A dirty-white shape appeared above the tiny box. She gulped as she squinted, staring at it in disbelief.

It rushed down, slamming into the roof of the box. The plastic around her creaked and squeaked under the immense weight; the transparent acrylic of the roof bent inwards. The amount of light getting inside was halved. There was a titanic sneaker resting on the right half of her box, its ridged sole pressed right against the roof. The box groaned, cried, shrieked... oh, no. That was her.

Brooke forced herself to shut up, but couldn't steady her breathing. "I'm alive", she thought. "Fuck, I am alive". But she was trapped in a box that an unsuspecting passenger was using as a footrest, and she didn't trust the box one bit as it clearly buckled beneath his foot. She made her way to the opposite section of her container, out from under his foot: the sole only covered about half of the box. She got into the corner furthest away from it, then forced herself to sit down and look at it again. From her new angle, she could see that the sole was at least an inch thick; perhaps the top of her head would be just in line with where the vulcanized rubber met the fabric. It was a nice sneaker otherwise, clearly well worn and clearly tested with time; it was carefully laced and clearly expensive. She couldn't really see much of anything else; the bottom of his shoe dominated her field of vision.

- Fuck, fuck, - she repeated to herself, and then groaned as she realized that in her attempt to get away from where the shoe rested on top of the box - in her attempt to ensure that if it were to break through the plastic, smash the feeble roof and walls, she'd be in the section that remained semi-intact - she ended up the furthest away from the door that she could possibly be. She cursed herself: she should have rushed towards it immediately. What were the chances that the windows around her had an emergency exit mechanism built into them? Probably very low. Hell, there were no regulations for companies like Leaf.

She looked at her Minicomm screen and flicked it on. Or tried to, anyways. Her confusion turned into terror as she realized that earlier on, when the box fell and she was violently thrown around, she must have hit the device on a corner or something, because the screen was dead. She held the thing up to her ear, tried to listen to it, and she thought there was a very soft electrical hum emanating from it, but she wasn't sure, and it definitely was not responding to her attempts to get it to light up.

- No, no, please!!!

Nope. Dead. And she didn't even get to hit a SOS button.

She was screwed.

She hugged her own knees as she looked up at the shoe resting on top of her box again. Surely, at some point he would notice. Or he would leave and someone else would. And the plastic will hold, right? Even if his other foot slams on top of it. Even if he kicks the box. It will hold. Plastics are some of the most advanced materials humans have ever created. They are strong. Reliable. And they are so fucking loud if you try to break them; he'll hear it, he'll feel it, and someone will tell him to stop making noises. Stop crushing a box with a tiny woman inside. Just stop.

The wall to her right flexed against her shoulder. She noticed the fabric of the sneaker shift as the foot inside must have stretched; maybe the toes lifted, maybe he arched it, who could tell? The box complained again, suddenly feeling frail and weak, and Brooke bit her lip, feeling tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

On the opposite end of the box, the plastic around the box seemed to shift a little bit.

"What if he breaks the mechanism", she suddenly wondered. "Fuck, I have to get out. Now. Now!"

She got up to her feet, licked her lips, and unsteadily made her way down the aisle, eyes focused on the door; don't look up, don't look down, the room's warping and creaking and shifting but you have to reach the door and get out and hide or get help, it does not matter what, you just need to get out, out of here...

A shadow shifted. She looked up just in time to see him cross his other leg over the one that was resting on her box. Ankle-over-knee.

- NO! - she screamed in sudden realization and took a step forward; and then the ceiling right over her head made a snapping, sharp sound, and she stopped dead in her tracks, trying to go in two directions at the same time. She fell on her back, suddenly staring right up into the expanse of that massive rubber sole, grit and sand scraping the acrylic, the weight on it unimaginable, incomprehensible, and she started crawling right back, quickly scampering on her elbows until the back of her head met the back wall again. The plastic gave at least a couple inches by that time, and when she looked at the door again, she saw that the walls and halfway down the box had bent so much that she'd have to crouch and crawl under the deformed roof - right under that unyielding rubber sole.

No chance in hell.

- Why, - she asked, suddenly feeling defeated - just as destroyed when she first shrunk.

It was so stupid. It was stupid then: she was meant to defend her PhD, go on, land a job, have the life she'd always dreamed about. It was stupid now: she was trapped in a stupid box forgotten by some punk and trampled by some fucker with literally zero attention to his surroundings. Who the fuck just brushes a thing someone else had forgotten off the seat? Who is out of touch enough to smash it underfoot? It didn't make any sense. None!

A series of bullshit events. None of this would ever happen to her if she wasn't hit by the shrinking. Or, more realistically, if she didn't agree to this in-person invitation...

His sneaker slid a bit forward, still on top of her plastic prison; the sole rubbed against the acrylic roof with a low rubbery squeak. She watched it go: she could not avert her eyes. The further it went, the more the box complained. She realized with cold certainty that the box was going to give all the way in, because as his foot was sliding forward, it would soon be his heel, not his arch resting on top of the box. There's less flex there, less area, the heel is hard, and the box is already so battered; no, it would stand no chance...

It was mesmerizing how the walls bent outwards with every passing second; she felt tightly wound, like a spring, and she prayed in that moment that this container is flexible enough that when it collapses, it collapses only on that side, by the door, like a plastic bottle would; she could all too easily picture them also coming down around her, next to her, behind her, leaving her jammed in their broken plastic folds, somewhere all too close to the unyielding sneaker of the uncaring destroyer above her. She prayed and watched at the thin lines where the strain (or was it stress?) was too high: those lines went white in color. The ceiling over there was so low now that it touched the headrests of the seats, smashing the safety braces. Another fraction of an inch, another one...