Courtney Aurea was not a good person. Most everyone who’s had the misfortune of meeting her or any of her friends would readily agree – they were incredibly spoiled heiresses to fortunes worth billions, who would make the lives of everyone around them miserable in their desire to never be inconvenienced in the slightest, and god help you if you brought their drinks even a second late, or messed up their nail polish in a tiny, barely noticeable way.
Some optimists thought that eventually, these girls would get what was coming for treating everyone like their doormats, and they’d finally get knocked off their high horse. The world is cruel however, and the devastating shrinking virus ravaged the earth, tearing families apart and breaking up friendships as over a billion people went missing after being afflicted with the virus, and another billion were registered as shrunken, never to have their old lives back.
However, while the rest of the world was lamenting this ongoing tragedy, Courtney and her friends in the Eta Theta Pi sorority were having the time of their lives. A vaccine for the virus was developed a few months into the outbreak, but due to the extremely rare ingredients used in it, it was exorbitantly expensive, and thus the vast majority of people kept living in fear of getting shrunken, while all of the ultra-rich sorority girls got their vaccine immediately. Courtney had even got some for her pets despite there being no recorded cases of the virus affecting animals, but she thought it was better safe than sorry.
The girls had already loved abusing the power they had over other people, but the virus brought this to a new extreme. Before, when Courtney was stressed, she would visit the headquarters of the company her parents gave her to ‘make her more responsible’, and fire some random people for no reason at all. She adored it when they begged her to reconsider, one had even licked her heels clean when she told him to, just for her to fire him anyways. This was old news though, as snuffing out some tiny lives was way more fun, and nothing relieved her stress like stepping on some poor person and feeling them pop beneath her pampered foot. Courtney loved this new state of affairs, after all someone like her could never go through what the poor people beneath her did, right?
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Courtney rubbed her eyes as she slowly woke up in her luxurious, almost room-sized bed. Getting up, she let out a loud yawn before moving to the side of the bed, shifting to a sitting position so she could put on her designer slides. They had cost more than what a poor person would be able to make in a million years, but to her it was nothing but pocket change.
Ever since she got her vaccine, she’s been using her most durable tinies as insoles to make her footwear more comfortable, as the feeling of having a tiny person squirming under her soles was absolutely exquisite.
William had once been an electrician, but after being called for a job in the billionaires’ neighborhood, he had caught the virus and happened to shrink right in front of the mansion he was supposed to work in. At his new size he could easily slip under the door, but the young woman who owned it saw him on the floor, and she didn’t really care that he was her electrician, as now he was just a bug for her to have fun with.
After surviving some abuse, the billionaire had placed him in his new job – to be the new insole for her indoor slides after her old one had finally tired out and popped beneath her sole. Initially she had to tape him to them, but by now he stayed still even if she was asleep. Her mansion was large and he wasn’t very fast at this size, so even with an eight-hour headstart he’d inevitably get caught and crushed by his angry owner.
Thus he remained at his current position, flinching when the rich girl’s comparatively massive foot came towards him, but being her insole for so long he had gotten somewhat used to it, staying perfectly still as her pampered foot hovered over him, just waiting for the inevitable impact of it landing directly on top of him…
His screams of pain went completely unnoticed by Courtney, although it’s not like she would have cared anyways. Looking down, she wiggled her toes over her tiny insole currently beneath the ball of her foot, enjoying being able to see his tortured expression as his head was between her toes. She didn’t want to waste too much time on someone so pathetic though, so she quickly turned her gaze in front of her and got up out of bed.
William had thought that everything about a billionaire who cares about her body so much would smell pleasant, but he had learned the hard way that after a long day Courtney was usually too lazy to take a shower before heading to bed, and she had been out partying all day yesterday so the smell was nearly unbearable from his position between her toes, making him light-headed as all fresh air was replaced with a sorority girl’s foot funk.
Courtney yawned before walking out of her room and into the corridor, not paying attention to whatever was beneath her in her groggy state.
There were many shrunken people living in Courtney's mansion, a few tried to only go out and scavenge for crumbs when they knew she was sleeping so as to not be crushed by the massive girl. Courtney's sleep schedule was erratic to say the least though, as being forced to wake up at a certain time each day was only for poor people, the rich got up whenever they wanted.
Despite this, they had figured out the times when Courtney was always asleep... until today. Having collapsed onto her bed after a night out, it was expected that she wouldn’t wake up until at least 11am, yet rather than waking up feeling as radiant as she thought of herself as usual, she had woken up no later than 8am today, irritable due to her lack of sleep and the feeling of nausea that was slowly increasing in severity.
Putting one hand on her forehead and grumbling something about how she just needs to get some fresh air, the shrunken people scuttering about in the corridor could hardly pay attention to her words as Courtney’s 5’6 body was to them the greatest force of destruction in existence, one that moved far too fast to avoid.
One girl, a former maid of Courtney’s neighbour who had shrunk and was promptly thrown away, had managed to escape the trash can and flee to Courtney’s home, where she had lived in small holes in the walls, subsisting off fallen crumbs for five months, until the superior sorority girl’s slide came down upon her with the force of a heavenly smite, ending the tiny girl’s life in an instant and turning her into nothing but an unremarkable bloodstain to serve as a warning for other tinies.
A tiny man in the middle of the corridor was not as lucky; he had more time to run upon seeing Courtney and had made it decently far for someone of his stature, something that would come to bring him great pain as the sole of the billionaire’s slide slammed down on his legs, flattening them and tearing them straight off his body once her foot rose up once more. Left bleeding out and crawling on the floor, his last strength would be used calling out for help which would certainly never come, his suffering lasting six minutes until his body couldn’t take the blood loss any longer.
Three more lives would meet their end under Courtney’s uncaring steps, in total killing five out of the eight tinies that had been there in the hallway and wiping out the small community that had built up between them over the months. She would never know of this, the popping of their tiny bodies being impossible to sense through the thick, plush material of her slide, the vibrant community of shrunken people becoming nothing more than one of the many forgotten stories of the new world.
It may have taken a massacre, but the billionaire had reached the door of her gargantuan walk-in closet, which was originally a guest room but converted once she ran out of space in her bedroom’s closet, and as such was huge even by the standards of Courtney’s sorority. A soon as she opened the door, the shrunken people that were forced to lick the vast shoes of her collection clean got off the shoe they were on and stood beside it at attention, wanting to make sure their owner knew they were being obedient, but also not get caught in the shoe as she put it on.
Luckily for the tinies that had been slow on escaping, Courtney hadn’t entered to put on shoes, but rather just a cute, casual outfit to go on a quick walk and get some fresh air before her best friend, Lexi, arrived in a few hours. Picking out a pink short-sleeved shirt, some yoga pants to show off the legs she worked out for and maintained perfectly, and white socks with little hearts on them, she quickly tossed her pyjamas on the floor, for the maid to pick up since she couldn’t be bothered to take them to the bedroom.
As the shrunken shoe-cleaners breathed their sighs of relief watching the billionaire walk out of the closet, the foolish group of shrinkees that had felt it was safe enough to get some food directly from the kitchen rather than from the floor experienced true fear enter their hearts as the sorority girl turned goddess to them walked into the kitchen hours earlier than expected. Some managed to hide behind the appliances scattered across the counter, but for those that were in the open, their bodies contrasting against the pristine white marble, it was certain that they would be spotted.
In the corner of her eye, she spotted some movement on the counter while approaching it, from one unlucky tiny man who had taken to sprinting as far as his inch-high legs would carry him, to the nauseated billionaire appearing like just an ant until she took a few steps closer and noticed the distinct limbs of a shrinkee. Out of instinct her arm was already above the wretch, ready to wipe him out of existence.
“Ugh… these fucks really want to annoy me, don’t they…” Courtney grumbled as she considered the fact that there might be other shrunken people hiding in her kitchen, wanting to truly scare them into never coming back she chose not to slam her hand down on the tiny man, instead moving it down slowly and picking him up between two fingers.
As her eyes glazed over to her new target, she found two more shrinkees, a man and a woman, which were just as quickly added to the collection in her hand. It took only two more paces on her part to reach what she wanted: the blender on her kitchen counter, her spare hand taking off its lid before dumping the tinies in.
The three unfortunate shrunken people all had broken bones as they were dropped a distance that was to them at least twenty feet, but looking through the glass of the blender they could immediately see a threat much worse than broken bones: Courtney’s face, clearly tired yet with the slightest signs of a smirk from her sadism being satiated in such a cruel way.
Without hesitation, she pressed the button to turn it on, holding it down for a few seconds before letting go, looking down to see what was left of the shrinkees, a few red stains on the blender’s blades and glass, betraying the horrifying way they went out, effortlessly sliced to bits until nothing remotely recognizable was left.
“Ahh… that’s how you really deal with an infestation.” Courtney smiled contently to herself as she walked out of the kitchen, having grabbed a muffin along the way to snack on as she made her way to the entrance hallway, ready to start her day in a better mood than she was just five minutes ago, although that strange nauseous feeling continued to pester her.
Kneeling down by the classy grand entrance door adorned with tasteful touches of gold, she grabbed the pink sneakers she had left there yesterday, having long broken them in they were her favourite and most comfortable pair, wearing them almost every day for the past two years. Just as she unlaced them and started putting her socked foot in one, the mild nausea completely consumed her, paralysing her for a few seconds until all of a sudden, she felt completely fine.
She was about to breathe a sigh of relief, until she noticed that her surroundings were much darker than they had been… and a strong smell permeated the atmosphere… it didn’t take long for her to realise what had happened, despite her rational brain working overtime to deny it, that it couldn’t be, she had gotten vaccinated and there hadn’t ever been a case of a vaccinated person catching it…! She was in her own, well-worn sneaker. The shrinking virus had struck her!