“Oh, goodness… I think it got into my shoes...” Ruth muttered as she slid into the front door. A burst of winterized air followed, and she was quick to slam it shut behind her. She shook off the excess snow that had gathered in the crevices of her polyester coat and took off her boots, leaving them in a heap next to the floor. The snow had been a limiting factor to the speeds of her commute these past few weeks, and with the shorter winter days that meant time at home was at an all-time low. But soon, that would change. A much-needed vacation was on the horizon, for just the two of them.

 “Ayesha! I’m home!”

Ruth hung up her coat and shrugged. Even amongst her teenaged kin, Ayesha was renowned for her ability to stay in her room for upwards of double-digit hour-long stretches of time. It wasn’t much concern to Ruth if she told Ayesha her plans for the two of them now or at dinner later, though she did wish that Ayesha lightened up every once in a while. Their relationship had never been negative, but though Ruth tried to give Ayesha everything she desired in both love and material goods, it seemed their mother-daughter connection just wasn’t complete.

Ruth entered the kitchen to begin food preparations. She’d been rummaging in the fridge for almost a full minute by the time she realized her daughter had been sitting at the kitchen table all this time. Ruth almost jumped.

“Oh!” Ruth caught her breath. “You didn’t hear me calling you?”

Ayesha had a vacant look on her face as she glared sideways at her mother. Her hands were spread flat on the tabletop, deep brown fingers almost invisible except for where they intersected with a white document. “Report card,” Ayesha mumbled.

“Report card…” This was never good. Ruth sat down across from her daughter and pulled the paper from Ayesha. Her brow furrowed more and more as she read. “This… this isn’t good, Ayesha.”

“Mm-mm.”

Ruth put her head in her hands. “I mean, this is really not good. This is not good enough for you to continue attending this school. You realize that?”

Ayesha nodded.

“Christ… after the tutoring, the Khan Academy lessons, the PTA meetings… you’re getting a D in English. I thought you liked English! I just… I just don’t know what to do with you…”

“Maybe… maybe I do,” Ayesha said in a low, low voice. Ruth looked up from the report card. Her daughter had her hands clasped together on the table, constantly shifting like she was molding a blob of clay. “Maybe… there’s nothing for me in school.”

“What, so you want to drop out?”

“No… yes? Maybe.”

Ruth sighed. “Ayesha, please. You’re only in 8th grade… plenty of time to –”

“Not a good student, I don’t have any skills, I’m not old enough to work. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, Mom. And I’m realizing, there’s just… nothing for me to do. No way to be useful to anyone. Nobody.”

Ruth eyed Ayesha. She was looking in her daughter’s face, trying to glean the exact purpose of what she was saying. Ayesha had trained herself over many years to mask her expressions and retreat to her solitude, but typically Ruth could always break through these gazes in the way only a mother could. This time, however, seemed more inscrutable than most.

“Ayesha. Are you having any trouble I should know about? Are you okay?”

Ayesha nodded. “I’m okay. Better than okay, in fact. Because I found… this.”

Ayesha opened her hands. Within, she held what looked like a key fob with one large, circular button on it.

“Whaaat is that?” Ruth dragged out the question skeptically.

“I bought it from offline. It’s a shrinking device. With this you can shrink anyone or anything. And Mom? I think I want you to shrink me. I want you to shrink me down and keep me for the rest of my life to do what you want with me.”

Ruth’s head was going in a thousand different directions at once. There were a few very huge problems with this, the first and largest of which being that her daughter actually believed that there were items capable of shrinking people? Maybe she was right about not being the brightest bulb.

But accepting that premise, there was also the absurdity associated with the fact that she wanted to be owned by her own mother. “What… what exactly are you saying? You want me to, ah, um, shrink you? With…” She batted a pinky finger to the device on the table.

“I know, it sounds weird. But I promise, I’ve thought hard about this. I’ve even been talking to some friends and they think it’s a good idea too! I got this from a third market seller, I think somewhere from Korea? I haven’t tried it since it’s just one use and I don’t want to waste it. That is why…” Ayesha reached out to her mother, taking her hand. She placed the fob inside her mom’s palm. “I want you to be the one to do it. To shrink me.”

“Well… Ayesha, this is just… this is quite ridiculous.” Ruth looked at the little device, turning it in her hands. It was warm to the touch, though whether that was from the heat of Ayesha’s hands or from the internal mechanisms of it was unclear. “So, you’re saying if I push this button you’re going to shrink? Why would you even want me to shrink you?”

Ayesha looked pained. “You’ve been good to me, Mom. Always. I see what you do every day, and I can’t even imagine how a… a screwup like me could’ve come from someone as pretty as you. I want to give you back for everything you’ve done for me. I want to give everything to you.”

Ruth was aghast. She was flattered, surely. Ayesha’s declaration seemed quite earnest to her, but still… something about it just seemed off. It was clear Ayesha’s inferiority complex ran deeper than expected. Perhaps therapy might be in order for her.

“Ayesha. I’m not going to shrink you. Besides, you really think this… this thing from Ali Express really has the technology to do that?”

Ayesha shrugged. “If you’re so sure it won’t work, is there any harm in trying?” She tugged at her mother’s sweater. “Please, Mom. I really, really want this. Please?”

Ruth narrowed her eyes. She looked back at the fob in her hands. It didn’t seem too hard… the button was huge, but it needed a good push. The device was shaped like a teardrop, and there were two prongs at the taper. It seemed as though that were the part that would do the hypothetical shrinking.

Ruth sighed, and she pointed the fob. Ayesha’s face illuminated, and she closed her eyes with reverence, preparing for her diminishment.

It’s not like this will even work… right?

Ruth pressed the button.

***

Ruth was in shock.

In no time at all, her own daughter seemed to disappear before her very eyes.

“A…Ayesha? Ayesha?!” She ejected from her chair, backing away, tossing aside the smoking fob as it crumpled to a husk. “Where did you go? Wh-where are you? Ayesha?!” Ruth had her back up against the kitchen wall, but despite her terror she stopped short of actually leaving the room. Her daughter had to be in here somewhere. Ruth gulped, and she swallowed her flight instinct. She had to get her daughter.

Carefully, she began to tiptoe forth. She was approaching the table at a snail’s pace and looking at the floor at every step. Even then, there was no way that thing really shrunk her. It had to have been a complex magic trick… or something. It couldn’t be real, could it?

“Mom!!”

A full-belt scream, strangely quiet. And it came from below, just as Ruth prepared to take another step. She wavered on one foot, steadied herself, and looked down. There, just past her dangling toes, stood Ayesha at barely an inch tall. By total accident, Ruth had come nanometers away from stomping her own daughter flat beneath her foot.

“Ayesha!” Ruth crouched, she reached down and scooped up her daughter in her motherly hands, wanting to cry, wanting to apologize, wanting to tell her how sorry she was. Even through Ayesha’s cries of terrified pain and… laughter? What was that?

“Mom, it worked! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!” was the reply. There was nothing forced about it. In fact, it was the most genuine exclamation from Ayesha that Ruth had heard in years. Against all odds she was happy! For once.

Ruth opened her hands and examined her daughter, who sprouted up like a sunflower, waving her arms in ecstasy. “I’m so thankful it worked…”

Ruth, on the other hand, was deeply disturbed. Even though she was witnessing her daughter’s happiness, the fact remained it was the result of this very strange, improbable situation. She was trying very hard to not freak out right now, for Ayesha’s sake and her own. “Ayesha honey, this just… I don’t know if I can support this. You’re still so young… there’s more for you now than to just be… Ayesha? Are you okay?!”

Suddenly, within Ruth’s hand, Ayesha seemed struck by a sudden pain. She collapsed within Ruth’s hand. “Down,” she squeaked. “Put me down!”

Ruth acquiesced, and she spilled Ayesha out onto the tabletop. But she still squirmed and called out, “No, no! Not here. Down!”

“Down?” repeated Ruth. “Like, back to the… the floor?”

“Mm hmm!”

Ruth looked down at the recently swept floor. It’d been cleared of most crumbs and food waste, but there were still some traces of dirt and dust. Ruth was uncertain about putting her daughter in her way now that she towered over her many hundreds of times, but Ayesha was insistent. Ruth cupped her daughter into her hands once more and crouched, opening her fingers to allow the young girl freedom once again.

Ayesha stumbled as she attempted to descend her mom’s sloping fingers. On her hands and feet in a sort of crab-walk, she deftly reached out her foot, each toe of hers the size of a grain of coarse sand to the magnified Ruth. Ayesha shuddered as she touched the floor, cold in the winter. Her other foot hit the floor, and now Ayesha was fully deposited. The teen girl stood up, stretched, and turned to her mother.

Ruth was pulling her hand back and placing it on her knees to help stabilize her squat. The last thing she wanted here was to somehow trip onto Ayesha. Here she could scrutinize her, peer down at her, examine her behavior, make sure she was okay.

Ayesha, however, was more than okay. She was almost jumping for joy down there. She was where she belonged. “Thank you, Mom! Now, I should be–” But then she saw it. Them. The true objects of her affection.

There, as her mother crouched on her haunches, she was poised on the balls of her feet, heels lifting upward like fleshy rock overhangs. Her toes were clutching the smoothened tile kitchen floor, and both sets aimed toward Ayesha. She didn’t know which to run toward first.

“Ayesha?” Ruth called out to her daughter. But Ayesha seemed to be in a trance, stumbling forward, paralyzed by decision as she looked from left to right. Eventually, a lucky trip sent her careening toward her mother’s right foot before the girl caught herself. But, if that was what fate had aligned for her, then who was Ayesha to deny it?

Now sure of herself, Ayesha sprinted forth to her mom’s right foot.

“Ayesha? What are you… you’re alright, right?” Ruth shifted her right foot a bit to get a better look at her daughter, but Ayesha was determined. She lunged, and she pounced, hands reaching forward and taking the smoothened soft flesh of her mother’s big toe into her hands. Ruth felt mortified as her daughter tried her best to insert herself between her biggest and second toe, but fear of hurting her daughter prevented her from making any sudden moves one way or the other. Ayesha was free to move about as she pleased, and she certainly did. She made sure to give love to every single one, wrapping her arms around the bulbous tip of the big toe, soaking in the moist scent of the second toe, poking her head in the space between the second and third, and so on, before starting the routine again. Ruth’s feet had traces of both sweat and melted snow coating them that hadn’t yet evaporated, giving the digits an unmistakably earthy aroma.

Ayesha rubbed, kissed, kneaded, hugged, and just about every other action that she could do to the digits at this size; even the smallest pinky was like a yoga ball to the girl. It was such a raw, almost sensual display; Ruth had never seen her daughter display such a complete lack of inhibition before. It felt wrong, but for some reason, Ruth’s heart couldn’t help but melt as she watched her daughter show the love she had for her mother.

But still. Ruth’s brain knew this wasn’t right. Humans weren’t supposed to be bug-sized. She couldn’t stay like this forever. This was a nice diversion, but sooner or later Ayesha would have to be grown back to her normal size, and then they could deal with whatever problems she was facing in her life together. Though… this was nice. Ruth enjoyed it.

Ruth took a gamble. She uncrouched, lifting her body up by unfolding her powerful thighs. Her feet were still adhered to the tile floor by the remains of sweat, but Ayesha seemed to have noticed her mom was about to shift positions. In a quick move, she buried herself between Ruth’s first and second toes, which has inadvertently become a sort of hideaway for the shrunken girl.

Once Ruth was on her feet, she called downward. “Alright, sweetie! You can stay there for a little bit I suppose… but only until we figure out how to get you back to normal. Is that alright with you?”

Ayesha popped up from between Ruth’s digits. “Mm-hmm!” And then she nestled back within, bathing herself in the warmth.

This felt weird to Ruth, no doubt. But… it wasn’t so bad all things considered. She’d entertain her daughter’s obsessions for a bit, and then she’d snuff them out for good.

***

It’d been a few days since Ayesha had insisted her mother shrink the young girl, and so far, there seemed to be no sign of ill effects. To the contrary, Ayesha had been nothing more than vibrant, exuberant, ecstatic. By all rights she was in love with her new life and was more than happy to while away her days at her mother’s feet. Ruth had tried giving Ayesha her phone, feeling that was the sort of thing a teenager would need to entertain herself. Exactly how Ayesha might use it at her new size was a problem that would be glossed over when they arrived to it, but Ayesha now had little interest in technology and was far more interested in being stuffed between Ruth’s toes.

It had proved a little difficult to keep her stable on her feet without some sort of security, so Ruth had elected to keep her feet encased in a pair of thin nylon socks, just tight enough that Ayesha would be able to sleep against the taut fabric when she needed to. It seemed that the only time Ayesha wasn’t kissing or hugging or licking her mother’s feet was when she was asleep, or when Ruth was out and about.

In perhaps the only controversial move Ruth had made since Ayesha’s shrinking, she forbade allowing Ayesha to accompany her in her boots when she was in public. Mainly due to safety; it was easy enough to keep Ayesha in a position underfoot where she wouldn’t be crushed at home, but in the car? At the supermarket? At work? The difficulty increased dramatically, and it wasn’t as though Ruth could easily readjust the position of her daughter under her foot while standing in line at the Trader Joes. Ayesha was against this, but given her situation she wasn’t exactly in a position to make demands. Ruth thought that allowing Ayesha to stay on her dresser with the TV on and a little sock to crawl in for warmth was a suitable compromise, but every time Ruth returned home the shrunken young girl seemed lost in that same stupor of misery that so often gripped her even while normal sized. Only when Ruth actively made her presence known did the lethargic pet blink out of her funk and spring back to life.

Pet.

That was an odd word to describe her daughter. It was close to how Ayesha had been describing herself and her potential future before she shrank, though. Well, that future was a reality, for the moment anyway. Ruth still planned to grow Ayesha back, someway, somehow.

This was her first session of doing serious research into that endeavor. Ayesha was wrapped up in Ruth’s black socks, kicked up on the coffee table, while Ruth was browsing Ayesha’s laptop. She refreshed the page. Another sitcom laugh track assaulted her ears. Ruth grimaced and turned the volume down further so she could focus. She looked back at the computer.

Ayesha had been completely fine with giving her mom all the codes and passwords needed to access her laptop and accounts. It felt weird to Ruth, almost as though she never expected to need them again, but that wasn’t a huge concern for the mother. The laptop was a useful tool in researching the origins of the shrinking device. Ruth sighed and took another look at its crumpled, broken form on the tabletop. It had a serial number on the back, but it appeared to have been charred to a crisp when the fob was used, making it useless. Ayesha’s search history was, however, a very good place to start since using regular search methods simply left Ruth with sci-fi stories and fantasy role-playing forums.

It made Ruth a bit uncomfortable to browse through the secret webpage data of her daughter who had otherwise been so possessive about the goings-on she got up to online, so she resolved to only search for as much was necessary to figure out where this device had come from and if there was any way to reverse the process. This was hard, especially since the notifications were loud and frequent, and they only got more so as the days passed. Emails, DMs, Discord messages, Ruth hadn’t actually opened any of them for privacy. Still though, people seemed very interested in exactly where Ayesha was. It made her stomach drop, especially considering how nice it felt to have her daughter in her shoe at times.

It wasn’t difficult to find the online storefront that hosted the shrinking device, but this only raised further questions considering the listing was in Amharic. Ruth was about to dump the text into Google Translate when the doorbell suddenly rang. Ruth jumped; she’d been engrossed in her research. Her toes clenched, and she kicked herself at forgetting Ayesha was sleeping. But the tiny little pecks that soon coated the inner curling of her toes hinted that Ayesha didn’t mind the early wake-up call.

Ruth got up and walked to the door, again stepping with careful precision to keep Ayesha underneath the grotto of her toes. It took a bit longer than it would’ve if she’d walked haphazardly, but eventually Ruth looked through the peephole.

“Oh! Ayesha! Your –!!”

Ruth stopped herself. She had just been about to call up to Ayesha out of habit, forgetting where she was. She unclicked the lock just to indicate that she was here, and then Ruth crouched to speak to her foot.

“Ayesha, hon?”

The voice was slightly muffled through the nylon fabric but still understandable. “Mwyes, Mom?” She didn’t want her smooches to be interrupted.

“Your friend is here.” Ayesha didn’t respond. “The blonde one.”

“Oh!! Candy! Let her in, let her in, I want to see her!!”

This was a shock. “Are you… you’re sure, hon? It’s fine if you don’t want her to see you like this, I can –”

“No, no! It’s fine! Please, let me see her!” Now Ruth was shocked before, but this was absolutely flabbergasting. Her daughter wanted to be seen as a near dust-mite by her friend? It was a choice… but Ayesha asked for so little, nowadays. It would be a bit embarrassing for Ruth herself to show her daughter in such a sorry state, but the truth had to come out sooner or later.

Ruth stood to full height and took another look outside the peephole. Candy was shivering in her boots and frequently glancing back and forth between the street and the front door. Ruth stopped torturing the poor girl and opened the door, as well as a chilly gust of wind.

In rushed Candy Dumont, rubbing her furry Ugg boots on the doormat and shaking the brisk snowflakes from her golden hair before they had the chance to melt. “Heeey, Ms. Tabernacle!” Candy navigated to the coatrack with practiced efficiency, leaving her in a sweater and some jeans. “How’s tricks?”

Ruth simply swayed from side to side. She wasn’t sure how to introduce to her daughter’s best friend the premise that Ayesha had purchased a bootleg shrinking device and reduced herself to the size of a grape. “Well… you see… Ayesha…”

“C’mon, c’mon, spit it out,” said Candy with her hands on her hips, tapping her own snow-logged boot on the wooden floor. “What’s up? I’ve been blasting her with DMs but I haven’t heard back in a while. She sick?”

“She’s…” Ruth’s eyes wandered, left, up, down. She was already awkward enough when speaking to Ayesha’s friends, but this? Still, she had to respond sometime.

“Wait…” Candy’s eyes narrowed. She looked past Ruth and to the table where the charred corpse of the fob lay dormant. “No… no way! Ah-ha, you can’t be serious, the bitch actually did it?!”

“I-I’m sorry?” asked Ruth.

Candy was already unbuckling her boots, kicking them haphazardly to the side before rushing to the coffee table to examine the device. “Unreal.” She tapped it a few times with her pinkie finger. “I guess it really was one use, huh. But still, so cool…” She turned to Ruth. “So where’d you put her?”

“Well, I–”

Candy ignored her and trotted to the kitchen area. “Let’s see, maybe there’s a jar around here. Or, oh, hey! Did you put her in a hamster cage? I know she has one in her room, so maybe…” Candy was moving to fast for Ruth to stop the young teen from bouncing up the stairs. “Nope!!” came her disembodied voice. She returned hanging from the banister. “I’m reaaaaaally hoping you didn’t off her already. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, you know?”

Candy peered into Ruth’s clueless eyes. She squinted. “You look confused.”

“I mean, well… I just –” Ruth had to actively stop herself from nervously twisting her foot into the floor. “You’re quite knowledgeable about my daughter’s plans.” Giving any indication that Ruth knew less about her own daughter than one of her silly little friends was anathema to the woman.

“Knowledgeable?” Candy chuckled. She descended the steps again and walked right up to Ruth, standing on her toes to peer in her eyes. “I’m the one who gave her this idea.”

Ruth felt her entire world turn several degrees. “You… huh?”

Candy’s eyes traveled down Ruth’s face, neck, torso, legs, socked feet. She grinned. “I should’ve known.” She crouched down and seemed to be speaking at Ruth’s animated, flexing toes for a moment. It would’ve been an absurd scene to any bystanders, but Ruth knew better. “Hey there, buggy! You gave me quite a scare,” Candy cooed. The muffled impression underneath the toe-encasing socks yelled back something difficult for Ruth to discern in her dumbfounded state, but couldn’t have been anything other than an exclamation of assent.

Candy hopped back up. “And you, it’s clear we have a lot to talk about.” She gestured to the coffee table. “Might as well get comfy. Besides, I want to see our Ayesha up close.”

***

“This is… honestly, I can’t even believe it.” Ruth had her forehead in her palm as she nursed a bottle of water to ease her nascent headache. “And here I thought this fixation was new. And now you’re telling me that she’s had this idea in her head for years?”

Candy nodded from the opposite armchair. “As long as I’ve known her at least. And she says it’s been a constant thing for her entire life.”

Her entire life. Ruth repeated the words in her head. There was no way this could’ve been a secret for that long. It was unfathomable her daughter, who’d been so perfect and normal until recently, had been harboring this obsession with being a shrunken bug in the care of another human for so long. But… well, the enthusiasm with which Ayesha was lapping at the walls of her new home between Ruth’s first and second toe spoke for itself.

“Okay…” Ruth began, looking past her feet on the coffee table and to the notably relaxed Candy. “But where do you come in? You said this was your idea somehow?”

“Mm-hmm! See, I saw Ayesha. She was doing fine and all, but I could tell that deep down something wasn’t right with her. Now, of course, she’s told me everything because I’m her best friend and of course she did. So I know that even if she were to get the best grades, ace all her classes, be the absolute brightest she could be…” Candy glared forward. “There was nothing a normal life could give her that she wanted.”

Ruth gulped. She tucked her legs underneath herself like a gooseling. Ayesha tumbled out from Ruth’s toes, none the worse for wear but now suddenly deprived of her sustenance. Candy on the opposite end was more than quick to pick up the slack, offering up her slender toes and equally lithe feet to Ayesha on the opposite end of the table, which she quickly took notice of.

“Thank you, thank you!!” Ayesha squeaked. She wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation at hand, but she was more than happy to give thanks to her best friend for providing a substitute.

“You’re so welcome,” Candy chirped. In a supremely dexterous move, she rubbed at Ayesha’s head with the bottom pad of her big toe, and Ayesha chagrined before accepting it. But then Candy didn’t stop. She kept rubbing down on the shrunken girl, sending her to her knees. “As I was saying,” Candy continued, as though she weren’t practically tormenting a human being beneath her feet as she spoke. “I decided to do something to help my friend. I kept telling her, on and on, she wasn’t right for this world. She didn’t deserve humanity! Bugmanity, maybe…” Candy scoffed. Then she bristled under Ruth’s increasingly disturbed gaze. “I would’ve stopped the second she said something! But hey, Ayesha agreed. Even she knew that she wasn’t a human, not really. Just a germ in human form. So, I decided that I was going to find something to help my friend achieve her only dream. I tried letting her worship my feet as a normal person – decadent, by the way, but it just didn’t have the desired effect.  And thus, I found…” Candy unclasped her hands, revealing the broken shrink fob.

“I… I see,” said Ruth.

“And as far as I can tell, it’s totally permanent! As long as we keep her too ourselves, our Atomized Ayesha will be ours.” Candy’s eyes twinkled. “Isn’t it great?”

“Hmmm… ah…” Ruth stuttered. She looked back at Ayesha, still being kneaded face down on the coffee table. She was twitching. “You’re… are you sure she has the air she needs to breathe down there?”

“Hm? Oh, sure, probably. I mean, does what she needs really matter at this point?”

“Of course it does! She’s still –”

Candy shrugged and pulled out her phone, bored. “She’s smaller than your thumb. Does a creature like that really deserve rights? Any of those were signed away the moment she gave you the device.”

“Gave… me…”

The twitching beneath Candy’s toe hit a crescendo. Ruth’s heart stopped, fearing the worst. Instead, a shimmery damp spot emerged beneath Ruth’s pelvis on the table. Somehow, Ruth was still underestimating exactly how much Ayesha enjoyed this.

“Hey, Ayesha! You heard all that, right?”

The winded, post-afterglow girl pulled the energy necessary to mumble, “Uh-huh…”

Candy turned back to Ruth. “See?”

Ruth sat back. “I think… I think I do.”

Candy dragged her toes from being sprawled across Ayesha like a blanket. Immediately, the girl began to convulse.

“Hm?” Ruth intoned, somewhat less concerned than she had been. “What’s happening now?”

Candy sighed. “Isn’t it obvious? Withdrawal. My feet have already imprinted on her. And how could they not? Even my feet are, like, a hundred times her size. They’re overwhelming. The little footbitch can’t live without them, isn’t that right Ayesha?” Candy spoke to Ayesha like a newborn baby even as Ruth’s daughter came this close to retching at the pure air. Ruth watched on in morbid curiosity as Ayesha’s writhing slowed, slowed, ceased. She looked dead.

Ruth raised her feet to the coffee table, sliding her fat, moist heel along the wood. And little by little, Ayesha stirred, following the scent to her knew, massive, five-toed masters.

“I knew you’d enjoy it eventually!” Candy cheered. “And don’t you worry, even though Ayesha is ‘no longer with us’ –” Candy winked. “I’ll be coming over plenty often to see more of your new ‘pet’.”

Ruth turned to Candy as chills raced up her legs and back from the reverent worship her feet were receiving. And Ruth smiled.

Maybe… maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.