The ceiling light was like a bright sun.

I shut my eyes again.

My head was gently tipped back for something to try and wedge into my mouth. Cool liquid poured down my throat, tanging with electrolytes.  When my stomach started to fill, I coughed and shook my head, and the liquid accidentally dribbled down onto my chest, quickly covered and wiped away with a tissue. I relaxed.

Warmth and light crept in under my eyelashes. It wasn’t the basement, or my house anymore. On the opposite wall, between the blind slats over the window, it was still dark. The window was a fraction open and the low buzz and hum of passing cars crept in. I dropped my head back, trying to not imagine how big cars were compared to me.

Something gave me a gentle prod. I curled in. The air resonated with Brandon’s voice, only a mutter, but with cinematic vibration:

“Where is that girl? She dump you on your door step?”

I was picked up and carried through the house. It was familiar but as overwhelmingly vast as before; like a basilica. A wood panelled floor that expanded out like a football field; white walls that rose to the heavens. Not to mention ogre-sized furniture: immense chairs that I had no hope of climbing up to sit on; a coffee table big enough to house an entire tea party; dining table that I could have comfortably sprinted across; a potted bamboo houseplant that looked like it belonged in a pine forest.

But my house was no smaller, I reminded myself.

It was Brandon’s steady stride took me past more rooms and corridors until I found myself looking at a white panelled door that opened to reveal a bedroom, femininely styled, in pastel colours.

Below, smoky carpet stretched in every direction, half covered by a shag rug that was lime green, imitating grass. Against one wall a white wooden desk like a cliff-face; even the handles of the desk drawers seemed to resemble the hand-holds of a bouldering wall. The desk held an array of hyper-size stationary straight out of a novelty gift store. It was strewn with crumpled gum papers the size of scrunched A4 paper. The back panel of the desk housed a row of books as tall as doors. There was also a corkboard tacked with study-related memos and a couple of photos. Beside the desk was a small plastic flip-top trash can.

The green shag stopped at a swimming pool sized bed, showing up the faint dents from knees, legs, palms or a butt, like Tyrannosaurus footprints compared to me.

It took a while to take in the surroundings. It was obviously Tori’s room.

I slowed as I drifted through the room, scrolling over the shag rug, passing the bed, before being lowered onto a stretch of grey carpet with a small thud that jumped up through the soles of my feet like a shudder.

Now Brandon’s pant legs utterly dwarfed me.

“Tor?” Brandon called out.

A pause.

Then heavy padding racing up the hallway. A tall, shapely figure appeared in the doorway and stormed into the room like a restless pony. From my perspective, two bare legs flashed past, casting their shadows long over my head.

“Dad!” Tori groaned. “Get out of my room! Now!”

Her bellowing assaulted my tiny sensitive ear drums. Watching her feet rage over the carpet, I drew my body in tight.

Her figure passed us in a flash, going straight for her bed, where a book – a diary – was open on the quilt. She snatched it up and slid it under her pillow.

“That’s no way to address me, young lady,” came Brandon’s taciturn reply.

The girl’s bare feet stood evenly spaced apart, black glossed toenails digging stubbornly into the carpet. I couldn’t see her arms, but I could imagine they were folded.

“Why you home so early?” she sniffed.

“And she calls this ‘early’. Teenager. The case was transferred. Patrol wrapped. So, no trouble back here?”

Tori gave the singsong reply:

“How would I know? Juuust in the bather-room straight-en-ing my haaaair…”

“You know what I call that, kiddo?” He nodded at her. “Arrow straight hair.”

“Dad, duh, I know that,” the younger girl drawled, giving her tresses a disdainful flick. “I want wavy hair.”

“Well, I’m not an expert but as your sole parent I have to know a couple things outside my expert zone: don’t you use a curling iron for that?”

“I want wavy hair not curly hair. Like really really slightly wavy. Like…messy.”

“Go to sleep and in eight hours, I give my word, you will wake up with your dream hair.”

“Sexy messy, not gross messy. Daddy, just stop. You will never understand that this beautaaayyy does not happen by magic.”

“Why do you need to style yourself up so close to midnight, Cinderella? You weren’t talking to Prince Charming on the phone when you should be studying?”

“No, dad, of course not, and news flash: the only Princes at my school are all Princes of stupid and it’s none of your business anyway.”

“Young lady,” Brandon said sternly, “enough of that tone for tonight. I’m going to shower. Finish up in the bathroom, and then serious dad-to-daughter time.”

“Okay,” the girl sighed, and skipped out of the bedroom again without so much as a look in my direction. As she’d pranced back and forth over the carpet she hadn’t even seen me. Was I that small? I blushed and felt my chest tighten and sink in.

Brandon shuffled towards the door after her. He stopped in the doorway and glanced at me.

“Take five, Hero guy. Or a nap if you want. I get it.”

The bedroom light flicked off as he left.

Motionless in the dark, I heard the steady pounding of his shoes recede back down the hallway. Meanwhile, the sound of a door thumping shut as Tori must have secluded herself in the bathroom again.

Now I was alone in the dark in the vast bedroom, and it was very quiet. The low murmur of the TV floated in from the living room, trembling my eardrums more than producing noise, like audio leakage when standing just outside the cinema after the film has started. The murmuring drone of deep, grainy TV voices was soothing…why did characters always murmur their dialogue in tense dramas…?

….

Brandon’s voice came down the hallway:

“—Careful, Tor. Focus on your studies. And then…” his voice became a hesitant shrug, “eh…maybe you wouldn’t be worrying over who to take to senior prom.”

My head jumped up off my chest and my eyes snapped open. I was sitting with my back against the wall. Still dark, still surrounded by a teenage girl’s shadow-draped lair, a street-sized landscape populated by furniture-shaped buildings. I was like a discarded doll. Maybe when I awoke in Lucy’s dollhouse, on some level I never really left it. The thought that I’d been turned into a doll seized me so completely I pinched myself to remember I was a person.

The conversation was still playing quietly, blissfully removed from my plight:

“I’m not worrying,” Tori sounded mortified.

“There’s a good kid out there who will go with you. We just need to find him and borrow him for one night.”

“Sappy, dad,” she said flatly. “Sooo not talking about this right now.”

A chair squeaked and then the sound of footsteps plodding and swishing over the floor, getting louder as they cut a rapid path to the room.

The door creaked, the bedroom suddenly ablaze with light. I blinked rapidly and drew my legs up as a great long shadow dropped over the floor as the girl must have stepped closer, cooling me slightly, or at least my skin broke out with tiny bumps.

A big pair of fluffy white bunny slippers faced me.

“Huh?” Tori exclaimed. And then let out a laugh. “Oh, just you. Crazy, I forgot how tiny you are.”

The floor creaked as I got sight of her shapely ankles bowing in front of me, her long legs bending in two as she crouched down. She was now wearing nothing but a pyjama tank top, panties and the bunny slippers.

Her curiosity peaked, she peered into my face. At least she didn’t seem upset, but somehow her interest in me was demeaning. If I was normal sized surely she would be horrified to find me in here without permission. It was like I was a kitten that had stumbled in here by accident.

“So …” she said casually, sliding her pointer under my chin to tilt my face up at hers “…why are you in my bedroom again?”

For an instant my brain was jumping ahead, trying desperately to reconcile that this was what my life looked like now. Being toyed with by the casually dominating curiosity of a teenage girl.

The floor trembled with close footsteps as Brandon emerged into the bedroom, stopping and inclining his head down at me. Tori glanced as he entered, keeping her fingertip poised under my head. My stomach curled with embarrassment.

“Why don’t I give you two a proper introduction?” he said, reaching past her.

Before I could react, his enormous hand thrust at me. My back instinctively pressed against the wall before the hand was upon me, wrapping securely around my middle, pinning my arms to my sides.

I yelped as I was lifted off the floor, wrenched into the full view of the two of them, under the warm lights of the expansive bedroom.

Tori jumped to her feet.

Once again face to face with Brandon’s teenage daughter, I felt a powerful rush of different emotions: nervousness, indignity, fear.

I felt like I was being presented before her, in the way a boy might ask a girl to a dance, and wait nervously for her approval. This was ludicrous, as there was no equality between us: I was an Academy graduate, whereas she was still high school age. Not to mention our outrageous size disparity. In that moment, I had less in common with a guy propositioning a girl for a dance, than I did a guy propositioned as sacrifice for the giant King Kong.

“Dad!” she shrieked. “Why do you keep doing this! Why do you keep barging into my room!”

“Tor, listen. It’s been a tiring day. Can we just do the happy family thing tonight?” He went to sweep his arms around her.

“Okay, dad.”

The blood drained out of my face as the girl’s giant figure expanded at me like an oncoming truck. I was a hair’s breadth from being crushed between the two enclosing bodies, before Brandon smartly swung me out of the way, bringing his arm up and around the great hump of his daughter’s bare shoulder.

Then my face became tangled in the dark, downy curtain of hair flowing down her back, and Brandon adjusted his grip around my torso, pressing into her upper spine. I tried not to move in order not to become even more tangled, while doing my best not to inhale hair strands. The thick strands oozed with the aroma of whatever fruity shampoo the girl had recently used.

The two of them pulled back again and I was returned to my position suspended in front of Brandon’s chest. He trapped me on one side, and she faced me on the other, and combined their focus was a laser beam on me.

His voice thrummed:

“The little guy here is Steve, our neighbor.”

Tori shifted her weight from one side to the other, and pulled a face.

“Yuck. It doesn’t suit him.”

“His name?”

“He needs a new one. Steve is blah.”

Her eyes narrowed in close study of my face, as if testing names in her head.

I shifted in Brandon’s grip uneasily, but was still paralysed by its constriction, as helpless as a doll. His fingers, curled around my back, kept my arms pressed into my sides. Then the carpet rose up to meet me, the soft but slightly worn and flattened fibres pressing gently under my bare feet as he placed me on the floor. The two of them both gave me a look to check I didn’t try to run off.

Being on the ground was even worse than being held. With the two of them towering over, I felt vulnerable and too exposed, too afraid to move. My immediate company was Brandon’s huge lace ups, blocking the path to the door. Tori had swished over and dropped back onto her bed.

“Why is he such a little ‘fraidy cat?” she said. One fluffy white rabbit was planted firmly on the carpet, with the smooth shaven leg rising like some great monument. The other leg lifted and crossed at the ankle. The suspended bunny bobbed up and down. Then she pulled the slippers off and threw them across the room.

“Play nice,” Brandon said, putting his hands on his hips. “He’s Samira Rockwell’s kid. So you can bring the attitude down a couple degrees.”

My mouth dropped open. Then I remembered he would know, he was a detective.

The girl had snatched up a nail file from her bedside table and was scraping it back and forth against her nails somewhat boredly. Her head tilted at Brandon.

“Who’s Samira Rockwell?”

Brandon explained.

I never knew my mom but I knew she loved to boat on weekends. When I was a baby she had taken a kayak out on a remote flatwater lake. The kayak was recovered on the shore, but there was no trace of my mother anywhere. Authorities suspected suicide, but if so, she left no body, as if she had just become one with the sea foam.

The story about my mom had sobered Tori a little. Still, unimpressed by his daughter’s stubborn air of teenage disdain, Brandon proceeded to give her a parental lecture: study, be courteous, etc. She was leaning sideways, propping herself on one palm. Her head nodded vaguely, but her eyes kept flicking from her dad’s face down to me, standing at his ankle.

I missed half of what Brandon said. Tori’s foot on the floor was pointed at me, the long slender toes scrunching against the carpet in a slow deliberate way, barely concealing her restless excitement. The toenails were like slabs of streaked obsidian, and the surface of her big toe’s nail was large enough for me to lay my head upon. Because her feet were so comparatively big, the sight of her polished toes committing these rhythmic muscular motions was hard to drown out. Like a kind of private performance outside her dad’s view, sent directly to me. I stood still as a statue, as my stomach seemed to float untethered inside my torso, and felt warmth radiating throughout my body. Feet were things all in themselves now, and moved almost with independent will. Looking at a pair of feet now took up my entire attention, the rest of the body – especially someone’s face – seemed miles away.

It didn’t take long before the daughter noticed me looking at her foot. The ghost of a smile crept over her face as she began twirling the big toe of her lifted foot in big arcs, while wiggling the other toes as if to entertain or distract me. The measured way she was waving her foot back and forth, it was like she was trying to hypnotize me.

There was a growing firmness between my legs. I couldn’t believe it. I was getting turned on by a teenage girl’s foot. This was the lowest point in my life. Flushing madly, I forced myself to look away, anywhere else. I gazed up, searching for Brandon’s face, somewhere way up, eclipsing the bedroom light. I was trying to work out how to ask him to pick me up again; my chest was starting to become tight with dread of being vulnerable on the open bedroom floor. But caught myself. How to explain to him that the source of my unease was his own teenage daughter?

Without warning she uncrossed her leg and extended it. Quick as a flash, she traced the perimeter of my face with the soft swipe of her toeprint. I got an unwelcome whiff of the natural aroma of her foot, before jumping back, startled. The girl stifled a giggle at my expense, and crossed her leg again.

I moved back until I was out of reach of her foot, and forced my eyes elsewhere.

Brandon finished his sermonizing, to his daughter’s relief.

“Enough chat. Come out for dinner when you’re ready.” He was talking to Tori, not me. “It’s the best kind: incredibly lazy but tasty.”

He gave me a small salute.

“Rocky.”

His pant legs swished by and the door shut softly, and the doorknob would require a flagpole climb, I couldn’t open it again.

*

On the same day Samira Rockwell had gone missing, in the small country town of Marston, a childless farmer called Marcus Venere stepped out of his barn and looked to the twilight sky, where the final fiery rays of sun were bleeding out to violet, and the first stars just beginning to wink into sight.

He was superstitious and used astral phenomenon to make predictions about upcoming seasonal patterns. What appeared to be the planet Venus, a pinkish-white dot, was in levitation just over the darkening horizon. As Marcus stared, it seemed to expand in size, and the twinkling bloomed into a pink flare.

“Mother of God!”

The spark of light flickered with a white halo like a welding torch before the parallax kicked in and the light, now dominating the night sky, bent at the ground and impacted with dull boom like the footstep of a fairy-tale giant.

When the farmer went over to investigate, he found a crater in the bare tilled earth, now emitting curling tendrils of dust and smoke. In the center was a big hunk of obsidian rock, but cut super fine. It was a very strange looking meteorite.

Coming closer he realized it wasn’t a meteorite. It looked like some kind of black time capsule. There was an engraving on the front, in some Latinised print like an inscription on a stone tablet in a museum, and somehow out of place on this futuristic space metal.

It said:

Under its glassy dome there was a baby, with its eyes shut. As Marcus stared in disbelief, the baby curled its toes and made grabby motions with its hands. When he placed his hand on the glass dome, a laser flashed over his palm and the air pressure lock disengaged and the glass shield (there was a little sound like someone let off a soda can lid, Marcus later recalled)

The Veneres rushed the baby to the hospital to consult a paediatrician, who confirmed the baby was a she and completely healthy. Then the paediatrician made a small painful cry. The baby had grabbed her finger and squeezed – very hard – and had to be plied away with a toy before she let go.

The Veneres never wanted kids, and the will outlined the farm would go to their nephew. But Marcus took the baby as a superstitious augur and insisted they would raise it. He thrust a scribbled note into the Latin-versed doctor’s hand and she hesitantly decoded the capsule inscription from its archaic “Ancient Greek gibberish” to English: Ibidem Samira.

It made no more sense to the Veneres. Nevertheless, an awed, superstitiously-inclined Marcus announced the star-sent baby’s name would be exactly as inscribed on the capsule: Ibidem Samira.

The doctor chuckled at what she saw as Marcus’s bumpkin ignorance, and told him that, in her scholarly experience, ‘Ibidem’ wasn’t a proper name. Embarrassed, Marcus’s wife, Sandra, chided her husband, and finalized the baby’s name herself.

When they returned to the farm, some strange people from out of town had taken the capsule away. The stablehand said they were special cops from some ‘Foundation’ but otherwise he was too spooked to say any more. So Sandra never saw the inscription on the capsule herself, only Marcus’s scribbled recollection, in which the Sigma was around the wrong way, and so what she ultimately wrote on the infant’s birth certificate was Zamira Venere.