Evan rattled the bars of his cage once again and the sound bounced off of the stone floors that surrounded him.

It hadn't taken him particularly long to yank the remains of his Tesla off of Kelsey's sneaker. The moment he had dug his fingers between the car and the rubber tread, a chunk would go clattering to the floor. In less than a minute, the girl's tread was clear and there was a pile of debris sitting on the floor in front of her.

She had risen up and stomped off, leaving him to stare down at the crushed remains of his car.

He had dimly thought about running or hiding but then he felt the tremors of her return.

A huge broom brushed past him and he couldn't stop the frightened yelp that escaped his lips.

“Jesus, it's just a broom, dude.” A chuckle echoed through the air, “Chill.”

Standing a few feet away, he felt a few stiff breezes as she swept the remnants of his car into a pile and then gathered it all up in the plastic dust pan that had come with the cheap broom. She carried it off through the house and he heard her drop his Tesla into the kitchen trash can before putting the broom back in the pantry.

120,000 dollars literally in the garbage.

He watched her stroll back into the living room with a new can of LaCroix in her hand and a smile on her face. She paused by the front door to push the sneakers off of her feet and then crossed back to him in nothing but her socks.

“C'mere,” was all the warning he got before she scooped him up into her free arm.

He was pulled in tight to her chest and the earthy scent of weed and patchouli oil assaulted his nostrils. Evan squirmed against her but that only made a chuckle rumble through her body.

The world then shifted and he heard the couch shudder from her flopping down onto it.

The television flicked on before Evan felt his tiny body rising and falling with each of her breaths. He lifted his head up and stared at the underside of her chin, struggling to figure out what was happening.

She just sat there, her glassy gray eyes on the television while her arm held him limply against her chest like he was a stuffed animal. As she guzzled down the grapefruit flavored soda water and then he felt a burp travel up her chest before she opened her mouth and it echoed through the house, a realization finally hit Evan.

“You're high,” he said it without thinking.

“Huh?” Kelsey looked down at him and his body bounced from her laughter, “No shit, bitch.”

He glared up at her and the anger that filled him came out in a single question, “Why?”

She glanced back down at him and another laugh rumbled through him, “Cause it's fun, little dude. Don't tell me you think weed's bad or something...”

“Not why are you high!” Evan smacked his fists against her chest in frustration.

“No hitting,” her authoritative voice was accompanied by a sudden increase in pressure. Her hand shoved down hard against his back and the air was slowly pushed from his body. His thrashing became twitching and then finally his body stilled when his lungs started to burn.

When she lifted her hand off of him, he looked back up at her, “No, why would you do this to me?”

“I already told you, I was tired of van life,” she rolled her eyes and then her face lit up with a thought. Evan's body was contorted by her immense frame shifting about so she could set her can down and then take out her phone. She tapped out a quick message and then sighed before leaning back against the couch, “Huh, where'd my soda go...”

Moaning from the sudden yoga poses he had been forced to go through, Evan looked up at her and awkwardly flailed an arm toward the coffee table.

“Duh,” she boomed and Evan grunted once more as his body was forced into a painful bridge-like stretch by her reaching for her LaCroix.

Thankfully when her phone buzzed a moment later, Evan felt the cool metal of the can brush against his bare feet.

“Aw, isn't he the sweetest?”

Painfully bright light burned into Evan's face as she turned her phone screen toward him. Slowly an image of a text conversation between the giantess and Austin (with a bunch of sparkly heart emojis around it) came into focus. The most recent text from her was asking him to pick up bath bombs and the response was 'That was my first stop.'

Evan rolled his eyes, not only at the meme-filled text chain that rose above the lovey dovey message, but also at the fact that he had apparently been shrunk by a pair of Gen Z burnouts named Kelsey and Austin.

A powerful force then smacked into the back of his head.

“Don't roll your eyes at me, bitch,” Kelsey grumbled and then he felt a great pressure push down on his throbbing skull. His face was shoved hard against her tie-dye tank top and he found himself unable to breathe. Her scent was so strong that it became all he could taste as he was held there by what he slowly realized was her thumb.

When she finally released him, Evan coughed and sputtered.

“Now tell me you're sorry,” she boomed before her finger wagged in the sky above, “And tell me how good of a boyfriend Austin is.”

“What?” He spat out breathlessly while shaking his head, “No, I'm not doing that.”

“Do you think you get to say no to me, bitch?” Her eyes narrowed and there was an edge to her voice that sent a chill down Evan's spine.

The little man struggled to put steel into his voice.

He thought about how easily she crushed his car but then he thought about how humiliating it was to pry it off of her dirty sneaker. There was no way he was going to do something like that again and he was certainly not going to praise her gigantic boyfriend just because he did something as basic as remember that she wanted to take a bath after weeks of living out of a van.

Pressing his hands firmly against her chest, he glared back at her, “I'm not doing it.”

“Fine.”

Everything lurched upward so quickly that Evan's ears actually popped.

“What're you doing?” He asked, fear creeping into his voice as his house started to blur by, “Where are you taking me?”

She strolled right into the kitchen and suddenly Evan was dipped forward while metal clattered below. Both of her hands wrapped around his torso as she lowered him down toward the floor, except his feet didn't meet cold stone but smooth plastic.

Her hands retreated and he stumbled after them, only to be met by a wall of metal bars.

She had put him in a dog crate.

A dog crate that they must have brought in from their van, which sent a number of terrifying questions about how many times they had done this spinning through Evan's head. The simple bolt lock clattered shut and then he watched her smack a padlock down over it before pocketing the key.

He shoved on the door, but it simply rattled, “What the fuck?”

“Playtime's over, bitch,” Kelsey boomed, “So you can hang out in your crate while I relax.”

She snapped a picture on her phone and then walked off.

“You can't do this!” Evan shouted at her retreating legs, gripping the cage's door and shaking it back and forth, making the sound echo throughout the house. He heard the TV shut off, followed by her footsteps going up the stairs but Evan shook the cage even harder, “Kelsey! Let me out!”

He could dimly hear sound echoing from the second floor of the house but eventually that died down as well. He banged against his door and tried to tug on the padlock several times before Evan finally gave up. The tiny man dropped down against the floor and stewed while the light steadily grew inside his kitchen.

Evan still couldn't believe what had happened.

Every new horror or humiliation should have been the thing to jolt him out of his living nightmare and that was the only thing that told him it had all really happened. Two kids had watched him over the past few days, figured out his schedule, and used that knowledge to shrink him down to the size of a house cat.

That alone didn't make any sense: shrinking and growing things was impossible.

For a while he pondered if this meant magic was real or if one of them was some genius who just happened to like riding around in a van with their stoner partner and breaking the laws of physics for a laugh.

Neither possibility actually made him feel any better though.

The sound of the front door opening had made him launch to his feet and rush to the door of the cage. He immediately wrapped his hands around the bars and shook them. “Austin!” Evan shouted, “Austin, let me out!”

The front door crashed shut with a resounding boom and then he heard the giant's lumbering approach. The cage was tucked in the corner of the kitchen, on the opposite side of the garage hallway from the pantry door, which gave the little man a full view of the kitchen's entrance.

Austin towered over everything as he walked in carrying several stuffed reusable bags, which he dropped on the floor before his dark eyes settled on the cage.

Evan rattled the door again, “Let me out!”

The giant stomped forward and Evan felt the bars of his cage begin to shake with each tremor the man's mighty foot produced. The little man stumbled back as both of the giant's slides clapped down in front of the door. His neck craned back in time to see Austin's meaty fingers scratch his package high overhead.

“Pl-please...” Evan whimpered.

Austin simply scoffed and then strolled off into the hallway.

The giant didn't even close the bathroom door when he entered, meaning that the sound of his piss filling the bowl echoed out through the kitchen. Evan trembled in his little prison and his eyes widened when he saw Kelsey walk into the room.

She didn't even glance in his direction, instead she simply started putting groceries away.

Austin stepped out of the bathroom and also ignored the tiny man. He bent down to give Kelsey a kiss as she went to the pantry before adding, “I'm going to go fire up the grill and stuff...”

“Ok,” her voice echoed softly.

“Did you want to eat outside tonight or...” Austin had a few ears of corn in one hand and a butcher paper wrapped package, presumably the steaks, in the other.

Kelsey ran her fingers through her hair and shrugged, “It's nice out, so we might as well...”

Evan glared up at the pair and as Austin awkwardly opened the sliding glass door, he shouted, “So you two are just going to ignore me? That's your big plan?”

Another scoff echoed from the doorway but that was the only response from the giant.

The giantess however stalked right up to his cage, and while his whole body started to shake, Evan did his best to stand his ground and glare up at her.

“You know what you need to do to get out,” she crossed her arms over her chest and her socked foot thumped against the floor, sending out a faint quake.

Evan blinked and when it hit him, he shook his head, “No, I'm not saying it. That's stupid!”

Kelsey laughed, the sound biting and harsh, “No, what's stupid is that you'll miss out on dinner if you don't apologize.”

His eyes widened and he suddenly became aware of how empty his stomach was, “Wait... dinner?”

“Mhmm,” Kelsey patted her flat stomach and then kicked the cage with her foot, “You don't treat us with proper respect then you don't eat, bitch.”

He flinched back from the shuddering bars, “Y-you can't do that...”

“Yeah I can...” The giantess went back to putting away the remaining groceries.

He stared at her and then moved to the door of his cage once more. Shaking it, he called out, “Kelsey! Hey! You can't just starve me! I'll die...”

She acted like she was too busy setting vegetables out on the kitchen island and searching for a cutting board to hear him.

“If I die you won't get any of my money or the house or any of that.” He tried to keep his voice strong but it wavered with every word.

She had to stretch to grab the cutting board from the narrow cabinet hanging over the sink that he had kept it in. With a grunt, she took it down and then set to work chopping veggies before pausing to hunt for something.

“If you let me out, I could tell you where whatever you're looking for is.”

“Aha!” Kelsey boomed while taking out a big plastic bowl that was buried in a cabinet somewhere. Sam had taken all their good serving dishes but Evan still had a bunch of cheap plastic and ceramic stuff from early on in their marriage. She set the bowl on the table and began to assemble a hearty salad for her and Austin.

“Just let me out...” he whined, rattling on the cage once more.

She mixed together a quick vinaigrette and then tossed the salad in it with a grin. She then set it aside and stepped over to the sink to handwash the board and knives.

“This is ridiculous,” he shouted, “You can't just keep me locked up in here and starve me just because I won't say you have a good boyfriend...”

Kelsey hummed happily to herself as she walked out of the room and then strolled back in with her green crocs on. She picked up the salad and paused beside the cage before looking down on him with a smile, “But I'd let you out and give you some din-din if you just said it.”

“No!”

“Your loss,” she replied with a shrug and then walked off.

He stared out through the forest of his kitchen set to see her go right out onto the patio.

The faintest whiff of cooking beef entered his nose and his stomach growled in revolt. The realization that he hadn't had lunch because they shrank him made the hunger even worse and the recent shouting also helped to make his throat feel rough and unpleasant.

At first, Evan rattled the cage in annoyance at everything that had happened but as the minutes ticked on, he realized that he needed to play along.

The gigantic pair had already swept in and taken control of his entire life. They wanted his money but if they could get into his laptop, they'd be able to access a lot of his accounts. Not everything but enough that they would probably be set for quite a while since they clearly didn't care about committing crimes.

Evan then wondered how long it would take him to be even declared a missing person.

With the divorce being truly finalized and thus there being no more meetings between him or his lawyer or anyone else, he was on an indefinite vacation from work. They would probably seriously ping him after six weeks, but that meant he was completely at the pair's mercy for a month.

The gigantic pair would either be long gone by then or given how many legal documents he had laying around, they could probably find a way to forge something in that time.

“Oh fuck,” he whimpered and then he rattled the cage even harder.

The glass door opened and Evan let out a cry of triumph.

“A new one or an old one?” Kelsey's voice overpowered his weak shout though, “Ok.”

She walked into the room and though he shouted her name she ignored him. “Fuck, it's getting cold out...” Rather than stop at the fridge, she walked deeper into the house and then upstairs.

“God damn it,” he shouted, smacking his fists against the bars and letting out a barely restrained sob.

The hefty thumps of Kelsey's approach made him stand up straighter and shake the cage, “Hey! Wait a minute!”

She had swapped her shorts for baggy black sweatpants and was busy zipping up a thin gray hoodie over her tie-dye tanktop. Kelsey glanced over at him as she opened the fridge and pulled out one of Evan's remaining beers and then a bottled water.

“What?” The giantess asked in an annoyed tone, holding both drinks against her chest as she walked forward.

She didn't stop a few feet away this time though, she kept approaching. Each of her footsteps rattled the cage and sent Evan stumbling backward until Kelsey was leaning over his world, her gray eyes locked onto his trembling little body.

“I'm...” Evan dropped down onto his backside and stared up at her, “I'm sorry. Austin is a really sweet boyfriend...”

She grinned high overhead, “Was that so hard?”

Stepping away, she set the drinks on the kitchen table and opened the door to the backyard, “Let's eat inside, babe, it's too cold out there for me!”

Kelsey stepped out and then a moment later, Evan could hear the pair's booming voices approaching. He heard the heavy thuds of food laden plates hitting the table and then watched them move directly toward him.

The girl had a big grin on as she dug the key from her pocket and Austin was obviously having difficulty containing himself as he looked down at Evan in the cage.

“Ok,” Kelsey squatted down and put the key into the padlock, “First, I need you to tell my big man what you just told me.”

“Wh-what?” Evan's jaw dropped, “That wasn't our deal!”

“The deal is whatever I say it is, bitch,” she replied with a giggle while sliding the key out, “But if you want to stay inside...”

“No, no,” He waved his arms frantically and then took a deep breath. Staring up at the towering young man, he said, “Austin, I think yo-you're a really sweet... a really sweet boyfriend.”

The giant laughed, “Aw, thanks, little guy. That means a lot.”

The padlock opened with a powerful clang and he watched Kelsey pocket it and the key once more. “Alright,” she opened the cage door and rose back to her full height, “You can come out.”

Evan's whole body trembled as he walked forward, his neck naturally craning back to take in the young couple who had already managed to completely dominate his life. He stumbled when he came over the threshold and his voice shook as he called up, “And I get dinner too...”

“Well, if you hadn't been such an annoying bitch about everything, you would have gotten it but now,” Kelsey shrugged and leaned against her boyfriend, who wrapped an arm around her slight frame, “What do you think, babe?”

The giant hooked his thumb toward the sky, “I think the price has gone up.”

“What?!” Evan's voice cracked from indignation.

“Yeah, I agree,” Kelsey sighed and thumped the toe of her croc against the floor, “I think this little bitch needs to show us he really understands his place in our house.”

“Your house?!” He stepped forward, rage fueling him for a moment, “This is my house!”

The anger left him quickled the closer he got to the pair and he felt the tremor created by Kelsey merely tapping her foot.

“See,” her hand ran up and down Austin's chest, “This is why I stomped his car with my old sneakers, it really helps drive it home...”

Austin's toes wiggled atop his slides, “Yeah, I guess it does.”

“And do you know what else will help him get it?”

Her foot slid forward, forcing him to stumble backwards with a faint yelp.

She lifted her croc up and showed him the gritty underside where the green rubber had been stained black with regular wear.

Austin chuckled, “I don't know if he's ready for that, babe...”

“Nah, not that yet,” her gray eyes then settled on Evan, making him flinch, “I just want a little kiss.”

Her lips made a quick kissing motion and Evan shook his head in disbelief.

“C'mon,” she wiggled the huge foot above him, “One quick peck and we can all have a nice dinner.”

“N-no...” his own voice sounded hollow in his ears.

“Our steaks are almost done resting, little dude,” Austin thundered, “And we're not going to wait for you.”

“No kiss, no dinner,” Kelsey chimed happily.

Tears welled in Evan's eyes but he clambered onto his hands and knees anyway. His whole body shook and his stomach was already twisting in disgust but he forced himself forward. With every fiber of his being trembling, Evan leaned up and pressed his lips against the dirty sole.

He expected some kind of disgusting flavor or smell to assault his nostrils but his lips were simply coated with dirt and dust when he pulled them away.

“There we go,” Kelsey clapped cutely overhead, “Now let's eat, I'm starving...”

The world shook as the pair took their seats, neither of them even glancing at Evan who sat on his hands and knees, tears flowing down his cheeks and black dirt coating his lips.