A Glass Half Full

Pulling around near the personal elevator, Jeffrey stopped the car and got out, opening the door for Sadie and I. Climbing out, I once again put my hand back to help the girl. Collecting her long stemmed wineglass, she grabbed her shoes and purse before exiting the vehicle.

“Can’t forget this,” she said, making a point of showing me the glass.

Rolling my eyes, “Um, sure, I can hardly wait,” I replied drolly.

Jeffrey waited until we were in the elevator, nodding respectfully and leaving as the elevator doors were closing. Sadie started humming a song, though familiar, I couldn’t quite place it.

“What is that tune?” I asked. Shouldn’t have.

She grinned, “Blondie, One Way or Another,” she replied.

I shook my head, “Figures.” The plan was simple. Before she could renew her campaign to torment me, I would excuse myself and visit the john. Stepping out of the elevator, I heard her drop her shoes as I turned to her, “I have got to go and,“ was all I got out of mouth before she put her open hand in the center of my chest. There was a tremendous jolt, like one of the TV shows when someone has a heart attack and they use the defibrillator paddles, yelling out, “Clear!” Was it a stun gun? Taser? There was nothing in her hand, but the force of it staggered me back a few steps and left me unable to breathe.

Now here’s where it gets weird and it’s going to come off cracked I know. But this is exactly the way it happened. Right where she hit me, there was a weird sensation, not pain per se, you know, more like when you bump your funny bone kind of, except all over, radiating outward through my whole body and out into my arms and legs, fingers and toes. I found for the moment I couldn’t articulate words, the air in my lungs rushing outward or like I was punched in the solar plexus. The world was rushing away from me at an alarming rate and I got this queasy sense of falling, although I seemed to be falling back, everything paradoxically seemed to be getting bigger in size, including Sadie. I’m not sure if it was my body dumping huge amounts of adrenalin directly into my blood stream, but suddenly I was filled with an almost overwhelming sense of panic. Through it all, Sadie kept those lovely predatory eyes of hers fixed on mine, an amused smile on her face as she crouched down above me, tossing her little purse casually to the side of the elevator door near her shoes.

What the fuck was happening? What did she do to me? My clothes started falling away, expanding around me and cushioning my impact with the floor. Lights exploded in my vision and I still couldn’t seem to catch a breath. She just kept getting bigger and bigger, her free hand coming down toward me, the other setting the impossibly tall wine glass down on the floor.

Mouth gobbling like a fish out of water, suddenly there was air in my lungs, and while I wish I could have yelled or said something intelligible, the only noise my vocal chords could make was a protracted scream, voice rising in pitch the larger the world grew.

How could she be so calm? How could she be so big, wait a minute, everything was big. Then it occurred to my rattled brain, it wasn’t her getting bigger, it was actually me getting smaller.

Now, remember I qualified how this was going to sound before I told you. I am fully aware of how unbelievable this was and yes I had been drinking, but that doesn’t factor into what was happening to me.

Her hand was very close to me, my entire body now no bigger than her thumb. Grabbing my tiny naked self by the right foot, holding me between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, she picked me out of the now ludicrously oversized suit lying on the floor. I screamed again, enveloped by terror. This wasn’t happening. But it was.

I heard her giggle, although loud, still a kittenish sound as she moved me toward the wine glass. What had I said about the height of the bowl? Four inches, maybe four inches? It seemed almost twice my height, making me a little more than two inches tall.  Hovering above the rim of the glass, the faint aroma of wine from the residue still lingering inside as she let my foot go and I fell inside. Landing awkwardly on my shoulder, I immediately flipped myself over and sprang to my feet, palms pressed firmly against the transparent glass, staring out. I’m pretty sure I screamed again, watching the hand that had so recently been holding me curl long fingers around the now post-like stem of the glass and lifting the drinking vessel and me its hapless passenger aloft.

Bringing me up in front of her head, Sadie’s face was immense as she smiled at me, those bee stung lips parting and white teeth gleaming. Abruptly my brain clicked and with a modicum of horror I realized what it was the blonde women in the restaurant had shared. It had been a person. They had eaten a living person. Fear knotted in my belly like a runner’s cramp and I had no clue what Sadie was going to do with me.

“Oh Lew,” she chastised. “How can you be so surprised? I told you this was going to happen,” she said, tapping the glass with the metallic green painted nail of the index finger of her right hand. She was beautiful and terrifying all at once, another paradox.

I suppose if I had not gone to the bathroom and taken a leak in the restaurant, I probably would have pissed myself then and there. I was scared absolutely shitless.

Shifting her grip, she bent down and collected her purse before walking into the apartment, through the kitchen from the broad opening near the elevator doors and down a hallway to her room. I had to drop low in the glass to brace my hands and feet against the pendulum swing of her arm as she moved.

Stepping into a darkened room, she clicked on a lamp next to a large bed in a room with a very decidedly feminine motif. Crossing the floor, she set the glass near the edge of a computer desk and sauntered a couple of paces back before turning back facing me. Crossing her arms over her chest, she touched a finger to her upturned smiling lips, “Who is in a cup now?” she asked playfully, right eyebrow arching.

Me. Climbing back to my feet, I leaned forward against the glass again, my eyes drawn to the precipitous drop beyond the edge of the desk before I looked up at her. Advantage Sadie. Game, set, and match Sadie.