One second,
you were running with Will over the kitchen counter. Then, in a heartbeat,
everything went red.
The two of
you went back along the narrow strip by the sink, but this time you ran; there
was no time to slow down. Will accidentally stepped too close to the edge of
the sink, and his foot slipped. His arm shot out to grab you, and locked around
your bicep.
One second
the two of you were on the sink edge, next moment Will yanked you over and you
were plummeting, and then—squish.
You landed
on something soft, wet and round, before sliding off, into blood-red water.
Paddling and kicking, you managed to swim over to Will, who was wading nearby.
He was stained red all over. The two of you looked identical; crimson little
shapes bobbing in a sea of red.
Everything
smelled sweet, syrupy, fruity. Around you, big objects like red balls bobbed
about. They varied in size, from being the size of exercise balls, to being
slightly larger than you. The liquid wasn’t blood; the two of you had fallen into
a bowl of pitted cherries floating in deep red syrup. There were also some
raspberries and blueberries sprinkled around. You guessed it was for a dessert
or fruit salad.
Before you
could help yourself, you cupped your hands and drank some. You hadn’t eaten or
drunk anything in a while, and it tasted real good. Sweet. Curious, Will did
the same. You drank so much the two of you ended up full and your swimming got
sluggish. But the syrup was slightly thicker and stickier than water and your
lighter weight kept you buoyant.
The top of
a glass bowl encircled your heads, too high to climb. There was no way you
could get out. You’d have to wait until someone came. Realizing this, Will
groaned with exasperation. However, you
felt hopeful. Someone was bound to retrieve the cherries and they had to notice
you. And you had a good feeling it would be Courtney. She was going to rescue
you.
Trying to
relax and conserve your energy, you slowly started to feel a weird tingling all
through your body. Within minutes a feeling of coolness seemed to surge through
your veins and radiate throughout your entire body. A shiver went up your
spine. You recognized this feeling: it was the feeling of liquid being absorbed
into your body, like you were a tiny sponge, and the thick syrup was slowly
making you heavier.
Startled,
you tried squeezing your muscles to push the syrup out. Across from you, the
same was happening to Will.
“It’s getting
inside me!” he exclaimed, shocked. Forcing yourself to stay calm, you explained,
“We soak up
liquid now.”
Will
thought you were joking.
“How is
this possible?” he yelped.
You told
him to squeeze his muscles to strain it out.
“I’m
trying!” he said.
It was no
use; every time you managed to squeeze juice out, more got sucked into your
body. It was like trying to shovel water out of a sinking canoe. As your body continued to absorb the syrup,
you slowly turned a deep rich shade of red, like wine. Across from you, you
noticed the deep shade of red obscured Will’s features so his face was harder
to make out. It wasn’t just that; he was changing shape, becoming rounder.
The red liquid
flooded nonstop into your chest, head and stomach. You could feel it filling up
inside your lungs, inflating your stomach and even expanding inside your penis,
which gave you a huge, pounding erection.
Your entire circulatory system was buzzing with the sugar. It made you
heady. You let yourself sink in the syrup until just your head was barely on
the surface.
Your body
stretched and rounded out to contain all the vast masses of syrup pumping in.
There was nothing you could do but feel the liquid gradually fill out your tiny
body into a fat, featureless red sphere. The syrup was also stretching out of
Will’s form. He didn’t even have a head or arms or legs anymore; he was
perfectly spherical, and since he had no features it was difficult to make out
his face anymore. Which meant you looked the same.
The two of
you were starting to look no different than any of the cherries bobbing around
in the syrup. You couldn’t help but wonder what all these cherries were for.
Was it going into a blender to make a smoothie? Or be sprinkled onto some
yoghurt or cereal? Or be put on top of a cake? Or baked in a cherry pie? Or be
made into cherry glaze and spread over spare ribs?
Also who
were they for? You’d never seen Jake eat cherries. You asked Will if Courtney
liked them. He just said:
“Don’t
think about it too hard. It’s past lunchtime, so probably no one is eating any
time soon.”
“How do we
get out of here?” you indicated the vertical walls of the bowl over your head.
Then
someone entered the kitchen. You both went quiet.
It was
Jake. He stopped by the fridge and peered inside, shuffling some items around.
“Hey, the
punch you made is still here, Court,” he called out in surprise. “You forget to
take it to your work function on Thursday night?”
“No,”
Courtney called back. “It’s extra. I accidentally made a little too much.”
Kayla
perked up.
“Ooh, what
kind?”
A smile
crept into Courtney’s voice.
“It’s not exactly
a prom night punch.”
“Well, I
skipped prom,” Lara shot back.
“What
happened to your diet?”
“It starts
when I say it does.”
“There’s no
more room in the fridge,” Jake went on, bending over to search deeper in the
fridge, “unless you take out the rest of the cake.”
“Oh, no,”
Courtney jumped in, “that’s a keeper. There’s at least another couple of servings,
and it’s a good one.”
Jake said:
“Well, then
it’s showdown. This fridge is too small for the both of us. Who are you rooting
for, Court? Loser goes.”
“I hate to
just toss anything out.”
“Choose one.
Anything.”
“I don’t
think so.” She thought for a moment, then relented: “The cake is mine.”
“Fine. I’ll
have some punch.”
“Wait a
minute. It’s bitter right now. When I said I accidentally made extra, what I
really meant was I screwed up the first one. It needs to be sweetened a little. And then
maybe I’ll have a glass, too.”
Jake shut
the fridge door.
“Some fruit
should do the trick.”
As he said
this, he loomed over the sink and eyed you. “On second thought, keep the punch.
I’ll just eat up some of these tasty-looking little cherries.”
Courtney
then entered the kitchen behind him, and suddenly you were staring up at her
face as she leaned over the sink. The husband and wife, giant-like, both
scrutinized you dispassionately, and you felt like an insect that had fallen
into the soup. But worse than that, they thought you belonged in the soup.
Courtney gave you a quick inspection, and finding nothing amiss, lifted the
bowl from the sink.
“Let me put
them into the punch first, then you can have all the leftover fruit you want.”
Cherries
bounced around like big red beach balls as you were carried onto the kitchen
counter, saving you and Will from an imminent tour of Jake’s digestive system. You
were overcome with a big wave of relief. Jake stood back and was now feasting on a bag
of potato chips. You really didn’t want to spent your evening swishing around
the rumbling ocean of Jake’s gut anyway, buried up to your neck in chomped up
potato chips.
Courtney
took the punch out of the fridge and put it on the counter next to the sink.
Then she began catching the cherries in a ladle and dropping them into the
punch. Obliviously she also scooped you and Will up and dropped you into the
wider red lake of punch, losing you in a forest of sliced strawberries,
raspberries, and cherries.
Jake
suggested:
“The juice will
make it sweeter, too.”
“Guess it
can’t hurt,” Courtney said.
You held
your breath as a heavy shower of cherry syrup poured over your head. Anxiously,
you tried to locate Will, amidst this red shower but he was now practically
indistinguishable from a cherry, and it wasn’t clear which one he was. He
probably thought the same about you.
A spoon
hovered over your head and parted the punch. In wonder, you watched it scoop up
a teaspoon size and then disappear between Courtney’s parted lips. Just earlier
a spoon like that had been your head.
“The juice
worked,” Courtney sounded delighted, “Problem solved.”
Jake said
through a mouthful of chips:
“Except not
really. You just doubled the punch without creating any more room in the
fridge.”
Courtney
called out to the teens in the next room:
“I fixed
the punch! You girls are welcome to take some before you go.”
From the
living room, the girls chorused eagerly. Courtney looked back at Jake with
satisfaction.
“There. Like
I said, problem solved.”
You watched
as Courtney’s face again appeared over the rim of the punch bowl. She was so
big to you she blocked out most of the ceiling.
You tried
to yell out for her but punch rushed into your open mouth and filled you up,
causing you to sink slightly, until more punch lapped at your face and
everything became red. You pushed to the surface again, and with a spike of
alarm, you watched the giant ladle pour in and out of the punch bowl,
subtracting a scoop each time, and pieces of fruit. A couple of times it bumped
into you, pushing you aside to collect some red liquid and then depart again. Courtney
watched you calmly, but also barely you paid you much notice. You tried to
imagine what was worse; ending up in Jake’s potato chip-filled stomach, or Courtney’s
stomach, filled with coffee and cake.
As you
bobbed to surface again, you caught her say to Jake:
“My aunt’s
going to be here soon to pick up Lara, but someone needs to take Kayla home.
She lives across town.”
“I’ll do
it,” said Jake.
The ladle
dove back into the punch, making a broad scooping motion for you, and this time
you were pulled into its cup and lifted into the air.
Courtney, it’s me! you thought desperately. You were firm and
full up with syrup juice, it was like your throat was swollen and you couldn’t
speak. As the ladle lifted, you accidentally poured out and landed in the punch
again, bouncing a little on the surface.
It suddenly
occurred to you that no matter what, you were getting drunk, today, tomorrow,
or the next day, unless you could tell someone you were there. You would end up
in someone’s stomach, even if it
wasn’t Jake. This caused your heart to race. Since you were perfectly round,
you couldn’t swim, or even move much, except tilt. You were totally at the
mercy of whatever direction the syrup was flowing in, like a cork bobbing in
the ocean.
“Did you
show them the photo book?” Courtney murmured, looking up briefly at Jake, who
was somewhere beyond the rim of the punch bowl, again crunching on the chips.
“Yeah,” he
replied vaguely. “Lara seemed to like it. She didn’t say it, but I think she
did.”
Courtney’s
voice piqued with interest:
“Were you
joking earlier? –She liked Fuzz back then?”
He
shrugged.
“Heh. Little
girl crush kind of thing,” he said indifferently. “That strange?”
“She was
only seven you know. Very mature taste for a seven year old. But I guess she’s
always kind of—”
“I think
she still does.”
“Oh, Jake,”
she said. “You just don’t get girl crushes. They’re…silly. You always want the
one you can’t have. That’s all.”
“That
explains why Sarah left. I was too available.”
Folding her
arms, she considered him with a lifted eyebrow.
“You weren’t
with her that long. I mean, not when
she was a little girl.”
“If we’re
remembering ten years ago;” he added, “ten years ago I was with Sarah.”
After a
moment he asked:
“You were
single.”
“It…It’s
not that simple. Well,” she thought aloud, “It seemed simple. It seemed really
obvious. And then the boys went missing it complicated itself.”
“You did
like Fuzz though.”
Courtney
paused. Surveying her calmly, Jake said:
“I can
tell.”
“Really?”
“Loud and
clear. Courtney, I knew the moment you told me about your twelfth birthday. You
were praying for him to kiss you, and when he did, you thought you’d pass out.”
“No, no,”
she giggled, suddenly sounding like her twenty-two year old self again, “I just
meant…oh, you’re right. Why the hell did I tell you that?”
“It must be
a thing with you Rugger girls, you get the Fuzzies going way back.”
Courtney
folded her arms and shook her head.
“If you say
so,” she said. She seemed to want to get off the subject. “By the way, I looked
up those Lost Boys kids again. I didn’t realize there were updates since they
were found. The reports about them being ten years younger seem, I don’t know, credible.”
Jake
thought about this.
“Yeah? What
about the flipside?”
“What’s
that?” she asked.
“They ran
away and lived some secret double lives without telling anyone “That’s what I’m thinking happened.”
“If that’s
true,” Courtney murmured, as she stirred you around with the ladle, “what made
them come back?”