Another long, soul-crushing night… Harper thought to herself. And of course, fucking Liam took off early, again. Well, fuck him.

With an armful of reports, folders, whitepapers, graphs, and even printed infographics, all printed in twelve copy sets for the meeting tomorrow morning, all heavy enough, and bulky enough, to make moving through the darkened hallways of the office difficult.

Even the fucking cleaning staff is gone! Harper noted, as the whole office was almost completely dark, save for some exit lights and computer glows. The only light she really had came from the end of the hall, a brilliant white light from the breakroom’s LEDs.

I've gotta do everything around here. Harper, still balancing stacks of paperwork, made her way down the hall toward the offending light. The entire office was fully deserted, dark, and still in the earliest morning. Harper turned the corner into the breakroom and almost dropped her documents.

The breakroom was probably the least furnished room in the entire building, Harper had overheard a member of the HR team talking to a member of the management team about decreasing the amount of time employees spent on break by making the recreational areas of the building as abominable as possible. Despite the company’s recent crack of the billion dollar revenue mark, the breakroom was furnished with a single table, a single chair, a fridge from the sixties, a coffee maker from the seventies, and a microwave from the eighties, but nothing else. The problem lay in the chair, in the form of a pile of clothes, shirt, tie, pants, belt. The shoes and socks seemed to be on the floor at the chair, but otherwise the whole attire was there. The cheap tie, and wrinkled shirt almost immediately identified it as Liam’s.

The fuck is Liam doing? Harper thought to herself.

“God damnit, Liam.” She said to herself. “Get your shit together.”

Harper dropped the stack of documents on the table, which threatened to pitch over from the new imbalance of weight, but Harper expected as much and pushed her documents toward the center of the table. She then turned her attention to the clothes, picking up the shirt first. As she lifted the white collared shirt from the chair when a lump, suddenly mobile in the fabric, came tumbling out. Harper’s first inclination was to shriek, but she held off as gravity pulled the wriggling thing down through the shirt, falling to the chair and then ungracefully bouncing off the too-worn cushion to the miserably scuffed tile floor. Her patience was rewarded as she almost immediately recognized the shape of what tumbled from the shirt, a tiny, nude man. What’s more, she recognized the stupid blonde hair and scrawny outline.

“Liam?” She asked, leaning over the stunned man on the floor. “Is that you?”

“Harper!” The shrunken analyst squeaked. “Thank God you found me! I think I might have hurt something in the fall! Can you take me to the hospital?”

Hospital? With our insurance?

“You look fine, but how long have you been here?” Harper asked, brushing her hair out of her face. She realized the only chair in the breakroom was genuinely empty and pushed Liam’s clothes off it to take a seat, with Liam directly between her feet.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling well, and I came in here to get something to drink, and then the world started spinning, and I think I blacked out.” He said. “That was the last thing I remember before falling.”

"When was that?" Harper asked.

"Are you going to help me?" Liam whined.

"Well…" Harper said. "I would but…"

You're worthless, and I've got better shit to do, and I still need to figure out how to hide fourteen millions dollars in stolen equities. Harper thought. Oh, that's almost too perfect.

“What do you mean ‘you would’?” Liam shouted up to her. He had begun to pace between her shoes as he seemed to be trying to come to grips with his new cockroach-like size. “I can’t do anything on my own.”

“I know.” Harper stated. “Hey, Liam, what’s the password to your work terminal? Oh! And to your phone too.”

“What?” Liam asked, frozen in his pacing.

“Well, let’s be real here, Liam.” Harper said, picking up Liam’s phone and turning it on. “There’s no cure for the shrinking virus. I mean, there’s the vaccine, but it looks like your religious exemption for, what the fuck was it again, ‘spiritual agnostic renewalism’ really paid off for you, although I don’t think there are any crystals that are going to clear this up.”

“I… What… what do you mean?” Liam asked, his confusion quickly giving way to a dawning realization and fear. “You’re not going to help me?”

“We’ve talked, Liam.” Harper said. “At length, about how much fun I have with shrunken people.”

Even at his tiny size, Harper could see Liam’s eyes open wide with fear. During some of the many nights in which She and Liam had been the only two people still working, the shrinking disease had come up many times, and Harper had learned her disregard for shrunken people could shut down a conversation with Liam relatively quickly. They had talked, about the first time Harper had found a shrunken woman alone, on a park bench, and about how Harper had crushed that woman beneath her sneaker. They’d also talked about how Harper had found a shrunken man on the subway station, and smeared him along the floor with her flats.

“And about how I don’t get caught.” Harper continued.

She tapped the toe of her right foot. Gently enough, but it startled Liam into falling off his feet away from the sound, even if that was simply closer to her left.

“And I think, if I remember correctly.” Harper said, feigning deep thought by pressing an index finger to her chin below her lips. “You even once asked me what I would do if I ever found a coworker shrunk, do you remember that, Liam?”

She tapped her left foot, much louder this time. The clack of her toe on the plastic floor sent the panic-addled Liam scrambling right, toward the foot he’d just shied away from.

“You’re joking!” He screamed, even as he crawled on his hands and knees. “You were joking, right? You wouldn’t really…!” Harper guessed some part of Liam’s brain wouldn’t let him finish the thought in his mind.

“Well, I might not.” Harper started, shining the light of the screen of Liam’s phone down on him. “If such a coworker did what he was told. The password to your computer, Liam, and your phone now. Unless you’d prefer…”

Harper finished her sentence by lifting her right foot up and stomping it down. The crack of her shoe on the floor probably would’ve been audible throughout the office, but the only other person to hear it was no more than two inches tall, and less than half a foot from where the sole met the polyvinyl. Liam screamed, but it didn’t bother Harper, this was part of the fun.

“Why?” He screamed after he had almost exhausted his breath.

“I already told you; I get off on it.” Harper said flatly.

No reason to lie, he already knew from our previous conversations.

“Why do you want my passwords?” He shouted, trying paradoxically to scoot away from her.

Harper blinked.

Of course this fucking idiot insect doesn’t know. He couldn’t wrap up an earnings report if it was to save his life. Oh well, no harm in telling him. She realized.

“Oh, I’m going to implicate you in the embezzlement scheme Mark and I have been running for the last six months. So what’s your password?”

Harper lifted her right foot over Liam. It was a bit awkward, sitting in the chair, in her work-skirt, hovering her foot above her shrunken coworker, but the shadow falling over him had its intended effect.

“The phone is 333, and the password is ‘francesca’!” He shouted, attempting to shield himself with his arms from her foot.

“Wait, ‘francesca’?” Harper asked, setting her foot back down. The foot fell right next to where Liam lay on the floor prompting another scream. “That bitch from human resources? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right?”

“I… wh… no? Why would I be kidding?” He asked, his eyes fixed on her shoe next to him.

“You know she hates you, right? She’d beat the shit out of you if she thought you were looking at her.” Harper said, between laughs.

There was an awkward silence as Harper shuffled her feet a bit, each slight movement of her shoe, however, caused a reaction from Liam. Harper considered spending more time tormenting Liam, but she had already been at the office for hours, and now had more to do before she left.

"Well, Liam, I think it's time to say 'goodbye', I'll let Francesca know you were into her." Harper said.

Liam screamed, but it did nothing to stop Harper’s foot from pinning him to the floor. Even with most of him under the gently rounded point of her wedge’s toes, while he clawed at the thick cork sole, she could see his horrified expression.

Harper took some time with Liam under her shoe. She covered him with her sole, she gently, for her at least, compressed him under her foot, and she rolled him around on the dirty fake-tile floor.

When she felt that he wasn't entertaining enough, she'd poke him into action with the toe of her shoe.

Nah, this isn’t doing it for me. Harper thought. Weird, this is normally the biggest rush. What’s missing?

She didn’t crush Liam, still screaming and crying under the tip of her wedge pump, but neither did she let up, keeping him pinned beneath the pointed tip of a shoe big enough to make him disappear beneath it entirely.

“Oh, I know what’s wrong.” Harper exclaimed. “I forgot pictures.”

Immediately she moved her foot off of Liam, letting it rest right next to him. She plucked her phone from where it rested on the top of her papers, and quickly switched to the camera. A few flashes and clicks later, Harper reviewed the images of her shoe next to Liam’s shrunken form. Each flash seemed to disorient Liam worse than the previous, and none of the photos of him were particularly good, but at least her wedge pumps looked good dwarfing a man.

“So, I’ve done this a few times before.” Harper said, as she leaned down and popped the wedge pump off of her foot, she set the shoe down on the table top. “But I’ve always done it with my shoes on.”

She flexed and spread her toes in the semi-translucent black nylons. Even through the black fabric, her own sparkling black toenail polish shone through against her remarkably pale skin. She set the foot back down next to Liam, and resumed taking photos, this time occasionally moving her toes to cover Liam partially and wholly as she snapped away. Liam didn’t seem to have much left in him to resist, and Harper could barely feel him struggling beneath her foot. But it was rewarding to be able to genuinely feel his struggles. For the first time she could feel the outline of a shrunken person beneath her foot, she could feel his torso and limbs, his head and even his face through the nearly sheer fabric. Harper took her time and made sure to have dozens and dozens of shots of her nylon clad foot abusing the shrunken man.

Still not the best. She thought. Not bad, but it could be better.

"Liam, I'd love to spend all fucking weekend helping you learn to love being under my foot..." Harper said, setting the phone down and letting Liam enjoy a brief moment unburdened by her foot. "but if I'm going to frame you for the embezzlement, you're going to have to disappear, so, buh-bye."

"Please…" Liam said through the pain and tears. "I won't tell anyone."

"I know." Harper answered.

Harper covered Liam's body one last time with her foot. Once more his entire form disappeared under her nylon wrapped toes. This time, however, Liam didn't get the playful pressure of her idle enjoyment. Instead, Harper quickly brought down her weight onto the ball of her foot, trying to savor the crunch and squish that accompanied her shifting her weight onto one foot.

Even in death, Liam managed to disappoint Harper. The sounds weren't as satisfying as she had hoped, and the feeling of his bones snapping under her sole was new and exciting, but diminished slightly by the dismal room she found herself in and the lack of time she had to enjoy it.

As her foot pressed down to the floor, she felt what had been Liam squeeze into a thin film and goo that seeped into the fabric of her nylons and up between her toes.

Next time I’ll have to do it at home. She thought, twisting her foot and making sure that any remains would be utterly unidentifiable. And barefoot! That must feel fucking amazing.

After spending a few minutes ensuing the only thing that could be found of Liam would be a stain, Harper took one last picture of the stain and one of her slightly drippy sole, she spent over two hours to clean the floor, and subsequently re-dirty it with a spilled container of lo-mein over where Liam had been.

I guess you'll at least be useful as a scapegoat. Harper thought as she surveyed the breakroom.

She picked up his clothes and his phone, those would need to go on the chair at his workstation, to give the appearance that he shrunk at his desk, diverting any search for him away from the breakroom. When he inevitably never turned up, having been washed off the floor and sent down the sink drain, and washed off her nylons, he’d be labeled as one of the thousands of shrinking virus victims that had gone missing. Balancing her own work, and now Liam’s thing as well, she made her way back to his cube. She dropped her own work at her desk and quickly set up the scene. She had been planning on using Mark as a scapegoat, so the work to incriminate one of her coworkers was already done, and it only took a couple of hours to fabricate everything on Liam’s computer.

Satisfied with her efforts, it was just as Harper had resolved to finally leave the office when the blue and red lights began to flash over the office walls through the windows.

Shit. Harper thought.

“Shit.” Harper said.