It happened early morning, when most people were barely waking up for work or school. There was a blindingly bright flash outside, and when people went out to see what had happened, they all looked up and saw that instead of the morning sky there was an infinitely distant ceiling over them, with a light bulb that seemed as big as the sun. Not only that: looking around they found themselves to be on the floor of a room easily as big as a continent. They gaped in fear and awe at a bed that stretched miles into the air, at more gigantic pieces of furniture, and other monstrous objects—at a baseball the size of a small country far off in the corner of the room, discarded socks and shorts littering the floor, and mountainous dust bunnies sitting under the bed.
They were terrified and bewildered, and they weren't the only ones. All over that same bedroom, a hundred other cities, and hundreds of millions of people, all found themselves in the same situation. Having disappeared from their home worlds, they had reappeared here, as little more than spots of dust littering this room. They all struggled to comprehend what had happened and what would happen next, but their thoughts were interrupted when they heard the distant sound of a door closing, followed by a quick series of footsteps growing ever nearer. It seemed they were no longer alone in this giant home, and the millions of tiny specks held their breaths in suspense as this new arrival kept coming closer, until at last the footsteps came to a halt, right outside the bedroom door.
The handle turned, the door came open, and in stepped a girl in sporty clothes, with sun-tanned skin and short brown hair—a girl so gigantic and moving so quick that she threw the millions of people into a panic. Huffing to catch her breath, she stepped inside, and down on the floor those cities right in front of her saw her massive foot rise up and swing towards them, the rubbery black-and-white sole of her tennis shoes appearing suddenly overhead, engulfing them all her shadow even as she flicked on the lights. They barely even had time to scream before her foot slammed down on them, immediately obliterating over a million souls. Her footstep shook the floor so much that dozens of buildings collapsed in those cities closest to her foot, and even those people in the furthest corners of her room were rattled by the impact.
Taking one more step, blissfully unaware of the millions of people trembling in fear of her on the floor below, the girl closed the door behind her and sighed, wiping the seat off her brow and carelessly flinging it away, never suspecting that those droplets would splash over the miniature cities on her floor, destroying whatever buildings happened to be in their path.
She dropped her backpack by the door, slipped her shoes off, and kicked them aside, never suspecting she was bulldozing a handful of cities in the process, all of them annihilated under the rubber or fabric of her shoes. Then she stripped off her socks and tossed them to the corner, where they razed two more cities as they slid across the floor before coming to a stop with their fabric tented over a third city.
Had the socks landed even a centimeter to the left or right, that city would have been crushed like the others. It was a miracle that they had managed to survive, yet one they wouldn't enjoy for long.
As soon as the sweaty socks settled down round them, the speck-sized people were accosted by the powerful smell coming off the moist pile of fabric. At their minute sizes, it was as if the stench of the tomboy's feet were magnified a hundred-fold, making them all gag and cough uncontrollably. At the same time, moisture from the socks also radiated off the fabric and,with nowhere else to go, formed droplets of condensate all over the city, droplets bigger by far than any of their buildings. These flooded the streets and buildings wherever they appeared, drowning anyone who was caught in them while those outside were left to suffocate under the terrible air quality. It took only a little over a minute before the whole city was dead, only its skyscrapers remaining as monuments to those who once inhabited them.
At the same time, the girl lowered herself and lay down, letting the floor tiles cool her off. A few more cities were crushed under her body, while those an inch or two away wondered if they might still meet the same fate.
In one city, two million souls trembled in the shadow of the tomboy's foot and looked up in awe at the massive wall of tan flesh stretching into the sky before them, all the way up to the mountain-sized toes curling and stretching impressively in the air. Though the heat, stench, and moisture of her foot assaulted them, since the air could flow freely it didn't prove fatal to them as it would to those under her socks. But there was another threat to them all: a single drop of sweat sliding down the tomboy's sole. Along its path the drop snaked left and right on its descent, but always it swerved back and fell ever closer to them, until at last it touched down at the very edge of the city.
To the little speck-people it was as if a lake had been dumped on them all at once, and as the water spread out from there, it flooded street after street, knocking every building in its path down, capturing hundreds of thousands and leaving them to drown if the great mass of water, if they hadn't already died as they were dashed against the ruins of some building. In the end, only an uneven outer crescent of the city survived the catastrophe—for now.
They weren't the only ones to meet such a fate, either. At the girl's armpit, another city was flooded with sweat, and here there were no survivors. More fortunate was a third city, one that had ended up between her thighs, where there was no threat of flooding by sweat. Even when the girl moved her legs closer together, with thigh closing against thigh, the city still survived in the small gap running between the lower curves of her thighs.
As all those cities who yet lived looked upon the resting titan, an overwhelming sense of futility crept up on everyone. This girl, likely not even in high school yet, was to them a living landmass, a monster so huge they wondered if they were even visible to her. Even the largest city there could easily be crushed in a single step—could fit on a single fingertip, even, and with plenty of room to spare. If that was what a single child could do to them, then what hope did they have of surviving in this monstrous new world? All it would take was for someone to sweep or vacuum the floor and they all would be swept away like so much dust, without anyone ever suspecting what had happened to them.
Some people among those cities closest to her, eager to avoid such a fate, drove out across the floor tiles towards the titan's body, braving the myriad minute imperfections which for them were blown up to the size of hills and ravines. There they started climbing up her skin, hair, and clothes, hoping to somehow get her help or, if nothing else, at least to get off the floor for good so they wouldn't be crushed.
Small as they were, though, they had barely made it a fraction of an inch up her body when the girl stirred, throwing off many of her climbers to die as they hit the floor. Others were crushed as she shifted her weight. Only a tiny fraction remained on her, most of them on her hair or her clothes, hanging on like tiny mites unseen and unnoticed, though how long they'd survive there was anyone's guess.
Though she stirred, the girl remained lying on the floor, and it was only after several minutes more that she finally stood up, after a shout from outside her room. “”Stacyyy!” Some unseen woman called; “Don't forget your homework today!”
The girl sighed and yelled back. “I know, mom!” Her voice exploded all over the room like a thunderclap, threatening to burst the eardrums of all the speck-sized people in her room. Then, with a grunt, she jumped to her feet and walked over to her desk, crushing a few more cities under her bare feet as she went. She pulled back the chair, completely oblivious to the two little gray spots that had appeared on it, and sat down, pulling a notebook from one of the drawers.
Opening the notebook to the latest page, Stacy reached out to grab her pen, but failed to grasp anything as there was nothing there. Then as she was looking around for her pen, she noticed a handful of gray spots that had appeared on her desk, seemingly overnight. They looked like spots of dust, or maybe mold. Curious, and welcoming any excuse to procrastinate on her homework, she leaned in real close to one of them, resting her chin on the table, trying to see what it was.
Stacy's face, and especially her mouth and her nose, came to dominate the view from the tiny city which now found itself the center of the monstrous girl's attention. All the people there looked on in fear, half expecting her to blow them all away in a puff of wind. She didn't, but her natural breathing proved bad enough, as the hurricane-force winds blowing out of her nostrils knocked whole buildings over and blew thousands of people away. Then when she snorted air, thousands more were carried upwards into her nose, inhaled like so many specks of dust, too small to even tickle her nose hairs.
Tilting her head to the side, Stacy slid a hand right up to the little gray spot and held a finger over it. Her fingertip, easily twice as big as any of the little cities in her room, filled the sky of the tiny people, and they all cowered in fear, certain that their time had come.
But something told her not to touch the little thing yet—what if it really was some sort of mold, after all? Instead she went over to her drawers to dig out the old magnifying glass she had been gifted a couple years ago and hardly ever used since. After a couple minutes she found it, pulled it out, blew off the dust, and took it back to her desk, where she tried looking closely at the little gray spot. And while she was no expert on little gray spots, she did think there was something weird about it, with how geometric its surface looked, and how there seemed to be a bunch of little structures rising up above the surface, not at all how she would expect it to look if it was just a spot of dust or mold. If anything, it reminded her of a city; those weird patterns looked like streets and roads while the little structures looked like skyscrapers. But that was silly, she thought, and kept contemplating them.
Then she noticed something weirder: the little patterns and structures lit one after the other, as down in the little city everyone turned on as many lights as they could. They all rushed to seize what might well be their best chance to let her know of their existence, even turning on their cars' headlights and honking while driving around in hopes that the noise and movement would help her recognize what she was seeing.
They succeeded. Though it took her a while, Stacy did finally realize that this little spot really was a tiny city. It sounded ridiculous, like something out of a dream, but she thought of one way to test it out. “If you can understand me, turn off all the lights,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the tiny city as she waited for something to happen. It only took a minute for nearly every light in the city to be turned off again. All the people waited with bated breath for whatever came next.
“Now turn them on again,” Stacy said. Sure enough, after another brief wait, the lights went on. Then the tomboy grinned. “Off!” The lights went off. “On!” They went back on. “Off! On! Off ! On!” So she called out, over and over, while the tiny little microbe-humans all but danced to her whims, just standing at the light switches and flicking them up or down as the girl's booming, godly voice demanded. Finally she burst out laughing. “Man, I can't believe you guys are still keeping it up! Ha ha! What, don't you have anything better to do than to turn the lights on and off?”
The people on her desk looked at each other uncertainly. “I'm kidding, I'm kidding,” her voice thundered out. “Just messing with you a bit. I mean, it's not every day a tiny city shows up on your desk. Or a bunch of tiny cities, I guess. Man, you guys are all sooo puny,” she said, moving a hand up close to the city. “I mean, you're all wayyy smaller than even my pinky finger.” Her finger came down gently next to the city, looming over them like a Mount Everest. “Look: I could crush you all with just the tip! All I gotta do is slide it a liiittle bit closer, and then...” Stacy started doing just that, but her finger stopped just a hair's-breadth away from the city, so close to it that they could feel the heat coming off of it.
“BAH-HAHAHAHA! Oh man, I can just imagine the look on all your faces! I bet you tiny little germs were so freakin' scared! Don't worry, I'm not really gonna kill you. I just like teasing you is all!” Stacy thankfully held her hand back up, resting her chin on it while she looked down at the little city. “But seriously, what are you even doing here? Like, how did you get so tiny? I mean, you did shrink, right? Or are you some weird species that no one's ever heard about? Are you tiny aliens or something? Did you come from outer space? Don't worry, I won't tell anyone if you are. But I guess you can't tell me anyways; not unless you have some sort of super loud megaphone . Or maybe... could you call me if I give you my phone number? Might as well try, I guess. Okay, listen up: it's three-five-one...”
“Stacyyy! Are you talking to someone up there!?” her mom shouted.
“No, mom! Just listening to something on my phone!” Stacy replied, turning to the door and absentmindedly letting her hand fall to the desk again. Then she turned back and spoke more softly. “Like I was saying, it's... Oh.” To her dismay, Stacy realized that her hand had fallen on the little city, and when she lifted it up, she saw it had been crushed right under her palm, leaving a tiny grey spot on her skin.
Just in case, she grabbed the magnifying glass again and inspected the city with it, but nothing of it remained; it was just an indistinct mass of gray now, without any light or movement or structure, same as the spot of dust it had left on her hand. Just like that, all those people had been crushed, their lives extinguished, and all of it was her doing.
Lightheaded, Stacy stared blankly at the little gray stains, trying to process what that meant. That city had surely held hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, and now they were all gone—dead at her hands. Surely that meant she was a murderer, if not something worse. And yet... she didn't feel the least bit guilty. At the end of the day, whether those puny things had been humans or aliens, they couldn't really count as people if they were too small for her to see even with a magnifying glass. More like bugs, or even germs, if anything, and who cared if a few billion dumb germs died? No one, and certainly not her.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she felt the whole thing was actually kinda funny. Hilarious, in fact, to think about how all those tiny little “people” had been killed in the most casual way possible, without her even trying to kill them. “How pathetic,” she boasted, wiping their city's remains from her hand. “They all just went and died like that while I wasn't even looking. Honestly, if they died off so easily, they were probably going to die no matter what I did. Too bad I couldn't play with them some more before they went crunch. Oh well; at least there's still a bunch of you around!”
Cheerfully she waved at all the other little cities scattered on her desk—about a dozen that she could see. “Hi, everyone! My name's Stacy; pleased ta meetcha! Your names don't matter, seeing as you're all going crunch in a little bit. I know, I know, and I'm sorry, but I don't wanna have an infestation in my room, you know? Besides, if my mom sees you she's gonna make me clean you up anyways, so I might as well get it out of the way now, don't you think? Don't worry, I won't make you suffer; I figure the least I can do is give you all a quick death, like I gave your little friends over here. So just sit tight and I'll get to you in a second, 'kay?”
Of course, as soon as they heard her words, everyone started trying to escape their cities, but they'd have a tough time of it with the deeply uneven surface of the wooden desk making it impossible for them to drive away; instead they had to slowly and painstakingly climb and clamber over every rugged hill and valley, giving Stacy ample time to deal with them all.
She started with the city closest to her, holding her finger overhead and waggling it teasingly up and down, keeping the little microbes guessing as to when she'd finally crush them all. Then, after stretching it up all the way, she let it fall right past their city. Just the impact knocked down a few of their buildings, and as the microbe people looked at the gargantuan finger dominating the sky, Stacy dragged it back to raze everything to the ground.
For the next city she leaned in real close, letting them see her grin across the sky. She closed her mouth for a second, gathered spit, and slowly pushed it out, until a little stream of it slid out and splattered onto the desk, obliterating the city on impact.
The other cities she had fun exterminating in other creative ways. She blew them away with a puff of wind or snorted them up to then sneeze them back out; licked them up to see if she could taste anything or grabbed a fallen strand of hair and dragged it over the city, letting it demolish everything in its path; crushed them with her lips in a playful kiss or kept tapping away next to their city until all its buildings collapsed under the incredible stresses; and all the while she kept taunting them over how tiny and weak they were.
“Come on guys, can't you even handle a little bit of my spit? Honestly, how can you call yourselves men if you're all gonna die like that?”
“Ah-CHOO! He he! That really tickled my nose! Did they all go up it together? I was just trying to see what it smelled like!”
“Wow! I didn't even touch your buildings and they all fell over! Couldn't you have made them a little stronger?”
Her playful digs stoked despair in the hearts of all those at her mercy as they came to realize they were now nothing but her disposable playthings, to be swept away for her boundless amusement. There was no point in even trying to run, they thought, and curled up in their homes to await death at her hands.
Finally, when there was only one city left, Stacy held her hand over it but hesitated to destroy it. Once it was gone, that be the end of the tiny cities—probably forever unless more of them magically appeared. Better to keep this one alive so she could keep having fun by teasing them for as long as she wanted.
“Actually, I think I'm gonna spare you guys. Should be fine to keep you around if it's only one city. Just gotta put you somewhere safe so you don't get crushed by accident. Wait here,” she said, and put a bracelet around the city to mark its place for her.
Turning around, she looked all over the room for some place to put the city, and was surprised to find many more little grey spots down on the floor. She grabbed the magnifying glass and got down to look at one of them, and sure enough, she saw it was another tiny city. “Were you little guys down there all this time?” she asked, sitting down in front of it. “You really should have said something. I mean, I could have stepped on you all without ever knowing it! But I guess it's fine; now that I found you, I can have fun stepping on all of you on purpose!” Stacy giggled and moved her feet forward, holding her soles an inch above the city.
Stacy let her soles loom over all the little people for a bit, filling the air with the moisture and smell of her feet. As she teasingly scrunched her soles and wiggled her toes, the movement dislodged bits of dust and dirt and previously crushed cities that all rained down on her helpless victims like a massive meteor shower, bringing chaos and destruction wherever they fell. Finally she brought her foot down and put the pathetic little things out of their misery.
After that she turned her attention to the dozens of other cities still littering her floor and went to destroy them one by one. She sat on them, stepped on them, swept them away, dropped her dirty clothes on them, and killed them in every other way she could think of. About halfway through she was running out of ideas, though, and she figured she might as well practice picking some up to see if it was even possible. She tried scraping up chunks of a city with her fingernail, but when she looked at what she'd picked up, it looked like a total mess; she didn't think anyone could survive something like that.
Stacy tried sweeping them up on a piece of paper, but everything was destroyed in the process. She tried asking them to climb on it, but they didn't trust her enough to do it. In the end, the only thing that sort of worked was when she used a cotton swab to slowly sweep over the city, as it managed to at least keep some buildings mostly in one piece. She figured that'd be how she gathered up the city on her desk.
Next she tried putting the buildings back down without wrecking them all. She pulled her foot closer, turned it around so her sole was facing up, and held the swab just above her sole, tapping it ever so gently to shake its tiny passengers off. When next she looked through the magnifying glass, she found a bunch of buildings nestled in the tiny grooves and wrinkles of her sole, and even thought she could see a bunch of people crawling out of them, though with how small they were it was hard to be sure she wasn't just imagining it. Still, she liked to believe she was seeing things right; it was so funny to think of all those people scurrying around on her foot like little germs. It made her feel so big and powerful, too.
It was such an intoxicating sensation; she just wanted to have more of those tiny things crawling on her, so she scooped up some more of the nearby cities and sprinkled them all over her sole, with some even falling in the valleys between her toes, before having another close look.
The tiny people she'd collected could hardly believe what they were seeing. The girl's footprint was like an alien landscape to them, one marked by an endless series of hills and valleys here and there dotted by sweat pores like small lakes, easily big enough to drown a city block. The foot's heat, stench, and humidity lay thick in the air, making it hard for them to breathe, and the ground subtly pulsed along with the vast rivers of blood rushing beneath the surface. And above them all hung the godly tomboy's grinning face, her eye magnified to a monstrous degree by the glass in her hands.
There really was no denying it now; whatever else they had once been, now they were nothing but germs on this young girl's foot, completely at her mercy. Knowing there was nothing they could do, they simply stood looking at her, awaiting her next action, sensing deep down that whatever she did now would spell the end of them.
After a minute, the earth beneath them shook and all of them screamed when Stacy started to scrunch her sole. As she curled her toes ever tighter, her skin deformed, folding up and bulging outwards, giving rise to new, greater wrinkles that were like great mountains next to the hills of her footprint.
The puny people rolled and slid down the slopes of those mountains, pooling together at in the depths of the valleys between them, and as Stacy finished scrunching her foot, those mountains closed up around the people ad trapped them all in the folds of her skin. Their screams were all silenced in an instant as they were crushed by her scrunching sole, and when she straightened out her foot again, on most of her sole there was no sign left of any of the little people nor their buildings, save for the unrecognizable specks of dust they had left behind.
“Man, you're all so freaking weak,” Stacy chuckled as she turned her sole aside and wiggled her toes, sending those specks of dust falling back to the floor where they belonged. Some of the survivors fell off with them, while others clung to her foot, but when she put her foot back down, they all died anyways. “Are you even trying to survive? It's almost like you actually want me to step on you all. Is that why you came here? Because you wanted to be crushed like bugs under my feet? Well, I guess I can give you what you want!” she said, stepping over to another city. “I mean, you're all so cute, I couldn't possibly say no to you guys! Here; you can get crushed under my big toe.” She slid her foot right up to the city with her toes up in the air, then after a teasing wiggle she let it fall on them and laughed.
“How was that? You like it under my big ol' feet? I bet you love it, you little weirdos. Hope they're as sweaty and smelly as you like them!” Going around her room, Stacy squished every last city she could find, enjoying the feeling of all those buildings crumbling against her skin and reveling in the thought of all those puny little lives being ended by the lowest and dirtiest part of her body. This was so much more fun that doing her stupid homework!
When she was finished with all of the cities on the ground, she turned her thoughts back to the little city on her desk, wondering where she might put it. Then she remembered some Petri dishes that her sister Tanya had in her room—another gift from their uncles trying to get them into science.
Stacy went over to her sister's room to “borrow” one—Tanya never used them anyways so she figured it should be fine—and returned with a short while later, sitting back at the table with it in hand. “I'm back, guys! Time to get you all moved into your new home!” She put the dish down next to them, then grabbed the cotton swab and carefully put it down right behind the little city. “Okay, here goes! Try not to die all at once, will you?”
The great mass of cotton slowly swept towards the city, fibers as thick as two story houses sweeping over everything on the street level and razing it to the ground, at the same time picking up many of the taller buildings like so many specks of dust, leaving them tangled up in the mess of white fibers. Inside them it was pandemonium as the slow, careful sweeping of the cotton swab had them turned on their side, upside-down, and in every other direction you could think of, sending all their contents tumbling around. Many people fell right out the windows to land on some cotton fiber or on the table's distant surface, usually dying on impact. Others were crushed by furniture or various other heavy objects falling on them violently. Even so, there were still tens of thousands of people alive at the end of the little swab when Stacy finished sweeping up their city. As she held them up for a closer look, all those poor, frightened souls looked out at her monstrous eye gazing back at them—the eye of a god, it seemed.
Her pitch-black pupil, big enough to swallow their city whole, flitted up and down the cottony surface, taking in the little specks whose lives she so casually held, and the rapid sweep of her eyelashes when she blinked blew a soft gust of wind at them all. He laughter resounded in their ears. “You're all mine now, little germs,” she declared, and all the survivors trembled knowing she was right.
Carefully she lowered them to the Petri dish, and, setting the cotton swab down, told them to climb down. They all did, fearing this was their sole chance of survival, and she watched their journey from above through her magnifying glass. She gave them ten minutes—would have given them less had she thought enough of them could make it off in time—and then, when most of them had gotten off already, she picked the cotton swab back up and used it to clean her toe jam, giving everyone still on it a most fitting end at her feet.
“Did you make it off? How many of you are down there?” she asked. She knew there were at least some people down there—they were gathered in such numbers that she could see them all together as a little dark spot on the plastic—but couldn't tell any more than that. “I'll have to get a stronger magnifying glass, or maybe even a microscope, so I can actually see you guys. Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter. What matters is you're all safe now! Aren't you glad I could get you out of that dangerous little city and put you somewhere you can actually survive? And it's the perfect home for a bunch of tiny little germs like you! I bet you're all super grateful!” Stacy lifted the Petri dish, turning it this way and that as she held it up to her face, imagining the tiny people all being sent rolling around on the plastic surface.
“You look so cute down there! I just know I'm going to have so much fun playing with all of you every day for the rest of your lives! But, I should probably get started on my homework now. I spent plenty of time playing with all of you already. I'll just leave you all down here while I finish it.” Placing the lid on top of the Petri dish, Stacy carefully lowered it to the floor, where she left it right under her desk. “See you later, guys!” she said, and, scooting her chair forward, she placed her feet down on the dish, leaving her little pets staring up at her huge soles pressed up against the plastic lid.
Even with the lid protecting them from her feet, some of the smell still reached them as did the warmth radiating from her soles, and even the slightest twitch of her toes was felt as a tremor shaking their new little world.
When she finished with her home work, Stacy gave her new pets some foot in the form of a tiny crumb that had been on her desk, and water in the form of her own spit. She left them in her shoe while she went down for dinner, and when she got back she sat down on the bed with them, holding their tiny home lidless between her soles and idly rolling it around, wondering what it must be like for them.
While she contemplated them, she started getting sleepy. She bid them good night and lay down to sleep with their tiny dish right next to her face, still lidless. Her soft breath blew over the tiny people, sometimes strong enough to send them rolling over the plastic. Then, after she had fallen asleep, her hand nudged the dish even closer, until it was pressed to her cheek, her half-open mouth hovering right above all the tiny people.
In the darkness of her room, drool seeped out of her mouth and into the Petri dish, ever so slowly pooling at the bottom. The tiny people tried to run away, but all it took was a slight change in the inclination of the dish to send the pool of spit flowing down towards them. It quickly overtook them, sweeping them all up in huge waves of spit, leaving them floating in the vast and growing ocean. And though they tried their hardest to make it to the surface or to the shore, they couldn't fight against the powerful currents and soon ended up drowning.
Stacy would be saddened to find them all dead when she awoke the next morning. But even as those thousands met their end, thousands more people all around Stacy's room spread out over the tiled floor, seeking out any place they could settle down in. They were the survivors of her rampage, people who one way or another had escaped being crushed, whether by hiding in some tiny hole on the floor, or having gotten far enough from their cities when she came to destroy them, or even being lucky enough to have ended up safely under some tiny groove on her skin when she crushed the city.
Many of those thousands would perish in the days to come, being stepped on, mopped up, swept away, or even just starving to death. Still, some would learn to survive, living off the various other forms of microfauna populating Stacy's bedroom, feeding off her dead skin cells and other detritus when need be, and hiding away in the tiniest of crevices whenever she was around to avoid her monstrous feet.
Over time their life cycles and metabolism would speed up as their bodies adapted to life at this tiny size—a day to her would be a year to them, and so they would spread and reproduce all over the floor, and soon there would be entire civilizations living in her bedroom, surviving unnoticed in her shadow and sometimes being wiped out by a single footstep.