Now that another 1:24 scale reduction had been added to my already shrunken 3 inch body, I was only an eighth of an inch. But how small was an eighth of an inch? Honestly, millimeters was a more appropriate unit to discuss my size at this point but I wasn’t aware of the proper conversion. Still, it was unbelievable just how a simple change in units caused a major change in my perception of the world.

“Ehehe… I can barely see you, Remy… Even less than before…”

“Do you keep a ruler in this house, Alice? The kids in the last movie we watched were a quarter of an inch tall, but I think he’s even smaller than that.”

A voice like thunder shook my body down to my toes, but I was more preoccupied by the monolithic finger that filled the view directly in front of me. Even when Alice placed her finger tip flat on the table, the thickness of her finger was still over four times my own height. That meant I had to look up to even see her finger nail. I could literally walk beneath it and be covered by it as if I was underneath a patio roof.

The intimidating size of it being so close to me caused me to back away reflexively. I didn’t actually realize that I had been doing that for a full minute because the enormous index finger never got smaller no matter how much I moved. It made sense, though, because I was so small that I hadn’t even gotten an inch away from Alice’s finger backing up.

Whaaaam!

“Wah!”

“Where are you going, Remy?”

Well, Alice wouldn’t let me go anywhere anyways. Even if I was capable of moving faster to run from Alice’s finger, it didn’t really matter. At an eighth of an inch, I was so small that I wouldn’t be able to get any meaningful distance away let alone off of the table. She blocked my path just by stretching her middle finger out past me. She couldn’t see me so clearly between her fingers, though, so she quickly moved it back. Seeing me fall on my butt made her giggle again.

“Ehehe... I thought it'd be a little boring if you got too small, but this is really funny…”

Boring? Funny? I couldn’t believe Alice’s words. She was only viewing me as entertainment rather than as a person. I wanted to shout out at her, but even if she could hear me, I was quickly interrupted and blown away again.

Thud!

“Gah!”

Nikki slammed a monolithic transparent tower down from high above with the ruler she had found.

“Just a bit more than 3 millimeters,” Nikki read the markings on the ruler. A laugh escaped her as her piercing gaze inspected my miniscule body.  Was she the type to have liked watching and messing with ants when she was younger? It certainly felt like it. “No wonder I can’t see him unless I get this close. I’ve seen drops of water bigger than him… Ooh, that sounds like a fun idea. ”

“... A drop of water…?”

I didn’t like the look Alice gave me. Nikki’s words immediately gave her an idea that she did not hesitate to put into action.

Whoosh!

Alice brought her face so close to the table that she almost pressed her chin on it. Her breath, even though it wasn’t aimed at me, was on the level of a storm. What was a storm without any rain, though? Alice didn’t have any water ‘on-hand’, but she did have some ‘in-mouth’. An intimidating gushing sound reached my ears as my cousin gathered some saliva in her mouth.

“A- Alice?”

“Hm… Mmm…!”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!”

My legs instinctively started fleeing as the pink lips of my cousin that filled the sky opened up to reveal a wet serpentine tongue. It retreated swiftly, but in exchange, Alice pursed her lips. A bubble the size of a house blew out of the gap. It didn’t pop. Instead, it was pushed out by the flow of saliva that came after it. Alice didn’t spit at me, but she drooled over the table as close as she could to my miniscule body.

Splaaash!

“Gwargh!”

I was knocked over by a meteor of spit when the small amount of drool that Alice let out hit the table and spread over it. Alice didn’t actually aim for me, but I had been too small to escape the rapid spread of the viscous fluid. From my u39;” perspective, the little 1” diameter mess Alice had made was the instantaneous formation of a shallow pond. My legs ended up soaked in saliva. They were so heavy from weight and the stickiness of Alice’s drool that I struggled to drag myself out of it.

“You were right, Nikki…. Remy, how was your swim…?”

“Hurricanes don’t have sudden flood causing waterfalls, do they?” I grumbled. That wasn’t a reply to Alice’s question. Although I spoke aloud, I knew there was no way Alice or Nikki could hear me. The conversation they were having literally overhead was like a rumbling thunderstorm. My insect-like chirps were immediately drowned out by my cousin and her friend’s more powerful voices.

“Wow, I was thinking about getting him to swim in a cup of water, but I guess we don’t have to if you got him to swim in your spit. That’s a little gross though, Alice.” 

“... Ehehe… I was curious…”

“Speaking of curious, if spit’s that much for him, I really wonder what other normal things would be too much now that he’s this small.”

“... Oh! I have an idea…!”

Whaaaaam!

“Wha-? Gwaaargh!”

Alice stood up to speak with Nikki. However, in her excitement, because she had been squatting down to get a closer look at me, something hit the table from below that I wouldn’t have paid much attention to if I weren’t so small - her chest.

The table jerked upwards from the impact from below. It wasn’t at a level that hurt my cousin, but the sheer power of the impact did actually move the table. The sudden force of the ground beneath transferred to my body at a level strong enough to break the sticky hold of Alice’s spit. I was sent flying upwards off the table. The entire world became a spinning blur as my body whirled through the air.

“Grk! What wa- Uwoaaah!”

It was because of my size, but while being launched was frighteningly sudden, it was equally as brief. I landed before I even reached the peak of my flight. That didn’t mean it was over, though. My body was immediately slammed downwards into a peach colored ground as it rose up and up like an elevator going at rocket speed.

“... Huh? Where did Remy go…?” 

“What? Whoa, did you standing up send him flying? Don’t tell me he got lost on the carpet.”

“... Eh? No way… Did he?”

It took me a moment to regain my bearings. As I did, I ended up hearing Nikki and Remy talking. I heard Alice. though, not only from above, but also from below. Her voice physically reverberated through the ground and into me. She didn’t see me on the table, not because I had fallen on the ground. I had landed much closer to her than Nikki had assumed.

“You’re kidding. Isn’t this Alice’s boob?” As I stood up to take in my surroundings, I could see a gap in the ground in the distance that looked like a curved fissure in the ground. In both sides of the fissure was smooth peach colored ground that had the smell of body wash shampoo. It was clearly the same color of Alice’s skin, meaning that deep green material surrounding me like a stadium roof was Alice’s zipper hoodie. I had been knocked off the table when Alice’s got up and ended up getting caught on her left breast before she stood up fully. “Hnrrrgk!”

Rumble…

The rhythmic rising and falling of the ground like ocean waves made me feel seasick, but when Alice leaned over just slightly and tilted her head down to check the table again, her breasts moved ever so slightly. On my 1:576 scale, even a slight movement was an earthquake - or rather, an Alicequake - to me so I couldn’t keep my footing and was sent stumbling, tumbling, and rolling.

“... He’s really not on the table… Remy?”

Rumble! Rumble!

“Gah! Hey, Alice! Grk! This is bad! There’s nowhere to grab on,” I couldn’t believe that my cousin’s left boob was big enough for me to not only stand on but also tumble around on without falling off. In my perspective, I had gotten knocked yards away from where I was originally but this wasn’t even two inches on Alice’s breasts. Gravity was a harsh mistress though as the curve of Alice’s breasts pulled me closer to my cousin’s cleavage. I felt the slope with my u39;” body as it got even closer and closer to it with every bounce of my cousin’s breasts.

“Hm? Wait a sec?! Is that him? Alice, he’s right there!”

I was lucky that Alice’s hoodie was unzipped enough to reveal her chest because Nikki’s hawk eyes were frighteningly sharp. A building sized finger descended from the sky as Nikki pointed at me.

“Huh…?” Alice looked down at her own chest. She couldn’t feel me because of how light I was, but I at least stood out on her bare skin. “... What the- Remy…?”

“Gah! I’m falling! I’m falling!” Due to Alice’s subtle movements, I started slipping even further. There was nothing for me to grab on to as I started to descend down the chasm of my cousin’s cleavage. “Mgff!“

Alice didn’t bother to use two fingers to grab me. In fact, she didn’t grab me at all. Instead, she grabbed her own boob and lifted it up from below. By tilting it properly, she stabilized the ground for me, but not before they pressed into each other. I was buried beneath Alice’s right breast and flattened under tons upon tons of warm boob flesh. 

My monumental cousin’s cleavage canyon was a hot and stuffy location due to both Alice’s body heat and the heat trap that was her bra and hoodie. As such, sweat had already built up in between her boobs. The tepid boob sweat girls always complained about became my captor as drops of sweat as big as I was coated me. The sticky saliva from earlier, the pressure of my monumental cousin’s boobs, and the hot sweat build up inside Alice’s cleavage made the perfect conditions to glue someone barely 3 mm tall to the flesh wall smothering me.

“... Remy? … Eh? Not here- Oh…!” When Alice took a glance at her left boob, she didn’t see me because I was now forcibly plastered to her right one.

“That’s- Wow. I mean, at that size, there’s no doubt he would’ve gotten stuck, but was it your spit or your sweat that did the job?” 

“They didn’t show something like this in the movies…”

“It’d probably be an unrated movie if they ever did that. Wait, don’t let go of your boobs, girl. We’ll lose sight of him again. You’re bigger than I thought for you to be able to hide your cousin in them,” Nikki laughed while stopping Alice from loosening her hold on her chest. Even though Nikki’s was bigger, Alice still had a sizable pair. As childish as Alice could be, she was still a young woman.

“... Mmm? Hehe…” I heard Alice giggle at Nikki’s compliment. It must have raised her self-esteem. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not to me because Alice showed no signs of embarrassment as she stared down at me stuck to her right boob. “... Remy, how’d you get all the way over here? Did you seriously fly…?”

“Of course I flew,” I groaned.

“Fufu… I can barely see your mouth moving, but I think you’re talking… Still, I can’t really hear you at all, Remy…,” Alice laughed at my predicament. She didn’t seem to be concerned at all that I was on her chest and had almost fallen into her cleavage. She wasn’t in a rush to get me off either. Nikki, on the other hand, plucked me off Alice with a bit of concern.

“Gyah!”

“Mgfff!”

“Hey now, personal space there. You’re cousins, aren’t you?” Nikki tried her best not to pinch me between her fingertips, but I was already smothered between them even when she wasn’t exerting any force. I instinctively tried to push her index finger off of me because it was so close, but it was like trying to fight a mountain weight-wise.

It wasn’t as though I wanted to be on my cousin’s boobs. Well, Nikki was actually directing her words at Alice rather than me, though. My cousin was far too blasé on the matter.

“Alice, you shouldn’t be letting guys touch your tits. Even if he is your cousin and the size of a speck.”

“You’re the one who stuck your hand in there…,” Alice was more flustered by Nikki than with me. “And I don’t really see Remy as a guy like this…”

Those words sent a shudder down my spine. Alice was comfortable enough to outright confirm what I had been fearing this whole time. She said it so naturally that even Nikki was stunned.

“Wow… Well, I really feel sorry for you, Remy,” Nikki shot a look of sympathy down at my tiny form. “My idea of shrinking and getting her used to guys doesn’t really work if she doesn’t see you as one.”

That was definitely a problem. Nevermind seeing me as a guy; I wasn’t even sure if Alice saw me as a human at this point. Nikki did, at least, but she didn’t mind playing along. Her curiosity was on the same level as Alice’s, which I saw when Alice moved away from the dining table while gesturing for Nikki to come over and her sympathetic expression quickly vanished.

“... Nikki, let’s go over here.”

“Huh? Where are we going, Alice? I thought we were letting your cousin sleep in your room.”

“No, to Lori and Remy’s room… I want to show you Remy’s dollhouse…”

“His dollhouse? Wait, now you have my attention. Come on, little guy, you need to give me a tour.”

Nikki placed me in the center of her football field sized palm. Her five fingers curled like imposing pillars around me to create a protective canopy. I could still see because a curtain light poured through the gaps in her fingers like rays piercing through clouds. The sight was astonishing if it weren’t so surreal. The girls were just so gargantuan that even parts of their bodies had become part of the scenery to me.

I was about to get another dose of surrealism though when Nikki and Alice intruded into Lori’s room to play with my dollhouse.

“Awww. How cute. It’s a dollhouse. The furniture looks a bit mismatched though.”

“Some of it is Remy’s stuff shrunken down… See…? It’s smaller than the Barbie doll… She’s bigger than him after all…”

“Well, if that’s the case then she’d be even bigger than him now. Come on out, little gu- Uh, I said come on out.” Nikki opened up her hand and tilted it. I rolled down it for a second but got caught in one of her palm lines. She had to turn it completely vertical before I ended up peeling off her sweaty palm.

“What am I, her pet?” I grumbled when I tried to pick myself up off the ground. It was pink - the same pink as the barbie dollhouse I had spent months living in now - so I knew where I was. I learned calling myself Nikki’s pet was sadly over-selling myself when I stood up to find myself staring at the beach-themed Barbie doll’s bare feet. I couldn’t even call myself Barbie's pet at my scale. 

A barbie doll was 1:6 scale so for me who was 1:576 scale, it was 96 times bigger than me - even beyond what Alice and Lori normally were to me. Before, I was knee high to the doll and resembled a small child to the Barbie, but now, I was more like a bug to the plastic toy that Nikki was gripping with her even more massive hand. Having a more reasonable-sized figure to compare my height dissipated the surrealism of my situation. The cold, hard reality made my stomach sink.

“No way. I’m only the size of its toes?”

“Oh wow… Barbie was bigger than him before, but this is even crazier…” I heard Alice say. 

She wasn’t wrong - I was bug sized to a doll. Even Nikki realized that as she decided she wanted to play with the Barbie just like Alice had done the first time she saw my dollhouse.

“Would you look at that! It’s a bug. Gross! I better step on it!’” Nikki playfully raised the pitch of her voice to what she thought Barbie would sound like. It sounded more playful than threatening to me, though, especially when Nikki brought the doll over my head. I found myself in the shadow of the doll’s foot.

“Hey, now. This doesn’t look like a joke to me,” I shouted desperately. Of course, it wasn’t like a Barbie doll had the ability to hear me let alone Alice and Nikki. The doll’s foot descended before I could run away. I was easily pinned to the floor by the Barbie doll’s weight and size. “Mgaafh!”

“Wow, I’m just holding it above him, but you can’t even see him under her foot at all,” Nikki observed.

“... It looks like the time I got massaged…” 

“Massage? I’m rolling her foot all over him. I can’t really call that a massage.”

“Eh…? But Remy massaged my feet before that way…”

“He what? Err, I know I keep asking this, but seriously, are you sure he doesn’t have a foot fetish?”

That was only because I lost when we were betting, but Nikki didn’t know that. I waited until Nikki finally took the barbie doll off of me. She purposefully sat the barbie down on my mattress as if it were a cushion. She arranged it so that its legs stretched out from them and towards me. I was dwarfed by the towering plastic feet of the doll and found myself literally in its shadow. Much like whenever I was on the floor when Lori got up from her bed, the Barbie doll looked like it was just getting up out of the mattress while I had to look up at it from below.

“Ehehe… It’s so cute how small he is… ” Alice’s giggle reverberated through the dollhouse walls. The room darkened, so I turned and saw the two girls staring into the dollhouse. The entirety of the dollhouse’s missing wall was filled with the two girl’s foreheads and eyes as they looked inside.

“Cute? You sure have some taste, Alice. But wow - it looks like he’s even smaller to Barbie than he was to us before we shrunk him. I thought of it earlier when I could barely see him on your boob, but an eighth of an inch really is way too small.”

“... I think it’s just right…” was Alice’s opinion. 

“I want a proper comparison.” Nikki wasn’t as accepting as Alice to my super miniscule size, but she still was very interested. “... Hey, Remy. Hold on tight to Barbie’s foot, would you?”

“Wha- Hrk?!”

Although she phrased it like a request, in my perspective, Nikki’s words were an order. She didn’t even wait for an answer or a movement, so before I could even register her thunderous words as a demand, her titanic finger was already on the move. She brushed it against me so as to push me onto the doll’s foot. Unfortunately for me, that simple movement was the same as slamming a building into me from my perspective. I didn’t actually have to do any climbing because Nikki’s fingertip was enough to lift me up off the dollhouse floor and up to the ball of the Barbie doll’s foot.

“Mgff…! Ouch. Talk about forcef-Gwark!” Without even giving me a second to breathe, Nikki took the Barbie out of the dollhouse upside down by its legs while her finger still pressed me to its foot. I was taken along for the ride while pinned down.

When the acceleration finally stopped, the girl’s finger finally stopped pressing me into the doll, but the nigh-unnoticeable traces of sweat on her finger were enough to keep me stuck on the ball of Barbie’s foot. That wasn’t enough to resist the cosmonaut levels of g-forces I was subjected to when the giant girl flipped the Barbie doll upright again.

“Waaaah- Oof!”

I fell a hundred feet from my perspective onto the carpet below. My landing was somewhat soft, but I still felt the impact. The top of the carpet fibers was a bumpy alien landscape that bent to any weight put on them, but I didn’t weigh anything at my size, so they thankfully did not spread apart enough for me to fall through the gaps between them. However, the thickness of the carpet was at least half an inch so if I slipped past, I’d be lost and impossible to find in it.

Rumble!

“Whoops. Sorry, I didn’t want you to fall off.”

“Huh? W-Whargh!”

Nikki thankfully didn’t want to lose sight of me either. She was quick to get me off of the carpet since me falling off was unintentional on her part. Her method of doing that while seated on the floor, however, was through using the Barbie doll in her hand again.

Wham!

“Gwah!” I shouted as the doll’s feet landed on the carpet right next to me. Compared to my insignificant dust-like self, the carpet fibers twisted and bent under Barbie’s weight. It was like a sinkhole suddenly formed where Nikki had plopped it down and my body rolled down the imperceptible dip towards its toes.

“There we go. Grab on tight. I’ll go slower this time,” Nikki thought I had climbed on of my own accord. She steadily tried to move the Barbie doll closer to where she wanted it with me on top of its right foot.

What did Nikki want to do with me? She had said that she wanted a proper comparison. I was struggling to not fall off the doll’s toes as I dangled on its big toe the entire time so I didn’t understand what that meant until the color of the floor far below me changed from off-white to peach.

“Huh? That is-” There weren’t any further sudden movements as I was lowered down. Nikki was actually gentle and slow with the descent as she had said. Still, I couldn’t believe what she had meant by a comparison until I got off of the Barbie. The peach surface I stepped onto had strange spiral-like ditches that resembled fingerprints and a salty odor was coming off of that same ground.

This wasn’t Nikki’s finger, I realized. I had gotten off of Barbie’s toe and onto Nikki’s toe. She had put the doll’s foot onto her big toe while she was sitting down on the floor. She had wanted to compare our sizes directly instead of with the doll, so she made me get onto her own foot as if it were solid ground.

“There we go. Now this is a good way to compare,” Nikki’s booming voice spoke from above. I didn’t even have to look up to know she was eyeing me from above with her analytical gaze. “Wow. I can barely tell him apart from the dirt on my foot. If I weren’t focusing, I wouldn’t be able to spot a speck with limbs at all.”

At 3 mm, I was small enough to move around on Nikki’s foot. She was so big to me that even her feet had become the terrain I could walk out after all. Conversely, I was so small to her that she couldn’t differentiate me from sock lint and carpet grime without actually exerting an effort.

Rumble. Rumble.

“Blargh!” Additionally, my pathetic size meant that even a millimeter of movement on Nikki’s perspective was several feet to me. Just the slightest twitch of her toe was enough to knock me off balance. The first time was rough enough, but Nikki hadn’t actually noticed as she handed the doll back to Alice, taking away the smaller but still titanic foot that had taken me to her toe. It became even worse when she grabbed hold of her foot to turn it towards her more. “Wha-Whaaaaaah!”

I tumbled down Nikki’s big toe. Unfortunately, I couldn’t feel any impact of landing because I actually fell off it. I didn’t land on the floor, though. I hit another peach colored surface just below it as the giant toe I was on turned and tilted.

“Whoa. With how easily stuff sticks to feet, I didn’t expect you to fall off so easily,” I heard Nikki’s voice from all directions. I groaned as I opened my eyes to see the toe I had been on literally towering above me. Additionally, to my side was an equally as tall wall that was another one of the girl’s toes.

I ended up in between Nikki’s big toe and second toe.

“Wow… He’s right between your toes…” Alice was watching what her friend was doing to me with interest. “They’re so much bigger than him… I think he could build a house and live there…”

Rumble…

“A house? Sheesh, I think you’re right. If we shrunk a house to his scale, he’d definitely be able to live in my feet.”

“Wah! What now?!” I cowered as Nikki’s toes moved. The massive structures that were her big toe and second toe hit each other and then bent above my head. She had reflexively scrunched them, but I was so small, I was actually safe in her gap between her toes.

“Hey, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, micro man? You’d definitely be able to live in my or Alice’s shoe or something at your size. We could probably fit a few whole neighborhoods your size in one if it were possible,” Nikki laughed, still thinking I had a foot fetish.

Alice liked her friend’s imagination. “That sounds amazing… Oh, I think Lori has some shoes in a box under her bed…”

Even though I knew that’d be impossible with the shrinking platform’s limitations, I didn’t like that idea being brought up at all. Both girls were sharing a laugh as if it were a joke, but it certainly wasn’t a joke to me. Literally standing and surviving and the gap between a college freshman girl’s toes was my current reality.

Unfortunately, their playtime continued as Alice found the shoe she had been looking for.

“Nikki… Put him in here…”

“Huh? Okay, sur- Whoa. Those are some dirty trainers. Those are your cousin’s?”

“... I think Lori uses them whenever she goes on a jog…”

“Whoa whoa whoa! Hey, stop! There’s no way I want to go there! Alice! Nikkiiiiiiiii!” Of course, my objections went unheard. All Nikki had to do was lift her foot up and it was already above my sister’s running shoe. I didn’t want to go in, but I wasn’t in any state to hold onto Nikki’s body either. The cataclysmic g-forces of her movement were too much for my body to handle. I ended up falling down onto the insole of her shoe. “Gak! Hack! Urgh… Gross…”

I had been inside Nikki’s shoe earlier when I was 3 inches tall. Now that I was closer to 3 millimeters, it didn’t look like a shoe any more - more of a cavern. I couldn’t see the toe end of Lori’s running shoe because it was so dark inside past the opening, but I could still at least tell it was a shoe from the stained indentation of my sister’s foot that had formed from months of jogging with them.

The last day Lori did any jogging was two days ago, so the inside of her shoe wasn’t hot and humid as if it were freshly worn like it had been with Nikki’s. That was the only good thing. The remnants of her sweat and foot odor were still everywhere - soaked up from the months Lori had been wearing them. I gagged and wandered around in a daze, covering my nose as I looked up the gigantic opening where light poured in. The inside of the shoe felt like a whole new world to me, and the only trace of the normal world outside was right above me - the smiling faces of my cousin and her friend as they talked to each other to plan my next ordeal.

“Nikki… Are you going to put it on?”

“No way. I said it earlier, but I’m not stepping on your cousin. Besides, I’m not wearing somebody else’s shoe. You shouldn’t either, Alice.”

“I mean… I’ve had Remy in my shoe while I was wearing it before… I kind of want to try it out…”

“You sure are a daredevil, Alice. He can’t climb out on his own, so he’d have to stick to our feet to get out, right? I guess this could be a way of getting him free. You sure he’ll survive this, though?”

“It’s Remy. He’ll be fine.”

What probably looked like a casual conversation between the two girls seated on the floor by a dollhouse was ominous and threatening from far below. Was Alice actually going to put her foot in? I didn’t want to be stepped on at this size. It was already too much at 3 inches tall. At u39;”, just how many thousands of tons would be crashing down on me?

Alice was serious, though. The light being blocked by a peach colored monstrosity made that clear. She was actually willing to stick her foot into my sister’s running shoe just to satisfy her interest.

“Ehehe… Don’t worry, Remy… I’ll be quick, I just want to see what happens…”

“Alice, no!” I cried. Even if I wanted to run, where could I go at my size? Everywhere around me was my sister’s shoe. My cousin’s feet may have been smaller, but they’d still fill it up and I wouldn’t even be able to run to the sides in time to avoid being crushed.

“You two, what do you think you’re doing?”

But Alice pulled her foot out when another voice intruded on the freshman girls’ fun.

“Lori…? You’re up already?”

“Ah… Guess we were too loud. Damn. I guess it’s too late for growing him back before being found out.”

My sister had apparently woken up from the commotion.

“Urgh, grow him back…?” Lori had heard Nikki’s words. She was tired, but she was still a quick witted genius. She was becoming more and more awake with each passing second too. “Don’t tell me you used the machine on Remy. And that’s my shoe… D-Did you put him in there?”

“Sis woke up? Thank god. I’m saf- Whoaaaaaah!”

I felt the world outside the shoe rumbling. The sound of footsteps and heavy movements literally rocked my world. Lori had approached Alice and grabbed her shoe. I was slammed down straight into the insole by the split second of rapid acceleration. The light shining down into the running shoe was replaced by an enormous eye bigger than a pool staring down at me.

“Lori, down here!”

“That speck - is that really you, Remy?” Lori was in disbelief. She could see me, but only barely. “You really shrank him again. What were you thinking?”

Lori only looked for me to confirm. She didn’t get me out of the shoe and instead put it back down. It was probably for the best, though, because I soon heard Alice’s voice crack.

“Hyah! … Lori?”

“Alice, answer me. Why did you do that to Remy?” 

I couldn’t see either of them from inside the shoe, but my best guess was that she had run up to Alice and grabbed hold of her.

“Why…? We… Uh… We…” Alice searched for an excuse but couldn’t come up with one.

Nikki decided to answer Lori’s demand honestly. “We thought it’d be cool if he was closer to the size in the movie.”

“Nikki… Why did you have to say that…?” I couldn’t see my cousin’s expression from inside Lori’s shoe, but Alice sounded like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Hey, she was definitely going to get angry since there was no way we were going to hide it. It’s better we just tell her the truth now, so it doesn’t get any worse,” Nikki had been quick to give up after getting caught, but she was just being realistic. She wasn’t stupid enough to think she’d be able to avoid pissing off Lori for going behind her back or to think she could hide what they had done. She knew they had already gone past the point of no return when they shrank me. 

“This is already bad…”

“You haven’t seen bad yet,” Lori was not happy with Alice’s reluctance to answer. “Is he safe? You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

“Lori, you’re gripping too tight… it hurts…” Alice grunted. “Remy’s fine… Just smaller… It’s Remy, he’d be okay…”

“Okay? ”Lori was not satisfied with that answer so she probably gripped even harder wherever she was grabbing onto Alice. “Just because my brother’s been such a yesman when it comes to you, you thought he’d be fine with you shrinking him even more?”

“... The way the shrinking works, he would’ve been safe… right?” Alice asked.

“Safe? I don’t think being trapped in a shoe qualifies as safe. Would you be happy being taken advantage of with no hope of fighting back against someone the size of a mountain?” Lori countered Alice’s question with her own.

“A mountain…? No, I… wouldn’t…” Alice was getting an idea what Lori meant now that she was trying to put herself in my shoes… as painful as that idiom was in my current position. She finally remembered that I had been properly experiencing everything she had thrown at me as a person rather than as a toy. “Remy… we didn’t do that much to him…”

“That much?”

“Ah…! I mean… We… I…”

Nikki was the first to apologize. She tried to speak for Alice who was still collecting her thoughts. They shared the blame together so she tried to shoulder some of Lori’s rage for my cousin’s sake. “Sorry. We couldn’t resist toying with him and the machine. I really wanted to try it out so we did it without considering his opinion.”

“You do realize that’s my brother, right? He’s an actual living, breathing human? He’s not some plaything.”

“Yeah. I get that he didn’t consent, but just calm down. We didn’t really do anything to him after shrinking him. He’s alive and I’m pretty sure he’s unharmed. We just wanted to get a good experience with his smaller size. You know - compare heights and stuff.”

“I doubt that’s all you did. Alice, what did you two do?” Lori was angrier at Alice than she was at Nikki. She wanted to know the truth.

“I just… I…” Alice stumbled to find the proper words now that she had realized her mistake. Getting yelled at by Lori was not something she was used to considering how much we pampered her. Lori was past the point of considering being nice to my cousin anymore, though. I could imagine the stare-down Alice was getting. Even she had to have realized by now that her interest and curiosity had gone too far this time. “I just thought it’d be fun… I didn’t mean to…”

“What. Did. You. Do. To. My. Brother?” My sister shouted again, each word getting louder than the previous one. She had every right to be loud because she had every right to be angry.

Alice was receiving a proper reality check that her treatment of me was not acceptable. Whether that only applied to while I was micro-sized or if it applied also to when I was 3 inches tall too had yet to be known, but the quivering in Alice’s voice was not one of shyness but one of a cornered child.

“Hic! I… I… Hic! Hic!” Alice was hiccuping as she spoke. Her breathing was becoming erratic. She likely never thought she’d get yelled at by my sister who cared for her another sibling. This was supposed to be a sleepover with a friend too, but now she was getting chewed out. I hadn’t heard her do so since the beginning of the school year, but Alice began to cry. “I-I’m sorry…”

“Hey, now. I think she’s realized she’s screwed up already. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame me for getting the idea in her head.” Nikki tried to defend her friend one more time after seeing her tears.

“Oh, you’re both to blame! But I know Alice has been like this for a while,” Lori did not redirect her anger away from Alice. She didn’t even accept my cousin’s apology. “I’ve been super chill about it since Remy told me not to worry and let you enjoy your college life. That’s why we were fine with this last minute sleepover, but after hearing you shrunk Remy again and treated him like a toy… I can’t stay quiet about this. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“... I said I was sorry!” Alice shouted back in tears, not wanting to be scolded anymore. She couldn’t find any counter arguments as Lori’s anger was highly justified. She was clearly at fault here and she knew it.

“Say that to Remy!” Lori was seeing red. Alice’s crying apology did not stop her shouts. “He’s the one who has to endure all of this! I don’t know what he’s going to do when we grow him back.”

“Ngnn…” Alice bit her lip.

She didn’t know how to respond. Like a rebellious teenager who had gotten caught, she was being forced to bear with it as my sister scolded her.

“You brought this on yourself, Alice! You’ve gone too far this time!”

“... I get it…”

“Do you really? Remy’s been doing this for your sake and you treat him like this? My brother is not a toy!”

Lori’s protective instincts had gone on overdrive after hearing what had happened just after being stirred awake. This was a motherly scolding that Alice never would’ve expected to receive after leaving home to get away from her mother. 

In the end, the realization, the shouting, and the stress were too much for my cousin.

“I get it already! You don’t have to yell like Mom, Lori! I hate you!”

For the first time ever since we’ve met her, Alice snapped back.