Hello! My name is Grant, and I’ll be your sample shrinker!

Ugh. No real human actually talks like that. I suppose it’s fitting that I’m saying it, then, seeing as how I’m not a real human.

Let’s back up.

I’m Grant, and up until about four-ish months ago, I was a normal human. Very normal. A college student with decent grades, a shitty part-time job, a shittier apartment, yada yada. Life was boring, but it made sense. I miss those days.

It all happened one late night after a shift at the aforementioned shitty temp job. I was walking back to my building in need of some well-earned sleep when a woman ahead of me crossed to my side of the street. I found this odd, but I did what I always did when I wanted to avoid potentially awkward conversation with a stranger: I pulled out my phone and pretended that I was on a call. “Yeah, Jeremy said he’d send me the file, but he hasn’t reached out quite yet,” or whatever the fuck. Anything boring enough to make anybody listening lose interest and pass me by. The strategy was simple, but it hadn’t failed me yet.

Well, I guess all our luck runs out eventually.

The woman was staring me down. I tried to look anywhere else, to avoid any sort of eye contact, but her gaze was pretty captivating. It was like she had my eyes locked in a tractor beam. Apparently forced to look at her, I couldn’t deny that she was beautiful. Way too beautiful for this crummy part of town, or perhaps I was just a sucker for red lipstick.

Was she eyeing me down for any particular reason? Was I about to get mugged? Was I about to get lucky? My mind raced with any and all potential outcomes. I was a twenty-one year old virgin, so I was immediately caught up in sexual fantasies. Maybe this night wouldn’t be so bad after all, despite my exhaustion. Maybe I could take her back to my place and show her my… mattress. Yeah, dude. Girls love to hang out with guys who can’t afford beds.

We finally met in the middle of the sidewalk. When she was in earshot, I mustered my courage and spoke up.

“Hey, I saw th–”

My feet immediately flew out from under me and I landed flat on my ass against the concrete. I thought that would surely be the most disorienting part of the experience… right until I opened my eyes. The sidewalk, now concerningly close to my face, stretched out to infinity before me. I looked up and saw that the tree whose branches I had just been dodging was now a skyscraper’s height above me. I finally began to comprehend my surroundings in the dim light when my vision went red. I thought that I had gone blind until the accompanying shockwave hit me and I wound up sprawled out on my back again. What the hell was going on?

I gazed at the shiny red wall before me and traced it up to the heavens. My shellshocked mind had just barely conjured up the word “shoe” when everything went black.

In the days that followed, the whirlwind of information heaped upon me nearly made me puke. Basically, I had been shrunk–or as I was instructed to call it, “miniaturized”–on that fateful night by a woman called a “recruiter.” I learned that I was now roughly the height of a tube of chapstick. And, according to some nifty legislation my normal-sized self had only halfway heard about, “shrinkers” like myself were not recognized as humans because our brains were “too small for cognitive thought,” or something along those lines. It was complete and utter bullshit, but nobody asked any of our opinions on the matter. I was now unceremoniously an employee of Servitude Enterprises, a brand new company that specialized in the selling and exchanging of miniaturized people such as myself. If you’re thinking that the concept of selling people sounds a little like slavery, you’d be in good company.

Funnily enough, I had actually heard of Servitude Enterprises once before my unwilling employment.

About a week or so after the main size law had passed, some girls were at the local coffee shop I frequented for studying. I think that their goal had been to stay quiet and discreet. This task had been failed miserably.

Their invasive talking (and even more invasive shushing) had compelled me to leave. But when I passed their table on the way out, I had caught some interesting snippets of conversation.

“...yeah, anything I want.”

“Anything?”

“Literally anything. I made her give me a pedicure last night.”

“Where did she even come from?”

“I bought her off the internet. I guess they’re super new.”

“She’s, like, barely even a person.”

“Does she talk?”

“She had the cutest fucking introduction speech ever. You could tell she was super nervous–”

“Knowing you, I would be, too.”

“Shut up!”

“Where can I get one?”

“I dunno, it was some company called ‘Servants Incorporated’ or something…”

I hadn’t even glanced over, but I was pretty easily able to infer exactly what had been going on. I remembered thinking about how badly that shrunken girl’s life must’ve been now, but at least it hadn’t been me on that table. There but for the grace of God I go, I guess. Who doesn’t love some good old-fashioned irony?

I’m very lucky. That’s what the woman said when she was telling me about my “job.” Most shrinkers go into full servitude (ha), but I was lucky. I was a sample shrinker.

Basically, when somebody expressed interest in owning a shrinker, they could pay a modest fee and get someone like me for a week before they committed to a full-time arrangement. I was a try-before-you-buy guy. Something to entice you into paying whatever exorbitant fee Servitude Enterprises was charging for someone more permanent. The giant woman’s explanation gave me the creeps, but (and I hated admitting this to myself) she was right. In my eyes, it was way better to be stuck with some giant owner for a week than for a lifetime. Also, as menial as it felt, I had some mild protections not awarded to other shrinkers. If some clumsy giant stomped on a shrinker that they had purchased for life, it was their own property they were destroying. The laws said that it wasn’t murder because shrinkers weren’t people. However, I was still owned by Servitude, so if I was lost, killed, or “injured beyond expected wear-and-tear,” there’d be a lofty fine involved for my owner. And as per the contract each giant had to sign at the beginning of the process, those who couldn’t pay the fine became indentured to Servitude as well. That’s right: they’d be shrunk down just like me. It’d serve them right, in my opinion.

What was my incentive to perform well during the trial periods of these uncaring giants? I’m so glad you asked. At the week’s end, each owner would fill out a performance review. Too many demerits and Servitude would “retire” me. Some fellow shrinkers I met told me that they’d heard retired people had been dissolved in acid, fed to pets, or just straight-up squashed like bugs. I used to be a fucking film major.

So, that’s been my life for the past few months. I’m woken up by some massive woman lumbering around our “barracks” (floors of tiny cots stacked atop each other, much like an open-air filing cabinet). There are about a hundred-fifty of us sample shrinkers at this facility (one of many, apparently), but we aren’t exactly given time to fraternize. Still, a handful of us on the same barrack floor are friendly. The giant person who has brought me from my blissful sleep tells me to get dressed in my uniform and report to the assignment room, which means hopping onto this tiny monoral thing that takes us from room-to-room (because crossing just the hallway would take us hours, and there was less chance of us getting crushed underfoot while riding on a tram). The stern-faced giant woman at my destination gives me a basic description of the week’s upcoming giant before sealing me away in our special transport packaging and sending me (by way of a fucking drone, like I’m an Amazon package) to my new temporary home. The future is now, old man: we can finally ship people through the mail.

I was woefully unprepared for my first job. I had been told very little about what these shrinkers were actually expected to do, so I had pictured myself being placed in some terrarium on some bookshelf like an exotic pet. I was anticipating an excruciatingly boring week in some nerdy kid’s bedroom.

The week was many things. “Boring” was not one of them.

I was slid out of my box (like a fucking action figure) and initally hit with the smell of a strong fruity shampoo. It was so overbearing and artificial that my eyes instantly began to water, though the sudden translation from darkness to blinding light certainly aided in that. Once my eyes had adjusted to this new environment, I blearily stared directly into the face of a twenty-something year old girl with strawberry-colored hair. She was wearing a barista uniform for some chain breakfast place, and she was (to put it simply) incredibly hot. There’s no way in hell I would’ve had a chance with her at my normal height, so I wasn’t attracted to her romantically nearly as much as I was biologically. (Basically, my dick led the charge instead of my heart.) As apprehensive I was about the whole situation, her looks and her fairly warm smile gave me a small measure of comfort. She looked kind enough, and in a very small way (ha-ha), I almost felt like I could trust her. Of course, I might’ve just been feeling woozy from the overwhelming smell of her hair product.

She set me down on her desk in what I gathered was her bedroom. She sat in a chair and scanned my tiny self with her eyes for a while before finally asking, “Do you have a name?”

I opened my mouth to respond and then remembered the words I was supposed to recite. “Hello, my, uh, my name is Grant, and I’ll–I’ll be your sample shrinker.” I gave that delivery a 7/10 in the moment, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Wow, you talk like a normal person!”

“Well, I am a nor–”

“How strong are you?”

I hadn’t been expecting a question like that. It took me a second to come up with an answer, but after a moment, I gave her a small shrug.

“Like, you know some ants can lift, like, a hundred times their body weight? Can you do that?”

I thought about this. “I, uh, probably not, but I’m–”

She pointed to my left. “Try to pick up that pencil.” Following her gaze, I looked to the other side of her desk and saw a wooden pencil laying atop a sheet of notebook paper. Who still uses wooden pencils?

As I approached it, I could smell the familiar scent of processed wood and rubber that took me back to my high school days. My full-sized days. Ugh.

I tried to think of the best way to approach this tricky task. The pencil reached up to the top of my calves, so I decided to get my hands underneath and lift it. On all fours, I shoved it forward a bit with my shoulder and ran my hands along its bumpy, waxy surface. Slowly, I managed to get into a crouching position and curled the pencil like my life depended on it. I had never been much of a gym rat in my big days, so this was the greatest workout I had ever received. I turned my head to look at her as I strained. She watched intently, still sizing me up. I managed to barely lift the entire pencil into the air before one of my arms dipped and I lost my delicate balance. The pencil fell to the desk with a loud clatter (or, at least, loud to me), just barely missing my shoes. The humiliating fact that a task like lifting a fucking pencil was a feat of strength wasn’t lost on me, but I was nevertheless feeling fairly proud of myself as I walked back in front of my giant owner. I even gave an exhausted little bow as I caught my breath. I looked up into her massive face, waiting for her to burst into applause or something.

Instead, she leaned back in her chair, running her hands down her body until they disappeared out of my view below the desk. I heard some shuffling, and then, “Great! I just got off of a double-shift and my feet are killing me.” With that, she swung her leg up and dropped a giant heel onto the desk before me. “Massage them?”

I stepped back, trying to fathom the sight. Before me were two incomprehensibly massive bare feet, one crossed atop the other. Her toes were so high above me that I could barely see them. From my up-close and personal view, I could see that her soles were reddened where she had been standing. The outsides and balls of her feet looked to be the most worn out. A cursory glance granted me the fact that they were sweaty by the way that small bits of black sock lint stuck to them. Her toes were too far away to see, but I was certain the sock lint would be the most concentrated there.

Someone into this sort of thing would’ve found her feet shapely. It was clear even to me that they were well-kept and recently pedicured. From my position, though, I was positively nauseated by their size.

Speaking of nausea, only after my eyes took in the experience did my nose. Coming to my senses, I was suddenly assaulted with an olfactory experience like I had never faced before. The overwhelming scent of her feet after a long shift hung so thick in the air that I swore I could see it, a misty haze that danced and swirled off her mighty soles like we were in a cartoon. I would’ve given anything to go back to smelling her artificial shampoo.

As I stood there uselessly, fighting back involuntary, smell-induced tears, she parted her feet to look at me through them. “Hey. Tiny guy. Massage.”

I nearly burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. What the hell sort of massage was she expecting from me? I barely reached the top of her heel! Slowly, I fought my better judgment and approached her uncomfortably warm soles. The smell only intensified as I neared her monolithic feet, but against all that was holy I placed my tiny hands against her left sole. I could feel the subtle grooves of her heel, and though it wasn’t slick with sweat, it was damp and sticky. I didn’t really know how to give a foot massage at my ordinary height, let alone at my current stature. I decided on the strategy of attacking as much surface area as possible, so I ran my hands up her foot as high as I could reach (maybe a third of the way up her sole) and pressed them into her skin. She felt my touch and scrunched her toes over me, creating unexpected wrinkles across her sole and showering down ordinarily microscopic bits of sock lint atop my head. I added a long, long shower to my bucket list, but I shook it off and continued pressing into her massive foot. Her smell had become a little more familiar to me, but no more manageable for my poor, overworked nose.

In the back of my exhausted mind, I had the strange knowledge that she wasn’t being cruel to me. As completely unpleasant as this was, she wasn’t making me give her an ineffective massage to torture me. I was simply a tool to her; a living, breathing utility. The thought almost made me wish that she had chosen cruelty instead.

Attempting to do my best (despite my already weary state), I gave my task all the effort I had. Her flesh was spongy, so I really had to push against her sole for her to feel anything. Her reactions to my touch were rare.

After maybe fourteen years, she decided that I was done with the lower part of her feet. Wordlessly, she pulled away from me and then set her foot flat on the desk. I watched as it fell, this monolith that could easily splatter me if I found myself beneath it. When her sole finally landed on the surface of the desk, it nearly shook me to the ground.

I jumped a bit when she spoke again, cutting the silence in the room. “You see all that shit between my toes? Could’ya pull all that out for me?” With that, she spread her toes apart to give me a better look.

Indeed, she was correct; there was a ton of black sock lint between her toes, adhered to her skin by sticky sweat. I gagged for the umpteenth time today as she beckoned me closer to her mighty digits. A more cognizant me would have stayed as far away as possible, so I developed a theory that her scent was interrupting my brain processes.

I walked between the first and second toes on her right foot, which were level with my hips. I looked across the vast surface of the top of her foot. My eyes eventually landed on her face. She was unsurprisingly lost in her phone again, barely regarding me as a person in the room. But I reminded myself that I wasn’t a person. Not to her.

I leaned down and pulled a clump of the damp, fuzzy stuff from a crevice in the gap between her toes. It was matted down with her sweat and I wondered how long it had been stuck there. An hour? A day? Longer? I knew that my sensory perception was a bit skewed at my size and location, but you could’ve convinced me that she hadn’t showered in three weeks.

After a few tries simply leaning to collect her foot gunk, my thoroughly-exercised back began aching. Against all that was pure and holy in this world, I dropped to my knees. There I was, literally kneeling at the mighty feet of this 20-something goddess, pulling toe jam out of her expansive toes. I wanted to die right there. Damn the forthcoming performance review, I’d take being dissolved in acid right now over this experience. But the feeling passed and my better judgment kicked in despite me. So I continued.

At one point in this process, the unthinkable happened: I leaned too far forward and fell face-first in between the second and middle toes of her left foot. My nose and mouth were pressed against her sticky skin, causing obvious panic. But as wildly, impossibly terrible as this sudden experience was, it paled in comparison to what happened immediately after: she crushed me.

Not fatally, of course. My faceplant had apparently tickled her toes and she reflectively curled them, burying me even deeper into her sticky, reeking flesh. I was effectively frenching the space between her toes with absolutely no chance of escape, praying to deities I had never believed in that she’d accidentally put me out of my misery (though what an embarrassing story for the pearly gates). Finally, she looked down and saw me there, breathlessly trapped in her vice grip. Rather than freeing me, though, she lifted her foot into the air and took my tiny body with it.

“Aww, cute! Even my little toes can immobilize you!”

Even with my face buried deep in her toes, I couldn’t help but feel grateful to her when she lowered her foot back down and spread her toes to free me. I tumbled back onto the desk, deeply breathing tainted air.

“Worn out, shrinky-dink?” She lifted each of her feet to her face and inspected them. “Yeah, alright, good enough. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to improve your craft this week!”

I hate to admit it, but my “craft” did improve. Over the arduous course of the week, I became much better at cleaning and pampering monolithic feet. I yanked away dead skin, I filed coarse bits, I even did a little toenail painting. Am I proud to now possess these skills? Of course not. But am I glad to have them? Well, when a well-pampered foot is the difference between a crumb and a whole chunk of meat for dinner, you want to be as capable as possible.

That was only the start of this journey. This girl (who only told me that her name was Sophia after four days of servitude) was one of the kinder ones. Even thinking about some of what came next makes me shiver.

But everything changed when I met Anna.