“Jack!” Carly called as she descended the staircase, her voice rebounding through the kitchen.  “JACK!”  She bellowed again, stomping her foot as hard as she could in protest of her brother not appearing immediately at her beck and call.

                Carly reached the floor with no satisfactory answer and approached the screen door leading to the porch.  “Jack, you left the screen door open.  It’s going to rain inside!” she yelled out to the grassy void.

                Grasping the handle, she slammed both doors shut in succession with a vengeful force and wriggled her toes liberally against the floor, exhausted from the work she’d been doing all morning to appease her sibling’s cruel blackmail ploy.

                God, where did he get off with this shit?  It wasn’t like he couldn’t do the landscaping himself, far faster and more easily.  He was seventeen, after all, and always marching around in t-shirts that let him show off his biceps like an overzealous Chippendales hopeful.  Hell, it would’ve probably been an ego boost for him to parade around the yard with a shovel over one shoulder and a bucket in his hand.

                Instead, she was left to suffer through the labor herself, and worse, have him holding a simple crush on Blake over her head like it belonged to him with that cell phone picture.  She could still feel her soles pruned with mucky yard water, and as she clenched her pink-painted digits together, she felt a few blades of grass still trapped in the deeper wrinkles tickling her skin.

                She clenched her firm fingertips into her palm, her knuckles cracking softly.

                There was a line.  There had to be one, and wherever it was, Jack had crossed it.  That much, at least, was clear, and Carly was dangerously close to the end of her rope now.  All it would really take would be-

                “Carly.”

                A murmur, so soft it might as well have been a memory echoing in her cerebral cortex, and yet it was real and able to interrupt her thoughts: it had presence, small as it was, coming from down below, like the sound of cars on a highway to someone listening from a plane.  Brushing a few hairs off her face, Carly tilted her head down to her feet, where they fell instantly on the distant sight of Jack.

                Or, at least, she was pretty sure it was Jack.  He was naked, and also around the neighborhood of three inches in height, but it was still ostensibly him, like a tiny desert mirage, sprawled at her feet.  A small puddle glistened on the floor in front of him.

                Carly’s eyes boggled, glistening with an indescribable shine, and despite the fact that she was fairly certain she’d been transported to the Twilight Zone, a smile crept over her lips.  She was perfectly aware she was witnessing something that should’ve sent any reasonable human being scrambling for higher ground and medical attention to pump out whatever hallucinogenic drugs had been pumped into their breakfast cereal, but not her.  Something about the moment, as separated from reality as it was by several entire dimensions, felt acceptable.  Correct, even.

                Without thinking too long about it, she plunged down into a crouch, her dirty blond hair hanging down like a canopy over the miniscule visage of Jack.  Her smile quickly dissipated into a look of confusion and curiosity as the bizarre reality presented to her refused to wick away into dreams.  She reached back toward her hair and swooped it away again, as if even fewer individual strands hanging over her eyes would allow the sight to make more sense.  Of course, it didn’t really do much.

                “Carly!” the voice peeped earnestly from the body that looks an awful lot like Jack’s.  He’d toppled off his feet and was now lying on the ground, his little chest heaving with the effort to get enough air.

                It occurred to Carly that she ought to feel revolted to be exposed to her brother’s de-clothed form.  Practically everything else about him revolted her; why shouldn’t his most private areas do the same?  Somehow, she wasn’t concerned.  It was as if it didn’t matter: the way it didn’t matter that a small rodent creeping out of its hole in the earth was naked, too.  Clothes would’ve looked almost unnatural.

                Carly’s expression remained frozen as she settled into a more comfortable breathing pattern, trying so desperately to process the information before her with little success, and yet a feeling inside that it was okay to not fully embrace reality just yet.

                Sure, there was a finger-sized organism who looked an awful damn lot like someone she knew to be over six feet tall, on the floor and sputtering in a puddle of rain water and piss before her squirming bare toes.

                Why not?

                “Carly?” the quivering voice followed up again.  “Carly?  It’s me.  It’s Jack.”

                The fourteen-year-old basketball player’s innards jolted like they’d been returned to animation with a few thousand spare volts.

                “Jack?” she said, her lips curling back into another uncertain smile.  Whatever was going on, she knew enough to be able to follow along with words in her native tongue.  That was easy enough.  Surely the rest would reveal itself in time.  All she had to do was play along until life started making sense again.

                “Yeah,” the little Jack muttered, letting the word trail off.

                “What…” she began, arching her eyebrows, but the sentence caught in her throat and was replaced with a rush of adrenaline and fearlessness as this strange new state of being continued on uninterrupted.  She was hardly guided by decision-making any longer, if she ever was at all as soon as her eyes caught on the glorious little being at her toes.  This was pure instinct.  Her left hand shot out from her side, her fingers outstretched and cool with the quavering anticipation of the upcoming revelatory instant.

                Flinching at the sight of Carly’s looming appendage with her fingers extended, the tiny Jack struggled for a second to crab-walk away, but was far too slow.  An instant later her palm was on him, collecting his tiny body into the center, her fingers curling possessively around his back.  It was even easier than she’d thought it would be, but it was something more than that.

                It felt good.

                Really good.

                A warm lump descended in Carly’s throat as she became acquainted with the feeling of a near-weightless human-shaped body writhing in her grip, then eventually settling, surrendering to her might.  Every inch of his skin felt delicate, thin like flower petals against the folds of her fingers.  Whatever was happening right now felt more and more natural by the second, as though much of her adolescence had been spent in a semi-conscious stupor, and she was only just now being shaken awake.

                The powerlessness Jack had made her feel from the time they were small kids, always using his height and strength advantage over her, requiring that she find stealthier ways to keep the score even, was disappearing away out the tips of her bare toes and fingers.  Weakness, emotional and even physical, that she had known for so long, drained away.

                Who cared if the indeed-alive creature in her fist was Jack?  Whatever he was, he was allowing her the purest moment of clarity in all her young fourteen years of life.

                Rising off her haunches, Carly ascended back to her full stature, her fist leveled just below her eyes.

                It felt like having a newborn star entrapped in her soft hand.

                With the minute being’s chest squeezed against her index finger, she could feel his heart pounding wildly out of control.  However, the longer she held him, clutching with just enough strength to not damage his corpus, she felt it leveling back down, synchronizing himself to the girl that now held his entire existence in her hand.  Rightfully.

                The staring match continued on silently.  Carly felt the fairy-sized Jack’s body temperature steadily rising back up in her clammy grip.

                “C-C-Carly…” he stammered quietly, his beady pupils and open mouth a blank slate.

                Carly’s eyes widened involuntarily and experienced the sensation of an ice cube ricocheting off the walls of her skull as her brain was finally forced to confront the unreality in ordinary time.

                There was no doubt about it now.  Through whatever severe bending or outright destruction of reality’s generally reliable laws had taken place, this was, in fact, Jack in her hand right now.  Not a hallucination, or phantom illusion, or some alien beast from the next galaxy over.  Jack.

                At last managed she a full response: “Jack, you’re… you’re, like, three inches tall.”

                “I… I know-”

                “What happened to you?”

                “I don’t know!  Please, Carly, please.  I need you to do something: call mom and dad, call the hospital.  Something.  I… don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he rambled.

                “Yeah, yeah, okay…” she said.  Having accepted this moment as reality, there seemed like there was no other option.  Jack was small and afraid in the fleshy vice of her fingers.  That instant of cradling the cosmos in her palm, however wonderful, was over now.  It had to be.

                What else could she do, after all?

                Carly took a final glance into her hand, feeling the distance between herself and the helpless creature closing until all sound, light, and matter had been sealed off and it was just her eyes, holding him in their grip as well as her hand.

                She could not.

                That was what.

                “Now, wait a minute, Jack…” she said.  Carly heard her own words passing her lips, natural and still, and was surprised by them, but dared not let it show.  Something else was happening inside her now.  A previously invisible and unspoken intuition, guiding her forward confidently without fear of the fallout, and though she wasn’t immediately aware of what direction it was carrying her, she knew for certain she didn’t disagree with its choices.

                “What, Carly?  C’mon!  You have to get me some medical attention, something is seriously wrong with me!”

                “Jack, slow down…” the girl insisted softly.  The idea of the future: consequences, not just for Jack, but for her as well, seemed to fade the longer she allowed herself to gaze down at the infantile little figure clenched in her fist.  Time didn’t have to march forward any longer.  For now, this was all there was, and she was in control.

                She.

                “Carly, I need your help!  Just keep going!  I don’t know what’s going on right now, but we have to do something about it soon!”

                “Jack…”

                “Carly, c’mon!” he grunted, quaking in her warm fist.

                Carly tilted her head to the side, pursing her lips in disdain, and cocked her eyebrows.  Obviously, he hadn’t yet realized the gravity of the situation.  How it was now her responsibility to ensure his being was maintained.  What right did he have to question her choices?  Was he truly that ignorant?

                Even now, at his most vulnerable and inhuman, he was still a domineering, self-centered asshole.

                “Jack, stop talking to me like that,” she suggested quietly.  Maybe in his delirium, things hadn’t caught up to him fully yet.  God knew they hadn’t yet for her, either.  She would be the bigger person and offer him another chance.

                “Are you serious, Carly?  Look at me, I’m tiny!  I don’t know what’s wrong and we have to find out, right NOW!”

                “You’re yelling at me, Jack.”

                “Wha-what are you talking about?  I need help!  C’mon!”

                “You’re still doing it.”

                “No I’m not!  Shut up and call the goddamned hospital!”

                Carly flinched.  It felt like she’d been slapped across the cheek, and by a being small enough for her to squelch the life from under her pinky finger, of all things.  That had to stop.

                “Jack, you cussed again,” she commented with another wince.

                “I will do whatever I goddamn please until you help me.  You’ve got to help me, Carly!”

                “Not until you apologize.”

                Even in a face so small, Carly recognized the shock.  As if he was having more difficulty grasping her desire for courteous, humane treatment than his own drastic downgrade in stature.

                “Carly, are you serious?” he screeched, his whole body vibrating against Carly’s coiled palm.

                “Jack, stop yelling at me!” she demanded.  The feeling was building up higher inside, clawing its way to an emotional apex.

                “HELP ME!”

                “Stop,” she uttered.  Carly was done.  Done with feeling putdown, treaded on, and degraded.  Done with all of Jack’s shit.

                Done being the small one.

                Forever.

                “HELP!”

                “STOP YELLING AT ME!” she screamed at last.  Instantly Jack’s tiny body began trembling again, recognizing, at last, his sister’s comparative omnipotence.  It was about damn time.

                “Okay,” he whimpered, seemingly returning to some equilibrium.  His tone eased into something more reassuring.  “Okay, okay.  Look, I’m sorry, Carly, that I yelled at you.  I’m just scared, okay?  You can understand that, right?”

                Typical.  Manipulative as ever.  Nothing at all was changed in his face.

                Carly narrowed her eyes.

                “I can’t believe you, Jack.”

                “What?”

                “Even when you’re in trouble like this, and you need me, you can’t be nice to me.”

                “Look, I’m trying, Carly, okay?  I’m trying!  Look, I’ll even just wait a minute for you.  Now, please.  Please.  Go call for help,” he intones calmly.

                Carly bit the corner of her lip.

                That intuition that had been guiding her actions in the previous moments was moving more to the background now, instead alighting on her shoulder like an advice-dispensing angel.  It was her decision now: her gift.

Nothing ever had to be the same again.  And it couldn’t.

It wouldn’t.

“No,” Carly breathed at last.

This single word, perhaps, even weighed against the sensation of cupping a life in her palm, felt most precious of all.

 “B-b-” he squeaked.

“Don’t ask me again, Jack, until you’ve said it to me.”

“What?” he spat, his little face flushing red.

“Until you apologize to me.”

 “You bitch - you stupid bitch.  What the hell are you talking about?  You get over to that phone right now and help me, God DAMN IT!” he shouted.

Carly’s lips pursed into a deep frown, her eyes flaring with teenage divinity and hellfire.

“That’s it.  You can’t talk to me like that, Jack,” she hissed.  “Did you hear me?  You can’t talk to me like that!” she yelled again.

The time was here.

Carly’s fingers began to constrict, squeezing inward around Jack’s whole being, further than she would’ve considered within the realm of possibility mere minutes ago.  Then again, very little of what was happening right now could’ve been in her realm of possibility, and yet here she was: holding her brother in her fist, clenching him inside her palm, and feeling his powerless little form thrash fragilely for release that no power on earth could force her to provide.  The thought crossed her mind that he could break in her grasp.  His body could snap like the brittle stem of a winter flower.

Then she remembered.  She was in control.  The variables were at her infinite disposal now.  Anything, absolutely anything, was possible now.  All she had to do was imagine it, command it, and it could be so.

Jack moaned sorely and gazed up again at his sister’s face, pleading in his eyes.  A penitent sinner, having gone through his revelation too late.

Everything was far too late.

“You’re never going to talk like that to me again,” she said.  A massive smile crept over her lips.  “Never again, little boy,” she added spritely, and unleashed a mortifying giggle of unadulterated power.

There really is a God, Carly considered in the refreshing silence of Her brave new world.