“Ugh, no!” Beverly said.

“What? I haven’t even said anything!” The tiny man said.

“I know, but you’re tiny and crawling around in the dirt, and you’re going to ask me to help you, and then I’ll have to take you to that creepy place where all the tiny people get processed and I’m trying to read and I’m not doing it, so just… I don’t know, go away!” Beverly said.

“There’s no one else here!” the tiny man pleaded. “I think my wife may be looking for me, we were picnicking not far from here, when the wind caught a paper plate and… if you could just take me to her, I’d…”

“I said ‘no’, you fucking bug!” Beverly shouted. “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand?”

"But if you'd just listen…" the tiny man said, taking a few diminutive steps toward Beverly.

"I told you I'm not interested!" Beverly interrupted, raising her foot off the ground and over the tiny nuisance. "My sister's into all that freaky tiny person shit, but you little shits gross me out, so I'll tell you one last time; go away!"

An awkward silence hung between them. Beverly's foot hanging over the shrunken man, leaving him in a deep shadow as he looked around. Even from behind her sunglasses, Beverly could tell he was near a breaking point. She knew he likely couldn't see much, the park was mostly hills, trees, and ankle-high grass. Ankle-high to Beverly, it had tickled as she'd walked barefoot from her car, well out of sight, to the quietest, remote corner of the park, and came to rest under the largest tree she could find. To the little man under the threat of her foot, however, the grass would be taller than him.

"Please…" the tiny man said, hanging his head.

"Wrong answer!" Beverly said.

His scream was immediately cut off by Beverly’s foot slamming him into the ground. She wasted no time in showing her displeasure by rolling him under her foot. His body tumbled between the dirt and her toes, then the ball, under her arch, and finally ground under her heel, before she pulled the foot back and sent him rolling the other way. She could feel his limbs trapped and rolling under her, but cared little for his safety. When she felt he’d tumbled enough for a moment, she squeezed him with her toes, and pushed him into the soil, sparing no part of him from either her foot or the ground.

Beverly continued tormenting him, leaning back against the tree. Having traveled so deep into the park, almost against the edge that lead into the woods proper, and sitting under a tree, Beverly had hoped to not be disturbed. She reached into her bag and pulled out her accouterments for the afternoon; her most recent fantasy-horror-romance novel, a tall glass bottle of kombucha, and a cigarette case containing a few pre-rolled joints.

She lay the book on her lap while she occupied herself with lighting her first joint of the day. She pressed the tiny man into the soil with her toes as she pulled a long, potent drag off the joint. A practiced smoker, she didn’t cough as she exhaled the smoke, but went back in immediately for the second lungful, a few minutes later she felt her calm being restored through chemical assistance.

"You know, my sister's really into this shit…" Beverly said, rolling the tiny body beneath her sole. "When she graduated from CU of NT, she had a whole fucking drawer full of you little things."

The tiny man had given up screaming, either out of breath or too overwhelmed by the dirt and grime from being rolled and stomped under Beverly's sole. He still managed a few grunts and squeaks as she continued to idly knead him into the increasingly broken earth beneath her foot.

“But she’s got an unhealthy obsession with you little shits.” Beverly observed as she tormented the tiny man. “She uses you all to masterbate, she eats you, she stomps on you just for fun, she even had her boyfriend rail her with a tiny woman strapped to him one time. That’s why he broke up with her, well that and she told him about her fantasies if he ever shrank. Freaked him out real good.”

Beverly opened her book back up, and found where she'd left off; a chapter wherein the heroine learned of the monster's true nature, a welcome respite from her studies. The man under her sole did everything in his power to prevent himself from being reduced to a broken bag of pulp and bone fragments, but he had almost no agency under her foot.

“Now, I came out here to read…” Beverly declared, feeling the effects of the cannabis as she settled in. “And I’m going to read.”

Minutes passed into an hour, and then the hour passed into many. The sun began to fall toward the horizon. Beverly drank her kombucha, smoked her cannabis, read, and occasionally switched feet while ignoring the tiny man's pleas for mercy and release. By the time Beverly looked up from the last chapter, and the heroine had subdued the monster in her bed and in combat, the dirt beneath her feet had been dug up, and the tiny man utterly coated in both the grime from Beverly's feet and a staggering amount of dirt. She had spent so long grinding the annoyance under and between her feet that where her feet rested, the grass had been completely worn away, leaving a small pit of moist earth for her feet and her victim.

Beverly clutched the unmoving little man in her toes and lifted him up for a better look. Almost no part of him was distinguishable through the caked on dirt, soil, and what was left of the grass that had been at her feet. Similarly, both of her feet were absolutely encrusted with soil, looking like she had trudged through mud rather than sat reading for a few hours. Still, caught in the grip of her toes, Beverly could still see the little man's body shudder with pained, ragged breathing.

Shrugging, Beverly let him fall back to the dirt. She packed her kombucha bottle and her book back into her canvas bag, and got up to stretch. It was a lengthy process, arms, back, thighs, calves, even stretching the soles of her feet, but when she stood upright from the final stretch, hands slightly dirty, she adjusted her shorts and was surprised to feel so relaxed. Despite being caked in dirt, her feet felt as though she’d just had a great massage from Robert, even though he was so usually unwilling to provide.

“You know, maybe my sister actually has the right idea.” Beverly observed, scrunching and relaxing her toes in the dirt. Her feet felt better than they had in a very long time. “But don’t think I’m going to follow her example and shove you up my holes…”

Beverly slung her bag over her shoulder and leaned down, fishing the tiny man out of the dirt. She shook him off, less gently than would have been considerate, but gently enough to leave him in one piece and still breathing when she dropped him into one of the pouches of her bag. She dusted off her hands on her shorts, re-adjusted those same shorts, and turned around for the long walk back to her car when she almost crashed into the sobbing woman who had just walked around the tree.

“I’m sorry…” the sobbing woman apologized. “I’m looking for my husband, he’s diminished.”

“Uh huh…” Beverly said, stepping deftly around her. “Best of luck.”

“I’ve looked all over the park!” the weeping woman continued. “Have you seen a shrunken man around here anywhere?”

Beverly didn’t even break stride as she turned and shrugged her shoulders.

“Sorry, no.” she lied. “I hope you find him before someone else does!”

With that Beverly turned and began walking back to her car. The park’s grass in the early evening felt good on her bare feet, and she hoped that by the time she made it back to her vehicle some of the excess dirt would have wiped or rubbed off, but even if it got her Sonata dirty, she didn’t care. She patted her bag, feeling the outline of the unconscious shrunken man inside it through the thick canvas.

“Still... when I get home, I might need to call my sister…” Beverly said to no one but herself. “Maybe she has some ideas on how you can prove useful.”