Lena knew it wasn’t long before dinner would be ready. She smiled down at her tiny five-inch tall captives. There were at least twenty of them, a mixture of men and women. They stared up at her, naked and trembling with cold and fear.

She had deposited them into a transparent container, it had a larger unit on top of it. This was one of the experimental shrinking chambers. It allowed small objects to be shrunk to micro size. With her mother gone for a few days she thought she would borrow it from the lab.

She glanced at the display screen and tapped in a few commands and then pressed activate.

The device whirred to life, the cooling fans spun wildly, keeping all of the microprocessors cool as it worked its magic.

The little people looked up in fear and wonder at the dark mechanical ceiling above them.

Lena peered closely through the transparent wall and enjoyed watching their sudden terror as they realised that they were being shrunk again. They screamed and some of them fell to their knees. Others tried in vain to climb up the smooth walls. Others ran up to her and bashed against the side of the container, trying to plead for mercy and rescue.

Their voices were barely audible inside the box.

Lena just watched them with a grin on her face. She watched until they were barely visible, only a millimetre or two at the most.

The device eventually shut down.

*

Michelle stared at the huge eyes of the giantess that looked back at them, without any sympathy, through the transparent wall of their newest prison. She had witnessed first-hand what this sick woman was capable of. She knew that whatever she had planned that it would result in them being murdered in some despicable way.

She couldn’t understand why they were being treated like this, they had done nothing to her. She treated them like disposable pets.

The giant hands reached above the dark ceiling above them and Michelle could feel vibrations through the container as the giant woman tapped on the top of the box.

Suddenly there was a loud whirring above, two large fans were spinning above them, and then what looked like a heat element started to glow red hot above them, but it wasn’t a heat element warming the air, but it did feel like it was warming up her insides.

She looked down at her arms and naked body, her skin seemed to quiver. She blinked several times thinking she was losing it, then she realised that she was actually shrinking. This felt different to the last time that this sick woman had shrunk her.

People started to scream around her.

A man grabbed her arm.

“She’s shrinking us again, we need to get out of here!” he shouted and then he ran over to the wall of the container directly in front of the giant face that was watching them with sick pleasure.

He leant against it and beat it with his fists, shouting at her to let him go. The giantess just watched him and smiled, her white teeth to glistening in between her lips

Michelle dropped to her knees as she felt herself shrinking. The pain started to kick in and she just focused on breathing through it.

Some people were shrinking faster than others. Someone tripped over her, already half her height. The woman yelped and looked up at Michelle in fright.

Michelle held the woman’s shoulders.

“I will be over soon!” she winced. Hoping that her soothing words were true. How small could they be shrunk?

The woman continued to shrink faster than Michelle, but she knew she was also shrinking. The perspective of everything around her was changing, she was getting lower to the transparent floor of the container, the giant woman looked bigger and bigger and the ceiling above was further and further away.

She was holding the tiny woman in her hands, then she seemed to catch up, the woman started to get bigger. The floor got wider and wider around her.

Within a minute she was lying side by side with the woman, who had passed out now. She pressed her palm on the floor, it was bumpy and vibrating slightly. She looked at it in shock, realising that this was what the surface of glass looked like at micro size.

She looked up in terror, the container was massive, it looked like the ceiling was hundreds of metres above them.

The giant face was now absolutely huge and almost imperceptibly big.

Michelle looked at the giant eyes that beheld them and screamed uncontrollably. Her mind felt like it was going to break.

Massive hands pressed against the sides of the container, the whole container jolted, causing the micro people to shriek. The ceiling lifted up and away with a clunk and cool air washed into the container, causing a breeze.

Michelle yelped as the desk floor suddenly parted as the container was lifted up. She screamed as the container was tipped to one of its corners. All of the occupants that were conscious screamed as they slid down the bumpy surface of the glass to the bottom corner.

They all slammed into a heap of tiny bodies in the corner. Limbs hitting faces, limbs tangled, private parts in all directions. There were moans, groans and yelps.

Then there was a tipping sensation again, the heap of screaming bodies slid towards the top of the container, then it tipped so much that they left the bumpy glass surface and just started to fall through the air.

Michelle thought this was it, they were dead now. She was tipping them away somewhere.

They were all airborne and screaming as they fell. Then with a combined oof, they all landed on large black stones.

She looked around her, pushing off a man’s bottom half of his body; that laid strewn across her. People were crawling away from each other, exploring their new environment.

They quickly reached the edge of their new prison, realising that it was cylindrical in all directions. Michelle looked down and took a sniff. Her eyes suddenly welled up and started to stream uncontrollably. It smelled like ground pepper.

“We’re in pepper?” a man asked in shock, holding his palm up, with grains of black pepper in it that actually looked the size of large stones.

Michelle looked upwards, the giant face was leering down at them through the clear circular opening.

“I hope you enjoy your last meal!” the giant mouth boomed down at them, causing a number of people to scream and cower. As they lowered their heads towards the pepper they sneezed and coughed.

A giant hand descended towards the opening, it held a black circular lid, which was then twisted on the top. The whole cylinder vibrated and shook.

Michelle watched helplessly as the giant fingers then closed around the side of the pepper shaker jar and they were unceremoniously lifted upwards.

The motion swayed constantly around them, it was sickening and seemed endless.

The giant torso of the giantess outside flashed back and forth, as did the huge environment around them that flew by in a blur. It looked like they were leaving her bedroom and out into a corridor.

Michelle’s nose began to itch. People were sneezing and snuffling.

The giantess descended some stairs.

After a long stomach churning journey they were slammed down on a surface. Everyone waited quietly, hoping that it was all over, hoping there would be some kind of escape. They waited for what seemed an eternity.

There were whispers as they watched as another giant person sat down at the huge table they had been put down on. Michelle looked through the glass, it warped her view slightly but it was another young woman with dark hair. She was attractive as well, but whilst Lena was attractive she had a menacing look about her. This woman didn’t seem to hold the same type of appearance. There might be hope for them yet.

Giant white porcelain dinner bowls with steaming food appeared either side of them.

There was muffled talking from the giant people.

A man wailed as he realised what was about to happen to them. There were dinner bowls being put down, giant people sitting at the table and they were tiny and in a pepper shaker. It didn’t take a genius to work out the fate that the sick giant woman had committed them to.

Now Michelle understood what Lena meant when she said ‘enjoy your last dinner!’ they were going to be in it!

*

Katie sat at the dinner table and glared at Lena, who was innocently sprinkling some grated cheese on her Bolognese sauce.

“Before we start our meal is there anything you would like to declare?” Katie asked with a growl.

Lena looked up at her with a sweet smile and batted her eyelids innocently.

“I don’t know what you mean Katie,” she responded.

“You know exactly what I mean, after your antics from the other night,” Lena’s face took on a hurt expression.

“Of course I wouldn’t, you made it clear that you didn’t enjoy it,” Katie kept staring at her suspiciously. She knew how devious the other woman could be.

She glanced down at the steaming spaghetti Bolognese.

“Have you shoved some poor tiny people in my meal this time?” she asked, glancing back up at Lena.

Lena huffed, and rolled her eyes.

“How crude you think I am,” she replied. Katie gently dipped her fork into her meal and turned it over a few times, then gently rooted around, closely examining her dinner.

There was not a living soul in sight.

Satisfied that her dinner was not part of Lena’s misconduct she grabbed at the cheese bowl and clutched a handful of grated cheese and sprinkled it over her dinner.

She reached out and grabbed the pepper pot.

“How about some music?” Lena broke the silence, standing up from the table and reaching over to the digital radio, she clicked it on to the local radio station and turned it up slightly.

“Sure…” Katie raised her eyebrows, Lena had never showed any interest in music during dinner, but she wouldn’t complain, it helped ease the uncomfortable silence.

Lena scooped up some spaghetti and started to eat, Katie could feel her eyes on her as she gently tipped the pepper jar and opened the plastic lid, she tipped it face down, only a little sprinkle of pepper fell out so she gave the end a tap with two fingertips, then a few more taps and shook it a few times.

*

Michelle flinched with horror as giant fingertips of the other woman pressed against the glass of the jar that they were in. Her stomach lurched as they were lifted up at extreme speed.

Her feet and hands sank into the surface of the pepper granules.

The black lid opened above them, revealing small clear holes, the jar tipped and they all screamed in unison as they fell. Some of the people were mashed into the black rim. They were probably the lucky ones as they were knocked unconscious. For the rest of them the black pepper wave from behind slammed them into the lid. Some of the pepper and bodies tipped out in the first tap.

Michelle was still inside, surrounded by limbs and pepper, pressing against the plastic rim.

There was a pause and a sudden jerk, a scream to her side drifted away. Then a pause. She breathed in and coughed from the pepper. Then another jerk.

Daylight spilled in and Michelle felt herself falling, she screamed and managed to grab hold of the rim of one of the plastic holes with both of her hands. She dangled from the opening. Another woman was covering one of the holes, pepper granules fell around her body and she screamed as she tried to resist the pressure.

She looked out, daren’t not look down, directly at the giantess and screamed out with all of her strength and lung capacity.

The giantess was looking in their general direction, it wasn’t clear if she was looking at Michelle, but she didn’t acknowledge her. She looked absolutely huge.

Michelle went to pull herself up, but there was another hard tap on the back of the jar, she fell through the air, it was a few seconds, she was horrified at what she saw. She was falling directly into the Bolognese sauce of this giant woman’s dinner.

She landed on some beef ragu with a wet thud. The wind was knocked out of her.

*

Ten times Katie had shook the pepper jar in total, Lena counted, smiling inside. She desperately tried to keep her poker face, otherwise Katie would be suspicious of her again.

Katie looked up, intercepting Lena’s gaze.

“Pepper?” She asked, offering Lena the shaker.

“Sure, thanks,” Lena accepted it and shook the pepper shaker on her own meal, an inordinate amount of times, Katie thought.

Then Katie dipped her fork and spoon into her dinner and scooped up a heap of ragu. She lifted up some spaghetti and folded it around the spoon, enclosing the Bolognese sauce with pasta and then lifted it into her mouth. She savoured the buttery pasta and the salty beef with a herby tomato sauce.

*

Michelle spluttered and spat out some grainy tomato sauce from her mouth. She had landed face down in the beef sauce, she lifted her head clear and wiped the warm sloppy mixture away from her eyes and mouth.

In the distance there was loud music playing, it felt like it was quite far away from them. She heard screams and shouts from behind her, she rolled over in the sloppy mess. Her heart thumping in her chest as she recalled where she was.

It was like a visceral battlefield scene in a war movie. Across the mounds of pasta, tomato sauce and lumps of beef she could see various tiny bodies writhing.

Some of them were looking up at the giant woman, waving, trying to get her attention.

Others were scrabbling, crawling or stumbling to get across the large expanse of food, they were all heading away from where the giantess was sitting.

There were a few, probably the most unfortunate of them all, who had found themselves at the closer end to the giantess, they were floating in a large pool of oily tomato sauce. One of them had clambered on some melting cheese. Another two were waving up at the giantess. The last one was front crawl swimming to try and get away.

Michelle seemed to be one of the furthest away from where the giantess sat. She looked up at the giant woman, who was looking down at them. Giant hands with a fork and spoon lunged towards them.

The spoon was plunged into a pile of beef ragu, with a loud splat, then the fork sliced through the large strands of spaghetti and scooped some up, flicking it over the spoon with a wet slop.

Luckily nobody seemed to be caught in it.

Everyone was now waving up at the giantess and screaming and shouting for her attention. It encouraged Michelle, she sat up and waved and screamed herself.

Lena, the other giant woman, was suddenly talking, distracting this giantess, she looked away from her bowl, and lifted up the food.

The giant spoon glistened as it lifted up and away, strands of pasta dangling.

A lump of beef rolled off and plunged into the pool of tomato sauce. It covered two of the waving people in a wave of tomato sauce, causing them to splutter.

They all watched as the giant woman’s mouth opened and then the spoon disappeared inside.

The sight of it gave them some renewed incentive to get away. They all resumed their scrambling, swimming, and various forms of escape attempt.

Michelle rolled and stood up on the beef, she scrambled over its surface. It was so uneven and slippery and the ground kept giving way underneath. There were voids in the substance and it caused her to slip over. She cleared the lump of beef and then her right foot disappeared through some spaghetti.

She yelped as she slipped up to her waist, grabbing out at the slippery surrounds for some purchase. She managed to dig her left heel into something and then kicked off. She scrambled as much as possible and dragged herself up a bit.

She lifted up in time to see the spoon soar down towards the bowl. Her heart froze as she saw its destination. She hoped that it would change direction, but it was heading directly for the pool of tomato sauce, there were two people close by, one was now swimming away, the other was treading water and waving up at the giant woman.

The spoon scooped into the tomato sauce, scooping up the tiny person.

Michelle was frozen, unable to move as she watched. The little person managed to swim hard, get to the edge of the spoon and jumped off, just as it was lifting clear of the tomato sauce.

Michelle blew out in relief and turned to scramble away. She grabbed hold of spaghetti and used it as a really thick rope to pull herself out. The whole surface was oily and she kept slipping as she tried to pull herself clear.

She kept kicking and managed to press her feet against something which was solid enough. It drove her out of her crevice. She continued to crawl along the pasta and then rolled away, tumbling down a few spaghetti strands.

She heard some more desperate screams and looked back.

The spoon was near the bottom of its descent again, clear from its previous journey to the giantess’ mouth.

It was returning to the pool of tomato sauce, the two swimmers were reaching the edge, another person was leaning out from a lump of beef, reaching out to the lead swimmer.

Michelle watched in horror as the spoon dipped into the tomato sauce and glided along, picking up the rear swimmer with ease, then it reached the other swimmer. She had just about reached the edge where a man was trying to help lift her clear.

He was shouting at her to get clear but the tip of the spoon caught her up. Michelle felt sick as the fork suddenly zoomed down from behind the man, it gathered a clump of beef and tomato, with a bit of pasta and shovelled it towards the spoon. It contained lump of food that the man was standing on.

He looked behind in sudden shock, feeling the ground move beneath him.

A pile of food was shoved into him and a tidal wave of beef and tomato covered him as it was all rolled into the spoon.

Michelle watching, hoping that they would all be able to jump clear, but the spoon started lifting up on the long journey up to the giantess’ mouth.

The giantess was looking down at the spoon with a casual eye that one had when eating ones’ food.

Michelle craned her neck, watching the giant mouth open up and the spoon disappeared inside it.

Bile forced its way up to her mouth, she wanted to be sick, but she had to keep moving if she was going to survive this.

She turned and scrambled over some more pasta.

She clambered over a lump of beef and then shrieked in panic as the metal of the spoon flashed to her front right, it dived into the food and scooped up some pasta, with a loud clink as the spoon touched the bottom of the porcelain, and then it lifted up and disappeared from her sight.

She continued to scramble over the obstacle course of food ahead of her. She couldn’t stop now.

She felt the pasta move from below her as the spoon dug away some food somewhere, it made everything unstable and collapsed a bit, but Michelle continued.

Then seconds later the spoon and fork were back again, gathering up food with more slopping sound, splashes came when food dropped off the spoon on its ascent.

Michelle crawled and crawled. She slid down pasta where she could and clambered up lumps of beef.

The fork or spoon plunged in behind her. She yelped but daren’t not look back, she continued. She could see the edge of the porcelain bowl.

She put her belly down on a strand of spaghetti that was pointing towards the edge and used her arms and legs to shimmy along. The oily surface finally worked in her favour and she slid towards the edge.

Pressing her hand against the edge of the porcelain bowl made her so happy she wouldn’t have been able to describe it if she had been asked.

She looked up the side, it was too tall to climb out of.

She heard slopping behind and some screams, but she was too focused on escape. She didn’t have a plan after this but she just couldn’t be consumed as part of someone’s dinner. Being consumed by someone who wasn’t even aware somehow felt even worse.

She grabbed at some slimy spaghetti and lifted it over her shoulder, she tried to balance it against the side of the bowl but it slopped back.

“Here, try this,” a woman shouted from behind.

Michelle snapped round and saw the woman carrying a large ball of beef mince. She helped the woman wedge it under the spaghetti and then they grabbed some cheese, it would help with grip, and slapped it against the side of the bowl.

“Quick, get up,” the woman shouted out.

Michelle clambered up the beef and scrambled up the cheese. It worked, it stopped her from slipping. She managed to grab the rim of the bowl and hoisted herself up.

She turned to reach down to the woman, but the spoon knocked against the bottom of the bowl elsewhere, the vibration caused Michelle to roll off the edge of the bowl.

She managed to grip onto the rim and found herself dangling on the outer edge of the bowl. She hung for a few seconds and then her fingertips slipped and she fell onto the plastic tablecloth.

She landed hard and rolled unconsciously. It managed to break her fall, but her foot was twisted a bit. She stood up, tested her foot. She could still use it, thankfully.

Breathing hard she started to run clear of the bowl, heading in no particular direction.

She spotted a gigantic bottle of ketchup, standing proud like a skyscraper ahead, and decided it would make some good cover until she got her bearings.

She ran towards it as fast as she could. She got that strange sense that she was being watched and looked up as she ran. She stopped dead, her whole body froze in absolute fear as she looked directly up into the predatory eyes of the giantess Lena.

She daren’t move a muscle, in case she hadn’t been seen. It wasn’t possible, surely Lena couldn’t have been able to see her, she was so small, she would have been…

She was small, but she was probably the size of a soil or fruit fly. She remembered herself how she used to spot them on a surface, table or chopping board, then she would casually press a fingertip down on top of them, squishing their tiny little body underneath her fingertip.

She now felt like a tiny little fly, unsure as to whether to try and fly clear of the potential danger or sit and wait it out, hoping she hadn’t been spotted. The eyes continued to glare down at her, directly at her. There was nothing much else around her, so she was pretty certain she had been seen.

She had to chance it. She looked at the ketchup bottle. It was about one hundred metres away. It was a sprint, her aching foot be damned.

She took in a deep breath and made a dash for it, head down and powering with her arms.

She sprinted as hard as she had even run in her life.

A shadow appeared over her, she didn’t stop, she continued to run, growling as she swung her arms.

Glass appeared in front of her with a bang, and shaking the ground, and she slammed into a hard wall and bounced back away from it, landing in a heap on the floor.

She looked upwards, there was a giant hand clutched around the base of a glass that had just been put upside down around her. She screamed in distress, she had been so close to escaping.

*“Thought I saw a bug,” Lena commented as Katie looked up from her dinner in mild shock at the sudden loud thud of the glass on the table.

She looked down at Lena’s hand that was clutching the bottom of an upturned glass. She squinted and looked inside. She couldn’t see anything through the glass.

“Can’t see a bug,” she stated.

“Oh…” Lena glanced at it, then shrugged. “Must have missed it, it must have flown off.”

TO BE CONTINUED.... The rest follows what happens to Michelle and also some of the people in the bowl. 

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