Lauren walked slowly across the clothes strewn bedroom. Her small, pale feet; snug in a pair of black tights, padding softly on the faux wood linoleum. She yawned and rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from her eyes with casual elegance. The clock on the night stand flashed the time and indicated that it was time to brave the winter snow outside and head to work. She ran her fingers through her thick fringe, a luscious blend of deep reds and chocolate browns, and flashed herself a smile in the large mirror, bordered by photos of friends and family, that stood upon the wide chest of draws that dominated one wall.
With another stifled yawn she turned towards the door. As she prepared to leave a casual glance downwards made her purse her full, pink lips. Beside a haphazard mountain of shoes was a small, red dot. A tiny blotch of crimson against the pale, honey coloured flooring. To most it would have gone unnoticed, almost hidden in the shadow of a discarded pair of heels, however this morning it gave Lauren an idea.
She skipped lightly back to the dresser and excitedly slid open the middle drawer; a faint whine, like the muffled squeaking of tiny animals, rose from inside. Her hand shot in like a manicure tipped snake and stretched towards the back. Within a matter of seconds she retracted it and closed the drawer with a definite thud.
Between her thumb and forefinger a tiny man squealed with fear. She grinned at the panicked flailing of his naked limbs as he struggled and beat uselessly against her fingertips. She held him up to her face, delight shining in her dark brown eyes. ‘Good morning sunshine’, she chirped. Her voice boomed senselessly around the tiny man. Carefully so as not to injure her prize, she increased her grip, the razor sharp tips of her pink nails inching ever closer to his terrified form. Lauren licked her lips slowly, as she liked to do when they were close to her face, and blew him a kiss. The slow, seductive movement always inspired a combination of arousal and abject terror in her victims. She had once caused one to soil himself there and then in the palm of her hand with this simple act, a crime she had punished severely.
‘Okay little guy, time to go to work’, she beamed. Dropping him into her waiting palm she closed a loose fist around him and walked out into the hall. She hummed happily to herself, lifted by the thought of what she had planned as well as the almost unperceivable fluttering of the man’s continued attempts to break free from her grip. She considered starting her test early and crushing the little creature in her hand. With difficulty she resisted temptation and, walking into the hall, deposited him atop the small shelf from which her keys hung. She admired herself again in the hallway mirror, a full length affair in an ornate metal frame. High in his open prison the shrunken man made no attempt to escape. Despite his assurance that his fate was sealed he had seen what befell those that tried to evade their captor and their demise was always worse because of it. She liked to enforce this rule and regularly reminded them of it.
Lauren smothered her hair beneath a knitted hat and brushed her fringe across one eye, just how she liked it. Still humming she whirled a bright red coat around herself, sliding into the garment in a flurried dance. Ignoring the man who watched her with widened eyes filled with awe and fear, she scrutinised her rack of shoes. Her lips pursed and her perfect brows scrunched into a light frown as she tried to choose her footwear for the day. She smiled at the sight of a pair of well worn sandals, tossed against the far corner. That smile broadened as she saw, bound with cotton to the strap that would fasten about her big toe, the broken and pitiful skeleton of a long forgotten victim. It would be many months before it was warm enough for her to wear those again but the sight of those tiny bones coupled with the pain and despair they must have perished in made her excited for the summer.
She wiggled her toes, for anyone at floor level they thudded ominously against the hard wood of the hall way. Returning from her day dream and in light of the thick snow outside, decided on a pair of thick, round tipped boots. She held them together in one hand and with the other snatched the watching man from his perch. He was plunged into darkness once again as she closed her fist about him and dropped into a waiting chair. He was ejected forcefully and tumbled through the air for several feet before landing in a heap in her lap. The taught black material of her skirt cushioned his fall leaving him with only minor bruising. The boots were dropped in similar fashion, clattering loudly onto the floor. He looked up at her but from where he stood her face was obscured by her ample bosom that pushed erotically against the black fabric of her top. The red expanse of her still open coat tumbled by on either side like an avalanche. She did not speak as she lifted a boot; the light glinting off the silver buckle that fastened the spike studded, leather belt that circled her ankle. Her foot entered with a faint hiss of fabric.
The man shuddered as her foot lowered to the floor with a soft boom. His attention was so focussed on the slight rocking movements the boot made as the titanic foot inside settled that he failed to notice the shadow that hung over him. Once again he rose to the heavens clasped painfully between her digits. He hung helplessly before her face, mesmerised by her beauty and power. ‘OK bug’, she smiled, ‘I know I’ve been rough but today I will be trying to keep you alive for as long as possible. You might even make it back here depending on how good I am, aren’t I nice?’ The small man stammered helplessly, at his size her words deafened him and more than half of what she said was lost in the roar of air that assaulted his trembling form. She shook him impatiently, frowning slightly. ‘Y-yes, my G-goddess’, he bleated, reeling from the blow.
‘Good’, her smile returned. ‘Now because of all this snow my piece of shit car won’t start so we are walking to work today, that OK with you?’ she asked innocently. He nodded dumbly. ‘Good’, she repeated. Her massive form bent double as she reached for her other boot. Her long dark hair fell around him in vast, citrus scented curtains. With a little ceremony he was held over the mouth of her waiting boot. She allowed him a few seconds to gaze into the void. Warm air rose to meet him, thermals carrying the unmistakable aroma of perspiration laced with fruity body lotion. It waited hungrily below him. The size of his goddess was one thing, as was the darkness of the drawer he and many others had been imprisoned in however his reduced size really hit home when he was able to compare himself to something as simple as a woman’s footwear. His stomach heaved in the heavy air, fear grinding inside of him.
‘In you go’, she sang and released her hold. He screamed as he plummeted through the air and into the greedy mouth of the boot. Leather walls draped with grey fabric rushed past him. The seconds his journey took felt like an eternity as the heat and humidity of his new prison replaced the cool, fresh air of the hall. He landed painfully, crying out in the gathering darkness. He groaned loudly. In the gathering gloom he saw his leg was broken, the angry shards of bone tearing out through the flesh. Pain wracked him and he choked in the moist, sale air. ‘I’m dead,’ he shouted, his voice swallowed by the cavernous expanse of the boot, ‘I’m fucking dead!’ This was a common game the Goddess, that fucking bitch, would play with them but, being relatively new and before now lucky enough to avoid her grasp, not one he had been subject to before. If you were quick and smart, so they said, you could survive it. Within the group there were maybe four or five who had been through this before and they had advised the others how to best increase their chances. Some said that she kept one guy in a box somewhere who survived every time; they said he couldn’t be killed but this was laughable. Nobody survived her in the end.
His body shook in agony as he prodded at the shattered blade of bone that jutted from his leg. Blood flowed freely from the wound and his head swam. He retched but had not eaten recently enough to be sick.
The game was simple; she puts you in a shoe and wears it. For a minute, for an hour, all day; only she knew. Your job was to survive it. The first tip was to roll into a ball when you land, a tip he had forgotten in his panic and was now paying for. Flat shoes are simple since you go right in but boots, especially those knee high pair with the killer heels, were difficult because of the height of the fall. Assuming you landed uninjured, and most did thanks to the increased durability they ‘benefitted’ from in their shrunken state, the next goal was to get running towards the toe. She’s pretty fair, if you can bring yourself to call it that, and normally allows you a few seconds head start. If you are lucky there’s room at the end to push yourself against the wall and pray for the best. In this position you will avoid most of the damage and maybe make it back. If you don’t quite make it to the wall you can curl up and hope her toes pass over you.
You’ve then got a fifty-fifty chance of either being in the space between or beneath her toes or, if you are really unlucky, you’ve just found yourself under the ball of her foot. The toes you might survive. With your increased resistances you can take quite a battering but if she starts scrunching or stands on tip toes, well you had better pray she stops or those five brutal digits are going to grind your tiny body into paste, make no mistake. If you find yourself trapped under the ball of her foot forget about it. You’ve got two, maybe three, maybe four steps before you are just another red stain soaking into her insole. Perhaps you could try and get under her arch, use the momentum of her step to slide backwards but don’t count on it. Nobody has ever come back saying that’s what they did and the odds of you being pounded flat seconds later are a dead certainty. Dead being the word.
There was movement in the circle of light above him. He groaned and chocked back a sob. He tried to raise himself to a sitting position, to drag himself down into the darkness towards what little hope he had. His aching arms shuddered and gave way under him, dropping him heavily back against the warm, damp insole. The boot rocked, a shadow passed by outside, momentarily eclipsing the injured man within. He writhed weakly and with his good leg tried to push away from the heel. The Heel.
Nobody spoke about the heel, what would be the point? In this game and the others the heel is a death sentence. In an instant you are pulverised, your bones shattering into dust, your muscles and organs liquefying against the inverted mountain of merciless flesh. With one step everything you are, every atom, every thought, every dream and memory is crushed into an unidentifiable organic speck. A tiny human smear to be trodden into the dirt and sweat of her insole, to be absorbed into her soft, fragrant flesh until no trace of you remains.
This is where he found himself, his fate sealed. Even if she remained seated, her heel merely resting upon his helpless body, compressing it slowly beneath the weight of just her cream coloured leg; a weight that to him would feel like hundreds of tons, the second she stood he would be destroyed. Why delay the inevitable?
Lauren hovered gently over her boot. From her vantage point he could just see the tiny creature within, badly injured from the fall, but remained hidden from his view. Perfect, she thought. Slowly she closed her eyes. A flowing warmth rose through her body, exciting her. She bit her lip as she focussed the terrified man in her mind. His leg was broken, a shoulder dislocated and two cracked ribs, those were the main things to fix. She breathed out slowly, time for the first test.
There was movement in the boot. The man’s eyes fluttered open as a loud humming filled his prison. Oh God, he thought, this is it. He looked up expecting to see the descending foot of his goddess, hungry for his destruction. Instead he saw globules of blood, his own, suspended as if free of the law of gravity. His breath was dragged from him as his leg and shoulder convulsed. With a painful grinding sound the bones forced themselves back into place, blood and bone shards flowing across the wound, knitting it neatly behind them. His chest rose and fell violently, the skin rippling over his ribs as the ugly lumps snapped back into place. Air flooded his lungs as his pain clouded vision cleared. The humming stopped. He glance wide eyed about him before hurriedly gathering his senses. He took off running towards the toe of the boot, towards hope.
Lauren breathed deeply, a wide grin spread warmly across her face. It worked; the wounds may have been minor compared to what she intended to do but so far it had worked. She shivered with excitement. Using her power in this way aroused her, not only can she control their lives; shrinking their bodies and making them able to withstand her handling of them but now she can stave off their deaths too! Her games could get a lot more interesting now she didn’t have to worry about their pathetic bodies getting crushed straight away. She giggled gleefully to herself then stopped. She still had to do the tests; she was getting ahead of herself. A broken leg and some bones were not conquering death after all and, more importantly, she had to get to work.
The newly revived victim slammed into the smooth grey toe of her boot just as her foot entered. His entire world shook and the faint hiss of moving fabric which he had heard earlier was now replaced by a grinding roar as her foot bulldozed towards him. The light vanished immediately and within seconds the air was boiling with the heat radiating from her approaching foot. She moved slowly, intentionally to increase her tiny’s fear but still the ground between him and her toes was covered in seconds.
They connected with a loud slam that exploded across the man’s shrunken body. He reeled but ducked away from her big toe, its presence overwhelming in the darkness and sunk to the floor. A second late she adjusted her foot, the dominating digit grinding against the wall where he had recently stood. Before him she filled his world, the air he breathed was already laced with her sweat that stung his eyes and burned his lungs. He gripped the fabric of the wall with one hand and the damp sponge of the insole, ready to steady him against the torment that was to come. Despite the blood that trickled from his mouth, his main injury from his collision with her toe, he grinned. He just might survive this.
She wiggled her toes and felt him scrabble desperately against them, kicking himself away from her with his newly restored legs. She tutted, normally she preferred them to be in this position and would allow them time to do so. She knew as well as they did that being near her toes, she wiggled them once more, was their best chance of survival. Today however she wasn’t playing and needed someone to test on.
‘Sorry bug, today’s not your lucky day’, she called down to her feet. Still sat on the chair she lifted her leg out before her and rotated her ankle, dislodging him from his relatively safe position. Her foot rose into the air as her leg straightened out, her toes pointed downwards. She stopped for a moment. Concentrating she could just about feel the tiny man thrashing between the tips of her second and third toe. She could almost imagine him desperately clinging to the fabric of her tights to prevent him slipping.
Within her boot her foot arched, a great void opening once again beneath the doomed creature. One tiny leg kicked the air desperately as he clung to her like a lover, his fingers and toes entwined in the warm fabric that covered her foot to prevent him plummeting to a certain death. He begged her loudly, worshipping the position he held on to; just below her pink toenail, with desperate kisses. He tasted the fabric and absorbed the smell of sweat and lotion into his burning lungs. His throat tore and broke as he screamed for his life and for her mercy.
His pleas fell on deaf ears as his tiny squeaks could not be heard outside of his leather tomb. She giggled as he fluttered against her. Despite their tiny size she had almost learned to recognise their kisses on her skin, obvious when she watched them worship but hard to feel when they were out of sight, well mostly. ‘C’mon little bug, stop playing around’, she cooed and shaking her ankle for the third time shook him free and sent him down towards her heel.
He scrabbled at the insole as he fell; his lungs set to burst from the force of his screams. The filmy material slipped free from his grasp and did nothing to slow his descent. He turned mid air and sought purchase on the underside of her foot, hoping to test his chances with her arch. She laughed as his tiny hands flailed at her sensitive sole, adjusting her foot slightly to prevent him taking hold.
He crashed into the mound of her heel, rebounding off the soft flesh to slam damply against the tilted insole. Slower now he slid inevitably into the black gap between the insole and the vast wall of warm flesh that hung above him.
She lowered her foot slowly. A loud boom tore through the inside of the boot as it connected with the floor. Carefully she stood and balanced on the ball of her foot, sparing the tiny man from instant death. Her breath fluttered with excitement as she felt the tiny man struggle to move beneath the pinning weight of her foot. She looked at herself in the mirror, her cheeks flushed with an aroused pink, and her eyes shone brightly beneath her loosened fringe. She corrected it and buttoned her coat slowly, being careful not to step down on the trapped man.
She tottered awkwardly to the front door, leaning on it slightly as she opened it. The world beyond was a still, frozen white. No others walked the street and for the most part the snow was undisturbed. It was still early, before the small town hustle and bustle began. She stepped outside, avoiding a patch of treacherous ice and stood lightly. She pivoted on her toes, the tiny creature almost being sick with the force of her movement, and locked the dark blue door smartly behind her.
She stood for a moment, basking in the fresh dawn air and enjoying the cooling breeze that caressed her face. Her victim would feel quite the opposite as what little air there was beneath her foot increased ever more in temperature. She scrunched her toes, twisting the ball of her foot in the snow, the noise terrorising her captive. ‘Well’, she said hopefully to the empty world, ‘here goes’.
She lowered her foot. The tiny man bucked and screamed as he felt himself move in the darkness. A prickle of excitement shot through her leg as the sole of her heel touched the snow dusted stoop. Her foot settled into position, her arch flattening against the ground. Her cocked knee was all that prevented her heel from absorbing her weight and obliterating the tiny human beneath it. She held her breath as she shivered slightly with arousal, oblivious to the cold that nuzzled her skin. Breathing out she slowly let her heel bear her weight, a fraction of an inch at a time.
The response inside the leather hell was instantaneous. The man screamed as he was slowly compressed by her unyielding foot. His legs, so recently restored to him, shattered before flowing freely from his body. His pelvis followed less than a second later; his penis being ground into the dirt, unrecognisable in the soup of blood and meat that surrounded him. His lungs burst, cutting his agonised scream short as his spine and organs were pulverised. His left arm went first, steamrollered beneath the creeping black clad flesh, snapping away into nothing. He feebly tried to pull what was left of his torso away with one arm before his skull exploded beneath her. He had no last thoughts other than agonising pain and pure terror of the beautiful, young brunette that was his Goddess.
She twisted her foot cruelly, making sure to grind whatever was left of the tiny man deep into the insole. She knew that her bare skin must absorb at least some of them and this idea always brought a smile to her face. She didn’t know much about afterlives, heavens and hells but she hoped that if souls were real then those of her victims remained with her. Tortured and broken with every step or movement she made. It was this idea which had made her decide to test the limits of her power.
She walked a few steps, stomping heavily with her right foot in a continued effort to destroy what remained of the tiny human beneath her. She was confident he was nearly all gone, after a while the liquid form of their bodies always became diluted with her own perspiration until only a slight stain remained. This was a rather good metaphor for how insignificant they were in comparison to her, bugs beneath a Goddess.
She reached the iron gate at the end of her path and spun on her heel, careful not to fall in the snow. Satisfied that he was no more than a tiny red stain on her insole, she began to hum. In the dark heat of her boot her toes wiggled slightly. Beneath the tyrannical, god like form of her heel, bowed and crushed by her weight, the microscopic fibres of her insole began to twitch. Their counterparts above them in the heel of her tights, stretched across her endless expanse of flesh, mirrored their vibrations. The sound of her voice echoed through the tiny universe, rising and falling in time with the miniscule movements. Slowly, from the fibres, a tiny red gobbet of blood dragged itself free to swim through the air like a microscopic red slug. It writhed as if in pain as it floated through the fibres until it collided with another. Their combined form thrashed with confusion before seeping through the maze of threads to join a mass of others that twitched and convulsed into an ever growing ball.
Lauren bit her lip hard, whimpering slightly under her breath. Eyes aflame with elation she walked lightly down the frost clad street, ensuring not to put too much pressure on her right heel. ‘It’s working’, she whispered.