#16 - Fix or Be Broken

“How are you holding up?” Elias said, as he sat on the table’s surface, his back up against the side of Jade’s miniature bed, trying to take his mind off the news playing on the massive screen.

“Muscles still feel like they’ve been slammed between a door,” Jade said, trying to peek under the piece of bed cloth Elias had wrapped around her calf. “The wound seems to be closing, I think.”

“Apparently due to our size, bacteria have a harder time causing infections, so there is that,” Elias said, pushing his glasses up, like he always used to do when dropping his random facts, it had been a while since Jade had seen that old quirk of his, “I wasn’t asking about the leg though. I was asking about you.”

Jade wondered how she should even begin to answer that. Robin had let the mutilated dead body of their friend crash down in front of them. Her words had dehumanized them. She admitted a hidden desire to hurt and kill them. Now the crazy woman had almost munched off her leg. All that, and yet, as the aura of tension and horror around the giantess grew, Jade couldn’t help but feel drawn in.

What was wrong with her?

She couldn’t lie to herself, it was the little hint of danger that caused her to take notice of Robin in the first place, a masculine smugness that had Trojan-horsed its way past the walls of her heterosexuality, walls she kept re-invading no matter how many times Jade dismissed the queer little thoughts as a fluke.

But this wasn’t that little hint of it anymore, Robin had become a mortal danger. She had gone well past the point where the spice should have ruined the entire dish, to where it stopped being hot, and turned into torture. Was Jade’s mind just defective? Was the ceiling of how far her submissive and masochistic little thoughts could go really that high?

Jade thought about how she’d been pinned between her friend’s teeth again, how Robin had been tasting her. If she hadn’t stopped her, would the giantess really have bitten her leg off? Would she have spit it out like filth? Or would the friend she had known for years have swallowed a part of her? Savoring and devouring it, a little part of Jade Wislow, forever lost inside of Robin Marrick.

How was she even supposed to begin explaining those thoughts to Elias?

“So, you sure this isn’t that stalker, Wraith?” Oscar asked sitting atop his own bed, drawing everyone’s attention back to the TV.

The massive screen showed a mugshot of a handsome Asian man, whose defeated face looked devoid of all life. It had been the third news update on the case that day. What Caleb Harm had done to their friend Elena Curtly had made international headlines.

Tinies disappeared or were killed in accidents every day, but this case was one the media couldn’t ignore. It was kidnapping and murder, clear as day, its victim, a beautiful young white woman from a well-off family, who’d been taken from a care facility; one of the only places where tinies were supposed to be completely safe.

The news world pounced on the story, true crime podcasts were scrambling to be the first to uncover the juicy details of the man behind the monster, while social media was a clutter of people mocking the girl’s death, others using the tragedy to make political points, while some even went as far as to idolize the man and publicly thirst over him.

“Friend. And no, I already told you,” Elias said. “And, unless he was using a voice changer, ChainedWr8 is a woman.”

“How many serial killer stalkers does Robin have?”

Theo stared into the eyes of the man in the mugshot. The man who had killed Elena, the smartest woman he knew, the one he thought of as a big sister, a guide. Why would anyone ever want to hurt her?

Was Caleb Harm an exceptionally violent anti-feminist spurred on by one of her rants? Had Elena been murdered by one of the very ‘barbarians’ she so vocally asserted herself against? The ones she had saved Theo from joining in their insecure misery.

“Friends,” Elias said, as he stared daggers at Oscar, not letting the jock strip the responsibility off the shoulders of his nightmare. “Wr8 was her friend, safe to assume this one is too.”

Oscar shook his head, “If they’re her friends, why are they coming after us? Are they trying to hurt her? Send a message? Jealous? Why is everyone so fucking obsessed with that girl?”

Theo and Jade both turned to look at him too. All three of them now stared at Oscar with questioning frowns, their wide eyes betraying them.

“What?” Oscar said, with a chuckle. “Like I haven’t noticed the way you’ve all been looking at her.”

Elias shook his head, “No, screw that. Whatever you think you noticed, that’s all gone now. I wanna watch that bitch choke and die.”

The rest of the group fell silent.

“What?” Elias said, trying not to raise his voice loud enough for the giant in the background to hear them, “she wants to do the same to us.”

Jade sighed, “Elias, I get that you’re hurting-”

“But what?” he snapped at her. “She almost bit your leg off, Jade.”

Jade broke eye contact, unable to hide the red on her cheeks from the white-haired boy, who caught on almost immediately.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, contorting his face in disgust, “Oscar’s right about you at least.”

Oscar frowned, startled by how his suggestion had changed Elias’ demeanor, “Bro, I meant it as a joke.”

Elias turned his attention to the timid brown-haired boy huddled up atop his bed, “How about you Theo?”

Oscar shot out of his bed, “you leave him outta this.”

“I-” Theo slowly turned his head. “I like her, but I want to get away from her, but also closer. I’m having these messed up thoughts.”

Oscar squinted, “What?”

“It’s like-” Theo squeezed his bedsheet into his fists. “I wanna fix what’s wrong with her, but I also want her to, I don’t know; break me.”

Jade stared at the boy so intensely his gaze could not avoid meeting hers. She wasn’t the only one with strange feelings towards their friend’s darkness. Were they the same? No, what Theo had was born from something horrible.

Oscar’s mouth fell open, “A-Are you saying you’re-”

“Into monsters. I know I’m fucked up.”

“T-That’s ok buddy,” Oscar said, unsure of how he should respond to something like that.

“Ok?!” Elias shouted, before looking behind him at the giantess, and lowering his voice again. “Are you guys her fucking fan club or something?”

“What about you Oscar?” Elias said, jumping up from Jade’s bedside and cocking his chin at the jock. “You accuse us of being obsessed, you’re the biggest defender here. You think if you’re a good boy she’ll let you fondle her melons some more, that it?”

Glasses or not, Oscar swung for his face right then and there. Jade yelled at Oscar, right as his fist collided with the boy’s teeth. Elias’ glasses jumped up sideways across his eyebrows, as he fell over, landing on his back. The white-haired guy pushed himself up on his elbow, his shocked face meeting that of Oscar, still boiling with intensity, before taking on the same expression.

“You’re all sick,” Elias shouted through bloodied teeth, no longer caring if Robin could hear him, “Simon is dead! Elena is dead! I wanted to protect you guys! I wanted to save you! You braindead subhuman lemming fucks!”

Elias crawled to his feet, keeping eye contact with Oscar for a few more seconds to see if he was going to hit him again, before he turned to his bed and began to push against it, separating it from the bed-fort, doing what he should’ve done long before the glow had marked him, and rid himself from these clowns who only ever dragged him down with them.

Robin had heard his shouting, but didn’t look away from the TV screen. What was he even talking about? Save them? There was no way he could save anyone, not from her, not from what she would end up doing to each and every one of them. The news proved it.

Big brother Harm, the sadist on his high horse, the man that made her believe, if only for a few fleeting days, that she could be a safe haven for her friends, had done the unthinkable. All his talk of healthy engagement, of caring for a tiny community to heal the rotten core of his heart, it had all been a lie.

Elena was dead, and just like with Simon, she didn’t even get the pleasure of doing it herself.

She wondered how he had done it. Had he finally enacted one of the many executions he’d roleplayed in text, throughout the many late-night DMs, where they pretended to be a giant couple. Would the police ever see those messages, as they went through his computer? Would they see the server?

Wr8 was right about all of them. The one example she’d hoped could lead her to any other conclusion had shown his true colors, shoved his blade through Robin’s hopeful heart, and it likely wouldn’t take long before one of QTpopper and TrEATmeGently’s little videos turned into a real snuff film.

Robin finally took her eyes off the screen and noticed Theo standing beside the pair of giant feet that rested on the table. He had walked up to her without her even noticing. If she had moved her feet only a little, she’d have squashed him without even getting to savor the moment. Jade wasn’t far behind him, limping closer, looking as if she had tried to stop him from approaching the horrid giantess on her throne of solitude.

“What?” Robin said, sounding as if she were barking at the puppy to get lost.

“Can you hold me?”

It was the first thing he had said to her since she had dropped a corpse right in front of him. He sounded as scared and broken as she’d expected him to. Theo’s adorable face, the way he’d always been so timid. Of all of her friends, his fear was most likely to send her over the edge, and she had warned them all about fear. But that request, those words she had not expected.

“Hold you?” Robin said. “Why would you ask me to hold you?”

“I’m scared,” Theo said. “I just wanted a friend to comfort me.”

Robin looked puzzled, “But it’s me you’re scared of.”

“Please.”

Robin carefully took her massive feet off the table, watching the tiny boy cower as they moved, their awful scent retreating. Robin leaned forward but stopped herself.

“Aren’t you worried I’ll hurt you?”

“Do you want to?”

“You guys should stop asking me that.”

“I hope you don’t,” Theo said, as he lowered his head, fidgeting with his own fingers. “But if you do, that’s ok too. Just make it quick.”

Robin looked at Jade, not standing that far away from Theo, she was shaking her head, begging her not to. The giant woman’s lips tightened in a malicious smile, as she snatched the boy off the table like an object.

Theo’s breath turned to stone in his lungs due to the speed at which he got hoisted up by his friend’s fingers. Jade limped over, as Robin settled back in the couch.

“Don’t let it take over!” she shouted.

Robin slammed her feet back down on the table next to her, offended at Jade acting like she’d become her snake charmer, “Shut up, you’ve already had your turn.”

Robin opened her palm and dropped the tiny onto it. He immediately made himself as small as possible, cowering and curling up in the soft pillows her scrunched half-folded hand made.

He was doing it. He was giving her the greenlight to do whatever she pleased with him. Was he suicidal? Had he willingly decided to let the ferrywoman take him down into the underworld? No, he had asked her for something else, what was it again? Comfort? How could she forget that so quickly?

Robin’s smile waned a bit, “Is it? Comfortable, I mean.”

Theo blushed, it was. Her hand was warm, soft enough, despite the calluses. Yet, at the same time, the surface was all consuming, invasive and personal, in the very way he’d dreaded. There was a slight humid layer of sweat and the lingering scent of the orange she had peeled earlier. He wanted to live or die in her hands, and that conflict wasn’t getting resolved by moping in his bed, he had to take the plunge.

“I’ve always been uncomfortable with people’s hands,” Theo said, quietly. “It’s been like that ever since I was a kid. I wanna get over it, wanna appreciate how nice this could be, but I got this thing in my mind that just keeps ruining it.”

“Yeah,” Robin said, with a calm resonant tone, “I get what you mean.”

It was a nice moment, a soft and intimate fuzzy feeling, watching her tiny friend cradled in her palm, and her mind kept trying to ruin it too. How easy it would be to squeeze him flat inside her fist. How fun it would be to poke him to death, watching his body be demolished poke after poke.

Robin raised her finger as she imagined it, yet it landed with no such force, instead she carefully brought it over to his back, stroking it gently.

“You want me to tell you what I’m scared of?” Theo said.

Robin shook her head lightly, “You’ll rouse me, you’ll make my mind ruin it.”

“Is that what you’re scared of then?”

Robin’s finger stopped caressing him, her eyes began to well up, “Is this why you let me grab you? You wanted to get through to the monster?”

“Fix or be broken,” Theo said. “Either would do.”

“There’s nothing to fix, it’s how I’m made to function,” Robin said, her quiet voice wavering. “I’m not misguided or in need of convincing, it’s a shadow whispering. It will always be there.”

“Will you break me then?” Theo shivered.

“Can I?”

Theo curled up tighter, “It’s not up to me, is it? Never has been. The hands will do what they want with me.”

The horrible realization of what his words meant crept up like shivers along her back. Robin turned to look a Jade again, who shook her head once more.

The giantess could feel her shadow scream at her. This was it. This moment was the worst moment imaginable to unleash herself onto his frail, pathetic little body, the most wicked and vile moment to betray this intimacy, to mark the end of their friendship in a streak of blood, it was perfect. Do it now, indulge at the cruelest time, in the cruelest way.

“I think-” Robin said, gently. “I think these hands would like to cover like a little cocoon to keep you warm, before pressing together until you turn into a bloody paste, which they would like to rub themselves in, until the things you’ve come to fear are fully coated in what’s left of you.”

Theo let out a long shivering breath, every muscle in his body tightened, as he braced himself.

Robin attempted to swallow the shadow in her throat, as the first tear rolled down her cheek, “But, I don’t think it should be up to them, Theo. The hands don’t get to choose, you do.”

Theo opened his eyes, his breath returning to him. His head slowly turned to look up at his friend.

There was too much meaning in those little eyes of his. Robin could read the incorrect assumptions on his face. This didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t fixed anything. She had only delayed his execution.

She would break him, one day.