Crawling groggily out from the makeshift tent of lab coats he’d fashioned into his new home, Ben leaned back against the stone wall of the Blend tech laboratory which was once his office, but now was exclusively used to make tweaks and advancements in flavor and quality to ForLit. The belongings he could still use, at a height of just under two feet tall, had been shipped to the office per a donation from Ms. Hoshoku, allowing him to work an even fuller day than before without having to brave the dangers of the street.

            There were no more men left in the office. Perhaps even in the city itself; Ben hadn’t been outside again after the photo shoot to confirm or deny. The stragglers of Blend had either been fired or simply disappeared. Were they confined to their homes? Prisoners of their spouses? Maybe they just drowned in a gutter, abandoning hope of doing anything but shrinking down so far into nothingness they could disappear through the electron rings of an atom. Or maybe something even worse that he couldn’t imagine.

            Ben was the last testament in the building to an evidently dying species of male who was tall enough to be seen with the naked eye. He, alone, remained to work.

            Of course, his “work” was no longer what he’d signed up for on his first day at the company, eyes bright and mind alight with glorious purpose in science. For one matter, he was far too short now to reach the tabletop he’d need to aid in mixing; plus, by this time, plenty of other female technicians could not only easily reach the table themselves, but had all miraculously increased their capability in the lab, turning them each into virtuosos of beverage blending. It was becoming obvious that ForLit granted intellectual talents to its female consumers. Thus, Ben was out of a “job,” at least the kind that paid him a regular salary for sitting in an office and testing out soft drink combinations.

            He still had one job, though. One that wasn’t going anyway anytime soon, as far as he could see. Which, he supposed, in this dark new age for which he was partially responsible, wasn’t a bad thing.

            Ten hours a day, five days a week, Ben lived in Hoshoku’s new vice-president office. She’d inherited this new space from a previously resistant shrinking man within the last seven days on the top floor. Alternately, the former Blend tech acted as a footrest, a toe-rubber, a leg massager, or simply a literal statue to stand by her desk and hold a bouquet of incense to freshen the space. And, of course, Ben was a cushion. Her favorite cushion, to be precise, as this was what she made of point of calling him with that endearingly haunting grin of hers.

            The photoshoot had lit a fire in Ms. Hoshoku’s heart, apparently filling her with creative inspiration for Ben’s practical uses as an office “assistant.” She’d been kind enough with her ever-increasing wealth to purchase a foam-padded medical pillow to act as a buffer between Ben and the hard-based chair, such that his bones didn’t snap like twigs on the first, second, twentieth time she laid her mammoth rump upon his breakable body.

            Ben had quit bothering with the mental calculation necessary to determine how much height and girth separated him from his boss now, a woman who, a mere five weeks ago, was only two inches taller than him and probably actually weighed less than he. Trying to make all the comparison just gave him headaches. All he knew now was that he was less than two feet tall, and Ms. Hoshoku, God bless her and keep her, had broken nine feet: the same height of most office room ceilings.

            Nine. Feet. Tall.

            In short, it was a necessary gift that the pillow be laid underneath his stomach to help bear the load. Otherwise, Ben knew, especially after he’d spent multiple hours under Hoshoku’s pert, muscular glutes which now stretched wider than his entire body length, he would be dead. There was no questioning it. He should have died of asphyxiation or internal bleeding from wretched bone splits each and every time Ms. Hoshoku used him as her chair.

            But he didn’t. At least not yet. Perhaps there was some plan for him yet to serve this new world order. And so he remained in the incense-flavored, green tea-spiced, feminine body odor haze which now defined his very existence and gave him a reason to get up in the morning. The weekend was his to wait in the lab in crushing solitude, resting up his sore little body for another week of radical human repurposing: a sacrifice to Ms. Hoshoku and her expectant, deserving, celestial body of an ass, in all its painful perfection.

            Ben wasn’t granted long in his grateful isolation. The offices were rarely empty for long. He heard the omnipresent clatter of pump heels: a crowd of them, growing louder like a stampeding herd of fashionistas. For an instant he considered burrowing back into his lab coat tent to avoid being seen, but they were already entering, filling the door frame and gloating down upon him with big, bright eyes eight and a half feet up. Although too short to make out the identities of the three women who’d just arrived, Ben could at least recognize the one who stood in front, though he sincerely wished not to.

            “Well, well, well,” Mariah said, her blonde head a matter of inches away from the tall laboratory ceiling. She was practically a giraffe now, except for that crimson top and skirt which wedded her to the visage of power and glamor she so craved. Palms cupped under her immense breasts, she gave them a shake, grinning at Ben’s helpless reaction to stare. “Looks like someone’s been hit hard by the economy. Am I right, Benny?”

            “Maybe,” he sighed. It wasn’t worth trying to argue with her.

            “But hey, at least you’re not homeless, right, little one? You’ve still got a roof over your head, and plenty to eat. Sometimes what you’re eating is even food!”

            Ben flinched but nodded.

            “Ooh, don’t look so shy! I figured if a person makes a decision in their life to spend all day every day eating ass and being a human seat cushion, they must not have the shame left to even be embarrassed!” Mariah reasoned. “Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Benny?”

            What did he have to lose?
            “Maybe,” he repeated.

            “But that’s not why I’m here, to remind you about that,” she explained. “I mean, it’s part of why I’m here… down on this filthy floor where I don’t belong anymore. No, I’m really here to make you a proposal.”

            “Are you going to sit on me again?”

            “Don’t be crude, Benny. We’re just having some fun here. And no, I’m not going to sit on you. Probably not. T-B-D. But the proposal is more about you and your obviously diminished financial status. I’d like to present you with a gift, you see. An opportunity to make up a deficit.”

            What, she was going to throw nickels at his head? Ben didn’t suppose he was ready. He lacked the hand-eye coordination at this clumsy size to avoid such an assault. Plus, with a cranium this tender now, like a baby’s, he would probably come away with a concussion or even go unconscious for the forthcoming female takeover of planet Earth he’d begun to suspect was underway.

            Although, all things considered, was it really so bad to want to be asleep for that outcome?

            “What is it?” he groaned at last, when he realized Mariah wasn’t going to stop glowering down at him with toned, crossed arms until he answered.

            “It’s pretty simple,” Mariah said. Her thumbs dug deep under the billowing, curtain folds of her sexy red skirt and drew her panties down the length of her thighs.

            Ben watched, unable to keep his mouth from watering as he watched the woman’s tanned, generous thigh flesh altering shape ever so slightly to accommodate the taut black silk of her underwear stringing along her limbs. It got easier around her knees and shins, and she easily pulled the looped undergarment over the crests of her heels. Bending the waistband back against her outstretched thumb like a slingshot, Mariah fired her panties at Ben.

            His coordination was as weak as he anticipated. Ben sputtered, literally knocked off his feet by Mariah’s flying panties. They covered most of his body like a blanket in all their black, silky glory. He ripped them away and threw them aside as forcefully as he could, which was really just akin to casting aside a parachute. It probably looked pretty pathetic.

            Mariah giggled. “Sorry about that. My aim’s not so great. I was trying to give you a black eye.”

            “I’ll bet.”

            “So here’s the proposal. Or I suppose I should say: Part One of the proposal,” Mariah said. “All you have to do is pick up those panties, lick all the way up the middle on the inside, and I give you one hundred bucks, right now.”

            One hundred bucks? It sounded like so much compared to what he had now, Ben almost had to remind himself how little use he had for the green stuff inside his cave now. Most of his needs were taken care of: food, water, shelter, warmth, sexual release. Ms. Hoshoku had summarily seized his assets earlier in the week on a legal condition that he was too small and weak to handle his own finances now; effectively, he was penniless.

            Still, he had to think about the future, even if it was bleak. If he was ever discarded from Ms. Hoshoku’s good graces and flung out into the street like Mariah’s dirty laundry, he’d need a nest egg just to survive. Even if he couldn’t reach the tabletops to beg for food scraps.

            “I see you’re thinking about it,” Mariah said. “And I want you to know that if you don’t decide in the next five seconds, that offer drops down to fifty bucks. Then twenty. I can keep going.”

            “Okay, okay!” Ben squealed. He was shaking from a combination of adrenaline and excitement at making back some of the massive shortage in cash he was experiencing: a shortage which almost rivaled the one he was suffering through in physical height. He took the blanket-like panties of his athletic, towering rival in his fists and lifted it up to his face.