Chapter Seven: Escape Attempt
“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
The warmth from Riley’s body radiated around, and through him warming his cold body. The chattering of his teeth dissipated, as the shivering stopped. Her hand draped over him like a blanket, while the beat of her heat rang in Adam’s ears. As much as he hated to admit this, it felt comfortable here. He hadn’t been this comfortable in days, but he knew he couldn’t stay.
“Riley, listen to me!” Adam yelled. “I can’t do this, I made a mistake, and for that I am sorry. I truly am. If I had known that was your first time I would have never, never taken that from you. As I knew it couldn’t last. I thought it was just a fling. I was away from home, you were away from home I thought who would find out? You are young and beautiful and I would be a bit remised if a part of me didn’t relish the fact that someone as lovely as you could find a man on his way to his forties attractive. I never thought of leaving my family though. When you talked about that I knew you had given the wrong impression. Please, just let me go home, home to my family.” Adam pleaded
Adam waited for several minutes for some response, some kind of reply. He thought at first maybe she was sad, or crying. Then maybe trying to compose herself, but the rhythmic breathing spoke volumes. She had fallen asleep.
“That was hard enough to do once. I can’t believe I’m gonna have to try to do that again.” Adam said to himself as wiggled and pulled at his right arm finally able to break it free from Riley’s hand now that she wasn’t actively working against his efforts to get out. Not wanting to waste the opportunity he had been provided, Adam reached his right arm up, and grasped at her the dense cotton material of her shirt. It was a bit unnerving at just how strong this dainty cotton fabric felt. It was supposed to loose, cool and airy. However, it felt dense, strong and powerful. As his now miniature hands dug into the fabric he could smell perfume radiating off her skin.
“Pull dammit, you can do it.” Adam said to himself as he attempted to pry himself out from under grip. After several minutes he had managed to get his left arm free. As he yanked his left arm free Riley pulled hand from Adams body resting it against her side.
The quick action caused Adam to freeze in place. He remained motionless for a couple of minutes in case Riley had woken up. As Riley remained motionless Adam allowed himself to exhale. Taking another breath made Adam realize he wasn’t even aware he was holding his breath. Slowly he stood up not lost on the lunacy of the situation. He was literally standing on a person. As his feet sunk a bit into Riley’s skin, the muscle tone, definition and athletic build from years of soccer became truly apparent to the point that he wondered if she wouldn’t have been able to take him before this weird transformation.
The darkness of the room shrouded everything and the shadows the various objects in her room caused made seeing anything difficult, but directly across from here he could see the glow of the screen from her laptop. Riley had a custom screensaver that seemed to rotate to a different picture every minute, many of which appeared to be of her friends by their nature, and attitude of the people in the pictures. Adam knew that would be perfect. He could send an email or instant message his family. The laptop has a touchpad so he wouldn’t even need to worry about trying to move an unwieldy mouse.
“I just need to get down from here.” Adam said to himself as he carefully continued to take step after step till he reached the edge of Riley. Her arm resting against her side allowed him to easily make his way down to the soft plush bed which posed its own unique challenges.
The bed seemed to be of the highest utmost quality, as Riley made quite a depression in the bed. Adam found that even his miniscule weight was enough too effectively cause a depression of his own. As he looked across the bed, the wrinkles and folds from the comforter made the bed appear to be an alien landscape.
“She could wake up at any moment. I have to hurry.” Adam mumbled to himself as he set out towards the edge of the bed. The walk should have just been a few inches, but having to climb over folds in the bed made things difficult, not to mention any subtle movement on Riley’s part effected what was right now the whole world to him.
The Journey itself that should have taken no time at all, took twenty full minutes because of his size, but finally reaching the end of the massive king sized bed brought about a problem Adam had been thinking about for quite some time. How in the world he was going to get off the bed itself, which was to Adam fifty feet off the ground.
The idea of climbing down seemed practical until he was actually faced with doing it. He would literally be free climbing down a fifty foot bed, not using anything but Riley’s comforter for hand holds, and the comforter itself didn’t provide much in the way of handholds . While the material was now strong enough to support his reduced weight, he was no longer able to bend or fold the comforter in any way to create the necessary handholds to get onto the floor. However, the greatest problem of all was the fact that Adam possessed no climbing skills whatsoever. Even if he had a rope and harness climbing down a fifty foot wall would be next to impossible and the comforter itself doesn’t even reach the floor; the last fifteen or so feet would just be a straight drop to the floor which could very well kill him.
Adam knew he was going to need another way down. He walked along the side of the bed looking down at the floor which was right in front of him with no way to get to it. The real world difficulties of navigating a world meant for people who were many times his own height had begun to sink in.
“This is futile.” Adam said to himself as neared corner of the bed with no real way to get to the floor. Giving up, and trying to get some sleep was beginning to look like the only real option right now when he noticed the bedpost. The bed post along with the frame was all hand carved. The bedpost itself contained a ridge that encircled the post. It looked as if someone had taken a slide and wrapped it around the bedpost. While even it his reduced size, he was a bit too big to be able to slide down, he could use the ridge to climb down. He would just need to shimmy along the wooden ridge as if it were a ledge. The idea itself was sound, but shimmying down a bedpost was enough to scare Adam to death, however he knew he was out of options. It was either this, or wait for Riley to wake up, but at the pace she was going he would be Mr. Adam Parker by the end of the week.
“There is no other way.” Adam said aloud to himself as if it would somehow comfort him, but it did very little to ease his mind at all as he stretched his leg out and placing it on the wooden ridge. He tried to push down with all his weight in order to ensure the wooden ledge would be able to hold his weight and much to his pleasure it held with ease.
“Here goes nothing” Adam mumbled as he reached his arm out clutching the wooden bed post with one arm while bringing his second leg over onto the ridge. As soon as his second leg touches down on the bed post he wrapped his arms around the post as best he could. The wooden ledge had the width of about two of his feet which allowed him to slowly shuffle down and around the post.
The Journey itself was very slow going, mostly because Adam had to stop for repeated breaks and he was just shuffling his feet an inch or two at a time. It wasn’t as if he was walking. He was pretty sure he probably could walk along the ridge, but his own fear kept him from doing so. The knowledge of knowing that any mistake would send him tumbling over ledge to almost certain doom kept him in line. So as much as he wanted to get to Riley’s laptop and contact his family, he wanted to be able to contact his family in one piece.
As soon as Adam’s bare feet hit the cool hardwood floor a sense of relief washed over him. Adam fell to his knees and kissed the floor repeatedly in joy. Looking back behind him he was amazed he actually made his way all the way down here. The bed appeared to literally be a small mountain. The idea he climbed his way down from there brought a twinge of pride to him. This was not the kind of thing he would normally do; As Adam generally avoided athletic activities much to Lisa’s chagrin.
After taking a break to rest for several minutes Adam pulled himself back to his feet. His legs were already killing him, but it took him a few hours just to get to this point. There was no clock that he could see from this vantage point, which brought about its own challenges. The closer it got to morning, the closer he got to his destination. This was great, except for the fact it would be harder for him to explain what he was doing, in a way that wouldn’t bring about some recourse on Riley’s part. However, Adam knew that he had to take the chance. He wasn’t sure how many opportunities he would have in which he was left alone of his own devices. The fact she locked him in eyeglass case in her purse for the journey home wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.
Compared to the climb down, the walk across the floor was easy. The only challenge it brought was the sheer length of the walk itself. As Adam walked, he couldn’t help but notice that the floor was immaculately clean. There was no dust on the wood floors; there wasn’t a single crumb of food anywhere to be found. This may have been one of the cleanest rooms he had ever seen. It was as if dust and dirt cowered in fear of this room to afraid to enter.
As Adam reached desk the second problem quickly became apparent. The desk was even taller than the bed and it didn’t have any of the ridges in which he could climb up, it was just smooth solid oak, seventy feet or so straight up. Walking along the base of the desk provided little in the way hope, or inspiration. It had several large drawers, and a few smaller ones all with knobs and key locks beside them, but none of that was useful to him. As he walked back towards the desk, he came to the large desk chair which was pressed tightly up against the desk itself. However, behind the desk he could see a couple of cords dangling down and running along the floor before leading back up about ten to fifteen feet to an outlet.
“That’s the only way.” Adam said to himself as he walked towards the cord. It was perfectly smooth, but of solid rubber. As he looked up it appeared to go all the way up, and onto the desk. Back in his high school and college days Adam remembered several times doing the rope climb in gym class, but this was on a whole different scale. They had mats below in case you fell, and even then were talking about maybe ten feet. This was climbing what looked to be seventy feet without any safety harnesses or mats. All he could do if he did fall was pray to the gods for a quick death.
“I came way too far to give up now. I have to try. I will see how the first few feet go, and I can always climb down if it’s too much.” Adam said to himself in a vain attempt to muster up some courage as he reached his hand out to the power cord. Sighing heavily he reached outward and began his ascent. The first ten feet went easily as the climb itself was actually a bit easier then he imagined. As he could wrap his legs around the cord and pull himself up. The abrasive nature of the cord provided a fairly secure and easy hold. It wasn’t as smooth as it appeared at first glance.
As Adam reached twenty feet up he began to tire as he lacked the physical strength; however he had climbed too much to simply wave it off at this point. Knowing he needed to rest Adam climbed up a few more feet where he came to the backside of one of the drawers. He dug his feet into the small crack where the wood of drawer didn’t quite meet the wood of desk. The crack was big enough where he could transfer most of his weight into the desk and actually rest his muscles a bit.
Unsure of how much time had passed, but it felt like twenty or thirty minutes. It was enough that Adam felt sufficiently rejuvenated to continue the climb knowing finding another resting place would be slim. He could only hope his body could hold out long enough to reach the top.
As Adam pulled himself over the edge of the desk he managed to take two or three steps to move away from the side of desk, and then fell onto the top of the desk. He gasped for air while his muscles cried out in pain as Adam mumbled never again. Never in his life had Adam done anything that physically demanding.
It was well over an hour, and sunlight started to peek through the curtains and blinds before Adam felt strong enough stand up again. His legs still felt like dead weight, but he was able to slowly walk. At first he used the giant wooden pen holder for support but once he got into the swing of thing he found he was able to walk without any kind of support. Running however was out of the question.
Reaching the laptop itself felt like a massive accomplishment as he looked back across the room and over At Riley still sleeping away having no idea all the physical abuse, and stress he been put through. She could simply walk over here and not give a second thought to it, but Adam felt as if he just completed the decathlon, but he still had one last thing to do before he could pat himself on the back. He stepped onto the laptop and crawled over to the touchpad. He placed his hands on the touchpad and begun to slide his hand across the surface. Expectantly he looked up at the monitor which looked to be about the size of 6 imax screens put together, only nothing happened. The picture merely changed to one of Riley holding up a tournament trophy with her teammates. Adam pressed down harder against the touchpad and yet nothing happened.
He tried again and again not able to understand why it wasn’t working. It hadn’t dawned on him yet that a touchpad, like any touch device needs to registers some amount of weight in order to detect that there is something there. In Adam’s case he no longer can provide the necessary amount of weight in order to activate the sensor.
Adam only became more frustrated and this time took a running start and slid across the touchpad on the laptop as if it were slip and slide. As he looked up at the screen his heart sank all the way down to his toes. He had risked life and death only to have failed utterly. There was no way for him to activate the touchpad.
Running out onto the keys of the laptop Adam hoped he might be able to use keyboard commands in order to get around enough to send a message. However, as he walked across the computer keys nothing happened. It was as surreal moment as he was standing atop a keyboard and the full weight of his body was not enough to depress a single key. He leapt as high as his tired and sore leg muscles could muster. Seconds later he crashed down onto the computer keys. He watched the keys depress slightly before rising back up.
“Yes” Adam shouted in elation. It would be very slow going but maybe it could work as long as Riley slept in. However, as his attention turned back to screen he looked on in horror as the screensaver still appeared on the screen. As even though the key had depressed it hadn’t depressed enough to register a keystroke.
“Oh god.” Adam said dropping to his knees as the full weight of this discovery came to bare in his mind. This meant phones, tablets, computers and any anything else modern society had developed he was cut off from. The world had grown into a touch based society and he could no longer use any kind of touch device. He wasn’t strong enough to even register a single keystroke on device that makes use of any kind of keyboard or keypad.
He looked over at Riley as she continued to sleep; he wanted to scream at her. He wanted to yell unable to believe what she had done to him. She had ruined his life, but he knew that wasn’t true. She may have brought him here to her house, but she wasn’t the one who shrunk him, and more importantly she wasn’t the one who cheated on her spouse. That was all him. He could have avoided all of this just by saying no. Just by being an honorable man and keeping the vows he made to his wife.
“I put myself here. What have I done? What have I done? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Adam said to himself as tears welled up in the corner of his eyes. He fought to hold them back, but as much as he fought, the teardrops slid out from the corner of his eyes.