Little Brother in the Big City (Chapter 3) (Patreon)

“Jaaaaaaacob!” Gabby sang out, getting comfy and fiddling on her phone in her lap. “Are you hiding in the bathroom or the loft or something? C’mon, I’m back! Let’s hang. Also, I’ve gotta show you some of the pictures we took. They are freaking FIRE!”

Jacob cringed with desperation, indeed wanting nothing more than for this ordeal to be over so he could safely exist in his sister’s presence again. Since Gabby still had no idea what had become of him – nor any rational reason to guess that he’d magically shrunken to a millimeter after taking too many of her “treats” – she was simply carrying on with her day, breezy and satisfied as could be. While unbeknownst to her, less than a step away and gazing up at the twin barges of her humongous boots planted on the trampled carpet turf not so far away, Jacob was stuck in the worst most-terrorizing anguish of his life. Realizing now what kind of odds he was up against, having come so close to being accidentally killed by Gabby already, he was tempted to crumple to his knees and burst into tears. Yet Jacob didn’t allow himself to surrender. His sister’s indominable upbeat attitude had always inspired him not to accept loss, even when things seemed dire, and he knew she wouldn’t want him to give up. Of course Gabby probably never expected that sororal lesson to apply to such a harrowing life-or-death situation, where she herself directly presented a threat for her brother’s continued existence, but it was still true.

So Jacob swallowed that self-pity and held the emotional breakdown at bay. He had to try. For himself, and for his sister, so she wouldn’t be left wondering for the rest of her life why and how he’d vanished out of the blue, never knowing that she’d stomped him into a nebulous smear with the ease of an aphid. Gathering his courage, Jacob began trekking the opposite direction across the rug fluff, now headed closer to the towering source of both his potential salvation and damnation. As a small consolation that was equally unnerving, the ground was at least easier for him to cross quickly, now that Gabby’s boots had temporarily leveled many of the fibers. Maybe it would be easier for her to spot him now, he optimistically reasoned. As he ran, Jacob waved his arms, just praying he might get lucky enough for the oddity of his tiny presence to register in his sister’s peripheral vision. And then also hoping, if he was “lucky” enough to be noticed, that she didn’t instinctively crush him dead like a roach before she could realize what and who he was.

There was little chance of Gabby spotting him for now, though, as she busied herself otherwise. Seemingly accepting that her brother had left the apartment, she shrugged, then held her phone to her lips, recording a voice message for him: “Heeeeeey, I guess you went to check out that café after all, huh? It’s seriously awesome, isn’t it? Take your time, and if you see this in time, bring me back a blueberry scone! They’re sooooooo good! I know, I know, I’m a genius, at least when it comes to picking hot spots in this town. Okay, bro, have fun. See ya soon.”

This chipper message discouraged Jacob, since his sister was apparently in no hurry to go looking for him or even to realize that something was amiss, but what she did next worried him far more. Setting her phone aside, she sighed and wiped a hand over her forehead, fanning herself. Svelte and in-shape as Gabby was, even she wasn’t immune to the scorching Manhattan humidity, now bearing a glamorous sheen of perspiration on her sun-kissed skin. And since she’d just been out modeling for a couple hours in stylish yet snug fashions, it was easy to tell that she was ready to kick back and cool off. Gabby reached toward the floor, tucking her thumbs into the leather backend of each Reign boot, then pinched as she began to wrestle each foot free from its muggy hovel. Even when she wasn’t taking leaden strides, the turbulence inside those shoes as she wrenched them loose was enough to destabilize Jacob again. Once doffed, she carelessly chucked the boots aside,  thenpropped each foot over her opposite thigh in turn, waggling her toes through the visibly damp cotton of her snazzy bubblegum-striped socks. She picked at the material and yanked, inadvertently putting on a show as Jacob watched the moist elastic fibers coming unpeeled from his sister’s titanic foot inch by vast inch. When finished, Gabby rolled her head back and let out a giddier sigh that rumbled all the way through her body, as she gratifyingly planted both now-bare feet back upon the carpet with a pair of bone-shaking WHOOOOOOOOMs.

Jacob had only a split-second to notice his sibling’s shapely well-lotioned peds had recently received another spa treatment, as her skin was perfectly unblemished and her nails were painted in crisp alabaster-white polish. But then they were headed straight toward him again, and he had much more emergent concerns than such inane observations. Gabby wasn’t getting up this time, but instead sinking deeper into the couch, while stretching her elegant legs and performing a post-homecoming ritual her brother had witnessed a thousand times before while they grew up, only of course from human stature and therefore not in life-threatening conditions. Eager to unwind now that she was back in the privacy of her apartment, the giantess proceeded to massage the naked underbellies of her smooth peachy feet back and forth across the rug square footage just below where she lounged. At first just rubbing in straight lines, grinding her thick rosy heels and scrunching those juicy soft-bulbed toes with each sweep, Gabby soon began drawing circles in the carpet. The fibers bristled quietly, bowing malleably under the superior weight of the girl’s wrinkly crescent soles, and began briefly snagging into the crevices of those ample digits whenever they squeezed adorably together, only to flow back out as her foot glided elsewhere. It was the most innocuous and understated gesture: a way for Gabby to soothe herself after marching about the city.

But of course, because Jacob now found himself stuck in the middle of that colossal chaos, he felt the polar opposite of relaxed. Suddenly his bravado to journey straight toward his ten-thousand-foot-high sister for help didn’t seem like such a wise survival instinct, as her wiggly-toed bare peds cascaded in majestic laps over the carpet, graceful yet with terrifying momentum that repeatedly bulldozed over the rug fluff like napalm wiping out whole forests in seconds. And he was easily in range for her to unknowingly strike. All it would take was for Jacob to get caught in the path of one barefoot sideswipe, and he might get punted the deadly equivalent of a mile away, or dragged beneath the obliterating terrain of her pampered pink sole until he was unrecognizably mulched to a fine paste along a random groove in her arch flesh. The all-too-possible reality of both those consequences haunted him, upping his considerable nausea. Watching Gabby’s lush curvy feet repeatedly hurtle toward him at a speed far too unrelenting to avoid, only to narrowly evade him again with another toe-curling flex, was enough to make his heart leap into his throat so many times that it started to seem plausible he might just perish from cardiac arrest before she could even squish him.

Still, it wasn’t just the brute-force rush of those peds that presented a vivid danger to Jacob’s wellbeing. Even the wind generated from so much sliding motion, probably barely noticeable to the giantess herself, felt like hurricane gales batting back and forth. Bittersweetly, those harsh winds were scented potently with a knock-out burst of Gabby’s favorite fruity-floral perfume, making her shrunken brother feel like he was taking snorts straight from the bottle every time her white-polished toes waved in his direction again at high velocity. He also smelled a smear of vanilla lotion, a dab of eucalyptus ointment, and the earthy freshness of leather stamped onto her skin from those relatively brand-new boots, which mercifully helped cover up any unpleasant musk that might’ve been steamed up by her walk through the summery streets, but that was just about the only blessing Jacob could count here. Whenever the giantess swished her foot nearby again, all he could do was cling tight to the closest carpet tuft while everything whipped to-and-fro around him with the anarchy of a tornado, scented distinctly of mango soap and artificial pheromones.