Tina was not going to be able to make it out of this okay.
One moment, Tina was sitting on the side of the bed with one leg propped on her knee checking her phone. Suzanne was in the bathroom washing her hands. Both were giddy and excited at the impending prospect of being able to share cake.
But one ominous fit of ear-ringing later, and now Tina had no idea where she was. The landscape was vast and ethereal, filled with such imposing cliff-faces and structures as to be unthinkable to Tina’s eyes. Even the floor upon which she stood, flat and smooth, went on for apparently hundreds of miles in three out of the four directions.
“S… S-S-Suzy?” Tina was already a soft-spoken woman, far more content to let her friends do the speaking for her. But even in this netherscape of inexplicable geography, she found her voice to be absolutely, inexplicably small. "S-Suzy... w-w-where did you go? Suz…”
A thump.
Another one, louder.
Tina wanted to jump with each tremor. She looked around but saw no outward indication of the source. At least, not until a massive wall, blurred by the distance, rectangular in shape, unthinkable in scale, began to move. A door. It practically destroyed all of Tina’s sense of reality to accept that fact, but there was no other object it could be. And that door was fast opening, allowing the creature who made those noises to enter her bedroom.
“Ms.… Ms. Park? Ms. Park?!”
Ms. Park it was. She turned on the lights, nearly blinding Tina with a shocking sensory overload. Tina was forced to rub her eyes, but as she did she was unable to erase the vision of Ms. Park, magnified into a creature so much larger than Tina that it would’ve been a disservice to Yu-Mi’s might to even attempt to describe it. But even if she could, as she opened her blurry eyes again, Tina felt yet another thump, a tremor. Ms. Park’s voluminous frame was approaching, fast. And if Tina could not escape, she would be right in the line of fire.
“Oh God, shit, God, SUZY?!” Tina didn’t waste time listening for a reply; she turned tail and ran. Every footstep Yu-Mi made was another jolt, a shock to Tina’s system, resulting in missteps, trips, accidents. Yet despite this, it felt as though Yu-Mi was arriving in slow motion. The shadow of her tepid foot would just almost encroach her. Until… another step. Tina had barely gotten managed to outrun them. But with each repetition of this cycle, the gap diminished.
“Oh God… oh God oh God…” Tina knew muttering was wasting precious breath, but she couldn’t help it. Speaking was the only ability she possessed to process the situation. Even now, she could smell Yu-Mi’s fragrant after-work musk, a powerful scent that invaded Tina’s nostrils and made her crinkle her nose at the sourness. “Please, please, please…”
Tina made the mistake of looking behind her.
Yu-Mi’s towering frame was no longer there. Tina had gotten so used to the varying steps of Yu-Mi’s arrival – she had to, lest she be utterly transfixed, unable to even walk. But in ignoring that, she had failed to realize that Yu-Mi had more than gained on her. She was right on top of her.
STOMP!
Tina jumped, and she screamed. She looked to her side. Yu-Mi’s foot landed, delivering sweaty wet spots to the chilled floor.
“I… I-I-I…” Tina quivered, then stopped as the lights went out for her. Knowing that what she was about to see would destroy her – physically and mentally – and she looked up.
The shadow cast by Yu-Mi’s dewy foot was apocalyptic. The smoothly carved ridges beneath the sole drew traces of Yu-Mi’s past. The history of everything she’d done, everywhere she went, the tunes she danced to, the sports she’d played. That entire history was written there on those soles. Tina stumbled, taken aback, when something wet fell on her shoulder.
“H-huh?!” Tina touched her finger to the droplet. It smelled salty.
Then the foot came down.
“N-no, no!” Tina tried to get back up, but tripped. She felt a sharp stab of pain and attempted to crawl out of the way. “Suzy?! SUZY –”
Squelch…!
Yu-Mi’s walk continued unimpeded. She would never know that as she proceeded to the bathroom, she would trample her former subordinate beneath her slippery smooth left foot, squeezing her under unbelievable pressure that shattered spines, grinded out bones, popped blood vessels, and ultimately exploded her into a corpse, then a stain, then a mere stamp, a stamp that would continue to paste fake Tina’s across the floor for almost an entire three more steps until the girl was truly reduced to nothing.
***
Suzanne watched, horrified, mystified, through the slit of an ajar bathroom door. She had been forced to come to terms with the reality of her size quickly – the cool ceramic material of the bathroom was instantly recognizable even from these germ-like scales. Nevertheless, this didn’t make it easy. Every noise that Suzanne heard was another potential danger: the drip, drip dripping of the faucet produced droplets that could drown her if she wasn’t careful. The aromatic scents of cleaning products and bath soaps were comfortably fragrant as a human. As a bug, they were nearly toxic, caustic poisons, ones that made Suzanne cough and hack before she grew adjusted to them.
Worst and most inconvenient, however, was the precise location of Suzanne’s shrinkage. Rather than be reduced in any area that would allot her the privilege of movement, escape, freedom of any sort… she had gotten the short end of the stick. Trapped within the fibers of a hand towel, carefully folded and placed lengthwise over the edge of the inverted crystalline dome that made up Yu-Mi’s bathroom sink. This wouldn’t be so bad on its own, but in Suzanne’s crazed squirmings upon coming to, she had inadvertently entangled her own legs within the mess of fibers that made up the white half-garment, a mistake she was trying her hardest to remedy.
Suzanne had to breathe, and she had to breathe slowly. She glanced up again at the faint sliver of Yu-Mi… Yu-Mi. She was as inevitable as the dawn. Suzanne didn’t know if she was coming inside the bathroom… but that wouldn’t change anything. Either way, if Suzanne didn’t finish what she was doing and finish it quickly, she would be in a lot of danger. Yu-Mi, thankfully, seemed to be focused on something on the floor. By the scant indications of her demeanor that Suzanne could glean, she could tell Yu-Mi was uncomfortable, a face of disgust. Had she stepped on something? Could it have been…
Suzanne shook her head, though her heart fell. Now was not the time for her mind to go to such dark places. She untangled another rope-like knot, and suddenly, her left leg was free.
“Yes… yes!” Now for the other one, she thought.
A gentle, grating, omnipotent creaking sound, brass rubbing against brass, and a rush of air that would’ve blown Suzanne backwards hundreds of feet had her one leg not still been encased in a barrage of knots. Suzanne’s eyes watered from the intense breeze, and through their misty frames the enigmatic colossus of Yu-Mi Park unbuttoning her shirt and sliding down her skirt was becoming more and more distinct.
Accompanying Yu-Mi’s arrival was also the arrival of her scent. Suzanne’s nose now began to sting, feeling the potent, fragrant miasma of Yu-Mi’s musk fill the confined bath area. It wasn’t especially extreme, given the circumstances. At normal size, its hardy, earthy undertones might’ve even been pleasant, to the right man or woman. But Yu-Mi’s size was a force magnifier, one that multiplied everything she did… everything she was… by thousands, if not millions of times. It caused Suzanne’s hands to jitter and shake, and this made her dexterity take a severe dip.
“No… c’mon!” Suzanne grit her teeth, steeling herself and trying to do the same to her arms. She curled her fingers around the threads of the cloth, but every reversal of a tie seemed to come with several more accidental knots, a consequence of her growing fear under the shadow of Yu-Mi.
All changed when Yu-Mi grabbed the cloth.
“W-what?! No, no! Ms. Park! YU-MI!” Her leg remained entangled, and now Suzanne was dangling upside down against the curtainous mass of threads and knitted fibers. From this view, Yu-Mi looked even more alien and incomprehensible, a face made of impossible-to-navigate peaks and valleys, divots and crevices, craters and hills. The hair that fell down her face was made of blacks so deep they seemed like a gift from Night herself. Her torso was bare of her blouse or office wear; all that adorned the beautiful woman were a bra and a pair of panties. Each one could’ve housed thousands of Suzannes on their own.
“Yu-Mi! Wait, wait!” Suzanne continued to scream for Yu-Mi’s attention, all falling on deaf ears. Yu-Mi gripped the cloth and held it inside the cistern before she turned on the faucet, the piercing sound of water rushing through pipes sending a shrieking migraine through the upturned Suzanne. This was naught but the prologue; a typhoon swirled through the faucet, raining down on the hand towel with Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water with each passing moment, coming inches from drowning the poor girl in a battering ram of nothing but liquid, liquid, and more liquid. It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds before Yu-Mi turned the faucet off, but to the saturated girl who dangled lifelessly from the rag, it felt like several lifetimes.
As the rag swished through the air, Suzanne sputtered to life, choking at first as she tried to breathe in air, having forgotten the water still caught in her throat. She coughed it out in a hack and tried to blink her eyes open again, only to be greeted by an even more dire sight – Yu-Mi’s armpit.
The ever-chic Yu-Mi always made sure to apply a healthy helping of deodorant in the morning after showering to ensure she smelled fresh and clean for the rest of the day. Suzanne now saw the results of this dictum, a crusted casing of white powdery flecks spiderwebbing across Yu-Mi’s shaved pits. And she was heading straight for it.
Suzanne didn’t even have the energy to scream out in terror this time, but once she was smothered against Yu-Mi’s armpit, she wouldn’t have been able to let out anything worthwhile against the flesh of her giant, unaware captor anyway. Yu-Mi slid dragged the rag across her armpit, digging deep into the trapped and crusted over deodorant, mixing it with water, creating a precipitant that was easy to scrub off and wipe away. And all through the motion, Suzanne was caught in the middle, kissing against Yu-Mi’s moist armpit, feeling nothing but horror, nausea, disgust, fear, pain, discomfort… an entire gamut of negative emotions and sensations as she was reduced to nothing but a sweat rag.
Yu-Mi finished the first pit, and Suzanne was granted a reprieve. Only for Yu-Mi to just as quickly return to grooming her opposite pit, sending Suzanne into a spiral of despairing just as she was beginning to feel the knots on her leg loosen.
No, though Suzanne. Of all the times… why now?! As she was being grinded against Yu-Mi’s increasingly pristine armpit, the knots of the rag were coming undone, having been loosened by the prior waterfall and use of the rag were coming apart. Suzanne was slipping.
Suzanne flailed her arms and summoned her strength. Even upside down, hanging from a toiletry item, she had to try. Yu-Mi was a wild card, but Suzanne knew the unbearable desolation of the bathroom floor would’ve been a truly demoralizing affair, assuming she even survived the fall. Suzanne angled her back and tried to grab onto the rag with her fingers, hoping to hug it in case her leg was freed too soon, but an aggressive rub sent Suzanne rolling along Yu-Mi’s rubbery armpit skin and losing her orientation.
Moments later, Yu-Mi removed the rag. Suzanne was not on it.
The mixture of water, sweat, and deodorant had calcified into a crystalline sheen. And there, embedded in this layer… was Suzanne. She was attached to the skin of Yu-Mi’s upright armpit spread-eagle style, and likely had mere moments to even try to breathe a semblance of fresh air until her arm came down, squishing her into oblivion.
Suzanne tried to blink. She couldn’t. Suzanne tried to open her mouth to scream, and when that didn’t work, she whimpered. She strained her arms against this entrapment in vain. But she had to keep going. She had to keep moving. She had to… that is, until she realized Yu-Mi was holding her arm up for far longer than Suzanne’s defeated mind had anticipated.
The only muscles on Suzanne’s body that worked unimpeded were her eyes. So, she turned them as far as she could to the left.
There, in the corner of her gaze, something was fast approaching. Yu-Mi’s hand was coming in hot, and it was wielding a plastic capsule of roll-on deodorant. A glistening orb of sweet-smelling glaze, itself hundreds of times the size of the beleaguered Suzanne.
“Yu…Mi…” mouthed Suzanne as the deodorant was planted on Yu-Mi’s skin, only paces away. Wet sounds were filtered out from the lubricated device. “I… I thought…” Suzanne’s mind broke, at last. There was nothing she could do. Nothing any creature her size could do. She wasn’t meant for this. She wasn’t built for this. She could do nothing, be nothing. She had nothing. And as the embiggened roll of deodorant crushed Suzanne out of existence once and for all, imbedding her reddish stain in a new sheen of hygiene and cleanliness, Suzanne’s final thoughts to this earthly realm were a lonely plea to her captor.
“I… I thought we were friends…”
Yu-Mi smiled at herself in the mirror before switching arms and applying another coat. Grabbing the rag again, she reached down and swiped the moist cloth along the bottom of her foot. She had felt something slight sticky on her sole. Once that was remedied, it was time for some relaxation. Yu-Mi had been planning to sleep the day away at first, but that cake had energized her. A bit of television wouldn’t be so bad.
***
Johnny was trudging, shamefully, across the couch. He hadn’t wanted to accept the fact that this gray platform of endless rolling fabric and cotton was the futon’s throw blanket, but the television box across the canyon meant this could only be the couch. Johnny hadn’t wanted to accept that he’d been shrunken, reduced to the size of a mere mite by forces he didn’t understand or even want to understand. But with each passing step, he made a bit of progress to the edge, the lip of the canyon. Progress that would lead to him finding his friends, him finding help, him getting out of this hellscape. It’s a common piece of advice that when approached with a seemingly impossible challenge, one must begin with the smallest possible task that will help in achieving the overall goal. For Johnny, that was taking every subsequent step, no matter how wobbly the surface he was walking on, or how shaky the tremors made him feel. How fast his heart pounded. How much his head ached from the fear, confusion, terror.
But when the tremors began again, getting louder and louder… when the vision of Yu-Mi’s massive, monolithic, bathrobe-wreathed legs entered his range of view… when they slowed to a stop just before his spot on the couch, ascending into the canopy of her barely-visible pert derriere, threatening to break from the tightly-wound belt… and when she began to lower her legs with a yoga-like slowness and steady pace, dual moons of pure pinkish-white edging closer and closer to Johnny… then Johnny had to wonder… what point was there in proceeding henceforth? In carrying his legs just fractions of a centimeter with each passing second further than he once was? He didn’t understand why he had shrunk just barely beyond the height of an amoeba. But now that he was… would he be forced to accept that this world was no longer his to own?
Yu-Mi’s ass was coming down even faster, and Johnny wanted to hop away, each foot sinking ever deeper into the swampy fabric. He had to move, he had to run, pump his arms, escape, no matter how hopeless it seemed. But in the corner of his mind, the reality that he was about to die set in. Not only that, but he was about to die beneath the ass of his friend and coworker, his superior no less. His superior’s ass.
This superior ass.
“WAI–”
Johnny leapt forth. He uttered a final, urgent request that, like him, was steamrolled and evaporated beneath the enormity of Yu-Mi Park’s derriere. For yet a moment, he remained alive underneath the heated globular posterior. Injured and defeated, beaten and broke, smothered and suffocated… but alive, at least in a sense. But as Yu-Mi shifted and kicked her feet up on the coffee table, burrowing her rear end deeper into the couch, making it give against her awesome, expansive weight…the pressure became too much. Johnny grit his teeth, biting his tongue as his frame crackled. He tried to scream out one last message to the world that was about to so cruelly do away with him, but he failed to earn even that privilege, He popped, splattering, equal parts sinking into the carpet and speckling the bottom of Yu-Mi’s starboard ass cheek.
Yu-Mi felt the tiny sticky spritz of something underneath her, and her brow furrowed. She angled her thigh to the side and glanced down beneath her levitating ass. “What…?” She dragged her hand along the throw blanket, ornate fingernails probing the surface, her tips catching onto something odd and sticky. She felt up her own rear, dragging her hand along the sweaty surface until it caught on another such odd spot of adhesion.
“What is going on today?” Yu-Mi scoffed. A lot more bugs in the house than before. A lot braver too. She scooted off the couch and stood to full height, trotting over to the counter of the serving hatch.
Courtney was there, next to the plate, crouched, clutching her head, moaning out partial words and phrases, hoping this was all a dream. She was beneath the awning formed by the saucer that flared out above her. Yu-Mi had come back… she hadn’t even mentioned anything about noticing Courtney’s friends, Yu-Mi’s former interns. Had she not seen them? Felt them at all? Were they that insignificant? There were five of them in total, five shrunken friends, five potential chances to be noticed… on the other hand, there were a thousand and one ways to be stepped on, crushed, eaten, or to meet some other unsavory demise. Courtney didn’t want to believe the thought that many, if not most, of her best friends had been reduced to bloodstains… but the fact remains that they were small. Too small. Impossibly small. There was no way they could get her attention alone…
But Courtney was still here. She sniffed and she rubbed her face clean of its tears, as well as the slight traces of blood from where she had aggressively started ripping her hair out. She straightened her back, and she couldn’t give up. She could not sacrifice the one thing that made her alive – her willingness to maintain this life. It was a difficult prospect, but Courtney summoned the last vestige of confidence she had, even in this alien, eldritch world. The confidence Martin would’ve wanted her to have, so she could continue on living. She had been pondering several plans while here on this counter, and though few showed promise, at least one had a bit of potential: trying to get Yu-Mi’s attention directly. If Courtney could somehow climb atop her body and scale her, she could get to her hand, or nose, or cheek… somewhere that Yu-Mi could observe and discover that she hadn’t been alone at all. From then, Courtney had no clue. But it was an idea, and at this point, it was her only motivating force. Courtney crouched and adopted a start position, as though an Olympic runner preparing for the 100 meter dash. Yu-Mi was standing up now, looking down at the couch with a curious expression. What was she doing?
She was coming over. Now, now was Courtney’s chance. If she could make it, she might be able to leap from the counter onto Yu-Mi’s bathrobe.
She was off. Courtney ran harder than she ever had in her life. She slid on the smoothed granite but maintained her footing. The drop-off was approaching. Courtney focused in on it, thinking of nothing but reaching that point, being ready for hopping over this bottomless chasm. Getting to Yu-Mi, telling her what was going on.
Yu-Mi arrived, her immense body casting Courtney in shadow. But this was fine, thought Courtney. She was likely going to sit here for a few moments more. Just enough time to make it, make the jump, and begin the climb. It was a long shot, to be sure. And Courtney still hadn’t settled on how she intended to get Yu-Mi’s attention. But in her heart, she…
She stopped.
Yu-Mi’s face was parked just above Courtney. She was looking down intently.
Courtney slowed down, barely twenty meters from the edge. She crumpled to her knees, reaching high to the heavens as Yu-Mi glared down, her expression twisted into something inscrutable. Curiosity? Confusion? Identification? Had it happened? Had she been saved?
Courtney sobbed, and shouted out, “Can you see –”
SPLA-SQUELCH!!
Yu-Mi’s face was a cocktail of disgust and annoyance. She dug the pad of her thumb atop the bug like a hydraulic press, twisting it into a stain. From beneath, she could hear the cracks of its frame, and she felt the outpouring of fluid, flattened and rubbed deep into the countertop. The viscera lost definition as Courtney became a corpse, then a splotch, then a memory.
Yu-Mi picked up her thumb. There was no sign at all of Courtney on the dark wood. When she looked at her thumbprint, she could tell much of the rancid little creature’s red bits had burried themselves between the grooves. “Disgusting…” thought Yu-Mi. Disgusting these bugs thought they could invade her house and try to eat the cake she had been so lovingly given by her wonderful interns.
Yu-Mi was grossed out at having to deal with them, but the satisfaction that came with killing this one gave her an intense euphoria. She didn’t know if there were more, but she did know that the next one she saw was already dead.
***
“You wanted to see me?” Yu-Mi Park poked her head in the office of her manager, Jeremiah Moore.
“Oh? Yeah, come in, come in.” The gruff, dark-skinned, bearded man waved her inside. Yu-Mi stepped within and straightened her skirt. “Have a seat,” he continued. Yu-Mi did so.
“So, Ms. Park. I hear last week was your ten-year anniversary working here. Congratulations!” Mr. Moore offered his hand to Yu-Mi, who took it somewhat tentatively. “That’s longer than I’ve been here. I take it you enjoy working with Icarus?”
“Thank you, Mr. Moore. I’ve liked it here, though to tell you the truth… I have been considering alternative options. Nothing in stone yet… but…” Yu-Mi trailed off.
Mr. Moore looked at Yu-Mi with worry. “That’s upsetting to hear. Well, if that’s truly how you feel, then we can discuss a severance package. However, before you make any rash decisions..." Mr. Moore pulled out his desk drawer and dug through a few the files for a sheet of paper. “You might want to take a look at this,” he said with a sly smile.
“Hm?” Yu-Mi took the slip. She scanned it, and her eyes widened. Her heart leapt out of her chest, and it only went higher when she saw that it was signed by the CEO himself. “Chief Data Analyst?”
“And all the perks, responsibilities, and pay that position entails.” Mr. Moore smiled. “From the look on your face, I have a feeling you’re rethinking your change in employment.”
“I, I mean,” Yu-Mi stumbled on her words. “I don’t know what to say! I, I just –”
“Well, I do.” Mr. Moore suddenly became solemn. “I’m sorry, Yu-Mi. This promotion has been overdue for years. You’ve consistently proven yourself, and it’s shameful management has taken this long to realize your potential.”
Yu-Mi’s eyes teared up. She set the letter down on the desk and rubbed her face from top to bottom, trying to relax the muscles within.
Mr. Moore noticed this, and with a light-hearted exhale, he said, “If there’s anything else you need… anything at all… just say the word. I’ll try to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
Yu-Mi put her finger on her lip. “Well, I was curious…” Yu-Mi rattled off the names of her interns, and she asked where they might’ve been. “I understand their tenure has been served, but if you were aware of any job opportunities they’ve received, I would be pleased to know where they are. I want to… thank them.”
“Oh? Those kids? They’re swimming in opportunities! Chances are half of them are out of state right now working with big tech!” Mr. Moore said it with a smile, but when he saw Yu-Mi’s face become downcast, he tried to remedy this. “But I will let you know what I’m able to dig up.”
Yu-Mi stood up and held her hand out to Mr. Moore. “I’m appreciative.”
“Think nothing of it.” He took it with aplomb.
Yu-Mi turned to leave, when suddenly Mr. Moore called out, “Oh, and one more thing.”
“Hm?”
“You live in… Rowan Lane, correct? Near one of our tertiary manufacturing plants?”
Yu-Mi nodded her head slowly.
“You haven’t heard any… ringing in your ears lately, have you? Any sort of discomfort, lethargy, stuff like that?”
Yu-Mi thought long and hard before she answered, “No, can’t say I have.”
Mr. Moore breathed a rather intense sigh of relief. “That’s good, that’s good. Alright, have a good rest of your day, Ms. Park.”
Yu-Mi nodded and grinned, closing the door quietly behind her as she returned to her cubicle. The thought that soon her tiny little cubicle was going to be a real office made her feel giddy. And somehow… she couldn’t help but feel none of this would’ve been possible without the two-sided support of her most recent crop of interns, who gave her the energy to proceed when she couldn’t do so on her own. It had scarcely been a few days and Yu-Mi already missed them. But in her heart, she knew even if she never saw them again, they had already proven to be closer, kinder, and more caring young people than anyone could’ve ever realized.