Everywhere around me was black, aside from a pinprick of light above me. It was hot, with no escape, like I was in an oven with a temperature to match, and a tremendous amount of pressure on all sides holding me in place. Carefully I probed the wall in front of me, and to my surprise it felt like soft, smooth human skin. I had no idea where I was, nor any recollection of how I got here, but I was thankful for the darkness now. Wherever I was, it was decidedly alien, and I was better off not knowing.
The last thing I remembered was being trapped by two titanic women in the library. They never told me their names, but the pair was a blond and a redhead, physically strong, and towered over me by about a foot and a half each. Apparently, they thought I had been staring at them and taken offense to it. When I got up to grab a different book, they ambushed me in a corner. Once I got a good look at them, they laughed and somehow began to grow even larger. I tried to escape when I felt like a bug, but a black Converse slammed down in my path to stop me and I lost consciousness.
Suddenly, the ceiling bloomed outward like flower petals, and light entered my enclosure. The floor was pink and etched by a series of deep lines, stretching about twenty feet in every direction. Above me, the ceiling separated into five long, segmented components that straightened as they extended. They bore an uncanny resemblance to fingers, but that was impossible. For me to fit in someone’s hand, I would have to be puny. I looked around, hoping for reassurance, but stared in horror at what I saw.
A wall of white, wrapped tightly around a distinctly feminine form, towered over me for hundreds of feet. Before me was a pleated skirt that swayed with each movement of her legs, and a t-shirt hugged her curves and showed off her arms. She was tanned, with skin the color of a slightly seared marshmallow, and pale blue eyes that could freeze me in place. Despite the visor, I knew she was staring right at me, and I had to look away. Her other hand was wrapped around an enormous yellow ball, and her fingers clutched a tennis racket that could take down an airplane.
“Hello, shrink,” she boomed, and I gazed up at her in awe. Her voice was low, like someone was distorting it, and remarkably loud even from what seemed to be such a great distance. Every syllable from her lips was punishment, and I wondered how long I could withstand a voice of such magnitude. “Thanks for volunteering to be my double’s partner today. You better not let me down.” Did she expect me to play tennis? Not only was I missing a racket, but the ball alone was several times my size. If by some mistake I got in its way, I was sure to be pulverized.
Before I could voice my concerns, she turned her hand sideways and I slipped out of her palm. It was an unexpectedly short trip, and I screamed all the way until I landed on the green rubber below. When I got back to my feet, I looked at my captor and gasped. The toes of her white Keds were tall enough I would have to jump to reach them, and her shoes were the size of luxury yachts. Her ankles would be a significant climb on their own, and without equipment I would never make it up her smooth shin to the knee hundreds of feet above.
“When you’re ready, Fulda!” someone in the distance called out, and I spun in the voice’s direction. The blond stood on the opposite side of the court, dressed in similar attire, hunched over and holding her racket in both hands. A tremendous net with gaps between the fibers larger than me was pulled between them, and I realized the truth. This was not a bizarrely large tennis court built for giant people. Rather, I was tiny, and they were normal size.
The titanic redhead stared down at me and put a hand on her hip, making her seem even more daunting. The sun was behind her, throwing her shadow over me, and I gazed up at her with a sense of terrible awe and wonder. Though her face was shrouded in shadow, it was easy to see her gigantic features at the peak of her figure. She seemed to regard me with contempt, and her expression of how people looked when they saw unwanted pests. “Well, shrink?” she asked in a terrible roar. “You ready?” I doubted she could hear me so I did not respond, and she took my silence as a yes.
Fulda, as I figured her name was, stepped forward and got ready to serve. She raised her foot and moved it over me, and I reflexively flinched away from it. The rough surface of her enormous, brown rubber sole soared overhead, and I watched with trepidation, fearing it could come down at any time. It set down just past me with a thud, and despite the absorbent surface I felt the force of it landing. I looked up her monolithic leg, past the bulging calf and powerful hamstring, and saw her short skirt made a little tent around her thighs, with her white panties clearly visible. Looking up skirts may have been a perk of my new size, but I would gladly trade it to not be this small.
A loud, rhythmic pounding drew my attention back to the ground, and I saw the ball bouncing up and down into her hand. Everything about this was weird and seemed designed to kill me, so I decided to run while she was distracted. I set out over the dark green surface toward the thick white line on the border, knowing escape was my only hope. If I could get away, I just might survive and find someone who could reverse this horrible process.
Fulda let out a loud grunt, and the thwack of her racket hitting the ball pounded on my ears. I turned back, and saw I was still less than one of her long steps away from her. Getting away was going to take longer than I thought, and I had never sprinted nearly this far in my life. Still, my life was on the line, and I could push myself past my limits. Even if I could not escape, getting away from her would greatly increase my survivability.
The blond grunted when she hit it back, and Fulda sprung into action. She dashed toward me, her feet pounding the rubber hard enough I felt small quakes from each step. When her foot near me picked up I feared it was all over, but it crashed down just beside me. Her heel lifted, creasing the shoe around her toes, then it picked up again. Fulda bellowed when she sent it back, and I planted a foot and changed direction. I needed to keep moving away from her, though that would be difficult if that direction kept changing.
With her non-stop running side to side, I had to run toward the back. It looked so far away, but I tried not to think about it. Once I crossed the white line I would be in the grass, and the giantesses would have a much harder time finding me. The thought of security drove me on, and I pumped my legs as fast as I could.
A loud groan nearly made me stumble, and I figured the ball was on its way back. Moments later an ear-piercing whistle filled the air, unlike anything I had heard before. It reminded me of the sound falling bombs made in movies, and it was rapidly getting louder. A yellow streak came into view and crashed onto the ground in front of me, startling me to a sudden stop. It bounced off the ground, and white shoes chased it in the distance. Fulda’s grunt when she hit it was like the lurching of heavy machinery, and its sound made my stomach uneasy.
It was nice in Fulda’s shadow, much cooler than elsewhere on the court, but I was not about to let my guard down. I realized, against all logic, the safest place was closest to the net, where no one would be running. With what seemed like a solid course of action finally, I turned from the titanic woman and ran toward the center, hoping to stay in her shadow as long as I could.
The blond swung for the ball and missed, causing a racket when it crashed into the chain link fence behind her. This was great news, since another serve would mean more time without a giantess running about. I could capitalize this and put some more space between us, getting away from her enormous feet before they started moving again. If I kept this pace, I might be on the other side of her half before she served.
While Fulda went to get another ball, my legs began to feel the exertion. My knees ached, and I was gasping for breath to fill my continually depleted lungs. The brief stop had cost me more than if I had kept going; by breaking the motion of the sprint, my body thought it was time to relax. Now I had a biting pain in my side, and my legs were getting heavier when I needed them to move the most.
The rhythmic pounding of the bouncing tennis ball returned, and I was still far from the white dividing line. “Ready, Helen?” Fulda shouted, finally giving me a name for the blond. As the ball bounced, it seemed like the most menacing sound imaginable. It was like a countdown with no definite end and would signal the gargantuan woman to begin dashing again. Helen nodded, and the countdown was over.
Fulda’s horrific grunt accompanied her racket striking the ball, and the sudden noise made me stumble forward. I had to slow down to keep from falling onto my face while I got my footing back, and I could not get back to how fast I was going before. I had to slow down and simply hope that her feet missed me until I got to the net. It was a big court, I figured, and even her gigantic feet could only cover a small part of it.
Helen dashed forward and tapped the ball, giving it just enough momentum to get back over the net. Fulda sprung into action, charging toward the ball, and I heard her approaching footsteps like a stampede. Her shadow fell over me and the tremors from her steps became more intense as they got closer, making me feel the threat in my bones. She stepped over me, her foot low enough I had to duck, and her foot slammed down right in front of me. The titaness deflected the ball back, unfortunately keeping it in play.
With her between me and the net, I came to a full stop. I could not risk getting closer to her, and I would not move away from my goal. For the moment I simply observed her, crouched like she was ready to pounce at any moment. Sweat glistened on her golden skin, making her muscles look even more defined as beads of it rolled down the curves. Were she not over five hundred feet tall compared to me, I would have found her beautiful, even majestic, but the persistent threat of being crushed made it difficult to appreciate her body.
The ball pitched into the air higher than even Fulda’s head, and I watched mesmerized while she backpedaled. Once she had taken a few steps I came to my senses and tried to run, but my legs would not respond. She stopped one movement away from stepping on me and seemed frozen, the toe of her shoe resting on the pavement. I looked up at the rough sole of her enormous shoe looming over me, expecting it to come down at any time, and desperately wanted to get out of the way. No matter how hard I willed it, though, my legs would not move. Far above me Fulda rotated her hips, making her skirt sway from the movement, and with a great cry she whacked the ball.
When her stroke was finished, Fulda’s foot began moving again. It raced down at an insane speed, and its shadow soon engulfed me. I could see every minute detail on her sole, and I opened my mouth to scream. Before I could make any sound, however, her heel set down on top of me. My body rapidly compressed under her immense weight, and with a brief flash of pain it collapsed, rendered nothing more than a flattened pile of mush and a small red spot amid a sea of green.
Helen watched the ball sail past her and bounce off the court before it crashed into the fence behind her. She smiled, and declared, “That’s game!”
“Are you serious?” Fulda replied, and lifted her shoe behind her. She peered down over her shoulder to inspect her sole and saw a red smear on her heel, with a matching one on the court. “Dammit!” she shouted, stomping her foot. “That’s three games of shrink tennis you’ve won in a row!”
“Yeah, but you’re getting better at it.” Helen looked down and saw a tiny person standing beside her shoe, petrified from fear. “An inch or two to my right and I would’ve stepped right on him!” To demonstrate, Helen slid her shoe a little bit to the side so the shrunken man was completely beneath it, then set it down. It landed with a satisfying crunch, then she lifted her heel and ground the ball of her foot back and forth, pulverizing the tiny remains.
“Anyway, good game,” Fulda congratulated her with a wry grin. “I thought this shrink had promise, but he was just as stupid as the others.”
Helen laughed and asked, “Want to play tennis for real? I mean, we did get dressed and come all the way out here. We can consider that a warm-up round.”
“Hm, nah,” Fulda replied. “It doesn’t have the same thrill if a shrink isn’t trying his best not to get stepped on, you know?”
“True. Two more shrinks, same time next week?”
“You know it.” Fulda and Helen walked off the court with a pair of smashed corpses on their shoes, chatting happily as though they had already forgotten about them. They left the remains for the rain to wash away the next time it came, barely noticeable unless someone knew where to look. It was not their concern what happened to them, after all. Their only part in this was making them.