Big Birthday Presence

A pile of precariously-balanced packages with tufts of blond hair peeking from the top opened the bedroom door. The whole figure crumbled on the bed as the door shut close, and Iso let out a sigh of relief. He got out of the mess of boxes and back on his feet, and walked to his desk.

“Look at all the gifts I received, Eel!” He put his hand palm-up on the desk for his tiny lover to board. They crawled onto it and snuggled his thumb, which never failed to get a smile out of him. They planted a small kiss on the base of his thumb and looked up to meet his blushing face.
“Aww, that was the best birthday gift I could ever get!” he beamed in response. He felt so lucky to have them in his life and made sure to show it every occasion he got. “I should probably open the other gifts now so I can thank everyone ASAP, though. Wanna get on the bedside table?”
Eel nodded and went back to hugging the gigantic digit. Iso carried them across the room and gingerly set them on a piece of fabric that served as their bed. They sat legs crossed and watched him tear open each package until they all revealed colorful gift boxes. One in particular caught both their attention: it was almost as long as the bed itself, wrapped in sky blue giftwrap with cloud motifs. It was as though wherever they looked, their attention would be drawn back to it, and Iso could not resist opening this one first.

Inside, there was a rolled-up square mat, an unmarked sleek black box, and a letter attached to it. “It’s from Rei!” Iso exclaimed when he recognized the signature at the bottom. He read it out loud for Eel:

“That looks like… a VR headset!” Iso exclaimed when he opened the box. “I don’t know what model that is, I’ve never seen one like that… It’s weird, the headset itself is super sleek but the game is on a cartridge?” He showed Eel the cartridge, unmarked just like the other items.
“Yee, that’s weird. Maybe it’s a prototype and that’s why there’s no brand on it? But you can’t plug the game into your computer, then…”
“There’s a… a slot on the front, here —” he showed them, “it must run on the headset itself. I guess the only way to know is to try it! …Wait, the haptic mat first!”
“Haptic mat?” they squinted with confusion.
“Yeah, it looks like…” He inspected the mat before unrolling it on the cramped floor space. “Yeah, so it’s a mat made of a lot of tiny pegs, look.” He invited them on his hand and lowered it to the mat. “Haptic means they’ll move and bump to make me feel things.”
Eel boarded off Iso’s hand and balanced themself on two pegs. “They’re so small!”

Iso resisted the urge to tease his tiny lover over their size, and instead brought them back to the bedside table. “Wouldn’t want to step on you while I play!” he grinned, unable to keep his horniness in check for more than two seconds. He picked up the headset and sat down on the mat to inspect both items; but they started to glow with green lights, then let out a monotonous Connected in unison. It was so sudden Iso was taken aback, but he shrugged it off and stood up again. He planted his bare soles on the mat and strapped the headset over his eyes. It showed his very bedroom as if he’d simply been wearing glasses, instead of the black screen he had expected — could it also do AR? He somehow couldn’t give it more thought; he figured he’d find out soon enough. He gave Eel a thumbs-up and inserted the cartridge.

The floor vanished under his feet and his vision blurred. He closed his eyes for a moment until the dizziness went away, and found himself towering over the very road he lived in, his own building barely reaching up to his waist.
“Oooooooooh!” He clutched his hands to his stomach; the sudden change of scenery had made him queasy, and he felt a tinge of panic lodge itself in his tree-sized throat. “It’s okay, it’s not real, it looks so fucking real, it’s just a game,” he breathed deeply.

It didn’t take him long to calm down and adapt to his new surroundings. He wished Rei would have warned him, but this was such a great gift! He could feel the cars, the lampposts and the sidewalk under his feet, though he dared not move yet. Instead, he bent down to inspect the crowd. He wondered how Rei could have gotten a hold of such a powerful piece of tech: each civilian was so detailed they might as well have been real, and they all had their own behaviour! Most were fleeing away in a cacophony of chaos and despair; some were frozen in place, unable to take their eyes off the blond giant; some were recording and broadcasting the whole scene, eager to share their exclusive point of view to the world; there were even a couple people throwing themselves at his toes with pure bliss. Oh, if only Eel could see this! It was a dream come true.

He almost picked up one of his admirers; but just as his fingers were about to close on the excited tiny, Iso realized he wouldn’t be able to feel them: the headset only came with a mat, not with gloves…
…unless he pressed his hand on the mat, of course! His interactions were limited to stomping and crushing, but the tech seemed to track his hands so precisely, it had to work. He hovered a single finger over the gushing figure and pressed them into the ground. There was just enough resistance that Iso found himself gasping in surprise, and when he lifted his finger he could see bloody remains messily divided between the asphalt and his fingertip, the phantom sensation still intense.

A counter appeared with a ding! on the edge of his vision, reading the number 1. Iso was so awestruck by the intricacy of the game he failed to notice it at first, just like he failed to notice he had grown slightly taller.
He eventually broke out of his trance and grinned at this new discovery. He had a kill count, the game was on! He stood up and spread his toes over the crowd, thick gooey strands of footsweat stretching between them. It was time for him to become a rampaging monster.
One single stomp snuffed out a dozen victims, and he could feel more squirm with panic, trying to escape his mighty weight to no avail. Once he had stopped growing, he drummed his toes on the asphalt, each tap producing a squeal of pain like a pulpy piano, until the numbers stopped adding up and he couldn’t feel any more movement under his foot. He then had another surge of growth, his feet spreading apart as his body grew wider and taller… and thus claiming new victims simply by standing there. The more he grew, the more he squished, the more he grew; Iso was now unstoppable and ever-growing, and he was enjoying this game like he never had with any other. Iso started walking, and the city started panicking.

As he turned the corner of the road, which could now barely contain his imposing figure, he stubbed his toe hard on a building. He cursed loudly, his voice booming through the whole neighbourhood. Damn their cramped bedroom! He must have hit a piece of furniture. He calmed down and rubbed his swollen toe.
“Sorry Eel, I hope I didn’t scare you! It just was real painful…”
He wondered if he should remove the headset and check that everything was fine; but he’d simply stubbed his toe, he hadn’t knocked off the furniture or made a mess, it had to be fine. His worries were somehow nudged out of his mind, replaced by an alien desire to not ruin the illusion of the simulation. His attention was brought back to the game when the monotonous voice of the headset manifested itself along with new numbers on the edge of his vision:
Revenge mode activated. Strength and resistance multipliers now linked to kill count.
Iso grinned at the distraction, lifted his foot high above the building that had wronged him, and smashed it to smithereens without feeling the slightest pain: there was only the splendid sensation of suffering under his mighty sole. He was running on pure adrenaline, and he had to get more.

Iso was on every channel, on every screen, each stomp and each fit of evil laughter drowning out the voices of the few reporters who dared to keep doing their job instead of running away like the rest of the civilians. The streets were jammed with cars, people were yelling at each other in pure anger and chaos, fetching their — or other people’s — belongings and elbowing their way into the elevators and down the stairways and through the door frames and the metro corridors and the supermarket aisles and the cars stuck on the road and the bike lanes where no one could bike and the shortcuts that now led nowhere and the whole city was nothing but an overflow of frenzied flesh, like ants fleeing their collapsing colony.
It was pointless, of course: wherever they went, they just made themselves easy to target en masse, easy fodder for the giant’s height. He could barely feel their squishy bodies under all the rubble; not that he cared: he was just happy that it all felt so real. He was intoxicated by the power he had been gifted, and all the life beneath him didn’t matter one bit; in the thrill of his rampage, he hadn’t even realized he had destroyed his own building. It was all ruins at his feet, half of the city turned to mush and the rest about to join it within a couple more stomps; next step was the whole metropolitan area, and then… he didn’t know yet. He would simply go wherever he pleased: he ruled over his own little world, and he was playing with it unchallenged.

Suddenly, Iso’s ears almost burst from a gigantic squeal of glee. He turned around and was met with the godliest sight he would ever witness. There in the stellar distance stood Rei, a galaxy draped over his toned body, gliding towards the Earth until his handsome, glowing face filled the whole sky. The god’s sight fell upon Iso, and he beamed with joy.
“Found you!” He poked his relatively tiny friend with a city-destroying finger, and gingerly picked him up. “I never quite remember which universe you exist in.”
Iso was taken aback both by this new development and by his friend’s words. Had Rei planned all along to join his game for a surprise? Were there more game mechanics they would explore together, infinite sizes in this simulation?
Only then, Iso realized the headset couldn’t have been emulating the dizziness he was experiencing from being this far up in the sky… nor could it have actually placed him up in the sky in his friend’s hand in the first place.
“Why, yes, Iso!” Rei chuckled, reading his friend’s mind. He flicked off Iso’s headset with his thumb, and nothing changed. “Of course this isn’t VR, it’s the real world!”

Iso was struck with wave after wave of feelings and realizations in a single moment.
He was actually in Rei’s hand, probably no bigger than a bean judging by his surroundings. Sizes felt weird though, as if reality had been distorted to fit Rei’s impossible whims.
He was actually in the sky, just above the clouds, though he didn’t seem to suffer from lack of air or low pressure… yet. Fear flowed through his veins at the thought of what could happen if physics resumed their course.
The people he had tortured and crushed had been actual human beings, the rampage he had brought upon the city had caused real damage. He barely had a moment to feel shame and regret settle deep into his every nerve, to start crying over the immeasurable harm he had caused.
He would never see Eel again. He would never see Eel again. Were they okay? They had to be. The thought of him hurting them would not even manifest in his mind.
And Rei was apparently a literal god, but that wasn’t his most pressing concern.

“R-Rei, wh-what’s going on?” Iso’s shaking voice quickly turned to anger. “You sent me all that VR stuff! You tricked me into doing all those horrible things! I thought it was a game all along, and now all those people are dead!”
Rei dramatically clutched a hand to his chest and gasped in faked surprise. “Oh Iso, I would never! This was simply a grave misunderstanding! Why did you even think this was a VR headset? If you had read the instructions manual, you would have known that this —” he bounced the headset on the tip of his finger “— is a simple size-changing device. That cartridge isn’t a game, it’s just a bunch of size presets.”

Iso stared wide-eyed at Rei — there wasn’t anywhere else to look, anyway. “And what about the haptic mat? You wanted me to believe it was a simulation, there’s no other reason it would connect to the headset. Your lies don’t even make sense!”
Rei froze for a second. It didn’t make sense indeed. He quickly ran a few billion scenarios through his mind, but none could quite work, so he elected instead to simply wipe the continuity error from Iso’s memory. He regained his composure and picked up his script again. “…it’s just a bunch of size presets.”

Iso stared wide-eyed at Rei — there wasn’t anywhere else to look, anyway. “But you —”
“I must say, I’m very disappointed in you,” Rei scolded his small captive before he could think too much about it. “You receive as a gift some of the most advanced, precious and ground-breaking tech on your dumb little planet, and you don’t even bother to do the most basic research and test it in a safe environment. I thought you were a scientist, Iso, a wise man; but instead of taking responsibility for your irreparable actions, you come to me and whine like a spoiled child. I should shrink you back to normal and let everyone else deal with you.”
“No! No, you can’t do that! Anything but that!” Iso rose to his feet in panic. “Please, Rei, you have to fix this!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the omnipotent god replied, shaking his head.
“Rei! Rei, I’m begging you! I-I want to fix this! I have to fix this! Take me instead and undo what I’ve done!”

Rei pretended to think it through for a short second. “Hmm… I suppose that could be a fair deal. Alright, that’s settled then!” The god snapped his fingers for spectacle, and the city in the shadow of his hand shifted back to how it was before Iso’s rampage, bodies and concrete rising from the ground back into people and buildings, everyone acting as though nothing had happened — for, in fact, the rampage had now never happened to them.
Iso sighed in relief and sat down in Rei’s palm. He didn’t feel ready for whatever Rei could have in mind, but he was glad the most important thing was done. He looked up and gave his friend a shy, pleading smile.
“My job here is done. Now, little servant, it’s time to have some fun!” Rei flicked Iso off his palm and into space. He crossed his arms and watched with amusement the puny giant tumble through the void.

Iso could barely remember the moment he was sent flying into space. How long had it been already? With every passing instant, it seemed to him that Rei was growing larger… or maybe it was him getting smaller? He wasn’t sure anymore if any of this was real. Rei was probably toying with his mind and playing horrible tricks on him. He had been hovering over Rei’s buff chest for what felt like days, like an abandoned space station on its path towards a nipple eclipse. He would have tried calculating how long it would take him to reach other parts of the god’s body, but in his strange situation, free from the influence of normal physics, his feeble brain could never parse the data even if there had been any logic to it. All he could do was gaze from up close at every crease and every pore of the god’s body, still as the flesh of a statue, as he flew past them. Rei’s face kept grinning all along, immobile but somehow tracking his fall. The abs didn’t flex as they entered his vision days later; the crotch didn’t tense as he almost brushed the galactic fabric that covered it weeks later; the toes didn’t twitch as he approached the foot months later. He had lost all thought and all sensation to the mere, overwhelming presence of the god, nothing but the words “This can’t be” cycling through his mind. When he finally landed in the god’s soft toe gap, Iso couldn’t be happier to finally feel something, and the flawless skin was his whole world.
Rei yawned. It had been a long second to him, and he was getting impatient to break in his new toy.

Time resumed its course for Iso when the two walls of flesh closed on him. He could barely breathe in the thin atmosphere collected around Rei’s toes; both the lack of air and the overpowering scent of the merciless god made him dizzy and chipped away at his mind. There was nothing he could do but let Rei toy with his battered body like he was nothing but a piece of lint. Each movement of the toes forced the goopy galactic grime over his body and into his mouth; yet it seemed to never completely cover or fill him, and he wondered if this was another of Rei’s tricks to make his torment feel eternal.

Fortunately for him, Rei decided it was time to move on. His voice boomed from everywhere at once:
“Okay, I think you’ve had a pretty good taste of your servitude, and you’re still in one piece. Consider yourself lucky that I even gave you this much attention.” A pair of Greek sandals appeared next to him; he slid on the first one and lifted his foot above the other. He glanced down at his new servant, his expression almost neutral save for a cruel glimmer in his blue eye. “You may live, so that I get to keep you forever… but remember that forever only lasts as long as you make yourself useful.”
With this, he let go of Iso. The tiny man fell right in the middle of the sandal, free if just for a moment of choking on the cosmic debris; then, the godly sole filled his vision and pressed him into the darkness of the rough leather, grinding slightly to adjust itself in the sandal before coming to a still. Rei started walking, and Iso started licking.

The god lazily ran a hand through his fluffy hair, where Eel had been sleeping peacefully all along. He gently teased them awake and waited for them to hug his finger, which they eagerly did. They were so adorable, he didn’t have the heart to fish them out of their hiding place. He simply couldn’t wait to be home and play with his new prize!
Just as he turned on his feet, making sure to put extra weight on his new foot toy, Rei felt his stomach growl. “Oh, right… I should get a snack before I leave. This —” he plucked the Earth out of its orbit and casually tossed it in his mouth to suck on —“will do just fine!” He savoured the sweet taste of wanton destruction on his way to other realities to mess with, already preparing his next surprise for another Iso…