This was not May’s first contact with a giant person. Spain had giants aplenty, especially from spring to the end of summer. Titanic American spring breakers leaving footprints bigger than minivans on the beach, Swedes almost twice the size of the locals towering over the crowds, waddling after drinking too much beer, colossal Chinese families posing for pictures next to landmarks that stood like miniatures at their feet. The usual, mostly seen from a safe distance.
This giant, though, was different. She thought she’d be ready, but craning her neck up to witness her little sister June, who always had been a head shorter than her, standing a hundred and twenty feet tall, made her heart sink and her legs tremble like jello. And May was seeing her just from her waist, the height where stood the arrivals platform for smaller people at the Medicine Hat airport.
“OH. MY GOD. MAY! YOU’RE… CUTE!!!”
Her voice, annoying enough at normal size, reverberated through May’s chest as it was blaring from 3 IMAX theaters at once. Standing on the arrivals platform of the airport, May clenched her teeth and forced a smile.
“You look cute too, June!” she yelled, in hopes of reaching her ears up above.
She wasn’t lying: her 22 year old sister was one of those “goth girls” many a gen-Z thirsted for. June had a lot to love, but May always felt her insecurity when she was around. The older sister had always been taller, curvier, with tanner skin and bigger breasts. Maybe that should have meant nothing for the smaller, skinnier, paler June… if their mom wasn’t shaming her all the time. You should eat more. You should go outside more (even though they lived in fucking Canada). And who had to deal with the consequences of that little gremlin’s insecurities? Yes, May. All her life. And now that little gremlin was the size of the fucking Calgary Tower to her.
“YOU’RE JUST SAYING THAT!” squealed June, squatting to see her up close.
May almost fell on her butt when her house-sized face descended right before her. She could see every detail on her pale skin, her pupils contracting, even the flakes of her eyeliner. God, that behemoth was her little sister now… by May’s choosing.
“COME ON, HOP IN!” thundered June, unfolding a hand big as the living room of May’s apartment in Seville.
“Eh… June, where’s the transporter?”
“THE WHAT NOW?”
“The transporter” God, her fucking voice. May rubbed her temples “The square box thing you use to transport tiny people safely”.
“NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT ANY TRANSPORTER.” replied June, offended like she was the victim of the situation. A classic. “YOU DON’T TRUST ME, RIGHT?”
She flexed her slender, boney fingers, a little bit taller than May was. The tiny sister sighed, knowing that at least she couldn’t be heard at her current size.
“I do trust you!” lied May “but it’s just… you know how many accidents like this happen per year?!”
“IF YOU WANT, I CAN DRIVE BACK TO BOW ISLAND, GET THE TRANSPORTER THINGIE, AND THEN DRIVE BACK HERE IF THAT MAKES YOU FEEL SAFE ENOUGH. IT’S GONNA TAKE AN HOUR, BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT…”
“Okay, fine, Jesus, just…” May stepped on June’s warm palm, holding onto her tree-trunk of a thumbnail, covered in chipped black polish “just be careful, okay?”.
May thought she would rather put her life in danger than endure an awkward drive with her sister being all passive-aggressive. She changed her mind not much later.
“HEE-HEE, COOL! GOD, IT’S LIKE HOLDING OUR HAMSTER WHEN WE WERE KIDS. SO FRAGILE. I THINK IT’D BE EVEN BIGGER THAN YOU NOW. I WISH HE WAS ALIVE TO COMPARE YOUR HEIGHTS. MAYBE YOU COULD’VE EVEN RIDE IT!”
While June yapped, May was starting to feel dizzy. Being transported on a giant hand was basically like being on a boat… but suspended a hundred feet in the air. The floor was so down below, stomped by the threatening mammoths of her sister’s black Doc Martens, and the other giant’s huge feet.
“June, can’t you cover me with your other hand?” asked May, embracing her sister’s huge pale thumb.
“BUT I CAN’T SEE YOU IF I DO. AWWW… YOU’RE HUGGING MY THUMB! DON’T BE SCARED, WE’RE ALMOST…”
May’s world turned upside down when another giant bumped onto June, probably a guy running late for a flight. The tiny girl had to cling harder onto her sister’s thumb. Her legs dangled in the void, and below, June’s huge boots stomped the ground, struggling to keep balance. For a split second May saw herself ending below their thick soles.
“HEY! ASSHOLE!” yelled June, almost making May’s ears ring. Then she covered her diminutive sister with both hands “OKAY, JUST A LITTLE SCARE, WE’LL BE IN THE CAR IN NO TIME”.
Not a fucking apology. Also a certified June classic.
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“I JUST SWEAR TO GOD MUM DIDN’T TELL ME SHIT ABOUT ANY TRANSPORTER! BET SHE HASN’T GOT ONE. SHE PROBABLY NEVER THOUGHT MUCH ABOUT THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE SMALLER THAN HER.
May was hearing all that wearing a heavy frown… seated on her sister’s left breast, held fast with some duct tape. It was the safest means of transport they both could think of, after some heated argument. It was surreal, seeing her sister from below her neck like that. The car’s AC and June’s body heat were making May sweat. Just half an hour until they got to Bow Island.
“IT MUST BE WEIRD, RIGHT? SEEING EVERYTHING FROM THIS PERSPECTIVE…”.
For once she was right. Unfortunately May had taken lots of rides on June’s car. Seeing the interior now was like being inside an alien mothership. The buttons and crannies she always ignored felt… hostile. Something so simple, but now so beyond her.
“Well, in Spain everything’s normal sized for me now. It’s good not to worry to flatten anyone’s car while walking on the street, or to actually be in the streets, with the people, instead of… like… hovering above them. I can go into bars and shit now, instead of just the places for the big tourists…”
“BUT YOU’RE SMALL!” complained her sister, taking her eyes from the road just an instant to observe her on her boob “YOU’RE SMALL, FOREVER!”
“June, it’s not forever, I could grow back. I would have to switch citizenship again, though. It'd take a hell of a lot of paperwork…”
“I WOULD NEVER GET SMALL. NEVER. IT’S SO FUN TO BE THE BIGGEST ONES AROUND! REMEMBER THE TRIP TO ITALY, WHEN WE WERE KIDS?”
How could she forget? June tried to smuggle a terrified local to the airport to “keep as a pet”. Luckily it just ended up with her being reprimanded.
“BESIDES, I’M SMALL ENOUGH NOW.”
Here we go again…
“Come on, you’re not that short…”
“WELL,” June’s mouth twisted in a devilish smirk “YOU CAN SAY THAT NOW, PIPSQUEAK. I’M FINALLY THE TALL SISTER. WHO ISN’T EATING HIS VEGGIES NOW, MUM? HAHA!”
May laughed too, a fake uncomfortable laugh. God, she felt… humiliated? She thought she’d not give a single fuck about being the size of Thumbelina to June now, but her sister seemed to be… really enjoying that fact. It didn’t help that she was tied to her boob, like an infant on a baby car seat. No, not a baby. A baby could eat her now, she was a fucking choking hazard.
With a sigh, she stared at the windshield. Pines caked in snow under gray skies, snowflakes falling lazily. After a while, they reached the sleepy suburbs of Bow Island, Alberta. Home. The small houses glowed wrapped in Christmas lights. May recognised her hometown… but everything felt monumental. So far away. And to think she left thinking that town was too small for her…
“CHEER UP, SIS. I’M SURE YOU’RE STILL A GIANT FOR THE NATIVES IN THE RESERVES”.
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“Mom, I think you got the wrong size for this”.
It just felt like when she was a child, May trying to get the attention of the towering giant that her mother was to her back then. Now, though, May was way, way smaller than she had ever been out of her mother’s uterus, and Rita, the owner of said uterus, was bigger than fucking Godzilla, and too engrossed showing her manicure to June to pay her any attention.
“LIHN’S SUCH AN ARTIST. SHE’S FROM VIETNAM, BUT SHE HAS BEEN LIVING HERE FOR TEN YEARS… AND SHE’S NOT PLANNING TO CHANGE HER SIZE! IN THE END THAT’S HOW SHE CAN PUT THIS AMOUNT OF DETAIL ON THE NAILS. I’M SURE SHE’D DO WONDERS WITH YOURS, JUNE”.
“I’M FINE, MOM”, muttered June, looking at her chipped black nail polish with a hint of shame. “AND MAYBE SHE’S STILL TINY BECAUSE SHE CAN’T GET A PERMANENT RESIDENT CARD…”
“YOU SHOULD GO TO HER SALON TOO, MAY!”.
Rita seemed to regret her words immediately, staring at her thumb-sized daughter on the dining room table. May has forced her smile so much since she arrived that jaw was starting to hurt.
“WELL, LIHN’S LIKE HALF YOUR HEIGHT, SHE COULD STILL WORK HER MAGIC WITH YOU…”
“Mom, the furniture. It’s not my size.”
The tiny chair and table Rita got her so she could sit with them for meals was still too big for May. Her legs dangled like she were a Leprechaun, and she struggled to reach the top of the table. Rita approached to examine the tiny furniture, and May thought she was never going to get used to giant faces coming down at her from above. At that size her mom looked terrifying. They were pretty similar, tall and toned, with long copper hair, but May always saw her as an omen of how she was going to age. Now said omen was inescapable: a monument of early wrinkles, white hairs and crow’s feet the size of her own head.
“OH, DEAR, I… THIS ISN’T YOUR NEW SIZE?”.
“I sent you the chart, mom. The specific size I was going to be.”
“HM, MAYBE THERE’S BEEN A MIXUP AT AMAZON. I’LL GET IT REPLACED AS SOON AS I CAN, DEAR.”
No one really fucking apologised in that house. May wasn’t even going to mention the transporter thing. To make things worse, June was smiling, apparently amused by May’s predicament.
A loud, screeching noise and a tremor startled May. It was just her mom dragging one of the chairs, and releasing her huge weight on it. Ever since May got to Canada her body was in fight or flight mode, trying to get used to her huge, hostile surroundings. For her lizard brain, every little noise was a life-threatening event. She read that kind of anxiety was normal and weared off after a few days… in most cases.
“SO, HOW… ARE YOU?” asked Rita awkwardly, her lips pursed high up the heavens.
“I’m doing fine, everything’s just a bit overwhelming. But I’m… really happy! The job’s great, I’m finally starting to blend in with the other people over there…”.
“IS IT WORTH IT, THEN? GIVING UP YOUR SIZE?”
Oh my fucking God. Rita was trembling. May could feel her huge manicured nails making the table rattle under her feet.
“Yeah, mom, I’m small here, I’m regular sized there, and it’s really good not to be a big scary giant tourist out there. The pay’s great, the weather is incredible, the food isn’t miserable… I am happy!”
“THAT’S GREAT HONEY, BUT… YOU KNOW YOUR FATHER CAN STILL GIVE YOU A JOB AT THE FACTORY’S OFFICE, RIGHT?”
“Mom…”
“JUST IN CASE YOU… YOU KNOW, ENDED UP REGRETTING THIS… YOU NEVER KNOW…”
What May was regretting was going home for Christmas. She knew what was going on inside her mom’s head: smaller people were just beneath them, just there to paint their nails and to use their homes as playgrounds during vacation. There was also the fact Rita would never conceive true happiness if it wasn’t on her terms. May decided she was not dealing with this right now, especially when she was getting used to her mom being fucking gigantic.
“Mom, I’m really tired, I just wanna sleep for three days. Can you… uh… take me to my room?”
God. The fact that she could not get to her room on her own… and she had to ask people to carry her. She also read about getting used to losing some agency while with the bigs, but the reality of it felt depressing anyway.
“OH, YEAH, SURE, HON.” her Mom stood up, and May’s lizard brain screamed again “I PUT YOUR HOMEPOD ON THE NIGHTSTAND, YOU’RE GONNA LOVE IT. IN FACT, I WAS KIND OF JEALOUS SEEING THE INSIDE, IT’S ALMOST LIKE A TINY HOTEL ROOM…”
“Mom… did you get the HomePod the same size as the furniture?”.
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Of course she did. May jumped again and again, trying to get on the bed of her oversized HomePod… but it was just too high for her to reach. Grunting, she grabbed one of the big grey chairs and dragged it heavily toward the bed. Panting, she managed to climb the chair and finally lay on the huge mattress… which wasn’t very soft.
The HomePod wasn’t like a hotel room, but more like a model room in Ikea, dominated by hideous “Millenial grey”. Pictures of cities and landscapes hung on the wall, and a poster that, in a terrible Pinterest font said “Big things await!”. Jesus fucking Christ. In the end May felt like a small child sneaking into their parents room and discovering that it wasn’t worth the hype.
“Fuck this”.
May got (carefully) out of bed and stepped outside the HomePod. Her socked feet felt the gentle wooden texture of her nightstand… and there it was: her room, the place where she lived and slept most years of her life, but just so fucking enormous. It was strange. The perspective somehow resembled the same that from the summit of a mountain, or a rooftop in the city… but the view was so mundane: her bed with the pink duvet, her white closet adorned with drawings and pictures of her friends and family, the table with the pencil jars full of a rainbow of different markers. Down the precipice of the nightstand rested her old pair of worn yellow slippers. She always had big feet (a fact that her mom and especially June loved to remind her of), but now the slippers were so huge that she could make her home inside them.
May sat on the edge of the nightstand, feeling a deep, strange melancholy. Everything was just so… out of reach. Objects meant for the gigantic girl she used to be. What she said to June was true: that size was not permanent. If she managed to change residence again, she could put on her big slippers, sleep in her bed, reach the pictures on her closet without the help of a giant, and her mother and sister would be shorter than her again instead of towering behemoths with complete power over her. Did she want that, though? Wasn’t she happy in Seville? Was this new existence as Bow Island’s Thumbelina the price of her happiness?
Well, one thing was sure: she didn’t want to sleep in that horrible oversized Ikea room. If she had to sleep in a bed too big, she’d sleep in the biggest one possible. Determined, she walked to the other end of her nightstand, where a cavernous gap separated it from the pink landscape of her bed. God, she could smell her mother’s fabric softener on the sheets, way better than the terrible plastic odor inside the HomePod. She just had to cross the gap, which was… well, wide enough to make her consider not jumping across it, at least for a minute. Finally, she mustered enough courage to make the leap. She ran, jumped with all her might…
… and realised she gravely miscalculated the distance between the nightstand and the bed. Gravity pulled her down as she screamed, hating herself for becoming part of that percentage of people who died on stupid accidents the first month after changing size. Luckily that didn’t happen: a fold of the duvet on the floor softened the land. She rolled onto it, finally landing on another soft surface. Yellow strands of what seemed like grass or fur. A weird dank smell. A cavern of that same yellow material.
“Hah, you’re kidding me.”
May was right, her slippers were humongous now. She had used them for years and years while living there, they were so damn comfy, but now they were worn as fuck. She decided to walk inside, not sure why. The smell weared off during this last couple of years of only occasional use, but at her size she could still feel it, the same acrid funk she used to feel ashamed of sometimes. She kept walking, observed the roof of the slipper, and the huge darkened toe prints at the bottom. God, that used to be her. She put her socked foot on the big toe print, just to see how several times smaller it was. She really had been fucking huge. It must have been terrifying for the Spaniards to see her like that before she shrank. Especially for the couple she almost crushed at the beach one of the first days she was there. They called her “giganta hija de puta”.
She finally got out of the cavern, gawking at her huge surroundings. She hadn’t been at ground level before, since that was very, very unwise if you were small. But there was no way she could climb up the mountain of the nightstand on her own. She’d have to… oh God, to ask for help, tell them about her stupid accident, be scooped from the floor like a wounded bird.
Grunting, she got her phone out and started texting June. She hadn’t finished writing her message when she felt the tremors. Boom-boom-boom-BOOM! A gust of air hit her when the door of her bedroom opened abruptly. June never had the decency to knock, and apparently that hadn’t changed. Every hair in May’s body raised when she saw her come in, taking her true height from the floor.
“OH MY GOD, MAY-MAY!!”
She wasn’t looking at May. She probably didn’t know about her predicament, because June’s eyes were fixed on the little HomePod on the nightstand.
“YOU HAVE YOUR OWN LITTLE DOLL HOUSE!”
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Her bus sized bare feet, with black painted pale toes, treaded heavy and violent on the rug towards May! She was frozen in fear as her gargantuan sister moved at an impossible speed towards her. Just when May snapped out of it… BOOM! An ear-piercing impact, displacing the air around her. May lost her footing, finding herself next to the huge black toes that almost smothered her, staring at her own reflection on the polish of the big toenail, bigger than her head.
“WON’T YOU DO ME A HOUSE TOUR?” Boomed June, knocking at the door of the HomePod. “MAY?”
BOOM, BOOM. As she peeped inside the HomePod, June shifted her feet, almost crushing May again. She yelped at the sight of her sister’s pale sole hovering over her and landing too close. Then June scratched her ankle with the other foot, displaying her wrinkled sole, a plateau full of stuck crumbs and lint, almost next to May’s face.
“JUNEEEE!!!” Screamed May on top of her lungs.
That did the trick. June looked down, gasped and took two steps back from her tiny sister.
“MAY-MAY!” She giggled “OMG. WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE FLOOR? I COULD HAVE STEPPED ON YOU, SILLY!!”
“You think so?” yelled May, flustered “Come on, help me up!”
But June didn’t do that. She crossed her arms, biting her lip while staring at her little big sister.
“I REALLY AM THE TALLER SISTER NOW, HEE-HEE” she laughed. Then she lifted her foot, hovering her bare sole a few millimeters over May’s tiny body. “I COULD JUST…”
May had enough. She grabbed her sisters enormous toes and tried to push them away from her.
“Get your disgusting feet away from me, you creep!”
She really shouldn’t have said that. When they were kids, calling June a “creep” like they did in school meant that their argument was becoming a fistfight. May was about to find out that didn’t change either. Frowning, June slammed her huge pale foot on May. The tiny girl’s body was buried beneath her sister’s sole, and her head popped miserably between her big and second toes. She gagged from the impact, the weight and the sudden stench of sweat.
“I’D CALL YOU BIGFOOT, BUT LOOK AT THIS.” She wiggled her huge toes, caressing her sister’s face “HOW THE TURNTABLES. GUESS I’LL HAVE TO COME UP WITH SOMETHING ELSE.”
May coughed, terrified. She never saw that look in her sister’s green eyes. Her lips were trembling high above, especially when May started squirming under her sole.
“June… come on… this isn’t funny!”
“IT IS FUNNY. IT IS FUNNY THAT I’M THE BIG SISTER NOW. MAYBE YOU SHOULD START TREATING ME WITH MORE RESPECT.”
“Okay, I’m… I’m sorry! Just… just let go of me…”
“ONLY IF YOU KISS MY TOE.”
June was dead serious, and May started to sweat.
“June…”
“KISS. MY. TOE.”
May breathed heavily, terrified, unable to recognise that cruel giant as the person whom she grew up with. With tears fighting to flow, she tilted her head, ready to kiss her big toe…
… and then the pressure and heat has lifted from her. An ear-piercing laugh reverberated inside the huge room.
“MY GOD, I WAS ONLY JOKING! YOU WERE TOTALLY ABOUT TO KISS MY DISGUSTING TOE, YOU FREAK!”
May felt a sheer mental whiplash hearing those deafening words. She got up, coughing and trying to keep her composure.
“I was not!” She lied “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“RELAX, SIS, CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE? COME ON, DINNER’S READY.”
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM. June’s huge bare feet took her out of May’s bedroom. With a sigh, May waited for June to remember her diminutive sister wasn’t going anywhere unless she picked her up.
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“Stupid little goblin” muttered May as she violently rubbed her clit. She took a deep breath filled with the homely smell of her mom’s fabric softener “Little insecure cunt, projecting her shit everywhere…”
Half covered by a tiny portion of the pink landscape of the duvet, a very small naked person in a stadium sized bed, May exorcised her anxiety and weird feelings like she usually did: masturbating. That awful experience stirred anger, frustration, humiliation… and those were the ingredients of the secret fuel that got her engines started. She just wished it didn’t happen with family involved, but well, she deserved a bit of dopamine in her system. Maybe she could fight off jet lag wanking herself to sleep.
“Coward. She’d never do what I did. Because then I’d move to fucking Russia… hmmm… have her live in my fucking shoe…”
May was fuuuucked up, that was for sure. But at least she was the only member of the family willing to accept it and, most importantly, set foot to a therapist's office to sort that shit out. She no longer felt the shame and guilt that she used to, touching herself in that same bed, her mind flooded with horrible thoughts, a part of her alert in case someone opened the door and caught her. The fact that she was too small to be heard and noticed made it a lot easier, though.
“Fucking… eat my… sock lint… ooooh…”
It was a good enough orgasm, but somehow “good enough” didn’t finish cutting it that night. Panting, May got herself comfortable in the soft embrace of the duvet, letting her thoughts drift through the afterglow. She always felt small at home. Ending up like that kind of made sense…
Her phone vibrated, poofing those thoughts out of mind. May rolled on bed, and she kind of struggled finding the device. She should better keep it close so it didn’t get lost in that desert of fabric. After unlocking it, the light of its screen blinded her first, but later illuminated a smile.
It was her ex-boyfriend Matt.