Pip clicked on his flashlight. The cellar was dark, even with the help of the dim beam, and he had to run his hand across the cement wall to make sure he didn’t collide with anything. Not that it helped much, though, as he found himself constantly tripping over a labyrinth of pipes that ran across the floor. It wasn’t until he reached the other side of the cellar that his Harry Potter slippers got caught underneath one of the pipes and he tripped. He tried to catch himself on his palms, but only succeeded in cutting them across the hard wet floor. The flashlight slipped from his fingertips and rolled under a stack of boxes. Grunting, he reached between the boxes and the wall, seized the handle of the flashlight, and rose back to his feet. The bulb was cracked and dying, but it gave off just enough light to reveal the fuse box, only a few feet away. He grinned.

Setting the flashlight down on the stack of boxes, he snapped open the metal case of the fuse box and drummed his fingers along each of the switches inside until he found what he was looking for: the main power switch. He gave a quick glance at his watch, deciding to give the gang a little more time to set up. He knew they wouldn’t be as quick and successful as him.

After three minutes had passed, he felt an itch on his neck—something stringy and ticklish, like a cobweb. He brushed at it and a small brown spider fell from his shirt, landing inside of the fuse box. It quickly scurried down the wall. He watched it, his only source of amusement in this dark prison, and then reached his fingers for the power switch. The guys had enough time. They had to be set up by now.

Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the lever and pulled it to the other side with a slam. It didn’t take long for the shrieking cry of about fifty girls to echo from the floor above him. He had to stifle a laugh, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him among all the panic. But that panic soon subsided. He scrunched his face, trying to figure out why. Why hadn’t Jason and Butthead crashed through the refreshment table? Why hadn’t Shawn and Ram groped the girls in the dark? Surely the girls should be making more noise than this.

Pip couldn’t figure it out. The power switch must’ve worked. He heard the girls scream. Now they were just talking in hushed whispers and he could hear their footsteps creaking on the floor over his head.

Something had gone wrong.

The flashlight’s bulb had since died and left him in as much darkness as the girls upstairs, so he didn’t bother picking it up. He couldn’t even see it anymore. Nor could he see the window he had come in through. So he stood there in the darkness, holding his breath, knowing he had to get out of here.
Before he could, though, the cellar door opened and a cone of light shone through. It was another flashlight, most likely in the hands of one of the girls, and danced across the walls like a searchlight. It was huge. Pip tried to dodge it, but the light easily washed over him. For a moment, he thought he was caught…

And then he realized something. The beam of light was too big to be a flashlight. It was more like the light of a lighthouse. The boxes around him, too, were huge. Like boulders. That spider he had brushed off his shirt before—he saw it again and gawked as it stood eye-level with him, glaring at him, its beady red eyes like tamed fire in a jar.

“Oh, shit,” Pip said, stepping back.

The spider watched him.

Footsteps thundered from the staircase. Pip looked over his shoulder to see a girl dressed as a pirate making her way down the stairs. The light radiated off just enough her to make out the simplest of details of her face, but that’s all he needed to recognize her as Christie. She was, after all, the target of this prank.

And now she was a giant.

Though the light was on Pip and the spider, Christie’s eyes were on the fuse box over their heads. She walked straight towards it, paying no mind to where she stepped, for her sailor boots fell in dark shadows anyway.

Pip watched her, stunned, mesmerized, awestruck by enormous size. He had never seen something so big move so fast and gracefully before. As she got closer, though, he realized he was standing directly in her path. Her footsteps came closer and closer, splashing through the cold water on the floor.
But he couldn’t move. He watched, still amazed, as her black boot sailed over his head, blowing back his hair, and came down on the poor spider. It didn’t stand a chance. The spider couldn’t even offer the least bit of resistance as the boot simply pressed its squishy body into the cement floor. Its legs twitched, broken, pieces of them stuck on Christie’s boot. And its eyes, once full of fire, were now blank, staring forever up at the fate that had crushed its life away. Christie only took one more step, lifting her heel up to reveal those remains of the spider to Pip, and then, when she realized she was too close to the fuse box, fell back on her heel, squashing the spider all over again. The whole time, she never noticed the crushed thing under her foot.

“Now who did this?” Christie’s voice boomed from above. She was only thinking out loud, but still her voice was quite audible for the tiny Pip. She looked over, spying the burned-out flashlight on the stack of boxes, and picked it up in her free hand.

“Jason!” she yelled. “Are you down here?” She searched the room with the flashlight, but remained standing by the fuse box, her eyes darting in the motion of the ray of light. “I swear, Jason, you better get out of my house before I call the cops.”

Pip continued to stare up at her. The fake silver sword around her waist glittered in the dark as she stood there and the reflection of the flashlight cast an orange glow around the shadows of her cheeks. She finally looked down.

“Christie! Christie!” Pip cried out, flailing his arms like a man stranded on a deserted island in hopes of getting her attention.
 
He wasn’t sure if she noticed him, but he did see her eyes locks with his, the beam of light now shining directly in his face so that he couldn’t make out the detail in her expression. All he saw was her brow crinkle, the bandana tied around her forehead being pulled down with it.

“There are some sick bugs down here,” she said. Upon the word ‘bug’, she lifted her foot and held it over Pip, keeping just the lip of the boot pushed back so that she could see where—and what—she was stepping on.

Something inside Pip told him he should run.

And he did.

Christie’s boot pounded the cement behind him, but he was away from her now. She followed him with the spotlight, trying twice more to stomp the life out of him, but he dove to opposite sides both times and finally made it behind the stack of boxes. His intense activity, though, was just a short-lived sport to Christie, like flicking a ball of dust across a table. She hadn’t even really tried to crush him. Certainly she would have if he wound up under her foot, but she hadn’t bothered to exert much energy. Crushing a bug wasn’t worth breaking a sweat.

 Again, she searched the cellar for Jason, now working up the courage to walk around. She started by circling around the stack of boxes, which caused Pip, gasping for air behind them, to quickly switch sides. She paid him no mind.

Finally, she sighed and turned the flashlight towards the fuse box. “Okay, I guess he’s not down here…” She reached her hand up, flicked the master switch, and heard the cries from the girls upstairs that the lights were working again. “But somebody shut off the lights.” She saw the bug again, out of the corner of her eye, cowering just outside the circle of her flashlight beam. “Was it you?”
Pip swallowed, nodded, and stepped into the light. He hoped she would recognize him now. She was, after all, the only one to save him from this dark prison. There was no telling how long he would be left down here in the dark, alone and forgotten to the world, if she walked away from him.
But Christie didn’t recognize him as anything but an insect. “Stupid bug, it probably was you.” With that, she slammed her foot down on him, dragging her boot back across the floor so that it would smear his body, ensuring that he was dead, and wipe the bug juice off the bottom of her shoe. She smiled when she lifted her foot and saw nothing remained. At least somebody paid for interrupting the party.

Unfortunately, Pip wouldn’t be the last to pay.