There was a
noise like someone tearing a newspaper in two and light burst onto your eyelids.
Next second something huge caught you in its grip, shading out your vision
again, and the pressure was like someone lying on you in bed.
The face of
a man peered in, impossibly big, like the face of a giant from a movie. It took
you an extra instant to realize who you were looking at. His
hairstyle was different, neater, and there were other little differences. But
after a couple of seconds you knew for certain who it was.
It was your
best friend, Jake.
He had
picked you up out of the envelope and now you were safely crammed between his
pointer and thumb, as he stared at you, apparently perplexed. You were barely
able to notice he had a different haircut for some reason. His face was more
filled out, too, in a way that couldn’t be weight gain. His face was more
angled, less boyish.
Nothing
made sense, and the pressure on you was so great, you couldn’t open your lungs
so you could speak. Your chest and throat were basically flattened, making you
mute. The pressure of his grasp made you so dense you felt like a wad of clay
that had hardened.
When you
tried to speak, your throat was compressed into practically paper and no sound
came out.
In no hurry
to put you down, Jake took his time surveying you with vague interest. Then you
were whirled around so abruptly the world became a blur and you lost track of
which way was up and down. Jake had just began to roll you back and forth. He
rolled you one way, then steadied you with his thumb, and rolled you the other
way. The firm pressure of his thumb kneaded its way into you, gradually
smoothing you even rounder.
As he
contemplated what kind of tiny object he was inspecting, Jake seemed determined
to keep doing this until he’d contoured you perfectly spherical. With your arms
and legs pressed into your body, you couldn’t move or squirm. He gave you an
unthinking squeeze, flattening you out of shape, and then rolled you for
several more minutes, until you were returned to being round.
Losing
interest, Jake put you down on a tabletop surface. You radiated in warmth from
the friction and contact of his thumb and fingerpad. Your skin was pink and
tingled from all the rubbing and rolling.
Meanwhile,
Jake’s gargantuan hand swept back over to the opened envelope on the table, and
this time fished Will out, only to subject him to a round of puzzled scrutiny
as well. Will was also squeezed and re-shaped into a ball.
Then a phone
rang from across the room.
Jake quickly
placed Will down next to you, and swept around as he jumped to his feet. His
arm came crashing into you headlong, and like you weighed absolutely nothing,
you were brushed clean off the table. Suddenly
you were flying through the air. In freefall, you got a quick glimpse of an expanse living room, with a window showing the night sky. You guessed you had fallen asleep inside his mailbox, and now Jake had only just collected the mail at the end of the day. It had to be late, but the way the house was lit up inside, and the fact Jake was still in his day clothes, it probably wasn’t that late. Then you hit the carpet. Your soft,
light form cushioned the impact, bouncing harmlessly on the carpet fibers.
While you flicked
on the floor, Jake got to his feet and moved like a storm across the room,
sweeping you with a flow of air and quaking you with his mighty footfalls. You
wondered if he’d accidentally step on you, but his motion departed across the
room, to the door. In a couple of long strides, he was gone. You felt relief
deep in your chest.
Suddenly,
Will dropped from the sky onto the carpet at your side. He must have rolled
off the table after you. Only problem was, he didn’t look like Will anymore. He looked
like a ball with a face. Staring at him, you realized with a strange feeling,
you must look the same. As Jake’s
thumb had patiently worked you, he had accidentally smoothed your features so
much that you didn’t even look like a person, or doll anymore. Now you looked
even more like a kid’s toy than before.
That was
bad. If you didn’t look like you, no one would recognize you. Not Jake or Ash,
or Courtney, or even your own parents. Will's voice jarred you:
“This way,” he said, waiting you to follow him.
You both
were at ground level in a humungous living room, surrounded on all sides by a
rug the size of a meadow that seemed to stretch away in all directions.
Furniture rose up around you like cliff faces. You had no chance of climbing
anything, so your only option was to move along the floor. Will was
already rolling away, and called back to you. You worked to roll your body
after him. It was like doing somersaults at first, before you got some momentum
up and it became easier. Your body quickly adapted to rolling and it became
almost as automatic as walking.
Slowly
making a path across the living room rug, Will led you towards the closest
wall. However, the rug fibers were like thick grass at your size, and slowed
you down. Will was speedier than you, as always; it was like the charity run
all over again. Any moment it felt like Jake would return, and you were placed
to get stepped on. Many times
your tiny hands and feet got tangled up in the fibers and you had to stop and
free yourself. The whole time you looked around, worried that Jake was going to
re-enter the room and and you were so exposed there was no way you could avoid
meeting the underside of his shoe.
But the
room stayed clear. From another room, indistinctly, you could hear Jake talking
on the phone. Across the
room you noticed something on the floor, near the doorway. A shoe rack against
the wall. One pair of worn trainers that probably belonged to Jake, each shoe
like a parked truck compared to you. There was also a light pair of feminine
sandals, also worn; like they must have been there a while.
You paused
to stare at the shoes. Did a woman live here, too? You hadn’t
considered that Jake had a housemate. Sensing
Jake could walk in any moment, you were drawn towards the shoes. Given that you
and Will were the size of walnuts, each shoe was big enough for you to enter
and hide inside. The only risk was, if you managed to climb inside, you might
not be able to easily get out again.
“Will!” you
called out to get your friend’s attention. But he had nearly made it to the
other side of the room. He just shook his head and gestured impatiently for you
to keep going.
After
several minutes more of rolling you managed to fight your way over to the window-side
wall, where you both slipped behind the curtain, which seemed to stretch
unimaginably up into the sky. The ceiling was so high above it practically was
as remote as the sky to you; you half expected to see birds circling up around
the ceiling lights.
Will was waiting for you. You made an
effort to look calm and feel grateful your friend would wait for you, but deep
down you were becoming slightly unnerved. If someone saw you, would Will wait
then? It was like that old joke: ‘If you and your friend are being chased by a
bear, you don’t need to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster
than your friend.’
Will was
faster than you.
“You see how huge Jake is?!” Will exclaimed. “What does he think we are? He grabbed us like we’re
grapes or something.”
You pushed
your discomfort away, and said:
“We need to
tell him it’s us. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t.”
“That’s not
going to work,” Will shook his head. “I already tried. Yelled out and he still didn’t hear me. We must have pipsqueak voices.”
Crestfallen,
you thought hard to come up with a new idea. Since he’d
had a chance to stop and think, Will was already a step ahead of you. He said:
“We need to
send him a message.” In ball form, he shifted on the spot. A shrug. “It worked
for that college guy.”
You scanned
the room, which took an extended moment since it was so big. Other than the
rug, shoe shelf, and a welcome mat, there was nothing lying on the ground
within reach, no drawing tools.
And there
was another problem. When you wrote the college guy a message, you had working
arms to hold the pen. Now the two of you were basically smooth balls of putty, even
if you found a pen, you couldn’t do much except roll around.
And something
else had snagged in the back of your brain. In the grand scheme of things, it
was a trivial observation, but damn it, it wouldn’t go away. You said slowly:
“Jake looks
different.”
“You think so,
Fuzz?” Will replied, deadpan. “I noticed that too. He seems a lot bigger now.”
“He has a
different haircut,” you persisted. “And his face looks different. His jawline,
I think. Like he’s lost some weight.”
Although
Jake hadn’t been exactly fat before, but his overall face shape was undeniably
different. Harder somehow.
“And gained
a lot more weight on his body,” Will
butted in. “A hundred tons.”
“I’m
serious, Will,” you insisted. “Something’s really weird, and it’s not just
Jake. Listen,” you went on, “has it only been a day since the race? Because,
what if we were knocked for a while, and the race was actually a week
ago?”
Will had a
disinterested look, but there was a shadow of concern underneath as he weighed
your words.
“We
couldn’t be knocked out for that long. We’d be starving.”
“We haven’t
eaten or drunk anything, but we don’t need to,” you reminded him. “You said so.”
Will looked
genuinely startled now. You both
realized something at the same time. If it was true that, in your new form, you
didn’t need to eat or drink to stay alive, it raised a very concerning
possibility. You had no reliable biological indicator for how much time had
passed. If you didn’t get hungry or thirsty, how could you know how much time
had passed since you last ate or drank? There had
to be something you could use, other non-biological indicators of time. But the
only ones you had noticed made no sense. There was a strange pattern going on,
and it had something to do with when you woke up small.
For
instance, the weather had been bright and mild during the race, but when you
woke up it rained beneath an overcast sky. Then when you found Will’s pants and
phone, they were damaged. Now Jake was different, too. You remembered when Jake
moved away to the other side of the country for a couple of years, and you
hadn’t seen him in ages. When he came back and you caught up, he looked
slightly different, but not in a radical way. He had gained a little weight
from drinking and an uneven tan from being a warmer climate. It was a little
startling at first but you soon got used to it.
It was like
that now; like you were seeing him again for the first time in a couple of
years. But it wasn’t just weight. Jake’s face, his brow, jawline, was less
boyish and more mature. His eyes were more serious and grounded. His hair was
shorter and neater. His build was leaner and he even moved a little
differently, with better posture. You saw
Jake only a day ago and he didn’t look like this. He looked and acted, and was,
22. Apart from getting a new haircut, he couldn’t change into this man in 24 hours. A weird thought;
but you had to keep reminding yourself Jake didn’t have an older brother.
Meanwhile,
you didn’t notice the sound of Jake’s resonant voice getting louder and closer,
until he re-appeared in the living room, first as trembling quakes through the carpet before his
towering shape followed. His shadow was bigger than a blue whale. Loud, heavy
footsteps rumbled over the floor as his enormous shape passed through the room
like a tsunami. Will and you instinctively pressed yourselves against the wall,
although you were both well out of Jake’s path. He was still on the phone and the
low resonant timbre of his voice thrummed the air like a truck engine as he
paced around the living room.
“—no need
to rush, hon. This works out fine actually. I said I’m making something…Yes!
…Guess you’ll have to see…Don’t bother…I promise… Okay. See you soon…”
Jake didn’t
stop moving. Once he had left the room and his voice cleared the airways, Will
turned to you.
“Is that his girlfriend?” He looked dubious. “Didn’t he split from Katelyn just yesterday?”
Katelyn was Jake’s ex-girlfriend. You weren’t half as
surprised as Will at this since you’d already seen the female shoes across the
room, and put two and two together.
Will scoffed:
“I thought they drew a line and it stayed that way.”
You weren’t
sure why he was so surprised since his own girlfriend Ash was pretty forgiving herself, having episodically split up with Will only so many
times before.
“I think
Katelyn lives here, too,” you said, peering out from the curtain to spy the
shoe shelf. “Look over there.”
“I knew
this place was too big for one person,” Will remarked.
You had to
agree; it was big and homely. Jake
didn’t just crash here each night, he lived here, was settled here, and with space
enough for someone else. Which was impossible, because as far as you were
aware, Jake had only just moved here, and he’d only been back with Katelyn for
one day, or less.
Will’s gaze fell on the feminine sandals, and he got an odd look. His face blanched.
But for a moment he said nothing.
You looked at him, puzzled. True, the
shoes were all shockingly big, but they weren’t any bigger than anything else
in the room. And if Jake was back with his girlfriend in whirlwind time, it
wasn’t really that unbelievable, he was friendly and likeable enough.
“What?” you
asked.
Will turned
away.
“It’s
nothing,” he said. “I guess a lot of girls must like that type of shoe.”
You glanced
again at the shoes; a strappy, delicate, very exposing, slightly heeled pair of
sandals that were not made for just any day at the beach or in the park.
“I don’t
think those are ‘girls’ shoes,” you pointed out. “They're 'womens' shoes." Katelyn evidently had a mature, sexy preference for sophisticated female footwear, compared to a typical teenager's trendy love of keds, ballet style slip-ons, and ugg boots.
Now there were
sounds coming from the kitchen. Jake was opening drawers and rummaging for
things. It was close to dinner time, you realized.
Within a
moment, light flashed past the living room window from an outside car that had
swept in under the carport, and stopped. Jake’s other half had arrived home.
Slowly and
indelibly your confusion was mounting. The sense that something was wrong with the scene was like a persistent thorn in your side. It was like you’d come back
to the living room after a bathroom break and found the movie playing on your TV
had accidentally unpaused itself. Somewhere, in a blink, a whole chapter had
vanished. You could feel it. Jake had
moved, resumed dating, lost weight, gained weight, changed shape, and settled. When had this all happened?
“This could
work." Will 's voice had shifted to cautious optimism. “Another person around means we have
an extra shot to tell someone we’re here.”
“Maybe,”
you said, trying to sound hopeful.
Will’s
voice: you never noticed it before, but he sounded…young. And so did you. You
had the crackly unsmooth voices of kids just stepping into being adults. And
Jake did not.
From down the hall, the front
door opened and shut. Then footsteps growing down the hall, closer, and
different to Jake’s. They didn’t pound, they clapped sharply but carefully. Feminine shoes. You
felt each clap in your head. It gave you a headache.
You and
Will remained at the wall, behind the curtain. You had a great view to watch
the visitor without them seeing you, and hoped it was a friendly face. A female
voice echoed through the hallway:
“Jake?”
She wasn’t
yelling but her voice resonated through you like a steam train horn. Jake
replied:
“In the
kitchen.”
A
pause.
“You didn’t
go bowling?” the woman said. She was putting her things away.
“Not
tonight.”
—and then
she appeared.
At your
height she was a pair of dark leather heels at first, and much higher, a woman, achingly
beautiful, svelte and leggy, with luscious smooth skin.
Totally
blank, you just stared. You’d seen beautiful women before, but never on titanic
scale. Never so big she could squash you with one toe of her perfect feet. Suddenly
you were more aware of your tiny size than ever before, your incredible fragility and softness, and puniness, like if she even brushed her finger on
you, you would melt or burst like a bubble. The thought of just being touched
by her made your heart race. In the back of your mind you wondered what it
would be like if she picked you up and put you against her lips. Your brain
reeled and your balls tightened just realizing the stark reality of her size,
and yours. Her form was a geological event; a stunning hotel with space to fit
you.
She took
such large strides across the living room floor that you barely got a good look
at her. But enough to know she was sublime. Beside you,
Will had gone into silent shock as well. Only, you sensed it was a different
kind of shock. Then he snapped out of it.
“Oh, shit,”
he said, half amazed, half dismayed.
The woman
paused, gazing around as if searching for something. She stopped. You held your
breath.
“What is that?” she said.
There was a
steamy aroma passing through the room now. Jake’s reply echoed from across the
house.
“Bourguignon.
Just a few more minutes.”
The woman
stopped by the shoe shelf and began to slide her heels off, one by one, placing them alongside the feminine sandals.
“Really? When
did you get it started? 'Cause if it's a chuck steak you need to keep it on 'til it's practically radioactive."
“I had
plenty of time. Plenty of time. You just get in? –which way you come home?” he inquired
conversationally.
She looked
briefly distracted about something, then it passed.
“Oh, the regular
way.”
“Traffic
didn’t look so nice when I was passing through. And I got off early.”
Her reply
bubbled up as if by accident:
“So weird.”
“What?”
“I'm in a mood. Nothing.
Tell you later, maybe.” She gave a small sigh. “Huh. The regular way might become the 'never again' way in future. You know traffic sucks when
your audiobook says ‘thank you for listening to this audiobook’ and the
gridlock still hasn’t moved.”
He stopped
humming and replied:
“Well, that
sounds…terrible.”
“Gee, Jake.
You’re supposed to say…oh, never mind.”
The woman
looked like she was going to head into the kitchen, but at the doorway, looked
in without entering.
“Can you keep
it warm for me? I’m going to change.”
“Go ahead.”
Without
another word, the woman went back out of the living room. Without the ‘serious
business’ pumps, her footsteps were gentler, but still sent little shakes
through your soft form, even across the room. You felt like a speck of dust
being rattled by her sheer presence. These shakes died away as she carried on
down the hall.
Will
shifted on the spot at your side. You could almost sense his brain going back
and forth, before he finally said, incredulous:
“Fuzz. It’s
my sister.”