"Why am I always the one who has to fix other peoples' mistakes?" A woman in a high-visibility vest and hard-hat with a thick Bostonian accent walked through a factory. "Yeah, sure, let's use some experimental fabric softener. Nothing could go wrong! It totally won't end up softening the pipes, causing them to need to be replaced on a regular basis. I shouldn't have gotten out of bed today." She walked over to a warped pipe near a giant vat. "Alright, let's get this over with." She set her toolbox down and looked at her clipboard. "Crap, I grabbed the wrong clipboard. Ugh. It's a routine fix. I shouldn't need the checklist. Besides, they always shut the pipe off."
She pulled out a wrench and began loosening the bolts on the warped pipe. The warping made it a bit difficult to turn the wrench. She stopped to wipe her brow a few times. After a minute or two, the bolts came loose, before the rest of the pipe came loose as well. "Finally, th-" She was interrupted by the liquid from the pipe spraying out of the new opening. "Gah! no no no!" She attempted to block the opening with her hands, but only ended up causing the pressure to build up and spray her all over with liquid.
After a minute of failing to block the pipe, the liquid ran out. "Crap... The one time they don't shut the pipe off is the one day I forget my clipboard. Damn it... if I had just gone back to get my clipboard... Ugh. I'm all covered in fabric softener. I really regret getting out of bed today. Well, best get this cleaned off before it starts irritating my skin." She walked over to an emergency cleaning station. There was a sink and shower head with a nearby drain on the floor, as well as some first aid kits. "I am absolutely covered in this fricking crap. It's all in my clothes. Gah..." She used the shower head to rinse herself off, and then began to disrobe and put her uniform in a nearby basket. "I'm sure glad we couldn't afford security cameras, and everyone's off work until I fix this pipe. I never thought I'd be naked at work."
After fully rinsing the chemicals off of her bare skin, she turned the shower head off. "Ah, I washed it all off but I can still feel it on, or in my skin. Crap. Well I'll just finish the job and then see if it starts itching. That'll be a good excuse to take a sick day at least, which means I won't have to get out of bed." She walked back over to the open pipe, and began to replace it with a new one, not paying attention to the puddle of softener that she stood barefoot in. "Finally." She said as she screwed the last bolt in. "Well it don't feel irritated, that's a good thing." She pulled her walkie talkie out of her toolbox and spoke into it. "Hey boss, I finished the repair, but give me a few minutes to get out of here. I had a bit of an accident and I need to change."
She put the walkie talkie back in the toolbox and stepped to the side, slipping in the puddle of fabric softener, almost falling through the nearby railing before catching herself. "Woah! That was a close one." However, she felt her grip failing, and before she could bring herself back up, she dropped into a basin 10 feet below, landing on her back with a thud. "Gah... that should have hurt way worse from that height. I hope I didn't break anything." She stood up, feeling disoriented. "Nothing broken? good." She felt around her body for possible bruises, before stopping at her rear. "What the fricking hell?" She looked back to see her once round buttocks now flat as a board. "Who stole my ass?!? I swear I'll kill the son of a bitch responsible!"
She recomposed herself, now focusing more on a way to get out. The basin she was in has walls 10 feet high on either side of her. "Ain't no way I'm getting out of this. I should just wait for help... then again, I'm buck naked, and I can't let anyone see me like this." She looked at the two closest walls. "I once saw a game show where they climbed walls like this by doing the splits. It's a shame I'm as flexible as a two-by-four." She humored herself by putting one leg on the wall. "Huh. I thought I wasn't as flexible." She slowly moved her other leg to the other wall, eventually able to prop it right up against it. "Wait so I can do the splits? Why did no one ever tell me?"
With one leap, she managed to perform a full split between the two walls. "Oh wow, this might work. Maybe I should start taking up yoga." She began to inch up between the parallel walls, the fabric softener still present on her feet causing her to lose her grip more often than not, but she was making more ground than she was losing. It took a few minutes, but she was now more than halfway to the top of the basin. Unfortunately, the few minutes she bought herself on the walkie talkie ran out. A buzzing sound was heard throughout the factory, signaling the all-clear to continue production.
"Crap... Maybe I can still make it out in time. It takes a few minutes for them to get back to work." The machinery around her began to whir back to life. The two walls she propped herself between began to move inwards, towards each other. "Crap, not this thing. Glad I helped install the fail safe. It'll stop as soon as it detects any resistance greater than the fabric that it's supposed to compact. Just as in the test, my bones will remain uncrushed, plus with the walls closer together, it should be easier to get out." She slid back down to the bottom of the basin, confident in her assessment.
Even though she was still doing the splits between both walls, she didn't feel her knees bend as the walls came inwards. It took her a few seconds to realize. When she looked to her side, she saw that her legs were now much shorter and fatter than usual. "What in the gosh dang hell? Who stole my height too?" She tried to pull her legs back from the walls but was unable to move them. She paused to watch her legs shorten between the compacting walls. "Why's this happening? Gah! It must be that stupid fricking experimental fabric softener. It softens metal pipes, and now it softened me!"
The walls continued to press inwards, shortening her legs and making them wider. She watched as her feet spread thicker across the walls as her body mass gave way to the cold metal plates. With the reality of the situation setting in, she was now speechless. When the plates reached the sides of her torso, her feet were already wider than the rest of her body. She was unsure what to feel. She knew this would usually be cause for concern, but she was also still stubborn that the fail safe would kick in, yet also for some reason felt exceedingly relaxed, as her muscles refused to tense up. The walls began to press into her torso. She felt the air being forced from her lungs. She looked straight ahead, unsure of what to do. Everything went black as her face began to squish between her spread out feet.
Her mind raced, but the persistent feeling of relaxation wouldn't go away. 'What's going on?' The plates squished her thinner. 'Shouldn't this hurt?' Her brain began to be compressed as well. 'Ooh... Where am I?' She was now less than two inches thick. 'What... was I doing?' One inch thick. 'Remembering... not liking work.' Half an inch. 'What is work? Was... stress? I think. This not stress. This relaxing.' One centimeter thick. 'Who me?' Half a centimeter. 'What "me" mean?' A quarter of a centimeter. 'me means... relax... happy...' As the walls stopped compacting, the employee's mind had been so compressed, that the ability to perceive even the concept of existence itself was a thing of the past.
The walls retreated to their original position, leaving a giant, two-sided flat foot flopping down into the basin. A third wall opened up and the floor tilted, sliding the giant foot off onto a conveyor belt. A set of mechanical arms gently folded the flat foot neatly. The former employee felt the folding, like a massage it amplified the already extreme relaxation. The mechanical arms placed the foot into a box and sealed it shut. The box was hauled to an outbound delivery truck, spending the next few days on the road before being unloaded in a warehouse on the other side of the country.
The foot spent months inside the hot warehouse, sandwiched in a stack of blankets, in a box among thousands of identical boxes. Alive yet no longer in need of food or water. A human, or rather, former human unable to think or move, the only bodily function left was to sweat in the hot summer heat. It could only perceive the joy of relaxation in a state of perpetual consciousness just as if not more restful than sleep. It was like laying in bed just after waking up, knowing you still have time to sleep in, but this time it's for eternity. If it could remember life before the incident, it would remember all the mornings it wished it could lay in bed forever. Now its wish is granted.
After months passed, summer gave way to autumn. Autumn gave way to winter, and the demand for blankets was high enough to begin unloading the surplus. The box with the foot in it was shipped to a local store and put on sale among other blankets. A woman walked by and noticed the design. Bursting out laughing at the absurdity of a foot-shaped blanket, she was compelled to buy it, if only as a joke gift. The cashier paid no mind as the blanket was scanned in, they had scanned in weirder things after all, and wasn't paid to judge people. The customer put the blanket in a box and wrapped it. It sat under the tree in the living room for weeks.
When time came to open the presents, the customer who bought the foot blanket and her girlfriend were discussing about how they always got each other joke gifts every year, and handed each other their respective joke gift boxes. The customer received a printed tee shirt of a crudely drawn cat with a poorly aged meme caption, and her girlfriend opened the box to the giant foot-shaped blanket. They both had a laugh. Later that night, they replaced their regular blanket with the foot blanket. For years, they would occasionally make love, unbeknownst to them, that their favorite blanket was very much alive, and very much unaware as to its surroundings, but mostly, very much relaxed. More relaxed than any other human would ever know.