Molly was in love with the feeling of her squirm. Her struggles against her impregnable jaws. The way her body was slurped down her esophagus, bulging out in her throat, before landing in her stomach to be digested away. A part of Molly did have to admit she felt a little bad; Vivian was always kind to her, and during Molly’s first day at school, Vivian offered to show her some of the ropes and talk to her during lunch. She was a good friend, and it was useful having a friend who was an upperclassman. But it was far more useful to have a friend willing to stay behind after school with Molly for a rooftop excursion, only to be jumped, bound, and gagged before she was made to serve her final true purpose. It made no difference, Molly thought. All the better to sate her master.
The Twilit Hour was already waning. A few clouds were drifting along the sky, obscuring the moonlight. Darkness was taking over. It was time to get home. Usually, Molly wouldn’t be out so late, however today luck was on her side. Her mother had to work late, and her sister had already confided in her that she planned to drive to the city with friends this evening. She was free and clear.
“Oh God!” Garnet arched her back as she cackled to the sky. “We have got to do that again! Where did you get that?! I wanna eat the next one! How did she taste? Tell me!” She grabbed Molly’s shoulders, and Molly giggled a bit at her touch. She politely removed Garnet’s hands before responding.
“I’ll show you later. Right now, I’ve gotta get home. It’s a bit of a long walk, but shouldn’t be too bad.”
Sofia was chewing a bit of lose skin off the edge of her thumbnail. “You know,” she said between bites. “I’ve got a cousin who would love this stuff.”
Molly cringed. “No, nobody else. Just us for now.”
Molly exchanged pleasantries and hugs with Garnet and Sofia before reluctantly shooing them away. Suddenly, she was alone on the rooftop.
She pulled out the bottle. It was now completely empty. Shrugging, she trotted to the side of the parapet and chucked it over, where she could only hope it landed in the recycling dumpster. Then she darted to the door, pulling it closed behind her, finally safe away from the cold and the wind.
“Ah…” Molly sighed in relief. She squatted on a step and felt around for the lock, but it was nowhere to be found.
“Hm?” Molly flattened her hands on the steps. She checked the top-most step, then the next one down. She swiped all along the dusty surface from top to bottom, yet there was no lock. She poked her head out the rooftop door, thinking she may have accidentally brought it out with her, but she saw nothing.
Well, this was a bit of a problem. She had stayed behind expressly to put the lock back on the door, after all. Cover their tracks, that sort of thing.
Molly closed herself back inside, and she wondered. Technically, she hadn’t been the one to enter the padlock keycode. One of her friends did – Garnet, probably. They likely knew where it was.
Molly sighed, content again. And she trotted downstairs through a somewhat acrid scent but paid it no mind. She skipped down the hall, her cottony blue cardigan flowing like a spring dress behind her. She reached the lobby – Mr. Guttierez was just finishing up a final sweep.
“Hola Señor Gutiérrez. ¿Qué pasa?”
When he laid eyes on Molly’s skipping frame, the tough and hardened expression on his face as he wielded the broom melted. “Molly, ¿cómo estás?”
Then, he got an odd look. Mr. Guttierez started again: “¿Sabés que tu hermana te está buscando?”
Molly stopped skipping. “¿Q-qué?”
Mr. Guttierez pointed to the door.
Molly dashed up to the window and stood on her tippy toes to look out of it. Sure enough, Alexis’s car was right there in the nearest parking space.
Molly’s heart dropped. She reached in her cardigan’s pocket for her phone. It was silent. She hoped against hope she wouldn’t see the message she knew she was going to see: Yo Mol-Mol. Im outside <3
Molly glanced back at Mr. Gutierrez. “Gracias!” And she raced out, having to brace her shoes against the floor to get enough force to push the double doors open.
***
The lock.
I’d been staring at it for a long time. Or, it felt that way, at least.
The first waves of… whatever cocktail of emotions I was feeling at the moment… had only just begun to subside. But when I looked at the lock, it came flooding back. I hadn’t even realized it was still in my hands. But as far as I knew, it was an artifact. Proof that whatever that was… it was real. On some level.
The lock still felt cold.
I cupped it in both my hands. I rubbed them together with the lock in between, letting the vague metallic feel and smell of it intermingle with my fingers.
What was that? What did I just see?
I leaned back in the seat, staring at my own reflection in a crooked rearview mirror. Let’s start with the basics.
I saw Molly. There was no doubt about it.
Okay… let’s reconcile this. She’s Molly. Whatever she was doing up there, she must’ve had a good reason.
Well, idiot, what was she doing there, then? You saw pretty much everything, didn’t you?
My stomach churned the more I forced myself to recall. But it wasn’t something I could etch out of my brain. I saw them… Molly and two girls… I was already recalling. They were some of Molly’s friends. Sofia, the tall, blond one. Soft-spoken, and very pretty, but a bit of an alt vibe about her. And Grace…? N-no… Garnet. The shorter, excitable one.
Then I realized. That must’ve been it! That must’ve been the key! Those girls… those girls… whatever it was they were doing… they must’ve made Molly do it. Peer pressure! Nobody pressures my little sister into doing anything except me!
I was all ready to formulate a game plan and put an end to this madness when I felt another needle stick its way into my chest. I hadn’t even addressed the biggest issue at play, here.
Did I… just… see somebody… shrink?
Like, get small? Was that what I witnessed?
I wanted to say no, file this for later, and never worry about it ever again. But it was either that, or in the two seconds I looked away, that writhing girl on the ground quite literally vanished into thin air. It scares me that I didn’t know which one was the more terrifying possibility.
My mind was a shattered vase of a million different ideas and thoughts, fears. I had to reconcile all of these or else I’d go fucking insane. But the only person with whom I’d ever feel comfortable talking about any of this was…
The passenger side door opened.
I yelped, and the lock dropped from my hands onto the floor, sliding a bit on the weather mat.
“Heya!” came that sweet saccharine voice I knew all too well.
Molly slid into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her. She missed my slight scream in the noise. I sighed.
“Hey, Molly.” I tried my best to speak normally, but I let a single voice crack slip.
“Sorry… I was at a club meet, and I forgot to tell you.” She put on a truly remorseful, pouty face that made me want to confess to her every sin I’d ever committed.
“It’s fine, Mol… let’s just… go home.”
I put the car in reverse, backed out, and put her in drive.
The ride home was nothing but Molly asking questions and me answering. Tersely. “How was your day?” “Good.” “Did Mom ask you to pick me up?” “Yes.” “Do you wanna go to Bruster’s this weekend?” “Maybe.” I could tell her plan – she was trying to wear me down. She thought I couldn’t resist those scrumptious cheeks and that toothy grin she liked to put on. And she was absolutely right. My responses were becoming less curt, and in that last leg of the trip I realized – quite spontaneously – we had a bona fide conversation on our hands. I felt my grip on the steering wheel slacken as we drove into the night. My heart was slowing down. I was pushing the images of what I saw out of my mind. This was my sister, the perfect sister. The most delicious human being in the whole entire world. Nothing could ever make me stop loving her. I was keen to believe it was a misunderstanding… maybe I’d ask her about it once we get home.
It wasn’t long before we did. I pulled into our carport while Molly was telling me about a joke someone made in class, and I felt more relaxed than ever.
I let out a long, hard-won sigh…
“So, Molly,” I asked.
“Mm hmm?” she replied, doing that thing she did where she purses her lips while waiting to answer a question.
“Well, I saw–”
BZZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZZ!
“Shit! Mom!” I said. When I realized my mistake, I looked at Molly guiltily. “Uh, I mean, uh, I –”
“I’m familiar with ‘shit’,” Molly said, with air quotes.
I smirked. “Alright you little pottymouth.” I reached out to pat her bundle of hair when my ears were pierced by a very different sound that accompanied my phone’s vibration. It wasn’t Mom at all.
“What the hell…?” I said to myself, and I reached into my pocket to grab my phone.
AMBER ALERT. VICTIM IS VIVIAN GRAY, AGE THIRTEEN, DESCRIPTION TALL WITH CHERRY BLONDE HAIR, GREEN EYES. SUSPECT UNKNOWN. LAST KNOWN LOCATION IS DALTON MIDDLE SCHOOL, IF OBSERVED CALL 9-1-1
I let the phone vibrate in my hands a few more times as I read it over and over again. And over again.
Molly’s phone rang too; she fished it out her cardigan and was greeted by the same alert. “Oh gosh!” Molly exclaimed. “I know her!”
“Do you?” I did not turn to look at Molly.
“Mm hmm!” She sniffed. “I hope she’s okay…” She looked back at me. “So, you were saying something?”
I glanced at her. Her face had returned to neutrality.
“What was I saying?” I asked.
“Ya knooow? You were saying you saw…” she waved her hands around for emphasis. She really wanted to know what it was I had seen.
I shook my head. “Shoot. I don’t know… slipped my mind.”
“Oh.”
We sat in the car, idle, for about a minute.
“You can go inside, Molly. I’ll chill out here for a bit.”
“You sure?” Molly shifted her eyes.
“Yeah.” I shut the car off. “Get in quick before you catch cold.”
Molly squinted, and she hopped out, trotting to the front door. She turned her key, then looked back at me briefly before ducking inside.
Once she was out of sight, I picked up the lock again, and I stuffed it inside the center console.
Something had happened tonight. I don’t know what… but I know Molly knows. I don’t know if she knows that I know… but I know she knows. And I was going to find out what.
***
Molly finished putting the bow in her hair and took a glance in the mirror. She did a little twirl, her denim jacket swirling outward. Matching sisters, she thought. She darted out of her room and into the hallway, illuminated by a bit of sun streaming through a window in the living room. She reached the end and rapped her knuckles on the door.
The muffled heavy metal on the other side stopped.
“Who is it?!”
Molly rolled her eyes. “It’s me! Molly!”
“Molly? Oh, shit –”
CRASH!!
“SHIT, DAMMIT, uh–”
The door unlocked, and Alexis poked her head out and looked around suspiciously. Intoxicant fumes wafted out from the opening. Through the slit in the door, Molly could see the tall speaker next to her bed had been knocked over, and it was easy to deduce she wasn’t wearing any pants.
“You ready to go?” Molly said.
“Go… where?” Alexis asked.
Molly felt something in her chip away. “To… the bakery? Remember? You said we were going to get some of those pound cakes? Remember?”
Alexis’s countenance flashed. She closed her eyes in a brief lament and put a palm on her forehead. “That was today… listen… I’ve… I’ve got… an appointment – interview. Today. I can’t go.”
She tried to close the door, but Molly planted her foot inside before she could. It was bare; Alexis yelped, and the door stopped nanometers away from crushing her delightful sister’s ankle.
“Even you don’t believe what you’re saying. We’ve been planning this since last week! Why are you doing this? Why are you avoiding me?!” Molly couldn’t help it. She started to tear up.
“M-molly!” Alexis tried to explain. As much as she wanted to take Molly inside to console her, Molly knew she wasn’t allowed in while Alexis was “lighting up”, quote unquote. “Why would you think that? I’m not –”
“Yes, you are…” Molly sniffed. “Y-you were gone all day yesterday. You said you were going to take me to a movie… but by the time you came back, the theater was closed…”
“Well yeah, I’m sorry! But–”
“And Friday, after we got home, I wanted to play some Mario Kart with you, like w-we always do, on Fridays, together… I wanted to cheer you up since you couldn’t go out with your friends…” Molly wiped her face on her sleeve, perhaps as a preventative measure. She hadn’t loosed a single tear quite yet. “But you just went to sleep. You didn’t even say anything when I knocked on your door.”
“Okay, Molly… I’m sorry, but –”
“A-and… when I… enter the room…” Her beleaguered grievances were broken up by intermittent sniffles. “You… you… always… leave… even when I… go to the porch… and sit next to you… you always…” Molly trailed off and looked down at the carpet.
“I… seriously?” Alexis sounded genuinely confused.
Molly nodded.
“I never noticed that…” Alexis pondered. “Look… Molly… I just need a bit of time. I’m trying to handle some things. And try as I might, I just can’t focus when you’re around being so dang funny and adorable.”
Molly cracked a smile.
“So, wait for me, alright? I’ll be back before you know it. And… next week, I’ll make sure to take you along with me to the bakery so you can pick out an extra-large poundcake. My treat.”
Alexis gave a soft smile, and she closed the door gently. The burnt smell dissipated in the air.
Molly stood at her door for a few moments. Then, she sullenly turned in place and trodded back to her room, sore, rejected, and dejected. She closed her door behind her and turned the lock. She took off her denim jacket and hung it up in her closet before plopping on the made twin-sized bed with her feet suspended off past the edge.
Molly pulled her phone out from beneath her and opened up her texts.
Garnet had sent her several over the past 48 hours.
HEYYYY BESTIE THAT WAS SO FUN LETS DO IT AGAIN :DD
my body has been shaking sooo much.. its still inside me i think
pleeez we have to do one this weekend!! i dont thinnk I can wait a hole school week.. i can go myself if i i have too.. just tell me were it is
my head hurts
help
i took some advil so i shoud be good.. is this how u felt the first time you did it??
Molly flipped face-side up and put a hand on her tummy. Molly could almost trace the exact moment in her life when she felt the beginning symptoms of withdrawal. She was in her Mom’s car on the way home from a perfectly uneventful day of school when suddenly, it felt as if the world had been about to collapse inward, and Molly was the only one who could sense it. She had to pull her hood up over her face – in that way children sometimes do – so her mother wouldn’t suspect anything from her distraught expression. The moment the car was put in park, Molly bolted out, launched into the house, and locked herself in her room waiting for the pains to subside.
Molly shook her head. She’d warned Garnet, of course, but either way, she wouldn’t wish the sensation on her worst enemy. All that mattered now though was that as long as they reconvened in a timely manner, the feelings of withdrawal would lessen. At least, that’s how it worked for her and Sofia.
Speaking of which…
Hey. Garnet texted me. Shes kind of freaking out. Check up on her soon.
Im feeling it too, by the way. But I should be fine. How are you holding up?
Also, whats your schedule like for next week? We should hold off on picking out more students, but I can probably trick some travelers at the hotel into following me. Should be easy enough :)
Molly sighed as she locked her arms in place, holding her phone above her. The girls were okay, at least.
She sat up. At least they were still acting normal. Relatively.
Molly slammed her head into her pillow. She tried to put Alexis’s behavior out of her mind. She’s an adult; Molly’s a child. It wasn’t an ideal scenario for either of them, and Alexis has a bunch of weird adult needs and feelings that Molly’s only read about in books. For the moment, Molly had to focus on herself.
She thought about Friday night.
She thought about the way she lowered Vivian onto her tongue.
She thought about her spindly body, squirming between her fingertips.
She thought about the way her tongue sampled her taste, how utterly delicious she was before it enveloped her, and sucked her down into Molly’s guttural esophagus.
Her sweet taste, so immaculate. She was a sweet girl, after all. Strange. Molly’s greatest fear was the guilt. The idea that she’d hate herself after performing such a thing to someone who had once done her a great kindness.
But now…
After coming to know… it…
She hadn’t even felt the tiniest smidge of guilt.
It was quite simple calculus, really. Molly’s belly – as well as her friends’ – had been transformed into a sacrificial pyre. A fiery cauldron, identical in every way to the mere food repository it had once been, with the noted difference that all those sent down had only one purpose… to sate it.
It wasn’t just their stomachs, of course. It was everything. Every part of Molly… since that first day… had changed. Everything she did, it was now in service to it. Each part of her body hid something beneath the surface, something that shimmered and shied away from the light of day… but seemed to stir at the very border between day and night.
Of course, she was still roughly the same Molly. She still loved poundcake. She still loved Ariana Grande. She still thought that cranberry juice had been invented expressly to punish death row inmates. It was just, the scope of Molly’s understanding of both herself and the world around her had broadened, and where she once floundered helplessly for any sort of purpose, any type of greater reason for existing… now she knew. It was freeing. It was mesmerizing to finally understand the sure reality and, more than that, to understand exactly what she had to serve and how she was meant to serve it, as well as the rewards for carrying out her duty.
And what rewards they were.
Molly thought more about Sofia’s offer. And she began to draft a message.
***
I haven’t been able to sleep.
My look currently was waffling somewhere between “eastern European grandma”, “swamp witch”, and “Chipotle burrito”. I wrapped the throw blanket around my shoulders a bit tighter and slid my feet a tad closer together on the edge of the chair.
The truth is, I hated it. I hated telling Molly “No”. It just wasn’t in my DNA, and the consequences of that rejection had eaten at me all the way into the wee hours of the night. She had a power over me, and she’s a far better person than I because there is no way I wouldn’t abuse that power if our roles were reversed. But despite wanting to spend time with her, memories of that night come flooding back every time I look at her. And with those memories, so too does my nausea.
I took a munch out of my Hot Pocket before looking back at the monitor screen. 12:37 A.M.
I refreshed the page.
The Dalton Star news article reporting Vivian’s disappearance was still exactly the same. There’s no sort of information or leads. She just vanished into thin fucking air.
A part of me knew how goddamn insane this must look. I’ve never even met the girl. I had no clue what she even looked like before the news websites plastered her face on the Missing Persons’ column. She was just the latest in a line of random, disconnected disappearances of gullible young people. There is no reason I should care about her. There is no connection between her life and mine. None.
No connection. Except Molly.
At first, I was tricking myself into thinking I was somehow doing this for Molly. Trying to track down information on someone she knew. Someone she cared about. I really really wanted to believe that’s what I was doing. I still do. And it makes me feel like an absolute monster whenever I run the numbers in my brain and realize it. Realize there was a simple solution staring me in the face, one that explained everything. I tried to escape it, I tried to beat the reality of it out of my mind.
I was scared. Of Molly.
Shit. Even now, it sounds like the world’s worst joke. I hadn’t done a great job at picking up the pieces of my brain that shattered outside the school gates, but after several sleepless nights to ponder it, I could only think about how that was Molly’s face out there. How she looked like she was absolutely relishing what it was she was doing. How the person they had tied up down there looked sorta like Vivian, if you squint, though I admit I never got a good look at her face. How she disappeared. How she disappeared. How she disappeared. How she –
The mouse onscreen was jittering.
My hands were shaking.
I tried to chalk it up to just nerves. Just the drugs. Just the surprise at finally seeing my little sister doing bad things for once. I would look into her eyes, and I would feel her love. I would feel her sweetness. And my anxiety would wash away. But then. I’d look too deeply into her eyes. And there’s something. I don’t know. I just don’t know. Something. Inside them. It wasn’t there before. I didn’t like it. I hated it. And then I hate myself for hating whatever it was my sister had become. The thread in my mind holding onto Molly’s innocence was fraying and fraying, and I still don’t know how much of it is because I’m yanking so tightly to hold on lest I fall into the endless abyss. She was my rock. What had she become? What am I making her out to be?
I looked up cases of disappearing into thin air. No luck. I wondered briefly if that girl might’ve been raptured. Mom probably would’ve thought so, but there was no way in Hell I was going to mention the first thing about this to her. Onto my next hypothesis – shrinking. Even as I typed the words into Google, I cringed at myself. It somehow felt like an even more absurd premise to accept. But it was the one that more closely matched with my perception of the event. Still, I didn’t get much except for a few articles on male erectile dysfunction. I dumped my queries into Tor, but still got nothing. I maintained alumni privileges on a few research databases, so for the Hell of it I decided to check there too. I found a few articles that toyed with the notion from a theoretical level, but none that genuinely engaged with the idea that size-changing was possible. The thought that whatever it was Molly knew about it and I didn’t was baffling to me. She may be a precocious little upstart, but she was still a child.
She’s still a child…
I leaned back in my chair. It began to tip over. “Whoa!” I lunged for the rim of my desk and stabilized myself.
I glared into the light of the monitor. Right. She was a child. There’s only so many places she could be at any given day. As much as it disturbed me to do so, I would have to keep an eye on her for a while. Just long enough for me to confirm that she wasn’t who I hated myself for thinking she was.
And then we could be sisters again.