Teaser: Jump Scared (Paws) (Patreon)

You try to sneak past the cat before you get caught up in anything awkward, but you slip on the space between tiles while you’re looking up at him. You trip and faceplant into the ground. You lay there for a moment, all your limbs splayed out, to collect yourself. It’s embarrassing enough falling flat on your face normally - the one saving grace when you’re this small is that you’re probably too small for Phirae to see you.

Phirae yelps when he sees you and stumbles back against the bathroom door with a loud thump. His fur bristles and his tail thwaps against the floor. It’s funny seeing such a large cat jump about ten feet into the air from surprise. It’s a lot less funny when one of his paws lands on you, and pummels you into the tile floor. He stamps and stomps and steps, squashing you underneath his paw pad, slamming hard enough to leave an imprint of sweat on the floor - with an outline of yourself sprawled out in the centre.

It could be worse. While the ground is firm and unyielding, the cat’s paws are surprisingly soft, despite the size and weight. Gentle isn’t a word you’d use to describe them, but the pressure seals around you and smothers you, rather than crushing you outright. Like being buried under the force like a ten ton truck, but it’s been made entirely of foam.

But it could be a lot better, too. Besides the immense pressure, it’s hot underpaw. And slick with sweat. The scent isn’t exactly unpleasant, but you only get one chance to breathe in before every ounce of air gets compressed out of your lungs on the second stomp. One time tells you plenty, from so up close. Humid, musky, with what might have been a hint of tea leaves - but you’re never given a second chance to make sure. You can’t even try to sputter out for him to stop, there’s not enough time when you’re not smothered in dark fur and pad. There’s barely even enough time to remember where you are, let alone why there’s some giant fluffy comets blocking out the light and about to impact your entire existence.

You don’t know how many times Phirae stomps on you, you forgot what numbers were after the quadozentienth time. Or maybe it was three.

Either way, it doesn’t matter when you might as well be completely flat by the time Phi’s finished. You feel like you’ve completely lost one of your dimensions. Or you’ve been cratered into fresh divots on the ground, freshly dug by sheer pressure alone. Or maybe you’ve been formed under the heat and pressure to be compressed into a diamond. Can diamonds groan?

Phirae’s still got one paw raised ready to stomp on you again, but recognition kicks in this time and he falters. Even then, he takes a long time to put his foot down beside you. You can tell he was contemplating stepping on you again anyway.

“I thought you were a bug for a second, don’t skitter like that! I damn near pissed myself, you scared me!” The cat wraps his tail defensively around himself. 

“Get out! Shoo! This is private kitty bathroom time!” He huffs and pokes at you with one toe, kicking you over the tile as if he didn’t just peel you up from a fate of being a flat sticker stuck there forever. You collapse almost immediately with your legs are jelly (and so is the rest of you, for that matter), but Phirae stomps past you to the toilet without actually bothering to check if you've left.

You slowly drag yourself to the door whilst he’s distracted, when you’re less likely to get stepped on again. It takes you a long time to catch your breath and take stock that you’ve not actually been flattened. It might have been possible! Maybe it’s like being shrunken further, except only on the one axis. You’re not entirely unconvinced that you’re now a little thinner and taller, as if you’ve been stretched out like dough.