All in a Day's Work (Chapter 2)

Naturally, Caleb was only further unnerved by this address from their superior. While he’d doubted from the first second he was given to her that Tracy’s personality was the merciful bleeding-heart soft-and-fuzzy type, considering the line of work she’d chosen, he’d steadily come to realize that this was far more than just a paycheck for her. She liked it. And he was stuck with her for at least a month – and probably longer, judging by her ominous teases.

“Well? Are you thinking about that? Because it doesn’t feel like you are,” Tracy drawled, noting Caleb’s ongoing flinches and sputters. Though internally, she appreciated his efforts, as she’d come to adore the sensation of a tiny much-weaker body tremoring against that sensitive midsection of her sole, inadvertently offering a massage.

Still, she was starting to get a little bored with this specific method of correction, and was ready for some variety. For that reason alone, Tracy at last gave her victim what he’d been uselessly endeavoring for all morning and eased the heft of her humongous sole off his downtrodden figure. Coming relievingly unstuck from her skin, he twitched and gulped for clean air, a tad too fatigued to even get up after such a thorough stationary trouncing. Not that he would’ve gotten far by trying to scamper away. Caleb, at least, had recognized quicker than some of Tracy’s many other former subjects had that attempted escapes would only serve to temporarily amuse the giantess and then guarantee them a harsher punishment later.

Someone who hadn’t recognized that correlation as soon was a woman named Karen, who currently stood at barely one inch tall, and as a direct result of trying to flee from the gigantic blonde executor of her punishment yesterday, was now cocooned inside Tracy’s worn blue-green slip-on shoe – along with the giantess’s other foot itself. The flat’s snugness ensured the miniature woman was in even more confined, numbing, and temperature-trapping conditions than the shrunken fellow receiving their handler’s direct attention now. Stuck in near-soundless darkness, piled horizontally under the coffin-like trench of Tracy’s toes, Karen’s own frenzy had yet to enter a moderately-restrained state like Caleb’s.

Giving in fully to self-pitying despair instead, she thrashed and shrieked like a caged animal, even long after her throat went hoarse and her limbs were too tired to muster more than some feeble flails. Tracy’s foot flesh was much slicker in here from drizzly perspiration, almost baking to the touch. It felt, to Karen, like being crammed in the trunk of a car and left there for hours. Only that fate might’ve been preferable, since it would’ve at least saved her from being dog-piled under an uncaring twenty-something giantess’s behemoth bulgy grime-oiled toes. When Karen was convicted for her numerous high-priced shoplifting escapades, she never could’ve dreamed she’d end up in a position like this. Had she known what was in store, she would’ve sooner given up all material goods and become a pauper. The lesson for her, at least, was already sinking in. Though that panicked remorse wouldn’t do anything to shorten her sentence now. Feeling more wretched than ever in her life, soaked in Tracy’s sweat, and rasping upon the odors that came steaming out of this over-loved slip-on vessel the longer it was worn, Karen again pondered whatever magic words she might have to scream once she was finally let out of here in order to earn mercy. Unbeknownst to her as of yet, no such words existed.

Meanwhile, back outside the shoe, Tracy pressed her heel into the ground a short distance past where Caleb was sprawled, then let her foot tower over the meager man, flexing and bunching her toes in a manner that again animated the silkily sumptuous dimples adorning that monumental sole. He gulped, deeply intimidated just by the sight of that foot alone, not to mention the fact that the heat of her sole and that fruity saltwater funk still lingered on his shrunken body. Nevertheless, even at the height of his distress, Caleb reached a sickening conclusion: if Tracy really loved tormenting him this way, then giving in to the fear and subjugation was only going to give her more of what she wanted. Which would surely only give her greater cause to break him down further. Something had to be done. He would meet the requirements of these strange consequences, yes, and take it like a man, but that didn’t mean he had to turn into a mewling retch by the end of it. So Caleb summoned his courage just as Tracy’s foot descended, plummeting gradually closer, until she’d rested the upper curvature of her northern sole upon his lower half, while his head and shoulders were snuggled conveniently into the gap between the giantess’s two biggest toes.

“Kiss my foot,” Tracy quietly ordered, then pulsed those digits inward as a tangible reminder of how easily she could pinch Caleb’s skull to the point of concussion. “Right now.”

“N-No,” he muttered.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I s-said… no. I’m not… doing that.”

“Hmm. Are you sure about that, now? Look, I know you must’ve grown up thinking you could get away with whatever you want, like the rules don’t apply to you, or else you never would’ve gotten in trouble for blackmailing your own family just to make them pay back those gambling debts for you. Yikes, pathetic much? Anyway, the point is, the thing you still have to learn… and I guess you still have a long way to go before you learn it… is pretty simple: there are rules in this world. And not only do you not get to decide everything you want on your own, there are lots of people… people like me, for example… who are in charge of your life. And if you forget your place? Then it’s a cinch for us to remind you what you are, and where you really belong. Watch me, now, and remember that I wouldn’t have had to do this if you’d just listened the first time.”

Tracy snapped her fingers then with a condescending grin. And though Caleb wasn’t sure what to expect from that pompous gesture, just about the last thing he could’ve predicted was his body abruptly shrinking again. In the blink of an eye, he’d dwindled down to barely half an inch tall – a quarter of his previous stature, and at once, his entire shell-shocked body fit between the giantess’s big and second toes. Before he could even think of trying to flounder away, those digits clamped inward on him like a fleshy vice, squeezing until he was mashed in a stranglehold, overpowering him even easier than before. And that was without even accounting for the sincerely galling sight of Tracy overhead, who now looked like even more of a golden-haired human skyscraper, having quadrupled in stature from Caleb’s perspective. His eyes popped and his jaw hung in astonishment.