“So, that’s it,” Oscar said, pacing back and forth through the living room. “We’re all going to shrink?”

“Years of school, college, building toward our future, all of it for nothing,” Elias muttered from the couch, where he sat in his sunken posture, arms crossed, leaning atop his knees, while he stared at a floor, he imagined could soon be his entire world. “Our lives are over. Our only career path now is talking insects.”

Beside him Jade and Theo sat in complete silence, contemplating their fate.

Robin sat across from her friends, in a chair she had pulled up from the dinner table. She wasn’t sure how to bring it up without it coming across as insensitive. She felt like she’d just be rubbing it in, but she had to show them somehow. She brushed the right side of her loose open plaid shirt aside, and grabbed the bottom of the t-shirt underneath, raising it to present the mark on the side of her stomach to the rest of the group.

It looked not unlike a regular tattoo, four inches across. The shape of three crescent moons in a row, the middle one mirrored towards the other two, its tips halfway into their curves. All of her friends had a mark just like it somewhere on their bodies, the only difference was that hers was black, while theirs was purple.

“You’re immune,” Jade said.

All Robin could do was nod, keeping her head well between her shoulders.

“Why you?!” Oscar said, causing Theo to shoot him a dirty look.

The question hit her like lightning to the heart. She’d been wondering the exact same thing. Of all of her friends, why did she deserve to be spared?

Why not Jade, the steely-eyed, black-haired metal fanatic, whose grim appearance contrasted a much more happy and peppy personality. She had a love for books, and dreams of running a spookier alternative version of a cozy little café. Her friend circle stretched far beyond the bounds of just this little group, and she would have so many more people who’d miss her.

Or Elias for that matter, the tech wizard with tired, dark blue eyes behind square glasses, his white bleached shaggy hair often covering half his face. He was an absolute genius, the type who’d likely go on to do big things in the tech world, if he had gotten to finish his studies.

While Oscar could be a jerk, he was just as much of a prodigy as Elias, just more brawn than brains. His entire future career as a professional football player had just been snatched by the cruelty of this indifferent universe. A tall muscular jock with dark brown eyes, a coily dark-haired fade and closely trimmed beard, everything that made a guy like him what he was, was about to be reduced to nothing.

Then there was Theo, the sweetest friend anyone could ask for. Unkempt sandy brown hair and innocent hazel eyes. He might not have had big plans, or a crazy career laid out in front of him, but he had this aura of safety around him. An awkward golden retriever, whom Robin imagined could’ve been a great husband and father to someone, living the happy suburban life which she could never imagine herself in.

He was short enough as he was. The thought of Theo shrinking down to a height of only two inches, becoming weak, scared and vulnerable. It was horrible, unfair. Yet, as those angry hazel eyes turned away from Oscar, shifting back to weak uncertainty as he looked at her, Robin felt a rush at the thought of it.

Compared to her friends, why would the glow spare quiet and creepy Robin? The weird bisexual ginger in oversized clothes that almost resembled rags; plaid shirts worn like robes, over loose men’s t-shirts, baggy pants, and canvas sneakers, which looked worn, dirty and even ended up with some holes, weeks into buying them.

Her dark brown eyes had a tendency to look pitch black, adding to the soulless attribute people would jokingly ascribe to her sleek, straight, shoulder-length copper hair, and freckled complexion.

Unlike her friends, Robin didn’t have much of a future or any positive qualities she could list for herself. While her friends were still building up to their life, she had already dropped out of college, and made a full-time job out of the part-time job she worked at the local fast-food joint. What was meant to pay for her studies, now paid for her crappy apartment.

While she was slightly more subdued now, her problematic youth was filled with therapy sessions and a stint in juvenile detention. All throughout she’d get in fights, often ones where she was the only combatant, which is another way of saying she just beat on other kids in her class. In early kindergarten she was banned from arts and craft classes, because of what she’d try to pull if someone gave her scissors.

Throughout her high school years, she figured out how to blend in better, and while she never shared anything of her past with the friends she made in college, there were signs of it even now.

She had a reputation for being the female version of a ‘Kyle’ stereotype; chugging down energy drinks and punching holes in drywall. If there was ever any trouble while she was out with her friends, Robin was often the first one to throw hands, usually relying on Oscar to either back her up, or on Theo to diffuse things. At any given time, it would be rare to see Robin without at least one cut or bruise somewhere on her body.

Her friends loved her all the same. They saw her as the endearing tomboy mess with a protective streak, rather than seeing the hints at her underlying issues.

So, why her?

“I don’t know,” she said, almost sounding apologetic that she wouldn’t be joining them.

“What about Simon and Elena?” Jade said.

Simon and Elena were the only two missing members of the group that was present when the purple glow flashed everyone outside the local pub two days before.

The Omen Glow, people called it. It always happened at random, without warning, without any way of predicting where or when it would strike. Anyone within the bounds of a flash would get a mark. The phenomenon started three years prior, and there was no science that could explain it, or revert its effects.

If you weren’t one of the rare lucky ones to have your mark appear black, then at some point, throughout the following two weeks, you, and strangely enough, every article of clothing you’d be wearing, would shrink down instantly, till you’d be at a height of only two inches.

Elias sat up and used the knuckle of his thumb to push his glasses back in place, “Both their marks are purple. Simon decided to go home and wait it out at his parents’ house. Elena already got her family to pay for her stay at a care facility.”

Jade brushed her palms across her thighs, “Do you think we should do the same?”

“Nah, no way,” Oscar bellowed, “I ain’t staying with my old man at that size.”

Jade sucked in her lips, before making a popping sound, “I guess same here. Finally got away from my toxic parents. Can’t cope with the idea that I’d have to go back and be that reliant on them for the rest of my bug life.”

“There is also this strange intimacy to the idea of someone handling you that closely at that size,” Elias said. “Not to sound weird, but you guys know what I mean, right? I wouldn’t want to interact with the giant body of a family member like that.”

“I guess Simon didn’t mind,” Robin said.

Oscar chuckled, “Yeah, but Simon’s always been a creep when it came to his sister.”

Pretty much the entire room turned to Oscar with a look of disbelief. Jade gave him a scoff that bordered on sounding like a gag, to which the guy simply raised his hands in smirking defense.

“Hey, just saying. He might be the only one of us actually getting some enjoyment outta all this.”

The entire group exclaimed their disgust in gasps and wretches.

“I don’t wanna go to one of the facilities either,” Theo said. “I’ve seen videos. It all looks so cold, so clinical. Even if you’d be able to pay for it, why would you wanna spend the rest of your life under that depressing fluorescent light?”

“Then what do we do?” Jade said. “We’d still need someone looking after us, keeping us safe. With the poor enforcement of human rights when it comes to tinies, we can’t just go it alone.”

Jade was right, tinies who didn’t have some sort of guardian were living dangerously, often scavenging to survive and running underfoot. Robin had first hand experience with that herself. While not intentional, she had put her foot down on a shrunken customer, while carrying an order to one of the tables.

She tempered any guilt she was even capable of feeling; by telling herself it was an accident, and that it was the guy’s own fault for running across the open floor. The way she reacted right after however, wasn’t normal. The way she felt about the feeling of the man crunching under her sneaker… it wasn’t right.

There wasn’t any legal action that could be taken for the incident however. While tinies technically had all the same human rights as regular sized people, there was one change made to prevent countless people from going to prison over accidental tiny deaths. All cases of manslaughter involving a tiny victim were decriminalized. This meant that unless malicious intent could be proven in a court of law, there were no consequences to snuffing out a tiny’s life.

This cold double standard resulted in a society of people that didn’t bother looking where their feet landed, nor did anyone put in the extra care to check if there were any shrunken people in their vicinity. Those that did were considered pretentious holier-than-thou activists.

It also meant that people with intent could get away with it, if they managed to play it off as an accident. Outside of public view, who knows what goes on behind closed doors.

In most cases tinies simply went missing. They could easily be snatched up by strangers, or the smudges they became were unidentifiable. A two-inch-tall body simply disappears more easily than a full size one.

As Robin looked at Jade, she pictured what it would be like. To see her try and make it on her own, running along the side of a building. So pathetic. So slow. All Robin would need is an opening to pretend it was an accident. Perhaps the short stretch the tiny girl would have to run between both corners of an alleyway. Robin could simply pretend to walk into the alley and blindly aim her foot to try and get that satisfying crunchy feeling of her own friend turning to paste beneath her weight.

As the daydream faded, Robin realized everyone in the room was looking at her. Had the rest of them somehow noticed what she was thinking about? Did she unconsciously make a wicked expression for all to see?

“Well, what do you think?” Jade said.

“Huh?”

Theo’s lips curled in an awkward smile, “Being a caretaker.”

“Doesn’t seem like a bad idea,” Elias said.

Oscar snickered, “Oh, does Robin fit the bill as someone whose giant body you could get intimately close to, Elias.”

Elias tried to ignore him, but both Oscar and Robin could see his face turn red.

“Hell, I guess I’d be ok with it being Robin,” Oscar said, followed by an annoyed sigh, as he checked his own muscular arms, making it clear he wasn’t eager to be put in that role. As someone lesser. As someone not in control.

“I’d feel comfortable with you,” Theo said.

“Seems like my best option,” Jade followed up.

Robin’s heart sank. It was not a good idea. They shouldn’t be ok with it. They shouldn’t feel comfortable with her having that power over them. It was not their best option.

Her friends looked at her, eyes full of trust, unaware of what really went on in her head, day in and day out. They hadn’t the slightest clue of what she was really like, what she had always been like. The grumpy quiet and aggressive tomboy they knew was only the tip of a dark, cold-hearted iceberg underneath, the part she kept drowned deep within an ocean of madness.

“N-No,” Robin said, “I’m not safe…”

“I know it’s asking a lot,” Jade said, “but you’re more capable than you think. I know you. You always think you’re gonna screw things up, but you always come through when it’s your friends. I’ve seen that more than once.”

They were misunderstanding, Robin wasn’t expressing insecurity at her capabilities, she was warning them; don’t do this; don’t trust me; I’m not safe. If anything, they should be getting as far away from her as they could.

“What would you all do, until it happens? Just live in my shitty little apartment at regular size with four people,” Robin said, frantically trying to find any argument to push them away.

“It would only be like that for a week or more,” Elias said. “It’s gonna get less crowded each time one of us ends up— small.”

Theo’s puppy eyes locked with hers, “Please.”

The look on his face reminded her of Captain Peanut, the beloved gerbil her little brother had when they were kids. It was the exact same expression the little critter had, as he put both of his little front paws against the transparent plastic on the inside of her mother’s blender. This innocent look that struck her so deep in her stone-cold heart, she couldn’t help but feel bad for him.

Deep down Robin knew she cared enough not to leave them to a fate they didn’t want. To them, she was the least off-putting version of the nightmare that awaited them. These were her friends, not some strangers, like the ones she took pleasure watching come to a grim end in the many videos posted online. She wouldn’t hurt her friends, would she? Maybe the urges and fantasies didn’t have that much of a hold on her.

Her fists grasped both bottom flaps of her plaid shirt, and she looked down at them. These hands, these instruments of whim; could they be caring to people that small?

“Ok, if you guys are sure,” Robin said, causing everyone but her to breathe a sigh of relief.

Theo smiled. Jade stared off through the window, lost in thought. Elias nodded to himself, still analyzing the situation in his head, while Oscar stopped his pacing and sat down on the couch’s armrest.

“You’re gonna do fine,” Jade said.

“Yeah, I’ll keep you guys safe,” Robin said, as the roaring sound of a blender springing to life echoed through her mind.

#2 - In Memoriam

He should’ve said something. He should have told his wife by now, but he was sure he would have more time than this. People went on about how it could take up to two weeks for the effects of the mark to kick in, yet here he was, after only four days, at a height of only two inches, cowering atop the cushioned bench at the local burger joint.

It wasn’t like Dave had been awaiting his eventual diminishment carelessly. He had spent the last few days pretty much magnetized to his wife Janice, just in case. Of course, it was just his luck that he shrunk the moment she went to the restroom.

When she came back, she looked around the room for her regular-sized husband, before sitting down in the chair across from him. She scrolled through her phone, waiting for her partner, who she assumed had gone to the restroom right after her. Dave was left with a humbling view of the world under the table.

Across from the cliffside end of his bench towered a pair of jean-clad lower legs, reaching up to the now massive thick thighs of the woman he had chosen to spend the rest of his life with. It had been years since he had felt this much reverence for them.

They were only in their early forties, yet their marriage had reached the stereotypical tired detachment of an old boomer couple. They had both realized their legal binding to each other was more so out of insecurity than any actual deeper form of love, and it had been that same insecurity that had hitherto kept them from divorce.

They’d fight, complain, and always wanted the exact opposite. It was this very same love-hate dynamic that made David worry about telling his wife. How could he open up about an impending powerlessness with a woman he could scarcely find agreement with? How would she even treat him once she had full control in their relationship?

He had no choice anymore, he had to call out to her now, but he was too little, too late. Try as he might, she couldn’t hear him.

After about twenty minutes Janice got up again, heading for the men’s room and calling his name. After not getting a response there, Dave could see her legs walk up to the legs of a young service worker, who wore baggy jeans, covered in front by a black apron. She was likely asking the girl if she’d seen him, even pulled out her phone to show her pictures.

His wife stormed back in his direction, marching past their table, as she walked towards the exit. He shouldn’t have stood so close to the side-edge of the bench, as the sudden gust of her quick movement created enough wind to knock him off the seat.

Sent into a freefall, he screamed, as the floor rushed towards him. He hit the ground with less force than he expected, due to his reduced mass slowing the fall. It still knocked the air out of him, but at least he didn’t splatter the way he would expect when dropping the height of a tall building.

He stood up and reoriented himself. He hadn’t just fallen right beside the bench, but his light weight had carried him further, out into the open walk-space between tables, and his dilemma only worsened when he saw the baggy pants of the girl his wife had just spoken to turn towards him.

As he looked up, he could read the text, “Service With a Smile,” displayed on her apron, before seeing the actual face above that expressing a tired frown.

The service worker was a freckled ginger girl in her early twenties; her rusty hair tucked into a black cap with the company’s logo. Her brown eyes looked devoid of life, and her pale face had this shiny layer of what seemed to be either sweat or greasy condensation from the kitchen fryers.

She looked like a mundane god, a titan walking his way, but not with the slow pace you’d see from a lumbering giant in the movies. She approached with the quick patting rhythm of a regular fast-food employee carrying a platter of junk food to one of the tables.

Dave screamed, waving his arms for her attention, but her face quickly disappeared like a setting sun behind the platter she was holding, as she came closer and closer. Her dirty, worn-out sneakers slapped the floor in quick succession, without grace, without care. The discolored white-rimmed monsters weren’t moving towards him specifically, they were impatiently padding towards a different destination entirely, he was just in their way.

Dave turned, he tried to run, but he could scarcely cross the length of a floor tile, before he heard the booming clap of rubber hitting the ground right behind him. He didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see, all he could do was hope the next step would land anywhere but on top of him.

He felt the air displace behind him before it hit, like the wind was trying to push him down, telling him to accept his horrible fate; to die, tread on by a grouchy-looking young service worker; to surrender all his being, humanity and personhood, and add himself to the collection of dirt on one of these cheap, ill-maintained pieces of walk-wear, as if he were nothing more than the rest of the grime beneath it.

He felt a push, a loss of control over his body, as he hit the ground, the side of his face pressed into the cold stone of a floor tile. He was forced to look across the vast expanse of the now alien-looking establishment, the chair legs like scattered monuments, the cold light of a winter’s day shining through the window. He could hear something crunching below him, a grotesque squishing sound, as he felt nothing but pressure holding him down.

He tried to move his head, to get back up. The sound of steps had subsided, and he was not enveloped by the darkness beneath the ginger’s shoe. If her feet had missed him, why couldn’t he get up? Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he turn his head to look up?

“Oh, shit…” He could hear the voice of a young woman boom above him, as his vision turned hazy and he lost consciousness.

Robin was staring at her toes, holding her platter to the side, enthralled by the sight of a minuscule head poking out from beneath the tip of her sneaker, as a small puddle of blood spread out into the open. The face she had just seen in the pictures his wife had shown her lay on its side, looking across the floor, in a death mask of shock and confusion.

She had stopped mid-step the second she felt the crunch, ready to give Jerry an earful for not cleaning up. Stepping on leftover food that had found its way on the floor was a gross, common occurrence, but this, the fact that the gross bit of meat she stepped on this time was a sentient human being, that recontextualized everything.

Robin immediately forced herself to recall what her step had felt like, the soft easy crunch and squelch of it against her toes. She told her mind to inscribe it, so she’d never forget. She could not stop the feeling of blood rushing to her cheeks, as an involuntary smile spread across her lips.

“The car is still outside,” Janice said, as she stepped back into the burger joint and addressed Robin.

The girl who she had asked for help just a minute ago, was distracted by something on the floor. She saw the freckled young woman raise her eyes toward her. The frown of an unhappy employee was gone, replaced by a barely subdued, thin-lipped grin.

“I think I found him,” Robin said, in a dissociated voice, the platter she was holding, shaking in her trembling hands.

Janice followed the girl’s eyes, as the service worker looked back down at her foot. Robin raised the front of it, letting her foot rest on its heel, presenting the woman with the gore of her husband stringing between the floor and the toe-end of her sneaker.

Janice’s jaw dropped open, letting out a screech of disbelief and terror.

~~~~~~~~~

It had been almost a year since the incident, and Robin had never told any of her friends about it.

She still remembers it all vividly, along with the screaming and crying that followed. The woman had threatened; told her she would rot in jail for what she did. She stated that the smirk on Robin’s face was enough to prove she had massacred her husband with sadistic glee. Robin’s manager came to her defense, and explained Robin’s morbid smile away as a shock response to a traumatic experience.

Like every other accidental death involving tinies, there were no consequences. Robin even got to keep the sneaker with which she had so humiliatingly snuffed out Dave’s life. She’d kept it in a separate shoebox ever since, not wanting any of the human gunk still embedded in the grooves, or the blood on the toe-end rim to fade by continuing to wear it.

In the days following the incident, Robin got the full names of the couple, by putting on her best face of remorse and asking her manager, who was still receiving threatening phone calls and emails of the grieving widow.

She used that information to quietly stalk the dead man on social media, finding pictures, personal information; like where Dave grew up, what schools he attended, where he’d been employed, his favorite sports team and his passion for fishing.

Everything she could find on his life, she printed out on two sheets of paper, which she folded up and put into the shoebox. Along with it, a printed picture of him and Janice, from their vacation to Spain, each smiling at the camera with a pair of sunglasses, happy and blissfully unaware that the picture they were taking, would find itself kept beside the grimy shoe that ended Dave’s life.

To Robin, the box served as a shrine, not in memoriam of Dave, the individual, but in fetishistic memoriam of his cruel end. Every now and then she’d open the box to look at that picture, to look at bits of him she got to keep, and read all the personal info she had on him to remind herself of his humanity, his personhood; the spice that made the sweet memory of his demise feel like all the more meaningful. It made everything feel personal. After all, he was her first and only tiny victim.

The fact that it had been an accident held great importance in her mind. She had never outright killed someone, big or small. The law agreed with what she had to convince herself of; this incident didn’t count, she hadn’t crossed that dreaded line, she hadn’t become a monster, yet.

And so, she allowed herself to bathe in the delight of that memory, to be happy that it happened, while promising herself to never act on the aching longing she felt, to have it happen again.

When she’d encounter a tiny in her day to day, she’d give them a wide berth, whilst trying to avoid looking at them, lest her creative mind would conjure up another intrusive thought.

Her fantasies were best kept to late night browsing of morbid video content. There were many fake videos involving tiny actors, who weren’t really being harmed, using fake blood and food products to simulate the effect of real gore. It was nice knowing she wasn’t the only one fantasizing about these sorts of things, and there was at least a somewhat healthy outlet for people like her.

At worst, she would get off on videos of real-life accidents, which often resurfaced, despite websites playing whack-a-mole to keep that content off their platform. There was a lot of CCTV footage of people checking their shoes upon realizing, or videos of bystanders filming the aftermath freakouts, and the horrified faces of people who realized they had just ended a life. The most famous video was of a streamer elbow grinding her boyfriend into a bloody streak across her desk without even noticing, until her chat told her.

There was only one thing Robin tried to stay clear of, the genuine tiny snuff videos made with intent to harm, which weren’t easy to find, but still accessible on the surface web. It wasn’t like the allure wasn’t there for her, it was, but to her, it would not be far off from crossing the line. She couldn’t be part of the consumer market for those videos. It would make her responsible for the creation of more.

At all times, Robin held her humanity over a raging fire of sadistic desires, and it was up to her to keep her fingers clenched, now more than ever, as those same hands would soon be holding the people she cared about.

As Robin stared at her old, bloodied sneaker, her phone rang, it was Jade.

“Hey, you got everything you need?” Robin said.

“Yeah, everyone has packed. Did you even check the group chat?”

“Half a box per person,” Robin said. “I mean it, there’s barely any space here as is.”

“Yeah, chill,” Jade said, “Time to do your rounds again. Pick each of us back up.”

“Kay, I’ll be right over,” Robin said, knowing none of her friends could risk driving at this point.

She took one last look at the contents of her shoebox shrine, before closing it, and shoving it under her bed, where she hoped none of her friends would ever find it.

#1 - Oscar

“Arrghck!” Oscar grunted, as he jumped awake in pain, reaching for his crotch.

“Oh, sorry,” Robin said, as she pulled her bare foot back from the man’s most sensitive spot.

“What the shit?!”

Everyone else in Robin’s dark, street-lit, one-bedroom apartment woke up at the sound of the commotion. Elias, who’d been sleeping on the couch, grabbed his glasses off the table. He got up to see his friend curled up in a fetal position on the floor, right beside a still-confused, waking Theo, who had also taken a sleeping spot on the floor.

A light went on in the bedroom, as Jade, who’d been sleeping with Robin in bed, ran up behind her in a panic.

“What happened?” she said.

Elias couldn’t contain his grin. “Robin stepped on his balls.”

Oscar huffed and hissed, “Ah, shh, motherfu-“

“I said I was sorry.”

“Bihhh- Fuck your sorry!” Oscar snapped back.

“I was going for a leak, I forgot you were here.”

Theo, now fully aware of his surroundings, tiredly reached his hand for Oscar’s shoulder. “You ok, man?”

Oscar cried a pathetic, “No.”

It had been five days since the entire gang had moved in with Robin, and none of them had an easy time sharing such a small space with five people. Oscar took a few long breaths, as the pain subsided a bit.

“If I’d been bug-size right now, I’d be paste,” he said.

“Well,” Robin said, “when you are, you’re not gonna be sleeping on the open floor like that, right?”

“And what if it had happened tonight, while I was sleeping?”

“Then she would have missed you by a few inches,” Elias said. “People always shrink towards center mass if they aren’t standing straight. Also shrinking during sleep is extremely rare, it’s more common for the shrink to hit during active hours, and even more likely to happen during moments of stress.”

“I’m feeling pretty stressed right now!” Oscar exclaimed, as he looked up at Robin’s guilty little smile.

Of course she was enjoying every second of it. That crazy little ginger had always loved watching him squirm.

Oscar had always had a weird dynamic with Robin, they were at once close friends, and rivalling siblings. Maybe it was their similarities clashing, as if the group had two man-children fighting over which one of them was the alpha male, one of them just happened to be a woman.

They would regularly try to mess with each other; hit each other with below-the-belt humor, or rub in an embarrassing moment, which would at worst result in some pinching, shoving or playful wrestling.

While Robin was a bit shorter than him, and a lot weaker, her aura was a ‘still waters run deep’ type of tough. Unless her fuse went off. A fuse which was much shorter than Oscar’s. If that happened, she’d lunge at just about anyone, with that wide-eyed feral predator look. When she was in that state, she wouldn’t pause to check whether she could take a guy, she just went off.

It wasn’t just all combativeness though; Robin was the type of friend he could rely on. When Oscar had complained about his father calling him home for yard chores and help fixing the shed, Robin had offered herself up to share the burden.

His old man wasn’t very impressed with him dragging a woman along to do his job, but was very impressed with work that woman ended up doing. Robin knew her way around pretty much every DIY tool, didn’t mind getting her hands dirty, and didn’t complain about doing some heavy lifting. His dad praised her every thirty minutes of that entire afternoon.

While Oscar had done about the same amount of work as her, if not more, his dad still held that he had been shown up by a scrawny white girl.

His father was the type to go on and on about ‘real men’, never missing a chance to remind his son that he didn’t fit his narrow definition of one, no matter how much gains he made at the gym, how impressive of a football player he became, or how much he behaved according to his father’s standards. He would never see a hint of pride in the man’s eyes, never feel the squeeze of his hand on his shoulder.

Maybe it was tough love, driving him to do even better, or maybe it was just shit parenting.

Oscar never said much about it, not like how Jade would go on about her parents. He bottled it up and tried to choke out those feelings, deep inside, like his father said he should, like a real man would.

The night after his rude awakening by Robin’s foot, he lingered on those memories, as he watched the streetlights float by, while riding shotgun in her car. They were heading out for drinks, just the two of them, as Robin couldn’t risk taking more than one of them out in public at any given time.

If there was just one person with her, she could keep her attention on them, in case the shrink would hit. The group agreed to a turn system, where each day, Robin would babysit one of them as they went to a location of their choice.

The day before she had taken Jade shopping for new clothes, tiny ones, for the entire group, tailor made for the people they’d soon become.

The day before that she had taken Theo to a multimedia and electronics store, where he had bought a new videogame, and a few TinySafe pulse systems. After that, they went to go see a movie.

Those TinySafe things were a must-have for any place housing victims of the glow. All you had to do was plug a few of those into the outlets around your house or apartment, and they would keep away all insects, spiders, rats and other small vermin that could harm shrunken people, without affecting their quality of life. Though, like any modern technology or medicine, the crunchy health gurus were distrusting of them, convinced they caused early onset dementia in tinies.

This day, it had actually been Elias’ turn to go out, but he chose to pass on it, preferring to stay on the couch and mope, as he awaited the inevitable. Oscar thought it was a waste, these were the final days of them being full humans, why not have a few last moments to feel normal?

He turned to look at Robin, her eyes focused on the road, as each passing light lit up her freckled face. All their rivalry would soon come to an end. There would be competition between them; no doubt which one of them was the alpha. His height, his strength, all the work Oscar had put into building himself up; into being the man that might impress his father, all of it would be meaningless. He could easily imagine his father’s voice in his head, mocking him for having his life be in the hands of that scrawny white girl.

It was about half an hour later, that the waitress brought them their drinks. Robin had gotten him a fancy and expensive craft beer, while getting herself a simple light beer.

“To make up for the grounded nuts,” she said, after she had ordered it.

“All good,” he’d responded. “It’s not like I’ll have any kids at this point.”

His public visit of choice had been the very same pub, outside of which, the Omen Glow had flashed their friend group, along with a young couple walking by. While that event would now forever stain this place in his mind, there were a lot of good memories here too. This had been their main hangout spot, and Frank had the patience of a saint, despite all the fights Robin had started in here.

“Still taking it like a champ, huh?” Robin said.

“How am I supposed to take it?”

Robin shrugged, “I’m just saying, you’re allowed to feel bad about it, vent in a way that isn’t just rage and jokes.”

“You saying I should collapse, all depressed, like Elias?”

“I’m saying you can talk to me.”

Talk to her, about what? About his insecurities? About this horrible pit in his stomach at the idea of being dependent on her? She’d laugh, joke it off herself. She wasn’t Jade, she wasn’t the emotional friend.

Oscar sighed, “I don’t know Robin, I guess I just-”

He cut his own sentence short, noticing a scene unfolding behind Robin, just a few tables away.

Two men; their loose, saggy postures showing just how inebriated they were, stood over a table, on which a tiny woman, probably a decade younger than them, slowly backed away in visual discomfort. The men were chuckling, one of them reaching out with his gross fingers to touch her.

“Such a pristine little doll, aren’t you,” he could hear the guy say. “Shame all the goods are so small now, but that could be fun too.”

Oscar lit up. This was it, his moment to stand up for an innocent person, to play the hero. Likely his last chance to feel like a proper man.

He jumped out of his seat, and roared, “Hey, don’t touch her!”

He drew the attention of the entire pub as both men turned to look at him, their drunken smiles turning to teeth-baring scowls at being interrupted.

“Mind your own business, friend.”

“I ain’t your friend, now back the fuck away.”

The man that had come close to touching the tiny woman rubbed the lower part of his face with a sniffle, “What for? I wasn’t doing shit. We’re just talking.”

Oscar stomped closer, “I said back away.”

The man scoffed and shook his head, as he turned his attention to the tiny on the table again, as if he didn’t believe Oscar would do anything about it. He was very much mistaken.

Oscar charged the man, landing a brutal fist into the man’s cheek, before the drunkard could even look his way. The man was forced back, and tried to maintain his balance throughout a few stumbling steps, before completely collapsing to the floor.

“Nolan, what the fuck,” his friend said, before running over to his fallen comrade.

Oscar could feel the rush, as he looked at the tiny woman he had protected, proud of himself. However, she looked at him with the same discomfort, the fear and uncertainty that her savior had only worsened the situation. She didn’t just have drunk harassers now, but angry drunk harassers.

Oscar inhaled and exhaled through his nostrils, as he waited to see what the men would do, whether he had knocked sense into them, or if they would swing back. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, he was alive.

As the guy he had punched was being helped up by his buddy, Oscar felt an unexpected consequence of his heightened adrenaline. A spot on his lower left leg was starting to ache, a burning sensation in the exact spot where his mark was.

All machismo drained from him as he realized, “Not now…”

For a few seconds all he could see was purple, that same awful purple that had flashed him a week prior. When his vision returned to normal, his surroundings had outgrown him, to dizzying proportions. He still stood in the same pose, ready for a fight, like a tabletop miniature on the floor. The pub he knew and loved, now a cathedral of giants, two of which had turned their attention back on him.

“Well, well, well,” the now giant drunk said, as he wiped the blood off his nose. “Look who got a reality check.”

The man stepped towards Oscar, taking extra care to make each of his steps stomp the ground as hard as he could, sending vibrations through the tiny hero’s body. Grinning like a monster as he got closer.

“Fee-fi-fo-fum, motherf—umpff.”

A giant wall of brown canvas had crashed down right in front of Oscar, it took him a split second to see the dirty white rim, and realize he was looking at the back of a massive Converse sneaker.

He craned his neck to look up at the sight of Robin’s massive legs, in baggy cargo pants, as she stood over him, like a mech-suit defending a civilian, her distant arm swinging straight for the inebriated kaiju’s face, before her fist crashed into the exact same spot Oscar had hit the man only moments before, cutting his intimidation short, and once more causing him to stumble back, this time keeping his balance.

The man didn’t blurt out another comment, as his friend patted him on the back, “Just leave it be, man.”

The guy listened to his friend’s advice, and walked out of the bar, while keeping eye contact with Robin, who’s expression Oscar couldn’t make out, as he was left looking up from beneath her, at her distant jawline and nostrils.

Apart from looking down at him with those frightening brown eyes, the giantess who stood over Oscar didn’t move for almost half a minute after the danger had passed, her breathing heavy, as she seemed to be calming herself.

Once she had, she took a step forward, and turned, now towering in front of him, rather than over him. She sank through her knees, into a squat, and reached her long slender fingers out towards him, the well-defined knuckles of which, showed the early redness of bruising.

Oscar scuttered back, as his friend’s fingers approached, out of reflex, out of fear. Robin’s hand paused, as if considerate of how horrific his newfound perspective must have been, but she didn’t give him long before deciding to grab him anyway. She had to get him off the floor, he could quiver in horror all he wanted once he was safely in her grasp.

Her index finger crept around the back of him, while the tip of her thumb pushed into the entire surface of his chest and part of his stomach, pinning him between her fingers. It was softer than he’d expected, though the rough surface of it felt like leather, with the whorls of a human fingerprint, smelling of beer and car keys.

His feet left the ground, and he could feel the butterflies in his stomach, as he was raised up to a height he was not prepared for, coming to a stop at the chest height of an unbelievably huge humanoid, whom he still couldn’t compute, was his friend. Her dark brown eyes, massive pools of near black, her cute little freckles, now each the size of his palm.

“Are you ok?” she said, her voice rumbling with a resonance he had never felt in it before.

“No,” he answered honestly.

“Who are you?” another giant woman said, addressing Robin as she approached the table.

“Me?” Robin turned to her with a confused frown, “Who are you?”

“I’m her friend, are you bothering her?” the blonde said with sass in her tone, while chin pointing at the frightened tiny on the table.

The fire returned to Robin’s eyes, made all the more frightening by her current size, “Someone was. Where were you?”

“W-Wha-“

“You left your friend alone, at that size? Do you have any idea what type of people are out there? What some people would do if they got their hands on someone that fragile?”

The blonde giantess’ lip quivered, unsure how to respond.

Oscar had so much to process, but as he looked up at the intensity on his friend’s face, he could tell that she knew what she was talking about.

#4 - Jade & Theo

“You’re putting too much glue on it,” Jade said.

“Ah, I am?” Theo said, watching the thick layer of hot glue cool on the wooden pieces, too late to do anything about it. “I guess this one will be mine then.”

“White translucent stuff pouring out of all corners of your bed, a fitting personal touch,” Oscar joked.

Theo’s cheeks flushed. He didn’t jab back, or even tell his tiny friend to shut up. He took the teasing like he always did; in huddled embarrassment, as he quietly focused on attaching the other side of the miniature bed, going a bit easier on the ‘white stuff’.

It had been two days since Oscar was the first to shrink. He had regained a lot of his old tough-guy facade since the night Robin walked in, carrying a shell-shocked, quivering little jock in her hand. It had been a confronting image to all of them; the biggest and strongest of them, in the palm of Robin’s hand, shaking like a mouse.

Despite being the designated caretaker, she hadn’t touched him ever since. The minute she got home, she set him down in front of the rest of the group, and pretty much ignored and avoided him, leaving it up to Jade and Theo to carry him around and keep him fed, as Elias wasn’t contributing much.

While Robin was at work, the three of them were at the kitchen table, putting together tiny beds Jade had purchased on another trip outdoors. Elias was where he’d been the entire week, on the couch with his phone in hand. A bottle of white wine stood near him on the table, emptied past the halfway mark, even though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon.

Theo couldn’t help but find the contradiction between who Oscar was, and his current size sort of adorable. Earlier that day, Jade had been trying to feed him a piece of her strawberry, which she held out in a pinch, prompting an argument between the two, as Oscar insisted she should drop it, not wanting the humiliation of having to nibble at her fingers like a hamster.

He had to relent eventually, but when Theo tried to pull the same thing, Oscar started an entire debate on how that felt a little gay.

“Well, maybe not capital ‘G’ gay,” Oscar said. “You’ve always been a bit of a femboy, which is the only reason I’m even allowing you to touch me with those baby skin hands of yours.”

There it was, the thing he’d been teased for the most by just about everyone in the group, the fact that he was this short guy, with a squishy face, who’d get embarrassed and awkward as easily around men as he did around women, causing most who knew him to project the idea that he was a closeted bisexual disaster.

Not that he minded, he’d never refute the gay femboy allegations, but he’d never affirm them either. To him, it was still a sensitive spot, as he wasn’t quite sure where he landed. The type of mindset he had been pulled out of had never allowed him to sit and consider. He knew he liked girls, but guys had their appeal too, along with the domineering male characteristics, which he had always looked for in the gender least likely to hold them.

Robin wasn’t the only one with a secret past. Unbeknownst to his friends, Theo hadn’t always been the timid and awkward soft boy they loved him as.

There were memories, things from his early childhood he had shoved into the deepest, darkest corner of his mind. Memories of the first house he could remember living in, the neighbors, and their daughter, Nora, who was ten years older than him, and would often be invited to babysit him.

Horrid memories of her, along with those of his terrible relationship with his mother, who was unkind, unfair, and favored outdated forms of corporal punishment, all of it coalesced into a warped perspective of what women were like, one that, as he aged, would clash with the real world he’d inhabit.

All throughout his youth and high-school years, he’d carry that twisted demonic view of the opposite sex, a projection that at once excited him, and put him at odds with women socially. To him, feminism wasn’t a movement aiming for equality, but a way for these bloodthirsty sadists to claim more power, over him, and other men like him, whose crimes were, at worst, fawning over the beauty of these would-be abusers a bit too much.

God had made men stronger than women, to keep them in check, and in a world where physical strength didn’t matter, men would be dragged around by these beings of superior social capital like dogs. It was a disgusting prospect during the day, and a fun fantasy at night.

Theo would move on to college, quickly finding comradery with other men who’d share some variation of his distrust, nay, disdain for women. His time with these men would be short-lived however, as a few weeks into college life, he and the posse that dragged him along would find themselves at a certain pub, meeting a certain group of people.

It was one of the most vocal members of his group, one who had more than just misogyny on his lips, who drew the ire of Robin and Oscar. Theo had pretty much gone unnoticed like a fly on the wall, until he decided to try and intervene and break up a fight. For which he took Robin’s unintended elbow straight to the nose, sending him to the floor.

The masculine woman had noticed, turned to him, looking like someone who had accidentally stepped on a dog’s paw, “Shit, are you ok buddy? You shouldn’t have bothered. I had it. Let me buy you a drink.”

Perhaps it was that innocent, cute appearance he was now defined by, but Robin mistook his entrée into the fight as some sort of knightly act towards her, not knowing the side he’d been on. His so-called friends had already run out on him, and he didn’t refute her assumption.

As she stood over him, the spiritual archetype of Nora, his construct of women’s true nature, but with the kindness and remorse that his abuser never had, he did what he would always do from that day on, and acted like the puppy he was perceived to be.

As he joined their table, he’d mostly get talked at, answering in short squeaking words, having his shoulder shaken by Oscar, complimented for being brave and stupid, while being doted on like a little brother by Elena and Jade.

And as he befriended them, kept hanging out, he kept attuning to people who saw the world a lot differently. He started to understand progressive movements like feminism as something other than attacks on him, slowly growing able to express himself in ways no social group before them ever allowed him to. He was allowed to be soft, to be imperfect and damaged, and if one day he came to that conclusion, a little bisexual.

It didn’t take a knock to the head for him to change, it took a hand reaching out, and offering a drink. He had the benefit of a blank slate, as a worldview not written on your forehead can be rewritten. He had the benefit of having found people who could tell him the stories that made him understand experiences outside his periphery. He had the benefit of friends.

Theo finished his little bed and put it down on the table, before unwrapping the custom mattress-shaped pillow that came with the build-set from its plastic. He remembered the funny remark Jade made that morning, in response to Oscar’s straight bro-logic.

“If it’s gay to interact with a giant of the same gender, then I guess I’m about to be little gay too. Then again, it’s a little gay for anyone to be into Robin, even for straight dudes.”

Jade’s life experience had been a common example of one that a younger Theo had been blind to. She’d grown up in a traditional-minded family, which she spent her entire life rebelling against. The expectations for her were to find a good husband who could make the big bucks.

All the college money her parents saved would go to her older brother, who’d end up squandering his opportunity, while Jade had to take out a massive loan to get hers, a debt that would be forgiven upon her size change. One of only a few benefits to being a glow victim.

Her parents weren’t that eager on her even attending college in the first place, feeling like that environment would only corrupt her further. How right they were. Jade delighted in the idea that with every decision she made, every little thing she’d achieve, she’d be sticking it to those backwards old prudes.

Now that all her chances of becoming the strong independent woman that the neo-liberal corporate world marketed feminism as would soon be shrunk into nothing, the only positive was that her parents wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing a man take care of her.

While she wasn’t completely against the idea, the list of men she felt she would be able to trust at that size was small, if there even was a list. Perhaps the only safe choice would be Theo, who seemed like the most harmless guy she ever met, not knowing what crucible of brain-rot his aura of safety had developed out of.

But safe or not, it was the principle of it that mattered most to her, the principle of affirming a classic power dynamic by gigantic proportions. She couldn’t submit, be dependent on a man. The idea that it would be Robin, the type of woman whose mere presence would give her parents an aneurysm, that gave her at least a little peace of mind about the whole thing. She didn’t mind a little size-based political lesbianism.

Throughout her stay at the apartment, she couldn’t help but think about something Robin had said months before, something that had activated a few neurons she didn’t think she had.

The usual gang had been sitting outside a coffee place, when Elena had noticed Jade was carrying around the book she’d recommended. As they were discussing it, Oscar jokingly interrupted with the assumption, by the cover alone, that it must’ve been one of those gushy girly romance novels. While shooting each other the widest grins they could manage, Jade and Elena challenged him to read a specific page they picked out.

Oscar, with an over-the-top playful reading voice, bellowed out the words on the page, his voice slowly getting quieter as he went on, until he eventually sat there, scanning the lines in complete silence, with an expression they’d pay money to see.

“W-What,” Oscar said. “Why- Is this really the shit you are into? This is worse than Simon.”

Simon ecstatically replied, “See, what have I been telling you? Women are freaks when it comes to this stuff. All that feminism, and then they write shit like that!”

“I mean, I think it’s important to distinguish fantasy from how you think society should work,” Theo said. “Just because you think something is hot, doesn’t mean it’s good enforced policy.”

“Sure,” Simon said, “but it proves that women by their very nature prefer to take a submissive role, and want a big, strong, scary beast to scare, hurt and protect them, in rougher ways than they’d like to admit anywhere but on a page. It’s like their only kink.”

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Elias said, taking the book from Oscar’s hands and inspecting it like a mysterious relic. “Why is that the only kink women seem to have?”

“Privilege,” Elena said, drawing the attention from the entire table. “Men have the privilege of exploring new ways to approach how they view women from complete neutrality. When something is an empty vessel desired due to its physical qualities, you can fixate on the specificities of every inch, find which parts you like best. You can imagine it with every personality and make it do any dance you want it to, and see what excites.”

“Women don’t have that privilege,” Elena explained, as her eyes turned to Theo, who couldn’t be more attentive. “They don’t get to explore men from a neutral position. Men aren’t bodies for them to project new fantasies onto. Men already have a well-defined role in the minds of women. From a young age girls learn that men are strong, scary and dangerous. Anything horrible that they imagine could happen to them in this world will most likely be perpetrated by a man. Ask any of us and we’ll tell you a story.”

“On top of that, the dominance of men is socially enforced,” she said now turning to Simon. “Imagine growing up from childhood in a world where you are an object of desire to a bunch of barbarians, most of whom are too dense to even see the survival horror going on just a body away, wouldn’t you develop some brainworms? Would that really be nature? Or is that nurture?”

“The cruelest thing the patriarchy pulls is that the society it creates trains women to have a kink that affirms its own existence.”

“Damn,” Oscar said, as most of the table remained quiet. “Makes the whole thing seem kinda hopeless, doesn’t it? How do you fight the patriarchy when it’s nestled in your brain?”

While she would usually be completely silent during discussions like this, Robin chimed in before Elena could respond with another rant, “Well, maybe there is an alternative way to handle that brainwashing.”

Robin leaned back in her chair, stretching her shoulders to emphasize the collarbones, sticking out of her loose, oversized men’s tank top, which laid bare her soft yet muscular lean arms, as she continued to explain, with a turned-up jawline, and a confident, knowing smile.

“Think of it this way,” she said, “What if, after all those experiences, after all the mind-fuckery this patriarchal society has done to you; what if, after they put all this work they put in to turning you into their perfectly trained pet; wouldn’t it be hot if another woman simply snatched you away instead, stole all that submission meant for a man, and simply kept you herself.” 

Jade felt Robin’s words wrap around her lungs and cut off the air. The bisexual girl’s dark eyes peered into her skull, with that smug smile across her thin lips. The suggestion, and the way her friend had phrased it, triggered something, planted a seed. And from the look on Robin’s face, it was clear she knew what she was doing.

Jade had not been the only one left with something to ponder that day. As he sat in silence, listening to that conversation, Theo tried to move around the pieces, swap the genders. With his crossed wires, his brain had been trained the same way they said women were, just not towards men. He wondered if that meant the comfort of a guy would be his version of the subversion Robin suggested.

Theo looked over the miniature bed he’d finished, lowering his index finger into the mattress and squeezing it, while he imagined how soft it would be once he’d shrunk to the size to use it. At this point anything would be better than the floor he’d been sleeping on so far.

He felt a sudden burning sensation on his lower back, his mark. He pulled back, and straightened his posture on the chair, “Jade, I think-”

His vision blocked by a sea of purple, Theo shrank to a size of two inches. When his sight returned, he was looking up at the bottom of the kitchen table.

His head swiveled, taking in his surroundings until his eyes looked upon the giant legs and butt of the woman who sat beside him. Was that Jade? Did he even dare to look up and check?

Jade had heard Theo call for her attention before it happened. She was looking down at another one of her friends, reduced to a miniature of himself. The way he sat there, just a little guy too small for his seat, as if he wasn’t cute enough already. Theo sat frozen, tiny legs outstretched, confused, it would almost have been funny if she didn’t understand how scary it must have been.

“It’s ok, I got you,” Jade said.

She lowered the back of her hand onto the seat, as a platform for him to climb on. She’d gotten used to it by now, after having to carry around Oscar.

However, she hadn’t expected the reaction she would get from Theo.

Theo froze as he saw the weird, pale-skinned, alien elevator platform offered to him. He squeaked, and scrambled back across the faux-leather surface of the chair’s seat. When he finally raised his head to look up, he didn’t see the face of a friend, but that of a giant woman. The itch he’d buried in the back of his mind, shot through the rest of his brain with full force, something raw and animalistic.

“No, leave me alone!” he shouted.

“Wow, chill, it’s okay.”

“Don’t touch me!”

Jade hadn’t expected this bad of a reaction, was it really that scary for someone his size? Was she really that horrifying to him right now? She couldn’t take the sight of his distress, and her impulses told her to comfort him in the only way she knew how, by reaching out to hold him.

Theo watched as the platform she had offered lifted and flipped upside down, the fingers spreading, and the massive palm turning toward him. He crawled away on his back, his breath catching, his heart pounding.

The hand he had told off was reaching for him anyway. He wasn’t big enough to stop it. He was small again. It wouldn’t stop just because he wanted it to, it would do what it wanted; what she wanted. He broke down in tears, at the thought of it all happening again.

Giant fingers embraced him, wrapping around his powerless form, before lowering him into another eager hand like a small object. It was warm, it was soft, yet it was of no comfort to him. It was invasive, all-consuming, an unwanted hand not just touching a part of him, but touching all of him at once.

Oscar could see Jade’s hand as she slowly raised it from below the table. Having heard the commotion, he was ready to have some fun at the expense of a wimp who was taking his first minutes of being small a lot worse than he did. Any comment he was ready to make got inhaled again, at the soul-wrenching sight of his friend’s contorted face, drowning in tears.

“Theo, it’s ok,” Jade said. “You’ll be ok, you’re safe.”

“I’m sorry,” Theo sobbed. “I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Jade said. “It’s ok.”

She lowered her finger toward the palm, with the intent of brushing his head or back, hoping to calm her friend down. Theo rolled onto his back, frantically kicking up his legs, as he futilely tried to slap the monolithic finger away with his hands, but it was too big, his hands barely squished into a thick layer of skin. He cried, trapped upon this surface of a woman’s hand, this enormous instrument of hurt and confusing sensations.

Jade pulled back her finger, realizing it was only making things worse, “Theo, look at me. I’m not gonna hurt you. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

Theo obeyed the command and looked at her, the distraught pale face of a familiar alt-girl looming over him, her steel-blue eyes, her black hair hanging down along her cheek. It was Jade, a woman he knew, a woman he understood, a woman he trusted. These weren’t Nora’s hands, these were her hands, these were safe hands.

He kept repeating himself as the sobbing seemed to die down a little, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Jade, I’m sorry.”

It was hours later when Robin came home from work, only seeing Elias on the couch and no one else. He had polished off his wine bottle, and was emptily watching slop content on the television.

“Where is everyone?”

“Table,” he said, pointing with a loose arm at the small living room table in front of him, where a shrunken Oscar was trying to cheer up a much calmer Theo with some casual banter.

“Room,” Elias said, following up with yet another single word, as his hand folded into a thumb, which he swung over his shoulder, to point at the wall behind the couch.

Robin walked in further, peering into her room, to see Jade sitting on the bed they’d been sharing for the past week. She was huddled up against the backboard, hugging her knees to her chest. Robin walked in quietly, and dropped her bag, causing Jade’s head to jump towards her. Her eyeliner hadn’t been waterproof enough to hide the fact that she’d been crying.

“You ok?”

“He was scared,” Jade said. “Scared of me.”

“Theo?”

“I’ve never seen him like that.”

Robin walked up to the side of the bed, pulled off her sneakers, and swung her legs onto it, shifting closer to Jade to put her arm around her.

“I’m scared I’ll be like that too,” Jade said. “I’m scared of being scared.”

Robin pulled her in closer, letting her friend rest her head against her chest. She didn’t have the words to comfort her, only an ear to listen, her presence and her warmth.

Jade grabbed onto the woman’s plaid shirt, squeezing it inside her fist, “I’ve always felt safe with you guys, with you. I know it will be scary at first, but what if that never goes away? What if I’ll never feel completely safe again.”

Those words caused Robin’s body to turn a little more rigid, as they laid out an impossible task. Not crossing the line wasn’t enough, she had to care for her friends with unfaltering guise of safety.

As Jade lay in Robin’s arms, she felt it, the mark on her shoulder burning.

With a deep sigh and calm tone, she said, “My turn.”

A canvas of purple covered her eyes, and when her sight returned, she was lying upon the soft surface of a mattress, looking like a desert at nighttime. A mountainside view of the blanket lay in front of her, with various entrances to its caves beneath it. Beside her, sat the giant this desert belonged to, a god in familiar clothes. Looking up, she could see those dark eyes look down at her, with an unsettling stillness, until her massive lips finally moved.

“So, is it…”

“Yes,” Jade said, clenching her fists to put on a brave face. “But not as bad as I expected.”

Robin gave her a sorry smile, and slowly, carefully reached out her hand like an elevator, the very gesture that had sent Theo into a frenzy. “Let’s go back to the others.”

Jade could see the intimidating size of it, but she walked towards it with only a pit in her stomach. She pushed herself onto the pillow-like surface of warm human leather, and crawled towards the center, where she curled up, and looked to the face above, that of the person she had chosen for this.

“Steal me away,” she said.

Robin frowned in confusion, “What’s that?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Never mind,” Jade said, a bit disheartened that Robin didn’t recall the conversation, which had burrowed itself so deeply within her mind.

#5 - Elias

It was the day after Jade and Theo had shrunk. Robin had left for work again, leaving Elias as the only regular-sized person in the apartment. The tinies would’ve had no one else to lean on while he wasted away on the couch. It was his turn to be the responsible one, to grit his teeth, and power through the melancholy that had made his limbs feel like useless noodles for the past week.

They couldn’t risk an inebriated giant around three tinies, so Robin had hidden away all bottles and cans of alcohol, knowing that with his own clock ticking, a guy like Elias wouldn’t be stupid enough to go out on his own to buy more.

“You missed a healing item,” Theo said.

Elias sighed, and turned his character around to pick up the green herb, while the rest of the group sat on the couch seat beside him, observing his gameplay on the biggest screen they’d ever seen.

Theo had asked Elias to finish his video game for him, the one Theo had bought on his first trip out with Robin, the brand-new installment in his favorite survival horror franchise.

Instead of playing it throughout the week, Theo had spent most of the time he had left at full size trying to make himself useful by cleaning Robin’s place, helping Jade with her preparations, and in the last two days, he had pretty much served as Oscar’s regular-sized butler, which left him little game time, before he finally shrank too small to hold the controller himself.

Elias’ face was a right mess. He had to keep brushing the unkempt white hair out of his tired blue eyes, the greasiness of which constantly reapplied a vision-blurring smudge on his glasses, which he kept having to clean off with his shirt, all the while Theo kept commenting on every little thing he was supposed to do, every mistake he made, while his hangover burst inside his skull.

This entire week had been a worse nightmare than anything the game could throw at him, and now, he couldn’t even cope the way he wanted to.

Theo interrupted again with that cute little helper tone of his. “Ok, here I think you’re supposed to-”

“I got it,” Elias said, as he quickly rushed through a puzzle segment without as much as a pause.

That was the one thing Theo couldn’t backseat-game him on, the one thing he would keep after everything else would shrink to nothing: his smarts, his intellectual superiority. It was the thing he valued the most, what his entire self-image was built upon. Greatness was in his blood, along with his curse, his addictive personality.

His father, a songwriter who could play twelve instruments like a legend, had been a prime example of both those traits. He would’ve made a name for himself, yet right as he signed on to one of the big record labels, the family curse would take him.

The cops had found his lifeless body in a motel, a few miles out of Los Angeles. Elias’ father had overdosed on some experimental cocktail of designer drugs, leaving behind a single mother to care for a four-year-old son who would never know his father as a flesh and blood individual, but as a mythological figure, a Hercules to live up to; an Icarus to avoid becoming.

It was a fitting backstory for the great man he would become one day. The genius who would take on Silicon Valley; design things that would wipe the floor with the one-trick data blenders that his lessers passed off as artificial intelligence. He would not become another tech-bro, or one of the many great minds employed like slaves in the machine of some loser billionaire; Elias Hatner would be king.

Elias Hatner would’ve been king.

Now all he could become was a burden, a small pet to a college drop-out who couldn’t even get a simple psychology degree. While he never vocally lorded it over them, Elias had always considered his friends beneath him; aimless simpletons chasing the simple pleasures, ones which he had promised himself he’d never fall into.

Deep down, he was grateful he had them. They were the ones to pull his uptight ass out into the real world, not letting his social skills atrophy. For in all his smarts, he had failed to realize his one-track mind would’ve made his road to greatness a lonely and isolating one.

That gratitude had wavered somewhat over the week. If it weren’t for them, and their regular outings to the pub, he wouldn’t have gotten addicted to the bottles he’d promised himself he’d never touch. If it weren’t for them, he wouldn’t have found himself outside of that very same pub the night the glow appeared.

Now that all his promise would fade to dust, was it all worth it? Was it worth wasting his future? Was it worth becoming an alcoholic? Was it worth becoming a subhuman bug?

As he thought back on all the good times he’d spent with them, Elias remembered the smiles, the dumb conversations drained of all intellectualism, and the countless times his eyes met those of that rough yet beautiful woman, the one he saw as a simple brute, the one he’d crawl out of his comfort and solitude to meet whenever she’d ask.

Was it all worth it, just to have known Robin?

“The weak spots are-”

“I know,” Elias growled. “The game makes it obvious enough. Stop acting like the personification of yellow paint.”

Just as Elias was fighting a boss, a message appeared in the upper corner of the screen by a user named ChainedWr8.

“Y u block me?” the message read.

“Who’s that?” Jade said.

“Dunno,” Elias said. “We’re playing on Robin’s account, must be one of her friends.”

The message was followed by an invite to a voice chat, one Elias ignored, as he kept playing. Not two minutes passed until another message popped up.

“Join, wanna talk”

Elias was about to write a message back, when another impatient invite to the voice chat appeared. He sighed and grabbed Robin’s headset from the table, plugged it into the controller and entered the voice chat.

“Hello?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

The voice of a young woman responded, “Who are you? Where’s Robin?”

“I’m a friend of hers. Robin’s at work.”

“Wait, are you one of the friends who’s about to be all itty-bitty like?”

“Uh, yeah,” Elias said, a frown forming on his face, visible to the tinies beside him. “She tell you about that?”

“Oh, Robin tells me everything,” the woman said, with a coy tone.

Elias maneuvered through the user interface, and held his thumb over the button to leave the voice chat. “Ok, well, it’s been nice to meet you, but I’m-”

“Are you the one she wants to bite in half?”

The white-haired guy froze, his eyes widening, “What?”

“Or are you the muscular one?” she said. “The one she wants to stick needles into, and sew to the inside of her sneakers?”

“That’s not funny.”

“I think it is,” the voice on the other side said, with predatory glee. “I’m really hurt she’s not inviting me over to the murder party.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Elias growled, as he lowered his thumb on the button to leave.

“Tell her to unblock me on Dis-”

His frown had sunk further, in anger and confusion, as her words lingered. It was crazy, the things some people would say to someone suffering from the glow. The internet was full of people who delighted in their own cruelty, but why would Robin have someone like that in her friend list? Even worse, why would she be on a first-name basis with someone so vile, and tell that person about the four of them?

“Who was that?” Jade said, seeing the sour look on her giant friend’s face.

“No one, just some troll saying fucked up shit.”

“What he say,” Oscar said, assuming ‘troll’ meant it was a guy.

Elias looked down at his friends, not sure if he should tell them. After the meltdown Theo had the day before, he didn’t want to put the thought in their heads. He didn’t want the thought of it in his own head. The thought of Robin having any sort of morbid ideas about them. The thought she might be planning a ‘murder party’ for them.

He didn’t believe a word of it, after all, this was Robin she was talking about. But the idea of it, the ‘what if’ was enough to send shivers down his spine.

“It doesn’t matter,” Elias said. “Let’s just finish this game already.”

It took Elias a few more hours to finally get to the end of the game. He could see Theo get emotional about it. He could see why. This wasn’t just a piece of entertainment the little guy had been waiting for. It was a series he had loved for his entire normal life, watching its most recent game conclude, just as his own normality did, that must’ve struck a chord.

The suggestion of what Robin might have in mind for them lingered in Elias’ head the entire time he’d been playing. After the game, he put on a streaming show for the entire gang to watch. It was some sort of comedy cartoon, but either the jokes didn’t hit for him, or he was just too in his head to care.

Robin? Really? Was she really joking about biting them in half behind their backs? Should he ask her about it once she got home?

While Theo and Oscar were laughing and repeating lines of dialogue from the cartoon, Jade had taken notice of Elias’ demeanor. She slowly walked up to the giant, whose fingers had begun quickly curling and unfurling on his lap.

“What’s wrong?” Jade said.

“It’s nothing.”

Jade didn’t let up, “Elias, something is up, can you please just tell me.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” Elias snapped. “You wanna know what the problem is? My mind keeps running in circles, with these fucked scenarios, while I have to babysit the rest of you, and I got nothing to take the edge off.”

His words struck like thunder above the rest of the group, the anger in them made all the more intimidating by his size. Oscar and Theo fell in complete silence, the funny dialogue of the cartoon in the background falling on deaf ears, as they all looked up at their friend, whose upper body swung back and forth as he tried to contain his nerves.

Jade swallowed her fear, “Elias, I think I speak for all of us, when I say we’re proud of how you’ve been holding up today.”

“Nah, fuck that,” Elias said, as he launched himself upright out of the couch, without warning. “I’m getting a drink.”

Oscar shouted back at him, “Robin stashed it all away, man. Just chill.”

“Like anyone can hide all those bottles in an apartment this small,” Elias said. “I’ll find them.”

“What about us?” Theo said. “We need you sober.”

“All you need is to be safe,” his giant friend said. “Sounds easy enough.”

Elias stormed off to the kitchen, and returned with a wide soda glass. He walked up to the couch seat on which his friends were all clamming up, and lowered the glass on its side.

“Inside, all of you.”

“Dude, no way,” Oscar protested.

“I said inside.”

Elias gave him a quick shove with the tip of his finger, causing Oscar to fall over. Theo shouted his name and ran over with Jade to help their friend up. Looking up in shock at their friend’s sudden shift in character, they slowly made their way to the glass and climbed inside.

The look in Elias’ eyes showed his insecurity, the knowledge that what he was doing wasn’t right, but he needed them out of the way. He slowly began to tilt the glass upward, making them gently slide to the bottom, before he held it upright, and began marching towards the bathroom, where he put the glass down next to the sink.

“There,” he said. “All safe, and far away from me. Robin is coming home soon, then you can be her problem.”

Elias walked out on them, and slammed the door to the bathroom, leaving his friends in disbelief and shock.

“Fucking asshole,” Jade said.

Elias moved through the apartment like a storm, from kitchen to living room, checking everything with a door on it, beneath every piece of furniture from the couch to the TV cabinet, before continuing to Robin’s room. He rushed inside, rummaging through the clothes in the closet, pulling open her nightstand, digging through her desk, until his eyes fell upon the bed.

He lay flat on his stomach as he reached under Robin’s bed, until he felt his hand collide with something, the feeling of cardboard, a box. He grabbed hold of it, and pulled it out into the open. The weight of it didn’t feel like it contained the drink he was looking for, but in a mix of curiosity and trying to make sure, he opened it.

Inside was but one shoe, alongside what looked to be a picture. Elias pulled it out of the box, seeing two strangers in sunglasses smiling back at him. Neither of them seemed familiar, but he assumed it must’ve been Robin’s parents. Despite her having seen Elias’ mother multiple times, she always seemed to avoid having her friends and family meet each other. His eyes fell upon another item in the box, paper.

He pulled it out, and unfolded it, to reveal multiple pages. He started reading the entirety of the life of a man called Dave Rotleigh, from the hospital where he’d been born to the end, which was described in vivid detail, from the perspective of the person who had caused it.

The soft crunch of his bones I could barely sense, as the rest of him gave way with a deliciously smooth squeeze, squelching into nothing but human sludge beneath my foot. A man as studied and achieved as Dave, made magnitudes inferior to a line cook like me, and reduced to goo beneath a simple step, what a delightful horror it must have been.

The quest for alcohol, which had hitherto been at the forefront of his mind, faded to the back, at the insanity of what he was reading. Robin wrote this. He didn’t have to ask himself; it wasn’t a question; he couldn’t delude himself into doubting it. This was Robin’s perspective; writing by Robin, with an unsettlingly gleeful undertone.

His eyes returned to the box, and the shoe inside it. His breathing was a subconscious effort no longer, but a labored task. He reached for the sneaker, pulling it up between pinched fingers, as if he expected spiders to crawl out from all sides.

He turned the front to him, the part the story detailed, the part under which Dave had met his end. Any hope that her words were nothing but sick fiction was smashed at the sight of dark, dried, gory residue sticking to the bottom of the sneaker, lined inside the ridges of a shoe, which Elias could remember his friend wearing over a year ago.

Elias let out a barely vocalized yelp as his fingers let go of the shoe, which crashed back into the box with a rough thud, that made him jump. The manual breathing became harder, as the air went in easier than it came out. Robin enjoyed this? She enjoyed this.

The fantasies Robin’s online friend had told him about returned to the front of his mind on repeat; bite in half, sewed to the inside of her sneaker, murder party.

The woman he thought he knew was a monster.

There was a metallic crunching: the sound of keys entering a lock, the sound of a door opening, then closing, followed by the padding of sneakers getting closer.

Elias watched frozen in fear, as the lanky frame of the friend he had known for years stepped into the doorframe with the tired smile of someone who was happy to be home from work.

Her hair had somewhat turned greasy, stuck in thicker strands of copper. She looked strangely beautiful as always, but somehow taller, more intimidating than she had ever been.

She looked at him, sitting on her bedroom floor. “Where is everyone?”

When her glance fell on the box Elias had pulled out from under the bed, her smile vanished. something in her eyes had changed as she stepped into the room, dropped her bag beside the doorframe, and kept her eyes locked with Elias while slowly closing the door to the bedroom.

“Where are the others?” Robin said quietly, calmly.

Elias’ voice shivered as he asked, “Who are you?”

He could see the creases between her eyebrows forming, as her hands folded into fists. As smart as he thought himself to be, Elias had just done the dumbest thing he could do. His question had hurt her.

“Where are they?” Robin said, maintaining her unsettling patience.

“Don’t hurt them.”

Robin stepped away from the door, and closer to him, “Are you scared of me?”

Elias didn’t answer with words, but with a gulp he couldn’t quite swallow.

“I bet your heart is pounding,” Robin said. “That’s a lot of stress, adrenaline.”

It was. He was at the end of his nerves, barely able to breathe, his heart beating out of his chest. This was bad news, he knew how elevated stress levels could worsen his chances of it finally happening. After being full sized the longest, and stressing all day, this would be the worst moment for him to shrink, but with this amount of pressure…

“Please, let’s just talk about this. It’s messed up, but, uh-” he said, searching his mind for any way to maintain common ground with someone who enjoyed ending a life; searching for any way to go back to normal from here.

“Thud-um, thud-um,” Robin said, teasing the fear out of him by trying to emulate a heartbeat.

She didn’t do so with a smile, but with a sickly neutrality, a tired face with a haunting emptiness, repeating the sound of a beating heart with a low tone of voice.

“Robin, please.”

“Thud-um, thud-um,” she continued, before quickening up the pace, willing his heart to beat faster. “Thoom, thoom, thoom.”

Elias’ eyes began to water, “I’m your friend.”

“Where are the others, Elias?”

The white-haired boy broke, “B-Bathroom, next to the sink. I wanted to not hear them. I wanted to drink.”

“They don’t know?”

“No,” he said, “and I won’t tell them, I promise. We can just pretend this never-“

“Rat-tat-Thum-Thum-Thum.”

“Robin, please don’t hurt me,” he cried out, at the rough but kind-hearted person he knew, at his friend, at the woman he trusted, at the girl he liked.

Elias gathered all he could, all the will that was left in his body, to lean forward and crawl into an upright sprint. If he could just rush past her, if he could open the door, could run out, open another door, hallway, run, run, run.

He had barely stood up, as the mark on his upper arm began to burn.

#6 - Monster

Robin had chosen the chair, she could have laid down on the stereotypical couch that served as the centerpiece of the room, but she felt it would leave her too open, exposed. She didn’t like being open.

It was years before she would attend college, years before The Omen Glow would shrink its first victim. It was years after she was finally free from that special boarding school for violent youth, the one that kept its rooms locked and had guards on staff.

She was doing better now. Robin had managed to limit her outbursts and the execution of her intrusive thoughts to the ones she felt deserved it. The high school she attended clearly didn’t agree with what she deemed to be an improvement, and had urged her parents to change to a psychologist they’d recommended.

“Why don’t you start by telling me a little bit about yourself?” Dr. Loomweiss said, as he sat across from her, with that fake friendly visage all her doctors had.

“I’m Robin.”

The doctor waited a bit, peering above his glasses, as he waited for more.

“I like music, TV and video games,” Robin continued with a sarcastic tone, “and my favorite color is blue, no, orange.”

The doctor made a small note. Robin was pretty sure her favorite color hadn’t been that noteworthy.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Loomweiss asked.

“Cause I tried to stab Max Peterson in the ear with my pencil.”

“And why did you do that?”

Robin tried to peer out the window, but it was blocked by translucent blinds, “He’d said things about my friend Sophie, posted them online, shaming her in front of the entire school.”

“It sounds like you were angry about what he did to your friend?”

Robin shrugged, her answer only surfacing after a noticeable pause, “Yeah.”

The doctor had picked up on it, “Are you sure, that’s the only reason? You know you can tell me. You’ve talked to annoying doctors like me enough to know I can’t tell anyone what we discuss here.”

“Unless I’m a threat to myself or others.”

“Are you?”

Robin leaned back, waiting, if she could drag on the conversation enough, this hour would end without Loomweiss prodding too deeply into her thoughts. The doctor waited with her, until the silence finally broke her into saying something.

“I just wanted to try it,” she said

“Try what?”

“The pencil,” Robin said. “I wanted to see what would happen if something like that went into someone’s ear. What Max had done to Sophie just gave me the excuse I needed. That what you wanna hear?”

Dr. Loomweiss took another note. “Do you think about hurting people often?”

“That’s what I do, right? Cause I’m some sort of psychopath, or sociopath, whatever the difference is.”

“Did someone call you that?”

“Sophie,” Robin answered. “Thought she’d appreciate it. She didn’t. I’ve gotten better at making friends, yet every time the real me slips, it just ruins things.”

“When you say ‘the real you,’ what do you mean by that?”

Robin began to wrap her hand around her lower arm, choking out her wrist, “the monster.”

“People aren’t monsters, Robin.” Loomweiss said. “There are people who sometimes have thoughts or impulses they don’t like.”

“But I like them,” Robin said. “I love the thoughts, the idea of feeling Max’s brain squish through the pencil. If I ever wanna keep a friendship, I can’t ever be my real self around people.”

“You call yourself a monster.” The doctor said, as leaned back slightly. “But monsters don’t worry about losing their friends.”

Robin shifted her attention to the clock on the wall, which ticked by too slowly.

The psychologist continued, “So, this monster, as you call it, makes you feel like you can’t open up to others.”

Robin frowned, “Being the anti-Christ is not the type of thing you just open up about.”

Dr. Loomweiss leaned forward, and with that same calm, comforting tone asked, “What do you think would happen if people saw that side of you?”

Elias let out a blood curdling scream, clawing at his own face in horror, as his vision returned, Robin’s room looked huge. His attempt to sprint past his friend had only left him closer to the feet which had already snuffed out a tiny life like his, closer to the woman who had enjoyed doing so. His mind could only produce one thought; he was going to die here.

From Robin’s point of view, it was a pathetic display. His screams were more akin to an adorable little squeak from her height. She was prepared to beat her friend to the ground if he had tried to run past her. Luckily for him, the glow had overtaken his body and shrunk him mid-dash, else she would have had to humiliate and hurt him at full size.

She knew how cruel it was for her to amplify his fear enough to trigger the size change, but the look on his face, the way she made a full-grown man squirm even at his regular size, it had been exhilarating. Now she had him exactly the way she wanted him; weak, defenseless, too small for anyone in the bathroom to hear, and if she were to choose it so, easy to clean up.

Elias had been her friend for years, but what was he now that he knew too much? Someone who had gotten a glimpse at the monster lurking underneath, and had discovered who she really was. Someone who would never look at her the same again, and could infect the others with that knowledge, with that painful view of her.

He was a problem, which she was only one step away from solving.

The choice was hers now, the bug in her court. Whatever would she do? Her expression remained vacant, her lips parting ever so slightly to let out a breath of morbid excitement.

On each side, her toes curled inside her sneakers, like little henchmen begging for the honor to be the ones chosen for the task. Left or right, whichever should she choose? Right had experience, proven its effectiveness, but left had never had the opportunity to feel a human being give way. Wouldn’t it be fair to feed both feet and equal share of death?

Beneath her, on her bedroom floor, Elias was shouting something she could hardly make out from that height, likely crying and begging for his life, the poor thing. All he could see was a giantess silently staring down at him. Robin wondered if the hunger was showing in her eyes.

Her left foot lifted, with a shaky, uncertain movement, as it slowly hovered closer to where a tiny Elias had fallen to his knees in prayer to his new god. She stopped right above him, leaning her upper body to the side, to keep an eye on the tiny beneath her shoe, crying in its shadow.

All Elias could do was beg her to stop, beg her to spare him, as he looked up at the worn and faded tread pattern beneath her sneaker, one of its grooves filled with dirt and tiny pebbles. Robin, one of his best friends, was about to end him like a bug on the sidewalk.

Robin held it there, for almost twenty seconds, as she lingered on the superb squish she imagined she would feel if she lowered it, until her legs became tired of holding the position, and her balance began to get shakier.

Her foot came down, only a few inches away from her friend, who she could hear squeak in surprise. It was the first in a series of steps, as she stepped over Elias and turned to sit down on the side of her bed.

Elias had a difficult time even moving to look at her, he had narrowly avoided death. He could see by the look on her face; she hadn’t been holding her foot over him as an empty threat or a playful tease, she had been pondering his fate for the entirety of those twenty seconds, with the same vacant look she had when choosing the flavor of ice cream she wanted.

The rusty haired woman leaned forward, and her long fingers pulled at her laces to untie them, after which, she kicked off both sneakers, sending them crashing across the floor like meteoric debris, making her friend cower at the heavy floor-shaking thuds.

Her feet, now clad in grimy white socks, still discolored by the post-work humidity of them, released a foul odor, which Elias would have to run a mile to escape. As he reached a hand in front of his nose, Robin grew her first smile across those giant, thin lips of her.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I know.”

She dug her thumb into the ankle of her left sock, before pulling it across her heel, slowly revealing her sole; pale and pink, with hints of yellow. It was an enormous sculpture of a life-like human marble, long, elegant, high arched, with long toes that had an ever so slightly masculine squareness to them. She dug her thumb into the other sock, revealing yet another horrific leviathan like it.

She threw her socks on top of one of the scattered sneakers, as she lowered her feet, and pressed them flat against the floor, before scrunching and flexing her toes, releasing another whiff of their disgusting scent, straight from the source.

“Maybe this way is more personal,” she said, with cold detachment. “You’re a friend after all. I bet it will feel even nicer for me too, the feeling of your warm guts bursting against my bare skin.”

Now, that she was sitting down and leaning close enough to the floor, she could hear Elias scream, “No, no! Please don’t say fucked up shit like that! Will you please just talk to me like normal!”

“Why?” she said, her voice carrying a feminine softness that was unlike her at all. “Now that you know I’m not normal, what’s the point in pretending.”

“Is this what you’ve been planning the entire time?” Elias sniffled. “Were we ever your friends to begin with?”

“You were,” she said.

“Were? Until what?” Elias grabbed on to the back of his head with both hands. “Until we got marked?”

“Until you found that box and looked at me, the way you’re looking at me right now.”

“Bullshit!” he squeaked. “What about your murder party?”

“My what?”

“Your friend, that chained wraith chick in you friends list told me everything!”

Robin’s eyes widened her calm dominance fading as he could hear the panic in her voice, “What did she tell you? Did she talk to the others?”

“No,” Elias’ fingers spread across his forehead, “I should’ve told them. I should’ve warned them.”

“What did she say?”

“That you were gonna do things to us, bite us in half, put us in your shoes.”

Robin whispered an expletive under her breath, as she looked at her own feet, “She’s lying, I wouldn’t have hurt you. I won’t hurt the others.”

“But you’ll hurt me,” Elias said, a every muscle in his body gave up, his shoulder sinking as he could barely stay upright.

The giant tomboy swallowed, as her tone darkened, “Yeah, I wanna hurt you a lot. Take my time with it too.”

“What the fuck!” he shrieked. “Why?!”

“Because I want to have fun breaking you apart slowly, hearing what once was a friend cry for mercy between my toes. Because I want to feel every bone in your body give way against my skin as I suffocate you in the stink of an honest day’s work. Because that’s the person I really am.”

All Elias could do was collapse in terror at the callous tone of the woman he’d fallen for, as she listed her fantasies, her sadistic plans for him, devoid of any sense that she had ever really cared.

“Because,” Robin paused. “Because you’ll never see me the same way again. When the mask slips, it’s over. You’ll always see me as a monster. I can’t let you infect the others with that.”

The giantess raised her left foot, slowly reaching towards him. Elias scrambled into a sprint, trying to get as far away from her as possible, but at his size and speed, there was nowhere to run.

Robin’s massive toes hit the ground in front of him, with an intimidating thud, before she pulled her foot back towards her, raking them across the floor, straight towards Elias, who got swept up, and dragged across the ground.

Robin let out a small sigh of comfort, the feeling of her foot making contact with his powerless little body was delightful, a welcome distraction from the anxiety she felt around the entire situation. All these mixed feelings, all the moral arguing that went on in her own head, if she just let go, and did what felt right to her, it would all be ok.

Elias gagged and squirmed, as his glasses got knocked sideways and the smell completely overwhelmed him. His body got coated in the tiny layer of sweat on her sole. It was warm. It was sticky. It was disgustingly intimate.

The toes came to a stand-still. Satisfied with the position it had dragged him to, her foot lifted a few inches above him, keeping him in its shadow. He was laying right where Robin had originally planted her foot down, and she clearly intended to do so again.

Elias, coated in her sweat rolled onto his back and raised his hands to her, “You don’t want the others to find out? Then what will you tell them happened to me?”

“That our little alcoholic ran out to get his milk,” Robin said. “Never came back.”

Her foot began to lower again, the ceiling of death rushing towards him.

“Wait,” he shouted. “Just wait.”

Elias took another foot-poisoned breath, as he remembered her smile, not the sadistic one, the sweet one.

“Are you sure they won’t ask questions?” he shouted. “Think about it. I’m smart enough to not go out on my own, even as I dry up. And you! You wouldn’t just let me walk out. You’d beat the snot out of me and tie me up.”

Robin sighed, “I can’t let you near them.”

“I wouldn’t tell them, if this is what you do to people who know, why would I curse them by telling?”

“After all this, I won’t be able to take the way you look at me,” Robin said, her toes curling beside Elias.

“Fine, no problem,” Elias shouted. “After all this, I won’t be able to look at you anyway.”

Robin expression floated between emotions, shock, pain, anger.

“Bad choice of words, Elias,” Robin said as she lifted her heel.

“No,” Elias barked. “You need me! You need me alive!”

Robin opened the bathroom door, seeing her friends stand up out of their bored imprisonment to wave at her. They looked relieved to see someone who could finally free them from their glass prison. The look on her face made Theo worry a bit.

As Oscar explained what Elias had done, Theo asked, “Everything ok?”

“It’s been a rough day,” Robin said

“Where is Elias?” Jade said. “I swear when he shrinks I’m gonna-”

“He already did,” Robin said. “He’s on the table, and don’t worry, I already gave him a piece of my mind, in case you’re wondering why he smells like my feet.”

Oscar shivered, “The fuck did you do to him?”

Robin carried her friends to the table, where a disheveled Elias was taking a couple of deep breaths, preparing for the performance he was about to put on. All he’d have to do was be himself; a version of himself from before he knew what really went on inside his friend’s mind. If he failed, everyone would die. No pressure.

Robin slowly tilted the glass on its side, letting the rest of the group climb out. Oscar was the first on his feet, ready to throw down with Elias, until he saw the state he was in. His clothes had been through the ringer, and it was surprising the guy’s tiny glasses were still intact.

Jade’s anger turned to the same surprise and shock, “What happened.”

“Robin sorta,” Elias shrugged, “gave me a firm talking to, I guess.”

He couldn’t contain himself anymore, and broke down in tears, “I’m really sorry guys. I fucked up. I got scared and freaked out. I just want things to go back to the way they used to be.”

Robin hung on every word he said, making sure he wouldn’t slip up, as she nodded along, “Me too, Elias. Me too.”

Theo ran up to hug him, “It’s ok Elias. I freaked out at first too. But we’re going to be alright, we’re safe with Robin.”

At those words, Elias went rigid in his arms, staring off into the void.

Theo let go, “Damn, you really do smell like feet.”

Robin stared down at Elias, this tiny powerless man who had taken control of the situation. The monster hated him for it. It had won the argument in her head, took control, shoved all those silly little principles she claimed to have down a hole. It should’ve been able to have its pleasures, yet Elias had made a counterargument.

The line remained uncrossed.

Not because of Robin’s own ability to stick to her principles, but because Elias had talked his way out of certain death, and now, as her mind sobered, and the monster was back on its leash, that scared her. It was her fight, her animal to keep in check, not his.

#7 - Medusa

“Robin, quit zoning out,” Jerry said as he pushed the platter closer to her. “Table 35.”

Robin blinked before looking down, reminded that she was at work. She nodded, lifted the platter, and started carrying it through the mostly empty burger joint, avoiding the shiny spots on the floor, unsure of whether she’d slip on them.

Jerry was the coworker she’d most often share shifts with. An equally moody and tired guy with a hunch, curly brown hair and an acne-covered face, an issue he never looked into resolving. Not that he wasn’t insecure about his appearance, but he was just one of those guys that had resigned himself to it.

He was another failure sharing this purgatory with her. With that came that same emptiness, lack of care, and propensity to lash out at the uniformed loser next to you; all traits Robin shared, but couldn’t stand in others.

The mild coworker annoyance Jerry instilled in her, was enough for Robin to spend her days fantasizing what she would do to him if he shrunk.

Throwing him in with the fries and letting him sizzle all-crispy was the first thing to come to mind, but it might cause too much of an outrage if a customer were to bite down on a crusted human body without looking.

Another thing she could do was grab one of the thick paper milkshake straws and put his head inside, before sucking on the other end until either his head would pop off, or his entire body got gored up into the straw. Robin thought he might appreciate getting sucked at least once before his miserable life ended.

She put the platter down on a customer’s table, with a fake smile, and took the location sign with the number 35 back with her, as her mind returned to the same brooding thoughts that had repeated in her mind, before Jerry interrupted them.

Robin had been pondering the worst-case scenario of what would happen once she got home. What if Elias had squeaked. While she was at work, there would be a lot of time for him to say something he shouldn’t. A lot of time for the others to notice he might not be acting like himself, and with repeated checks of concern they would surely drag the answers out of him.

Would he really put his friends in that dangerous position? Maybe he’d do it out of revenge, a last hurrah, as he sacrificed himself and everyone else, just to hurt her, just to leave her with no one.

If he did, she wouldn’t have a choice, they’d all look at her like a monster. Their friendship would be over, and the four of them would be nothing but tiny nuisances that feared her. If that were to happen there would be no reason to stop herself from having some fun getting rid of them. Taking care of cowering pets that had once been her friends would be too confronting for her.

That’s what Elias would be from now on. This small insignificant pest, afraid, and constantly on edge. His mere presence would serve as a constant reminder of what she was, while he’d wear the face of someone, whom she had relied on to forget, to feel normal. Just having him around would be torture.

Had it been stupid to let him live?

She kept going over everything she’d said to him, the way she’d acted and played with him like prey. In that moment, Robin had been more honest with him, than she had ever been to any normie in her entire life. It’s just that easy to be honest with someone, when you’re about to make sure, they’ll take it all to the grave.

Now, there was a living soul out there who knew what she really was, not someone who shared the same demons like Harm or Wr8 did, but someone who’d judge her for it.

Wr8, that psycho lunatic.

Just when she thought she’d found someone she could lean on, who understood her and had the same troubled response to her so-called ‘accidents’. It turned out hers were a bit more intentional than she let on. She didn’t live by the same rules Robin did, she had never tried to keep her monster in check.

All the personal information she’d shared, all those deep-rooted feelings and morbid fantasies they’d discussed, only for Wr8 to try and manipulate her into letting loose, taking the monster’s side under the guise of supporting her ‘true self’.

Robin had finally decided to rid herself of her toxic influence after she had opened up about her friends’ situation, about her insecurities at being a caretaker. Wr8 had spent hours filling her DMs with recommendations on how she should massacre them, before Robin ended up blocking her.

How stupid she had been not to remove her from her PlayStation friend list as well. Now Wr8 had filled Elias’ head with lies that were all too easy to believe, given the truths he’d seen about her.

“Robin!” Jerry shouted. “Table 28…”

Robin closed the door to her apartment. Everything was so much emptier compared to the chaos of the past week. The TV was stuck on an ‘Are you still watching’ screen; a setting she forgot to turn off, which had probably left her friends without entertainment for most of the day, which made them all the more likely to pay attention to each other and talk, more likely for Elias to have blabbered.

As she walked up to the living room table, where her friends had built their encampment of tiny beds, farm-like feeders and water cups, she carefully gauged their reaction to her presence.

Theo seemed happy to see her. Oscar was laying down on his bed, arm over his forehead. Elias only glanced her from the corner of his eye before turning his head the other way. Jade approached her side of the table, slowly, as if sensing the tension in her.

“Hey,” she said, “Welcome home, how was work?”

“I work at a burger joint,” Robin said, “how do you think work was?”

Robin stepped around the table, dropped her bag on an Elias-free couch, sat down next to it, and untied her shoes.

Jade lowered her head. “Ok, sorry, didn’t know it was that bad.”

Robin clicked her tongue, “It’s just a stupid question. I don’t get why people ask shit like that.”

“It’s called small talk, Robin,” Theo said, tilting his head. “It’s about starting a conversation.”

Robin looked at Jade, realizing her tone had intimidated her, “Sorry. Maybe just start one with a better question next time.”

“The mask slipping a bit today?” Oscar scoffed.

Robin went pale, “What?”

“The autism, you’re not masking it well today.”

Robin kicked off her shoes and scooted back in the couch, raising her legs, ready to put her feet on the table, as they created a sour wind across her friends’ encampment, before realizing what she’d be subjecting them to and raising them onto the couch instead.

“Sorry,” she said. “I think I’m just a bit of a mess right now.”

“At least things are still normal to you,” Oscar said, as he covered his nose at the sudden stench.

“What do you mean? None of this is normal for me either,” Robin said. “Not used to taking care of little- things…”

“Things?” Oscar repeated.

Theo spread his arms out, “Ok, just stop being so touchy, both of you.”

Robin sat cross-legged, lowered her head and without looking at her friends said, “You guys know I care about you, right?”

“O-Of course!” Theo shouted. “What makes you say that?”

Jade frowned and inspected every freckle on her giant friend’s face, “What’s wrong, Robin?”

“I’m just worried at some point I’ll say something,” Robin said, pressing both her hands onto her ankles, “or do something, that’s gonna make you think I don’t, but I do.”

“Does this have to do with what happened between you and Elias yesterday?” Jade said.

Robin’s eyes scanned each of her tiny friends, “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing,” Jade said, “Which is exactly what has me so worried.”

“Last night I-” Robin started. “I was pretty pissed off at him abandoning you guys, and pushed him around with my foot a bit, after he shrunk. I said some things. Hurtful things.”

Elias, still with his back turned, commented, “You were just being honest.”

“I could’ve explained myself better.”

“No need, you know me,” Elias said, with a passive-aggressive tone. “Smart enough to read between the lines.”

“I was horrible to you.”

Elias’ head swung over his shoulder to look at her, “We both understand each other now. Just drop it, before you say something we’ll all regret.”

Oscar sat up in his bed, “Jade, I think we should leave this between the two of them.”

Jade looked over at Theo, who seemed to be waiting on her lead, equally ready to back up her attempt at prying more information, as he was to follow her into keeping quiet. Jade chose the latter and walked back to her tiny bed on the table.

Elias could feel his body heat up. He saw Robin’s empty words for what they were, an attempt to erase what she had done to him the night before. If she was going to apologize for gleefully trying to end his life, she could do better than that.

If he hadn’t chosen the right strings to pull, he wouldn’t have made it out alive. He had to present her with a problem his death would cause her, that’s the only thing that worked. If he had wasted his last chance on anything else; begging, relying on her humanity, speaking to their friendship, even confessing his feelings, then he would have been dead now; a murder she’d look back on fondly; a sadistic memento in a cardboard box.

Robin was a monster, a Medusa that reduced tinies to discardable pebbles if looked at for what she really was. They were all living on borrowed time. He was the only one who knew, the only one that could save the friends he couldn’t tell. It was up to him to find a way out of her clutches. For now, he had to bide his time, and be careful to avoid a total party kill.

Robin sat in silence. There was nothing she could say or do to fix what had happened. It was her own fault, if she had just thrown out that box, like Harm had told her to months ago, if she had been thorough about cutting off all contact with Wr8, if she had acted differently upon Elias finding out about her, maybe she could’ve salvaged this.

Their friendship was broken, and with it, one of the four strings that held up her humanity had snapped.

#8 - Others Like Her

With the shakiness of a handheld camera, the scene opened up to a bedroom. Its palette a mixture of pinks, purples and clear white. The edges of the ceiling were lined with LED strips, adding an orchid purple glow to a room filled with figurines, most of them cute Japanese mascot characters. Plushies lay strewn about, in such a scattered fashion it looked like they were planning a soft and cozy revolt.

The camera tilted towards the grey carpet floor, and zoomed in on one of the legs of a king-sized bed, behind which a small human figure was peeking out at the person holding the camera.

“Well, well,” a pitched-up and cutified female voice said, “What do we have here? A little perv come to spy on his favorite streamer?”

Despite not really doing a good job at hiding, the tiny acted startled at being found out, and instead of running under the bed, chose to leg it across the open carpet. 

The woman holding the camera let out an overplayed cute giggle, “Oh, looks like someone is a little camera shy~”

The camera tilted further, until it was looking straight down at the top of a pair of pale feet, with neatly manicured nails; white gel nails, with finely drawn purple swirls and doodles. The toes flexed playfully, before starting into a slow step, making sure to dramatically land every footfall, pressing deep into the carpet, so that the fibers poured out between the toes.

As she caught up with the little prey running for his life, she held her foot up and slowly brought her toe closer, announcing its approach with another tease.

“You can’t outrun me, silly little thing~”

The tiny, running for its life, arched his back a bit, raising his arms to prepare for a fall, as the toe bumped into the back. While the force seemed enough to knock someone his size over, the tiny did much more than that, he stumbled a few steps before falling into a roll and eventually landing on his back.

The woman put her feet on either side of her victim, as she let the camera zoom in between them, where a guy in his early twenties with dark curly hair and olive skin lay panting.

“Please, don’t hurt me, I’m your most loyal mod,” the tiny shouted.

“Ah, I see,” the woman said, with a sweet voice. “And like all dedicated mods you long to be closer to your goddess. Who would I be to deny your dreams?”

The camera view got shakier and loose, as one hand reached down towards the tiny man, equally pale, similarly manicured, its index finger digging into the carpet underneath the tiny, as the thumb pinned his little chest. The camera view followed the tiny being raised into the air until the hand disappeared from view.

The view switched to the phone’s front-facing camera, revealing the face of the woman who’d just caught her adoring moderator. She was a shining example of an archetypal e-girl. Her short neck-length hair, dyed in a dark indigo blue, was fluffy and voluminous, feathering outward near her neck.

Her eyes, naturally big and round orbs with dark irises, were enlarged further by white eyeliner on her waterlines, and emphasized by thick black eyeliner starting halfway the top and bottom of each eye, ending in extended horizontal wings.

The pale skin of her soft round face was made to look almost porcelain through the heavy layer of foundation and well-blended concealer. A bit of blush accented her cheekbones and adorably colored the tip of her nose a bit.

Held in front of this smiling monument to modern male thirst, obsession and objectification, the tiny man squirmed as a hopeful cry squeaked out.

“Really, you’re not upset with me?” he said. “I can stay with you?”

“Of course,” the e-girl said. “I don’t mind letting my adoring cuties move in.”

The camera began to shake as she started walking, tiny in one hand, camera in the other. She sat down in a faux-leather gaming chair, and leaned over her desk, to put the phone in a holder. Her hand covered the entire frame as she adjusted the angle.

She sat up with a pause, turning her head ever so slightly to find the angle from which she would look the cutest. Before bringing the tiny person closer to her face.

“S-So where am I staying?” the tiny asked with an adorably naïve tone.

“Inside.”

“Inside?”

“There is no place closer to your idol, is there?” the girl said, as her pink lips thinned into an evil grin.

“Wait, you mean…” the tiny began to kick his legs within the tight grip of her fingers. “No, please QTpops, don’t eat me, I’ll die in there!”

“Exactly, and turn to nutrients for your most beloved streamer,” she teased. “It’s not much, but every donation is appreciated.”

Her grin parted as she opened her mouth just a little, slowly bringing her victim towards it, legs first. The tiny man screamed, and pulled his legs away from her mouth, spreading them so the moment they came in contact with the giant, his feet were planted on her top and bottom lip, denting and squeezing into the soft pink pillows, as he put up all the resistance he could, not to be sent into the darkness between.

The image held like that for almost ten seconds, as she giggled, obviously a man this small couldn’t put up any real fight by putting his feet against her lips. She could easily break his legs by moving him further, folding them onto his chest and back and force him in crotch-first.

She chose a gentler method however, pulling back and opening her mouth wider, before lunging forward and closing her lips on the wayward legs with a vocalized, “Ghham~”

The tiny cried out in fear as both his legs were pinned between the soft lips of the streamer he adored. “Please, you’re just playing around, right? You gotta be joking!”

With a push of her fingers, more of his body disappeared between her lips.

“No, please, I’m sorry I snuck in, ok! I learned my lesson!”

Another push, only his head and shoulders were visible.

“I don’t wanna die!”

Her lips pursed as her finger pushed his head, guiding the last of him into her mouth with a wet, sucking pop. She looked straight into the camera with a seductive glare that told the viewer, this could’ve been you. Her cheeks sucked inwards and bulged, along with the movements of her jaw, while her tongue could be seen moving into just about every part of her mouth.

She raised her chin and opened her mouth again, revealing the tiny man, his dark curls now saggy and wet, as he lay upon her tongue and rolled onto his chest. He looked at the camera, at the light, at the outside world it represented.

The sight was a fleshy and wet gigarian horror scene, a human being surrounded on all sides by the biology of just one human, pink oral mucosa, rows of perfect white teeth coated in the shine of saliva. He looked pathetic, the character in a horror movie who knows they’re about to die, reaching out but one arm for any miraculous savior to grab onto. But there were no saviors here, only the blue haired e-girl who had already decided his end.

“God, someone, please, help me!” the tiny man screeled.”

Her lips closed, and with one more wide-eyed dare-me-not-to look at the viewer, she tilted her head back and swallowed. The tiny lump of something moved down her throat. As she lowered her head, there was another short pause, a movement of the jaw and tongue, a tiny bulge in the cheek, before she opened her mouth again to reveal the same horror scene, now missing its actor.

“How’s that for content~” she said, with a cute voice, completely detached from the horrific crime she just committed.

ChadBug — 5:36 PM

Hot

harmless — 5:41 PM

As always.

@trEatmeGently Really selling it with that death scream, sounds realistic.

trEATmeGently — 5:42 PM

Thanks!

Method acting

The method: me actually being afraid of my girlfriend

ChadBug — 5:42 PM

ikr, I’m always worried until I seem him in chat

QTpopper — 5:43 PM

How do you know I’m not puppeteering his account, while he melty in belly?

ChadBug — 5:43 PM

You forgot /s

trEATmeGently — 5:45 PM

Wait

Harm

How do you know what a realistic death scream sounds like?

harmless — 5:45 PM

>.>

ChadBug — 5:47 PM

@QTpopper /s!

Goldfeysh — 6:04 PM

Has anyone seen that video of the girl healing a guys broken leg?

trEATmeGently — 6:07 PM

AI slop

harmless — 6:07 PM

Wish I could charm someone into irl roleplaying my scary little kinks.

Goldfeysh — 6:08 PM

I don’t think so

Was on the news

First tinies, now superheroes, what’s next?

Lord Womp — 6:10 PM

Alien waifus pls

Rotbeing — 6:11 PM

Hey guys

ChadBug — 6:11 PM

@harmless I’d fly right over to you if I ever got marked.

trEATmeGently — 6:11 PM

Holy shit, rot in general

*Party Emoji*

harmless — 6:12 PM

Miss Rot, how nice of you to join us.

Have you seen QT and Treat’s new vid?

Rotbeing — 6:13 PM

I might check it out later

Sorry for not being on much lately

Just wanted to ask if you guys heard anything from wr8 lately

QTpopper — 6:15 PM

Bozo Banzo

Rotbeing — 6:15 PM

Y?

harmless — 6:18 PM
Listen, I know you guys are friends and all, so I’m sorry, but she started freaking some people out, with her Ubermensch bullshit.

Rotbeing — 6:19 PM

Nah

Good riddance
not friends anymore, just checking here

Also, what?

She’s crazy but didn’t think her a white nationalist

harmless — 6:21 PM

It’s not a race thing. She had this weird supremacist thing about her black mark, said she was chosen or something.

QTpopper — 6:22 PM

Said glow would weed out the ‘real ones’, and threatened anyone with a ‘tiny’ or ‘wannashrink’ tag wih real-life violence.

ChadBug — 6:22 PM

She call me a word Idk what meant

Sounded like a slur

harmless — 6:25 PM
If you weren’t lurking in on that, how did your falling out go.

Rotbeing — 6:27 PM

It’s complicated

I thought she was the one person on here like me

So I DMed her a lot

QTpopper — 6:27 PM

Yeah, forgot about us T-T

Fwend betwayal

Rotbeing — 6:28 PM

Sorry

Things were bad

She said some things now that I look back

I think her boyfriend didn’t die by accident like she said

ChadBug — 6:29 PM

wtf

Rotbeing — 6:29 PM

I told her things about me I shouldn’t have

I got hit by the glow

QTpopper — 6:30 PM

Omg Rot, I’m so sorry.

Rotbeing — 6:30 PM

No, I’m ok

Immune

But my friends aren’t

She managed to VC with one and told him about what goes on in my head.

harmless — 6:31 PM

That’s messed up.

Are your friends safe now?

Rotbeing — 6:32 PM

I’m trying to keep them safe ig

harmless — 6:32 PM

Wait, you’re keeping them?

Rotbeing — 6:32 PM

Yeh

harmless — 6:31 PM

Rot, you sure?

Rotbeing — 6:31 PM

Don’t be a hypocrite, I know where you work

You literally surround yourself with them

QTpopper — 6:32 PM

Did you manage to explain things with your friend?

Rotbeing — 6:32 PM

No, he found my box, he freaked out and I went full psycho on him

harmless — 6:32 PM

The box you said you’d gotten rid of?

ffs Rot

Please tell me he’s alive.

Rotbeing — 6:34 PM

He is

Just not the same

harmless — 6:34 PM

Oh Rot, you stupid girl.

Rotbeing — 6:35 PM

I know, I’m sorry

harmless — 6:38 PM

Want me to drive over? Have a conversation with your friends about it? There are ways to live with what we have around tinies, maybe they’d even let you indulge in some of your weird side.

Rotbeing — 6:38 PM

No

They’re not treat, they wouldn’t be into it, they’ll freak.

And idk if I have it in me to play it out safely like QT

I’m a monster

harmless — 6:41 PM

Rot, we’re not monsters.

Rotbeing — 6:41 PM

You’re not

I am

QTpopper — 6:42 PM

No rot, big bro harm is right, you let wr8 get into ur sadgirl head.

You can be yourself if you do it right.

Rotbeing — 6:43 PM

You don’t know what I did to him

What I said

harmless — 6:45 PM

This is what I mean though, if you think you’re that horrible why are YOU keeping them?

Rotbeing — 6:48 PM

I don’t wanna lose them

trEATmeGently — 6:49 PM

Poor Rot

harmless — 6:50 PM

I get that, just be careful then.

My advice would be to stop focusing on what you’re worried about, and focus on what you can do for them, be nice, be gentle and care.

A giant in a bad mood is scary to people that size, you can’t be a downer.

Rotbeing — 6:53 PM

Yeah

Thanks for the advice, big bro

harmless — 6:54 PM

Don’t start calling me that too, QT is already annoying enough.

QTpopper — 6:54 PM

:P

harmless — 6:55 PM

And keep in touch.

Were here to support you.

Cause you’re not like wr8, you’re like us

Rotbeing — 6:58 PM

Idk bout that

ChadBug — 7:04 PM

btw Rot, have you heard the lullaby yet?

Are you hearing voices like wr8?

trEATmeGently — 7:11 PM

Think she’s gone again

ChadBug — 7:13 PM

Just wanted to know if she heard something about the games

Goldfeysh — 7:15 PM

Hope not

Don’t want her to start saying weird shit too

#9 - Four Calls

“I swear if you’re drawing what I think you’re drawing,” Jade said.

Oscar smirked, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Robin had laid down a few sheets of paper on her living room table, next to her tiny friends’ encampment. Large canvas painting using cotton swabs as brushes, it was one of the first things she could come up with in terms of an entertaining activity. She couldn’t just have them sit in their beds all day and stare at a giant screen.

Theo and Oscar both loved the idea, while Jade had felt a bit insulted at first. It was true that there was a certain infantilizing day-care undertone to the whole thing. Robin was still figuring out how to engage her friends in their current state without reverting back to boy-scout activities.

“Those are clearly balls, and you’re halfway into drawing the shaft,” Jade said.

“Nu-uh!”

When Theo suggested building out a small town square out of miniature set pieces, Oscar jumped to pitch the idea of recreating the pub in small scale, with its own miniature figurine of Frank behind the bar. The idea seemed nice, they would be able to hang out like they used to, but the project would take money and time, for now they would have to do with the childish joy of drawing phalluses onto paper like grade-schoolers.

“Ta-da!” Oscar shouted.

Jade sighed, “Did you really need to waste that much space on something so juvenile?”

She continued on her own painting, trying to do a landscape of trees in thick smudges. While unpracticed, the care she put into it shone through, a peaceful and hopeful bit of work.

Then there was Theo, who in complete concentrated silence, painted the giant woman that sat on the couch beside them in shades of red and orange, he switched between using his cotton swab for the big strokes, and his tiny fingers for the details. He and Elena had always been the most artistic of their group.

To Robin it was at once impressive, beautiful and uncomfortable. The image of her sitting sideways with her eyes to her phone, translated the impression she left on the tiny people next to her perfectly. The little guy wasn’t just drawing his friend. He was painting the most notable presence in the room, a giantess. Not unlike Jade’s drawing, she was a landscape, a monument reflected on print-paper. Even Theo’s artistic rendition of her dwarfed him.

Elias hadn’t joined in. He’d been keeping separate and quiet ever since the night she’d hurt him. He was still sitting in his bed, every now and then grabbing a peek at what his friends were doing, and trying to avoid acknowledging the looming presence that had once been his friend.

“Why aren’t you joining in?” Oscar shouted.

Robin looked to Elias for a response before realizing Oscar was looking her way.

“Oh, uh,” she stammered. “It would just be regular painting to me at this size, and I’m not any good at it anyway.”

“It’s all about expression,” Theo said. “Just look at the clear space and let an image come to mind. The execution doesn’t have to be perfect.”

She looked at a clear bit of paper, the part Oscar stood right next to. An image came to mind; that of her unkind fingers grabbing onto her friend and digging the nail of her thumb into his knees, before pinching his lower legs off. The image of a screaming brush with two points being dragged across the paper.

She wondered if she’d have enough blood to paint a cute little doodle of a cat’s face. Oscar would likely bleed out too quickly. She’d have to mash what’s left of him and use that extra gore to finish up the eyes and tip of the snout. The execution would be perfect.

“Nah, I’m good,” Robin said. “Yours looks amazing though.”

Harm’s words flashed across her mind. She couldn’t be a downer. Her negative energy couldn’t be felt, part of being a gentle caring presence was to exude charm and comfort, two things that were just not in her nature.

In her peripheral vision she could see Elias looking at her for the first time that morning. She returned a glance, to see his piercing stare. It was as if he could see past her eyes. It was as if since that night he had been able to pick up on when her mind would go to that dark place again.

Was it the look on her face, the way her body locked up a bit each time she caught herself after an intrusive thought?

“You know what, fuck it,” Robin said, forcing a smile, as she grabbed a cotton swab, climbed out of the couch and sat on the floor beside the table.

Harm was probably right, he’d always been right, and Robin had always known. The problem was Robin couldn’t help but exclude herself from the people who could benefit from his advice.

While the similarities were there; the same dark fantasies, Robin had always felt like Harm and QTpopper had a better hold on things, that they didn’t have this dark presence clawing at the back of their minds.

As she started drawing a unicorn from the base of Oscar’s crude drawing, she wondered, what if they did? What if they simply looked safer because they’d grown confident in their ability to control their urges? Would following the advice and listening to the pep talks of big brother Harm really stop her from turning out like Wr8?

If he was really like her, then Harm was a paragon of restraint. A nurse and activist who worked to care for and improve the lives of tinies, despite his dark side. He worked in a tiny care facility not that far away, the very same one that would now be home to Elena.

Robin wondered if they’d met, she’d probably like him. While Robin had never seen what Harm actually looked like, she had heard his voice in voice chat. It was warm, resonant and dreamy, his little controlled laughs adorably boyish, before his voice would return to that smooth masculine timbre.

Oscar burst out in laughter and clapped at the unicorn who wielded his crude little doodle on the head. Theo chuckled and Jade rolled her eyes, disappointed Robin was encouraging him.

Robin thought back on Harm’s words, “You’re like us.”

Hours passed as the scary redhead’s smile became more genuine, the day slowly beginning to feel like things did before, like it did when they were still their regular size, all the while the quiet presence of Elias hung over it like a tiny storm cloud.

Robin had just refilled their food and water, when she mustered up the courage to address him.

“We need to talk,” she said. “Is it ok if we separate for a bit?”

Elias looked at his friends, then to her. She was meaning to take him out of sight, somewhere she could be honest and direct. It would be another chance for him to speak to the real Robin, not this fake babysitter she’d been posing as that entire Saturday. It could also be another chance for her to change her mind on what she would do with him. No, she wouldn’t be stupid enough to get rid of him now.

Elias climbed out of his bed and stood ready with spread arms, ready to be picked up between the giantess’ fingers. They were all used to it by now, lowering a hand and waiting for them to climb took too long, simply being picked up like an object was more efficient.

The digits of Robin’s fingers pressed tight and securely against his back and chest, before he was raised off of solid ground. Robin smiled at the others, before giving an uncomfortable nod, and carrying Elias to her bedroom.

The giantess lowered him over the mattress of her bed, before dropping him half an inch onto it. Elias fell onto his side, as Robin sat down, denting the landscape under her weight, as her colossal legs swung onto the bed, and she placed her large feet, clad in dingy white socks on either side of him. Elias would never get used to that awful smell.

“So, what do you want?” Elias said, as he pushed himself up to sit straight.

Robin responded in a calm, quiet tone, so no one outside the room could hear them, “I’ve planned out some phone calls with everyone’s family this afternoon.”

“And you don’t want me to say anything about the actual situation to my mom,” Elias said. “I think that’s a given, why would we need to go over that?”

“I’m not letting you call anyone,” Robin said. “I’m sorry.”

“W-Wait, but I won’t say anything, I’m not stupid.”

“That’s the problem, you’re not. You’d probably figure out some way to get a message across, or make her notice something is off. I can’t ever let you near a phone, or buy you one of those tiny computers. I can’t have you contact the outside world.”

“It’s just my mom!” Elias shouted in disbelief.

“I can’t trust you.”

“YOU can’t trust ME?” Elias’s brow completely caved in anger, hurt and disgust. “Which one of us is the fucking serial killer here?!”

The landscape changed as Robin’s feet dug deeper into the mattress. Elias wasn’t sure if it was her own nerves, or if she was just trying to intimidate him.

“I’m not a-” Robin bit her lip before speaking, “I need you to act like it’s your choice not to call anyone, you’ve been moody ever since you got your mark, they’ll believe it.”

“Moody,” Elias repeated, quietly.

“Elias, I’m sorry, I really am. I want to make things right between us, but the way we are now-“

“You can’t make this right,” Elias hissed. “You were going to kill me. Maybe that’s just a little whoopsie in that sick oversized head of yours, but to normal people that’s not something you come back from.”

“I know,” Robin said, as her nails began to claw her knees. “I don’t need your forgiveness. I just want to figure out a way to make you feel safe again.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I feel perfectly safe!” Elias shouted in an uncontrolled rage. “I feel safe knowing you can’t hurt me, or else your whole façade crumbles. I can do whatever the hell I want around you, talk to the monster in every nightmare I’ve had this week, like I’m scolding a dog, and you can’t do shit to me!”

His arm wrapped around his chest and grabbed the upper arm on the other side, as his tirade shifted to a quiet mutter, drowning in fear and pain, “You can’t hurt me. Can’t hurt me. You can’t.”

Robin’s heart ached at the sight of how broken she had left her friend, while in her lungs she could feel the tickle of dark excitement. A friend that trusted her with his life, had been turned into a pathetic, shaking mess for her wicked enjoyment, and beside the genuine heartbreak, she couldn’t help but drink in how voraciously hot it all was.

Theo’s Call

Theo was the first to call his family. It was a video call where he expected Robin to move the camera around for him, as the little guy ran across the table to show his parents and little sister the paintings he had made, much of the paint still caught in his messy brown hair, and spread across his adorable tiny face.

“Happy to see you’re holding onto that spirit of yours,” his father said.

Theo smiled and gave his old man the happiest double thumbs he could muster. Of course, his dad would say something like that. If you were to ask that man about Theo, he’d say his son had always been a ray of sunshine, unwavering positivity you just couldn’t break.

“You sure you have everything you need with that girl,” his mother said, emphasizing ‘that girl’ with a tone of judgement. “So many of your things are still waiting for you here T-bear, let me know when you want mother to come pick you up, ok?”

Theo’s lips squirmed a bit before finding that toothy smile again, “No, mama I like staying with my friends, it’s nice.”

“You don’t think it’s nice with your poor old mother?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I carried you into this world, and as you’ve always been keen to remind me of, I may have handled a few things the wrong way, but you’ll always be my little guy, you know that right?”

“Yes, mama,” Theo said, as he lowered his head.

“I love you, T-bear.”

“Y-Yeah, love you too mama…”

Oscar’s Call

Oscar had opted for a regular voice call, stating he didn’t want them to see him like this.

His mother had taken up more space than any parent that afternoon, wanting to know all about how her baby was doing, and droning on about everything that had been going on with her lately, from a feud with the neighbor over the noisy dog in their yard, to what she’d gotten from the grocery store, and planned on cooking over the next few days.

“Oh, I’m just going on and on, aren’t I?” she said. “You probably bored as hell.”

“Nah, mom,” Oscar said. “It’s actually really nice to listen to for once.”

“Awww, baby!” she squealed through the phone with such heart, it put a smile on everyone listening in. “You be sweet to Robin ok, don’t give her a hard time.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure she can handle me.”

“I’ll ask if your dad wants to say something.”

“Nah, that’s alright we don’t have a lotta-“

“Son?” the calm tone of Mr. Davis brought Oscar to near silence.

“Pops.”

“You doin’ alright?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a damn shame that glow got to you,” his father said. “Don’t mean you gotta stop keeping your head up, alright?”

“Yes dad.”

“Gotta stand tall even when you’re short,” the man let out a dirty laugh. “Keep up the training. Maybe ask Robin if you can bench her tiddies.”

Oscar cringed, “You know she can hear you right?”

Without shame his dad guffawed another laugh, “You stay safe. Stay tough. I know I shoulda probably told you this more often, but I’m proud of you son.”

Oscar froze up and blinked, “What’s that.”

“You heard me, don’t make your old man repeat himself, you insecure little shit.”

Oscar’s eyes closed in full on laughter, it looked like he might cry, “Love you, dad.”

Jade’s Call

While no one in the group had expected Jade to want to call her parents, she seemed to more than just a little excited at the idea of doing a video call as well. It all became much clearer why when she explained.

“I wanna ragebait them,” she said.

“You wanna do what?” Theo said.

“I want to have a video call with them just to give them the middle finger,” Jade explained. “I got an idea, but I don’t know if Robin will be ok with it.”

Robin frowned suspiciously, “Ok, what’s the idea?”

“What if I had a video call with them, while I’m in there.” Jade said, pointing towards Robin’s chest.

Robin looked behind her, before she realized what her friend was getting at, “You wanna go between my tits?”

Jade’s face turned red, as Robin’s surprise turned to something intense. The giant squinted at her with a smug grin. The tiny girl knew her friend would be game for something like that. She had been the one to try and tease the bisexual out of her in the first place. If anything, it was Jade asking for it that was out of character.

“You sure?” Robin said, keeping her confident grin locked on her friend, who started to doubt even bringing it up.

“Oh, since we’re going down that road, do I get to bench them later?” Oscar said. “Pop’s orders.”

Robin’s knowing smiled jumped to each of the three friends in front of her, “So, have you all been waiting to tell me something, or?”

Theo gasped, “I didn’t say anything weird!”

Oscar’s joking demeanor washed away the second those eyes hit him, “I was kidding, damn.”

When those dark orbs turned to look at her again, Jade didn’t utter a word, her face was boiling. What had she done? She was trying to subtly lean into Robin, by playing it off as a dig at her parents, but it had somehow activated the giantess like a bi-bomb on all the tiny people in front of her.

That look, that masculine, smug delight of knowing she could get everyone on that table like they were a buffet. How did she pull it off that well? Was it practice, or did she just naturally have that she-wolf in her? The eyes of a predator.

“Too bad Robin never wears anything that shows cleavage,” Oscar said, trying to weasel out of the situation he’d jested himself into, “only boys’ clothes.”

Robin’s grin only widened, taking it as a challenge, “Oh, there’s an easy solution to that.”

The giantess rose from her seat on the couch, flexing her shoulders before she pulled her plaid shirt off them.

“Wait, Robin,” Jade said, before falling back into silence, knowing she couldn’t stop what she started. Knowing she didn’t want to stop her.

Two rough feminine hands with well-defined knuckles grabbed on to the bottom of Robin’s loose t-shirt, and raised the cloth to reveal the skin underneath like the unveiling of a giant statue. Her movement was fast and to the point, flashing her friends with sight of her impressive abs pressing beneath her soft skin, and her small breasts squeezing against her black bra.

Robin threw her t-shirt aside and smiled down at her tiny friends on the table in front of her towering legs. They looked shocked, surprised and in awe at the sight of her. The confidence boost hit her like a firework. These pathetic little insects, were looking up at her like an Olympian god. She even noticed Elias stare up from his tiny bed.

“Come on,” Robin said. “It’s not like you guys have never seen me like this.”

“Not like this,” Jade said, with a quiet guilt, which her giant friend almost failed to hear from up high.

Robin let a one-breath chuckle leave her nose, “Let’s ragebait your chud dad.”

Robin reached down, grabbing all three of them without warning, before laying down with her back against the armrest of her couch. She brought her hand to her upper body, enjoying the feeling of her friends squirming and protesting in her hand. She had to take a breath, a moment to ground herself, lest she go too far, lose her cool and release the monster.

The giant tomboy loosened her fingers, and gently sprinkled her friends across the top of her stomach, sending them tumbling down a slope of abs, as they squeaked in panic and surprise.

“Robin what the fuck!” Oscar shouted as he slid all the way down to the waist of her cargo pants.

Jade managed to put her feet down against the bottom of Robin’s belly button, stopping her fall and grabbing Theo by the hand.

“You guys ok?” Robin asked, with a playful smile.

None of them answered directly, the expressions on their faces were worth a thousand words.

Oscar despite his tough guy reluctance to admit it, was beyond himself with awe for the massive structure that had once been the girl he used to wrestle with.

Jade was dead quiet, blushing profusely at the escalation of her own words. She knew Robin could act smug and playful, but had no idea what terrifying intimacy that could bring when she was this size.

Theo tried to control his breath as he found his bearings, holding on to one of Robin’s abdominal muscles, he didn’t have to keep repeating to himself that this was his friend to feel safe. There was no doubt in his mind that this was Robin, and in her current playful state, safety would come rough.

“Robin!” Elias shouted from the table, having crawled out of bed and cautiously approached.

The giantess smiled at him, “I know, chill. They’re fine. You wanna join in?”

Elias stepped back, his anger building. She had just grabbed everyone like they were toys, exposing them to her body based on nothing but vibes. She was moving too fast, getting too excited. He was the only one who knew just how dangerous her excitement could be.

Did he want to join? The sight of what his friends were going through would at some point have been a dream come true, but now it was the build up to a nightmare. The offer to join was a sadistic tease from a would-be caretaker turned jailor, who’d banned him from all contact with the outside world.

He shook his head, but kept close attention, worried about how things might unfold.

“So, you wanna try benching one, right?” Robin said, looking down at Oscar.

Oscar looked at her in flustered disbelief, was she serious, was this fembro really about to-

He wasn’t allowed to even finish the thought, as her eager fingers grabbed on to his defenseless little body, and brought him to her chest. With her free hand, she raised her left breast, before placing him under its shadow and slowly lowering it again, so his legs got pinned. Oscar let out weak boy-ish yelp as he got trapped against the soft squishy flesh of her under-boob.

“Just like I thought,” Robin said, “There is no way you can bench that.”

She turned her attention back to her stomach, “Theo~”

The tiny boy shuddered upon hearing his name, “Please, I didn’t say anything, I’m fine where I am.”

“Yes you are,” Robin said, as she brought down her finger to gently stroke his back, before giving him a few soft presses against the abdominal muscle he clung to.

“Jade,” the giantess said, “Let’s get you in position for your call.”

Jade looked up with wide puppy eyes, as Robin reached down to grab her. She was shaking, butterflies in her stomach, as she got raised up to her friend’s chest, and watched two fingers spread the gap in the giantess’ cleavage, before lowering her into it. Jade tried to cooperatively aim her legs to make it easier, but Robin didn’t need her help tucking her exactly where she wanted.

The feeling was overwhelming, the soft body temperature pillows of skin squeezed her into a warm hug unlike any she’d ever felt before, there was a soft humidity of sweat and a scent that was undeniably Robin’s. The struggles of her other friend, trapped barely inches away from her caused a repeated jiggle that only served to further massage and knead her into Robin’s skin.

She was so lost in the intimacy of the moment; she hadn’t noticed the phone screen hovering over her. The call was already going, and her parents were looking in horror at the sight of her lost in shock between the giant mounds of a masculine ginger woman, smirking at the camera.

“Hey Mr. and Mrs. Wislow~” Robin teased.

The head of Jade’s father popped a vein as he shouted, “What the hell are you doing to my daughter?!”

Jade snapped out of the hypnosis of intimacy, and addressed the camera with the most satisfied smirk she had ever had, “Nothing I don’t want her to, daddy.”

Elias’ Call

Mrs. Hatner frowned as she saw a call come in from an unknown number, she hesitated thinking it would be one of those scam-calls her son always warned her about. Call it instinct, but she picked it up anyway, bringing the phone to her ear.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mom,” the voice on the other end said. “Mom, it’s me.”

“Elias?” Mrs. Hatner said in upbeat surprise. “Why are you calling from this strange number? I thought you’d be using Robin’s phone.”

“Yeah, technical issue, don’t worry about it. How have you been mom?”

“I’m good, great! Cassandra brought me these antique chairs; I was just in the middle of varnishing.” She said, before going on about her many projects.

On the other end her son chuckled, “Are you sure you still got room for all of that, you’re gonna have to start renting the neighbor’s attic.”

There was a stutter near the end of his sentence, the sound of someone swallowing the sad swelling in their throat. Mrs. Hatner paused, she could hear even beyond that; something had changed about her son’s voice, his tone, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“What about you,” she asked. “Are you ok sweetie?”

“Yeah, mom,” Elias said. “I’m actually better than ever, if you’d believe it. I’ve just missed you, like, a lot.”

Mrs. Hatner let out a smiling sigh, “Sometimes you go months without calling, and now you miss me after only two weeks. Sweetie, has the shrinking been that hard on you? You wanna talk about it?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s been feeling a lot longer than two weeks for me. I just really needed to hear your voice again.”

There it was, another collapse, this time complete as if the young man on the other end was breaking down crying.

“Elias, is there something wrong, did something happen? Are things wrong with Robin?”

Elias could be heard trying to catch a grip on his crying voice, “No mom, Robin is fine, she’s actually taught me a lot, shown me a whole new world. There is some stuff I have to do, and I don’t think I will be able to call you again for quite some time.”

“Elias, you’re scaring me,” Mrs. Hatner said. “Please just tell me what’s going on.”

“I’ve been doing a lot worse than just scaring people. I really wish I could explain, but you wouldn’t understand. I’m on my way to become a great man, like I promised you. I won’t end up like dad, ok?”

“Elias.”

“I love you mom, I really do.”

The call ended, leaving Mrs. Hatner in a confusing silence, unable to decipher the cryptic yet ominous words of her son.

#10 - Lullaby

It sounded like the creepy tune of an old antique music box. The song wasn’t any classical piece Robin recognized but something completely its own, a somber bedtime lullaby.

She was in the dark, her feet bare, the floor feeling solid and cold as marble. She wasn’t alone, she could hear footsteps nearby, along with a strange modulated male voice, sounding as if it was filtered through a broken computer. It was humming along with the lullaby.

As she looked in the direction of this stranger’s sounds, she saw the bright light of an arching doorway shine out into the dark, and the silhouette of a man with an oddly shaped head walking towards it, his frame cast black due to the overwhelming glow of white.

“H-Hello?” Robin said.

She was afraid in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. It was a thing she had an easier time inflicting than swallowing herself. In an echoless void of darkness, her best choice was to follow the man towards that light.

The silhouette passed the threshold of the light and disappeared.

“Wait!” Robin shouted.

She started running for the same exit, afraid the bright doorway of light would close on her. Her bare feet slapping against the cold and black, as she ran through the dark in her oversized sleep shirt and bare legs.

Running into the light, Robin could feel the change beneath her feet, before she could even see her new surroundings, squishy, cold and chunky, like wet dirt. As the blinding light faded, she realized she was standing in exactly that.

Robin found herself in the middle of a hauntingly peaceful bog, brightly lit, not by sunlight, only more of that white serene empty brightness. Around her dead trees arched up from the soaked ground and murky puddles, every single one bent and tilted, only able to sprout broken fingers of wood. A thick layer of mist hung across the ground just up to knee-level.

The modulated humming returned. The strange man was walking only twenty meters in front of Robin, with his back to her. She could see him much clearer now.

It was a thin man, in a faded-black suit, which seemed custom tailored to fit his frame, narrowing around his waist. The bottom of his trousers and his black dress shoes hadn’t been spared by the deep mud he had threaded through before finding a more solid path.

His hands were covered by tightly fitted black leather gloves, the left of which clung onto the long brass chain of some sort of medallion, ornate compass, or antique pocket watch, which the man swung in circles beside him, as he continued to hum along with the disembodied lullaby.

The strangest thing about him, was what he was wearing on his head.

The odd head-shape Robin had noticed in his silhouette was some sort of weird hat the man wore, a big ball of white knitted yarn that lay atop his shoulders, out of the top left side of his head rose a singular pointy knitted ear, like a rabbit.

“E-Excuse me,” Robin stammered, as she fumbled through the mud with big steps approaching the stranger. “Hello?!”

As she got closer, the man’s hum stopped, and he turned around, revealing the front of his knitted plush head to indeed resemble that of a grandmother sewn rabbit.

The right ear, missing its stuffing, hung loosely across the rabbit’s face, swinging across its eyes, both of which were black sewn-on buttons. It didn’t look like there were any peep-holes for the man’s real eyes to look through his mask. The mouth was a thick black thread sewn horizontally in an irregular jagged sawtooth pattern.

“I’m-” Robin struggled to find her words, intimidated by the soulless glare of the mask. “I think I’m lost.”

The rabbit’s head tilted, its loose ear moving to cover one eye completely, before his modulated voice sounded from the mask. “Well, then I guess there is no point in telling you to get lost.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You say that a lot,” the rabbit paused. “Are you ever really sorry though?”

“I don’t know how I got here,” Robin explained. “I just heard the lullaby and-”

The rabbit raised its disjointed electronic voice, “yes, yes! The fucking lullaby. People keep showing up here because of it.”

He spread his arms in frustration and roared at the sky, “and we just can’t seem to shut the damn thing off!”

Robin followed the buttons’ gaze and looked up at the sky. In the empty white of it, she saw what looked to be a thick giant translucent tube floating completely still above them, it looked to be made of plastic, with ridges to make it bend without closing shut. It looked man-made, the type you’d see commonly manufactured at a smaller scale, but like this it looked eldritch and otherworldly.

A smaller tube without ridges wired itself across the sky. Robin traced it with her eyes to where it would end, and in the far distant mist she could just about make out what looked to be a massive floating IV bag.

“What is this place?” Robin said.

“Somewhere you’re not supposed to be,” the rabbit said, before swinging the chain around his hand for a few spins, until the locket crashed into his palm. “You’re supposed to lay low, pretend to be whatever you wanna tell your friends you are, and wait for us to invite you when its playtime.”

He clicked open the locket, revealing it to be a pocket watch, and tilted his large knitted head the other way.

“Won’t be long now,” he said.

“Wait, what do you mean, playtime?”

The rabbit’s buttons turned to her again, as the strange voice took on a tone of malice, “Wakey, wakey, Robin.”

The rabbit lunged forward with his free hand, grabbing Robin by the throat. Her eyes widened in surprise and she was in darkness again. This time however, the darkness was familiar, the light of the street dimly illuminating her room.

The relief of this all having been simply a dream quickly dissipated as she realized she wasn’t laying beneath her sheets, but on top of them. With a wriggle of her toes, she could still feel the dirt between them.

Robin grabbed her phone from her nightstand and looked at her legs with the extra light; dirty.

In a mania of confusion, she jumped out of bed, and rushed out to the bathroom to shower, unaware of Theo waking up in his tiny bed upon the living room table, who saw the light beam out of the bathroom door, and listened to the water in the shower go on. He decided it was best to keep quiet, and not ask about it the next day, assuming this was a private thing men had no business inquiring about. 

After a quick shower getting all the dirt off her, Robin climbed back into bed, she’d change the sheets the next morning, it was only the top of them that were dirt. She grabbed her phone and started furiously typing in the server.

Rotbeing — 03:42 AM

I just had a weird dream, but when I woke up, my feet had dirt on them from in that dream.

ChadBug — 03:48 AM

What?

Rotbeing — 03:48 AM

Chad hey
anyone else here?

ChadBug — 03:49 AM

What, I’m not enough?
Ouch
All murricans eepy right now ig
Did you hear the lullaby?

Rotbeing — 03:50 AM

Yes, how do you know about that?

ChadBug — 03:51 AM

Wr8 and her meltdown.

Rotbeing — 03:51 AM

I’m freaked, ok I’m losing it.
As if I the whole becoming a monster wasn’t enough, now there is a weird asshole rabbit in my dreams.
Or real dreams?
WTF WTF WTF

ChadBug — 03:53 AM

Rot chill
If you’re going through the same things, then maybe Wr8 wasn’t delusional.
Messed up and scary, but not delusional.
Could ask her

Rotbeing — 03:55 AM

No way
I don’t want to

ChadBug — 03:56 AM

I know but she might have answers.

Rotbeing — 03:56 AM

Answers that will try to steer me into shit I don’t want to.

ChadBug — 03:58 AM

got any superpowers?

Rotbeing — 03:58 AM

Bro
Take this seriously

ChadBug — 03:59 AM

I am
What about the games?
Did you hear about the games?

Rotbeing — 04:00 AM

The rabbit said something about being invited to play
You know what he meant.

ChadBug — 04:02 AM

It’s currently a rumor
Like an urban legend that sprung up this month.
Messed up games organized by shady people
Underground invite only
Killing tinies for sport

Rotbeing — 04:04 AM

How sure are you about those rumors

ChadBug — 04:05 AM

idk, some say the cops are hunting the freaks down.
Wr8 said she’d already played
You’re not planning on taking the invite, right?

ChadBug — 04:27 AM

Rot?

As much as she tried, Robin couldn’t fall asleep again for the rest of that morning. Her mind flipping back and forth on dismissing what had happened as a weird dream, to reminding herself the way she woke up proved it was more than that.

Maybe she had sleepwalked out of her apartment and ended up somewhere in the dirt, before making it all the way back without anyone waking her. She’d never sleepwalked before. Was that even possible while sleepwalking?

As the thought crossed her mind, a gut wrenched realization hit her. If she was sleepwalking how dangerous would that be to her friends. A half-conscious giant lumbering about the apartment, doing what came natural to it, doing what came natural to Robin.

She threw her sheets aside and swung herself out of the bed again. Storming towards the living room and turning on the light. She rushed to the table as sudden light, and the earthquake of her panicked steps work every single one of her friends up at five in the morning.

They were ok, they were alive. She hadn’t hurt them.

“What?” Oscar yawned. “It’s still dark out.”

“I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I thought, something bad had happened.”

“You have a bad dream?” Jade said.

Robin nodded, as she sat down on the floor beside them, leaning her back against the couch, “I worried I’m starting to lose it.”

Elias put on his tiny glasses, “I think I speak for all of us, when I say it’s very important to all of us you don’t.”

Jade frowned at him, “Since when did you become such an asshole?”

“It’s ok Robin,” Theo said. “You don’t have to worry so much. You’re doing good. I mean, this afternoon was maybe a bit…”

A pink glow appeared on his tiny cheeks as he thought back on the line that had been crossed that Saturday. Not Robin’s dark line, but a physical one. All of them had realized it in their own way. Their friend would no longer be a giant landscape in the distance for them to paint, but someone who could grab them, put them intimately close to her in a way friends usually didn’t.

“Theo is right, you are doing good,” Elias said, as if influenced by Jade’s judgement of him.

Robin could see he meant it, but also what he meant by it. He wasn’t complimenting her for being a good host, he was acknowledging the restraint she had exercised so far.

“Sorry, for waking you guys up,” Robin said.

“No Robin,” Jade said with a soft smile. “Thank you for caring.”

Robin left, back for her room, letting her friends pick back up on the sleep she couldn’t have. A few hours later she was sitting in the couch, gulping down her giant can of energy drink; her version of morning coffee.

The group was watching a Sunday morning talk show, with a controversial guest, Tobias Arkland, a pastor who had quickly risen to fame grifting off a religious angle to the Omen Glow phenomena. He was clearly taking his spot on the show as another opportunity to publicly debate his views.

His interviewer, a brunette in casual business attire was the first to speak, “I just don’t think we should be demonizing an entire group of people based solely on the fact that they’ve been spared from a terrible disease.”

“A disease, huh?” Arkland scoffed. “I’m glad you call it that, it shows just how desperate you vaccine junkies cling to your medical science mumbo-jumbo, even as the impossible unfolds right in front of your eyes.”

“You want science,” he said, “I’ll give you science. They’ve done studies into this, they’ve got numbers, you like numbers? You like looking into what the numbers say.”

The woman tried to keep her composure as she spoke. “The sample sizes of the studies you’re referring to aren’t enough to prove-”

“Oh, it’s never enough for you people. Leave the pattern recognition to the people actually paying attention.”

Arkland continued, “People with the devil’s mark are twenty-five times more likely to have committed a violent crime than the average person. Over 40% of them are in active therapy. That’s almost-”

“Are we judging people for seeing a therapist?” the interviewer said, with a smirk that told the audience she believed it to be a good retort.

“Let me finish. That’s almost double the national average.”

“Let’s not forget the case where the glow struck a prison,” Arkland said, “and left more than a quarter of its inmates immune. The largest instances of black marks during a mass glow event, and it happened at a prison.”

“Yes, I know about it. Correct me if I’m wrong but many of the wardens also received a black mark during that. Maybe if you’re arguing down this road, it might be worth including these figures of authority you like so much, into your demonization of these people.”

“If they’re marked black; they are demons,” the pastor said. “They are no neighbor of mine.”

“Sir, I think you should be more careful with that inflammatory rhetoric, given how it might influence people to commit acts of violence against innocent-”

“The Omen Glow is the devil’s work, and it is the devil’s children who are spared from it. I wouldn’t trust someone with that mark anywhere near my wife or my children. And in a world where so many people find themselves weak and defenseless by unholy magnitudes, I think we should be a bit more attentive to the signs we are given. Thank you, ma’am.”

“Sir-”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Arkland had clearly gotten across everything he wanted to say, her retorts didn’t matter to him, only the airtime to list his own talking points.

Robin put down her can on the table, the weight of what was still inside sending vibrations through every tiny nearby.

She wondered, was he right? Sure, if she were only looking at herself and Wr8 it checked out, but those were the only two examples she had right now, she had never gotten close enough to another person with a black mark to tell. Harm and QTpopper would probably add to the pool of examples, if they were really like they claimed to be, like her, but they had never been caught inside a glow to a mark.

The idea of it though; the thought that there were really others out there with monsters inside them like Robin, that they could be recognized by their mark, counted in studies. It would mean she really wasn’t as alone as she always believed herself to be, but was that a good thing? How many of them managed to control it? How many of them even tried?

“Checks out,” Oscar said, as he turned to Robin with a shit-eating grin.

“What?” Robin said, caught off guard.

“You can be a little psycho sometimes,” he said, playfully.

Theo happily chimed in, “I mean, you were pretty scary yesterday!”

Jade gave a squinted smug grin, “Our demonic little devil child.”

“Little, huh?” Robin said, hiding her worries behind a confident smile that attempted to overpower Jade’s.

Elias wasn’t commenting on what he heard, to him it was a new fact to keep in mind, one he knew to be true. People with Robin’s mark were dangerous monsters, and if the Omen Glow continued, sadistic psychopaths would one day inherit the earth.

They spent most of their Sunday lazily watching TV, and as the following week went on, this new dynamic began to settle into the early stages of normalcy. The boring work days mostly following a repeating pattern of Robin leaving them in front of a giant screen, and coming home too worn out to do much.

Robin lamented the fact she couldn’t just prop her feet up on her table anymore, undress or leave a mess at her leisure. Maybe that could change in time. Perhaps she could train the little bugs to just get used to her stink, or get used to her half naked body strolling by if she just pretended it was normal and went on despite the comments she might get. They’d probably like it anyway.

Maybe Harm was right, maybe she could get a hold of things. Leave the morbid fantasies to the imagination. Maybe she had simply been too self-loathing, too distrusting of herself. Causing her to make untrue conclusions about where she would and had to take things, conclusions that had hurt someone whom she might never fix things with.

With each passing day she grew more confident of that, more trusting of herself. This monster wasn’t going to touch her friends.

It was Thursday evening when the package arrived at her apartment complex, the one that reminded Robin what world she now lived in.

It was a small cardboard box, the size of a tissue box. The problem was Robin hadn’t ordered anything, the package felt light, and shaking it didn’t seem to move anything inside. It was an unsolicited package from a complete stranger. Robin was stupid to bring it upstairs. An idiot to sit down in front of her tiny friend’s encampment to open it.

“Ooh, what’s in there?” Jade said.

As she flipped open the cardboard flaps, there was a thin strip of paper atop the bubble wrap with a message. And a tiny crimson spot of something which had dried onto the paper. Robin’s heart sank, as she carefully turned the paper around inside the box, so her friends wouldn’t see the bloodstain, and read the message.

“Really wish we could’ve done this together, but U coping,” it was signed off with a heart and the name ChainedWr8.

Oscar tried to peer in on his tippy toes, which was still a foot too low, “So, you gonna show us what’s in there?”

Robin carefully dug her fingers into the bubble wrap, carefully pushing it aside, until she froze up completely, “No…”

Elias saw the look on her face, that mix of morbid fascination and dread, “Robin, what’s in there?”

Robin looked out above her friends’ heads, her eyes wide with her attempt to disassociate from the moment. She expected herself to cry, but didn’t, and hated herself for it. Her lip quivered.

Elias shouted at her, “Robin, what’s in the box?!”

#11 - Wr8

People are so fake, aren’t they?

Society acts like the concept of masking is a behavior exclusive to neurodivergent people, the ones who more easily have theirs slip. The ones that don’t slip up can go on pretending their façade is normality itself, their true face only ever seen by their disgruntled exes, or the broken children they send out into the world.

There is a lie about what people are like, so ingrained in our culture, that it gives every human being impostor syndrome, thinking they’re the only misfit, desperately playing a character afraid of being found out, unaware that their perfect little performance puts the same pressure on the shoulders of the people they worry might figure them out.

My name is Eve, and the truth of what I am is incompatible with this cultural liar’s view of humans.

If you were to lay eyes on the things I do when no one is looking, you’d probably call me a monster. As if ‘human’ is a label you can simply strip away like an in-group subculture identity. Simply because the zoological truth, that something like me is of the same species as you, would be too much to handle.

I know what you would call me, how you would look at me, how you’d talk about me. But I also know why. It’s because I am, in fact, human. All my savagery is relatable, a dark mirror of what goes on in your own head; what would happen if something just slipped down the wrong corridor in your palace of bullshit.

A real monster would be a different species, and you wouldn’t judge it the same.

When a man puts his arm into a lion’s cage, and has it torn to shreds. Does he think of the animal as a monster? Does he blame it for acting according to its nature? No, of course not. He’ll return years later, pointing in laughter with the one arm he has left, as he retells the story of the elegant predatory beast that got him.

I don’t get the luxury of having my nature be viewed in that light; powerful, predatory, elegant. If I were to rid you of your underutilized useless little limbs, you’d forever think of me as the evil bitch that ruined your life, with disgust, rather than the reverence I deserve.

All because of the projection that comes into play between one human and another, because I disobey the façade we all agreed upon. It says more about you than you realize. It reveals that, deep down, you know all this pretense to be a lie; a carefully maintained construct.

In a world full of clawed eagles pretending to be dainty little robins, I am truth. At home, I keep not a shrine to incident, but a temple to purpose.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, as I stepped up to the café to meet my handsome little date. I was scanning tables outside for a sign of this insignificant little life-form, when I was helped by the arm of a young blonde woman rising to wave at me, while she bore an expression of annoyance. Of course, the little shit had a babysitter accompanying him.

Knowing the real identity of Robin Marrick through the access she gave me to her social media, made it easy enough to find information on all her tiny friends; Jade Wislow, Oscar Davis, Elena Curtley, Elias Hatner, Theo Brecker and Simon Elwind.

I know who they are, where they are, the types of people they are, or posed themselves to be, and I knew a desperate little pervert like Simon would be the easiest to snatch from his nest.

I stepped up to the woman and the tiny man in front of her, with a warm smile, that I lightly infused with hints of embarrassment. “Oh, hey, there you are! Is this your sister?”

“Yeah, don’t mind her,” the little guy said. “She’s sort of like my maid.”

The smile that followed wasn’t one I had to fake. His distasteful nature was laid bare without even an attempt to hide it, unlike the pretense many other modern men engaged in; it was honesty.

I knew all about these distasteful parts of his personality, his radioactive insecurities, how those made him an outlier among his friends, and made him a walking repellent to any self-respecting woman. I knew how close to home these idiosyncrasies would be to his friend Theo, whose secret online footprint revealed a much worse history.

I imagine sweet little Theo might have tried to teach his friend some self-awareness, in hopes of making sure Simon wouldn’t end up in a similar place, but different experiences breed different complexes, even if the outward behavior may seem the same.

I pulled back a chair, and sat down in front of them. “I gotta say, you’re even cuter in real life. I really gotta keep myself from just- ah!”

I stretched and pulled back my manicured fingers, making an overwhelmed face of giddiness that screamed cuteness-overload in classic millennial fashion. I worried the quirky act might not go over well with a college-aged kid, a generation younger than me. But in the case of Simon, the idea of dating a woman in her early thirties was part of his little fantasy.

“I’m sorry if it’s weird,” I said. “I just have a thing for tiny men. The idea of a handsome little guy like you fitting in my palm makes me just so-”

“Nah, I like that about you actually,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “It’s nice to finally be dating a woman who doesn’t put up a shallow height limit. Y-You know I used to be six-foot-two before I got nerfed?”

“No way, really?”

I looked to his sister, to see her rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

I let the little guy do most of the talking. He seemed more interested in flaunting his feathers to impress me than he was in asking me anything about the person I was, which made things easier; less need for me to explore the character I was playing.

Throughout his incessant yapping his stare would crawl all over me, the little guy was over the moon and who wouldn’t be?

I was dressed to kill; an open black jean jacket layered atop a tight dark red crop top emphasizing my large tits and laying bare my perfect waist, while dark-grey three-quarter jeans tightly squeezed my thick legs, beneath which I wore the out-of-touch black flats I had kept in pristine condition since high-school.

My long nails were perfectly manicured with matte, dark maroon nail polish, matching my even darker lipstick, which was applied and outlined to make my lips look bigger. My cold steel-blue eyes were accented with classic cat-eye wings, and fake lashes. My wavy raven black hair extending past my shoulders with a glossy shine.

I was the millennial femme fatale a man like Simon would ask his gooner AI to roleplay. The lie he wanted. Meanwhile at home, I’d be what men like him would refer to as a messy hag, a failed woman past her prime, living in her witch’s den like a cat-less cat lady sipping wine. None of that mattered, the fantasy of me was all he needed. He wouldn’t live to see me remove the make-up.

Simon just went on and on, “Anyway, it’s too bad I’m too small to hold a guitar now, else I’d play you some tunes.”

His sister was trying to pass the time with her phone, it was clear she wanted to be anywhere but here, and that’s all I needed.

“Hey, I was wondering,” I said. “Seeing as your sister is just uncomfortably third-wheeling, wouldn’t it be better if we let her do her own thing. I don’t mind bringing you home later. Maybe you can spend the night at my place?”

Simon’s little eyes lit up, his blond head turning to his sister, who was his only obstacle to being taken home by this absolute goddess.

His sister frowned, “I don’t think that’s safe. Don’t take this the wrong way, but this woman is still a complete stranger.”

Simon gasped, his hands and arms making an explosive ‘the fuck’ gesture. Getting him on board was the easiest part, unlike his sister, he wasn’t attuned to the danger of an enticing stranger. His horny little boy-brain had never been confronted with even the idea of someone predating on him. Danger like that hadn’t existed in for him until a few weeks ago, and he had spent those two weeks isolated from this new world, which would eat him alive.

“No,” the young woman said. “Mom and dad told me to keep an eye on you.”

“Oh, you’re the one always calling me a creep,” Simon shouted. “Yet here you are, dutifully willing to watch me do it with the woman of my dreams.”

His sister’s nose scrunched, “Eww, yuck. Don’t even-”

While the sibling hostility was an absolute joy to listen to, I knew this wasn’t going to go the way I wanted, unless I gave it a little push. I leaned forward, locking eyes with the blonde girl, as I felt the black mark on my right thigh burning.

I spoke with words beyond, “What is it you want to do?”

The anger and disgust she had for her brother faded, as her face returned to complete neutrality, “I want to hang out with Jess and Rachel…”

The blonde woman’s chair slid back, with a scratchy sound, before she stood up and walked away without another word.

Simon shouted at his sister’s back, “I appreciate it, tell mom I’ll be fine!”

The tiny guy turned his attention back to me, locking his fingers and swaying his shoulders in what no doubt was an attempt to exert some white-boy swagger.

“So, just us now, where do you wanna take this?”

I slowly lowered the back of my malevolent claw down on the table to offer a ride, as if it were a gentle hand. “You know where. Hop on cutie~”

The drive was longer than the little guy expected, we had to cross state lines, and it took another few hours before we finally got to my cozy secluded little house. He was starting to notice something was up, asking all these annoying questions, about how he thought I was a local, asking how much longer the ride would take; nothing I couldn’t handwave away with a sweet voice, and the promise it would all be worth it.

There was no reason for me to keep up the act at this point, but I wanted to. I had planned out exactly how I wanted the realization that he was in danger to hit him, and I didn’t want to deal with him screaming and crying in my car for the entire ride home.

I carried him inside and pulled off my flats, wriggling my toes in the white invisible socks, which kept the top of my foot bare, their soles had been grayed and turned soggy by the long drives I made that day. I’m such a sweater.

“You got like a nice place,” Simon commented, his tired mind struggling to find small talk.

“Thank you,” I said. “I can’t wait for you to meet my boyfriend.”

“Y-Your boyfriend?”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re not really together anymore.”

“But he still lives here?”

“I wouldn’t say he lives here,” I said, unable to contain my grim excitement. “Might be best if I just showed you.”

I carried him to my little hobby room, where I kept my gaming desk, and shelves full of knick-knacks and broken little trophies. I brought him closer and closer to those shelves, as I watched him try to make out what he was looking at, this weak little thing, slowly beginning to tremble against my cold palm.

“What’s that,” he said, as if he was hoping there was still a chance this wasn’t what it looked like.

“These are all the idiots that came before you,” I said, with a gently cooing voice. “Well, maybe calling them idiots isn’t fair to them, most weren’t stupid enough to come willingly. My boyfriend is up here somewhere, but I forgot which remains are his.”

I raised him up to one of the shelves, to give him a better look at my collection; a bloody sock with unrecognizable gore dried into the fibers, the dead body of a tiny woman held up by the six toothpicks I had impaled her with, a wide variety of twisted beaten and broken bodies, some loose limbs of the ones I couldn’t fully peel off my skin, and my favorite ash tray, full of burned bodies, some of which I had just held above my lighter, while most had been poked to death by cigarettes. I don’t make a habit of smoking outside of play.

“What the fuck! No. No. fuck!” Simon shouted as he crawled backwards on my palm.

There is nothing more amusing than watching someone try and squirm away from you, when the very surface they’re squirming away on is you.

“Oh, you should see this,” I said, pointing to a jar of my own puke. “I call this one the exo-vore jar. Eating someone is fun, but I really like to watch them drown or melt away in my stomach acid.”

“You’re a fucking psycho!” Simon squealed.

I let my face sink into a sad and hurt look.

“You think I’m a psycho?” I said with a vulnerable voice, before picking up with huffing laughter, “no one’s ever called me that before!”

“No, God! Why are you doing this?!”

“Because Robin told me I could have you.”

“What?”

“Your friend Robin,” I said. “She’s a friend of mine too. All those other tiny friends of yours, she’s already butchered them all.”

I could see the gears turning behind his shocked and horrified little face, “No, no. Robin wouldn’t. She didn’t! Call her! There’s been a mistake! She’ll tell you we’re friends. She wouldn’t want you to hurt me!”

I smiled with wicked glee as I recounted his friends’ obituaries, “I think she slammed Elias’ limbs under the buttons of her mechanical keyboard. Strangled Theo with a lock of her own hair, almost severing the little guy’s head. Jade became a red streak across her ass-cheek, and Oscar, oh Oscar, she chopped that guy up into little bits before snorting him up like a fucking line of the good stuff.”

“No, that’s not- she didn’t-”

I answered with a miserable sorry pout and a baby voice, “All your friends are dead.”

I turned to a whisper, as I lowered my lips down closer to the mentally shattering victim in my hand, “All that, and she didn’t even invite me to join in on the fun. But she told me to come and find you; said you’d always been a miserable little incel who couldn’t pull any women, that you’d be easy enough to lure out. She told me she only ever put up with your shit, because Oscar liked you so much, but deep down she fucking hated your guts so much, she didn’t even want to spill them herself.”

As I leaned back a bit, I could see it in his eyes, the warped little twist I gave to the things I knew about her friends were clicking into place, he was starting to believe me. The horror of Robin’s betrayal combining with the fear of what I was about to do to him made for such a juicy cocktail of chemicals in his mind.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” he said as he turned into a whimpering mess.

“I was starting to doubt if I should,” I said. “The more I heard about you, the more I felt I could relate to you in a way none of these creepy decorations ever made me feel. We’re both discarded and disowned by a society that left us behind, with an air of moral superiority.

I could see his eyes widen, that little spark of it. Oh, how I adore the push and pull of giving and stripping away hope.

“Honestly,” I said. “I don’t agree with her calling you that horrible ‘incel’ word, it’s kinda crude and dismissive of men’s issues. Everyone is always talking about the glow, but who is out here caring about the loneliness epidemic?”

He didn’t budge, his eyes were still wide in hope-fueled terror, his body still locked up solid like a deer in headlights.

“Little Simon, who never fit in anywhere, and had to play the role of jester just so he could connect with others. Then all these people start getting sensitive about everything, and turning the one social-in you had into a minefield. Women, looking at you in disgust. Men using you as a social punching bag to get in the good graces of those women. It’s not fair.”

“Here you are, discarded like trash by a person you trusted, into the hands of a sadistic monster, who might be the first woman to actually see the real you,” I continued, as I reeled him in like a fish, “All you ever wanted was warmth, to be treated like a human being, to be desired by a single woman the way you desire so many of them. All you wanted, was a love.”

I reached out the index finger of my free hand, my digit turned upwards, wondering if he would bite. His head shakily turned to my shelf, as he reassessed the horror he was in, before turning back to look me in my empathetic eyes. I was the monster at the fringes of society, seeing him, offering him the very companionship, which I had denied so many others. A loner’s perfect fantasy.

Simon’s tiny little hand reached out, carefully touching my fingerprint. I titled my head, and smiled at him for the few seconds he’d need to imagine a future with his psycho mommy, then I let my thumb pounce on his hand with a tight squeeze, under which I felt all those intricate tiny carpals bones give way. He screamed in pain.

“You pathetic little loser. Did you really think I believed any of that?” I laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, I understand you. I understand everyone.”

I began to press my thumb back and forth, really grinding the little hand, as the tiny boy kept screaming.

“Lonely men, activists, racists, tiny little queer people. No one ever admits to themselves how easily their mind is played with by a friendly voice, an ally, someone unlike all those nasty other folks.”

“It hurts! It hurts!”

“Women, am I right? You give them a hand they take-“

I squeezed my thumb forward, making sure I had a good grip on his lower arm, before I ripped the whole limb off his shoulder, as if he were a flimsy scarecrow. His scream of agony alone was enough to make the entire drive to-and-from worth it. Blood came gushing out, and I knew I wouldn’t have much time left to tease him.

“Oh, whoopsie,” I said, as I brought the limb back, and poked his face with the bloody stump of it. “You want it back? Here take it. Take it. Heheh~”

He fell back and squirmed, as his blood gathered in a little puddle, which poured out into the lines of my palm.

I lowered my hand a foot above the ground, before tilting it and letting him take a little tumble. He was such a noisy little squealer, I loved it. He rolled onto his stomach and began crawling across my floor with the little bit of strength and consciousness he had.

“Keep going Simon, you’re gonna make it.” I teased. “Come on all the way back home, you can do it!”

My words were enough for him to give up completely. He just laid there, crying, as he bled out.

“Oh, that it?” I said. “Are you ready for me to end your pathetic little life, like the worm you are?”

“Why?! I don’t understand. Why is this happening?!”

“I told you, you were dumb enough to befriend a sadist who gifted you to one of her sadist friends. I’m just living my truth.”

I shifted my big toe forward, raising it only high enough to envelop his lower body. I can only imagine how foul the smell was, how gross the squishy feeling of my humid sock’s fibers against his legs and lower back must have been. I wanted to bury him completely under the filth his ride had built up, but I had to leave the face intact, recognizable.

“Robin, fucking bit-“

I slowly pressed my toe down, the blood which poured from his mouth stopping Simon from cursing his final slur at the friend who, he believed, had betrayed him and his friends. The ones he toxically struggled to connect with, but cared about deeply.

I felt his spine, hips and upper legs collapse with a satisfying potato-chip-like crunch, under the casual force of my toe pressing into the ground, as I felt that warm gore seep through my sock.

There is nothing more exhilarating than feeling a human life ending against your hands and feet.

I scolded myself for being so quick to pull off one of his limbs, putting a bleed out timer on something that could’ve lasted hours if I had been a little less impulsive.

I raised my foot to look at the sticky red mess I left on my sock and floor. “Well, looks like I have a gift to wrap~”

#12 - Bloody Bean-Spill

“What’s in the box?!”

Even though Elias’ voice was distant and squeaky due to his size, it rang through Robin’s mind. What lay inside the bubble wrap was a gory mess, a tiny arm, a half crushed upper body, no sign of any legs. What lay inside that box was a friend. It was Simon.

Robin and Simon had never been close, but they got along, as long as he didn’t feel too confident going on his tangents. He’d been a drinking buddy brought in by Oscar who thought the guy was hilarious. He ended up sticking around, probably due to Jade, for whom he had a crush so obvious everyone in the group caught on to it.

It was clear from the things he’d joke about, and the things he’d argue, that his general attitudes didn’t fit in well with the rest of the group, but he made up for it by being an all-around good-natured person. Everyone knows that one guy who’s kind, reliable, buys the most rounds of drinks, but the second an argument or debate starts turns into the densest most annoying bastard alive, that was Simon.

Now, he was gone, brutalized and packaged into a gift for her. It was horrible, grotesque. It was the very thing Robin would’ve done to Elias if he hadn’t stopped her.

Her long stare into the abyss didn’t help soothe the infectious anxiety that radiated onto her friends. Oscar, Jade and Theo were looking between her and Elias. They had all sensed it in some way, that tension between them, and now it seemed whatever was in that box was somehow shared knowledge between the two of them, despite Elias not even having grabbed a peek inside.

“I’m a ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ type of guy,” Oscar said. “But I think it’s time you tell us what’s going on.”

Robin looked down, at Oscar with an empty soulless expression. The little bug had no idea what he was demanding. To know who she was, to see her, truly see her, and the danger that ever having been her friend now put him in.

Was this it? Did she really have to explain it all? She could just close the box, pretend it’s nothing, and tell them to shut up. Let them be suspicious, let the uncomfortable secret nag at their mind, anything was better than having them fully dread and fear her. Discomfort she could deal with.

“Robin,” Jade said, drawing her attention with a gentle, almost maternal tone. “I don’t know what’s been happening between you two, but we need to know. We’re too close to keep secrets.”

Was there a world in which she could come clean, perhaps spill only part of the beans? Tell her friends she had quirky little fantasies, without telling them how closely they edged with reality?

Robin spoke, “I have-“

“A stalker,” Elias butted in. “It’s that troll from her friend list, I’m assuming the package is hers.”

Theo frowned as he looked at Robin, “Then why didn’t you just tell us? Why would that be a secret, you’d want to vent, or seek support.”

“She didn’t want to worry us, so soon after shrinking,” Elias said. “She wanted to focus on making us feel safe.”

“Safe,” Oscar said. “You mean the stalker makes us unsafe?”

Elias’ eyes went wide, as he realized he’d chosen his words poorly.

Theo shivered, “What is in that box? Just tell us!”

Robin’s mind raced thinking of the first best thing a stalker would send, “It’s a love letter, and some chocolates.”

Jade nodded, “Ok, then show us.”

“What?”

“Just show us the chocolates.”

Robin’s grip on the box tightened, her knuckles whitening. “No.”

Oscar pressed both hands into the back of his head, “It’s not fucking chocolates, is it?”

Robin closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “It’s-“

“Robin, don’t,” Elias said with a lump in his throat.

Oscar snapped his head towards Elias, before he stormed over to the guy, pushing aside Theo, and shoving both of his arms into the white-haired boy’s chest, throwing him off his feet, onto the table’s surface.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Oscar shouted.

“The fuck is wrong with you,” Elias shot right back. “Why are you so hell bent on getting us all killed!”

Theo leaned over to try and help him back up, while Jade’s face lost all its color.

“What are you talking about Elias?”

“Just shut up,” Elias said. “All of you just need to shut up.”

Jade raised her head at the giant sitting on the couch in front of her, she squeezed her fists and stepped forward, braving herself to put on her gentle, caring voice once more.

“Robin, I can tell you’re scared, and I know you don’t want to put that on us.”

Robin’s grip began denting the box, as her eyes remained closed.

Jade continued, “but we’re getting pretty scared right now, and maybe it’s better if we could all just talk, starting with what is in that box.”

Robin finally opened her eyes and looked over the three tiny friends who still saw her as the girl they once knew. She knew what she had to do. She knew there was no more hiding what she was, what her world was like. But she wanted to savor the way they looked at her one last time, even if their faces were full of angst, they were still looking at their friend.

Jade’s starry-eyed hopeful bravery; Theo’s trusting eyes awaiting the words that would explain all this away, so he could offer his comforting support; Oscar’s intensity, that could return to a joking demeanor if she had any lie left to sell them; all those faces were about to turn to horror, never to return to normal.

The giant tomboy’s stare went blank; a look only Elias’ would recognize. The mask wasn’t slipping; she was about to take it off.

“No more lies, no more pretense,” Robin said, knowing how much Wr8 would have loved to hear her say those words.

Elias’s fingers dug beneath his glasses, clawing at his own face, “No, no, no!”

“Time for you to see my world,” her voice having turned completely monotone and soulless. “To see what I am.”

Robin raised the box above the table, before flipping it to pour out the contents. The bubble wrap slowly sank out of the box, until enough of it had loosened for the mangled half-corpse of Simon to slick out, spin through the air and crash onto the table with a sickening splat.

Cue the screams.

Jade shrieked like a banshee. Elias’ muttering turned into an agonized wail. Theo fell onto his butt and began to hyperventilate, Oscar stumbled backwards in complete silence, before his body lurched forward and he began to puke.

“So, my friend Wr8 had her fun with Simon.” Robin said, explaining the sight before them with callous simplicity. “I guess the whole idea was to send me a message about who I am, and how I can’t protect you guys from it. So here we go, my world, my sickness.”

She let the cardboard fall out of her hand, sending it crashing down to the floor beside the table, before she leaned back on the couch, and after weeks of not doing so; propped her grimy, socked feet up on the table.

It was as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, the tense muscles through her body finally loosening, as she imagined feeling cortisol dropping. She listened to the horrified screams of her friends, as a smile crept across her face. They would be processing the horror of it for a while, best to bask in their misery, and wait for them to finally be able to talk.

Most of them were rooted to their individual spots on the table, frozen in fear.

Theo began to whisper to himself, “Not again, not her, not like her.”

Jade, brave as ever, was the first to address the grinning giant beside them, “This is what your stalker did. You didn’t do this.”

“I didn’t,” Robin said. “But I could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. If anyone is going to kill one of my friends, it should be me.”

Jade’s jaw quivered, “Robin, you’re freaking me out.”

“I know,” the bisexual god said, with that confident smug grin.

The tiny alt girl couldn’t believe it. That smile, that fucking smile. This was what it had meant all along; what had been hiding behind it, not flirtatious intent, not playfulness, but darkness, something Jade’s mind was still puzzling together.

“You wanna kill us!” Oscar screamed.

Robin turned to him with a toothed grin, “Yeah, it’s just a silly little thought that’s been on my mind lately.”

“I wanna go home,” Theo whimpered.

“I am your home now.”

“Why? Why would you wanna kill us?” Jade shouted, her hands clutched to her chest.

“Because it’s messed up for me to do so,” Robin said with a shrug. “You’re my best friends, hurting you, the people who trust me, is the worst thing I could do, the most horror I could inflict. The thought of it, just makes my mouth water.”

Jade began to break down, her eyes welling up, “Please, don’t hurt us.”

“I promised I’d keep you safe, didn’t I?”

“Y-Yes, yes!”

“Haven’t broken that promise. Yet.”

She smiled down at Elias, “Can’t scold your nightmare anymore without consequences now, that’s gotta suck.”

Robin pulled her feet back and leaned forward, her head looming over her pathetic, cowering little friends, as she brought her face close and closer, until they could smell the energy drink on her breath.

“You’re mine now.” Robin said, with an oppressively quiet voice. “Some words of advice from a friend; don’t piss me off; and get a hold of how hard you shit your pants in front of me. The last thing you want to do is get me high on the fear.”

She pushed herself up out of the couch, and for the first time, they didn’t just see an Olympian god, but Hades himself, in the form of a rugged grungy redhead. Her advice, to show no fear, was impossible to follow. Their friend had just become something more terrifying than anything they could imagine.

The giantess leaned over the table, her chest looming overhead as she pulled a few tissues from the box on the table, and lowered them onto the remains of Simon. She pinched the corpse into it, before folding the tissue and bringing it down again, to smear out the stain he’d left, until it was no longer visible to her, but left behind the lingering scent of death.

Robin turned around and walked away, dumping what had once been her friend into her trashcan like common household rubbish, before walking towards the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

She walked up to the sink and started scrubbing her hands, over and over, avoiding eye contact with the mirror, until she could no longer resist the lingering urge to look at her own reflection. Her dark brown eyes stared back at her. Robin felt a shiver run up her spine, frightened of her own image.

“What did you do?” she asked herself, with that same monotone voice that had terrified her friends. “Gonna keep that promise, right? Maybe they’re safer knowing they’re not safe. Just don’t cross the line.”

A guilty little smile crept across her lips, “Or try not to, at least.”

Robin walked out of the bathroom, with a stride that showed she truly felt at home again, in her element, unburdened by performance. As she sat back down on the couch, she grabbed her phone. There was one more friend who Wr8 could go after; Elena, one more friend who belonged in Robin’s collection, for better or worse, and she knew just the friend who’d fetch the tiny girl for her.

As Robin DMed Harm, she looked down at her silent, cowering friends. Her monotone voice released a heartless command from her smirking lips.

“You guys should cheer up. This is gonna be fun. I’ll be your grim keeper~”

#13 - Duality

The living room was dark. The streetlight outside dimly illuminated the giant pieces of furniture, the giant television, the couch, the distant kitchen and its large dinner table, which was so much bigger than the small living room table the friend group had come to call home.

Their friend, if that was still the word they should’ve used for her, had gone to bed after her horrendous shift in personality, leaving her friends to contemplate and regret their decision to ever trust her with their lives.

In the dark of night, each of the tinies had put in the effort to push the little beds of their encampment closer together, until they aligned like the four walls of a fort, not one that could withstand a giant like Robin, but one they could huddle up in together, and take some comfort; some imagined safety.

Jade and Theo sat on the ground inside the enclosure of beds, holding each other in a hug they had been holding for quite some time. Elias sat across from them, knees up, arms resting atop them. Oscar was the only one of them that had climbed into bed, but there was no way he could close his eyes. He lay on his side, looking at his friends.

“That wasn’t Robin,” he said.

“I don’t know,” Jade said. “It looked like her, sounded like her. Do you think she had a nervous breakdown or something?”

“She’s acted like that before,” Elias said. “When I found her murder box.”

Jade and Oscar looked at him with wide eyes, while Theo kept his closed, holding Jade.

“I was looking for a drink, when I found this shoebox beneath her bed. She had this bloody shoe, with a picture of the person that died under it, along with pages detailing who he was, and how good it felt to end his life. When she walked in, she intentionally freaked me out more just to trigger the mark to shrink me, after which, she almost killed me.”

“Are you sure she wasn’t just scaring you into silence?” Oscar said.

“How would that make this any better?”

“Cause maybe she just freaked out too. Suddenly flying off the hinges, that’s still the Robin we know.”

“No, I was going to die. She was playing with me, enjoying it. I had to argue my way out, say she wouldn’t be able to cover it up in front of you guys. You guys not knowing, is what has kept us all safe.”

“So what now?” Jade said.

“Now we’re her pets,” Theo said. “She’ll do with us whatever she wants.”

Oscar tugged at his pillow, as if it was responsible for his inability to find comfort. “No, we’re her friends, that’s gotta count for something.”

“Didn’t you hear her,” Elias said. “It’s counting against us. It makes her want to hurt us more.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Oscar shouted, as if fighting Elias on it would change the very words, he heard Robin say herself.

Jade squeezed Theo closer, “She cares about us, she has to. There is just this other thing we didn’t know about.”

“No this,” Elias’ eyes widened with intensity, “what you’ve just seen, that’s Robin. She’s a sadistic fucking monster who almost killed me with a smile on her face. If she’ll do that to me, she’ll do that to every single one of us.”

“Yes,” Jade said. “But wouldn’t she miss us. Don’t you think she’d be sad afterwards?”

“Who gives a fuck if she’d be sad about it,” Elias exploded. “We’d be dead!”

“I’m sorry Simon,” Oscar said, as he rolled onto his back. “I didn’t know I was introducing you to the fucking devil.”

“What about that stalker,” Jade said. “The one that actually killed Simon.”

“Chained Wraith, the troll from voice chat. The one I thought was just getting under my skin,” Elias explained. “But she did warn me, happily told me what Robin might have in store for us.”

“And you didn’t tell us,” Theo squeaked, with a rage unlike himself. “You didn’t think to get us out of here? At least warn us?”

“I didn’t believe it then!” Elias said. “Would any of us? Would any of us believe Robin could hurt us.”

“I would’ve,” Theo said. “I stopped trusting my instincts, let you guys turn me woke, let her convince me she was the safe version of Nora.”

“What are you talking about?” Jade almost let go of Theo completely upon hearing a buzz term she had never heard him use before. “Who’s Nora?”

Theo didn’t answer, the waterworks started flowing on his soft adorable little cheeks. Jade didn’t need the details to understand what type of a person he was talking about, why he’d reacted to her the way he did after shrinking. The hug which had almost broken, tightened again, harder than before.

“Show no fear,” Oscar growled, in a way he could imagine what his father would say. “I think that advice of her was genuine, as fucked as the delivery was.”

Jade nodded, “Right, maybe fear is her…”

“Her alcohol addiction,” Elias sighed. “She’s acted like that twice now, each time, it was the fear that caused her to snap.”

“She warned us,” Oscar said. “She still cares.”

“No, she’s playing with us,” Theo said, before hiding his face.

Jade turned her head towards the window, as she held Theo, looking out the massive glass panes at the little peek of night sky she could get just above the roof across the street.

She thought of her friend, the rough around the edges man-lady, who had this back and forth with Oscar, where they’d to shove each other into the bushes on campus. The skinny ginger with muscles, and this disheveled mid-western roughness, who seemed completely unaware of her toxic masculinity. The friend who did not tell off creeps flirting with Jade and Elena, but the wild animal that threw them off.

She could be chaos, she could be calm, she could be scary, she could be laid back, always willing to listen to someone vent, even if those vacant eyes never seemed to understand why people got upset about ‘dumb shit’.

She had always been such a hot mess of a person, Jade couldn’t help but imagine her as one of the men in Elena’s books, so much so that she forgot she was fawning over a woman. She had no idea how right she was, how closely Robin truly resembled the eroticized monstrosities she had read about.

Those lean arms, that strong jaw, that dirty, unladylike smirk.

“Robin, who the hell are you?”

Robin slowly opened her eyes to the sound of her alarm. The little tune that used to annoy her so much, the jingle that announced another awful day at work, was now a welcome change from the creepy lullaby which would accompany most of her dreams.

The events of the night prior slowly returned to her, in such a way that for a short time, her waking mind could still catalog it all as a dream. Something that hadn’t really happened. Something she hadn’t done, something she’d never do.

“You fucking idiot,” she whispered to herself, as reality clicked into place.

She trotted out of her bedroom, and walked straight for the fridge, feeling the eyes of her little friends on her neck. She took her morning can of energy drink and clicked it open, before pouring half the can down her throat in one go, and walking over to the living room table.

“Sup guys,” she said, with the lighthearted tone of depressive humor. “I had a really bad dream again, where someone killed Simon, and I told all of you guys what really goes on in my head.”

She put her can down hard on the table, causing nearly each of her friends to jump, before she dropped onto the couch in a slouched, leaned back posture. Her bare, foul-smelling morning feet rose up, one heel crashing down on the table, in front of her friends, while she rested the ankle of her other foot on top of the first.

They were long and elegant, yellow and pink on pale, with a shiny layer of dried sweat. She wriggled her square toes, as if she was fanning the horrid foot scent at them.

She looked at the horrified faces of her friends, huddled up in a construct of four beds. “You guys been able to sleep?”

“She’s talking so casually?” Jade whispered.

“Her feet fucking stink,” Oscar followed up.

“Don’t say a thing about them,” Theo said, his soft voice carrying a warning born from experience. “The first one that does, gets a face full of it. It’s a power move.”

Elias sighed, before climbing over his bed and leaving the comfort of the bed-fort to address the giantess, “When no one was looking, you said you wanted to make things right with me. Make me feel safe again.”

“Yeah, I did,” Robin said.

“I-I wanna-” Elias lowered his head; he couldn’t show fear. “I wanted to ask something about that, but I don’t know what the question is…”

Robin’s eyes darted away, “Yeah, I get it. I don’t know what the answer is either.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you calmer now, compared to last night?”

Her eyes immediately returned, that intimidating look locking with Elias, “the fuck you mean by that?”

“I mean you aren’t smiling the way you did yesterday. So maybe, you’re safer now.”

“Safer now,” she repeated, with a tone that neither affirmed or denied it, but lingered on the idea. “I don’t know.”

Jade climbed out of the fort as well, followed by Oscar who looked to Theo and said, “show no fear.”

Theo didn’t budge; he was terrified.

“Robin,” Jade shouted, pacing past Elias to get even closer to the giant’s feet, “did you really mean what you said last night?”

“Every word,” Robin said, as she slowly tilted her feet over Jade, letting some dirt between her toes wriggle loose, so that it would float down on the tiny woman.

“Then why aren’t we dead yet?”

Elias clenched his teeth, hissing through them, “Jade!”

Robin bit her lip before answering, “Cause I don’t wanna lose you guys.”

“You do care about us,” Jade said. “Don’t you?”

“I cared about who you were,” Robin explained. “Now that you know how fucked up I am, you’ll never be like that again. You’re just scared little playthings now. I honestly don’t even know how long I would have lasted without you guys knowing.”

“Well,” Jade paused. “What if we all just try to be ourselves despite knowing you have- What would you call them; fantasies, kinks-”

“Urges,” Robin said, before considering what Jade suggested. “The idea definitely appeals to the sadist in me, forcing you to act like my old friends, while you’re terrified of what I could do at any moment.”

“Robin, I beg you, please try to work this out with us.”

“I’m sorry, it’s over. I’ve already lost you guys.”

“So, we’re just waiting to die?” Oscar shouted. “Come on Robin, so what if you got a little psycho in you, that don’t mean the rest of you was fake, right?”

“You don’t get it, Oscar,” Robin said. “It’s not this small thing. If you could see in my head, you’d end things yourself before I could get my hands on you.”

“No, you’re my friend, I trust you,” Oscar said, crossing his arms and tensing his muscles.

Jade looked over at him, and remembered, show no fear.

“So do I!” she said

Elias shook his head, and stayed quiet while Theo didn’t budge even a millimeter.

“It doesn’t care.” Robin said quietly.

She finally took her feet off the table, got up and grabbed her can again, gulping down the other half, before going through the morning routine of refilling their food and water, without another word.

After getting herself ready for work, she looked at her playthings one last time before leaving. She spoke with a mournful voice, as if they had already died, “I love you guys.”

There wasn’t a single one of them that wasn’t stunned upon hearing those words. It sounded genuine despite conflicting with the way she carried herself so callously, confidently. Jade was finally starting to put together the puzzle that had been scattered in front of her the night before. She didn’t say she doesn’t care, she said ‘it’ doesn’t.

It wanted to kill, she wanted to keep; that was the duality of Robin Marrick.

#14 - Love Bites

While her friends were left to decipher the inconsistencies to the monster they now had to live beneath, Robin’s own mind went back and forth throughout her workday.

She wondered how she could improve their living conditions, at the same time as she imagined scenarios of them dying at her hands. She wondered if she should buy them something nice as a peace offering, while she hyped herself up on selfish ways in which she could indulge herself with them once she got home.

There was no need to hide, from now on they would never see her as anything other than their sadistic caretaker, she could just play with them like toys if she wanted.

The born-again monstrosity came home after her shift, carrying a paper bag that clinked and chimed, which she put down next to the living room table, before dropping her work-bag beside the couch and sitting down. She pulled off her grimy sneakers and dingy socks, to free those god-awful feet of hers.

“Friday night, bitches,” she said, with a grin on her face, awaiting a response or question that never came, before continuing herself. “You know what that means?”

“You bought drinks.” Oscar answered.

“Yeah, and even better,” Robin said, as she pulled out some items from the paper bag. “Tiny cups, and tiny drink barrels.”

“Are you sure you want to be drinking right now,” Jade frowned, as Robin unwrapped the items from the transparent plastic they were held in.

“Yeah,” Robin said with a smile of genuine excitement. “With the death of Simon, all the scary and depressing talk of me coming out, and you being my reluctant little allies, I figured it would take the edge off.”

All the looseness of her smarmy attitude couldn’t hide it. Jade recognized the behavior from when they’d been the same size. The sudden need for her and everyone around her to drink was a call for help, a sign she was hurting.

Whatever weight had been lifted from the tomboy’s shoulders the night before, had been replaced by something else nagging at her mind, something she wished to drown out. Was it guilt, remorse, the feelings that might be keeping the four of them alive, were those the ones she sought to numb?

No one would be able to help Robin now that she was a this dangerous colossal being. If this was how she decided to cope, they were but helpless bystanders who’d get swept up in the mess that would unfold.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Jade said.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Robin said, smiling as she tilted her head, “and I got the bigger brain, so I must be right.”

Elias leaned into Jade, and said, “She’s clearly already had some before she got home. We both know what she’s like when she had a few too many.”

Jade whispered back, “So, what do we do?”

“Me?” Elias paused. “I won’t turn down a drink on my last night alive, best to enjoy things until she gets too playful or falls face first on the table and flattens us all.”

Robin put the plastic barrels down on the table, and let the tiny cups scatter beside them, “Check this out, we got some Belgian stuff for Oscar and me, some light beer for Theo, and a fine bottle of white for Elias and Jade.”

“I’m not drinking,” Jade said, as Robin began to fill up the barrels.

Robin ignored her comment and walked to the kitchen to fetch herself a glass. It didn’t take long for Elias to pour an entire cup of wine down his gullet, before grabbing a refill. Oscar glanced over at Theo, who was staying in the bed-fort. He decided to pick up the cups, and fill one for both him and his friend.

“Are you serious?” the black-haired girl said, as she watched her friend walk by.

“Theo’s a mess.” Oscar said. “Twink needs a pick-me-up.”

The ground thundered as Robin put down a pint glass for herself, and began filling it up, eyeing Jade as if she was daring her to say something about it, do something about it. She raised her glass at the group.

“Cheers.”

The others barely responded, Theo and Elias only shot her a quick glance, while Oscar was the only one to raise his cup back at her.

Throughout the next half hour, Jade kept herself separated from the others, watching the animated background of an hour-long Lo-fi hip hop playlist video, which Robin had put up on the massive screen in front of her.

Things were calm, quiet for now. At the bed-fort, Elias and Oscar were trying to pretend they were really just out drinking, failing to cheer up Theo, who stared off into his cup. She didn’t want to join them, despite how calm things seemed now, all it would take, was for Robin to pull something. If she did, then the tiny girl sitting between her and her friends would be the first to draw her perilous attention, it was her way of protecting the boys.

She had no idea how right she was.

As Robin leaned back and sipped her drink, all she was left with was a quiet loneliness. Despite being right there on the table, there was a palpable distance between her and her friends, a divide both psychological and physical. Their shared size made it so they neatly sat around each other, able to talk without her even hearing them. Meanwhile, she loomed in the background like a lonely drunk at the bar.

She was at her third lonesome drink, when she finally acknowledged Jade’s refusal to partake. “You’re really not going to grab a drink?”

Jade shook her head.

“You’re not sitting with the others either,” Robin said. “I appreciate the company. Wanna get a little closer?”

Robin leaned over, putting her glass down on the table, before reaching down with that same cold condensation-wet hand to pluck her tiny friend off the table. Jade wanted to scramble back, protest, but Robin’s thumb pressed the air out of her lungs, before she could say anything. The giantess pinched her between her fingers, and took her up into the air.

She was being abducted from the small world where she still had agency; a choice of whether she stood, sat, ate, drank or slept. It was the limited life of a prisoner, or a common house pet, but better than being picked up and trapped between the fingers of a giant, squeezed into the whorls of her digits, stripped of any agency whatsoever, completely in Robin’s control.

“Put me down!” Jade shouted.

Robin smiled, lightly cocking her head, “Put you down, what? Like a dog? You haven’t bit me yet~”

The giantess sank back into the couch, taking her prisoner with her, before propping her rank feet up on the table, ruining the moment of escapism for the others with the stench and sight of them.

“No, you’ve been a good girl~” Robin said, with an intentionally low teasing timbre, as she held her friend in front of her freckled face, her giant black eyes piercing the tiny with a sharp gaze.

Jade’s face turned red, she couldn’t help it. It was the look, her tone of voice, so overpoweringly intense, that even the smell of beer on her breath couldn’t ruin it. The woman she had just come to fear still had it, that vile confidence, the knowledge she could just take her whenever she wanted, now even more literally so than ever.

“Cut the shit, Robin!” Jade shouted, trying to reassert herself. “Put me back on the table!”

Robin didn’t relent, she brought the tiny closer to her mouth, until the little girl could see every crevice in the pattern of her lips bend and contort as her smug smile widened.

“Tell me,” those giant lips said, as Robin lowered her voice, not into a whisper, but quiet enough to where Jade could still hear the rough growl in her murmur, “deep down, did you like it when I told you I wanted to hurt you?”

Jade felt her tense muscles lose their strength, the words piercing through her defenses, leaving her to respond with an unconvincing, “S-Shut up…”

The lips showed their teeth in a malevolent smile, “Do you like being scared of me?”

“You’re breath stinks! You’re drunk!”

Robin chuckled, making both the mouth and hand Jade was in shake. “Makes me even more dangerous, doesn’t it?”

“Robin, please…”

“Please what?”

Jade fell silent for too long before answering, “t-the table.”

Robin’s smile held, they both knew she had been too slow to hide she might have been begging for something else. It was too late. Robin’s tease had worked, messed with the chemicals in Jade’s mind like a venus flytrap, causing her to trigger the mechanism of her own misery, hypnotized and enthralled.

Jade could barely feel herself being moved closer. It was as if her friend’s lips simply grew in size, as they closed and pursed ever so slightly.

“No, wait!”

Her upper body bumped into the soft red pillows. Robin’s lower lip squeezing into her breasts, as her upper lip pressed into the side of her face, pushing so hard is forced her entire head to tilt back.

It was soft, the living leather of a giantess, warm, wet with the taste and scent of beer. The feeling overwhelmed her so much, she struggled to process what this was. A kiss. Robin, was kissing her. She was being embraced, intimately so, pressed into this wall from which only cold and callous words had slipped since the night before.

It wasn’t an innocent non-gay little peck on the lips. The grungy queer ginger girl was laying claim to the top half of her body. All Jade could do in retaliation was squirm, but she didn’t. She let herself go limp, embracing the warmth, the sticky wetness of it. Was this what Robin really wanted? Was this affection, or was it sadism?

As the giantess pulled her back, every part of her which was coated in Robin’s warm saliva cooled immediately, making for a chilling divorce from her lips, as she was raised up to the giant’s dark eyes, just so they could mockingly gaze at the tiny girl hanging limp between her tormenter’s fingers.

Robin could see the desperation on the tiny girl’s face, her wide steel-blue eyes begging her; tell me what you were trying to do, tell what this is, tell me what it means; and for the love of god, do it again.

Without a word the giantess lowered her again, Jade’s heart pounded in anticipation of another kiss. As she moved Jade closer, Robin’s lips pulled back into a smile, that toothy grin of hers. The soft pillowy lips of hers were making way for her giant teeth, each one bigger than her head. They parted, revealing the dark abyss behind them.

“Wait, no!” Jade squealed at the thought of being devoured, the promise and tease at intimacy a sadistic lie. “Robin, please don’t do this!”

The giant tomboy tilted her little friend’s legs first toward her mouth. Jade kicked and screamed squirming between her fingers, as her legs passed under her lips.

“Robin!” she cried.

The tiny girl had barely noticed the giant’s mouth move, before she felt a sharp pain pulse around her lower leg, “Aaah!”

Throughout kicking and pulling back her legs, her right leg had been within reach of her friend’s teeth at the worst moment. Her incisors had closed like a marble stone gate on her shin and calf.

“My leg!” Jade screamed. “Robin stop, you’re hurting me!”

It was pinned, held tightly between the woman’s teeth. Jade could feel the lower tooth squeeze into her muscle, not cutting but squishing it, while the upper tooth pressed so tightly against the bone, the drunk girl could easily break it, if she were to budge her jaw even a millimeter.

“Robin, let go! I’m bleeding!”

Jade began to kick her other leg helplessly at the teeth beside the ones growing a crimson coating of her blood. If her friend really went through with this, if she really were to bite down, she wouldn’t just lose her leg, she could bleed out, she could die.

“For fuck sake, you’re gonna tear it! Robin please don’t do this!”

Behind the white stone gates that were threatening to tear off her leg, Jade could feel something. A wet creature within the cavern beyond was moving along her foot, the slimy bubble texture of it creeping up and down her leg. The giant tomboy was tasting her; she was tasting her blood. The horror of it was too much, the cruel enjoyment, this wasn’t Robin anymore, this was-

“Robin!” Jade shouted at the top of her lungs. “Don’t let it win!”

The tongue stopped moving almost immediately, the teeth softened their grip on her tiny leg. She did it, she’d managed to get through to her. As the teeth parted further, she felt herself being moved back, up to the eyes of the woman who had almost maimed her.

The giantess stared at her with an empty expression, as if she’d been pulled out of her sadistic flow state. Jade panted in fear, as she searched for her friend across an ocean of freckles. Robin had stopped; Jade was able to make her stop.

The giant’s eyes scanned her tiny body with a look of innocence, as if she didn’t even realize what had happened, Jade almost felt sorry for her. Sorry for how bad the friend that was still in there would feel if she saw what she had done. The giant dark brown eyes stopped, staring straight at the bleeding wound she’d created.

To Jade’s horror, a smile of satisfaction spread across her friend’s face, “What? You don’t like little love bites with your kisses?”

Robin took her feet off the table and leaned forward, lowering her gently onto the table. Jade winced, her calf too sore to stand on, there was a deep cut in her skin, in a way that would leave a mark, but she had managed to get through to her friend quick enough, that the muscle hadn’t been shredded.

She hadn’t even noticed the boys swarming her, helping her stand. They had watched the entire horror show unfold from the table, in her own panic and fear, she hadn’t even heard their screams.

“Are you ok?” Oscar spoke quietly.

All of them looked up at the toothy grin on their giant friend’s face, Jade’s blood remained on her teeth, until she grabbed her glass, and took a swig to wash them clean with casual uncaring drunkenness.

A thousand thoughts swarmed through Jade’s mind; fear, anxiety, heartbreak, hatred, despair and most maddening of all; arousal.

#15 - Do No Harm

A tall, lean and lanky figure in a blue nurse’s outfit walked under the clinical artificial lighting of The Wieldfern Center for Glow Affected Individuals, through a row of massive tables bordered by transparent plastic walls, his shoulders too wide to fit his otherwise thin yet trained physique.

He was a sharp-faced man in his late twenties, black hair shining with wax, as the locks hung down like tall grass across his forehead and left eye. He had a well-defined jawline, which sloped down steeper than most. His thin, almond-shaped dark eyes carried no visible bags, despite the tired expression they would always rest on.

Caleb Harm was the embodiment of control, from his confident and aware stride, to his self-care routine, his carefully tuned and maintained looks, his clean and structured workplace and home, all the way to his ability to suppress and healthily redirect the darkness within him.

He had turned, what he believed, to be his innate monstrous destiny into a life of striving for sainthood. He would do as he’d promised; abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. Even if the words of the Nightingale pledge didn’t even begin to describe the wickedness he was truly abstaining from.

As he glanced down at the tiny people going about their day in the small towns that had been handcrafted for them upon the many tables around him, Caleb couldn’t help but smile, reminded of the care and safety he helped provide them, reminded of his purpose in life.

Three years ago, as every facet of society scrambled to adapt to a world where the glow and its victims were becoming part of everyday life, Caleb dropped out of his studies. Instead of becoming a general physician, he joined a brand-new program to train himself up to be a caretaker

“Hey, Harm!” a familiar voice squeaked.

That’s what every resident called him; Harm, or Mr. Harm if they were being polite, despite his numerous attempts to get them to simply call him Caleb. His unfortunate surname was the result of how his Korean parents had chosen to romanize their name upon immigrating to the United States, what would otherwise be Ham, or Hahm, became ‘Harm’.

He looked down to see a middle-aged woman with dyed-red hair standing up against the plastic barrier at the edge of the table.

“Morning, Mrs. Theims,” Caleb said, with a clear and kind voice, before asking the question he already knew the answer to. “How can I help you today?”

“I need to get to Marfield Square!”

He raised an eyebrow as he turned to look at a small mechanical construct not far from them. “The drawbridge is only a few feet away, Mrs. Theims.”

She didn’t answer, she just stared up at him with an adorable smile, waiting for him to give her what she wanted.

Caleb tried to keep a stern professional face, but it didn’t hold for long, before his signature smile showed, “You’re gonna get me fired, little lady. You know that right?”

Again, no words from Mrs. Theims, just smiles.

The man looked around the room to make sure no one was looking and clicked his tongue, “fiiine.”

The giant’s hand lowered past the plastic barrier, beside the tiny woman, who happily climbed onto his fingers, before crawling on her hands and knees as he raised her slowly into the air. Mrs. Theims settled onto the warm skin of his palm.

Caleb carried her gracefully between the rows of tables. The idea that this could get him fired was a lie. His superiors advised against it, due to psychological concerns related to agency and normalcy, and the likely consequence that too many tinies might start requesting rides from staff, but there wasn’t a strict rule against it.

The young charmer just pretended there was to make these small interactions feel riskier and more adventurous to the tiny women who sometimes lined up to ask him. So much for the mischief part of his pledge.

As he gently lowered Mrs. Theims into the crowded community square on one of the tables, he noticed a visitor walk up to him in his periphery. He waited for the tiny woman to safely make it off his hand, while she had the audacity to sneak a tiny kiss onto his pinky, before thanking him and waving him off.

Caleb took his hand out of the enclosure, and turned to look at the regular sized stranger approaching him. He couldn’t help but think it as soon as he laid eyes on her, what a mess of a woman was this?

Her black hair was a wavy disaster, with strands poking out on all sides, a hair-don’t that looked as if someone had mistaken the term blow dried for blow died. Her make-up was more of a paint job, her lipstick smudged, her attempt at drawing eyeliner so uneven one of her steel blue eyes looked bigger than the other, giving off this crazed look.

Judging by the amount of effort she had put into trying to look good, and by the careless confidence she approached with, she seemed self-assured of her appearance, but to Caleb she looked like a hermit who didn’t get out much. Even a skinwalker would put on a better human guise.

The woman looked at his nametag, as an unsettling smile formed across her lips, and she spoke with a voice Caleb was sure he had heard somewhere before, “Nurse Harm, is it?”

“Can I help you ma’am?” Caleb said, unsure of whether anyone could.

“I’m visiting, looking for a resident.”

“And who would that be?” Caleb asked, politely.

“Elena Curtly.”

Caleb froze, his eyes widening, as things clicked into place. He’d been keeping a close eye on Elena ever since his online friend Rot had messaged him about what happened to her friend Simon, and warned him that his killer might be coming for the tiny girl next.

Harm had never liked Wr8. She took way too much enjoyment in the real-life suffering of tinies, without as much as a single humanizing break from the callousness she played off as dark humor, which in hindsight, he should’ve been more critical of, instead of letting her skirt around a ban each time she made things difficult for their server’s moderation team.

Then one day, Wr8 just snapped, harassed his friends, talked about slaughtering tinies in games and becoming a superior being; a reaper. And if Rot was to be believed; she had crossed the line into becoming an actual killer.

Rot had suggested Caleb smuggle her tiny friend out of the facility, thinking she’d be safer with her. Despite how proud he was upon hearing Rot had finally come out to her friends, and was finding healthy ways to cope, like QTpopper did with her boyfriend, smuggling Elena out without her consent was out of the question. How could he even begin to explain all of this to that sweet innocent girl?

If anything, she was safer here. The center was full of cameras. You could not play off a murder as incidental, not in here. You couldn’t take a tiny with you, without the police showing up at your door the very same day. Wr8 had to know that too, right? Even she wouldn’t be crazy enough to just walk up to Elena and grab her. Would she?

As he stared into the uneven eyes of this unsettling visitor, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

“Elena,” Caleb said, trying to compose himself. “Yeah, that girl is barely ever at her own place. Usually spends her time enjoying a fancy coffee and a good book at one of the cafés. Let me just find her for you.”

Wr8 didn’t respond, she stared at him with a more ominous version of Mrs. Theim’s waiting eyes.

Caleb turned around, his controlled stride faltering, as he turned corner after corner between the tables. He knew exactly where Elena would be, the exact district, the exact miniature building, the exact tiny table out front. He had no intention of letting that freak anywhere near her. He had to get to her. He had to get her out of here.

As he looked behind him, he saw Wr8 begin to move as well. She was pacing slowly, as if she were gliding between the tables like a ghost, a nightmarish wraith. Her eyes were locked onto him with an unnerving smile. Did she know who he was too? Of course she did, she’d read his name tag. But if she knew, then why would she alert him? Did she not think Rot would’ve warned him?

The siren of a drawbridge blared. It lowered right in front of Wr8’s path, forcing the giantess to stop and wait, keeping her upright posture and predatory eyes aimed at Caleb, while a tiny group of friends crossed tables along the metallically reinforced plastic bridge, unaware of what monster they had halted beside them.

Caleb made it to the enclosure where he was sure to find Elena, and there she was, calmly reading one of those expensive nano-printed novels, as she leaned back in her chair on the terrace of a Parisian themed café.

“Ms. Curtly,” he said, unable to shake the butler-like manner in which he was used to addressing the tinies in his care with, as he tried to keep his voice from booming with panic.

Elena looked up from her book, frowning as she saw an expression on Caleb’s face that was wholly unlike him, “Harm?”

“I don’t have time to explain, you have to come with me.”

Elena was stunned, the handsome nurse that every girl fawned over, the face she put to every fictional heart-rob which was too vaguely described by their author was beckoning her with immediacy.

Would this be the day he finally told her why he’d been acting suspicious lately, why he’d been watching her so closely? Was this the boiling point of his emotions, so sudden and overbearing that he had to whisk her away from everyone, just so he could tell her in private.

She had to shake bookworms out of her head, before she could think and answer appropriately, “W-What, why?”

“You’re in danger, you have to trust me.”

Harm lowered his hand into the enclosure, as his head swiveled between her and something she couldn’t see within the confines of her tiny Parisian world. How was she supposed to get her messy little thoughts straight, as he said the exact words a book character would say?

She put her book into her shoulder bag and ran up to his hand with a sudden hurried sprint, lost in his infectious panic, her confusion, her fantasies. She climbed on, and Caleb lifted her out of her small world, into his.

Elena was in his hand; one of the broad hands of Caleb Harm, structured with a roughness that made them seem destined for hard labor, built like those of a construction worker, yet honed to care, kept softer than they had any right to be, not a sign of any calluses, not even a hint of any rough, thickening pads.

It was soft, it was warm, it would’ve been magical if the seriousness of Harm’s claim didn’t ram through her imagination, “What’s going on?”

Caleb turned his head toward Wr8, as the drawbridge blocking her rose up slowly, her horrid, tilted smile looking at the tiny girl in his hand as she waited. Elena had followed his eyes and saw her, this creepy looking stranger.

The deep rumble of her caretaker’s voice sounded above her, “If that’s a friend or family member I don’t know about, you tell me right now.”

Elena shook her head and stuttered, “I-I don’t know who that is.”

“I’m getting you the hell out of here.”

“Wait, what?” Elena said, as the giant turned heel and walked away with a quick pace, heading for the exit doors. “Who is that? What does she want?”

“I think that woman is here to hurt you.”

“What? Why?”

“To get at Rot.”

“Who the fuck is Rot?!” Elena shouted

Caleb rushed through the doors into the entrance hall, “You’re not safe here anymore.”

The man walked in full view of every camera in the building. What he was doing was without a shadow of a doubt kidnapping a resident in his care, he could only hope that her consent after the fact would resolve any issues, once he’d fully had the chance to explain to her what was going on.

“Harm, stop, I’m scared,” Elena squeaked.

Caleb cussed under his breath at the slide doors to the outside, which could not open quick enough. In the corner of his eye, he could catch a glimpse of Wr8 pacing towards them.

The creepy woman was a head shorter than Caleb. He knew if it came to blows, he could easily overpower her, but any altercation with someone as small as Elena in his hand could end tragically, no matter the opponent. It couldn’t come to that.

Caleb shouldered through the gap between the slide doors as soon as they began to open. They were walking across the open plaza in front of the facility. The parking lot was only thirty feet away. He considered breaking into a sprint, rushing to his car. But running with a tiny came with too many risks, risks he couldn’t control.

Wr8 didn’t suffer the same limitations, she was making a dash for him. All he could do was tell her off.

“Stay back!”

Wr8 stopped and raised her hands, catching her breath, “What is your problem B, just visitin’ my gurrfren.”

Harm slowly backed up towards the parking lot, “I’m not gonna let you hurt her, Wr8.”

“Oh, please, call me Eve. And don’t worry, I’m not gonna hurt your little patient,” the black-haired witch said. “You are.”

“What?”

“Come on Harm,” Wr8 started with a coy, playful voice. “Do you really think I need another packaged bug corpse to send Rot a message? One is more than enough, don’t you agree. I’m not here to pester Robin. I’m here to get across the same message I send her, to another one of my dear, beloved friends.”

Her smirk widened, “I’m here for you.”

Harm continued to step away, locking eyes with her in disgust.

“Taking a frail and vulnerable tiny girl out of the safety of a care facility,” Wr8 said, clicking her tongue and shaking her head in disapproval. “What naughty little plans does a sanctimonious pervert like you have for that poor little girl.”

“I’m taking her where a freak like you can’t touch her,” Caleb growled.

“But Harm,” the villainess said, meeting his piercing gaze. “There is a freak like me touching her right now. Tell me, honestly, what is it you really want to do?”

Caleb heard the world around him fall silent, felt his breath caress the inside of his lungs with excited tickles. He looked down, at the confused frightened tiny in his hand. How adorable of a sight, how pathetic the heaving motions of her little chest. She was such pretty little thing; her brown hair, wrapped in a cute bun, her little librarian-esque outfit in colors of autumn, embracing a theme of dark academia.

He knew he could ruin it all, paint this pretty girl into unsightly reds, an affront to the god that had made her, as he became her new diety, her end, her destruction.

A smile of childlike wonder crept across the caretaker’s lips. His eyes grew hungry, as he brought the fingers of his other hand over to the palm that held her. The palm that was meant to be her carriage out of danger.

“Harm?” Elena shuddered. “What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Caleb spread the middle- and ring finger of the hand that held her, so wide that they almost pressed against his pinky and index finger, creating a gap large enough for Elena’s tiny body to pass through. He let the fingers of his other hand push her little body across his palm, head-fists towards the gap.

Elena squirmed, pinned on her back, fearing what would happen if she were to fall between those fingers and drop to the ground below. He was pushing her over a cliffside, to her doom.

“Harm, what are you doing, stop!”

As she tried to look behind her at the gap between Harm’s clawed fingers, she could catch a glimpse of that creepy woman smile at her, enjoying the show Harm was putting on.

Elena felt the solid ground of warm skin beneath her head give way. Her head was now right between the dreamy man’s fingers, with nothing to rest on.

“H-Harm?”

The nurse’s smile held, with careless curiosity as the fingers began to warp inward, closing into a fist on the rest of Elena’s body, the joints of the fingers beside her tightening on her head, the only part of her body left exposed to the open air.

She felt his fist heat up her body, squeezing every inch of her. The entirety of her was held within that caring hand, which had tightened into a prison. Her head pinned between the joints of his fingers.

“Help!” She screamed. “Someone help me!”

Caleb let her, gave her some time to scream her little lungs out. No one would hear. No one would notice in time to do anything to help. None but God could hear her now, and he was having too much fun to stop.

The giant squeezed. Elena felt his soft skin harden with pressure. She screamed as her bones began to give way, her knees bent back to a breaking point, her upper leg popping out of a collapsing hip, until her ribs snapped and bore into her lungs silencing her, as all she could let out of her windpipe was blood.

Tears flooded her face, the last thing she saw was the sadistic smile of that handsome caretaker who always knew when to say something cocky or clever, and when to keep mysteriously quiet, teasing his adoring victims, as he left them wondering; what was he thinking behind that adorable smug little stare of his?

Caleb’s fingers tightened on her head, causing Elena’s skull to collapse. Her jaw popped loose, while her eyes bulged out of their sockets. With a delighted boyish giggle, he rubbed the joints of his fingers together until what was left no longer resembled a head. All those thoughts, all those fantasies were now nothing but paste between Caleb’s fingers.

The sound of the world around him returned, cars, people talking in the distance, the fuzzy feeling in his lungs was gone, all he felt now was the warm and wet of blood inside his hand.

Caleb held his breath and fell to his knees. His fist loosened. His fingers spread, revealing the gore and ruin he had wrought upon the innocent girl’s body.

With a deep voice, he let out a pathetic sound. There wasn’t enough air in his lungs to get out a full word, just an agonized wail collapsing into a voice crack, as he attempted to scream the word no.

He gasped for air, as he let his hand tilt, until the gory, headless remains slipped off his palm and fell to the ground.

“What did I do?!” he howled. “What did you make me do?!”

Wr8 answered with a sing-song voice, “Nothing you didn’t want to.”

Caleb whimpered, “I-I didn’t! I didn’t want to-”

“Oh, you self-righteous repressing fuck-stains can’t lie to me anymore.”

“How did you?!”

“How did I what? Force you to show me who you really are?” Wr8 stepped closer, and brushed aside the locks of hair in front of his eye. “Just a little gift I picked up during the games. I’ll get you an invite. I used to have my doubts, but you’re clearly one of us.”

“G’h- ha- fucking kill you!” Caleb screamed as he lunged at her face.

Wr8 stepped back just in time to avoid his hands grabbing onto her, causing him to topple forward onto his elbows. Caleb scrambled to get up.

“Help!” Wr8 shouted, echoing the desperate calls of Elena like a forest mimic. “Someone, help me!”

Caleb got to his feet and jumped her like a madman, riding her to the ground, as he clenched his bloodied hands around her throat.

“You made me-” Caleb shouted, spitting from his frothing mouth. “You killed- Made me kill- You killed me!”

There was a moment of genuine panic in Wr8’s eyes, before Caleb could feel the hands of bystanders pull him off her.

“Hell’s wrong with you!” A man’s voice shouted, as it took three of them to drag him away from Wr8.

Wr8 gasped for air, before pointing at Caleb in horror, “He killed her! He stole that girl from the center and killed her!”

Slowly the eyes of every bystander fell upon the sight of a tiny woman’s mangled body, the contents of the little shoulder bag scattered, her book full of dark passions lay beside her, bloodied by one of the real-life barbarians she had come to fear; the ones who could never be anything like the beautiful myths Elena would seek in her escapism.

“Someone call the police! Call 911!”

#16 - Fix or Be Broken

“How are you holding up?” Elias said, as he sat on the table’s surface, his back up against the side of Jade’s miniature bed, trying to take his mind off the news playing on the massive screen.

“Muscles still feel like they’ve been slammed between a door,” Jade said, trying to peek under the piece of bed cloth Elias had wrapped around her calf. “The wound seems to be closing, I think.”

“Apparently due to our size, bacteria have a harder time causing infections, so there is that,” Elias said, pushing his glasses up, like he always used to do when dropping his random facts, it had been a while since Jade had seen that old quirk of his, “I wasn’t asking about the leg though. I was asking about you.”

Jade wondered how she should even begin to answer that. Robin had let the mutilated dead body of their friend crash down in front of them. Her words had dehumanized them. She admitted a hidden desire to hurt and kill them. Now the crazy woman had almost munched off her leg. All that, and yet, as the aura of tension and horror around the giantess grew, Jade couldn’t help but feel drawn in.

What was wrong with her?

She couldn’t lie to herself, it was the little hint of danger that caused her to take notice of Robin in the first place, a masculine smugness that had Trojan-horsed its way past the walls of her heterosexuality, walls she kept re-invading no matter how many times Jade dismissed the queer little thoughts as a fluke.

But this wasn’t that little hint of it anymore, Robin had become a mortal danger. She had gone well past the point where the spice should have ruined the entire dish, to where it stopped being hot, and turned into torture. Was Jade’s mind just defective? Was the ceiling of how far her submissive and masochistic little thoughts could go really that high?

Jade thought about how she’d been pinned between her friend’s teeth again, how Robin had been tasting her. If she hadn’t stopped her, would the giantess really have bitten her leg off? Would she have spit it out like filth? Or would the friend she had known for years have swallowed a part of her? Savoring and devouring it, a little part of Jade Wislow, forever lost inside of Robin Marrick.

How was she even supposed to begin explaining those thoughts to Elias?

“So, you sure this isn’t that stalker, Wraith?” Oscar asked sitting atop his own bed, drawing everyone’s attention back to the TV.

The massive screen showed a mugshot of a handsome Asian man, whose defeated face looked devoid of all life. It had been the third news update on the case that day. What Caleb Harm had done to their friend Elena Curtly had made international headlines.

Tinies disappeared or were killed in accidents every day, but this case was one the media couldn’t ignore. It was kidnapping and murder, clear as day, its victim, a beautiful young white woman from a well-off family, who’d been taken from a care facility; one of the only places where tinies were supposed to be completely safe.

The news world pounced on the story, true crime podcasts were scrambling to be the first to uncover the juicy details of the man behind the monster, while social media was a clutter of people mocking the girl’s death, others using the tragedy to make political points, while some even went as far as to idolize the man and publicly thirst over him.

“Friend. And no, I already told you,” Elias said. “And, unless he was using a voice changer, ChainedWr8 is a woman.”

“How many serial killer stalkers does Robin have?”

Theo stared into the eyes of the man in the mugshot. The man who had killed Elena, the smartest woman he knew, the one he thought of as a big sister, a guide. Why would anyone ever want to hurt her?

Was Caleb Harm an exceptionally violent anti-feminist spurred on by one of her rants? Had Elena been murdered by one of the very ‘barbarians’ she so vocally asserted herself against? The ones she had saved Theo from joining in their insecure misery.

“Friends,” Elias said, as he stared daggers at Oscar, not letting the jock strip the responsibility off the shoulders of his nightmare. “Wr8 was her friend, safe to assume this one is too.”

Oscar shook his head, “If they’re her friends, why are they coming after us? Are they trying to hurt her? Send a message? Jealous? Why is everyone so fucking obsessed with that girl?”

Theo and Jade both turned to look at him too. All three of them now stared at Oscar with questioning frowns, their wide eyes betraying them.

“What?” Oscar said, with a chuckle. “Like I haven’t noticed the way you’ve all been looking at her.”

Elias shook his head, “No, screw that. Whatever you think you noticed, that’s all gone now. I wanna watch that bitch choke and die.”

The rest of the group fell silent.

“What?” Elias said, trying not to raise his voice loud enough for the giant in the background to hear them, “she wants to do the same to us.”

Jade sighed, “Elias, I get that you’re hurting-”

“But what?” he snapped at her. “She almost bit your leg off, Jade.”

Jade broke eye contact, unable to hide the red on her cheeks from the white-haired boy, who caught on almost immediately.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, contorting his face in disgust, “Oscar’s right about you at least.”

Oscar frowned, startled by how his suggestion had changed Elias’ demeanor, “Bro, I meant it as a joke.”

Elias turned his attention to the timid brown-haired boy huddled up atop his bed, “How about you Theo?”

Oscar shot out of his bed, “you leave him outta this.”

“I-” Theo slowly turned his head. “I like her, but I want to get away from her, but also closer. I’m having these messed up thoughts.”

Oscar squinted, “What?”

“It’s like-” Theo squeezed his bedsheet into his fists. “I wanna fix what’s wrong with her, but I also want her to, I don’t know; break me.”

Jade stared at the boy so intensely his gaze could not avoid meeting hers. She wasn’t the only one with strange feelings towards their friend’s darkness. Were they the same? No, what Theo had was born from something horrible.

Oscar’s mouth fell open, “A-Are you saying you’re-”

“Into monsters. I know I’m fucked up.”

“T-That’s ok buddy,” Oscar said, unsure of how he should respond to something like that.

“Ok?!” Elias shouted, before looking behind him at the giantess, and lowering his voice again. “Are you guys her fucking fan club or something?”

“What about you Oscar?” Elias said, jumping up from Jade’s bedside and cocking his chin at the jock. “You accuse us of being obsessed, you’re the biggest defender here. You think if you’re a good boy she’ll let you fondle her melons some more, that it?”

Glasses or not, Oscar swung for his face right then and there. Jade yelled at Oscar, right as his fist collided with the boy’s teeth. Elias’ glasses jumped up sideways across his eyebrows, as he fell over, landing on his back. The white-haired guy pushed himself up on his elbow, his shocked face meeting that of Oscar, still boiling with intensity, before taking on the same expression.

“You’re all sick,” Elias shouted through bloodied teeth, no longer caring if Robin could hear him, “Simon is dead! Elena is dead! I wanted to protect you guys! I wanted to save you! You braindead subhuman lemming fucks!”

Elias crawled to his feet, keeping eye contact with Oscar for a few more seconds to see if he was going to hit him again, before he turned to his bed and began to push against it, separating it from the bed-fort, doing what he should’ve done long before the glow had marked him, and rid himself from these clowns who only ever dragged him down with them.

Robin had heard his shouting, but didn’t look away from the TV screen. What was he even talking about? Save them? There was no way he could save anyone, not from her, not from what she would end up doing to each and every one of them. The news proved it.

Big brother Harm, the sadist on his high horse, the man that made her believe, if only for a few fleeting days, that she could be a safe haven for her friends, had done the unthinkable. All his talk of healthy engagement, of caring for a tiny community to heal the rotten core of his heart, it had all been a lie.

Elena was dead, and just like with Simon, she didn’t even get the pleasure of doing it herself.

She wondered how he had done it. Had he finally enacted one of the many executions he’d roleplayed in text, throughout the many late-night DMs, where they pretended to be a giant couple. Would the police ever see those messages, as they went through his computer? Would they see the server?

Wr8 was right about all of them. The one example she’d hoped could lead her to any other conclusion had shown his true colors, shoved his blade through Robin’s hopeful heart, and it likely wouldn’t take long before one of QTpopper and TrEATmeGently’s little videos turned into a real snuff film.

Robin finally took her eyes off the screen and noticed Theo standing beside the pair of giant feet that rested on the table. He had walked up to her without her even noticing. If she had moved her feet only a little, she’d have squashed him without even getting to savor the moment. Jade wasn’t far behind him, limping closer, looking as if she had tried to stop him from approaching the horrid giantess on her throne of solitude.

“What?” Robin said, sounding as if she were barking at the puppy to get lost.

“Can you hold me?”

It was the first thing he had said to her since she had dropped a corpse right in front of him. He sounded as scared and broken as she’d expected him to. Theo’s adorable face, the way he’d always been so timid. Of all of her friends, his fear was most likely to send her over the edge, and she had warned them all about fear. But that request, those words she had not expected.

“Hold you?” Robin said. “Why would you ask me to hold you?”

“I’m scared,” Theo said. “I just wanted a friend to comfort me.”

Robin looked puzzled, “But it’s me you’re scared of.”

“Please.”

Robin carefully took her massive feet off the table, watching the tiny boy cower as they moved, their awful scent retreating. Robin leaned forward but stopped herself.

“Aren’t you worried I’ll hurt you?”

“Do you want to?”

“You guys should stop asking me that.”

“I hope you don’t,” Theo said, as he lowered his head, fidgeting with his own fingers. “But if you do, that’s ok too. Just make it quick.”

Robin looked at Jade, not standing that far away from Theo, she was shaking her head, begging her not to. The giant woman’s lips tightened in a malicious smile, as she snatched the boy off the table like an object.

Theo’s breath turned to stone in his lungs due to the speed at which he got hoisted up by his friend’s fingers. Jade limped over, as Robin settled back in the couch.

“Don’t let it take over!” she shouted.

Robin slammed her feet back down on the table next to her, offended at Jade acting like she’d become her snake charmer, “Shut up, you’ve already had your turn.”

Robin opened her palm and dropped the tiny onto it. He immediately made himself as small as possible, cowering and curling up in the soft pillows her scrunched half-folded hand made.

He was doing it. He was giving her the greenlight to do whatever she pleased with him. Was he suicidal? Had he willingly decided to let the ferrywoman take him down into the underworld? No, he had asked her for something else, what was it again? Comfort? How could she forget that so quickly?

Robin’s smile waned a bit, “Is it? Comfortable, I mean.”

Theo blushed, it was. Her hand was warm, soft enough, despite the calluses. Yet, at the same time, the surface was all consuming, invasive and personal, in the very way he’d dreaded. There was a slight humid layer of sweat and the lingering scent of the orange she had peeled earlier. He wanted to live or die in her hands, and that conflict wasn’t getting resolved by moping in his bed, he had to take the plunge.

“I’ve always been uncomfortable with people’s hands,” Theo said, quietly. “It’s been like that ever since I was a kid. I wanna get over it, wanna appreciate how nice this could be, but I got this thing in my mind that just keeps ruining it.”

“Yeah,” Robin said, with a calm resonant tone, “I get what you mean.”

It was a nice moment, a soft and intimate fuzzy feeling, watching her tiny friend cradled in her palm, and her mind kept trying to ruin it too. How easy it would be to squeeze him flat inside her fist. How fun it would be to poke him to death, watching his body be demolished poke after poke.

Robin raised her finger as she imagined it, yet it landed with no such force, instead she carefully brought it over to his back, stroking it gently.

“You want me to tell you what I’m scared of?” Theo said.

Robin shook her head lightly, “You’ll rouse me, you’ll make my mind ruin it.”

“Is that what you’re scared of then?”

Robin’s finger stopped caressing him, her eyes began to well up, “Is this why you let me grab you? You wanted to get through to the monster?”

“Fix or be broken,” Theo said. “Either would do.”

“There’s nothing to fix, it’s how I’m made to function,” Robin said, her quiet voice wavering. “I’m not misguided or in need of convincing, it’s a shadow whispering. It will always be there.”

“Will you break me then?” Theo shivered.

“Can I?”

Theo curled up tighter, “It’s not up to me, is it? Never has been. The hands will do what they want with me.”

The horrible realization of what his words meant crept up like shivers along her back. Robin turned to look a Jade again, who shook her head once more.

The giantess could feel her shadow scream at her. This was it. This moment was the worst moment imaginable to unleash herself onto his frail, pathetic little body, the most wicked and vile moment to betray this intimacy, to mark the end of their friendship in a streak of blood, it was perfect. Do it now, indulge at the cruelest time, in the cruelest way.

“I think-” Robin said, gently. “I think these hands would like to cover like a little cocoon to keep you warm, before pressing together until you turn into a bloody paste, which they would like to rub themselves in, until the things you’ve come to fear are fully coated in what’s left of you.”

Theo let out a long shivering breath, every muscle in his body tightened, as he braced himself.

Robin attempted to swallow the shadow in her throat, as the first tear rolled down her cheek, “But, I don’t think it should be up to them, Theo. The hands don’t get to choose, you do.”

Theo opened his eyes, his breath returning to him. His head slowly turned to look up at his friend.

There was too much meaning in those little eyes of his. Robin could read the incorrect assumptions on his face. This didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t fixed anything. She had only delayed his execution.

She would break him, one day.

#17 - Invitations

Player 1

At a height of only two inches, Rafael lay in the crater of the sunken surface of his girlfriend’s pillow, his leg pinned beneath her soft cheek. She wasn’t unaware of what was happening, Cleo had been wide awake for hours, and this was the fourth time her tiny boyfriend had to try and wrestle himself out of one of the many dents her head had made in her pillow, as she kept moving and rolling around in bed, gazing emptily at her phone screen.

It had been a while since the two of them had shot any footage for a new video, the recent news of their friend’s sudden heel-turn weighed heavy on both of them. QT and Treat couldn’t believe someone like Harm was really capable of hurting someone.

If big bro of all people could not control his urges, then what would happen to them. Would the day come where Cleo’s mind slipped, a day where her inner monster was tired of being teased by playing pretend. Would she really squash or eat her little jellybean? She couldn’t risk it. She couldn’t film anything right now. All she could think to do was bedrot.

Rafael did his best to try and cheer her up, but he could feel she was intentionally creating distance, figuratively speaking. Her warm, soft, bubbly cheek was completely burying him into the pillow. It took him a while before he finally wrestled himself free and climbed back up to the flat surface of the pillow.

That’s when he heard it, something rattling like paper being jostled about. The tiny boy turned his head towards his girlfriend’s gaming set-up across the room, from between the slit of one of her desk drawers, a piece of paper shot out.

“Uhm, Cleo!” Rafael said.

His girlfriend responded in bored melancholy, “What is it, Bean?”

She turned her head and saw it too, a white piece of paper, gracefully dancing up and down in mid-air toward them. Cleo sat up, causing the landscape of the pillow to change form again. Her boyfriend fell onto his butt, as she reached out and grabbed the paper. She held it out in front of her, her eyes growing wide as she read what was on it.

Rafael recovered and stood up, “What is it?”

Cleo turned the piece of paper to show him. She looked as if she had seen a ghost, and to Rafael she might as well have.

“What? What it is?” he asked.

“Read…”

“What do you mean, read? It’s a blank piece of paper. There’s nothing on there.”

Player 2

The middle-aged man smiled, as a woman he didn’t even know the name of tightened the restraints, tying him to the bedpost of the dingy motel room. It was risky, exciting. A welcome change from having to deal with his nagging wife. And the best thing, it was all free of charge. The woman he had picked up was doing this out of her own pleasure.

He stared at his mistress with a hungry smile. She was a tall piece of work, well over six-foot, with a skinny frame and a barely visible bosom and butt, nothing her pretty face didn’t make up for; big, nearly bulging hazel eyes, spread apart like the ones of many young Hollywood actresses. She had a slightly longer mid-face than most women, which gave her this powerful domineering aura.

Her style had this youthful alternative look to it; a fluffy sea-green wolf-cut hairstyle, a septum piercing, thick black eyeliner. She was dressed in loose blacks, a silver chain dangling beside her black knife-skirt. Her boots; weighty black Doc Martens, that thudded with every step.

“Before we begin, I have to come clean about something,” The woman said with a raspy voice. “It’s time for me to show you what I plan on using on you tonight, but you have to promise you won’t freak out.”

“Oh, dolly, you ain’t gotta worry about none o’ that. I could tell,” the man said, as he looked over at her skirt, ready for her to lift it and show him the goods; ready to see just how big it was.

Instead, the woman turned around, grabbed the large bag she’d been carrying around, and threw it onto the bed, missing the man’s balls by an inch.

“Good,” she said, with an adorable giddy little blush. “I was getting shy about showing you my toys.”

She unzipped the bag and started to pull out item after item, throwing it onto the bed, next to the tied-up country bumpkin. The man struggled to see what each object was. Some of it looked to be regular toys you’d find at any erotica store, but many other things were too shiny and metallic for his liking.

A small case landed right beside his head, and he recognized the branding on it. His heart sank as he realized it likely contained the same set of kitchen knives his wife used.

“W-Wait, no this ain’t what I signed up for…”

Those big bulging hazel eyes widened even further as the woman cocked her head, “What do you mean, you did sign a waiver, did you not?”

“What? I didn’t sign shit!”

“Mr. Caldwell?” she said, pointing a plastic casing of long nails at him.

“My name isn’t Caldwell, it’s Reed! Clive Reed!”

The woman leaned back, letting her shoulders sag, before speaking in an overly exasperated tone, “Fiddlesticks. Ah well, let’s just make the most of it.”

“What! No, untie me you crazy bitch!”

The woman reached into her bag again, pulling out an instrument that looked not unlike a misshapen flare gun, which she loaded with some kind of metallic cylinder.

The man squirmed, desperately pulling at his restraints, “W-What type of sex toy is that?”

“Oh, this isn’t a sex toy, you silly goose,” the woman said, with an unnerving smile. “It’s a captive bolt pistol, for when I get bored of you. You know, the things they use on livestock to make them take a nap? Right between the eyes, click, thunk~”

“Help!” The man screamed. “Someone help me!”

The ocean haired woman walked up to him with a ball-gag to shut him up. As she forced it into his mouth and wrapped it around him, a piece of paper slid between the door of the motel room. It danced through the air before landing on her victim’s chest.

“What’s this?” she said, as she picked it up, the muffled frothing screams of the man sinking to the background as she read it. “Interesting~”

Player 3

A messy dark-haired nineteen-year-old boy, dug his arms into the shelves at his local superstore, raking in the entire row of trading card packs, and letting them tumble unceremoniously into his shopping cart.

His entire outfit looked to be stolen off a Pinterest mood board, messy greys and blacks, baggy pants, and a long flannel shirt the size of a trench coat drowning his short frame. His eyes were completely shadowed by messily applied black, which almost looked like war paint.

He swung his cart around, one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, ready to drag his haul to checkout. These babies would resell like hot cakes online. Before he could move, he heard a squeak.

“Hey, you can’t just take the entire stock asshole,” A tiny man shouted from the shelf across the one he’d emptied.

The boy looked around, to see where the little bug’s guardian was. Another guy walked a little further down the aisle, checking out collectable figures, too distracted to notice the boy stepping towards the tiny.

“What? You wanted one, little guy?” He said, as he pulled one of the packs out of his cart, before holding it over the tiny’s head. “You sure?”

The little man cowered, as the giant grinned, threatening to drop the entire thing on his frail little body, “Dude, the hell! Chill out!”

“Oh, I’m chill,” he said. “Are you?”

“F-Fine, forget I said anything, please don’t kill me over cards, you psycho!”

The boy’s grin widened, as he pulled back the case of trading cards, sparing the tiny, who would’ve easily flattened under them.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, as he threw the cards back into his cart, leaving the tiny man behind, quivering.

Before the boy fully made it to checkout, a piece of paper fell into the pile of card packs. He reached into the cart, and read it, his satisfied smile turning to one of child-like wonder.

“Fucking finally, let’s go!”

Player 4

Caleb sat cross-legged atop the uncomfortable little bed he’d been sleeping on for days, locked inside his small six-by-eight-foot cell, donning the classic orange jumpsuit.

Wr8 had ruined his life, made him the monster he had grown confident he would never become, and for all the world to see. Not a night went by where he didn’t dream of the look of horror on Elena’s face, as it got destroyed between his fingers.

No one deserved to die like that, especially kind but assertive little Elena. Maybe one person did. If he ever got his hands on that mind controlling witch, he’d squash her to bits, full size or not. Out of revenge and in defense of all the other people she could hurt.

She was still out there. If she could do what she did to him, what chance did Rot and QT have to resist? They didn’t even know what she could do yet. The thought of QTpopper crying over the ruined body of Treat was an image he could not shake once he imagined it.

He saw the movement in the corner of his eye, a piece of paper floated between the bars of his cell, gracefully landing in his lap. As he turned the paper to read what was on it, his heart sank. He jumped out of his bed and ran over to the bars.

“Guards, I need to talk to talk to my lawyer,” he shouted. “Guards!”

Player 5

The engine roared, as a lime green sports motorcycle sped along the highway, its rider revving the engine for no other purpose than to announce himself to the obstacles in his way. The man was clad in all-black riding gear, accented by streaks of cyan blue, his helmet; a silly cat-ear design.

He swung his weight around, moving from side to side, swerving like a maniac, and digging in between lanes of cars, barely missing their side mirrors. He was Mozart, and the sound of car horns blaring behind him was his symphony.

A part of his orchestra that was particularly ticked off by his antics sped up beside him. The dark blue sports car rolled down its passenger-seat-window, just so the woman inside could show him the middle finger, before they drove up ahead of him, and he could see a paper cup fly out.

The cup bounced alongside the car, before the projectile hit him bullseye on his steering wheel, exploding upon impact into a sticky shower that was more sugar than coffee.

“Sonuvabitch,” he cussed, before muttering to himself, “Oh, you wanna fuck around, huh? Let’s find out together.”

The rider leaned forward, and began to speed up even more, racing the car to get ahead of it. Those idiots probably thought that would be the end of it. As he managed to get ahead of them, he swerved in front of their car, before break checking them lightly.

The car took a sharp turn into the other lane, tooting its horn, as its driver looked at the man with a face of anger and shock at the stunt he pulled.

“What? Was that not as good for you, as it was for me?!” the rider shouted for no one to hear, as he accelerated again to get ahead of the car. “Baby, come back, I’ll do better this time!”

He once more sped in front of them, and without a single care for his own safety, hit the brakes. The tires of the blue car shrieked, as it swerved into the lane next to it. The loud bang and clatter of metal could be heard as a grey family sedan in that lane crashed into the side of the sports car.

The rider looked back over his shoulder, “Oh-ho-ho-ho, shyeet…”

As he turned to look in front of him, a piece of paper flew right into his helmet, blocking the view through his visor.

“Motherf-“

He could feel the motorcycle beneath him come to a sudden halt, while his body continued at full speed. The metallic sound of his poor mistress screaming in pain, was followed by him flying into the air, blind, weightless until he landed, shoulder first against the concrete, his body slamming against the ground and bouncing a few more painful cracking rolls before he finally came to a broken halt.

“Arrgh, come on!” he squirmed in agony, until the mark at the back of neck began to burn, and he managed to push himself up, hearing the popping of joints and clacking of bones snapping back together.

He pulled the paper off his visor, read it, then looked at the two crash sites he had caused, his motorcycle lying in ruin beside the road, “Rabbit better pay for the damages...”

Player 6

“Please stop, I-I have a family,” the tiny man screamed, as Eve twisted her finger on the poor guy’s leg, slowly turning it to splinters and goo.

“You sure about that?” Eve said, grinning. “Blonde house wife, good-for-nothing adult sons with no jobs, all of them this big.”

With her free hand, the woman showed him her thumb and index finger, spread only two inches apart.

“No!” the man cried in horror.

“Oh, yes.”

A piece of paper shot up from under the couch in Eve’s living room. As she saw it float up beside her, her attention shifted away from her tiny victim. The messy, black-haired woman grinned and snatched it out of mid-air with her bloodied fingers, her hungry eyes sifting through the words on the page.

“P-Please!” the tiny man shouted. “Please tell me you didn’t hurt them!”

“Shut up,” Eve said, and in classic Wr8-like fashion, lowered the piece of paper onto the table, covering the tiny man with a sheet of white. “I’m reading!”

Eve raised her arm and swung her fist down like a hammer, slamming it on top of the paper, in the exact spot where the tiny man lay crying for his family. There was a quick cacophony of cracks and a pathetic squelch, as a red stain began to form, seeping through from the backside of the letter.

Eve grinned, “I can’t wait for my friends to join me.”

Player 7

The way Robin had handled Theo had slightly damped the group’s anxiety. While Elias kept everyone at arm’s length, Jade, Oscar and Theo all seemed to have regained some cautious faith in their giant friend.

Robin hated it. They were so eager to believe she was the woman they had always imagined her to be, that they’d cling to any hint of that ideal version of her. The giantess felt the urge to scare them back into seeing her for what she was, not one born out of her usual sadistic malice, but out of a twisted responsibility to make sure they wouldn’t grow too trusting.

She couldn’t do it though. Because deep down, she wanted them to trust her again. There was now this glimmer of hope that even though she had shown her true face, her friends could still go back to seeing her as Robin. Not born out of her secrecy, but out of their own desire to delude themselves the monster could be tamed.

Maybe she could have her cake, right up until the very second she’d snap and ate it. Scaring them off would be kinder than the false hope she was giving them by playing along.

She was lying back in the couch, letting the TV play, trying to ignore how this dynamic had become their entire lives, both to her and the bugs at her mercy.

A piece of paper slid out behind the TV, floating through the living room. Elias had been the first to see it, not calling anyone’s attention to it. It landed on Robin’s chest only a split-second after she’d noticed it fly up to her.

She raised it, and as she read the contents, it was as if she could hear the inner voices of six other people reading it with her.

To all Reapers and Invited Prospects who receive this notice,

You and any mycosized individuals we deem to be closely tied (excluding blood relatives and those not yet of age), are hereby summoned to participate in one of the upcoming Ascension Games.

These trials are designed to test those marked with the potential for Apotheosis and to entertain She Who Dreams the Waking World.

Prospects who have not yet acquired a Reaper’s Mark will be subjected to a localized instance of the Winnowing, separating those with potential from the lesser lot.

Reapers who achieve High Triumph within one of these trials will be awarded trial-specific rewards, and if not yet attained, their first step towards Apotheosis; Awakening, granting them an individualized ability, which will aid them in the trials to come.

The step thereafter; Advancement, will be granted by default to all Awakened Reapers once enough games have passed, and a sufficient number of Reapers have Awakened. This in turn will open up the possibility to reach the third step; Ascension.

Reapers who suffer Abject Defeat, or resist participation within one of these trials will have their mark struck and will be mycosized.

The upcoming event will take place this Wednesday at 10:00 PM (UTC). At this exact time, all those invited will be transported to the event. Those who intentionally cause this sudden disappearance to happen within public view will be severely penalized.

May you rise,

- Mrs. Hat and Master Rabbit

The entire group gathered in front of Robin, who stared at the letter in disbelief.

“What is that?” Jade said.

Just as Cleo did with Rafael, she showed them the letter.

“It’s just empty paper,” Oscar said.

“It’s not,” Robin said. “It’s insane…”

Elias ground his teeth and sighed. “Can you tell us what you’re seeing?”

Robin bit her lip, unsure if she should freak them out further, before she read the letter again, out loud.

#18 - Welcome to Macau

It was Wednesday afternoon. Robin was staring at her phone’s clock, watching the last-minute count down to the hour of their so-called ‘transport’. She was still holding out hope that nothing would happen upon the hour’s change, but the strange almost magical nature of the letter made it highly unlikely to be a prank.

It had been half a week since they received it, the group’s reaction was a whirlwind of confusion and questions Robin couldn’t answer. All she had known before the invitation, was what ChadBug had told her; death games run by shady people, ones Wr8 had claimed to have participated in. They were real, and her and her friends were about to be dragged into one.

The tinies had spent days discussing the possibilities of what lay in store. Would the games be a simple task? How closely would it involve them? What were the chances of them getting hurt? Would Robin be expected to do something horrible? Something horrible to them?

Robin hated the idea that even if she had been able to keep her urges a secret, they would have been dragged into the daylight by this cruel secretive group all the same. Not only that, but the one thing she could hold on to, the fact that her line remained uncrossed, might soon be wrestled from her grip. She would likely have to cross it tonight. Not through any fault of her own, or a lack of control, but through a forceful push by shadows she couldn’t put a face to.

As they all tried to puzzle, cope and prepare with the days counting down to Wednesday, the distance between the three parties grew; Robin, Elias and the three tinies who clung together. They barely communicated. Robin believed it would help control her urges and stress if she just fed and ignored the tinies. Elias had lost all trust in his friends, big or small, while Jade, Theo and Oscar attempted to communicate with the two, to no avail.

“Whatever happens,” Robin sighed, as she watched the last seconds tick by. “I’m sorry.”

The disembodied creepy sound of that nightmarish lullaby began to play throughout the room, the one she’d been hearing in her dreams. A wash of purple light blinded everyone.

Robin woke up, her body seated in a chair in front of a large green-carpeted oval table, with two decks of cards at the center of it. Each deck had a different back-face design, one a symbol of a top hat, the other that of a rabbit with one button eye, and an ear drooping over the other.

“Holy shit, we’re here!” a young male voice shouted.

Robin looked over, seeing a kid barely out of high-school sitting to the right of a tall green-haired woman who was sitting beside Robin on her right. The boy looked at another stranger sitting to his right, someone in full motorcycle riding gear, whose helmet had a cat-ear design.

“Thanks for the invite, man!” the boy said to the motorcyclist, raising his fist and holding it out to the guy.

With a loose casualness, the man popped his arm out and bumped the fist, “No problem, ma’ssacre-asa es su casa, compadre.”

To that guy’s right, across from Robin, sat a woman in her early thirties with messy waves of hair, and a poor application of make-up. She had no idea who the woman was, but the stranger looked at her with an unnerving smile, as if she knew her.

As Robin’s eyes continued to follow along the table, when she saw a familiar face, an e-girl with dark indigo hair; QTpopper. Robin’s breath held. What was she doing here? Even if she was a kindred spirit with a size kink, as far as Robin knew, she didn’t have a mark.

Then her eyes fell on the person to QT’s right, the man sitting on Robin’s left, the one who quickly drew the attention of everyone at the table. An attractive tall Korean man in a prison jumpsuit, the first hairs of his unshaven lower face beginning to show; Harm.

That fucking bastard.

Robin, barely took in her surroundings, as she started to see red, and jumped up from her chair, her fists ready to swing at the man who had killed one of her best friends. The man himself didn’t stay seated either, launching out of his chair just as quick, his eyes locked with the black-haired woman across the table, he leaned forward just as Robin’s fist was about to hit him, ready to crawl all the way across the green table between him and his target.

Both of them froze up, all of their momentum halted completely, as they both found their bodies unable to move, held by an invisible force. All they could do was move their heads. Harm turned to look at the fist which had almost hit him in the side of the head, while Robin looked around the room.

It looked to be a small, luxurious hotel club room, of steely greys, blacks and gold accents, with a leather couch and small table in one corner. Their table stood by a massive window that stretched across the entire length of the room.

The room they were in seemed to be very high up. The large window looked out across a lively well-lit nighttime city with massive buildings in a wide variety of shapes, their grandeur emphasized by colorful lights. It looked nothing like any American city Robin knew of, and judging by the fact it was still daytime when she got transported, she was a long way from home.

“While we understand some of you are eager to vanquish your opponents,” The weighty voice of a woman sounded from another corner of the room, with intimidating presence. “I regret to inform you that tonight’s game will not be martial showdown.”

Robin could just about turn her head enough to see two additional figures in the room with them, standing by what looked to be a small bar or kitchen corner. She recognized one of them from her dreams, a suited man with rigid posture, his head a knitted rabbit with a dangling ear.

The other stranger was new to her, a woman with long, straight grey hair, which aged her otherwise youthful appearance. Her Victorian-era dress and corset looked like steampunk cosplay, as if she had just walked out of a renaissance fair. She wore a brown top hat, too wide for her head, which made it tilt sideways across the left side of her forehead, giving her the same one-eyed visage as her masked companion’s ear gave him.

She was holding out her arm, her hand reaching like a claw towards Robin and Harm. Was she the one holding them in place?

The rabbit man beside her looked to be pouring cava into a set of glasses on the bar, as he spoke with his electronic voice, “Once Mrs. Hat releases you, we expect the two of you to sit back down and play nice, else there will be; consequences.”

“I don’t care,” Harm hissed through the teeth he could barely move, “Two monsters less in this world.”

Robin frowned, confused as to why the target of her rage directed his elsewhere.

The rabbit let out a modulated sigh, as he carried the platter of drinks atop one hand, and walked over to the group, “Try, and we’ll make sure you become a bug at her mercy, before you can strike a second blow. Play by the rules, and who knows how this morning might turn out.”

“This morning?” the woman with the ocean-green wolf-cut said.

“Yes,” the rabbit said, as he placed a glass of cava beside her. “Six a.m. and one minute to be exact.”

“Where are we?” The young guy said, receiving his glass

“No guesses?” the rabbit said, like a school teacher on an excursion, as he served the rider and the black-haired woman.

QT, still shaking at the shock of her transport, answered while her drink was lowered, “China?”

“Very good, Cleo,” The rabbit said, as he put the last two drinks down by the frozen individuals.

“A special administrative region of China, formerly occupied by the Portuguese” The rabbit threw the platter he served them with into the room behind him like a frisbee, letting it clatter onto the floor, as he stepped up to the window spreading his arms dramatically at the city lights, “Welcome to Macau!”

“The gambling capital of the world! City of excess and consensual robbery!” his electronic voice thundered with excitement. “Who can think of a better place for a communion of psychopaths?”

“Call centers, Silicon Valley, a Wendy’s parking lot,” the rider said. “There used to be an island, but the guy that ran it definitely, totally killed himself in prison.”

Master Rabbit ignored the man’s comments, turned to look at Mrs. Hat and cocked his head at Robin and Harm. Hat lowered her hand, the two almost collapsed to the floor, as they unexpectedly regained control of their bodies.

Robin wanted to attempt another swing, but she believed the threats the rabbit had made to Harm. If she did, she too would find herself robbed of her size, before she could even make it count.

“You’re Caleb Harm, aren’t you?” the boy said. “The killer nurse in the flesh. I’m like your biggest fan.”

The black-haired woman smiled, “Yeah, a real role model, isn’t he? You should ask him for his autograph.”

Harm’s eyes were focusing all the hatred he could manage on the woman, until he heard the words of the ginger who had almost hit him.

“I trusted you,” Robin hissed.

Harm slowly turned his head, his face turning from rage to shattered disbelief, “Rot?”

He looked down at the table, letting his head hang in silence, as he sat down, finally seeing the woman to his right, QTpopper. She was looking at him as if he was a wild dog on a flimsy leash. How much he would give to hear her say his stupid old nickname, instead of looking at him like a monster.

Robin’s chair slid forward on its own, slamming into the back of her knees, forcing her to sit back down at the table. After a short glance at QT, she held her eyes on the side of Harm’s face.

“Now first order of business is bringing in the playmates of those with someone to protect,” Mrs. Hat said.

Master Rabbit added, “having people with someone to lose makes things more -- interesting.”

Mrs. Hat snapped her fingers, and in a puff of purple smoke, five tiny people appeared on the green mat of the table, one in front of QTpopper and four in front of Robin.

Each of them looked around in shock.

QTpopper was quick to lower her hand to comfort trEATmeGently, who grabbed onto one of her fingers and hugged it, as she whispered, “It’s gonna be ok, Bean, you’re gonna be ok.”

Robin didn’t do anything, she kept her hands to herself, as her friends turned to look at her, she could only look away with avoidant guilt, before refocusing on how much she wanted to harm Harm.

Jade stood frozen in fear as her head swiveled between the other giants sitting at the table.

“What the fuck is this place?” Oscar said, as he grabbed the shoulder of a hyperventilating Theo.

Elias frowned, took one look outside, and more frustrated than amazed said, “Macau.”

“G-Guys!” Theo shuddered, as he pointed up at the giant man beside Robin.

“No, fuck me!” Oscar shouted.

“Is that Caleb Harm?” Jade said.

“Look who’s a popular boy,” The black-haired giantess said. “Go on Harm, what do you have to say to the poor little people whose friend you so callously butchered.”

From his lowered head, Harm’s eyes only briefly glanced over them, before he looked up from under his brow at the giantess in rage, “You made me.”

Robin turned to look at the woman, who was grinning ear to ear, her voice, the implication of her involvement made her finally realize, “Wr8…”

“You don’t catch on quick, do you, bestie?” Wr8 said, raising her brow condescendingly.

“Wr8 told you to?” Robin said, as she looked back to Harm, disgusted, wondering what Wr8 could’ve possibly said to convince someone that principled into doing something so horrible to Elena.

“She used whatever power she got here to control my mind,” Harm said.

QTpopper’s fear sank into a hollow stunned expression, “Harm...”

Treat squeezed her finger, “Wait, Wr8 actually has super powers, like Goldfeysh was talking about?!”

“Bullshit,” Wr8 said. “Take some fucking accountability already, my power can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

“I didn’t wanna hurt her,” Harm growled. “I was trying to save her.”

“Fine, I’ll prove it,” Wr8 said. “Explain Reaper ability!”

A small stream of black smoke poured out from under the table, trailing a small figure, which floated through the air beside Wr8. It looked like a cute mascot character, twice the size of a tiny, with a small humanoid body and a large cat head, made entirely of black smoke, its huge eyes glowing purple.

The entire table looked at it in dumbfounded amazement, except for the rider, whose expression could not be read beneath his helmet.

The tiny creature spoke with an adorable cartoon voice, listing technical details out loud;

Reaper ability: Words of Encouragement

Category: Support Ability

Use Type: Voice Activated

Cooldown: 4 Hours (Upon Successful Usage)

The user is able to boost their target’s abilities by encouraging them to act upon their base impulses, bypassing all their fear and rationale, through the use of a vocal trigger which makes the target think of what they wish to achieve such as, but not limited to; cheering them on, or referring to the desire in need of encouragement in therapeutic way.

Targets gain one of three supernatural enhancements, depending on what fits their goal; Increased Physical Ability, Increased Intelligence, or Increased Creativity.

This boon stays active for 4 hours, or until the desired goal is achieved.

“You made him the world’s most talked about murderer using a support ability?” The guy in the helmet said. “That’s cold. Creative, but cold.”

The shadow-eyed nineteen-year-old leaned forward, “wait, you get a little pet with your ability? That’s awesome!”

The little cat floated in front of Wr8’s face, its big eyes looking in the boy’s direction, as it continued with a cute, happy tone, “I am not a companion. I am an entity born of a request. My life’s purpose is to explain the ability of the Reaper that created me, then die a painful death. Goodbye.”

The smoke creature’s tiny arms stretched, becoming longer, as it reached up, grabbed both of its ears and began pulling. Its smoke form split in half right down the middle, and its glowing purple eyes dimmed. Both sides of it began to float upwards, and slowly dissipated like actual smoke.

“What the actual fuck?” Jade said, looking up to see the last of the smoke evaporate.

“Reaper abilities, huh?” Oscar said.

“She took away his reasoning, it wasn’t him.” Theo said.

“It still was,” Elias said, “Just because he’s acting nice, doesn’t mean his real self wasn’t hiding under the surface at all times.”

“Finally, someone gets it,” Wr8 smiles down at Elias, giving him the shivers.

“So, if she were to use that on Robin, we’re all dead,” Oscar said.

Wr8 smiled, “My thoughts exactly little man~”

Robin’s blood ran cold. Of all powers Wr8 got from the games, she got the one that could shatter the last bit of self-control she clung on to. It was still Harm acting on his instinct when he’d killed Elena, but he was robbed of his best quality, his restraint. Now that same gun was aimed at her. Wr8 gazed deeply into her eyes and parted her lips.

“She won’t use it though!” Elias shouted, as if commanding the end of the world to stop. “She’s not stupid!”

Wr8 broke eye contact with Robin, stunned, as whatever words she was about to speak fell back down her throat. It was clear she had no idea what Elias was talking about, but lingered on the little guy’s words, as if she were waiting for the pathetic bug to explain to her why she was smarter than she was.

“She’s about to play a game where her life is at stake,” Elias said. “And by the look of things it’s going to involve gambling. She won’t waste a power that could save her life in a game that’s all about impulse control.”

Wr8’s eyes moved from Elias to Robin, with a thin smile feigning confidence, but Robin could see it in her eyes, the woman felt slighted, she’d been reminded of strategy by someone she deemed to be subhuman.

The woman got up from her chair and leaned over the table, “Well, why don’t I just-“

As Wr8 reached out her arm, with clear intent to slam her hand down atop Elias, she froze up, the same way Robin and Harm had moments before. Elias yelped, staring up at the grooves in the crazed older woman’s palm, which had almost flattened him, before it came to an inexplicable stop.

“We also regret to inform you that tonight’s game won’t involve killing what currently belongs to your opponent.” Mrs. Hat said, as her fingers swiped the air, sending Wr8 flying back into her chair. “Now, seeing as you’ll all be sharing a table tonight, would any players like to introduce themselves?”

“What like first day of school, or job training?” the fluffy ocean-haired woman said.

“Exactly like that,” Mrs. Hat smiled to her. “Tell us your name, and a little bit about yourself.”

The alt-girl looked out across the table, the two guys next to her waiting for her to start, while the four who clearly knew each other were moody-ing up their entire half of the table, shooting each other glances of hate and apology. She hadn’t expected the games would be this much drama.

Her eyes fell on the frightened indigo-haired e-girl, who she started to feel a bit sorry for, this was no place for someone as innocent looking as her, but maybe her looks were deceiving, how else would she show up here?

“My name’s Lilith,” she said.

The black-haired woman turned to her, taking a break from pestering her friends, to interrupt her, “How original.”

Lilith mean-mugged the grinning hag, before continuing, “I’m a dominatrix and killer for hire.”

“What, really?” the guy in the cat-ear motorcycle helmet said, his lack of a visible face made up for by his excited voice, and expressive body language. “What’s your price?”

“2K,” Lilith said.

“I meant the dominatrix part.”

Lilith cocked her head to the side, “My services are a package deal.”

The rider paused for a few seconds, the visor of his helmet staring blankly at the woman, before he answered with a low, playful voice, “Oh mama, I think I’m in love…”

The corner of Lilith’s mouth pulled into her cheek, as she raised her brow, in a judgy but flattered smile.

The boy leaned into his friend, “Bro, you realize that’s a dude, right?”

Lilith shot him the same eyebrow, without the smile.

The rider turned to his friend, his shoulders rising with a deep breath, before violently sagging back down on the exhale, “What did I tell you about respecting trans women?”

“What?” the boy scoffed. “Don’t pretend to be woke now, you make pronoun jokes all the time.”

“Defamation!” the guy in the helmet said, turning to Lilith, while pointing his thumb beside him, shrugging and shaking head, as if he had no idea what his friend was talking about.

The boy made a face of visible disgust between the two of them, “My name is Lucas, I’m a hustler and entrepreneur. No one really gets me, but I’ve had this darkness in me, ever since I was a kid. I’m talking like, real psycho shit.”

No one at or on the table looked very impressed by the baby-faced edgelord’s introduction, and quickly turned their attention to the rider who seemed to have invited the guy.

“You guys can just call me Visor,” he said. “I’m keeping my identity a secret, cause I’m actually a super famous Hollywood actor.”

Lucas frowned at him.

“Anyone I’d know?” Lilith said.

Visor put his elbow on the table, and let his helmet rest in his hand, with an effeminate flair, “Just think of whichever heart-rob you think is hottest, it’s probably me~”

Lilith smiled at the guy’s playful try-hard energy.

The black-haired witch smirked as she looked away from them, turning her attention to the people who already knew who she was, “My name is Eve, but most of you will know me as ChainedWr8. I’m a social worker, who loves pizza and long walks on the beach.”

The group turned to QTpopper, who took a few seconds to find her words, before nervously replying, “My name is Cleo. T-This is my boyfriend, Rafael. We don’t really want to be here. I hope you guys understand, I don’t want him to get hurt, or anyone for that matter.”

Eve and Lucas smiled like a pair of grinning bullies, while Harm, Robin, Lilith and the other tinies looked at her in somber empathy.

“She’s not like the others,” Oscar said.

Elias shook his head, “No, she’s one of them.”

“Aww, that’s actually kinda sweet,” Lilith said.

“Well, I know who I’m going after first,” Lucas said.

As eyes fell on Harm, he looked at the rest of the table with disdain, “You all already know my name. If it matters to any of you, I’m not here to kill anyone except Eve.”

As the table turned their attention to the ginger woman in an oversized plaid shirt, all she had to say was her name, “Robin.”

“Are you here to protect your friends too?” Lilith asked, leaning in right beside Robin, and smiling at the little people on the green table-carpet below them.

Robin looked down at the ones she had once sworn to keep safe, the ones who were in danger by just being around her, and were now under threat by outside forces. It had been a promise she had a hard time keeping on her own, how much of a chance did she have of keeping it now, with whatever game was about to unfold.

“Yes,” she said, quietly. “I am.”

“Isn’t it a bit unfair that some of them have tinies they care about involved, while most of us don’t?” Lilith said, addressing Mrs. Hat.

“Mycosized individuals are but playthings to us,” the grey-haired woman said, “we think of it as bringing your own toys to a playdate. Now that you are all acquainted with each other, it’s time for us to call upon a Winnowing, to grant a Reaper’s Mark to the invited prospects who are still to receive theirs.”

Lucas rubbed his hands together, excitedly, as Mrs. Hat raised her hand and snapped her fingers. The entire room lit up with a purple glow, which blinded everyone inside for a few seconds.

Harm reached his hand over the back of his right shoulder, feeling a slight burn. He raised the collar of his jumpsuit and peered inside. He couldn’t see the whole mark on his shoulder blade, but just enough to make out that it was black.

Cleo felt her mark burn against the top of her left foot. She slowly pulled her hands away from Rafael to pull off her shoe, and check beneath her sock. On the back of her foot was a mark of three crescent moons, one mirroring the others, its points reaching into the others’ curves. It was black too.

“Wait, no! No!” a voice shouted at the other end of the table. “This has to be a mistake.”

The attention of everyone at the table was drawn to Lucas, who held his arm out, the mark on it was visible to everyone; purple.

“Looks like we have a poser in our midst,” Eve chuckled.

Lucas looked across the faces of a table full of dangerous psychopaths, as the realization set in, and a look of horror replaced his cocky smirk. He wasn’t a part of their little club; he was their prey.

“Hold on, I’m not a normie! I’m one of you!”

The rabbit walked along the glass window overlooking the cityscape, his modulated voice sounding from his mask, “Neither a player nor a personal playmate, Lucas now falls outside of the game rules that would otherwise protect him today. Reapers, feel free to do with him as you like.”

Mrs. Hat snapped her fingers again, causing the mark on Lucas’ arm to burn, as a purple glow enveloped his body, reducing his size to that of a two-inch tall tiny, disappearing from the table’s view into his chair.

“Wade, help me!” he shouted up at his friend.

Visor looked down, “After you tried to sabotage me in front of this baddie, go fuck yourself.”

The giant looked over to Lilith and cocked his helmet to the side, “Heya cutes, looks like the chair beside me just opened up.”

Lilith’s lips thinned into a wide grin beneath her septum piercing, “Well, if a gentleman is offering~”

The tall woman got up from the chair next to Robin, and walked over to pull back the one beside Visor. All Lucas could do was scream and beg in horror as this tall elegant behemoth looked down at him with joyful sadistic vindictiveness.

“I’m sorry, ok!” Lucas squealed into a voice crack. “Don’t! You’ll kill me!”

The giantess shuffled in between the table and the chair, before intentionally raising her black knife skirt to give the nineteen-year-old a full view of her towering, thin pale thighs, and her black underwear. The little guy cried out in horror at the sight of her tight butt descending, as he caught a glimpse of her untucked crotch; her balls squeezing against the fabric of her underwear, along with the shape of a surprising and horrifically massive-

Darkness crashed down on him, a ceiling of squishy softness quickly turning to hardened pressure as soon as it touched him. He wjusas buried beneath the warm skin of her right inner thigh, just outside the leg-rim of the giantess’s underwear.

He could feel his bones cry out in pain, a few of his ribs snapping and collapsing, and his legs were getting squeezed so tightly, it cut off the blood flow. His head stuck out from beneath the thigh-skin just enough to allow him some small breaths of air in the darkness beneath the woman’s crotch.

The placement of near the front of her seating was borne of pure luck. Lilith had sat down on the boy in completely uncaring casualness. If he had been just a little too far back, her weight would have squeezed him like a hydraulic press. If he’d been a bit more to the side, he’d have suffocated against her skin.

Right now, he was still alive, his body pressed just past its breaking point, but alive, able to breathe the air, scented with a mixture of lavender fabric softener and a surprisingly feminine body odor emanating from organs which Lucas’ tiny brain couldn’t comprehend the complex realigned biological reality of.

Robin stared at the woman’s face, reading the satisfaction of her smile, the distracted focus of her eyes which hinted at her mind focusing on senses elsewhere. It was like watching someone else eat a five-star meal, and trying to experience the delicious taste of it through looking at them alone. How nice must it be, to feel a life flattened and burst to death under one of humanity’s most common poses of ease.

“Did you just kill him?!” Cleo said, her eyes wide, her brow furrowed.

“Dunno,” Lilith said. “I didn’t feel him burst open, but felt something crack.”

“Aren’t you gonna check?” Wr8 said. “Watch his little body break down bit by bit each time you sit back down.”

Lilith shrugged with an air of nonchalance, “Why bother, he’s not worth any invested sadism. He was just a loud annoyance that happened to be in my seat. Leave it up to fate, like his parents did when they ditched the condom.”

“R.I.P. Lucas,” Visor said. “I’ll make sure to tell his mom what happened.”

“They’re so easy with it,” Oscar said. “That kid might be dead.”

Elias scoffed, “He just said he wanted to target that other tiny, hard to feel bad for him.”

“Still...” Jade said.

“So, Doc,” Visor said, his helmet turning towards the rabbit by the window, “we playing cards this time around. Quite the change from the usual blood and guts.”

The rabbit’s button eye stared off into the city as he spoke, “You’ll be playing our version of poker. Texas Hold ‘em ruleset, without wildcards. Mrs. Hat and I will deal the cards.”

“That’s it?” Lilith said, “Just a poker game?”

Master Rabbit turned his attention back to the group, “It will be a quick game. Each player will start off with only a small amount of chips, and the game will last until one or more players run out. This will be considered Abject Defeat, resulting in the player’s mark being struck, and their mycosized body being offered to the player who won that betting round. At this end state, the player with the most chips will be awarded High Triumph, going home with the big prize pool they’ve gathered up, and if not yet attained; their Awakening, thereby unlocking their reaper ability.”

“So, one winner, and one or more losers?” Harm said with strained impatience. “What about the ones that don’t lose their entire stack by the end.”

Mrs. Hat answered, “Those will be sent home with their winnings and nothing else.”

Visor looked down at the empty green table surface, with only two decks of cards, “So uhm, where are the chips?”

Master Rabbit signaled Mrs. Hat with a nod, after which she raised her fingers for another loud snap, before a moment of silence fell across the table.

Theo jumped as he heard a loud gust of wind beside him, and swung his head to look over at a cloud of purple smoke dissipating from the two-inch-tall body of a woman in casual office attire, standing only an inch away with a shocked expression.

Oscar frowned, “What the-”

More puffs of smoke appeared all around the table. Tinies, one after the other appeared in front of each of the other the giants, at an increasing pace, each adding to a growing soundscape of panicked gasps and screams, until the tinies in front of each reaper counted exactly ten (tinies that were already on the table included), totaling a crowd of sixty shrunken people.

The rabbit tilted his head, until his right ear no longer covered his button eye, “Today’s game, is human poker.”

#19 - Entführung

“Ich zahle mit karte,” Leonie said, as she raised her bank card, and swiped it.

The man behind the night store’s counter gave her a forced smile and nodded, “Danke. Schönen abend noch.”

The young blue-eyed brunette with a ponytail stepped out of the small store with a plastic bag containing; sour cream chips, a big pot of cookie dough ice cream and multiple canned mojito drinks. It was a little past midnight in the small German city she had been born, raised and would likely die in.

It was another one of those nights, the lonely ones, the ones that bled over into days just as meaningless and empty. Leonie didn’t have a job, she didn’t have friends, and all the family she had left was a father she’d sworn she’d never speak to again. All she had was a small apartment, a hole to curl up in and disappear from a world that wouldn’t even notice if she up and disappeared one day.

With the ironic cruelty of this indifferent world, that was exactly what happened, as she turned the corner into a narrow street with no witnesses.

A sudden pain burned across the back of her right hand, causing her to drop the plastic bag she was carrying. As it hit the ground, one of the mojito cans burst open, sizzling as it sprayed the liquid inside.

Leonie looked at her hand, seeing a strange green mark of two crescent moons overlapping. In her shock the connection was quickly made; Das Vorzeichenlicht. But how could it be? She had seen no purple glow, and the mark looked nothing like the usual three moon symbol.

Purple smoke poured out from the yellow lining of the green mark. It didn’t float upwards, but enveloped her hand, her wrist, her lower arm, and crawled upwards. Leonie let out a short, unheard scream, cut off by the smoke rising to her face.

The world went dark for only a few seconds, before the smoke exploded outward, in a puff. Her body was cleared of the strange phenomenon, but displaced, her dropped bag no longer beside her feet, the ground beneath her a green carpet of thick fabric with frayed fibers which looked larger than they should be.

The shouting, screaming and gasping started, Leonie looked around the strange stadium full of people, and the six giants sitting around it, two giant decks of cards in the middle.

“What the hell?” A gruff man shouted.

A woman’s voice followed in a Scandinavian language, “Vad är det som händer?!”

“W-Where am I?” panicked a younger man.

She turned to see a giant woman with detached hazel eyes and blue-ish green hair looking down at her. There was a coldness to that look, no reassurance, no mocking.

“So, we’re gambling with tinies?” The woman’s voice boomed. “Keep the ones we managed to win by the end?”

“Exactly,” an electronic voice sounded, originating from a strange masked figure with a rabbit’s head, stepping around the stadium; the table.

Leonie’s breath caught, she didn’t join the shouting or screaming, her mind overclocked trying to process what was happening, her head on a swivel.

“It’s a game,” one guy shouted. “They’re real.”

Leonie watched a young man who looked to be Southeast Asian with a warm skin tone run across the carpet, away from the giantess. He made it only a short distance before his body slammed against the air in front of him, like someone running into a thick glass window, but there was no gleam nor any fracturing of the light; no sign of any glass.

Another giantess stepped up to the table in a strange costume, her wide top hat tilted atop her long grey hair. She pulled back the single empty chair at the table, and stood between the ocean-haired giantess, and an uneasy looking copper-haired one. She didn’t sit down, her hands pushed down on the carpet as leaned over the crowd of people, her chin raised with a wicked smile.

“Silence,” she said, with a low domineering tone, the word followed by the disembodied echo of a German translation, like something Leonie would often hear in a poorly dubbed television series, “Seid still.”

Leonie, understanding both languages, didn’t struggle to obey that command, her voice and body frozen.

“Until but a moment ago, you were people,” she said, the translation following. “Now you are but chips in a prize pool. The marks on your hands label you as one of the unseen, forgotten and ignored by all who do not bear a mark. You are a part of this world now, no longer able to function in the old one. Your only hope at survival rests within the hands of these six Reapers, your life reliant on the kindness of the cruel. Pray this poker game lands you in the claws of a merciful one. Do not scream. Do not beg. Your fates are no longer yours.”

Leonie’s hands reached for her face, her fingers crawling across her cheek and into her hair, her eyes so wide it made her vision shake. She wanted to scream, but like most of the other tinies around her, she was too afraid of the potential consequences of angering these strange gods.

On the other end of the table, Harm looked down, cursing the sight of ten tiny people turning to look at him in horror, as they realized they were in the hands of a world famous killer. Sixty tiny people would be at risk tonight, depending on whose hands they ended up in.

Harm turned to look at Cleo, “We have to save these people.”

Cleo looked at him with mask of horror, “I don’t know how to play poker.”

Harm’s heart sank. They were about to play a game where lives were at stake, where her life was at stake, and she didn’t even know the rules.

“It’s ok, I’ll explain,” Harm said, trying to keep his cool, trying to live up to the older brother role she had once put on him, while the game’s host seemed to allow him the time to do so. “At the start of each game, each player gets two cards. Two players are forced to put in a bet, one is called small blind, and the one left of that player has to bet twice that, a big blind.”

“Oh, and don’t forget,” Visor chimed in. “The person with the small blind has to keep one eye closed for the entire round, the big blind has to keep their eyes shut completely.”

“That’s not a rule, ignore him,” Harm said. “The person left of the person putting in the big blind can choose to either match the current bet in play by calling, raise the bet and force the other players to call that bet, or fold bailing out of the current game. The choice to do one of these three things passes to the person on the left each time, until everyone either folded or put in the same bet.

“If you fold you lose everything you’ve already put into the bet,” Lilith said. “So, you’re always weighing whether to go along if someone escalates the tension by raising the bet. Sometimes it’s better to put in a little more, as not to lose what you already put in, but sometimes it’s better to sacrifice some and fold.”

Harm turned to look at Lilith with a frown, surprised and suspicious as to why someone of her ilk would give genuine advice. He looked back to Cleo, who was staring at the human beings in front of her, people she might have to ‘sacrifice’ in a bet.

“After the first round of betting comes the flop,” Harm continued. “Three cards will be revealed to everyone, and another betting round starts, with the small blind player getting to make the first choice, without having to pay their blind again. You have to see if the two cards in your hand will combine with the community cards to make a good hand.”

“W-What’s a good hand?” Cleo said her index finger returning to Rafael, stroking her tiny boyfriend more for her own comfort, than for his.

Visor interrupted again, “Try and make sure you have a Blue-Eyes White Dragon.”

Harm shook his head, “Having a card with a high number alone is the weakest, a pair is better, the higher the numbers of the pair, the better. Having three of the same card value is better than a pair. A straight is already very good, that’s when you have five cards that follow up on each other; one, two, three, four, five. Above that is a flush, where you have five cards of the same suit; five heart cards, or five clubs, you get the idea. Above that, full house, three of a kind and a pair in one hand. If you somehow have four of the same card number, that’s even better than a full house. As straight flush is pretty much the highest, it’s when you have five cards in sequence like a flush, while they’re also the same suit. There is also an impossibly rare royal flush, that’s when those five cards are in sequence, same suit, and the highest cards in the deck.”

Cleo’s breath shuddered, “I can’t follow, it’s too much.”

Harm looked at the rabbit, “Is there any chance she can have a sheet to check hand values?”

Master Rabbit and Mrs. Hat looked at each other, before Hat answered, “In the name of fairness, I can’t see why not. Who else needs a check sheet?”

Despite being the most disruptive of Harm’s explanation, Visor raised his hand high, while Robin quietly raised a few fingers. Mrs. Hat snapped her fingers and three sheets ranking each poker hand with a visual explanation appeared out of thin air, flying over to each player in need of one.

Harm finished his explanation, “After that round a fourth card is added to the community cards, starting another betting round, after that a fifth, starting the last betting round. The game lasts until either that round ends, or all but one player has folded. Then the forced bets of the blinds move to the left, and a new game starts.”

Cleo nodded, unsure if she really had a grasp on it all, “Ok, ok.”

The tiny people across the table still squeaked and cried amongst themselves, but had started to quiet down. Theo, Oscar and Jade had tried to calm the six new tinies near Robin with the empty promise that they’d be safe, that their friend would save them.

Robin just stared down at them, not affirming those claims with the distressed empty look she gave them. Her friends were on the line, chips in a poker game. The six others were nothing to her but a thin human wall of security to stop her friends from ending up in the prize pool.

She had no intention of joining Harm and Cleo in their goal of saving these tinies, all she wanted to keep was the four of them, they were hers.

“Well then, let’s get started,” Eve said, leaning onto the table, and pinning a man beneath her index finger, causing him to squirm like an insect.

Mrs. Hat reached into her cleavage, taking out two large plastic chips which she let float towards the table, one of them landing in front of Lilith, the other in front of Robin.

The one in front of Lilith had a drawing on it, a man with sunglasses and a walking stick, which the man held out in front of him, poking the toe of a giant foot.

“Small blind,” Lilith snorted. “How cute.”

Robin looked at the one she received, the drawing on the big blind was that of a giant woman, her eyes wrapped with bandages like lady justice, sitting against a large destroyed building, amidst flattened cars and a panicked crowd.

Mrs. Hat used her powers to lift the deck with the Master Rabbit artwork on the back of the cards. She split the deck, and put the bottom half on the top, before letting cards fly off the top towards all players, letting them catch their hand until each of the Reapers held two cards.

“Wait, what are the blinds?” Lilith asked, looking at the drawing of the tiny blind man, wondering what bet she was supposed to make.

The modulated voice of Master Rabbit answered, “The big blind is one tiny.”

“Wait, but if that’s the big blind-” Harm said, unable to finish his sentence, as the realization kicked in across the table.

Eve’s eyes shot open, as she burst into gleeful sadistic laughter, watching the faces of Robin, Harm and Cleo. The hope that this would be a clean game melted off them into sickly despair.

“Half a tiny,” Rabbit said confirming their horror.

“Does that mean we don’t have to put in live ones?” Eve said. “I could just kill all of these bugs right now?”

“Correct,” Master Rabbit said.

Cleo looked at her with begging eyes, “Wr8, don’t…”

Eve didn’t need to hear the confirmation of the game’s host twice. She grabbed a man in his early thirties out of her pool of tinies, holding him under her thumb, his back pinned against her middle and index finger, as she tilted her thumb forward, pushing the nail of her thumb into his throat.

“Wr8 stop!” Harm shouted, his masculine voice collapsing into a higher pitch, fearing for the man’s life.

Eve’s eyes locked with Robin’s, who was staring at her in dead silence. The slow breath of a guilty observer escaped the tomboy’s lungs, as she watched her former online friend choke the life out of a man with a simple push of her thumb. Robin’s lower lip quivered, almost curling under her teeth, before she got a hold of herself, and looked away.

Annoyed by her friend breaking eye contact, Eve shoved her nail forward into the tiny man’s throat, destroying the entire structure inside, all the way to the top of his spine, leaving him gurgling blood from the torn windpipe.

She let the body fall down amongst a group of nine screaming playthings, who tried to scatter and claw up against the invisible barrier that held them in front of her.

Eve began a massacre, slamming her giant middle finger into a beefy looking man’s chest with a flick, causing it to burst open. Leaving him to bleed out of the collapsed ribs sticking out of his skin. She dropped a woman inside her cava glass, but not before crushing her leg, forcing her to swim inside her drink with a broken limb, while blood flowed out, mixing into the alcoholic drink which burned the tiny’s wound.

Visor looked at the woman, as she splashed around inside Eve’s drink, before sinking, her last bubbles of air barely recognizable amongst the fizzy bubbles of the drink itself.

“She’s gonna need to call an Uber after that amount,” he said, dryly.

He looked down at his own pool of tinies, before suddenly flexing his gloved fingers wide, “Boo!”

A few of them fell over, cowering and screaming, as he chuckled without following up on his scare.

“D-Don’t you wanna play with them later?” Elias shouted, trying to have his voice carry louder than the panicked screams of the other tinies on the table. “You could get so much more creative at home!”

Eve glared at him, this tiny pet of Rot seemed to understand her better than anyone else at the table, but he was using that understanding to try and control her. The audacity.

“Sure, I could. But it’s so much fun showing off just how twisted I am to an audience,” Eve said, turning to look at Cleo. “I’m sure you understand, little snuff streamer~”

The tinies in front of the indigo-haired e-girl looked at her. The aura of being the safest giant at that table, which she had given off by treating Rafael so softly disappeared. The tiny boyfriend attempting to repair the damage of Eve’s words.

“It’s not snuff,” Rafael explained as the other tinies backed away from Cleo. “It’s fake, just ketchup and jam. She’d never hurt anyone!”

The disheveled black-haired hag continued her indiscriminate mass murder, as she popped the head of another woman beneath her finger like a grape, the tiny woman screaming, as her skull collapsed into gore.

Eve made a gross noise with her throat and nose, as she worked up some mucus into her mouth, before spitting down onto the table, much to the frowning disgust of Mrs. Hat. She grabbed a man by his leg, and dragged him into the quickly cooling puddle of saliva and slime, before forcing his head down into it. She kept him pinned under her finger, as his little limbs flailed about, until he stopped moving, drowning in the most disgusting way imaginable.

Lilith raised her brow and smiled, as she looked down at her own ‘stack’ of ‘chips’, “Well, I reckon them’s the rules, so…”

She raised her own glass of Cava, and poured it all into her gullet in one go, before turning the glass upside down and lowering it onto the tiny man, who Leonie had watched run into the invisible barrier. The tiny man screamed, throwing his arms up in a desperate defensive plea, as the rim of the glass, the part smudged with the imprint of the alt girl’s lips, came down on his stomach, crushing him in half, his last muffled wail echoing inside the glass.

Leonie’s stomach didn’t take kindly to the scream she tried to swallow, she retched, barely holding the urge to puke, to collapse in the chaos and horror of it. She couldn’t let herself make a noise, or react in any noticeable way. She was small, defenseless, and all she could do was make herself smaller. If she could prevent herself from standing out, she could escape the attention of the giant trans woman who loomed over her, and escape being the next on the chopping block.

Lilith grabbed the tiny man’s legs and threw his lower body out on the table in front of her, before turning to look at Robin and giving her a single nod, “Your turn.”

Robin looked down at her three friends, who were looking back in questioning despair, as if she was supposed to say something that would help them keep their cool. While Elias watched Eve kill the last of her tinies, with an empty abyssal stare. The first round of bets had only just begun, and eleven of the fifty-five people who’d been stolen from their lives were already dead.

Robin reached out, grabbing a woman who cried out in fear. She could feel the tiny stranger squirm between her fingertips, so much justified anxiety, such a pathetic fight she put up. The feeling was intoxicating to Robin, but the weight of the game she was about to play dampened her enjoyment of it.

She gently lowered the woman onto the table in front of her, leaving her exposed, alone. What once had been a person, was now Robin’s forced bet, her big blind. A part of the disposable currency had to keep her friends from ending up in the game.

Robin looked over at the small blind chip, the one that would be hers next game, the thing that would force her to cross her line; force her to split someone in half.

#20 - Split Share

Current Chip Count:

Robin; 10 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Elias, Jade, Theo, Oscar)

Caleb; 10 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Cleo; 10 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Rafael)

Eve; 0 live, 10 full dead, 0 halves.

Visor; 10 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Lilith; 9 live, 0 full dead, 2 halves. (Holds; Leonie)

Robin looked at her hand; Queen of Hearts, Two of Clubs. The queen wasn’t a bad start. She turned to Harm, to see what his next move would be. She couldn’t help but glare, even if Wr8 had pushed him, he was still the one responsible for Elena’s death. Knowing her own fantasies, urges and desires, she knew it was hypocritical, but so was his desire to go and play the hero now.

The dark-eyed man looked up from his cards, behind the dark locks of hair which hung loosely across his eyes. A man Robin had imagined to be controlled and clean, looked rugged and worn instead. He smiled uneasily at his cards, looking over the faces of his competition. His large hand slowly reaching for one of the tinies in front of him, before coming to halt.

His eyes had stopped analyzing the players, and fallen on the large chip with the artwork of a blind tiny, in front of which lay the lower body of the innocent man who’d been butchered to pay its tithe. Harm looked at Robin, his chest raising with a deep sigh, before he lowered his hand, the cards face down, and pushed them out onto the table.

“I fold,” he said, turning to Cleo, who was up next. “You have to fold too.”

“I think I have a good card though,” Cleo said, with a fragile pitch, as she looked down, wondering which of the people in front of her she’d have to risk.

“You need to fold,” Harm said, making it sound more like a command this time. “Robin needs to win what Lilith put in…”

Cleo looked down at the half body in front of Lilith. She understood immediately. This situation was dark, messy, but if Robin won this game, she wouldn’t have to resort to killing anyone herself. The indigo-haired girl nodded, and lowered her cards onto the table to fold, before looking at Eve, the one up next.

Eve cackled, “You think playing with another killer’s corpses is gonna save your soul?”

“All you have to bet are corpses, if you lose it could build up their pool of them quite quickly,” Lilith said. “If you hadn’t been so gung-ho with your stack, you might have been able to force their hand more, the way you seem to like to do.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Eve said, as she pulled the dead woman out of her cava to call the bet. “But she’ll have to win this round first.”

Visor looked down at his card ranking sheet, then back at his cards.

Eve shot him a patronizing smirk, “You sure you don’t wanna take that stupid helmet off? Can you even read your cards though that visor?”

Visor swung his head towards her with a sassy wiggle, “Of course I can…”

He turned back to his cards, extending his arm away from him, before bringing them closer again, like an old woman struggling without her glasses, “I got two aces! No wait, that’s the Ninja of Triangles.”

“Oh, now I see,” he said, pointing at the left card in his hand. “That’s the one that lets me change the color, and forces the next player to draw four cards.”

Without much care for his comfort or wellbeing, Visor grabbed a man from his pool of tinies and called the bet, throwing the man a few inches in front of him.

“I’ll get that helmet off you if you lose,” Lilith said, as she raised the upside-down glass, and threw in the other half of the man she’d split, evening herself with the current bet. “Just don’t blame me when your head pops off along with it, like a Lego figure.”

Visor cocked his head, “Careful cutes, you flirting like that is gonna get me bricked up.”

Robin looked down, she could just keep the bet as was for now: the one tiny she’d been forced to put in. No need to raise it, she called.

Mrs. Hat let three more cards fly up from the Rabbit deck, revealing the flop. The first three community cards floated down on top of the table, flipping themselves over; Jack of Diamonds, King of Hearts, Ten of Clubs.

“Pair of Kings…” Cleo muttered under her breath, calling out the hand she would’ve had.

Lilith sighed, and lowered her cards face down, folding.

“Why are you dropping out, the bet hasn’t been raised yet?” Visor commented. “Could just ride it out and see.”

“I know,” Lilith said, before turning to Robin with a sweet smile, leaving the two halves she put in up for grabs.

Robin didn’t have a decent hand yet, all she could hope for at this stage was a high card with her queen. She checked, leaving the bet at one tiny.

Eve and Visor did the same, looking at their cards and checking without another word, before Mrs. Hat revealed the turn. The fourth card flipped itself over; Queen of Diamonds.

Robin let out an audible sigh which drew the attention of everyone at the table. So much for a poker face. She looked at Wr8, trying to read her confidence, while cursing the unfairness of Visor’s unreadable helmet.

Jade looked up at her, nodding, as if to ask if she had a good hand. Robin responded by grabbing the tiny man next to her, and raising the bet with him. Unlike the previous tiny, he kept absolutely still in fear.

Eve dropped her cards face down, Visor followed. The game wouldn’t be played out to its end, everyone but Robin had bailed out. Her excitement had given it away; there was no need for them to risk it.

Through the morbid use of the corpses already in play, Robin’s line would remain uncrossed, for now.

Mrs. Hat raised her hand, and all the tinies in play floated towards Robin; the two she had put in, the live man from Visor, a drowned woman from Eve, and the two halves of the man Lilith had split in half.

Current Chip Count:

Robin; 11 live, 1 full dead, 2 halves. (Holds; Elias, Jade, Theo, Oscar)

Caleb; 10 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Cleo; 10 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Rafael)

Eve; 0 live, 9 full dead, 0 halves.

Visor; 9 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Lilith; 9 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Leonie)

The cards floated back into the rabbit deck, which in turn floated up towards Master Rabbit, who began to shuffle, looking out across the view of the glowing cityscape. The next game’s cards were dealt out from the deck with the hat symbol on it, floating into each player’s hand, as the blinds dragged themselves across the green carpet surface, the small in front of Robin, and the big in front of Harm.

“Elias,” Theo said. “You’re good at games like this, right?”

“Yes, and?”

“Maybe look at Robin’s cards, help her make decisions. She’s still relying on a sheet.”

“Why?” Elias said, shaking his head. “To help her win more people to eventually kill?”

“Robin won’t kill anyone,” Oscar said.

“You still believe that?”

Jade limped up to him, grabbing both of the white-haired boy’s shoulders, “If not for Robin, then to stop us from ending up with that monster.”

Elias followed where Jade was looking, seeing Eve look at her cards.

“I’ll help, if it comes to that,” he said, before shaking his shoulders free from Jade’s grip. “For now, she’s on her own.”

“You know this woman?” a man in his forties asked.

“Yes, she’s our friend,” Oscar answered.

A woman turned to them, “A-Are we safer with her?”

“Y-Yes,” Oscar said.

“Safety is fucked up spectrum at this point,” Elias said. “Our so-called friend is a monster. Just look at what she did to her leg.”

The woman looked at Jade’s lower leg, which was still wrapped in cloth, then to her face. The desperate look of the woman disarmed Jade. She had no idea how to reassure her, how to explain it away like her perspective of Robin allowed her to do. To any normal person, Robin was a monster, and there was nothing she could say to sell the other tinies on the idea that she was anything else.

“Dammit, Elias,” Oscar said.

Elias shrugged, “It’s the truth. No one here is gonna join your sick worshipper cult.”

Robin heard the entire conversation, but pretended she didn’t, focusing on her cards; Ace of Hearts, Four of Spades. An ace was a good start. She grabbed the upper body of the dead Southeast Asian man and threw it out in front of her, the loose guts spilling out even more. There was a little bit of blood on her thumb now, but it wasn’t any she had spilled.

Looking away from his hand (Ten of Spades, Six of Hearts), the giant next to her had heard the conversation too. Harm stared at Jade’s leg in hurt disbelief. As gentle as he could, he grabbed one of the cowering women in his stack and set her down as his blind bet, before addressing Robin.

“You told me you came out to them.”

Robin turned to him, grinding her right molars, “I did.”

“Said you did so healthily; that they took it well.”

“I lied.”

Caleb squeezed his eyes shut, the lump in his throat stopping him from saying another word.

Theo looked up at the giant, trying to puzzle together who this killer really was to Robin.

Cleo looked at them too, not fully understanding, but feeling the hurt all the same. She lowered her cards to the table, folding and thereby following the same strategy to make sure Harm wouldn’t have to hurt anyone.

Eve called throwing out another dead body from her morgue, followed by Visor, who added a live tiny to the prize pool. Lilith folded again.

The flop cards revealed themselves; Five of Clubs, Six of Diamonds, Three of Clubs.

Harm tried to hold in a sigh, not to show his opponents anything. The six gave him at least a pair.

“Ooh, six that’s a pair already!” Visor shouted out loud. “Come on give daddy a joker.”

“There are no jokers,” Lilith said. “No wild cards, remember?”

“Then why do I have a ‘J’?”

“That’s the Jack, idiot,” Eve said.

Harm’s little bit of hope turned to ash. If Visor wasn’t playing dumb and lying about his cards, he was screwed. A low pair like that alone might have won him the game, if there wasn’t a higher hand at play. But if Visor had the same pair, and a higher kicker, that was it. A Jack was only one higher than his Ten of Clubs, just his luck.

It this round didn’t go his way; he’d be forced to kill again. No, this time he would have a choice. He could go down, have his mark struck instead of entertaining the hosts’ sadism. But if he did, could he assure these people were safe? Him and Cleo could rake in more of them to safety together. It was a trolly problem; could he kill one of them to save more of the others?

Robin tossed in the other half of the dead body, calling the one-tiny bet. Harm couldn’t lose face; he couldn’t tip toe around it. He had to play bold, make the other players drop out. Their lives were on the line, and he didn’t care much for his. The others would be more careful; the first game had proven that. He could go all in, but Wr8 would smell the desperation of a suicide bluff. He had to go high, just enough to scare them.

With a gentle hand, one after another Caleb added four tinies to the bet, totaling five. He looked at Eve, daring her to call. To his relief, she folded.

“Alright, alright. Let’s get risky,” Visor said, his cat-ear helmet bouncing as he nodded, before calling the bet and adding four tinies.

Harm couldn’t show his worry, but if Visor wasn’t lying, he’d beat him. The four extra people he’d put at risk would fall in the hands of this psychopath, and it wouldn’t even save him from the choice he dreaded to make. If his mark would be struck mid-game, would the tinies end up in the prize pool of the next game, or be killed on the spot by Hat and Rabbit?

Robin looked at the cards again. She didn’t have a hand yet, just the highest card in the game. She was running on an ace high, when Visor had already called out a pair. If an ace showed up it would beat a six.

As she wrapped her hand around four live tinies, Harm turned to her in shock. “What are you doing?”

“Playing the game,” Robin said coldly.

“If you win, I-”

“You don’t have a soul to save anymore.”

Harm’s tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, as he struggled to swallow, watching Robin call the bet.

To her it was a blind gamble, one that risked a huge chunk of her defensive wall in return for a massive one, and a chance to punish Harm for what he took for her, for Elena. He was a killer; he might as well live up to the reputation he deserved.

The turn card flipped; Nine of Clubs.

It didn’t bode well for neither Harm nor Robin, but neither of them let it show. They eyed each other with intensity, as all three players left checked the bet without changes.

The river card flipped; Ten of Diamonds.

Harm couldn’t hide his sigh of relief, while Robin’s hissed between her teeth. He had two pairs, she had nothing.

Robin called, while Harm gently lowered two more tinies to raise the bet, forcing Visor and Robin to fold, leaving all the tinies in play to him. He did it, not only would he not have to kill, but he managed to save nine people from the hands of Visor, and a former friend who had proven herself to not be as safe as he had hoped, one who would’ve wanted to see him kill again.

Current Chip Count:

Robin; 7 live, 1 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Elias, Jade, Theo, Oscar)

Caleb; 19 live, 1 full dead, 2 halves.

Cleo; 10 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Rafael)

Eve; 0 live, 8 full dead, 0 halves.

Visor; 4 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Lilith; 9 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Leonie)

Harm could feel Robin’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn to look at her; he couldn’t look at her again, not after what she just did. To his surprise Lilith was the one to say the words he couldn’t.

“That was a childish fucking move,” she said.

Robin eyed her with disgust, “I don’t need to hear that from someone who’s already killed two people here.”

“One,” Lilith corrected her. “I can still feel the other squirming a bit. Killed more out there, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. I folded twice to shield you two from what I am, cause I don’t like people being forced to be something they ain’t. Looks to me, you ain’t keen to share the same kindness. You’re about as good as Eve in my book.”

Eve huffed.

Robin’s eyes widened with rage, fear, pain, “I don’t care about your book, I’m not her.”

“Then act like it.”

Once all the tinies were safely in front of Harm, the cards floated back, the deck was switched, and the blinds moved, the small in front of Harm, the big in front of Cleo. Harm uneasily lowered a dead man’s legs out in front of him.

“Don’t worry,” he said to the almost twenty tinies in front of him. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but you’re safe with me.”

He nodded to Cleo, who carefully and apologetically put a tiny man out in front of her, “I’m so-so sorry, Sir!”

Eve chuckled before looking at Master Rabbit still shuffling the hat deck. “You two have been awful quiet, why don’t you join us. Have a drink yourself.”

“We are simply the hosts of the game,” the Rabbit said, “and I am proud to say I haven’t had a drink in years.”

Visor chuckled, “If it were up to this hag, she’d drown you in booze, literally.”

Eve grew a little smile at that, feeling complimented for the first time, while Robin looked down at the proof of that in front of her, the one dead woman in her ‘chip stack’.

Cleo looked at her hand; Eight of Hearts, Four of Spades. It wasn’t a great start, but who knows what cards might be revealed. There is always hope, always a positive mindset to find. This had worked out for Robin and Harm. It would work for her too. She looked to see what Wr8 would do, keeping a brave little smile on her face that said, bring it, you scary witch.

Eve looked at her cards, her eyes flexing into a bulge for a split second, making them look even more crazed than they already were. Don’t let it go to your head, Cleo. She’s just playing mind games.

Eve grabbed two dead bodies from her collection, throwing them out in front of her, raising the bet. Just mind games Cleo, just mind games.

Visor looked at Cleo, tilting his head adorably, before folding. “Shielding people, huh? I’m game. Never tell me I don’t have a soft spot.”

Eve scoffed, “Oh, don’t start. Either you’re just trying to impress your new girlfriend over there, or you’re starting to feel just how little you got left.”

“Who can say for sure, me being an all-round good guy sounds better in my opinion,” Visor said, turning to Lilith. “What do you think, girlfriend?”

Lilith folded as well, giving Cleo a reassuring smile, before addressing Visor’s comment, “Girlfriend, huh? I’m usually not a fan of chasers.”

“I don’t like being chased much either,” the rider said. “ACAB am I right?”

Lilith let out an involuntary giggle, his comment actually sending her a bit. The movement of her laughter causing something to burst beneath her leg; something gooey and squishy.

After two poker rounds of suffering, Lucas had finally burst open under her weight, his last thoughts filled with the regret of what he had gotten himself into, of what he had postured himself to be, of how he had tried to cope with the powerlessness he felt in everyday life.

He’d cried at the realization he’d die underneath one of the few freaks he imagined his miserable self to be above, until a simple movement caused by her laughter wiped all those tears away, along with his flesh, bones and everything else inside him, until he was but a simple streak of misery drying into her skin.

Robin lowered her cards to fold as well.

Harm called the bet, offering the upper half of the split body, and a live person. “I’ll fold after this. I still have a body, better for you to have two pieces.”

Cleo nodded, scared, unsure, but trying to speak some courage into herself, before calling the bet, carefully placing another tiny in front of her, “I-I’m sorry…”

The flop revealed itself; Three of Diamonds, King of Spades, Jack of Hearts.

Cleo’s heart sank. Not even a single pair. No this wasn’t it. This couldn’t be it. There were two more cards left. Something magical always happens right there at the end, when all is lost. She wouldn’t have to face the small blind without someone who was already dead, there is no way she’d be forced to hurt someone. She simply couldn’t imagine a reality in which that was the outcome. Mind over matter Cleo. Mind over matter.

Harm folded and Cleo checked.

Eve grinned at the community cards, before looking around the table. “Everyone folded, just me and sweet little QTpops. Alright, if you wanna leave her with me, that’s fine.”

Eve picked up one of the corpses in her stack and pulled it in half, throwing the upper body onto the pile in front of her. “I raise…”

Cleo squeaked, “W-What?”

“You don’t have to call it,” Harm said. “You can just raise it by half, and add another full person.”

Cleo nodded, starting to feel more and more guilty about putting people on the line in this bet, as she lowered another man in front of her. “It’s ok, I’ll win you back. You’ll be safe.”

Eve grinned, as she threw another full corpse out onto her pile, which raised the bet by half again.

“Stop!” Cleo yelped.

“Stop?” Eve cackled. “That’s how you play a game of face? Visible desperation?! Squirm or face what you are princess. The only way you can stop me from betting is by calling the exact amount, not raising.”

Cleo lowered another man in front of her, raising the bet by half. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t lose.”

Another corpse flew onto Eve’s piles, as the hag grin winded.

“You’re losing too many chips,” Lilith said, “you should fold.”

Harm put his elbows on the table, pushing his forehead into his palms, “I think Lilith is right Cleo. Eve seems pretty confident with her hand, she’s sandbagging you. Unless you’re sure you can win, you should fold.”

“But the last two cards haven’t been shown yet!” Cleo said, revealing to everyone in just how bad of a predicament she was.

“Cleo fold! Fold now!” Harm said.

“I don’t wanna hurt anyone…”

“She has enough corpses to force you to bet until you only have two people left. You’ll be at risk!”

“I don’t care!”

“Treat will be at risk!”

Cleo looked down at Rafael, her little Jellybean.

The boy grabbed the tip of her finger tightly, reassuring her, “Do what you think is right, Cleo.”

“One more raise then,” Eve said with a playful tone. “I promise I’ll call the next one. Those last two cards might fix everything.”

Cleo gently put another person out in front of her, too shaken up to apologize this time.

Eve, tempted to throw out another full corpse, came through on her promise, and threw out the other half of the corpse she had split. “There, called.”

The fourth card revealed itself; Two of Spades. Still nothing that Cleo could make a hand with. This wasn’t just mind games. This wasn’t anything positivity could fix. This was hell, and she’d be forced to play the role of a demon. She checked, and so did Eve.

The fifth card flipped; Two of Diamonds. It was over. All Cleo had was an eight high card.

The smile on Eve’s face turned to sadistic wonder. “You were right, the last two cards made everything so much better.”

Cleo lowered her head and checked. Without mercy, Eve threw three more corpses on the pile. Her entire stack of eight people (one split in half) lay in front of her.

“All-in,” Eve said with a toothy grin.

Lilith sighed, “Cleo, it’s not worth it.”

Cleo stared out across the table; Visor, quiet for the first time; Harm, the look on his face echoing her pain, as he was unable to advise her; Robin, shaking her head, telling her not to.

“I call,” Cleo said, resisting the urge to break down crying, as she lowered three more people into what everyone already knew would be their doom.

“Well then, showdown,” Mrs. Hat said.

Cleo and Eve lowered their cards revealing their hands. Cleo’s cards were useless; Eight of Hearts and Four of Spades. Her pair of two was a shared one in the community cards. Eve’s cards; King of Diamonds, King of Hearts, combined with the King of Spades on the table, and the pair of twos, made up a-

“Full house!” Eve shouted.

The tiny people floated off towards the monster Cleo had sent them to, as the cards slid themselves back into the deck, and the decks got switched again. The blinds moved; the small in front of Cleo, the big in front of Eve.

“No more weaseling your way out of it now, princess,” Eve snarled.

Cleo looked down, the only tinies left in front of her were her boyfriend, and a tiny man, whose name she didn’t even know. The choice between them was obvious, so simple, it was a cruel joke on the blond man, who stared up at her in horror, as Cleo began to sniffle.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry…”

#21 - Redistribution

Current Chip Count:

Robin; 7 live, 1 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Elias, Jade, Theo, Oscar)

Caleb; 18 live, 1 full dead, 0 halves.

Cleo; 2 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Rafael)

Eve; 9 live, 7 full dead, 4 halves.

Visor; 4 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Lilith; 9 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Leonie)

“Cleo, it’s your turn to place a small blind,” Master Rabbit’s modulated voice said with impatience.

The young woman with short feathering indigo hair, and cutifying e-girl make-up loomed over the two tinies she had left. Her boyfriend and one last stranger.

“P-Please don’t,” the blond-haired man begged.

Rafael shuddered, he felt like part of this was his fault. He was trying to be supportive, put his trust in the woman he loved, and in doing so had sent everyone else in their stack to their death. He should have Cleo spare the man, let her kill him instead, but he wasn’t that brave, that selfless, and he knew it would only hurt his girlfriend more.

The screaming began, as Eve’s fingers began to play with her winnings. A background noise that grew quieter and quieter each time one of the screams got cut short.

“Cleo?” Mrs. Hat said.

“I-I can’t.”

“Refusal to participate will result in a struck mark.”

“You have to do this, girl,” Lilith said. “Most of these tinies are as good as dead anyway. You can’t protect your little man right there if your mark gets struck. I know you don’t want to-“

“I want to,” Cleo said, fully breaking down into tears. “That’s the problem. It’s not what I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to be good, soft, sweet, not- Not this!”

Robin froze up upon hearing that. Cleo really did have the same shadow inside her. Robin had spent so long feeling isolated despite Harm and Cleo’s attempts to comfort her, to help her. Their success at controlling their inner monster made it so Robin didn’t even believe they were suffering the same struggle. She didn’t believe they could help her. She thought they were different. They weren’t.

Eve raised the last living tiny she had, the man who Cleo had promised she’d win back, the one she’d promised would be ok. She held his upper body between the fingers of her left hand, and his legs between the fingers of her right.

“Here,” Eve said. “We’ll do it together. Just follow along with Miss Wr8. First, you hold the tiny like so. Then…”

The man cried out in agony, as Eve began to pull him apart, the demonic smile on her massive face serving as a moon-like backdrop to his destruction.

Cleo lowered her fingers toward the tiny man beside her boyfriend. Rafael stepped back and turned around, not wanting to look. Cleo gently wrapped her fingers around the man’s chest raising him up to her tear-stricken face.

Her fingers were milky white, soft like pillows, they were the hands of an angel. Her dark eyes had such a fragile reflection in them, the white liner on her waterline emphasizing their roundness, applied with the intent of selling anyone who looked at her on the idea that she was just an adorably harmless girl, who liked plushies and all things sweet.

“Please, no!” the man begged.

“What’s your name?” Cleo asked, with a gentle, mournful whisper.

“Eric.”

“I’m sorry you were forced into this, Eric,” Cleo said. “I know my life isn’t worth any more than yours. I am so sorry.”

“Wait!”

With the thumb and index finger of her other hand, Cleo covered Eric’s head in the pillow of her digit, which was so soft, he could barely feel the ridges of her thumb-print against his face. The gentle smell of her hand lotion ran up his nostrils. In a quick mercy, she squeezed, hoping to flatten his head before his mind could process any pain.

Her thumb slipped as she pressed, Eric’s jaw broke off, forced to the side, as his left cheek collapsed, squeezing out his eyeball. Cleo gasped. Eric was left gurgling and choking on his own blood, his face a mess of red paste. It was grotesque, so much crueler than she had intended. She could feel the butterflies in her stomach, the excitement at the sight of what she had done, but quickly got a hold of herself and squeezed his head again, finishing him off.

“I’m sorry!” she yelped, in a high-pitched cry. “I’m so sorry!”

She held the dead body of Eric the way Eve had shown her, and began to pull it apart. Throwing his legs out into the bet, and letting his upper body fall from between her fingers.

Eric’s crushed face and torso landed behind Rafael with a wet thud. The curly-haired boy didn’t turn around; he didn’t want to know what his girlfriend was really capable of. These were the fantasies they shared, not a reality he wanted to see.

Cleo stared down at trEATmeGently, at Rafael, at her little jellybean. She wanted to stroke his little back, to comfort him, to comfort herself, but she couldn’t, not with her fingers covered in Eric’s blood.

Robin couldn’t believe it, both of the people she had once thought to be so far above her, had been forced to act on their shadow. Her hatred of Harm was personal, more about whom he had killed than the fact that he had killed. If she were morally consistent, she’d view the crying girl the same way, but it wasn’t morals that made her disgusted at what Harm did, it was selfishness, a feeling of betrayal. Eric didn’t matter, not like Elena did.

Eve smiled, as she put in a full corpse as her big blind, “Atta girl! Finally, all my online friends have joined the murder club.”

Lilith turned to Robin with a frown, as if questioning her about that comment.

Robin shook her head at her, “Accidental step, didn’t mean for it. Doesn’t count.”

Jade’s mouth fell open, “her murder box, it was an accident?”

Elias shrugged, “An accident she seemed to enjoy.”

“You never told us it was an accident though,” Oscar said.

Elias fell silent again.

Visor folded.

Lilith called, putting her fingers around a scared little German woman who squirmed in her tight grip. Leonie’s attempts at going unnoticed had failed, and now, she was part of the prize pool, separated from her small community of scared people, who huddled together beneath the giant alt girl.

“Why haven’t any of you played with the little bugs yet?” Eve asked the players beside her. “If I were you, I’d have a little fun before giving them away.”

“Have never really considered killing tinies before,” Lilith said. “My victims tend to be a lot bigger.”

Visor tilted his helmet, “I think I’ll just take mine home. Let my mistress play with them.”

“You already have a mistress?” Lilith said in faux disappointment.

“Oh yeah, and she’s a beauty,” he said. “Dressed venom green and black, like my childhood cartoon crush, around a 1000cc inline-four pushing near 200 horsepower, light as a feather, and geared to hit 300 like it’s nothing. Once she’s back from repairs, I’m going to line these little guys up in front of her, and let her fresh rubber pass the judgment.”

Robin called, putting a tiny in front of her, Harm followed, doing the same. Cleo, still in shock, took a second before grabbing the other half of Eric and nervously tossing it out in front of her. Rafael was the only tiny she had left now.

The flop cards flipped; Ace of Clubs, Eight of Diamonds, Ten of Spades.

Cleo checked. Eve raised the bet by one corpse. Lilith called, putting another person beside a shuddering Leonie. Robin called as her wall started getting smaller.

“Cleo, you’re gonna have to fold, don’t risk Treat.” Harm said, as he raised the bet to a total of five, by adding four people.

Cleo nodded, she wasn’t risking Rafael. With any luck, this game would end, before she’d need to put down a blind again. She folded putting her cards down on the green carpet.

Eve folded. Lilith called, adding three people.

Robin shot Harm a mean look, his raise would force her to throw the last tiny shielding her friends, the cava drowned woman’s corpse, along with one of her friends. She looked at her hand again; Four of Diamonds, Ten of Hearts.

She had a pair, a pretty high one. She could win this; she had to win this. Her wall was giving way, better to bet now, than to lose them with a worse hand. But who? Who could she put at risk of ending up with Harm or Lilith? No one. None of them.

She threw out the corpse and lowered the last tiny whose name she didn’t bother to know, until all that was left was for her to choose. She couldn’t risk Jade, not with her leg injured. Elias was the most obvious pick, the one she’d never fix things with, but if he ended up outside of her control, he’d find a way to do damage, he’d have hell rain down on her. It had to be Oscar; he was the toughest guy she knew.

“I’ll go!” Theo said.

“What?” Robin said. “Why?”

“If the worst happens,” he explained. “If it’s me you lose. Then at least you’ll never get to undo that moment.”

“Theo, no I got this. You know this is my job,” Oscar said. “It’s always been my job!”

“Let me choose this,” Theo said.

Robin agreed, and gently picked up her friend, placing him out with the rest of her bet. “I won’t lose you. I got a good hand.”

Theo nodded, trying to act reassured, as he looked to Lilith, who gave him a sweet smile, and Harm, who wasn’t even looking their way, focusing his dark, tired eyes on the community cards, as the fourth one flipped; Three of Clubs.

Everyone checked.

The fifth card flipped; Five of Clubs.

Everyone checked again.

Robin tightened her grip, as Mrs. Hat called for the showdown.

Everyone lowered their cards.

Robin; Four of Diamonds, Ten of Hearts; she had a pair of tens.

Lilith; Jack of Spades, Eight of Hearts; she had a pair of eight.

Harm; Ace of Hearts, Five of Hearts; he had two pairs, aces and fives.

“No!” Robin shouted, as she watched Theo being carried off by Mrs. Hat’s powers.

Harm watched the boy and three others float towards him alongside a dead body, combining into the crowd of people he aimed to save from this table. He picked him out specifically, gently grabbing the boy between his fingers, before carefully setting him down in the palm of his other hand.

Theo panted, scared and worried. He heard enough, knew enough to understand this giant was just as dangerous as Robin. The man that had killed Elena, his best friend now held him. His tired eyes squinting with an expression Theo couldn’t read.

“I want him back,” Robin said.

“I think that would be against the rules,” Harm said, his fingers curling like a cage around her friend. “If you hadn’t tried to Wr8 me earlier, you’d have had more people to bet, and he wouldn’t be here. If anything, he’s safer with me than he is with you.”

Harm nodded towards Jade, referring to the wound on her leg.

“Minor correction,” Master Rabbit said. “While the exchanging of chips during the game would be against the rules. We have no qualms with Reapers redistributing their winnings once the game has concluded.”

Robin’s eyes widened with hope, as she looked away from the rabbit, back to her former Discord friend, “Harm, please.”

Harm stared at the little brown-haired young boy in his hand. He looked so frail, not just due to his size, but a certain soft quality to his features and skinny build.

“You tried to make me kill someone today, Rot.” Harm said. “You have any idea how fucked up that is?”

“You can’t just use him to get to me, he’s a person.”

“And the person I would’ve had to split in half wasn’t?”

There was a soft squeak beside Harm. He turned to look at Cleo. Her tears had finally dried up. Her make-up was ruined. Her reddened eyes stared at him, as if to ask her big brother what he thought of her now.

“I’m sorry,” Harm said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Current Chip Count:

Robin; 3 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Elias, Jade, Oscar)

Caleb; 27 live, 4 full dead, 2 halves. (Holds; Theo, Leonie)

Cleo; 1 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Rafael)

Eve; 0 live, 13 full dead, 6 halves.

Visor; 4 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Lilith; 4 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

As the cards were redistributed, and the blinds moved, Robin became a slouched bundle of fear and hate. The small blind was in front of Eve now, and the big in front of Visor.

She was in the same predicament as Cleo. She couldn’t call a single starting bet, as it would risk one of her friends blindly on only two cards. Her best chance was to fold until the entire game ended, but at the start of the round following one after this, the chip with the blind giantess drawing on it would find itself in front of her again, and force her to risk another friend, and if she didn’t win that, she’d have to kill one of them.

“Ooh, looking good,” Visor said, vocally letting everyone know he likely had a high set of cards in his hand.

Eve threw out one of the half corpses from her pile of dead, after which Visor put one tiny man out in front of him paying his blind. Lilith followed, also calling.

Robin looked at her hand; Eight of Clubs, Three of Clubs. It wasn’t a good starting hand, nothing she could risk a friend on, she folded.

Harm called.

Cleo folded.

Eve called, throwing in another half corpse.

The first three cards turned over; Six of Spades, Ten of Clubs, Two of Clubs.

The entire table checked, the fourth card revealing itself; Queen of Hearts.

Eve looked at her hand; Ace of Clubs, Queen of Diamonds. She had a good pair, and enough corpses to put some pressure on the ones next to her, who were almost out of rope. Lilith and Visor had only four tinies left. Eve raised the bet by one corpse.

Visor let out a deep sigh beneath his helmet, before calling it. Lilith followed doing the same. Harm folded.

The fifth and final card revealed itself; Five of Clubs.

Eve smiled, raised the bet by another two corpses, totaling four; the exact amount each of her opponents had left. She wasn’t sure if she had imagined it, but she could swear she was able to smell the sweat beneath Visor’s gear.

“Ah, I wanna go wild and say fuck it,” Visor said, as he began to lower his cards. “But I gotta be smart about this.”

“What was that,” Eve said, commanding the attention of Visor, who made the mistake of looking at her, as her crazed eyes peered through his darkened visor, as if she knew exactly where his eyes were. “What is it you said you wanted to do?”

Visor’s gloved hand halted, right as he was about to put his cards face down. He pulled them back up. His body loosened, as if all the tension of the game had just washed off his shoulders.

“Fuck it!” he said, raising both hands, which grabbed onto one tiny each, before he carelessly threw them out in front of him. “All-in!”

“Wait, no that’s cheating,” Lilith said. “She forced him with her power.”

The rabbit cocked his head, “Powers are part of the games, Lilith.”

“Well, shit,” The ocean-haired woman said, calling the bet. “Guess the game ends here. All-in.”

The showdown began;

Eve; Queen of Diamonds, Ace of Clubs. She had a pair of queens, with an ace as kicker.

Visor; Queen of Spades, Jack of Hearts. He had a pair of queens, with a jack as kicker.

Lilith; Queen of Clubs, Five of Diamonds. She had a pair of queens, and a pair of fives.

“Shit,” Visor said, slumping in his chair, his cat-ear helmet dangling loosely from his neck.

Final Chip Count:

Robin; 3 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Elias, Jade, Oscar)

Caleb; 26 live, 4 full dead, 2 halves. (Holds; Theo, Leonie)

Cleo; 1 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves. (Holds; Rafael)

Eve; 0 live, 10 full dead, 4 halves.

Visor; 0 live, 0 full dead, 0 halves.

Lilith; 9 live, 3 full dead, 2 halves.

The rabbit clapped his gloved hands together, “Contest concluded! Caleb Harm, High Triumph! Wade Nelson, Abject Defeat!”

The cards floated back into the deck, while the tinies Lilith had won floated towards her. Harm could feel a slight burning sensation on the back of his shoulder.

“Alright, well,” Visor sighed, raising his head. “Can I just say a few final words, before my mark gets struck?”

Master Rabbit, more than tired of his nonsense, answered with a blunt, “No.”

Mrs. Hat snapped her fingers, causing Visor to scream in agony, and reach for the back of his neck, the pain was unlike any of the burning sensations that usually accompanied the activation of a mark. Much like Lucas and any other tinies before him, his body was enveloped in a glow, but this time, instead of purple, the glow was a deep red.

His body shrunk away into his chair, before being lifted up by Hat’s telekinesis, and floated towards Lilith, the player who had won the bet he’d lost. His tiny body was lowered like a sacrifice to an old god, inches away from the group of live tinies the woman had won.

Visor’s helmet looked up at her, still reorienting himself at his new size. “You’re gonna be gentle with me, right? Q-Queen, uhm, Goddess?”

Lilith smirked, “What would you have done if I had ended up in your hands.”

“Gah!” Visor gasped, sounding more offended than afraid. “Babe, darling. You’re the love of my life!”

Visor paused, cocking his head to the side, “I would have made you last a few weeks, at the least!”

Lilith raised her eyebrows in playful, smug disbelief, that seemed to hide a tinge of genuine hurt. The giantess lowered her hand and pinched the little guy between her fingers, not with the same care she had given the tinies during the game, but with a mean pressure, squeezing the air out of Visor’s lungs.

“Let’s see what behind that helmet~”

“W-Wait, I’ll take it off just-”

Lilith didn’t wait.

Before Visor could reach the locking mechanism beneath his chin, she put both fingers on the cat-ear helmet, and began to pull. Visor let out some guttural noises, as his arms waved about trying to fight off her ginormous fingers.

“S-Stop, ack, fuck!”

Following one especially hard tug backward, there was a crack, a snap, a sudden limpness befalling his struggling limbs. Lilith let go, unsuccessful in removing his helmet. Visor’s head fell back, helmet and all, sagging across his upper back, his neck completely broken.

Lilith sighed and threw the lousy flirt’s broken body across the green carpet, letting it bounce along, like a rock skipping across water, until it came to a complete stop, lying on its side.

“And here I thought you two had something,” Eve chuckled.

“A guy who flirts like that?” Lilith said. “You don’t have much experience dating, do you?”

It was a burn everyone else at the table could’ve appreciated given the right moment, but Robin, Harm and Cleo were too in their own heads to process the humor of it. Cleo had just killed someone, Robin was about to lose a friend, while Harm’s victory tasted more sour than sweet.

Harm looked down, lost in thought. Along with Theo, twenty-five people stared up at him, awaiting their fate. Their lives were in his hands now; he was their god. No, he could think like that. How did that thought even find its way to the surface?

“You said I could redistribute my winnings,” Harm said.

“Correct,” Master Rabbit said.

Harm turned to look at Cleo, broken and beyond herself. Her boyfriend curled up, all by himself, hugging his knees in front of her.

“I need you to take them home with you,” Harm said to her.

“What?”

“You have space, privacy, money,” Harm said. “Forgotten and ignored. If what Mrs. Hat said is true, the authorities can’t help them anymore. They have to be in the care of a-“

“A Reaper…” Cleo said, pondering the responsibility. “Are you sure?”

“It’s better than taking them back to prison with me.”

“It’s a good call if you feel empathic towards the mycosized,” Mrs. Hat interrupted. “The unseen slip from the minds of those around them. While they technically are seen and felt, they are not processed by the brains of those without a mark. To the outside world, they are ghosts. Prizes who tell no tale. That being said, you don’t have to go back to prison, we can transport you back elsewhere.”

Harm tried to force a smile, as he looked at Cleo. “I’d still be a fugitive. I know how you’re feeling right now. You know I do. Trust me when I tell you, caring for people is one of the most wonderful things you can do, one of the best ways to heal from guilt.”

“What about Robin’s friend?” Cleo said. “You should-”

“Give him back?” Harm said curtly. “Is that what you’d do?”

Cleo gave a weak nod.

“Then I’m not giving him to you either,” Harm said. “Theo stays with me.”

“What the fuck, Harm!” Robin finally exploded. “You don’t get to take another one from me!”

“Another what, Robin?!” Harm shouted back. “Theo has a purple mark. He can be seen by others. He can be brought to safety.”

Robin growled, “I’m safety enough! He’s mine. They’re mine!”

Each of her four friends froze up. There she was, their keeper. Animalistic, possessive.

A silence fell across the post-game table. A silence broken by the loud cough of a tiny. Every giant in the room turned their attention towards the center of the table where Visor sat up, his helmet tilting from side to side with a few cracks.

“What the-” Oscar muttered.

“Holy shit, it still works!” Visor bellowed out laughing. “My ability still works!”

“That little shit had an ability?” Eve said.

“Explain Reaper Ability!” Visor shouted.

A huge stream of smoke poured out from his neck, until it formed into a bipedal cat character made of smoke, twice the size of the tiny it sprouted from. It looked the exact same as the one Eve had summoned before. The creature floated upward before beginning its explanation;

Reaper ability: Ragdoll

Category: Tank Ability
Use Type: Passive
Cooldown: None

At the cost of a much lower pain tolerance, the skin of this ability’s wielder becomes much stretchier than that of most humans, and is nearly impenetrable. All other body parts benefit from a strong healing factor. As long as damaged body parts are within reach of the host body, the wielder’s body is able to reconstruct itself to its former state.

Foreign body parts fitting the wielder’s frame can be used to replace missing parts, if inserted into the body, and brought beneath the skin layer through any orifice or wound.

“Well look at that,” Eve scoffed, “an unbreakable toy.”

The cat mascot produced a boomerang shaped-object out of smoke in its little hand, and threw it out in front of itself, the object spun wildly above the table.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,” it said with a cute voice, as the boomerang spun back in its direction, decapitated the little smoke cat. Its separated smoke-form slowly dissipated like regular smoke, as its purple eyes stopped glowing.

Lilith grew a little smile, “Well, maybe you are a keeper after all.”

Harm called the attention of Mrs. Hat again, “I’d like to pass all my winnings on to Cleo, except for the purple marked boy.”

Mrs. Hat nodded politely, and used her power to let the crowd of twenty-five float towards Cleo.

“Lilith,” Harm said. “The people you have, will you let Cleo keep them safe?”

Lilith looked at the nine tinies she had won, “Why would I do that?”

“Cause, you seem to care on some level.”

Lilith took another long look at the tiny people cowering below her.

“I don’t like it when people tell me who I am,” Lilith said. “I warned you.”

“I’m not telling, I am asking.”

“Fine, but I’m keeping Visor,” Lilith said, nodding to Mrs. Hat, who floated the other nine people over to Cleo’s group.

“Thank you.”

“Pleasure.”

“The reaper ability,” Harm said, looking to the Rabbit

“You received it the second the game concluded,” Master Rabbit said, standing with his hands behind his back, looking out the window, as the sun began to rise on the city of Macau. “If you’re curious what the ability is, you already know the words to say.”

Harm looked across the table; across the other people who’d hear the same explanation. He couldn’t say the words here, not now. Who knows what power he got? What weaknesses could come with it? Much like cards during poker, it was a hand best kept to himself until it came to an eventual showdown.

“I’ll check once I’m alone,” Harm said.

Master Rabbit looked over his shoulder, “Smart boy.”

“Now any last requests before we send you all on your way?” Mrs. Hat said. “Anyone who wishes to invite a friend? Any place you’d want us to drop you off, other than where we plucked you from?”

“Gas station west of Letfort, Oregon,” Harm said.

No one else made a request.

Cleo was too busy looking over all the people she’d soon have to care for.

Eve was flicking bodies off her corpse pile, to see how far they’d land.

Lilith was already pulling at Visor’s arms, testing just how stretchy and resistant he was, as he grunted in pain.

Robin eyed Harm with rage and disgust. Jade and Oscar were looking at her, trying to once more decipher the side of her they had just witnessed, while Elias watched Theo disappearing behind the curling fingers of Harm.

“Thank you for your participation,” Master Rabbit said. “Until we call on you again.”

The rabbit’s head turned to look at the group of tinies in front of Cleo in particular. To the confusion of everyone, his electronic voice said something in German, “Sei stark… und schätze jeden Tag, den du hast, Kleine.”

A wash of purple blinded everyone in the room, as they were transported away.

#22 - From Beyond

Oscar could see the murder in those black eyes of hers. Robin looked livid. Her face was contorted, her freckled nose scrunched like a growling dog, baring her gritted teeth, as the red substance covered the bridge of her nose all the way up across her cheek.

“That’s it,” she growled. “You’re dead.”

Her right shoulder pulled back, as her lanky yet muscular arm prepared for launch. Her fingers folded into a warhead with prominent knuckles, before blasting off towards him.

Oscar stepped aside, swatting his hand at her lower arm to divert its course. “Woah, chill! Why do you always go for the face?”

Robin didn’t calm down, her other fist coming in hot. Oscar managed to keep her from doing any real damage, as punch after punch either got slapped away, or tanked in case of body shots.

Elena sighed, “Always the same with those two.”

Oscar gave her own momentum a little extra push to trip her up, before getting up behind her, and pulling her into an arm-locking hug. He was pretty much the only one in the group who could piss her off and wrestle away the consequences.

Simon had a bad habit of trying, but despite yapping about ‘equal rights, equal fights’, Robin had more than once proven he was not her equal, leaving his skin bruised, and ego shattered.

“Guys, cut it out!” Theo shouted.

Moments before Oscar had been sniffing the baked onions on his hot dog with a suspicious look, turning to Robin to ask, “Hey, don’t you think these hotdogs smell kind of funny.”

You can likely guess what happened after; a childish prank typical of the asshole jock who still had a high schooler’s mentality. When Robin was gullible enough to sniff, Oscar gave the back of her head a slight push, dipping her face into the ketchup.

She had let the thing fall out of her hand, before shooting up in rage. She had always had a problem regulating her emotions, anger was hardly ever a snarl or a middle finger, but almost always a frightening explosion. Not to Oscar though, he thought of it as the cute outburst of a little brother.

“Let go, Asshole!” Robin said, as she squirmed in his grip,

“Girl, I’m sorry, ok,” Oscar said. “You calm down first.”

Robin stomped her heel onto his toes.

Oscar’s eyes widened, “Did you just put your grimy-ass shoe on my Jordans?”

Robin’s face turned over her shoulder, looking at him with a toothy vengeful grin.

“Fine,” Oscar said. “Let me help you clean your face.”

Oscar swung her around, in the direction of a fountain. It served as the centerpiece of the mall’s atrium, which the group had been loitering around, sitting on the wide stone side of it, as they had their fast food.

“Oscar stop, that’s too far,” Jade shouted.

The jock kept pushing, fully intending to push her head into the water, until a hand pulled at the back of his shoulder.

“Leave. Her. Alone.” Elias said.

Oscar loosened his grip, as Robin wrestled her arms free, eyeing him with a meditative pant, as she tried to calm herself down.

The big guy turned, letting a quiet word slip as he passed Elias, “Simp.”

Oscar stepped away from the group, in the direction of the fast-food kiosk, “I’ll get you a new one.”

As he did, Simon walked up to the group with an apron and a platter of drinks. He worked at the juice bar right beside the fountain and was more than happy to serve everyone free juice, paying for it out of his own tips.

“Robin have a tantrum again?” he said, as he watched her sit down beside Elena, who began to clean her face with a napkin like a concerned mother.

“Oscar set her off, as usual,” Jade said

That was the last of the conversation Oscar heard, as he stepped away with a half-smile. It was fun watching Robin lose it and turn into that wild animal again, but maybe it hadn’t been completely worth it.

His pristine sneakers now had a little grey mark on them, and he might have ruined Robin’s mood for the rest of the day. He hoped not. She would recover; she always did. Robin was a roller coaster when it came to that stuff, she could try to kill you one minute, then share a cigarette with you the next.

Not that that mattered to Oscar, he didn’t smoke. Meanwhile, Robin was a human chimney. Wait, no that wasn’t right. She’d quit a while ago, didn’t she?

Oscar stopped, stared at the ground, then at his hands, curling and stretching them, as he heard footsteps approaching from behind, the sound of cheap flip flops clapping against someone’s heels. A familiar face popped out beside him.

“You mooding off?” Xander said.

Oscar frowned, “I’m just getting Robin her munch back, you can stay with the group.”

“And do what?” the guy said, with his Dutch accent and scratchy voice, which sounded as if his old high-pitched vocal cords had been filled with sandpaper to sound more masculine. “Sit there nodding along with the others about how much of a dick you are? I’d rather tell you myself.”

Oscar scoffed with a smile. Xander stepped out in front of him, his loose yellow Hawaiian shirt flapping upward as he spun around to give his friend a smug smile.

While everyone was dressed casually for a day at the mall, Xander was walking around in beachwear. He wore swim trunks with sunset colors, and a silhouette of a lone palm tree island. Under his open flower-pattern Hawaiian shirt, his impressive sun-tanned abs were bare for all to see, along with the two horizontal scars under his chest, which he presented to the world with pride.

He was almost the shortest of the group, just an inch taller than Elena, but he did everything to make sure not to be seen as a scrawny twink; his body honed to its limits at the gym, his short, patchy beard of little blonde hairs glistening like pixie dust in the sunlight, which beamed down through the glass roof of the mall.

Xander turned to keep walking and Oscar followed. They arrived at the food kiosk, and as Oscar ordered another hot dog, Xander stared off in the direction they came from.

“To see Elias stand up for her,” he said, as he scratched the back of his scruffy blond-brown hair. “Used to really like her, didn’t he?”

Oscar frowned, “What?”

“I said he really likes her, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he does. Won’t ever say it straight though.”

Fresh hotdog in hand, the two of them returned to the group. Xander sat down beside Theo at the fountain, while Oscar handed over his peace offering to Robin.

Robin took it with a dark forewarning look, before bringing her hand up over the hotdog and flicking her finger across the top of it, launching a splatter of ketchup across Oscar’s face. Robin’s grim face grew a mean little smile, as Oscar swallowed the urge to once more escalate the feud he’d started.

“Alright,” he said, bringing his fingers up to wipe a smudge off his face and taste it. “Fair enough.”

Both of their smiles widened, before each let out a little chuckle. The conflict was settled, and this time no one ended up in the fountain. This was them; their bullshit, their dynamic, their friendship. If only things could’ve been like that forever.

“I’ve missed you,” Oscar said, as a quiet settled over him.

Still smiling, Robin’s eyes squinted, “What?”

Something in Oscar broke. There was an odd feeling in his chest, as if his own guts had crawled up into his chest and started strangling his lungs and heart. He didn’t know why he’d say something like that. Even if he couldn’t quite remember how long it had been, they met up all the time. He had no reason to miss her. However, he couldn’t stop the feeling, the strangulation went up into his throat, until his eyes began to pool up.

“Shit,” he said, as he wiped the back of his hand against his eyes. “Think you hit me in the eyes with that shit.”

Theo noticed, watching their conversation from the sidelines. “Oscar, are you ok?”

The entire group turned their attention to the man who had just successfully stopped himself from crying, as he let out a finalizing sniffle. “Feels like something’s changed. Can’t place it.”

His friends just stared at him with an empty silence.

“Hey Simon, your shift is about over, right?” Xander said.

“Oh yeah,” Simon said, his apron and drinks platter nowhere to be seen. “Why? Wanna go do something?”

“Was thinking maybe we could do something fun. Arcade, or karaoke?”

“Arcade sounds nice,” Theo said, with Elias nodding along quietly.

Elena let out an excited squeak, “Oh, I wanna do karaoke.”

Theo changed his mind instantly, “Yeah, let’s do karaoke.”

“We can do both,” Jade said.

Xander turned to Oscar and Robin, “What do you guys think?”

Robin shrugged, and looked to Oscar for his opinion, who wiped the last of the ketchup off his face and stared Xander down. Something felt off about his old friend.

It didn’t take long before they all found themselves seated in a room at the karaoke bar. Oscar had barely taken note of the journey there.

The place was just big enough for the eight of them. There were bench couches along the walls, a small table in the middle, and a TV put up on the wall between the door, and a mirror. The wires of the karaoke machine stuck out bare and tangled. The place was lit by some simple warm spots in the ceiling, and one cheap rotating disco light on the floor, in the corner right next to the mirror.

Simon was the first to claim his turn, grabbing the mic and scrolling through popular songs. His pick was to be expected, Eminem. All of his friends slouched back and uncomfortably nodded along every time the blond guy turned around to proclaim to his friends that he was, in fact, ‘the real slim shady’.

His performance was followed by Elena, who excitedly sang ‘HOT TO GO!’ by Chappell Roan, making sure to try and bust out some dance moves, which mostly involved wagging her butt around and swinging her upper body left to right, as she awkwardly shifted her weight from side to side.

She then offered the microphone to Theo, who refused, wanting to let more excited people go first.

“Come on, Theo I’m passing off to you. Go!” Elena insisted, almost shoving the microphone into his chest.

Theo grabbed hold of it and got up. He stood in front of the TV, straight as a board, his shoulders tense, his head hanging low, as if he would crawl into his own hoodie if he could. He scrolled through popular songs, skipping through all the happy ones, until he finally found one he could imagine singing, ‘Numb’ by Linkin Park.

His voice started out timid, almost as if he was carefully saying the lyrics instead of singing them. Something picked up in the latter half, as his shoulders loosened and an actual pained cry escaped him near the last chorus. His voice wasn’t anywhere close to that of Chester Bennington, but the raw emotion of it carried that spirit within it.

When he was done, he apologized to the group, who answered him with smiles and applause. Simon patting him on the upper arm, as he walked by to sit down. He handed the microphone over to Jade, who would not miss her chance to perform ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ by My Chemical Romance.

After that she offered the microphone to Oscar. His mind had been wandering a bit throughout her delivery of the famous emo anthem, but he accepted the microphone. As he stepped up to the screen, he thought about it for a few blinks, before picking out a classic to sing.

“Sinatra, really?” Simon said. “I thought you’d pick something more-”

“More what?!” Oscar bit his sentence short, causing Simon to suck in his lips. “Go on, say it white boy. Frankie not gangster enough for you?”

Simon didn’t answer, raising his hands in surrender.

“You know My Way is cursed, right?” Xander said.

Oscar huffed, “What?”

“There’s an urban legend from the Philippines that claims people who sing it at karaoke end up getting killed soon after.”

Oscar shook his head, turned around and proceeded to sing it anyway, trying to match the somber pride in his voice to do the song justice. After finishing, he turned around and spread his arms, with a confident smile.

“So, which one of you is gonna kill me?”

Robin chuckled, “I think you might have butchered that song so badly, the curse didn’t even notice.”

Oscar, fully believing he’d absolutely nailed the song gasped in offence, before holding the microphone out to his friend, “Your turn then.”

Robin grabbed it with a thin smirk and headed for the TV, instead of scrolling through popular songs, she opened up the search bar, “Let’s see if they have this one.”

Oscar cringed a little, as he saw her enter ‘Hollywood Undead’ in the search bar. It was a typical fit for someone who carried herself like a midwestern ‘Kyle’ stereotype; grungy devil-may-care clothing style, Monster Energy drinks, and of course edgy rap rock.

She settled on one specific song, one of the few HU songs Oscar had heard. All of which he knew through proximity to Robin. The song was titled, ‘Another Way Out’, and a soon as she began to sing the lyrics, something ran up his spine, locking him in place, only able to listen.

The song wasn’t subtle; no Hollywood Undead song ever was. It was a song from the perspective of a slasher villain. As soon as the first rap verse began, the lyrics told of voices urging the singer to kill whoever was listening, have them vanish. The copper haired tomboy didn’t miss a word of it, her back turned towards Oscar.

He’d heard her sing it before, in her car. It was edgy and cringe, even funny back then. But now, it unsettled him for a reason he couldn’t quite place. He felt cold, frozen in place when Robin finally turned around during the chorus, singing the words as if they were directed at him.

“I wish there was another way ou-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah out for you~”

She was singing it with a smile, a genuine playful one, the type people always had spread across their face during a sing along. But there was something off, something that made the warm lights overhead turn colder, dimmer. There was an aura of malice to it, and it frightened him. In that moment, the curse Xander had mentioned felt like an actual omen.

He didn’t get it, why would he ever be afraid of Robin? She was his friend, and whenever she did have a violent moment, all he had to do was cover his balls. He could easily overpower her. The Robin he knew would never try to do any real harm beyond a black eye.

The song ended, and it seemed like the light returned to normal, the friends sitting around him had returned from fading into the background. Robin walked over to Xander, handing him the microphone, while her smile was aimed at Oscar.

“You ok?” Robin said, her smile faltering a bit.

Xander took the microphone, his pale blue eyes on Oscar with an anxious frown, “Try focusing on the good vibes. Don’t dig inside your head. Trust.”

As the short, muscular guy got up, a smile quickly grew across his morbidly sincere face. Oscar noticed something on his bare leg, along the inside of his right ankle. Xander had a strange tattoo, which Oscar could’ve sworn he’d seen somewhere before. A black symbol of three crescent moons folding into each other. Where had he seen that before?

Xander scrolled through popular songs; all the good vibes he could go for, then there was a sudden pause. Oscar could see his face from the mirror, the corners of Xander’s smile sank, as he seemed to stare off, past the screen, lost in his thoughts, before he, just like Robin went for the search bar, to get a specific song.

Oscar frowned with curious confusion, as Xander entered ‘System Of A Down’ and picked a song from their ‘Hypnotize’ album. While he knew the band, the song itself wasn’t one Oscar was familiar with.

The intentionally chaotic and disarming combination of the guitar and drums kicked in. Xander’s strange voice began to sing the lyrics on screen, as if he preached an old tome. No one could dream of matching the combined vocals of Serj and Daron, but Xander’s voice dipped into something uncanny, something to match their freak.

Oscar tried to read along with the lyrics as Xander sang them. The lyrics seemed cryptic, borderline nonsensical, as System Of A Down lyrics often were, but it wasn’t hard to get the vague idea of what they were trying to say. They always had something to say; Something to call out about this corrupted world, the fake bubble of comfort and consumerism held intact by war and the suffering of others.

As Xander turned his head towards the mirror to look himself in the eyes, it became clear he was reinterpreting the lyrics differently, appropriating the tome’s text, to call out something more personal to him. Which became all the more noticeable, as he got to the chorus.

“You---,” he sang, directly to his mirror image, with a worn posture, and weary face. “You went beyond---, and you lost it all---. Why--- did you- go there?”

Throughout the entire song, there was a tinge of anger to his voice, a tinge of hurt, their intensity dampened, as if he had resigned himself to whatever he was singing about. When the song ended, he walked over to Elias and handed him the microphone without saying a word, before sitting back down next to Oscar.

Oscar met the painful silence of Xander with a careful joke, “Didn’t follow your own advice, got in your own head?”

“If only,” Xander forced a smile.

“I don’t think I’ll sing anything,” Elias said.

“Aww, come on Elias,” Elena said. “Everyone of us did a song. You have to.”

She got up and pretty much dragged the white-haired boy out of his seat, “Come on, I’ll help you pick a song.”

As Elias stood uncomfortably in front of the TV screen, Elena scrolled through pop songs anyone would know, before finding another one of her favorites and forcing it upon Elias. Simon was grinning from ear to ear, as the piano intro of Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ began playing.

Elias sighed, and reluctantly began speaking the lyrics with a bored, sarcastic tone.

Oscar knew the lyrics well enough himself. It was a song about dissolution, betrayal, the anger that came with that; a war cry of scorned love.

The strangulation in Oscar’s chest returned. If Elias understood the lyrics, he wouldn’t sing them so insincere, but with the fire the song called for. Oscar struggled to piece together why, but Elias had every right to feel the way the song did, he had a right to be angry; angry at Robin. Robin had hurt him.

As Oscar’s heart pounded with nothing but sickening emotion, left unexplained by his foggy mind, Elias’ voice began to pick up. The rawness Oscar felt was justified, appeared as if by projection as a lump in the throat of Elias, who slowly got louder and louder, until his rendition of the song sounded more like screamo than singing. There was a side to her that he never knew, and he’d light the fire to burn it all down.

Oscar looked in the mirror to see tears stream down from the boy’s glasses, his face contorting into an ugly cry, as he shouted the last of the lyrics. This was the real Elias, the friend he’d dismissed, whose feelings he could understand deep down, but only if he accepted a truth he couldn’t, one that would cost him another friend.

“Oscar, enough!”

Oscar turned to see Xander’s wide-eyed stare, he was so tense his head was shaking a bit.

The jock took a deep breath, “Who are you?”

“Try to hold on to your good memories,” Xander said. “I think we should move on to the arcade.”

With a single blink Oscar found himself standing in the shopping mall’s arcade, surrounded by lights and games, ranging from classic arcade machines to basketball hoop games. It was a place he remembered, a place he felt safe, a place he felt happy, a place he missed, something he’d lost.

Elias and Simon stood by an old zombie shooter game, holding prop guns, which they aimed at the screen. Oscar guessed it to be House of the Dead, but the more he tried to read the words on the machine, the more scrambled they became.

He watched Jade try a rhythm dance game, which made no sense, because-

As the thought projected itself onto the world in front of him, Jade let out a cry of pain and collapsed onto the colorful floor-buttons of the machine, holding her bleeding leg.

“Oscar, just try and stay focused on-”

Oscar snapped towards the sound of Xander’s voice beside him, and let his hand shoot for his throat, cutting the short guy’s words short, before forcefully slamming him against the claw machine, where Elena and Theo were trying to grab a small plush mech.

Rage and confusion exploded out into words, “Who the fuck are you?”

There was an overwhelming sound of whirring and buzzing, as all the electronics in the arcade began to malfunction. Oscar’s head was on a swivel. All around, the colorful lights flickered on and off. The screens of the old arcade machines began to glitch out, showing lists of high scores on their bugged out displays, the name beside all the scores on every machine read the same; SANDMAN.

Oscar felt Xander’s throat give, as it changed texture into something soft, something he couldn’t grab onto, something which escaped between his fingers, like sand. He looked to see Xander’s entire human appearance collapse into gold glistening particles. A mound of sparkling sand piled up on the floor, before dragging itself a few steps away, and sculpting itself back into a humanoid shape, after which the fleshy human appearance of Xander returned to it.

“You becoming lucid is gonna make things harder,” Xander said, with his scratchy voice.

“You’re one of them…” Oscar said, as the memories of the real world continued to collapse into his dream. “One of those other psychos! A reaper!”

“Oscar, I need you to calm down,” Xander said. “You need to trust me. Focus your mind on positive memories.”

“Hey Oscar, wanna go for a round of Street Fighter?” Robin said.

Xander eye’s darted away from Oscar, to the woman behind him, “Don’t turn around. Don’t say a word to her. It’s best if you think of someone else.”

“You’re trapping me here?” Oscar said.

“Not intentionally,” the Reaper said.

“I need to wake up.”

“I agree.”

Robin’s voice called out again, “Come one, just one game. You afraid of getting owned?”

The last word burrowed itself into Oscar’s mind, owned. Robin wanted to own him, to own all of them. She was no longer someone he’d hang out and have fun with, no longer a friend he could piss off and fight off when she got violent. She was…

“Oscar stop,” Xander said, with urgency in his voice.

Oscar heard something move behind him, something large. He felt its presence through the vibrations in the ground. He knew exactly what it was, but couldn’t bring himself to turn around, to look at the monster, as it snuck up beside him, he could see the movement of pale skin in the corner of his eyes.

Simon stepped away from the zombie shooting machine, smiling to Oscar, “I’m sorry I never paid you back those twenty bucks, mate.”

The monster pounced on Simon. Five enormous fingers, a huge hand, attached to massive arm, most of which still hid itself behind Oscar’s periphery. It was a human appendage too big for its owner to fit inside a small arcade like this.

It swiped Simon off the ground, as it barreled forward, catching his throat on the stretched curve between its thumb and index finger, before slamming him into the arcade machine he’d just played, which exploded into pieces of wood, glass and wires.

In the rubble, pinned behind the giant hand, Simon reached his hands up to get a grip. Blood poured down from a gash in his forehead, as he tried to crawl up through that curve between her fingers.

“I was so scared,” Simon moaned, as he made it halfway through the curve, before the giant thumb pressed against the finger beside it, squeezing the opening shut.

“Oscar, run!” Xander screamed.

Simon’s eyes bulged. He retched forward and puked up a stream of his own blood. There was a sickening sound, a wet crack, before the front of Simon’s body fell from the closed fingers, squeezed in half, he tumbled across a human’s length of pale skin, before lifelessly falling to the ground of the arcade with a wet thud.

As if propelled by sand, Xander dashed toward Oscar without taking a step, pulling him by his wrist before pushing his other hand against his back, “You can die for real here, just run! Don’t look back!”

Pushed out of his frozen fear by the reaper, Oscar stumbled forwards, before he started into a sprint, out the glass doors of the arcade. He could hear the voice of Robin behind him.

It no longer sounded like that of a person calling out, but that of booming omniscience, “You’re mine! You’re all mine!”

As Oscar ran through the wide corridor of the mall, he couldn’t help but look behind him. He saw his other four friends run out of the arcade in the same panic, before the hand crashed through the glass wall of the arcade.

The fingers of the familiar hand stretched, before slamming down flat on top of the last person to get out, Elena, who completely disappeared underneath it. Elias, Jade and Theo kept running, as the uncanny sight of a giant hand in the middle of a mall corridor lay behind them.

It slowly rose up, titling its palm in Oscar’s direction to reveal the broken body of Elena, flattened against it. Her limbs bent, twitching like a swatted bug, tears streaming down her face.

“No!” Oscar screamed, taking a few steps towards the friends running in his way

A cloud of glimmering sand floated in front of him, forming back into Xander, who pushed his hand against Oscar’s chest. “They’re not in real danger, you are. Keep running!”

Oscar froze. He wanted to punch this strange manipulative asshole in the face. He wanted to save his friends. He pushed the sandman’s hand aside, and ran for Jade, who was struggling to gain any distance with her injured leg. The massive wrist and hand behind her pulled back, slithering back into the arcade like a giant serpent.

There was a heavy quake, a sudden jolt of force coming from underground. Then another. The tiled floor of the mall’s corridor began to crack. Jade fell, as another quake hit, the floor beneath her cracking. She was on her hands and knees; strands of her black hair caught on her tear-dampened face. Her desperate eyes looked to Oscar for saving, as he sprinted towards her.

“Jade!”

A final quake shattered the floor, as something shot out of the ground. Chapped lips and giant white teeth emerged on either side of the immobilized young woman like a giant carnivorous plant sprouting from the ground. Jade disappeared behind the freckled skin of the giantess’ cheek, as the monster’s face continued upwards, slammed into the ceiling, until all that could be seen in the mall’s corridor was Robin’s throat. A lump sliding down the front of it with a loud wet squelching sound.

“Noo!”

The giant cloud of sand floated up from behind him, before turning around towards him. This time it didn’t turn into a human, but instead crashed into Oscar, forcefully picking him off the ground and carrying him through the mall. Oscar squirmed as the uncomfortable feeling of little sand crumbs crawled into his clothes, and all over his skin.

As they reached the large atrium with the massive glass ceiling, it carried him further up into the air, over the fountain where they had gathered earlier. The mall was empty now, devoid of life; a liminal dream space of nostalgia, where only a monster lurked, waiting to pounce on a man desperately holding on to what was already lost.

The cloud carried him to the mall’s entrance, before dropping him to his feet and reforming into Xander. “Stop being an idiot.”

On the other side of the atrium, Oscar saw Theo and Elias run out into the open space.

“They can make it,” Oscar said. “help them!”

The wall above the corridor his friends ran out of began to crack, before exploding into massive pieces of rubble that crash down like meteors around Theo and Elias, flattening and crushing chairs, tables, benches and a kiosk.

Out of the dusty cloud of destruction, a hunched giantess stepped into the open space of the atrium. Robin looked like a creature from a monster movie, her plaid shirt and cargo pants tattered, her feet bare. The only part of her face that was visibly beneath a curtain of copper hair was her wicked, toothy grin.

She turned with a slow shoulder, before looking down at her tiny friends running to escape her, “You’ll never leave me, not alive...”

Robin raised her foot, before pouncing her toes down in right front of Elias, hard enough make the ground shake. Oscar could no longer see his friend behind the mean square toes of his giant friend’s foot. On her tip toes, she dragged the foot back.

All Oscar could hear was the screams of Elias being cut short, as a blood began to pour out the front of Robin’s toes. As she continued to drag her foot back, she drew a streak of red across the floor of the atrium, before raising her foot, and letting something unrecognizable slowly peel itself off the skin below her toes, while she flexed them. It fell to the ground with a sickening wet splat.

“No, I’m sorry,” Oscar cried. “Elias, I’m so sorry!”

Theo made it to the exit and pulled Oscar along by the shoulder of his shirt, “They’re gone, they’re all gone!”

Oscar and Theo ran out onto the open parking lot. There were no cars, and there was no world beyond the mall. Halfway across the giant parking lot he once knew, the paved ground gave way to dirt and mud. Beyond the bounds of Oscar’s memory lay a sad grey swampy wasteland of dead trees.

One monolithic man-made object stuck out of the ground, the size a mountain side. It was a plastic bottle of pills, transparent yellow with a white cap. It looked to be the type someone could usually hold in their hand, but at this size, even a giantess like Robin would look like a tiny beside it. There was a printed prescription label, half peeled on the side of it, with a name reading, Allison Verloge.

Xander appeared beside Oscar, sparkling sand slowly dissipating from his human form. He looked at the same name on the pill bottle, before speaking with a somber tone, “Don’t blame her. It’s not her fault. They are just using her.”

“Who is she?” Oscar said, panting from exhaustion.

“My sister…”

Behind them, the sound of shattering glass sounded like lightning strikes, Robin was growing in size, emerging from the glass roof of the atrium, until her waist matched the highest point of the mall.

“You know what’s really going on?” Oscar said. “With the marks? With the games?”

“I wish I could tell you. I wish I could explain things, which could help you stop all of it,” Xander said. “But I guess I can’t. Because I never did. He will rise, because he’s already risen. He’ll cause himself to cause himself. The paradox needs to run its cycle. Until then, everything is already set in stone. All I can do is hope there is a world left to save after that.”

“What does any of that mean?”

“It means I can’t help you. Not yet.” Xander said. “What those traitors are doing is not just affecting our world. Allison dreams of others too. There are so many innocent lives at stake.”

Xander looked at Oscar’s lower left arm, noticing a large nasty cut. Oscar had barely felt it himself through all the adrenaline, he couldn’t remember when he would’ve gotten it. Xander reached for the wound, letting sand gently float from the palm of his hand, into the cut, closing it with a strange crusty, glimmering texture.

“I’m sorry I mind melded with you,” Xander said. “I still struggle to control where I end up. I usually dream with her, but she’s locked me out.”

He looked to a scared and confused Theo, and smiled, “It’s good to see the cute one made it out, even if he’s only a fake.”

The façade of the mall broke into rubble, collapsing into dusty clouds, as the giant version of Robin stepped out onto the parking lot.

“Try and wake up. I’m sorry for everything that has and will happen,” Xander said. “I’ll meet you at the end, old friend.”

The words ‘old friend’ struck a chord. In truth, Oscar had no idea who the young man was. The idea that they’d been friends was a figment of this dream, a strangely comforting lie.

The sandman turned to face Robin, and walked towards her. When there was enough distance between him and the two men who’d escaped the mall, a cloud of mystical sand swirled around him, until his body could no longer be seen within it. The sandstorm expanded, causing Oscar to put his arm up in front of his eyes.

When it dissipated, Xander stood at the same height as Robin. His flip flops clapping against his giant bare heels, as the giant sprinted towards Robin. Throwing a fist into her face, which caused the massive woman to stumble back. She tripped on the side of the ruined building, before crashing back down into it.

“Why would Robin want to hurt us?” Dream Theo said.

“I don’t know,” Oscar answered, as he looked up at the sky, seeing enormous medical tubes line it like an aurora. “I hope you’re safer with that other freak, buddy. I’ll miss you.”

Oscar’s eyes opened in the darkness of Robin’s living room. He was lying in his small miniature bed, two inches tall. The dim streetlight illuminating the beds beside him. Jade was fast asleep in hers, alive and well, while the over-glued one he had mocked Theo for lay empty.

He pushed himself up, and noticed the wound on his lower arm still hurt. He ran his fingers across it, feeling the sand-like texture of it.

He turned his head. In the distance he saw Elias sitting up on his bed too. He remembered the version of his dream, the Elias he understood, the Elias that was hurting just as much as the real one. He wanted to walk over to him, wrap his arms around him in a form of affection he’d never offered the guy before, no matter how weird it was, no matter how hard Elias would likely fight back.

Oscar sighed, and lay back down, pulling his bedsheet back over himself. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t reach out to his friend and admit Elias was right about Robin; even after that nightmare, even after his subconscious had hammered home the truth of how he really felt about her now.

“I’m sorry Elias,” he whispered to himself, as the friend who needed to hear those words the most, never would.

#23 - Oasis

Robin’s room was dark, the blue glow of her monitor serving as the only light source. The pale girl’s legs were bare, her thighs pressing against the towel she had placed down on the desk chair, as she sat in front of her computer.

She needed to relieve the stress, after the whirlwind of conflicting emotions the poker game had left her with.

She had lost something that belonged to her, something of her collection; a toy, a pet, a friend. She had been witness to the deaths of over twenty tiny people. Her mind was a cocktail of loss, revulsion, sickening uncertainty and pent-up lust.

It had been a day since they were transported back; back home, to the privacy of the prison she held her friends in, to her place of normalcy, an environment she used to believe she controlled. Now it felt like a waiting room, the kennel of a feral hound awaiting its next dog fight.

Her friends were in the living room, left to watch the giant television from the table that had become their prison yard, while she had resigned herself to her room, believing avoidance was better than acknowledgement.

Silence was her kindness. If she were to offer words of care, kindness and comfort during these moments of weakness, it would only add to the cruelty of her eventual betrayal. A dark outcome, the inevitability of which, she could no longer soothe into denial.

Here she was hidden from their judgement, free to explore these darker thoughts, and indulge her twisted desires without anyone getting hurt.

She clicked through her file explorer window, making her way to the hidden folder full of saved content. She clicked on a video, one of QTpopper and trEATmeGently roleplaying a tiny office worker getting preyed upon by a predatory boss, who demanded worship, flexing her soft angelic toes, as the boy rubbed and kissed her heel.

Robin reached her hand down between her legs, using her fingers to begin her shameful demonic ritual of indulgence. A ritual without relics, as Robin could never bring herself to buy something to assist her with something so shameful.

If her desires had been normal, if her wants had been like those of regular women, maybe she’d have the sex positivity to buy herself toys, things to enjoy these sessions better. But no matter how much she would like them in moments like these, her clear mind could never buy into what she would do in the dark.

Her indulgence was raw, a stimulation of the body, solely by what her body had to offer. No fanciful gadgets, just fingers. No lube, just a slow caress telling her flesh to dampen up, and get ready.

The video would end the way their videos always did, with Treat disappearing beneath QT’s slowly descending foot, before being replaced by a creative mixture of stage blood and wax. It was the safe way of embracing these morbid desires, a way for it to look like a harmless kink.

Robin paused the video, staring at her online friend. It felt strange pleasuring herself to her now that she had met the real her, now that she had witnessed the poor girl break down in the most traumatic moment of her life.

Compared to the real frightened and horrified face of Cleo, the smug smile of QTpopper looked so inauthentic. Compared to the blond man who had his face crushed under her thumb, and his body ripped in two between her fingers, the pile of wax in the video looked so fake.

Robin tapped the arrow key back until the video player paused on a still frame of QTpopper’s face. Her feathering neck-length indigo hair, her adorably enlarged eyes, her softened skin. As she continued to stimulate herself, Robin projected the horrible memory of the girl’s despair onto the image on screen, causing her excitement to grow, her slow breath to flow in and out of her parted lips.

These videos, these fake displays could not hold a candle to what she had seen. The cruelty, the tragic emotions involved, the realness of it all, that’s what completed it, that’s what Robin hungered for.

She thought of Eve, systematically going through her winnings like a kid with bubble wrap. Each little human, a fully-fledged person, forced to show their crimson contents for the fleeting pleasure of a sadistic woman living at the fringes of society.

Robin caught herself for a second, the more she thought on those real horrors, the slipperier she got between her legs, and the slipperier the slope became.

She was left with a choice; continue watching this fake slop, which had grown stale now that she had experienced the grandeur of death’s playground, or embrace the evolution of her newly refined palette, and seek out that forbidden fruit she’d sworn never to bite into, now that she knew just how juicy it could be.

To support the creation of content she would never in her right mind endorse, it would be so close to crossing her line. But she wasn’t in her right mind anymore. The repressed little eggs of corruption among her brain cells were hatching, their spawn crawling into her bloodstream, causing her entire body to crave touch, to where the feeling of her own shirt against her back felt like a lover’s breath.

She wanted to seek out what she promised never to watch, she had to. The reason why; the rational justification; that was something she would figure out later. She had come so close to crossing the real line multiple times now, could this small vice really erode her further?

She closed the window on the video, and went back to the darkest place on her computer, her direct message log with ChainedWr8. She went to the top of the user interface to open up the pinned messages, and clicked the one reading; the oasis is here, you need only drink.

She clicked the message, which sent her message feed way up to an older message where Eve had shared a link with Robin, one she had refused to click until now, along with a passkey she could copy and paste.

Beneath the message was a back and forth, an argument between Eve and her old self. Eve claimed this was her dark outlet, a way to repress her urges. What a lie that turned out to be. Robin believed her at the time, argued back that it was a bridge too far, that real people got hurt making these, and more would if there was money to be made from it.

There was some hesitation as Robin’s cursor hovered over the link, something in the back of her mind screaming to listen to her old self, but her panting breath had left her lips dry, and she needed to drink, to take a plunge in that oasis. If she used Eve’s passkey she wouldn’t have to pay for anything herself, she could indulge without supporting the content she craved.

She copied the link and put it into her layered routing browser, knowing the link would not work on a surface web browser. It took a much longer time to load the page than it would on a regular website, but eventually she was met with a simple login screen. The web design looked like something from the 2000s, with blue hyperlinks and a white box asking for a passkey, no username required, just a code.

Robin’s hand guided her mouse with a loose grip, as if the lack of conviction in her movement would lessen the moral weight of what she was doing, as she copied the chain of letters, numbers and symbols and entered it into the white box, before hitting enter.

The website opened up with a message reading, ‘Welcome back, Unchained’

Below was a list of links; Most Recent, Browse, Favorites (254), Uploads (21).

Not only had Eve favorited an insane amount of content on this site, but she had even contributed to it herself. Curiosity led Robin to check out Eve’s uploads first, there was a list of images and titles in four rows; still images of cowering people, broken bodies and unrecognizable gore stuck to the woman’s grimy sole.

Robin’s eyes scanned every image, trying to find any sign of Simon; as a friend, wanting to know what happened to someone she cared about; as a monster, wanting to pleasure herself to video footage of his horrid demise. Alas, there was no sign of him.

The titles read; Puny Barista Armpit Suffocation, Exo-Vore Jar Timelapse, Why They Call It ‘Micro’wave.

Robin’s fingers began to massage a bit harder at the sight of it all. She hated Eve with a burning passion, but her collection was a candy store of twisted wonders to the ginger blushing at her computer screen.

She clicked on the image of a tiny lying amongst charred bodies and cigarette butts in an ash tray, the title read; involuntary celi-burned. She clicked it and waited, the video taking a long time to buffer, due to the slow speed of the encrypted internet connection, and once it played the clip was only 720p quality.

The video was shot from the top down, the ashtray taking up most of the frame, below which Robin could see what looked to be the edge of a living room table. A tiny man in his late twenties lay on his back, dusted in the grey and white of cigarette ash. He held his arms up in a defensive posture, as a puff of exhaled smoke drifted across the camera’s view, with the soft sound of someone blowing off-screen.

“Squish, Pop,” a familiar deep womanly voice said. “Crunch, Crunch, Squish.”

The tiny shuddered, and gasped, before a loud bang followed, the entire table shaking.

“Don’t make me repeat the rules,” Eve said. “It’ll cost you more than losing.”

The tiny voice squeaked out the words, “Squish, Pop, Crunch, Crunch, Squish.”

Eve huffed a short unamused laugh, “Crunch, Squish, Pop, Squish, Crack, Pop, Squish, Pop.”

The tiny squeezed his eyes shut, as another breath of smoke was exhaled into the frame, “Crunch, Squish, Pop --- Squish, Crack, Pop, Squish, Pop.”

“Wrong…”

The cigarette came into view, and descended onto the tiny man, who tried to squirm away in between the charred bodies of the ones that came before him.

“But I got it right!” the tiny man screamed

Robin could feel the anticipation grow, as Eve with mind-melting slowness lowered the burning end of her cigarette onto the tiny man’s lower body. She wanted to see it connect, to see the pain, the reaction of a real person reacting to being burned in such a casual way, as she gently clawed inside herself to caress those horrible thoughts.

Eve pressed the cigarette against his crotch. The man let out the type of short squeal meant for a sudden burn you could easily pull away from, but this one he could not, extending the pained cry until there was no air left in his lungs. The cigarette pulled back, leaving its ashes in the scorched wound.

“Shi-“ a breathy half-whisper escaped Robin’s lips, as the air that went in after tickled her lungs.

It was grotesque, cruel, exactly the way she had thought of doing it, minus the game. The realization that this was a real person pressed to the forefront of her enthralled mind. It was a horrible thing to get off to, she should feel ashamed, yet that very truth was what made it all the more exhilarating.

“Whatever, you’ll lose eventually. You know that, right?” Eve’s voice sounded. “You’ll end up like every other worthless, meaningless, nameless thing that ends up with me.”

The words of Robin’s former friend dampened the enjoyment of it a bit. The demeaning nature of them was hot, but there was something missing; some pillar to Robin’s investment damaged by them, in a way she couldn’t quite place. It was enough to pull her out of her trance, to make her click away without finishing the video. She clicked back to Eve’s list of videos, then back to the main page.

Maybe this was going too far, maybe she should’ve closed out of the window and never returned, but there was so much more than just Eve on this site, a treasure trove of cruelty and death, exploring a bit further couldn’t damage her conscience any more than she already had.

She clicked on the browse link which opened up a list of the most popular videos, coupled with boxes full of tinies, an insane number of videos with their thumbnail featuring a tiny strapped to a toy or held against someone’s private parts. It was cruel and hot for being cruel, but the sexual nature of them didn’t appeal to Robin, she was looking for something else.

Every title was some horrendous mocking insult towards the victim in them, ranging from dismissive insults, to inflammatory sexualized hate speech. Robin scrolled past all of it, until one title stood out to her, simply reading; I’m sorry.

The thumbnail featured a tiny person held among the pale fingers of a woman’s hand, her head pinned against the side of the woman’s index finger, by the digit of her thumb. Curiosity and intrigue caused Robin to click, as she began to caress herself a bit more intensely in preparation for what she was about to witness.

The video opened up to a webcam view of what looked to be a woman in a thin white plastic mask, vaguely shaped to resemble human features. There were two eye-holes, through which a shaded pair of green eyes could be seen. The woman’s hair was pale blonde with a warm sunset tinge of orange, the sides hung like two voluminous flaps, which almost resembled fluffy, neck-length dog ears. The skin visible on the throat made her look unhealthily pale.

The woman looked at the camera, as she settled back into her seat after pressing record, before breaking eye contact with the viewer, and letting her head hang.

“I found someone again,” she said, with a soft timid voice, as if she was confessing something to an authority figure likely to scold her. “At the park. She was looking for help. There were so many people there who could’ve helped her, kept her safe, but-”

The woman paused and let out a hampered sigh. “But she ran up to me…”

The masked girl raised her hand, presenting a tiny woman with long black hair to the camera.

The tiny sat inside her palm shaking, “P-Please stop filming. I-I don’t want to be used for content. You’re very sweet for helping me out, but I really want you to take me home.”

There was a fear in her tone, as if she still bordered on the realization of what type of video she was in, as if the giantess had managed to instill trust, before putting on that unsettling mask. No, the woman knew. She knew exactly whose hands she was in. The tone. The delivery of her captor’s words. It was obvious, but denial was the one thing someone in her position could hold onto.

“Her name is Kate,” the masked woman said, with a slow cadence, interrupted by short pauses in the middle of her sentences. “She’s a teacher, a mother. She -- means a lot to a lot of people. What I’m about to do to her isn’t fair to her, or any of the people who loved her.”

The tiny woman’s voice broke into panicked pleas, as the giantess vaguely confessed to her dark intentions, “No, no! Please, you don’t have to do anything! Just stop recording sweetie! Just stop recording!”

Robin slowed her rhythm with a deep focus, and arched posture, getting close enough to the screen for it to feel her damp breaths. This was it, more satisfying than any direct cruelty or dehumanizing words, the creeping dread of something monstrous speaking softly, with a quiet and somber recognition of who she held, and what she was about to do.

The tiny woman began to try and scramble off the hand, which resulted in the image in the thumbnail; her tiny head pinned between the giant’s fingers, as she continued to beg for her life, “Please, whoever is paying you, I’ll pay more…”

“I don’t need money,” the masked woman said. “I need someone to stop me. I need someone to come and save you.”

The masked giantess held firm, as she looked around the bedroom she was in, the white walls stained, discarded cans, bottles and food packaging everywhere to where you couldn’t see the floor. She waited for what felt like half a minute, staring at the door to the room, before looking back down at the woman between her fingers.

“No one is coming,” she said with a sad monotone voice.

The tiny woman broke down in tears, as the giant’s other hand reached out to grab something off-screen, before pulling it into frame. It was a large rectangular screen of transparent plastic, with supports at the bottom to keep it upright. She placed the screen in front of her, before bringing the hand that held the woman up to it.

She carefully kept the woman pinned against the plastic, as she shifted her hand around, until her fingers and palm lay stretched against it, the woman held uncomfortably between the screen and her hand.

“I’m sorry, Kate,” the masked woman said, in resigned melancholy.

There was a sound, an attempt to scream or beg, but the way the woman’s head was forced sidesways against the screen made it hard for her to articulate, and the way the giant’s hand pinned her entire being muffled everything she could.

The blond woman held the screen in place with her other hand, as she stared to apply force to the one pinning the tiny. The skin of her fingers and palm began to whiten, as blood withdrew under the pressure. Her victim’s last squirm had left her in limbs in a strange splayed-out posture, which was now being solidified in place by the skin squeezing around her form.

Robin gasped, feeling a jolt of euphoria rise up from her stimulated flesh, into every other part of her detestable being. Her eyes were on the tiny woman, clinging to the sight of her, awaiting any sign of breakage.

She was a real person; a good person. She was someone who was now missed by people who would never know what happened to her; who would never know of the monsters that pleasured themselves to her horrid demise.

Pressure increased and an awful squeaking squeal escaped the muffled containment. It was impossible to see, but something inside the woman was starting to give, her joints, her bones, they were starting to give against the pale-blonde’s palm. The jaw of her sideways head, was locked in place, into the permanence of a screaming expression, as blood began to pour out.

The screaming stopped, replaced by the droning moan of a dying antelope. Her death was approaching, and with that in mind, Robin put more force into her fingers, keeping the slow rhythm with much more intensity, as she awaited the bliss of seeing the woman cross the threshold between life and death, between human and paste.

The woman’s form began to collapse against the whitened skin, her human frame bloating as it flattened. With no bones to hold it in shape, she became a sack of skin in the rough form of a human, which pressed into the plastic surface. The blood had nowhere to go but out, pouring from her mouth and spilling between her legs. Once one of her ribs poked a hole in her chest, it was quickly ripped wide open by all the red, which finally had somewhere to go, and poured out of her center mass like a flattened grape, across the pale skin of the masked woman, whose advanced apology could never justify the destruction she had wreaked upon her.

Robin moaned. The suppressed cry of an inhuman grotesque in the Appalachian woods. It was everything she wanted; death, intimate, slow, personal. Not dismissive slaughter, but acknowledged murder; a betrayal of shared humanity.

The woman pulled her hand back from the screen, the dead woman stuck to the skin of her palm, as the giant’s fingers lowered back into a neutral curl. The pale-blonde woman tilted her hand ever so slightly, causing the body to peel itself off her palm and fall onto the desk. She looked at the blood and gore left in her hand, before squeezing it into a fist.

The empty green eyes in the shadowy sockets of the mask stared at the dead woman’s body in complete silence. It was over, she had killed someone, and Robin was still pleasuring herself to the brutality of it.

She wanted more.

Robin moved her cursor, causing the video player to show the time bar. There were still four more minutes left. Would the masked woman pull out another tiny? She skipped through the rest of the video, but nothing happened. The woman just sat there, dead silent, unmoving, staring down at the remains of her victim for all of those four minutes, until she finally looked up at the camera, and reached out to turn it off.

Robin scrolled down on the page to find the uploader’s username; my.archive.

She clicked the name, and was greeted with a collection of sixteen videos. Many of their still frames featured the same screen, or an under-glass view of a table. The titles all followed the same pattern of uncapitalized and unnerving titles; don’t forgive me; you deserved better; I cannot imitate humans; why did god let me find you?

One of the titles stood out to Robin, striking a chord; I’m a terrible friend.

The video’s thumbnail was one with an underglass view, on top of which lay a tiny, on his back, looking up at the masked woman looming overhead, her upper body dressed in a tight beige turtleneck sweater, her legs bare.

Robin clicked it. The video started with the camera on the floor, aimed at her crossed legs, which took up more than the entire frame, in front of which cowered a tiny young man, with brown hair. He reminded Robin of Theo, a seeming innocence radiated off him.

“My friend got a purple mark,” the familiar quiet voice said. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”

There were sounds escaping the tiny’s mouth, broken screams. Something had happened to his lower face, it looked bloodied, damaged. Perhaps intentionally, for if this really was her friend, he could identify her.

“It’s important to care for the ones we get,” archive said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do. That’s what I promised Glen I would do. But I’m a liar.”

The broken screams cut into short pattern of exhaled cries, “Nu-eugh, eugh, heugh.”

“He was one of the only people that still came over to see how I was doing, one of the only people who didn’t abandon me. Why do I repay kindness this way?”

The line made Robin whimper in unison with the tiny boy. On a site full of senseless and sensational violence, those words might have been the most sensual violence of all. Her fingers moved on their own, her mind lost in the moment. She did not need to play the instrument between her legs with focus, she was on the same wavelength, Archive’s melody played itself, as Robin’s toes curled.

Archive reached for the camera and grabbed it, making for a few dizzying seconds of uncut shaking, as she placed the camera beneath a glass table, looking up at the ceiling. The giantess stepped into frame, holding her tiny friend in her palm, before lowering her hand onto the table, and gently giving the guy a few nudges with the joint of her index finger to make him step off.

“Thank you for everything. I’m sorry for taking more.”

Archive straightened her back and raised her foot, the little figure on the table became harder to identify, a pixelated silhouette which Robin could reinterpret, and unconsciously, she did. What lay on that table wasn’t Archive’s friend, but hers. Theo was lying there, and behind that mask, behind those words, she could imagine herself, ruining the moment of kindness they’d had.

She could feel the sweat cool shivers across her skin as she continued to watch the dark fairytale unfold. The long, high-arched foot of the giantess lowered, pressing the toe-bed next to the ball of her foot onto the tiny boy’s lower body, whitening around it against the glass, as his shoulders and head stuck out, under the arches of her toes, breathing space, screaming space.

Robin cried a little moan, as she watched his legs bend in unnatural ways, as the toes above him spread, allowing a peek at the woman he cared about, whom, in her own twisted way, cared about him, with a passion he would never come to understand. That care, that closeness was the most important ingredient to it all.

All he could do was scream a sequence of unintelligible gurgled prayers, begging for mercy. Robin wanted to know what he was saying, she knew Archive did too. These words, the final pleas of a friend, they were so important, and being robbed of them was a terrible crime against murder.

“Mischief at the old trainyard,” Archive’s soft monotone voice spoke with a frail crack, before Robin could see her swallow the thick lump in her throat. “My mind wanders there.”

The toes closed, leaving the boy in the dim skin-toned light beneath, as the whitened edges of the foot’s skin spread, and the frame of his body followed. Robin was reaching her peak, this was the moment, the threshold between a living friend screaming, and hollow silence. The exact moment where Archive, where Robin, would take what should never be taken.

Theo, Theo…

They burst together, Robin’s breath steamed through her vocal cords, as the tiny’s frail body collapsed, spreading its contents along the glass, against the doughy whitened skin which rolled over the top of his body, crushing his head in one slow deliberate motion.

Archive froze, as she held her foot on the table for about half a minute. Robin went limp in her chair. The two sadists were linked together in silence. When the pale-blonde removed her foot, strings of gore tethered to her sole. Even in death, a friend like that could never let go, would never accept the cruelty, they’d stick with you even after the end. Theo. Jade. Oscar.

Robin didn’t move. She didn’t need to budge her mouse to check how much time was left on the video player. She knew Archive would be staring at the result of what she’d done for a long time, and she understood why. She wanted to linger there too.

And so, they marinated in it together, separated by time. Robin tried to see the woman’s green eyes shadowed inside the mask. She wondered if Archive cried. She wanted her to. She wanted the reassurance that she would do so when the time came, but she knew emptiness bore no tears.

A part of Robin wanted to comfort the woman. She wanted to hug her, tell her she understood. There was a pulse in her heart that lasted past all the excitement. A longing. A desire to entangle herself with someone truly like her, to dive into a shared hell together. Was she catching a sudden spark for this stranger?

The quiet didn’t last, Robin didn’t get the time to simmer in the aftergloom of Glen’s destruction as long as Archive got to. The sound of a notification interrupted her, while Robin’s hand still rested between her thighs. A red dot had appeared on the icon in her taskbar. A message.

Robin guided her cursor down and clicked, opening up the DMs with ChainedWr8, where a new message had appeared. In her frenzy to find the old link, had she unblocked her? The message wasn’t a tantrum, a playful line of text, or even a word. It was a single grey heart.

She knew.

Eve knew Robin had logged in on her account. She had to have been notified that someone did. All Wr8 had to do to gloat that her lost little puppy had finally drunk from the oasis was to send this one little symbol of affection. A grey heart, one step closer to a black one.

It took Robin a few seconds for it to sink in. A fire slowly built up inside of her. She managed to calmly block ChainedWr8 again and slowly get up from her chair. As she did, the floodgates broke.

“Fuuuck!” Robin roared.

She turned and swung for the closest wall, the one separating her neighbor’s apartment. It was a stupid target to take, but her fist needed to connect with something, anything, and connect it did. Robin’s knuckles almost broke connecting with a solid wall, smashing the skin between, and sending a painful shock through her bones and joints, rattling the complex structure inside her hand.

The loud scream and thump would’ve been heard throughout the apartment, both her neighbors and the playthings camping out on her living room table would’ve heard.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she hissed at herself. “You’re not Wr8. You’re not Wr8. You’re-”

“A terrible friend,” the voice of the pale-blonde woman echoed through her mind.

“Archive…”