(AUTHOR'S NOTE - Sorry to self promote here a bit, but I recently opened a Patreon, check it out if you want - https://www.patreon.com/KevinFred )

The old rag had been a gift from many years ago, hand knitted by Evelyn's mother. It saw much use in that time, its once vibrant color beginning to fade, visible fraying of its threads slowly appearing on its corners. But, it still stood strong, and it served its purpose well enough. It was washed every other week and, now that he was forced to climb it at a size that he had previously thought a human could only be at in movies, Richard began to think it had maybe gone past that usual cycle. The soggy threads were slightly slimy and traces of whatever food were stuck between its threads. The smell was the horrible, the worst so far. Richard remembered gagging at the smell of the feet, but that scent would be akin to roses compared to the rank of the rag. Fortunately, by now, his stomach was beginning to grow accustomed to dealing with foul odors, and he barely felt a tinge of nausea as he climbed up the wet mess with his family in tow.

Once they stood atop the rag, the group paused to catch their breath. Richard turned and looked back down towards the metallic pit of the massive sink, staring at the black hole at the center of it. He had been to the Grand Canyon once as a kid, and remembered being awed at just how huge it was. The feeling came back to him now, but was coupled with a surreal sense of familiarity that brewed into sheer dread. This was not the majestic sprawl of the Grand Canyon, one of the most famous natural land formations in the United States. This was his kitchen sink. The very same one that he saw every morning for years. He had fixed the leaking pipes for it just last year. Every morning he washed his hands and dumped food down the same dark hole that had almost swallowed him up an hour ago. It was a strange and terrifying thought.

“Well...” Henry managed after several deep breaths. “We made it. What now?”

That was the million dollar question. The objective of this entire “game” was to either stay alive or get his wife's attention. Considering both of them now, Richard thought each was insurmountably difficult. They might be able to find a place to camp and ride out the rest of their time. But at this size, what place truly was safe? Any tiny insect was now the size of a bear and could maul them as such, and they could be anywhere. Food and water was another issue. They had feasted on literal crumbs earlier and finding a clean source of water seemed impossible. Even if they did find a safe haven, would they survive long enough to complete the “game” before dehydration finally took them? Their only other option had gotten them trapped in underwear, crawling across fields of flesh, thrown into the trash and almost down the garbage disposal.

“I don't know,” Richard finally answered. “You have any ideas?”

“...no.”

“Well we have to do something!” Jenny cried. “We can't stay here! We have to get Mom's attention!”

“How are we going to do that?” James asked.

“I don't know!” Jenny replied. “But...but we have to find a way! Maybe we can leave her a message or something?”

“A message?” Sammy raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah! Maybe we can spell something out with the crumbs on the counter! The ones we were eating earlier!”

“You mean the ones she brushed into the sink with us?” Henry said.

“Well...” Jenny hesitated. “There might be more! Maybe she didn't get them all! Or maybe we try crawling to her ears again and...”

“No.” Henry shook his head. “We are NOT crawling on her again. Never again.”

“But...”

“No.” Henry repeated firmly, glaring at his younger sister, causing her to recoil from him.

“Aw, but watching you climb around your momma's body is so fun!” The Voice squawked through the walkie. “What's the matter? Don't wanna end up in her pants again? Risk getting stuck back up her birth canal? Or maybe this time up her shithole?”

Henry turned red and began to speak, but Richard raised a hand and shook his head. Don't engage, it's what he wants.

“What did I say about not answering me?” The Voice barked loud enough to cause a hiss of static.

“What do you want me to say!?” Henry snapped back.

“What else? I want you to answer my question.”

“....No.” Henry said slowly. “I don't want to crawl her body because...because nothing good has come from it.”

“For you? No.” The Voice replied. “For me? Well...you know where I'm going with that.”

“Look,” Richard unclipped the walkie and held it up. “Why should we keep going? How do we know you're even going to keep your end of the deal. For all we know, even if we do make it to Sunday night, you're just going to keep us shrunk forever. We shouldn't we just throw ourselves back into the sink and just be done with it?”

“Because I have nothing to lose by letting you live.” The Voice said. “Sure, there's the risk you going to the authorities, a potential complication that I haven't had to deal with as no groups have survived. But, honestly, it's nothing I can't beat. Even if they believe your story, they'll never find me. I'll lay low for a little while, and they'll eventually stop looking. It's a big world buddy, even bigger when you're small, but as long as you have what it takes you can always make it big. Get me?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well, that's on you.” The Voice sighed. “Look, why don't you...oh!”

The crackling voice was interrupted by a soft tremor that they all felt. Another tremor shortly followed, this one a little more powerful. Then another, again after a short pause. Richard almost immediately knew what it was. He had seen enough monster movies to recognize the footfalls of a towering behemoth. And when he turned his body, he saw the colossal form of a much bigger one walking along the far edge of the island counter opposite to them. At this distance, Richard couldn't see the face, all he saw was mostly a wall of white. The power of the tremors began to increase, but they were high enough from the floor for them to not send the group sprawling. Slowly, the immense thing turned the corner and began to make their way towards them. Richard craned his head as high as he could as it approached, but could only reach the cusps of the breasts before his neck began to cry out in pain.

“MOM!” Jenny screamed, desperately. Suddenly, she ran into Richard's vision, looking up towards the sky and waving her arms wildly. “MOOOOM! DOWN HERE!”

Richard began to move, meaning to grab her and pull her back, but then Sammy and James ran past them, mimicking their younger sister's frantic cries and waving. Henry soon followed. Reclipping the walkie to his pants, Richard then followed them. Once again, out of sheer instinct, he began to look upward to see if she was gazing down. He even began to raise his arms to join his family in their desperate pleas. However, as the godlike body closed the gap, Richard quickly saw that it was not slowing at all. The loud thuds of its footfalls created the illusion of a slow, lumbering creature, but the body moved past them with a speed that seemed unnatural at their tiny size. As it passed out of his vision, Richard immediately felt the gust of displaced air rip into him, sweeping him off his feet. He heard the screams of Jenny and the rest as they soon joined him in being carried off the marble field of counter, sending them in a death plummet towards the floor.

Despite his freefalling, Richard found a moment to realize that this was likely where he was going to die. And, tragically, a part of him was relieved.

But the show was not over. Instead of meeting a horrible end atop the hard, checkered tile floor, the family instead found themselves bouncing off the old, worn foam mat that sat before the sink. Richard himself almost felt as if he bounced half the way back up the counter before falling back down. It was hard to say as the world spun and spun and spun around him. It continued to do so for what seemed like hours before things finally began to straighten out long enough for him to realize that he was lying on his back. Slowly, he raised his dizzy head, faintly aware that again he had cheated death and had come out without any long term injuries. About ten or twenty feet away from him, he could see the others. They were writhing, slowing trying to move their own weary bodies. None of them seemed any worse off than him.

He opened his mouth...

“Woah, watch out!” The Voice called out, not without some glee.

There was no time to react. His spinning head hadn't even registered the quakes that muffled weakly through the foam. The darkness filled his vision as something massive came down on top of him. A shower of something rained on him. It wasn't liquid, he could feel hard specks of something smack against his skin. The sheer force of the impact lifted him into the air, where he stayed for only a brief moment before painfully colliding into something and plummeting back down. Yet again, he had to wait for his mind to clear before realizing that he was simply lying on the ground, flailing his arms wildly in a vain attempt to protect himself, desperately swearing under his breath.

“You can stop now, pal!” The Voice called, the smile clear in his voice. “Phew! That was fucking close!” Richard didn't respond, his delirious mind nowhere near ready for that. “You almost got stepped on, by the way. Right now you're in the treads of her tennis shoes. HA! You got some luck, buddy. I like it!”

Even if his head wasn't spinning like a top, Richard still wouldn't have answered this. Distantly, he could hear screams.

“Sounds like at least a few of your kids made it.” The Voice said.

“Few...? A few!?”

“Well, maybe more. Who can really say? I can't see them. The loud whiny girl definitely appears to be alive.”

“Where...?”

“Somewhere deeper in the treads, I guess. Tap the button on the top of the radio I'm talking out of. It's got a built in flashlight.”

Richard fumbled around his waist for the radio and again unclipped it. Feeling around the top, he found the button and pressed it. Sure enough, a small but powerful light shone out from the top of the device. Looking around, he suddenly felt like a tunnel rat in the midst of the Vietnam war. If Evelyn truly was wearing tennis shoes, it was most likely the worn out ones that she'd gotten many years ago. The ones she often wore while in the garden or doing housework. He could actually old withered blades of grass draping down from the roof like vines. Unsure of which direction to go, but unable to rotate his body easily, he moved forward, crawling forward like a soldier in prone, adding to the surreal experience. Worse, though, was a deepening feeling of dread that had gone beyond anything throughout this whole ordeal. This was feet. The whole weight of the body was held up by them. If they casually shuffled or moved even slightly, not even the soft padding of the mat (which was currently pressed under the immense weight) wouldn't save him. But, he had to keep moving. Even if there was only one surviving family member somewhere in this tunnel, he had to get to them and fast.

There was a turn up ahead. As he slowly crawled towards it, he heard a sound in the distance. It was the familiar sound of water flowing, though magnified to the point where it more resembled a waterfall. It could only be the sink. When he turned the corner, he almost dropped the flashlight in terror. The dried, mangled husk of some insect hung from the ceiling, semi wrapped in the grass blades. Its dead eyes gleamed in the light from walkie, seeming to stare at Richard from the darkness. He crawled as low as he could, but the husk scrapped against the top of his back and he moaned, hurrying along and not daring to look back. The screams were still going and he began to think he could hear some other voices in the darkness, but he couldn't tell if he was getting closer. The acoustics under here were strange and hard to pinpoint the source of the noise.

“Jenny!” Richard called out. “Henry! Sammy! James! Can you hear me?” The wailing sobs, definitely belonging to Jenny, kept going without pause. Richard continued. The tunnels around him moved slightly, showering him with pebbles, dirt, dust, a couple of blades of dead grass. “Guys! Can you hear me!”

“Jenny, shut up!” Sammy, barely audible, managed to scream over her sister's shrieks. “Dad? Dad!?”

“Yes!” Richard shouted. “Are you...?”

Another sound broke through the dull roar of the waterfall, cutting him off. It was low and heavy boom, like an explosion in the distance. It was immediately followed by a smaller report that was barely heard among the rest of the noise. Richard remembered what the Voice had told him yesterday and was suddenly, and bizarrely, thankful that he wasn't trapped inside his wife's thong again.

“...are you okay?” Richard continued.

“I think so!” Sammy called back. “We're all here! I think we're all okay.” Henry's voice called something, but Richard couldn't understand it. “Yeah! I think we're all okay!”

“Good!” Richard yelled. “Stay where you are! I have a light! I'm gonna try and make my way towards you guys! Just...”

Whatever else he meant to end that statement with never came, because suddenly the waterfall's din abruptly ceased and light suddenly blinded him. But he could feel his body suddenly lifted into the air, caught up in the movement that was happening all around him. His world once again spun as if he was doing rapid cartwheels until he finally rolled to a stop on a hard floor, a shower of pebbles and dirt following him. A loud boom, immediately followed by a hard quake, rumbled him to his very bones, forcing his eyes open. The long draping shadow blocked the overhead lights enough for him to see the body towering over him, just in time to over him a clear view of the building size shoe soar over him in mid step. It came down with boom, but this one was softer with distance, and the responding quake only somewhat rattled him. The following footfalls were gradually weaker, until he could only feel a gentle tremor.

When the behemoth was gone, he noticed his family not far from them. Henry, the tough son of a bitch, was already on his feet, helping his sisters up, while James wobbled up on his own. Richard drunkenly stood up and staggered towards them.

“We need to get somewhere safe!” Henry said immediately, looking up at his father as he brought Jenny to her feet. The youngest daughter was beside herself, sobbing uncontrollably. “Where she can't step on us!”

“The baseboard,” Richard slurred, his mind still spinning. “Under the island counter...”

“Good idea.”

They went and not a moment too soon. The tremors began to grow again, but this time were accompanied by a new sound. It was a low, almost grinding sound, like something moving or being dragged across the floor. The tiny family all began the sprint towards the baseboard under the sink. It didn't look far, it really didn't, but as the ground began to quake harder beneath their feet, causing them to stagger and stumble, Richard felt the gap was closing remarkably slowly. He turned his head to see if he could see her approaching, but his eye was caught by something on the floor about a hundred feet from them. It reminded him of the crumbs that had been spread out atop the counter but these appeared to be bigger, much bigger. He was able to recognize, even at this size, the mess as uncooked oatmeal. So, when he saw the massive tennis shoes step back around the counter and, craning his neck upward, a giant grey hose being dragged along with the towering figure, he wasn't really surprised.

The thought to scream out to hurry entered his mind just as a mighty roar filled the air, swallowing all other sounds.

Richard turned his head just in time to see the wide ass lower down behind the tennis shoes as the massive body squatted. A large metal tube, wider than a highway tunnel, descended from above and began to gobble in the oats with ravenous eagerness. He turned his eyes away and focused on the baseboard, running as hard as he could, listening to the rattle of the oats as they traveled down the heavy plastic esophagus of the vacuum. He saw Jenny and James ahead of him, the former was staring back with an expression of stark horror. Richard pushed her forward, frantically pointing towards their destination, hoping she would focus her attention on their goal. But behind him, the roar grew louder and louder. He remembered hearing stories from survivors of a tornado saying that the approaching funnel sounded much like a massive freight train passing right over them. This sounded much, MUCH bigger than anything humanity had ever built. Just as he begin to feel the suction gently working on him, its power surged immensely and he was whipped off his feet.

For the third time he found himself flying through the air, though this time it actually felt like he WAS flying. Another difference was that, incredibly, his mind was clear. He was able to watch himself soar inside the gaping maw of the nozzle as it swallowed him up, sending him through a long dirty wind tunnel. It was too dark to see, but he could feel things bumping into him in the air as it carried him. The roar grew louder and louder until he it filled began to fill his entire consciousness. At least until a dim light suddenly appeared at the end of the long tunnel. Richard was just able to make out a rapidly spinning fan blade before he felt his body jerked in a new direction, suddenly pelted with a wide array of...something. He felt a lot of soft material brush against him, as well as being grazed by a few larger, harder things. But everything was happening too fast and all was a blur. The only thing he knew for sure was that now everything was moving in a circle. Now it really was as if he had been picked up by a ravaging tornado, hurling deep within its funnel along with everything else it had devoured. Except there was no hope of being launched outside of the raging winds, away from other objects being whipped around with him.

Then, abruptly, the roar stopped and the wind with it.

Richard landed with a plum on a pile of soft fabric. Or at least it felt like fabric. He knew what it really was: an ocean of dirt, dust, and all sorts of other things. He immediately thought to listen for the cries of his family, but his ears were ringing. Dazed, he began to try and lift himself out of the mountain of dust. As he raised his arms, a light came with them. He glanced at his right hand and saw that, amazingly, he still held the walkie, which was clutched in a death grip, his finger red from the act. Still, he had his light. This revelation was interrupted when a sudden motion jerked his new found world harshly, causing him to fall face first into the massive pile he stood upon. Light suddenly poured in, causing Richard to quickly raise his eyes from the dirt. When he did, his gaze was met a massive, emerald green eye that gazed into the chamber through a large hole. Then, the eye disappeared and everything shifted again, causing Richard to be thrust back into the ocean of dust. He landed on his back and was only in that position for a moment when he felt everything fall out from under him and he was suddenly falling with it. Again he would land atop the pile as it plummeted down towards the ground, throwing up a cloud similar to that of a nuke. Richard lay atop the mound, coughing and gagging, frantically both trying to and not to breathe. It wasn't until the smoke began to clear that he saw the same view that he had seen earlier this morning and smelling the same smell.

She poured out the bag...we're back in the trash, he thought with exhaustion, all that...and we're back where we fucking started.

He laid where he was for a moment, listening to the constant ringing in his ears and watching the dust cloud slowly clear, allowing light to flow back into the can. How he had managed to stay alive thus far was beyond him and, now more than ever, he found himself wishing that he had not survived. At least then he would be out of this never ending hell. Why on Earth should he even continuing going at this point? The answer came in the form of a distant, muffled noise. He turned his head towards and saw his Jenny and Henry, standing in the midst of massive trash and dust, yelling. Their voices were muddled, lost in the ringing, but still, he saw that they were okay, and it got him to slowly drag himself back to his feet. Clipping the walkie back onto his pants, he slowly staggered across the large waste surrounding him, making his way towards his family. Jenny saw him first. Her face was dirty, caked with dust and grime, but still he managed to see the tears well up in her eyes. She began to run to him, and Richard did the same.

Just before they could reach each other, something fell from sky and landed between them with a heavy thud, kicking up dust. Richard recoiled, falling onto his butt on the dirt pile behind him, before he was able to get a good look at the object. It was a massive, seemingly metal tube, with a large red stump sticking out of one side of it. Engraved on the side of the tub was the word, “Maybelline”. Richard craned his neck up and saw her standing above them, towering over the opening of the can. In her hands she held a large red purse, which looked to be about twice the size of the white house. The hands extracted a small, crushed water bottle.

“Look out!” Richard screamed. But even he could barely hear himself.

The bottle ricocheted of the side of the can before crashing down inside, nearly landing on top of Richard, who ran, not sure where his legs would take him, but covering his head with his arms as if it would protect him. He didn't get too far before something big landed on top of him, knocking him down onto his belly. The object wasn't heavy and pushing it off, he realized it was merely a wadded piece of paper. There was only a moment to realize this before a rectangular plastic slab came slicing down next to him. He saw the compartments of the slab and realized it was a gum package. And then he continued running, dodging a broken pen as it came down, stabbing into the dust pile like a javelin. Something like a tarp then came down, causing Richard to have to stop to fight it off of him. Shoving it aside, he was able to make out the word, “tampon” on the wrapper. Another tarp came fluttering down, nearly landing on him. This one had half of the word, “Hershey” on its torn surface. Just as Richard was backing away from that, another big thing came crashing down behind him, its landing sending him flying into the wall of the can, causing him to see stars. His limp body flopped back down onto the dirt pile and as he rolled, eventually winding up on his back, he was able to get a view of the big white thing that had fallen. It was a massive, mostly white canister, the words, “Excedrin: Maximum Strength” blaring at him.

His body could take no more, his head lulling back to look back up towards the sky. As his vision began to fade, he saw the towering figure bend over the can. Soon, before his vision completely left him, he saw the light disappear in a quickly narrowing gap and feel the world around him being pulled and lifted up.

And then, there was nothing.