaim:

“I LOVE THIS SONG – READY…?!”

My eyes shut and I let out a small sigh, muscles quivering in anticipation for the next round of tongue hammering invisible nails into my body.

Sometime later, I was dislodged and my Spider-man suit hastily pulled back on, before being handed over to Raf at the bar, so that Jen could use the restroom.

The musicos on stage were dismantling gear to make way for the next act, while some stage hands were setting up some panels around the DJ booth on the stage.

The floor was already starting to whistle and cheer, and stamp their feet even before the next group was introduced. Evidently it was a popular act.

The noise increased as a guy in headphones came in behind the DJ booth, now barricaded by the glass panels. The edges lit up with neon lights, making it look like he was inside a big glowing rectangular prism.

A microphone rang out with the MC’s announcement:

“NOW MAKE SOME NOISE FOR DJ RAITARO AND ANYA ZARSKY!”

The floor did not need to be told. The music started and the room exploded as a young woman carrying a microphone came out on the aluminium gangplank suspended over the stage and stepped down onto the glass prism with a sharp clunk. She was wearing a ‘child-friendly’ bondage outfit, devil horns, and led-lit glass platform heels, and though her face was partially hidden under her black mask, the bleached hair falling down her back from beneath the headpiece gave her away.

While she tested the microphone by thanking the city, I jumped up and scrambled across the bar, trying to avoid slipping on alcohol moisture.

“Raf! – Hey!”

He leaned his elbow across the bar counter towards me, but barely took his eyes off the stage.

“Is that Anya?” I yelled up at him, “–your Anya?”

“THAT’S HER.” He gave a tiny nod, his eyes reflecting the stage lighting. “SHE’S A VISION, YEAH?”

“Yeah, a vision that every man in this joint has his eyes on.”

He didn’t reply; not seeming to have heard me over the pounding noise, or maybe thinking what I’d said was so obvious it didn’t call for a response.

“You said she worked here,” I called up at the top of my voice.

He gave a self-evident shrug.

“SHE’S WORKING.”

“She’s gigging, it’s a little different.”

“SAME THING.”

“No, I mean, she’s famous. Like, seriously. She’s a big hit. I thought she was a bartender or something.”

“SHE USED TO BE A WAITRESS,” he offered. “I THINK?”

“Maybe a million years ago. Let me take another look.”

His giant hand circled my chest and lifted me up over the sea of dark bobbing heads where the stage materialized, and the strikingly leggy singer making her way with model-like catwalk pose through flashes of lighting and plumes of theatrical smoke, singing the first few lines to the house music being mixed by the DJ.  

"WHO ARE THEY?"

Raf was looking at a small group couple of dancers; Jennifer had returned from the restroom and was dancing with them.

"No idea."

"FRIENDS OF HERS?"

"Nope."

"YOU WANT ME TO CALL HER OVER?"

I shook my head, grateful for the rest.

"She's having fun.”

The DJ/singer act spun through several songs. Raf was keen to buy me a drink, and helped me partake from a tiny plastic shot cup. But when I went to order another, he refused. His fingers closed around my head and rubbed thoroughly. His agitation expressed itself through his finger strength, and my skull ached.

“NEED TO FOCUS,” he explained. “STAY LUCID.”

“Ow. This is just a mask, not a crash helmet.”

“GET HER ATTENTION.”

“Who?” I said. “Jen? No, really, it doesn’t bother me.”

He shook his head, and then stretched up tall to peer over the heads of the crowd, looking out towards the stage.

“YOU GOT US IN HERE EARLY, REMEMBER? DO YOUR MAGIC AGAIN. GET US INTO HER.”

“Anya? You’re joking, right?”

He leaned his head over, trying to hear me better over the mosh din and music. Every time I tried to speak up my voice was drowned out by the microphone-amplified vibrato beaming from the stage. The pop star’s clear voice had everyone under its spell, like a Homeric siren. But honestly, it was nice to have a famous person here, to take the heat off me.

“GIRLS LOVE YOU, MAN!” he grinned.

“You don’t expect me to just go up and talk to her?”

In my mind’s eye I saw myself crowd surfing, being passed hand over hand and deposited onto the stage, and getting quickly lost in the curling stage fog, before ending up inadvertently stamped flat to the underside of one of the fearsome metallic chrome platform stiletto heels outfitting the ends of the singer’s killer legs.

“NO – YOU GO UP AND OVER!” he said, pointing his free hand up at the alloy trusses running along the ceiling in a grid. They formed two intersecting squares; one square boxing the mosh, connected to another square boxing the stage.

In his cubic booth, the DJ tipped his head back to drink from a water bottle. Across the floor, over the heads of the bobbing crowd, I saw Jennifer had stopped dancing. She ran a hand through her well-mussed red mane of hair and appeared to be looking around, and sucking her lips as if thirsty or…trying to conjure up saliva, anyway…

“Throw me!” I roared.

He flung his hand up and I was speeding high above everyone’s’ heads, towards the ceiling. I threw out my hands to grab the lower metal bar of a truss, swung myself up, and then bear hugged an intersecting bar and pulled myself up to the upper bar. The spandex was too slippery on the metal, so I ripped my gloves and boots off, and my bare hands and feet gave me better traction. The music quaked through the bar, through my hands and body as I gripped it.

Astride the upper bar, I gazed down to see Raf give me an excited thumbs up, right before Jen pounced on him. Wrenching my eyes away, I began to move along the bar towards the stage. It was wide enough to run along, my smaller mass gave me better balance, because of less gravitational pull.

The lights flared and rotated below me. I focused on the end of the metal beam and crossed the first truss box, and bear hugged the bars intersecting with the second box, which surrounded the stage.

Below, Anya floated through the fog to the very edge of the stage and wailed the last Banshee note of the song at the top of her lungs.

The truss ran into a brick wall along the side of the stage, behind a curtain, where some cabling extended down; my ticket to getting back down to ground level.

The crowd erupted in cheers and applause as the song ended, and with the set over, the curtains were pulled over the stage, cutting it (and me) off from the mosh. Directly below, stage hands moved a ramp to the glass sphere, one of these took Anya’s hand, guiding her down onto the stage. She unclipped a microphone and handed it to the stage hand. From there, she moved briskly towards the back end of the stage, down another ramp, and around a corner.

Racing along to the end of the alloy truss, I met the brick wall and slid down the cabling until my feet touched the stage floor. Fuzzy shadows of mist churned around me as I sprinted along the backstage wall.

“Anya!” I yelled. “Anya, wait!”

No one heard me. The backstage hall echoed with carry-over noise from the dancefloor, the stormy sea of chatter.

I barrelled down the ramp onto a cracked stony floor. Doors and big black equipment boxes lined the black brick wall. It was very dim, smoky, and dungeon-like except for a puddle of red light below an exit sign. I was tiny, and Anya, gargantuan – her heels alone dwarfed me – but I was running full speed, and she was walking. And the lack of gravitational pull on my tiny mass allowed me to be surprisingly fast.

Ahead, the singer’s giant glassy stilettos were swinging along, hitting the stone floor with deafening metronymic snaps on the stony floor.

“Anya!” I screamed, “Stop!”

The unearthly resonance in the dark hallway gave my tiny voice just enough crackle. The giant glass heels froze, as the singer seemed to consider whether she’d been hearing things. Then the heels swished around with two great claps, to face me head on. She was frozen for a nanosecond, as if to make sense of the seeming empty curtain of air in front of her. Then her eyes must have plummeted and made sense of me. One of the heels unconsciously snapped back.

“HEY…!” she gasped. “OH MY GOSH, A TINY LITTLE SPIDER-MAN. ARE YOU REAL? I THOUGHT I WAS SEEING THINGS! WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?”

The glassy stilettos came clomping up to me, acquiring a red glow under the light.

“Well,” I panted, too tired for formal introductions, “there’s a bunch of metal girders on the ceiling. I just walked along them. It beats lining up.”

“UH…” she seemed lost for words for a second, “…THAT’S REALLY DANGEROUS.” She peered up at the ceiling gauging the distance from the floor, and then letting her eyes follow the rigging out over the dance floor.

“My friend threw me up there.”

“YOUR FRIEND WHAT?” then she frowned, “OKAY – MY POINT EXACTLY.”

“I’m a stunt person,” I said quickly, wanting to leave her with the impression I was not unthinkably stupid or insane, “It’s what I do.”

“THAT’S RIGHT…” she said, as her immense height seemed to dive down over me in a graceful kneel, “YOU MUST BE JERRY MOUSSEAU. I DIDN’T REALIZE YOU ACTUALLY WENT AROUND DOING THIS KIND OF THING. I THOUGHT IT WAS ALL KINDS OF CAMERA AND EDITING.”

“No, I really am this big in real life.”

She smiled.

“YOU ARE SO TINY, LOOK AT YOU, IT’S CRAZY,” she tentatively brushed a finger to my chest as if expecting I’d evaporate in a puff of smoke. “AREN’T YOU AFRAID OF GETTING SQUASHED IN A BIG PLACE LIKE THIS?”

“It’s okay. I’m a pro at not dying. Like a tiny ninja.”

“YEAH, THAT OR YOU SERIOUSLY DON’T GIVE A DAMN.”

She seemed to have meant this as a compliment but it was hard to tell.

I shuffled back, trying to take in her from a more natural angle, but there was nothing natural about my perspective. Staring straight up at her from the grimy cracked floor gave me the POV of an actual spider about to be trampled flat by one of the massive heels, whose glassy platforms were big enough to function as windows. Plus, the deep shadow she was casting on me in this dim hallway made it seem like she was about to fall on me.

“I wanted to meet you. Uh…for a friend…”

This surprised her. She held my gaze a moment and then smiled.

“YOU WANTED TO MEET ME? THAT’S WHY YOU CLIMBED THE CEILING? I’M DUMBFOUNDED. I REALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY. WHAT IF…WHAT IF YOU SAY YOU MET ME, I CAN SAY I MET YOU?”

“But there’s someone else who wanted to meet you as well.”

“I’M SO SORRY, JERRY, BUT I HAVE TO GO SOON. UGH, SO FRUSTRATING YOU CAUGHT ME NOW, I WISH WE HAD MORE TIME, I REALLY DO. I’M A FAN OF YOURS. I THINK YOU’RE AMAZING, ACTUALLY.”

I put up my hands, not in modesty, but imploring her to stop.

“But if you were to please wait just one minute, I actually have to talk to you – my friend – ”

She held out her hand towards me, lime green polished nail plates hovering just under my nose.

“WOULD YOU LET ME…?”

Assuming she wanted to shake hands, I held my palm out for her.

“Uh, sure.”

Her fingers moved smoothly forwards, ignoring my hand and sliding around my chest, grasping tight as I lifted up off the ground, catapulting up her body and stopping at her neck level. Her upper chest wall swelled and fell with the exertion of her recent performance, making the leather of her bondage Lite costume squeak faintly.

“IT’S NOT VERY SAFE FOR YOU DOWN THERE,” she explained. “YOU’RE SO TINY IT’S SCARY. DO YOU MIND IF I HOLD YOU?”

The ground seemed a very long way down now, and from my new vantage point, even darker and grimier.

“No, I, uh, appreciate it.”

“SO, THIS FRIEND,” she said. “DOES HE, UH, EXIST…? DID HE DARE YOU TO COME BACK HERE, OR IS THIS THE OLD STANDBY WHEN YOU RUN INTO THE GIRL OF YOUR FANTASIES. YOU CAN TELL ME.”

Her soft smile had extra meaning.

I let out a laugh.

“He not only exists, but if you’ve got a phone I’ll make him materialize on the spot.”

She wandered down the backstage hallway, flagging down the attention of a crew member; a guy wearing a black t-shirt, one of the stage hands. He held his phone under my face while I slung Raf a text. My heart hammering with the rush of a mission completed, I sent:

face it tiger…you just hit the jackpot!
backstage left <-<-<-

Meanwhile, Anya was saying to the stage hand:

“CAN YOU TAKE A SHOT OF US – THIS IS SPIDER-MAN AND I’M HIS BIGGEST FAN, GWEN STACY.” She gave me a quick wink, and then put me on her shoulder as we posed for the shot, her head turned and lips puffed up flirtatiously in my direction and me doing a web-slinging gesture. The stagehand offered to send the photo to me, and I was about to give him my email address, but then at the last second pulled up a recent text conversation with Jennifer, inserted the photo and sent it to her.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the curtain…

My gofer stumbled into view, looking completely lost even though he knew exactly where he was. The look of non-comprehension on his face intensified as he spotted me riding Anya’s shoulder.

She addressed him, waving him over. He shuffled up to us like she was pulling him on an invisible lead, weirdly being drawn to her as if his legs were being commanded against the judgment of his brain. But she quickly drew him out, charmed and fascinated that he chaperoned me, peppering him with questions that he stuttered his way through. As they chatted, my phone presented a reply that was weirdly not in Jen's usual tone:

That is Anya Zarsky.  
I will tell you about her another time...
Tvb xx

I stared at the text for one long, uncomprehending moment.

“HEY, SPIDER-MAN; SMILE!”

The stagehand snapped another picture of us, now with Raf. Then Anya leaned down and in one fluid move, pinched my mask off and kissed my cheek, and, handing the mask to Raf, she kissed his cheek, and spun away from us, disappearing with her crew down the backstage hall, waving and blowing a kiss over her shoulder.

The white Chrysler rolled down the dark streets. Urban drone grinded past, street lights flared like flashbulb cameras. A squeal erupted from the back seat.

“YOU MET ANYA ZARSKY?!”

Jen stared between Raf and down to me I. Her jaw had fallen open.

Still unable to conjure up words, Raf could only let out a laugh.

I sat in the warm padded seat of her cupped hands. The price of the comfortable seating had been to endure a game of being rolled back and forth, from one hand to the other, and trying to resist her fingers from curling in to pin me and subject different parts of my anatomy to gentle, ticklish pinches just to amuse herself in my surprised, irritated reactions. But it didn’t just irritate me. She seemed irritated too; her sharp nail tips dug into me with breathtaking bite, like being stroked with the flat of a knife. My stomach curled and hunched.

“That’s what I said,” I gasped, as the car ceiling flipped around over my head, while she rolled me around in her hand. “Check your phone.”

“YOU DID NOT, LIAR.”

In her other hand, the shiny screen came barrelling at my face and hovered there like a flatscreen TV. I flinched. And then saw for myself; the last entry on her chat log with me was over a day ago. No ‘I will tell you another time’ reply.

Ohhh-kay, I thought. I must have texted someone else by accident. It hadn’t sounded like a text from her anyway.

She gave my member a tweak, and smiled in spite of herself.

“YOU’RE A TOTAL BONEHEAD WHEN YOU’RE HORNY,” she murmured.

At the last second, the car twisted around a tight corner. I was mashed against her body as she steadied herself, and then brought back. The impulse to talk was squeezed right out of me and my mouth remained clamped shut. She met me with a cool, unperturbed stare. The shadows scrolled past her face as the city lights ran along the windows.

"I CAN SEE YOUR TINY LITTLE BRAIN SHORT-CIRCUITING TRYING TO FIGURE SHIT OUT. IT'S SO CUTE."

Then she impersonated my voice with an exaggerated squeaky timbre:

“I’M JERRY MOUSSEAU, WHY DOES MY GIRLFRIEND HAVE TO BE SO BIG?”

“I don’t sound like that!” But it wasn’t the mimicry of my voice that bothered me so much as her immediate targeting of something that caused me so much anxiety.

“—AND WHY DOES MY GIRLFRIEND HAVE TO BOUNCE ME UP AND DOWN LIKE THIS—?”

“Hey! What—?”

I was flung up and down like a ragdoll, bounced on the trampoline of her thigh until the alcoholic contents of my stomach started to crawl up my chest cavity. Feeling like I was going to pass out, I scrunched my hands and feet rapidly to keep the blood flowing through my body. Passing out in the vicinity of Jennifer while she was intoxicated was most unwise. And in the shadowy back seat, with Raf distracted by the streets, she had full liberty to indulge in her dark whims.

“I’m going to pass out,” I burbled weakly, clutching the pleats of her skirt. Her fingers pulled my ankles tight and lifted them up into the air, trying to detach me from her. Upside down my arms were pulled tight as I gripped her skirt harder, until my muscles burned. Her reckless strength was terrifying.

My balls were given a tug. I let go.

As I dangled from her hand, she slumped back in drunken laughter, still mimicking my voice:

“—IT’S SO EMBARRASSING. LOOK AT MY CUTE LITTLE GRUMPY FACE, THAT’S HOW EMBARRASSED I AM.”

“YOU GUYS ARE INSANE,” Raf exclaimed cheerfully, and laughed. He was absolutely a glass half full kind of guy; even making insanity sound fun.

“NOW MY GIRLFRIEND IS GOING TO GIVE ME A BIG KISS BUT I’M SO TINY I HOPE SHE DOESN’T EAT ME MMMPH—” a giant pair of lips spread over my face, blotting out the world with squishy, wet, pressurized darkness, “—OH NO, WHAT IS THAT BIG SNEAKY NAIL DOING? DON’T TICKLE ME – NOOO!”

*

She departed down the hallway to get changed, moments later her ghostly singing warbled out from the soft pattering shower.

In the meantime, I jumped up onto the single bed, put on a loose t-shirt and pyjama pants, and went back out into the living room. Surmounting the sofa, the lights seemed to glow too brightly for an instant as I was hit by a sudden pang of light-headedness as my chest flip-flopped. A muscle in my leg responded by seizing painfully and twitching. Then it was over. I was still taking the growth medication and the effects were still happening. I’d just gotten better and better at pushing it out of mind. Searching for a distraction, I moved over to the remote, flicking the TV on and watching whatever appeared on the screen, a talk show.

The pounding water from the bathroom ceased.

A moment later, the TV went black and still and the room was quiet again. A giant hand flew down from the sky and was coming for me.

I dived under the blanket and began running down the bed, keeping the sheet lifted over my head.

“Hey, what about a foot massage?” I called out. I imagined myself nestled between her feet – as I had been at Samantha’s house – rubbing me until I fell asleep. Right then, the irony of Samantha being the gentler alternative went over my head.

There was a great jolt as a form came down upon the mattress. Giant legs dug under the blanket right behind me, spreading rapidly down the length of bed as if chasing me. The unseen mass of a huge foot swept past, the toenails scraping, searching for the tiny object that was my entire existence. I pushed into the smooth wrinkled canvass of her sole and rubbed it vigorously with my palms as if trying to pacify her elevating sexual mania.

There was a shriek and the leg jerked, the big toe pistoning forward with lightning speed and stamping me dead in the face with a walloping blow like a punch. Next second my back was against the mattress and stars whizzed in front of my eyes. My face felt very warm; with a reddened imprint of her toe print stamped over it.

“YOU LITTLE ASSHOLE!” came her thundering reproach, but half gasping and half giggling. “DO THAT ONE MORE TIME AND I’M GOING TO STRING UP YOUR ANKLES AND MAKE YOU INTO A NECKLACE!”

I was too dazed to reply. After a moment of silence, the bed groaned as she sat up, her legs whispering over the sheets, parting to give me space. A hand curled around and snatched me out from under the sheet where I was brought up under the massive ceiling of her face, turned down to examine me with concern.

“DID I POKE YOU…?”

She spread me out on her thigh and began to stroke her hand over me as if in apology.

“YOU KNOW I HATE THAT,” she said sternly, referring to me tickling her. Even as she said this, her nail tip was absent-mindedly swirling against my stomach, tracing the scar on my belly, and this was tickling me, though she didn’t seem to realize. “AND YOU’RE SO TINY – OR DID YOU FORGET? JUST WATCH YOURSELF DOWN THERE, LITTLE NUGGET.”

Lying on my back, I beat my fists up against the constantly moving target of her hand, but this just made her lips twist in a smile at the spectacle of my puny fists paddling away ineffectively into her flesh.

“Don’t call me ‘little nugget’ – !”

The hand flattened over my body like a sheet while the pinky finger lifted delicately, the pad smushing against my lips.

“UHP. SHUSH.”

She leaned back, sighing and keeping palm over me, gently sandwiching me against her thigh – as if predicting I’d run away.

Her hand swept around me like a blanket, snatching me up into the air. I did a whirl around in the air until her face filled up my view. My eyes were forced to run over magnificent features, the silky mane of showered and wet, red-dyed hair that spilled, untied, over her shoulders, her lashes downcast, fluttering slowly as if sleepy, but definitely alert. She was wearing only underwear and a tank top which pulled over her breasts tightly; the nipples erect and contoured in the air. She hadn’t dried herself properly from the shower and the top was dampening in patches.

Held up before her lips, my tiny face was washed by her deep, relaxed expirations, until it was shining wet from the warmth and moist condensation. I was so close to her lips that when they parted, my entire vision turned wet and mauve, completely surrounded by the escaping tongue, which poured out and scooped up my chin, lifting and balancing my head on its red tip like a tiny, delicate piece of fruit she was savouring, fighting the temptation to suck and swallow.

The tip of her tongue was pressed uncomfortably against my throat, slightly squashing it, while keeping my head inclined up, forced to gaze up into the twin caves of her nostrils, as she leisurely sampled the flavour and texture of my neck. The steady draughts of her breath gushed out, patting my cheeks with warm air. She kept me positioned like that for an extra moment, just to underscore my helplessness.

If we’d both been the same size, this terrible intimacy with her face would have been the precursor to a make out session. She treated the tininess of my head as something adorably begging to be kissed and licked and teased by the big, wet, affectionate tongue. But for me, with her head dwarfing my entire body, her reddish hair tumbling down for miles, the proximity was oppressive and made my head feel every bit the final piece of food from a good meal, poised to be eaten once toyed with.

Her tongue retracted a fraction, sliding in reverse along the underside of my jaw. Then, with laser speed, the tip of her tongue barrelled at my face and poked me dead between the eyes as if determined to impale my head on the end.

Her low voice beat against my ear drums.

“I COULD HIT THE DANCEFLOOR AGAIN AND GO UNTIL DAWN. JUST SAYING.”

 Taking this as some kind of sinister foreshadowing, I began to sweat even more. Then she added:

“BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT IS YOU ON MY PELVIC FLOOR.”

She nudged in under my armpits, tickling up and down my sides to get me moving. My heart plodded like a hammer.

“You just use me f-for the sex,” I grunted as I squirmed hopelessly around on her palm.

“HEYYY…” even through a frown her eyes twinkled with mock reproach, “…I HAVE WAY MORE CLASS THAN THAT. I’M A GOOD GIRL.”

Before I had time to protest, my head was taken up by her lips, whipped around and playfully spat out into the air. I spun and bounced over the mattress. Then my head was sucked back inside her mouth, snatched into the air and shot out again. This time she laughed and caught me in one hand before I hit the mattress. I took a huge breath and then the world went black and hot again as her lips latched around my face again, and her teeth delicately trapped my temples. It felt like my head was stuck in the exhaust pipe of a great machine. Her tongue slipped back and forth, poking at my face, adjusting my tiny skull before my body was again flying free in the air, before skipping over the bouncy mattress.

Chasing my flight paths, her long body draped across the tiny single bed, making the bed seem much smaller. And considering the bed dwarfed me, making me feel crushingly tinier by comparison. Her body went on forever.

The tight stretchy sleeveless top was peeled up and discarded like snakeskin, and then the bra was ripped off, exposing her sweat-balmed naked chest.

“MY BOOBS ARE CRAZY FOR YOU RIGHT NOW…SO, WORK ON IT; GO!”

She dropped me onto the large mound of one breast so eagerly, the hardened nipple punched my gut. I was quickly repositioned until the feeling of the blown up mass pushing into my butt every time she drew in breath, with its gentle thrusting cadence almost overcame me with inescapable eroticism. It was like her boob was trying to have sex with me, even though it could have crushed me.

I placed a hand on either side of her nipple and began grinding my palms back and forth, rolling the nipple a little each way. The nub was like a ball of red putty, but in contrast, became firmer as I rolled it, not softer. Sometimes I gave the nipple a quick scratch to surprise her. It seemed to work, every time her long, raking breaths would catch and she’d gasp, or let out a halting moan.

A hand crashed down on me, and with a careless sweeping motion, sent me flying over to her left breast, where I quickly composed myself and got to work ‘pottering’ the left nipple. Unable to rest, her fingers wandered around me, blindly bumping my shoulders, prodding my head, frequently capturing it in an impassioned pinch.

Not so long after, my ankle was snatched up and I was dragged by my leg back to her right breast.

For good measure, she took my head up in her mouth, sending another crashing wave of saliva over my head, and swishing it around with the buff flex of her tongue. It felt like having my head dunked under a warm tropical ocean at pitch black night, and manipulated by an enthusiastic chiropractor. Then my head smacked free and was once more applied to her nipple, stiff with eager anticipation.

The nub was powerfully massaged into my features, or more accurately, the bumps of my features were made to massage the nub, tracing around the areola, swooping under the weight of the breast to sweep up to the nipple, from below, giving it an upward flick. My face was grinded and stretched against her aching flesh, as if to scratch at an itch.

Her fingertips remained calmly and resolutely fixed into the back of my head, deftly manipulating my neck, working my head around the tip of the sensitive probe. She wasn’t demure; she watched the whole time, arousal evidently heightening at the sight of my face contacting the nipple over and over, shoulder and neck muscles flexing with the exertion.

I scrunched my eyes shut as the tight rosy bud pounded and flicked my facial features like a series of small slaps. It felt like my face was being mixed with a spoon and turned into pudding.

“GIVE ME SOME LIP LOVING, CUTIE.”

At her command, I puckered my lips in an exaggerated way and pressed them to her nipple. With all the stimulation she was already receiving, it probably didn’t make much of a difference, but she seemed to enjoy the sight of me kissing her nipple more than the feeling. I was a pure toy at the service of her aching tits, a silent, submissive instrument whose sole sexual duty was to stroke and swell her feminine ego.

Pleased, she continued to drive my face back and forth over the terrain of her silky soft mammary. Every so often when I opened my eyes I noticed very fine – almost microscopic – hairs standing stiff with arousal, circling the dark areola. On one of these occasions her nipple accidentally tickled my nose and pricked at my eyes, so I kept them shut the rest of the time.

The pressure stopped.

When I opened my eyes again, her vast face loomed at me, her gaze trained on me with anticipation. I couldn’t turn my head; my temples began to ache in the clamp of her fingertips, which were still tight around my ears.

A long nail slid around my lips, trying to pry them apart.

“OPEN UP WIDE.”

I stared at her questioningly. Her bright green eyes ran over me with arrested longing.

“YOU WERE ADORABLE TONIGHT, JERRY, SO MUCH FUN. YOU CAN’T BLAME ME IF I WANT TO HAVE MY FUN WITH YOU IN PRIVATE AS WELL.”

“But we’re serious now,” I countered, “I mean, in addition to this.”

“MMM. I KNOW YOU ARE, SWEETIE. WE HAVE A NICE BALANCE GOING ON. YOU’RE A SOFTIE, AND I’M MORE…NOT.” She seemed about to say something more, but then tapped my lips with her nail and concluded: “NOW, OPEN. GIVE ME ROOM. A LITTLE TEETH IS OKAY, TOO – YOU’RE TOO TINY TO HURT ME.”

I obeyed and she steered my head onto her nipple. The tight red bunch passed my teeth, scraping the roof of my mouth, and finally lodging between my tonsils, sealing off my throat. I couldn’t bite her even if I wanted; the hinge of my jaw was stretched around her areola. Her scent filled up my head, pulling a chemical trigger inside my brain .

As she leaned back, I was left clinging to the underside of her breast like a baby, my legs stretched down, and the balls of my feet pushing against the ridge of her upper rib.

She drew my head back, the nipple escaped my throat. Her fingertips nudged in tighter as they framed my face, sharp nail tips digging into my brow and jaw. One nail slipped deep inside my mouth to keep it prised open. The underside was alkaline and slimy with soap. My throat quivered in disgust. I must have grimaced suddenly because she chuckled. My reactions of surprise or shock to her body always made her laugh, where it would have made other women self-conscious.

Her other hand cupped her breast, keeping the point of its swollen tip locked onto my mouth. She drove the hardened nipple back in, manipulating my head around the mass, encouraging me to suck deeply and stretch the nipple as she drew my head back, until she made a noise of frustrated arousal. When this wasn’t enough, she began to flick my head around with rough swipes of her thumb, grazing my face into her nipple over and over.

The nub slapped and poked at my face for a long while, growing faster and more insistent. Giving my head a rest, she adjusted her grip of me to sit upright against her fingers while making my stiffened dick do slow, circling laps around her areola, and playful flicks against the nipple until my butt was unconsciously bucking into her hand, straining to release the pressure in my balls. Her nipple probed and traced my shaft delicately with the firmness of a finger. It felt just as good for her, too; her head drove back into the pillow and her breath came out in trembling gushes as she directed my dick to flick at her boob, faster and faster. As the feeling built up to a dizzying height, I was switched to the other nipple, which paddled rapidly against and around my shaft. Then switched back.

As the point of the nipple teasingly ran up and down my shaft and stroked my glans, I gave a shiver and came in multiple rounds, and then, feeling totally drained, slackened in her grip. She let out a long sigh – not satisfied, but frustrated I was over before she was happy. The hot air of her fierce breath combed through my hair, as she stubbornly carried on drawing my penis back and forth over and around her breast, drawing rapid circles around the areola, which tightened before hitting the bullseye of the nipple. Then, cupping her free hand up under her breast and tensing the nipple between her forefinger and thumb like a pencil tip, she perched my groin on her nipple and began trying to work the hard nub up behind my balls, towards my butt. This was weird and nauseatingly erotic to me. Confusing even, as the nipple was so hard and thick compared to me, it felt like a phallus trying to batter into my ass from behind. I struggled and groaned, and she just giggled, loving my powerlessness, absolutely aware of the homoerotic suggestion of what she was doing.

Finally she let up, accepting that I was spent. My balls felt utterly wrung out, entire genitalia aching like an overworked muscle.

“What are you thinking about?” I said, more eager to sustain the break than anything.

“WEIRD QUESTION…” she said under her breath. “DO I HAVE TO BE THINKING OF ANYTHING?”

“I mean…you’re not fantasizing?”

“YEAH…” she answered, “I DON’T DO THAT. WHEN WE PLAY AROUND, MY BRAIN DOES THE OPPOSITE OF THINKING.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, TEENSY ONE. YES, MY BRAIN USED TO BE KIND OF A JUNGLE,” she admitted. “BUT I DON’T NEED CRAZY THOUGHTS TO GIVE ME A LADY BONER ANYMORE.”

She peered down at me for a second and then brushed my lips with a finger.

“ALL DRY?”

Next thing I knew my head was racing up through space before getting snagged into place between her parted lips like my head was the neck of a bottle she wanted to drink from.

Her tongue darted out and muscled around against my face, filming it over with a generous lather of her own brand of natural, orally-derived lubricant. The tongue summoned a seemingly endless supply of it from the depths of her oral cavern, and sending buckets of it bursting over my face, dumping me in warm slime, before the tongue brushed back and forth over my features with vigor, while scooping up more and more newly produced saliva to dump over my ensnared face, even as I tried to thrash my head away, but only getting an accidental mouthful of it for my effort.

Then my head was free again, cooling in the air, before being swirled around and around the aroused red bulb of her nipple, battering the nipple with a gentle swatting motion of my head, as I struggled to gargle on the saliva I’d accidentally swallowed.

She said breathlessly:

“EVER SINCE YOUR SHRINKING – WHATEVER – ACCIDENT THING, MY SEX LIFE HAS JUST GONE, LIKE ‘BOOM!’.”

“I can tell,” I gasped when her boob wasn’t mashed against my mouth.

She went on, exhilarated:

“NONE OF MY VIBRATORS DO WHAT YOU DO.”

“I’m more than a vibrator,” I said, while slightly perturbed that her reference to vibrators was in plural.

“EXACTLY. YOU’RE A TALKING VIBRATOR. A SMART VIBRATOR. I DIRECT YOU, YOU WORK WITH ME, AND IT’S A DONE THING. LIKE YOU KNOW MY BODY – OR LIKE, YOU’RE BECOMING A LITTLE PART OF ME.”

Suddenly her attention was drawn to the bedside table. My phone made a sound and in a blink, she snatched it up, bringing the novelty-size phone right up to her face and was squinting, trying to make out the tiny screen.

My head jerked up. Her other hand still had me applied to her breast.

“Hey! That’s mine – you can’t just—!”

“OH, STOP. YOU’VE USED MY PHONE A MILLION TIMES.”

Either her face was screwed up from the effort of deciphering the tiny text, or she was displeased. Her eyes glued to the tiny screen, she remarked with a playful taunt:

“IS SOMEONE IS JEALOUS YOU MET ANYA?”

But – was I imagining it? – there was an understated bite in her tone, as if this ‘someone’ embarrassed her.

“You were,” I pointed out.

“DOES THIS SOUND LIKE ME: TVB…KISS KISS…” Her brow scrunched and she muttered to herself, “—WHO IS THIS…THAT NATALIE CHICK?”

My breath hitched. There were too many problematic texts on my phone. I needed to get it out of her hands.

Without another word I whipped the sheet over my head and pulling myself up the dark hill that was her torso and grabbing at every square inch of flesh within arm's reach.

Surmounting her abdomen, I began to scurry on hands and knees down her body, the silky flesh of her stomach dimpling lightly under the impact of my tiny hands and feet, heading towards the cleft between her legs, which were shifting restlessly in the dark. All I could think about was burying inside her and not stopping.

The sheets lifted way up over my head as a huge thumb scooped up just below my ribcage, fingers wrapping around my back, and with the smallest application of strength – as if I was light as a feather – separated me from the floor of her flesh. As the hand tilted, I moved backwards and my head was revolved around until I was on the other side of the sheet, hovering in the air upside down in front of her vast face, which watched me with calm puzzlement as I squirmed and yanked at the thumb like a safety bar pinning my stomach, and paddling my legs in the air, groaning.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" came a understated tremor, as if she'd caught me in some quirky but harmlessly fascinating task, whilst internally debating if she wanted the full story behind it.

“I’m trying to fuck you,” I grunted, irritated by her patience.

The other enormous hand shifted in front of my view as the tip of a finger extended, moving up my body and probed lazily around between my legs, before scooping up under my balls and lifting my dick onto the hard plate of a nail.

“WITH WHAT? YOU’RE NOT EVEN THAT HARD.”

“I would be if you stopped holding me back.”

She plucked at my member until it was long and hard and craving the pressure of her womanhood. It was shameful how quickly it perked at her touch, against my will.

“YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG,” she said with mock pity. “YOU’VE GOT TO TALK A GAME FIRST. COME ONTO ME. GET ME INTERESTED.”

“Oh, fuck—!”

Suspended upside in the air, the blood was going to my head and making my brain sluggish.

“TRY HARDER.”

The pressure of her fingerpads was shifting all around my body as she idly turned me over between her hands, as if inspecting me from all angles, until I began to feel like a piece of dough being moulded. At the same time catching dim glimpses of the shadowy hills of her breasts and the extension of her lower body vaguely imprinted beneath the sheet, and the shapes of her legs – crossed over each other – and way down the other end of the mattress, her toes tenting up the sheet, curling and screwing the fabric up between them. All of this should have ramped up my lust but the constant shift of gravity kept tugging my blood flow away from my groin.

Her fingers seemed to shuffle down my spine as she rotated me head down, a thumb pushed against my forehead, then I was turned sideways, the fingers of one hand grasping my chest, the thumb buried just under my jaw, while my ribcage was held between the fingers of the other hand, and accidentally pressed down on my groin, smushing it for a second, before lifting and planting itself on one of my butt cheeks. It was perturbing how deftly she could juggle me around between the fingers of one hand, like I was ping pong ball.

My mouth was open but nothing came out. There were no words in my brain, just primal instincts.

She gracefully slid her feet over the mattress until her knees pointed up, legs open.

The rotation slowed until I was upside down again, staring straight ahead into her engorged lips, slightly parted and wet. She brought my face against the puffy ridge of a labial fold, and slid it down past the end of the slit. Suddenly everything went dark as a tight sleeve hugged around my head, which squished around, rubbing furiously. Fluid gushed over like a tide coming in, while my hands searched blindly for the mattress surface, or something firm to push against, but my palms kept connecting with a shifting landscape of slicked pulsating flesh. Before I could free myself, her hand spread over my back, two fingers sliding up my ribcage and hooking in beneath my armpits and holding, keeping me lodged in place. Once I was still, she drew me out of her vagina.

“You didn’t come,” I said once I caught my breath.

She gave me a subdued smile as she looked me over, observing my condition.

“IT’S A LITTLE WITHHOLDING THING I’M TRYING OUT. LET’S SEE HOW IT GOES.”

Scoops of fluid began pouring over my head. Even as I shook my head to throw the fluid off, sheet after sheet kept getting painted over.

"DON'T PANIC," she soothed, after I was half-drowned under the sticky deluge, "THIS NEXT ONE—” there was a small smile in her tone “—USE THAT BREATH CONTROL AND IT’LL BE A PIECE OF CAKE.”

The mask running down my face kept me unable to talk back.

At that point, I lost all sight of her above the waistline. Her shoulders settled against the mattress, and gracefully drew her legs up until they balanced on the balls of her feet. Her muscles rippled, poised to thrust.

Then I realized what she was talking about.

The dimensions of her ass filled my vision, the twins of plush muscle and flesh screwing into tight balls as her glutes squeezed with anticipation. She used her free hand to separate the cheeks until there was no avoiding the shadowed puckered anus I was imminently doomed to be sucked inside. I was jabbed forward and the cheeks glommed onto my head. The wrinkled fissure, lightly greased with sweat due to the warmth, came forth out of the trench of her crack to plant a huge, thick-lipped, slutty kiss on my face, and stick there like an intoxicated lover, sucking me indulgently as her muscles pulled and flexed.

She was so aroused the anus wouldn’t loosen, and immediately I felt like a tiny fruit being fed and strained through a juicer, wrung into pulp. As I entered her, inch by agonizing inch, the muscular ring gripped and crunched me with bodybuilder strength. The airspaces in my body were crushed up like a soda can being decompressed until my muscles began to quiver and I was convinced I was turning into a boneless noodle.

The anal sphincter slid past my scalp again, in reverse, and the white ceiling burst into my eyes, dancing with little spots. A cowl of greasy ass slime clung to my face. The unforgiving ring then crunched tight, wrapping up my neck like tape until I began to cough and squeak for breath, straining for clean air. Then I was plunging back into the crack, into the anus that was like a hungry mouth, and it all went dark and tight again.

The clinging airspace made breathing like sucking sweltering, noxious air through a very narrow straw. Such a pinchhold was placed on my head by her ass muscles that my skull was straining to burst. The rectal walls squished together vigorously, suckling on me, compressing my entire form as if trying to turn me inside out.

Each rapid retraction the world reappeared outside the smooth moons of her ass, but most of it was blocked by the tremendous log that was a dildo, pistoning in and out right past my face, shining with a new coat of lubricant every time it re-emerged.

Humiliating that it was so large, bigger than my entire body. It was clear when she said I fit her perfectly, it wasn’t by pure girth. She meant I fit like a tampon, comfortably and unobtrusively, capable of taking a severe jolt of pressure and resizing to conform to her dimensions.

Every time she pulled me out, her thumb dug deeper under my ribcage. The compressing force came in beats, I fought to take a breath anytime her thumb relaxed, for the slightest second. Then the insides of her bowel once again looped around my world like a horizon, choking off the fresh air, the slimy intestinal membrane rubbed my body up and down, greasing me in obnoxious secretions and the fetid sauna made my heart thump.

I was rotated and re-inserted feet first for another series of insertions. Then she paused and stretched her legs out on the bed, grunting with pleasure. Only my head protruded from her anus, and the tension of the stretch seemed to bend through my head until I thought I’d pass out.

I let out a pitiful sound.

"LET’S TAKE FIVE, SHALL WE?” she decided aloud.

From my tiny nook fitted into her asshole, the whole world was squashed into a narrow slit between her sofa-sized butt cheeks. This slim window tilted upside down as she sprung off the bed and bounded into the bathroom. Caught on the very end of her generous hips, my head was given a bouncy sway with every step.

The world pivoted right around and it seemed like I was dropping head first into the toilet bowl, but at the last second stopped aas her butt hit the seat. Hung there, I stared between the valley of her cheeks at the aqua surface below, reflecting a shadowy portrait of my face where her anus should be: pinched between her buns.

Her all-surrounding nether regions gave a small squeeze, a weak stream erupted, followed her vaginal cleft down, and dribbled over my helpless face, soaked into my hair and dripped off the top of my head. I shook my head as I was washed over by the intense-smelling amber currents. With my head positioned upside down, the acrid stream had no resistance against running up my nostrils and in under my eyelids. Pretty soon my entire face was burning; the burn burrowed in behind my eyeballs, deep inside my ears, my gums.

She sighed deeply, sending another squeeze through her butt. Her lower anatomy was puffy and tired, the urethra tapered by pressure at the tip, so the draining process was slow. The stream carried on, flickering thinly but unbroken, determined to break down my resistance by sheer endurance. My mouth was clamped shut, my nostrils were full of fluid. I refused air in or out. My head was swollen, pounding with her clammy odor.

The stream paused for a couple of seconds. She let out a breath. Then, with a warm pulse, it recommenced its transit over my begrudging features. Something thicker and stickier followed, trailing down my head like a warm slug. Female ejaculate that had been expressed via her frustrated squeezing. It was too big and thick to run into my nose, and got stuck in my eyelashes instead, gluing my eyelids shut. I trembled in suppressed disgust. The steady emission of hot urine soon melted the cum away.

After finishing up, she moved to the sink. As her hips swayed, my head was pushed back and forth by the muscular commands of her gluteus. As one muscle chunk flexed and corresponding leg lifted to take a step, my head rocked in the opposite direction. With the next step, my neck strained as my head was bodily pushed back. The speed of her energized footfalls turned my head into a little stubby tail, wagging gently as if expressing her happiness. Knowing she was happy where I was wasn’t guesswork: she let out a small amused sound at the lewd fondling going on around the sensitive surrounding region of her asshole.

A thumb and pointer clapped around the top of my head. The edge of her thumb rested just on my brow, any lower and it would have been pressing my eyes. There was a wrench through my neck and collarbones and then I was on the outside again, the cool air fanning over my hot, sticky skin. The faucet squeaked and the air was immediately replaced by icy cold water. I kicked and wrestled with the water while her fingertips, around my head, kept me hostage. Her other hand swept close, washing her own hands with antibacterial soap all over. My flesh crawled. I couldn’t see through the chill spout of water, but felt her soaped fingertips run over my face in massaging circular motions, down my chest and stomach, tugging my penis, and then washing my legs. The massage reversed direction, travelling back up to my head, and completed this trip a handful of times. Each time pausing at my groin, unable to resist the urge to bat it like a toy with the flick of a nail.

Back in the bedroom, I came down upon the bed, numbed by cold and flopped down upon to the mattress, muscles all over still twinging from the abuse of being wrung in and out of her asshole like a pencil through a sharpener.

Her great upper body smoothly lifted off the bed and hung over me. She sat up, kneeling with a huge gap between her legs, as if straddling an invisible saddle. Instead of a horse, there was just the diminutive length of my body, lying on my back on the mattress between her legs.

Looking straight up, the flab of her furred mound bordered the bottom of my view, with the undersides of her breasts like two eclipses against the ceiling.

Sweeping her hair back from her perspiring face, she gripped her thighs and re-positioned slightly for comfort. This caused the mound to shift along until it was past my head. With my head relaxed against the mattress, I was peering straight up at the dark, wet opening of her vagina. The opening pulsed and flexed like a beating heart as currents of pleasure ran through her muscles, and gradually working to strain fluid out.

She focused on her breathing, taking measured, sweeping inhales. Exhausted beyond reason, I tried to mirror her breathing, but could only pant and suck at the air like I’d just been swimming. Meanwhile, a crystal clear drop of pre-cum ballooned from the lip of her puckered red vagina, stretched long like a string of drool, and even as I watched, finally broke free. By the time it landed in my mouth it was too late; the slimy secretion was already running down my throat, plugging up my windpipe like expanding sealant. What was a tiny drop to her was like a bursting mouthful to me. My chest was cramping too hard for me to even cough it up. I waited desperately for the ropey strand to sink into my stomach so I could breathe again. It was so sticky, it took a several moments.

Meantime, another gluggy bead was beginning to grow at the edge of her slit.

I uttered a groan as air raced back into my lungs. She took this as a sound of impatience – she had not yet come – and explained:

“I’VE GOT THIS AMAZING PLATEAU GOING ON AND I’M JUST KINDA FLOWING WITH IT.”

Directly above my head, the projecting shelf of her bust was going up and down with the energized tempo of her accelerated heartrate. The droplet detached like a ripe fruit and plopped onto my forehead, splashing into my eyes. I grunted. It was humiliating that something so tiny as a droplet, shredded from her private womanly parts without the slightest regard from her, could nearly drown me or blanket out my entire world.

When my eyes stopped hurting and itching, they were fixed back on her cleft. The puffy lips were blowing yet another bubble of pussy drool, expanding even as I eyed it. I rocked my tired, trembling body, trying to scoot away from the invisible cum bullseye.

But a sharp nail dropped down to give my belly an admonitory poke. I let out a small squeak.

“DON’T EVEN MOVE A MUSCLE, BUSTER! I’M SO ON A TIGHTROPE RIGHT NOW AND YOU’RE GONNA RUIN EVERYTHING.”

To be fair, she had a habit of accelerating to the climax, so withholding was pretty special for her.

Her sharp nail prickled into my belly until I obediently went still, and then departed. My stomach scrunched with dread as I watched the succulent folds of her labia take another spit shot. This one on my cheek.

Again I tried to move. She responded immediately.

Out of nowhere, the shining wet tip of the giant dildo came flying in and burying my head beneath the grinding pressure of the silicone glans. She used it to pin me to the mattress while my legs kicked, and my hands pounded at the firm false cock.

The grinding weight lifted and my head slumped back. Blood rumbled in my ears. I stared up at her drippy gash in defeat.

She groaned, loud with pleasure. This was the only warning before her hips gave an almighty buck, a power twerk, fast like an electric current had run through her pelvis. All her withholding had built up a reservoir of backlogged fluid.

Warmth and wetness detonated in my face. My airflow stopped up entirely with a thick pale mucal blob that had migrated down from the cervix in an avalanche of sex fluid, and it lodged in my throat like glue. I began to cough and wheeze for air as my face started to turn red.

Meanwhile, she rolled onto her side, heady on the delayed climax. Finally surveying me, she tried to suppress a chuckle, but failed, and then said, half amused and half bashful:

“I WAS TRYING TO SQUIRT YOUR TUMMY.”

She took deep sighs of pleasure to catch her breath again, her skin glowing and rosy with the fulfillment of the act, glittering with sweat.

My face was going purple and my eyes were bugging out.

Her hand wrapped around my middle and began subjecting my body to repeated, painful squeezes – a kind of full body Heimlich maneuver. The blob was just about to be expelled when a pinky fingernail rammed into my face, wrenching my jaw open while the nail kept on powering forward, the glassy underside of the nail trapping my tongue to the floor of my mouth as it battered to my tonsils in an attempt to poke the congestion down. She held me right up under her eyes, trying to strain my jaw open to see down my throat. I shut my eyes against the dry blasts of her breath and with agonizing compulsion worked my throat in desperation, utterly choking on her nail, and after three attempts was able to swallow the glob.

Satisfied I was okay – if utterly defeated by the power and dominance of her sex – she went into the bathroom and the shower water beat through the wall. Some people used a shower to wake up. She needed the shower to relax. It was also another excuse to play with my body with the excuse of washing me.

She burst back into the room, coming for me.

“No…” I said, knowing how hot she liked them.

Her fingertips pinched my waist delicately and lifted me into the air. She just shook her head and gave a grunting sigh. My head had been sucked on by her ass and now played the role of a tissue for a cervical sneeze; there was no argument. The meaty, gristly scent of her insides had sunk into my pores.

Within seconds the water was beating the top of my head like a drum, the rest of my body captured in her grip. The sweltering, muggy atmosphere was not unlike the inside of her, and the heat made my heart pound again.

She lathered her palms with soap and then my body was being passed back and forth between her hands, rotated indiscriminately and set upon all over by determined stubbed fingertips, waxy with soap, which grinded and scrubbed with maddening patience.

Once this was over, she placed me onto the shower floor. I migrated to the corner of the cubicle but she demanded I stand at her leg, doing my best to hug her ankle, to remind her where I was while she washed herself.

Once showered, we went back into the bedroom, towelled off but remained naked. She stretched luxuriously, gave me a warm smile, and now not driven by the pressure to climax, could relax and indulge me in my all-time favorite activity with her: cuddling. Her soft fingertips batted at me, capturing my body parts and fondling me like I was a little doll. Unable to settle, she spent several moments swatting me, trapping me under the expanse of her palm, and playfully blowing on my head to ruffle my hair.

I grew tired before she did and began to protest against her hands that were constantly swooping in on me to snatch me up or pet me with cloistering affection. My body curled with instinctive self-defence and once her groping failed to produce the responses she wanted, she stopped.

She kept me pressed against the bed while her thumb and middle finger poked up under each of my armpits to hold me still while her pointer slid back and forth over my chest as if searching.

"CAN YOU FEEL MY HEART BEATING?" she asked in a very quiet voice.

"Yeah." It was thrumping softly into my back.

"I CAN FEEL YOURS." After a moment she made a sound of amusement, and said: "YOU'RE WINNING; YOURS IS GOING FASTER."

As her fingerpad was pressed to the left side of my chest, her voice piqued with curiosity:

“IT’S LIKE…SO POWERFUL, LIKE ‘THUNK, THUNK, THUNK.’” She gave my chest an affectionate squeeze. “A LITTLE ELECTROSHOCK.”

“It’s because of the machine.” A lie; it was the medication, but that was a dangerous subject. She was so rarely sweet and cute in this uncomplicated way I wanted it to last. Of course, it would not last.

“THAT WAS AGES AGO, THOUGH. SURE IT'S NOT 'CAUSE OF ME?"

I snuggled closer into the warmth of her hand, trying to curve my body in along her soft palm, which was like a mattress and electric blanket.

“It’s because of you.”

“YOU’RE JUST SAYING THAT.”

“Okay, I won’t say it. But I feel it.”

Satisfied, her fingertip began to massage my pec, where the tattoo was. Her timbre went down; low murmuring vibrated my scalp.

“ACTUALLY THINK IT’S KINDA HILARIOUS ALL THIS POST-COITAL SWEET TALK WHEN WE JUST PLAYED SOME BASKETBALL WITH YOUR HEAD.”

I stared with confusion at the lines on her palm.

“But…we’re not playing. It’s just regular anal. I mean, as much as I can do.”

She shot back:

“OH, THERE’S NOTHING REGULAR ABOUT IT.”

“Well, what is it to you?”

“IT’S ALL DIGESTIVE TRACT, DARLING. AND THAT’S MY KINK ZONE.”

“But you don’t pretend I’m, like, a dick or something?”

“REMEMBER, I DON’T FANTASIZE.”

“Well, what does your kink have to do with it? If you ate me, I’d be…something totally different by the time I got that far. That’s totally different.”

“OKAY, I FANTASIZE A TINY, TEENSY BIT.”

“You mean you fantasize I’m a wad of crud you digested?!”

“DON'T JUDGE,” the huge tip of a thumb butted itself into my head, and too eagerly jamming itself into my mouth to hush me. “REWIND TO WHAT YOU SAID BEFORE; I MAKE YOUR HEART CRAZY. NOW, CONVERSATION OVER.”

She gave a great, hollering yawn which brought a surge of hot air pummelling the top of my head. Then stretched her t-shirt up and the top of my head was shaded by the great mass of one breast, lifted and quickly dropped, hitting me like a huge sack of flour, trapping my entire body beneath it. As she stretched, the mass rolled back and forth over my spine, smoothing my body flatter, as she shifted and got comfy again.

And that was it; my bedding for the night was the hot, heavy underside of her boob. I began to get a little light headed from the pressure. It didn’t help that her breathing kept pushing down upon me with the expansion of her chest wall. She gave another yawn, crushing me slightly beneath her expanding lungs. The weight lifted a fraction as a long nail burrowed in to identify my shoulder, and giving my ribcage a brief tickle, enough to coax me into squirming to reassure her I was okay.

At this, I was lulled to sleep, if a little against my will.

The city rumbled outside, white noise interspersed with traffic horns. The closed windows kept the noise at bay while I napped, basking in a patch of glowing afternoon sun. It was too warm to let the air in. Otherwise, it was quiet for now. Jennifer had been out getting groceries. I’d asked her if she wanted to do some yoga but she laughed the idea off.

Now I clutched my phone with sweating palms, intoned a desperate prayer of mercy, and Googled images under my name. Then tilted the phone screen, watching the images skew, shortening in perspective, but never lengthening.

I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.

The words rushed into my head and I contemplated them blankly, stunned. I’d scrolled through images for so long the sun had moved past the window, and now my photo self looked like a stranger. So many photos of myself stood against bigger objects and larger people. Standing in hands, against feet, framed by humungous faces. From my perspective, I never saw myself as tiny, but other people as huge. But in the photos, there was no escaping I was the tiny one. And I was famous; there were inescapably many photos. If I'd dreamed that being famous would change the public's perception of me, I was wrong. It was entrenching the public perception that I was ludicrously tiny.

Now the door creaked and shut, the bags rustled as they were put onto the counter.  I gave myself a mental shake.

The sound of floorboards almost sinking with every step. Unless I was imagining it, her passage around the conjoined interior quarters seemed to churn the air into cool sweeping currents over my body; my apartment interior seemed tinier than ever before. I could sense her moving around even without seeing her. The house admitted her presence by sound – doors opening and shutting, floor creaking – where I was undetectable.

The bathroom door shut. My eyes were tired from internet surfing and began to close.

Suddenly she was in the doorway. Her green eyes were upon me. I lay still as a doll, as if the stillness made me inconspicuous. My back sank into the mattress under the weight of her intimate stare, sending me the direct signal that I was her plaything.

That was not the only thing staring at me. Her breasts hung like full succulent fruit, the nipples standing up on her bare chest, as if offering the red tips out to me. Given the warmth of the day she now decided to wander around naked, letting her gigantic hide grow sultry and scented in the still, warm air.

Before I could sit up, her towering shadow floated across the bed a moment before her form descended upon me. A giant hand reached down, extending one long, feminine finger and sinking the tip into my belly like a fist to pin me to the mattress. I groaned and shifted my legs restlessly as the sharp nail bit into my soft insides. My diaphragm was scrunched up, stunned. A bolt of panic flickered through my muscles. I couldn’t draw a breath. I could only stare up at her features, which formed an oppressive ceiling over my world.

She studied me intently, delighting in the woefully ineffectual muscle spasms my body was throwing up against her, against this tiniest application of pressure in her fingertip that had me totally subdued.

There were a lot of attractive guys wandering around in St Palma, pretty boys and gym rats and she must have seen them while she was out. Some of them might have even seen her. But they were irrelevant compared to her favorite obsessive pursuit; the old game of trying to determine how much I wanted her.

A cramp was building up in my chest. I slapped and struck the long pillar of her finger, turned down against my torso like a stake.

She lifted an eyebrow she gave me a pout.

“DOWN,” she commanded. “YOU THINK I WOULDN’T HURT YOU…” Her nail dug in deeper. A frisson of pain rippled over my skin. My muscles pulled and I couldn’t breathe again.

The pressure kept up.

“…BUT YOU LOVE PLAYING WITH MY PATIENCE A LITTLE TOO MUCH.”

It felt like her finger was wrapped right around my stomach, squeezing mightily, causing me to cave in, bit by bit, from the pressure. My heartbeat ratcheted up. It seemed she was actively considering if I’d burst.

Then, as she bent lower, a puzzled expression came onto her face. She paused, took in a sweeping breath.

“EUGH…WHAT IS THAT?” Her face descended upon the pillow, searching for an invisible culprit.

“Oh…” I said. Nerves flickered somewhere inside me. I was so used to the perfume lingering on the bed I no longer noticed it. “The cleaning service must have spritzed the sheets or something.”

She gave the bed a strange look as she sat up again.

“PRETTY VAMPY SPRITZ IF YOU ASK ME.”

“I’ll tell the maid to tone it down next time.”

A shadowy kind of fire was in her eyes as they lingered on me for an extra second. I held her gaze and my face admitted nothing.

At this, she decided she didn’t want to be in the bedroom anymore, and sweeping me up in one hand, conveyed me into the bathroom.

The cool sink counter came up under my body as she put me down. Meanwhile she fetched something she’d just bought downtown. I stared at the black tube between her fingertips.

“NEW LIPSTICK,” she remarked, sliding the lip off to expose the red nub. “WANNA TRY?”

I stared.

“Try…?” 

For a second I wondered if she intended to put some on me. In fact, in a sense, that was what she had in mind, sort of.

She didn’t answer, but lifted the tube to her face and began painting a bright sheen over her lips.

Without delay I was again swept up into the air as if by hurricane – a hurricane with a precise sense of aim, deftly manoeuvring my tiny legs between the heavy moist folds of her lips. My legs slid over the carpet of her wide, wet tongue, which bucked rapidly to spin me until I was face down, her sticky tongue muscle pressing hard up into my belly, shifting like a walking horse to tilt and balance me, in between generous sucks that pushed the air out of my chest via compression.

Then the mirror, and my bewildered looking reflection was moving closer and closer until my nose bumped against the pane and donking my forehead into my reflection’s hard glassy forehead.

Pressure against the back of my neck held my face still while the lips loosened around my neck and started surging forward over my features, ensconcing my head in a tight rubbery sleeve as she kissed the mirror. Then they retracted again, sliding back down my head and settling back into position around my neck like a warm, damp scarf.

My lipstick oiled skin sticking for an instant before peeling away. And now where my reflection had been there was a bright red imprint of my face – specifically the ridge of my brow, nose, cheeks and mouth – closely framed by the plush creased masses of her lips, circling my face like a weird frill.

I stared at it, morbidly fascinated and unnerved, when her hand shot up, fingers plucking me out roughly by my head and dropping me onto the counter before she couldn’t hold it back any longer, bursting into laughter at the sight of the imprint.

“MWAH,” she kissed her fingertips. “A TRUE MASTERPIECE.”

I rubbed my face, trying to get the waxy gloss off, but just ending up with red palms.

The sink was run and within moments I was thrust, upside down into the warm water. She dipped my head repeatedly in and out of the water, and scrubbed my face back and forth with her thumb to wipe the lipstick off.

As the water crashed over my face, her voice became murky, then bright and clear again as I was yanked up:

“REMEMBER WHEN WE TOOK A BATH TOGETHER WHEN YOU WERE, LIKE, SUPER TINY?”

“I can’t forget,” I managed to reply, right before her thumb stroked up under my jaw and daubed my face.  Undeniably demeaning to have my face rubbed about like an unfeeling doll, but it was so quick and easy for her, she didn’t question it. Plus, the oily lipstick had begun to dye my soft skin, and required some stubborn friction to erase. It just felt like my whole face was at risk of being erased under the grinding pressure of her finely crenulated thumbpad.

“WELL,” she went on, “I WAS IMAGINING BEING DOWN THERE WITH YOU ON THAT TOY BOAT, SITTING ON THE FRONT—THAT THING, THE BOW—?”

My head penetrated the water and was held there. Undaunted, the thumb followed me in, launching itself onto my face for more rigorous massaging. I kept my eyes closed, holding my breath as my face was worked into. The vibration of her resonant voice seemed to swell in the water, clapping into my ears. Then I was back above the water.

“Yeah,” I said.

“LIKE, SUNBAKING UNDER THE BATHROOM HEAT LIGHTS. FUCKING ON THE DECK. FUCKING IN THE WATER. IT WAS LIKE A FREAKING VACATION FOR YOU. BUT IT WAS JUST A BORING OLD BATH FOR ME.”

“But that boat was a kid’s toy.”

“NO, IT WAS LIKE ‘JERRY’S HAVING A PARTY ON HIS PRIVATE YACHT, AND JENNIFER’S NOT INVITED’—”

“No, I mean--.”

“—AND NOW JENNIFER IS PISSED OFF. AND KINDLY HAS TO LET YOU KNOW.. THAT'S WHY I -- YOU KNOW.""

I was suspended a moment longer just over the sink as the water dripped off my head, and feeling like caught prey, dangling.

“Well, whatever you were going for, it worked. You broke up the party, exploded my ear drums and singed my eyebrows off.”

*

Despite the fact she just washed me, she couldn’t wait to get me dirty again.

Reclining along the bed, naked, she worked me into her, deep and slow, before letting loose with an ungodly crunch of pelvic muscle, making me feel as small and feeble inside her as humanely possible, seeming to scrunch me up to half my size.

Without warning, the motions stopped, my body clenched in her hand, and my head the meat sandwiched between her labial folds, a hair’s breadth from being inside her.

“HEY BRO, GOT YOUR DRINKS, BUT I ADVISE YOU NOT TO PRE-GAME TOO HARD TONIGHT, BECAUSE—”

Meandering footsteps and a short pause.

The bedroom door was wide open. I’d forgot.

“Oh, crap,” I muttered, squirming around, but struggled to find my footing on the shifting, unstable surface of her giant mammary.

“JERRY?”

It happened so fast I had no time to react, much less blush. Raf walked into the doorway and jerked to a stop, staring at Jennifer sprawled out naked over the sheets, and me curled up like a cat on her right breast, trying to conceal my dick, my head cushioned by her nipple. I saw exactly what he was looking at through the mirror across the room. Jen fixed her eyes on him and offered him a lazy smile and a quick wink.

He wheeled around and disappeared, his footsteps withdrawing back through the house. His halting words drifted into the bedroom behind him:

“I’LL JUST LEAVE IT ON YOUR…UH…”

Then the front door shut.

I sighed deeply as my body relaxed into her soft flesh. She gave an unhurried stretch, her breast rocking me.

“OOPS,” she said without remorse. “DID I EMBARRASS YOU IN FRONT OF YOUR FRIEND?”

A lock of her hair ran down over her chest. Without thinking, I reached for it and began threading it through my hands. In return, she began grooming a fingernail through my hair.

“He forgot. He’s not used to me having someone over.”