He shifted in place before giving them one more look. Down below, Leah heard two dull thuds. "See you later", Ben winked at them and lowered his hand. She couldn't see what was going on because of his palm... but then it tipped, and down she went, rolling, tumbling into a circular dark cave. The musky, stale stink hit her before she herself hit the ground; a spongy, dark surface with a barely visible "14" inscribed on it.

"A fucking shoe", she thought, shocked. "What the..."

She heard May scream somewhere else. Then her mind went blank as she saw a shadow rise over her current prison. The socked sole. It was coming. Towards her. She looked at it, captivated, her jaw dropping, her mind occupied with one dumb thought: "this can't be happening". But it was, and she instantly remembered every horror story she'd ever read about shrunken women and their captors, and she fell to her knees as the foot descended, as the thick boulder-like toes entered the cavern of the shoe and rolled over her, smothering her in rough sock fabric.

It couldn't be happening, but it was. Ben was going to wear the shoes. With them inside.

She was sent sprawling on her back, she was dragged along by the sole and ended up somewhere in the middle, and as the foot roughly entered the shoe everything around her squeaked and shook and as more and more of the appendage entered there was less and less space remaining for her. It started as a light pressure over her entire body and gradually grew to an immense weight. Darkness settled along with the footflesh, and soon there was no light, no air, no sound, save for the endless sounds of the shoe creaking under it's wearer. And there was Leah, compressed between the sole and the insole, a two-inch-tall girl turned pest, smashed into the spongy surface and flattened against it. The moment the weight of the titan settled on her, she expected death to come - but it never did. There was only numb pain.

Her prison moved up, then came back down, which repeated in a series of rhythmic taps as Ben idly smacked his sole against the floor. Every tap was an impact which echoed in Leah's head. She almost bit her tongue off with the second one. Her body endured, but she felt like it was malformed, like it already gave in and flexed and bent in ways impossible for a human. "I will die here", she thought, "I will break, I'll be a bloody stain on the underside of his foot... What a fucking mess... god, oh god, why am I even here..."
As her thoughts went progressively less coherent, she felt the weight lift for a moment, and everything moved again, and the foot on top of her flexed and she thought she even heard blood rush through his vessels, and then there was an impact far harder than those before, heavy and deadly. He started walking. She cushioned his step, like a part of his athletic shoe. What are the usual buzzwords with these? They conform to your foot? They flex really well? They provide efficient amortization? What else? She was now in there, a component of it all...

And so it began.

***

It was horrible, strange, surreal.

Leah could not move, couldn't even properly breathe on her own; in a way, Ben was doing for her now, because every time he lifted a leg the air would rush into her poor lungs and every time he set his foot down it would all be squeezed out of her again. It was a smothering rhythm, one she had to get used to on the go. The air was infused with the odor of stale sweat and the natural manly musk.

She tried to cry out, she cursed at him, she wept, she imagined how once she was normal-sized again she'd get a gun and blow his brains out for this humiliating episode. But her panic, her anger, her absolute horror at what was happening to her have slowly subsided, and apathy came in their place. It was difficult to believe that out there, beyond the foot and the shoe, there was a big world with a sky and a city and the usual buzz of people around. She existed somewhere else - in this tight, cramped, dark, smelly place, where everything was determined by the up-and-down walking cycle. Slowly but surely she felt more and more detached from it all.

She had no power over any of this. At all. If Ben so desired, she would spend an eternity here - although it already seemed like she's been here for a very long time. She'd never felt so insignificant before; never has been so radically silenced and ignored.

Her thoughts were slowly getting more and more scattered, for there seemed to be nothing to think about; her instincts and reflexes were taking over. Survive. She breathed in and out, learned to brace for every step he took, prepared for every painful wave sent through her body. Sometimes his pace increased and she had to shift, too. Keep breathing, keep yourself in place; somewhere out there is the crushing, unforgiving heel, and if you end up there, you'll surely be gone for good.

She was treated in an inhuman way, she knew that, but she could not help it, and into a non-human she turned. For a time. Otherwise, she'd go mad.

The air around her thickened, became moist with his perspiration; damp lint covered her body, sweat burned her eyes. These immediate concerns replaced whatever other thoughts she had. It was all very simple down here; he was walking, and she was trampled, and nothing else really mattered, for he was too immense, too uncaring, too... alien. And she was just insole padding.

***

Unlike Leah, May ended up under Ben’s toes. Before her thoughts were wiped out by the walking cycled, before the crushing pressure of his toes and the sweat pooling around her became her primary concerns, she had some time to reflect.
There were some things May hadn’t told Leah. She’d had some… ideas as to what exactly was the relationship like between Scott and Sylvia. She’d known them before Sylvia shrank and back then they’d fight all the time. Now it seemed like Sylvia would always be there for Scott - affectionate, subservient, content. May was fascinated by what she interpreted as a whole new level of understanding between the two.

She knew, for example, that Sylvia was shining all of her boyfriend’s shoes. She did it dutifully, without complaining, even though at her size it probably took her the better part of the day. It was part of a routine those two had; Sylvia would always greet her boyfriend at the door, would help him get his shoes off, greet him with a big smile on her face. She wore the outfits he liked her to wear and did her absolute best to make him feel valued and cherished. A couple of times May witnessed Sylvia give her giant boyfriend a foot rub, and seeing how the tiny girl was giving it her all in kneading the man’s flesh made May blush. She only asked Sylvia about it all once - and the girl promptly replied: “Shrinking helped me look at him in a different way.” That way, as far as May could tell, was looking up to him, sort of like a tiny little old-fashioned housewife. Leah would despise the very thought, but May, who'd always been rather sexually submissive, was quite intrigued by what's it like to get that different look at the world.

That was why she'd been pushing for the two of them to try shrinking - their joint podcast was, in part, just a reason to actually do it. After that it was a matter of asking Scott. When he agreed to introduce her to Benjamin, she thought this was really going quite great.
The "breaking exercise", however, was a surprise.

Curled up beneath Ben's toes, she cried her eyes out and screamed her throat hoarse; when she was fantasizing about shrinking, she'd never even think of being subjected to torture like this. Flexing toes played with her like she was a pebble, squeezing and mashing her around. She had more freedom to move than Leah did and that was both a blessing and a curse as it meant that she was thrown around more, would find herself in an unnatural or even dangerous position more often; one time the toes nearly folded her in two, another time her leg got caught in a small hole in his sock and was subsequently pulled around so hard May thought it was going to get dislocated or broken.

When her tears ran dry and she could no longer speak, she was still where it all started - beneath his toes, trapped, utterly dominated by the uncaring giant, and by then, similar to Leah, she stopped resisting and stopped trying to rationalize or process anything what was happening. She counted his steps, every single one, hoping that the next one would be the last, but the next one inevitably brought another heavy impact, another painful tug, another squelching plunge into salty, burning sweat. She could feel her clothing tearing and turning into rugs, her hair - into a dirty mop. The air felt misty to her, thick, dense, every breath felt like it deposited sweaty condensation within her trachea and lungs. She was so, so sorry to Leah. She wished she could tell her friend that, but in that moment it seemed to her they'd never meet again; escape from this hot, disgusting cell seemed impossible.