Madison

Everyone has their dreams, their secret hopes and desires that exist beneath the surface. Sometimes, though, those dreams are almost undesirable. Sometimes they're dark and wicked, and they're repressed, denied, and buried, forced into the background and hidden for fear of what they might entail. Only when they're forced to the surface, when something triggers those secret shameful dreams, are they confronted. For the two Tinies clinging to one another in the dark, trapped in a box and trembling on the floor of Madison's apartment, how she deals with her own desires is far more than a philosophical or psychological conversations. It's a matter of survival.

• A young woman confronts her inner dark side!
  
• A helpless couple trembles before her massive boots!
  
• A shrunken couple learns their place in the world!
  
• A whopping audiobook performed by April Would!

Shit! Shit, shit, shit...

Tinies have always fascinated Madison for one reason or another. Not that it's really appropriate to call them that. Officially they're "The Diminished," but there's plenty of other terms for the expanding subset of people who happen to have mysteriously shrunken to mere inches tall. They're still people, with all the same rights and protections as people a hundred times their size.

That's just one of the reasons why it's so petrifying when Madison wakes up with a mild hangover and a pair of Tinies in her room. What the hell was she thinking? What did she do last night?

Listen, I’m so, so sorry about all this.

She really was. Madison was a nice girl; she'd never inconvenience a coworker or bother someone standing in her way at the supermarket, and she certainly wouldn't ever kidnap someone. The whole situation, the whole concept surrounding the very existence of these two Tinies was beyond baffling. It was scary.

Not that there wasn't something more to it, too. There was that strange feeling she got when they stared up at her with that mixture of intense fear and impotent rage, and the little impulses and warm flutters that drifted through her core when she felt them banging around against her thighs, and the brief flickers, just the faintest hints of thoughts about how she might look from their point of view, or how they might feel if she held them in her hands...

You shouldn't talk to me like that.

She didn't mean to do anything to them. She couldn't even remember last night, so was it even really her fault? She tried to be nice, to explain what had happened and apologize, but they just didn't get it. They didn't understand, and they way he kept yelling at her, and even threatening her, it was just too much.

Once they're down on the floor down at her feet, her feelings are just a little different. It's almost like they're even smaller down there, so, so far below her. Such tiny little things shouldn't worry her so much, and seeing them on the ground scurrying around her lovely boots, watching as they flee for their lives, that starts to bring an entirely different set of thoughts and impulses to Madison's mind. Even though she knows that there's something troubling, something truly dangerous about this situation, there's still no denying the facts. Something about it feels right. Towering over these tiny things, watching them scamper away from her footfalls just... just feels really good.