The spitball swelled from between Sally’s soft lips and plopped with a quiet, sticky splash onto its intended three-inch target, right in the center of the teen’s open hand.
Amanda flinched at the gooey impact and visibly shuddered as her sister’s spit flooded warmly over her abdomen, though already it was allowing the foamy residue to break up more easily.
“Honey, please don’t do that in public. You couldn’t at least have waited until we were back in the car?” her mother sighed, placing a hand over her face in frustration.
“What? She’s dirty. I wanna keep her clean,” Sally defended. Licking her thumb for good measure, she began rubbing her fingertip vigorously over Amanda’s body, spreading her spit across all exposed skin and chipping steadily away at the foam. “You’re the one who said she’s fun to play with cuz I take care of her so well.”
“I know, I know,” Sally’s mother groaned. “Maybe just don’t do it like that in the store anymore? Your dad and I raised you with better manners than that.”
“Okay, fine,” the teen agreed, finishing rubbing the filthy shrinker down, and noticed that Amanda’s miniature underwear was still soaked with the foam. “Gosh, this is messy. I hope this goop comes out of her little panties.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, honey, you can just throw them out later. Trunks, especially for three-inchers, you can get in packs of a dozen for a buck or so at the dollar store,” said her parent. “God knows I went through enough of those sets for my sisters. I used to have to buy a few extra packs, too, for when I’d go to camp in the summers and take them both along.”
“Really?” Sally giggled, stroking a curved fingernail precariously along her miniature sister’s stomach to ensure all the foam was cleared away. “How come just for camp?”
“Well, the way I hiked, by the end of the day I had an awful lot of dirt on me. And if the showers weren’t free, I had them to clean me up. By the end it looked like they’d been trekking through the mud instead of me, especially if they didn’t do a great job and I had to just start using them to get it done myself,” the woman said warmly, reminiscing once again. “I had to throw away a lot of their little leotards.”
“I just don’t want Amanda getting the gross stuff all over the inside of my purse,” Sally affirmed resolutely. “And I think I brought a spare pair of undies for her anyway.” Sliding a well-trimmed fingernail into the waistband of her sister’s tiny panties, she slid them gently down her legs. She quickly followed suit with the bra, stripping the shrinker down to absolutely nothing in her peachy palm.
The naked shrinker, clearly used to such cavalier theft of the very few things she owned in the world, remained motionless despite the increased cold of the air as her titanic sibling pinched the stolen foam-crusted clothing between a thumb and forefinger, grimacing with disgust at the sight of them. Her eyes darted to the side and located a small trashcan with a swiveling door next to the bench, intended for the disposal of used pantyhose. The girl flicked the soiled articles into the receptacle and then set about rummaging through her purse for the spare set.
Finding nothing, though, Sally thought back to three days prior, and realization dawned yet again.
Her friend Maria, while in the process of smacking on a rather large wad of hours-old bubble gum, had found Amanda while her sister had left her on the classroom desk during a bathroom break. Seeing an opportunity for a gag, the girl had immediately plucked up the shrinker and shoved half Amanda’s thrashing body between her sticky lips and blown a fresh bubble around her.
When Sally had returned to the classroom from the bathroom, she nearly doubled over with laughter at the sight of her sister dangling awkwardly from Maria’s mouth, a pink bubble curling around her limp arms and shoulders.
Of course, the thing had popped seconds later, and the gum was almost assuredly never going to come out of the fabric. This necessitated Sally stripping her sister yet again, much to the cackling amusement of Maria and a few other classmates.
“Actually, I think I used up the other pair of her undies, too,” Sally said as she removed her hand from her purse and looked back up to her mother. She wrinkled her nose and swiped a thick spit bubble out of Amanda’s tangled hair. “Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown those away before I checked. Now she’s stuck all naked and cold…”
Her mother shrugged, picking up another shoe from the rack and looking it over. “So she’ll be a little chilly on the way home. It’ll be okay. Just find a way to keep her warm for now.”
“That’s easy,” Sally said. Placing her other hand over her cupped palm, she sandwiched her sister between the two pads of pink skin and began gently kneading her between them. She rocked her hands back and forth, locking her fingers together, ensuring plenty of heat was generated where her sister was now pinned without putting any painful pressure on her.
“That’ll work. And… honey, would you please make sure you clean her up with actual soap and water when we get home? She’s been in our salads, in that foot mold, up against your toes…” her mother catalogued, wrinkling her upper lip. “She’s probably just covered in germs by now, and I don’t want anyone forgetting and then getting sick from touching her too much.”
“Yeah, I’ll clean her up,” Sally promised.
“Thank you. Now let’s take a look at some of these choices, hmm?” her mother said, now picking up a green and yellow shrink-rider shoe. “How about this one?”
“Eww, Mom, don’t be weird,” Sally gasped as she rose to her feet and examined the shelves. She still kept her hands pressed together, mildly cooking Amanda between the lotion-scented heat of her soft palms. “Green and yellow? Pleeeeease. I’m not a Christmas elf.”
“Sorry about the wait. I had to get in line to put in the order for the custom insole. We’ve had sixty-eight orders for customs, just today! Imagine that,” Joann said as she reappeared next to the pair. “Seeing anything you like yet?”
“Not yet,” Sally said slowly, squinting at a pair of black and purple shoes before shaking her head.
“C’mon, honey. I think we’ve taken enough of this woman’s time. Let’s pick them out. Which shrink-rider do you want?” Sally’s mother said, kindly presenting an ultimatum.
“I just don’t know,” Sally sighed. “A lot of them do look pretty cool.” She looked down to her fist, uncurling her fingers. Her sister, now well-heated from being squeezed against the damp skin of the girl’s palm, sprawled into the center and realized with shock that her giant sibling was actually making eye contact with her. “What do you think, widdle one? What color should I get for our shrink-riders?”
Our shrink-riders. The phrase sounded so bizarre, and yet so fitting.
After all, by the time the things were worn out in a couple years, Amanda would be far more intimately familiar with the sights, touches, and most prominently smells of the footwear than her sister could ever hope or indeed want to be. Amanda, who’d been on a robotic autopilot for roughly the past forty-eight hours since her sister had last requested any kind of coherent thought from the shrinker, stared blankly at the massive wall of shoes.
It took the tiny girl a solid thirty seconds to even regain the mental musculature necessary to make decisions. In her new life as a miniature toy for her twin sister, any decision she got to make was usually limited to something like “which color bra do you want to wear today,” or the ever-popular “which stocking do you want to be worn inside today?”
But this. This was something real: something that would actually have an impact on the existing world, or at least her sister’s social circle once she started proudly wearing the things to school, with Amanda firmly affixed to the base under her sole and a mounting moat of toejam-flecked sweat.
And as much as the shrinker yearned in the back of her mind to make the choices of a real human being again, Amanda knew the way of the world and had come to numbly accept her fate. Her parents chose to toy with her on many an occasion, but her true owner, Sally, always ensured she was never in true harm’s way, because as the taller twin often expressed with finger hugs or moist kisses, she still cared for her as one might care for a beloved pet.
Who in Amanda’s position could possibly ask for anything more?
Sally deserved to be happy. Maybe she even deserved Amanda, here, beneath her? It was the shrinker’s duty to choose well for her, and she did not take that responsibility lightly.
“The red and silver,” Amanda said, her voice coming out as a croak since she hadn’t spoken aloud in two days, but she said it firmly. It was rare for shrinkers to have a reason to feel proud of anything, but she felt it in this moment.
For this instant, she mattered as something more than an accessory for her sister’s toes.
“Red and silver,” Sally repeated thoughtfully. She raised an eyebrow, chewing the possibility over, and then slowly shook her head. “Nope! I choose blue and white.”
Her fingers curled back in, cocooning her three-inch sister back into the warm, doughy skin of her fist before Amanda had even had an instant to register the disappointment.