It had started as a simple day at the beach with three of my friends. I joined, without a clue about what would happen that afternoon. And how could I? Even I can barely make sense of the absurdity of it all.

The four of us profited of the extremely low tide to explore a small, isolated cluster of rocks in an abandoned area at the side of our beach. Usually, this formation would be under water for most part of the year, and so someone thought it was a good idea to go and take a look around. It was notoriously an area where researchers used to study local fauna, since generally normal beachgoers and divers could almost never reach or get close to the formation.

The extremely rare event of such a low tide, mixed with the thrill of exploring a completely new and wild area, inspired me to adventure a bit more bravely than the other three people that were with me, and I got separated from the group. That was when I noticed an oddly shaped formation of various seashells, reflecting the light of the hot afternoon sun in an unexpected manner. A strange sensation overwhelmed me, and I acted as if I were not in control of my own actions. In hindsight, reaching out with my hand to examine the shells was not one of my brightest decisions.

Curiosity got the best of me, and without too much of a warning, the sharp edges of the weird shells cut through the flesh of my finger. A burning sensation spread out to the rest of my body, followed by an unexplainable sense of nausea. Before I knew it, I collapsed to my knees in just a few moments, without even the time to realize that my curiosity had probably brought me to an untimely demise due to an unknown poison.

When I came back to my senses, I was floating peacefully. The adrenaline suddenly kicked in, and I forced my eyes to open. I turned around in disbelief, seeing myself surrounded by water. But I soon realized that I wasn’t off the cost: I was inside a small puddle of water, on a sandy patch on the rocks, which now where unsurmountable mountains. I was minuscule. Panicking, I really tried my best to stay afloat in the shallow water, that was just a few centimeters deep. I couldn’t even touch the bottom.

I had only a few seconds to take in all that was happening, before the water suddenly became rough, as the sloshing sound of what seemed a raging squall approached. Far in the distance, I could see huge waves crashing down, as an object of impossible size collided with the surface of the water. The waves quickly reached me, and the clash pushed me underwater. Soon, the bright sunlight of the afternoon went extinct, as two huge shadows were cast upon me.

When I reached the surface again, I opened my eyes just to find myself in front of a set of massive, pink-lacquered toes, each resting above the water level. Although it was difficult to process, I was in front of a huge human being. Or better, a regular-sized human being. It wasn’t long before the second shadow approached, and a pair of larger, tanned feet reached the first, causing waves comparable to a storm to me, but that were probably just simple ripples. I looked up just to have confirmation of what I already assumed: tall above me stood the titanic bodies of Grace and Felicity, two of my friends. Even though the notion of ‘friends’ was about to be undermined by the events that would follow soon after.

To be completely honest, they were barely definable as ‘friends’ even way before the events of that fateful day. They had always treated me with spite, and we never seemed to get along well. It has always been a mystery why we still hanged out together at all. From their side, they probably started to take too much pleasure in mistreating me… Whispered words among them, laughter on my back, continuous taunts, or downright insults were basically part of the routine, lately more than ever. From my side… I couldn’t bring myself to explain rationally why I still endured all of that. The tension was already high between us, and now the two girls were literally towering over me.

Felicity was the first to come close to me, and the nearest. She was looking around, puzzled, her long dark hair moved by the afternoon wind, adjusting her sunglasses while searching for something… or someone.

At her side was Grace, shorter and less fit than her, but tanned and agile. She was the second one arriving to reach her dear friend.

“I told you, I saw it! He just… disappeared… right here…” Felicity explained, still looking around confused. It was Grace ‘s intuition to look down. Crouching to inspect me, a mite floating between their feet.

As her huge eyes focused on me, she let out a giggle of triumph.

“There he is”, she announced, standing back up and pointing a finger at me, for Felicity to see. “The idiot got himself shrunken!”. She said it as if it were the most natural thing to happen. And the most troubling thing was that she said it without an ounce of concern for me. If anything, Grace seemed amused.

Felicity looked down, followed her friend’s finger, and saw a small thing in the water, floating around her toes. Chaos ensued, as she let out a shrill scream and kicked the water before her. “Get that sandhopper away from me, I don’t want it to bite me!”. Her reaction caused the equivalent of a tsunami wave that washed me away, pushing me again underwater.

When I reemerged, I saw both girls’ faces above me. Grace still with a smug grin, and Felicity with an expression of amazement on her face. She had realized that I was no sandhopper after all. Which was probably for the worst.

For a few seconds, I could see my own fleeting reflection in the lens of her sunglasses. That was before the pad of Felicity’s titanic index finger was placed over me, hovering ominously upon me.

“Wait… This one, right?”. A rhetorical question to the other giantess. Grace didn’t even have the time to reply, before Felicity pushed me underwater with her finger. In an instant, what seemed to me like an immeasurable pressure (caused by only a few centimeters of water) overwhelmed me, as my titanic friend’s finger pinned me against the sandy bottom. I squirmed and trashed, feeling the sharp lacquered nail against my abdomen. The pressure from Felicity wasn’t too unsustainable, as the sand embraced the diminutive form of my body, but her fingertip was also pushing out the air from my lungs. Slowly asphyxiating me.

The images above the surface were blurry, but the most unsettling part was that both girls were smiling. Their muffled laughers boomed above, clearly not caring much about the fact that they could very easily end me if they kept me too long underwater.

As abruptly as it came, however, Felicity’s finger disappeared, swiftly emerging and abandoning the shallow waters in which it tortured me. I swam back to the surface just in time before running out of air completely.

While I was breathing heavily, eagerly inhaling air after almost drowning, I heard the two girls whispering in each other’s ear. Their plotting was not a good sign for me. At that point, I had already started to fear for my life and, with a desperate and clearly pointless attempt, I tried to swim away from the two girls. I turned back only to see an expression of contempt on Felicity’s face, and a mischievous grin on Grace’s lips. It was her turn, now.

Her chubby foot moved behind her, then sprung forward, splashing water everywhere. There was nowhere to hide, and no time to react: before I knew it, her titanic big toe hit my back with full force. She kicked me out of the water and sent me flying in the air. “Aaaand out of the park!” She exclaimed.

Luckily enough, I landed on a patch of wet sand, that cushioned the impact. I felt like I was launched on the other side of the sea, even if it was just outside the puddle of sea water, a distance that both girls covered in a couple of strides. I was still coughing out sand when they reached me. I couldn’t escape, and I stood once again under their shadows. The two giantesses exchanged a look of complicity… and raised their feet above me.

Drops of water the size of cars rained down on me from the sky, as Felicity’s paler foot and Grace’s tanned one stood above me, their skin slightly soggy and wrinkled after the long time spent in the salt water. Were they about… to just step on me? I wondered if they would go that far. To have fun at my expenses up to the point that they would simply obliterate me beneath them. I didn’t want to believe that. Sure, maybe I wasn’t the most important person ever to them, but I didn’t deserve to die for that. But their looming, descending soles seemed to disagree. I could do nothing but close my eyes and brace for the impact. For one moment, I had the curiosity to wonder who of them would actually do it.

Would it be Felicity, slowly and painfully grinding me into paste just for a laugh? And then washing away from her pale foot whatever would be left of me?

Or would it be Grace, obliterating me with one powerful step and no remorse? And then admiring with pride and superiority the stain left by my body?

Both outcomes seemed equally terrible. I couldn’t possibly believe they hated me that much. But when the impact came, I was spared. I incredulously opened my eyes to see Grace’s foot a few millimeters away from me on the right, and Felicity’s on the left. The two friends synchronized perfectly only to make fun of me.

“Shame I can’t tell if he pissed himself!” Felicity joked.

“What an idiot, I bet he liked that” Grace remarked.

“Yeah, what a pathetic fu—”. Grace was interrupted mid-sentence by Felicity, who kept her gaze fixed on something not too far away, near the rocks. She pointed at it, and Grace saw it too. You could almost see a cursed, gleaming reflection in her eyes. Without a word, the two of them strolled away, their thundering steps shaking the ground as they walked away, as if they were hypnotized. As if they hadn’t just tried to end my life for a joke.

I noticed that both gathered around a familiar-looking cluster of shells, not too different from the one I had encountered before. Slowly, with stiff, unnatural movements, they were reaching out to it with their hands with innocent and honest fascination for the bright object. I was too far away and, at my size, they wouldn’t have heard me even if I had warned them.

Which I didn’t do.

“Ouch!” they both exclaimed, almost at the unison, as the weird, poisoned shells cut their skin…

Honestly, I don’t know what to say about what happened next, except that no one is ever safe, on this planet.

One moment, you feel like you’re standing on top of the world, you feel like everyone is below you; and the moment after, you’re shot down to harsh reality. Where no one is ever in charge of their own destiny. And this is exactly what happened to Felicity and Grace.

I watched, as the two girls looked in horror at the bruise on their skin, left by the strange shells they touched out of curiosity… Immediately regretting it, as they felt something was wrong. Just seconds before, they were abusing the superiority given by their comparatively greater size. Now, the poison was taking effect on their own bodies, which started to reduce in size. It seemed like a pretty distressing process. I can’t say that they had been good friends – no, good people – judging from how they treated me before. But seeing them condemned to my very same fate… did they really deserve that? Am I bad for seeing a karmic justice in their predicament, the same as mine? Especially knowing that this small satisfaction didn’t improve my situation at all, lowering the chances of rescue to basically zero. Isn’t it pointless to feel gratification when your enemies are in a desperate situation if you did nothing to improve your own?

Needless to say, in just a few moments, the cruel girls that had previously bullied me ended up at my exact size.

After a few minutes of realization, the two newly shrunken girls turned to me. I’ll spare you the endless bickering that ensued. Denial and anger were the only possible consequence of that dire and seemingly unnatural situation, especially when dealing with irrational people like Felicity and Grace. 

I believe their greatest shock was not so much the fact of being shrunken, which was unusual enough per se, but rather of being put at my very same level. The level of inferior people, deserving to be treated as such, just for the fun of it. And the useless arguing would have continued, if the sound of the tides hadn’t almost completely covered our voices. We looked at the impossible mass of water of crashing waves, that at our size was inconceivable. And we realized that the sea was closer than we remembered.

The tide was rising again.

The formation of rock we had explored was about to return under the water in a few hours, and with our small bodies, I knew climbing and returning to a safe spot in time was almost impossible. But we had to try. And to do so, we needed to traverse the vast patch of sand that stretched before us.

Time passed as the three of us walked on and on through the interminable desert, in a futile attempt to reach any point that would make us recognizable in the patch of sand. The sun began to set and the shadows grew longer over the dunes. I turned back only to see that the water had covered in minutes what we had traversed in an hour. The tide was starting to rise again, and if we hadn’t been fast enough… we would have soon drowned, washed away like stranded fleas by the unforgiving sea. It quickly became clear that the small patch of sand that we had crossed would provide no shelter from the water. We had to reach the rocks and try to climb high enough.

But as we were approaching the massive cliff, Grace sprinted forward, shoving the rest of us aside. Felicity fell on the ground, cursing loudly for being intentionally boycotted by her own “friend”. It seemed inexplicable at first, but fear had made something inside Grace snap. “I won’t be held back by losers like you!” she shouted while running ahead toward safety, her voice clearly trembling with panic. “If there’s a chance I can save myself… I won’t end up like you miserable nobodies. You won’t hold me back, I will be saved, and I’ll… I’ll…”. Grace’s words became more and more garbled and irrational the further she went.

She had always been used to being in charge, and never the one in danger. The shift of perspective must have afflicted her. Or so I tried to explain to a furious Felicity, who let out her anger on me, refusing to take my help getting up and shoving me in turn to the ground. She was in her very same situation, and all of us knew she wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same and leave us behind.

We lost sight of Grace as she raced among the huge dunes of the beach. We continued to preserve energies, advancing more slowly.

But all of that was for nothing, since we never reached our destination.

A few minutes later, the earth started shaking. A familiar sensation that I had already experienced that day.

Someone was coming our way. Someone normal-sized.

A silhouette approached from the horizon, jumping playfully from one rock to another, and, with a leap on even feet, finally landed on the portion of sand ahead of us. The impact caused a wave of sand to propagate in our direction, half burying us beneath it. I had just the time to spit out some dirt and shield my eyes from the sandstorm, before another impact came our way, making the ground beneath me quake. Up above, there was a clueless, air-headed girl, which appeared almost identical to Felicity: the same raven hair, the same fair skin, even her bra matched in color the other girl’s.

Well, I had previously mentioned there were four people that afternoon. Lucy was the fourth. She was just tagging along… with her sister, Felicity.

The diminished girl screamed at the terrific sight of the monstrous size of her own sister. Which looked all but worried about watching her steps. In fact, Lucy was calling out her sister’s name, probably worried after not finding any of us for such a long time. She walked fast and impatiently, carrying her flip-flops in her hands. A hint of apprehension clouded her expression. She felt left behind, understandably.

But I only had so much to process what she was going through. Something was moving under the surface of the sand. Something huge.

Suddenly, a sinkhole opened beneath me, and I found myself trapped in the movement of the sand, going downwards. A massive wiggling mass of pink had excavated a tunnel from underground, resurfacing later. The girl’s toe. Which was basking in the warm sand, as she looked around for any of us. Another twitch of the huge appendage caused another massive stirring, and I slid down, right beneath it. I was harshly rubbed between the coarse skin of Lucy’s big toe and the sand beneath me. Bruised and bashed for a good couple of minutes, I had difficulty breathing due to the sand.

The giantess above hummed briefly, unaware of my condition.

Unexpectedly, another movement from underground saved me. Suddenly, her big toe rose up high, and from beneath me her second toe emerged, lifting me up along with a considerable mass of sand. The rest of her monolithic toes followed, and I was tossed in the air in a spray of sand, as she lifted her foot to walk away.

The landing at least was somewhat soft, as I fell head first into a newly-formed dune. Not far from me laid Felicity, half unconscious. Judging from her condition, she had experienced the same accident from the side of Lucy’s other foot. The giantess was now walking idly around, splashing in the low waters of the sea (at least, to a regular human) and looking around, frantically trying to find any clue about us. She started walking in circles, back and forth, more and more anxiously.

It wasn’t long before we noticed that, eventually, the circles were closing around us.

It all happened in a second. The huge mass of sand, vaguely shaped like a foot, rose above us for its next step. Lucy’s foot was caked in wet sand, which fell down on us like a rain of debris. But what caught our attention was a minuscule something, struggling and fighting, caked in the wet sand between the toes of the titanic girl. A wriggling, insignificant lump that was none other than Grace, who, apparently, didn’t go far. Easily fallen prey to Lucy’s idle walking. And we were next.

The sandy sole quickly lowered upon us. Our screams were muffled the moment Lucy’s foot stomped down right on us.

The sand at the bottom of her sole completely absorbed the impact, molding around our forms. And keeping us firmly stuck under the girl’s foot during her next step. She absent-mindedly dropped her flip-flops on the ground and slid her feet inside, trapping us between the sweaty foam and her warm, dirty foot. Lucy adjusted them with a few wiggles of her feet, feeling a bit uncomfortable, then jumped back on the rocks, heading to the main beach. From there, it was a long walk to her unknown destination.

With every step, the pressure became stronger, as the quick and anxious pace of Lucy ground us against her sandy flip-flop. And, unexpectedly, Grace acted first. Maybe the continuous pounding of Lucy’s titanic foot was already too much for her – her slim body appeared fragile under the brute strength of her friend’s steps – or maybe Grace simply couldn’t tolerate the humiliation of literally being stepped on; after all, she was used to be the one stepping on others.

Between one step and the other, she slowly crawled towards the titanic heel of our giant tormentor. I don’t know what she hoped to achieve, maybe she wanted to simply get out from under the foot to try getting noticed. I honestly think Grace, for once in her life, acted bravely… Even though it was for a selfish intention.

But her move had been too risky: moving to the outer part of the foot meant less sand to cushion the step. And so, with the next impact, Grace took the full blow of Lucy’s gigantic step. When the foot rose again, she didn’t stick to the sand and instead remained on the insole of the flip-flop. She held onto the colorful, foamy surface for her life, as another step and another impact inevitably followed. For the second time, she was stomped under the heel of our gigantic friend.

This time, we could distinctly hear a crack coming from her direction. After the foot was lifted, I saw Grace had been badly injured by the impact. She was holding one of her arms, groaning in pain. And that was what ultimately led to catastrophe. When the flip-flop was raised for the following step, she didn’t manage to get a hold in time and, with a casual, unnoticed flick of Lucy’s foot, Grace was sent flying away, tossed off the massive flip-flop and into the endless vastity of sand on the strand.

It was impossible to determine where she landed: too small to be seen, she tumbled off somewhere among the dunes. Hurt and alone, she was left to fend off for herself, as the night approached and the tide was rising. A few steps later, I completely lost sight of her location. Lucy continued to walk.

Ironically, she ended up being the one left behind. And so, we lost her.

I had no time to grieve the horror of losing someone to the huge world. Lucia picked up the pace while heading for the parking where she had left her car. The newly produced sweat dampened, even more, the sand stuck to her feet, turning it into mushy mud in which we were engulfed. At our size, there was no chance of wiggling out. And for what? To be tossed away and left behind just like Grace? Her fate was already terrible; I had no desire to share it.

Lucy pouted and groaned to herself, shooting one insult after the other: her anxiety had progressively turned to anger for being left behind. So she decided to simply stop looking for us and go home. After an interminable stroll – at least from our point of view – she reached her car. She hopped up in the driver seat, still mad at us, and turned on the engine. From beneath her foot, we could hear the familiar sound of her car starting, and a sudden pressure was yet again put on us as she started driving.

If the situation wasn’t bad enough for me and the already battered Felicity, Lucy had the fame of being a terrible driver. Her foot shifted frequently and unceremoniously from the gas pedal to the break, mashing them with unnecessary brute force, and grinding us down consequently. Her resentment towards us, specifically her sister, produced an even more savage and angry driving style. Unknowingly, Lucy was really making her pay.

By the time we reached her home, we had blacked out a couple of times each, and I was almost about to throw up from the turbulent travel right on the sole of the clueless driver. Not that Lucy would notice; she couldn’t even distinguish our bodies from the rest of the dirt.

She hopped down, stepping on the tiles of her front porch. But while walking towards the front door (still with us two firmly stuck to the sole of her left foot), she realized that she was leaving sand and prints behind her. Lucy sighed to herself and headed to the back of the house. She clumsily made her way through a few gardening tools scattered on the ground and reached a small faucet, which she turned all the way on.

She slid her feet out of her flip-flops, reduced to a filthy mess of sand and sweat by the tense drive home. And stepped under the torrential flow to clean them.

I was stuck and ground under her strong heel. The air was forced out of me, and there was only water around me to replace it. I slowly started to drown, but I still managed to witness that Felicity was having a different fate. She hadn’t been pinned down by Lucy’s foot, and as soon as the powerful waterfall reached her, she was splashed away from the giant foot… and towards the drain where the water headed.

She who considered herself so high and mighty; she that hadn’t hesitated, just a couple of hours before, to mock me and bully me for my size. Nearly killing me. Now, was slowly sliding away to her doom. In just a few seconds the water pushed her to the silver edge of the drain, despite her efforts to contrast the flow. A few seconds of hands flailing for a grip, and a brief scream cut short from the fall. Then, Felicity plunged into the dark abyss below, disappearing from sight. Lost somewhere in the depths of the city sewerage.

Soon after, Lucy turned off the faucet. She stepped away and I was finally freed from under her foot. Eagerly breathing air again, I turned on my back, completely exhausted. I looked up in her direction.

“What a bunch of assholes… But… What if they all ran into those clams, though…” she muttered to herself, letting out a small chuckle. “That would honestly be hilarious”. I could swear I even saw the faintest smile crossing her lips.

Could it be that… she already knew about their existence? I would have never known. As she turned off the stream of water and headed towards her house, I was left there. Abandoned in the puddle of water beneath the faucet of her garden, gasping for air.

With no hope to be rescued, or ever discovering the meaning behind that cryptic sentence that escaped from Lucy’s lips…