“Run!” The words came in a constant, panicked stream as the two figures desperately tried to cross the wasteland before them. A booming sound was masking the tiny voices, growing louder as they tried to flee.

Matt was panting already, but he knew the punishment if he was to fail. The giantess would reach him, her foot coming down. Squished under her shoe, not even a chance of being spared a cruel, painful, and humiliating death.

“Run!” Shouted the three other men, already under the safety of the cabinet’s overhand. Matt tried, but his legs burned, his lungs screamed, his stomach was tearing at him. How many days had it been since he had last eaten? Two, three? And even then, it was literal crumbs.

The two men left running almost fell as the giant’s flat came down again, the hard sole rocking the tile floor below. Though neither was willing to look over, they knew the shoes appearance. It had almost crushed them many times before. Belonging to a middle aged woman whose body the very idea of beauty, the shoes were tight flats, made of a black leather that gripped their owner’s foot. Though the outside may have been covered in cracks, bends and chips, they looked no less radiant, nor any less deadly. Matt continued to push himself, thinking only of the safety before him, not sparing a thought to his friend that was falling behind.

A shadow came over them, the giant’s foot hanging high above, ready to come down and end their suffering. But Matt was almost in reach. He screamed, the feeling of a thousand knives stabbing his legs taking over as he desperately leapt under the cabinet. Hands grasped onto his outstretched arms, pulling him the last few paces in.

A deafening thud, a muffled scream of agony, then the sound of tiny crumbs and specks of dirt falling from a giant’s shoe as she continued her thoughtless step. Matt was still alive, in one piece, saved at the last moment. The same could not be said of his friend.

Matt looked back, his chest heaving, sweat, drenching his naked body. If his stomach had anything of substance inside he would have vomited it up at the sight of his former friend turned to a mess of blood skin and organs on the tile floor.

“Come on,” one of the others said after a moment, the shock of thier friends death still weighing heavily. He dragged Matt to his feet, ushering him to the hole they had cut out from the cabinet and the small hollow space behind that served as their home. “That’s no good to look at.”

“No,” Matt agreed, turning away. He had seen it before, and knew that he would see it again. No point in letting the sight burn itself into his mind any more than it already had.

Sleep came hard that night, partially due to the continuous gnawing in his stomach, partially because of his realization of the futility of the situation. His friend had died today and it took no more than one well-placed step by these giantesses that now tormented them. Who was going to die next?

The group of four, originally a group of six, had been convicts convicted of different crimes of different severities. Ever since the invention and legalization of shrinking technology the government had implemented it in prisons, shrinking the convicts so that they would be easier to manage, feed, and keep. As far as he knew, Matt and the others were the first people to have escaped the program.

They had ran, crossing through the streets of the town outside of the jail, always moving in the direction of a shop called Paula’s Beauty. A woman could buy anything she needed there, but Matt had a more specific goal in mind. Among the woman who worked there was a girl with fiery red hair flowing past her shoulders, green eyes that were as captivating as her smile, and a heart that was ever filled with compassion. Her name was Cassie, and she was the love of Matt’s life, the two having been in a relationship for almost two years before his conviction.   

At first he had hoped to simply call out to her, have her realize what happened, maybe even take care of him until they found a way to reverse the shrinking. Those hopes had disappeared the moment he saw the titanic girl standing thousands of times his height, his near microscopic head barely reaching past the sole of her shoes. She had almost crushed him that day, Matt only surviving because he had fit into the grooves that made up her boots.

Ever since that day the group had simply tried to survive; getting help from the gods that walked around them one of the last things on their minds. They didn’t have a chance. They were just small, naked, tiny insects to be stepped on, eaten, or to simply lay down and die in a corner. Now it was just a matter of time.

Still, none of them had the heart to give in. They continued to scurry around the shop, trying to dodge the numerous hazards that awaited them, eating whatever crumbs they could scrape off the floor.

Of the four members left of the escape party, two of them had been convicted of murder previously. Jonny claimed it was in self-defense, which Matt believed due to his generally laid back nature. Brian said that it was a revenge thing after the guy slept with his wife. Matt himself had been wrongly convicted of raping a young girl, a crime that he still denied even now. It didn’t matter though, no one believed him. Even Cassie, who had stood beside him for so long, had her doubts. She had barely even visited him in jail.

The final man had been convicted of theft and assault before, but had been put in jail due to terroristic actions that had never been detailed. Nicholas was his name.  His temperament always seemed to change, and was never easy to predict. A strange man, one whom Matt tried to avoid as much as possible. Still, in this world he couldn’t be picky when it came to help.

Matt closed his eyes tightly, trying to drown out the sounds of things creaking, tiny footsteps of the mice, and the dripping of the broken faucet high above. He tried to peel his mind away from the nightmarish thoughts that gripped it, the fact that he slept next to murderers each night, the reality that they were going to die soon, the revelation that his life meant nothing, the image of his dead friend. No, sleep would not to come easily that night. It never did.