A month or so into their liaison, Kenzie initiated in earnest her inquiry into his past relationships. She had, in fact, tried it some weeks before ("Names, dates, drama, in that order, thanks."), but he didn't bite; he sighed outwardly, and continued on with whatever task she'd interrupted. Nor was she unaware of how tedious the process could be: previous partners had been similarly reserved. From past experience, she'd gleaned at least two methods of getting the info she desired.

"What if I tell you about mine first? And we go blow for blow?"

"I just don't think it's that interesting, Kenz."

"I think it's plenty interesting, and useful, too! It's good to see where we went wrong in our previous forays."

"And maybe we've already gotten everything we needed to out of those old relationships, and we should just let it be."

"I'm beginning to think you're hiding something." She said in a sing-song voice.

"There's nothing to hide, Kenz, promise. No checkered past, no secret, no double life. I'm just interested in talking about other things."

Wordlessly, she began to wash the dishes. She was visibly disappointed. One broken heart ago, he wouldn't have thought anything of it, but he'd said it himself: he was supposed to have learned something from all that. So, he asked: "Hey, that game you showed me, the night we met, what's it called again?"

"Siren." The faucet stopped, and her gaze turned to the living room closet, the entrance of which was blocked by a faux-leather sofa he'd brought from his place when he moved in.

"Yeah, Siren, that's right. Tell you what, I have a preposition for you. We never got to play it right? I think we were too drunk that night? But I know it’s your favorite, so, let's play a round. You win, I give you name. I win, you drop it for a week, and maybe instead of talking about that stuff, we lay in bed while you tell me more about how shitty your thesis advisor is." He smiled then, and she replied with own.

"That's it?" She sneered. Without hesitation, she approached the couch and lifted her hand up in his direction, gesturing for his aid with the implicit certainty of an aristocrat. "What happened to high stakes? I've seen you bet your paycheck on one inning of baseball."

"That's different: the Astros were untouchable that week." He groaned as they moved the couch. "You're a psycho when it comes to games. I'm not about to bet my life." She opened the door and withdrew from the closet a dusty, plastic box. They sat face-to-face as she took out the cards and fanned them along the table in one swift motion. "How about this: three rounds. If you win any of them, I drop the subject forever."

He laughed, "And if you win all three you get my soul?"

"Nope, just a name, like you said."

He clapped his hands together and leaned forward, keen on hearing the rules of the game, "Well, if those are your terms... just remember that you did this to yourself!"

"I will. And babe, I don't need to win your soul in a game. It's already mine."

She smiled then, and he replied with his own. The cards went out and the game began.

An hour after his encounter with Farah, Kenzie gathered her guests into an adjacent room, and opened the closet door; the light flooded in through the holes again and he could see her reaching into the box. A moment later, he found himself in a mason jar on the living room table, veiled by a piece of scarlet cloth.  He sat against a wall of glass and waited and rolled a question around in his head. Farah, why was she here? She was an old flame. It must have been almost five years ago. They’d met outside ACL. She had been drifting from entrance to entrance, offering free bottles of water to festival goers.

He stopped and his group went on ahead of him. She was calling out to passerby in a rich, full voice he found alluring. He could not help himself. She had majored in media studies. On their third date, he took her to a French film on the theory it would make him seem cultured. She was fluent, he found out, in both French and film; he was not, and though the movie was subtitled, he couldn’t really keep pace with the flow of images. On the drive home, she expounded on the film’s troubled production, its formal innovations, its director’s licentious escapades. To another, it may have been endearing, but he resented his ignorance and found her passion grating. He felt small. When he snapped at her, she asked him why he took her to see a foreign movie if he didn’t think he’d like it. He stayed silent. Six months later, they made the mutual decision to break it off.

“I feel like you just can’t open up.”

There was a rumbling sound outside, and it gave way to a host of excited voices. The scarlet cloth, his only defense against the scrutiny of giants, flew off the jar, and the light flooded in, and his glass shield was made a zoo’s enclosure by the presence of onlookers. He was absolutely helpless. All around him rose laughing giants; they crowded shoulder to shoulder, forming a mountain range in his living room, obviously excited to finally get a glimpse of the night’s entertainment. A thin, ghostly pale, and deftly manicured hand dropped into the jar, and he was pinched between two baby-blue fingernails and dragged into the sky to dangle helplessly before two insatiably curious eyes. One blue, one brown. Marianne. She shook him around and laughed.

“Not your most striking entrance,” she said, curling her words into a contemptuous croon, “If you came into that party looking like this, I’m not sure you would’ve piqued my interest. In fact,” she lowered him onto the rug before her sandals. “I’m not sure I would have even noticed you.” She stretched—they all did—impossibly into the air. Until now, he hadn’t stood at ground level at this size. He wanted to curl up somewhere dark and hidden; he felt exposed. A mortal at the feet of goddesses, a paramecium under a microscope. A toy.

“I can barely see him down there! Put him back on the table!” said a voice with a slight rural twang. From his position, he could barely make out who it was that spoke, but he could see enough to begin to put the situation together in his mind. Danielle. He met her at the bowling alley they worked at in college. And beside her, in a black, shoulder-cut blouse: Margaret. A high school sweetheart he once (stupidly) believed he would marry. There was Jasmine standing beside Kenzie, no doubt undressing him in her head. She was on the sales team at his first real job after college. It was a dynamic competitive environment, but one thing was constant: on the sales leaderboard for any given month, her name was just below his. She both loved and hated him for it. Farah sat quietly on the loveseat, recovering from a night at the bar. Finally, returning from the kitchen with a plate full of cheese and crackers was Cassidy. They “dated” for a month in middle school. He left her for League of Legends and baseball and never looked back. Those laughing giants, to whom he was an insect, were not anonymous monsters summoned by Kenzie to torment him. They were instead a host of all the hearts he’d wronged. And they had become more while he had become less.

Suddenly, he began panic. He scanned his surroundings frantically, looking for her. But she wasn’t in the room, not yet at least. Insofar as he was inclined, he thanked the Fates that at least one secret of his remained beyond Kenzie’s reach. He, however, was not so lucky. Her hand swooped down and, in an instant, he felt himself cast back onto the table like a lucky die.

He landed on his back and groaned and stood up and observed the landscape. While he was on the floor, they’d placed a game board on the table. A deck of cards crashed down beside him with a resounding thud. Were he a few feet (i.e. inches) to the left, he would have been crushed. “If you’re not gonna help set up,” Jasmine said, “could you at least stay out of the way?”

“I guess he’s always been unhelpful, huh Jasmine?” asked Kenzie as she removed a set of silver game pieces from a small pouch.

“Always! I remember we had a rule for boardgame night: whoever won didn’t have to help put the game up. And guess who always won? How unhelpful is that?”

“Very unhelpful,” replied Kenzie. She blew on him and he tumbled in the direction of a square marked “Go.” This was her way of telling him to get a move on. “But I can’t say that was ever a  problem for me. We had that rule too, even for Siren, and I never even had to close the box. One time—I think this was like the second or third game he’d lost, so he was, what, a foot-and-a-half…” she suddenly burst out laughing. “Man, I can’t believe you were even that big! This size fits you way better.” Already exhausted from all the commotion, he stood, hands on his knees, catching his breath a short distance from “Go.” Cassidy gave him a calculated flick onto it and growled, “You’re taking too long!”

Wiping her eye, Kenzie continued: “Anyway, he had just graduated from fun-size to run-size…”

“Run-size?” Danielle asked. Evidently, she got to choose her game piece first; she plucked a silver cowboy hat from the center of the board and placed it next to him on the starting square. They were the same height. Another lost bet and it would dwarf him.

“Run-size as in, when I came stomping by, he’d better run. Or better yet, he’d better run to follow me out of the room before I close the door on him. He was just about too short to reach the doorknobs. Not that it stopped him from trying. Girls, there’s few things more entertaining than watching your little man take these cute, little leaps towards a doorknob and fail and fail and fail. Better than a cat chasing a laser-pointer. But I keep getting off-track. We’d played a game, and he lost—that’s how I found out about you Cassidy, by the way—and he became even more of a runt, and I said ‘Alright, standard rules apply. Put the game up.’ And he said that wasn’t fair because his widdle arms weren’t big enough to even open the box. And yes, it’s true, the deluxe edition I bought after our first game was a little harder to open than the original, but so what? Rules are rules. I watched him climb the couch so he could jump to the table. I thought it was so cute I had to see it again, so I picked him up off the table and placed him on the floor, and he hopped up and down at me and called me things not fit for polite company. I said I was so, so sorry, and that I wouldn’t do it again as long as he let me record him doing it. And he could’ve just scrambled over to the bedroom and sat and pouted in a shoebox or something, but ladies, male pride does not die with male dignity. So he did it, and I have it right here…” She showed them the video on her phone.

“Look at him go!”

“So resourceful!”

“Doesn’t look so bad to me!”

“And he still couldn’t open it! I just watched him try and try and try to get it open. Don’t have it on video, unfortunately, since he didn’t give me permission to record that. And he was so annoyed that he couldn’t do it that he challenged me to another game right then and there. He raised his tiny fist and said, ‘I want a rematch!’ Always so eager to prove he’s better. I’ve been playing Siren since I was a little girl, and he thought he could close the gap in a few games. You see the results now, ladies. The gap only got bigger.”

They had all chosen their pieces by now, and silver shapes surrounded him on all sides. He was boxed in. The car, the hat, the ship… no thimble, though. She’d lost it a long time ago.

“That night, I learned about you, Marianne. He was really hesitant to give up your name. Don’t know why.”

“Probably ‘cause he ghosted me. Apparently, he never got over the fact that we met at a party, so when he was ‘done partying,’ he was done with me too.” said Marianne.

“Well, that’s shitty. You’ll be happy to know he slept in a dollhouse that night. Still a little too big for it, but he wouldn’t be for long.”

He was trapped between what should have been miniscule chunks of cheap plastic, and he burned with rage. She was wrong, in so many ways. He wanted to correct her. He had gotten a door open, once, at that size. It took some time, and, yes, he did have to leap, but while she lay on the bed, laughing her head off, he put in the effort, and he got results. And the so-called “deluxe game box” wasn’t a game box at all! It was a heavy-duty storage trunk she strained to lift onto the table, which she bought for the express purpose of humiliating him! She never asked for his “permission” to record him, and she did, in fact, record him trying fruitlessly to open the box, she just told him it was “for her eyes only.” And he did not sleep in a dollhouse! He was too big. He slept on the bed and had to contend all night with her “accidently” smothering him as she tossed and turned. One side of the bed touches the wall, so when morning he came, he found himself trying to climb her ass so he could get off the bed. Instead, she audibly laughed and turned and “accidently” nearly smothered him beneath it.

Marianne was wrong, too. Yes, they’d met at a party. Yes, he’d given up partying. But that’s not why they broke up: his job had moved him back to Austin without warning! And he didn’t ghost her… no, he didn’t ghost her. He could’ve sworn he’d told her once that he’d sworn off long-distance. He had tried it once and it didn’t work. And he could’ve sworn that he’d texted her that he was moving, but maybe it didn’t go through. And maybe he wasn’t as thorough as he could’ve been, and maybe he was too eager to move-out, and maybe his aversion to long-distance was irrational, but he did not ghost her. She was lying through her teeth, he swore.

Yet the entire time, the others were in rapt attention. They might have known that they were hearing fabrications or exaggerations or outright lies, but they didn’t care. Why? Something in those fictions was undeniably compelling to them. What was it? He couldn’t guess. Regardless, they would never hear his side of the story—his voice could not rise above an unintelligible squeak. At first, he tried to communicate with Kenzie, but his squeaks were only “cute,” or “adorable,” or “puny,” they were not understood. So, he spent his days in silence; at long last, she’d taken his voice from him. His life had withered into a collection of secrets he had no power to reveal.

“Hey, did you pick your piece yet, Kenz?” asked Cassidy, “I’m rearing to go, go, go!”

“Oh, I always let him decide. And wouldn’t you know it, he’s chosen the thimble.”

“Uh, thimble? There is no thimble.” said Farah, who was distributing the money.

“What do you mean? The thimble was the first piece on the board.” said Kenzie. The others hesitated for a few seconds, then laughed. “I just thought we trying to scare him with our big ol’ game pieces!” said Cassidy, “But that’s a way better idea!”

“He does look a little hopeless trapped between those big, scary pieces,” said Kenzie, “You girls mind if I go first? Let’s give him a chance to stretch his legs a little.”

The dice between her palms rose into the air and crashed against the board with the thud of two heavy stones. The game had begun.

For sins he could not list, he was cursed by God to play the thimble. In the beginning, She allowed him the dignity of moving himself along the path that chance had chosen—but only when he had to travel a short distance. When She rolled high, She sighed with impatience and carried him to the target square herself. Between turns, he had nothing to do but stand in place. When he tried to move off the square, someone’s hand came down in a swift chop and walled him off; when he tried to sit, someone lifted him off the board and goaded his legs into an upright position.

Occasionally, he was forced to dodge falling houses. Cassidy—who appeared to be enjoying herself the most—started the sub-game of dropping houses onto the board whenever she built property. Of course, she built on every square she owned, whenever he was on it. The others joined in the practice, even if they were more conservative in where and when they built property. In fact, save Cassidy, the women seemed intensely focused on actually winning the game. Other than a shared laugh when Kenzie corrected his behavior, they avoided engaging with his presence at all. In the past, he hated being ignored, but now that it was the only alternative to being treated like a toy, he found a way to enjoy it.

Kenzie drew a card from the community chest. “Oops. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Sorry, bud, it’s the law.”

“Come on, Your Honor, he couldn’t have possibility done it, look at him! He wouldn’t hurt a fly!” said Margaret. She smiled down him, “Well, couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Yeah, at least tell us what he’s being accused of!” said Danielle.

“Maybe he was perving on people in the women’s restroom,” said Farah, “swept right in behind someone, hid beneath fallen bits of toilet paper, and crept right under a stall door.”

“Ew, could you imagine!” said Danielle, “I think I’d smash ‘em right then and there. Good riddance, one less creep in the world.”

“Really? I’d let him see whatever he wanted,” said Jasmine, “what’s he gonna do? I’d pick him up, give him the world tour, one big smooch, and them splash! right into toilet. Or maybe I’d take him home. Sharpie could use a new toy, her old one’s pretty ragged.”

Sharpie was her cat. He met her, once—he insisted on keeping his distance from then on. At the thought of seeing her now, he shuddered.

“I like it, I like it.” said Margaret. “What about you, Marianne?”

Marianne appeared to be deep in thought. She tapped her pointer finger against her chin and said: “I’d find a way to stuff him in the tampon dispenser, then I’d leave it to chance.”

“That’s fucked up,” said Kenzie, “I approve. In reality, his crime was a lot worse than bathroom snooping. Assault and battery.”

“Who was the victim?” said Marianne, who let out a faux gasp.

“Me, right here.” She pointed to her left cheek. “He was just a little bigger than he is now. I had him right here in my palm, and I was asking him why he had so much trouble with my line of work. I was an influencer at the time…”

“You did wacky sex shit on the internet!” said Margaret.

“Yes, Margie, thanks. Anyway he got a little upset and hit me right in the face. Obviously, I popped him in my mouth in self-defense, and spat him into the kitchen sink till he cooled off, but the incident still left me shaken. So, off to jail he goes.”

She smiled at him with a false benevolence. “Actually, it seems pretty boring to just tuck him away in the Monopoly jail.” She took him in hand and scanned the room. “Who’s losing?”

“Cassidy,” Jasmine said instantly, “She’s out soon if things don’t go her way.”

“Hey, don’t count me out yet! I just got a little carried away!”

“Tell you what, Cass—is Cass okay? Why don’t you keep track of him till I can get him out on probation?”

“Really?” She looked at him with a certain terrifying intensity; she was a magnifying glass, concentrating the sun’s rays into a deadly beam. “What am I allowed to do with him?” She asked without looking away.

“Anything you want,” said Kenzie, “as long as you leave something for the rest of us.”

Cassidy smiles, and he felt a stone growing in his gut; just when he was starting to think the routine of the game had extinguished his fear, he found himself bound tightly in Cassidy’s grip, immobile and helpless and squirming beneath her hungry eyes.

“Is it possible I could take him somewhere private?”

“Oh, sure,! Kenzie said, “go ahead. You can use his old room if you’re alright with Funko Pops. Want me to just play for you? Till he’s out on parole, I don’t have much to do.”

“If you wouldn’t mind! I just know nothing like this is ever gonna happen again. I wanna savor it.” He was in front of her mouth as she spoke. Her tone was almost bestial, and the feeling of her warm, damp breath triggered some ancient instinct in his lizard brain. Run, run, run. His feet even emulated the movement, but it was futile. He imagined himself being ground beneath her teeth. For once, he desperately hoped that luck was on Kenzie’s side. Then he reconsidered: Kenzie’s luck only ever brought him misery. If fate was on her side, his immediate future belonged to Cassidy.

Cassidy’s methods of domination were more direct than Kenzie’s, he noticed, less varied, less creative—more physical. When they arrived in his room, she plopped on the bed and kicked her shoes off and switched the TV on, as if she’d lived in that room for years. She absent-mindedly squeezed him from time to time or rolled his body along her bare leg like a ball of clay she was lathing into a thin strip; she sat cross-legged on the bed and pinned him in the pit between her legs with one hand. Occasionally, she let out a stunted giggle, but for the first few minutes she was otherwise silent. Once she’d settled on something to watch, however, she started to speak.

“Man, sucks for you that I suck at monopoly. We could have had a lot of fun together.” She dangled him by one hand above her chest and let him fall into her cleavage. “Christ, there’s so much we could’ve done! Guess I have to make up for it now.” Slowly, the walls of flesh around him began to close in; the pressure grew and grew before she finally released it. One more second, he swore, and he would have been crushed. “Remember when I asked you in middle school whether you liked boobs or video games more, and you said video games? What a dumb question. Even dumber answer though.”

She plucked him out and clasped him in her hand and said, “Wonder what you taste like.” She licked him and spat. “Not particularly good. What exactly are you good for?” Suddenly, she had an idea.

His world spun downward, and darkness fell. Once again, he was completely paralyzed. A soft membrane held him firm against what felt like skin. He realized he was trapped inside her shorts.

“Look around, man. Scope the place out. Make this good for me goddamnit! Oh come on, how could you miss that one!” He heard cheering and the sound of a whistle coming from the direction of the TV.

Cassidy was clearly content to leave him there for now. With nothing to do, he thought about how they first met. It was a middle school fling, nothing serious, or so he thought. April of that  year he’d received a new laptop for his birthday and that was the end of it. Perhaps he could have been more cordial. From what he could remember, the breakup was abrupt, and she hadn’t taken it well. But what did she expect? They were in 8th grade! Was she expecting to me Mr. Right at age 13? Next year they were at different high schools. How was that going to work?

It was true she tried to contact him, seemingly every year, without fail. By phone, on Facebook, via email (or, once, a singing telegram, during the performance of which he was mostly just shocked by the continued existence of singing telegrams). He dodged her, of course. During college, he enjoyed cataloguing aspects of his social life on Instagram: parties, trips with friends, long-repressed nights at local clubs. She’d leave a comment on occasion; he’d see it and think nothing. He always half-considered her a stalker.

Well, isn’t it weird to look up people you used to know, just because you used to know them? Or to call them… once a year. Okay, but she should have learned to let things go. Though she hadn’t tried to make contact in a few years. And maybe… maybe he was always way to quick too cut her out of his life. Nothing prevented him from replying, giving a cursory how have you been? Maybe he did need to cut her out, but what was stopping him from just telling her that? He was beginning to see a pattern.

Everywhere he went, he left people behind, and every time they reached out, he played possum. He played the ghost. Every time.

No, no! That’s not it! He thought he was losing it. He thought being reduced to such a small size for such a long time was beginning to have an effect he hadn’t anticipated. His old memories had been revised without his noticing; there he was, for instance, at Cassidy’s feet, tiny and insignificant, rejecting her invitation to the middle school prom; and why would such a small thing have such a big ego? Why would it think it has carte blanche to treat others however it wanted? When it should live in fear lest any giant crush it for its insolence. But he fought against his apparent brainwashing. It was just another one of Kenzie’s tricks. It was his life. These had been his decisions to make. It was his life, and he could let people in or kick them out as he pleased. Period.

 But then again, maybe…

The world rumbled. A slit in the darkness opened over his head, and a hand was reaching through. He was in front of her face again. “Couldn’t feel you moving anymore. Just making sure you didn’t die.”

He was going to do it. He was going to let her have it. He didn’t know quite what he was going to say, but he whatever it was he was going to scream it as loud as he could, and whether it sounded like a lion’s roar or a rat’s squeak was up to chance; the will to roar was his.

“Hey.” She said, and he stopped. That one word utterly disarmed him. There was something so melancholy in the way it left her mouth, like it was meant to be the first note of a lament. And he realized that he was no longer bound in her fist. Instead, he was standing on one of her hands. Below his feet, the skin gave like a soft bed. He liked the sensation of standing on skin at this size; he felt weightless. He tried to summon up that anger again, but he could not. Instead, he stood in rapt anticipation of whatever she said next.

“Those aren’t fucking Funko Pops!” She quickly tossed him aside onto the bed and stood up and approached the shelf. “Those are anime figurines!” Arrayed from end to end were tiny statues he’d collected over the years. They weren’t his proudest accomplishment, but their acquisition brought him a kind of simple joy he’d learned to appreciate since his career had picked up.

What he wouldn’t give to have those days of toil back.

“This is Revy, from Black Lagoon, right? I remember telling you about that show when were together, cause you couldn’t watch Adult Swim. Man, you used to tell me stuff like this was dumb. But here you are.” She turned around and looked him.

“But here you are,” she repeated, the words stretched in a half-sung fashion, “just… there. Huh. You know, I thought it was funny how we’ve all been treating you. I figure you were kind of a jerk to the rest of them, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t really thought about you much since we broke up. Got pretty annoyed when you ignored me, but it’s whatever. I get it.” Slowly, she approached the bed; slowly, her hand crept through the air, as if she were wary of startling him. It settled down in front of him. The fingers stretched outward, asking him to take his place on her palm.

“Sorry, I dropped houses on you and stuff. Give me just a little bit of power—or a lot, I guess—and I go nuts instantly. Though I can’t deny it was cute the way you danced around to dodge them.” She laughed. “Sucks that I won’t be taking you home tonight.”

Taking me home? he though, Where did that come from?

She hauled him over to the shelf and dropped him down on one end. “Go on, I wanna see how big you are.” Despite his reservations, he obeyed. He walked over to a figurine of Deku from My Hero Academia, which reached up to his waist. “Okay, you’re worth at least two Dekus. What about this.” She set the Revy figurine down next to him. To his annoyance, he found himself looking up to me its eyes.

“Hah! She’s a head taller than you! That’s so good! Smaller than your own toys!” Suddenly, her eyes shifted to the end of the row, where a particularly large figurine towered over the rest. A moment later he had been plucked into the air and set down next to it.

“Damn! Up to her knees! Man, Kenzie was way off-base waiting till now to call me up. Would have liked to see you at my knees. At this size, you’re just so… insubstantial.” She blinked and looked up at the ceiling briefly, “Weird word for me. But it works. It’s like you’re barely here at all. I would have liked to see you about where you are compared to… whoever this. Oh, wait a minute. I know who this is! This is Akali, right? From League?” There was a brief silence, as if he were meant to speak; she continued before he could. “Wasn’t she your uh, your favorite one. Whatever the word is. She’s kind of hot, not a bad choice.” Akali had been his first main in League. He bought the statuette as a gift to himself after his job had hired him on, as a monument to a hobby the draconic demands of  adulthood could no longer allow. It brought him a strange sense of relief whenever he saw it thereon. Excluding the present moment. That old sense of relief had been absorbed by a general fear of anything big enough to crush him. When he was about its size, Kenzie had made him sleep with it.

“I can see why you chose her over me, I guess. Weird that you got into all this stuff after middle school. You used to hate all this anime shits.” Her voice softened. Somewhere in the back of his head, a feeling he couldn’t quite parse was beginning to stir. “I never stopped loving it. I got a shelf just like this at home. A few, actually. Man, I am a one grown-ass woman, huh? And your one grown-ass man.”

Her eyes bore down on him from above and felt the scrutiny of a mountain. Whenever he could snatch a moment of reprieve, his mind settled on cataloguing his sensations. There were different ways the world looked at you at this size. In the dollhouse, for instance, his old living quarters, he felt fully in control. This illusion was very easily shattered by Kenzie whenever she rocked the house back and forth or pryed the roof from the walls. But otherwise, the dollhouse conferred a certain feeling of security, a feeling that had long ago receded like the memory of a past life. Similarly, at night, when Kenzie’s momentous movements had finally settled into the steady, rocking pulse of mere respiration, he felt invincible. Occasionally, a fly or ant would arrive at his napkin carton bed to harass him. But once they were driven off, he was alone in a world far larger than he, with no human force to oppress him. Years ago, he’d spent a night beneath the stars in east Texas; the feeling was the same. When he was on the couch, lying against the back cushion, he felt unmoved by Kenzie’s gargantuan activities, almost fearless. An enclosed space—partial or entire—felt like a warm blanket.

But here, exposed to the open air on all sides, it was as if there were nothing in the entire universe but him and the giant. She bowed her head down till it was all he could see, a freckled, heaving mass. Every pore was visible, every blemish. And yet, he could not help butthink she was beautiful. For so long, he’d only been able to conceive of his giant world in monstrous terms. He felt like he was seeing her, truly seeing her, for the first time tonight, even though she appeared all but eager to grind his tiny form between her teeth.

“Is there anything you want, little dude? Before I have to go.”

Huh?

“I’m out, man. Kenzie texted me a few minutes ago. ‘sorry cass can’t win from this far behind.’ I’m bad a board games, sucks but it’s whatever. She’ll come around as soon as you’re out of jail. But if you want something—this is probably the last time I’ll see you. I mean, even if you got back to normal somehow. You know, I only came cause Kenzie invited me; and she only invited me—or all of us I guess—because she’s done with you, wants you gone.” She plucked him from the shelf and laid against the end of the bed, placing him on the ground before her.

“Whoever wins takes take you home. So… last chance. Anything you want?”

Steps were resounding down the hall. “There she comes. Speak now or forever hold your peace.” He tried to muster up something to say, some grand, climactic speech that would bury their—his—past mistakes. There was no reason they couldn’t be friends after this, somehow. The logistics needed some work. His newly-crowned owner would be possessive, he was sure. He stopped himself. He reflected briefly on where this sudden interest in renewed friendship had come from. Nothing came to him.

The door flung open and the heft of the displaced air tossed him onto his side. Slowly, he looked upward in anticipation of Kenzie’s smug grin. Instead, it was Margaret, cigarette in hand, her face twisted into a scowl.

“I’m out too! Can you hand him over for a second? I wanted to say good-bye to the little loser.”

Cassidy lifted him from the ground and passed him to Margaret, who inhaled from her cigarette and let the smoke loose in his direction. He fell to his knees and coughed, his eyes red; his head began to ache.

“Thanks, that was all I needed,” she said, handing him back. “Bye, bye. Bug boy. Hope Jasmine wins you, it’s what you deserve!” she yelled as she moved down the hall. He heard the front door open and shut.

“Jesus… you okay? Guess you really know how to piss people off. You know, it brings people together, in a way. That’s gotta be worth something.” She laughed and stood up and tilted one hand into the other so he wouldn’t fall as she left his old room and walked down the hall.

There was something he wanted from her, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

“Here’s the boy.” she said, dropping him onto the game board. “Think I’ll go right now. I had my fun, said my goodbyes. Gotta plane to catch tomorrow.”

“Ooh, where to?” asked Kenzie.

“New York.  They’re displaying some art I did. It’s some kind of east meets west exhibition or something and they decided I fit the bill. My agent says more people’ll come if I’m there to answer questions. Not a fan of telling people ‘my story’ or whatever, but you know. It is what it is.”

“That all sound so exciting! The big city, the art world… so romantic. Shame a certain someone can’t go with you.”

“You know,” she said, looking down at him, “I think I’ll get over it. Thanks for putting this together, Kenzie, it was fun.”

“It was my pleasure!”

“And it was nice meeting all of you!” she said as she walked out the door. Right before exiting the house, she turned around. “Whoever wins, I expect a steady stream of pics! Get creative!” The door closed behind her, and he instantly noticed five pairs of eyes bearing down on him like a pack of wolves. Two players down.

“She was nice, wasn’t she?” said Kenzie, rubbing her finger along his back. He noticed her funds had only depleted since he’d been away. The Almighty Kenzie, who had never known defeat, was a few bad turns away from an early exit; his freedom—from her, at least—was just on the horizon.

The dice once again went up in her clasped hands and just as quickly crashed against the table.  The impact shook him from his feet. Snake eyes.

In the heavens high above him, money flittered between the remnants of the pantheon; cities and towns rose from the earth at their command, or sank into ruin at their will; he'd round the four corners of his flat, little world and be greeted with a falling citadel, or humiliation in a giant's hands. The women had settled into a kind of split-awareness: their focus on the game was unerring, almost eerie--the banter and the laughter had dissipated--but their hands, when otherwise, unoccupied, or under the sway of some bespoke, gimmick card Kenzie had place in the deck, searched for him. Kenzie drew, "Avalanche! Sweet!" She showed the rest of them what was clearly a picture she drew herself of a large sheet of snow sliding down the side of a mountain; a tiny stick figure was trapped in the flow, one arm stretched out toward the sky.

"What's that mean?" asked Danielle.
"It means: who wants to play catch?"
"I do!" The others said in unison.
    
The first few tosses were a novelty too unpleasant to ignore. In fact, this new torment was the first thing in a while to break his concentration. Since his return from his sojourn with Cassidy, he'd adopted a new strategy; something in him had softened and that could only end in disaster. He needed to be able to brace himself against all possibilities, all threats.

He retreated inward. His limbs were independent agents and he was utterly calm. When, in the course of one toss, his face struck the side of Marianne's thumb at a bad angle, he didn't feel it. He didn't process when she, aware that his nose was bleeding, hugged him to her belly in a grand, mocking display of feigned pity. He barely realized it when'd been deposited back on the board. The game resumed, like the flow of a river freed from an obstruction, and he was swept helplessly in the froth and rush of its currents.

"Earthquake!" And they shook the table, dropping him to his knees.
"Tornado!" And Danielle blew a gust of wind, knocking him off his feet. She had whiskey on her breath.
"Tsunami!" And Jasmine enveloped him in her mouth, and rolled him all over that dark, moist place with her tongue.

Eventually, they noticed his stupor. The enormous, shouting faces of mountains bellowed directivevs for him to move, for him to do a little dance, or sing with that lvoely cororatura soprana they were sure he had. At one point, Danielle became visibly upset.

He thought about Danielle. She was his first girlfriend in college. After his doomed romance with Margaret, he wanted a change of pace. Danielle was a hard-drinking permaslacker with a good body and no ambitions; at the time, that was what he was looking for.

But he couldn't picture Danielle the way she'd been in the past. When an old memory crept up from his subconscious, he could it had been tampered with, altered. He was training her at the bowling alley; he was teaching her how to trigger the manual reset for the pinsetters in case something in the machines became stuck. But she was refusing to listen.

He was on the ground, no higher than the toe of her cowboy boots, jumping and shouting his instructions. But she wasn't listening; she plucked him from the ground and touseled his hair with her enormous thumb.

"I don't really see why I should have to take orders from you, bug boy." Her cheeks were rolling in and out and she blew a shiny, pink bubble, and it popped and he was suddenly covered in gum. She stuck him to the side of the bowling ball and said "Don't worry, I know how to spin it just right so you don't get crushed," and she rolled it down the lane; and he struck the pins and fell and fell and fell into a darkness with no end. The ball rolled back through the machine, travelled along the groove, and when it reached the end he was stuck to the top side and he saw her standing triumphantly over him, then, suddenly, tears were streaming down her face.

"Are you even listening to me?"

The bowling alley--the bowling ball, the memory--all dissolved away in an instant. He was balled in her fist. They were standing on the porch and she was crying. He did not know why.

"You could at least say something! This is it! The last time you're ever going to see me!"

He said nothing.

"I did so much for you. And it was always just this in return: silence. It's all I ever got. Kenzie says you chose to live in that box all on your own. I don't know if that's true but I believe it. You've always acted like a bug, now you just look the part. Always creeping aroound till you find some little hole to hide in. Turtling up inside your shell, like I ain't even here. Well." She drifted off, set him down on the cold wood of the porch, unlatched the front gate, and took the first step down the stoop. "Good riddance, and good luck getting back inside!"

The door behind him was closed, and he could only look forward in teh deep, dark wilderness beyond the porch. A chill wind blew and he grabbed his shoulders, his eyes widened, his knees trembled, and his teeth began to chatter. Wherever he had been, he was here now.

He considered the difficulty of descending the stairs. No doubt he could fit through the bars of the gate; he was small enough for that. The possibility of freedom was right before him. Just creep beneath the gate (a high, metal valley), climb down the steps (steep, flat cliffs), and cross through the yard (the jungle). He looked up at the stars. He felt small. He'd always been small, the thought occured to him; present circumstances had merely made his body comport with his soul. Minutes passed. A golden line angled across the bars of the gate; it opened wide and wider, and an enormous figure cut in shadow in the widening light stepped onto the "Home Sweet Home" mat in front of the front door. A darkness descended over head, and he flew through the air. Someone——Farah——had come out to retrive him.

"She just left you out here huh? That bitch," she said playfully, "Don't worry, I'll take care of you."

Inside, the game had advanced considerably. Kenzie was using a small toy soldier in lieu of her "thimble." Farah dropped him near his substitute, and a moment later Kenzie tossed it off the board and across the room. It crashed into something a mile away from where he stood, and he winched when he heard the impact; he imagined his own body breaking against the wall. "Finally! My luck was beginning to turn without you, bud," said Kenzie.

"Hey, Farah," said Marianne, taking her turn, "How'd you and the little guy meet?"
"Oh, I haven't told y'all yet? Huh. Well, it was a few years ago, and he wasn't a little guy just yet."
"If I can interrupt," began Kenzie, "why not embellish it a little bit?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean... look, I've been telling tales all night about him, how small he's gotten, how much fun it is to have a little bug boy walking around and your complete mercy." Her lips curved into a mischievous grin as she spoke the word "mercy."" "So why don't you try it? Just tell us about you all's time together! Only make him puny." She held her thumb and pointer finger a small distanct apart. "It's not that big of a change at the end of the day; we're all pretty much in agreement that he's always been like this from a certain point of view. It's not like he'll speak up to correct us. If we could even hear him, that is."

Farah drummed a row of fingers along the table in a cascading motion. "Sure, why not. Hey, we're just having fun."

And so she told the story of how they met, albeit with a certain amount of poetic license. It was at Austin City Limits, and he was dodging around people's ankles, trying to avoid being crushes. Eventually, she claimed, he was standing at her feet, hunched over on his knees and panting; she whispered "poor little guy" to herself and lifted up her foot with the purpose of putting him out of his misery. He jumped and screamed and waved his arms in protest, and she——whether out of mercy or pity she did not know——relented and placed her foot alongside him. He pointed at her water bottle, and once she realized what he meant she poured it over him and laughed. She lifted him up onto her palm and up to her face. Safe, hydrated, but wet and angry, he crossed his arms as she examined him. No bruises, no bumps. A toy in good condition: he might be good for something. He explained (for this was before his long oath of silence) that he'd agreed to be reduced so a friend could sneak him into the festival; poor guy couldn't afford a wristband. That friend had flaked on him, leaving him stranded and puny in the great, green expanse of Zilker Park--oh, what heartless giant could forsake him then? Farah, because she pittied him, and because she could think of more than a few good uses for a tiny man, agreed to take him through the festival and keep him safe; and, if he was lucky, he'd have a place to sleep that night: on a box of Kleenex by her bed.

"Okay okay, I like it so far," said Kenzie, "though it does beg the question of how he got so small. Like how did this flaky friend shrink him? And how small is he, anyway?"
"Hmm, I don't actually know. I was basically just improvising with his size. And as for the how of it, I guess I'm not familiar enough with the process. I mean, how do you do it?"
"Nuh uh, a magician never reveals her secrets! At least not until the grand finale."
"Okay, well, magic then. And the friend never came back, I guess."
"Or how about the friend tricked him! Hoping he'd get trampled in the park. And not even a friend, a girlfriend, trying to get rid of him."
"Ooh, I like that. Adds a bit more spice."
"Who would it be? Who'd he hook up with before you, Fair?"
"I think it was Marianne."
"Marinne, nice! How bout that Marianne, you tricked him into shrinking at the park, then abandoned him! Seems like something you'd do."
"Well," said Marianne, "it was better than our actual breakup, so sure."
"So, Marianne left him tiny and stranded at ACL, and then he met you, and then you..."
"Had a wonderful time at the festival. We saw Animal Collective, Foster the People, Ghostface had a solo set... oh, and Taylor Swift was there that year. I remember asking him if he wanted me to throw him up on stage. I was ready to do it. I had him balled up in my hand and ready to go, but I could feel his little feet kicking in fear so I decided not to. Then, once we got home..."

She put him to work, all night long. She kicked off her shoes, broke out the nail polish, and sat on the bed; she placed him on the floor, right beneath her toes. She was intent on being pampered. "I don't want a normal paint job, come on," she said, "I want some detail! Do a nice little pattern or something!" And of course, his artistic work was mediocre at best. She noted his subpar handiwork and caught his head between her toes. Then she kicked out her leg and gingerly tossed him with her feet into her hamper. "Where he would stay until I thought up something else."

And she did.

Intermittenly, she'd removed him from her pile of worn clothes and place him to work on this or that task. Fetch a sock from under the bed, she said. Here, take this needle and run it through that hole, you're hands are way smaller than mine, she said. Keep Phlegm, the hamster, company while I smoke outside. Hey, I'm about to take a shower, come with me and be my loofa, will ya? At one point, he was covered in dish soap and forced to crawl around the bottom of a stock pot; it was a far more effective way of cleaning every nook and cranny of the thing, and she didn't have to lift a finger.

"And, I'll be honest, girls, at this point, I wasn't really sure what he was good for," Farah said, "but then..."

He had been laying atop the pile in the hamper, utterly exhausted, when the light suddenly went out; a new set of clothes had fallen into the hamper and smothered him. After he crawled from underneath, he realized they were the clothes she'd been wearing the whole night. She instantly materialized over the top of his enclosure, fully naked and flashing a broad, terrifying grin. A tallow hand slithered down after him, and a few seconds later, he was standing on her bare stomach, staring through the valley of her breasts towards that mocking, radiant smile.

"Oh wow, didn't know you'd go there so quickly." said Kenzie.
"Well, I was just having a little fun."
"And what about him," asked Jasmine, more intrigued than she had been, "was he having fun?"
"Dont know, to be honest. What was it like for you, Kenz-" she stopped herself. She had almost forgotten the point of this exercise. "Actually, I don't know, because I don't care," she said with confidence, "he was just a toy. Whether he was having fun or not, wasn't my problem. Anyway, after I got let him have a good look at me..."

Her phone vibrated and she took it out and looked at it. There was silence for a few moments. "Yeah, then what?" asked Marianne.

"Yeah, yeah, I wanna know!" said Jasmine.

"Actually... if it's okay, I need to head out."

"What?" said the others in unison, "What's the deal, you were getting to the good part?" said Kenzie.

"Yeah, yeah, guess I was. It's just that my work... you know the law firm, they just told me they're putting me on some client's case? And it's kind of a bigshot case, and I didn't think I'd get it, and now I have to get a deposition the day after tomorrow and now I really need to-"

"Don't worry about, Fair. I could tell you were out of ideas anyway." Kenzie winked.

"Well, you know," she was packing up her things, "performative cruelty isn't really my thing. Not sober anyway. Though if you ever wanna send the little guy around while I'm smashed, I wouldn't say no."

"What about the competition? Don't you wanna be the one to take him home?" asked Jasmine, apparently appalled at Farah's sudden disinterest.

"To be honest, not really. I mean, thanks for putting this on Kenzie, and I'm not gonna lie, the longer I went on the more I could see myself enjoying having a little pet. But, you know, it would still be him? I'd prefer to keep him out of my life, frankly. Hope whoever gets him has fun, though. Bye girls! Keep in touch!" And she was gone, like the sun past the horizon. He was struck by how quickly, almost eagerly, she left, and by how little she seemed to care. He tried to draw up that memory once again, of the two of them in the car after that French movie he could not muster up the will to feign he enjoyed. That was, he speculated, the last genuine conversation they'd ever had, hostile as it was. Everything afterward was a long stagnation, filled with strained moments of quiet and perfunctory remarks. Something deeper than silence set in between them; it was almost a blessing when she finally broke it off. He tried to picture that memory again, that car, that argument. Only this time he was an insect: she stuffed him in the glove compartment and drove home, humming to herself the whole way. When she got home, she cast him into the kitchen garbage bin and forgot about him the next morning, and every morning after she forgot about him again, till the only thing resounding through his head was the buzzing of trapped flies.

"Well, shit. She was winning too. More for the rest of us, I guess. How should we split  her money?"" asked Jasmine.

"Usually," began Kenzie, "I'd take a handicap and let you two split it between yourself. But——and I hate to say this because I feel like we're becoming such good friends——we're in the end game now." She turned around to face them, "And I don't plan on losing!""