The air was stifling, that or there just wasn’t much of it. After his kicking episode proved fruitless Parker changed his tactic. He realised there wasn’t a chance of getting himself out of her pocket with force. Instead an idea came to him, one that should have been his first thought. Feeling like an idiot he started patting himself down. After checking each pocket twice he found the familiar block shape he was looking for. His phone lit up, illuminating the dark of the breast pocket. The walls draped around him wrapping him in a velvety bindle.

I have signal, he thought to himself.

‘I have signal!’ he cried out with uncontained joy.

He felt a sudden pressure, crushing him close to Kit’s chest.

‘Shut the hell up’ she hissed down. Kit moved her hand back to resting on the desk. Another outburst like that and she wouldn’t hold back with just a tap.

After a minute of silence it became clear that he was staying put. She wasn’t reaching in to fish him out.

Parker started scrolling through his contact list, there wasn’t anyone he thought he could call for help right now. If the first person said no, then that meant calling another and then another until he found someone. He knew there was no way this girl was going to put up with him running a call centre from her pocket.  Instead he opened the camera and started taking pictures of himself. It only took a minute before he had uploaded them with his cries to help to Facebook, twitter and Tumblr. His phone chirped out with the first notification.

‘Social media to the rescue’ he smugly hummed to himself, he looked back to his phone to find out who was the first person that was ready to save him, ‘What’s wrong with you’ He shouted in anger only to be gifted with another hard smack against her body. He scrambled around trying to clamber back to his feet. The anger was still foaming up inside as he found himself looking down at the screen on his phone. The notification read, Nicole Robeson likes your status.

He reread what he’d put out loud to make sure there was no confusion, ‘I have shrunk down in the Thorson building, lecture room T105, please send help some girl has already put me in her pocket. I need to get help, please. I’ll PM anyone who helps what she looks like. Just help me’

Another chirp shook his phone. Andrea commented, Lucky girl, always wondered what you tasted like.

Jake Parker: Does that mean I get all your stuff?

Adam Gylkes: What’s that supposed to be, a pocket selfie?

Lucy Parker: Idiot.

What he thought were his friends had already started posting pictures of themselves wrapped up and crying in blankets, posted with #pocketparker and #shrinkeeselfie.

The lecture was close to over, but the tiny beeping that only she could hear was already grating on Kit’s nerves. She reached into her pocket, carelessly fumbling the tiny boy around in her fingers until she found his hand. With unprecedented precision and skill she plucked the tiny phone from him. But it had been Nick that had practically thrust the phone into her fingers. After reading all the comments and jokes that were being posted, it didn’t seem that it could be of any use other than making everything feel more hopeless

Kit brought the tiny phone up to her eyes, holding it precariously between her thumb and forefinger.  With an indignant self-satisfied smirk she rubbed his phone into a fine metal powder.

Nick sat back and sulked for the next half hour, no one was coming to his aid. Any friendships he had now didn’t mean anything. He thought it would be different. That someone would help him, it was always so easy to ignore the problem before, and Nick would always argue if they had been better people then maybe someone would help them when they shrank. Being a fraction of your size meant people turned on you. You weren’t one of them anymore so you deserved everything that came to you. And they felt more than responsible for pest control.

Kit didn’t hold the same view, sure they were still people. But she didn’t have to treat them as such.