Dylan huffed as he shouldered open the glass front door of the Little Delights Bookstore. With the heavy brown-leather tome of the vintage alchemy history book under his arm, the college student stomped between the aisles of books. He passed the clustered tables and couches of the study section and up to the rental counter near the back corner.

            As he approached, Dylan noted the female clerk behind the desk. He was fairly sure it was the same young woman who’d talked him into renting the alchemy history book, which only made him want to sneer harder. All he was trying to do was get an A on a school paper on the lineage of chemistry; this lady had sworn up and down that this was the only text he’d need to score with flying colors. Instead, he’d received a C- and a passive-aggressive note from the professor about using legitimate sources in the future.

            He slammed the old book down on the rental counter, instantly grabbing the attention of the startled clerk. ‘August Turner,’ her nametag read. What a dumb name, Dylan thought. Wearing her thick-rimmed black glasses and uptight hair stick for her blonde bun, she was undoubtedly pretty, even in her modest business-casual clothing and lack of make-up, but Dylan couldn’t help but look down on her. He imagined it made her feel better about her own shy and socially awkward exterior to trap hardworking students like him into reading unhelpful old books.

            “Are you… returning?” August said quietly, obviously flustered by the show of aggression, but she held his gaze. “We ask that you try to treat the books, particularly rental copies, with adequate care.”

            “Yeah, whatever,” Dylan grumbled. He shoved the book across the desk. “I’ll do that, once I get a book that’s actually worth something to me.”

            August nodded with measured speed. Her lips were pinched, sensing his loud dissatisfaction.

            “You were unhappy with your rental?”

            “Uh, yeah, I was unhappy with my rental. Jesus,” Dylan snorted. He crossed his arms, and straightened his back, subtly hoping his six-inch height advantage over August would further intimidate her. “You went on and on about this thing. You said it was all I’d need to ace that paper. Remember that?”

            “I do.”

            “Well, it didn’t do shit for me. Most of the book isn’t even in English. How was I supposed to use it? And the parts that were only gave me a bunch of bullshit. Which I thought was real and then turned in, and now I’m probably going to get a C in this fucking class.”

            August adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose. She blinked in quick succession.

            “Please, sir,” she said calmly. “We ask that you don’t yell in the bookstore, or use strong lang-”

            “I think I’ll just do whatever I want to, since you screwed me over just to perk up business for a failing bookstore,” Dylan scowled. He looked over his shoulder, eying the mildly perturbed other customers milling about the shelves, but no one was coming to accost him. Good.

            August tapped on the keyboard behind the desk, re-entering the copy. Clearing her throat, she drummed her fingers on the countertop.

            “I’m sorry, sir, but… did you not check the late fee notice in the back?”

            “The what?”

            “The late fee notice.”

            “What, you mean like the card-thing? So what. I’m late by a couple days.”

            “A week, actually. And I’m not talking about the card. See?”

            August gently opened the back cover and turned the hefty textbook back around to Dylan. Ready for more ammo to get out his feelings, he obliged and leaned forward to read.

            If returned late

            say goodbye

            to daylight

            fresh air

            and freedom.

            “Is that supposed to be a poem?” Dylan laughed. “It doesn’t even rhyme.”

            “It’s not a poem, no,” August corrected, still just as cool as a cucumber. Her voice had never even risen to meet Dylan’s initial challenge. “Like I said, it’s a late notice. A warning, really. You see, others were waiting on using this book, and you’ve inconvenienced them as well.”

            “Okay? And?”

            “Well, you’ve got to pay the late fee now, of course.”

            Dylan threw back his head and expelled dramatic air. What kind of conversation was this? Was she not even remotely sorry for leading him wildly astray? Now she was ignoring his complaints and prattling on about some ancient crap on the last page. Who did this bitch think she was? All at once, Dylan was filled with the compulsion to see just a tiny crack in the woman’s armor. To see her even slightly thrown off balance, as he had been by that C-.

            Casually, his gaze wandered down August’s slender frame: down along her smooth, pale legs, which possessed the lightest of shimmers, and to her shoes. The woman wore an obviously well-loved pair of black backless leather clogs. Her curved heel peeked out the back; she wore the shoes bare.

            Wrinkling his nose, Dylan shook his head. It was May already; summer was in full bloom, and so was the heat. Did she really think it was a good idea wearing leather shoes with bare feet, when she worked in close proximity to customers? Surely the sour, wet leather stench clouded the whole store by noon. It was clear that not only was she comfortable disregarding his grievances as a consumer, but she was content with letting the stench of her feet germinate within his and others’ range.

            “Look, whatever,” Dylan sighed with a shrug. “I don’t know about any late fees, but I know I’m not paying a dime for that. See ya around. And by the way: a little tip for customer service. Don’t go barefoot like that unless you want your whole store to smell like the inside of a moldy sock.”

            Sneering at August’s blank expression, Dylan backed away from the counter and started back toward the door on the opposite side of the establishment. More customers had since appeared, so he was forced to take a detour down different aisles. Passing the far wall now, he was alone among the shelves, and the door lay dead ahead.

            Dylan crashed to the ground. For an instant, he assumed he’d been cracked across the back of the head, but there was no impact pain. Only a suspicious chill prickling beneath his skin. He stumbled forward, hoisted to his knees, and promptly fell right back on his ass with surprise.

            The previously humble shelves of the bookstore now stacked into the heavens like multicolored office buildings. Under his feet, the ratty carpet swelled with texture and sun-sunken hues. From somewhere beyond, the sounds of whispered human voices boomed in Dylan’s ears. He cowered against the ground, trembling with shock. The impossible notion that the world had grown around him only just crossed his mind when August reappeared behind him.

            Now, though, she was not so much merely behind him as she was above him, too. He clocked her presence within a heartbeat of her titanic body marching around the corner of the bookshelf. The image of the stringent blonde dwarfing the towering walls of texts was eerily reminiscent of Godzilla tramping down the street between skyscrapers. Those black leather clogs were like tanks, raining down from the sky with each step and pulverizing the carpet beneath. With each step, her sole rose from the black pedestal, before clomping back to the slope. She was an absolute monstrosity, alluring despite her plainness, yet terrifying. August Turner looked to be four hundred feet tall. Or, more accurately, Dylan realized with cancerous horror, he’d shrunken dramatically to something like an inch tall.

Only now, when Dylan was made to sprawl on the ground by the very feet he’d insulted not one minute before, did he notice the black stripe running up the back of each of her legs. The shimmer upon her skin twinkled again as a reminder. August was wearing sheer stockings, so clear and thin as to be like gossamer, but not bare like he thought. Dylan’s stomach swam.

            He was momentarily relieved when the bespectacled giantess halted her march and peered down at the carpet, directly at him. At least she saw him; those potentially murderous leather clogs wouldn’t grind him into paste without her knowledge. Then, feeling monumentally stupid, he was flooded with fear once again. Of course she saw him. She was the one who’d done this to him. He understood.

            Ordinarily when wronged, Dylan would puff up his chest, clench his fists, and unleash a verbal barrage. That usually did pretty well to shut up opponents and get him what he wanted. Somehow, though, it seemed less effective in theory to shake his fist at a pair of shoes six times his height, belonging to a woman of almost unfathomable scale. His throat went dry.

            August Turner stooped down on the carpet, resting her arms on her knees, and observed her inch-tall victim from above. The shine of her nude stockings glistened again, as if throwing Dylan’s mistake in his face.

            “It appears you’ve run out of that bravado of yours,” August declared. In keeping with the respectful bookstore environment, she maintained her soothing indoor voice. However, her words still carried great resonance in Dylan’s tiny ears, and made his spine tingle. She managed the first little smile he’d seen on her. “I’m glad, because while this isn’t a library, we like to think we cultivate the same sense of peace inside the Little Delights Bookstore. I’ll thank you to keep your voice down in the future.”

            Her calmness unnerved Dylan greater still. She wasn’t speaking to him any differently than she had at the desk, save for the note of self-satisfaction in her tone. For her, there was nothing remarkable in her choices.

            “We’ll begin the payment of your late fee now, if you don’t mind. Come here.”

            Thin, lotioned fingers the length of pillars descended from on high. August’s thumb and index finger hovered just far enough apart to contain a hapless inch-tall man. Her eyes were bright and determined. The closer her hand drew, and the more intricate details Dylan could distinguish in the creamy flesh of her creased palm, the realer the scenario at last became. The concept of running screaming away only occurred to him as August’s fingertips pinched around his sides.

            Her strength was like iron, keeping him firmly cinched against her digits, and he understood within an instant of the giant woman’s thumb pad pressing on his ribs that there wasn’t a hope of resistance. Still, he tried anyway, wrenching and squirming as she lifted him off the carpet. As she stood up from her squat and returned to her staggering full height, however, he curtailed his wrestling. Even if he beat her fingers, there was only a spinning death plunge awaiting.

            Casually as if she was returning a book to its shelf, August strolled to her desk at the back of the store. She let her arms hang at her sides, still with her miniature detractor contained in her feminine fingertips. Dylan wasn’t sure if he was more nauseous from the arcing swing of her arm, or the tug of gravity toward ruin far below. Even from the height of August’s thigh, a fall would be incredibly fatal.

            August took a seat on a stool behind the desk, concealed from view of the rest of the store by a high stack of books. She cupped Dylan in her palm and curled her fingers up high enough to create a bowl shape, ensuring he couldn’t crawl out either direction. Not that he intended to try. Dylan shivered in the giant clerk’s hand, still doing his best to process the impossibility he was currently involved in.

            “I assure you, your shaking isn’t necessary. I have no intention of harming you,” August explained in whisper. “Certainly not permanently, anyway.”

            Permanently? What was she going to do?

            “It’s only fair I inform you, though, that we take the late fee policy very seriously, particularly on that book you borrowed,” she continued. “In accordance with its lines, you can say goodbye to fresh air, light, and especially freedom.”

            “What does that mean?”

            “Don’t speak out of turn,” August corrected, almost kindly. She planted a shushing fingertip over Dylan’s head. Her smile widened. “It means you are mine now, Dylan. An unusual perk of working here, I admit, but one that greatly benefits the staff. You wouldn’t believe how much it improves one’s mood when you have a handy little shrunken slave servicing you as their full-time job. When this happens, which isn’t often, we tend to gift you out eventually: to our mothers, friends, daughters. However, I do believe I’ll be keeping you for myself.”

            “H-How long?” he muffled from behind her large finger.

            “Forever,” she said, and actually chuckled. “I thought that was obvious?”

            Dylan shuddered, a knotted mess of confusion and fear. He wrung his still-trembling knuckles.

            “That’s all for now,” August said. She picked the shrunken boy back up in her fingers, and ascended from the stool. “I’m going to store you away for a little while, until I can decide how best to use you. After all, you’re not the only customer I need to take care.”

            Before he could summon a word of protest or tears, Dylan was brought to bear before the rotund wall of August’s narrow thigh. The upper hem of her sheer stocking, wrapped tightly around her skin, became visible for the first time. With her opposite hand, the woman briefly peeled away the delicate fabric, opening just enough of a spread to fit someone of his size.

            “Wait-” Dylan swallowed a gasp as he was jammed with practiced dexterity into August’s stocking.

            Once the boy was inside, August wrapped the mouth of the legwear back over top of Dylan. The nude fabric, though thin as spider’s web in appearance, was surprisingly taut. The nylon hugged the clerk’s every curve and bend along the svelte geometry of her shapely leg. At first assuming he’d merely slide straight down the vertical shoot of the nylon, straight to the top of August’s foot and likely his crippling, Dylan was confronted instead with the opposite physics problem: he was stuck in place.

            Facing the soft yet tense wall of August’s leg, Dylan was fastened by the clenching force of the nylon. His face was pressed flush to her warm thigh. She smelled of melon soap, possibly the powdery addition of some female hygiene product. Not an unwelcome smell, really. He supposed he was just lucky he weighed so little at his new one-inch height, or he’d probably be dropping like a rock now.

            Lucky.

            What a stupid conclusion to make about this scenario. This giant psycho had just promised him in a lullaby voice that she intended to keep him as a shrunken servant forever.

            For.

            Ever.

            The word was incomprehensible to Dylan, like trying to imagine the length of infinity. It simply wouldn’t compute in his mind that, three minutes before, he was an autonomous college freshman just trying to replace a useless textbook and give the staff a righteous earful; the trajectory of his entire life had since spiraled into the hateful and impossible.

            Bold and confident, as if she hadn’t just ensnared a tiny man inside her nylon, August strode back into the hustle and bustle of the bookstore. She happily addressed customers, pointed out aisle numbers to confused visitors, and even re-shelved the leather alchemy tome which had started all this trouble.

All the while, Dylan endured the minute flexing and clenching of her leg muscle through the tender skin. It was intimidating like little else in his life, to experience the near-infinitesimal quivers and hardening of the woman’s lovely leg, likely with muscles she wasn’t even fully aware of using, yet strong enough to crush Dylan to pulp if, say, he was accidentally sandwiched between her palm and thigh with enough force. All it would take was August forgetting he was there, feeling the tickle on her leg, and slapping him like an errant fly out of instinct.

            With each step the woman took, the inch-tall boy was set into a rhythmic embrace against his apparent new owner’s leg. When she stretched her limb forward to launch herself onward, August’s sheer nylon spread further and thinner over Dylan’s back, binding him harder to the leg and splaying his arms. Then, when her weight shifted back to this leg while the other reached forward to step, the nylon relaxed over his back, yet the gentle bulging of her quadricep picked up the fabric slack and kept his body secured in the same place.

            Several times, Dylan made an attempt to scream for help, whenever August passed near to an equally giant customer, most of whom seemed to be women. He was only an inch, but he wasn’t microscopic; surely he should be discovered?

            Yet he wasn’t. No matter how much shouting he did, he only seemed to shake harder with frustration when no giant hands appeared through the stocking netting to rescue him. The crowd of almost exclusively young women was either willfully deaf, or his voice was much more of an insignificant squeak than he realized.

            Perhaps it was the fact of having his face held into August’s thigh. His oddly intimate position upon her pencil-like yet powerful leg made it so that all his yells were absorbed into the wall of unblemished skin and muscle. In effect, he was screaming for help to the uncaring woman’s leg, and he certainly would get no help there. He sensed his heartbeat trying to sync with the pulse within the leg. It was darkly funny; this morning, he could never have conceived of a bad situation where he had his face pressed against a lovely woman’s thigh inches from her nethers, yet here he’d discovered the exception.

            As he hovered in limbo just below the hip, Dylan’s mind affixed to the perceptions of his other senses. After all, he had only a smooth wall of leg to see, anonymous female voices rumbling to hear, and the occasional itch of the nylon against his scalp. He drew long breaths, hoping to remain calm, and also keep himself from sliding. The air was still redolent of that melon-flavored scrub, which was comforting, but a couple other notes had entered the aroma scape now. Nothing drastic, but a faint hint of staleness pervaded the fibers of the stockings; perhaps she hadn’t worn a clean pair today, out of convenience. Dylan only hoped August didn’t do anything strenuous today, to keep the scent from intensifying and overpowering the fruity soap.

            Ten minutes inside August’s nylon stretched into an hour. All the while, the ruthless yet soft-spoken bookstore clerk did almost nothing to acknowledge him with word or touch; occasionally her hands would hover over his position on her thigh, perhaps threatening to pinch or poke him through the stocking prison, but she never did. Taunting him. Still, Dylan was pleased that he hadn’t slid further down her leg, but at this point he was just desperate for small comforts.

            Unable to see what was happening outside August’s stocking, Dylan was surprised when he felt the fabric unpeeling from her limb again, and her fingertips scooping out his frail form. She plucked him back into the light, again safely hidden behind the desk and a stack of books.

            “I’m sorry!” he yipped instantly. Over the last hour, he’d mostly just been trying to devise the perfect words to get him off the hook here. August was serious before, which meant he couldn’t take this lightly, but she also was quiet and unassuming. A professional, in a strange way. She could see reason, and especially a bargain. “I’m really sorry. Honest. I’ll pay a fine, okay? Any fine. However much it takes. Not even to the store, just to you, if you want. I don’t have a lot on me, but my parents are pretty loaded, so we could make sure you’re-”

            “Do you remember seeing a mention of money in the text’s late fee warning?” August interrupted. She held him up to her smirking face, still gripped between her thumb and index finger.

            “N-No?”

            “Then you’ll know that neither I, nor the bookstore, are interested in a monetary late fee from you. That book you rented has a great many uses to a variety of people, more than can be measured with a dollar amount, and by holding it as long as you did, you caused several customers a delay in its use. So, your late fee must be more… lasting than a $5 slap on the wrist.”

            Dylan blanched. Could she honestly not be interested in that casual mention he’d made of essentially paying her a ransom for himself? She worked in a bookstore, for crying out loud. Who was going to say no to some easy cash, when she was holding all the cards in this situation? Hell, it wasn’t like she even had to be afraid that he’d come back and report on her. What was he going to do, point a finger and insist she used witchcraft to make him pay for a late book?

            “T-Thank you for taking me out of there,” he managed with a hard gulp. As full of rage and sickness as it made him to show gratitude to her, he realized that pushing down his pride was the only survival tactic here.

            “Oh, you’re welcome, though this is only a quick break. I just needed to handle an irritation.”

            “Irritation?”
            “Your clothes are making my leg itch,” she said. Her fingernail abruptly pinched its way under his shirt. “They have to come off.”

            Tussling and squirming every which way, Dylan did his best to resist. He gritted his teeth and threw his fists and feet at whatever dangling log of August’s finger he could reach. Of course it did nothing, and his blows bounced off her digits like punching bags. In the meanwhile, she clawed through his shirt and pants; rather than tugging them off his uncooperative body, she simply cut a slit in the tissue-thin shrunken garments with her filed fingernails.

            Suddenly Dylan was cowering in his underwear in the dastardly fingers of the giant bookstore clerk, and not even those were spared; with all of his former clothes removed, and ripped to shreds by August, Dylan was made to watch naked and helpless as his belongings were flicked into the garbage can below. At least she was gentle with him, and kneaded his skin with her spiraled fingerprints as his clothes were shorn away. With all the adrenaline pumping throughout his body, not to mention the tantalizing feeling of skin-on-skin, the college student was now getting bloodflow to at least one extremity he hadn’t before.

            “This should be much more comfortable,” August said as she re-opened the tight lip of the stocking. Her eyes sparkled with one last power-drunk glance at the bare, shrunken boy gripped in her fingertips. “For me, and possibly for you too, if you’re lucky.”

            Dylan was plunked back into the tube. The stocking snapped back around him and fastened him to her pale quad, face-first. Almost as soon as he’d descended to his former position on August’s leg, however, he realized things were different. Without the friction of his clothes to meet the nylon, staying in one place was more difficult. On the first step taken by the woman, the hapless one-incher slid a few millimeters down the curved slope of her skin.

After five minutes of casual sauntering around the store, Dylan was just above August’s knee in her stocking. Her musculature was thinner here, and meant he could slide downward even faster. All the way down, his crotch was stroked along the smooth, warm surface of August’s leg. It stung at first, but once Dylan learned to arch his spine, the sensation was limited to a mellow caress of his member on the sleek, silky limb. Were the circumstances wildly different, and Dylan was engaging in rough foreplay with one of the girls in his dorm, he would have been riled right up by this kind of contact.

            As it happened, though, he was only begrudgingly hard. His cock was betraying him, and not just on principle, but also betraying his body to August. From the under-the-breath snickers he heard whenever his member was flopped to the side by the blonde’s thigh, he knew she was onto him from the moment his dick touched her body. A couple times, her finger even ventured to press against his back and encourage his puny rod to massage the heavenly leg upon which it was marooned.

            At one point, Dylan was awkwardly cresting under August’s knee, at the complete mercy of her slippery nylon and gravity. His thoughts shifted inevitably from the dangers of slipping to the much more real threat of being squeezed at the union point of the woman’s calf and lower thigh. What if she had to sit down? Would he even survive? Mere injury would be wishful thinking. If he was caught at just the right angle, his body might snap like a feeble wishbone between the two colliding forces of August’s upper and lower leg.

            As if reading his paranoia, August marched to the back of the store again and drew near to her stool. Feeling more and more helpless, Dylan craned his neck to the side just far enough to notice the shadow of fingers spreading overhead. August was reaching for him. He tensed instinctively, hoping to be fished back out and ideally given a more secure location to rest. Instead, he was nudged hard in the side by the blonde’s arched thumb. She wiggled him back and forth, inching him around the side of her knee, until he was poised directly atop the hardy joint. At least he wouldn’t be squeezed under her thigh. However, there was obviously no intention to remove him from this long, silken prison just yet, as August returned to patrolling the bookshelves for unknowing customers.

            Part of Dylan wanted those behemoth strangers beyond to hear his screams, if only so he could warn them. Read the back of the cover before you buy or rent, he wanted to shout. They really fuck you with the late fee. Unfortunately, he was far too fearful of accidentally plunging the rest of the way down to attempt turning his body around to face the world and cry. Plus, he didn’t think he could stand the humiliation of being noticed and feeling a pair of questioning, dinner plate-sized eyes studying the inch-tall naked man, his junk tangled in nylon, gently crucified on a woman’s leg.

            Eventually Dylan began the second stint of his slow journey down August’s leg as she stalked around the store. Against his will, he’d since stiffened to full mast, and both wished for a release and an immediate separation from these bizarre circumstances. And while the low-rounded hill of her calf muscle brought a fresh sense of anxiety over sliding quickly to ankle-breaking doom, the shrunken college student became aware of an equally pressing matter.

            The melon soap and lotion flavors were only a ghostly memory now, at this low height on August’s person. Something sourer, ticklishly odorous, and distinctly human was creeping in the corners and making Dylan slow his breaths. A little whiff of BO and sweat, rising from below. Her nylons, obviously having survived their fair share of double shifts at the bookstore, not only weathered the first glazy signs of perspiration from today, but also the microscopic remains of past sweats, etched within the very stitching. It was something a normal-sized person would never even pick up on, but which was currently becoming a source of ire for an inch-tall one.

            Dylon coughed as the steadily increasing aroma itself seemed to drag him down, not gravity. Down the slope of her calf behind the black stripe of her stocking, and nearing the top of her ankle. The dark material was thicker, and lightly damp in small patches against Dylan’s bare back. As if to discourage his protesting, August’s pinky finger reached down to prod at his waist, then stroked her fingernail coquettishly along the tiny shape of his head and shoulders. The pad of her finger wedged into his back and pushed him hard enough into her calf muscle to nearly numb his dick. Though he couldn’t look to confirm, he burned with the distinct sense of her deep blue eyes gazing unblinkingly upon him as he descended toward her clog. Another lilting giggle confirmed this.

            After another hour on her feet, August elected to take up her post seated behind the counter again. This at first comforted the boy in her stocking, until he realized her skin was now just slick enough with thin frosting of sweet summer sweat that she didn’t even have to be walking for him to slide. The lubricant of her perspiring beneath the nylon was enough.

            Once again, as he rolled over the bumpier vertical terrain of August’s ankle, Dylan was made to fear briefly for his actual life rather than merely the degree of grievous injury he might incur. Supposing he was allowed to keep sliding, and got his legs wedged under the bulbous mass of the woman’s heel, she could liquefy his entire lower body simply by shifting the weight onto the back of her foot. She wouldn’t even have to walk on him to do it; as was now clear, August was prone to crossing her leg over the other and bobbing her clog merrily from her dangling foot, letting her nyloned sole slap again and again on the damp leather.

            However, in a reminder that August was fully aware of his being at all times even when she chose not to acknowledge him, the woman’s fingers pinched him through the stocking wall. She guided the cringing naked bulge that was Dylan away from the car-compressor that was her stockinged heel, and instead shepherded the boy toward the side of her foot. The instep.

            Here, August’s skin was especially damp, almost rubbery, and noticeably more humid than her leg. Her pores flowed with miniscule beads of sweat, still nothing which would distress any customers, but which made the nylon on Dylan’s back swampy. Each time she bounced the clog from the end of her foot, the leather dragged and squished along the gridded latticework of her nylon, and a “fresh” puff of pungent air was released. It rose like smoke, first collected within the pocket of the hanging shoe under August’s sole, and flowing out into the open air right over Dylan, forcing him to absorb the brunt of the funk if he wanted to breathe at all.

Coughing was the only way Dylan could keep sucking in bitter oxygen and clear his throat of the moist air being vented past the filter of his inch-tall body from within the dank grotto of August’s shoe. In the worst way possible, he’d been correct about one thing in his earlier insults. While August did indeed wear nylons and possess some supernatural power, she was still highly prone to one particular very human vulnerability: summer heat.

            Gravity at last released its grasp, and Dylan was stuck on the side of August’s foot for the better part of another hour, immobilized purely by the tensile strength of the stocking. All the while, her clog rode up and down on her foot, propelled by her rocking toes, wafting more foot-flavored mist his way. During his latest fit of hacking, the boy felt another shift in the rounded plain of August’s instep. She shifted her leg over her opposite knee, bringing her foot up into her lap, and light streamed through the wet fabric.

            Dylan could see her face out there past the sheer fabric which imprisoned him like a popped gum bubble. August looked cool-tempered and sunny as ever, ignoring the balmy conditions within her shoes. There was a friendly glint in her eyeglasses lens. Her face appeared even bigger than when last he laid eyes on her, though maybe that was just from the emotional perspective he’d gained after more than three hours inside her stocking. Being ignored and worn like an accessory had that kind of effect on a person’s psyche.

            “Shhhhh…” she slurred, a finger pressed over her lips like a librarian’s. Still, there was nothing in her eyes or tone to suggest she was at all bothered by her actions today. It made the boy shiver, despite the heat of her foot.

            Next, August’s probing fingers jammed Dylan to the deepest point he’d reached yet. Over the curve of her elegant instep, the boy was smeared along her pale foot flesh, down into the shelf of nylon stretched over her sole. Her finger patted him once, just to make sure he’d made it to the place she wanted him, and then darkness swallowed him up. The clog was hugged flush back to August’s foot, and Dylan was entombed inside.

            The sloshing squish of the sweat purged from flesh and fabric with each bob was now multiplied tenfold. It seemed to come from all around Dylan, as did the actual moisture. Within the black and airless environment, the sticky puddles of sweat became an unfortunate glue for the boy’s body. Each time August’s foot briefly peeled away from the insole, he was either adhered loosely to the stocking or to the sweltering underside of her slimy ped. The stench was so overpowering that he was starting to consider giving up attempts at breathing at all, yet his lungs choked him into action. Her odor was borne of some unholy combination of earthy grime and poorly aged dairy products. While Dylan had put up with his share of rank smells in his time, usually either in the dorm basement or while going down on a girl after a drunken night out, the briny essence of August’s nyloned foot took the cake. His own skin was turning pruny as he soaked up the liquid like a sponge, stinging with the salt of a veritable pond of sweat, giving a whole new meaning to the term trenchfoot.

            Adding infuriating insult to injury, Dylan noticed amongst the darkness that his erection had yet to wilt. In fact, it remained constantly standing, even with the threat of being trampled literally hanging overhead. He bit his tongue before a moan could escape his throat when August’s foot scrunched and his cock was fondled by a giant, buttery sole wrinkle. Dylan had never received a footjob, even from his kinkiest one night stands, but he was pretty sure this was not how you were supposed to do it. Not that his dick seemed to know the difference.

            Was this just life now? Being bucked about in the gritty hellhole of a black leather clog, scraped in endless circles amongst the spongy sole of a spurned bookstore clerk? Not to mention the likely permanent case of blue balls he was developing. The thought of permanence hadn’t really occurred to Dylan yet, even after August reiterated the truth that she was claiming him as her full-time shrunken aide for the foreseeable future and beyond. However, now that he’d reached his literal lowest possible point upon the woman’s body, by inhabiting the shoe beneath her foot, he had time to gather his thoughts and come to messy terms with his fate.

            Maybe this was all he had to look forward to now. No more family, friends, college, job, or joys of any kind besides guilty sexual urge: just day after day of wondering where August’s mammoth fingers would next deposit him.

            Time had slowed to a sludge the longer Dylan was molded into the soppy ceiling of sole. By latent discovery as if waking from a dream, though, he realized the pressure was changing in a much more laborious frequency. August was no longer bobbing her clog against her foot in rapid succession, but instead gradually shifting all of her weight into the ball of her foot before relenting again.

            She was walking around, with Dylan still inside her shoe; he decided the only reason he wasn’t a red stain on her leather insole already was because of the depth of August’s arch granting just enough space differential to allow for an inch-tall body. Though he was certainly aware of this risk too. All she’d have to do was step wrong, flatten her ruddy sole just a hair lower against the saturated basin of the clog, and Dylan would tint the sweat swamp crimson with his guts.

            Dylan wasn’t sure if he’d fallen asleep out of sheer defense or if he’d merely passed out, but the next time he was aware of his senses at work, dim light streamed over his body. It shocked him after so long in the dark, and he jolted, before realizing he was still entangled in damp nylon, with his whole body kissed into August’s foot above. She’d crossed her leg again over the opposite, and had dangled her shoe so low from the perch of her toes that her servant was actually exposed to the outside.

            The comparatively fresh air was a regular oasis for Dylan, who hungrily sucked down a few lungfuls of standard oxygen, even as it was still tainted slightly by the glistening nude stocking and its tangy threads.

            No giant bodies walked by for Dylan to scream uselessly at for help. His only company over the next hour was the occasional intrusion of August’s fingernail, scratching a probable itch in the doughy deep of her sole and its supple wrinkles, before retracting her digit again without acknowledging Dylan. Anyone walking by might not even be the wiser that her shoe contained a newly claimed toy slave; they’d just see a woman scratching an itch.

            Whenever she reached in to make this adjustment, the nylon tightened at his back and briefly interrupted his chances for clean airflow with a face plant into the mattress pad-like sole above. At the same time, his hard-on was gathered back into the rippling sole creases: a uniquely confusing combination, with his lungs deprived oxygen but his cock teased by the casual arching of August’s sole. After the eleventh time she’d done this, Dylan was seriously doubting she even itched anymore. He didn’t even need to hear her laugh to know. They were reaching the point where all the woman had to do was curl her toes, causing the sweaty crease in her sole to catch his dick, and Dylan would gasp on the brink of hollow climax.

            The workday had to be nearly over. While his sense of time was warped by his imprisonment in a space without light, air, or sexual relief, Dylan had to guess it was nearly 6 pm, when the bookstore would close. He didn’t allow himself to wonder whether August might allow him a break afterward, but maybe there would at least be a shift in this awful pattern. However, when August began to pry her foot out of the backless clog, the boy came dangerously close to crossing his fingers.

            The wordless good news continued as August next set about rolling her sheer stocking down her thigh, an inch at a time. She surely was about to remove him, if only temporarily. Meanwhile Dylan dangled a few inches from the carpeted floor, still under the netting of the nylon, and painfully erect. So close to the freedom of the ground, and yet so far thanks to the stocking. He heard movement above, but no distant voices. Perhaps the store was closed after all. Whether that was desirable for his wellbeing remained to be seen.

            August balled up the last of the nylon tube around her foot. She unstuck Dylan at last from her sole and kept him within the tunnel as it peeled off her toes. The mouth of the stocking hung limply from her thumb, as if she was hanging it to dry, with Dylan coiled at the very tip.

            Gathering his bearings, Dylan clumsily clung to the soupy net of the nylon and tried to stand. He peered through the sheer wall. Outside he could see the imposing body of his captor, plus a second person, standing across from August. The girl was shorter; he couldn’t make out the face, but her fiery red hair would’ve been visible even through a colored stocking. Those ginger tresses were familiar, actually. It almost reminded him of one of his classmates…

            “So that’s who made me wait so long for the book,” the stranger said brightly. She punctuated the remark with a giggle. Her voice was definitely youthful; she was likely about Dylan’s age. What the hell was so special about this damn gibberish alchemy book that gave it such a waiting list?

“This is him,” August said proudly. “I’ve just been using him as a cushion for the day, though I think I’ll be training him later to actually put some work into his time down there, too.”

            “Do you… I mean, do you think I…” the redhead stammered nervously.

            “You want to take a test run?”

            “Could I? It would be good to test it out before I… you know… use it on my ex.”

            “I don’t see why not,” August said. “I’m afraid I’m not looking to lend this one out overnight, but you’re welcome to use him now while I close up shop, if you’d like to look over the book.”

            “Oh, that’s perfect!” the girl said, and clapped her hands. She hugged a large, brown shape against her chest, which Dylan surmised was the book. “Thanks, August.”

            “Of course, Larissa.”

            Larissa? Dylan didn’t hear a last name, but between those flaming locks and the girlish tone, he knew without a doubt it was the same Larissa from his chemistry class. More than that coincidence, though, he was troubled by the volley of perplexing statements thrown between them. What was Larissa practicing for? Why did she seem to know so much about the devious secrets contained in this store? And worse, what did she want a “turn” with him for?

            The stocking turned upside down and Dylan hurtled through the squishy tunnel, its unfurling guided by August’s fingers. He landed in her cool, dry palm, but was quickly overtaken by five outspread fingers winging down from above. The digits were smaller and more delicate than August’s, and before he even saw the flash of red hair, Dylan knew he was in Larissa’s fist. Through the crack between her fingers, he saw a pair of wide pink lips stretch into a selfish grin.

            “Please,” he hissed from out of the plush cage of her hand. “You have to help me. She did this to me, somehow. I don’t know how she got away with it, but I’m-”

            “Hush, little guy,” she responded under her breath, cutting him off. With her free hand, Larissa pulled out a chair from one of the study tables and flipped open the cover of the alchemy book.

            “My name is Dylan, we’re in the-”

            “Yes, I know. We have chemistry together.”

            “Please…”

            Her green eyes darted to a wall across the room, where August was now re-shelving scattered texts.         She winked at Dylan, then pressed her mouth against the opening in her fist, blotting out the light and filling the space with her warm, cinnamon breath.

            “Maybe this’ll teach you to think about others before yourself a little bit, huh?” Larissa whispered. “That’s part of the reason I’m about to practice playing with you. The truth is, though, that I’ve been waiting for this book so I can do to my ex what August did to you today. So it’s really kinda convenient, too, because if I’m going to do a good job of hurting Sam as much as he hurt me, then I’m going to need some practice. On you. Sorry bout ya, little guy.”

            Briefly, Dylan was bewildered by the apparent idea that the book itself contained some secret which allowed for his reality-bending shrinkage. However, his attention refocused when he was thrown back against Larissa’s palm on the trip toward the carpet. Her fist reopened an inch from the floor, beside the discarded pair of her shoes, and let him fall to the ground. She had clogs as well, though not as high-sloped as August’s, and colored a glossier brown. The redhead’s bare feet were already waiting, soles flat to the carpet, and her jet black-painted toenails dulling the glint of light like black holes in space.

            Dylan stood blearily up. It felt like a week since he was allowed to touch solid ground, without being burdened by the megaton weight of a giant bare foot sweating him to oblivion. Staring ahead at Larissa’s feet, though, and watching her make ‘fists’ with her toes, Dylan had a feeling that sensation of freedom would be short lived. Only for a second, he considered bolting in the other direction and hoping for the miracle of a crack in the wall for him to hide, until he realized he was entirely too exhausted to even think of sprinting.

            Larissa didn’t leave him long to ponder his liberty. Her left foot arched from the ground, black-painted toes writhing, and lunged toward him. That pink sole and its wrinkles flashed through the various hues of flushed skin as she loomed. Throwing out his tiny arms did little good for Dylan; he was snatched lengthwise along two of the redhead’s stubby toe tips, and squeezed into the curled shafts of her digits. From there, he was laid atop the piggies of the opposite foot, while the pudgier bottoms of the other smashed him into a pressure sandwich of pale toes.

            This first grab commenced a pattern of catch and release. Larissa’s toes would flick him off the top of her foot, give him an instant to stand up, then come for him again, this time with the other foot. Once again, with her pudgy big toe leading the charge, she grabbed Dylan up, violently hugged him down against the ball of her foot, then formed a makeshift coffin for her inch-tall victim from all ten of her happily wriggling toes. Rinse and repeat.

            For someone who supposedly needed “practice” at this activity, Larissa seemed like a natural. Foolish as it felt, given his own rock-bottom situation, Dylan felt some sympathy for this “Sam,” whoever he was, that was dumb enough to split up with the vengeful little redhead. While the toe capture was uncomfortable and humiliating in equal measure, Dylan supposed this was by design, and decided to count himself lucky he still hadn’t snapped any limbs yet, though his ribs were a bit bruised. In between failed attempts at avoiding her tackling digits, the boy listened carefully to the activity atop the table, where most of Larissa’s actual attention was zeroed.

            “Wow, this is… easier than I thought it would be,” Larissa commented with genuine zeal. Pages turned in rapid succession. “August? Is it really this easy?”

            “Anyone with the talent for it can pull it off without even breaking a sweat,” August announced from across the room. “Getting some good practice over there?”

            “Oh yeah, I’m learning so much,” Larissa answered. On the emphasized syllable, she spread Dylan flat between the fleshy bridges of her toes and ground him along them. The boy yelped, feeling rattled to the bone, not to mention the risky sensation of his member being bumped hard along each squishy crevice separating the redhead’s peachy digits. After so much build-up inside August’s stockings, all it took was a couple runs along Larissa’s velvety toes to put Dylan on the edge.

            This time, she didn’t let go of him. Instead she let her foot hover over the carpet, still with Dylan absorbed into the underside of her grappling toes. From out of the corner of his eye, her shrunken classmate saw the flicker of a nylon hang into view.

            God, no, Dylan thought. I just fucking did this.

            Larissa’s staunchly clenched toes crested through the mouth of her stocking, with Dylan still hopelessly in tow. Her nylon was nearly as sheer as August’s, though with the lightest tan tint, and looser-fitting, though of course this made no difference for Dylan as he was wadded into the tip of Larissa’s backless clog before the rest of her giant foot filled in the space. The young shrinker-in-training let her leg swing back and forth like a pendulum under the chair seat, grazing the floor in between.

For Dylan, this meant a rollicking Viking ship-style ride within the warm confines of Larissa’s shoe, with her burly toes piling him to the foamy ground. On each bump past the floor, he was hugged tighter between the shoe’s wall and the burgeoning, lollipop toes of his giant tormentor.

            With some shuddering horror, he felt his dick, erect and aching for release, wedged in the tender valley of Larissa’s toes. She seemed to make note of it, too, because there was special effort made on the redhead’s part to squeeze in quick pulses, balling Dylan so fervently that he started to think his body just might turn to clay in her grip. Sadly, his dick seemed to have disgustingly different ideas, despite the soreness, lack of oxygen, and thrashing of pillowy toes, Dylan was pretty sure he’d cum if she kept up like this. God knew he’d been pent up after so much tortuous teasing today.

            From somewhere in the ether, the voices of giants carried to Dylan’s ears. Though muffled, he could distinguish the words in his haze of sweat-drunkenness and yearning for freedom.

            “Wow, I think this guy’s about to burst like a little horndog, August,” Larissa laughed. “I hope when I do this to Sam, he lasts a lot longer. I need it to be the most embarrassing jacking Sam’s ever had. He used to hate my feet, you know. So the message has gotta stick.”

            “Oh, don’t worry about that. You can get him to last plenty long, so long as you’re careful,” August answered. Her voice was louder now, and her footsteps rumbled outside. “This one’s just that weak because I was doing the same thing to him all day long. Nice and slow is the ticket. That’s how you get a message across.”

            “Should I let him?” Larissa asked.

            “Oh, I don’t see why not. I don’t want him too depressed, seeing as I’d like to keep him around now. And he’s not a bad little shoe cushion, I’ll give you that much. It’s about having some carrot and stick action, you know?”

            “Yeah, I do. Okay, hold on. I’ll give him a carrot.”

            Larissa did just that. In the stuffy darkness of her brown leather clog, she planted her foot on the ground and pinned Dylan to the wall with her digits. A death grip of her blushing toes kept the boy’s dick in a pleasurable vice. He was practically suspended solely by his crotch, if he hadn’t managed to pinch his arms around the redhead’s nearest toe. All Larissa had to do was glide her toes together a few more times, his cock completely enclosed by the squishy walls of her digits, and then she felt Dylan shudder under her foot.

            “Done!” she announced, and August couldn’t help but laugh again. Larissa tugged her foot out of the clog and worked the nylon down her leg. Her gaze lingered on the open page of the textbook, committing its information to memory, as she plucked an upside down and physically spent Dylan out of her stocking. “Thanks so much for getting this back for me. I’m looking forward to learning even more things.”

            “It’s my pleasure,” August said. She reached out and accepted her shrunken naked slave into her palm. “That’s what we’re all about here at the Little Delights Bookstore. Letting the literature enrich new minds with its information.”

            “You can say that again,” Larissa said. The redhead bent over and peered at Dylan in August’s hand, then winked at him. “Thanks for letting me practice on you, little guy. I’d say I’ll see you in class on Monday but, uh… that’s probably not likely. So maybe I’ll just see you around here instead, whenever August feels like taking off her shoes and giving you a break.”

            The women shared a booming round of pronounced mirth. Dylan could only curl into himself in the center of the blonde’s warm palm, trapped in a mind-fraying middle ground of bitter sexual satisfaction and emptiness at his upcoming new life. He cursed the day he ever set foot in this damn place with the intention of finding the perfect research tool to win him an A+. It seemed the only thing he was going to be “winning” anytime soon was a victorious, shit-eating grin from his towering blonde keeper, who turned out to be much more of a “Type A” personality than her shy shell ever let on.

            Even in the afterglow of his climax, Dylan reflected with intense desire on what might have been if he’d gotten that book back in seven days sooner. He’d never have insulted August, never have shrunken, and more pointedly, he wouldn’t currently be lying along the black stripe of her soon-to-be-occupied soggy nylon stocking. It seemed possible he’d be haunted by what-ifs for the rest of his strange, miniature, carrot-stick life with Ms. August Turner.

            Reality set firmly back in, as August’s slender foot snaked its way down into the shimmering tunnel. Dylan watched it bearing toward him with grim indifference and a hint of stirring between his legs for round two. The pale sole met his body, molded him to its squishy mass, and descended to the waiting black shoe. August’s fingers met the underside of her foot again before entry; her index traced her quivering victim’s frame like a criminal chalk outline, before she pressed one last shushing fingertip over his face and sealed the boy inside her sweat-caked leather clog for their trip home.