Interview Series: Kayla (commission) (Patreon)

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“Okay, you all set?” I ask as my camera starts recording. 

“Ready when you are!” The young woman replies as she peels off her socks for me. It’s a hot day today and her bare soles glisten with a thin sheen of sweat as she airs her toes out.

Immediately I notice the red stain on her foot and I audibly swallow the sudden lump in my throat.

“Um is that…?”

“Oh right!” She exclaims, cutting me off, “You need my name! I’m Kayla! And this is-was my roommate, Gabby!” She indicates the red splatter with a casual nod. 

The horror hits me in a wave as I lean in closer for a better look. There, smashed into the ridges of her sole, is a tiny woman, or what’s left of one anyway, dried blood caked around her, beads of sweat rolling over her tiny mangled body, her face frozen in an expression of shock and terror. I take a moment to fight the bile back down my throat as Kayla watches me, eventually I regain my composure. 

“But...when you messaged me you told me she had just shrunk and that you guys were trying to adjust-”

“Yeah well, we were working things out but then...well…”

I sit there, watching her formulate her thoughts into words.

“Look, I’m not a bad person” She says finally.  “Gabby and I were good friends before she ended up shrinking, she was a great roommate honestly”.

“Then what happened?” I ask, exasperated as I look from Kayla’s placid half grin to the splattered remains of her roommate, my stomach churning as I see the poor tiny girl's mangled body in more detail now.

“It just sort of dawned on me I guess?” she shrugs, her grin turning into a sheepish smile.

I shake my head. 

“What do you mean? What dawned on you?”

“Well, it was this morning, the third day after she’d shrunk. We’d finally decided she was okay to take care of herself, or at least that I didn’t need to act like her giant chaperone or something, anyway, I got out of the shower and she was there on the floor, trying to get my attention and…”

She sighs and pinches her nose. “I don’t know, when I saw her down there on the floor for the first time she just reminded me so much of a little annoying bug or something…”

I shake my head again. “I don’t understand, you saw her down on the floor and she...looked like a bug?”

Kayla nods.

“-And you squished her?”

She rolls her eyes. “Like I said, I’m not a bad person, I’m just not explaining it well, she just seemed so...pointless. I guess. I just got the urge to end her, you know? It was easy, waaaay easier than you’d imagine, her little body didn’t stand a chance, I felt her pop underneath the ball of my-”

“I got it, I got it” I say, cutting her off with a desperate wave of my hand, feeling nauseous at her description. 

She snorts with amusement at my reaction. 

“I honestly wanna try it again, more slowly” she says eventually. 

“What? You...what!?” I ask in disbelief, pulling my head out of hands, my mouth agape.

“I just mean that it was over so quickly, you know? I wish I'd taken more time to experience it, to savor it I think. My brother got diagnosed recently, I’m gonna see if maybe my Mom will let me do it, or maybe we could do it together? I doubt she wants a little bug like that as a part of her life”.

“Are you insane? You’re saying you want to step on your brother once he shrinks?”

“Well, not him specifically or anything, I just wanna do it again. Hey…” She looks up at me as though just noticing I'm here for the first time. “You’re diagnosed too right? Do you think you’d-”

“No!” I shout at her, noticing a few people nearby stop to look at the commotion. Kayla grins and gives me a condescending look. 

“Oh come on, you really wanna spend the rest of your life as some kind of little insect? Not even human? Would it really be so bad?”

She scrunches her toes and I hate myself for looking, despite the horror of it all. Her feet were undeniably sexy. I tear my gaze away from them, the smashed remains of her roommate helping me do so.

“Splattered? Under your sweaty foot? I can think of few worse ways to go, Kayla,” I say, grabbing my things, there’s no point in staying any longer anyway.

She pouts. “Leaving already?” Her eyes search me up and down slowly, making me all too aware of how loosely my clothes are fitting my body. 

“You’re close huh? Any day now?” It’s a pointless question, she’s just stating the obvious in an indifferent tone. She’s not trying to rile me up, she’s just that far removed from the gravity of it all. 

“Wouldn’t that have been an interesting interview? If you shrank? You were expecting a different person out of me, obviously, I could have turned you into paste…”

With the camera stowed in my bag I stand up to my full height, and once her shoes are back on and the crime scene on her foot is once again hidden, Kayla does too, dwarfing me as I barely reach her chest now. 

“The offer still stands” She says with a casual wave as she turns away from me, trodding across the park grass lazily. “Think on it, an easy way out instead of a life of tiny suffering. See ya!”

I watch her leave, and the further she gets from me the safer I feel. Some people on this planet are truly terrifying, and she wasn’t even trying to be, she was just being herself...