Just who was Nikki?

When it came to Alice’s friends, Lori and I were only aware of one person. The girl Alice talked about the most was Nikki. Did we know much about her? Despite all that Alice spoke to us about, we honestly didn’t. Alice’s friends were her own after all.

“Hey! Hey! I brought all the equipment and snacks too! Soda, chips, popcorn - the works! Are you ready, Alice?”

“... Wow, you’re super excited, Nikki. It’s so early…”

Now that she had come over, Lori and I were learning a lot about her from first impressions.

“I told you I’d run over as soon as I woke up. We’re giving you a taste of a bunch of different movies until we find something you like!”

“... How many movies would that be?” 

“I don’t know, but you did say a sleepover was fine, right? I’m not letting you sleep tonight.”

“... Now, I’m glad I slept well last night then…”

Considering how our cousin was, it was likely that Nikki was the only friend she had made so far since attending college. That wasn’t a bad thing in the slightest. It seemed the two of them were close enough to have a sleepover.

Yawn!

“A sleepover? So that’s what you had planned, Alice,” high above me, Lori couldn’t stop herself from yawning. I couldn’t tell what expression she was making because she had stood up to greet our guest after Alice had slipped a hoodie over her underwear to let her friend in. The only view I had was over her towering legs as she purposefully stood with her left heel up so that it created a wall that blocked any sight of me. “Sorry if the place is a mess…. Nikki, was it? Alice only gave us the heads up a minute before you came. I’m Lori, her cousin.”

Lori was doing her best to sound natural, but it was clear from my ears that there was tension in her voice. Lori was doing her best to keep me hidden. While we did tell Alice that we weren’t keeping my shrinking a secret, neither of us were sure how much Nikki knew about our situation nor how she’d react. As such, we felt it’d be easier on us if she didn’t see me. Lori was also trying to hide the shrinking platform too even though it was in plain view since there was nothing we could do about something so massive. She tried to stand in Nikki’s way from seeing it and me, hoping the girl was either oblivious enough to not realize I was shrunken.

“Whoa, those are some serious bags under your eyes.”

“I haven’t been sleeping much this week. And I just pulled an all-nighter. It’s no big deal, though. Nothing to worry about.”

“Whoa! I haven’t pulled a single school related all-nighter since the school year started. Don’t tell me it’s going to get tougher than the midterm cramming we just had.”

“Hm? Oh, right. You two are freshmen. Honestly, it just depends on your course load. I’ve just been having trouble with my project since the laptop I have to use for this is a hunk of junk.”

“Hunk of junk?” The moment Nikki turned her head to try to look behind Lori, my sister leaned her body in the same direction to block her. It was certainly unnatural, but Lori was persistent enough to continue. “Uh… Excuse me?”

I probably should’ve tried to sneak away to another hiding place to take advantage of my sister’s conversation, but I didn’t. I was a bit too curious and actually got closer. I wanted to get a proper look at Nikki - the girl who Alice had been spending so much time with and the very girl I had been so close to without her knowing when I was stuck inside Alice’s boot.

“Sorry, Sis. This probably isn’t the best place to be, but I want to see,” I grumbled as I walked up to my sister’s foot. Because of how she held her foot in place, her toes were just barely touching the carpet. I didn’t appreciate the smell coming from between each toe, but the gaps in between her toes were perfect to peek through. I only hoped that Lori wasn’t going to put her foot down any time soon. “Whoa, so that’s what she looks like.” 

I was able to see someone who I did not expect to be the type of girl Alice would be friends with. A spunky girl with a ponytail and dyed blue highlights in her black hair was wearing a movie T-shirt that was large enough that it was impossible to see if she was wearing shorts underneath or not. From what I could tell, she was a very laid back and easy-going person. 

Whaaam! Thud!

“Ngrh!”

“You don’t have to be so cautious. I’m just going to be hanging in Alice’s room all day,” Nikki chuckled as she took off her shoes. She tossed them to the side. It was like watching a car crash when the massive truck sized purple and blue sneakers impacted the wall to my left and rolled. I flinched out of reflex.

The stories Alice told us of Nikki flipping a guy who had been bothering her made sense now considering she was visibly toned and fit. She wasn’t muscular per se, but she was well built. In contrast to the delicate, indoorsy Alice, her friend seemed to be a lot more sporty and outgoing. The gap between them really made me wonder how in the world they were able to get along so well.

Whoosh!

Well, I couldn’t really consider Alice too delicate when she was capable of lugging bags that were hundreds of tons from my perspective. The massive weight swinging overhead was more than a little intimidating. The snacks Nikki had brought made enough of a sound pushing through the air even though it wasn’t at any level for any of the girls to sense.

In any case, all three girls seemed to naturally create a circle as they talked where the entryway met the living room carpet. I glanced up at Alice who noticed me hiding behind my sister’s foot when she put down the bags. The sight of a tiny guy peeking out from behind his sister’s foot to look up at a circle of towering girls must’ve looked cute to her. She had to put her hand over her mouth to hold back her laughter. Even then, I could still hear her muffled giggle over Nikki’s and Lori’s conversation.

“Pfft…! Remy…”

“Hm? What’s up, Alice?” Nikki only saw Alice’s expression and thankfully didn’t trace my cousin’s gaze toward me.

“I was jus… A-Ah…! Uh… It’s nothing…” Alice realized she had made a mistake by alerting Nikki to my presence when Lori shot a demanding glance at her. She turned away from me but stuttered because she couldn’t come up with a lie to distract her friend. 

“Nothing, huh?”

“Y-Yeah…”

“...” Nikki said nothing. It was more than likely that she knew Alice was lying. Our cousin’s emotions showed on her face after all. Even Alice herself knew that, so the only thing she could do was put down the bag of snacks to create another blockade to prevent me from being spotted. She let it go when it swung towards Lori so it smacked her right leg. Unfortunately, it was more troublesome than it was helpful.

Whump! 

“Woah!”

The impact of the gargantuan bag hitting the ground shocked me enough to make me stumble. I fell backwards away from Lori’s feet. Unfortunately, that left me out in the open… right between Lori’s left foot and one of Nikki’s sneakers.

“Hm? Did I hear something?”

Whaaaam!

“Ngrkff!”

Lori was quick to cover for Alice’s mistake and my accidental shout. But she wasn’t gentle in her rush to hide me. In order to be quick enough for Nikki to not spot me Lori’s left foot slid across the floor. She couldn’t stealthily pull me back behind her leg, so she ended up kicking me out of the way instead. Her foot slammed into me so powerful that I was lifted up off the floor and launched like a kicked pebble.

“Did you put something weird in this bag? I heard a squeak from it,” Lori lied about where my shout had come from and directed the attention to the snack bag.

“... Huh?” Nikki narrowed her eyes. My sister and cousin hadn’t been the least bit conspicuous. I was concerned when I felt her gaze even while knocked down. Nikki’s next words seemed to change the subject however. “A squeak? I don’t think I threw any of Sparky’s chew toys in there.”

“... Sparky? You have a dog, Nikki…?”

“Oh, did I never tell you, Alice? Yeah. He’s back at home, but Dad did bring him up last time he visited. Let me see, I should have some pictures.”

“Oh? Let me see too. What breed is he?”

As I picked myself up off the floor, I saw that my sister’s redirection had been successful. The girls were all preoccupied with looking at Nikki’s dog photos, so I was able to stand up and figure out where I had tumbled.

Well, it wasn’t too hard to figure out.

“Mgh… You’re kidding me,” my face scrunched up as I plugged up my nose. I didn’t even have to open my eyes to figure out I had landed amongst the shoes Nikki had tossed. I stood up to see the purple and blue colors of our guest’s sneakers. One of her shoes had fallen on its side, so the foul smell of sweat and feet was right next to me. It unnerved me to see that the opening of her sneaker was big enough for me to enter like a cave, but at least there wasn’t much of a chance for me to be spotted now. 

“Wow… He’s so cute…!”

“Ain’t he? He always tilts his head like that whenever Dad calls him.”

“Oh man, I want to pet him. Ngh~!”

The sight of my sister trying to hold back her desire to squeal distracted me from the odor of Nikki’s shoes. I chuckled knowing from my experience with Sam’s dog that Lori was a sucker for dogs and cats. “Heh, would you look at that. As always, pet photos get everyone’s attention.”

However, even if I wasn’t getting spotted, there was still something else in the house that was going to be seen. 

“Alright, Alice. I think it’s time we head to your room… Is what I want to say, but before that… That thing over there - Can I ask about it?”

We were close to having Nikki just go into Alice’s room without lingering in the living room, but the ‘elephant in the room’ was too difficult to ignore. And honestly, Nikki had likely been curious about it since the moment she walked into our apartment.

“Oh, don’t touch that! That’s delicate equipment!” I could see Lori’s split second moment of panic from my vantage point below when she realized she had gotten so into Nikki’s pet photos that she forgot about blocking her view of the platform. She had let the girl walk right past her.

“I can tell.”

Even if my sister blocked Nikki from seeing the machine for a while, Nikki wasn’t oblivious. She wasn’t freaked out or surprised by the sight of the shrinking platform. Rather, she was composed, if not a bit curious. 

“Oh wow, it takes up so much room,” Nikki started to walk over to the machine. As she stepped onto the carpet, the sporty girl pulled her socks off. To my dismay, she tossed them in my direction with the dexterity of a basketball player. The sky above me turned black when her two black socks landed right onto her sneakers - a balled up one hitting its mark and landing inside the upright shoe and the second one covering me and the tipped over shoe.

“Mgaaff!” My cries were muffled as the heavy, sweat stained tarp of a sock blanketed me. 

“Ah…” Since Nikki was looking at the machine and Lori was there to guard it, Alice was the only one who saw my plight. I would’ve appreciated it if she helped me as I struggled to crawl out from beneath the sock, but she did not. It was for the better, though, since doing so would draw Nikki’s attention to my location.

And as it turned out, Nikki was not ignorant to what was in our house.

“This is one of those compression machines, right? You actually have one at home?” the girl put her hand to her chin. She actually knew what the shrinking platform was.

“Compre-? You actually know your stuff,” Lori was surprised Nikki knew the proper terminology.

“Lots of folks think I’m a humanities girl, but my major’s in mechanical engineering, so I know a thing or two about these machines,” Nikki chuckled. She was probably grinning when she told Lori who likely made the same assumption. Even I had been thinking the same thing considering how passionate Nikki seemed to be about movies, but it made sense considering she had a few classes in common with Alice. “I saw these when they let me tour the engineering building during orientation. So am I right that this is one of those shrinking platforms?”

“Uh, well, yeah, it is one. It’s not the latest model, but we have this one at the apartment for… special reasons.”

“That’s so awesome!” Nikki’s sudden excitement raised the pitch of her voice. “I've gotten a bit curious about these things ever since I read an article that they’re going to be using these machines for movies in the future. That’d be so cool to shrink actors and cameramen down to get all sorts of scenes and angles. I’ve seen a bunch of movies with shrinking in them, but those were all special effects. The real deal sounds so cool.”

“... There are movies with shrinking in them?” Alice asked. Her lack of pop culture knowledge was known to all of us at this point so it wasn’t surprising to us that she didn’t know.

“Oh, of course there are, Alice! Size changing in movies is a pretty common theme actually. People growing super huge or getting shrunken down to bug size - there’s a bunch of recent ones, but you just can’t beat the classics,” Nikki was ecstatic to hear Alice’s curiosity. It seemed to give her an idea. “Oh, we should add them to the list of movies to watch today! My favorite one is about a man who just keeps shrinking and shrinking. It’s got a pretty horrific tone, but it’s super compelling how insignificant he gets.”

I stopped crawling for just a second to shudder when I heard Nikki’s glee from describing the movie. I knew the one she was talking about. She was far too excited about the ‘horrific’ part of the movie’s synopsis.

“You sure have some taste there, Nikki,” my sister was just as concerned as I was, but she was trying her best to sound unconcerned.

On the other hand, the film's premise seemed to spark something in Alice. Her voice sounded like she was brimming with curiosity when she asked, “... Really?! How small does he get?”

“That’d spoil the movie,” Nikki laughed. “But really, that film was before science developed this far. I wonder how small these machines can shrink someone in real life. Is there a limit?”

“Is it three inches…?” Alice mumbled, recalling my height. 

“Alice, please, don’t make it obvious,” I frowned, wondering if Alice was looking in my direction. I still couldn’t tell as the thick net of Nikki’s sock was tougher than I expected to crawl out of. It was a bit damp from sweat too, so it was too heavy to lift. Unfortunately for me, when I finally was able to crawl to a place where the sock was raised off the ground and could get out, I realized I had entered Nikki’s shoe. “Shoot. I went the wrong way.”

“I’m pretty sure they can make things even smaller,” As I continued to struggle, Nikki shared her thoughts regarding Alice’s mumblings. “Hm… Actually, Alice, wouldn’t this be helpful for you in dealing with guys? If we could ever shrink some dude, they wouldn’t be scary at all to you at the size of a bug, right?”

Cough! Cough!

“Lori…?!”

“Hack! Urgh! Sorry,” my sister coughed. Lori and I had assumed a friend of Alice’s would be pretty normal, but Nikki was way sharper than we had given her credit for. She hadn’t realized that I was around, had she?

“You alright? It sounds like you were pretty shocked there.”

“Gak! Water just went down the wrong pipe. It’s no big deal.”

“... No, I’m pretty sure you had a good reason to be surprised there, and I think I figured it out already.”

“... Huh? Nikki…?”

Rumble! Whoosh!

“Waaah!”

The answer was made clear enough when the shoe I was in suddenly tipped over so that it was properly upright again. I tumbled onto the indentation of Nikki’s heel inside, my face kissing the sweat encrusted insole. There was no time to even feel repulsed by the smell and taste, though, as before I could react, the floor rose up. My body slammed into the sneaker insole as Nikki’s shoe was lifted off the floor.

“Mgffh!” The sudden acceleration wasn’t the only issue. I couldn’t see anything. Nikki’s sock sank into the opening of her shoe because of it as well, so I was once again covered by the musty fabric. All that surrounded me was darkness and the dank stench of Nikki’s used sock. It didn’t pin me down for too long, though. It was lifted up and pulled away when the acceleration finally stopped. Light poured into the sneaker, blinding me for an instant, but letting me see again.

“Gotcha!”

“Busted,” I realized I was caught when the light was blocked once again. Instead of by a sock, though, it was blocked by a face - or rather, an eye that was peeking in.

“Whoa, I was right. I was sure I spotted something skittering around, but who knew it was a tiny guy crazy enough to climb right into my sneaker,” I heard Nikki’s voice reverberate around the confines of her sneaker. She had realized where I was the entire time. I wanted to get up but Nikki pushed me back down by putting her finger on my torso. Her black painted nail dug into my chest. “I thought you two were acting strange since I came in. So this was why.”

“... R-Remy!” Alice ended up calling my name.

“Hey, be careful with him,” Lori was concerned for me now that I was in Nikki’s hands.

“Gwah!”

Nikki’s thumb came to assist her index finger. Rather than pick me up by my torso, however, Nikki’s tree sized fingers clamped around my left arm like a vice. I was lifted up out of the sneaker by my arm and dangled in front of an imposing building-sized face.

“Uh… Hi…” I nervously greeted Alice’s giant friend.

“Hi?” Nikki’s pink lips parted, assaulting my entire body with her hot breath as her mouth opened. It was thick and smelled of spearmint. “You sure sound calm. I guess you weren’t kidnapped or anything.”

“Kidnapped?” I guess that would have been a big concern if it had been true. Abusing the shrinking technology to abduct someone was actually pretty plausible. Nikki was really using her brain. It was unnerving to be stared at by her. She was analyzing me with her sharp gaze. Hanging so many feet up in the air from my perspective, I was helpless as the girl inspected all three inches of my shrunken body. “No, I wasn’t kidnapped. I live here. I’m Lori’s brother.”

“Her brother? Earlier, I was just joking about shrinking someone to get Alice used to guys, but it looks like that wasn’t too far from the truth.”

“Hey, could you put him down?” Lori asked, worried for what Nikki would do.

“Oh, sure.”

“Woah!” 

Nikki did not answer my sister in the way either she or I would’ve preferred. Instead, she lowered me back into her sneaker. However, because it was tilted at a steep angle, I immediately had to grip onto the insole to avoid tumbling down to the toe end of her shoe. I couldn’t hold on for very long, sadly, especially when Nikki began to lower her shoe back down to the floor. The sudden acceleration was too much for me. I let go and rolled down the sloped insole.

“Bleck… Gah, it stinks even worse here,” I gagged. The heat and foul odor was much more oppressive inside the shoe. It was like walking through a thick fog. She had only just taken off her shoes, so the sweat and sock lint were still fresh and in abundance.

The only good thing was that I hadn’t fallen all the way to the deepest part of Nikki’s sneaker because it had hit the floor before that. I was in the middle of it when the slope flattened out, so when I stood up, I found that I was capable of looking up and out at the girl who was now squatting down. She loomed over my tiny body trapped in the sneaker with a curious gaze.

“Nikki?” I heard Alice call her friend’s name with concern. All three of us were unsure of what the girl would do.

“Heh, I can’t believe there’s a shrunken guy stuck in my shoe right now. I was right - shrinking technology is super cool. I was expecting a normal movie marathon, but I think today’s gonna be a whole lot more exciting now.” 

Maybe it was from our lack of sleep, but Lori and I had really underestimated Nikki. Alice’s friend was not a simple minded girl we could have deceived. She had realized we were hiding something from the start, easily spotted me, and then caught me without even trying. The girl was far more alert and quick-witted than we gave her credit for. And now that she had seen me, the curious sparkle in Nikki’s eyes showed us that she got more than a little mischievous when she found something interesting and exciting. 

“Hey, do you want to join me and Alice for our movie marathon, little guy? You just have to tell me the whole story.”

Her sleepover with Alice wasn’t going to be just a two person thing anymore.