This could not go on. For the past two days I had been winning the most important game of hide and seek of my life, but it was time to find a new spot. My lips were dry and cracked, and my stomach no longer rumbled with hunger, it was simply empty. A single drop of water or a mere crumb dropped from a plate would be enough for me to get by, but I would find nothing of the sort here. Everything was too clean, and my unwitting host never brought anything back with her. I was on my own.
Strange as it may sound, none of that was exaggeration. While attending a sorority party on my college’s campus, I had been shrunk to less than an inch tall, and from what I could gather I was not the only one. I was lucky enough to have shrunk in a hallway, and while I ran to the nearest room to hide two titanic women had walked by, one of them holding a shoe box that was a constant source of screams. They did not notice me – I was probably the size of an ant compared to them – and I was able to take cover beneath a piece of furniture.
During my stay I got several demonstrations of what happened to tiny men who got caught, it it made me more determined to avoid their attention. This room belonged to a tall, fit blond woman who towered over me even before I shrank. At first, she had brought a shrunken man into her room every few hours to let him loose on the floor so she could chase him around. Those that did not wind up smashed beneath her feet got picked back up, never to be seen again. I had not seen one in over a day now, and I presumed I was among the last man alive here.
The only thing left was to pick a time to escape. It was not enough to wait until she left; my gigantic host came and went at all times and could either be gone for a few minutes or several hours. She was simply too unpredictable to plan around. Nighttime was a bust, too: while she would not see me, I also would not be able to see where I was going, and the last thing I wanted was to stumble into a glue trap, or worse. Besides, I did not know if I would last much longer without sustenance.
The doorknob turned, heralding the return of my unknowing captor. When the door swung open I reflexively ducked into the carpet fibers so I could be sure she would not see me while I could see her perfectly. She had pulled her long, golden blond hair back in a ponytail, and her light blue eyes glinted when she flicked on the light. Her light skin glimmered, and she set her square jaw when she pressed the door closed with her long fingers. As she dropped her black portfolio bag beside her bed she straightened her bright red tank top so it was flush with her short tennis skirt of the same color. Each footfall from her titanic red hi-top Converse made the floor shake, and I had to place a hand on my stomach to ease my queasiness.
It was marvelous to watch her walk to her desk. With every long stride her svelte calves popped out, making her white knee-high socks bulge, and the muscles of her powerful thighs bulged. Every time one of her city block-sized shoes hit the carpet it was accompanied by a dull slap, demonstrating a hint of the power she wielded. Were it not a matter of survival, I would remain under her nighstand so I could watch her come and go daily. As it was, however, I needed to get ready to escape while she worked.
Just before she could sit down, however, the air was filled with the ear-rending sound of a phone ringing. She halted and rushed back to her bag to withdraw her phone, then swiped her finger along the screen. The horrible klaxon stopped and she raised the phone to her ear.
“Yeah?” she answered impatiently, the single syllable like a thunderclap over the plains. “Yes, this is Jessica.” She started pacing, her feet hitting hard enough to make the glass case on the far side of the room rattle. “Yes, Jessica Stein.” Even with her low, rumbling voice I could tell she was getting frustrated. “Yes, Jessica Stein of Gamma Tau Sigma. Look, can I help you with something, or are you going to keep asking if you got the right person?”
Jessica stopped her pacing right in front of me and turned around, planting one foot solidly on the floor. She dragged the other shoe behind her and raised it so her heel was propped against the frame of her bed. While she was distracted on the phone, I figured I could risk poking out a little to gaze up longingly at her towering legs, the light casting long, stark shadows over them. Were it not practically asking for death, I would rush out and clamber up her red sneakers to see how far I could get climbing them. Alas, all I could do was look at them, admiring the subtle twitching of her foot inside the canvas.
“You want to pledge? You’re aware of our requirements, right?” A muffled voice briefly answered her. “Let’s just worry about the biggest one for now: all members have to be at least five-ten. Do you meet that – Meredith, was it?” The other person answered, and the wooden frame creaked when Jessica pressed her heel against it. “Six feet is good. That’s barefoot, right, not in heels or boots or something? And not counting your hair either? We’ve had a lot of people try to slip under the radar like we wouldn’t notice, and I’d rather not waste my time on someone we won’t even consider.”
The bed springs squealed when Jessica sat down, and the floor trembled when her foot slammed back down. A tremendous red canvas wall rose in front of me, lined at the bottom with white rubber. I looked up, and found I could not focus on much beyond the ankle-high top of her shoe almost thirty feet above me. Her gigantic foot blocked the room’s light, throwing a long shadow over me. Far overhead, a white circle with a star inside it the size of a helipad taunted me, daring me to climb for it. Caution tempered my enthusiasm, however, and I continued simply gawking up at her.
“Okay good, so you’re six-even flat. Don’t worry about it, Gamma terminology – if we accept you, you’ll get used to it. Anyway, we’re meeting potential pledges next Saturday. Be here at ten a.m. sharp for measuring and orientation.” Jessica paused while the other person spoke again. “Your roommate wants to come too? That’s fine, we don’t really have a roster or anything. How tall is she?” The voice came back, and Jessica gasped quietly. “I’m sorry, did you say six-five?” The caller briefly answered. “Yeah you should bring her! Anything else?” She got a quick answer before proceeding. “Okay, great. I’ll see you on Saturday with the other pledges. And Meredith? If you lied about being six flat, it’ll be worse than if you had just shown up.” Without waiting for a reply she hung up and stood, making her bed groan again when the springs expanded.
Jessica walked to her desk, the floor shaking with each step she took and the dull slaps of her Converse ringing in my ears. They got weaker the further away she got, but I could still feel the seismic waves she generated in my knees. After a few seconds I heard the clatter of her chair’s casters when she pulled it out, then the thump of her huge frame slamming against the leather. The whole room grumbled when she pulled her chair back in, its massive movement making everything rumble, accompanied by spiking tremors when her heels dug into the carpet. Though I could not see her, it sounded like she was settling in for a while.
This was my chance. True, she was still in the room, but if she was busy she would not notice me moving. She could not suddenly come in and discover me making for the door, nor would she be walking around as she tended to do. If I was going to make a break for it and get some much-needed sustenance, this was likely to be my last chance.
I dashed out from beneath the nightstand toward the gigantic wooden door on the far side of the room. Immediately, it became clear to me that this escape would be harder than expected. The thick carpet of Jessica’s room nearly came up to my waist and were clustered tightly enough that pushing through them would require serious effort. Walking alone felt like I was constantly hopping over hurdles as I hopped over the fibers to continue along my way. Each one was an obstacle I needed to overcome, and there were hundreds or thousands between me and the door.
Within a few minutes, it was clear that two days without food and water had taken their toll on me. I was exhausted, and there was no way I could keep up my pace. Going back to where I had been hiding would be just as difficult as getting where I had, however, and only keep me in this situation. To keep making progress toward the exit I began simply climbing over the carpet fibers, swinging my legs over the sides and crawling onto them before moving on to the next. It was significantly slower than jumping over them, but it was the only way to keep moving.
A series of quick, light tremors reached me through the floor, and I turned to check on Jessica. Fortunately she was still at her desk, nose buried in a book as she scribbled notes onto a pad beside her, so she was not coming for me. However, she had drawn her legs beneath her chair and crossed them at the ankles, and the top one was now repeatedly tapping against the floor. Her fidgeting was going to make my difficult task even more perilous, but I could not let it stop me. I had to escape from her room.
Several hours of slowly climbing my way through her carpet while the floor shook and I still had not made it to the hallway. The door loomed in front of me, taunting me as I gradually and inexorably drew closer. I was probably about a foot from it now, in terms of regular person measurements, and it looked to me like hundreds of feet of rough, craggy terrain. To keep my spirits up, I told myself it was just another half hour or so until I could crawl through the crack beneath her door.
The floor trembled from a new set of footfalls, each successive one getting more powerful, and the titaness’s shadow fell over me. Any hope that she had not seen me was crushed when her enormous red shoe stomped down between me and the door, the heel just missing me. A tremendous quake emanated from its impact, and I leaned forward against a thick carpet fiber. Looking forward, I saw bold black letters as tall as I was spelling ALL STAR along the back of her heel, with a large black star right in front of me.
I had come too far, hidden for too long, to give up now. I pushed off from the carpet and started running perpendicular to her foot, hoping to get around her. The excitement flooded my body with adrenaline, and I used the surge of energy to fight my way through the carpet. Again I hopped over the carpet fibers, my feet barely touching the ground before I bounded up and over the next one. With how fast I was going, I felt there was a real chance of me getting away from her and escaping her room intact.
A titanic red Converse slammed down in my path, ending that delusion. The ground rumbled when it landed and I lost my footing, throwing me forward into the white rubber wall. From the middle of her instep, it seemed that her foot curved around me, totally enclosing me. Any escape was hopeless now. Jessica had caught me, and now I was about to find out exactly what had happened to the other shrunken men I’d seen from hiding.
I gazed up at the conquering colossus, so tall I could not focus on all of her at once. A wall of red canvas rose up beside me, my eyes following the white stitching past the broad white logo to the top of her gargantuan hi-top. Her sock clung tightly to her calf and shin, looking like a great white pillar as it rose ever higher before giving way to her skin glistening in the light. Jessica’s powerful thigh seemed to go on forever until it was subsumed by her bright red skirt, a hand casually resting against the opposite one. A hand rested on her hip, and as I looked further and further up I saw colossal breasts protruding from her chest, the tight shirt making them look even larger. She had leaned forward slightly, so at the top, beneath a pile of straw-colored hair, I saw her staring back down at me. Excitement made her blue eyes dance, and I could see nothing but contempt in her lopsided smirk.
“What a nice surprise,” Jessica boomed, and I recoiled in a crouch, “a loose shrink. I thought we had taken care of the last one yesterday.” She chuckled, and the loud rumble of her laugh pummeled my ears. “As funny as it is to watch you struggle through my carpet, I have to put a stop to it. Can’t have a puny, pathetic man like you peeping on me throughout the day, can I?”
In an instant the tower collapsed, and before I knew it Jessica was leaning over me. She swiped at me with her right hand, and the world went dark when it engulfed me. Her fingers dragged against the carpet as they curled inward, making a loud, brief scraping sound, then the tip of one caught me. It launched me off the ground and into her palm, where her finger pressed me deep into the soft skin stretched across it. There was not even an opportunity to struggle as her hand closed around me in a tight fist.
A moment later, I was glad her finger held me so securely. Jessica stood, and I was subjected to intense g-forces from the sudden and powerful acceleration. It felt like my insides were still on the floor, and my stomach turned over itself multiple times, its emptiness the only thing keeping me from puking in her hand. Were it not for her squeezing me, I was sure I would have passed out. Just as suddenly as it started, however, it stopped, throwing me further into my indentation in her palm, and my insides were allowed to catch up to me.
The world turned over when Jessica rotated her hand, and I now found myself lying on her palm. With a flourish she opened her fingers, and I was dazzled to see her enormous face looming above me. Her chin was pushed out, giving her a strong air of superiority, and light glinted off her pink lips pulled tight in a smirk. Blue eyes were cast down on me from above, the giantess not even deigning to look directly at me. Jessica’s smugness was palpable, and it made her even more intimidating to me trapped in her hand.
“That’s better,” she boomed, the warm gusts of wind from her voice buffeting me. “Don’t you feel safer in the palm of my hand than you did on the floor?” She continued before I could answer her apparently rhetorical question. “I’ve seen so many shrinks get stepped on by accident, it’s sad. It’s nobody’s fault, really. You’re all so small and easy to miss, and with how you run away it’s like you don’t trust us!”
Jessica tilted her head down to look at me and set a finger from her free hand beside me, then began twirling it around me. “I hope you can come to trust me, though.” Her expression softened significantly as she looked down at me with tender eyes. “I’m sure you think I saved you, but really, you saved me. It can get lonely sometimes, towering over everyone like I do, and I might’ve even hurt your feelings.” Was I hearing her right? Had I completely misjudged her? “Let’s kiss and make up, hm?” She puckered her lips and leaned in, and as her face drew closer, growing larger in my view until it was the only thing I could focus on, I braced myself for her kiss. If we had just gotten off on the wrong foot, I was eager to rectify that.
When her lips were about to touch me, however, they parted, and Jessica dropped her jaw. The horrific pink, slimy carpet of her tongue slithered out of her mouth and flattened against her bottom lip, coating the soft skin in a thin layer of shiny saliva. Beyond the great pink beast I saw the rest of her cavernous maw, lined with straight white teeth as big as I was. At the back of the enormous pink cavern I saw her uvula dangling from the ceiling, wobbling as she inhaled. I stood there shocked, unable to move as I gazed into the terrifying, damp cave above me, an enormous tentacle wriggling out of it toward me.
I did not have long to be in shock. Jessica pressed her tongue against her palm, and when she licked it clean I was stuck to it. She ran it up to the base of her fingers then flicked it into the air, then held it triumphantly in the air. Desperately I screamed, hoping there had been a misunderstanding, and struggled to break free from the thick layer of saliva coating me. Despite my efforts I was still firmly trapped on Jessica’s tongue when she pulled it back into her mouth and nothing I did was helping me get free.
The tip of her tongue retracted behind her teeth and finally stopped. With a surge of energy I flipped myself over and started pushing against my new floor, though my hands merely sank uselessly into the spongy tissue. As I fought to get them free, I watched Jessica’s teeth and lips close back together, blocking the small amount of light I was getting inside. The outside world was reduced to a mere sliver, then cut off entirely when her lips touched. I was sealed inside, and Jessica’s mouth had become my tomb.
Her tongue rushed upward, causing me to yelp, and slammed me against the roof of her mouth. Stars briefly danced in front of my vision, and she began dragging me back along her palate. With each ridge she rolled me over it seemed the amount of saliva around me increased and became stringier, becoming more like regular water. Jessica’s tongue reached the back of her mouth and started forward again, pushing me over the same ridges I had just gone over. She repeated it several times, dragging me roughly across her palate, though it was not until I heard and felt a terrifying roar fill her mouth that I realized she was sucking on me.
After a dozen trips forward and back Jessica’s tongue dropped from the roof of her mouth, though I was too battered to do anything about it. As it turned out, I would not have been able to anyway. Her tongue pitched upward, launching me into the air toward the back of her mouth. I blindly grabbed for her uvula as a last-ditch life raft in the darkness but did not even come close enough to brush a finger against it. Out of options, I landed with a splash on top of Jessica’s gullet.
Frantically I tried to swim out of the pool of saliva, but it was too late. With a sickening schulp the ring of muscle opened, draining the saliva into her esophagus along with me. Her throat muscles closed around me, and I clawed and thrashed against them in an attempt to get back into her mouth. It was all for naught, however. Jessica’s throat muscles were much stronger than I was, and I could not stop them from inexorably pushing me downward. They did not release their grip on me until I reached the stale air inside her stomach, and by then it was too late. When I felt the acid stinging my skin, I knew that it was all over.
Jessica felt the shrink in her stomach, struggling weakly against its walls. That had been such a nice surprise; she was worried she would have to wait until the next party for more shrinks. When the movement inside her slowed and finally stopped, Jessica could not keep from smiling. Another shrink gone, and no mess to clean up this time. As she went back to work, she clicked her tongue inside her mouth. There was no taste like a terrified shrink, and she would be savoring that all night.