“So…” Maggie drawled, crossing her arms as she savored the size of her trinket-sized brother at his absolute minimum height, standing atop the bedside table just about level with her waist. “What are we going to do about this?”
Scott opened his mouth, wanting to speak and offer whatever the requisite vocal debasing was needed to get his looming titan of a sister to call Ella back and give him the chance to talk to her.
“Cat got your tongue again, little boy?” Maggie cooed with a smirk. “Really, really little, I mean.”
What could he say? Was there even anything? Could he throw himself down at his knees and offer himself up as a personal dummy for his sister? Was there anything he could willingly do that would make it easier than if she just made him? He was positively nauseated by the thought of it, but with what sounded like his romantic prospects roosting treacherously on the line, it was something he knew he had to do. For Ella’s sake, and for his own, mostly.
“Yeah,” he coughed.
“Why’s that?” Maggie giggled. “You know, if you’d stood on your tiptoes, I bet you could’ve reached the phone. You just didn’t try hard enough.”
“I know,” Scott agreed flatly, falling as smoothly as he could onto autopilot in order to increase his depressingly slim odds of success.
Maggie frowned, obviously somewhat irritated at his refusal to play along, then leaned down closer until she could rest both hands on the edge of the table for support. Her contact with it rattled the entire surface, forcing Scott to cower momentarily to keep from falling over, as the heels of her enormous hands smacked down concussively.
Her arms. Her hands. Her fingers. Just the sight of them made him queasy, now that they were this much closer to him at this size. They looked big enough to scoop up a dump truck and compress it between her peachy palms like an empty soda can.
He knew what something that destructive looked like, because Maggie got a certain kick out of smashing trash between her fingers for added show before tossing it into the bin well within Scott’s view. Like a preview of some kind.
Imagination was usually not something he needed much of.
“Well, good,” Maggie offered at length, her brow slightly furrowed. Her hands slid a few inches further across the table, causing Scott to take a precautionary and fruitless step back away. “So tell me, itty bitty. What did you do with yourself today?”
“Huh?”
“You heard me. I know you did, because I bet I could make you go deaf if I talked much louder, COULDN’T I?”
Scott shivered, indeed feeling the tiniest ringing in his ears at the boom of his little sister’s words, but refused to let it show. He swallowed hard.
“Cleaned the house.”
“Uh-huh. And that’s it?” Maggie pressed, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
“Really. Absolutely everything. You didn’t have fun at all?”
Where was she going with this? He imagined the very idea of him enjoying any given part of his house arrest would give his sister a hernia. What did she want?
“No. Just lots of work.”
“None? No TV, or sports, or… going swimming?”
Another silly question. The family’s backyard swimming pool was a pretty undesirable place for the young man, as it was literally impossible for him to get out of it on his own, particularly if he was any smaller than a foot. And as he’d already had a couple of experiences being used as a pool toy for his sister and her friends during these early pre-summer days, the both of them knew he’d never willingly set foot out there on his own.
“No swimming.”
“Oh really?” Maggie chuckled almost accusingly, lifting her left hand up slowly, which by this point had disappeared from view behind the flower vase. “Then what, exactly, where you doing in this?”
Her hand suddenly emerged, hanging far overhead, but close enough to give him a good look. Pinched between her index and thumb was the tiny wetsuit, looking comically pathetic at less than an inch long in her powerful grip.
Scott felt the familiar running of ice in his bloodstream, perhaps faster than he’d ever experienced in his sister’s presence.
“I… I w-was in the p-pipes. Under the s-s-sink…” Scott gasped, desperate to hide his panic and failing almost immediately as a cold sweat ran down his back. “Mom d-d-didn’t w-want me to get… s-stuck.”
“Is that so?” Maggie said with interest, nodding her head. “That was a good idea.”
“Yep!”
“That way you can move around easier in the water, you don’t get dirty, and best of all, you’re safer from falling down anywhere the water might go.”
“Uh… uh-huh.”
“But you know, I was also just curious,” the girl continued. “What else it could be used for? I’ll bet there’s a lot we could do.”
“W-What? ”
“Oh, sure. I mean, c’mon. We’ve got a handy little inch-tall boy at our disposal, a cute little scuba suit for him, and a lot of narrow spaces around the house,” she observed. “So many places you could fit.”
Her words were suddenly dripping with that terrifying new tone, moist and curious, suggesting something else was on her mind that she didn’t dare reveal in full, and it was making Scott sicker than he thought possible, with positively nowhere to run.
“She put you in her mouth, didn’t she?” Maggie asked suddenly, on the verge of a full-on cackle, but managed to keep her voice low and terrifying as ever. “Mom stuck you in her mouth.”
“N-No! No, s-s-she… s-she…”
“Don’t. You. Dare. Lie to me,” Maggie spat, suddenly leaning much further over the table in a rush of wind, this time sending Scott clean off his feet. The sultry bent of her words moments before had dried up and been replaced with venom.
“Yes.”
The word hurt Scott’s throat, but in his fear, it came out clearly.
A slimy tongue, practically amorphous in its glistening, flexing form, emerged from between Maggie’s lips and slid back and forth three times for good measure. She was close enough that she could’ve leaned forward an extra few inches and ravaged Scott in saliva with a single slurp.
“I hope you’re a good swimmer, little boy.”
Scott’s every inch was shaking well beyond his control, and he had to fight back a horrified shout in the back of his throat as Maggie’s right hand rose up, her thumb and index parted just wide enough to grasp him up for a one-way elevator ride up.
He groaned sorely as she pinched him roughly in her haste and lifted him up without another second’s pause, rising back to her full height and brandishing her inch-tall brother in her hand just above her head so that he could look down upon his destination.
The sixteen-year-old’s mouth opened as wide as possible, her eyes clenched shut with glee as she bounced her golden ponytail to the opposite shoulder.
“Maggie, PLEASE!” Scott cried hoarsely as his sister’s fingers descended with him toward the blackness, his voice cracking hard as he watched a few strands of dancing saliva dangle across the softly parted lips that could barely hold back a monumental grin. “PLEASE DON’T!”
“I’m heading out, guys,” Judy announced as she suddenly popped her head back into the room. “You two getting along in here?”
“Uh-huh,” Maggie answered, her mouth hanging open in a bizarre and sheepish smile, her baby blue eyes refusing to break contact with Scott, who was now marinating in a cold sweat.
“What are you two doing in here?” Judy questioned, taking a few steps into the room. Scott could feel his sister’s hand lowering a few inches to uselessly conceal the preparation for such an obvious act.
“Nothing,” Maggie insisted, rolling her eyes when their mother wasn’t looking, and playing with her brother between a couple of prodding fingers. She cupped Scott into her palm, giving him a reprieve at least for this moment, though that didn’t stop Scott from huddling fearfully into the fleshy center of his sister’s hand and working to fight back the shivering. Swallowing his pride without a second thought, he allowed himself to draw comfort from the warm embrace of the very skin that had so nearly deposited him into a slimy hellhole.
“Really? Because… it looks an awful lot like you were going to put your brother in your mouth, sweetie,” Judy declared calmly.
Once again, Scott found himself perplexed by his mother’s out-of-character apparent defense of him, particularly when it concerned his sister disciplining him with her special type of draconian torment, something Judy usually let go without comment. Nevertheless, he held his breath, unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially after he’d had to go into said gift horse’s mouth earlier in the day.
Now that a new week had started, he could leave the house again. Maybe Judy would insist on taking him with her. Maybe he could be saved.
“Mom… come on. It wasn’t going to be anything bad. I was just going to, you know, let him sit there for a second.”
“Honey, I’m sure you didn’t mean to do anything bad to him-”
It was Scott’s turn to roll his eyes now.
“-but I think you’d better stick to… less risky activities with him right now.”
“Why? You did it,” Maggie commented as politely as she could muster. “I know you did.”
“That’s different. I’m his mother,” Judy countered curtly. “Now, I’ve got to be going, and I need you to listen to me and not put him anywhere near your mouth. Remember when we talked about it the first time?”
The goddamned which time?
At this point, Scott was hopelessly losing the battle to stop the tremors in his body.
“Yes, Mom,” groaned Maggie sadly, leaning back against the edge of the queen bed while keeping her upturned hand containing her brother roughly at stomach level.
“I’m serious, sweetie,” Judy said in her over-sugared way. “Scott’s got some weeds to pull for me outside. He knows they have to get done, and now he knows that I don’t want him going in your mouth. If I come home and find the garden’s still not looking pristine… we may have a couple of problems to deal with.”
Scott couldn’t help but freeze in puzzlement as a cutting momentary release from his fears of being placed into his little sister’s mouth. This confused him even more than the fact that his mother was defending him.
This was a move Judy had never made before in all eight years of using the PMRD.
She seemed to actually be directly linking Scott’s disciplinary fate with Maggie’s, and putting the latter in a position that she couldn’t just do whatever she wanted. Maggie was actually being held responsible for something over her tiny brother.
Scott had to blink a few times to ensure he was still on the same plane of reality as a few moments before. Somehow, he was.
“Right, Mom,” Maggie said, managing to squelch the sarcasm from her voice to sound shockingly sincere. “Fine. I swear I won’t.”
“We don’t swear, sweetie, we promise. Promise me.”
“I promise I won’t put Scotty in my mouth.”
“Great. And I will want to see those weeds pulled when I get back in an hour, so if you could put him back to twelve and make sure the screen is open out back so he can get through the cat door, I’d appreciate it.”
“Uh-huh,” Maggie uttered nonchalantly. “Will do.”
“Thanks so much, sweetie. And Scott? Make sure you pull at the root so they don’t grow back. I’ll see you guys later,” Judy said with a final wave as she disappeared back into the hallway.
For a couple minutes, Maggie remained frozen in place, keeping Scott sprawled in the center of her palm while she listened to the sound of footsteps down the stairs, the garage door opening and closing, and the zoom of Judy’s car back down the street.
In the blink of an eye, Scott found his heart thrown back into overdrive.
“All right, little boy,” Maggie said definitively, pinching her brother up between two fingers again and raising him to eye level for examination, her tone instantaneously businesslike. “Let’s make a deal.”