Like much of the past five years, Peter was sitting at the head of his bed with his back against the wall, staring at the faded, peeling floral wallpaper directly across the gloomy dark room. He gently bashed the back of his head against the wall and turned his eyes to the cracked popcorn ceiling above, sighing in frustration.
He had long since run out of new thoughts to bounce around in his head. No, all that was left were the same questions that had plagued him since he first arrived at what the residents there have bitterly named Hester’s Hideaway for the Hopeless.
Why him? Where would he be right now if none of this had happened? Would he have fulfilled his grade-school dream and made valedictorian this year? Would he have gotten into MIT like he had planned? Would he have kissed a girl by now?
What would he say to his parents if he had the chance?
But Peter was determined to not dwell on such depressing things for once. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, giving a quick glance to a candle near the far wall that was just taller than him. Given that there was barely any light coming in through the lone window of the one-room house, he knew what he had to do.
He had to go out there.
Peter didn’t bother changing out of his torn and tattered jeans and ripped gray shirt before heading for the door. It’s not as though his other outfit was in much better shape anyway. With his hand on the doorknob, he paused, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath before turning it and stepping out of the house.
The shelter was really busy. He did his best to ignore the other downsizers roaming around outside their homes, some aimlessly, others with purpose. Keeping his eyes to the ground, just to be safe, he set out for the ashtray fire pit in the center of the shelter.
It was their different sizes that Peter had never gotten used to. He always thought that all downsizers ended up the same size: two inches, like him. But once he was placed at the shelter, he discovered people ranging from half an inch to five inches tall already living there.
No one seemed the least bit interested in telling him how they came to be different sizes, either—not that he was eager to socialize. Over time, he had gotten used to various-sized homes that made up their so-called community. But the people … Living with people ranging from almost three times as tall as him to roughly knee height always left him unsettled.
The chill of the old laminate flooring stung the bottoms of his feet with each step, the soles of his old, ratty sneakers worn paper thin and offering almost no protection at all. He ignored the pain, looking ahead to see that no teeny tinies were currently in his way.
With his path clear, Peter ventured a look skyward, near where the gargantuan human wall in the distance met the ceiling more than 600 feet above, to find the basement window. It was the lone view the shelter’s downsizers had of the outside world. All he could see, however, was the same grayish-cloudy sky that always seemed to hang over the small Seattle suburb that he used to call home.
He managed to arrive at the ashtray without having to speak to anyone.
Okay, Pete, almost there, Peter told himself. Just light up a stick with the ashtray embers and get out of here. You barely talk to anyone anyway, so no one’s going to—
“Yo Peter! Hey!” a loud voice called out from behind him. “How’s it going?”
Crap. It was that Brendon. He was a nice guy, only a couple years older than Peter himself, but he was also a four-incher, and he never seemed to notice how much that intimidated Peter.
“Oh, hi Brendon,” Peter replied indifferently, hoping that an unenthusiastic attitude would encourage the social butterfly to hunt some new prey. “Just another day at Hester’s Hideaway, right?”
Peter turned around having already taken a quarter chunk of a toothpick from the nearby pile, with a small piece of matchstick head attached to one end with nonflammable glue. He took a step toward the ashtray, but Brendon stepped in his way.
Glancing upward, past Brendon’s tight white muscle shirt, Peter knew that frown on the tiny giant’s face meant he was about to be on the receiving end of an annoying lecture.
“Come on, Peter,” Brendon lightly scolded. “You know Millie hates it when you call the shelter that. Her mom worked really hard on this way back when, and the vets say she’d be rolling in her grave to hear us call it that.”
Ah yes, the vets. The ones who were part of the original shelter. Those irresponsible pricks who thought it was a good idea to raise families in this dump. Peter didn’t much care what they thought about anything.
As for Millie, their supposed caretaker, well, Peter didn’t like to curse, but she could fuck right off in his book. And if Brendon wanted to have a conversation out of him, then fine! He’d get a conversation out of him!
But before Peter could launch into his rant and ensure that Brendon never bothered him again, he thought better of it. As intimidating as Brendon’s size could be and as much as his overly positive attitude toward everything grated on Peter’s nerves, he really was a good guy, and he didn’t deserve to have his legs cut out from under him by Peter’s own grumpiness.
“Sorry,” Peter mumbled.
Brendon put a hand on Peter’s right shoulder.
“Hey, I get it. Life isn’t exactly easy here. That’s why we’ve all gotta be here for each other,” Brendon said. “Speaking of which, do you need help with that fire? I know it can be rough for someone your size to reach the hot embers, and you know I’m literally here to help.”
It was true. Brendon spent a large part of his day waiting by the ashtray to help the smaller sizes get fire to light their homes, usually going so far as to carry it to their homes and light their candles for them.
But relying on people required trust. And Peter trusted no one. He couldn’t. Not after what happened to him.
“Thanks, Brendon,” he said, “but I’ve go—”
Peter was interrupted by a soft tremble shooting through the ground, not strong enough to knock him off his feet, but it was enough to make his legs feel like rubber. Then it was followed by another. And another. Human footsteps. Millie was coming. The pattern of her footsteps was always the same.
But something different happened this time. The quaking became less rhythmic and more constant. Most of the other downsizers looked confused, but it didn’t take Peter long to figure out what was happening.
This could only be caused by multiple sets of footsteps. Peter didn’t like this.
He had already dropped the makeshift torch and broken into a dead sprint back toward his home by the time he heard the basement door opening, its creaking echoing over the shelter like rolling thunder. He ignored Brendon calling out to him, focusing instead on keeping his footing as the now-constantly shaking floor threatened to trip him up.
“Thanks for cleaning up for us, really,” a posh voice boomed pure sarcasm across the shelter. “We probably should have, like, made sure our shots were up to date or something before coming down here. Gross.”
Peter froze just as he reached the door to his house, his hand on the knob. Pure, unadulterated fear overtook any sense of rational thought, leaving him unable to finish the simple act of entering his home.
That voice was frighteningly familiar to him.
A sudden chill ran through his body, shaking him to his very core, as his head instinctively started to turn at a snail’s pace toward the giants’ entryway into the shelter. There, standing just before dozens of mixed-sized homes at their feet were five humans, their identities almost as terrifying as their size.
Standing in front of the group was Millie, the towering Asian beauty nervously brushing loose strands of her dark hair behind her left ear as those deep hazel eyes of hers swept over the village. Based on the company behind her, Peter knew what, or rather who, she was looking for, and he was grateful that the caretaker never bothered to learn who was staying where in the shelter.
The girls behind Millie, all at least a good ten years younger than her and closer to Peter’s own age, looked much less anxious to be there. Peter immediately identified the source of the snooty insult hurled the caretaker’s way when his gaze shifted to the girl standing to Millie’s right: Amelia Riverfield.
Unlike Millie, who was wearing her usual outfit of black sweatpants and a plain gray t-shirt, Amelia hadn’t dressed with the thought that she would be visiting downsizers in mind. Her chic olive green denim skirt stopped midway down her lengthy, elegant thighs, matching her stylish white crop top perfectly.
“I-I’m sorry about the mess,” Millie’s meek apology rang in the ears of every downsizer below. “I wasn’t expecting any visitors to the shelter.
Amelia’s lips, a shade darker than her crimson messy-bun curls, warped into a deep sneer as she stared back at Millie, a look burned into Peter’s memories from the two torturous days that she had taken “her turn” with him after he had been downsized.
“Yeah, like that would have made a difference,” Amelia said rudely, rolling her expressive sea-green eyes in accompaniment. “Like you could ever make this dungeon look good enough for girls like us, right Vic?”
She looked behind Millie as she spoke those last questioning words, the loose locks of hair framing her face helplessly swaying through the air at the turn of her head. The ground shook violently as Victoria Abrams carelessly stepped up to the opposite side of the caretaker, the vibrations of her steps knocking several nearby downsizers off their feet.
The swishing of her tight black leather pants drowned out the screams of the downsizers beneath her as her black Louboutin red-sole leather low top sneakers landed just shy crossing into their territory. Her midnight black hair bounced off of her shoulder blades with each confident stride, the shade of her luscious locks complimenting the bright red blouse they fell upon perfectly.
Peter never knew what to think of Victoria. She usually hung back and just followed along with whatever her friends were doing as far as he could tell. Even during the time he was forced to spend with her, she barely paid him any attention, mostly ignoring him as he sat in his cage in her lavish room, feeding him the odd scrap of food and switching out his water dish on an occasional whim.
“I don’t know, Ams,” Victoria answered, never taking her dark brown eyes off the tiny homes and people below as she grinned down at them. “This place looks like soooo much fun!”
Without warning, she lifted her right foot about knee high before slamming it down in one smooth motion. The deafening thud was bad enough, but a massive quake also ripped through the weak flooring, forcing Peter to grab his door knob with both hands to keep from being thrown off his feet.
A collection of homes for some of the half-inchers gathered on the outskirts closest to the girls weren’t so lucky, however. Even from the far end of the shelter, he could see the houses, glorified inch-high huts, really, collapsing from the force of Victoria’s simple stomp.
As Peter began to wonder if there was anyone inside any of those destroyed homes, an innocent giggle from above provided him with an answer.
“Oh. My. God!” Victoria said through her laughter as she stared down at the wreckage at her feet. “Look at all those itty bitty arms and legs sticking out of all the house pieces! So cute!”
Amelia joined in with a giggle of her own, though hers seemed a pitch too high.
“I didn’t even know downsizers came that small,” she said with a smirk, her eyes following her friend’s gaze. “Like, what are you even supposed to do with ones that small, anyway?”
The conversation was cut short as another girl stepped beside Amelia from behind, a serious scowl darkening her pretty face as she glared at the other two girls. It was another familiar face for Peter, this one framed by wavy blonde hair. But this Sydney Vanderbilt looked a lot more irritable than the one he remembered.
“If you guys are done messing around, I wanna find Peter and get this over with. I’ve been waiting five years to make that little prick pay,” Sydney said with a hint of anger before turning to Millie. “I’ll also cover any damages we cause while we look for him. Just add it to what we talked about for Peter and you’ll get your money at the end.”
Make me pay? Peter asked himself. Are they really acting like they’re the victims here?!
But whatever rage he could muster died as Sydney turned her eyes to the shelter itself. The cold that he saw within those sparkling blue irises was a far cry from the pleasant demeanor he had seen from her five years ago, at least once she was away from the rest of her clique.
Yes, she had kept Peter in a terrarium and expected him to do what she said without question. But she also provided him with downsized furniture and made sure he had three proper meals throughout both days under her watch. She had even had a few conversations with him, something neither Victoria or Amelia even attempted during their “turns.”
But whatever warmth had once been present within Sydney was gone now. Her ever-stretching legs moved forward, her jeans having rips and tears in all the right places, as she was the first among the group to step into downsizer territory, keeping her eyes to the ground.
Her right foot, housed in a black Gucci Jordaan Loafer with a gold buckle, crashed the laminate flooring, just missing a few two-inch downsizers who had to scramble to get out of the way. The impact of the step knocked over every downsizer in a one-foot radius, dozens in total.
“You heard her, Ams,” Victoria said. “Let’s go!”
With that, Victoria’s gaze was glued downward as she moved her left foot forward, hovering it over a group of one- and two-inch tall downsizers. She taunted the tiny people by lowering it with agonizing slowness. It touched down just as the last downsizer had managed to escape its shadow.
Peter watched as Amelia rolled her eyes but smiled as she too stepped into the downsizers’ space. Unlike her cohorts, however, she kept her head held high and walked at a normal pace, quickly overtaking them as she approached the shelter’s town square.
Down below, Peter noticed Brendon trying to help as many of the smaller downsizers as he could get out of her impending path. The four-inch man was so busy pushing and guiding others out of the way that he didn’t notice the shade blocking out all light overhead until it was too late.
Peter wanted to call out, to warn Brendon. But he couldn’t find his voice. Maybe it was because he knew he was too far away for Brendon to hear him. Or perhaps he knew it was already too late and that it didn’t matter.
But Peter knew. He knew that the real reason he didn’t even try to warn Brendon was fear. Fear that his voice would be heard. Fear that he’d give his position away to the forces of nature targeting him and only him. Fear that maybe saving someone else’s life would cost him his own.
In that moment, Peter wondered whether he would have still been such a coward if he had been allowed to grow up like a normal kid, rather than spending his formative years in this hellhole.
Brendon realized he was about to get stepped on only after Amelia’s foot was already on the way down. He made a desperate dive to his left, hoping to clear the white serrated sole of the girl’s black Versace diamond-studded leather sandal before it squashed him.
Most of him succeeded. His legs did not.
Peter whimpered as Brendon’s legs, from his upper thighs down, disappeared under Amelia’s shoe. The giantess’s step wasn’t impeded in the least, the bottom of her sandal touching down on the flooring with a loud crunch accompanying the usual thud rattling the bones of every downsizer in the shelter.
Brendon’s howling screams rose above the chaos and confusion cries of Peter’s fellow downsizers scrambling for survival all around him. Peter had experienced a lot of pain and hardship during his time at Hester’s Hideaway, both in his own life and by distantly watching the suffering of the other residents of the shelter.
But he had never before heard noises like those Brendon was making, the tough, heroic four-inch man reduced to a sobbing, raving mess before Peter’s very eyes. The scene was instantly burned into Peter’s memory, something he would remember for the rest of his life, as short as that may be.
However, the sounds of Brendon’s intenser agony were quickly muffled by something much, much louder.
“What the fuck?!” Amelia’s stuck up voice rained down from the heavens.
Peter hesitantly trailed up the giant brat’s long legs; flat, bare tummy; and moderate side set breasts to find her disgusted expression finally paying attention to the floor, staring down at what was left of Brendon.
“You little asshole!” Amelia screeched. “I had these sandals hand-crafted! Do you have any idea how much that costs?! They’re worth more than your worthless little life, and now they’re ruined!”
Rather than let Amelia’s selfish tantrum get to him, Peter instead chose to focus on Brendon. If they could just stop the bleeding somehow, he could still get out of this alive. Peter was already cataloging materials on hand at the shelter, his natural engineer’s brain beginning to piece together how to build his crippled friend some crude replacement for his lost legs.
It won’t be much, Peter told himself, but at least he would be able to—
“Hey, he’s not looking so good,” Victoria said as she crouched down, elbows on her bent knees, for a better look at the tiny man her friend had stepped on, her hands hanging loosely just above him.
Then the black-haired giantess looked up at Amelia with a mischievous smirk on her face.
“It’d be cruel to just leave him like this, right?” Victoria said, a false innocence in her tone. “You think maybe you should finish the job? Put the poor little bug out of his misery?”
No, no, no, no, no! Peter tried to cry out but failed to verbalize. I can fix him! Just leave him alo—
“Yeah, like, I guess I could do that for him,” Amelia answered with a naughty grin stretching across her face. “Not that this jerk deserves it!”
The pitch of Brendon’s incoherent screams raised an octave as Amelia’s foot lifted off his flattened legs by mere inches before it drifted over the rest of him. Dust and chunks of dirt, unnoticed by the shoe’s haughty wearer, fell off the sharp-ridged sole like saliva dripping off the top row of teeth of a shark rising out of the water to feast on a hapless person floating at sea.
And then, with a simple tap of her toes, Brendon was forever silenced, squished under the ball of a giant foot that completely covered him with plenty of room to spare. Amelia’s heel remained high off the ground, with the arch of her foot flexed further from the sole of her footwear as her toes ground what was left of Brendon into the floor as though he were nothing more than the butt of a cigarette she wasn’t quite old enough to smoke.
Once she finished, her heel casually fell to the ground with an dense thud. A slight rumble rushed through the floor, the only ceremony Brendon received.
But Amelia didn’t stop there. She raised her other foot, the one without Brendon’s unrecognizable remains splayed all over its bottom, and put it through the center of a two-story house designed for two-inch downsizers. The outer walls, struggling reaching the height of her lower shin, collapsed around her shoe, leaving it covered in a pile of debris and tiny household items that survived her unimpeded step.
Victoria watched in awe as Amelia’s toes wiggled playfully, throwing much of the mess they had made of the home of some poor downsized family off her foot. A curious grin crossed Victoria’s full lips as her eyes slowly made their way up from her friend’s foot and the house beneath it all the way up to the redhead’s face.
“What?” Amelia asked with a slight blush. “These shoes are already ruined anyway, so, like, why not have some fun?”
Before Victoria could respond, both girls’ attention was drawn to a hint of movement within the rubble. A man Peter vaguely recognized seeing around the shelter from time to time, emerged from underneath a pile of what was most assuredly his former home.
“Ooh! A little survivor!” Victoria squealed joyfully. “Dibs!”
Her right hand shot down at a speed that both amazed and terrified Peter, pinching the two-inch man’s chest and back with her thumb and forefinger, respectively. She eagerly lifted him all the way up to those alluring eyes of hers, those dark brown irises alight with mischief.
With the long, blood-red-painted nail of her left index finger, Victoria slashed through the front of her puny catch’s dust-covered shirt, leaving the shredded remains to fall all the way to the ground. She quickly pulled his pants and underwear next, pulling them down in one go with her left forefinger and thumb.
Then she spat on him, soaking his upper half in her saliva.
“Yeah, I’m not about to put all that yucky stuff from the floor and your house in my mouth,” Victoria said with a look of disgust.
Upon hearing about his final destination, the tiny man went into a frenzy. As she switched her grip on him, holding him with both index fingers on his back and both thumbs on his chest, he punched and kicked at the massive digits manipulating his body, but she ignored his efforts.
Victoria squinted a little as her thumbs worked his front end, spreading the spit all over and washing away the dirty remains of his former home. Once that was done, her forefingers wiped down his back, butt, and legs until there was no trace of filth still on him.
“There,” she said as she took him back into just her right hand again. “Nice and clean, like a good little piece of meat.”
Peter shook in a blend of rage and fear at the black-haired beauty’s words. Her whole display had both sickened and terrified him. But she was just messing with that poor man, right? She could be mean, sure, but there’s no way she’d ever go that far. She was just trying to scare the guy.
At least, that’s what Peter kept telling himself.
Still in a crouch, Victoria set her left hand on the floor for balance as she twisted her torso just enough so that Millie was directly in her line of sight. Peter could just barely make out her smirk from his view of the side of her face before it was blocked by the flailing man trapped within her fingers, now being held right beside her face as she showed him off to Mille.
“You’re paying attention, right miss caretaker lady?” Victoria asked. “Be sure to put this one on our tab, too!”
She took her time moving her catch toward her lips, never breaking eye contact with Millie, who could only limply nod in response with a distraught expression written all over her face. The man was fighting with everything he had, but it didn’t even amount to enough to be noticed by his giant captor.
Victoria slipped her puny prey’s upper body between her lips, his legs remaining free as Peter saw them kick helplessly in the air. A pleasurable moan blaring throughout the shelter like a warning siren signaled that she was enjoying his taste. She held him like that for about a solid minute before she slurped the man’s other half inside her mouth.
“Not the worst thing I’ve ever eaten,” she said as she swished her tiny victim around in her mouth, her brow raised and tapping the pad of right index finger against the center of her closed lips. “Eating live food is just so … lit!”
Victoria’s last word threw her little morsel to the front of her mouth, as Peter could see his left arm and head poke out from between her lips. Her dark red lipstick smudged on his face slightly as her lips closed around him. Still locking eyes with Mille and not acknowledging the battle for survival in her mouth, Victoria’s finger returned for another tap and shoved him back inside, not breaking its rhythm in the slightest.
Peter could actually see her tongue working as she shuffled the poor man’s body about inside her mouth. Peter could even occasionally see the outline of the man’s arms, face, and chest as he pounded against her left cheek in a desperate attempt to escape the inescapable fate in store for him.
No, Peter begged internally. Please don’t.
Then, with a slight tilt of her head, Victoria swallowed. Peter followed the lump as it made its way down her throat without any resistance at all. With a satisfied sigh and a theatrical few smacks of her lips, she finally released Millie from her punishing gaze.
Victoria’s endless legs were in no hurry as they straightened, elevating her back up to her full, sky-scraping height at a gradual pace. Along the way, she brought her right hand up to her face, gently placing the tips of her index, middle, and ring fingers on top of her lips just in time to cover a cute little ladylike burp.
“What are you guys thinking for lunch?” she asked as she absentmindedly rubbed her stomach, her head swiveling to locate her fellow giants as her perfect dark tresses swung effortlessly with each turn of her head. “I’m starving.”
At first, Peter thought Victoria was making another cruel joke. But a look at her sincere expression revealed an even scarier reality; she had already forgotten about the man whose life she had just consumed. And that life hadn’t even amounted to enough to hold her over until her next meal.
“How about you, Syd?” Victoria asked. “Any thoughts on food after this?”
Peter followed Victoria’s eyes to find Sydney, a small part of him hoping that maybe, just maybe, Sydney would be upset at what her two friends were getting up to. Instead, he saw the blonde titaness on one knee, holding a house that was supposed to be filling the empty lot below, her back to the chaos wrought by Amelia and Victoria.
The butts of Syd’s palms fit nicely under the bottom of the single-story home, which was designed for a two-inch downsizer, while her fingers wrapped around the sides and lay atop a large portion of the roof on either side. She scanned its interior with eyes as large as the windows she was trying to look through.
Small chunks of the house started to crumble as the pressure of her grip intensified, sending minuscule chunks down into her cleavage. What debris rolled off her chest left a small mess on her millennial pink t-shirt, which was emblazoned with the words “Daddy’s Little Girl” in glittery blue lettering.
“Empty!” Syd growled, slamming the house into the ground in frustration and shattering it into countless pieces. “Where is he?!”
A deep sense of hopelessness overwhelmed Peter, who now knew there was no saving him ... or anyone else, for that matter. This realization was interrupted by Amelia’s annoying laugh as she watched Sydney’s tantrum.
“Get ‘em, Syd!” Amelia giggled as Sydney ignored her, picking up another house to search. “But, like, seriously, I don’t think she’s worried about food right now, Vic. Why don’t we ask …”
Amelia trailed off as she searched the room for her target, her eyes finally landing on a final figure standing behind Millie, one Peter had been too distracted to notice until now. He started trembling as he recognized who it was.
“Uh, Bella?” Amelia asked the fourth member of their clique. “Like, what are you doing back there? You too good to have fun with us?”
Everything stopped for Peter as Isabella de Amoros moved into plain view. The chaos all around Peter faded away. The taunts and cruel laughter of the giants already terrorizing the city slipped into silence. The downsizers screaming and scrambling for their lives were seemingly no longer there. Everything else ceased to exist as Isabella’s black and white Chuck Taylors gracefully touched down near the outskirts of the shelter.
She was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen, and he hated her more than life itself.
The fact that, unlike her friends, Isabella hadn’t even bothered to dress up for the occasion did nothing to conceal her beauty. That light brunette hair of hers still had that tantalizing slight wave to it as it fell past her shoulders, and her angelic face framed her glowing hazel eyes just as flawlessly as he remembered.
Her body was no less perfect, either. White leggings hugged her slender, touchable legs as they stretched toward the heavens. And the black t-shirt and unzipped brown leather jacket she wore did little to hide her protruding round breasts, which had developed even further in the five years since he had last seen her.
There was a time when Peter would have lost himself in her mere presence, even before she had blossomed into the plain-clothed goddess that stood before him now. But that time was gone. He had fallen for that trap before, but his hatred grounded him now, and he could see the truth so clearly.
She was the one who lied. She was the one who led him there that day. She was the one that flipped the switch. She was the one responsible. For what happened to him. For losing his family. For five years of constant suffering and depression.
Isabella was the one that did this to him, and no amount of beauty could make him forget that.
“Yeah, come on, Bella,” Victoria called out in a sing-song voice that melodically threatened to rupture Peter’s eardrums and brought him back to the real world. “Come play with us. Or at least help us find Peter. Syd’s getting pretty grumpy over there!”
Isabella only nodded in response, taking her time as she placed her right foot inside downsizer territory and sending a rough tremor throughout the shelter. Her eyes were glued to the ground, her eyes narrowed in determination. Peter couldn’t see what was happening at her feet from where he was standing, but he could only imagine the pain she was causing as she stared down in ruthless judgment at crowds of desperately fleeing downsizers.
She walked at a slower pace than the other girls, almost stalking her way through the shelter. But she made no stops like they did, so she moved deeper into the territory before they had even considered doing so. For the first time, Peter realized that he was still out in the open, where he could be seen.
And just like that, as if reading his mind, Isabella lifted her searching gaze just enough to meet his eyes, the flicker of recognition as instant as it was horrifying.
Peter finally opened the door to his home, sprinting inside as though that would save him. His mind was filled with intense panic, stripping him from any sense of logic or instinct. Something deep inside begged him to run, to break open his window, jump out, and hope she would somehow miss his escape.
But all he could do was fall into a corner of the structure’s lone room, knees pulled into his chest with his eyes closed and head down, shaking uncontrollably. He began to hyperventilate at the thought of what terrible things were inevitably about to happen to him and how powerless he was to stop it.
Would she squish him like Amelia did to Brendon? He was small enough that Isabella could easily get him one stomp. Or would he be taking a trip down Isabella’s throat, like that poor man Victoria swallowed. Maybe Isabella had her own ideas, maybe ripping his limbs off like the wings of a butterfly or feeling his bones crunch as she squeezed him tighter and tighter in her dainty fist.
Thankfully, there wasn’t much time to dwell on such things, however, as the aftershock of one of Isabella’s steps landing right next to the house violently vibrated through the walls. Several pieces of the popcorn ceiling shook loose, falling onto the floor and Peter’s frightened form.
Then, an even more powerful quake struck, threatening the integrity of the house itself.
That was her knee, Peter realized through the cloud of fear enveloping his brain. S-she’s going to—
Before he could finish his thought, an ungodly ripping noise echoed through the room. It was loud enough to force Peter to cover his ears with his hands and grit his teeth in order to deal with the ear-splitting noise.
Through the pain assaulting his eardrums, he managed a glance up just in time to see four unpainted fingertips shove their way through the flimsy ceiling near the door with effortless elegance. Long, delicate fingers pushed their way further into the room before each one curled toward the ceiling one at a time, starting with the forefinger and ending with the pinkie.
Then, the ceiling was lifted away, ripped from the walls with intimidating ease. Peter could only watch as it fell apart in Isabella’s right hand as she held it as though it were nothing. She casually tossed it aside, quickly turning her attention back to him.
A pathetic whimper escaped his throat as she spotted him almost instantly. He hated himself for that, wishing he had the courage to at least stand up to this monster before she killed him. He had so much he wanted to say to her in those final moments, but the words seemed to be just as afraid of her as he was. Not that someone like her would have listened anyway.
Isabella stared down at him for a moment, her expression unreadable as she drew out his demise. Then her hands started to move, her right hovering over the room. Rather than reach for him, however, it waited for her left hand to arrive.
She reached into the right sleeve of her jacket, her fingers carefully tugging at the tip of a thick, light blue wool sock. She pulled it until the fingers of her right hand could grip it and lowered the hand down just in front of Peter, the sock a mere arm’s reach away.
The aroma of the sock wasn’t as unpleasant as he had expected. There was something … disarming about it, actually. He let go of his legs and stood up, walking even closer to that intoxicating smell. He needed more.
A voice in the back of his head screamed about the danger he was in, about how evil this girl was. But it was getting more and more distant with each sniff of his nose. Looking up at Isabella, he knew he should hate her, but all he could see was the girl he’d been crushing on since the fourth grade, only now as a full-blown woman, the very essence of sex given flesh.
“It actually worked,” she said in a deafening hush, a smirk across her pouty lips. “Well, that should make things easier.”
Peter barely noticed when Isabella tucked the sock back into her sleeve. He was too busy ogling as much of her as he could see as she leaned over his home, grateful that a divine beauty such as her would grace him with her presence.
Her right hand came back for him, those destructive fingers wrapping around him with surprising gentleness. Without any thought at all, he began to rub his face into the soft flesh surrounding him, enjoying its warmth and smoothness against his cheek.
Surely it would feel just as good against the rest of his skin, right?
Peter tried to take his shirt off, but Isabella’s grip around him tightened as he felt his stomach drop as he was lifted at a speed that would put the Seattle Center Monorail to shame. By the time her fingers opened up to let him out, he was shrouded in pure darkness. By the leathery feel of the “walls” he registered in the back of his mind that he was likely in one of her jacket pockets.
He didn’t much care about that, though. Finally free, Peter stripped as fast as he could, Isabella consuming his thoughts. He continued to ignore the warnings his logical self was trying to give him about the danger he was in. Instead, all he could do was as he tried to claw his way through the warmer side of the pocket, where he knew her sexy flesh was waiting for him.