“You… you’re sure this is the place?”

Even after Antonia’s Lyft driver nodded in the affirmative, she was still… well, flummoxed. It wasn’t a mansion… but she couldn’t imagine anyone ever presuming this massive house buried in this fairy tale-esque woodland oasis was paid for by someone who made money writing macro smut commissions on the internet.

“Okay… well, appreciate’cha…”

Antonia Ortiz meekly handed the driver a couple of extra bills, and after hefting her luggage out from the trunk she was left alone at the foot of the driveway to carry this stuff all the way up herself. The nerves were burning a pit in the bottom of her stomach that made her tremble and struggle to make even a little bit of progress. Somehow, here and now, this whole idea seemed much worse than it had been when they were speaking in DMs to one another. The reality of the thing seemed so much more apparent, and now Antonia could conceive of far more ways this could go wrong.

The first and most obvious possibility was that “Sinner99” was some kind of axe murderer. It was low-hanging fruit, but Antonia couldn’t very much curb the teachings of her first-gen Zoomer upbringing that everybody you meet on the internet is an axe murderer until further notice. Then again, would a serial killer own a home like this? It seemed doubtful.

The second, more probable possibility was that Sinner99 was, for lack of a better word, a “freak”, “coomer”, “gooner”, or some other brand of terminally online porn addict. It was possible; these communities were not exactly known for having well-adjusted people. Luckily for Antonia, she wasn’t like any of the others. She was one of the good ones. But the same couldn’t be said for everybody else she met in that sphere.

Still, Antonia was here now. And last-minute hotel rates would be insane. In this economy, she was fine with taking her chances.

So, she took a deep breath, swallowed… and approached the front door.

It was a dark, heavy-looking wooden thing with an ornate metal knocker attached. There was also a doorbell, so Antonia had to take a minute to decide which she would use. She didn’t feel as though she were deliberating for long, but apparently it was long enough for the lock to unclick, and the door to inch open without friction.

Antonia’s heart stopped.

She had a few ideas of what to expect. Somehow, this wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t looking at a knife-wielding murderer, disheveled shut-in, or even a strong-jawed hunk of a man. Rather, she was faced with a woman. Woman-presenting, at the very least. This woman peered through the slit for nearly a minute, her mind probably deliberating much the same streams of consciousness that Antonia had been. Soon though, this woman summoned some courage and emerged from her makeshift barricade, revealing herself in full. She was Antonia’s own height, perhaps a hair shorter, wearing sweatpants and a blouse. She had dark eyes, dark hair, an olive complexion, and seemed the striking image of a supremely nervous young girl who had half a mind to dart back behind the door she’d so struggled to open. “Ah! Hey, hi! You’re… junebugrug202, right?”

Antonia gave a long, drawn-out nod.

The woman chuckled. “That feels so weird to say out loud… oh! Please, please! Come on in!” She swung the door open and beckoned. With a gulp, Antonia lifted her bags up over the threshold and stepped inside. The door shut behind them both. Antonia was led like a duckling through a wide foyer, and then into a sitting area of two armchairs and a television that, despite the tiny presence it had in an otherwise expansive open floor plan, still felt cozy. A bar counter and serving hatch vaguely to Antonia’s right allowed her to peer into the similarly pristine kitchen.

“It’s kind of a mess,” the woman said with a shrug. She picked up a sum total of two (2) socks from the back of a stool as she trotted into the kitchen, opening the fridge and digging around inside. Antonia was wondering in what universe would a place this pristine be considered messy. “I was meaning to straighten up, but I was working on the next chapter of –”

“Catastrophic Catalina!” Antonia was surprised that she’d managed to speak. “Ha… it feels so weird to say these things out loud,” she said, making a face like she’d just eaten an apple with a worm embedded.

“Right?” She poured from a pitcher of crispy lemonade into an ice glass. The sounds gave Antonia chills. “C’mon, sit, sit down! I can take your bags up to your room if you don’t want to–”

“It’s fine,” Antonia waved it away. “I should be good. If you just tell me where–”

“Please!” She dashed back through the kitchen archway, ferrying the glass without so much as a ripple by the time it was forced into Antonia’s palms. It seemed only then did the two get a close look in each other’s faces.

“I… oh God, God! Manners.” She slapped herself. “Hi. My name is Kate… I really hope I haven’t been overbearing, I get it from my mom, I guess. But, I am honored to welcome you into my home.” Kate gave a bow just shallow enough to feel casual.

Antonia’s heart was in that light flutter, the surge of energy and endorphins that came with meeting new people. “I mean, the honor is mine! I just, gosh…” She felt lightheaded. Antonia took a sip of the lemonade; its sweetness seemed to stick to her tongue like syrup and overstayed its welcome. She drank a bit more to try and wash it down and said between sips, “Y-your home is gorgeous.” Finally, somehow, Antonia was beginning to come off her wave of adrenaline and stress.

“Oh, you’re so nice! Thanks, thanks! Anyway, here…” Kate wrested control of Antonia’s suitcases. Hefting them up with impressive ease, she marched up the stairs and disappeared into the upper levels. Antonia was alone.

The trek up the hill had been murder on her knees; the couches were calling her name, so Antonia took a seat. She downed the rest of the glass, and after a bit of indecision she took one of the ice cubes into her mouth, sucking on it. It had mostly been reduced to a nub when Kate came back.

“Yeah, sorry again! Just getting the bathroom ready.” Kate slid into the armchair. “So stiff! Take off your shoes, be comfy!”

It was the sort of thing you don’t really think about until someone mentions it. Antonia’s feet had been locked inside her calf-high black boots for about 18 hours at this point, if you count the drive to the airport. She tugged at the laces one by one and graciously removed them, revealing patterned pink socked feet that were most definitely not up to her employer’s uniform code.

“Okay, so!” said Kate, slapping her knees. “You don’t have to keep torturing yourself. I know you’re just burning with questions, so ask away. I really do not mind.”

Antonia took some time to swallow the now pea-sized cube of ice. Then, she took in a breath and opened her mouth.

Kate interrupted, “YES! I do live by myself, and no, I do not live exclusively on commissions.”

Antonia had only barely sidestepped the awkward task of asking it outright. She sighed in gratitude. “Oh, I see.”

“Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I expect to be on people’s minds. It’s no biggie. Not that you asked, but I’m a chemical engineer. The writing is just a fun hobby.” Kate reached for the coffee table and turned on the television, currently playing some Congressional hearing or other. She turned the volume down to a whisper. “Hope you don’t mind. I appreciate a bit of brown noise.”

Antonia waved it away. “No, it’s fine. The little silence in-between conversations always gets to me, too.”

“Right? So, anyway, tell me about yourself! We can play some conversational ping-pong. But, oh! If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I’m by no means saying that just because I told you my name you’re somehow obligated to tell me yours, which I get sounds sort of like I’m being sarcastic or ironic or something but I promise I’m –”

“I’m Antonia.” Antonia chuckled. “When I was younger some of the other kids used to call me ‘Ant’. At first because it was a nickname, and I guess kindergarteners can’t be trusted to pronounce non-English names without butchering them somehow. But later it sort of morphed into a pretty apt title because I was shorter than almost my entire class.”

“Really?” Kate was befuddled. She lunged from her chair and took Antonia’s wrist, gently coaxing her up.

Antonia saw no reason to decline, but as Kate was gearing to compare heights she felt the need to add, “This was, like, 20 years ago. I have grown a fair bit since then.”

“Uh-huh.” Kate had found the crown of her own head just about went to the connecting ridge between Antonia’s forehead and scalp. “Well, hardball then. Did the whole ‘ant’ thing develop… shall we say, your complex?” Kate circled Antonia, looking all up and down every facet of her body.

Antonia laughed. “To be honest? Not really. In fact, all things considered I think I got into the kink pretty late. A friend sent me some 4chan meme to laugh at and I had to basically hide the fact I found it incredibly hot. It was close to six years ago, so we were like… eighteen?”

“Wowwwww, huh.” Kate finished her inspection of Antonia’s body and sat back down. “I have never heard of anyone getting into the giantess fetish that late in the game. I mean, I’ve been writing for twice that amount of time. How was that for you? The experience of getting into it?”

“It was… normal? I suppose? My parents never really gave me any trouble for liking girls, so I felt free to explore my own psyche in a sexual sense. I mean, I Googled around for some forums, lurked on DeviantArt for a bit. It was an experimental time for me, just investigating what it was about it that makes me tick.”

“And what is that?” Kate was leaning forward. Her eyes were trained on Antonia’s forehead. “What makes you tick, I mean?”

Antonia put a finger to her cheek. “Tough one. I don’t self-insert, per se. But if I had to…” Antonia couldn’t help but blush and smile like a lovestruck idiot. “I’d love to be small… To be at the mercy of something bigger. There’s something nice about relinquishing control, you know?”

“And… would you like to be crushed by them?” asked Kate.

Antonia dialed down to a half-grin. “My brain says no, not in real life. I like looking at the collages, the art, reading the stories and imagining myself there, in place of the tiny as they’re getting smushed, and all that. Even if somehow the excruciating pain is hard to separate from the hotness.”

“Why do you think you – or, we – find that sort of thing hot? I mean, on its own, what is there that’s really ‘hot’ about… death? Blood and guts? ‘Viscera’, that sort of thing?”

“Fuck knows,” said Antonia. She sighed and reached to drink a bit more of the melted condensate from the glass. “That friend? She liked a lot of… I guess you could say ‘shock videos’? Live Leak vids, executions, suicides, that sort of thing. And every so often, she’d make me watch something like that, if she finds something really ‘cool’ to her. And we’d watch it together.”

Antonia noticed Kate visibly trying to decide on the right words before she spoke: “So… is that… you think that’s part of the reason –”

“No. Hell no. That shit made me sick to my stomach, every time. For days. No, I didn’t like it.”

Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, fair.”

Antonia continued, “I’m just bringing it up, because, it’s, well, weird, right? I mean, liking fictional death and all. Getting off on it? It sort of makes you think about yourself, right? Think about just how fucked up you have to be to… hey, hey. How are you?”

“Huh?” Kate’s face suddenly reanimated.

“You went pretty slack. Did I say something triggering?” Antonia’s anxiety at meeting new friends was dripping back. She couldn’t stop herself from going into damage control mode. “We can talk about something else, if, if that’s what you’d want...”

“No!! This is interesting! I mean, I’m down. I guess, bah! God.” Kate wiped her bare forearm on her forehead, which by all accounts appeared to Antonia to have been dry beforehand. “I think I had my first macro fantasy when I was… six?”

“Jesus Christ. Oh, sorry!”

“Nah. It’s nothing.” Kate smiled. “Just a bit of daydreaming after I watched a DVD of… some old movie. I’ve tweeted about it before…”

“Attack of the 50 Foot –”

“Nah…” Kate waved the possibility away. “Not quite that old. I mean, before I was born, but not –”

“Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?”

Again, Kate shook her head. “It wasn’t an actual giant woman movie. It was a monster, kaiju, something with–”

“Godzilla?”

“Godzilla! Yes, yes! That shitty one from the 90s. That was the cause of my awakening.” Kate chuckled dryly. “Luckily, none of my adult caretakers knew what a giantess fetish was, so nobody I asked put it together that it could’ve been anything sexual. And honestly it wasn’t since, well, since I was six. I was more interested in Powerpuff Girls and all that. It didn’t start to take over my life until… puberty,” Kate finished.

“Puberty,” Antonia repeated grimly.

Kate nodded. “That’s when my brain, body, everything inside me was in on a conspiracy to tear me open from the inside out. My fantasies returned in full-force, technicolor. Blu-ray. IMAX. Whatever.” Kate gave a futile shrug. “It is an awful feeling, realizing that the death is what’s hot to you. That the blood is what turns you on. Like, what do you even do, then? Who, as a child, do you talk to in that situation? Mom nearly killed me when I tried to come out as bi to her. In fact…”

Kate took her hair in one great bundle, and momentarily Antonia realized just how long it was, going down at least a bit further than her armpits, double that of Antonia’s brunette mop. She wondered if Kate had extensions and considered asking, but before she could Kate turned away and revealed a miscolored gash almost four inches long threading the rear of her neck.

“I… oh. That looks, ahm, permanent.”

“Getting shoved into a granite countertop will do that.” Antonia could tell from her voice Kate was smiling. She let go of her hair and the wound was covered once more. Antonia didn’t know why but she was thankful it was gone. Kate turned back to her and continued, smugly, “It looked worse than it really was. But don’t tell my mom that. Her believing for 10 minutes that I was dead probably fixed most of the problems in our relationship.” Kate finished nearly manic, but her eyes soon went dim. “Created plenty of new ones too… but…”

With that inconclusive note, Antonia took a minute to realize she was expected to talk again. She floundered for a response. “Oh, I… do think you’ve mentioned that you liked men as well.” And after a few more seconds, “I read some of your giant male stories. They’re… fun! They’re fun.”

“Ah! Thanks.” The light flickered in Kate’s face for only a moment. “But… yeah. I had friends and all… mostly just, like, regular people, I guess. They’re nice. I still talk to a few of them. But nobody I was able to share that piece of myself with, comfortably.”

Antonia was squinting. Then she said, “You know, you might really like my old friend I was talking about. She’s probably mellowed out since the 4chan phase, but still. You two would get along.”

“Oh?” said Kate. “Think so? Do you have her social media?”

Antonia only managed a glum shrug. “We lost touch after high school. Gosh, that’s really sad, though! If I could just, like, switch our lives up, so maybe your situation was better for you, and you had the friend, or just… I don’t know,” Antonia put her head in her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Really. It’s nothing,” Kate said, showing her teeth. “I mean, we met online anyway. So it works out in the end, doesn’t it?”

“True, right.” Antonia nodded. Then her face twisted as though she were doing math in her head. She then burst out– “You wrote Final Eclipse in high school!?”

Kate’s eyes almost popped out of their holes. “Wha-huh? Why, how –”

“You just said! That Godzilla 1998 came out before you were born, which means you have to be… carry the one… And then, just now! You’ve been writing for twelve years. You couldn’t have been older than fourteen, fifteen. You were… Good lord. That’s fucking impressive.”

Kate looked nervous. “You, ah, you got me. A bit of a vent piece I guess. During the day I would write as much into my school notebook as I could. At nights, after homework I’d go on the family computer and copy as much into Word as possible. Hope my mom never investigated the file. And eventually… it became… that.”

The longer Kate talked, the more Antonia’s awe increased, the more confused she was at Kate’s apparent embarrassment.

“So, yeah, thanks,” said Kate. “But, try to keep that on the low? I do not need to give my FBI agent any more fodder to lock me up.” She rubbed circles into her cheek with her palm. “Besides, I’m already ashamed enough as it is.”

“Ashamed? Ashamed? No… you do not understand. I mean –” Antonia was loose. She was comfortable. And now, she was ready to rant. “That… masterpiece, you wrote it when you were fifteen. When I was a teen, I was, like, playing Subway Surfers in my bunkbed. But you were – are – a prodigy! I mean, you said ‘hobby’ but you could write for real if you ever wanted.”

“What do you mean by that?” Kate narrowed an eye.

“Oh! I mean, your stuff is real, it’s real. Just… yep!” Antonia tried to ignore Kate’s piercing stare. “But I mean, damn. I wish I could reread Final Eclipse for the first time one more time. Just thinking of it makes me weak… And then I read through the rest of your backlog and then I sent you that DM on Twitter and then…”

“We became friends.” Kate smiled.

Antonia nodded. “Yeah… yes! We did!” She beamed. Kate returned it.

“So, anyway…” Kate crossed a leg. “Now, it’s time to talk about boring stuff. I’d love to hear about what you’re in town for. I know it was a work thing, and you don’t have to reveal any more than you’d want to.”

“Oh, it’s fine!” said Antonia. “It’s a sort of professional development conference for, ah, teachers.”

Kate brightened. “You’re a teacher!”

“Mm-hmm! Second year at it. The middle schoolers definitely feel more like screaming gerbils at times… but still, I like it. And having summers off doesn’t hurt either. This conference isn’t technically mandatory, but I get a stipend if I do go. Plus, if I show a flight receipt the district will pay for the travel expenses. But not–”

“–but not the hotel,” Kate spoke over Antonia on accident.

“Yep. Hence.”

“Well, aren’t you glad I just so happened to reposition my life and move to North Carolina just to save you a bit on lodgings?”

“So grateful,” Antonia rolled her eyes. “But really, again, I cannot thank you enough. Seriously, you’re amazing. In more ways than one.”

“Oh pish,” said Kate, bubbling over from praise. “Well, wanna order a pizza or something?”

“Mm-mm,” Antonia said, finally ready to stretch her sore muscles and trek up the stairs. She creaked out of her chair, her earlier fervor gone. “I ate after the plane landed. I should be good until morning. Which reminds me! I need to schedule a Lyft to pick me up…”

“Oh, no need,” said Kate, hopping up and trotting to look over Antonia’s shoulder. “I can drop you off.”

“You do realize at this rate I’ll be paying off my debt to you for the rest of my life, right?”

Cheeky, Kate simply replied, “That’s right.”

“Alright then! I guess I’ll see you in the morning! Take care, Sinne– …Kate!” Antonia was a few steps up the stairs when she suddenly said, “Oh! Forgot.” Kate watched Antonia return to the coffee table. She grabbed the glass of half-melted ice, and she ferried it to the sink, washing it, drying it, and depositing it into an empty dishwasher. Kate watched Antonia shoot her a pleasant wink, and she disappeared upstairs.

Kate remained in her seat completely still. Until Antonia yelled back, “Ah, which room was it again?!”

“All the way at the end of the left hallway! Can’t miss it!”

“Thanks!”

Slam!!

Kate was alone.

***

Antonia noticed something was off when she refused to emerge from beneath the spread of blankets.

Oh, she tried. She seemed to crawl endlessly through entire reams of the impossibly comfortable and warm fabric that made up the endless grotto she’d found herself in. The once-cozy in-between space between blanket and mattress had become muggy and claustrophobic, so much so that Antonia felt the need to stand up on the bed, yet even that refused to free Antonia from her confinement.

What is this…? Antonia began to wonder if this was a dream. Travelling seemingly endlessly along the bouncy surface of the bed underneath an equally expansive blanket seemed somewhat dreamlike. And yet, that theory felt off too. Her head was splitting, and it seemed odd that she could feel such a sharp pain in a dreamscape. If this was a dream, it was no dream Antonia wanted to participate in, and now was about the time she would be waking up. She tried… but nothing. The woman remained trapped.

Where am I… Antonia wondered. Of course, it felt ridiculous to ask such a thing out loud. Clearly Antonia was still snug in her bed; through the darkness she could even make out the floral print pattern of the sheets if she squinted. But why was she confined so, why did the bounciness of the mattress springs feel overly stiff, and why did everything feel too big?

When Antonia emerged from her odyssey, she wanted to feel accomplished. At ease. Yet here as she beheld the rest of the moonlit room, that wrongness again. Her blood-blurred eyes failed to focus on anything; she couldn’t recognize anything. The bed seemed as though it stretched far too long than logically made sense. And any attempts to parse exactly what it was that made her feel so distressed only raised more questions.

And there was a figure in the corner.

Antonia was struck. She couldn’t move. She didn’t know if it was from fear or sleep paralysis, but she could not bring her shivering body to shift even an inch in any direction. She simply laid there.

Antonia’s heart was pounding. What’s going on, what’s going on, what’s going on… Her chest felt like it was being crushed under a barbell. When she breathed, she couldn’t exhale; her lungs seemed only to expand, and it was full to bursting. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. This was the only thing Antonia could do as she slowly seemed to lock up, immovable. Not even her eyeballs could rotate in their sockets. They could, however, make out the shroud of black that was approaching her, utterly massive, indiscernible, incorporeal, inescapable.

***

“Hu-gah!”

Antonia woke up.

This was it, Antonia thought. This definitely wasn’t a dream. But it only took moments before that faith was shaken. Her blanket was gone, for one… as was her bed. The great steppes of her mattress had been replaced by a long stretch of solid brown floor that expanded in four directions.

Antonia was also naked. That seemed important to note.

She wanted to stand up, but at the same time she feared what creatures exposing herself might attract in whichever bizarro nightmare dimension she’d ended up in. And yet, like before, the chill of her nudity and the sting of cold from the wood felt oddly biting, oddly corporeal. Oddly…

Oh God. Antonia realized it. She felt foolish for not even noticing it before.

It felt like a sick joke. It felt too terrifying, too mortifying, too impossible to be possible. But she recognized this wood. It was the coffee table.

Antonia rotated deliberately, like a model on a catwalk, absolutely unable to believe it. Her surroundings had taken on the sterile tinge of a room illuminated only by plug-in nightlights, but she was in Kate’s living room, scaled to five hundred times her old size.

Antonia was small. Tiny. Utterly minuscule. It was hard to even measure at this point, but one-inch seemed feasible. How? Why?! What?! And how did she even get here anyway? All of these were important questions, but they were secondary to getting help as soon as possible. That was looking like a, er, a tall order though. It was the middle of the night; Kate was probably fast asleep or in her writers’ focus right now. Antonia guessed she probably had a dedicated study if she didn’t write in her own room. Either way, neither of those were close to here. Antonia was isolated.

So, Antonia did the only thing she could do. She yelled.

“KAAAAAAAAAAAATE!!! HEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!!”

And on. And on. And on.

In the ensuing laments, Antonia was sure not to let the irony escape her. She’d somehow become exactly what she’d wanted to be for years: a tiny. Fantasies of existing at a diminutive scale had dominated her dreams for her entire adult life, but Antonia couldn’t bring herself to entertain the thought of enjoying this. Not even in a carefree “oh, when this problem gets fixed I totally wanna have fun with this” kind of way. She wanted to throw up. Her body’s height and weight ratios were completely out of sync. Her movements felt weird and perpetually groggy. Her eyes could not focus on more than one large thing in the distance at a time. Even in the best of circumstances, this would’ve been a bottom-tier experience in the list of her experiences. Now? It was more than awful. It was hellish. It was beyond terrifying. Antonia didn’t know how to describe it. Hell, there was only one word to describe this.

“Comical.”

That single word wasn’t uttered with much force at all. Yet it brought Antonia to her knees. Once she was settled on the ground, the whimpering woman twisted and watched the figure appear from the translucent shadows of the kitchenette no-mans-land. The vibrations travelled with every step, dispersing a bit in the carpet but still maintaining enough cohesion to bleed into Antonia’s bones.

Because this wasn’t just anyone, but Kate. In the flesh.

The first living thing Antonia had seen since her diminishment, and she wasn’t appearing as a friend. Perhaps it was the nightlights and lamplights accentuating her from low angles. Perhaps it was the twitching smirk that plucked at the corner of her mouth. Perhaps it was the simple fact that anything can look threatening when you were small enough. But Kate no longer looked like a friend.

“K-K-K-K-Kate…?!” Antonia had to shake her head and clear out the fog. A part of her still hoped this was a dream, but the realness was getting closer and closer. Kate felt real, as did every shudder and shake that crept into Antonia’s body. She looked real as her entire being approached, almost filling up Antonia’s frame of vision while being impossible to turn away from. She even smelled real; Kate was by no means a foul-smelling girl, but even mild body odors had the potential to become pungent and overwhelming when faced by nostrils as small as Antonia’s.

“Simply comical,” Kate repeated. And she plopped down on the couch. The sound of her ass hitting the pleather cushion was like a gunshot, and it hurt. So many things hurt Antonia now. She covered her ears belatedly, and she squinted forth to see Kate really dig into the couch and relax, spreading her legs wide just for Antonia to realize the woman was not wearing any bottoms beneath her chemise.

“Do you have any idea how scared I was?” Even with her ears covered, trying to avoid Kate was like trying to avoid sand on the beach. Like rain drops in a storm. For the moment, Kate was as ubiquitous as air. “I wasn’t sure if it would work well or not. I hadn’t even tested if ingestion would work, or if your stomach acids would neutralize the shrinking agent. If there’s one thing we can learn from all this… it’s that I’m a goddamn fucking genius.”

It's not like Antonia hadn’t considered it. Hell, it was her first hypothesis. But she abandoned it just as quickly as it crossed her mind. Antonia would’ve sooner believed aliens had stolen her away in the dead of night, shrunk her and stripped her of her clothes, probed her, then politely returned her to Kate’s coffee table than believe Kate herself had the ability to shrink her, much less the desire and determination to make it happen.

“Did you enjoy the lemonade by the way? I really don’t make homemade beverages all that much. I put a little honey in there for sweetness, and to hide the bitter aftertaste. I don’t know if you noticed. But seriously, how cool is this? I mean, you have to tell me. Really describe it. Don’t I look cool? Don’t I look hot?! I really want to know what I look like from your perspective... Look at me.”

 Antonia trembled as she turned her gaze to the heavenly body that was Kate.

Her twin knees on either side almost flickered in the lowlight; Antonia could almost make out the blue veins that pulsed beneath her flesh. Bare legs and hips further coated by a black shroud of a chemise. It seemed to cascade down Kate’s front like a waterfall, the result no doubt of Kate’s two massive orbs that hung free from her chest. Kate’s arms were craned behind her head leaving her shaved armpits free for all to witness. Kate was calm. She was comfortable. Most importantly, she was still. Even as big as she was, Antonia could not see her shift, could not see her twitch. It was uncanny. More than anything, Kate truly wanted Antonia to look at her, as she was, now, here.

Antonia tore her gaze from Kate’s skylinear face and wrapped herself in her own arms. Kate smiled ever wider. “Yeah… you look so fucking funny down there… I know what you’re thinking, you know?”

Antonia hazarded another glance.

“Still hoping this is a dream, right? Still hoping that you’ll wake right up in your warm little bed, and I can drive you to your cute little meeting tomorrow, right?”

The tiny little Antonia made a tiny little nod.

“GOD!” Kate slapped her own thigh. The force and shock and fear were enough to send Antonia rolling away in a heap. “I love this shit! Love it so much… so much.”

Antonia didn’t even have the time to collect her bearings when Kate’s hand was already reaching for her. “No, no!” Fear had overridden everything. Even if she couldn’t force herself to think Kate was an enemy, those fingers definitely were her foes. She scooted on her butt, chafing against the seasoned wood. She kicked away, and Kate giggled.

“Feisty! I’m here for it.” Kate grinned ever more, an almost unnatural width, at the sting of Antonia’s kicks pushing back so hard against her palm. It was so damn cute. She wasted no time though; Kate slapped her hand down on Antonia. It shoved the breath from her chest and left only her head exposed.

“No, stop! Stop, stop-stop-stop, please, please! Kate, Kate?!” Kate’s fingers would’ve no doubt submerged the shrunken woman had the giantess not taken proper care to avoid it. Antonia’s shrieks were intermingled with her heaves and gasps for breath, and Kate eased her grip just a bit, just enough to keep her from falling deeper into her grip.

“Kate…” Antonia wanted to look at her, but she just couldn’t muster the strength. And yet, now Kate’s face took up her entire field of view. It was a brain-breakingly bizarre experience. Humans never looked at other humans’ faces from this close up. The weight of it was what at last made Antonia burst into a ball of stringy tears. “W-w-what… are you…” Sniff. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Oh? The question.” Kate gave Antonia a couple of squeezes, and she leaned back in her couch. She uncupped her hand against her breasts and looked down her nose as Antonia flopped free into Kate’s palm. “That’s always the question, right? That’s what the scared little tinies ask when they’re small, isn’t it?” Kate cocked her head. “Or some variation thereof.”

Even amidst Kate’s overpowering body heat, Antonia was shivering. She didn’t say anything.

“You really are scared, aren’t you…!” Kate bit her lip. “So… you’re not even a little excited? Not a tiny bit?”

“Kate, I’m terrified!! You… you… you did this to me, somehow. It’s not natural. I don’t understand…” Antonia had to rock back and forth just to keep the rubber bands that raveled her up from popping. “Please. Please. Just tell me I don’t have to be scared.”

Kate licked her lips. “But, Antonia. Don’t you see? I did this for you.” She reached her finger to Antonia and nuzzled the tip against her cheek with uncharacteristic softness. Antonia didn’t resist, but she didn’t react. “I knooow…” Kate let her voice drop to a sultry whisper. “I know how much you love this. Don’t you?... I’m sure you do.”

Kate’s finger poked into Antonia’s side. Then, it poked her again. Antonia was scared, but now she was becoming annoyed. She wrapped her arms around the finger, and suddenly Antonia was yanked up and into the space before Kate’s forehead, dangling solely on the strength of her own grip, as Kate drew circles in the air with her finger pointing down. “All the adrenaline of a rollercoaster ride, right here in my home. But you’d never have to want for anything. Worry for anything. Because I’ll be right here. Feeding you. Loving you. What more could you want?”

Antonia wanted to look past Kate’s tree trunk of a finger, but her grip slipped. She tried to adjust, but she only slid down the moisturized digit more and more. She let go, yelped, and landed on the pillowy cushion of Kate’s breasts. She grabbed onto a handful of flesh to keep from sliding into her nightgown. This excised a ticklish chuckle from Kate.

“See? I can be your safety. I can protect you, if you let me.”

Antonia didn’t want to admit she was thinking about it… it did sound nice.

“I know you know. I know you understand, we’re the only ones on this Earth who understand each other. You understand it, right?” Kate leaned in closer and closer. Her hand scooped up Antonia again, and soon the shrunken girl was practically hugging Kate’s eye, getting flitted by butterfly kisses over and over. “Did I do it? Are you still scared? Or are you coming around?”

Despite the blazing heat that radiated from Kate’s body, Antonia felt colder than ever. “Kate…”

Kate’s eyes opened wide. They glistened in the nightlight. If Antonia wasn’t careful, she feared falling into the pool of her right eye, emptying herself into Kate’s embrace, and becoming one with everything she was.

“This has been… I… I don’t know! I don’t know how I feel. I’m just, confused. You’re making me… I-I don’t know!!” Antonia shook her tiny little head. And she looked at Kate with solemn tears. “I… don’t want this. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry if this isn’t what you expected. If it isn’t what you wanted.”

Kate was a stone. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She didn’t twitch. She stared at – nay, through Antonia. For a long, long time. The heat coming off her almost scalded the little woman. But Antonia couldn’t do anything. Say anything. She could only wait.

Until.

Kate’s lips curled into a tight, slight smile.

“You don’t have to apologize. This is exactly what I wanted.”

Before Antonia could even mouth What?!, she was scooped up once more and practically thrown back onto the coffee table.

Two twin SLAMS followed, each one sending a quick burst of bone-chattering shockwave energy through Antonia’s little form. Antonia writhed; though she was not in pain, she felt as though she should be. And when she did look up, she saw on both sides of her was a foot. A massive, massive foot. A foot which could span her own body length many times over. A foot which was ever so slightly twin-toned, milky soles on one side, and olive brown on the other. Two feet on either side of her, casually sliding around on their heels, casually wiggling their toes. Two feet which could remove Antonia from this mortal plane at a twitch.

“It was all part of the game, you see…”

At this size, and at this distance, a single foot appeared more like a billboard, and a casual sway of one of them blocked out Kate’s visage. The face of her friend was no longer visible, and for some reason this made Antonia brim with anxiety. “G-g-game?”

“Well, clearly. There’s always some build-up, right? Some… what’s the word… hope spot?”

Antonia tried to swallow, but her mouth went dry. Those feet, as beautiful as they were… she had to get away from them. She got up, turned, and ran. And subsequently got SLAMMED down on the table remorselessly. “Ach!!”

Warm.

Warmth on her back. Warmth at her head. Warmth, and pain.

Kate clenched her right toes, and she dragged the little woman back, closer to the edge so that Kate’s knee bent at a sharper angle. Her left foot was still as relaxed as ever.

The stars that filled Antonia’s eyes had yet to dissipate, but she knew she was bleeding. She could even intuit that there might be a trail of the stuff drawing her path from a futile escape to here, barely a few inches long in human terms, but practically a hundred-yard sprint to the bug. She tried to unstick her forehead from the coffee table just as Kate opened her mouth once more.

“Obviously I couldn’t just smush you.” And then Kate giggled. She continued, as though trying hard not to laugh. “I couldn’t, couldn’t just invite you inside, shrink you down, and then, and then… BWA-HAHAHAHA!!”

Antonia wasn’t even looking at Kate now, still nice and stowed beneath her captress’s warm toes. Antonia was sure she looked beautiful even braying like a donkey. And that thought only sent her deeper into her pit.

“Butter you up, wear you down… but, see…” The toes increased their pressure, and Antonia’s gasps were squeezed up a pitch. Kate continued with a deadly seriousness, “The moment you realized I started writing this shit at fifteen… there was no way you were leaving this house alive.”

It was a moment of relent, and Antonia managed to twist her body against the foot, turning upward and staring through the gap of the big and pointer toe. Through that gap she saw Kate looking down on her and sneering with untold contempt. So deep was the hatred on her face, it truly, genuinely shocked Antonia to silence. Even opening her mouth several times and keeping her eyes locked into Kate’s dark ones, the mite-sized girl simply could not say anything, at least until she belted into another frantic set of pleas.

“I, I, I, I’m sorry, I won’t tell anyone, no one, nobody, I won’t tell anybody, please… please, PLEASE, please just let me live, Kate… Kate…?!”

Kate had broken into a smile. Then a grin. And she busted into a guffawing laugh again. “AH-HAHAHAHAHA! I’m playing, Antonia. I’m playing.” She didn’t relieve any of the pressure of her feet upon Antonia’s abdomen. “I’m just playing.”

The warmth on her forehead told her otherwise, but her voice, those words, it did some work at putting Antonia more at ease. The playfulness, the earnestness. It helped untie the knot that this experience had wrapped Antonia into.

Kate looked as though she had to swallow some excess saliva in her mouth. With a casual glance down to her feet: “To be completely honest, I knew I would kill you the moment I laid eyes on you.”

…

Antonia stared at Kate.

Kate’s incisors clutched her lower lip. “Eh. Yeah.”

CRACK.

The toes. They’d constrained Antonia. Constricted Antonia. Wrapped around Antonia’s dumbstruck form, they came together in one, quick, fatal clench.

In just a moment, every bone which made up Antonia’s spinal column had been pulverized into dust. Kate held the position, held her toe in its clenched state. And Antonia could continue to feel the warmth as various organs in her body began leaking into places they were not meant to go.

“G-guah, ah, ah… uh…” The pain hadn’t quite hit Antonia yet, but worse than any pain or even discomfort was the feeling of wrongness. Her body had been transformed from what it was to a mangled thing with all the callousness of a baby and a Barbie doll. Except in this case, Kate knew exactly what she was doing. She reveled in it. She looked on, hypnotized as Antonia tried in vain to flop like a fish using the legs which had been so cruelly stolen from her.

Kate breathed out sharply from her nose. “Hnnngggg…” Her hands had already gone to the nub which was ejecting itself from between her legs. “I was… worried…” It was difficult for the woman to speak between gasps. “I’d been worried for a while now. That it wouldn’t feel as good in real life as, ah, ah…” Her breath quickened. “As in my head.”

The pressure had let up. No point anymore, after all. Antonia’s legs now just useless, dead weight. Her arms still functioned, but what could they do here? Grab onto Kate’s slightly sweaty toe for some reason? There would be no need – Kate was unexpectedly dexterous, and she slid one of Antonia’s legs between her first two toes, clutching it and lifting her foot back up onto its heel. Antonia’s other leg dangled uncomfortably, but she barely registered any sensation there anymore. Antonia could see Kate now, somewhat. She was masturbating, and upon locking eyes with the shrunken mite, her masturbation seemed to increase dramatically in pace.

It was useless. Pointless. Nothing. She was nothing. She’d been paralyzed in only a moment by something so much larger than her.

Was this some sort of punishment? A punishment for her masochism? For finding pleasure in depictions of pain? Even her own?

Did Kate hate her? Did something Antonia did, or said, over those years… did she make a mistake? Did she insult Kate in some esoteric way? What was the purpose of this cruelty?

Antonia couldn’t move as she hung, a toe ornament forced to watch her owner get off on her humiliation. But despite the screams and squawks and the sharp, harsh pain which had now injected into her every limb and extremity, Antonia’s mouth still worked… sorta.

“H… H… How…?”

Kate didn’t hear her. She was huffing as more gooey wetness dripped from between her spread legs. She took the occasional glance toward her foot and toward Antonia to remind her what she was masturbating over, but it was practically impossible to pull her out of that kind of revery.

Antonia swelled up. She filled her lungs with as much upside-down breath as they could take, and she eeked out, “Kate?!”

It seemed to cut through Kate’s self-satisfaction. Her rubbing slowed down. “...Huh?”

“How…?!”

Kate very nearly paused her jill-off session entirely. “I told you earlier, didn’t I? I mean, I could explain how I designed the formula, but I feel like it’d be a bit complex without a background in biomechanical –”

“No…” Even just speaking was taking its toll on the girl.

“How… how could you… how could you do this? How? How?! T-t-t-to… to me?!” It still didn’t make sense to Antonia. It didn’t make sense that someone who’d brought her so much joy had wanted to induce so much pain as well. It was a sick, twisted, fucked up joke. “Please… tell me… Weren’t we friends?”

“Oh?” Kate wondered. And then she let out another thundering, billowing laugh. Every time she did, she clenched her toes a bit around Antonia’s leg. Some kind of twitch reaction.

“Oh! Oh, my bad! I am so sorry you misread this entire situation.” Kate put on her kindest, most motherly face. “See, I do not consider ‘being friends’ and ‘wanting to shrink you down and crush you to paste’ as mutually exclusive.”

Antonia didn’t respond. Upside down, the upturned smile Kate wore seemed uncanny at best.

Kate went on undeterred, though: “I mean, did you think they were all just gaffes? Jokes? Pretend…? Catalina... Final Eclipse… Blood Rain… Carnage To-Go… Beginning the End…?” With each story title Kate rattled off, Antonia was transported away. Back to a different place and time. She could remember exactly where she was when she read each story, fell into each story, fell in love with each story. She remembered the intensity, the vicious orgasms she suffered and craved, like a drug. Going back to each story again and again just for another hit. Rereading the most desolate, depraved sequences. Scenes of absolute debauchery, psychopathy, misanthropy. Toward one, ten, a thousand people all at once, with no remorse for age, race, gender, and beyond. Planets reduced to nothing but stardust to pad the superior asses of the hottest women Antonia could ever imagine.

Each memory sent a violent spasm down what was left of Antonia’s spine.

“Oh, sweetie…” Kate reached forward and grabbed Antonia, turning her right side up again in her fingers. “It was all real. Every bit. Everything I’ve ever gained. Everything I’ve ever wanted. I’d trade it all away… every bit… to feel what it’s like. To feel someone. A human. To feel them bend, and break, completely break away into a nothing. Beneath me. Like she always was, in a way.”

The sickening sweetness with which she said it. The soft caress with which she held Antonia. It was all so uncanny. Disturbing.

But it was her eyes. Kate’s eyes.

Perhaps it was the dimly-lit room. But Antonia couldn’t tell. She’d never been able to tell, in fact, what color they were. What was inside of them. How deep their abyss traveled.

Antonia believed Kate. She believed every word. She could even believe that she’d turn this world to ash in only a moment. Given the opportunity.

Antonia felt herself sink into those eyes. Into the abyss. She had skirted that abyss so many times, at her computer, on her phone, in the sanctity of her mind as she revisited these sordid ideas. She’d skirted it, but for so long, she’d believed she was not of it. That she was above it. That she didn’t need it.

Antonia couldn’t skirt from it anymore. She couldn’t even walk away from it. She could do nothing. But. Accept it. Accept herself. Accept Kate. Accept everything. Everything that had come to pass was meant to be.

Who Antonia once was fell away, piece by piece. A mother, a father, an apartment, a girlfriend, a job and classroom of students who would forever languish without knowing what happened to her. Her hair color, her eye color, her skin color, her sense of fashion, her desire to live or to die. All of it came apart, unveiling her body in shards like eggshells. Unleashing what was beneath in a glowing metamorphosis.

Kate looked at Antonia. Antonia’s lips pursed together. And she nodded.

“You get it.” Another hand went to her pussy lips. “You really get it now, don’t you.”

Tears were streaming down Antonia’s face. “Please…”

But this ‘please’ was not one for hope. For redemption. For rescue. This was a plea to be returned to her rightful place in this room, this house, on this material plane. To be returned to beneath Kate’s feet. To allow this creature to usher her into the next life, just as she ushered her into understanding the true dynamic of their reality.

Kate understood.

“Fffffffffuck…” Another orgasm pierced her every cell. She breathed, had to breathe, and regained her composure. “This… isn’t as good as my imagination. This is so. Much. Fucking. Y’ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh…”

Kate was tingling. There was no goddamn way the affection of something so small should have an impact this drastic on her. But this was a human woman. Someone who’d known the unique pleasures of being a fully realized sapient being. And decided anyway they’d rather stay reduced in their last moments than go on fighting, futilely, to regain what she’d lost. Yeah, it’d taken some prodding on Kate’s part, but that was still a goddamn treat.

“Yeah, fucking worship me, bitch.” And as much as Kate tried to put on her most self-serious ‘goddess face’, she couldn’t help but smile. It was just silly. So unbelievably silly.

And Antonia was doing it. Even limp, with non-functioning legs, she was squirming and wiggling as close as she could to Kate’s feet. The literal beginning and ending of Kate’s body, the end of Antonia’s world. Those feet which stole from Antonia her own mobility but bequeathed something far more important to her in the process. Perspective. They were worthy of respect, veneration, and love. And they would receive all of those from Antonia for as long as her muse allowed her to persist in her world.

Kate had already orgasmed twice, and somehow the fact she was able to cum just from forcing the little creature into such a submissive state was itself an immense turn-on.

But she wasn’t kidding. She was going to kill her.

It would’ve been nice to keep her around, for a time at least. Kate got dozens of comments on every story chapter she posted, and there was always a steady trickle of new faces and usernames to keep track of. But junebugrug202 was one of the first, and certainly the most consistent. She was doing Antonia a favor by ending her this way, surely. She was showing her the way to her own paradise… but it was a loss all the same. And it made Kate sad.

Kate leaned all the way back into her couch, entire body forming a rather obtuse angle. Her feet remained on the table by the heels, and crawling pitifully to the leftmost foot was Antonia. The life that was once in those eyes took on a different character from when Kate examined those eyes at full size. It seemed… more muted. This walking-death quality of those eyes was a microcosm of what her existence had newly become.

Kate had difficulty doing so while shoving as many fingers into her pussy as she could, but she did manage to aim her foot atop Antonia’s head and stroke along her back and body, petting her with her big toe. An errant twitch accidentally slammed her face into the table, but Antonia didn’t seem to mind.

“I wish I got to know you, Antonia.”

Antonia simply purred, somewhat unable to move from beneath Kate’s massive digits.

Kate’s other foot slid across the stained wood table. It nudged into Antonia’s motionless legs, toes grabbing hold of them both, and sidling further up Antonia’s body until her waist was wedged securely between the big and second toes of Kate’s foot.

Antonia could feel the sharp clamp that surrounded her hips, powerless and motionless to escape. But she didn’t want to, even as the opposite set of toes slid over her head, bathing her in sweat, and clamping equally around her chest and shoulders. Her diaphragm creaked under the strain, but for Antonia the pain was the pleasure. At least, pleasure was what she’d forced pain to become.

The pressure increased. Top and bottom, Antonia began to feel it. A new pain. The pain as her body began to pull apart.

Kate was laser-focused on the scene. Her soles were facing one another, dug into and braced upon the table as her feet flexed. Each foot was barely an inch away from the other, and between them was a person.

Not just any person.

Kate’s friend.

Antonia’s breath quickened. She’s really going to do it. She’s doing it. She’s going to rip me in half. Her feet are going to tear me apart.

Kate was masturbating, massaging her clit while stimulating her vaginal walls as much as was feasible. Her legs were sore from holding the position, but Kate was a strong girl. She could handle it. The soreness. She could handle anything. She could do anything. She wasn’t a girl. She was everything. To Antonia… no… to this ant. She was everything. The beginning and ending. Even before, before all this, she was her everything. I, Kate, made her feel things. Incredible things. Impossible things. I could destroy her with the right pairing of words in the right order, right time and place. It was all me. I was her priest, her connection between the world of her flesh and the world of her spirit. And now, I would be her God.

Kate didn’t even care to catch the drool which dripped onto her chemise anymore.

Antonia meanwhile was grappling with so many questions. Was Kate truly going to kill her? Did Kate want to kill her? Did she care? Did Antonia care? Was there any point, any purpose to anything Antonia had ever done if she were just to end everything here, a stain on some woman’s coffee table? Was this pain she was feeling inside her own mind? Was it real?

So many questions, all wrapped up and amalgamated into a single answer:

It doesn’t matter.

Antonia doesn’t have to care. About herself. About her body, her pain, even about Kate. It didn’t matter.

Kate was, now. She just was.

Kate had become her queen. Mistress. Goddess. All of these and more to the diminutive. And it was no mere platitude or false title. It was all Antonia could even imagine her as. Her mind was rewiring itself as her body stretched. She could not afford to think rationally. She couldn’t afford to think at all, lest she think of the pain as her broken spine began to uncouple itself. All she could think about were the toes which wrapped around her, which crunched her, which owned her.

She didn’t even need additional stimulation for the waterworks to begin in earnest.

“Hng, hhng, hng, hngg…! I can feel it…!”

Just when Kate thought this was it, this was the absolute horniest she could become, she felt it. Antonia wasn’t just wet. She was soaked. Kate hadn’t realized it before through her own sweat, but the tiny girl hadn’t even lifted a finger and was dripping like a faucet. She was getting off on her imminent death.

Well, who would Kate be to deny her?

Her toe was a massive, unwieldy thing to the tiny creature, but Kate still managed to find Antonia’s own pubic mound and massage it, even as her toes strained and prepared to break this tiny woman into two. And in response, Antonia’s arousal kicked into overdrive. Involuntary spasms coursed through her, buckling her hips as though she were having sex with Kate’s second toe. It was incredible. It made Kate feel incredible. Unstoppable. It was unstoppable. She was unstoppable. Everything. Antonia felt it. The rush as she buckled and came uncontrollably, the pain as her body creaked and bones fractured, the endless love that bubbled into her chest ready to break free from her ruptured corpse. She loved this. She loved Kate. But it didn’t matter – Kate would have her way, one way or another.

“AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Kate’s orgasm ripped through the house.

And as she descended from her high like a queen from her tower, and saw the twitching, bloody pair of legs, even now spurting out oozing globules of cum… she seemed to ascend on high all over again.

***

Kate didn’t wake up on her own.

Her alarm clock usually woke her up promptly at 7 o’clock. Just early enough to get to the chemical plant with time to spare. Barring that, her phone would wake her up at 7:45, offering just enough time to get there if she didn’t try at all to shower and only meagerly touched up her hair and makeup.

This morning, Katarina Romanovich had neither.

She’d slept straight through her alarms, both of which were still ringing elsewhere in the house. And she would’ve slept far longer had the alarm sounds not leaked into her blissful daydreams.

Kate’s face was stuffed in the corner between the arm of the couch and its cushion. “Ughhhhh… God dammit…” She pulled one arm from underneath her torso and felt that momentary confusion and fear one feels when their arm refuses to move on its own properly. Shrugging at the paralysis, Kate tried to sit up and noticed a throw pillow seemed to also have been jammed between her thighs.

“What… happened last night…?” Kate said to no one in particular. She tugged at the pillow and pulled it out, wincing as she realized just how sore her labia was. The pillow itself was now darkened with stains and spots and smells much to Kate’s chagrin. This was the good pillow too, and it came with the set. It’d be a bitch to clean, but it’s not like she got many visitors.

The alarms were annoying. Kate associated them with limits and anxiety. The sooner she shut them off and called in sick the better. She gingerly lifted herself off the couch and put one foot in front of–

Crunch.

It all came flooding back.

“Oh… oh God… oh God…”

Kate looked down at her left foot. Red stuff was oozing out between her first two toes. Carefully, she lifted it up. Something which had spent the night caked against the pliable ball of her foot had been crushed into a stain in only a moment.

Kate pulled her rightmost foot up into her hand and examined the sole. The ball of the foot had a simple Rorschach of dried blood adhered to it. She sniffed, and she drank in the blood scent.

She did do that, didn’t she.

It wasn’t all a dream. She’d done it. It’d taken time. Weeks for the plan alone, and then another month to synthesize enough serum to shrink her without anyone at work noticing. She’d considered it, agonized over it, executed it. She’d murdered someone. Far and away from the prying eyes of civilization where nobody would ever know, she’d ripped a woman in half with a well-timed flex of her toes. And not just anyone. A friend. One of her closest online friends.

And she’d made her enjoy it.

Kate glanced toward the coffee table and almost winced at the corpse of… What was her name again? Kate stamped her foot and snapped her fingers.

“Antonia!”

That was it. Antonia.

Antonia’s upper torso was all that was left. Just beneath her navel, a mess of blood and organs spilled out into a bite-sized lake of viscera. Her body was pale. Kate didn’t precisely know for sure how long someone could live after being bisected, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Chances were Antonia had been dead for hours. And etched permanently into her face, from now until forever, was a smile of bliss. She’d died cumming. It was horrific as it was arousing, and it was enough to turn Kate on once again.

Kate took a long look down the hall to her room where her phone was impatiently awaiting her to turn off its buzzer. Where she’d be forced to scrape all sorts of sticky goos from her flesh and shamefully arrive at work several hours late before going back home too soon to even be of use to the company.

Or.

Or, Kate could use this. This experience. This fresh memory that even now would not stop playing and replaying over and over in her head. Use this, take the day off – the week off, if necessary. Hole herself up in her study, subsist on frozen meals and Postmates. Do nothing, nothing, nothing. But write, write, write. Write the best damn story she’s written in her entire life.

She could do it later. Clean up her tables later. Call in sick later. Melt Antonia’s suitcases later. Hell, she could even finish Catastrophic Catalina later. But now, Kate was already halfway down the hall, nonchalantly leaving reddish sticky footprints on her hardwood floors… before stopping. She turned back, returned to the coffee table, and she peeled Antonia’s upper body from its surface like a wax seal. The gaping wound had mostly congealed, but the body itself hadn’t totally drained out.

Kate brought Antonia up to her face and, with a bit of apprehension, tasted a bit of the red stuff beneath.

Kate had expected to be repulsed by the flavor… but it wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t even bad. It was… interesting. And it’d likely be more interesting if she’d been eaten fresh. For now, Antonia wasn’t worth devouring. She’d be put to better use as a muse. A moist paperweight. Whenever Kate was stumped on how the next segment of story should go, she could look at that blissful face. Imagine what she was thinking this time yesterday. Really imagine, imagine things from Antonia’s perspective. And the words would flow like honey and wine.

She was practically drafting the first page in her head. ‘Antonia’s car–’... no, that wouldn’t work. Can’t use that name. Too suspicious… Could change the gender? Nah, I couldn’t work like that. It needs to be a girl. Maybe… Portia… Miranda… Delilah? Delilah, maybe… ‘Delilah’s car pulled up in front of the storybook mansion…’ Would she be driving her own car? Oh, she said she wasn’t, right? Maybe an Uber, then…?

Kate slipped inside her writing study with an unexpected reverence. She was used to coming here as an escape, a place where she could sit, lounge, read, and venture into worlds of imagination when reality was overwhelming.

But this would be different. The text she planned here would have a holy significance. And even if her fans and readers wouldn’t truly know why, they’d know. Something was different this time. Kate would make them know. It was her duty. Responsibility. Someone died for this story to be written. The least she could do was make sure the story was good.

Kate dumped Antonia’s torso beside her monitor and slid into her rolling chair, still plotting. Uber… that should work.

Maybe… might even begin the story with dialogue. Antonia smirked. That would be fun…