Danielle was driving along a rural highway one night, looking for more people she’d be able to shrink down. It was a regular occurrence for her, and she didn’t have to drive long before she’d be able to find someone stopped on the side of the road for one reason or another. Eventually she spotted a pair of flashing lights, and she pulled over behind a minivan to find a man and a woman kneeling at the car’s left rear wheel, attempting to fix a flat tire.
“Oh, thank goodness someone finally came along,” the woman smiled with relief, as the man looked up to assess Danielle as she stepped out of her car. As she approached the couple, she was able to see into the back seat of the car, where a teenage boy and girl sat, curiously looking out the window to see if the stranger had come to help. All in all, they were the perfect, classic family unit. Which made them the perfect prey.
All that Danielle had to do was wave her hand, and immediately the man found himself shrinking down, his crowbar falling away as he shrunk down to only several inches in height. The woman screamed, and the boy in the car immediately got out of the car and ran around to see what had happened, and defend his mom if need be. His face displayed the same shock as his mom as he stopped dead in his tracks, seeing his minuscule father struggling to stand in on the giant gravel terrain. The boy’s reaction was swifter than his mother’s, and with a confused but enraged face, he turned to Danielle, and began to swing a punch at her, before she waved her hand again with a giggle and he too found himself shrinking down.
The mother had started crying, regarding to the young woman with terror as she fell to the ground, backing away but not fully thinking straight. “What—what is this? What do you…w-want,” she stuttered.
Danielle turned to the girl in the car, “Hey, you need to get out here too.” The girl didn’t fully understand what was going on, but could tell that something had happened to her dad and brother. Adrenaline took over her brain, and she complied with the command out of fear that something might happen to her or her mom if she didn’t comply. So she opened the car door and got out, careful not to step on her dad. “Stand up,” she told the mom, before raising her hand as if to threaten someone else getting shrunken, and the woman quickly stood up, clutching her daughter in a hug. “Now, both of you take off one of your shoes.” To the mother and daughter, this request didn’t seem as scary, so they did as they were told, the mom slipping off her tennis shoes while the daughter took off one of her converse sneakers. “And the socks.” They obeyed the second order as well, just as it began to dawn on the daughter what was happening. Danielle laughed as she could tell from the girl’s expression that she realized what they were about to do, but evidently the mom hadn’t caught on yet. “I think your daughter understands what’s about to happen. Go on, pick up your dad.” The girl started crying as she picked up her father, whose clothes hadn’t even shrunken with him and was now squirming around naked in the clutches of his teenage daughter. “Aaaaand drop him in your shoe! And then put it back on and tie it up nice and tight.” The man began struggling even harder as the girl obeyed Danielle and slowly lowered her dad into the opening of her shoe.
“Sorry,” she whispered through tears, before standing back up and slipping her bare foot inside, trying her best not to squish or hurt her dad as he banged his fist against her sole and yelled at her to let him back out. Then she tied her shoe like Danielle had said, and could feel his wriggling lessen as his room to move was compressed inside the sour, musty, and claustrophobic space.
“You next,” Danielle nodded to the woman, who was shaking more visibly as she walked over to her son and picked him up, wiping some of the tears from her eyes as she did the same, gently depositing him into her tennis shoe. The son knew it was useless to try and fight back, but he ran deeper into his mom’s shoe in hopes that he might have more room at the edge of her toes. What little amount of light was let in by the moon soon disappeared as her toes followed in, their calloused, leathery surface uneasily settling on top of her naked 3-inch son.
“So, how’s it feel?” Danielle smugly asked the two as she crossed her arms. The girl tried her best to look confident in light of the fact that she was being forced to squish her own father beneath her foot, while the mom kept asking the son if he was doing OK, moving her toes all about on top of his naked body as she tried readjusting his positioning to make him more comfortable. But Danielle’s expression fell as she saw lights in the distance behind them; a car approaching. “Shit…” she muttered, hoping she would’ve been able to have fun with the family for a little while longer, as she waved her hand again over the two people and their car, all of which shrunk down to only a couple inches in height. She pocketed the car to get rid of the evidence, and then slipped her own boots off, picking up the woman and her daughter and tossing them into her boot. The woman hadn’t stopped crying the whole time, but Danielle suddenly heard the girl scream as she came across the messy remains of Jonathan and Kyle, causing the mother’s cries to only strengthen as they both wondered if they were about to die. Danielle had made sure to shrink their clothes as well this time around, so the dad and son of the family—now reduced to only a few millimeters—could still stay trapped in their shoes. And then the smell and heat increased of the cursed leather cavern as Danielle’s foot came entering its domain, silencing their pleas as she turned to get back in her car.