“This is amazing!” Sally shouted to her friend Maya over the din
of the music.
The beats shook the
entire massive space they were partying in. In a way it felt like
partying in an open field; there were technically walls around them
but they seemed miles apart.
“I know right!”
Maya yelled back as she twirled.
The pair were at
perhaps the most unique party they’d ever heard of.
A post on social
media, a private group, had led them both to a new development area
of town where the houses were still mostly empty. They’d been
greeted by a nice mid-height woman and a party already in full swing.
Since it was obviously safe, over a hundred partiers were already
busy, they had no issues accepted the group Tiny Tinder request and
shrinking down to two inches tall. The woman had carefully deposited
them onto the kitchen island where the party was taken place,
carefully put their phones in a cabinet out of sight in the hallway,
and it had been non-stop fun ever since.
There was a regular
sized household speaker that gave the party more than enough sound to
essentially be a concert. The ‘ground’ beneath their feet even
shook slightly while they danced. Up close the faux-granite
countertop looked even cooler.
“How do you think
they did the booze part?” Maya asked as they left the dance floor
area and walked to what was half designated as a bar.
“No idea!” Sally
yelled back, not wanting to explain that she recognized some of the
drink dispenser machines from childhood toys. Nor that somehow most
alcohol tasted much better as a person shrank.
“Let’s get
wasted!” they yelled in unison as their host activated an overhead
LED light that worked far better than a disco ball at highlighting
the party.
***
Helena dropped off
the last group of partiers with a smile, double checked that her
hired bartenders were fully stocked, then stepped out of the kitchen.
She had to be sure to hold that smile until she was out of sight, and
to keep the crowd busy she activated a small LED bulb that cycled
through colors rapidly as it hung from the ceiling.
The ‘locked and
safe’ cabinet she had been putting her partiers’ phones in was
actually unlocked and currently only held twelve phones. Zero by the
time she unloaded it into her purse.
“How’s it
going?” she called ahead of herself as she moved down the hall.
There was no worries that a tiny partier would hear her voice; her
twenty dollar speaker more than drowned out any noise she could make.
She nudged the door
to the backroom open and sat her purse on the collapsible table her
partner was working at.
Devan looked up at
her as he plugged multiple phones into cables and tapped on his
laptop.
“Pretty awesome,
actually,” he said as he slid two phones into a large trash can.
Helena dumped out
the last of the phones and slid them into his ‘IN’ pile.
“Everyone’s
security sucks,” Devan said, “There hasn’t been any issue
syncing up and taking over, and I think these remotes are gonna work
great.”
He indicated a small
box that Helena knew was full of simple remotes that she had 3D
printed herself, with some aid from Devan for the electronics
portion.
“Those were a
really good idea,” she told Devan, “It opened up a whole new
realm for us. What with you hijacking the signal and-”
“Thanks but not
right now,” he interrupted gently as he tossed one phone to the
side and plugged a new one into his laptop, “I want to get this
wrapped up before I do so many I screw something up. This is it,
right?”
“Yeah, that’s
the last of them,” Helena said, “How long til I can wrap things
up out there?”
Truth be told it
really did look like a fun time that she was hosting. Ignorance was
bliss.
“Five minutes?
I’ll let you know,” he told her.
***
Eva carefully closed
the tap and handed her patron a tiny beer. Tiny was a relative term,
at their current size it was pretty big. That didn’t stop the taps
from leaking a little; they were repurposed from toys and repainted.
Which didn’t always mean watertight.
“More cleanup over
here?” the other bartender, Alli, asked her over the music.
They’d never
worked together before but found themselves moving like a well-oiled
machine. Both were bartenders at full-size too, but neither could
turn down the money that they’d been offered for this incredibly
cool Tiny party.
“No, this tap
shuts pretty good,” Eva replied, giving it a nervous look.
For once there
wasn’t anybody at their makeshift bar. It had been a very busy
night. But when she thought of the cash she’d already been paid, it
had been worth it. The general idea made her nervous but no one paid
cash up front to do something shady.
“Good maybe we-”
The music paused.
There was a groan of disappointment followed briefly by a cheer.
“Oh, Kelly must
have an announcement!” Eva said, looking upward at her boss for the
evening.
The woman was
looking down at the crowd with a smile.
“Uh, you mean
Terra?” Alli replied, wondering why Eva called her boss a different
name.
A terrifying thought
flashed through her mind just as the giant woman spoke.
“I want to thank
you all for coming out tonight!” Helena said excitedly, and the
crowd cheered again. “This has been a huge success and I’m
really, really thankful so many people came out.”
Alli breathed a sigh
of relief. She’d been sure something horrible was about to happen.
“Now, let’s
really celebrate!” the giant woman said, holding up a large bottle
of champagne, “Get over here everyone! Bartenders, you too!”
Eva laughed and
happily hopped the bar along with the other three bartenders. Alli
held back; she didn’t like champagne. The crowd of partiergoers
moved closed to Helena who was starting to shake the bottle.
Helena shook the
fake bottle for another few seconds, just long enough to get all the
tinies closer to the edge of the kitchen island.
Then she dropped her
fake smile with relief, and sat the bottle on the ground. The crowd
seemed to catch her change in energy but everyone was drunk enough to
only react with confusion rather than running away.
Third time’s
the charm, she thought as she
traded the fake bottle for a large metal popcorn bowl.
“Alright,
everyone just stand still,” she said as she held the bowl just
below the height of the island, “If
you all run this is gonna get annoying.”
Alli
clapped her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. The regular
sized woman, who had apparently lied about her name and clearly
everything else, leaned over the crowd. A few less-drunk people
attempted to run but the woman just used her forearm to sweep them
back.
“Hop
in and save me the trouble? No?”
There
was a massive sigh of annoyance and Alli watched in terror as the
woman used her forearm to sweep the crowd toward her.
“Next
time I’m bringing a brush,” she said, irritated,
as she smashed people
together.
Alli
could hear faint screaming as almost two hundred people were shoved
off the side of the island. She
couldn’t see what they were landing in but knew there was no way it
was just a fall to their deaths. When things happened to shrunken
people it was never that simple.
Before
she could even think about what to do next, she was alone, hiding
behind the miniature bar and hoping that the giant woman didn’t
notice her. The massive metal bowl that was now a prison was set
carefully onto the kitchen island.
“Don’t
bother,” Helena said to someone in the bowl, “I greased the
sides.”
Alli
could only hope that meant someone was trying to climb.
“Hey
D!” Helena called out to
someone unseen, “Let’s
wrap this up, I don’t want to pack everything myself this time!”
A
distant male voice called back: “I’m packing up the computers!
Gimme a break! Test the
remote real quick!”
“Fine,
fine,” Helena mumbled as she pulled a small remote out of her
pocket.
Movement
caught her eye.
“Hey!
A bartender!”
Alli
screamed as massive fingers wrapped around her body and dropped her
casually onto the middle of the kitchen island. She had a momentary
view of the mass of people cluttered together in the bowl before
falling with a scream. The fall surprised her, but being super-tough
it didn’t actually hurt.
“Thanks
for volunteering, it’s tough to get people to work at
these things,” Helena said
idly as she looked at the small remote in her hand.
“Let
me go!” Alli screamed upward, “I won’t tell anyone and-”
“Hold
still, I’m new to this,” the bigger woman said.
She
fiddled with the remote and Alli’s stomach lurched as she grew four
inches taller.
“You
paid me and everythi-”
“Chump
change,” Helena interrupted, only glancing briefly at Alli. “Pinch
yourself?”
“Wha-”
Alli
screamed when Helena reached toward her again. She tried to dodge out
of the way but it didn’t matter. Two fingers encircled her leg and
she fell. The fingers squeezed and pain shot through her entire body.
When the fingers left she looked down and saw that her leg was
twisted in the wrong direction.
Broken.
She
was supposed to be super-tough.
“Oh
fuck.”
“So
that one works,” Helena said as she looked at her results with a
smile. She waved the remote at Alli. “Control over the common TT
settings. For all of you.”
Alli
drew breath to scream but instead her stomach lurched again as she
shrank down, then briefly back upward.
“Two
inches, that’ll do,” the woman said.
“Is
it working?” a man’s voice said, and Alli began screaming when
she saw the giant man holding a trash bag that was obviously full of
phones.
Through
her pain and terror she realized what was actually happening.
“Just
one more setting to try,” Helena said as she nudged a button on the
remote.
Alli
winced, sure it was about to get worse. Her leg had actually stopped
hurting and she realized adrenaline had numbed it for her. For the
moment.
“Wanna do the
honors?” she asked Devan, her partner-in-crime.
“Nah, I wanna get
these soaking in that big-ass cooler in the trunk before anything
dumb happens,” he replied. The man’s massive eyes spared Alli a
glance, then he smirked at her before walking out the front door.
Alli looked back at
Helena in time to scream as her massive hand wrapped around her. The
giant woman held the tiny wounded bartender in front of her face and
gave her a terrifyingly relaxed smile.
“We’re kinda
testing a thing,” Helena explained as she shifted Alli around to a
better position.
The small woman
tried not to scream again as she saw the remote. On one side was a
slider for size, on the other a dial with several toughness settings.
Of the actual buttons, one labeled 'digestable' was lit up. As well as the toughness being halfway between 'indestructible' and 'wimpy.'
“So struggle as
much as you can, okay? If it doesn’t work then we need to know.”
Alli lost her self
control as she was lifted above Helena’s head.
“Perfect! Just
like that!”
And Helena lowered
the little bartender into her mouth. She fought for all she was worth
but it just made her a more interesting morsel for Helena. The
struggling couldn’t come close to overpowering her tongue and Alli
was swallowed in a disturbingly business-like fashion.
Helena didn’t have
time to enjoy a treat; Devan was right. The longer it took to pack up
and vanish the more likely their situation would be become
complicated. They had technically broken into the unoccupied house to
host the party.
After an extra large
gulp to get the squirmer down, Helena shrugged and picked up her bowl
of product. There was much screaming and noise-making, but it was
easy to ignore. Especially once she covered the top with plastic
cling wrap.
“Can’t have
anyone falling out, right?” she said as she looked down at the
tumbling crowd. Laughing, she carried tonight’s haul out to the car
just as Devan walked back in to grab his computer equipment.
***
The following
morning Helena slept in. She was greeted by a bright sunny day and
coffee brewed on a timer an hour earlier. Her midnight snack was
still twitching somewhere in her small intestine and she idly texted
Devan to let him know the setting had worked just fine but in the
future they should pair it with a timer of some sort. She loved the
thought of the bartender still twitching, and knew she was completely
aware of every excruciating moment in her guts up until she was well
and truly digested. It was how a tiny snack should be, in her
opinion.
But some people
preferred their treats capable of multiple rounds. And some didn’t
want to be kept up half the night by the bouncing tummies. As a smart
businesswoman she wanted her customers to have options.
After a cup of
coffee and a banana (she was always health conscious), her stomach
finally finished its earlier meal and the twitching stopped.
With a smile she sat
down to begin sorting last night’s haul. Two taps on her phone
opened her music app and she started her day with Mozart.
A printed out list
awaited her with numbers and destinations.
“Three for
Michigan? Lame,” she said aloud as she pulled out a small ziplock
baggie.
Barely looking at
what she was doing, Helena lifted the plastic wrap on the bowl and
snagged three tinies. They screamed and shouted but she wasn’t
paying attention. Almost bored, she dropped the three into the
baggie. Next came three small remotes identical to the one she had
tested the night before. With a printout of how to sync and use the
remotes, Helena added everything to a box, added a pre-printed label,
then set the box to the side. Ready to ship.
“Four for
Tijuana?” Helena giggled, “They must have something fun planned,
TT is legal down there. Must want some gringos in particular.”
This time she did
pay more attention, making sure she got the whitest looking tinies
that she’d procured last night. These went into a their own baggie,
and the scenario repeated.
“Maybe a donkey
show?” she wondered aloud before moving onto the rest of her
orders.
Eight went to
Thailand, where Helena never knew that ladyboys used them as prostate
massagers for years until they would inevitably be lost in the sewage
system.
Another four went to
Canada where a poutine obsessed chef realized that tinies just
weren’t the ingredient he was looking for. This was, of course,
after they had been devoured.
A dozen to Chile,
six to New Zealand, three sent to England. Helena went through the
routine, sometimes vacuum sealing the bags to make sure customs
wouldn’t catch on in certain countries. Everyone wanted tinies, but
not everywhere allowed the world’s most popular app.
Finally, Helena
filled her last order and looked at the pile of boxes she’d
prepared.
“Damn that’s a
lot of money,” she said aloud.
“And just enough
parties too,” she announced as she looked into the bowl. She’d
set a rough goal for how many people to bring in, and there was just
one left from last night.
The lone tiny
cowered under Helena’s hand as she reached into the bowl.
“What to do with
you, I wonder?”
Idly she used her
last remote and synced it to the tiny. She curled her hand around the
little blonde and made sure she was on three-quarters-toughened. Her
thumb slid the slider up and she felt the tiny grow to five inches in
her palm. Big enough that she could be heard yelling in terror.
“Quiet you,”
Helena told her before standing and walking into her backyard.
It was a beautiful
morning. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining.
The neighbor’s dog
was in their backyard.
“Hiya Pluto!”
she said happily to the great dane, who bounded up on the chain link
fence and stood on his hind legs almost as tall as she was.
Helena gave him
dutiful scratches behind the ears, then offered him a toy.
“You want it boy?
You want it?”
She wiggled the tiny
screaming woman just in front of the dogs nose, and he dropped down
from the fence and spun in circles in excitement.
“Go get it!”
Helena said with a laugh as she tossed the tiny halfway across her
neighbor’s backyard.
The dog took off
like a shot and just as the tiny bounced, Pluto snapped her up with
his jaws.
“Have fun!” she
called out to her neighbor’s dog as he started gnawing.
That oughta give
him a couple hours’ fun, she
thought as she thought of her trip to the post office.
***
For
the curious: Those sent to Mexico were, indeed, used as part of a
donkey show. One recently-poorly performing donkey found its
appendage revitalized by cock vore. The tinies, of course, were
recovered after the show and reused for years.