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It was just an ordinary day for us. A slow, quiet day. We were walking home from university campus.

 

There was me: Todd, my best friend Landon, and my female friends, Audrey and Jessica. We were roommates in a place down the road.

 

Audrey and Jessica were walking together, chatting about university classes. I was talking with Landon about some AI-related stuff – one of my favourite subjects. But we could hear what the other two were saying and sometimes our conversations intersected as one of the girls looked back over her shoulder and make a remark at us.

 

I had known Landon the longest. He had combed back brown hair and a penchant for tight jeans and loose t-shirts. Outside of university he played in a barroom rock garage band and I was told he had a good singing voice. He was quite serious and a little sarcastic; but so was I, so we tended to get on fairly well. I’d known him since high school. We were more like brothers than best friends; we didn’t always agree, we got on each other’s nerves, and we had periods where we weren’t always in contact. But we always seemed to migrate back into each other’s orbits after some time. I didn’t have a familial brother so this suited me.

 

Landon had a particular magnetic charm with the ladies, and I, less so. I was more withdrawn. Landon had to pull me along to get me to go to parties and social things. If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be friends with the girls. He was like the leader or ‘Fred’ of our Mystery Inc. gang. All we needed was a van with a psychedelic paint job.

 

If either of the girls were Velma, it had to be Audrey. She didn’t have the physical resemblance: in fact she looked more like Daphne, with long reddish brown hair usually pulled back with a headband, soft, gentle eyes. I had known Audrey for quite a while, long enough to think of her as more of a sister or maybe a cousin, but she was quite attractive. She could have played MJ in a Spider-man stage play, though she would have been far too demure for stage acting. She had no difficulty getting male interest but was not very keen to go parading around for it. She preferred curling up with a book, and brushed away any compliment on her physical appearance. She was a humble next-door-neighbour type girl. She was also a bookworm and the voice of reason and cautious suspicion reining in many of Landon’s antics.

 

That meant Jessica was Daphne. She was a very striking girl, but unlike Audrey’s warm cuteness, she had a kind of smooth, cold beauty like a marble statue. She probably got more attention from admirers than Audrey and Landon combined, but it was superficial attention – from people who impulsively tried to add her on social media after having one class with her. Jessica was very shy, maybe even moreso than Audrey, possibly even a little suspicious of people and their intentions. But with how guys acted around her I guess you couldn’t blame her. Even other girls seemed a little wary around her, like they were intimidated by her; it reminded me of the conflict in the movie Malèna.  Jessica seemed to be at home in our group because Landon already had a girlfriend and was equally, unthreateningly pally with any other girl, and I took after his lead. I didn’t know what Jessica’s relationship status was,

 

If that was our whole Mystery Gang, that left me playing the role of Shaggy. This was not accurate; I was not a goofy, spontaneous pothead. But being Shaggy was better than Scrappy Doo, right? Little did I realize, I would not be playing Shaggy for much longer, but be demoted somewhere closer to Scrappy Doo before the day was out.

 

I’d known Audrey so long that I thought of her more as a sister or maybe a cousin, than in sexual terms. Those wires didn’t get crossed in my brain. Plus, she already had a casual thing with a guy called Austin. She called it a relationship, or at least she referred to him as her boyfriend, but as I rarely saw him (and when he did come over to the house it was for one reason) it seemed more like friends with benefits to me. Whatever the case, she was off the table. Whereas, I didn’t know what Jessica’s relationship status was, and I didn’t go prying.

 

The house wasn’t like a hippie commune and the girls were discreet but I had seen Jessica wearing very little a couple of times, and the sight of so much of her exposed flesh always made something flicker inside me, like a stray spark of electricity. I tried to ignore it but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t create an instinctive, undeniable reaction.

 

Landon complimented her appearance sometimes, but it was in a cocky, non-serious way, as he was already in a relationship with a girl called Valerie. He had also made joking insinuations about my disposition towards her (“You look very alert this morning, Todd. It’s only Saturday. That’s not like you. You feeling alright?” – one weekend morning when Audrey and Jessica came out in bikinis to go to the beach). But I just played along with him. I didn’t need his help in my dating life. No doubt Jessica got a lot of attention outside. And it was obvious she didn’t want any one of us interfering in her dating life, because she kept it right out of the four walls of our house. She never brought guys home or talked about them (at least not to me – understandable – but maybe she and Audrey talked). She must have been going to their houses.

 

Our university was just on the city border. The accommodation area was hemmed at one side by a thicket, with a paved path leading through.

 

We were following the path, chatting casually, when Landon looked ahead and made a noise of surprise and said: “What the – ?”

 

There was a tall shimmering curtain of some smoky, filmy blue substance suspended  around the trees, extending up off the ground. At first, I thought it was a massive, dewy spiderweb shifting in the wind, until I realised there were no threads. Getting closer I saw it was made of tiny blue light particles that were blinking in and out of existence really fast, reminiscent of TV static. I thought that it was maybe some kind of hologram, but that made no sense. We were out on the edge of the forest beyond the university campus – what was a hologram doing here? And besides, I couldn’t see any projectors.

 

The blue light extended lengthways from us for about twenty yards before ending. It looked like an Aurora Borealis, but hovering just above the ground – rather than in the sky – giving us the ability to reach out and touch it, and to actually walk right through it. Assuming it was safe to do so.

 

“It’s a mirage,” said Audrey, confidently. How does she know that? I wondered.

 

Without warning, Landon ran through it.

 

“Landon!” Jessica yelled. It was too late. We all stared in shock as he charged through the wall and emerged on the other side. Nothing happened. He turned and waved at us.

 

“It’s safe!”

 

We moved closer to the wall, still scrutinizing it suspiciously.

 

“What does it feel like?” said Audrey.

 

“Didn’t even feel it,” Landon shrugged. “Come on, you guys – you’re right, Audrey, it’s just an illusion. I don’t know, the light...”

 

Audrey confidently strode through. As with Landon, she emerged on the other side with no reaction. Taking her lead, Jessica then walked through. Now it was just me. I took a deep breath, secretly not wanting to inhale the stuff – whatever it was.

 

I was about to take the first step through when I heard a sudden scrabbling sound behind me. Everyone looked back over my shoulder. Twisting around, I saw a chase rapidly approaching me. There was what looked like a rat scampering headlong at me, closely followed by a pale fox. Neither animal seemed to have noticed us, or cared. Both were fixated on the other. I stepped out of the way as the rat charged through the screen. At this point it noticed me and kicked around in the dirt, struggling to change direction to avoid both me and the fox. A second later the fox was upon it. The moment the fox passed into the screen, so that the both of them were practically on top of each other. The fox actually landed on top of the rat, stunning it. With both of them half in the screen, a strange thing happened.

 

The fox didn’t just land on the rat, it seemed to get pulled down into it. And the rat seemed to get pulled up into the fox. There was a nanosecond where my brain got stuck, refusing to believe what I was seeing. It happened too fast for my brain to register. The next moment the fox and the rat were nowhere in sight. Instead, rat-sized pale fox lay on the ground, the screen swirling around its tiny body. It didn’t move for moment; just blinked, stunned.

 

“Whoa!” said Audrey.

 

“You just saw that, right?” said Landon.

 

“No way,” said Jessica. “That didn’t just happen.”

 

I didn’t say anything. My brain was still refusing to believe what it looked like had happened: the rat had vanished and the fox had shrunk. Or maybe they had both shrunk, and the rat was no longer visible to the eye. But my brain insisted: there had to be a more logical explanation.

 

“There was a rat just a second ago, right?” said Landon.

 

“I don’t think it was a rat.”

 

No surprise it was Audrey who said this. She was the analyst and the one who remained cool and composed. She was always the one playing Devil’s advocate, trying to get us to consider alternative viewpoints.

 

She continued:

 

“It looked like a rat. But maybe it was actually a small fox.”

 

“So where did the big fox go?” I pointed out.

 

“Yeah,” Jessica chimed in. “Maybe there was no rat, but there was definitely a big fox.”

 

“I don’t know. This thing --” Audrey gestured at the screen – but was careful not to touch it, I noticed – “it plays with the light. It creates illusions.”

 

“Is it dangerous?”

 

“I don’t know, but I want to go home and see if anyone’s seen something like this before. Maybe we can look up what this is online. There must be an explanation for it.”

 

“Yeah, okay,” Landon said, and then looked through the screen at me. “You just going to stand there all day, Todd? Let’s get moving.”

 

“Sure,” I said. I was personally also eager to get home and look this thing up. My thoughts whirled somewhat incoherently as I moved into the screen; the jury was still out on what, exactly, I’d just witnessed – had a rat vanished, or had a fox vanished? But I was eager to find out.

 

But as they say, be careful what you wish for, I guess.

 

As the screen swirled around me, I heard one of the girls gasp and the next second found myself lying on the ground. I must have tripped over but I couldn’t remember doing it. Maybe I hit my head. Then I realised I wasn’t just on the ground. I was really, really on the ground. Like, right down low. My eyeline was level with rocks and grass blades when I should’ve been looking down at them.

 

Why am so damn low down? I wondered. Everything was way above my head. Shaken, I got to my feet, but something really odd happened. I was still on the ground. Even when at full standing height. Still really, really on the ground. I was standing up but everything was still way over my head.

 

“What just happened?” I said out loud, and my breath caught. The voice that came out of my mouth was still mine, but it was low and kind of growly, as if I was getting a cold or had a sore throat.

 

“Oh shit,” I heard Landon say. But his voice came from way up, and it was deeper, not lower, but it quaked the air a little, like I was hearing it through a microphone.

 

“Uh…” Audrey began reluctantly, “…Todd?” . Her voice also had the effect of coming through a microphone. But also, she sounded afraid. And, I thought, if Audrey – the calm one – was afraid, then something was really wrong.

 

I looked up – and up, and up – to see the three of them standing over me in alarm and concern. Except it didn’t look like them, at least at first. 

 

They were all tens of feet tall.

 

They were giants.

 

I felt like I had been tossed into another world, like some fairy tale land.

 

They can’t be up there, I thought frantically, almost incoherently, I mean, I can’t be down hereHow do I get back up there? I mean, how did I get all the way down here?

 

“What happened?!” I repeated, this time my voice reduced to a stunned squeak.

 

“Todd, is that you?” said Landon, as if not sure whether to believe me or not.

 

I gaped up at him.

 

“Of course it’s me! Who else would it be?”

 

“Well…I just want to make sure…” he still didn’t sound convinced.

 

My thoughts were rolling along in a rapid stream.

 

Okay, Todd I thought to myself, you’ve been shrunk. No idea how it possibly could’ve happened, but it happened. Deal with it. So what the heck do you do now?

 

What the heck, indeed. My surroundings had expanded out tenfold. I had previously been in a thicket of oaks and elms, now it felt like I was in a forest of sequoias. I was positively dwarfed in the shadows cast by the trees, the bushes, my own friends. It was beginning to occur to me that the pure locomotion of getting back home had turned into a Herculean task; the mere action of putting one foot in front of the other, and repeating enough times until I was back in my room, never mind the obstacle of opening a door handle to get inside, or opening the fridge door to eat, or climbing up onto the toilet bowl to take a leak, turning the shower on to wash, how to get dressed, how to get to class on Monday, how to drive to the store, how to drive anywhere, how to walk anywhere, how to avoid being trampled underfoot while walking, or run over by a bike tire on the pavement, or squashed by a car tire while crossing the road, or snatched up by a big dog or – 

 

My brain felt like it was beginning to melt under the intensity of it all.

 

My silence made them concerned, as if they wondered whether my initial speech had been a fluke, and now I was struck dumb as animal – an apt descriptor as I was soon to discover.

 

Audrey crouched down in front of me and I stumbled back reactively, falling ungracefully onto my butt (but barely felt it as gravity was so much gentler to me at my size). There was no mistaking my reaction – to myself or the rest of them.

 

I was frightened of Audrey, my own friend, embarrassing as it was to admit to myself. She looked like she had been about to say something but now, at my reaction, faltered, a look of stunned sadness crossed her face as she realized the monstrous vision she was inadvertently creating.

 

She held up a hand reassuringly.

 

“Don’t run away,” she murmured, “I’m not going to hurt you. Todd…it’s still you, right?”

 

“Yes,” I said frantically.

 

Why was she talking to me like this? Like I was child? What was this ‘don’t run away’ nonsense? Why were they so ambivalent about acknowledging that it was me? What did I look different, too, was I not only small, but – ?

 

My brain had frozen on the sight of my hands, lifting before my face.

 

They were covered in whitish beige hair. The hair I had, only a moment ago, seen on the fox, which I now realised, casting my eyes around, was no longer to be seen. It must have scampered away while I was distracted. Good thing, it might have had rabies. A chill crept up my spine at the thought. For all kinds of large predators, I was snack-sized now…

 

This just got worse and worse…

 

“Todd,” Landon said, leaning in above Audrey’s head to get a closer look at me, “you know you’re a fox, right? But tiny. I mean, is that what you are? – tell us what’s going on, I don’t know.”

 

…and worse.

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