Louise jogged across the empty car park, her hangover nipping at her heels as it chased her through the twilight. The early morning air was damp and close, raising small chills where it brushed against her exposed skin. She leapt the small stretch of water that huddled in the gutter and strode up to the plate glass doors. White light poured through them, splashing wetly across the tarmac. There was no one in sight, good.

Louise loved this time of day, the fresh Saturday morning when there was barely another car on the road and the world was still in bed sleeping off the previous night. That time when the sun tickled the skyline pink, that time belonged to her.

Her friends thought her mad for being at the gym at this time but they didn’t understand. They were happy to snooze away the morning, wrapped in the arms of whatever snoring jock they had lured back. Louise had left hers out in the rain, drunk and confused, water trickling through his floppy hair as he stood at the end of her street. She had slammed the door on him.

She didn’t want a companion, a lover. Louise wanted something more or rather something less; a subordinate, a human pet, a slave. Louise was naturally dominant and, despite her short stature of just over five feet tall, had found no shortage of men and women willing to submit to her though they had failed to satisfy her.

Though the sight of grown men and women grovelling at her feet, cleaning her PVC boots with their tongues and calling her their mistress excited her she knew it was all a sham. They were there through choice, for their own pleasure. They enjoyed being the play things of a nubile young woman. Kissing her feet and having her walk across them in her stiletto heels excited them. That was not what Louise wanted. Louise craved power. The idea of it rushed through her like warm wine, intoxicating her, arousing her.

She wanted to make them flinch with a single look, to have them cry out with fear and despair when her feet touched the floor in the morning. She wanted them to have nothing but her, to live and to die for her. Louise was a Goddess and yearned to be worshipped.

The Shrinkys helped. They were everywhere these days, nothing but common pests. The tiny humans had no rights and as such the general population fell in to two camps when dealing with them; either ignore them or torment them. Louise was in the latter camp.

Many of her friends were the same and to kill one or two on a night out was commonplace. Something about them brought the worst out in people. Their stupid, grubby faces looking up at you with those wide eyes filled with fear. You wanted to hurt them.

You wanted to feel them crunch beneath you, to have them die screaming from whatever torture you devised while sipping cocktails. You saw them disappear under heels on the dance floor or crushed into sad little piles on the bar top beside empty glasses. They were even edible and, as gross as it sounds, didn’t taste too bad really. It was worth it to know that while you partied and threw shots of brightly coloured liquid down your neck something, someone, was dying in agony inside of you, trapped in a dark prison of flesh, dissolving into nothing, food for some drunk young girl in a nightclub.

But even Shrinkys were not enough for Louise. At home her boots had countless tiny bodies crushed like pink gum into the treads of her soles. Her sandals had a stain beneath the big toe where she had once slowly beaten a girl to death over the course of an entire hot afternoon. She had crushed and broken and torn and twisted them, she had digested them, smothered them and drowned them in her boiling sex. She had had them kill each other for her entertainment and then paint her nails with their blood. But it was not enough. They were too fragile. What good were they if they died from a single step? Often it took more effort not to kill them than to actually kill them. Why should she have to work for them?

No, a Goddess should not work for her slaves. The Shrinkys were no good, she needed a Resilient.

Cassidy had a Resilient, she wore him in her shoes when she worked at the bar. Louise would see him sometimes if Cass slipped off her shoe during a break. His grey little face would come creeping into the light, daring to steal some fresh air before he was forced back beneath the foot of his owner. Louise was so jealous but knew Cass would never give him up. Resilients were rare and practically indestructible. They were also the solution to her problem, the ideal worshipper.

Louise sighed and keyed her pass code into the door lock, four quick beeps. She stretched her leg behind her as she waited for the doors to unlock. A small red light turned to green and she jogged into the gym to the sound of silence. Perfect.

Row upon row of machine stood empty, each bathed in brilliant white light. Mirrors filled almost every wall, reflecting her toned physique back to her. She was very proud of her body and didn’t begrudge the long hours she spent in this place sculpting it to perfection. Her skin flashed bronze in the light, her hair shimmering like molten chocolate as she swept it into a tidy knot behind her head.

She had gone for the retro look today. A pink, long sleeved crop top covered her torso, her breasts pushing snugly against it from within the confines of her sports bra. Blue hot pants enclosed her ass extenuating her shapely curves as she admired herself in the nearest mirror. A stripe of tanned flesh peeked from the gap between them and her black thigh high socks with the white stripes at the top. Her small feet settled comfortably in a pair of old, grey and pink converse that she wore regularly to the gym.

She was feeling fresh and ready for her workout.  Louise filled her water bottle from the chrome fountain and turned to the nearest running machine. She always started with a run, thirty minutes of cardio before self led circuit. She took a step forwards and stopped.

There, amidst the sprawling expanse of mottled grey carpet was a tiny pink lump. She took another step, softer this time. Correction, two tiny pink lumps.

Louise grinned wolfishly, her teeth flashing as brilliantly white as the lights above her. Shrinkys. Brilliant.