“That’ll be… 11.90. Would you like to round up your total for charity?”

Ronnie made a light, neutral-sounding grumble as he reached into the front pocket of his hoodie for his wallet. He pulled out the worn, warm leather capsule and flipped through it, prying his debit card from between the flaps. “Sure, whatever…”

The concession attendant cheerily responded, “Alright then! That’ll be twelve dollars even!” She reached out a hand, and Ronnie handed her his card. As she typed, the attendant made small talk. “So what movie are you seein’?”

Ronnie jammed his hands into his pockets, finally looking up from the depressed angle of his gaze. He tried to make eye contact with the friendlily smiling counter attendant, but he had difficulty and then gazed toward the popcorn stand instead. Ronnie wondered briefly if he should lie, then decided that though lying wouldn’t hurt him, it would do literally nothing to help him in this case. Besides… this receptionist was cute. Perhaps answering honestly could be the beginning of a new and blossoming relationship.

“Ahh… it’s called Weathering With You.” Ronnie shifted uncomfortably as he watched the concession lady’s smile flash a bit, apparently unfamiliar. Attempting to cushion the blow, Ronnie continued, “I like the director a lot. He makes really pretty stuff.”

“Oh! Neat. Wait, I think I heard about that one.” She handed the card back to Ronnie before turning to scoop a serving of popcorn into a paper bag. “Issssss… it a Disney movie?”

Ronnie felt a bit more discomfort. “It’s Japanese. It’s an anime.”

“Oh! Right. Same difference, I guess.” The vendor ignored Ronnie’s deathly glare as she grabbed a box of Nerds from behind the glass stand counter. “Here’s your food, ma’am!”

Ronnie took the bag, warm in his hand. He grabbed the box of candy and then said demurely, “Um, it’s… sir. I’m a boy.” Ronnie pulled down his black face mask and hood. This revealed soft, boyish features and a helping of shoulder-length dark-brown hair terminating in jagged, unkempt spokes.

The vendor gazed at Ronnie, then mortification filled her. “Oh, goodness, I’m sorry!” She tried to fill the awkward air with laughter as she handed Ronnie his receipt. “My bad, I just thought, with the hair, and the nail polish, and I guess your voice was a little… ach, I’m slow today.”

Ronnie wanted to tell her that it wasn’t the first time he’d been confused for a girl. At a solid five foot three, the young man had been surpassed by almost all his male peers in stature these recent years, in addition to at least half of his female classmates. He’d been given all manner of derogatory monikers, such as pussy, sissy, and wimp, and after somehow surviving middle school he learned a whole new cavalcade of homophobic slurs so comprehensive and ubiquitous that he almost felt bad on behalf of his queer peers for not being gay. As a result of this verbal flogging, Ronnie only opened his mouth to speak when it was absolutely necessary, usually through a mask. This voice was still feathery and light, and though at its depths the baritone timbre of a growing boy could be heard, he was just as often confused for a lady’s alto. While Ronnie had difficulty accepting that this would be the best he got in terms of his development, the end of his junior year of high school was fast approaching, and the window of opportunity for blooming into a far larger specimen was quickly running out – facts that caused him no end of dysphoria and anxiety.

Ronnie hadn’t the time to explain all this to the female vendor. So, he simply said, “Don’t worry about it.” He tried to smile, and he took his receipt. Ronnie drew his mask back up over his face, thankful he was no longer under any pressure to emote. All he wanted was to return to the theater he’d darted out of only a few minutes before, this time with a snack to soothe his aching belly.

After a quick detour to wash his hands, tucking his snacks in the pocket of his sweatshirt, Ronnie returned to the hallway leading deeper into the theater. Heavy doors lined the walls, each one labeled in big flashy numbers from 1 to 20. But something different greeted Ronnie from the first time he arrived.

Standing at the podium, guarding the path into the theater hall, was a woman. She wore glasses with hair tied in a bun, and she was garbed in a grey skirt and red Polo: the theater chain’s employee uniform. Her locks were greying slightly at the roots, and she was glaring at a tablet, jotting stuff down on it with her stylus. Her nametag read “Hi, My Name is ‘Linda’”, though it was distinct from the concession vendor in that this one had stars adorning the label. Ronnie wondered if she were a supervisor or manager of some sort.

Well, whatever. The podium had been empty the first time he went in; Ronnie simply clutched his ticket and sidled around it. Now, he prepared to do the same thing, until…

“Excuse me… excuse me!”

Ronnie was halfway past her by the time he realized she was talking to him. Backtracking, Ronnie approached the front of the podium. He had to stand on his tippy-toes to create an illusion of them somewhat communicating on even footing.

“It’s past 8pm. Under sixteen-year-olds need to be dropped off by an adult.”

“Ah, I am sixteen.” Ronnie tried hard not to let resentment creep into his voice.

The manager was taken aback as Ronnie spoke. Perhaps, thought Ronnie, she hadn’t been expecting a voice quite that low. Then she returned to an expression of neutrality. “Very well, then. Do you have an ID?”

Ronnie lost his voice. He technically had a learner’s permit, but after a particularly harrowing near-miss on the highway several months back, Ronnie was in no rush to continue practicing his driving. He was prone to leaving his card on the side of his bed in an effort to deter either of his parents unexpectedly forcing him to drive to or from school while they were out and about.

“I… I don’t, sorry. But, here. I have the ticket,” Ronnie pulled it out, the stub already torn. He offered it meagerly to the manager, who looked down her nose at the stub. Then she looked at Ronnie, wrapped up in his black hoodie, wearing baggy sweatpants and dark blue nail polish, sneakers.

The manager felt a headache come on. “Look sweetie, it’s our policy that we can’t let in unaccompanied minors after 8pm without an ID. It’s written on the sign, right there? At the front?” She pointed past Ronnie toward the entrance.

Ronnie was getting annoyed. “Yes, I saw the sign. But, like, the movie started at 7:55. I was there, I just had to go get a snack. The lady at the counter, she can vouch for me.”

Ronnie turned back. The counter was barren. Nobody was there.

He turned back sheepishly to the manager. “She’s… I don’t see her. But… c’mon, can you just let me in? I’m 16, I just forgot my ID at home. Can’t you just… like… make an exception? Please. Please.”

The manager sighed. “Look. I get this must be ‘disappointing’,” the manager emphasized this with air quotations. “…that you can’t get into your…” The manager peered at the ticket. “What is that, some sort of cartoon? Well, we are an established business. We have rules we need to follow or else we risk litigation. If you left your ID at home, you could just call your mom to drop it off for you?”

Ronnie’s eye twitched. There were numerous problems with that idea, none of which the manager could possibly be privy to, but which irked him, nevertheless. “That would be difficult,” he intoned.

The manager was getting a bit peeved at this boy who was deep in thought after his disgruntled comment. She looked over his shoulder, where a group of high school guys were shooting the breeze as they walked leisurely toward the podium, tickets in hand. The manager looked back to Ronnie. “Look, rules are rules. I would appreciate it if you were to step away from the podium to, er, figure things out.” She swung her hands outward, the universal symbol to “get lost”.

Ronnie stared with deathly eyes at the manager. Then, he walked away.

Ronnie spied an empty table and slumped into it, spreading his legs. He opened his crumpled bag of popcorn and took a few bites, quickly getting some stuck in his teeth. As he attempted to pry a kernel from between his canine and molar, he pulled out his with his free hand and pondered just what he wanted to do…

“…Bitch…”

The theater was practically empty. Still though, Ronnie still looked over his shoulder to make sure nobody heard. But his corner was particularly barren, offering a distinct view of every other section of the lobby and the entrance to the theaters, but nothing behind him that could give way to snooping ears and prying eyes. Well, aside from a poster for a new horror movie coming out next month featuring quite a few sets of prying eyes that belonged to the film’s undead antagonists.

Ronnie ran the numbers. It was a seven-minute drive to the theater. Seven minutes there, seven minutes back… add on two or three minutes to unlock the house, clamber up the stairs, find his ID, another five or six minutes for the Uber to pick him up in the first place…

Wait. Did his phone even have Uber installed?

Ronnie groaned, and he opened the app store. His thumb slammed on the screen repeatedly, searching for the right app when he noticed too late that a misclick led to him downloading something completely different.

“Dammit…” Ronnie cursed. His phone didn’t have the most RAM or storage; this mistake would eat into his movie time more than most would realize. He backtracked and after an agonizing wait managed to locate and begin downloading the Uber app.

His mobile data meant that would take a while.

Ronnie returned to his phone home screen, deciding to delete that other app while he waited. It had already been downloaded and installed, apparently.

“Huh…” Ronnie long pressed on the app, but no delete button came up. He tried again, but nothing. He went to his system settings… but there was no option at all to remove this application from his phone.

“Okay… weird.” It was too much of a request for the official app store to have no predatory virus scam apps, it seemed. Even the icon looked creepy, some stick figure shrinking, minimizing into a smaller figure.

Ronnie glanced to the manager, a short distance away. And he groaned. She was letting those idiot high schoolers through. They were the same age as Ronnie, and somehow, they got the privilege of going into the movie practically with no fuss, when he had to get his ID?

Ronnie shook his head. The rideshare app had yet to even finish downloading, much less install. He looked back at this other, weirder application…

Maybe opening it would reveal more info about how to delete it. Having that app remain on his phone irked him.

Ronnie tapped on the icon, slowly, perhaps with needless caution. The app was loading. Ronnie snuggled and slouched further into his seat, trying to get comfortable while he waited. He was glancing askew, eyes aimed toward the lobby windows yet never truly seeing out of them. It was only when his phone blared “YOU HAVE CREDIT” that he jumped up, paying attention to it once again.

“Shit, Christ…” Ronnie slammed his thumb on the volume button; he must’ve left it up high at some point. The black loading screen was gone, replaced by a pure white background, nothing in the foreground. It was empty. The only UI that Ronnie could glean was text at the top stating “CREDIT: x1”.

“What the… is this some kind of game?” thought Ronnie, tapping on the screen. He lifted his phone in front of his face, moving it around. At first, this seemed to do nothing.

“C’mon, what are you, huh?” Dreams of an Uber, and even the movie itself had been long-since forgotten. All Ronnie wanted now was to figure out the purpose of this app. Whether it was a scam, a virus, a phishing attack, or just some poor computer science student’s failed thesis project, there had to be something here.

As Ronnie haphazardly waved his phone around in the air, he was struck by a thought – he didn’t want to come across as appearing to be filming any of the other patrons. He glanced back toward the manager, who was staring down at her tablet, practically doll-sized from Ronnie’s perspective.

“Huh…” Ronnie tried to remain cautious, and he lowered his arm when he noticed the phone’s UI had changed.

“Hm?” Ronnie looked at it. There, in the pure white screen, was a human-shaped red silhouette. It was static, immobile, but slid across the screen as Ronnie moved his phone in the air. “What the…”

Ronnie tested it out, holding his phone again. He slowly scanned it from side to side. The silhouette skimmed the locale, tracing across the screen, disappearing out the side. Ronnie moved his arm back, and the figure reappeared. He moved his arm all the way, and the figure was gone again out the other end. He returned it to the middle. His arm was getting tired.

“Hey, excuse me! Ma’am?”

Ronnie looked up, and he put his phone down.

He hadn’t even noticed that he was aiming his phone directly at the manager’s podium. She was looking at Ronnie sternly. “I would appreciate it if you put your phone down. I don’t know what you were doing but I do not want to be on video camera.”

Ronnie nodded silently and he put the phone on the table, flat.

The figure was gone.

“So, this is some sort of… AR thing?”

Ronnie picked up the phone again. He could turn the camera on himself… but that wouldn’t help anyone. There was, again, nobody running any stands, no janitors, no movie theater guests. Ronnie and the manager were alone. She had returned to jotting stuff down on the tablet.

Ronnie didn’t necessarily want to go against her wishes… again. But at the same time, considering her inflexibility, Ronnie wasn’t exactly the most charitable at the moment. Besides, there was nobody else around to test it on, and he was dying to know the actual real purpose of this game.

So Ronnie angled his phone upward, slightly. The red figurette poked its head above the lower bezel of the screen once more, intriguing Ronnie. He tried to do it so it wasn’t super-duper obvious that he was attempted to aim it at the manager, yet still he failed.

“Okay, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” The manager got out from behind the podium, straightening out her grey skirt before walking briskly in Ronnie’s direction.

“I-I wasn’t doing anything, I’m not doing anything,” Ronnie said nervously. He hated confrontation, and even hearing people raise their voices was enough to make him sweat. Still, he kept one eye on his phone screen, where the red silhouette was growing and growing. But nothing yet, no real change.

“I’ve asked you several times to obey the rules of this movie theater and you’ve ignored me at every turn,” the manager said, halfway to Ronnie’s table, already putting her hands on her hips. “You do understand this is a private business, correct? Therefore I could call the police and get you arrested for trespassing. If you really are ‘sixteen’, then you should know you are capable of being tried as an adult for trespassing in the state of –”

PROCEED? (This will use ONE (1) CREDIT)

The pop-up appeared randomly, just as the manager had come within ten feet of him. Without thinking, Ronnie slammed his thumb on the YES button.

Ronnie blinked.

What… what just happened?

“I…” Ronnie stood up, and he looked around. The manager was… gone?

Had that been, had… it… what?

It defied all logic. Ronnie couldn’t understand it. The manager had been only a few feet from him one moment, and then the next… she was gone. Completely. No sign of her. No smell, or sound, no flash of light, no indications of spontaneous human combustion. There was nothing. Where did she go?

He walked out from his chair, and found, against all odds… that he felt relieved.

Certainly, yes, the manager’s disappearance raised more questions than it did answers, but considering what she was saying about calling the cops only moments ago, Ronnie felt he may have dodged a bullet. Who knows if she would’ve called the cops even if she did leave?

Nevertheless, the manager disappearing did unsettle him quite deeply. People don’t just disappear like that, especially without leaving any trace. And she vanished right in front of his eyes. The only other thing around that could’ve been distracting him was…

Ronnie looked at the phone. The credit counter at the top banner now said “NO CREDIT”. But more importantly… there was still a red silhouette within that white void.

Ronnie was confused. His phone was flat on the table, facing down. There was nothing it could’ve been looking at. But sure as rain, when Ronnie picked the phone up, the figure on it shifted. It was small, far smaller than it had appeared earlier when he was aiming it at the manager, but it was there and apparent.

Ronnie’s confusion only deepened as he noticed that the silhouette was now moving steadily, rapidly, on its own. It was moving away, further out.

Slowly… Ronnie crouched down. The theater lobby was dimly-lit, and here underneath the table it was even darker. Ronnie at first cringed as his petite fingers dug into the sticky carpets, calcified from decades of crusted-over spilled soft drinks and popcorn with nary cleaning. But when his eyes landed on the manager, now reduced to an inch tall, crouching, shaking, shivering beside the central leg of the table… he knew exactly what he was looking at. He knew the fear in her eyes was real.

Ronnie had to get closer. He crawled forth a few inches, and his approach made the manager collapse out of sheer terror. She scampered backward on her hands and feet, still too terrified to turn away from Ronnie’s assuredly massive face. She prepared to say something, opening her mouth and closing it a few times until she finally tried to form words. Somewhere between her brain and her mouth, it transmogrified into a blistering shriek, and out of pure shock and befuddlement Ronnie swiped her up. He launched to his feet, then banged his head on the underside of the table.

“OUCH!!” Ronnie felt tears flood his eyes as he scooted from beneath the tabletop, finally able to stretch out his back. His fist was clenched, and already beginning to sweat. Ronnie was too scared and freaked out to open it up right here, right now, but he did slightly loosen his grip to hopefully get a bit of airflow going so she didn’t suffocate.

Out of the corner of his eye, movement. A girl, the same girl from the concession. She was wiping her hands on her pants when her eyes met Ronnie’s. They brightened, and she trotted over. “Oh, hey! Hasn’t your movie started? What’re you doing? Go on in!”

Ronnie said nothing, eyes wide. Fearful. He clenched his hand tight.

The vendor raised an eyebrow. “You’re… oh – oh, I see. You’re worried about the whole ‘No minors past 8pm’ thing?” She scoffed. “Don’t worry about that. Only the manager really cares, and she’s kind of a nazi about it. I mean technically she should be, uhhhh…” She turned to the empty podium. “She should be right over there. I guess she took a break? Anyway, you gonna stand here or did you need a re-up on that popcorn?”

***

When Ronnie got back into the theater, the movie had still only barely started. The main character hadn’t even met the deuteragonist yet. Anything Ronnie missed, he could easily glean from context, and by sneaking a glance at the Wikipedia page during one of the film’s slower moments. But right now, Ronnie lacked the ability to even pay attention to the film. He could look at it, certainly. It was undoubtedly a visual spectacle of style and light and photorealistic beauty. But stuffed in the front pocket of Ronnie’s hoodie was a springy symphony of squirms and twitches. Each itchy shake represented either another attempt to escape or a deathly, disturbed spasm of fear and incoherence. And despite their minuscule effect on his comfort, the fact they were even there was enough to make Ronnie vibrate from fear and from curiosity.

For now, though, Ronnie had to force himself to relax. The theater wasn’t crowded by any means – on the contrary, its scant audience numbers meant that Ronnie had no refuge in anonymity. If his wheezes breeched a certain volume threshold they would be able to tell exactly where it came from. So, Ronnie bit his tongue and tried to conform to the contours of his seat with no fuss. No matter how much his pits, knees, neck, and ears were sweating. And for a few moments, he almost felt like he was comprehending what was happening onscreen.

Until a light, airy, feathery, ghostly facsimile of a horrid scream pierced from his hoodie pocket.

Ronnie jammed his hands into the pocket and curled his fingers around the stowaway as he looked around him. A scene girl at the easternmost rear corner of the theater was heavily invested. Near the front, a father was on his phone while his two children were looking every which way in their seats, distracted. The theater was loud, but Ronnie didn’t want to chance anyone glancing in his direction and taking note of any weird sounds.

But his squeezing didn’t make it stop. He could feel the vibrations the woman made by yelling as hard as she could into his clenched thumb, speckling a tiny spot on his hand with her spittle, just enough for him to notice. It was… sort of disgusting, and it made Ronnie want to remove his hand and wipe it on the leg of his sweatpants. But it wasn’t until he felt a stinging sensation as she chomped at the digit that Ronnie let loose a constrained, “ACH!”

He ground his teeth against the pain quickly enough, but this was a quiet moment. People were already glancing in his direction – something Ronnie usually hated on a good day. But now that very idea filled him with dread. Ronnie removed his hand and stomached through the manager’s renewed screams, burried under the thick fabric and layers of clothing just enough to not bat an eye. And sure, that’d be fine for the time being… but what about when he left? What about when he was on the bus, surrounded by other people with nothing to do but listen to her pleas?

While he waited for the heat to die down, Ronnie’s mind got to work. Clearly, the front pocket of the hoodie wasn’t going to cut it. But there just weren’t any places on his body that would provide enough insulation to limit even the chance of her sounds drifting out.

Or… or were there?

Ronnie’s gaze traced its way down the screen, drawing the outline of the seats before him. It continued to the floor, and finally… his shoes.

Ronnie wasn’t exactly a sneakerhead. His shoes hadn’t been replaced since middle school considering his size hadn’t changed dramatically enough to have outgrown them, and their black color tended to hide the more egregious blemishes and scuffs. It was frugal for both Ronnie and his mother, and his feet had come to appreciate the spacious and firm room they had molded into them after being stretched out over years of regular wear and use.

Ronnie reached down and undid the lace of his right shoe. He slipped it off his foot, and he shuddered as the cool air-conditioned breeze washed over its moist, sock-encrusted form. He lifted the shoe up and put it in his lap. Then, with his other hand, Ronnie reached into his pocket and plucked the manager out, ever fearful of watching eyes.

At the moment, the manager looked like nothing more than a dark silhouette despite her inflamed struggling. She looked down at the hole of the shoe above which she now hung, and her squirms turned downright hysterical. Ronnie couldn’t tell what her expression was… a mix of horror and utter disbelief, dread and nervousness and abject fear. Any number of psychotic feelings. Ronnie wasn’t exactly an empathetic individual, but he did try as reasonably as someone like him could to not cause excess pain in the world. But for someone like her… he couldn’t care less. Besides, she couldn’t behave. So, really, what was about to happen to her was nobody’s fault but hers. Whatever her name is. Linda, was it? Maybe when he got home, he could ask her in depth.

And Ronnie dropped her in his shoe. Her screams were suddenly focused directly through the aperture of the mouth of the sneaker, a mouth that was quickly plugged as Ronnie inserted his toes, followed by the rest of his foot. They squelched onto the insole, rubbing against the individual he knew was inside of there like she was a stress ball, squeezing the toes against her and showering her entire face with the ambient sweat that seeped through the sock. The sensation of her being against his foot was… unexpectedly pleasant. Almost euphorically so. For a few moments, Ronnie simply continued to toy with her, even lightly stomping and applying pressure to the ground – and by extension, to her – with some taps and presses. This went on for far longer than expected, almost ten minutes, before Ronnie at once remembered that something interesting was happening on screen. At the same time, he noticed unexpectedly the excess pressure that had formed in the crotch of his sweatpants over that period, which was definitely a no-no. So he took a break from tormenting the little chew toy and decided to munch a few handfuls of his popcorn.

One thing was for sure. Whether she finally decided to shut up or whether her shrieks simply were unable to pierce the monolithic flesh column of his lower extremity… Ronnie was now able to enjoy the film in peace.

 Well, that was a good movie.

Ronnie walked out the film relaxed. He had finished off the bag of popcorn, but the Nerds had only been lightly skimmed. Ronnie was prone to binging on his favorite candy, but prior experience was a cruel teacher about the immense discomfort to be found from overindulging.

Ronnie made another quick detour to the bathroom where he cleaned his hands of the grease and salt and sugar, then darted into the stall to relieve himself, then washed his hands again. It was while he was wiping his hands off on his sweatshirt that he finally stepped into the movie theater lobby and noticed the vendor at a far wall of the theater. She was wearing a puffy white coat over her uniform and was tangling with a large stand-up vacuum, trying to stuff it into a closet with pronounced effort and only barely winning.

Giving up hope of a more elegant solution, she propped it up just long enough to close the door. Sure, it would fall on the next individual to open the closet, but so long as it wasn’t her, that would be someone else’s problem. She wiped her hands and turned back to the rest of the lobby; here, her eyes met Ronnie’s.

The vendor brightened, and she waved him over. Without really thinking about it, he acquiesced. “What’s up?” Ronnie asked.

“Sooooo how was the movie?” Her eyes were glowing as she leaned over the side of the counter. It seemed to be a genuine inquiry.

“It was… good?” Ronnie didn’t know quite what to say. “It looked beautiful. Music was great. I… enjoyed myself.”

“Cool!” She started to zip up her coat. “Well, you appear to have the distinction of being the last patron of this theater during open hours, so congratulations to you. Nobody was behind you, right? Workers, other customers?”

Workers…

Workers.

Shit. Ronnie had actually forgotten about that.

He curled his toes in his shoes and was suddenly thankful he was still wearing his mask; he was sure if it were off, his scarlet exterior would be a dead giveaway he knew something she didn’t. “Nope. Nobody.”

“Got it!” She turned to the closet for a moment and stuffed a key inside the knob, locking it. “To be honest with you, I’m not super-duper used to locking up. Usually that’s my boss’s job. But for some reason, for the first time in her entire career, she appears to have left early.” Her annoyance was seeping through. “Guess I’ll just have to have that conversation about overtime when she gets back.”

Hearing this woman speak so nonchalantly about a woman who was currently stewing in the bottom of his show made a cocktail of lurid emotions swirl up within him. His body was twitching with every beat of his heart, and no shortage of panic-induced sweat was leaking out of most of his perspiration glands, something he was sure Linda wouldn’t take to kindly. If she was alive that is. She had been so obediently immobile that Ronnie truly forgot she was there; had she given up? Had he inadvertently crushed her in his spellbound toe-tapping within the theater?

“Well, once you leave, I’ll go ahead and turn off the lights and everything. So just to cross my I’s and dot my T’s, you didn’t want another pack of Nerds or anything, did you?”

Ronnie thought for a moment as he looked in her eyes. She had chestnut colored skin, and curly brown hair that escaped gloriously from the back of her uniform red visor. She flashed a smile as she pulled the last bit of her zipper up; her khaki pants, white coat, and brown face gave her the vague appearance of a vanilla ice-cream cone with a cookie shard planted on the top.

Ronnie was awestruck for a moment, realizing how pretty she was. Maybe he had judged her too harshly earlier. But the window for a reasonable response time was running out, and Ronnie had to make a move. But what?

The vendor raised an eyebrow awkwardly before chuckling. “Guess not, huh? It’s no big deal; trust me, I know better than anyone how bad these prices are.”

Then she started walking away.

Ronnie wanted to call after her, but his voice never reached past his mask. Defeated, he simply walked toward the door, every dejected step of his shoes sending another wave of pressure from the shrunken woman through the sole of his feet and into his body.

Outside in the chilly autumn air, Ronnie took a moment to breathe in. Letting the breath out, he pulled his phone from his pocket and examined the home page. Uber had indeed downloaded right next to the app.

Ronnie checked the settings, searching for the name of it.

“The Control App…” Ronnie had assumed it was some sort of universal remote-control thing… but this was a bit different. There was no metadata related to the app, no version number, no storage, no cache. By all accounts, it didn’t exist on his phone.

Ronnie opened the app up again.

“CREDIT RECHARGED. YOU HAVE CREDIT.”

Agh, that stupid voice blared again! He thought he muted the phone… Well, whatever. Ronnie raised the phone up and glared through the white void. Around him, tiny minuscule red dots zoomed over the horizon. Cars and people. None so close that the pop-up appeared though. Ronnie turned and saw an even closer red figure on the surface. Back through the movie theater doors, she was turned away. She never even noticed Ronnie as he stood outside for almost a minute, wondering. Her red afterimage on his phone was more than visible, yet still not close enough. He could… he could walk up to her. The theater was empty. Nobody would know…

But Ronnie decided against it. He didn’t know what this app was or how it worked. But he did know that two women disappearing from the same theater would be suspicious no matter where you’re from. Besides… Linda deserved it at least. What had the concession worker done to deserve anything…?

Ronnie shook his head and turned to go back home. No more using it for now. He still had plenty of business to attend to with the first one.

***

Ronnie unlocked the back door and slipped into an abyssal space of shapes and furniture that under normal circumstances would be known as a “kitchen”. He planted his arm against the wall, hands and fingers prowling for the switch. He found the wall plate, then shifted two switches to the left for the proper one that controlled the lights.

Ronnie flipped it, and his vision was restored. He sighed gratefully and closed the door behind him.

Ronnie elected to walk home that night. Sure, it added an extra thirty-five minutes of travel, but Ronnie enjoyed the night air. Sure, it could put him at risk of running into shady individuals, but Ronnie wasn’t exactly the sort who was overly concerned for his safety either. Simply put, he wasn’t in the correct headspace to place the responsibility of his safe arrival home in the hands of someone else. Ronnie was still reeling from his dalliance with breaking the laws of physics; a part of him even wondered that if he sat still too long, he could sink straight through the Earth’s crust, never to be found again.

Ronnie would usually take of his shoes at this point, but instead he bounded up the stairs and headed straight for his room. He pushed open a cracked door, and it felt as though crossing the threshold was stepping into his own personal world. Immediately, a tinge of his scent caressed his face, the result of spending upwards of 80% of all his free time in the confined dorm. Now he could relax, finally in his own element. Ronnie didn’t stop, immediately pulling off his sweatshirt without even unzipping the zipper, and he threw it aside where it melted into the background radiation of several weeks’ worth of unwashed laundry. Exhaling a sigh of relief he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, Ronnie made a beeline to his desk in the darkness. He passed peeling posters, empty game disc boxes, drained soda cans, loose socks, and a dresser lined with half-cocked, overflowing drawers stuffed with any combination of clean and dirty clothing. With the precognitive reflexes of a pirouette performer, Ronnie deftly avoided a potato chip wrapper he’d been planning to pick up for a few days, only to crunch a plastic Solo cop he’d forgotten was there since yesterday. Ronnie grunted, decided it was tomorrow’s problem, and plopped into his office chair before reaching his arm through a forest of immobile anime figurines to press the power button on his massive, hulking PC.

As he waited for the machine to activate, Ronnie finally returned his attention to his shoes. He scooted from the desk to give himself space before reaching down and detaching the shoe from his foot. A light pop noise made him smile as the suction finally allowed air to breach the interior of the capsule. His black socked foot was thankful to be free in the aerated room, and Ronnie brandished the shoe like a chalice in his hands before overturning it. He shook it upside down, and when nothing came out, he started to get worried.

“Where’d you go?” Ronnie asked aloud, glaring down the mouth of the shoe and getting a sideways whiff of the lemony scent of his foot until – oh yeah. It was the other one.

Ronnie took off his other shoe; this time, the pebble-like growth peeling away from the sole of his foot as he lifted it out was apparent and cathartic. When he overturned the sneaker, a greyish-tan mound fell out.

Hitting the desk was a bit of a shock to her, and this provided an immediate jolt of the energy necessary for her to come to her senses, no matter how much she didn’t want to. Linda had been forced to turn inward and hibernate, guard herself from the encompassing reality of this boy’s foot for nigh three hours at this point. It not only took its toll on Linda’s body, soiled and ripped her clothes, battered and bruised he skin… it also took a toll on Linda’s spirit and very understanding of the world in which she persisted. Shrinking was not real. It couldn’t be. It defied reason.

This reason was now staring down at her. And that reason was a rather short, young… boy. The Dell logo splashed him with light as the monitor loaded. From this close, Linda could properly examine his facial features and body type, and despite the twilight she was more or less certain that he was a boy this time. How on Earth had she gotten it wrong earlier?

Trapped in the young man’s shoe, she had to adapt. Now free, Linda tried to take a full breath of air but coughed in the attempt, clearing out her lungs of the pungent, raw smell of the child’s foot. She tried to crawl away through the inky black of the dark room but was suddenly plucked from the desktop by a nigh-invisible force. She had a yelping fit and tried to break free, but this was impossible; no matter how much force she exerted, she could not pry herself out of these clutches. So instead, she was brought face-to-face with the shadowy visage of a young boy who now stared at her with a morbid fascination.

“Holy shit… holy shit! My own girl!”

Linda was taken aback at this excited declaration. Ronnie didn’t give her a moment to process, and he continued. “I bet you’re feeling pretty stupid now, huh. I bet you’re wishing you just let me the fuck inside, aren’t you?” The scent of his foot still rolled off her body in dollops, and Ronnie loved it.

Linda did not. She wanted to scream at him but could only manage a croak. “How did you… how did you do this…?”

Ronnie raised his eyebrows. His globular orbs caught and reflected just enough light from the screen for Linda to make out his expression. “Oh!” It was an excited yelp, one that hurt Linda’s ears. He dropped her on the table, ignoring her cries of fear as she thumped the surface. Ronnie dug his phone out from his pant pocket; he booted up the app and shone it in Linda’s face. Her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted, and she cringed from the bright light of the endless white void.

Ronnie responded with an uninhibited glee, as though he were showing a schoolyard buddy the new Yu-Gi-Oh cards he just got, “I don’t know how it does it. But somehow this app can shrink people! Pretty cool, I think.” He scooped her up again and prodded her even closer to the phone screen, as if she hadn’t understood the first time.

Linda hung from her nape; the fight had been drained out of her. She had… she had no idea if this child was lying or telling the truth. The idea that a simple phone app had the power to do this, to steal her height from her… it just defied all standards of belief.

“You still there?” Ronnie nudged her hanging form gently. “Like, I know I was a bit rough with you in my shoe during the movie… and the walk home… and all…”

“Please… please… just turn me back.” Linda could only whimper. She tried to look up at Ronnie’s face, but she let out a slight gasp and gazed downward again. “Just turn me back… please…”

“Now that is a good question.” Ronnie set Linda back on the desk next to his keyboard. He rolled up closer to the table and logged into the PC. Moments later, his Nezuko wallpaper greeted him. It was now the only light source in the room, and it cast everything in a dim, violet glow. Shadows lengthened. Shadows that could literally eclipse Linda thousandfold. “But I’m not so sure. Why would I ever grow you back? Why should I?”

“I… I…” Linda grabbed onto the plastic frame of the keyboard. “You… you can’t do this…”

“Don’t start crawling up there,” Ronnie warned icily. “I don’t want you fucking with my settings.”

Suddenly, the plastic felt like ice to Linda, and she removed her hands posthaste. Her faint dregs of confidence dipped, but she continued.

“I’m a person!” Linda tried hard to stop it, but she couldn’t prevent the sob from coming out. “Please, n-nobody deserves this… you can’t just shrink me… lock me up… take me –”

“Whoa, whoa whoa… who said anything about locking you up? Oh, did you know there are over 400 species of bird in this state alone?” Ronnie informed her after a brief Google search.

“I… I… what?”

Ronnie turned back to Linda. He leaned his cheek on his palm; some of the baby-soft fibers of his hair were caught between face and hand as he fixed his glare on Linda’s form. “You can leave right now. If you want. You know.”

Linda already knew Ronnie’s game, and she wasn’t buying it. She looked past him to the dark window that foretold an overcast, starless night. “N-no. I’m not going out there. You need to take me –”

“Oh, so now you’re trusting me to go outside without my mommy? I seem to remember… not that long ago…” Ronnie put a finger to his chin as he faked a lapse in memory. Linda simply looked at him horrified. “Hm… it escapes me… ah, oh yes! Yeah, I’ve got it now! I think it was you who said that I needed to get a permission slip to go into the theater. So, according to your logic, I can’t go anywhere by myself.”

“I… I-I-I-I was –”

SLAM!

Ronnie’s fist smashed down next to Linda as he snaked his head closer, really examining his captive as she cowered in abject terror.

“You, on the other hand, are the ‘adult’. The ‘grown-up’. The ‘elder’. You get to decide whatever you want. So clearly, you should be able to handle yourself out there. But not me, of course. Frankly, I find it shameful you would even suggest putting a child like me in harm’s way like that.”

Linda felt her hopes for being freed drop within her chest. She could only croak as the frog in her throat clawed its way up her esophagus.

“So! I’ll tell you what I have in mind for your punishment… in a bit.” Ronnie was navigating his PC as he talked. He was clicking with a robotic precision, summoning a series of tabs and webpages in a precise order, rehearsed over many years of his adolescence. He typed in a few keys and clicked ahead again. The bright lights hurt Linda’s eyes, but as she adjusted, she realized exactly what sort of website this demented teenager had visited.

Ronnie’s eyes were glazed over in his focus, only brightening as he was greeted by GIFs of scantily clad anime girls undergoing a litany of sexual humiliations that were taboo even for hentai standards. Dozens of videos now beckoned toward him, each one vying for his attention more and more. And Ronnie felt the pressure in his pants grow. Beneath the warm fabric of the woolen cloth, a stiff member was rising, and fast. It had nowhere to go, and it caused a paradoxical painful pleasure as Ronnie ran his hand against the stretched seams.

Linda turned to Ronnie, and she became even paler. She prepared to turn tail and run once again – maybe she could hide in a crack in the wall, wait for Ronnie to go to sleep, take her chances with finding someone else. It was a long shot, but it could work – but Ronnie crossed one eye to her tiny frame on his desk.

“If you even think about moving… I’ll… I’ll crush you… I’ll…” Ronnie’s threat was interspersed with a series of groans, and sometimes silence. His mind was in two places: Linda, and on his masturbation. He hadn’t even selected a video yet, but the minor stimulation from the porn site’s webpage combined with the knowledge he held Linda’s fate in his hands made him unspeakably horny.

Linda didn’t know if she should take the chance or not. On one hand, it didn’t look as though Ronnie was giving her his full attention… and frankly, observing the masturbating boy made her knees weak. He was so small at her full size, yet now his every movement and ministration creaked the chair and shook the table. He was giving into primal feelings of release, and Linda felt unsafe in the presence of such a force of nature.

But if she got caught… Linda hadn’t forgotten the callous threat of crushing her. And considering she just spent the evening in the boy’s shoe, that didn’t seem far-fetched. If she tried to escape and failed… the punishment would be–

Linda didn’t have time to ruminate over the consequences. Ronnie’s hand slammed atop her, dragging her into his clumsy, slender talons. Linda shouted and seethed, leg and arm slipping through the gaps in Ronnie’s fingers. “L-LET ME GO! Let me go, please, please! Stop! P-p…p…”

Ronnie lifted Linda in front of his face. He managed to catch a dribble of drool just in time before it slipped out the corner of his mouth, and he smiled. Ronnie saw the fear in this woman’s eyes. And he loved it. Ronnie had never made anyone afraid before. It was a new feeling. A novelty that provided him a high that was unique and unlike anything he’d felt before. It drove him out of his mind and heightened the arousing spire in his pants into a full-throttle throb. It was causing him physical discomfort to ignore his impulses for this long. The time for release had arrived.

Ronnie removed his hand from his computer mouse, and with one motion he undid the knot that bound the anterior of his sweatpants. The tent underneath became a bungalow. Linda stared downwards as Ronnie’s right hand did this work, silent except for her hoarse whimpering. She let out a slight shriek as Ronnie pulled his pants down, and his cock sprang up. Its massive, milky, bulbous head was slathered in precum that exacerbated its shine against the low light.

Linda went slack as she witnessed the cock directly below her. She didn’t have a proper idea of its length from this vantage point, but she did have an idea of its girth. The thickness was more than Linda expected, a sentiment she’d probably maintain had she been normal-sized. Ronnie was gently dragging his fingers up and down the lower roots, just barely nibbling at the hood. And with each repetition, the cock let out a pulse, a heartbeat. It was an animal unto itself, alive and hungry for more of this new addictive drug. Blood was filtering through the veins along the shaft so thick and so fast, Linda could almost see it through his translucent skin. The scent of the evaporating biological lube the tip secreted was already filling Linda’s nostrils, and she hated herself for not finding it completely repulsive. The fact was, at this size, her olfactory senses were being overloaded with each passing moment. Linda was hardwired from a biological standpoint to be attracted to this vision of masculinity, even if – or perhaps because – her brain was blaring out a fight-or-flight response that was impossible to ignore.

“So… how about I prove to you… that I’m a real man, huh?” Ronnie’s voice was husky, and the dangling grip he had on Linda’s body loosened. “That even in the face of my dick… a grown woman like you is nothing compared to it? And maybe… if you can satisfy me… I’ll grow you back?”

And Linda fell.

The sounds of hentai actresses moaning in response to tentacular violation phased into the back of Linda’s mind as the game began in earnest. Her flailing body flopped against Ronnie’s outspread balls. The flabs of skin were tight, and Linda bounced against them like a waterbed. She tried to close her mouth to prevent the secreting musk from invading her own orifices, but she was suddenly slammed against the hardening shaft as Ronnie clutched both her and the base of his own dick at once. Linda was now hugging the cock while Ronnie provided himself a massage, not quite stroking yet, but just enough to provide stimulation.

“And, come to think of it… it’s probably time to get these off…”

Linda could barely speak, and she definitely didn’t understand what Ronnie said in between the muffling. She only realized once Ronnie grabbed her nape and tore her tattered polo shirt away from her body with one aggressive tug that the child was disrobing her.

“ACH!!” Linda felt the burn as her clothes snapped against her, the thick threads breaking apart and inflicting her with a chafe as they were torn away. It was quick, and now Linda was clad in a bra and pants. But it wasn’t long until her pants too were ripped off her legs, and she belted out an even more severe scream.

“That’ll have to do… soft…” Ronnie whispered, and he began to rub her against his cock again, this time with gusto.

Linda wanted to scream again, but the repetitive motions stole her breath away at every attempt, leaving her grunting helplessly, suffocated against the stiff flesh of Ronnie’s mast. The precum was beginning to drip steadily down the sides, something which Ronnie anticipated excitedly as he dragged his hand further up, planting Linda’s head square in the middle of a thick gooey droplet just a tad larger than her own skull. Linda was dunked in, and her coughing fit began but was again stolen from her as Ronnie continued rubbing her within the viscous soup and then dragging her back down, a maneuver that drew a few hard throbs out from the cock as it drooled out a couple more of dollops of precum. She used her as a rag, spreading her body all around every inch of the member and painting it in a glistening glaze.

Linda was beaten, humiliated, exposed, and terrified. She was in shock, and the worst part was that every motion she made to fight this situation quite literally played into Ronnie’s hands. She could not struggle without providing this child with an extra bit of stimulation that was necessary to elicit more of the drowning torrent of sticky syrupy precum. It invaded her mouth, her eyes, her nose. It had already saturated her body in a shiny layer of film, completely dominating every sense from tactile to taste. Linda’s entire form vibrated painfully each time she had to make the disgusting choice to swallow the fluid that entered her mouth rather than choke on it, which was often. Her eyes stung with tears and irritants. This was hellish. This was simply hellish.

Ronnie on the other hand was glowing. He had never reached this level of hardness, and though it was difficult to keep from blowing his load too early, he was determined to try. His focus was split between the porn videos and quick glances at his hand, where the rubbery little woman had already been slathered in his dominating pre-seed. Her face was hidden at most times, either from his fingers or from the massive size of his five-and-a-half-inch cock that towered above Linda, superior to her in every way. God, just the thought that even his cock outclassed the itty-bitty woman… it was enough to drive him over the edge…

No! thought Ronnie. Not yet… but, ah, the pleasure. It was mounting. He could feel the swelling within his tightening balls. He hadn’t even gotten the tissues out! He was going to make a mess.

But Ronnie didn’t care. It had been scarcely a minute, but his churning balls were ready to unleash the most powerful orgasm of his life. Ronnie’s rubs sped up, taking Linda along for the ride as their frequency hit multiple strokes a second, each slide liberally lubed up by his precum. Ronnie could make out a limb here or there, but in the rush he simply didn’t care about her anymore. He was ready to unleash, to explode. His body filled with euphoria, and then pooled all of it into his core as Ronnie curled his toes, a moan passing through his lips as a pained grunt, and he hit the climax.

The volcanic eruption began as a small spritz that burst through the tip, landing on the desk. Then the torrent came out in earnest, sending multiple ropes up into the air, each landing on either the computer keyboard, the wall, or on Ronnie himself, some reaching as high as his cheek. From then, the eruption became a pyroclastic flow, dribbling down all sides of his cock in a milky white landslide flood that flowed over Ronnie’s still-pumping fingers, getting all into the nooks and crevices. It was only as Ronnie finally began to catch his breath did he loosen his grip, and Linda was swept up in the snowy mudslide, completely overtaken in Ronnie’s cum, collecting in a pool on the edge of his seat between his chubby thighs.

Ronnie took another deep breath. His eyes were glazed. He angled them downward slightly and saw that this dick had went flaccid, yet even now it was ejecting a few misfired volleys of semen, rolling down into the growing puddle of fluid that had yet to absorb into the fabric of his chair. Somewhere in that pile was a human woman.

Well, no, thought Ronnie.

She wasn’t a woman anymore. Not after that.

She wasn’t even a bug. That would imply agency on her part, something she had none of.

She… it… was a thing. And it belonged to no one in this world, except Ronnie.

There was a stir in the mix. A mound was forming. Linda’s form was trying to stand. Between the cum dripping off the edge and the uncertain cushiony fabric of the seat, she was having a rough time of it. Once she made it to her knees, she still barely looked like a human, and looked more like a golem made of foam. She tried to scrape off the cum that had collected into an armor-like layer on every bit of her body, but tripped and fell into the pile again, completely overtaken. This time it did not come back up.

Ronnie sighed. He had to do everything himself.

He reached his sticky hand toward where it fell and he dug into the mess, clutching his thumb and forefinger around its body. At first they slipped, and he picked up nothing. Ronnie tried again, lifting it up by a limp arm out of the muck and in front of his face.

From here, the cum was slipping off through gravity, enough to again reveal Linda’s face. Her hair was slicked against her neck, and her eyes were simple slits. She was still shaking, but it looked as though she had lost all feeling.

Ronnie bared his fangs, and he opened his mouth, licking her body from the bottom to the top. His cum was salty and not entirely something Ronnie was used to, but he had sampled it before. Even if it was an acquired taste, somehow Ronnie didn’t really mind. Especially after seeing the effect the lick had on her, jolting her awake, the capstone on him making his ownership clear to her.

“You’re mine, aren’t you…”

Linda was silent. Her mind had been battered and broken. She couldn’t muster a word, a movement, anything.

“And just so you know,” Ronnie said as he planted Linda on the desktop, next to a small pile of cum that still retained its surface tension. “I lied earlier about letting you go. I don’t even know how to work the app, much less if it can grow you back. But that’s life, isn’t it?”

Ronnie got up from his seat, pants still hanging around his waist. Drips of cum fell from his dick to the floor as he waddled to a nearby dresser, pulling from it a pack of tissues. He took out a few and cleaned off his dick somewhat, eventually abandoning his pants altogether.

When he got back to his desk, he noticed Linda had curled into a tight ball, and she was clutching her head. Ronnie slid into his desk, observing her for a few moments. He gently tapped her, and the ball only got tighter like a roly poly.

Ronnie huffed. Then he noticed that seeing something about the sheer terror he had instilled in her… it was making his heart pound again.

Did Ronnie have it in him to take another go? Usually not. But now that she was here… anything was possible.

So, Ronnie grabbed at her again. He plucked her up, and her form flailed. “Ready for round two?”

“NO, NONONONONONONONONON–”

Ronnie ignored her, and he plunked her down against his quickly stiffening cock once again. Ronnie felt a cruel smile come to his face as the gentle warmth her sobbing body provided spread into him. And he wondered…

If this was the fun he could get from owning one woman…

Why not two?

Ronnie’s eyes slowly, drearily managed to pry themselves open.

Ronnie turned. His blanket had only been covering 30% of his body, which was already bare save a pair of boxers. He was cold, hungry, and drowsy. A deadly combination. Ronnie reached for his phone… and it wasn’t there.

“Hnnggg…” Ronnie moaned.

Like a zombie, he scrambled with jerky blind motions – the source of the alarm. But though he could hear it, it wasn’t within reach.

Ronnie opened his eyes in full and groaned. His vision was congealed in a mass of uncertain shapes and uncommitted colors. He reached out and squabbled with the blanket, and he began waving it out in wide flaps. The blanket formed a series of parabolic arcs, and a large electronic tablet was flung from between their folds.

“My Switch!” Ronnie kicked himself. That’s what he’d been doing last night.

Ronnie hopped off the bed. The Switch hadn’t gone far, landing in a pile of clothes close to his desk. He reached down without bending his knees and grabbed it, his shorts imprinting within the lines of his slim buttocks. Ronnie tapped the power button and breathed a tentative sigh of relief that it still turned on despite taking a dive.

Ronnie was awake now, and he had a better idea of where the phone had gone. He flopped back on the bed and stuck his arm between the mattress and the wall, reaching down to the ground. There the phone was, perfectly thin enough to slide between the two. It might’ve been a difficult proposition to retrieve for anyone else, but Ronnie was fortunate. His hands were lithe, and his arm was slender enough that it managed to slide through and grab the phone with no issue.

“Ah, there we go.” Ronnie plucked it out and stopped the alarm, grinning as the sweet sound of silence greeted him once again. Blue morning light was gleaming through his window. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping.

Ronnie flitted through the phone and checked the Control App. Sure enough, it was still there. Ronnie didn’t precisely know why he checked every time he used his phone. It was a habit. It still didn’t seem real, the notion that an app could shrink a human being. It’s not like Ronnie’s phone was some sort of futuristic super-phone; it was the same cheap Chinese knock-off he’d had for the last several years. The idea that an app could do something like what it did several weeks ago was akin to magic. Well, no. Even magic had rules to abide by. But this… this was a method to circumvent reality itself. It felt like a dream. And every time he woke up in the morning, he rushed to ensure it was more than a dream. It was real. He had a power he never would’ve dreamed of.

All this ran through Ronnie’s mind as he opened up the app and raised the augmented-reality visor to his visibility. The occasional red dot peppered the white void in the background. Some near, some far. He still had only one credit.

“YOU HAVE ONE (1) CREDIT.”

“ACH!” That too, was a problem. No matter what settings he fiddled with, what options he changed in the menu, no matter whether his phone was on silent or Do Not Disturb, that stupid voice would always blare out and announce to the heavens above exactly how much ‘credit’ he had. It was annoying, and more importantly, concerning. The opposite of discrete. If Ronnie wanted to use the app again, he would have to be extremely discerning about where and when. No one – no one – will know about this.

Save for those he chooses to shrink, that is.

Anyway…

“Hey, Thing.”

Like clockwork. Ronnie glared through the phone screen down between his legs as they dangled off the edge of the bed. His rubbery toes scrunched and curled, their knuckles just barely kissing the hairs of the carpet as a bright, shining red outline on the screen trudged toward those toes at a snail’s pace. Ronnie peered around his phone, to the floor where the figure that had become Ronnie’s source of unmatched joy crawled drearily out from her roost.

Linda had seen better days. Her clothes, once freshly pressed and ironed, had become ragged tatters of their former selves, soiled from days and weeks without a change or wash… unless showers of Ronnie’s cum counted as a wash. Her hair was a tangled, crusted over mop. Her shoes were useless clumps of leather held together by nothing but prayer at this point. And whereas Linda had once been a virile young-ish woman full of life… now, her face held nothing. It emoted nothing. A vague sense of despair seemed to be the only spark behind her lifeless eyes, yet even that was snuffed out. To show emotion was to court death, thought Linda. It was easier to do nothing.

Ronnie’s toes barely reached the floor of his elevated bedframe. They danced across the carpet, and Ronnie chuckled as Linda finished emerging, turning around like a soldier at the end of his training march.

“Thing. Lick,” Ronnie said, cocking his head just a tad. His cock was already becoming stiff, amped up by his morning wood.

Linda obliged. She knelt down and picked up Ronnie’s big toe off the ground, facing its bulbous, smooth, silky mass beneath the toenail. Much of the smell it accrued during the previous day had wafted away as they laid bare during the night, though faint hints of Ronnie’s acrid sweat still settled into the grooves of his toe print, calcifying overnight and giving the boy’s toes that characteristic sheen that Linda had become familiar with.

There were so many parts of this child’s anatomy that Linda was now intimately associated with. So… so many.

N-no, thought Linda as she dragged her tongue across Ronnie’s toe. No thoughts. Nothing.

That was how she managed to persist.

It was difficult to empty her mind of absolutely everything, but the lengths people will go to for survival are unparalleled. It was hard for Linda to forget everything related to her home life. To forget her loving boyfriend. To forget the numerous close loved ones she made during her four years at business school. To forget the family she who loved her, cherished her, raised her. To forget the life she had left behind so quickly, so inadvertently, so utterly.

It just… wasn’t fair, thought Linda, before quickly scrubbing those thoughts away. No thoughts. But, it just wasn’t. What had she even done to deserve this?

Had she been a little callous? Sure. Had she been sort of a narc? Perhaps. Had she misgendered a teenage boy? Yeah, accidentally.

But there was no way this punishment was commensurate with that list of offenses. She had been flogged with endless humiliation for weeks. The sun was a scarce luxury to her, always filtered through windows, or through the linen cloth of Ronnie’s garments when she had so “earned” the privilege to go out in public with him, stowed away in his pocket during the best of times, in his shoe during slightly worse times, and in his underwear when…

Linda shuddered.

“Thing, you’re not being very diligent today. Is something going on?”

Ronnie bent forward and reached down, and Linda instinctively dove toward his toes for any sense of comfort. His feet were her place. As perverse as it may have seemed, they provided a sense of sanctuary, and if hiding beneath the banner of his sole would shield her from his looming… terrifying… cherubic visage, Linda would gladly stay there for life. It was far easier to believe that she’d been granted this sentence by a sentient, fleshy mountain than by an actual fellow human being.

Ronnie giggled. “You’re cute sometimes, Thing. You know that?”

Ronnie dug beneath his foot, fingers wrapping around Linda and plucking her up and off the carpet. Weeks ago, Linda might’ve fought to escape after having been grasped. Not anymore. Now she simply shut down. And she waited until she was addressed, or until she was set on whatever surface she was heading toward.

“What’s wrong?” Ronnie asked as he set her in his palm. Linda collapsed in a heap, twitching slightly as she slowly rotated to face Ronnie’s expression. It was twisted in a version of sympathy, yet beneath it all, Ronnie knew that he was the giver of life, the keeper of death. Every emotion Linda was capable of experiencing in this demented hell, Ronnie had the capacity to take away or increase tenfold. If he wanted to make her feel pain, fear, despair, he could. And now that she’d been so completely broken, Ronnie too had the power to give her joy, if only that fleeting joy that is a result of one’s situation not being as shitty as it could be.

Linda could tell Ronnie truly wanted to know what was wrong. She could try to formulate words… but when she opened her mouth, only a frog’s croak came out. Even language was a chore for Linda to grab hold of. Not that Linda had forgotten how to speak, no. Rather, it was such a momentous task to even attempt to commune with this giant being like they were equals, Linda would’ve preferred not to bother.

“Oh, that doesn’t sound good… Is something bothering you, Thing?” Ronnie raised an eyebrow.

Linda shook her head, a movement that devolved into a violent shiver.

“You sure? It sounds like –”

Knock, knock, knock!

Ronnie stuffed Linda in his boxers. Before he had the chance to say “Come in”, a disheveled woman wearing a bathrobe opened his door and peered inside.

“M-morning…” Ronnie said.

Ronnie’s mother looked at Ronnie’s burning red face, mostly-bare body, and she made a weird face. She faltered at first when she started to speak, but then shook her head.

Ronnie’s cock tingled and twitched with the squirming of the occupant stuffed inside his pants, and with a (definitely not) discrete maneuver he shifted on the bed, body aiming away while his head was turned to face his mother. “Did you need anything, Mom?”

Mrs. McIntyre blinked twice before she started. “Were you talking to anyone?”

Ronnie brandished his phone in-hand. “Just some friends off Discord.”

“It’s too early for you to be getting on social media. Staying on your phone day-in-day-out hurts your brain. If you don’t put a stop to it, I might have to revoke some privileges.”

“C’mon, Mom… my grades are good, aren’t they?” Ronnie pleaded. Every second he spoke with his mom was a struggle to keep a straight face.

Mrs. McIntyre scowled. “Yes, and I love you for it. But there are other extracurriculars at school to worry about besides grades. Anyway… come ride with me to the coffeeshop. You can pick up my beverage.”

She closed the door to a crack and left down the hall. Ronnie at first breathed a sigh of relief… then he had an epiphany. He leapt up from the bed then cringed, knees buckling as Linda’s incessant struggling intensified. He couldn’t go to his mom like this. So instead, he yelled:

“Uh, Mom?”

“What is it, sweetie?” the voice came back, faint after having travelled through the wall.

“How about I go pick it up myself? It’s just around the corner!”

“You want to drive?!” she asked with an incredulous tone.

Ronnie groaned silently, thankful she couldn’t see his face. “I can walk! It’s a ten-minute trip!”

Ronnie counted on his fingers for a few moments as his mother didn’t say anything. Eventually, Ronnie sighed. He reached into his boxer shorts and pulled out Linda’s form. Now free from her captivity, she had reverted to her dead-eyes state of acceptance as she awaited her next directive. Her own smell had long since been superseded by Ronnie’s overpowering musk. Ronnie looked into her eyes curiously… when his door opened again.

Plop!

Ronnie had just barely stuffed the woman into his mouth by the time his mother laid eyes on him again, brandishing her credit card.

“You can get something for yourself, too. Just make sure…”

Ronnie’s left cheek was stuffed like a chipmunk as he tried to pin Linda against the walls of his mouth with his tongue. Her twitches were a problem, but from the distances at which Mrs. McIntyre witnessed them they could be attributed to Ronnie sucking on whatever item he’d smuggled into his room.

“Please, Robin,” Mrs. McIntyre put her fingers to her forehead as she prepared to scold Ronnie. “No eating in your room! How often do I have to tell you this?”

“Ph’shorry…” Ronnie spoke out the side of his mouth. Somehow despite her son’s immaturity, seeing him like this couldn’t help but charm Mrs. McIntyre.

“If you’re that hungry, I guess you can get two things as well.” His mom smiled. She put the credit card on his dresser before leaving and shutting the door behind her.

F’pwah!

Linda came out shivering in a globule of drool on Ronnie’s palm. She wasn’t a complete stranger to being inside Ronnie’s mouth, but seldom so suddenly, so violently. It somehow summoned the light back into her eyes, to be so close to death once again, completely at the whims of this high schooler who could send her into the acrid abyss of his stomach any time he wanted.

Ronnie looked down at Linda with love and fascination. His pet brought him no end of joy.

You can get two things, Ronnie recalled his mother saying.

Yeah. I’ll get two things.

One mocha Frappuccino… and one girl to go.