Accepting the plea deal meant Dante wouldn’t have to suffer a drawn out trial, but his stomach churned at the rehabilitation method the district attorney had in mind. 

Despite their long history, prisons have been overwhelmingly unproductive at rehabilitating the criminals who pass through them. Desperate to find another method of deterring criminals from reoffending, the government introduced the Retribution Program, which put a criminal’s punishment completely in the hands of a single retributioner.

Dante’s retributioner was supposed to arrive in their correction room 5 minutes ago. The convict's decreased size was causing him to grow cold on the metal table. Retributioners had the power to, among other things, control the sizes of others. Dante’s had decided to start him at the modest size of 3 inches, a tactic surely meant to intimidate him. 

The Retribution Program was like another form of corporal punishment. At first, there was a massive push to end corporal punishment as its “too cruel” nature often left people jaded and increased the odds they’d reoffend. After a series of studies published by the Retribution Program, it turned out corporal punishment didn’t work because it wasn’t cruel enough. Just being shrunk made things for Dante 10 times more humiliating, hurtful and demeaning. And that often wasn’t the worst part. 

Before, you could beat a guy within an inch of his life to teach him a lesson, but the punishment had to stop there. With new retributioner technology, a retributioner can heal any wounds they inflict on their victims, meaning they can be beaten over and over again to get the message across. Not only that, but retributioners can control other aspects of a person such as their senses and perception of time which could make mere minutes feel like hours. 

Dante was only found guilty of a small felony— unarmed robbery of a gas station— so he hoped his punishment would be minimal. Maybe a few flicks to the head, toss around in the air, enough to scare him from ever committing another crime again. 

Worse things have happened to people who committed more serious crimes. Dante heard tales of murders having their bodies slowly dissected with a tiny scalpel, forced to watch as the retributioner pulled out their guts with a tweezer and munched it between their teeth. Another story had a rapist be shrunk down to the size of a doll, becoming a fleshlight for the retributioner to use over and over again as a sex toy to pump loads of cum into. In some specially cruel cases, such as child abduction, retirbutioners have been allowed to take their convicts to their home for an upward of a month to be their personal slaves, toys, or pets.  Some of these criminals have even gone “missing” after their retribution sessions, and others never came back the same.  

Time continued to tick away. Dante’s session was only supposed to be an hour, would they grow him back if the retributioner didn’t show? On his way in, he saw a scarily large man sharpening a blade. Was that the guy who was going to torture Dante? Was he taking so long because he was taking his time preparing his tools for torture?

The larger than life surroundings only added to Dante’s anxiety. His tiny body sat cross legged on the metal table tucked neatly in the corner of an otherwise empty room. Nothing else sat between the plain walls. What kind of torture did his retributioner have in mind?

Dante shook as the large metal door on the other side of the room swung open. To his relief, the big guy from outside didn’t walk in. Instead, a petite woman did. She had flowing brunette hair that came down just below her shoulders, and wore a white buttoned up shirt accompanied by a pink waistcoat and skirt. Her heels clinked against the ground as she approached the table Dante sat on. As she got closer, Dante noticed her smooth features and tight frame. 

“Good evening Mr. Sullivan. I’m Susie, your retributioner.” She dropped a case file on the table next to Dante, a gust of wind pushing from under it that almost knocked Dante over. “I’ve read over your case file; petty theft won’t mean too much punishment for you. We should have gone in 20, 30 minutes? Not much force will be used in your case, I believe breaking your bones a few times, maybe a little crushing, should straighten you out. Any questions before we begin?”

“Um, yes.” Dante furrowed his brows. “Just how old are you? You look a little young to work here.”

“I hardly think my age matters, Mr. Sullivan.” The girl snarked. “But if you’re so keen, I’m 19.” 

“19?” questioned Dante. He himself was 35 years old, an entire 16 years older than she was. “I’ll be damned if I get punished by some child nearly half my age. Get out of here and find somebody who actually knows what they’re doing. I can’t even believe they hired you.” 

It might’ve been better to have someone more dainty to punish him, as it might not be as harsh, but Dante would crumble under this kind of humiliation. He refused to be toppled by someone barely out of high school.

Susie’s gigantic hands pressed on the table on either side of Dante. As she peered over the tiny man, Dante realized just how small he was compared to her. Her shadow dwarfed him, and the length of her pink painted nails reached up to his chest where he sat. They looked so sharp, like they could cut him if they wanted. He’d never felt so powerless compared to somebody so young.

“Actually, I don’t work here. But I’m a college student on an internship, so I can’t exactly leave either. My bosses have given me a task, and I intend to complete it.”

“An internship?” Dante jumped up, showing a little too much courage for someone who was completely at the mercy of this giant. “Do you even know what you’re doing? You could really hurt me—”

A swift flick was delivered to the tiny man’s head. He fell hard on his back, the back of his hand slamming against the metal beneath him. His head roared in pain, and there was blood gushing out of a thick cut that now appeared across his forehead. He winced and groaned, his vision blurring. 

“Of course I know what I’m doing. You should be a little more cautious about what you say to somebody whose job it is to literally torture you.” She raised her hand high above Dante and slammed it down. It crashed right next to him, a giant boom coming from the table. It banged around Dante’s eardrums, rupturing them and causing them to bleed. 

“You know, even though you’re only in here for a small crime, it’s still considered a felony, which gives your retributioner full authority over what to do to you.” The giant’s words were hard to hear, given that Dante’s ears were still ringing. He felt her giant fingertip press on top of his chest. The smooth and cold finger tip pulled him forward. Dan panicked, turning over and clawing at the desk below. 

The giant raised her finger. “Poor bug person, you’re in for a world of hell now.” There was another loud bang next to Dante. His body shook, fear paralyzing him as he laid there on the table. “Come on now, don’t be shy little man. See what’s next to you.”

Ignoring her demands would only make things worse. She wasn’t asking him to do anything too degrading, right? All he had to do was open his eyes. 

As he did, he turned to the source of the bang, brushing his cheek against the blood that was leaking onto the table from his head. At first, Dante only saw a tan wall in front of him, a color not too off from the walls surrounding him. But as the object came into vision, he noticed that Susie had just put her right heeled foot beside him on the table. Following the foot down the leg, Dante could see the retributionist’s panties, and he briefly wondered if it was wrong to be looking up the skirt of such a young girl. 

As if to answer him, Susie flicked her for to the left. It was a small action, but the plastic heel hit Dante so hard it shattered his nose and fractured his jaw.  “You should know better than to perv on someone who, from your standards, is too young for you.” 

Dante slid across the table, his body erupting in pain from the impact. Blood dripped from his nose as he came to a halt just at the table’s edge. His entire face ached, screaming at him to fix what the woman broke. But he doubted Susie would let him heal anytime soon. 

Rolling over on his stomach so he didn’t fall off the edge, Dante used the new position to cough up the blood filling his cheek. He took in sharp breaths, his lungs feeling tight. The ringing in his ears had only gotten worse, but he could still make out the sound of something slushing its way towards him. Then something hard smacked against the back of his head, slamming it down into the puddle of blood he just coughed up.

Susie pressed her heel onto the back of the tiny man’s head, showing great restraint now to squish him there. “It’s impolite to get blood all over somebody else’s desk, you know. I have half a mind to make you clean that yourself.”

“Go to hell!” Dante yelled. Susie responded swiftly, pressing her heel hard into the back of his head.

“Come on now, how are you going to reform with such a bad attitude?” Her heel was crushing him, his head was pressed into the blood soaked desk beneath him. His head screamed with the sounds of his skull cracking in his head. Dante squirmed and threw punches, but nothing helped. In fact, it only made Susie angrier, her heel weighing even harder on his skull. 

“You better not be getting blood all over these heels, either. I won’t be happy if you do.” Susie twisted her heel side to side as if she were grinding Dante’s already deformed face onto the sidewalk. His bones were chizziling, and his head was acting as a paint brush for the blood gushing out of the large cracks in his head. His skin was splitting, tearing apart as bones poked out of them, displaced by the pressure. “You are getting blood on them! You’re going to have to clean them before I let you go.”

Dante felt the heel lift off of him. He screamed, but his screams were muffled as his head was glued to the desk. His face burned like it was on fire. Did Susie know how much pain that caused him? If she did, would she have cared? 

Before he could find answers, there was a tug at his leg, and he felt himself being pulled from the table. Pieces of his skin stayed attached to the table, ripping apart from him as he was whisked high up in the air. Dante was glad he couldn’t see himself, he was worried that he hadn’t any skin left on his face.

Susie’s young face swung in front of him as he dangled from her fingers. She looked so apathetic, like seeing his mangled face was normal. “You’ve got some dirt left on you.” she said, “Here, let me get that for you.” She sucked in a mouth full of air, and then blew it all over Dante. A giant gust of hot wind that smelled like a tuna sandwich blew Dante’s body back. Susie tightened her grip around Dante’s ankle, making sure his body didn’t slip out of it as the wind assaulted him. His cuts burned, and the rest of his body was heating up from the breath. Dante’s body still swung in the air as the blowing stopped, and Susie’s white smile taunted him.

“That’s better, shame it didn’t fix the face though.” Susie looked like she held back laughter, but she was doing a bad job at it. Then, adding insult to injury, she said, “I think I like it better this way though, it better reflects what an awful person you are on the inside.” 

Even though Dante half expected she was only saying this to further torment him, it stung nonetheless. He had never felt more powerless like this in his life. No story he heard ever encapsulated just how terrible it was to have your head flattened by a heel, or have a giant blow hot air over your unrecognizable body. If they had, nobody would ever commit another crime again. Looking down at the ground, Dante hoped Susie would drop him and end his misery.

And he got his wish. Susie’s fingers released his ankle and sent him spiraling towards the floor. Air entered and escaped his lungs without his control and he spun and lost all his senses. He was moving so fast he couldn’t make out the floor from the ceiling. Colors blended and swirled, but he was able to distinguish the floor better as he got closer to the tiles. This was it, he was going to die and be spared from this hell. His last thought was of his dog. He’d never know what happened to him.

Then his head connected with the ground. Time seemed to slow. He felt his head split open, his skull bursting slowly. Each chip sent intense pain pulsing through his body as the crack in his skull expanded. He felt his brain being squished in his head, some of it seeking through the cracks in its prison. Before his eyes exploded, he could see the tiles turning red and pink with white dust sprinkled on top. His tongue shot out of his mouth as his throat collapsed, decapitating it. 

At the same time he felt his chest shatter, and his knees pop out and twist the wrong way. His arms too were flattening against the ground. He felt as they turned to a goo, and bones disintegrating or straight up flying away from his body. Why was he still conscious throughout all of this, and why was it all happening as if in slow motion? He had fallen so fast, but it felt like an entire minute had passed as he was flattening against the floor. His skin melded with the ground, folding on itself and expanding. Blood flowed out like a waterfall, but it happened slowly. Was this the retribution's power to control time at work? Was she doing this to him on purpose? This all hurt too much, but it didn’t matter. Dying was too slow, but at least it would be over soon. He wouldn’t have to suffer Susie’s torture any more. He would be released. 

And then everything happened in reverse. It was like his body was slowly putting itself back together, and it didn’t feel good. Having his bones put themselves back together after having them reduced to dust was like having somebody drill into his tooth, except instead of it just being one tooth or even all the teeth in your mouth, it’s every bone, joint, muscle, nerve, skin, and organ in his entire body. His skull was the last to seal itself, and after it did, he screamed for all it was worth. The physical pain had vanished, but the mental effects still lingered. Dante clawed away at his head with his finger nails. He wanted it gone. He didn’t want to feel anything ever again. He cried. He didn’t want to live.

Susie’s giant bare foot hovered over him, now free from her heel. Her big toe, which was a little bigger than his head, pressed down on Dante’s body. Dante screamed into the sweaty toe, but the smell and pressure Susie was putting on his head shut him up after a while. “I didn’t heal your wounds so you could cry like a bitch at it.” She pressed down harder on him, sweat dripping onto Dante’s face. It drenched him, seeping into his eyelids and burning his eyes. 

Susie must’ve healed him within the same second he crashed against the floor, using her powers to make him experience in slower time, and then healed him before he passed away. How often was she willing to do that— squash him and then pull him back right on the brink of death? It was at that moment he realized her giant big toe was pressing down harder on his face. She was already pressing down so hard on him that his newly fixed nose threatened to break again. Was she going to crush him again? He couldn’t go through that experience again. He couldn’t… 

With his nose fixed, Dante got a strong whiff of Susie’s foot odor. It was awful, worse than any scent emanating from any foot he had the displeasure of smelling at normal size. What he was experiencing was a full on frontal assault on his nose. It tickled his insides as it wrapped around his brain. The smell radiating off her foot was so nauseating that Dante started to cough, much to Susie’s dismay.

“What, is that too much for the poor wittle baby?” She mocked in a fake baby voice. “I can’t have you lick my feet clean if you can’t stand the smell. Maybe if I crank the smell up a bit, you’ll get used to it faster.” Seemingly out of nowhere, the already overwhelming smell of Susie’s big toe became unbearable. Dante could feel his nose be overloaded with, rubbed against, and assaulted by the smell. To make matters worse, Susie rubbed her big toe ferociously into his face, smudging it harshly into the holes of his nose. 

The toe skin pinched his lips shut, making his nose the only source to consume air being his nose. Dante tried focusing on something else—anything else— to take his attention off the smell. He dragged his fingers against the tile, looked out of the corner of his eye for a wall, but nothing he tried to do could take his mind off the profuse stench. And all this wasn’t to mention the immense amount of sweat dripping from her toe’s pores. If Susie hadn’t been pressing so tightly down on him, Dante might’ve been able to slip out. 

Dante couldn’t help but think of how unfair it was that she was torturing him like this. Retributioners were supposed to use weapons, not their feet, to torture convicts. And they weren’t supposed to be interns, either. If this was only the start, Dante was terrified over what she had in store for him next. 

“Had enough yet.” Susie removed her giant toe off Dante’s face. Cold air rushed over him, covering his body and oddly, heating it up. He could move his body now, but it hurt to do so. Picking his head up, Dante noticed the pool of sweat surrounding him on the floor.

“I haven’t even been through that door for 10 minutes yet, you know?” Susie roared so much louder without her toe on top of him. Not even 10 minutes? He could have sworn he was under her foot for an hour at least, was she using her time powers again? Though his vision was blurry, Dante could make out the annoyance displayed on her face. She wasn’t seriously upset he was already worn out, was she? She had nearly killed him a number of times already, and did kill him once. 

“Well, sadly for you,” Susie continued, “there's still lots of fun to be had. You know I don’t have to respect the hour time limit, right? I bet you thought we were almost done, seeing I showed up so late. Maybe if you apologize for what you said earlier, I’ll go a little easier on you.”

“I’m not apologizing.” Dante said, coughing up sweat that was stuck in his mouth. “No women should be allowed to be a retributioner, let alone someone whose only 19. Retributioners aren’t supposed to use their feet, either, which proves you’re too young to know what you’re doing. This kind of torture isn’t humane.”

Susie didn’t respond right away. Instead, she shook her head disapprovingly. “The first step to showing you’re sorry for the crime you committed is showing a little respect for your fellow person.” The irony wasn’t lost on Dante, who had been treated like less than a person for what felt like two hours. “You belittled my skills just because of my age, and that wasn’t right.” 

“Respect is earned with age. Now get somebody in here who knows how to treat a convict who hasn’t been charged with a serious crime!” 

Dante winced, expecting Susie to react harshly to this, but all she did was shake her head again. “Tsk Tsk Tsk, you’re gonna need a lot more work.” Susie raised her foot high in the air. Dante flinched, raising his hands up to protect himself for when she slammed it down on him. 

Something told Dante his torture was far from over.