“Is it recording?” Jesse asks.
“We’re rolling,” Ken says, and puts the camera strap around my forehead. The three of us are only one inch tall, standing on a pavestone patio outside a coffee shop. The guys jump in front of me and strike a bad pose, grinning excitedly. They’re both just wearing shorts.
“Hey, I’m Jesse!”
“And I’m Ken!”
“On camera we have our man Louis,” Jesse says, and I give a thumbs up to the camera. “And that,” he continues, bowing off to the side and presenting with outstretched arms, “is Tanya!”
There she is behind them, a giantess, towering above us. Tanya’s sitting at a little glass coffee table, typing on her laptop and sipping from a steaming mug. She has shoulder-length strawberry blond hair and green eyes. She’s wearing a cream-colored sweater, black skirt, grey pantyhose and dark pumps with five-inch heels.
Jesse and Ken jump back in front of me.
“We shrunk ourselves again!”
“And you know what that means?”
I say, “That you’re about to do something stupid?”
Tanya types lazily at her laptop. She’s almost finished writing a scathing review of the company reports handed in by her subordinates. She knows they tried, but they could still do better. Someone’s going to lose their job from this. She yawns. It’s a nice, cool morning. Fall is here, and that means she can enjoy pumpkin spice lattes again.
“You’ve seen us ride a toy car!” Ken says.
“And you’ve seen us ride a dog! Click the links to watch!” Jesse says, pointing to empty air where the links will be added in later.
Ken says, “This time, we’re going to ride… a human!”
“We’re going to sneak onto her foot and when she’s done that coffee, we’re going on a ride!”
“Woooo!”
We sprint across the patio, barely looking around for danger. The bricks are rough to run on, but I hardly notice in my excitement. We keep to her blind spot and soon her shoes loom over us. I can smell leather, varnish, and faint perfume. I try not to think about the risks, and it’s not hard with the adrenaline running through me now.
Jesse doesn’t hesitate to leap up onto the toe portion, scrambling up the side. Ken runs under the arch of her heel toward the other one. I slow down and let the immensity of her sink in. I look up, directing the camera at the towering leg and then down again to her shoe arching over me as I pass underneath. The tan-colored arch of the underside of her shoe above me is daunting to say the least. Large number “9”s stare back at me. I push out thoughts of how unthinkably heavy they would be on top of me.
Ken hops onto the pillar which is her other high heel, wrapping himself around it and making lewd humping motions for the camera.
“I’m ready to roll!” Jesse says from on top of the shoe.
I hurry between the two giant shoes and try to pull myself up onto the same one as Jesse, but it’s awkward without a run-up as it’s taller than I am. Jesse leans toward me and grabs my hand, pulling me up.
It’s crazy being on here. My heart is pounding. I look up the length of her foot, continuing endlessly up her leg. She’s so huge. There’s so much of her, so close. I can feel her warmth from here, smell her skin. It’s intoxicating.
“Lets gooo, Tanya!” Jesse says. “Finish your coffee already!”
Tanya sips her latte. Her mind drifts from the computer and towards home. What would she make for lunch? Is it too late for brunch, because she should probably use up those avocadoes before they become overripe.
She closes her laptop, pushes it away, and picks up her phone to check her texts. She’s been sitting still for a long time and feels stiff. She breathes in and stretches her back and arms, and then her feet, exhaling. She points her toes up toward her and then stretches her ankles, rotating them.
I hear Tanya moving way up overhead. Through the glass table I watch her slide her laptop away and pick up her phone, before stretching.
“Hey,” I say,” I think we’re about to-”
Without warning she lifts her foot. We fly up and bounce down again, scrambling to find purchase. For a brief moment I think it’s ok, before she starts waving her foot around. I’m thrown from her shoe and crash onto the hard ground somewhere several feet away. I look up and my vision is still blurry. As it clears I manage to see Jesse getting whipped around like a bull rider on her foot, clutching fistfuls of pantyhose before he is slammed against the side of the shoe and drops underneath. He lands on his back, stunned.
I get up and run toward him. “Jesse!”
Jesse shakes his head, looks up, and screams.
The wet crunch cuts off his voice, deafeningly close and so visceral that I feel it in my body. I have never heard my friend scream like that before, never heard a human body crushed like that. I’m frozen in place, my mind gone. I vaguely realize that what is in front of me on the ground is Jesse’s insides, all squirted out from under her giant foot, and I’m covered in his blood. My friend’s blood.
Ken comes up beside me, whispering “Oh my god, oh my god…” His chest is heaving and he’s pulling out his own hair. “This… this was your idea Louis,” he says, turning towards me. “Tanya was… you wanted… urgh-!” He drops to his hands and knees and throws up violently. I find myself stepping backward slowly, in a daze. How did this happen…
Now that Tanya thinks about it, the avocadoes are probably overripe already. She sighs and sips her coffee. She still has broccoli though. She can make pasta to go with it. Kimberly had shown her how to make that garlic oil, which would work. She can’t quite remember how to make it though, so she googles it on her phone in case she forgets a step. She lifts one leg and crosses it over her other.
I blink as Tanya’s massive leg swoops upward and comes to rest, hovering in the air above. If there was anything I didn’t want to see more than my friends guts on the ground, it was his smashed flat body stuck to the sole above me. Yet I can do nothing but stare and feel reality continue to drift away. It’s almost recognizable as a human shape, but all distorted and covered in red goo. Bits of him dangle and drip.
Tanya doesn’t even realize what she’s done to him… I can see her on her phone up there through the glass table. She doesn’t know...
“T-turn off the camera,” Ken says. “Nobody can see this.” He struggles to stand. “If anyone finds out we planned to ride her, we’ll be at fault. There-” He gags again, and wipes his mouth. “There’s no life insurance for this. We’ll go to jail f-for negligence a-and body trespassing and… give me the fucking camera,” He reaches at me, stumbling. “Nobody should see that. This was your fucking idea Louis! Jesse’s dead because of your stupid idea! Why did it have to be Tanya?”
I push him away, but he comes back at me, his face filled with hate and fear. I try to shove him but he grabs ahold of me and we both go down. We roll over each other, grabbing and elbowing and then he’s on top of me, his hand on my face. He claws at my eyes and mouth, and I throw him off me. I scramble backwards and he comes at me on his hands and knees like an animal.
Tanya can’t find that one particular recipe, and sends a text to Kimberly asking where to find it again. She can feel the effect of the coffee now. She switches legs, putting one foot down and crossing the other. She takes another sip and starts tapping her shoe.
“N-no, look out! I shout at Ken as I see the massive sole descending on us. There’s a deafening crash and the loud sound of muffled bones snapping and flesh bursting. Ken doesn’t scream, yet. His face is a pale mask or surprise, eyes glazed. Tanya’s stepped on his lower body. He gurgles and grunts, trying to turn around.
“D-don’t look. Don’t look Ken,” I mutter, trying not to fall into a state of complete shock as well.
Then her foot rises again. There’s a sound of flesh peeling that I never want to hear again, and I see a bloody wet spot on the ground where Ken’s bottom half used to be. Now he screams. Intestines stuck to Tanya’s sole dangle like vines, and I don’t know how Ken ever had that much stuff inside of him. I stumble and fall backward, and the shoe lands, this time about a foot behind him. It must be only millimeters to Tanya, but it’s the space of life and instant death to us. It rises again, and falls. I can feel the ground beneath us shake each time. She’s tapping her foot. She’s oblivious to us, we tiny creatures, I realize with a sunken, hopeless feeling. We’ve splattered our lives on her shoes and she doesn’t even notice. I grab what’s left of Ken by his wrists and start to pull as the foot rises again.
Tanya’s phone vibrates. She’s gotten a reply. Kim says she’s off work early and would love to stop by and help her cook right now. And maybe “other” things later? Winky face.
Tanya smirks. She remembers the last time Kimberly was over. She remembers how the bedsheets were soaked after an hour. She remembers the feeling of Kim’s lips and tongue on her clit, and her ears against the inside of her thighs, and her long, dark hair getting all matted in her hands.
She presses her thighs together in sudden arousal, and then starts wagging her heel as she types out a reply.
There’s a rush of wind when her shoe finally lowers and lands down on Ken. There’s the same sound as when Jesse got crushed, only closer now, and then she twists her shoe, filling my ears with wet scraping noise as her arch moves back and forth above and Ken gets turned into pulp right in front of me. This time there’s brains and eyeball on me. I realize I’m still holding onto his severed arms, and I drop them before breaking into a run, trying to get that noise out of my mind.
Tanya takes one last sip, finishing off her latte. She stands and starts to head home, excited.
I hear three giant, clicking footsteps behind me before I find myself smashed into the ground. I can see the back of her arch in front of me for a moment before it lifts away. I can’t feel my legs. She must have stepped on them with her high heel. I look back and they’re gone. I mindlessly start to pull myself forward with my arms. I’m not sure if I’m screaming or not.
Tanya stops. She’s forgotten her laptop. She sighs and turns around, walks back to her table. She vaguely registers something crunching underfoot, a leaf or insect probably. She snatches up her computer and heads out again, thinking of this afternoon’s activities.