It was another day in paradise for
Evan Pierce.
He was entering his second week of
vacation after finalizing his divorce and he was truly enjoying
himself for the first time in years. The funniest part about it all
was that he wasn't really doing much of anything beyond lazing around
the house that he had bought but never got to enjoy.
Evan had considered moving into an
apartment downtown and selling the place because he expected it to
remind him of all the stupid fights and arguments he and Sam had had
over the years but the day movers took away all the shit she had
filled the house with, all of those bad memories simply melted away.
He was still technically redecorating
but for the most part he had replaced all the furniture she had
taken. Sam had kept the place looking like those cold sterile houses
rich villainous couples had in movies; shining marble, gleaming
metal, and couches that were not only spotless but looked like they
had never been sat on at all.
The first thing he had done was buy a
few big shaggy rugs to cover up the chilly stone floors that covered
most of the first floor. Then he got an enormous sectional sofa that
he could actually flop down onto and enjoy the tv that had always
hung over their untouched fireplace.
Evan knew that it clashed a little
with the house's aesthetic but he didn't care, he wanted the house to
actually feel like a home for the first time in eight years. Their
first place, the condo they had bought shortly after getting married,
had looked like somewhere people lived and based on how she had
decorated their house, apparently Sam had always quietly detested
that.
She had never seemed uncomfortable in
their big cold house but Evan reasoned that was because she came from
money. He had almost let her have the place in the divorce but then
he remembered that the down payment had come entirely from his
accounts after the company he worked for went public. It was bought
with the sweat of all his eighty hour weeks coding for a start-up
from when they were an office with twelve people working on top of
each other to a company that owned multiple buildings across the US
and was headquartered in Dublin for tax purposes.
Sam had been the one to convince him
that it would be better for them to have their 'dream home' in the
burbs rather than to keep living in the condo they had bought in the
walkable neighborhood they loved but it was still his money that paid
for it.
He wasn't going to get his IPO money
back, so he fought tooth and nail for the house.
And so now Evan could truly enjoy it.
The first thing he did after
activating his automatic out-of-office email reply and signing out of
slack was to dive into the pool that was the only thing he had
insisted the house have. He could count the amount of times he had
swam in the pool over the past eight years on one hand but since
starting his vacation, he had gone in every day like clockwork.
Laps in the late morning, followed by
a skin tanning nap on a lounge chair, and then a hearty sandwich when
he woke up.
After a week of swimming everyday, he
was definitely still sore but Evan thought it was probably a good
sign that he was feeling almost pleasantly tingly when he flopped
down onto his chair for his post-workout nap. Sleep came almost a
little easier than usual but he didn't think anything of it, after
all, this was the most stress free his life had been since... ever.
When he woke up though, Evan
immediately knew that something was off.
At first, given how groggy he felt,
Evan assumed that he had simply slept longer than usual but then he
slowly realized that he was lying flat rather than on an incline. It
was possible that he had somehow slid downward while he slept but his
feet weren't dangling over the edge of the lounge chair nor were they
on the ground.
“What the...”
Sitting up, Evan was immediately
shocked by what he saw.
The lounge chair stretched out ahead
of him and on either side, larger than the huge sofa that now sat in
his living room. Stumbling up onto his feet, he found that the arm
rests rose almost to his chest and the slanted back of the chair rose
much higher. His house loomed like a giant's castle in a fairy tale
beyond it, making his jaw drop.
Without thinking, Evan smacked himself
as hard as he could in the cheek.
The pain was hot and instant, making
him stagger across the springy ground of the lounge chair's stretchy
material. “Ow...” he muttered while rubbing his self-inflicted
injury, “Ok, I guess I'm not dreaming or maybe that doesn't
actually work...”
Stumbling across the lounge chair,
Evan found that he was big enough to cautiously lower himself down
onto the patio. The sun baked stones warmed his tiny feet while he
surveyed the seemingly huge world around him.
“Wait, where are my...” Evan
immediately looked down to see that his speedo was still clinging to
his frame, “Ok, so obviously I'm dreaming if my clothes are still
on me or would it be more embarrassing if I was nude...”
The thought of being naked made him
shudder as he realized that if this was really happening, he didn't
want to go to any of his neighbors for help in his current state.
“Ok, if this isn't a dream, I need
help but if I am dreaming, what the fuck can I do...” He struggled
to jumpstart his brain, snapping his fingers and pacing across the
patio. Stopping in his tracks, Evan shut his eyes tight and simply
tried to will himself bigger.
When he opened his eyes, the world was
still enormous in comparison to him.
“Fuck,” he rubbed his eyes and
sighed, “Ok, they say you don't have your phone in your dreams, so
either it won't be where I left it in the kitchen or it will be and
I'll need to call my doctor's office...”
Walking toward the house, Evan
couldn't help but crane his neck back further and further as the back
door seemed to loom larger and larger. The closer he got, the more
Evan wondered how he would be able to open it at all, “Oh God,
please tell me I didn't close it all the way, please...”
The cry of joy that burst out of him
when he saw the open space between the door and its frame launched
Evan into a sprint, his tiny feet slapping loudly against first the
warm patio and then the cool stone of the kitchen floor.
Taking a moment to catch his breath,
Evan stood up straight when he heard a strange noise coming from the
back yard.
It was a metallic rattling followed by
a heavy scraping noise.
The realization that it was the gate
in his fence being opened made him jump in surprise.
“What the fuck...” he muttered.
Moving toward the sliding glass door,
Evan pressed his hands against it and pushed with all his might in an
attempt to shut it. His muscles strained and he could feel his feet
slipping against the floor from the effort but the door didn't budge
even a quarter of an inch.
Two shadows stretched across the patio
and he heard a feminine voice boom out, “Huh, he's not in the
chair...”
“Shit,” The second voice was a
powerful masculine thunderclap, “Did he wake up already?”
The giant voices sent Evan scrambling
backwards away from the clear glass door and searching for cover. He
weaved through the legs of his newly purchased table while their
voices carried through the open back door.
“You want to check the pool shed
while I head inside, babe?” The woman's voice asked.
“Might as well, I should pour the
stuff into the pool so we can use it later anyway...”
A million questions raced through
Evan's head at the exchange but all that mattered was that the girl
was heading inside. Ahead of him was the short hallway that lead to
the garage, the door into which was firmly shut as was the door to
the laundry room. The door to the half-bath that sat off the kitchen
was wide open but then he heard it.
The soft thumping of approaching
footsteps.
Juking to his left, Evan scrambled
into the pantry by squeezing himself through the barely open door. He
backed away into the darkness of the walk-in pantry while his whole
body trembled in terror.
There was a low rumbling noise from
the back door being opened wide enough for a normal sized person to
walk in and then he heard the soft thuds of her walking into his
house. The door rumbled once more but he didn't hear it fully shut.
“Huh?” The girl chuckled, “What
is this? Ikea shit?”
He heard her knock his kitchen table
with her knuckles and for some reason he could feel a faint heat
rising in his cheeks. Sam had taken almost all of the kitchen stuff
and while he would have loved to get some nice pieces, Evan had known
enough to know that the old weathered wooden table he liked wouldn't
look right in the hyper-modern kitchen he had. So he had simply
bought the best looking stuff off the Ikea website and paid for them
to assemble it.
“Babe!” Her voice was so loud that
Evan had to cover his ears at the sudden noise, “I found his
phone!”
Her boyfriend's voice roared in the
distance but Evan couldn't make it out.
“Now where is that little fuck...”
What few doubts Evan had that these
people had done this to him disappeared in that moment. The questions
that fear had pushed away suddenly surged to the forefront of his
mind and the now shrunken man crept toward the gap between the pantry
door and its frame.
His kitchen was still bathed in the
gray shadows of the early afternoon because it didn't really get much
natural light until the sun was practically setting but one spot was
lit up by harsh florescence and that was where the giantess stood.
The first thing he noticed were the
scuffed up lime green crocs the girl wore and the bright pink crew
socks that rose out of them, stretching up her skinny legs until they
gave way to pale flesh and finally what looked like a pair of
basketball shorts. She lifted her foot and thumped her toe against
the floor, giving Evan a clear view of the charms that adorned the
holes in her crocs; a weed leaf, a peace sign, a van, and the supreme
logo.
“Man, we're going to have to go
grocery shopping first thing...” the girl sighed before extracting
a can of LaCroix from his fridge and opening it with a hiss.
“What the fuck...” Evan whispered,
trying to wrap his head around what the giant girl was talking about.
Her huge feet pivoted toward him and
he watched as she crossed the kitchen. Each of her footfalls produced
an appreciable thump but the closer she got to the pantry, the more
Evan swore that he could feel the floor tremble beneath his feet.
“Where could you be...” The
giantess muttered to herself between sips of seltzer.
Evan's whole body froze as he felt her
tremor-inducing footsteps pass the pantry.
The bathroom door creaked open, “Are
you in here, little dude? Nope...”
Evan heard the door firmly shut before
he heard her open another one.
“Damn, these things look like
they're fucking spaceships,” the girl laughed to herself and Evan
knew that she was inspecting his washer and dryer, which were top of
the line models that he and Sam had bought a few months before
separating. The door to the laundry room shut once more and her voice
drifted up the hallway, “I wonder if he's big enough to reach those
or if we'll have to do laundry ourselves...”
Evan's heart jumped into his throat as
her words made it quite clear what they were going to do with him. “I
need to get out of here,” he said while pushing his way out of the
pantry at the same time that he heard her open the door to the
garage.
The shrunken man moved as quickly as
he dared, afraid that if he sprinted the sound of his bare feet
slapping against the floor would echo in a modern kitchen filled with
marble and stainless steel. He was thankfully beneath the table when
he heard the door to the garage shut.
“What? No, she barely looked...”
He whispered, stopping in the center of his kitchen table.
The sound of her approach grew louder
and louder until Evan could feel the floor trembling beneath her feet
once more. He tracked her skinny legs as they wound around the table
toward the backdoor where she paused to poke her head out, “Babe,
you haven't seen him out there, right?”
“Nope, he's not in the shed and I
made sure the gate was closed...”
“Ok, I'm going to shut the door here
and then I guess I'll check the rest of the house...”
“Alright!”
The wide glass door slid into place
and Evan felt the world shudder as she stepped back.
“But first I'm going to grab a
snack...” The girl said with a giggle.
His whole body pivoted as the girl
circled the other side of the table and then pushed open the door to
the pantry. Light blazed on overheard and he watched her step inside
while he wondered what he should do.
She had cut off his only escape route
and even if he had made it out, he'd have been unable to get through
his own fence with the gate shut. The girl already had his phone so
there was no way for him to call for help though he wasn't sure
exactly who he would have called anyway. Sure, the cops could have
dealt with the two of them as trespassers but what would they have
done with him?
Would they have believed him if he had
said he was always this size?
“Score,” the girl's joyous word
derailed his train of thought.
He flinched as the door to the pantry
slammed shut and then he began to back away as he watched the girl
drag the nearest chair back from the table before plopping down into
it. Her feet smacked down mere inches from him and he was hit with a
wave of air that reeked of weed and patchouli oil.
Overhead, he heard her tearing open a
plastic package and letting out a low 'hmm' of pleasure.
Evan knew that he had to run.
He was an errant foot twitch away from
being discovered but he found himself transfixed by being so close to
a human being who was so much bigger than him.
All he could see of her was her shoes,
skinny legs, and the baggy Adidas shorts she was wearing but he knew
that she wasn't actually that big. Simply comparing her to his
immense furniture, Evan figured that she was a petite girl who
couldn't be much taller than five feet.
Yet, she was also the biggest living
thing he had ever seen.
An elephant would be like a dog to her
and not a particularly big one.
He was so perplexed by the thought
that he didn't even notice that she was kicking out her legs to relax
until the grimy sole of her croc had smacked into him. The sheer
force of it reminded him of when his dad forced him to try out for
football in middle school and he was knocked down by a kid who had
been a lineman in a peewee league since he was eight.
Evan was left dazed on the floor, his
vision wavering while he lay in the shadow of the rubber monument
that was her shoe.
And then the shoe pulled away and her
voice rang in his head, “No fucking way...”
Struggling to move, Evan flopped onto
his stomach and then forced himself to his hands and knees. He could
feel the chair scraping against the floor as she pushed back from the
table then he saw shadows move from her undoubtedly looking down to
confirm she had just kicked him. Evan stumbled to his feet and tried
to catch his breath all while her laughter filled the room.
“Were you under the table this whole
time?”
He pushed himself to start running
even though he could feel the floor shaking from her casually walking
to block his path.
When her lime green croc crashed down
in front of him, the floor buckled with enough force to make him drop
back down to his knees. He caught himself before he could fall face
first against the scuffed up shoes and then he simply sat there,
trembling.
He wasn't sure how long it was,
whether seconds or minutes, but it felt like an eternity before he
had the courage to slowly lift his eyes from weed charm that sat
prominently on the toe of her left croc. His eyes ran up the hot pink
sock, then her bare skin, past the black shorts with the waist rolled
down to reveal a mostly flat belly, and then across the tight tie-dye
tanktop that was stretched over her thin chest. A sleeve tattoo
adorned her right arm and he noticed that even her fingers had ink
that stood out against the seltzer can that still sat in her hand.
Far above, he watched her pop the
remainder of a twinkie past thin pink lips and then casually brush
the crumbs from the corners of her mouth. Out of a backwards red
baseball cap spilled straight hair that had probably once been dyed
some radical color but now had faded to a limp blonde with faint
hints of what might have been pink or purple. It all framed a thin
face that slowly lit up with a big grin as her pale gray eyes settled
on him.
“You're mine now, little dude.”