While Remy was coming out of his sedation, his semi-cognizant ramblings suggested he was intent on leaving the house and reuniting with his boyfriend after all, if only because he repeatedly awoke to gasp “Where am I? – Al? AL!”

‘Al’ turned out to be the name of his boyfriend.

Jennifer and I thought he needed more time to recover, however Stuart was oddly adamant that if Remy didn’t get out of the house soon, he was going to go batshit crazy or make an ill-fated escape attempt and get hurt.

So Jennifer got on the phone with Al and gently explained the situation to him. I couldn’t hear the other end of the phone call, but by the halting pauses, and number of times Jennifer stopped mid-sentence as if she had been interrupted, and number of times she had to repeat a basic salient piece of information – for instance, that Remy could not just get in the car and drive home anymore – told me that the news hadn’t sunk in. Finally, in desperation, she mentioned me, and it turned out the guy had seen my media bit. Then he must have gone quiet, because Jennifer promptly ended the call.

We didn’t hear from him for the rest of the day, and sadly assumed we’d unwittingly botched Remy’s relationship lifeline. At least, that’s what I was thinking; no one else said anything, although Jennifer and Stuart seemed to be too distracted by their own personal unfolding drama to pay Remy a lot of thought, while Remy let out little moans of self-indulgent pity every so often, and refused to engage in discussion. It left me feeling like the most level person in the household, which – coming from me – was not good.

Across the day, Jennifer shuttled between the master bedroom – where Stuart was – and the other rooms of the house. The bath he’d had earlier seemed to have seriously affected him. Ever since then, he’d slunk away into the master bedroom and no one heard a peep from him. It’s like he had reached his snapping point, as had Remy the day before. Neither of them seemed to be taking to the situation as well as I would have guessed. Being shrunk had disturbed me at first, too – it was an incredible shift in perspective, literally – but their sheer refusal to at least try to grapple with the situation was disheartening, and brought the whole energy in the house to a grinding halt. Stuart at least had me as a role model to show him existence at small scale was doable, even enjoyable at times. But for the time being he had totally shut me out. And, by the looks of it, Jennifer, as well.

At one point, she came into the living room, where I was sitting on the two-seat sofa, and uttering a big sigh, dropped onto the space next to me – at the last moment, flattening her palm over me to prevent me bouncing up into the air. Then she hunched forward, her forearms resting on her knees, looking straight ahead.

“You sound tired.”

“GUESS SO. GUESS I’M STILL WORKING IT OUT.”

‘Working it out’ sounded like an understatement. I could only imagine how devastated she was: having her boyfriend pulled into this situation now as well. At least she used to be able to escape my situation – I assumed she used Stuart to do that. Sometimes vocally in the bedroom, after dark. Now even that avenue was closed. And it didn’t seem Stuart wanted to talk to her much, because she was rarely in the master bedroom for very long, although she went in there frequently, like she just could not leave him be.

“JERRY…” she said in a low voice, still looking straight ahead, “…HAVE YOU NOTICED ANYTHING DIFFERENT WITH STUART LATELY?”

“Uh,” I thought for a moment, shifting my legs back and forth, “apart from being zapped down to fun size, nope.”

That wasn’t entirely true. I had noticed he wasn’t attentive of Jennifer anymore. He wasn’t his usual goofy, gentle self. He was acting more and more like a caged rat. His eyes darted around whenever she entered the room, and his body didn’t properly relax until she was out of sight again. Totally uncharacteristic of him. On the other hand, long-term with Jennifer could be tiring like that.  

But I didn’t want to be the one to point out that she wasn’t imagining things. After failed attempts to mediate their domestic issues, I had sworn off interference altogether.

“What kind of thing do you mean?” I asked, with slight discomfort.

“HE’S ACTING STRANGE AROUND ME, LIKE HE’S GOT SOMETHING ON HIS MIND, BUT HE WON’T TELL ME WHAT.” Her brow creased as she deeply analyzed the lines on her palm. “HE’S NEVER KEPT THINGS FROM ME BEFORE.”

She suddenly stopped talking and looked up.

There were car lights outside, refracted by the heavy rain. It was difficult to tell because it was so dim, but the sun was beginning to go down.

And it looked like Al had just shown up.

Jennifer got up to let him inside, taking him over to see Remy, who was still lying on the sponge bed on the coffee table.

When Remy heard Al’s voice, he hugged his arms over his face as if to block out the light.

“Avert your eyes!” he wailed. “Flee! Depart! This is not the real Remy you see lying before you! It’s a merely a poor facsimile!”

Al’s eyes were blank and he spent the majority of time in a whirlwind of stammering shock. Gradually he became amenable to the suggestion he take Remy home with him, and once this was the case, Jennifer was keen to get them to leave before he changed his mind again.

“You can do a TV special,” I offered as they were leaving the room.

“No!” Remy and Al said at the same time.

Al took Remy in one hand, tucking the time machine under his other arm, as Jennifer walked him to the door. He was so shocked by the appearance of Remy, he didn’t even ask what the time machine was, just wordlessly accepted Remy’s pleas that he take it with them.

“THEY’RE MAKING NEW MEDICAL DISCOVERIES ALL THE TIME, THOUGH, RIGHT?” said Al’s voice, from the doorstep.

“ABSOLUTELY,” said Jennifer, briskly, “AND IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, CALL THIS NUMBER.”

Al looked at the business card.

“THAT’S A VET.”

Once they had left, Jennifer went back towards the living room where I was. She gave the room a cursory look around.

“IS STUART STILL…?”

He was still in the master bedroom. I nodded.

Her footsteps receded up that way.

“STEWEY? REMY’S GONE NOW. HONEY, TALK TO ME...”

Then I heard the bedroom door shut quietly.

I flopped back on the couch and watched the TV news, more for the noise to fill the room, and drown out any sound pollution that might leak out of the bedroom.

The sun had set now and it was dark outside. Rain was pounding against the windows, trailing down in streams against the glass.

Beginning to feel cold, I put on my superman costume, which was folded by my sponge bed. Then, returning to the soft sofa, I lay down and wrapped the cape around myself.

Later, the master bedroom door opened and Jennifer padded back out. Of course it was her; no one else in the house made normal sounding footsteps anymore.

The kitchen light flicked on. The fridge door opened and glasses clinked. Then the sound of a drink being poured.

Oh God, she’s going to get Stuart drunk, I thought immediately.

But she didn’t go back to the master bedroom. Instead, she hovered around the kitchen, in a somewhat lost fashion. At one point she wandered into the living room, and, seeing me on the couch, wandered out again. But not before I noticed she was drinking a glass of vodka and was still gripping the neck of the bottle in her other hand. You knew it was bad when she didn’t put the bottle down while she was drinking from the glass.

“You okay?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“FINE,” she grunted.

Within another minute she came back into the living room, trying to look as though she meant to be there all along, but sitting on the sofa armrest as if waiting. She drained her glass and poured herself another.

“Maybe you better slow down…” I mumbled. I was thinking of Stuart more than anything; he shared the bed with her and so was at direct risk if she flopped down onto the bed drunk.

She didn’t respond. Her face looked a little out of focus. Finishing the glass, she finally clanked the bottle and glass down on the coffee table and jumped to her feet.

“I’M HEADING OUT,” she said.

I bolted upright, looking at the clock. It was nine thirty.

“What? Where?”

“I DON’T KNOW. I DON’T CARE. I HAVE TO GET OUT FOR A LITTLE WHILE.”

“In the car?”

“HOW ELSE?”

“But you’re drunk!”

She didn’t reply. She was already striding out of the room and down the hall, her high heel boots clattering over the tiles.

I scrambled down from the couch.

“Jennifer, wait, stop!”

“BE GOOD WHILE I’M GONE,” she called from down the hallway. “STUART’S IN A WEIRD MOOD.”

I sprinted down the hallway after the echo of her departing boots, my cape flapping behind me. I knew I wouldn’t catch her before she went out the door, and once she did, I wouldn’t be able to open the door to follow her. So there was no point running straight on her tail.

Thinking quickly, I deviated into the spare bathroom, practically skidding over the polished tiles as I halted before the shoelace ‘rope ladder’ that stretched up to the sink counter. I grabbed the lace rungs and began to scrabble up in a series of furious leaps until I had surmounted the countertop.

From there, I leapt down onto the rim of the bath, and followed it around to the other side, which came to a wall, with a window.

Jennifer loved the position of the window, facing one end of the bath. When it was dark outside the window became a mirror and she could admire herself while she bathed. She was not self-conscious about things like that.

Well, now I loved the position of the window, too, but for an entirely different reason.

All of the windows in the house opened by sliding…except the bathroom windows. They were awning windows; the glass pane tilted outwards. I had never used them to get outside before because I would need to push against the window to open it, creating a risk of me falling outside through the newly created gap. That didn’t concern me right now.

The window was inky black and streaked with rain. I flipped the latch and then started to push with all my might against the glass.

Come on, you—!

It shifted outwards a tiny bit. But not enough to slip through.

From down the hall, the front door thudded shut. Jennifer must have gone to get something before she left the house, like her handbag or the car keys.

I slammed into the window again with my full body weight.

Piece of shit! Come on!

The glass slipped outwards all at once, I went tumbling forward and down into the cold black night, the air whistling in my ears. Twigs prickled against my face and chafed my limbs; a shrub catching me a moment before I crashed onto the soft rain drizzled grass below.

Not giving my head time to settle, I jumped to my feet again. An equivalent drop at normal size would have probably broken bones, but I seemed okay, just my nerves were jangled.

Everything was shrouded in the smoky gray blanket of rain that threw up a screen of watery mist as it pelted the ground. It was heavy rain even at normal size but at my size it was like getting showered by a garden hose. Two seconds exposure and I was soaked and chilled to the bone.

Forced to squint, I began to run under the open black sky, following the perimeter of the house towards the driveway. My rapid footsteps squelched over the wet grass, and big raindrops tapped my body like frigid fingers and bounced around my heels. The cold cement bit into the soles of my feet. I wasn’t wearing the rubber red superman boots; they tended to slip when I ran, and slowed me down. My soaked cape stuck to my back and flapped at my ankles.

Depressing that a race down the driveway was such an endeavor – and Natalie’s remark jumped into my head out of nowhere; that she couldn’t see a relationship with a guy whose crowning achievement was opening the fridge. Well, if my crowning achievement of today was making it to the mailbox before Jennifer drove off, then that was enough for me. Assuming I could even do that.

Just ahead, the corners of the driveway were beginning to spillover with rain. Standing at the very end was Jennifer’s towering shape, with her umbrella, like a huge domed canopy over her head. She had put on a fur lined coat, probably the reason she had delayed leaving the house. She had also probably taken the trip down the driveway more cautiously than usual, due to the slippery rain and her drunkenness, giving me the extra fraction of time to try and reach her.

Now she had her back to me, and she was juggling the umbrella and her handbag as she fished her car keys out. I tried to ignore the sedan behind her; never having seen it from ground level, it was like some beached whale made of metal. Never mind the whole car; a single one of the black rubber tires, if unloosed from the axel, could roll me into a pancake.

To realize that she was immediately contemplating commandeering this monster killing machine, without a second thought, was so terrifying that each rapid beat of my heart became painful, while my legs were urging to lock up entirely. It took all my willpower to keep running towards the car that could crush me like an insect.

If she got in the car and started sliding out of the driveway, she could bulldoze over me, hammering me with one blow down into a tiny human manhole cover. And that was if I was lucky. If I was unlucky I might get pasted to the wheel like a postage stamp and be forced to revolve at dizzying speeds down road after road until she finally reached her destination. And then I would be stuck there for God knows how long until having to repeat the entire trip back. I could only hope I would be dead long before then.

The car lights flashed as the car was unlocked.

“Jennifer!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I dashed headlong down the wet glittering concrete. “Stop!”

I was convinced she couldn’t hear me over the drumming rain, but she must have, because she then turned and noticed me. At least my red and blue costume made me stand out against the charcoal cement.

Seeing me, her eyes flashed with concern, the giant boots took the last couple of pounding steps to reach me. Then a hand dropped down from the sky, scooping me up, whipping me up into the air and in the same instant, pulling me into the car.

Sitting in the driver seat, she put me up onto the shelf over the dashboard, and folding up the umbrella, shut the car door, dimming out the rain.

She looked at me curiously.

“HOW DID YOU GET OUTSIDE?”

The bathroom window must have slipped her mind. I decided not to tell her, in case she thought better of sealing it in future.

“I flew,” I said, pacing anxiously, leaving a small wet trail on the dashboard. “Don’t drive.”

Her eyelids dropped a little over her eyes. Finally, she said:

“I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE.”

I sat down on the top of the dashboard, pulling the cape around myself. The physical exertion had warmed my body, but now my limbs were going cold again.

Maybe she was telling the truth, but we were sitting in the car, and she could still change her mind.

“Why not wait until Stuart is in a better mood?" I went on. "Don’t you think it’d piss him off even more if you went somewhere without telling him?”

She stared straight ahead, out the window.

“MAYBE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED FROM YOUR VANTAGE POINT, BUT LATELY MY LIFE HASN’T BEEN GOING EXACTLY TO PLAN.”

“I know this really sucks for you both, but…” I searched for words, “…you still have a lot to be grateful for.”

“LIKE?”

“Well, you didn’t get shrunk too.”

She didn’t say anything, but I thought her eyes softened a little, like she was considering what I said.

“You should be grateful for that,” I emphasized. “I am.”

Now my feelings were spilling out before I could it, and in the desperation of keeping her from starting the car, I surged on:

“When I get angry about it, I remember that. I would jump in front of that machine all over again if it meant saving you from having to go through this.”

She pursed her lips.

“YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT THAT SAPPY STUFF.”

“I’m not being sappy. I mean it. You have a big presence. It wouldn’t fit inside a small body.”

Letting this sink in, she folded her arms over the steering wheel leaning her face towards me until I began to smell vodka fumes. I scooted closer, trying to bathe my cold body in her warm breath.

"BEFORE NOW, I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLE TO LIVE WITH SOMEONE AND MISS THEM AT THE SAME TIME."

I swiped some speckles of rain off my brow and sighed.

"Give Stuart time. And be a little gentler with him. It's a big transition."

"I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT STUART.” She pushed a strand of hair back from her face. “I MISS YOU, JERRY.”

She batted her eyelashes at me, giving me her best come hither look.

In one swooping instant it seemed like a bad idea to have followed her into the car. All the car doors were shut and I had no way of opening them. The black night pressed against the car windows like a conspiratorial curtain, fogging them slightly, and the pattering rain dimmed all outside sound.

My gaze slipped downwards. I could slide down the dashboard, and scramble for cover underneath one of the seats.

Problem was, she would hate that: her antipathy of out-of-reach hidey holes. And I didn’t want to upset her. She could still drive off in a huff.

In the silence, the driver seat groaned as she shifted back. She was adjusting the hem of her skirt…

…pulling it up?

My lungs tightened.

“Take me inside,” I demanded, drawing myself up. “I’m freezing my balls off.”

Voicing a threat to the functionability of my groin seemed to work. She paused.

Then her hand came up and snatched me.

“Jennifer, Goddamn it, if you—!”

“RELAX! WE’RE GOING INSIDE.”

Before I could say another word, I was slipped into the soft folds of a pocket of her fur-lined coat, submerging me in darkness and silky hair. There was rustling and shifting around as she took her umbrella and got out of the car.

I bumped around as her heels clacked up the driveway, padded at all sides by the fur lining. Grateful as I was to be out of the rain and cold, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was like some suckling baby animal nestled against its mother’s soft underbelly.