Anthony felt the brush of soft fabric on the tip of his nose, dulled sunlight was coming through his eyelids making the insides of them an off red before his clouded vision. He stirred; the shoulder he lay on, against what he realized was the surface of a couch, aching and sore. The man inhaled deeply and let out a sigh of exhaustion, it was apparently morning, the light of the early hour piercing through gaps in the nearby window shades of the apartment’s front facing glass.

Anthony rolled over and opened his eyes groggily, the accumulated dust and grime of the night making his lids irritably difficult to crack free of each other, he rubbed them, only then starting to sit up and gaining a picture of what, and who, was sitting before him.

Across the room, sitting on a shorter, but similarly colored couch, covered in a plush brown throw blanket was Mira, and in between her hands, she held a mug, the contents of which gave off the unmistakable scent of freshly poured hot cocoa. She stared over at him, her eyes giving that same unflinching, menacing gaze, the faintest split of a smile coming to her face as if pleased with herself in some way.

Anthony’s thoughts refocused in a flash of recollection, he placed the back of his hand beneath his nose and rubbed his upper lip, a speckled smear of blood coming away with it as he brought it back to his face to examine. He looked down at the dried, cracked bits of the precious crimson remains, he knew the night had not been a dream, but in some small way, he clung to the frail hope that it had been.

He looked back over at Mira sitting casually with her legs to her chest and her feet resting on the cushion. The young woman was looking at the smear of dark red too, as he checked to confirm his nightmare had been all too real, glancing back up to meet his eyes in return, acknowledging as well that she had played a part in his terrifying ordeal. Anthony’s breath was heightening, his pulse raising sharply as his throat collapsed with nervous anxiety, he was still in the den of the beast he remembered, and she was hadn’t decided on simply allowing him to escape either. As if to emphasize this observation, or in just some perverse form of mockery, Mira lifted the mug of hot chocolate to her plush, feminine lips and took a drawn-out sip of its murky liquid, deliberately trying to make a slurping noise as she did so.

The sitting man calmed himself, taking a deep breath to curb his on setting panic. The two sat across from each other in total silence, their lives and relationship changed forever in a way that virtually no one would ever come close to understanding. The truth of the matter however, at least on Anthony’s end of the situation, was far worse than he was letting on to.

Mira finally broke the uncomfortable lack of noise between the pair as the human in the room rose to stand; her voice was soft, in a lower volume than it would be in normal conversation.

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in some hot chocolate?”

“Fuck you,” came back Anthony in a growled whisper looking down at her, his hatred on display as clear as his blood had been on the crisp white of the kitchen floor.

Mira looked down and away as she shook her head once in obviously faked surprise, her voice maintained its measured calm as she joked casually back in reply, her eyes refocusing on him once more,

“Down, boy,” she muttered to Anthony, as if he were a misbehaving pet, taking another sip of her chocolate delight and keeping him fixed within her stare.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that,” stammered the standing boy, he too now shaking his head in complete disbelief.

“You swear like I made it awful on you,” Mira responded in a half dismissive, then half-reassuring tone, “and trust me… I could have…”

Anthony glanced up and away shaking his head, finally tearing his eyes away from the now back-to-normal sized beauty. He looked around the room still at a total loss for words and entirely submerged in his emotional turmoil. As he turned away and rubbed his eyes, a tidal wash of distress threatened to consume his nerve with each passing moment, the leftover fragments of pain, death, fear, and hopelessness refusing to dispel after the traumatic experience of the night.

He glanced over his shoulder and asked the woman sitting without a care,

“Where’s my stuff, and my jacket,” Anthony had noticed his backpack was missing, as was his black sweater which at some point had been inexplicably removed from him, though he was certain he’d never actually taken it off during the course of his visit.

Without answering verbally, Mira simply nodded in the direction the corner of the room was, and following her inclined head, Anthony found his belongings piled in the bend of the wall.

“I need to use your bathroom,” he managed, now quiet and restrained.

The girl raised her mug to her lips again, but before taking a drink, she replied flatly, not objecting in the least.

“Down the hall, to the right,” and only after speaking did she sip more of her cocoa.

Anthony nodded and turned his head back around and away; walking as soon as he did passed the couch, towards the hallway and the restroom, Mira’s eyes, unknown to the human, never leaving him.

He walked through the door and leaned over the sink turning the faucet open and on, releasing a stream of cold water into his cupped, trembling hands. He brought some water to his face and rubbed his eyes and cheeks, the frigid cold of the splashed droplets steeling his willpower and bringing him back down hard to earth with the shocking temperature.

As Anthony brought his eyes up and towards the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection and its shaken demeanor, for some reason he looked different to himself, and he knew beneath his worry it was because he really would not ever be the same again, after what he had experienced. Turning quickly he found Mira standing next to him, leaned up against the door frame, her mug gone and her elegant body wrapped in her brown blanket.

“Anthony,” she began, now at a normal speaking voice, looking over at him with the intense sharpness of her eyes, “we need to talk.”

“Talk?” Anthony almost laughed out, “What is there to talk about?”

He turned to face her, wiping his wet skin dry on a nearby hanging towel of hers, then giving the woman his undivided, albeit visibly discomposed, attention.

“The fact that I came to a classmate’s apartment last night, alone, under the impression we were going to do some stupid homework, and ended up dead, then alive again? Or maybe you want to talk about that you’re not only a little bit unhinged, to say the fucking least, but not even human?”

Mira was silent, tolerating the outburst that had brought her latest victim’s voice to a shout now. He paused for a moment after the last remark, looking down at her with regretfully disappointed eyes, she didn’t look away, and part of him wished she would just for once.

“You…You killed me,” he finally forced out at last, a clear distraught tremor to his voice, afraid of even uttering the words, as if doing so might herald the possibility of repeating the incident. The pair stood in silence, the accusation irrefutable, nightmarishly so in fact.

He didn’t want to touch her, he didn’t even want to be near her, but casting aside his fear, or maybe just not even caring anymore, he shouldered passed her and headed back down the hall, intent on gathering his things and getting far away from here.

“Anthony,” she said after him, the young man ignoring her words as he threw on his jacket and scooped up his bag, “The curse Anthony, it’ll swing again in less than eleven hours. I hit you with it at exactly 7PM last night, and at 7AM this morning it was reversed,” she was trying to force vital information into his head, but she could tell she was losing him, he was just too distraught, too clouded in vivid, fresh memories and tumultuous emotions.

“Anthony!” She raised her voice, finally accepting he was going to doom them both if she didn’t get through to him here and now, he stopped as he made his way near the front door, not close enough to reach out and grab the knob, but facing away from her as she remains standing by the hallway entrance.

“Listen to me, at 7PM tonight you’ll go back to being tiny again, and when that happens if you aren’t safe and something happens to you-“

“Just stop alright!” He shouted, raising his voice over hers to silence the girl, “Even if you are telling the truth, why should I care Mira? Why should I care what that thing does to you for the rest of eternity?”

His body had swiveled abruptly so that they were face to face again, Mira could see the human’s eyes glistening as his tear ducts puffed and filled.

The young man swallowed hard and his eyes betrayed a small tinge of remorse for her despite what he was saying, it was only for a few precious seconds, but they both knew they had not imagined it; he turned away back towards the door, unable to look at her as he continued.

“I…Felt it…Mira,” he whispered, as if to only himself but loud enough that she could hear, “I felt what you felt…in that moment.” A tear ran down his cheek as the incomprehensibly dark emotion hidden in the shadows of his mind, like a prowling monster it stayed at the very edges of his soul, but it was there, stalking him with its evil.

Mira had assumed he was talking about the pain of his death, his final breath of life cruelly crushed out of his lungs by the weight of her monolithic foot, but as he spoke further, she found she was far from the truth.

“I know what you are, what you need to satisfy your, urges,” he says grinding out the last word, the same one she had used to describe the reason and purpose for his agony at her behest.

“Honestly Mira, I actually kind of liked you,” Anthony chuckles out, the absurdity of the thought now hilarious to him given what he knew about her, “but now, you deserve whatever happens to you.”

The woman across the room felt his attempt to twist the proverbial knife, she wasn’t entirely immune to the guilt he was trying to hit her in the face with, but at this present time, she was more concerned with the problem at hand, so she ignored his spiteful words.

“See you in a year, Mira,” Anthony said with grim, hateful finality. He took steps towards the door walking away from her and grabbed the handle and lock, no blast of pain, no detonation of agony, the door just opened as he clicked the deadbolt over and twisted the knob.

The half-demon watched him walk out, his arm slamming the wooden opening to the apartment shut behind him as he did so, not looking back.

“Idiot,” she thought angrily in her mind, staring at the paint on the now idle front door, “he’s going to get us both killed.”

Stubbornly pushing the human’s words out of her mind, despite knowing she really shouldn’t, Mira turned and headed for her room to change. She was in for a long day, and possibly an even longer night, not exactly the way she wanted to spend her Saturday.

+ + + +

Anthony let the ball flow cleanly out of his hand and up into the air, his feet off the ground and an opposing player in front of him trying without success to block his shot. The orange, faded and worn basketball sailed up and over the defender as the young man’s body drifted back and away from his release, his shooting hand extended in good form and technique. The ball sank quickly down, embracing the touch of gravity and swished with a crisp, “swoosh,” as the net slid around it, the ball not knocking the rim of the basket at all. The ball bounced with a protracted echo as it came back to the polished wood of the indoor court, resounding with a successful retort at scoring a three-point shot.

“Time!” shouted one of the nearby boys as he held up his cellphone with a timer into the air, indicating that the shot had been made legally before the end of the half.

Anthony and his team all came together and high-fived, knocking each other with good-humored jeers and jabs of encouragement, the last shot by him had put them ahead after 20 minutes of back and forth struggle with the other players during the course of the casual pick-up match.

Anthony’s best friend Kyle came over and made his way through the group as they began to disperse and head for some nearby bleachers to take a predetermined break for the ending of the half. He placed his arm around Anthony’s neck and pulled at him, pushing him around playfully in payment for keeping them in the run for victory.

“Nice shot nerd, I still can’t believe you never tried out for the team, man,” Kyle said as he shoved his buddy around a bit. He was not as tall as Anthony, and he was slighter of stature, but both guys were evenly built with athletic frames, toned well enough with muscle and strength that complimented their closely matched age. Where the taller man was brown haired, Kyle was instead bleach blonde, green-eyed and always carrying himself as the jokester in somewhat stark contrast to his normally more serious companion.

Kyle and Anthony had known each other a very long time, going back as far as middle school, they’d go on to graduate the same high school, at one point work the same job, and eventually even end up at the same college all these years later. Kyle and Anthony were so close, they didn’t even really discern between either boy’s family, they seemed to be from the same exact stock when it came to that, both treated one another’s parents as their own, and the duo enjoyed the love and attention of two sets of supportive mom’s and dad’s. All this, of course, resulted in deep trust and an understanding of one another that was nearly impossible to keep things from, and just as hard to lie to.

Anthony wiped his brow full of sweat with one free hand having not responded, he was quiet, seemingly far too focused on something, but simultaneously somewhat distracted by that which plagued him. Kyle could see it, he had noticed it ever since he’d ran into him at the beginning of the evening, something troubled him, and he wanted to know what it was.

Anthony had been at home when Kyle earlier messaged him on his phone, telling him he was going to be out with a few friends for a pick-up game later in the day if he was interested. The shaken young man had been home, actually asleep, trying any way he could think of possible to forget any part of the night before.

Nothing had worked.

“Hey, Big D,” Anthony looked over at the mention of his nickname, his last name brought forth the first letter of D, and Kyle had called him other subtle variations of it since they’d been in high school, where the “big,” portion of it came from, he wasn’t sure, maybe Kyle just thought it had sounded cool at the time.

“Yeah? What?” Anthony said in a conflicted, distracted daze looking over, the pair were walking towards metal and plastic arena bleachers, the building was large, large enough to accommodate six full-sized basketball courts as well as their appropriate seating for bystanders. They arrived and sat down, their court was at the far wall of the immense structure, the ceiling high and the interior bustling with about two hundred other people. Anthony wiped his face with his arm, his body was sheened in a fresh layer of uncomfortable sweat, the black t-shirt and black and white basketball shorts he wore matching his black, purpose made court shoes.

“I’m gonna be honest with you man, you seem a little out of it…You uh, you cool?” Kyle asked giving voice to his concern, sounding genuinely worried and no longer messing around.

“Yeah, yeah man I’m fine, thanks,” he lied, hoping sincerely that Kyle failed to notice his fib and that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t press him on the matter despite it. If he knew what was really going on, he’d probably think he was completely insane, but worse yet, if he learned the truth of everything, and Mira caught wind of something like that…

“Yeah man, I just had a really long night, bro that’s all.”

Kyle searched Anthony’s face for any hint of doubt or disingenuous tells, it was clear he didn’t buy his friend’s answer, but he stared at him for a hesitant moment just before nodding and making a content face of acceptance.

“Well good, now that that’s out of the way, I would like to point out something to you muh-man.”

Anthony ruffled his brows confused and was taken briefly aback. Kyle in response nodded up to his friend’s right flank, atop the rows of seating a long way up the bleacher stands. The taller boy turned around and noticed, up at the very top row, sitting without a care in the world and writing something in her notebook, was Mira. She was dressed oddly similar to Anthony, a black shirt with a black bomber jacket and baggy black sweat pants.

Anthony turned back around to face the court trying to hide his discomfort from Kyle, something told him however that he was not successful in doing so.

“Yeah, and I’m sure it has nothing to do, whatsoever, with her,” he says if mocking the fact Anthony had tried to pass a lie off on him.

“She’s been taking looks at you all night,” Kyle says leaning over slightly in a hush as the pair of them look face front, trying to act natural, “I thought maybe she was looking at someone else, but no, she’s here for you bro.”

They both look over their shoulders again and to where the girl they had seen was sitting, as if on cue, Mira at once looked up and caught their attention as they spied on her. She gave Anthony a small smile and a casual wave, her pen from writing in her notebook still in her hand, wiggling along with it.

Anthony sighed as if struck with dread when she gathered up her notebook and started to descend the stairs, obviously heading over to where the two young men sat talking.

Not sure if Kyle was joking or not, Anthony listened to him try and formulate a plan with him.

“Alright man here we go, how you wanna handle this? Want me to soothe her over a little or you just gonna go for the throat on your own?”

“Kyle,” His friend started nervously, “I’ve never asked you for anything man,”

Kyle cuts in mid-sentence, wearing a face as if he has just been insulted, “Well that’s definitely not true...”

Anthony ignores him and continues unaffected, “But please, for the love of God keep your big mouth shut, alright?”

“Alright, alright man, keep it together, bro,” Kyle says while holding his hands up jokingly in surrender.

Mira arrives before them to Anthony’s right and they remain seated as she starts to talk, her attention directed towards him. There is a noticeably playful sheen to her voice just below the surface of what she says, no doubt enjoying masquerading as one of his normal, human acquaintances in this less than random encounter.

“What’s up Anthony, I’m glad I caught you!” She says genuinely excited, and the man before her internally blushing understanding every sentence she utters is an inside joke between the two of them.

“And this is…?” She says looking to Anthony’s side, over at Kyle, Mira’s prey willing his friend not to give her anything that she could possibly use to hurt him.

“Oh, I’m supposed to keep my big mouth shut,” Kyle says smiling and shrugging at Anthony when he turns to watch for his answer.

“Uh huh, I see,” Mira says with a feline glare at Anthony.

The brown-haired boy cuts in looking back to his new female friend, his voice holding a more direct address, easily interpreted as rude.

“What do you want, Mira?” he says without any drop of pleasantry.

“I really wanted to ask you about the Pysch project we did yesterday, I think we might have gotten something wrong in our answers and I wanted to be sure I got your opinion, got a minute?”

Anthony was nervous about being alone with Mira again, and he was certain this wasn’t a conversation he was going to enjoy at all, but he needed to protect Kyle from her, he would never allow his best friend in life to get any closer to the dark entity standing before them in the gymnasium. Before he could answer though, Kyle spoke up suddenly, apparently not able to contain himself any longer.

“You said your name was Mira?”

She shifts her eyes towards the blonde boy who’d spoken up, keeping her voice light, and deceptively natural, “That’s right.”

“Oh yeah, Anthony talks about you all the time! Said he was dying to hang out with you more the other day! And we’re not doing anything this weekend either!” Kyle lied; he had never even mentioned Mira to him before but now he was clearly trying to cement what he thought was Anthony’s chance at scoring a date or some other romantic exchange. The supreme irony of what Kyle had said though about dying made Anthony slowly turn on him with an angry, frustrated expression, fixing his buddy with a hard look of displeasure.

Clearly agitated with him, Kyle did a double take at Anthony, unsure of why he was glaring at him with an intense, disdainful frown. Anthony made a mental note that if any of this ever managed in some impossible way to come to light, he’d punch Kyle as hard as he could in the face for that second to last comment.

Deciding to relieve Kyle of his opportunity to do something stupid for a second time, Anthony grabbed his phone from the bench and stood up, looking over to Mira who wore a smile.

“I’ll be right back, if not I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says to Kyle before starting to move away.

“Gotta hurry Anty, I have to leave soon,” Mira pressed at him, this time using a nickname for him he had heard from others before, but one that now took on a new, more sinister context with her choosing to employ it, Mira savoring any chance to remind him about his new affliction of her doing.

The pair walked away side by side as Kyle smiled in abject pride, his longtime friend finally coming out of his shell and putting himself out there like he always told him he should.

+ + + +

Mira lead him to a female locker room at the far end of the gym, as they continued to walk briskly, she didn’t say a word. After a minute or so they made it to the secluded changing area, and without anyone seeing, the count of girls in the building was pretty low, and most of them had been nearer to many other changing rooms aside from this one, so, for the most part, they were isolated and could assume they’d remain alone. She turned on him, as they made it into a room without windows and lined with lockers and benches, her temper flaring, coming alive.

“Do you have a death wish or are you just plain stupid,” she basically shouted at Anthony as he halted before her, bracing himself but still caught off guard by her uncharacteristic anger. She pulled out her phone impatiently and held it up at her side so that he could see it, the clock superimposed on its front screensaver reading, “6:58.”

“What did I tell you? At 7PM and 7AM every day you’ll change, it happens in an instant just like the first time, and you thought it was a good idea to be somewhere like here?” She scolded without holding back, venting her frustration and scorn that had evidentially built up over the day.

“If you do something stupid Anthony, we both get screwed,” she pauses, her red-hot temperament sizzling out, but still very much boiling below the surface, her voice lowering back to normal after she regains control of herself.

“You think that after a year you won’t care about me anymore? You think that if you manage to ride this out somehow without my help everything will work out just fine?”

Anthony sighs and sits down on the wooden bench in front of Mira as she berates him, he was truly blind to a portion of the absolute truth, but he could still tell where she was going with this. There was a reason, whatever that thing was that spoke to him from the darkened void in his mind, had given them such a long time limit to work with.

“After a year I doubt you’ll feel the same way you do now, and when you have to admit you still hate me and sentence me to hell for what I did, you won’t make it through unscathed… And if something should happen to you before then…Well, we both know how that goes.”

“Why would you even make it to where it shifts back and forth? Why would you even give someone that chance? I don’t understand, that doesn’t seem like you at all,” Anthony asks looking over at her, confused and just as frustrated with the situation.

Mira sighs guiltily but doesn’t lie to him, regardless of what he’ll think of her for divulging the truth no matter how grim it is.

“It’s the only form of the curse I know,” She began to explain regretfully, “And no one has ever lasted long enough with me for it to matter anyways…I mean look at you, I didn’t even wait a few minutes to… To get to you…” She says over to her last victim, trying for the first time to lessen his predicament with a different choice of words.

“Then again,” she starts up once more, her mood a little lighter. Shifting her weight nervously and pursing her lips, the devious woman says with a tiny smirk, “You were kind of special…”

Anthony is placed off balance by her last remark, looking over at her surprised; he almost can’t believe what she just said, this demonette who has killed him once already, taking sick pleasure in the horrid act as well as his petrified reaction to it. She thought he was special? It was a thought that as he entertained it, he wasn’t sure if he was flattered by it or placed in a position of overwhelming anxiety.

“S-special?” He hesitates, “Special how-“

The young man cries out suddenly, a bombardment of punishing torment assails the inner part of his skull like a sound honed into a dagger’s edge. The weaponized shriek of pain stabs into his brain as his hands immediately grip his head and he falls over to the floor, his eyes squeezed tightly, his teeth gritted so firmly together he feels like they’ll shatter at any moment as the pressure builds. The piercing noise is beyond sharp, and at a volume that he swears has burst every part of his eardrums, coming from seemingly nowhere it destroys utterly his ability to control his body. He rolls from one side to the other, gasping out a shuddering, weak groan of anguish.

The sudden sonic attack ceases, the whole bout of the agonizing audio beating him down for only an instant as Mira had previously promised it would. Anthony coughs and lets out a drawn lengthy groan; he clutches now his stomach as if he’s been punched square in the gut, both his arms holding his midriff tightly in an attempt to dull the pain. The man rolls up propping his body on one hand, his other still applied to the area around his intestines. Raising his free hand and reaching out for the bench he had just been sitting on, it falls down through empty air as the lack of an anticipated solid object sends the human stumbling back to the cold grey concrete of the floor.

Anthony feels the ground begin to shake, the earthquakes sending a vibration through his bones as if a passing armored vehicle was destroying a paved residential street it was never meant to traverse. If he had been standing, the footsteps of the approaching demonette may have sent him to the ground with the force of her casual stride, but he was still seated thankfully, rising again from his side and holding himself achingly up on both his hands, resting on them as they pushed his palms flat behind his back.

Mira looks down at him far below, the boy the size of a dime again, not able to contain a smile as she resists the urge to crush him like an insect for the second time in as many days, the impulse screaming in her heart, baying for his annihilation once again.

The woman glances up and casts her vision left and right, making certain they are indeed still very much alone, as she brings her eyes back down to him, she can just make out the pathetic human having struggled up to the seated position.

Anthony held himself up panting liked he’d just finished a marathon. His eyes opened revealing his stature had indeed altered dramatically as he had been warned it would, though he was much less shocked this time around, and only briefly had to shake off his surprise. The ant-sized man tasted blood in his mouth, as he craned his neck, fully expecting and seeing Mira standing over him, his diminutive outline sitting directly in between her laced up tennis. Her eyes pinned him to the floor as if physically holding him in place, the brown shining globes promising that not only could he never get away no matter how hard he tried, but that they enjoyed the fact that he and Mira both knew the result of such a pathetic attempt to be absolute suicide.

The tiny man gave her a resentful frown and looked away, curling his tongue and spitting out a half mouthful of sticky blood defiantly after licking his lips, a thin trail of saliva stringing down along with it. He was scared to be at the mercy of her dark whims again, but he was confident that her sense of self-preservation would keep her in check.

He sighed, the whole thing was more than just the realization of a nightmare he reflected, he really was changed in more ways than just the obvious since he had come to know Mira. She looked down at him and rolled her eyes, tolerating his stubborn and rebellious nature towards the situation. Turning around in the air above him, taking special care not to accidentally step on him, she sat her taut, firm posterior onto the bench as he heard it groan under accepting her weight.

Anthony knew she was looking down at him without even checking, he knew she took immense pleasure in enjoying how hopelessly insignificant he was compared to her. His life, as had been proven already, could be ended by her with the same amount of regard for his existence that she gave dust on the ground. Mira places one elbow on each knee as she sits hunched over, taking her left hand and placing it across her lap and against her other arm. Moving her opposite free hand up to her chin, she rests her head angled downwards on the back of her grouped fingers, silently peering to the floor, thinking of what to make of him.

Mira hadn’t lied before, Anthony was different. She’d met him genuinely enough, by chance after he’d not gotten the details of an assignment one day in class and later asking her about it. He was a little shy, but he was sweet, and she could see the small flame in his heart that powered an as of yet, ungauged measure of strength. She knew he was having a difficult time with all of this, and frankly, she was too. It was hard knowing that every moment of your life would now be changed because of a circumstance that occurred in the blink of an eye. Though as Mira looked down at him, the little pest running one of his hands through his short, dark hair, she understood he, unlike her, was never given a choice and never got the chance to avoid his current fate.

Without hesitation, of course having done this a great many times in the past, though this time with a specific intention to not inflict bodily injury, Mira took the hand that was under her chin and reached down with a look of indifference, focusing her eyes on the tiny target that was her pet classmate. Anthony gasped but didn’t even have time to panic as the well-manicured fingers of the woman’s clean hand plucked him up and off of the surface he sat on. He was hoisted into the air with impossible speed, but with an almost dismissive boredom from the perspective of Mira, the demonette bringing him up to her face equal with her eyes that focused on his struggling body. She toyed with him in between her black-tipped, polished digits, she liked how he wriggled around as if trying to escape her incalculable power, the futility of such a thought tickling her wicked soul, but she wasn’t smiling, she was thinking. As she danced her thumb, index, and middle fingers slowly about his tiny body, hearing his rasping, concerning voice fearful and spiked with terror, she delicately played with his life, reminding herself not to apply much more pressure or she would accidentally turn some of his bones to splintered fragments and powder.

Curiously, he seemed to be afraid of something Mira hadn’t noticed at first. As she held him to her eyes, inspecting him, she expected him to look upon her with terror and possibly even plead for his life like many others had before him, but she could glimpse his own attention more drawn to something below him, and with a deliciously cruel realization, she understood what it was.

“Wait a second… Are you afraid of heights, little Anty?” Each of her words coated with a mock form of sympathy brought to a whisper. The woman felt him slightly increase his trembling at the question, probably horrified at the fact she had discovered a weakness of his that could only add to his growing misery. She saw him force shut his eyes, his hands and arms shuddering, pathetically clung around one of her fingers.

She brought him in close, frighteningly close to the gaping abyss that was her mouth as she spoke a single word, one that as it barely broke her lips, the tiniest whisper of a promise that blew out a rush of air from the tongue that flicked it out, brought a sense of dread to his microscopic heart that he could never begin to describe. With the quiet hushed voice as if from a lover, she says to her tiny prey under her breath, her eyes narrowing and her smirk returning, relishing in the planned events to come,

“Good.”

+ + + +

Some things in life can be learned through experience, events encountered personally at times require people to employ every manner of whit and all parts of character available to them at their disposal to overcome some obstacles, but the situation Mira and Anthony were in was unlike any either ever thought possible. Other things can be learned through practice, such as cooking for example, trying again and again over the course of months, years, or even decades to hone to perfection the skill of creating culinary masterpieces, but Mira didn’t have months, and especially not years. She however fervently believed that the most important lessons and skills in life were taught through fear and at times, pain. A child touching their hand to a hot electric stove burner may lose their fingers, but they will learn, and it can be guaranteed that afterward they will come to respect and fear the possibility of what the searing iron plates could do to them in future. Moreover, it just so happened, that fear and pain were Mira’s preferred options, given most, but specifically this particular situation involving a shrunken human.

The pair had made it back to Mira’s apartment a half hour ago, the cool chill of the night now kept at bay by the cozy warmth of the running interior heater. The gorgeous half demon girl sat in one of her dining chairs, bedecked in her typical relaxed outfit of a plain black tank top and soft blue cotton shorts, her bare feet propped up on the table, one ankle over the other as she clicked buttons on her phone, lit up and keeping her attention. There was a soda bottle standing alone in the center of the table, a name brand source of caffeine that Mira had consumed earlier in the day, but it wasn’t filled with soda anymore, she had fished it out of her recyclables, sorting through the plastic containers looking for the tallest one, and filled it instead with water…For ballast.

Standing atop the cap of the bottle, his forehead sweating due to his nerves capitulating, was the lone figure of Anthony, breathing hard and trying with all his willpower not to open his eyes and look down. Mira had her body angled at forty-five degrees to the table edge, her legs extended out before her with the resting, lower half of her body pointed away. Anthony wasn’t in reality very far from the surface of the table, but his fear of heights was complete, and the distance didn’t really seem to matter that much, though Mira reflected it must look like at least 80-100 feet high from his point of view.

“Mira…” Anthony began shakily, his breathing abnormally erratic, “Can you please, please, put me down somewhere…?”

The girl poking boxes and windows on the flat glass of her smartphone didn’t look up or even acknowledge his pleas.

Anthony was really starting to come undone now though, it was one thing to be threatened with pain, death, or any other manner of cruel punishment, but to be placed against one of your most mortal, primal fears was just that much more intense and effective when used against you.

“Mira…” He echoed out again, this time exerting his courage to push open his eyes, looking over to his handler’s own pair of brown, brilliant orbs, as she rolled some of her hair through her fingertips lazily.

“Please, seriously, I can’t... I can't take much more of this…” He was practically begging now, but resorting to this state of surrender without any hint that it would be enough to get her to intervene. The poor young man had been shaking ever since she had carefully stood him in the middle of the not entirely flat red cap, it was slightly wider around than he was tall, which left him virtually no room to sit, lay, or move without coming terrifyingly close to the edge.

Mira halted typing on her phone, as well as instantly ceasing the casual rolling of her hair. She glanced over without moving her head to face him, making a point to look dissatisfied with his overall performance thus far.

She fixed him hard with her stare, those eyes he’d come to know all too well over the last hectic days. Anthony wasn’t sure of a lot of things about Mira, most things in fact, but he knew with certainty that was almost engrained into his DNA that she was, despite her immediate appearance, a predator, a killer. Mira was truly something that as far as the layers of the fledgling human food chain were concerned, she knew she was at the top of.

Mercifully, she looked away and replied with her usual calm,

“You’ve only been up there for nine minutes, you haven’t learned a thing. Once I’m convinced you’re not going to do anything stupid again, we’ll see.”

Anthony exhales the remainder of his diminishing hope, holding out his arms awkwardly at his sides keeping a solid, nervous balance, despite not needing to, being on relatively even footing. Mira hears him sigh as she looks over again and takes a sneaking peak at his crumbling demeanor; she smiles at him as he maintains his closed, hidden gaze, oblivious to her silent, curious examination of him.

Placing her phone after locking it onto the far side of the black table, she brings her legs and feet down and carefully leans her body on the cool wooden surface, her arms tucked beneath her chest now carelessly on display before the bottle and its prisoner. Her hair drapes down over her face as well as the bulging curves of her double D sized breasts. Anthony felt her move to sit before him, leaning on the table, and as he senses the area around him covered in the shadow of the monstrously large vixen. He allows his eyelids to part once more, momentarily forgetting he was being tortured as soon as they did so, the fact that her obviously appealing chest was now deliberately provided for him to notice, completely filling his view with its magnificence. The small human was dumbstruck for a short instant, gazing at the perfect curves she was blessed with, the smooth, unblemished Caucasian skin glowing and healthy.

Forgetting himself, Anthony quickly shifted his eyes upwards and towards where Mira was staring down at him, her enormous eyes watching him enjoy for a brief time her alluring female assets. She had the tip of one of her index fingers not quite in her mouth, but toying with the tip of one of her lower canine teeth as if testing its sharpness. The pair both knew he’d been caught ogling, and they each responded very differently to the fact. Anthony blushed and opened his mouth as if about to make excuses, not able to find speech however as he stammered awkwardly. Mira though, she smiled from the side of her mouth that her fingernail was nearest, brandishing her teeth as she bounced her eyebrows teasingly twice in quick succession as if silently asking, “like what you see?” Anthony swallowed hard and looked away, shaking his head as if trying to physically banish the thoughts wafting around his mind, Mira, of course, kept her eyes on him smiling at his cute attempts to ignore her obvious attractive figure she was tempting him with.

“What?” The man said rubbing his face.

The girl looming over him shrugged, and lowly whispered down to him; keeping in mind the breath from her speech might accidentally push him off balance if she didn’t.

“Just giving you a little break, that’s all.”

“How sweet of you,” Anthony murmured, his sarcasm on show for all to see.

Mira could tell he was trying with all his reserves of discipline and respect not to look over at her and encourage his base male instincts. She liked that, not that he was able to manage it for this short amount of time, but that he fully intended to try. The demonette was finding she enjoyed him regardless at what size he regularly took, he was, in fact, cute, and she was coming to see he had many more qualities to him that were desirable...possibly…even to…

“I’m gonna go have a shower,” she says suddenly, changing the subject and instantly drawing his attention, “I usually take long, hot ones…but after I get back,” she says now while standing to her alarmingly huge, full height, her body towering up straight and powerful, “We’ll talk, O.K.?”

Anthony looks up at her, the girl’s mood is…almost light, as if she’s for once nothing more than what he sees before him, an attractive, relaxed, human woman of about his age. She turns and takes one heavy step, her footfall echoing out as the sole of her foot impacts the floor. The man on the bottle cap calls out to her just as she faces away.

“Mira!” He shouts out to her, nervous but loud enough to get her to pivot around, some strands of her gorgeous brown hair drooping over her right eye as she gives him his opportunity to address her looking down at him. He clears his throat and gathers his courage as he says in a low, sincere voice,

“I’m…I’m sorry…About earlier I mean.”

She’s still looking at him quietly as she allows him to continue, knowing full well he’s putting himself into a vulnerable position, something he hasn’t done for her before. He shakes his head trying to formulate his thoughts, finally understanding what she was risking by keeping him safe and what he was irresponsibly doing that kept that job from being easy.

“I just… This is hard for me, you know? I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking of what could happen to you tonight. And… And I’m really sorry about what I said this morning to you… I was angry and pretty upset,” he says up to her, trying to look at her as wholehearted and honest as possible.

Mira contemplated this admission for a few seconds as they looked at one another, she of all people should really be the one apologizing, and she knew Anthony probably correctly felt the same way as well. Here he was though, apologizing to her despite that, feeling bad that his disregard for his own safety would have affected her had something inevitably happened to him, though that had been ultimately avoided.

The half-demon smiled to him and for the first time since they’d met, it was not laced with an underlying intent of malice or debased cruelty. Her heart warmed with a tiny flicker of flame, small even when compared to the tiny human who had caused it to exist, but she felt it and she enjoyed the way it spoke to her without words, whispering a promising it could grow if only she allowed it.

Anthony could see her apparently accept his apology, her mouth producing a wondrous response as the man too smiled along with her. He saw her chest heave as she took in and released a sigh,

“I think I’ll take a bath instead,” She says with a whisper, still happily wearing her little grin, “that always takes a lot longer than a shower…”

Anthony chuckles relieved at how the apology went as she takes one last look at him and turns back, walking away, her footsteps thudding with rhythmic retorts as she stomps casually away heedless of what may be on the floor. He watched her, no longer trying to look away or hide it. She was something else, what entirely that was he hadn’t decided just yet, but as he lost sight of her rounding the corner to the hallway, remembering at once he was uncomfortably high in the air, he knew there was something about her he’d always been attracted to.

The young insect-sized human standing on the bottle cap looked down and around facing his predicament once again, he thought out loud as the reality of what Mira had said before leaving sunk into his mind. Nodding to himself and sighing, but fully content with his actions despite them resulting in his lengthened sentence, he confirms with himself,

“Worth it.”