For sins he could not list, he was cursed by God to play the thimble. In the beginning, She allowed him the dignity of moving himself along the path that chance had chosen—but only when he had to travel a short distance. When She rolled high, She sighed with impatience and carried him to the target square herself. Between turns, he had nothing to do but stand in place. When he tried to move off the square, someone’s hand came down in a swift chop and walled him off; when he tried to sit, someone lifted him off the board and goaded his legs into an upright position.

Occasionally, he was forced to dodge falling houses. Cassidy—who appeared to be enjoying herself the most—started the sub-game of dropping houses onto the board whenever she built property. Of course, she built on every square she owned, whenever he was on it. The others joined in the practice, even if they were more conservative in where and when they built property. In fact, save Cassidy, the women seemed intensely focused on actually winning the game. Other than a shared laugh when Kenzie corrected his behavior, they avoided engaging with his presence at all. In the past, he hated being ignored, but now that it was the only alternative to being treated like a toy, he found a way to enjoy it.

Kenzie drew a card from the community chest. “Oops. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Sorry, bud, it’s the law.”

“Come on, Your Honor, he couldn’t have possibility done it, look at him! He wouldn’t hurt a fly!” said Margaret. She smiled down him, “Well, couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Yeah, at least tell us what he’s being accused of!” said Danielle.

“Maybe he was perving on people in the women’s restroom,” said Farah, “swept right in behind someone, hid beneath fallen bits of toilet paper, and crept right under a stall door.”

“Ew, could you imagine!” said Danielle, “I think I’d smash ‘em right then and there. Good riddance, one less creep in the world.”

“Really? I’d let him see whatever he wanted,” said Jasmine, “what’s he gonna do? I’d pick him up, give him the world tour, one big smooch, and them splash! right into toilet. Or maybe I’d take him home. Sharpie could use a new toy, her old one’s pretty ragged.”

Sharpie was her cat. He met her, once—he insisted on keeping his distance from then on. At the thought of seeing her now, he shuddered.

“I like it, I like it.” said Margaret. “What about you, Marianne?”

Marianne appeared to be deep in thought. She tapped her pointer finger against her chin and said: “I’d find a way to stuff him in the tampon dispenser, then I’d leave it to chance.”

“That’s fucked up,” said Kenzie, “I approve. In reality, his crime was a lot worse than bathroom snooping. Assault and battery.”

“Who was the victim?” said Marianne, who let out a faux gasp.

“Me, right here.” She pointed to her left cheek. “He was just a little bigger than he is now. I had him right here in my palm, and I was asking him why he had so much trouble with my line of work. I was an influencer at the time…”

“You did wacky sex shit on the internet!” said Margaret.

“Yes, Margie, thanks. Anyway he got a little upset and hit me right in the face. Obviously, I popped him in my mouth in self-defense, and spat him into the kitchen sink till he cooled off, but the incident still left me shaken. So, off to jail he goes.”

She smiled at him with a false benevolence. “Actually, it seems pretty boring to just tuck him away in the Monopoly jail.” She took him in hand and scanned the room. “Who’s losing?”

“Cassidy,” Jasmine said instantly, “She’s out soon if things don’t go her way.”

“Hey, don’t count me out yet! I just got a little carried away!”

“Tell you what, Cass—is Cass okay? Why don’t you keep track of him till I can get him out on probation?”

“Really?” She looked at him with a certain terrifying intensity; she was a magnifying glass, concentrating the sun’s rays into a deadly beam. “What am I allowed to do with him?” She asked without looking away.

“Anything you want,” said Kenzie, “as long as you leave something for the rest of us.”

Cassidy smiles, and he felt a stone growing in his gut; just when he was starting to think the routine of the game had extinguished his fear, he found himself bound tightly in Cassidy’s grip, immobile and helpless and squirming beneath her hungry eyes.

“Is it possible I could take him somewhere private?”

“Oh, sure,! Kenzie said, “go ahead. You can use his old room if you’re alright with Funko Pops. Want me to just play for you? Till he’s out on parole, I don’t have much to do.”

“If you wouldn’t mind! I just know nothing like this is ever gonna happen again. I wanna savor it.” He was in front of her mouth as she spoke. Her tone was almost bestial, and the feeling of her warm, damp breath triggered some ancient instinct in his lizard brain. Run, run, run. His feet even emulated the movement, but it was futile. He imagined himself being ground beneath her teeth. For once, he desperately hoped that luck was on Kenzie’s side. Then he reconsidered: Kenzie’s luck only ever brought him misery. If fate was on her side, his immediate future belonged to Cassidy.

Cassidy’s methods of domination were more direct than Kenzie’s, he noticed, less varied, less creative—more physical. When they arrived in his room, she plopped on the bed and kicked her shoes off and switched the TV on, as if she’d lived in that room for years. She absent-mindedly squeezed him from time to time or rolled his body along her bare leg like a ball of clay she was lathing into a thin strip; she sat cross-legged on the bed and pinned him in the pit between her legs with one hand. Occasionally, she let out a stunted giggle, but for the first few minutes she was otherwise silent. Once she’d settled on something to watch, however, she started to speak.

“Man, sucks for you that I suck at monopoly. We could have had a lot of fun together.” She dangled him by one hand above her chest and let him fall into her cleavage. “Christ, there’s so much we could’ve done! Guess I have to make up for it now.” Slowly, the walls of flesh around him began to close in; the pressure grew and grew before she finally released it. One more second, he swore, and he would have been crushed. “Remember when I asked you in middle school whether you liked boobs or video games more, and you said video games? What a dumb question. Even dumber answer though.”

She plucked him out and clasped him in her hand and said, “Wonder what you taste like.” She licked him and spat. “Not particularly good. What exactly are you good for?” Suddenly, she had an idea.

His world spun downward, and darkness fell. Once again, he was completely paralyzed. A soft membrane held him firm against what felt like skin. He realized he was trapped inside her shorts.

“Look around, man. Scope the place out. Make this good for me goddamnit! Oh come on, how could you miss that one!” He heard cheering and the sound of a whistle coming from the direction of the TV.

Cassidy was clearly content to leave him there for now. With nothing to do, he thought about how they first met. It was a middle school fling, nothing serious, or so he thought. April of that  year he’d received a new laptop for his birthday and that was the end of it. Perhaps he could have been more cordial. From what he could remember, the breakup was abrupt, and she hadn’t taken it well. But what did she expect? They were in 8th grade! Was she expecting to me Mr. Right at age 13? Next year they were at different high schools. How was that going to work?

It was true she tried to contact him, seemingly every year, without fail. By phone, on Facebook, via email (or, once, a singing telegram, during the performance of which he was mostly just shocked by the continued existence of singing telegrams). He dodged her, of course. During college, he enjoyed cataloguing aspects of his social life on Instagram: parties, trips with friends, long-repressed nights at local clubs. She’d leave a comment on occasion; he’d see it and think nothing. He always half-considered her a stalker.

Well, isn’t it weird to look up people you used to know, just because you used to know them? Or to call them… once a year. Okay, but she should have learned to let things go. Though she hadn’t tried to make contact in a few years. And maybe… maybe he was always way to quick too cut her out of his life. Nothing prevented him from replying, giving a cursory how have you been? Maybe he did need to cut her out, but what was stopping him from just telling her that? He was beginning to see a pattern.

Everywhere he went, he left people behind, and every time they reached out, he played possum. He played the ghost. Every time.

No, no! That’s not it! He thought he was losing it. He thought being reduced to such a small size for such a long time was beginning to have an effect he hadn’t anticipated. His old memories had been revised without his noticing; there he was, for instance, at Cassidy’s feet, tiny and insignificant, rejecting her invitation to the middle school prom; and why would such a small thing have such a big ego? Why would it think it has carte blanche to treat others however it wanted? When it should live in fear lest any giant crush it for its insolence. But he fought against his apparent brainwashing. It was just another one of Kenzie’s tricks. It was his life. These had been his decisions to make. It was his life, and he could let people in or kick them out as he pleased. Period.

 But then again, maybe…

The world rumbled. A slit in the darkness opened over his head, and a hand was reaching through. He was in front of her face again. “Couldn’t feel you moving anymore. Just making sure you didn’t die.”

He was going to do it. He was going to let her have it. He didn’t know quite what he was going to say, but he whatever it was he was going to scream it as loud as he could, and whether it sounded like a lion’s roar or a rat’s squeak was up to chance; the will to roar was his.

“Hey.” She said, and he stopped. That one word utterly disarmed him. There was something so melancholy in the way it left her mouth, like it was meant to be the first note of a lament. And he realized that he was no longer bound in her fist. Instead, he was standing on one of her hands. Below his feet, the skin gave like a soft bed. He liked the sensation of standing on skin at this size; he felt weightless. He tried to summon up that anger again, but he could not. Instead, he stood in rapt anticipation of whatever she said next.

“Those aren’t fucking Funko Pops!” She quickly tossed him aside onto the bed and stood up and approached the shelf. “Those are anime figurines!” Arrayed from end to end were tiny statues he’d collected over the years. They weren’t his proudest accomplishment, but their acquisition brought him a kind of simple joy he’d learned to appreciate since his career had picked up.

What he wouldn’t give to have those days of toil back.

“This is Revy, from Black Lagoon, right? I remember telling you about that show when were together, cause you couldn’t watch Adult Swim. Man, you used to tell me stuff like this was dumb. But here you are.” She turned around and looked him.

“But here you are,” she repeated, the words stretched in a half-sung fashion, “just… there. Huh. You know, I thought it was funny how we’ve all been treating you. I figure you were kind of a jerk to the rest of them, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t really thought about you much since we broke up. Got pretty annoyed when you ignored me, but it’s whatever. I get it.” Slowly, she approached the bed; slowly, her hand crept through the air, as if she were wary of startling him. It settled down in front of him. The fingers stretched outward, asking him to take his place on her palm.

“Sorry, I dropped houses on you and stuff. Give me just a little bit of power—or a lot, I guess—and I go nuts instantly. Though I can’t deny it was cute the way you danced around to dodge them.” She laughed. “Sucks that I won’t be taking you home tonight.”

Taking me home? he though, Where did that come from?

She hauled him over to the shelf and dropped him down on one end. “Go on, I wanna see how big you are.” Despite his reservations, he obeyed. He walked over to a figurine of Deku from My Hero Academia, which reached up to his waist. “Okay, you’re worth at least two Dekus. What about this.” She set the Revy figurine down next to him. To his annoyance, he found himself looking up to me its eyes.

“Hah! She’s a head taller than you! That’s so good! Smaller than your own toys!” Suddenly, her eyes shifted to the end of the row, where a particularly large figurine towered over the rest. A moment later he had been plucked into the air and set down next to it.

“Damn! Up to her knees! Man, Kenzie was way off-base waiting till now to call me up. Would have liked to see you at my knees. At this size, you’re just so… insubstantial.” She blinked and looked up at the ceiling briefly, “Weird word for me. But it works. It’s like you’re barely here at all. I would have liked to see you about where you are compared to… whoever this. Oh, wait a minute. I know who this is! This is Akali, right? From League?” There was a brief silence, as if he were meant to speak; she continued before he could. “Wasn’t she your uh, your favorite one. Whatever the word is. She’s kind of hot, not a bad choice.” Akali had been his first main in League. He bought the statuette as a gift to himself after his job had hired him on, as a monument to a hobby the draconic demands of  adulthood could no longer allow. It brought him a strange sense of relief whenever he saw it thereon. Excluding the present moment. That old sense of relief had been absorbed by a general fear of anything big enough to crush him. When he was about its size, Kenzie had made him sleep with it.

“I can see why you chose her over me, I guess. Weird that you got into all this stuff after middle school. You used to hate all this anime shits.” Her voice softened. Somewhere in the back of his head, a feeling he couldn’t quite parse was beginning to stir. “I never stopped loving it. I got a shelf just like this at home. A few, actually. Man, I am a one grown-ass woman, huh? And your one grown-ass man.”

Her eyes bore down on him from above and felt the scrutiny of a mountain. Whenever he could snatch a moment of reprieve, his mind settled on cataloguing his sensations. There were different ways the world looked at you at this size. In the dollhouse, for instance, his old living quarters, he felt fully in control. This illusion was very easily shattered by Kenzie whenever she rocked the house back and forth or pryed the roof from the walls. But otherwise, the dollhouse conferred a certain feeling of security, a feeling that had long ago receded like the memory of a past life. Similarly, at night, when Kenzie’s momentous movements had finally settled into the steady, rocking pulse of mere respiration, he felt invincible. Occasionally, a fly or ant would arrive at his napkin carton bed to harass him. But once they were driven off, he was alone in a world far larger than he, with no human force to oppress him. Years ago, he’d spent a night beneath the stars in east Texas; the feeling was the same. When he was on the couch, lying against the back cushion, he felt unmoved by Kenzie’s gargantuan activities, almost fearless. An enclosed space—partial or entire—felt like a warm blanket.

But here, exposed to the open air on all sides, it was as if there were nothing in the entire universe but him and the giant. She bowed her head down till it was all he could see, a freckled, heaving mass. Every pore was visible, every blemish. And yet, he could not help butthink she was beautiful. For so long, he’d only been able to conceive of his giant world in monstrous terms. He felt like he was seeing her, truly seeing her, for the first time tonight, even though she appeared all but eager to grind his tiny form between her teeth.

“Is there anything you want, little dude? Before I have to go.”

Huh?

“I’m out, man. Kenzie texted me a few minutes ago. ‘sorry cass can’t win from this far behind.’ I’m bad a board games, sucks but it’s whatever. She’ll come around as soon as you’re out of jail. But if you want something—this is probably the last time I’ll see you. I mean, even if you got back to normal somehow. You know, I only came cause Kenzie invited me; and she only invited me—or all of us I guess—because she’s done with you, wants you gone.” She plucked him from the shelf and laid against the end of the bed, placing him on the ground before her.

“Whoever wins takes take you home. So… last chance. Anything you want?”

Steps were resounding down the hall. “There she comes. Speak now or forever hold your peace.” He tried to muster up something to say, some grand, climactic speech that would bury their—his—past mistakes. There was no reason they couldn’t be friends after this, somehow. The logistics needed some work. His newly-crowned owner would be possessive, he was sure. He stopped himself. He reflected briefly on where this sudden interest in renewed friendship had come from. Nothing came to him.

The door flung open and the heft of the displaced air tossed him onto his side. Slowly, he looked upward in anticipation of Kenzie’s smug grin. Instead, it was Margaret, cigarette in hand, her face twisted into a scowl.

“I’m out too! Can you hand him over for a second? I wanted to say good-bye to the little loser.”

Cassidy lifted him from the ground and passed him to Margaret, who inhaled from her cigarette and let the smoke loose in his direction. He fell to his knees and coughed, his eyes red; his head began to ache.

“Thanks, that was all I needed,” she said, handing him back. “Bye, bye. Bug boy. Hope Jasmine wins you, it’s what you deserve!” she yelled as she moved down the hall. He heard the front door open and shut.

“Jesus… you okay? Guess you really know how to piss people off. You know, it brings people together, in a way. That’s gotta be worth something.” She laughed and stood up and tilted one hand into the other so he wouldn’t fall as she left his old room and walked down the hall.

There was something he wanted from her, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

“Here’s the boy.” she said, dropping him onto the game board. “Think I’ll go right now. I had my fun, said my goodbyes. Gotta plane to catch tomorrow.”

“Ooh, where to?” asked Kenzie.

“New York.  They’re displaying some art I did. It’s some kind of east meets west exhibition or something and they decided I fit the bill. My agent says more people’ll come if I’m there to answer questions. Not a fan of telling people ‘my story’ or whatever, but you know. It is what it is.”

“That all sound so exciting! The big city, the art world… so romantic. Shame a certain someone can’t go with you.”

“You know,” she said, looking down at him, “I think I’ll get over it. Thanks for putting this together, Kenzie, it was fun.”

“It was my pleasure!”

“And it was nice meeting all of you!” she said as she walked out the door. Right before exiting the house, she turned around. “Whoever wins, I expect a steady stream of pics! Get creative!” The door closed behind her, and he instantly noticed five pairs of eyes bearing down on him like a pack of wolves. Two players down.

“She was nice, wasn’t she?” said Kenzie, rubbing her finger along his back. He noticed her funds had only depleted since he’d been away. The Almighty Kenzie, who had never known defeat, was a few bad turns away from an early exit; his freedom—from her, at least—was just on the horizon.

The dice once again went up in her clasped hands and just as quickly crashed against the table.  The impact shook him from his feet. Snake eyes.