Anna and Alison’s apartment was mostly silent save for the low hum of the outdated television resting on a foldable dinner tray. The lights had been switched off to preserve energy, the screen the only source of vision in the space.

            With her mother out on a couple of errands, Alison slouched comfortably in the old couch, her feet propped up on the ottoman just a twitch of distance away from where Tony and Ashley were seated delicately on makeshift bedding consisting of the eighteen-year-old’s giant white socks.

            Occasionally Tony would crane his neck around to their keeper, watching the lights flicker on and off along Alison’s towering sole. It wasn’t a particularly comforting sight. She’d placed him and her cousin here specifically so she could keep a close eye on them while they were out of their box, without intent to toy with them. Still, being seated on a pair of cotton footwear that had imprisoned him and his tiny girlfriend numerous times was a bit much for Tony to swallow, even if it did allow Ashley to recline more comfortably. He’d spent several sleepless nights in the past cuddled forcefully up against those wriggling digits, his back compressed into the dirty-blonde’s warm sole while she rested peacefully in the knowledge that he wasn’t going anywhere.

            “You guys wanna watch anything?” Alison offered. She flipped the channels absent-mindedly, stabbing the buttons with her thumb. “Anything? Crime show? News? There might be one of those sitcom round-up marathon things happening tonight, too.”

            “Can you just take me to bed?” Ashley croaked without turning around. Her voice was far more civil than it had been during the rest of the day.

            “Uh, yeah, sure,” Alison shrugged, touched by the strength she knew it took for her cousin to make a request minus the insult. Her feet slid carefully off the ottoman, plopping to the floor below without rattling the furniture. The girl’s hand reached forth, preparing to collect her cousin into her palm.

            “My back hurts,” Ashley said.

            “Oh.”

            “So be careful,” the smaller girl grunted, then managed to vomit out a final word in the lowest volume possible: “…please.”

            “What’s wrong with it?” Alison questioned. She was a little taken aback by this previously unforeseen level of generosity.

            “It hurts from trying to hold my fucked-up arms and legs that your Mom popped like fucking crackers,” Ashley spat, returning to her usual self in smooth form. “In case you forgot.”

            “Oh. No, I didn’t forget,” Alison promised solemnly. “You want some pain meds?”

            “No, I want to get the fuck out of this hellhole and get as fucking far away from you and your pscyho-bitch mother as possible. But yeah, sure, pain meds will be okay for now.”

            “Coming right up,” Alison said, not skipping a beat. She gave the ottoman a little nudge with her leg, just so it was too far of a leap over to the couch for Tony, ensuring he and his girlfriend remained marooned on the cloth island of the footrest. “Just hold on.”

            Alison entered the shared bathroom by the apartment closet and sprung open the medicine cabinet. There wasn’t much, but a bottle of aspirin eventually presented itself once Alison brushed past the de-bristled toothbrushes and empty floss containers. Grasping for it, her knuckles knocked against the plaster backing of the cabinet, causing it to creak like the straining belly of a rowboat.

            Frowning, the girl gave the wall another little push, revealing a panel that opened fully into a dusty space behind the cabinet and fastened firmly into the wall. Though she wasn’t particularly excited about discovering any spider kingdoms in the darkness, Alison’s intrigue guided her fingers back into the void. Her palm closed fully around a plastic cylinder, which she steadily drew out and held beneath the bathroom light.

            It was a spritzer, or maybe an eye dropper, but with the label entirely torn away, leaving only a blank cylinder on its face. Alison unscrewed the cap, holding the narrow spigot up to the bridge of her nose for examination.

            She hadn’t intended to squeeze the bottle, only supporting its base by her fingertips with the express purpose of relieving pressure. However, it seemed an air bubble had been trapped just below the spout until opened, because as soon as Alison opened it, a shot of moisture fired into her left eye.

            Staggering back, knocking a bar of soap from the sill, Alison shook her head, wiping away what little remnants of whatever medicinal concoction had apparently been left by the previous tenant in the wall. The bottle was instantly placed back in its secret hideaway, the panel pulled back into place. She rinsed her fingers thoroughly in the sink, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

            “That’ll teach me…” Alison mumbled with some lingering irritation, struggling to keep her flickering eyelid open. The scent of the misty gunk suggested an aged vinegar to her olfactory senses, and she was greatly anticipating finding something stronger-smelling to cover it up as soon as she delivered Ashley’s meds and put the two miniature roommates to bed.

            Finally returning to the main living room of the apartment, Alison tipped an aspirin into her waiting palm. Next, securing it by her fingertips to the countertop, she mashed it into a fine powder with the blunt end of a butter knife.

            “Here,” she said, drawing nearer to the ottoman again. She stooped low over the patiently waiting pair, her fingertips extended and dipped in the powder. “I’m not really sure how much you should take. I mean, this is like… a quarter of a pill right here, so maybe just a few little clumps?”

            “You’re the real fucking MVP,” Ashley mocked. She leaned in, scooping some of the granules off her cousin’s fingers. “I hope you washed your hands first.”

            “I did,” Alison said truthfully. She drew her hand back as she sunk back into the couch cushions, licking the needless remnants of the aspirin off her fingers. “So, you still wanna go to bed right now?”

            “Who’s that?” Tony droned, his voice distant and comatose.

            “Who’s who?” Alison asked, still watching her cousin gobble up the pain med powder.

            “The… girl on the TV.”

            Raising an eyebrow, Alison looked up at the news channel. An image of a smiling young woman was displayed, probably not much older than Alison, and with very similar sheen to her hair. She was tall and toned, almost surprisingly so, as she stood next to a man and woman that Alison presumed to be the parents. Her name was displayed on the bar beneath her image.

            CARLY ARTON

            “I guess that’s who it is,” Alison shrugged.

            “Keep… keep watching,” Tony mumbled.

            “Again, we’d like to emphasize that these images have not been altered or enhanced in any way,” the television news anchor said in some drunken disbelief. “What you’re seeing is real.”

            Alison just about felt her legs go out from under her. A young man, sharing several of the same features with the previously displayed girl, who was standing in the palm of someone’s hand. He couldn’t have even been three inches tall. The camera shifted to various angles, clearly to prove that the image hadn’t been doctored. The tiny boy was doing his best to shield his face from the flash of the cameras and the loud questioning that surrounded him in a wall of massive humanity, until at last another hand rose protectively to block him from sight.

            “If you’re just tuning in, these clips were taken mere hours ago, from outside the campus where Jack Arton, a twenty-two-year-old former high school student, was found to be alive after having vanished for nearly five years. We’re not yet hearing any information on the source of the remarkable physical transformation of his, but sources are confirming that his sister, Carly Arton, a nineteen-year-old student college freshman and star forward her the women’s basketball team, was not only aware of his survival, but keeping him secretly in her possession. We’ll be bringing you more on this story as it develops.”

            Alison’s jaw hung limply from her skull. Her pupils stung from glaring in wild-eyed disbelief at the fairy tale madness unfurling on the screen, or maybe it was just the lingering effect of her accidental dispersal of the fluid. She flashed a glance down to Tony and Ashley, both looking just as shocked as her, and that was when it happened.

            The effect was nearly instantaneous from the moment she became aware of the tingling in her spine. A burning sensation emanated from behind Alison’s eyes, rippling out like needles in every direction across her skin. Cold permeated each bodily cell, as though someone was invisibly inserting sheets of ice beneath every layer of muscle. And then she was falling, or what felt more like tumbling, down to her hands and knees. By the time Alison desperately caught herself on her haunches, she found the darkness had transitioned from its cool, television-glow staleness to a true blackness, warm and uncertain.

            It was then that Alison realized she was naked, covered in a broad tent of fabric that it took her several moments of coughing and gasping for breath to realize was her own shirt, now billowing around her hopelessly tiny, shrunken body.

            “What…” she croaked. “What the fuck?”

            Palms clammy, she forced her limbs through the parachute of her shirt, its folds seemingly growing heavier with each length forward she moved. In her panic, Alison hardly realized she’d emerged from the shirt until she felt the cool air of the outside on her bare skin. As her eyes adjusted to the slivers of light silhouetting around the now-gargantuan ottoman, she could make out the two figures peering down at her from above. Though it was difficult to make out through the shadows, there was no mistaking it.

            Alison was smaller than her cousin and her boyfriend. Much smaller.

            “Holy shit,” Ashley gawked. “Babe, look.”
            “I see, babe,” Tony said,

            “What are you waiting for?” Ashley demanded, her voice hoarse with mania. “Fucking get her.”

            Ashley’s legs were moving before she’d even fully processed the cerebral command. She moved somewhere between a four-limbed stumble and a sprint, barely keeping on her feet as she made for the nearest structure of the empty bookshelf. There was a dusty crack just beneath the lowest platform, tall enough for her to dive under, but just maybe too tight of a squeeze for her pursuer.

            The weight of Tony’s body pouncing over top of her knocked the wind from Ashley’s much frailer frame. She tumbled head-over-heels, rolling a few paces further from the tackle. She turned, looking up at the miniature twenty-year-old she’d spent all these long months imprisoning in a box and only removing occasionally to masturbate between her fingertips.

            He was double her size. Maybe more. Like a full-grown adult standing over a toddler.

            “Hold still,” Tony hissed, his voice not possessed by the same shrieking malice as Ashley’s, but nonetheless infused with an understandably reinvigorated sense of confidence. He towered over Alison, wringing her shoulders as he pinned her to the floor with his broad hands. God, he was strong. “Stop moving. Now.”

            “Tony. Tony. Tony.” Ashley had turned into a broken record, winging at the edge of the ottoman as far as she dared crawl. Her fists, still tiny but newly enlarged in Ashley’s eyes, even at this distance, dug aggressively at the plush terrain. “Tony. Tony. Bring her. Bring her here. To me.”

            Blinking, Tony looked back down to his girlfriend’s cousin, the young woman who’d spent the better part of two years feeding him scraps in a cardboard box and treating his genitals like her personal amusement park. Wildly she whipped her head back and forth, her lip quivering as she silently pleaded.

            “T-Tony…” she uttered. Her hand opened, fingers outstretched toward him for support she already could read in his beaded eyes was not forthcoming. “Please…”

            “Right away, babe!” Tony called out to his beloved in the distance, nodding resolutely to himself as tears began to roll down their new captive’s cheeks.

            There was work to do.