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It was a warm, summer day in the suburb of Eltham in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. In a typical suburban house, which was located on a quiet street where only one side had residential households and the other side was dominated by large eucalyptus trees, light trickled in through a chink in the window blinds. Inside the house’s living room contained a television, a brown coffee table, and two large couches. The house was covered by wooden floorboards, carpeted areas and white wallpaper.

On one of the couches a man was passed out drunk and smelled like whiskey. This man’s name was 52-year-old Jack Walkins and he was a warehouse manager. He had long shoulder length hair and a beard and was still wearing his work pants, florescent vest and boots.  After a tiring long day of preparing spreadsheets and stacking boxes on shelves and trolleys Jack liked to have a bottle of whiskey and have a nap on the couch.

Jack had two daughters named Emma and Oliva. Their mother had died years ago so he was raising them by himself. Emma was a 21-year-old physics university undergraduate student who had achieved a 97.8 ATAR and had excelled in maths and science, especially physics. The same could not be said for her 18-year-old sister Oliva who was the complete opposite of her sister. The girl was extremely lazy and did nothing but drink and party all day. She had even almost dropped out of school however her father had stopped her and had barely passed school with a 54.3 ATAR. Unfortunately, Jack was too busy and overwhelmed to stop his youngest daughter from continuing her reckless lifestyle. Oliva had gone to Schoolies in Queensland with a bunch of friends 2 weeks ago and had only told her father about it after she had already left.    

Upstairs, in the room on the right-hand side of the corridor lay Emma Walkins room. Emma was currently working on shrink-ray matter technology for an upcoming university honour-roll physics invention competition. The winner of this competition would win $10000 and also would have the glory and honour of being featured on the University Hall of fame for the most iconic scientific minds.

However, she wouldn’t be able to plan and construct such a complicated task alone   so she had invited her 24-year-old boyfriend Justin Lions along. Justin Lions was also a recent physics graduate and had just undertaken work placement at an engineering firm. He had medium length black hair and today was wearing a red-checkered shirt, grey jeans and converse shoes. Emma on the other hand had long straight brunette hair and circular-rimmed glasses. She was wearing a white sweater with red stripes, blue jeans and was barefoot.

“Justin, could you pass the screwdriver?” asked Emma.

Justin glanced around at Emma’s room which was a complete mess. Books, notepaper and stationery littered the study table, bed and even the floor. Posters were plastered half hanging off the white wallpaper and even shoes, socks and clothes were sprawled across the floor. It was as if a bomb had gone off and scattered debris everywhere.  

“Fucking hell” groaned Justin. “Emma how to you expect me to find anything in this mess?”

“I will get it then” sighed Emma. She then pulled a screwdriver out of a sock which was left on the floor.

Justin laughed and stated “You know for a girl your room is pretty disgusting.”

 Emma rolled her eyes. “You know with this project coming up I don’t have time to waste with trivial things such as cleaning.”

Emma then turned her attention to the shrink ray protype which was situated next to her study desk which contained an open laptop and various notes sprawled around everywhere. The shrink ray device itself was quite large, being a metre long and resembling a blue shiny cannon with a trigger mechanism attached and a button control patten on the side with a small calculator screen. The device was quite heavy as well, weighing approximately 7 to 8 kilograms.

Emma twisted the screwdriver vigorously, securely screwing the screw into the base of the trigger.

“It’s finally finished!” she beamed at Justin. “Want to test it?”

  “Absolutely!” said Justin enthusiastically.

Emma then punched some numbers into the control panel, setting the size dimensions to approximately 10-15 cm. She then aimed the nozzle of the gun at the spinning chair situated next to her desk.

She squeezed the trigger.

A bright blue light ray emitted itself from the device and hit the chair. A sort of light bubble forcefield surrounded the chair before it contracted itself, taking the chair along with it. Within 10 seconds the chair reduced in size to about the size of a doll chair, the kind of toy chair you would expect to find in a dollhouse.

“Holy shit Justin, it actually works!” she gasped.

“Let me try!” piped Justin with his hands eagerly outstretched.

Justin gripped the device in his hands and aimed it at Emma’s little dressing table which consisted of two drawers and a lamp. Once again, he fired the ray directly at the table which quickly shrank to the proportions of a children’s toy set. Justin placed the shrink ray down on the floor and picked up the shrunken dressing table in the palm of his hand. 

“This is real!” gasped Justin with eyes bugling widely. “I don’t believe it; we are on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. We have the competition in the bag!”

“You are absolutely right,” laughed Emma. “Justin, can you pass the shrink ray to me? I need to photograph it for our report.”

Little did they know how pear-shaped things were about to get……………….

 Emma’s hands had gotten quite sweaty due to the excitement of their success. Given the fact the surface of the shrink ray was covered in smooth, polished copper; sweaty hands and frictionless metal made for a very bad combination.

When Emma reached for the shrink ray it slipped out of her hands very suddenly as if she was trying to grip a bar of soap. In a panicked manner Emma thrusted her left arm to try and grab the nozzle to prevent it from clattering on the ground. This resulted in her fingers grabbing the button control panel and a series of decimal numbers being imputed into the calculator screen.

The size dimensions had been set to 3 to 5 millimetres…………….  

The shrink ray device itself was quite heavy weighing 7 to 8 kilograms. So, when Emma reached out to grab it, she ended up clutching the shrink ray in an awkward position with her left hand, putting great strain on her left shoulder. So, to stabilize herself she instinctively grabbed the bottom of the device.

Unfortunately, that meant she grabbed the trigger by accident. And an unlucky twist of fate would have it that the nozzle of the gun was pointing directly at Justin meaning Justin was right in the firing line………...

Justin screamed with a terror he had never felt before in his entire life as his body took a direct hit from a blue electric light ray. He saw a blinding flash of blue light followed by a strange tingling sensation that he felt throughout his entire body. Then everything went black………

Little did Justin know that when he woke up, he was in for a big surprise………….

“OH FUCK!” shrieked Emma as she witnessed Justin disappear in a flash of blue light before her eyes. Within seconds of the blue light bubble surrounding him he was gone within a flash of an eye.

Emma started hyperventilating for she knew that Justin had not disappeared instantly as the illusion would like her to believe but instead had been shrunk to miniscule proportions. With teary eyes she looked at the calculator input screen.

4.17 millimetres.

Emma’s heart rate quickly accelerated to the point that it was almost bursting out of her chest. She then realised that Justin had been shrunk to the size of a small black ant. This meant he was barely visible to the naked eye and judging by her the mess in her room it was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Her pupils dilated as she scanned the wooden floor intensely and gingerly took a few barefoot steps forward.

Meanwhile…………….

“What the fuck?” groaned Justin. He readjusted himself groggily and then hastily looked around. His eyes widened with horror as he absorbed the sight before him.

Everything around was enormous. It was as if he had teleported himself into a strange alien world. Breadcrumbs that would normally be the size of his fingertips were now the size of basketballs. Various assortments surrounding him such as pens, clothes and scrunched up pieces of paper now looked like giant canyons and construction structures.

He looked up to the ceiling and realized that it was so far above him it was like looking into heaven. He looked to his left and with dread realised that the area covered by Emma’s bed was so large he had to squint just to see another end. The bed legs themselves were so tall that from his perspective they looked like mount Everest.     

Then a very slight breeze blew over him and then came a revolting smell. He suddenly felt nauseous and queasy and his stomach was churning. He felt like he was going to vomit.

Then he turned his head to the right and realised the source of that revolting smell. Emma’s converse sneaker and sock now the size of an ocean liner lay about 20 metres in front of him from his perspective. When he was normal sized, he hadn’t even been bothered by it but now that he was up-close the odour had been magnified by about 100 times.

His knees were knocking. He couldn’t believe what was happening.

 BOOM. BOOM.BOOM. BOOM.

Then the ground began to shake violently. It was gentle at first and Justin first thought it was an earthquake but the tremors grew stronger and it seemed that the epicentre was moving closer and closer. Then he realised the source of the tremors much to his utter horror.

With tears in his eyes, he looked up to see Emma’s bare sole rising above him, attached to a blue jeaned leg which to him looked like a high crane lifting a heavy construction load. Her sole was quite grey from collecting dust, fluff and other bits of floor debris, some pieces which were larger than him. This dirt on her sole was glued by a sticky coat of foot sweat which covered the entire area of her sole. He started shaking in disbelief that this was the girlfriend he was speaking to as an equal just a few minutes ago.

When she gingerly took a step, to him it was as if a building had just collapsed in front of him. With a huge thwack her heel came down first followed by the ball of her foot and finally her unpainted toes. The force was so strong that impact of her foot settling down actually threw him half a metre onto his bum. When he looked up about 3 metres in front of him were five white lumps with ringed patterns. He craned his neck to the top to see a long ivory sheet of sharp toenail which looked like a cliff face. He pondered for a moment then the truth dawned on top of him.

He was directly looking at Emma’s barefoot which looked so large it looked like it was a jumbo jet. He tried to squint his eyes upwards to see her face but she was so large it didn’t even seem like she was a living creature, more like an unstoppable force of nature.

And the smell had become 10000 times worse. The air reeked of stale sweat and corn chips and this time Justin actually vomited on the floor with all of his stomach contents emptying out. As he was vomiting, he heard the cracking of toe joints and the scraping of dry skin which he realised was Emma simply wriggling her toes. However, to him it sounded like rolling thunder.

Then out of the corner of his eye he spotted something that made his blood run cold………….

Emma wiggled her big toe upwards to reveal half of the underside. As she did Justin spotted something squished, twisted and lifeless plastered on the bottom of her big toe. Something that was about the same size as him. 

It was a poor ant. Crushed and flattened by an innocent step Emma had probably taken earlier in the day it now had its guts and entrails smeared all over her big toe. Dried brown and grey hemolymph (insect blood) caked a small area around the main body of the ant where it had died.

As a normal sized human Justin hadn’t even thought of ants as proper living creatures. They were just black dots running around which were so small literally no one even stopped to take a glance at them.

Now that he had seen the corpse of an ant up close, he now realized it was a living, breathing creature with arms, legs and organs just like him. He started bawling his eyes out with the truth dawning on him that to Emma and the rest of humanity he was on the same level of insignificance as the ants.      

Meanwhile………………….

After vigorously scanning the floor Emma finally spotted a small red and grey dot twitching on the floor, around 15 cm in front of her bare feet. She gave a big sigh of relief before a disturbing thought crossed her mind; had she been a little less careful Justin would have been flattened under her innocent looking feet and become an unrecognizable red smear. He was so small that Emma couldn’t even make out the detailed outline of his body let alone see his facial features. 

Justin looked up to see a giant human face blocking his view. Emma’s face was so large he had to squint to see the sides of it; her face was so large that to him it felt like a floating metropolis was above his head. He could make out every little detail of her enormous face; her giant circular-rimmed glasses, her moon-sized brown eyes and her gaping mouth with white glistening teeth so large they looked like excavators. Her loose brunette hair flowed all over the sides of her head as if it was the Amazon rainforest.

Justin’s eyes caught the sight of Emma making direct eye contact with him and a small smile was emitted on her plush lips. He breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally been spotted.

Aware of Justin’s vulnerable state Emma decided to whisper to him in a low tone as to not to startle or alarm him.

“I am really sorry Justin but I didn’t build the device with a reversal process. I only had the intentions to be testing it on inanimate objects and never on living creatures. I never anticipated something like this happening. Kind of stupid of me to be honest.” Emma confessed to a now horrified Justin.

“WHAT THE FUCK EMMA?!” he shrieked. “YOU DIDN’T EVEN THINK OF INSTALLING A SHRINK REVERSAL PROCESS?!”

Justin looked with bright red-hot fury at Emma then quickly realised that Emma hadn’t even reacted to his enraged rant. He realised that while Emma’s whispers still felt like someone was making a loudspeaker announcement maybe she couldn’t hear him. ‘I can hear her but she can’t hear me’ he concluded.

Red-faced and embarrassed, Emma looked at the unrecognisable red and grey dot that was once her big man lover.

“Don’t worry Justin I can fix this” she reassured him. “Just let me dig up some research mechanic papers out of the garage and I can install a shrink reversal process within a couple of hours”.

She then began to lightly pad barefoot backwards before giving Justin one final look.

“NO! NO! NO! DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!” screamed Justin. “YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE ME ALL ALONE SHRUNK TO A FEW MILLIMETRES IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR FUCKING ROOM! I WILL BE COMPLETELY EXPOSED AND UNPROTECTED!”

“Listen Justin” Emma said as if she could read Justin’s mind. “No one else is going to come into my room. My dad is going to be passed out on the couch, drunk for several hours and we don’t have any unexpected guests coming in anytime soon.”

With a final bow she hastily exited her room. Justin once again felt those shaking earthquake like tremors only this time, they became softer and softer. He still had a hard time believing that those godly earthquake-like tremors were simply his girlfriend walking around. 

Emma had no idea how wrong she was and soon she would be eating her words……………….

Little did she know that an unexpected guest would be arriving shortly……………

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

 3 loud knocks echoed through the hallways of the house. However, Emma was so pre-occupied deep in her father’s garage looking for equipment and information that she didn’t even hear the knocks nor the voice calling out.

  “Hello? Is anyone home?” called a younger feminine voice. Without a response from any human being the voice groaned and responded “So glad I bought the house keys.”

The wooden front door opened to reveal a stunning, attractive 18-year-old teenage girl who was much more attractive than her undergraduate sister. She had very long slightly curly blond hair that reached to her chest area, sky blue eyes and 3 freckles on her left cheek. Currently she was wearing a white crop top, navy blue jean shorts and brown Birkenstock open toed sandals that looked like they came from the last supper.

This girl’s name was Oliva Walkins.

Oliva had decided to actually come home early from her little fiasco at the schoolie celebrations on the Gold Coast in Queensland after police had exposed an illicit party pill drug bust among several youths. To escape prosecution and association by guilt Oliva had quietly snuck on the next flight back to Melbourne as quickly as possible. It had been one hell of a ride for Oliva and a really close call.

Oliva popped her head into the living room, located directly on the right of the entrance hall and saw her father snoring in his work clothes and his long hair covering his face. She smiled, quite amused at the sight of her father sleeping so peacefully.

Oliva kicked off her Birkenstock sandals near the shoe rack at the entrance and wiggled her lime green-painted toes at their new found freedom.

“Ah it feels good to let the old dogs bark free” she sighed, cracking her toes at the joints.

Oliva then patted her right shorts pocket and felt a pink lighter. She then brushed her lime green painted nails over her left pocket and felt a 20 pack of cigarettes and smirked. 

“Oh, I really need to fucking smoke……………...” she moaned.

Meanwhile……………

Sitting in the middle of Emma’s room, huffing and puffing at his situation, Justin couldn’t believe how dangerous and unbelievable today’s events had become. What had started as a scientific-engineering project had quickly turned into a life-threatening dilemma.

Things were about to get a little more unbelievable.

Justin suddenly heard rustling and tapping behind him in the shadows and thought he saw a black shape flash behind the train-sized pens and paper-scrunched boulders.

Scared out of his wits Justin grabbed a tiny splinter, which to his size was about the same size as a sword. His pupils dilated and his forehead started sweating heavily.

“Whose there?” he barked. “Come on show yourself!” 

Then he realized how stupid he sounded. It was impossible to have any humans that were the same size as him. He was the only human to be shrunk to this size therefore it was impossible to have any other non-giant humans around him.

 Then another horrible thought crossed his mind. It was probably an insect. Most insects from his general knowledge were carnivorous and didn’t mind feeding on other insects. From the insect’s point of view, he looked like some exotic new bug that looked tasty and they couldn’t wait to try out.

Petrified he sprinted towards Emma’s country-sized bed and hid behind one of those skyscraper tall bed legs. From this position he peaked his head from behind his vantage point to get a better look at the creature that was skulking around him.

His eyes fell upon a little black ant that had emerged from the shadows. It had 6 black legs, beady little eyes, antennae and a small set of mandibles. From his perspective the ant was about the size of a German shepherd. It was scavenging for crumbs that had been dropped earlier by Emma, grabbing basketball sized chunks with its mandibles.

But it is what came out of the ant’s mouth next that shocked him to his core.

“Mum will love these crumbs I have collected. Maybe the whole colony will thank me for my scavenging efforts”.

Those words of perfectly unbroken English had not been spoken by a human being. It had been spoken by the little black ant in front of him.

“No fucking way!” Justin gasped. “You got to be fucking kidding me!”

He was well aware that ants were living, breathing animals. But intelligent beings? ‘Ants don’t speak any form of constructed language’ Justin thought to himself. ‘Let alone English’. Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any more bizarre it just did. Now he had just witnessed a talking ant. For as far as he could remember talking animals only appeared in Disney movies.

Suddenly Justin felt slight earthquake tremors that signalled the sign of footsteps approaching closer and closer. ‘About time she got back’ he thought to himself thinking Emma had come back to fix his shrunken state. He was just about to come out of his hiding place when the door swung open and a pair of younger feminine feet entered the room with squirming lime-painted toes.

He raised his eyebrows and frowned. “Wait that’s not Emma……….” he gasped.

“Sis are you in here?” called out a voice. “Are you home?”

Oliva Walkins had been walking around the house for the past few minutes looking for her sister. As a result, she had walked into her sister’s room uninvited and was now snooping around her personal belongings.

“This room is disgusting! Oh well she won’t mind if I add one more piece of rubbish” smiled Oliva.  

Oliva’s lime green-painted nails stroked and flicked at her almost finished smouldering cigarette. She took the cigarette to her lips and gave one final puff before flicking the cigarette out of her hand towards the ground.

CRASH!!

Justin nearly jumped out of his skin as a bus-sized cigarette butt crashed about 20 metres in front of him, from his perspective. However, in reality it was only about 30cm from the bed leg.

Now unlike most other smokers Oliva didn’t mind extinguishing cigarette butts with her bare feet. Oliva had been walking barefoot for most of her life, even in the forest, so as a result her soles had developed quite a thick hardy texture and high pain tolerance.

Justin looked up to see a giant brown sole hovering above the cigarette butt. It was even filthier than Emma’s sole with every inch caked in a thin layer of soil, glued on by a coat of foot sweat.

CRUSH

Oliva stepped on the cigarette butt with her right foot to extinguish it, twisting the heavy ball of her foot over the cigarette butt to fully put it out.

“Oh, that’s hot” she giggled as she twisted her foot side to side and scrunched her toes.

Oliva then lifted her foot for Justin to see a flattened piece of tobacco paper with ash surrounding it. He looked to see Oliva settling her foot back into place and looking ahead. 

“Oh, that was nice” she sighed.

Justin shuddered at her raw power, destroying something that was almost 10 times his size.

Oliva then turned her attention to her sister’s messy study table which was cluttered with design sketches, physics books, scrap paper, stationary and her laptop, which was stacked precariously on a stack of books. She raised her eyebrows at the sight, then cracked a smile.

“Still being a massive fucking nerd, are we Emma?” she laughed.

Then out of the corner of her eye she saw something moving. A little black shape twitching among the discarded breadcrumbs which littered the wooden floor, just half a metre in front of her desk.

The little black ant that had been harvesting crumbs earlier had now stopped and turned his attention to earthquake tremors that were happening all around him. He turned around to see a giant pair of bare feet belonging to a creature so large he could barely see her head, disappearing up into the point horizon. From his point of view, she was tall as 5 mountains.

“Wow” he gasped. “I have never seen a human in the flesh before. They are so much larger than they are described in the books”.

He focused his vision on a looming head coming closer and closer to him to inspect him. He saw the knees bending at the joints as if it was some kind of giant industrial machine. He saw her facial expression clearly for the first time which transformed from an expression of amusement to one of disgust.

Oliva saw a little black shape twitching among the crumbs in her sister’s room. After bending down to take a closer look she was disgusted to see it was a gross little ant.

“Emma!” groaned Oliva. “This is why Dad doesn’t want you to eat in your room! It attracts bugs!”

She pushed the hair strands out of her eyes before narrowing her eyes to look at the tiny little ant and cocked her head.

“We have a bug problem?” smirked Oliva. “Well, I have a solution of the old-fashioned kind.”

“Hello human?” piped the ant from down below. “I come in peace!”

BOOM! BOOM!

The poor naive ant could not predict what happened next. A pair of ocean-liner sized bare feet crashed on either side of him, sending an earthquake sized tremor that felt like a magnitude 8.8. The unfortunate ant was flung backwards onto his back, twisting one of his legs.

“OWWWW!!” he screamed.

With tears he looked up to see the giant girl looking down and grinning at him. In those eyes he could see the hatred and disgust in her eyes.

The poor ant didn’t know this but Oliva wasn’t like most other humans who would just crush bugs instantly on the spot when they saw them. Instead, Oliva loved to torture bugs, playing cat and mouse games with their lives. She enjoyed taunting insects, spitting on them and pretending to miss them while trying to crush them. For her this was a satisfying taste of power for an otherwise small 1.6m tall human girl who felt quite weak in terms of physical strength and size with other humans.

Oliva raised her left big toe over the injured ant, her nail glistening with that coat of lime-green toenail polish.

“OH MY GOSH NO!” screamed the petrified ant, desperately trying to crawl away from his impending doom above him. “THE RUMORS ARE TRUE ABOUT WHAT HUMANS DO TO OUR KIND!!”

He then closed his eyes for the end however Oliva’s big toe actually crashed just next to his main body flattening two of his legs and breaking them.

“FUCK!!” he shrieked.

Meanwhile from above Oliva snickered as she brought down her toe next to him.

“Oops looks like I missed” snickered Oliva.

She then began tapping her toes around the ant giggling at its panicked twitches, trying to avoid her toes.

“Where are you going to go little bug?” she laughed. “Where are my big powerful toesies going to stomp?”

The ant was emitting blood curdling shrieks as her house-sized toes danced around him.

CRASH!! CRASH!! CRASH!!

Somehow, he was able to dodge her toes every time but more of his legs were broken with each earth-shattering close impact. It was a deadly game of Russian roulette.

Meanwhile Justin was watching the ant’s suffering from behind the bed leg with his mouth hanging open in horror. Sure, he had confessed to himself that he had stomped on spiders and cockroaches in the past. But he had made sure it was a quick death not like this with the ant screaming in agony. It was like watching a fucking psychopath being made.

Oliva rolled her eyes and stated “Ok I am bored now”. She had had her fun now it was time to finish off the little pest.

Crying, shaking and curling himself into a ball the little ant looked up from his battered and broken body to see Oliva’s pink and brown sole hovering above him, blotting out most of the light.

“OH, PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!!” he sobbed with tears trickling down his face.

 Oliva’s ball of her foot made contact with the little ant, pressing his body into the ground. She then re-adjusted her foot before applying more pressure. His exoskeleton popped first, then his guts and entrails, with his   haemolymph soaking into the brown filth of Oliva’s sole. The little ant had been reduced to a little spot of brown and black goo which was unrecognisable among the other bits of brown dirt under her foot.

Oliva felt that satisfying exoskeleton pop then sighed; “I love feeling you little shits pop under my feet” 

She then closed her eyes then started giggling. “Ewww squishy”.

Oliva then raised her sole to her knee and strained her eyes trying to find the ant’s corpse. Finally, she spotted a tiny black dot among the brown dirt of her sole.

“One disgusting bug down” she smiled. “Judging by Emma’s biohazard of a room there are probably several more of them. I should squish all of them before they start laying eggs, breeding and start a nest. I wonder how many other bugs are around here……”

Her eyes started darting around the room, trying to spot any more bugs.

Justin cowered behind the bed legs, shaking and was horrified. For his entire life he had never seen death happen before his eyes. Well technically he had with all the insects he had squished when he was normal-sized. But now seeing a living, breathing insect up close with fully visible and similar features to himself and speaking the same language as him had given a whole new meaning to homicide.

Little did he know that his luck was about to get so much worse………….

At that particular moment the clouds in the sky completely uncovered the sun, leaving the orange rays of the afternoon sun to spread its rays all around, completely unrestricted. This resulted in a shower of afternoon sunlight making its way through the chink in the blinds and at just the right angle, directly hit the bed leg closest to the window. It was just Justin’s luck that he was standing next to the bed leg closest to the window. This resulted in his body shape being illuminated, making him a lot more visible.

Unfortunately for him Oliva had quite sharp eyes. As she was darting her eyes around the room, she spotted a little red and grey dot wiggling next to the bed leg.

“That’s a strange looking bug” she smirked.

Justin’s heart stopped dead in his tracks. He hadn’t thought about it before but if a human didn’t bend down enough to have a really close look from above, he just looked like an indistinguishable moving dot. An unrecognisable moving dot which looked just like a little ant or any of the other tiny insects that scavenge the ground.

He had just seen her ruthlessly squish that ant. Judging by his appearance he looked just like that ant and would probably suffer the same fate. He wasn’t taking any second chances.

In the fight for his life, he sprinted deeper under the bed, the underside area of the bed so large that to him he felt like he was in some giant underground cavern.

Oliva spotted the little ‘bug’ crawling at a surprising speed underneath the bed. She started laughing and cocked her head to the side.

 “Little buggy wanna play? Okay let’s play!” snickered Oliva.

Justin was now quite deep under the bed and was now confident that Oliva couldn’t reach him. He could still see her pair of jumbo jet sized bare feet pacing up and down and around the bed. Even though he was quite deep under the bed he could still hear and feel her earthquake footstep tremors every time her feet made contact with the ground.

“Oh, little bug!” sang Oliva. “Come out, Come out where ever you are!!”

  He then heard a horrifying crackling sound that sounded like thunder. He looked to see that Oliva was wiggling and cracking her toes at the joints. Her shiny lime-green painted toes looked so erotic and yet so deadly to him at the same time as her toes kept moving up and down and dragged across the wooden floor, creating a low rumbling sound.

Oliva moved half of her left foot upwards and what Justin saw made him start shaking uncontrollably. The little ant’s corpse that had been crushed earlier was plastered on the ball of her foot. He could make out every bit of grisly detail; the twisted and mangled body, the guts squeezed out like toothpaste and the dried puddle of haemolymph surrounding it. He realized there was a very real chance he could end up like that ant.

“I won’t hurt you little bug” sneered Oliva. “My feet just want to give you a little kiss just like they did to your little friend!!” she squealed with glee.

Oliva then crouched down, bending her knees to look under the bed. From his position Justin saw first her knees and hands making contact with the ground so that Oliva was on all fours. Then he saw her giant moon-sized head lowering down to the level under the mattress to peep under the bed. He could see every detail of her face; her sky-blue pupils, her loose Amazonian jungle of blond hair and her giant smile with teeth and a gaping maw so large he felt as if he was looking into the Grand Canyon.

Oliva’s arm extended out like a snake with a hand and 5 lime-green painted fingernails snaking its way under the bed. Her fingers looked like a giant spider creature that was crawling towards him with fingers extended towards him like claws. Luckily for him her arm couldn’t extend far enough to his position so he was safely out of her grasp. 

Oliva strained to extend her arm further and clutched her fingers but she couldn’t reach the little pest.

“Shit, I can’t reach it” she groaned. 

Then out of the corner of her eye she noticed something.

It was a wheel.

The bed legs had wheels.

Oliva faced palmed and quickly remembered that her sister Emma specifically slept on a wheeled bed. This was because Emma was always reorganizing furniture in her room to utilize space and this was so frequent that her father had just bought her a bed with wheels to make things easier. This way she could just push the bed across the floor instead of always calling on others to help her lift the bed to a better position. Oliva couldn’t believe she had forgotten about that detail.

“Oh, little bug, today is your unlucky day. Well for you anyway, not for me” she giggled.

 Quickly she sprang up to her feet, causing a magnitude 10 earthquake tremor that quite literally swept Justin off his feet. Dazed and confused he looked to see what Oliva was doing.

Oliva grabbed the side wooden base of the bed and began to push slowly.

From under the bed, he looked to his horror as the underbed ceiling above him began to move backwards. Horrified he glanced to his side to realise that the bed leg’s cylindrical base that he had seen was actually a wheel. Shaking he realized that Oliva was pushing the bed to reach him.

“A BED WITH WHEELS!!” he screamed with tears in his eyes. “WHO THE FUCK BUYS A BED WITH WHEELS!! “

Then the underbed ceiling above him disappeared completely, leaving a flood of fresh sunlight hitting his eyes. Briefly blinded for a moment he then realized he was completely exposed. Panicked he began to run.

“Oops where do you think you are going?” chuckled Oliva as she stepped forward bringing her barefoot just centimetres from Justin.  Oliva had now moved the bed completely to the side leaving the little ‘bug’ crawling around near her feet, completely at her mercy now. 

As Justin was running a glistening white barefoot crashed just in front of him with so much force it was as if an asteroid had impacted in front of him. He was actually thrown back in the air several metres before landing awkwardly on his legs. As he landed on his legs he heard and felt a sharp snapping sound making him shriek in pain. He had fractured his ankle. Now he couldn’t walk or run properly.

“SOMEBODY HELP!!” he screamed. “I CAN’T MOVE!!”

His eyes darted to see the other barefoot settling about 10 metres next to him however much softer and less forceful, creating a lighter tremor.

He looked upwards to the distant face of a usually normally sweet and attractive teenage girl who was 6 years younger than him. In any other situation he would have found her cute and adorable but now as he looked up into her malice filled eyes, he saw a fucking demented monster.

“I AM NOT A BUG!!” he shrieked. “I AM A HUMAN BEING!! YOU HEAR ME YOU STUPID BITCH!!”

Oliva snickered at the helpless little bug twitching near her feet, twisting and thrashing as if it was in pain.

“I got you now, you disgusting little insect.” Oliva stated. “Maybe take this pointer on what happens to little bugs that invade my house”.

Oliva then began moving her tongue and sucking up the saliva in her mouth to create a ball of spit in her mouth. She then narrowed her eyes at the disgusting little red dot that she thought was a pest and without hesitation spat a small ball of spit directly at Justin. The spit ball sailed through the air downwards before making contact with Justin.

Justin screamed with a terror he had never known his entire life as he was hit with a spit ball that was around 5 times his size. It was like he had been hit with a dump truck water load. However, this wasn’t water; it was human saliva that burned his eyes and irritated his skin. The saliva texture was thicker than water as well, so soon he was encased in a gooey spit bubble which he desperately treaded to keep his head above the surface and to keep himself from suffocating.

 Oliva was watching the little bug struggle in her spit gleefully, giggling “Tee he he, look at it struggling, it’s so pathetic I bet it wishes it was bigger!” she taunted.

However, the spit bubble began to break apart luckily for Justin, the liquid residue spreading out across the floor, freeing Justin from his spit bubble. Justin gasped a breath of fresh air as he collapsed on his hands and knees, still tasting the stale taste of tobacco he had in his mouth.

Oliva raised her eyebrows and said; “Oh you are a resilient little bug, aren’t you? Most bugs don’t survive that. Oh well, I know a sexier way to die”.

Oliva parted her big and second toes and began sliding them towards a stunned Justin.

“FUCK NO!!” Justin cried. “I CAN’T DIE LIKE THIS, IT’S TOO HUMILIATING!!”

He watched helplessly as her house-sized toes, each toe the height of a two-storey house, surrounded him, making him feel like as if he was in an alleyway between 2 buildings. However, this was a lot more terrifying as the inside facing skin of her toes trembled. The smell was 1000 times worse than Emma’s feet, the air reeking of rotting cheese. He looked in between her toes and saw dozens of basketball and beachball sized chunks of toe jam, oozing with foot sweat.

He looked down at his pants and noticed a wet spot, realizing he had quite literally pissed himself in fear.

Meanwhile Oliva snickered at the pathetic life-form between her toes. Every time she squished one of these pesky little bugs, she felt so powerful, like a goddess.

“Do you like my pretty little toes little bug?” she giggled. “I like to get a pedicure and paint my toes so you worthless little bugs can have something pretty to look at while you die!!”

Slowly she began closing her toes together, trapping Justin in between them.

Justin wailed as the toes clasped around him like a vice and began compressing him like the horrible job a trash compactor does when flattening trash. He heard several of his ribs breaking and blood was starting to come out of his mouth as Oliva’s toe pressure began to increase. He tried to scream but was gurgling as more and more blood came out of his mouth. But just when he thought he was about to pop the pressure suddenly stopped.

“His shell is kind of soft for a bug” said a perplexed Oliva as she clenched Justin between her toes then changed her mind about crushing him this way and released him. She then readjusted her toes, hovering her big toe over Justin’s broken body.

Justin looked up to see a squirming giant house-sized toe hovering a few metres above his head, the toeprint covering his entire perceptual vision.

“Please” he cried with bloody tears. “I am not a bug; I am a 24-year-old human with my whole life ahead of me. Why can’t you see me”? 

He curled up into a little ball as Oliva’s toe lowered down.

“Oh, please Oliva don’t kill me like this!!” he wailed.

Just before her toe made contact with him, he uttered his final words.

“I love you Emma…………….”

Oliva smiled a cheeky grin as the tiny bug disappeared under her lime-green painted toe.

 “Oh, I can still feel you squirming” snickered Oliva. “I will press down harder”.

As Oliva’s toe pressed down harder, Justin’s intestines were the first to go. A giant gash ripped through his abdomen before his intestines squirted out like a tube of toothpaste. Then his chest cavity began to cave in with his chest splitting down the middle before his heart and lungs were reduced to red mush.

Meanwhile Oliva’s eyebrows raised in surprise at the texture of this new bug. Usually in the past when she had crushed insects, a loud hard exoskeleton crush would be felt followed by a loud pop. Then a lot of gooey liquid would be felt. But this crush was different. This bug was crushing in the reverse with soft squishing material first with hard crunching towards the end. Oliva didn’t know this but Justin was not a bug, he was a human being with a skeleton on the inside of his body which unfortunately meant for him that his death was going to be a lot more painful.

“This bug feels kind of weird and different compared to the others,” said a perplexed Oliva.

Justin’s legs were the next to go, turning into an unrecognisable mush of red meat and bone. The last body part to be destroyed was his head where his skull cracked open like a nut before splintering into shards. His brain was the last part of him to die turning into liquid jelly.

Oliva giggled as she felt a wet pop under her shiny lime-green painted big toe.

“OOOHH I finally felt that pop. That bug was so soft compared to the others. He’s so squishy and gooey” she laughed as she twisted her toe into Justin’s remains.

 She then raised her sole up to her knee and placed her thumb on the underside of her toe to focus her vision. She then looked to see a tiny red dot pasted to the bottom of her toe.

“Huh? Why does the bug insides look red? Aren’t insect insides meant to be brown or black?” she questioned herself.

Just then the door opened.

“Oliva?” gasped Emma. “When did you get home?”.

Emma had just walked in with a box of books, tools and other equipment to start working on the shrinking reduction process. Apparently, she hadn’t anticipated on her dim-witted sister showing up completely unannounced. Not only had she entered the house without any warning she had also barged into her sister’s room.

“Hey sis, I decided to come home early after a little fiasco. Sorry for not telling anyone about my arrival” said Oliva to a shocked Emma who stood there gaping and frozen with shock as if she had seen a ghost.

“This is my private room; you can’t come in here!” frowned Emma.

“Oh, come on, it’s not a big deal,” laughed Oliva.

She then waved her hand around showing the utter state of Emma’s room which was sinking under a mountain of books, paper and stationery.

“Your room is a living petri dish Emma. No wonder it attracts so many bugs” lectured Oliva

Emma’s heart froze in fear. She remembered what she had told Justin, that he would be guaranteed to be safe waiting in her room shrunk to only a few millimetres tall. Judging by the unexpected visitor she wondered how Justin had reacted to her sister clumsily stomping about. Another disturbing thought was edging its way into her mind but she pushed it aside for now.

 “I found 2 disgusting little bugs in your room. Luckily, I taught those little shits a lesson they will never forget” snickered Oliva.

 Emma’s lip started trembling and her hands started to quiver. Now that thought had made its way into her mind and she was really hoping her sister hadn’t done what she thought she had done……………………….

“You killed bugs?......” trembled a quivering Emma to a proud Oliva.

“Yes, I did” boasted Oliva. “You should be thanking me. I know you don’t like me squishing bugs because you think its animal cruelty or whatever but when you show these little pests mercy, they start breeding, establishing a nest and before you know it those little cunts become a massive fucking annoyance in your life”.

‘No No No’ thought a horrified Oliva. ‘Tell me she didn’t……….’

“There was this one bug though” Oliva went on. “It was so strange like his shell was so soft while I was squishing him with my toe. Also, when I finished crushing him his insides were kind of red………...”

Oliva then raised her sole to a horrified Emma where she could faintly see a little red dot on the underside of her big toe.

“That’s what you call girl power right?” snickered Oliva.

Emma fell to her knees in despair, dropping the box on the floor and holding her face in her hands. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she now realised what her sister had done. Her boyfriend had been taken away from her forever by her dim-witted and cruel sister and there was no way he was ever coming back.

Her younger sister Oliva had been killing and crushing insects throughout her entire childhood. She didn’t like it but didn’t speak out about it since she didn’t like conflict and naively thought that this bloodthirsty habit would never ever have a severe negative personal impact on herself. Now she realised just how wrong she was.

To the untrained eye Justin looked just like any other bug when he was shrunk. And if he looked like a bug, he would get treated like a bug…………………

Oliva was taken aback by her sister’s bizarre display of emotional grief and raised her eyebrows.

“What the? ………. Why are you acting so weird? You are acting like I just murdered a person” stated a perplexed Oliva without realising the irony of her words.

Emma’s grief quickly turned into fire-hot rage by her sister’s arrogant and inconsiderate attitude. She was so angry she felt red-hot iron bars had filled into her body. With tearful angry eyes she glared at her sister and let it rip.

“YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU STUPID BITCH!!!!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!”

Shocked by her sister’s aggressive attitude Oliva didn’t know what to say.

 “Oh, come on sis they were just gross little bugs. I didn’t know you would get so emotionally attached to insignificant little things that crawl on the floor” defended Oliva.

Emma was so angry she wanted to scream at her more but the anger had built up in her throat so much it felt as if she had a frog in her throat. She had lost control of her voice box to say anymore words.

“I mean all I did was squish a few bugs?” stated Oliva.

“It’s just a bug”.  

Chapter End Notes:

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