“Are you all the way back there, Marky?” Becky sang into the lengthy leather tunnel of her mocha-chromed cowgirl boot.

            Down in the fur-lined darkness, laid out at only two inches tall now thanks to an adjustment by the PMRD, was Mark, clothed in the goofily striped one-piece, the rubber breathing device clenched in his back teeth. His spine was pressed to the curved wall of the boot’s toe, as distanced as he could be before the bulging intrusion of massive toes entered and tackled him. Though he knew no amount of distance was going to help.

            Chilled momentarily by the emerald fizzle of the shrinking device, his body temperature had almost instantaneously reversed directions once he was deposited down into the recently worn footwear.

            The twin buttons of the emergency indicators were attached between Mark’s index fingers and thumbs, thankfully easily in reach and capable of sending off a flashing alarm to the plastic monitor currently held in Joy’s palms far above. Already he felt the urge to squeeze the triggers with all his might, and his giant sister hadn’t even inserted her bare, train-sized foot into the boot yet.

            “Yep,” he sighed meekly in answer. He could see the filtered light poured into the boot dancing and shifting as his sister and mother moved about above. The boy could feel feet thumping against the carpeted ground beyond the muggy walls of his new prison and quaking him to his core, as well as far-away whispers granted only to the two normal-sized women above. Despite knowing that his mother and sister were merely discussing safety protocol to keep him in one piece, it made Mark feel oddly out of the loop, even lower than he already was as he crouched patiently in the acrid fog of Becky’s boot.

            “All right, honey,” Joy called into the mouth of the shoe, her massive shadow momentarily blotting out what little light her tiny son had access to. “I’ve already tested the monitor twice and it’s ready as soon as you hit either button. Now, once Becky starts walking, take a little bit of time to let her get a feel for you, and then choose when you’re going to start fighting back. Your fists, feet, anything you can use - remember, you won’t have the suit on if this ever happens again.”

            “Uh-huh,” Mark replied blankly.

            “Then, while you’re doing that, hit the buttons - and I’ll be able to see if Becky can guess it at the same time that you’re trying,” Joy finished. There was a ruffle as the woman’s hand slid down the length of the opening, alighting at the fur-trampled heel as her fingers fished toward the tip. Her thumb found Mark in his clenched position at the summit of the boot and stroked affectionately down his side, earning a guilty shudder of comfort out of her embarrassed offspring. “You’ll be all right.”

            “Uh-huh,” he repeated, not doubting her words from a physical standpoint as he poked at the ultra-dense padding on every surface of his suit, though he wasn’t sure he could quite say the same for the sanctity of his emotional status or masculinity as his enormous parent petted him like a wounded lemming.

            “All right, then,” Joy said as she tugged her arm back out of her daughter’s boot after a final caress of her son’s fetally curled body, leaving the boy alone once again, if only briefly. “Becky? Go ahead.”

            Mark, not wanting to watch his oncoming immediate future literally eating up the light and the space, shut his eyes as he heard the soft skin of Becky’s foot pressing into the opening and sidling along every feathery thread of the fuzzy lining. He felt the muted whomp as the ball of the girl’s foot met the insole, followed by the rustle of false fabric hair flossing between Becky’s naked, writhing toes as they charged toward their two-inch target.

            Gratefully, Mark could note a significant difference between having his sister’s toes meet him while she was aware of his presence versus before when she’d jammed her stockinged appendage into the flat in a giggling rampage to make a TV show deadline.

            Her toes, newly lotioned and polished, oddly for his benefit, gave him a gentle nudge to ensure he was in place before the girl arched them over him. The suit solidly kept him from the risk of bruising, and even the breathing device, though it was nonetheless feeding him air from an environment enriched over countless walks by feminine summer foot grease, seemed to work well. At least his lungs were filling up with something.

            Still, without the buffer of the slick nylon from yesterday, Mark found himself once again literally face-to-foot, his entire head squeezed into the baking swirl of his sister’s big toe. The rubber suit and breathing device made a big difference in keeping his nose from becoming buried in a sweaty flesh fold, but that only went so far. Luckily, the girl seemed to be making a special effort to crest her toes as high as possible, to give him more room.

            However, each protective tool that Mark wore also maintained a great deal of friction, and as the shrunken teen felt the rumble of ground below as Becky pushed off by the treads, her already anxiously-damp skin clung to the material of his suit, meaning with the every flinch, fleck, or splay of those massive toes, Mark experienced tenfold over every square millimeter.

            Thrown into a sense of déjà vu and vertigo, the sixteen-year-old crossed his arms over his chest and straightened his legs, the way Joy had instructed him to do for safety if he was unable to get enough leverage to beat his way into being noticed.

            Becky’s foot rose up, the leather bend of her narrow boot stretching and rubbing inside Mark’s ears. Centrifugal force hugged the boy flush against the underside of Becky’s writhing toes as they accidentally grasped him into their fleshy grip. He could tell she was only doing it for his safety, and that each step was increasingly slow and steady so she could wait to feel his emergency indication, but a muffled declaration from Joy suddenly sent her into a much more normalized pace.

            Their mother was nothing if not serious about application of valuable real-world lessons.

            Mark waited, counting out twelve entire steps in a lap around the kitchen as Becky continually and knowingly trod upon her two-inch brother at the concerned insistence of their precautious mother. Then, feeling the time was right, and wondering how much more he could handle of the greasy, toejam-flavored oxygen squeezed through his breathing tube, Mark began to punch. Throwing his fists again and again into the wall of skin and wrinkles above, as he had before but with even greater force, the reduced house-inmate squeezed both triggers in his gloves, giving Joy the signal, and continued to flail against Becky’s foot.

            But the graciously soft pounding didn’t stop. The titanic fourteen-year-old’s foot came down for a thirteenth, then fourteenth and fifteenth time, followed by eight more steps, continually grinding her beloved shrunken sibling down into the matted insole, all while her toes were tipped just a little too high out of reach for consistent signaling.

            Haplessly, Mark gave the trigger another two pulses to alert Joy, even as a particularly heavy landing mashed his skull down into the fluff beneath Becky’s meatiest digit. Again, no response was effected as the girl continued peacefully walking around the room, completely ignorant of the battle happening inside her boot.

            With a performance this poor, the teen had a sneaking suspicion his mother wasn’t going to be satisfied just yet.