Mark had held his breath as long as was humanly possible, or at least someone of his somewhat-average lung capacity. He crouched on his hands and knees, continually massaging the same darkened pockmark in the rubber-lined fabric cave with his damp washcloth corner. The teen knew it would be impossible to avoid inhaling forever, and sure enough, his puffed cheeks gave way and he gasped up the stale, vaguely-parmesan-esque aroma that clung like fallout to the interior of his little sister Becky’s favorite mint-green flats, inside of which he was currently sitting at a height of less than a human thumb.

            Shaking his head, the Shrink-Act-persecuted sixteen-year-old gritted his teeth, hoping in vain to filter the fleshy odor of Becky’s bare feet as it leaked into his throat, but it didn’t help much. Not when his body only stood at two inches tall. These shoes certainly were in dire need of a clean, especially given that they were his sibling’s favorite, but he guessed that was exactly why he was here. It only proved a point, really.

            His mother Joy might’ve given him a slightly less degrading task, he supposed, but as she herself had been in the kitchen all morning, on her hands and knees herself scrubbing away at the tile, and she hadn’t even spray-painted the school gym, it did seem he wasn’t necessarily getting a bum deal. Fair was fair, after all, and it wasn’t like his mother was capable of fitting her entire body into her daughter’s shoe like Mark was.

            So, biting his tongue and gulping up a rank breath, the teen allowed his forearms and shins to sink back into the plush flooring of the slipper-shaped tunnel, melted over hundreds of hours of wear by the ball of Becky’s left foot. Amidst a graveyard of empty shoes and the occasional dust bunny of the laundry room beyond, the boy realized, at least he had some peace and quiet to do his duty and wipe the grunge from the gigantic fourteen-year-old sister’s shoes.       

            Duty? Maybe that was a little strong of a word. Debt to society? Probably better.

            “I thought you said your brother would be in the kitchen?” a shrill voice questioned from the hallway. Mark froze, pre-emptively mortified before the source of the words was identified. Out of instinct, he inched further back into the deepest corner of Becky’s flat. The pungent air became thicker, tickling his skin with the memory of the girl’s often unwashed feet and their porous discharge, but he didn’t care just so long as no strangers saw him like this.

            It wasn’t that he feared for the treatment he would receive in his sister’s loving though occasionally overbearing hands and fingers. It was more the almost certain wounding of character he would receive as she cooed up a storm in the presence of a houseguest.

            “Yeah, I thought so. I guess Mom gave him a different job.” Becky’s voice followed next, and suddenly Mark recognized her companion’s sound as that of Melissa, the neighbor from two blocks down, a close friend of his sister’s, and a petite curly-haired brunette beauty with whom he’d harbored something of a little crush for at least a year. He knew nothing would probably come of it, but she still gave him knots in his gut. “Mark?”

            If it was possible to actually meld himself into the musty curved walls of the feminine flat, Mark would’ve, if it meant he could remain hidden. His cheeks had already flushed a red so deep it had to be exactly the chromatic opposite of the verdant, bow-tied shoe. It probably wasn’t going to be of much help in getting Melissa to notice him if she happened to glimpse him at a size smaller than her finger; of course, he never would’ve had the guts to let his little sister know of his childish desire for the girl, or she probably would’ve avoided putting him in this situation.

            Probably.

            “Maaaark!” his sister yodeled from the other room, though the volume rose as she approached the laundry/shoe space. Mark heard two pairs of pounding feet thumping almost in tandem across the floor, rattling his limbs as he clenched every muscle in attempt to become a statue in the tip-toe corner of the girl’s shoe. Just by nature of his nearness to the floor, he could distinguish each set of footprints: one with a more pronounced landing, and the gentle call of summer-sweat-greased sole flesh unpeeling from the hardwood. The other was almost silenced, though he could hear the slick slide of fuzzy nylon on the floor.

            One giantess barefoot, one in socks. It disgusted him how well he’d come to know the bizarre world so near to the floor in the mere month he’d been under juvenile shrunken house arrest. If he could’ve listen to their footfalls a little longer, Mark knew he could probably pick out their exact moods.

            “Where are you, widdle brudder?” Becky asked loudly, her voice echoing off the white metal tower of the dryer behind the second row of shoes, and Mark realized both she and Melissa had entered the room. Their steps rocked him harder still as they finally came to a stop. Peeking out the open sliver of light still visible through the mouth of the shoe, Mark could just barely make out the ponytailed top of his sibling’s head high above.

            “Maybe he doesn’t want us to find him,” Melissa said, stifling a giggle. “Maybe he’s embarrassed.”

            You don’t know the half of it, thought Mark.

            “What? No, that’s crazy! He loves it when I hold him,” Becky stated indignantly, and though he couldn’t see it, Mark knew his gigantic sibling had planted her hands defiantly on her narrow hips.

            “Uh-huh,” Melissa said. “My aunt shrinks my cousin whenever she grounds him, which is like… every other weekend. He hates it. He screams and yells and stuff the whole time and she just covers his mouth up.”

            “Mark’s different, though. I’m gentle.”

            “Still. It probably feels funny. Having your little sister pick you up and everything.”

            “But I wanted you to see him at one inch! He’s so cute. But we can’t shrink him more if we don’t find him first.”

            “I thought you said you’re not old enough to use the PMRD?”

            “Ugh. I’m not… yet… but Mom sometimes does it for me if I want to hang out with him tiny.”

            “Ohh, I see. That’s cool. I wish my mom would do that for me with George.”

            “Your brother’s not on house arrest, though!” Becky chuckled.

            “So? That doesn’t mean he’s not still bad sometimes,” Melissa answered with apparent envy. “I could take care of him. Especially at one inch tall. He can’t go anywhere without me.”

            “That’s why you should get to hold Mark, as practice!”

            “Yeah, that makes sense,” Melissa relented. “I’d keep him warm, too.”

            Mark’s heart sunk a little at this final decision, though he at least was comforted to hear she didn’t necessarily find the idea of carrying a reduced human being in the palm of her hand as some hysterical cosmic joke. Additionally, it was more than a little affecting to picture himself wrapped in the girl’s soft palms, emasculating as it would be.

            “Hey, keeping him warm is my job. But I guess he’s not coming out, wherever he went,” Becky sighed, peeking around the doorframe just in case her sibling came tottering around the corner at his toothpick height. “We’ll check again when we get back from your house.”

            Oh, good. They were leaving for now. It would give Mark time to clamber out of this squalid shoe, which was seriously starting to marinate his senses with its leathery odor and flaked remnants of Becky’s polished toes. Then he could just take refuge somewhere far more open and less foot-scented, both of which were incredibly ideal-sounding to him at this point.

            “Mom, we’re going to Melissa’s house for a little bit!” Becky hollered into the hallway, cupping a hand over her lips.

            “Okay, hon!” Joy’s voice echoed back from the kitchen.

            “Cool. Put your shoes on. The show’s gonna start in, like, four minutes! And I know you don’t have cable,” Melissa taunted playfully.

            “Hey, don’t rub it in,” Becky grumbled, letting out a cheeky snicker on the end. Her footsteps thundered nearer to the opening of the shoe, and suddenly Mark could make out the twin towers of her legs stretching far up beyond his sight, slender and tightened as they were by long hours of dancing, clad in skin-tight pale pink nylon stockings. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t quite get out the sound. Becky’s left foot arched into the air, toes taut against the faded fabric.

            Shit.

            “Those flats are so beat up. And they’re green! You’re gonna look like a watermelon girl with them and the tights on!” Melissa joked, jostling her friend in the shoulder.

            “I know, I know, but they’re my favorites,” Becky sighed bashfully, confirming what Mark knew given how often she slipped them on. Without another thought, she slid her stocking-encased foot into the well-worn left flat, shifting her heel from side to side until it was flush against her ped. “Plus, I asked Mom if she could have Mark clean them for me when he had a chance. With his little hands, he could probably do a really good job.”

            “Yeah, I bet. You’ll have to tell me how he does,” Melissa said, voice broadened by her grin. “Maybe I can convince George to try it. I’d probably have to pay him first, but still.”

            “Oh, I will. If he doesn’t do it by the end of the day, I might just stick him in there myself,” Becky said, descending into a girlish chortle with her friend, before taking her first step toward the garage door steps once her flats were securely donned to her . “You know I’m kidding, right? I love my big brother waaaay too much for that.”

            “I know, I know.”

            Mark could only catch the occasional word of this continued conversation as he was thrashed about, fastened beneath megatons of pressure and his giant sister’s five moist, sticky digits the size of Olympic punching bags wrapped in soggy pink nylon that quickly pinned him to the dank wall of the accidental shoe-prison.

            Mark couldn’t help but feel he’d been ungrateful for the embarrassing, mildly humid solitude of before inside the giant shoe, prior to when Becky and Melissa had entered the laundry room.

            Now that he was sharing the densely packed space of his little sister’s favorite mint-green flat with her stocking-stuffed left foot, crowded into the very tip by five squirming, semi-pudgy, sweat-glossed toes each nearly as large as his entire body, he was beginning to wish he could take back his earlier interior complaints.

            If he wasn’t so worried for his own bodily safety, Mark knew he would’ve grown quite nauseous by this point, as each step was like an accelerated ascent up the hill of a steel roller coaster, with Becky’s mammoth toes suspended briefly above his frail form, causing him to roll awkwardly against the top of the bulging ball of her foot.

            The descent came just as quickly, though, with even fewer positives to focus on. Becky’s foot flexed in midair, her toes splayed upward through the pink stocking and then curling down again, instantly ramming Mark back into the thankfully cushy wall of the shoe, practically molding his shape into the toe-tip. Then came the impact, not quite painful thanks to the lighter touch that came with his sister’s casual dance training plus the padding of the sock, but he nonetheless felt the pressure building up atop his limbs and torso as her toes wriggled back into place, filling the smelly void and making a flesh-and-fabric sandwich out of him.

            After Becky had taken around fifty steps and Mark had reoriented himself in the balmy pitch-black well enough to know where his hands were, he began throwing all his effort into punching the girl’s worming digits stretched inside the mealy nylon. Again and again he struck blows, sometimes meeting the airy give of space between Becky’s splayed toes, sometimes landing a blow on the doughy curvature of her big toe, but neither had any effect.

            Worse, since Becky and Melissa seemed to be in a hurry to catch whatever show they were so intent on geeking over, they had apparently settled on a brisk power-walk, making it even harder for Mark to manage, let alone try and get his sister’s attention. Eventually he gave up on trying to punch or pinch his sibling’s mashing digits, instead putting all his effort into keeping his cranium shielded from the next musky, wind-stealing brunt force. He was already dizzy enough from the wild blackout ride his gigantic sibling had unwittingly sent him on, and it wasn’t helping having to suck down the noisome flavor of Becky’s swampy pink stocking on every alternate step.

            Fifty steps turned to one hundred, then two hundred and three hundred. Mark was trounced with particular oomph into the plastered ball of Becky’s foot when, he presumed, she and Melissa were hopping off the concrete curb and crossing the thin residential road to the next block. They’d almost arrived, at least, though Mark hoped it came long before his bones started to creak.

            “I think the front door’s unlocked, let’s just go in,” Melissa said, though the sound of her voice was muffled between the thick green fabric of the flat and Becky’s constantly buckling toes. “Yep, open!”

            “Cool. I call the big armchair!” Becky giggled.

            “You’ll have to beat me there, then!”

            Mark felt the rumble of four stampeding appendages, one of which he was acquainted with now at a seismically intimate level.

            Becky picked up the pace as she crossed the threshold into Melissa’s house, pattering through the foyer after her friend by sauntering comically on the balls of her feet through the flats. Entertaining for the two fourteen-year-olds, assuredly, as they set back into raucous snickering upon entering the kitchen, but not terribly comfortable for the two-inch Mark, who felt the full weight of his sister’s enormous marshmallow toes balanced upon his back for just a few split seconds longer than he would’ve preferred, his preference being none.

            The tiny teen had been vaguely planning to reattempt his punching efforts once they reached the house, presumably as the girls would have to stop on the stoop for a moment, but the unlocked door meant they were free to charge forward. Mark knew he had to call out again, but his chest was too devoid of fresh air and moisture to summon any words. He coughed, only allowing more of the foul, putrefied fog into his lungs. His teeth caught on a snag of the near-sopping pink stocking, which by now had been scoured across Becky’s gently sweating peds for the whole sunbaked walk over to the house.

            Salty excretion was tattooed across the back of his throat as Mark spat the wad of tangled nylon back out, though he still couldn’t do anything about having his entire body immersed into the plush ceiling of his sister’s stocking-clad foot. On these slower, weightier steps now as the girls entered the living room, the boy could sense his body sinking up into the rosy fabric and spongy foot skin, molding into it like clay.

            “I called it! It’s like shotgun in a car. You know that, right?” Becky chuckled as she leapt effortlessly onto the reclining leather armchair.

            Mark felt the stomach-churning rush of zero gravity surround him and his tight company of titanic teenage toes before he was bounced down against the damp basin of the flat and then up again into the curved crevice beneath Becky’s stockinged toes, where he was immediately glued by the girl’s idly stretching digits. A joint in her middle toe popped loudly, startling the boy and scrambling his sense of direction again just as he was readying his fists to recommence the emergency beatdown on his sister’s toe.

            Groaning to himself, Mark decided once Becky noticed him, he was prepared to pay just about any sum of money or chores to ensure this little escapade never was uttered about again in either passing or implication. Though he had a feeling that wouldn’t be enough for the girl, whom he knew cared for him perhaps more than any of her other family or friends.

            This probably couldn’t end well.

            “Is it okay if I take my shoes off on the carpet?” Becky sang out to Melissa.

            “Sure… but they better not stink up the room!” her friend joked back.

            “Why do you have to be so mean to me?” the girl sighed dramatically. “They’re not that bad…”

            A certain smaller party in the room begged to differ. Mark’s heart fluttered joyously at the prospect of finally escaping the mashing prison of his sister’s toes, just as much as he positively dreaded the onslaught of humiliation that would surely accompany it. Maybe he could quietly get her attention before his sibling’s equally enormous friend caught notice and put the pieces together?

            Above all, he had to make sure everyone remained calm.

            He heard the thump of his sister’s gigantic fingers on the outside of the flat, squeezing it harder into her instep so the cusp of the heel would be loosened and slip away. Briefly, he found her toes compressing back around him, the netty fabric of the nylon bunching up around him and clogging into his nostrils and mouth again, this time with no chance to cough them up. Mark wheezed, struggling uselessly to bat his fists into her foot as he felt a hot droplet of her rancid sweat bead from between the massive toes and roll over his teeth.

            Mercifully, the process lasted only an instant, as the mint-green flat as pried and peeled away from Becky’s appendage and ankle. Out of instinct, Mark clung into the sea of fabric bolstered by muscular toe flesh behind it, wrapping his arms in for security as the shoe was dropped toward the floor below. A second alter, he was hung by his limbs like a macabre Christmas ornament from his younger sibling’s bouncing toes, her foot crossed over her opposite knee.

            “Um… Becks?” he peeped uncertainly.        

            He peeked over the fluffy pink horizon of Becky’s curled, stockinged toes and saw her golden ponytailed hair and bulging blue eyes crest into view. For a moment she blinked at him, processing the image of her two-inch sibling dangling from her digits by the slender footwear and putting the pieces together, and then she shrieked. Loud.

            So much for keeping things calm.

Mark wasn’t sure what made him feel more internal wrenching: the throat-tearing wails of his sister that had been continuing without oxygen breaks after she discovered him impounded in her shoe, or his mother’s enormous fingers prodding and kneading at his entire newly regrown twelve-inch body for injury. Already it had been an hour since his eight minutes in sweaty purgatory, and he seemed to be the only one ready to move on with life.

            “Mom, seriously, I’m fine,” the shrunken delinquent grunted as Joy clutched her son against her lap, her thumb tugging his shirt up and exploring across his stomach with her grooved fingertips. He squirmed against the woman’s expansive palm, which was able to cover almost his entire torso, even at this size, though his arms were gently but firmly nudged aside by a flick of her fingers.

            “I hear you, honey,” Joy said as she sat on a stool by the marbled kitchen island, her first aid kit opened and at the ready on its glossy surface in case it became necessary.

            “I looked, though!”

            “Mhm. Remind me who went to nursing school in this house and who didn’t? I’m not about to go off on a hunch when we could’ve prevented something just by checking.”

            Becky, hearing her mother’s declaration, seemed to take it quite personally, releasing a choked sob of even greater volume as she collapsed her cheek against the countertop, where her tears had already pooled. Mark winced, partly out of sympathy for his sister for her near-grave error, but also for the especially potent effect the cry had on his miniscule eardrums.

            “Hey!” he yelped as Joy’s thumb ran up the length of his thigh, passing over his crotch in transit.

            “What?” she questioned, pausing and immediately hovering her fingers back over the danger zone. “Did I find a spot?”

            “No!” he groaned. “Just… c’mon, Mom.”

            “Sorry,” she said, immediately understanding and moving on. She brushed her bangs higher on her forehead then commenced delicately pinching at Mark’s calves and ankles between her thumb and index finger. “Just make sure to give yourself another thorough check tonight when you’re changing, okay?”

            “Uh-huh,” he droned.

            “Why didn’t you SAY SOMETHING when we came in the room?” Becky howled, lifting her tear-splashed face up from the countertop again and slamming a fist into the surface. She rubbed her knuckles along the puffy undersides of her eyes, then wiped at her cute button nose, mopping up the refuse with overused tissues crumpled around her that Joy had provided. “We were calling for you. I even yelled your name, right there!”

            “I, uh…”

            “All you had to do was say you were there, and I could’ve gotten you out! You… you would never have… h-have…” Becky murmured, devolving quickly into unintelligible gurgles again.

            “It was my fault,” Joy said before her son could dryly offer up another excuse. She propped her thumb against his chin, lightly turning his gaze up to her face above. “I should never have asked you to clean out the shoes in that room without moving them into the kitchen, so no one could think they were usable.”

            “Mom… Becks… seriously, it’s… it’s not a big deal,” Mark said, wracking his brain for rhetorical devices. “Sure, I mean, it wasn’t… fun, exactly… but-”

            “But what?” Becky sputtered. She stumbled up from her own island bar stool and scurried around the kitchen counter, standing above her mother’s lap and towering over her prone sibling, hands pressed to her cheeks. “We called for you, over and over! Did… did you actually want t-”

            “GOD no!” Mark balked, mortified and infused with shivers at the very notion.

            “Then why?” Becky demanded. She reached down, clenched fists unfurling around Mark’s doll-scaled hips. Joy’s own warm fingers spread aside, making room for the girl to gently grapple with her accused.

            “I don’t know,” he admitted with a begrudging sigh. “I was… embarrassed, I guess. You had your friend there, and I just… thought you’d go away or something so I didn’t have to, like, come out like this or-”

            “Embarrassed?” Becky gaped with genuine confusion, furrowing her brow as she leaned in closer. Her tender fingers squeezed tighter around her brother’s narrow sides as she lifted him up, propping his knees against her chest so she could aim his miniature face at her own distraught countenance. “Why would you be embarrassed with us? You know Melissa! She’s super nice, she wouldn’t have done anything mean to you, and if she did anything that even started to hurt, I’d just take you back, and then you’d be with me again!”

            Mark noted that his sister seemed to list this last option as though it was some kind of reward to be sprawled at in inch high in the creased landscape of her palm: at Becky’s complete, utter, and adoring mercy. However, he resolved to keep his mouth shut.

            “It doesn’t matter why,” Joy said softly. “It happened, and now we have to learn from it.” She rose up and wrapped her arms around her daughter, offering further comfort as she hugged the entire family into a plush sandwich of shirts and trembling arms, with Mark carefully poised between his sister and mother’s abdomens.

            “I’m… I’m so sorry, Marky,” the girl wept again as a fresh downpour of soggy tears leaked down her chin, plopping unceremoniously against her brother’s head. He felt the salt in his eyes, trying unsuccessfully to blink it out. Next he reached up and pre-emptively wiped away a trickling stream before it could plunk off of Becky’s adorable face. “I should’ve been thinking. I don’t know why I wasn’t more careful, or why I didn’t feel you… but it’s all my fault!”

            “It was all of our faults,” Joy announced solemnly, leaning in nearer for the hug to enforce it and her own equal dispersion of guilt. “No one is taking on all the blame for something when we each had a part.”

            “Um, Mom?” Mark questioned as he felt his mother’s embrace increasing the pressure as his head was wedged awkwardly into the shallow valley of Becky’s t-shirt while Joy’s slender stomach squeezed harder against his back. For an instant, he was almost reminded of the sensation of being inside Becky’s mint flat again beneath her nyloned toes, albeit thankfully devoid of the same sopping and vinegar-flavored bog.

            “I’m sorry too, sweetie,” Joy said, her voice cracking on the last syllable as her hands slid up under his legs, offering support to her foot-tall offspring. She inched away to give him breathing room. “You look fine, like you said. Nothing I can see. Just check yourself out again tonight, and we’ll go from there.”

            “Okay,” he muttered, bowing his head. Looking down, Mark watched his sister’s much more petite though nonetheless dwarfing palms opening again, wrapping around his sides and pulling him back in against her upper body until his entire face was nuzzled into her moistened cheek.

            Swallowing his embarrassment, the boy planted a quick, polite peck of forgiveness on his sister’s cheek. Hearing and feeling it, the girl only coughed up more tears and sobs.

            “It’s all right, honey,” Joy said as she brushed her daughter’s frazzled bangs off her clammy forehead. The woman leaned back into her seat again, observing her youngest child bear-hugging the Shrink-Act-prosecuted older teen into her shoulder. “Mark, you can go ahead and take the rest of the day off, all right? You two can go watch some TV and I’ll make some popcorn. And then we’re going to come up with a plan to make sure this never has to happen again.”

            “A… plan?” Mark peeped awkwardly, trying to turn his head and glance at his towering mother behind them, but he could already feel the vibrations of Becky’s body as the belabored dancer took heaving steps back toward the living room, her hands clasped around his body and unlikely to release their lovingly overprotective grasp for at least the rest of the afternoon, except to snatch up kernels of puffed corn.

“Mom, um… not that I’m, like, against the whole safety thing, but…” Mark gawked as he stared in a paralyzed state of disbelief at the pile of newly purchased items Joy had just dumped out of the paper shopping bag and onto the kitchen counter. It didn’t exactly paint a pretty, nor especially promising, picture of his future.

            A box of fresh band-aids.

            A fresh tube of liquid gel bandage.

            A miniature plastic breathing apparatus with attached rubber pocket.

            Last but not least, a padded black-and-red one-piece not unlike a diving wetsuit, lined with foam and breathable pores, affixed with an emergency beacon button in the gloves, and specially trademarked for shrunken individuals who were expected to find themselves in some compromising locations with little outside protection.

            “Trust me, honey. In the long run, you’ll be so glad we took this time today,” his mother reassured, using her fingers to spread apart the options.

            Mark seriously had to doubt that.

            “Haven’t we already taken some time today? And yesterday?” the boy added, careful not to let himself sound complaintive. He’d been aching for a little privacy after he’d just spent the better part of sixteen hours in the house with his sister’s arms wrapped around his sides while on the couch or her hands nesting him into her lap as she checked every scrap of social media available on her laptop. It had taken an awful lot of convincing on Joy’s part to keep Becky from climbing into the boy’s bed with him when night fell. Apologies definitely didn’t come easily where she was concerned.

            “We took some time for a break, yes, and I’m glad you didn’t find anything else wrong,” Joy said, then turned to her daughter, who was also seated at the kitchen island again. “Honey? Everything all right?”

            “Yeah,” Becky sighed, the catharsis of clinging to her twelve-inch sibling for almost a full day having at least soothed her back to somewhat-normal. Her cheeks were still puffed a rosy hue after so much tear-staining the previous day. She reached out, fingers splayed and coiling them around Mark’s left leg as he stood before her, giving him a little tug. “Marky? I think your pants leg is too long. You might trip.”

            “I’m… good, Becks,” he said, observing that the denim sleeve did, indeed, extend just below his heel, but by no means in a life-threatening manner. If jeans could even be worn in such mortal fashion, anyway.

            “Let’s just roll it up, okay?” she insisted, and already her fingers were busily toying with the fabric, bunching and tucking it over itself with the soft tips of her digits until it was curled up past Mark’s calves. The girl nearly toppled her doll-scaled brother forward with the insistence of her digits, though she quickly wrapped a palm around his shins, keeping him rooted.

            “Uh, thanks,” Mark said as he inched forward another few steps across the counter, away from his sister’s primping fingers before they could discover another flaw. New Huck Finn-ish style of his pants aside, he didn’t need Becky fussing up a storm when he already was trying to mentally digest the fact that his mother apparently found him in need of scuba gear for whatever she had planned.

            “Now,” Joy said, clearing her throat and regaining both her children’s attentions with some effort. She steepled her fingers together as she leaned over the counter, regarding the fresh shrink-accessory merchandise with a glance. “I’ve done a… lot of thinking. All night, actually. And I think I’ve come up with some things we can all agree on, to make sure everyone stays safe.”

            “Okay…” Mark gulped, painting on an optimistic grin.

            “Sure, Mom,” Becky said immediately. By now the girl had straightened up, blue eyes bright and ready to receive whatever orders would keep her tiny sibling secure, though her index finger still remained hooked into the cusp of Mark’s pant leg, just in case it slipped back down. The boy had to suspect his sister’s finger remained attached, at least subconsciously, however, to keep him from wandering too far out of her reach. This was probably about to represent the norm for at least a week after her accident.

            “First of all: no one in this house is wearing socks, stockings, slippers, or anything that could keep us from feeling something underneath,” Joy said. “Unless Mark is already right in front of you.”

            The reduced teen heard the rustle of fabric down below: the gentle scraping of cotton fabric along toenails, and he realized his sister was instantaneously peeling her socks off her soles. It made sense, given that this directive was aimed squarely at his sibling, though somehow it made him nervous to hear Becky folding so easily into this semi-bizarre regime. She clearly was prepared to accept any mandate.

            “Second, Mark will not be doing any kind of work on the ground at any size smaller than a foot. If we have something that’s best suited for him, like… what you were doing yesterday, honey, then we’ll have it done up on the table or the couch, in plain sight,” Joy said, blinking several times in quick succession.

            Mark shrugged, knowing this next rule was primarily because of his mother’s mistakes, and could hear in her voice that she meant it. Maybe at least he’d be let off the hook on such activities a little sooner if he was in sight and in mind, especially if the aroma consistently wafting out of those abused insole fibers actually managed to infiltrate a normal-sized person’s sinuses and garner sympathy.

            “That makes sense,” Becky said. “If I have another shoe or something that needs to be cleaned up, Mark can just sit on my bed with me!”

            The boy withheld a hearty cough.

            “And last…” Joy breathed. Her hands upturned, her thumbs and middle fingers pinching around the breathing apparatus and miniscule diving suit, each of which occupied only a couple inches of space between her long digits. The moldable rubber bent in the weighty crevasse between her digits as she squeezed absentmindedly. Each item was scaled for use by someone smaller than the woman’s thumb.

            Mark swallowed. He knew this next rule, whatever it was, was for him.

            “…last, we’re going to have… practice.”

            “Practice?” Becky questioned, blinking rapidly.

            “Like first aid practice?” Mark asked with saccharine levels of hopefulness as he looked over the materials clearly intended to help heal wounds rendered at a smaller-than-average height.

            “Not exactly,” Joy said, tapping a finger at the band-aids and gel. “These are just in case. I hope we won’t need them, and if we all work together, I doubt we will.”

            “You meant practice like last time, right?” the younger teen chimed in.

            “Yes. Sort of,” their mother replied with some hesitance. “A month ago, we tried it with nothing on. I thought that was enough. But it’s… clear to me now, that for… Mark’s sake… for all of our sakes… we have a couple more lessons to learn. We’ve… and I mean both of us… need to have a better idea of what it feels like.”

            “Of… what feels like?” Mark blurbed. Eyes darting to the opposite corner of the counter, the boy spied a very specific silver-lined briefcase gleaming beneath the microwave, and already he had the gut-contorting answer he so definitely did not want.

            “…what it feels like to have you in our shoes, honey,” Joy said with painfully apologetic sweetness, stroking a finger down her miniature son’s shoulder blade.

            Her skin was lukewarm, but as the tip of the woman’s slender digit caressed along Mark’s back to ease the blow of humiliating information, he couldn’t help but pre-emptively feel the distinctive cold flash of the PMRD already seeping into his bones.

            “Are you all the way back there, Marky?” Becky sang into the lengthy leather tunnel of her mocha-chromed cowgirl boot.

            Down in the fur-lined darkness, laid out at only two inches tall now thanks to an adjustment by the PMRD, was Mark, clothed in the goofily striped one-piece, the rubber breathing device clenched in his back teeth. His spine was pressed to the curved wall of the boot’s toe, as distanced as he could be before the bulging intrusion of massive toes entered and tackled him. Though he knew no amount of distance was going to help.

            Chilled momentarily by the emerald fizzle of the shrinking device, his body temperature had almost instantaneously reversed directions once he was deposited down into the recently worn footwear.

            The twin buttons of the emergency indicators were attached between Mark’s index fingers and thumbs, thankfully easily in reach and capable of sending off a flashing alarm to the plastic monitor currently held in Joy’s palms far above. Already he felt the urge to squeeze the triggers with all his might, and his giant sister hadn’t even inserted her bare, train-sized foot into the boot yet.

            “Yep,” he sighed meekly in answer. He could see the filtered light poured into the boot dancing and shifting as his sister and mother moved about above. The boy could feel feet thumping against the carpeted ground beyond the muggy walls of his new prison and quaking him to his core, as well as far-away whispers granted only to the two normal-sized women above. Despite knowing that his mother and sister were merely discussing safety protocol to keep him in one piece, it made Mark feel oddly out of the loop, even lower than he already was as he crouched patiently in the acrid fog of Becky’s boot.

            “All right, honey,” Joy called into the mouth of the shoe, her massive shadow momentarily blotting out what little light her tiny son had access to. “I’ve already tested the monitor twice and it’s ready as soon as you hit either button. Now, once Becky starts walking, take a little bit of time to let her get a feel for you, and then choose when you’re going to start fighting back. Your fists, feet, anything you can use - remember, you won’t have the suit on if this ever happens again.”

            “Uh-huh,” Mark replied blankly.

            “Then, while you’re doing that, hit the buttons - and I’ll be able to see if Becky can guess it at the same time that you’re trying,” Joy finished. There was a ruffle as the woman’s hand slid down the length of the opening, alighting at the fur-trampled heel as her fingers fished toward the tip. Her thumb found Mark in his clenched position at the summit of the boot and stroked affectionately down his side, earning a guilty shudder of comfort out of her embarrassed offspring. “You’ll be all right.”

            “Uh-huh,” he repeated, not doubting her words from a physical standpoint as he poked at the ultra-dense padding on every surface of his suit, though he wasn’t sure he could quite say the same for the sanctity of his emotional status or masculinity as his enormous parent petted him like a wounded lemming.

            “All right, then,” Joy said as she tugged her arm back out of her daughter’s boot after a final caress of her son’s fetally curled body, leaving the boy alone once again, if only briefly. “Becky? Go ahead.”

            Mark, not wanting to watch his oncoming immediate future literally eating up the light and the space, shut his eyes as he heard the soft skin of Becky’s foot pressing into the opening and sidling along every feathery thread of the fuzzy lining. He felt the muted whomp as the ball of the girl’s foot met the insole, followed by the rustle of false fabric hair flossing between Becky’s naked, writhing toes as they charged toward their two-inch target.

            Gratefully, Mark could note a significant difference between having his sister’s toes meet him while she was aware of his presence versus before when she’d jammed her stockinged appendage into the flat in a giggling rampage to make a TV show deadline.

            Her toes, newly lotioned and polished, oddly for his benefit, gave him a gentle nudge to ensure he was in place before the girl arched them over him. The suit solidly kept him from the risk of bruising, and even the breathing device, though it was nonetheless feeding him air from an environment enriched over countless walks by feminine summer foot grease, seemed to work well. At least his lungs were filling up with something.

            Still, without the buffer of the slick nylon from yesterday, Mark found himself once again literally face-to-foot, his entire head squeezed into the baking swirl of his sister’s big toe. The rubber suit and breathing device made a big difference in keeping his nose from becoming buried in a sweaty flesh fold, but that only went so far. Luckily, the girl seemed to be making a special effort to crest her toes as high as possible, to give him more room.

            However, each protective tool that Mark wore also maintained a great deal of friction, and as the shrunken teen felt the rumble of ground below as Becky pushed off by the treads, her already anxiously-damp skin clung to the material of his suit, meaning with the every flinch, fleck, or splay of those massive toes, Mark experienced tenfold over every square millimeter.

            Thrown into a sense of déjà vu and vertigo, the sixteen-year-old crossed his arms over his chest and straightened his legs, the way Joy had instructed him to do for safety if he was unable to get enough leverage to beat his way into being noticed.

            Becky’s foot rose up, the leather bend of her narrow boot stretching and rubbing inside Mark’s ears. Centrifugal force hugged the boy flush against the underside of Becky’s writhing toes as they accidentally grasped him into their fleshy grip. He could tell she was only doing it for his safety, and that each step was increasingly slow and steady so she could wait to feel his emergency indication, but a muffled declaration from Joy suddenly sent her into a much more normalized pace.

            Their mother was nothing if not serious about application of valuable real-world lessons.

            Mark waited, counting out twelve entire steps in a lap around the kitchen as Becky continually and knowingly trod upon her two-inch brother at the concerned insistence of their precautious mother. Then, feeling the time was right, and wondering how much more he could handle of the greasy, toejam-flavored oxygen squeezed through his breathing tube, Mark began to punch. Throwing his fists again and again into the wall of skin and wrinkles above, as he had before but with even greater force, the reduced house-inmate squeezed both triggers in his gloves, giving Joy the signal, and continued to flail against Becky’s foot.

            But the graciously soft pounding didn’t stop. The titanic fourteen-year-old’s foot came down for a thirteenth, then fourteenth and fifteenth time, followed by eight more steps, continually grinding her beloved shrunken sibling down into the matted insole, all while her toes were tipped just a little too high out of reach for consistent signaling.

            Haplessly, Mark gave the trigger another two pulses to alert Joy, even as a particularly heavy landing mashed his skull down into the fluff beneath Becky’s meatiest digit. Again, no response was effected as the girl continued peacefully walking around the room, completely ignorant of the battle happening inside her boot.

            With a performance this poor, the teen had a sneaking suspicion his mother wasn’t going to be satisfied just yet.

            Mark wheezed into the vigorously pumping oxygen mask as he was tumbled for the umpteenth step on the underside of Becky’s sweat-lubricated toes. His suit, slicked with a full layer of gummy transudation, made the ride akin to a slip n’ slide, minus the coolness, happiness, and sunlight. The break he’d had a few minutes ago was hardly enough to gasp in a fresh round of untainted air in the world out of the girl’s over-worn leather boot, and before he knew it he was back in this pitch-black tunnel of unbearable heat and sour aroma.

            After Mark’s sister had failed to take notice of his repeated beatings on the underside of her appendage as she gently tramped around the living room with her shrunken brother trapped in her fashionable footwear, waiting for his signal, Joy had taken note of his distress calls on the monitor, and at last requested her two children to halt the task in which they had both failed.

            Soon enough, Mark was relieved of the plush weight of his sibling’s giant toes off his two-inch body and fished out of the tip of the boot by Becky’s trembling, clammy fingers. Somehow she’d managed to find some more tears hidden back in her ducts, and they were flowing again down her raw cheeks as she cradled the boy in her palm, apologizing continually for not noticing him again, even while she was attuning her senses to pick up his bids for freedom.

            And so, with a sigh, an apology, and a moist kiss on the top of the detainee’s little head, Joy had instructed her daughter to deposit the boy back into her boot for another test.

            “I did my best,” Mark mumbled.

            “I couldn’t feel him, honest!” Becky whined, bouncing impatiently. “I tried, I really tried! I almost felt like I was gonna fall on him.”

            “That’s… the point, honey. You can’t be lifting up or he won’t be able to reach you. If this happened for real, you’d be walking like normal,” Joy had said.

            “O-Okay…” the girl sighed.

            “Aim for the spots between her toes,” their mother had insisted, changing attention to Mark. “The skin is softer. She’ll feel it more. You could also try wrapping yourself around one of them, like wrestling. You won’t be able to match her movements, so either slow them down, or go where she’s vulnerable.”

            “Hit as hard as you can!” Becky blubbered meekly as she lowered her cupped palm back down into the briny darkness of her sweaty boot. “Do whatever you have to, Marky!”

            I did, the boy wanted to groan, though he held his tongue. His sister had been through enough trauma already today, and she wasn’t even the one who had been accidentally worn in a shoe. Frankly, he was just about ready to take three or four showers to wash off his sister’s salty stink and then begin the laborious process of forgetting about this afternoon of well-meaning humiliation.

            At this point, this activity was for his mother and sister’s peace of mind rather than his own, which was rather inconvenient, since he was the one being smashed like forgotten chewed gum into the sticky, marshmallow-like terrain of a giant bare foot again and again and again.

            So, the begrudging teen hopped off the titanic teen girl’s hand and made the short but squishy trek once again along her beaten-up instep and wedged himself into the end again, his back arched into the curve, where he’d be safest. Perhaps out of fear that she’d back out of it, Becky seemed to shove her foot into the boot with more force this time, as if she was ripping a band-aid away from her skin.

            Mark was bulldozed helplessly against the wall of the shoe as his sister commenced walking again, very nearly squelching what little disgusting air he’d managed to squeeze out of his breathing apparatus. Indeed, his sister was following Joy’s suggestion very carefully: she was stepping like normal again, as if he didn’t exist, as if she didn’t have a living thing grappling for life beneath her grimy toes.

            At the very least he’d learned a few lessons from the multiple occasions he’d had now to become familiar with the roly-poly chaos of being encased inside his enormous sibling’s shoe. By the rhythm of her booming steps, Mark knew when to expand his stomach and take in a deep breath, then constrict his torso and every muscle to prepare for impact as Becky placed her booted foot back on the carpet. He’d already been trained to recognize by the flicker of a toe muscle which one was going to curl into the top of her foot and which was going to extend, making for a better handhold, or at least the closest one he could approximate when every fleshy surface had become so slick and sticky with nervous summer sweat.

            Hell, maybe this wasn’t entirely useless after all. Though Mark hated the very notion that there was any positive benefit at all to having to spend so much time shrunken and imprisoned in a giant shoe, so he resolved quickly to avoid dwelling on this possibility.

            The boy returned half-heartedly to beating on Becky’s thrashing, worming toes, putting even more force into it until he could feel his shoulders getting weary and begging for a break. With the full brunt of those sandbag-like digits weighing upon him, fatigue came much faster than he’d hoped.

            Grappling with the buttons on his hands for Joy’s knowledge, the boy almost hated to do so, knowing it probably meant they’d have to repeat the activity yet again. He next attempted Joy’s two instructions, first jamming his hand as deeply as he could into the folds of clay-esque skin that webbed between the gargantuan girl’s big and second toes, though in the darkness and rapid motion, it was impossible to tell if he’d managed to reach the deepest corner of the crevice.

            Next Mark tried to hug himself into a digit, choosing the third, as he found it easiest to get all his limbs around it. However, as soon as he managed to curl an arm or a leg about the toe, Becky’s entire foot would clench, or a fresh geyser of sweat would seep through the doughy area between, and his grip would be lost, splashing him back into the spongy floor again to be bounced up against the girl’s mass.

            For all his effort, once again, the pair had seemingly flunked, and they’d almost certainly have to repeat it.

            Gritting his teeth and digesting the last morsel of his pride, perhaps for good, Mark decided that he had had plenty of this exercise by now. It was time to get a little extreme.

            Waiting for Becky’s foot to launch off the ground again, giving him a split second of loosened space and bodily agency, the boy dug his fingers under the body suit’s mask and ripped it and the rubber breathing tube away.

            No longer spared in even the slightest through the onslaught of vinegar-flavored sweat and broiling air, Mark huffed valiantly, becoming painfully reacquainted with the sensory trip he’d been forced through the day before, sans the protective gear. His skin tingled, bristling as salty excretion sopped into his body and burst in massive droplets against his lips.

            Undeterred, the thoroughly spent sixteen-year-old balled his hands into fists and pushed off the tip of the boot’s fuzzy, sweltering interior, throwing himself through the musky blackness until he felt his body colliding around Becky’s nearest flexing digit.

            The grooved pad of her toe was pressed flush almost immediately to his face, grinding unknowingly against his teeth. It flooded his tongue with flaked, soggy skin, and that’s when the boy acted. Parting his jaws, and awaiting the next moment of relatively free motion in mid-flight, Mark chomped onto the dense bulb of his little sister’s melon-sized toe tip.

            Like sliced cheese, the boy felt soggy, flaked foot skin brushing along the inside of his cheeks and melting away into his throat. Fighting the gag reflex, Mark chewed, hanging on for dear life by his jowls and coiled arms, feeling a mealy mixture of ingrained toe-grit along with a choked esophagus-full of lukewarm, oily sweat descend unwillingly down his gullet like the world’s worst medicine. He gnawed, ramming his teeth into the silky spiral of Becky’s toeprint, repeating it for several agonizingly repulsive seconds.

            Just when Mark was beginning to wonder if his churning stomach would be willing to take this abuse of his traumatized taste buds any longer before rebelling, he experienced the seismic event of his sister’s truck-sized boot coming to a stop as it sent him tumbling down beneath her arching, sunbaked instep.

            “You did what?” Becky squealed with voice-cracking disgust.

            “You heard me,” Mark grunted, burrowing his face casually in his fists. It wasn’t helping to make this situation any less unbearably embarrassing, but he imagined that maybe, just this once, his immediate surroundings would be willing to conjure up an invisible barrier and bar him from sight, if he willed it hard enough.

            “You… you bit my toe?” she choked out, her upper lip wrinkling. “That had to be so gross. Are you okay?”

            “Yep.”

            “I’m proud of you, honey,” Joy said as she reclined back on the high-backed kitchen stool, her posture more relaxed than it had been in the previous hours. She regarded her two-inch son with a reassuring smile as he stood on the dappled countertop, sliding her hand across its surface toward him. “I know it’s not always easy to follow through when it’s… not pleasant, but it shows a lot of maturity on your part to do whatever’s necessary to keep yourself safe.”

            “Do you want a mint or something?” Becky piped in helpfully, jamming a white gummy nub under Mark’s chin she’d retrieved from her purse, the candied morsel easily accounting for something the size of a bowling ball to the boy.

            “I’m… good, thanks,” the shrunken inmate said, swatting it away in hopes that his sister would drop the matter of his sampling her toe sooner rather than later. He smacked his jaw a few times, lapping awkwardly at the roof of his mouth.

            That rubbery, salted flavor still lingered as he’d feared it would. The sooner he could get access to his makeshift toothbrush, the better. And maybe a backup gallon of alcoholic mouthwash as well.

            “Feeling any bumps? Bruises? Anything?” Joy questioned, scooping her fingers around Mark and delicately collecting him into her palm. Ordinarily she would’ve waited for him to load onto her digits himself, but the teen could tell she was still just impatient enough about this whole matter to forgo manners.

            “Nope. I’m good,” he grumbled as his mother’s enormous fingers probed at the padded segments of his sweat-slicked black wetsuit, half-heartedly fighting off her jabbing thumb when it neared his thighs like the day before. “This thing worked well. Maybe I should just wear it all the time.”

            “Really?” Becky gawped. Her blue eyes broadened.

            “No.”

            “Oh,” she snickered, catching on. “Good. Cuz you’d look pretty silly if you did.” Seemingly satisfied at last, the girl grinned, bouncing her blonde locks from cheek to cheek and extended a hand toward her parent. “Can I have him now, Mom? For the car ride?”

            “Car ride?” Mark queried, shifting his gaze from his sister’s suddenly looming palm to his mother’s face far above.

            “While you were down there, I told Becky we’d go get some ice cream after we finished up here. I thought we could all use a cooldown. Especially you.”

            “No kidding,” the shrunken sixteen-year-old muttered. After gnawing on his monumental sibling’s foot flesh, slurping up some mint chocolate scoops would be a welcome follow-up.

            “Although…” Joy sighed. Her eyes darted from her miniature son down toward the hardwood floor below, where her house slippers happened to be crossed over one another under the wooden pillars of the stool, and in an instant Mark knew where this was headed.

            Or rather, where he was headed.

            “Mom…” he groaned. Already he felt the cushy expanse of his mother’s palm descending down toward her lap. A foregone conclusion.

            “I’m sorry, hon,” she said, biting the corner of her lip and furrowing her brow. She leaned forward toward the ground, snatching up the fluffy periwinkle footwear with her free hand, crooking a finger into each of the fur-lined mouths. “We just have to be absolutely, positively sure that we all know-”

            “C’mon, Mom,” Becky cut in, patting her fingertips against her palm and reaching further over the counter until her dancing digits were blotting the kitchen lights above Mark’s tiny head. “Can’t you take your turn after we get ice cream?”

            “Well…” the woman said. She dangled the slippers from her fingers, letting them swing breezily like the imposing pendulums they were. “Mark? Think you’ll be able to stay as focused as you were just now for when we get back from ice cream?”

            “Yes!” he breathed.

            Joy nodded, taking in the exasperation in her son’s voice. “All right. We’ll take a break. Becky, can you go grab my keys from the hook?”

            “Uh-huh!” the girl replied cheerily, bobbing her head as she sprinted toward the laundry room. “But I wanna carry him on the ride there!”

            “Fair enough, hon,” Joy said, returning her attention once again to her older child still huddled awkwardly in the center of her palm at two inches tall. She pursed her lips, dipping to a gentle whisper, her wispy words warming the boy’s already overheated skin. “Just make sure you do whatever you have to when I take my turn with you, Mark. I’m serious. I’m going to do whatever I have to to keep you safe down there, but you have to do the same for yourself. Including… you know… whatever you need to do, like with Becky. All right?”

            The boy nodded, getting her full meaning, and wishing he hadn’t really. Though at least Joy seemed to do a more thorough complete-body wash when she took showers, unlike his sister.

            He squeezed his tongue against a back molar. In the silent process, he felt a fleck of toe-grit from Becky’s skin still lodged between his teeth, its waxen texture grinding against his muscle. Nearly hacking up a lung at this realization, the boy wrestled to push the microscopic clip of congealed dry skin and foot grease back toward his lips to spit it out, but only succeeded in getting the errant reminder of his unfortunate survival instincts adhered to the underside of his tongue.

            Mark sighed as he was deposited into the eagerly awaiting peachy palms of his sister and shrouded in a wave of soft, curling fingers on the way to the car.

            Safety first, after all.