Little Brother in the Big City (Chapter 5) (Patreon)

Jacob’s burden was somehow even more unrelenting here than when Gabby had just smacked him flat into the rug, as the giantess unwittingly squeezed her toes down as hard as she could. Feeling that strain ascend to new painful extremes, he put everything he had into alerting his sister of his presence, before it was too late. Even with his face suffocatingly immersed against that curvy ridge of upper sole, he screamed at the top of his lungs for help, though any noise was absorbed into her flesh like a whimper in a windstorm. He burned all his remaining stamina on emergent writhing, just hoping now that she’d feel something alive caught under her bunched toes and choose to let it go, rather than clenching harder for the kill. But still none of these efforts had any effect. Gabby didn’t abruptly stop her oblivious toe-dance to investigate whatever was stuck to the bottom of her foot, nor did she let up on squeezing. Jacob could even hear his sister humming a jaunty pop tune chorus as she carried on basking in her latest photos that were sure to win her an enormous bounty online in both cash and drooling fan attention. His screams croaked to a rasp and his floundering became injurious winces, too weak now to keep fighting, as it felt like he was being buried alive in an ever-compressing pocket dimension made of Gabby’s spongy yet lethal toe bulk. For the third time today, he counted himself as done for.

Then, just as casually as it began, the onslaught of pressure halted, and the giantess stretched her toes outward again. With a life-preserving gasp as if he’d just been given last-ditch CPR, Jacob was delivered back to coherency, much worse for wear. Still tacked onto the bottom of Gabby’s toe, he jolted as the waves of pangs rippled through his unnumbed insides, as if he’d just been slowly run over by a car. Fresh bruises were sprouting all over his skin like polka dots. Even no longer squinched to within an inch of his life, Jacob felt like his breath capacity was still cut to half, as if Gabby had permanently squashed his lungs. And something inside him definitely felt dislocated, if not outright broken. Still, it was a miracle that he could even move now, albeit clumsily, let alone that he remained mostly in one piece. Terrified and recoiling from his wounds, all so nonchalantly bestowed by his unaware giant sister, he again flailed until his millimeter-high body started to peel off from Gabby’s warm toe flesh. He was almost free.

But still not fast enough. Just as Jacob came loose enough to take that hurtful but necessary leap down from the underside of her toe back to the ground below, her entire foot launched into motion again with a turbulent vengeance unlike anything the shrunken creature had ever suffered. It felt like he was getting sling-shotted a half-mile into the sky with no warning or protection around his fragile bare shape. In reality, all Gabby had actually done was lazily lift her foot off the ground and prop it up over her opposite thigh, like she had when removing her socks – except this time, Jacob was unluckily held captive the whole way up. His teeth chattered, his eyes watered, the breath caught in his chest, and his miniscule muscles locked up in frenzy. Even though it didn’t physically hurt as much as being squeezed under his sister’s foot, the inhuman adrenaline rush of such an unguarded ascent while gummed to the bottom of her toe was the most sickening thing he’d ever suffered.

Then suddenly that breakneck climb came to a bracing halt. Gabby’s foot stopped as it thumped to a sideways repose upon her bare leg, but Jacob didn’t. That last touch of pressurized moisture still binding him to his sister’s skin came undone, flinging him even higher into the air and far away from her foot. At once, the little thing was soaring in freefall nearly a full mile off the ground. Shellshock ripped through him, along with his fourth consecutive bout of certainty that he was about to die, as he sailed end-over-end through the air away from the still-oblivious Gabby. How could he possibly survive this? Again the passage of seconds unnaturally dragged into minutes within Jacob’s racing mind, making him feel like he was trapped in midair, slowly plummeting toward his doom. As the breeze whipped past his naked millimeter-puny form, he squinted desperately at the beautiful distant landmark of his gigantic sister, still oblivious to all the tumult she’d unknowingly caused him while busily tapping at her phone and scrunching her toes through the carpet fluff. With all he had, Jacob waved his bruised limbs like a broken-winged bird and tearfully howled like never before:

“GABBY! PLEASE! H-HELP ME! I’M HERE! IT’S ME! IT’S JACOB!”

            Inevitably, these pleas – perhaps the last sounds Jacob would ever emit – went unacknowledged, making it all the more heartbreaking for him, as his perhaps-final view was of Gabby’s happily unwitting countenance so close and yet so far. And so he fell, again shutting his eyes and bracing for impact. Half a heartbeat later, the expected reunion with terra firma arrived, though definitely not with the gruesome result he expected. Yet again, physics and dumb luck had kept Jacob from death, as he splashed into a cold tomato-scented collision with (of all things) the now lake-sized bowl of salsa he’d been dipping and snacking from earlier, before making the catastrophic choice to taste-test his sister’s drug stash. He submerged in the zesty depths with an inaudible plunk like he’d high-dived from a skyscraper, discombobulated and stinging all over, but amazingly alive. Dog-paddling toward the light above, Jacob resurfaced, now coated in salsa juices and treading for purchase. Apparently, his ultra-light body mass meant that his fall wasn’t deadly: just painful as hell. These repeated setbacks had rendered Jacob weaker, out of breath and covered in spotty contusions, with probably at least one twisted joint or a minor broken bone. But against all odds, he was still surviving, which granted him a last boost of hope when he needed it most. He wasn’t finished yet.

            Operating in pure survival mode now, Jacob started meekly swimming toward the closest rim of the glass bowl that he could see, though it was dishearteningly far away, and climbing out of it was going to present another steep challenge if and when he got there. At least this wasn’t like being marooned in the middle of an ocean; the tasty substance he’d fallen into was thick and chunky, too dense for him to just sink right down like a rock until he drowned, and the humongous hunks of diced vegetable could serve as rafts where he might take rests on his journey. The smell of the condiment was profoundly strong, dousing his senses in cilantro-rich onion and the smoky zip of chiles, and made Jacob feel almost as overwhelmed and intoxicated as he had from the perfume aroma of his sister’s feet below. Still, he didn’t let that stop him, as he climbed atop a tomato blob to re-gather his vigor, then set off swimming again for the perimeter. The odds were stacked against him here, but after he’d just endured so many treacherous obstacles while trying to earn his rescue from Gabby, yet still lived to tell the tale, Jacob felt oddly empowered. He would get out of this bowl, he vowed. He would be found by his sister. And he would live to regrow to normal, so that all this could someday just be a traumatizing but nearly-forgotten piece of his personal history.

            Unfortunately, once more, Jacob’s daring plans were about to be turned asunder, and his mission to climb the edge of the bowl suddenly wasn’t the top priority. After falling into the salsa, still astonished that he wasn’t dead, he’d let the threat of his sister take lesser prominence in his mind, as he could barely still see her over the sloppy swamp of chip dip. But that was about to change. Seemingly putting her phone down for the first time since lounging onto the sofa, Gabby abruptly loomed back into Jacob’s full view, dominating his personal skyscape as she leaned forward over the coffee table. Recognizing he had another chance to be found, her shrunken brother clambered atop a tomato slab and resumed crying out to her, hoping again to be seen. Then his heart sang with glee when, despite his fears, her head tilted in his direction. Her pretty lips spread into an infectious grin and her dazzling hazel eyes seemingly locked onto his location. Almost looking right at him. Just that apparent contact alone was enough to make him start crying happy tears. Maybe the horror was about to end.