Jacob observed through his glass prison – that gave him a somewhat hazy view – at two females cracking jokes in the distance. Friends of Reign, his 16-year-old daughter. He glanced at them in a disapproving manner when he saw how shamelessly short those skirts were they wore, exposing their thighs almost to their butts.

His teeth sanded over each other when one of the girls – in a drunken stupor – stumbled against his Harley Davidson, toppling it over. The girls shrieked, laughed a bit, and bluntly continued their banter, obviously indifferent about Jacob's bike collecting clearly visible scratches in its paint layer from the fall.

Fuckin sluts. Jacob grumbled.

He was so pumped to rush up to them, knock their empty heads against each other and scold them out of his backyard. He would also be more than happy to deal with their dads if they were eager to seek redress for his behavior towards their daughters.

He would show them. ALL of them. Definitely… In former times that is, when he was an intimidating presence still.

Unfortunately, he no longer had this kind of authority anymore. He was a joke now, even for these two brats. He was roughly 2 inches tall. They would probably laugh at him if he walked up to them, assuming he could climb out of his glass prison filled with whiskey and coke. Or play with him even.

As his legs paddled leisurely in a sticky substance of whisky and coke, Jacob noticed that the jeans wrapped around his neck needed more air. It was a trick he learned during his time in the navy. While floating in deep water without anything to hold on to, just remove your pants, tie the trouser legs to each other, slam them in the water with a wide motion to capture air, and, tada, you have an improvised lifejacket.

The only thing was that denim wasn't exactly airtight, so you had to fill it with new air from time to time. Jacob filled his lungs with a big breath of air, dipped his head underwater, and blew boiling bubbles through his lips, pumping his life jacket up. Despite his precaution of keeping his eyes shut, a few drops of beverage – mingled with alcohol – were able to seep into his eyes, making them sting. He tried in vain to rub it clean, a thing he had done too many times before. He already had some surface irritation, but he was afraid it might end up with something more severe, like a corneal abrasion.

A shadow engulfed Jacob, and his whole glass prison went airborne. Two enormous eyes peeped at him above the massive hand that held his glass prison and shone their glee upon him before churning into a look of curiosity when they noticed the jeans around his neck.

Reign…

"I was hoping you would have drowned by now, dad, but you're clearly more inventive than is good for you."

"Why don't you finish me off right now and be done with it then?!" Jacob screamed up at his powerful daughter, holding all of his strings.

"Ha! And grant you the easy way out? I don't think so."

Jacob gave a yelp when his glass prison tilted. He used all of his pitiful might to swim away when Reign placed her lips against the glass's edge to take a nice, long swig. Jacob swam with strong strokes, but Reign's suction power was too great. Her upper lip came closer and when he was pretty confident that Reign would swallow him, the glass was placed back on the table. It relieved Jacob to see that he was able to stand now. The mix of whisky and coke came only up to his middle now. He craned his neck to look up and saw Reign's massive torso as she wiped her mouth clean with the back of her hand. A gargantuan lipstick stain was plastered on the glass. His Goddess daughter smiled down upon him. Her hand shot out and the ring on her finger clanged painfully hard against the glass – piercing daggers through his eardrums.

6 months ago.

Jacob slammed the clamping front door close with a grunt, removed his shoes and clattered them in some corner of the hallway. Another grueling workweek is done. Jacob was tired and angry, even angrier than usual. All of his colleagues were a pain in the ass and his boss seemed to do everything within his power to make Jacob's life even more miserable than it already was.

He needed his lazy chair and a frosty cold bottle of booze. And dinner, a huge plate of pasta would be great, topped with grated parmesan cheese. It was Friday, so Meril would definitely make pasta. Oh, and rest, he needed rest and silence. No nagging and whining and bellyaching from anyone.

"Daddyyyyy!" Riley, Jacob's youngest daughter – a 10-year-old squirt – ran up to him like a frolicking lamb with her arms wide open.

Jacob deftly evaded her. "Not now, sweety. Daddy is tired and hungry."

"You're no fun at all!" Riley fumed while stomping her foot on the floor.

Jacob walked up to the kitchen, following the smell of freshly cooked dinner.

"Hey, you!" The face of Meril, Jacob's wife, lit up when he entered the kitchen. "How was work?" She walked up to him for a kiss.

Jacob swooshed past her without answering her affection and removed the lid of a pan sizzling there on the stove.

"What is this?!" Jacob gave his wife a look you gave after your boss offered you a wretched bunch of flowers while a big fat raise was promised.

"It's beef stew, darling. I worked on it for hours," Meril said.

"It looks like something that's been barfed up by Gordon Ramsey during a cheap gypsy wedding! Where is my pasta? It's Friday!"

Jacob's hand quickly blocked the oven mitts tossed at him by an angry Meril.

"Hey! Where are you going? Where is my pasta?!" he called after his wife, who made haste to leave. "I PAY THE RENT AROUND HERE!" he bellowed while slamming his chest like a wrought-up gorilla.

His head jerked to the side when a burst of pitching laughter caught his attention. It came from outside in the backyard. Sliding the curtain aside, Jacob peeked through the window and glanced with deep disdain at Reign phoning on a lounger in her bikini at the edge of the inflatable pool as she blabbered with a street market voice.

"Did she tell you that?! Noooo, please tell me she didn't! That girl is so bla bla bla-"

-SNATCH!-

There went Reign's phone, stripped from her by Jacob's hand.

"Hey!" Reign screeched. Her hand shaded her eyes from the beaming sun as she looked up at the imposing figure of her father. The voice of Reign's friend still blabbered through the phone's speaker.

"Reign's busy," Jacob's heavy voice said softly before hanging up.

"What was that for?" Reign asked.

"Move your lazy butt and get me a beer." Jacob waved his hand like he was ordering a servant.

"But – "

"NOW!" Jacob bellowed in Reign's face.

Reign hastily leaped up and scurried off like a jumpy squirrel.

The lounger creaked and groaned under Jacob's weight as he plunged his fat butt into it. He glanced at the orange hue of the setting sun above a line of trees and contemplated his life. What on earth did he do to earn such a miserable life like this? What did he have? An underpaid job as a forklift driver at some lousy company while working for a Gestapo boss, a wife who doesn't understand what he needs, a little squirt of a daughter who shouts all the time, and to top it all, a teenage daughter whose only concern it is to look pretty at any time of the day. His head just couldn't grasp it.

"Here," An ice-cold bottle of beer obscured Jacob's view. He looked up at Reign's sullen face, gave a curt appreciative nod and grabbed the beer.

"Can I have my phone back now?" Reign asked as she held up her hand.

Jacob took a long refreshing swig and burped loudly. He placed his hand on his stomach. "I'm still hungry. Be a darling and fetch me some of your mother's stew, huh?"

Reign groaned and stormed off. She came back with a plate full of steaming beef stew a minute later. Jacob eagerly reached his hands out but looked puzzled when Reign held the plate out of his reach.

"First, my phone," she said.

Jacob sighed. "Demanding twit." He fished the phone out of his breast pocket and handed it over to Reign, who, in her turn, handed over Jacob's dinner. Then she removed herself from the backyard to leave Jacob alone. As he relished in his beer and dinner and the setting sun, he suddenly slammed his hand on his forearm when a mosquito landed there and bit him. Jacob wasn't aware that this ordinary-looking mosquito carried with her a minute amount of synthesized chemicals after it had bitten a laboratory primate in a nearby secret facility. In the upcoming hours, its compound will mingle with Jacob's blood and eventually find its way to the core of Jacob's adult stem cells, where it will establish some significant fundamental changes that will forever change his life.