Raindrops splattered across the windshield as Anna roared down the dusky highway, the precipitation seemingly turning to hail on contact with the earth. The tires clattered in whisper over the ice-pebbled road, nearly empty of other vehicles as the evening turned to night. Gravel on wheels was the only source of conversation, as inside Anna’s car, no one had spoken in at least half an hour.

            “Slow down,” Ashley barked suddenly from the wide-rimmed cardboard box deposited in the adjacent passenger seat. Her tiny voice carried with plenty of force up to her aunt’s ears, despite the owner’s four-inch frame. She snuggled nearer to Tony, while tightening her grip around Alison’s forearms. “Now.”

            “I thought you wanted to get there as soon as possible, hon,” Anna remarked, devoid of emotion. She glanced to the secondhand GPS guiding them to the home of George and Tamara Yeager.

            “Yeah, and we also want to get there without you fucking killing all of us with your car. I know you’re thinking about it. I know you. So just know that I’m also thinking about snapping your little girl’s vertebrae. ‘Kay?” the venomous twenty-year-old spat, instantly cursing herself for her rhymed threat, but ultimately deciding it was best to leave it be.

            “Understood,” Anna responded.

            Her petulant niece experienced another miniature burst of adrenaline and quasi-arousal from the sheer, unmitigated joy of finally holding the power to order around the woman who’d murdered her parents. Ashley was only disappointed that she still had yet to detect a single note of fear in her aunt’s voice.

            Alison was in a similar emotional position, albeit a hazier one, as she was primarily concentrated on stringing one breath to the next. She hadn’t bothered thinking too far ahead of the present moment. But still she wondered. Why hadn’t her mother reacted yet?

            After all, the teen was propped across Tony’s knee with her older cousin’s white-hot fists wrapped around her wrists, her battered back and bruised limbs in central snapping stance if her two captors saw fit to do so. Frankly, she was shocked to have made it this far without blacking out, but what puzzled her even more profoundly was her mother’s lack of an answer to all of this.

            As much as Alison trusted her mother with implicit, unflinching loyalty, just as she had all these years when all they had in the world to lean on was each other, it was hard not to wish for some sign of life from the woman. Currently, the eighteen-year-old, newly shrunken to a mere two inches in height, was sporting a variety of cuts and spots along most of her body, only some of which had begun the slow healing process, courtesy of the overzealous Ashley. More than anything, Alison wanted to embrace her mother, or probably more likely now, her mother’s thumb, and know that everything was going to be all right.

            But there was nothing about their current standing to suggest anything was going to be all right. Best case scenario, Anna went to prison, and Ashley was whisked off and donated to science. And that was the best case scenario. The worse cases, in all likelihood, involved some combination of mother and daughter maimed or dead by the end of the evening.

            Tony, for his part, wore a stoic and solemn expression in the darkness of the box as he did his duty, holding Alison fast to his thigh for security against the giant woman with whom they were cautiously negotiating a release. He only allowed himself the luxury of blinking while staring up at Anna’s towering person when his eyes were so dry they stung for a break.

            Still, he had the good grace not to squeeze too tightly on their hostage, only keeping her secure to his body. It was a comfort, even if only a small one, for Alison, who was prone to wincing now from just about any angle she was touched, after the beating she’d received.

            Anna’s index finger flicked, and the turn signal chirped as the car veered gently onto the highway exit.

            “How close are we?” Ashley demanded after another bout of uneasy silence. She wrapped an arm around Alison’s throat, stopping just short of applying choking pressure around the girl’s windpipe. “How close?”

            “Close,” Anna said without taking her eyes from the road. “Five miles.”

            “I don’t care how far, that doesn’t mean anything to me, when I can’t see it,” Ashley growled. “Don’t fuck with me, bitch.”

            “I didn’t mean to,” Anna insisted, offering only the minimal amount of resistance in her tone to demonstrate she wasn’t being sarcastic. “Less than ten minutes.”

            “Say you’re sorry.”
            “I’m sorry.”

            “Say it again like you mean it.”

            “I’m very sorry for fucking with you, Ashley,” Anna corrected.

            “That’ll do for now. But I want to see some good fucking begging when we get there. Do you hear me? Begging,” Ashley slurred, clearing her throat. “So just be thinking about that, if you want your itsy bitsy baby girl to have any kind of chance of living.”

            “Well, you can’t say that wasn’t a successful night,” George Yeager beamed, stripping his rain-dampened coat off as he and Tamara stepped back into the regal foyer of their home.

            “You always say that,” Tamara chuckled.

            “What?”

            “You can’t say it wasn’t… whatever it was, a good night,” Tamara said. “You never just say “that was a successful night.”

            “Are you asking me to change it? I’d never noticed I say that before,” George said. He smirked.

            “Not at all. It’s just a George-quirk I’ve come to take notice of.” She folded her own coat over her arm and leaned up for a kiss on his cheek as he reached for the closet door handle.

            The man pulled his wife in close, his hand a few inches from snaking beneath the fabric of her dress along her back. Tamara was already reaching around her husband’s hip.

            “Get a room!” Brett yelled out from his bedroom at the top of the stairs, just beyond the reach of the art-deco railing. He slid the door shut with an extended leg in time for his room to erupt with the bone-marrow-penetrating sound of dubstepped electronic.

            George and Tamara balanced foreheads together, breaking into collective snickering, as each retracted their PG-13 groping. Ironically, their son’s suggestion was probably what was called for if they didn’t want commentary from the peanut gallery.

            “Are they being weird again in public?” Josh yelled out to his older brother from down the hall, though his softer voice was hopelessly drowned out by the thundering boom of Brett’s chosen background music.

            “No, we most certainly were not,” George defended loudly, his answer just barely reaching his son’s ears. “Just celebrating a successful night at the shareholders’ dinner.” He looked expectantly to his wife with wide eyes for his intentional word choice, which Tamara answered with a joking thumbs up.

            “Brett, could you turn down the racket?” Tamara yelled, knowing there was no chance in the universe that the party-harder of her two teenage children would hear her. “We can’t feel ourselves thinking. Let alone hear it.”

            “I got it, I got it,” Josh said dutifully. He ambled along the carpeted upper balcony of the foyer, two different dog-eared books hooked under each arm. Rapping a fist on his brother’s door several times in quick succession, the music receded down several postal codes of volume.

            “Thank you, dear,” Tamara said.
            “Much obliged, son,” George grumbled, dramatically spinning his pinky along his ear canal, almost certain his elder son’s music choices would deafen him well before he turned fifty.

            “So it was a good night?” Josh questioned pleasantly, leaning against the railing. A goofy braces-gleaming grin followed.

            “As a matter of fact, it was,” George said. “

            “Did you guys see the creepy thing on the news earlier?” Josh asked. “About the brother and sister? The… little dude?”

            “We did see something, didn’t we?” Tamara said with a frown, struggling to conjure the unusual imagery of the newscast from earlier. For some reason, the name “Carly” had stuck in her mind, but not much else, other than the flash of old school photos of a boy and girl with similar facial features and the exact hue of dirty-blonde hair to link them as siblings. It was like something out of an odd dream.

            “Something or other, yes,” George chuckled. He tugged at his tie with a free thumb, loosening the collar’s hold on his neck until it came undone. “They’ll put just about anything on the news these days for ratings, Joshua, I tell you what, and almost none of it is actually true. It might as well be a fantasy channel. Trust me, if you want the real news, you’ve got to go find it on your own. Why, just the other day, I-”

            It was only then, after the volume of Brett’s music was begrudgingly reduced down to manageable bass levels, that both George and Tamara became curiously aware of the gentle droning of the doorbell just a few feet away. It tolled again after a moment of silence.

            “Who could that be at this hour?” Tamara asked. “And in this kind of weather, too?”

            “Real weird,” Josh said, bouncing down the stairs with his books still in hand. He paused at the base of the flight.

            “Was that the fricking doorbell?” Brett muttered sleepily, poking his head out his bedroom door and at last silencing his techno beats. The lanky teen hung a pair of top-dollar headphones around his neck, leaning out into the hall. “Some of us are trying to get things done up here, you know.”

            “Turn on the porch lights, would you, honey?” George requested. He took a few tentative steps away from his wife, releasing the gentle grip he’d maintained since they’d begun casually disrobing their rain-slopped clothes. His brow furrowed as he peeked through the damp ceiling-length glass beyond.

            The lights rose. Through the droplets dotting the window, George could almost instantly make out the face of the woman standing in the dim glow, clutching a shoe box to her stomach, a satchel slung over her shoulder. Easily as he’d recognized her, though, he couldn’t allow himself to believe it. At least not at first.

            “Who is it?” Josh asked.

            “I-” George croaked.

            “George?” Tamara added.

            “It… can’t be.”

            “Who the f… I mean, who the heck would come over this late? Aren’t you gonna tell them to get lost, Dad?” Brett commented slyly. He was creeping his way down the stairs now, clearly hoping for this particular outcome, for the entertainment value of it.

            “It’s just some lady,” Josh said, squinting as he pressed his nose to the window on the opposite side of the door. “Do you know her, Dad?”

            “Maybe we should just leave her alone,” Tamara suggested, slowly making her way toward the glass for her own view. “Give the neighborhood watch a call if she doesn’t go away in a minute. If you don’t recognize her, then-”

            Tamara’s jaw hung limp, quieting her just as handily as George lost his own voice. The pair stared out onto the porch, directly at the last woman to have seen Kevin, Helen, or Ashley Yeager alive, not to mention the poor girl’s boyfriend.

            “Open the door,” Tamara hissed. She was already fishing for her cell phone in her handbag’s pocket. “George, open the door.”

            Obliging in his half-zombie state, the man unlatched two locks and swung the door open.

            “Thank you,” Anna said coolly, an uncharacteristic smile on her lips. “I was beginning to think you hadn’t heard us.”

            “Us?” George uttered. Knowing where to begin addressing the woman was an impossible task, but luckily, she’d chosen to take the lead.

            “Yes, of course, us. I’ve brought you some guests who would really like to see you,” Anna said. She peered down into the box she’d been gripping with both hands just below the level of her chest. “Come see.”

            Lost in the eerie uncertainty of the moment, like something out of the Twilight Zone, both George and Tamara inched forward over the porchlit threshold of the front door to the chorus of the still-falling rain beyond the stoop overhang. Josh and Brett, now both at the bottom of the stairs, hung behind, unnerved by the prophetic sight of the woman each was only just beginning to remember. Tamara’s hand was wrapped around her phone, but she’d neglected the necessary level of consciousness to actually dial any number for support.

            They stood before Anna. Through tremendous effort, the couple tore their gazes away from the earnest brunette in order to gaze into her mystery box. It took nearly a half minute of silent staring for the vision alone to register for George and Tamara, let alone for them to produce a reaction. There, in the box, was their niece Ashley, huddled on her haunches by that boyfriend of hers, cradling a smaller girl: the younger, spitting image of Ashley. Of course, each figure was the size of a human finger, properly proportioned and animated, but nonetheless miniscule, smaller than anything either George or Tamara could’ve imagined.

            “What is it?” Josh called out anxiously. His voice was so distant in the ears of his two parents that he might as well have been standing down on the opposite street and speaking into a tin can. “Mom? Dad?”

            “Uncle George… Aunt Tamara… thank God. It’s me! It’s us,” Ashley sputtered. Her voice was cracked with ugly crying before she’d gotten out the second syllable. She stumbled as she rose from the unsteady ground of the box, managing to stand by the support of Tony’s shoulder. The young man remained with their living leverage coiled around his arms and legs.

            “What…” Tamara was hardly aware that the questioning word had come from her own mouth.

            “Please. Don’t you recognize us? It’s me. Ashley. And… and Tony. We… I don’t know what happened,” Ashley meandered. “Something happened to us. They… they did this to us. And Mom and Dad. They… they KILLED Mommy and Daddy.” Though she’d thought through how to deliver this bombshell beforehand, now that freedom was so near she could taste it, the speech wasn’t playing so coherently. Most of Ashley’s words had devolved into a state of half sobbing, half rage-screeching.

            “It’s us. Please. You’ve got to help us,” Tony piped up, realizing he’d have to take the wheel if concrete information was going to be made known to their saviors. He struggled to adjust the wounded Alison across his knee as he leaned forward, basking in the hopeful safety of the still-bewildered, enormous middle-aged faces above, gazing in at him and his beloved like they were an alien zoo exhibit. He swallowed, taking a steady breath, and noticed his heart was racing so fast his vision was on the verge of swimming.

            “Not…” George coughed. “Not possible.”

            “Yes it is. Please. Just listen,” Tony said, confidence swelling in his voice. “Two years ago, the four of us shrank in the house. We don’t know how. Then these two showed up, Alison and… her mom, and they… took us, and-”

            “FUCKING HELP US,” Ashley cut in with a wail, tears streaking down her red face. “We’ve got her. Help us put them in the fucking ground.”

            Tony nodded, pulling the girl into an embrace. She’d gotten the essential message across.

            George was struggling for air as he backed away by a step, reaching for his tie again to loosen it in a bid for oxygen, until he remembered he’d already removed it. Tamara, hand over her railing heart, followed. She looked to her husband, who looked back to her. Anonymous confusion and unfettered fear, like something from a waking night terror, greeted each in the pupils of the other.

            Tamara opened her mouth, maybe to speak, maybe to breathe. She would never be certain of which, and in the next instant, neither mattered.

            Anna’s grip on the box had shifted so invisibly, not even the passengers of the cardboard vessel had taken notice until one of the hands previously supporting its weight had arced over the side like a serpent. Ashley, split off from the other two, weeping and hacking with emotional release, only looked toward her dumbfounded relatives; Tony, in his effort to clarify for his scatter-brained lover, had allowed his guard to drop to previously unseen lows as only a single hand remained on Alison’s body.

            Quietly as shadow, Anna’s massive thumb and index finger swooped in around Tony, flicking him aside like stray dust and reclaiming her daughter in the same flash. Alison, though pained by the sudden pressure of the emergent flesh on either side of her bare body, rippled with euphoric goose bumps at the realization that her mother had her again. A warm palm closed protectively around her two-inch body: a tactile vow of eternal protection from here on.

            How could Alison have ever doubted?

            “TONY!” Ashley screamed. She nearly toppled over in effort to follow after her gently felled partner, scrambling on her hands and knees, her own fingers made slippery from wiped tears. Eyesight, as well, was clearly at a premium from all the moisture.

            Tony doubled over, merely stunned by the relatively kind-hearted defensive move he’d received from Anna’s digits when she could’ve just as easily shattered his skull to powder in the same twitch. His senses swirled now, making it unclear which way was up or down. He heard Ashley scream his name again, a raspy plea in the spinning haze of darkness and looming humanity, and then he was falling, slowly, delivered toward the earth with such angelic grace he couldn’t have been sure it was happening until he felt the thrust of the earth beneath his palms. Anna had placed their box on the ground.

            It was as though the entire population of the world had been reduced down to just these eight people, at least in Tony’s sight. He doubted another soul existed for at least a quarter mile around. More than enough for the apocalyptic happening he was drinking in but by no means digesting.

            George and Tamara, dwindling. Spun around toward the light of the foyer, and then they were gone. Tony didn’t have to see where. He knew, instinctively, that the couple had shrunk down much closer to his particular stratosphere of the planet. Just for confirmation, though, he had the sight from above of Anna’s bare hand extended into the house like an invading sorceress, her fingers clenched around an object concealed by silhouette.

            In nearly the same flash, the two boys in the front hall of the house vanished just as well, joining their parents and cousin in their shrunken state. Somehow, to Tony, it was almost inevitable. Just a transition of events as they were always going to proceed, from the very moment Alison had shrunk. He was anything but surprised.

            Only Anna stood at the size of a real human being now. With the certainty of one born to these unearthly acts, the widow bent down, recollected with one hand the box containing the miniature boy and girl who now held precisely zero bargaining chips to parlay for their lives, and cradled her abused daughter in the opposite hand.

            “Well,” Anna sighed with chilling relief, rolling her neck against her shoulders. Her dark, rain-combed hair draped in black cascades. “I do believe I’m in the mood for a good, old-fashioned, little family reunion. Anyone else feel the same?”

            The woman stepped back over the threshold, gifted the toy-sized Ashley with a simpering smirk of quiet, deific victory from on high, and shut the door softly behind her.