Night has fallen. Claire walks along an abandoned street, enjoying the freshness of the evening air, a slight chill present in the atmosphere thanks to the sun having set much earlier. Every so often she finds herself beneath the illumination of one of the many street lamps posted up along the sidewalk. Soon she comes to a shopping complex. She continues walking past the various stores, each of them dark and without signs of life, the parking lot just as devoid. In her hands she carries an empty shoebox, the very same shoebox that had once contained ten tiny passengers.
Before setting off on her adventure, she had left her shrunken neighbors and their friends with something to eat for supper prior to safely sealing them up inside the attic once more. They had all they would need for the night, food, water, and a place to sleep. But Claire decided that last part could use an upgrade if she was indeed intending to let her little guests enjoy a long stay in her home.
Reaching the end of the strip mall, Claire makes her way around the side of the building and walks behind it. She stops in front of a red door, the rear entrance to a mattress store.
“Here we go.” Claire reaches into her shorts pocket and pulls out Michael's device. She crosses her fingers on her free hand as she aims the device at the door. “Please work please work please work” she chants to herself as she pulls back on the trigger.
The red door shrinks, literally right off its hinges. Miraculously, an alarm does not sound.
The tiny door falls downwards and spins around as it travels through the air before producing a faint clanking sound as it hits the ground. Claire kneels down and picks it up between her index finger and thumb. She carefully examines it for a moment. Specifically, it's the extreme smallness of the doorknob that catches her interest. After a few seconds, she tucks the tiny door away into her shorts pocket before standing back up and taking her first step into the mattress store.
“I'm not shoplifting” Claire says to herself, smiling. She drops the shoebox and jumps into the air. The cardboard box hits the carpet floor at almost the exact second when Claire's body lands on one of the store's beds. “Not technically, right?” Claire asks herself. “WOW This is comfy!”
“These beds are just displays for the store, not merchandise...” Claire thinks to herself. “They don't actually sell the displays, do they? They're just physical advertisements, right? But they sell the TV's that were used as displays in electronics stores. Maybe this really is considered shoplifting.”
Claire laughs and shakes her head as she rises from the comfort of the bed and stands over it. “Am I really worried about stealing a couple beds right now? I'm sure I'm already guilty of much worse” she says, smiling as she thinks about the “guests” currently trapped inside her attic.
With her arm extended forwards, Claire aims Michael's device towards the bed and pulls the trigger. In an instant, the piece of furniture seemingly disappears, as if replaced down on the ground with a tiny version dwarfed by the presence of Claire's pretty feet resting atop her black flip flops.
Very carefully, Claire plucks the tiny bed from the ground and lifts it into the air. She carries it to the empty shoebox on the floor and gently places it inside.
Before long, four other tiny beds have joined the first one inside the cardboard box. Upon setting the last one inside, Claire places the lid on top before picking the box up and carrying it out through the doorway. She walks around the side of the building and begins the long walk back to her car. She had thought it would be a good idea to park her car a fair distance away from her destination.
“Oh yeah...” Claire says to herself as she remembers the shrunken red door inside her pocket. “What am I gonna do with that?” Holding the shoebox with her left hand, she reaches her right one into her pocket and pulls out the door. She raises it closer to her face and looks it over. “I probably shouldn't just grow it back and leave it here... if I did that, they'd probably be able to get a fingerprint off of it. Well, a GIANT fingerprint!” Claire laughs. She looks ahead and notices a trashcan far off in the distance on the sidewalk. “Guess I'll just get rid of it on the way.”
Claire reaches the trashcan, and without stopping, she flicks the tiny door away down into the darkness of the container. Now she can see her little black car in the otherwise barren parking lot in the distance. But something is different now. “That wasn't there before” she thinks to herself, noticing a green car parked next to the sidewalk between herself and the parking lot containing her vehicle. Two men are leaning against the green car, each one smoking a cigarette.
“Did they see me?” Claire worries to herself. “Do they know I stole the beds? Just act cool, Claire. Ignore them and they'll ignore you.”
Each step brings her closer to the green vehicle and the two men leaning against it. It's a nice car, or at least it would be, if it were taken better care of. In its current state, it's a victim of years of neglect. Just a couple of meters away from the car, one of the men calls out to Claire and she stops dead in her tracks.
“Well, hello there, miss. Allow me to introduce myself. My name's Kurt.” The man stares at Claire, who stares back, frozen in fear. “You're just a treat on the eyes, now aren't you, girl?”
The other man laughs. “I think she's afraid of us.”
“Is that right, miss? Are you scared?” The man throws his cigarette to the ground and begins to approach Claire. His friend stays by the car and watches as he continue to smoke his cigarette.
Kurt reaches Claire. A bit taller than her, he smiles as he studies her body. “Whatcha got there, girl?” Without warning, he rips the shoebox from her hands and looks inside. Claire jumps from fright and begins to take a few steps backwards away from the man. “What the fuck is this? Doll furniture?” Kurt laughs. I thought you looked young, but aren't you a little old to be playing with dollies, girl? He throws the box to the ground and takes slow steps towards Claire, still taking slow steps backwards away from him. “Get the trunk opened...” Kurt yells loudly enough for his friend back at the car to hear. “I'll toss her in.”
“No!” Claire screams. As fast as she possibly can, she pulls Michael's device out of her pocket and aims it at the man. Adrenaline pumps through her body and her heart beats harder than it ever has before.
Kurt smiles and throws both of his arms into the air, feigning fear. “Careful, girl. Wouldn't want you to hurt anybody.” He laughs. “What is that, anyways? I know it ain't a gun... probably ain't a Taser... looks like a damned TV remote!”
Shaking from fear, Claire speaks to the man. “Go back to your car and drive away or I'll pull the trigger.”
“What are you gonna do, bitch? Change the channel? I ain't afraid of your little remote.”
The man lunges forward and Claire pulls back on the trigger faster than anything else she'd ever done before in her entire life. Instantly, the menacing looking man disappears before her very eyes.
“What the fuck did you do?!” yells the other man, snapping Claire's attention onto him. “Where is he?!” Claire quickly aims the device and pulls the trigger again, causing the second man and the green car to vanish from sight as well. Claire inhales and exhales deeply and takes a moment to calm down and collect herself.
“What the FUCK?!” Kurt yells as he picks himself up off of the pavement. “What did that bitch do? Where am I?”After rubbing his eyes, Kurt can't believe the sight that they're taking in. “Ho...ly... shit...” Not far in front of him stand two gigantic feet, each one clad in a black flip flop. He raises his head higher and higher, straining his neck as he struggles to take the sight of the mountain of a young woman in. His gaze passes up her long, toned legs, and all the way up her body until her head comes into view. Her enormous yet beautiful face stares straight ahead off into the distance, as though the girl is stuck in some sort of trance. “She's not looking at me... does she even know I'm down here?”
“Hey! Over here!” A voice in the distance behind him catches his attention. The man turns around and spots his car and his friend Travis jumping up and down next to it on a seemingly endless expanse of pavement. “Come on, man, you've got the keys, we need to get out of here! Now!”
Back at the car, Travis waits impatiently for his friend. “Come on come on come on!” he yells as he watches Kurt ran as fast as he can, a pair of enormous legs stretching into the sky in the background. Both men bolt into the car and shut their doors before Kurt thrusts his keys into the ignition and Travis fastens his seat belt. The car roars to life and speeds off along the unfathomably massive expanse of pavement.
Once again calm, Claire spots illumination on the pavement not far in front of her, the headlights of the tiny car as it inches away from her as fast as it possibly can. She rolls her eyes. “Well, shit. What am I gonna do about this?” She watches as the distance between herself and the tiny vehicle continues to very slowly increase. “I can't grow them back, they've seen my face, and they probably want to hurt me now more than they did before. I can't bring them home to live in the attic, they're dangerous and they would probably hurt my other little people. And I can't just leave them shrunken out here, someone might find them and rescue them and then everything gets led back to me.” Claire sighs and begins walking towards the little green car in the distance. “I guess that only leaves me with one other choice.”
“Where are we gonna go?!” asks Kurt as he looks frantically out his windshield.
“I don't know!”
“Where are we right now, even?!”
“I don't know! It's all just an ocean of tar!”
Suddenly a series of booms becomes audible, each one louder than the last and accompanied by an even louder slapping sound.
“Ah, shit, that's gotta be her! Where is she?!” yells Kurt.
“I don't know!”
“Then CHECK!”
Travis turns around and his jaw drops as he looks through the rear windshield to see Claire's enormous feet rapidly closing the distance between herself and the car with each step she takes. “She's right there!”
“Where?!”
“Right there, right be-FUCKING-hind us, man!”
“Damn it! How did she find us so fast?! We had like... a three minute lead over her”
“She's fucking massive, that's how, now get us out of here!”
Kurt turns right and keeps the gas pedal pushed to the floor. “Come on, faster, faster! Are we losing her?!”
“I'm looking, I'm looking!” Travis turns around again only to find that the enormous feet have disappeared from view. He begins checking out each of the other back windows in search of Claire. “I think we lost her!”
“FUCK!”
Travis turns around just in time to see Claire's right foot slam down in the car's path. The force and the smack of her sandal slapping against the pavement creates a boom louder than anything he had ever heard. Kurt tries applying the brakes at the last second but it's too late. The tiny green car smashes full speed into the front of Claire's black flip flop. The impact causes Travis' limbs to lash around violently while his body is held secure behind the seat belt.
In a daze, Travis' ears ring and his vision fades in and out. He looks ahead through the smashed windshield and watches as Claire's terrifying toes wriggle slowly in her flip flop. “Come on, Kurt, we've gotta get out of here!” He turns to his left and whimpers, “No...” Kurt's head rests on the steering wheel, slick with the crimson liquid running like rivers down his face. Travis watches in horror as his best friend remains perfectly still, either unconscious or dead from the collision. Travis doubts he has any chance of escaping, but he knows he won't be able to carry Kurt away from this. He and his best friend since way back when they first met in school... Kurt and Travis. They had both lived rather brief, uneventful, and quite pitiful lives. But for the most part, they had lived them together. Kurt always had Travis' back, and Travis always had Kurt's. And this is where it would all end for them, with their lives culminated to a conclusion on this summer evening at the feet of a girl, as though they were nothing more than a pair of irritating insects.
“Kurt, no! Come on, man!” Travis shakes his friend, trying frantically to wake him, to jolt his body back into consciousness. Suddenly he hears a loud scratching sound. Outside, the massive young woman's flip flop scrapes against the ground as she lifts it from the pavement and into the air before maneuvering her foot towards the car. She dangles her sandal from her toes and lets the toe section touch down onto the hood of the vehicle, causing the tiny car to groan and creak under the pressure of her flip flop alone. Travis watches on through the windshield as her massive toes playfully wiggle.
“Ugh...” Claire begins as she lifts her foot away from the car. Her flip flop hits the pavement and she wriggles her foot back into its proper place on the sandal after having dangled it. “Why couldn't you guys have just gotten in your car and drove away the first time, like I warned you to? Anyways, you didn't so now this has to be done. Sorry.”
Travis watches as the bottom of Claire's flip flop passes over the windshield and disappears from his view as she raises her right foot above the car. The vehicle rocks back and forth a couple of times and groans loudly as Claire rests her sandal on the roof of the car without applying any pressure. “Sorry.”
“NO! NO! PLEASE! NO! PLEASE! STOP! NO!”
Claire can barely hear the tiny screams coming from below. She takes a deep breath and slowly begins to press down. The steel folds and bends beneath her weight.
“NO! PLEASE! STOP!” yells Travis as the walls of his prison close in around him.
Snapping, cracking, and shattering sounds are birthed as the steel sinks lower and lower, forced into the ground under her unfathomable power. When her foot is offered too much resistance to allow her to press down any further, Claire knows her task is completed and she lifts her flip flop off of the car and scrapes it off back and forth on the pavement behind her. She can no longer hear the tiny screams begging her for cessation. The tiny car at her feet is simply crushed, flattened beyond all recognition.
Claire walks to the shoebox and picks it up off of the ground where Kurt had thrown it. Inside, each of the beds are broken, shattered from the impact of the box hitting the ground. She releases a sigh of disappointment before walking back to the tiny hunk of steel and kneeling down in front of it.
Claire picks the crushed vehicle up between her index finger and thumb. “Idiots” she says to herself before flinging the tiny heap of scrap metal into the cardboard box with the broken beds. She carefully picks up all of the larger chunks of metal and glass scattered about on the pavement and tosses them into the box as well before standing up again.
She walks off towards the trashcan where she had deposited the door from the mattress store not much earlier. When she reaches it, she dumps the contents of her shoebox inside, shaking the box to make sure each and every crumb is evicted. “Now I have to go shrink beds all over again.”
Claire thinks about what she just had to do as she travels once more towards the mattress store. “They were going to hurt me. They wanted to get me into their car and they wanted to do terrible things to me. They were bad people. Yeah, they were very bad people. If anything, I just made the world a better place. A safer place.”
“I'm like Dexter!” Claire yells excitedly before giggling. “But... I think Dexter would have worn gloves...”
With five new shrunken beds safely contained inside the shoebox tucked under her arm, Claire opens the door and climbs into her car. She places the box gently down onto the passenger seat and closes the car door before driving off out of the empty parking lot and into the night.