A hand reached down from above, plucked me from where I’d been sitting, and yanked me high into the sky. I was hoisted upward by fingers longer than I was tall, between fingernails painted the shade of pomp and power. The whole world spun beneath me and the sudden change in altitude was dizzying. I was completely at the mercy of a hand that could squish me flat.

“Hey, Nick. Know what today is?”

With me dangling so close to her face, Autumn’s booming voice would’ve knocked me to the ground, if not for the fact that I wasn’t exactly standing, per se. As it was, my body actually fluttered in the breeze as her words blew over me. I glanced down at the terrarium that had been my home for the better part of a year; it looked like it was at least a hundred feet down, but I knew better. It was maybe a two-foot drop, and I was simply so small that it only felt like I was being manhandled by the Statue of Liberty. I pulled my gaze back up to her and made eye contact with her left iris. It wasn’t much smaller than I was.

“It’s August… something?”

Autumn’s lips, painted a deep violet, widened into a knowing smirk. Her nose was straight and sharp, and her smile was faintly shark-like. Given the respective sizes of her mouth and my entire body, it seemed a fair description to call her expression predatory.

“Nope. Well, I mean yes, but to be more specific…” She started walking out of the room, her steps padding against the bedroom floor and beating through her body into mine with rhythmic thuds that only stopped once we were in her apartment’s kitchen. The orange glow of sunset trickled through the little window and onto a bottle of reposado. “Remember last year when you came to visit?”

At this scale, I don’t think she could see me roll my eyes. Of course I remembered.

_______________

I’d gone to visit my best friend from college, Autumn, at her new home in southern California. At my original, full size, she took me around to do touristy things during the day, and at night we embraced our university-era tradition of getting shitfaced while watching terrible movies. Technically, we watched Fifty Shades of Gray, but honestly I couldn’t have told you much about the plot. The rules we’d settled on were to take a drink every time one of us expressed genuine surprise or disappointment at the shoddy storytelling; needless to say, I was sloshed within an hour.

The side effect of being drunk while watching a film about domination fetishes with your best friend is that you admit things you might not have otherwise let spill into real life. That night, I confessed to having some exceptionally particular kinks. Autumn had already known about my giantess fetish – she wasn’t into it herself, but as a kinkster she could relate and as a pagan she didn’t think my impossible fantasy was silly. I told her that it was even more specific than a fascination with being shrunk. I specifically have a thing for the combined power dynamics of alcohol play, tongues, being shrunk by someone who knew me personally, and even the threat of being swallowed. Under duress, I even admitted to getting aroused just talking about it.

Once her deafening cackles had subsided, she’d leaned forward across the couch and grabbed my arm with both hands. “Do you want to?”

“Do I want to… shrink?”

“Yes!”

“I mean… probably?”

“I can do it. I just need you to drink something –“

“I don’t think that’s a problem,” I’d said with as much dignity as my tequila sunrise had allowed.

“ – and to give me a… a thing, proof that you’re consenting to the power exchange.” I must have been looking confused. “It’s a… witchy thing, you know? I can’t do it unless the magic knows you want it.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Something symbolic. Like…”

“Like kissing your feet?” I’d interrupted.

“Christ, you’re such a slut,” but she’d said it fondly. “Yeah, that would probably work. Just a sec.” Autumn got up from the couch and wobbled into the kitchen. Two minutes afterward, she’d wobbled back into the living room carrying a shot glass full of amber liquid.

“Is that more tequila?”

“Hush. It’s what I had out, okay? Just take the shot and then do your weirdo thing.” She’d smirked possessively as she’d said it.

I took the shot glass from her. “Well, bottom’s up.” I shot the tequila back in one gulp. It burned, but not any more than liquor usually did. Once my airways stopped feeling like they were on fire, I dropped down from the couch to the floor, next to where Autumn was standing. My head was now inches above her feet, but before I could kiss them, Autumn spoke.

“If you look up now, it’ll look like how I’ll look once you shrink. Last chance to double check if you want to stop before you’re off to Smallville.”

I didn’t look up. Her toenails were painted black like the night, and – although it was probably the alcohol talking – they spoke to me. I lowered my face down the few inches to her big toe and pressed my lips against it. Twice. Then her other foot. Then…

She’d stepped back, pulling her feet away while laughing uproariously. “Oh my god, Nick. You can be my little foot bitch later. Just chill.”

I did as instructed. I waited ten seconds. And ten seconds more. And then…

“Now what?” I started to get up.

She’d shrugged. “Not sure, exactly. I’ve never tried this before. Maybe it’ll take a bit to kick in.”

It was at exactly that moment when, either through the alcohol or Autumn’s brew, I started falling back down to the floor. I blacked out.

_______________

Ever since then, I’d been Autumn’s shrunken pet. She had been very clear that she could reverse the shrinking whenever I wanted her to. I just never did. She’d had me pegged, and she’d basically granted me my lifelong dream. I could live like this till I died.

And Autumn didn’t seem to mind. I was low-maintenance, and sometimes I was even mildly useful. She could tie me to an earring and I could keep her company while she went about her day. And she had that domination fetish; she would, on occasion, get drunk and play a little dangerously with me. What really tickled her, though, was seeing how much I enjoyed being her tiny bitch. It was absolutely hilarious to her. She had a laugh that came out alarmingly often when she was toying with me. It was somehow terrifying, enchanting, and hot all at the same time, and once I asked if that was a magic thing. She’d said no.

“You’re just a weirdo.”

Right now, it looked like tonight would be another such game night.

She put me down on the kitchen counter next to the golden tequila skyscraper. There were three shot glasses next to me; they towered over me too. With a deft motion, she popped the top of the bottle and then started explaining.

“It’s the one-year anniversary of when I shrank you, so in honor of that, we’re going to watch Fifty Shades Darker –”

I groaned. She probably couldn’t even hear me from down here, but she smirked anyway. She poured golden waterfalls into each shot glass.

“— and every time each of us reacts to something stupid, we have to take a drink. These two are mine, and this one,” she plucked me back up and suddenly plummeted before splashing into a pool of very strong liquor, “is yours.”

In reply, I simply sputtered and coughed through the liquid and fumes of the reposado.

“And,” she continued with a worryingly eager flourish, “if my glasses are empty before yours is, I can use yours to keep playing.” She smirked. At the risk of stating the obvious: the shot glass I was swimming in was the relative size of a small house. This game might have been rigged.

Maybe Autumn sensed my dawning realization. She lowered her face down to the rim of the glass until her purple lips loomed directly above me. The painted curves opened into darkness, and all I could do was watch as her tongue, monstrous and large and terrifying and hypnotic, shaped the rushing wind of her breath into words.

“Do you want to play for keeps?” the tempting pink serpent asked. It might have been because I’d already swallowed mouthfuls of liquor or otherwise inhaled the powerful fumes, but… Autumn help me, I nodded.

She pulled back instantly and, with a disorientingly chipper tone, announced, “Okay! Let’s start the movie.”

It was, naturally, an absolutely godawful movie, but honestly I wasn’t paying enough attention to play the drinking game. It was all I could do not to get incidentally blitzed while treading tequila, after all. I don’t know how long it took, but it was getting harder and harder to focus enough to keep my head above water. Suddenly, I felt the world shake beneath me and the shot glass fly upward. At the speed it went, my inertia actually pulled me briefly underneath the surface and I took in another few mouthfuls.

And then just as abruptly, the shot glass stopped again. Once I got my bearings above the tequila, I could see Autumn’s lips forming into a hungry smile much too close to me and my little pool. Her mouth opened and her voice rushed out in a hot, humid, and alcoholic gust.

“Nikolai, do you like being my pet?”

I nodded.

“Do you like being my toy?”

I nodded.

“Do you want me to own you forever?”

I didn’t nod, but my body – and the physics of refraction – betrayed me. My boxers were the only thing I had on, since everything else had been too heavy to wear soaked, and the tent that was now forming in them was, apparently, magnified by the alcohol I was still swimming in. Her head swept back as a raucous laugh reverberated all around me.

“Oh my fucking god, Nick! You’re such a slut! I love it.” Her mouth moved back in toward me until it was close enough that her tongue could have reached out to me. “If I take this shot, there’s like, a 50/50 chance you’re going down with it.” She laughed again, and the vibrations shook the glass until the tequila practically crashed over me like a tidal wave, which made triggered an even wilder round of intoxicated cackles. It took her a minute to calm down enough to speak again. “Are you ready?”

I didn’t even have time to respond before the world spun and I was thrown about like the drowning man in a tempest that I was. There was a resounding slap as I hit Autumn’s tongue. There was a brief moment when I’d regained my orientation and hadn’t yet been sealed in darkness, and then —

Her lips closed, shunting me into blindness, and an irresistible force pulled me into a spiraling vortex of tequila and vacuum. With horrifying speed, her tongue shoved me upward and slammed me into her palate. My ears were popping uncontrollably, but I could hear the roar of liquid cascading down… somewhere. And then, just as suddenly, it stopped. Autumn’s lips opened, light streamed in, and her tongue gently lowered me back down from the roof of her mouth. I could see again. Everything was pink but her teeth, whose ivory façade glinted with what little tequila hadn’t been gulped down.

A blast of air echoed through me, and I was thrown about as her tongue writhed and danced like an enraged dragon. It took me a while to realize that the two things were related: Autumn was speaking to me.

“Nikolai... I need something. Proof that you want it.”

I looked back toward the inky darkness of her maw. It was black like the night, and – I don’t think it was the alcohol talking – it spoke to me.

I pressed my lips against her tongue, and kissed.