The next morning came, and Kaleb gradually returned to the land of the living. He was still in a dark, dusty place, but the oppressive, intimidating size of everything had diminished somewhat. Sighing with relief, he realized he was back to an inch tall.

He staggered up, but his head bumped the “ceiling”. It felt good to be too big for once, even if it was just the space underneath a table.

Carefully, Kaleb crawled out from under the furniture, emerging to a fresh new dawn in a new room. It looked to be a bedroom, probably Emilia’s. Again, it was very hazily familiar, but a solid memory evaded him.

Looking up, he noticed that he had actually been left underneath a dresser. Directly ahead of him was Emilia’s bed. The woman herself was unseen and unheard. With any luck, she wasn’t there at all.

Kaleb was starting to rethink his approach to his recent conundrum. It appeared that Emilia was absolutely intent on making him suffer, his attempts to draw her attention going completely unnoticed. He was even starting to get the feeling she was willfully ignoring him. Even if that turned out to be nothing but a paranoid suspicion, there was no harm in being careful. He’d travel only when he was sure Emilia wasn’t nearby, hide and bunker down when she was, and try to climb onto a table or something during the night. That way, he could remain reasonably safe, and stood a good chance of getting noticed, for better or for worse.

Kaleb found it somewhat difficult to move through the carpet at his current size. It was like trudging through a heavy snow, knee-deep in polyester cords. His motion was also somewhat hindered by the brittle crust of dried sweat and toe jam from yesterday’s outing.

Nonetheless, Kaleb felt driven, with a definite goal in mind and some hope for the future. So he kept going. Before too long, he had arrived under the bed. From here, he’d be able to survey the rest of the room and figure out his next move, without fear of getting stepped on for the third time.

 Not long after, there was a resounding creak, followed by the telltale thumping of Emilia’s approach. Kaleb hit the deck and watched her move around the room. The terrible peds were socked now, with the same threadbare things she’d worn when he’d first seen her. Eventually, the oblivious goddess wandered out of the room, neglecting to close the door behind her. Once the cannon shots of her footsteps had receded into the distance, he got back up and continued his survey.

Near the front of the bed was a nightstand and the door out of the bedroom. There were a few other pieces of furniture: a chair and what might have been a TV stand, but nothing that might guarantee that he’d be noticed. He could try leaving the bedroom entirely, but the prospect of facing the huge carpeted plain outside was not an especially attractive one. The nightstand looked to be the most promising option. If Emilia left something important there, like her phone, he could draw her attention much more effectively, even at a smaller size. As long as he didn’t shrink to some truly insignificant size, she’d notice him.

Maybe.

Kaleb spent the next several hours getting to the nightstand and arduously scaling it. During that time, he experienced all manner of heights. At two inches, he strode through the carpet almost as easily as he would normally, quickly reaching the base of the nightstand. There was a terrifying stretch time during which he was stuck in one of the microscopic imperfections in the nightstand’s wood, unable to do anything but peer out at the titanic, blurred shapes that made up of Emilia’s bedroom. By the time he reached the top, the afternoon sun was slanting through the windows, and he his stature had largely stabilized at about an inch. He took a moment to assess his options.

There was no phone, but he did see an alarm clock, a pack of gum, and a picture frame. None of them were ideal, and Emilia had so far proven quite unobservant. If he tried either the clock or the gum, he’d end up smashed or going down someone’s gullet. To be quite honest, his best chances were to just stay somewhere on the nightstand and hope for the best.

Having already decided on inaction, Kaleb took some time to further investigate the framed photograph. He looked at it, and kept looking at it. And yet he couldn’t actually put into words what was there. For whatever reason, it made him uneasy.

Far away, a door opened. To tiny Kaleb, it sounded like the end of the world. After a moment’s frozen terror, he hurried into a clear space near the middle of the nightstand. He heard the titaness approaching well before he saw her, as was the norm. When she finally appeared in the door, he was struck speechless.

It was only his second time seeing Emilia fully upright. Even from his artificially elevated position, she was simultaneously stunning and monstrous, a creature of great terror and beauty. It was difficult to see her as merely human.

She ignored the nightstand and went straight for the dresser. Kaleb shouted and waved his arms, knowing there was no way she’d see or hear him. But it was something.

Emilia rummaged through the dresser for a few moments, then pulled out a tank top, similar to the sweat-stained rag she was already wearing. From the greater distance, Kaleb could almost imagine he was about normal size. The mindset allowed him to realize that Emilia was an utter mess. She appeared to have avoided showers for at least a few days. Her hair was matted and her face flushed, as if she’d been exerting herself. Her body was toned and athletic, but not exceptionally so. This was no divine being.

He looked down at himself. He was shocked to realize how thin he looked. His ribs were beginning to show, and the definition in his limbs had diminished significantly. Of course, he hadn’t eaten anything substantial in at least three days. And yet he felt no hunger pangs.

In addition to his feeble frame, his cleanliness had only deteriorated since yesterday. His skin was covered in black specks and hard-brittle patches of brown-yellow crust. A thin layer of dark grime enveloped him.

It began to dawn on him that perhaps he was the inhuman one.

Caught up in these revelations, Kaleb didn’t notice Emilia’s departure. He looked up to hear the distant front door swing shut. He was alone yet again.

Kaleb tried to get some sleep before he got his next chance. Bothered by the question of his own identity, he found it difficult to settle down. To make matters worse, there was nothing soft to rest on. He curled up inside the box of gum, choosing the relative warmth and softness of the cardboard over the bare surface of the night stand.

When he woke up, the world was dark and shaking. The top opened, and he saw a set of monolithic fingers reaching for him.

They plucked a strip of gum from the box, bringing him along by pure chance. Kaleb realized he was now about a quarter inch tall, small enough to stand comfortably on the strip without bending it very much. He looked around and noticed he was being maneuvered into a set of open, waiting jaws.

It was Emilia. He began jumping up and down, screaming at the top of his lungs in the hopes of at least giving her pause. All the while, her hot, wet breath rolled over him, smelling of stale hunger. Her teeth were enormous white blades, gleaming with saliva. He could make out the shape of her tongue and throat by dim, glinting reflections.

And then she stopped. She looked confused, and Kaleb kept at it, yelling even louder. He let some hope creep into his shouting. Emilia looked directly at him, and brought the piece of gum closer to inspect the tiny, squeaking speck on the end.

Her eye was huge and terrifying. The iris was grey-green, the pupil a dark, empty hole, in which he saw his own pathetic reflection. Emilia’s eyes went wide as she realized what she was seeing. To Kaleb even that tiny motion was a show of force, as walls of flesh thicker than his torso rushed along the curve of the eyeball, quite literally faster than he could blink. He cowered against the minty strip.

“Oh my god,” she whispered.