Several days passed, which I only knew thanks to Taylor’s coming and going. After that dinner on Sunday, she did not let me out of the glass for a single second. She did not touch me, talk to me, and the few times her eyes landed on me I was sure were accidents. The most she did to acknowledge me was flicking drops of water in my direction when she returned from her shower each morning, a few of which landed inside the glass. It was hard, bitter, and tasted like soap, but it was the only liquid I could reach, and by the second morning I greedily lapped it up.
It felt like she we doing the bare minimum to take care of me. On the rare occasion she brought food back to her room she ate it far away from me, where it would take the better part of a day for me to reach it, not counting the time it would take to escape. For that matter, escape was impossible, barring a mistake on her part. The clear glass walls of my prison were smooth and straight vertical, making it impossible to climb them even if I had the strength. By the time she was in her nightie on the third night, I had decided it was better to conserve my energy rather than waste it on futile escape attempts.
On the fifth day of my solitary confinement, the giantess finally deigned to notice me again. Taylor stood beside me, not even bothering to turn towards me, and looked down from her great elevation. The brilliant blue eyes made me feel comfortable, the closest thing to human interaction I had for almost a week, though her face imparted no feeling. It was like, in her eyes, I really was nothing more than a bug.
“Hello, insect,” she boomed, and I recoiled from her voice bouncing around inside the glass. “It’s Friday. Are you excited for the weekend?” Friday and weekends were meaningless to me so long as I was trapped in this glass cell. “You should be.” Naturally, her questions were not to fuel conversation, but to enable her monologues. “Rebecca’s coming over tonight, but more importantly, tomorrow’s our big game against Wash U and you get to be there with us.”
My eyes lit up, and I felt a surge of energy surge through my body. I got to my feet and stared up at Taylor, a smile gracing my face for the first time in captivity. “She’s coming here?” I asked, hoping she would be able to hear my raspy shout.
“Now I remember why I don’t talk to the mascots, you’re always so boring. Yes, if you can believe it, my best friend’s coming over to hang out. She also said something about wanting to see her boyfriend, which I guess means you, though I don’t get the appeal. I mean, you’re basically a dust mite who lives in a glass. She could do better by throwing a rock on the quad.”
Three loud knocks at the door made Taylor jump. “That must be her now. Could you do me a favor and not literally jump into her pants for at least five minutes? I’d really appreciate it.” She walked to the door and opened it, and on the other side of the threshold stood Rebecca, her curly golden hair flowing down to the middle of her chest.
“Hey, Tay!” she bellowed, and the sound of her voice ricocheted throughout the room. She stepped in, and the two volleyball players embraced in a one-armed hug. “Sorry I’m a bit late, I had to get my hair just right seeing as how I’m seeing my boyfriend tonight.”
“I don’t know why you bothered, he’s as tall as one of your hairs is thick,” Taylor replied. “Remember, shoes off before you come in. I don’t want to have to vacuum up the dirt that you trail in.”
“Yes, of course, Queen Taylor,” Rebecca responded sarcastically as she bent down to untie her shoes. “Wouldn’t want to track dirt around your bog-standard dorm room. Why don’t you just move in with us already so you’ll have a cleaning lady and won’t have to worry about that shit?”
“I value my independence. I’d hate to be stuck in one place, everything I do immediately visible to everyone else, nowhere to hide if I need to get away. That sounds like torture, really.” It was not a mistake that she had described the exact situation she had put me in. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it works for you, it’s just not something I’d like to be part of right now.”
Rebecca took her shoes off then rushed to me, her hands slapping the table on either side of me with a great bang. “Hey there, little guy!” she exclaimed, her face filling my entire sky even accounting for the glass’s refraction. “Did you miss me? It feels like it’s been ages since we’ve seen each other!”
“Yeah, I did,” I admitted. Even if the whole thing was an act, Rebecca was the only person who treated me like a person, let alone a man. Given the choice, I would choose to live with her in a second.
“Aw, you did! Would you believe that I missed you, too? I love watching my little bug-sized boyfriend walk around, totally helpless and reliant on me for everything!” And thus why I had doubts about her sincerity. “Taylor tells me you’ve been a good little man for her, though.”
“Most of the time I forgot he was even there,” Taylor added. “I guess that’s a point in his favor, but would it kill him to have a little presence?”
“Tay, please! He’s puny, how much presence can he have?” Rebecca looked back to me and smiled big, revealing the top row of huge, straight teeth. “Don’t worry, I know there’s nothing you can do about being so small and forgettable. That’s part of why I like you.” Her lips were puckered and she was trying to coo, but I could not stop from feeling a little insulted. Forgettable was among the worst things you could be, especially for someone in my situation.
“Maybe you should sit down before you start sucking face with him,” Taylor suggested, and she place a chair down beside hers with a loud thud. “Just remember that I’m his owner, so I don’t want you swallowing him if you can avoid it.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll try not to. I know how touchy you get about your stuff. Hey, is it okay if I sit in this chair? Wouldn’t want to accidentally damage something since I’m just a big klutz, right?”
“Of course you can, smartass.” The two took their seats, but that did not clear my view. My sight was still blocked by Taylor’s tight black T-shirt and Rebecca’s blue deep V-neck. All it did was bring their enormous faces closer to me, which only made them more imposing. With their giant eyes able to bear down on me more easily it was readily apparently how small I was, especially since I could not even see myself in the reflections on their corneas.
Rebecca leaned forward, making the table shudder when her forearms landed on it, and my sky was filled with her bright face and sparkling eyes. “So, cute as a bug boyfriend,” she began, and her voice rang off my cell’s walls, “what have you and my bestie gotten up to this week? Anything I should know about?”
I started to answer, but Taylor spoke over me. “Really, he’s just been in that glass the whole time. He hasn’t so much as asked me for food! You’ve got nothing to worry about from him, trust me.”
Rebecca’s lips tightened, making her gloss shine under the light. “Aw, you must be going stir-crazy in there, pipsqueak!” I was more concerned about being so hungry I could no longer feel it, but that was a problem, too. She sat back up and turned toward her friend, leaning toward her pleadingly. “Can we let my boyfriend out, just for tonight, please? I promise I’ll be careful with him, I just want to hold him and let him walk around for a bit!”
Taylor crossed her arms sternly and blew a strand of blond hair out of her face. “Fine, for tonight. But he doesn’t leave this room, got it?”
Rebecca’s fingerprints were already pressed flat against the glass. “And miss spending time with my Tay-Tay? Never.” She tipped the glass toward her, and I tumbled over the smooth, transparent walls to slide on the faux wood surface of Taylor’s desk. With a bang she turned the glass back upright, and the resulting tremors made me stumble as I stood back on my shaking legs.
I was hardly any closer to them, but they seemed significantly larger to me now. Maybe it was the exposure, or the lack of glass refracting my view of them, but I felt much more vulnerable outside of my cell. Craning back my neck to look at them did not help with that feeling. They were so large I could not take in one of them in her entirety, let alone both of them, and I had to look almost straight up to see their faces. To make matters worse, they were looking almost straight down at me, and there was nowhere for me to run. Benevolent or not I was entirely at their mercy, whether they thought of me as their boyfriend or property.
“How about we start off with a hug?” Rebecca boomed, and I knew by now I was not really meant to be included in the conversation. She raised her index finger from the table and shifted it sideways, moving it several dozen feet toward me so the pad of her fingertip hovered over me. It lingered there for a moment before the whorls of her fingerprint rapidly became deeper and more defined while it descended toward me. Her finger laid on top of me, shoving me down against the table, and remained on top of me as an unbearable weight that must have registered in the tons.
I enjoyed the warmth of Rebecca’s body heat, and the steady pulse coming through her skin made me feel strangely relaxed. However, I was terribly aware that the great weight atop me was a mere fraction of the force it could exert on me, and with a slight twitch she would be able to flatten me without even trying. I struggled against Rebecca’s finger, trying to push it off or at least slide out from under it, but to no avail. The sheer weight and friction of her finger held me in place, and there was no chance I would be able to push it off me.
The titanic volleyball player smiled enough to show the top row of her teeth, and a gust of hot air rushed out from her nose in a suppressed laugh. “Hey! That tickles!” she declared, leaving her finger firmly in place holding me down. “Tay, you’ve got to try this, it feels so good.” She lifted her finger off me, slightly picking me up from the table before my minuscule weight could break their bonds with the oils on her skin.
“Sure you won’t get jealous?” Taylor asked as she moved her hand into position.
“Yeah, sure! The way I see it, he’s my boyfriend but you own him, so we kind of have equal claim on him, you know?”
Taylor’s finger was swinging toward me before Rebecca had even finished. It landed right on top of me, and her smooth skin formed a loose seal around me. “I prefer my boyfriends to be taller than most ants, so I’ll leave that sort of stuff to you.” As she spoke her words made her whole body vibrate, including her finger, which imparted a surprisingly pleasant sensation into my body. I squirmed in a vain attempt to get free of it, but could scarcely budge under the weight of her finger.
“Oh, you’re right!” Taylor proclaimed, sending another wave of soothing vibrations toward me. “This does feel good! Plus, like, I feel really powerful, too. I mean, there’s a whole person trapped under my finger, how could I not?”
“That’s the spirit!” A slap rang through the air when Rebecca clapped her friend on the shoulder. “Now maybe you’ll lower those standards to below six feet, huh?”
“You have no idea what my standards are,” Taylor shot back, her finger still firmly planted atop me. No matter what I did or how hard I squirmed, I could not get out from beneath it. “Needless to say, though, I doubt they’ll be changing to include men under an inch tall.”
Rebecca clicked her tongue. “Your loss.” As they went back and forth, I continued fighting against the tip of Taylor’s finger. While she was distracted I managed to make some progress in getting out from under it by bracing both hands in one whorl of her fingerprint and pushing as hard as I could. The finger itself did not move, but by pushing the flesh up a little I was able to free my chest. My arms shook from the strain of holding up the tremendous weight, and I wiggled my hips back and forth to extricate my lower half from beneath her.
Taylor nudged her finger to the side and threw my arms out of position, dropping the ceiling of skin back on top of me. She waved it triumphantly back and forth, sliding me along with it as I squirmed to get out from beneath it. Her hold was much tighter than before, however, and I could scarcely move my shoulders under the weight.
“Come on Becca, do you really want to date this weakling?” Taylor tapped me with her finger and it felt like she simultaneously punched my whole body below the neck. “He’s pathetic! You’re a strong blond goddess and he’s practically dirt underneath my fingernail. I wouldn’t even consider you two the same species.”
“You’re so superficial! Like, I can see he’s just a puny speck of a man, and if we looked away from him we’d have trouble finding him again. And ever since you’ve taken him out of that glass, I’ve had to control my breathing so I don’t accidentally blast him off the table and into the carpet. He’s really sweet, though!”
“How would you know? His voice is a tiny, high-pitched squeak, and most of the time I can’t even hear him.”
“You just haven’t given him a chance.” Rebecca gave me a pouty look that I could barely see past the tip of Taylor’s finger. “See? He’s giving me the sweetest look right now. I bet if I held him up to my ear he’d say the most charming thing.”
Taylor sighed, and the strong wind hitting me made me momentarily glad for the finger holding me in place. Rebecca was right, I turned out, and a particularly strong breath would blow me around like a feather. “Go ahead, tell me what he says,” my owner said, and lifted her finger off me. “He’s got five seconds once he’s at your ear, and I’ll be shocked if you get anything other than terrified stammering.”
“You’re on.” Rebecca held an upturned hand level with the table’s edge, then extended a finger until it touched the side. Beckoning me toward her with her other hand, she cooed, “Come on, little guy! Hop on my finger!” The gargantuan, radiant beacon of her smile was all the encouragement I needed, though the opportunity to prove Taylor wrong was an added bonus.
Groaning, I got back to my feet and realized I had no idea what I was going to say. Should I compliment her for being so titanic she could block out the sun standing on her knees? That did not seem like a very appropriate thing to say to one’s supposed girlfriend, even if it was true. Would it be better to say that her voice made my whole body tremble, and every time she spoke I flinched? Maybe something about how her eyes were especially beautiful since I could fit inside the iris? Nothing I thought of seemed particularly good and only highlighted how tiny I was in comparison.
Talking towards her, however, it occurred I might not have to say anything. Whatever I said, if anything, Taylor would not be able to hear – she had said as much just moments ago. Rebecca seemed invested enough in this that she would make something up just so she would be right. Bolstered by the confidence that what I did would not matter, I strode onto the pad of Rebecca’s index finger, her supple skin barely dimpling beneath my weight.
It took a couple seconds for me to climb to the very center of her fingerprint, and when I was in place she slowly lifted her hand from the table. She moved incredibly slowly, only bending her elbow a few degrees a second, and even then I could feel the force of the ascent pressing down on me. Her hand, unsupported by anything else, shook slightly as she raised it. Though it was barely perceptible to her, I felt it strongly enough that I had to crouch on all fours to keep from falling off the side.
The ginormous features of her huge face gradually scrolled by. I had plenty of time to consider her plump, dark pink lips that stretched as far as I could see to either side, and her round, bulbous nose the size of a boulder. Her rosy cheeks on either side were flush, turning the cliffside bright red, and the small wrinkles beneath her eyes were like trenches carved deep into stone. When I came to a stop in front of the bridge of her nose, she nearly went cross-eyed as her tremendous blue eyes turned inward toward me. A tendon in her neck popped out as she turned her head, and she let go of a breath she had been holding for my whole ride up.
That was where it all went wrong. Rebecca’s hand shook with a sudden jolt, making her finger roll to the side. I slid from my tenuous position on the peak and tumbled down her fingertip, then slipped over the edge. It was too fast for me to grab a whorl of her fingerprint, and I yelped as I fell into a freefall.
Mercifully, it was a short drop, and I landed on the elastic material of Rebecca’s shorts pulled tight over her thighs. All my inertia was dissipated on impact, making a minuscule ripple move across the soft flesh that buffeted me. I began rolling down her thigh until I reached the bottom of her shorts, where I slid into the small indentation the form-fitting material made in her smooth skin. Unable to believe what had just happened, I merely laid there and tried to process it, letting my face rest against Rebecca’s warm, silky thigh.
“Shit!” Rebecca shouted, making me start as the work around me trembled. “I dropped him!”
“Then we better find him before he gets too far!” Taylor responded. Rebecca’s hands rushed down to the sides of her chair, and her arms tensed to push herself up.
“No, just look down!” I yelled. “You don’t need to-“ I was too late or too quiet to stop her, and my plea was cut off when the ground beneath me suddenly raised. Momentarily I slid over the gentle curve of her quad until it became too steep and my slide turned into a freefall. Rebecca’s leg continued to straighten, pushing me along with her thighs movement until it stopped, launching me away from her. My trajectory changed to an arc, and I watched the ground race by beneath me as I sailed through the air. As I descended, I saw myself outpace the huge plateau of Rebecca’s foot to fly over the carpet, where I landed and bounced off one of the springy fibers.
“Don’t worry, little guy!” Rebecca said, and I cringed from the noise. Even from ground level she was unbearably loud. “Just stay where you are and we’ll find you!”
“And don’t even think about trying to escape!” Taylor chimed in. “If we can’t find you in five minutes, I’m putting down glue traps by the door so you have nowhere to go.” At least she was concerned about what really mattered: maintaining ownership of me.
“Now, if I were puny and had just been dropped by my gigantic partner,” Rebecca began, and tapped her chin in thought, “where would I be? Somewhere on the floor, no doubt, but where?” As she prognosticated, she shifted her weight from foot to foot, making her hips sway side to side. Though I had no illusions about the danger I was in, it was still nice to watch, and felt like she was giving me a show without Taylor finding out.
Rebecca lifted her right foot and I watched, horrified, as it slid toward me over the ground. Her massive foot loomed over me, blocking the rest of her, and extended for several dozen of my body lengths beyond me. The black threads of her cotton sock were pulled tight, forming to the curves of her gargantuan foot’s sole and instep. It was particularly strained under the ball of her foot, and I could see bits of her pale skin poking through between the black threads.
Her foot swung down and landed on top of me with the devastating thump of it hitting the carpet. It felt like my entire body had been punched simultaneously, then engulfed by soft cotton that had just come out of the dryer. Rebecca pushed me down into the carpet, compressing the fibers beneath me, and my body felt the strain along with it. A massive weight pushed down, keeping me in place, and from how broad it looked above me I knew I could never escape from beneath it.
The pressure around me increased, and I got scared that she was going to accidentally smash me. With what little I could move I struggled against her foot, though I did little more than squirm my body against her sole. Rebecca’s foot was so enormous that it encompassed everything around me, putting me completely in its control. Movement in any direction, even down to hide amid the base of the carpet fibers, was impossible so long as it was on top of me. All I could do was writhe like a worm and hope she felt me before my body was splattered on the bottom of her sock.
“I think I felt him under my foot!” Rebecca proclaimed after several seconds of me wiggling. Her voice was muffled by the gargantuan foot resting atop me, but her words were clear. The intense pressure was removed when she picked her foot back up, but to my surprise I was carried into the air with it. Fortunately, I was not to firmly pressed into her sock that I was stuck, and quickly dropped back to the floor. She moved her foot to the side, and I was relieved when her radiant face came back into view.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Taylor called from across the room. No doubt she was already busting out the glue traps and imagining me stuck in one. “The dorms have had a bit of a bug problem lately, you might want to stomp it just in case.”
“Well, it did feel like a bug,” Rebecca replied. “I don’t think we should be smashing anything until after we find him, though.” At least one of them was not actively trying to destroy me. However, though I was not currently in danger of being smashed, I was a long way from being found. I still needed to catch her eye, and even if she knew where to look that would be difficult.
Rebecca’s huge foot pulled away and set down several hundred feet in the distance, toes fanned down for a landing. In an instant the great tower of her leg crashed down, a tremendous bang making the earth shake when her knee hit the floor. A moment later her other knee landed with similar effect, then the rest of her body toppled forward. The broad platforms of her spread palms slammed to the ground on either side of me, sending out powerful tremors, then her face turned toward the floor. Her eyes scanned the area in front of her, passing over me several times in her search.
“Hey little guy?” she began, and I clutched my ears for protection. “I can’t really see you, so if you could, like, move around or something it’d really help me out.” While I did not really want to move, I also wanted to be found before she gave up. If I moved from where I was, however, I would fall between the tufts of carpet and become even more difficult to find. I settled for waving my arms in a wide arc and jumping straight up when I was sure of my footing, hoping that would be enough to draw her gaze.
Rebecca’s eyes circled more tightly around me while the zeroed in on the small amount of movement my tiny body could make. “Did you find him yet?” Taylor called out. “If not, it’s time to start putting out traps.”
“Yeah, I think I got him.” Rebecca leaned close, her gorgeous face growing in my view until it was the only thing I could see. She kept coming, the black pit of a pupil centered on me, and drew closer until the flecked blue field of her iris formed the sky. I looked blankly at it and she seemed to be staring at me with an all-seeing eye. When she blinked, her long, curly eyelashes brushed over me, giving me a light tickle, and I saw her pupil momentarily expand and retract when her eye opened again. To be sure she had seen me, I gave one more big wave that almost brought my fingers against her cornea.
“Got you.” Rebecca’s whisper hissed at my ears, but it was reassuring to know that I had been found. Her face lifted away from me, momentarily letting me see something other than an eye, but it was soon replaced by a hand. “Okay, now I’m serious: don’t move.” She drew her thumb and forefinger together until they were nearly touching, then set their tips on the ground and dug them into the carpet. Enormous, flesh-toned walls penned me in now, the fingertips wider than I was tall. I kept my eyes up on her, but it felt like I was in the bottom of a deep pit.
Rebecca pinched her fingers around me, engulfing my body in two mounds of warm, smooth skin. Though it would have been easy for her to squeeze me to death, she made sure she used just enough pressure to keep me snug and secure between her fingers. She slowly lifted me off the ground, making sure I was completely extricated from the carpet before she sat back on her heels. I had not yet recovered from the initial journey when she stood, subjecting my body to another pummeling from strong g-forces. The whole time she kept me squeezed tightly enough that I was immobile, so even though it felt like I would go flying out of her grip there was no chance of that happening.
“Don’t you just look adorable in there!” Rebecca said when she was fully upright, looking down at me pinched between her fingers. “Smaller than a bug and cuter than one! I’d give you a kiss, but…” She smiled, revealing gargantuan pearly whites behind her full lips. We both remembered my last encounter with her mouth and knew how easily I could slip between her lips by mistake. As much as I wanted her lips to engulf me, I did not want to be engulfed by her whole mouth.
“Good, you found him.” Taylor walked up behind her friend and stared down at me over her shoulder. “Let’s get him back in his glass so we don’t have any more accidents like that.”
“Do I have to?” Rebecca replied, pouting. “I thought that, since I’m staying over tonight, and my little boyfriend’s going to be here anyway, we could… you know…”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Taylor answered. “We’ve got a game tomorrow, and I don’t want you to be all out of energy and dehydrated for it – or at the doctor’s office getting the man-bug extracted. Plus, it’s his little debut as our new mascot, and he’ll need to have his wits about him.”
“I’m willing to take that risk!” I blurted out. “I’ll be fine tomorrow, besides, how hard could being a mascot be?” I was not entirely sure how the mechanics of it would work, but I was willing to risk whatever danger to have sex with my skyscraper-sized girlfriend.
“No, your owner knows best,” Rebecca cooed, lowering me down to the table. “Our mascot routine is a little unorthodox, and it’ll be really strenuous for you. If you’re still around tomorrow night, though, I’ll see about getting you alone for a few minutes, okay?” Her fingers entered the glass and escorted me all the way to the bottom. When they were touching the base, she opened her fingers and let me fall the rest of the way, and I landed in a crouch in my cell.
Gazing up at her, she looked regretful about having to do it, then Taylor got her attention by tapping on her shoulder. “Want to get started?” she asked. “My orgo midterm’s coming up in a couple weeks, and I could really use some help.” They turned to walk away, not even glancing back at me.
“You can study over here, can’t you?” I called after them. “I can help, I got an A in organic chemistry last year! Just don’t leave me alone like this!” The only response was Taylor stepping toward me and grabbing a cap, then setting it over the glass. I was left in the dim light beneath the cap, the air heavy with the smell of clean hair and chemical products, with nothing but a few blond hairs dangling from my new ceiling to look at. The other two got on with their night as though I were not even there.