One second, you were running with Will over the kitchen counter. Then, in a heartbeat, everything went red.

The two of you went back along the narrow strip by the sink, but this time you ran; there was no time to slow down. Will accidentally stepped too close to the edge of the sink, and his foot slipped. His arm shot out to grab you, and locked around your bicep.

One second the two of you were on the sink edge, next moment Will yanked you over and you were plummeting, and then—squish.

You landed on something soft, wet and round, before sliding off, into blood-red water. Paddling and kicking, you managed to swim over to Will, who was wading nearby. He was stained red all over. The two of you looked identical; crimson little shapes bobbing in a sea of red.

Everything smelled sweet, syrupy, fruity. Around you, big objects like red balls bobbed about. They varied in size, from being the size of exercise balls, to being slightly larger than you. The liquid wasn’t blood; the two of you had fallen into a bowl of pitted cherries floating in deep red syrup. There were also some raspberries and blueberries sprinkled around. You guessed it was for a dessert or fruit salad.

Before you could help yourself, you cupped your hands and drank some. You hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in a while, and it tasted real good. Sweet. Curious, Will did the same. You drank so much the two of you ended up full and your swimming got sluggish. But the syrup was slightly thicker and stickier than water and your lighter weight kept you buoyant.

The top of a glass bowl encircled your heads, too high to climb. There was no way you could get out. You’d have to wait until someone came. Realizing this, Will groaned with exasperation.  However, you felt hopeful. Someone was bound to retrieve the cherries and they had to notice you. And you had a good feeling it would be Courtney. She was going to rescue you.

Trying to relax and conserve your energy, you slowly started to feel a weird tingling all through your body. Within minutes a feeling of coolness seemed to surge through your veins and radiate throughout your entire body. A shiver went up your spine. You recognized this feeling: it was the feeling of liquid being absorbed into your body, like you were a tiny sponge, and the thick syrup was slowly making you heavier.

Startled, you tried squeezing your muscles to push the syrup out. Across from you, the same was happening to Will.

“It’s getting inside me!” he exclaimed, shocked. Forcing yourself to stay calm, you explained,

“We soak up liquid now.”

Will thought you were joking.

“How is this possible?” he yelped.

You told him to squeeze his muscles to strain it out.

“I’m trying!” he said.

It was no use; every time you managed to squeeze juice out, more got sucked into your body. It was like trying to shovel water out of a sinking canoe.  As your body continued to absorb the syrup, you slowly turned a deep rich shade of red, like wine. Across from you, you noticed the deep shade of red obscured Will’s features so his face was harder to make out. It wasn’t just that; he was changing shape, becoming rounder.

The red liquid flooded nonstop into your chest, head and stomach. You could feel it filling up inside your lungs, inflating your stomach and even expanding inside your penis, which gave you a huge, pounding erection.  Your entire circulatory system was buzzing with the sugar. It made you heady. You let yourself sink in the syrup until just your head was barely on the surface.

Your body stretched and rounded out to contain all the vast masses of syrup pumping in. There was nothing you could do but feel the liquid gradually fill out your tiny body into a fat, featureless red sphere. The syrup was also stretching out of Will’s form. He didn’t even have a head or arms or legs anymore; he was perfectly spherical, and since he had no features it was difficult to make out his face anymore. Which meant you looked the same.

The two of you were starting to look no different than any of the cherries bobbing around in the syrup. You couldn’t help but wonder what all these cherries were for. Was it going into a blender to make a smoothie? Or be sprinkled onto some yoghurt or cereal? Or be put on top of a cake? Or baked in a cherry pie? Or be made into cherry glaze and spread over spare ribs?

Also who were they for? You’d never seen Jake eat cherries. You asked Will if Courtney liked them. He just said:

“Don’t think about it too hard. It’s past lunchtime, so probably no one is eating any time soon.”

“How do we get out of here?” you indicated the vertical walls of the bowl over your head.

Then someone entered the kitchen. You both went quiet.

It was Jake. He stopped by the fridge and peered inside, shuffling some items around.

“Hey, the punch you made is still here, Court,” he called out in surprise. “You forget to take it to your work function on Thursday night?”

“No,” Courtney called back. “It’s extra. I accidentally made a little too much.”

Kayla perked up.

“Ooh, what kind?”

A smile crept into Courtney’s voice.

“It’s not exactly a prom night punch.”

“Well, I skipped prom,” Lara shot back.

“What happened to your diet?”

“It starts when I say it does.”

“There’s no more room in the fridge,” Jake went on, bending over to search deeper in the fridge, “unless you take out the rest of the cake.”

“Oh, no,” Courtney jumped in, “that’s a keeper. There’s at least another couple of servings, and it’s a good one.”

Jake said:

“Well, then it’s showdown. This fridge is too small for the both of us. Who are you rooting for, Court? Loser goes.”

“I hate to just toss anything out.”

“Choose one. Anything.”

“I don’t think so.” She thought for a moment, then relented: “The cake is mine.”

“Fine. I’ll have some punch.”

“Wait a minute. It’s bitter right now. When I said I accidentally made extra, what I really meant was I screwed up the first one.  It needs to be sweetened a little. And then maybe I’ll have a glass, too.”

Jake shut the fridge door.

“Some fruit should do the trick.”

As he said this, he loomed over the sink and eyed you. “On second thought, keep the punch. I’ll just eat up some of these tasty-looking little cherries.”

Courtney then entered the kitchen behind him, and suddenly you were staring up at her face as she leaned over the sink. The husband and wife, giant-like, both scrutinized you dispassionately, and you felt like an insect that had fallen into the soup. But worse than that, they thought you belonged in the soup. Courtney gave you a quick inspection, and finding nothing amiss, lifted the bowl from the sink.

“Let me put them into the punch first, then you can have all the leftover fruit you want.”

Cherries bounced around like big red beach balls as you were carried onto the kitchen counter, saving you and Will from an imminent tour of Jake’s digestive system. You were overcome with a big wave of relief.  Jake stood back and was now feasting on a bag of potato chips. You really didn’t want to spent your evening swishing around the rumbling ocean of Jake’s gut anyway, buried up to your neck in chomped up potato chips.

Courtney took the punch out of the fridge and put it on the counter next to the sink. Then she began catching the cherries in a ladle and dropping them into the punch. Obliviously she also scooped you and Will up and dropped you into the wider red lake of punch, losing you in a forest of sliced strawberries, raspberries, and cherries.

Jake suggested:

“The juice will make it sweeter, too.”

“Guess it can’t hurt,” Courtney said.

You held your breath as a heavy shower of cherry syrup poured over your head. Anxiously, you tried to locate Will, amidst this red shower but he was now practically indistinguishable from a cherry, and it wasn’t clear which one he was. He probably thought the same about you.

A spoon hovered over your head and parted the punch. In wonder, you watched it scoop up a teaspoon size and then disappear between Courtney’s parted lips. Just earlier a spoon like that had been your head.

“The juice worked,” Courtney sounded delighted, “Problem solved.”

Jake said through a mouthful of chips:

“Except not really. You just doubled the punch without creating any more room in the fridge.”

Courtney called out to the teens in the next room:

“I fixed the punch! You girls are welcome to take some before you go.”

From the living room, the girls chorused eagerly. Courtney looked back at Jake with satisfaction.

“There. Like I said, problem solved.”

You watched as Courtney’s face again appeared over the rim of the punch bowl. She was so big to you she blocked out most of the ceiling.

You tried to yell out for her but punch rushed into your open mouth and filled you up, causing you to sink slightly, until more punch lapped at your face and everything became red. You pushed to the surface again, and with a spike of alarm, you watched the giant ladle pour in and out of the punch bowl, subtracting a scoop each time, and pieces of fruit. A couple of times it bumped into you, pushing you aside to collect some red liquid and then depart again. Courtney watched you calmly, but also barely you paid you much notice. You tried to imagine what was worse; ending up in Jake’s potato chip-filled stomach, or Courtney’s stomach, filled with coffee and cake.

As you bobbed to surface again, you caught her say to Jake:

“My aunt’s going to be here soon to pick up Lara, but someone needs to take Kayla home. She lives across town.”

“I’ll do it,” said Jake.

The ladle dove back into the punch, making a broad scooping motion for you, and this time you were pulled into its cup and lifted into the air.

Courtney, it’s me! you thought desperately. You were firm and full up with syrup juice, it was like your throat was swollen and you couldn’t speak. As the ladle lifted, you accidentally poured out and landed in the punch again, bouncing a little on the surface.

It suddenly occurred to you that no matter what, you were getting drunk, today, tomorrow, or the next day, unless you could tell someone you were there. You would end up in someone’s stomach, even if it wasn’t Jake. This caused your heart to race. Since you were perfectly round, you couldn’t swim, or even move much, except tilt. You were totally at the mercy of whatever direction the syrup was flowing in, like a cork bobbing in the ocean.

“Did you show them the photo book?” Courtney murmured, looking up briefly at Jake, who was somewhere beyond the rim of the punch bowl, again crunching on the chips.

“Yeah,” he replied vaguely. “Lara seemed to like it. She didn’t say it, but I think she did.”

Courtney’s voice piqued with interest:

“Were you joking earlier? –She liked Fuzz back then?”

He shrugged.

“Heh. Little girl crush kind of thing,” he said indifferently. “That strange?”

“She was only seven you know. Very mature taste for a seven year old. But I guess she’s always kind of—”

“I think she still does.”

“Oh, Jake,” she said. “You just don’t get girl crushes. They’re…silly. You always want the one you can’t have. That’s all.”

“That explains why Sarah left. I was too available.”

Folding her arms, she considered him with a lifted eyebrow.

“You weren’t with her that long. I mean, not when she was a little girl.”

“If we’re remembering ten years ago;” he added, “ten years ago I was with Sarah.”

After a moment he asked:

“You were single.”

“It…It’s not that simple. Well,” she thought aloud, “It seemed simple. It seemed really obvious. And then the boys went missing it complicated itself.”

“You did like Fuzz though.”

Courtney paused. Surveying her calmly, Jake said:

“I can tell.”

“Really?”

“Loud and clear. Courtney, I knew the moment you told me about your twelfth birthday. You were praying for him to kiss you, and when he did, you thought you’d pass out.”

“No, no,” she giggled, suddenly sounding like her twenty-two year old self again, “I just meant…oh, you’re right. Why the hell did I tell you that?”

“It must be a thing with you Rugger girls, you get the Fuzzies going way back.”

Courtney folded her arms and shook her head.

“If you say so,” she said. She seemed to want to get off the subject. “By the way, I looked up those Lost Boys kids again. I didn’t realize there were updates since they were found. The reports about them being ten years younger seem, I don’t know, credible.”

Jake thought about this.

“Yeah? What about the flipside?”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“They ran away and lived some secret double lives without telling anyone “That’s what I’m thinking happened.”

“If that’s true,” Courtney murmured, as she stirred you around with the ladle, “what made them come back?”