Once it was clear that Gina wasn’t using me as a trick, the small crowd of shrunken students closed in around me. They gasped as though they were in awe of me, like I had somehow convinced their goddess to spare my life. I knew as well as she did that it was a game to her, and if she wanted to, she could have smashed me without a thought. For the dozen or so people showering me with adoration, though, I had performed the impossible. Most of them had never even seen one of Gina’s cullings.
“You’re back!” “How’d you do it?” “Take me with you next time!” they called, pressing closer until I felt like I was being pressed by Gina’s fist again. All I wanted to do was get out of the spotlight and talk to Roni so I could get to the truth of the matter. My adoring fans, however, had no intention of letting me go, and their praises all blended together in a cacophony of sound.
Nervously I ducked down, trying to escape the throng of inmates trying to get some sort of blessing from me. Ironically, I found myself wishing that Gina would shrink me right then. Make me truly tiny, nothing more than a speck, so that I could get away from them, or escape their notice entirely. One of them would crush me, no doubt, but at least it would deny their goddess the satisfaction of doing it herself.
Beneath the armpit of one of my fans I saw a woman sitting dejected on a small piece of gravel. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and sat silently, paying no attention to the thronging mob only a few feet away. That was the mark of someone who had been in the terrarium a while and understood that there was nothing special about Gina bringing me back. In fact, she did look familiar – there was something about her green eyes that stuck in my memory. I slid out from the crowd and approached her before they noticed I was missing.
“Hey,” I said simply. “What’s the matter?”
“She took her,” she answered, her voice quivering. “She took my little sister and didn’t bring her back. She’s dead, isn’t she?” I gave a solemn nod, and she pressed her face into her knees. A wail escaped her mouth, and I took a step closer. Carefully I placed a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. She continued sobbing, as I expected: my sympathy could never bring back one of Gina’s victims, no matter how much I wanted it to.
“She was just a kid,” the woman continued through tears, “barely even 14 when we wound up here.” I knelt beside her and took one of her hands, hoping she would open up. “We had just moved here and didn’t know anyone, it was only the second day of school. I went to get her so I could take her home and saw this gigantic bitch looming over her, mocking her for being short. So I stepped in and told her to pick on someone her own size. She laughed and turned to me, and I realized that I only came up to her waist. Told me to dream on and asked if I was crazy, said that my sister was so much bigger than me she should be the one stepping in.
“That’s when I started shrinking. I didn’t come up to her waist, but her knees. Then her ankles. Her heels. Then the soles of her shoes. My sister screamed – she was enormous, too, like I had never imagined. It was terrifying. That must have gotten Gina’s attention though. Her scream vanished, and she wasn’t towering over me anymore. I looked and saw her in front of Gina’s other foot, even smaller than me, still screaming. She picked us up and put us in her bag, smiling the whole time. Then we were here.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I offered, knowing my words were hollow. “I can relate… kind of. One of my oldest friends was out there, too. I had to hear him beg while she squeezed the life out of him. It never gets easier to watch, to hear her go on her rampages.”
She lifted her head and sniffed. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and streaks ran down her cheeks. Quickly she wiped her face with a hand, then asked, “She’s going to kill all of us eventually, isn’t she?”
“Not if I can help it.” I hoped my false bravado helped her at all, because it didn’t help me. “I don’t think we’ve been acquainted, I’m-“
“Gina’s high priest, yeah,” she broke in. “Or her favorite pet, I guess. I’m Vanessa.” I smiled weakly, and she tried to return it, though neither of us were convincing.
Figuring this impromptu therapy session was over I stood, taking Vanessa’s hand with me. “C’mon, let’s get you inside.” I gave her hand a tug, and she quickly unfolded to stand as well. When she was at her full height I looked dead on at the collar of her tattered shirt. Her brown hair waved forward and back, brushing against my forehead before it came to a rest.
“I figured someone so important would be taller,” Vanessa remarked, looking down at me. If she was joking either I’d helped her more than I thought, or she had developed some very unhealthy coping mechanisms in the past few months.
“Some women like short guys,” I replied, walking past her toward the ramshackle house Fulda had given Gina to keep me in. The crunch of sneakers on gravel told me that Vanessa was following me. I wasn’t eager to have Will’s room filled so soon after Gina popped him like a grape, but there was no point in leaving it vacant. Besides, if Vanessa had to be out there with the people who worshipped Gina I expected there would be trouble.
We stepped over the stripped chicken bone that lay across the doorframe, the body trapped under it nothing more than a skeleton. This was the remnant of one of Gina’s early attempts to feed us. She had dropped a drumstick from the top of the cage, giggling as she did so. It landed directly on someone – I forgot his name long ago – and crushed his skull, killing him instantly. While we screamed Gina laughed hysterically, finding it hilarious that she had accidentally crushed one of her captives.
The model house Fulda had kept me in was a mess. Its door had long ago been knocked off its hinges when Gina flicked it in a rage, and all of the windows had circular holes in them the width of her finger. She had torn the roof off so many times that it no longer fit properly, which made her even more eager to do it. Its interior was far from pristine, too. All the furniture had tears or missing legs, and we had stopped trying to put things back where they were when it became clear Gina took sadistic glee in shaking it with us inside.
Finding Roni was easy enough – she was sitting in the middle of the living room, stuffing bursting out of the leather chair she was in with her long legs propped up on a crate, one ankle crossed over the other. Roni was one of the few women I suspected Gina shrank because she was jealous. An all-state cross-country runner, she had lean, defined muscles, with the little amount of body fat she had gathering in all the right places, and two years of surviving Gina’s torment had only made her more toned. Her waist-length blond hair was tied into three braids, which were themselves braided to run the length of her back. Sparkling blue eyes complemented her light skin while they scanned the pages of a book she had no doubt read a half-dozen times before.
Roni didn’t even acknowledge us when we entered. I cleared my throat loudly. No response. “Will’s dead,” I announced, and she replied by loudly turning a page. “You remember Will, right? Nice kid, took himself too seriously, your old friend?”
“I stopped having a friend named Will about half an hour ago,” Roni said, not even looking up from the page. That was… startlingly nihilistic, even for her. She had always been blunt, but this was a new level.
“Yeah. Because Gina crushed him.” She might have shrugged, but it was so slight it barely registered. This was getting nowhere. “Before she did, he told me that you threw him into the group to save yourself.”
“Did he now?” Roni laconically placed a scrap of paper to mark her spot, then slammed the worn book shut. She set her legs on the floor and placed the book on the crate, then stood. Her joints popped while she stretched, nearly touching the ceiling. “What else did he say?”
“Nothing much. Begged me to save him, begged Gina not to kill him.” Roni stared at me blankly, and Vanessa had moved off to the side. At times like this I’d rather be pulling her teeth than trying to get information out of Roni.
“Sounds like him. Kid was a fucking weasel.” Roni took a couple languid steps toward me, her battered running shoes pounding on the imitation wood. “He left something out.” She came to a stop about a foot away so she could look down at me while I had to crane my neck back. Roni was a bit over a head taller than me, and had gotten acclimated to using it for her advantage – not that she was intimidating compared to Gina. “Will tried to push me into Gina’s hand, so I threw him at her. Not gonna say I’m glad he’s dead, but he had it coming.”
“No, that doesn’t…” I wanted to deny it, but when I thought about it for a few seconds it absolutely made sense. Will had made it so long by being a coward, plain and simple. Roni might be cold, but I didn’t figure her for a cold-blooded killer. Gina may have dropped her name earlier, but that was hardly evidence: she loved tormenting us emotionally almost as much as physically. “Well, better him than you, then.” She smirked, glad that I came around to her point of view.
Roni looked up from me, finally acknowledging that Vanessa existed. “Who’s this?” she asked.
“That’s Vanessa,” I replied. “Her sister got taken in the last batch. Figured that Will doesn’t need his room anymore, so she could have it.”
Roni tilted her chin back, the closest I’d ever come to see her greet someone. “Cool, another V name. I’m Veronica.” Oh, that’s right. We exchanged names so rarely here that I had forgotten her actual name. “Been here long?”
“About four months,” Vanessa answered, taking a step toward us. “She got us right when school started. We had no idea why no one stopped her from bullying people, and it cost us- cost her life, and probably mine. You?”
“Over two years. Got me right at the end of my senior year. I had a full-ride track scholarship until Gina ambushed me outside my car. Bitch stole my future.” She may have killed any outward expression of emotion, but I knew Roni was smoldering inside. We stood silently until Roni turned her attention back to me. “Go ahead. You know you want to.”
“Six years.” Vanessa gasped. “I was dating Gina’s sister, and when I tried to break up with her she shrank me. Then when she got bored of me, she gave me to Gina. She’s the one who taught her how to shrink people, and who knows what other tricks she’s gotten from that book by now.”
“So you’ve been…”
“Tiny all that time, yeah. I’m not sure if she’s keeping me alive out of some sentimental value, or she likes torturing the most, or loyalty to her sister. Maybe it’s because she ‘stole’ me from her and she thinks this is spiting her. Whatever the reason, even if it’s from old age I’m going to die shrunken.”
Before they could say anything else a shadow fell over the house, blocking the light streaming in through the windows. I looked toward the obstruction and saw the crotch of Gina’s shorts blocking the whole view. Just then a great crash pounded the tank’s roof and resonated throughout the walls. “Feeding time, bugs!” Gina bellowed, her voice booming from the sky. “Eat quick, lights out in five. Some of you are having a very big day tomorrow.” The latch slammed shut, followed by a great scratching sound that wormed its way into my head while she latched it.
The three of us walked to the door and saw a slice of bread the size of a helipad in the middle of our prison. It was already being devoured by the other shrinkees, each of them shoving it into their mouth by the handful. I didn’t see the need to rush, since there was always enough to last us several meals, and in some cases a couple days when Gina felt particularly generous. We would be able to grab some in the morning without having to fight over it like the animals Gina was trying to turn us into.
Intense pounding heralded Gina’s return, and the others immediately abandoned their meal to look at her adoringly. Some of them knelt and bowed while others offered prayers, and the new person hesitantly joined the group bowing. I rolled my eyes while Roni glared at the giantess, and Vanessa froze, apparently unsure what to do since we weren’t joining in.
I looked up at Gina, the living skyscraper who surveyed everything before her. After all this time I still didn’t know what to feel while gazing at her. Puny, sure, but that had been with me my whole life. There was no denying that she was beautiful, but she was also responsible for all my suffering the past several years, as well as hundreds of murders. No doubt Stockholm Syndrome played a significant part in my conflicted feelings.
Gina’s blue eyes fell on me, and I couldn’t bring myself to look away. We stared at each other for several seconds until she winked, which for some reason made me feel deeply uneasy. “Your Goddess has heard your prayers,” she said making the glass rattle, “and She is satisfied with the sacrifices today. You will be at peace until She returns tomorrow.” With that she flicked the light switch, casting the entire room into darkness. Her thudding steps made the terrarium shake until she crawled into bed, finally freeing us of her menace until tomorrow.
Roni, Vanessa, and I walked back into the house, where some lights still shone dimly. Wordlessly Roni went to her room, bumping into me as she went past, and I showed Vanessa to Will’s old room. Even if it wasn’t to her tastes, I figured, it would beat sleeping on the rocks outside. Once they were situated I crawled into bed myself, turned off the weak light, and let my exhausted body drift to sleep.