I awake with a yawn and reach up to rub my eyes. My hand slides down my face and comes to rest on my chin, scratching my beard. Beard? That's strange. Since when did I have a beard? I'm puzzled, but I take it in stride and keep calmly stroking my strange yet familiar facial hair. I yawn again and stretch my arms until they hit against the headboard. Then I open my eyes and look around.
I'm in a decently-sized room, on a big bed with a dark green quilt covering me. There's a dresser and a closet, but no windows, and only the soft light of a bedside lamp illuminates the room. Still, it is cozy and feels familiar enough that it takes until I flip on the light switch for the realization to hit me: This isn't my room.
Concern strikes me as I try to think back to what had happened yesterday when I fell asleep. I'm almost horrified when I fail to dredge up any memories at all. Not my name, not my home, not the faces of my friends or parents. I don't even remember what my room is supposed to look like—I only know that this isn't it.
I walk to the dresser and open the drawers one by one. There's clothes there—pants and shorts and socks and underwear. I try on a pair of pants. They fit me perfectly, as do the socks. I grab a shirt from the closet and find that it fits me well too. I look for shoes but there aren't any in this room. On the other hand, I do find a note by the door. “Come outside when you're ready. Don't be scared of what you see. You're safe. You're loved. Be glad. Everything will turn out fine.”
I hold the note. Is this my handwriting? I feel both reassured and confused, curious yet frightened, tender yet melancholy. I leave it aside for now and look around the room for anything that might help me figure out what's happening here. There's nothing, though. If there are any answers, they must lie outside this room.
I grab the doorknob. It turns easily in my grasp, and the latch comes loose, but I don't pull it open yet. I'm scared. My heart is beating hard and my palms are sweating. I glance at the note again. The words still confuse me, but they comfort me all the same. I steel myself and open the door.
When I see the outside, I feel like I'm in a dream. I've left the bedroom just to enter another. It's close to identical to the one I just left, with the same furniture, the same color walls and carpet, the same everything. But there are windows here, and, more importantly, everything is thirty times bigger than in the room I just left.
I stand on the edge of the dresser, overlooking everything. Amazed as I am, somehow this feels expected. It's that feeling as much as the strangeness of what I see that reassures me this is only a dream. There's no way I would be so calm about this if it were real.
Separating me from this giant room on all sides is a wall of glass, or maybe clear plastic, that extends up a dozen feet, above the walls of the miniature room I woke up in. Near the wall, there's a button the size of a large dish, and a sign behind it that reads “Press for help” and reiterates the same comforting words from before. Everything feels so surreal, and I hardly notice I'm moving to press the button until it clicks under my hand.
A sound like a doorbell comes from outside this room. I wait in suspense. Not five seconds later, I hear the sound of a door closing and a series of thumps that are definitely coming closer. When they stop right outside this room, there's a knock on the door. “I'm coming in now, okay? Please don't be scared,” someone calls to me. But how can I not be scared when the door opens and a giant peeks inside? She smiles at me and steps in slowly, like she's taking care not to scare me. Still, I can't handle the sight of something so big coming towards me, its eyes locked on my vulnerable self. The thought that this is a dream provides little comfort.
She stands across the room, making no move towards me. I look for any sort of escape route, but the glass wall surrounds me and a plastic lid above, like the cover of a fish tank, traps me here. There's no escaping her. I can only hope that she'll be friendly.
“Good morning, Nathan!” she says, leaning down so her head is closer to level with me. “Nathan”; is that my name? It feels like it could be, at least. “How are you doing? You're probably confused, or thinking it's all a dream, huh?” She's still smiling at me, but there's a pained, compassionate look to it now. “Maybe it's better for you to think that. But if you want to know the truth, I can tell you everything. Why you're so small. Why you can't remember anything. Why you're probably feeling all sorts of deja vu today. I could tell you all that from here, but, do you mind if I come closer? I'd really like to look at you. Just press the button again if you're okay with it.”
I look at the button again, hesitating, but in the end I do press it. She nods her head. “Press it again if you want me to stop,” she says, and slowly approaches. I can't say I'm not scared, seeing something so huge coming for me, but, putting aside her size, there's something calming about her. She feels familiar. Everything about this does. It feels like I've been through this a hundred times before, but I can't remember anything. Just a dream, I tell myself, and it helps calm me down so that when she's standing right in front of me I'm not so scared.
Still, I can't help but be impressed when I look at her. She seems a bit younger than me, maybe twenty years old at most, though in size she's my superior by far. Even seeing her from just the waist up she still towers more than fifty feet over me. Her hands come to pull the lid off my little box, carrying it away so effortlessly and leaving it on the dresser just outside the glass walls. Her face hangs high above, peering in at me. She's really happy now, I can tell. “Good morning,” she says again.
“Good morning,” I answer her.
“Everything okay?”
“Y-yeah, I guess I'm fine.”
“I'm glad. Oh, I'm Molly, by the way.”
“And I'm... Nathan?” The name feels familiar on my lips.
“You are, that's right. And you're my...” Whatever she was going to say, she stops herself and licks her lips. Her cheerfulness falters . “I said I could tell you everything you want to know. Do you want to hear it, or should I let you keep dreaming?”
“Tell me everything,” I said. I'm curious how everything could possibly be explained. And besides, whatever she says, I'm dreaming all the same, aren't I?
“Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “Your name is Nathaniel Hayes. I'm your daughter, Molly Hayes.”
I frown and look closely at her face. She does look a bit like me, I think. The long nose, the brown eyes, the high cheekbones, the big forehead, the chin and the freckles—it's all like my own. But I laugh all the same. “How can you be my daughter if you're only a few years younger than me?” I ask. She chuckles with me for a second, then shakes her head.
“Do you want help looking in the mirror?” She points above the miniature room, and I notice that there has been a mirror there this whole time—there wasn't on the smaller dresser. I look back and frown. What could she possibly want to show me? But I'm curious. If I have a beard now, how else could I have changed? Alright, I tell her. She lowers her hand into the cage, and as I step back she sets it down next to me. “Hop on.”
I look it over uncertainly, but I'm already walking towards it, and I sit in her palm like it's the most natural thing in the world. It's... comfortable. The grooves and creases of her skin feel a bit rugged at this size, but still soft and silky smooth in their own way. It feels right, somehow.
A moment later that meaty platform lifts me up, with her other hand cupped under it, until I'm about level with her face. It looks strange from so close—faces weren't meant to be seen from this perspective. I see her teeth glistening as her lips draw open in a slight grin. I feel the warm breath from her nose blowing over her skin and around my legs. Behind me her fingers bend closer but stop short of touching me, like she remembered she's not supposed to. Then she clears her throat.
“Look. Here you are.” She holds me towards the mirror. I'm several feet away—or, is it a few inches? Is she giant or am I small?—and I see myself in the mirror. I look... old. Older, at least. Middle-aged, with a more wrinkled face and lightly graying hair. I raise a hand. I feel my face all over. It's all real. Had I looked like this before waking up here? If I really was awake and not dreaming. I still couldn't believe all this.
“Why am I old now?” I ask, with more vanity than concern. Maybe I've grown numb from waking up to a world many times too big for me; finding out I'm older too hardly has an effect. I guess I don't look too bad, though, with those clothes I'm wearing.
Molly takes another deep breath. “Okay, so a little over eighteen years ago, there was this virus going around. You got infected. The virus made you shrink, and it gave you a type of amnesia. You basically lose all your memories at the end of the day. Except, like, maybe a few unconscious ones. Every time you wake up it's like a fresh start for you.”
“A fresh start,” I repeat. Guess that would explain why I can't remember anything, and why it all feels so familiar. She probably spent years taking care of me. If it's even real. “This all sounds so ridiculous. Honestly, you just convinced me it's all a dream.”
She gives a wry smile. “That's fine. You can believe whatever you want. While you're dreaming, though, how about we get you some dream breakfast? Aren't you dream hungry?”
“Hungry?” I pat my stomach. “Guess I am. Well, sure, why not? Might as well see where the dream takes me.”
“Then sit tight and let's get going!” She carries me away with a moderate pace, moving with such expert care that it feels like I'm gliding through the air. There's hardly a bump or a shake I can feel, but still I'm so high up and moving so fast that when her fingertip appears at my side I hug it for support while trying to look around at where we are and where we're going.
The hallway we pass is as huge as the bedroom we just left, but also just as ordinary. There's nothing else really strange nor dream-like about it. Before long I hear sizzling and I catch the smell of breakfast in the air. “I'm back, mom,” Molly announces when we enter the kitchen. There's a woman at the stove, her white blouse sleeves rolled up and an apron over her chest as she scrambled some eggs. As she hears Molly's voice, she turns to us, and I see her face.
She's beautiful. At least, to me she is. Maybe others would disagree. She's no supermodel, no prom queen, no trophy wife. She's an older woman, middle-aged like I am now, with as many wrinkles as me, though her hair retains more color. Not thin. Maybe a tad overweight. If you'd asked me to draw you the picture of a beautiful woman... well, I can't draw, but if I could, it wouldn't have been her. Not until I saw her, at least.
“Molly,” she says to her daughter. They do look alike, I notice after a closer look, but it seems like Molly took more after me. She's cheerful when greeting Molly, but when she looks at me she seems so nervous. “Good morning, Nathan.”
“Morning,” I mutter back. I'm not sure she hears me, but maybe she sees my lips moving since she give a little smile.
“It's another 'dream' for him today,” Molly tells her.
“Again? Well... whatever makes you happy, dear.” She looks at me with such love and compassion, I can feel it in my heart. She acts like she knows me, but...
“I'm sorry, who are you?” I ask, ashamed that I don't even know her name.
“No, no, don't apologize. I should have introduced myself right away. My name is Sophia. I'm your wife... if you'll have me.” My wife. The word sounds so painful in my ears. I don't know what to say, and before I can think of anything she shakes her head. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have dumped that on you yet. You don't have to answer now, or ever if you don't want to. Molly, why don't you take him to the table? I'll join you when the food is ready. I hope you'll like it; it's eggs with baked potatoes.”
“Sounds perfect,” I tell her honestly. She smiles. Then I'm turned around.
“Come on, let's get you seated,” Molly says as she carries me around the half wall to the dining room, where she takes a seat and lowers me to the table. There's a smaller chair and table where I hop off, the perfect size for me, and I take a seat myself. After getting comfortable I look back at Sophia. My wife.
After a while, a chuckle from Molly pulls my attention away. “Can't wait for breakfast?” she asks. I can tell she knows that's not what's on my mind, but I answer “yes” anyways. “Maybe you wanna talk about something to pass the time.”
I look at Sophia. “So she's my wife, huh? ... How did we meet?”
“You spilled a beer on her shirt.” Molly grins.
“Oh, man. Was she pissed?”
“Nah. I think she was too drunk to care.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Sounds like my kind of woman. Or, I guess she was... eighteen years ago, you said?” I sigh. Even if this is a dream, it still feels bad not being able to remember anything. Even if all my memories were of the dream world it would still be better than nothing. “So we've been together since before I... shrank?”
Sophia nods. “You got married a year before that, and had me one month later.” She's grinning again, but she wipes it off before speaking at a whisper. “When you shrank... Mom wanted to keep you around, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't balance her job with raising a kid and taking care of you all at once. She had to send you to an asylum for shrinkees. We visited you every weekend, but we couldn't do anything more for you. She couldn't even tell you who she was.
“We only brought you back a year ago. Mom still feels guilty for leaving you there for so long. If she tells you she's sorry... Well, I don't need to tell you to forgive her. You do it every single time.”
Hearing her story, I forget about this being a dream. Real or not, I'm moved at the thought of how much hardship Sophia must have suffered after my shrinking, how much she must have cared for me to still take me back in after so long. And I couldn't remember any of it.
A little later, Sophia comes around with a couple plates in hand and sets them down, one for herself and one for Molly. For me, she cuts off a small bit of egg and potatoes and gently sets them down on my little table. My stomach rumbles. The smell is divine. I thank her for it and dig in.
“You're welcome. I hope you like it.”
Molly scoffs. “Of course he likes it. He wouldn't have asked for it if he didn't.”
I swallow and frown at her. “I asked for this?”
“You did, yesterday.”
“Ah. Well, um. Thanks for making this for me, Sophia.”
She blushes. “You're welcome, Nathan.”
“And, about what you asked earlier. I still don't now if this is real or not. It feels so much like a dream. But whatever it is, I think I'd be happy being your husband, for as long as it lasts. If you really want someone so small and troublesome as your husband.”
“Don't talk about yourself like that! You're no trouble at all!” She reaches for me but stops short. “Ah, sorry. We'll, uh, leave that for later.”
“Oh my God, you guys, do you really have to be so sappy about it every time?” Molly says, laughing about at us. But despite her chiding, it's clear she's happy.
As I look on both their looming faces, I feel something well up inside. A deep love for these two perfect strangers, my wife and daughter. If this is a dream, it's a beautiful one, and one I hope will last the night. I only wish I may let them know how I feel before this all ends.
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
A man wakes up at two inches tall without any memories of his past life. A pair of women claiming to be his wife and daughter try to help him cope. Based on a certain greentext and expanded on with the original author's permission.
RATING: G
TAGS: Gentle, Handheld
RATING: G
TAGS: Gentle, Handheld