#5 - Elias

It was the day after Jade and Theo had shrunk. Robin had left for work again, leaving Elias as the only regular-sized person in the apartment. The tinies would’ve had no one else to lean on while he wasted away on the couch. It was his turn to be the responsible one, to grit his teeth, and power through the melancholy that had made his limbs feel like useless noodles for the past week.

They couldn’t risk an inebriated giant around three tinies, so Robin had hidden away all bottles and cans of alcohol, knowing that with his own clock ticking, a guy like Elias wouldn’t be stupid enough to go out on his own to buy more.

“You missed a healing item,” Theo said.

Elias sighed, and turned his character around to pick up the green herb, while the rest of the group sat on the couch seat beside him, observing his gameplay on the biggest screen they’d ever seen.

Theo had asked Elias to finish his video game for him, the one Theo had bought on his first trip out with Robin, the brand-new installment in his favorite survival horror franchise.

Instead of playing it throughout the week, Theo had spent most of the time he had left at full size trying to make himself useful by cleaning Robin’s place, helping Jade with her preparations, and in the last two days, he had pretty much served as Oscar’s regular-sized butler, which left him little game time, before he finally shrank too small to hold the controller himself.

Elias’ face was a right mess. He had to keep brushing the unkempt white hair out of his tired blue eyes, the greasiness of which constantly reapplied a vision-blurring smudge on his glasses, which he kept having to clean off with his shirt, all the while Theo kept commenting on every little thing he was supposed to do, every mistake he made, while his hangover burst inside his skull.

This entire week had been a worse nightmare than anything the game could throw at him, and now, he couldn’t even cope the way he wanted to.

Theo interrupted again with that cute little helper tone of his. “Ok, here I think you’re supposed to-”

“I got it,” Elias said, as he quickly rushed through a puzzle segment without as much as a pause.

That was the one thing Theo couldn’t backseat-game him on, the one thing he would keep after everything else would shrink to nothing: his smarts, his intellectual superiority. It was the thing he valued the most, what his entire self-image was built upon. Greatness was in his blood, along with his curse, his addictive personality.

His father, a songwriter who could play twelve instruments like a legend, had been a prime example of both those traits. He would’ve made a name for himself, yet right as he signed on to one of the big record labels, the family curse would take him.

The cops had found his lifeless body in a motel, a few miles out of Los Angeles. Elias’ father had overdosed on some experimental cocktail of designer drugs, leaving behind a single mother to care for a four-year-old son who would never know his father as a flesh and blood individual, but as a mythological figure, a Hercules to live up to; an Icarus to avoid becoming.

It was a fitting backstory for the great man he would become one day. The genius who would take on Silicon Valley; design things that would wipe the floor with the one-trick data blenders that his lessers passed off as artificial intelligence. He would not become another tech-bro, or one of the many great minds employed like slaves in the machine of some loser billionaire; Elias Hatner would be king.

Elias Hatner would’ve been king.

Now all he could become was a burden, a small pet to a college drop-out who couldn’t even get a simple psychology degree. While he never vocally lorded it over them, Elias had always considered his friends beneath him; aimless simpletons chasing the simple pleasures, ones which he had promised himself he’d never fall into.

Deep down, he was grateful he had them. They were the ones to pull his uptight ass out into the real world, not letting his social skills atrophy. For in all his smarts, he had failed to realize his one-track mind would’ve made his road to greatness a lonely and isolating one.

That gratitude had wavered somewhat over the week. If it weren’t for them, and their regular outings to the pub, he wouldn’t have gotten addicted to the bottles he’d promised himself he’d never touch. If it weren’t for them, he wouldn’t have found himself outside of that very same pub the night the glow appeared.

Now that all his promise would fade to dust, was it all worth it? Was it worth wasting his future? Was it worth becoming an alcoholic? Was it worth becoming a subhuman bug?

As he thought back on all the good times he’d spent with them, Elias remembered the smiles, the dumb conversations drained of all intellectualism, and the countless times his eyes met those of that rough yet beautiful woman, the one he saw as a simple brute, the one he’d crawl out of his comfort and solitude to meet whenever she’d ask.

Was it all worth it, just to have known Robin?

“The weak spots are-”

“I know,” Elias growled. “The game makes it obvious enough. Stop acting like the personification of yellow paint.”

Just as Elias was fighting a boss, a message appeared in the upper corner of the screen by a user named ChainedWr8.

“Y u block me?” the message read.

“Who’s that?” Jade said.

“Dunno,” Elias said. “We’re playing on Robin’s account, must be one of her friends.”

The message was followed by an invite to a voice chat, one Elias ignored, as he kept playing. Not two minutes passed until another message popped up.

“Join, wanna talk”

Elias was about to write a message back, when another impatient invite to the voice chat appeared. He sighed and grabbed Robin’s headset from the table, plugged it into the controller and entered the voice chat.

“Hello?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

The voice of a young woman responded, “Who are you? Where’s Robin?”

“I’m a friend of hers. Robin’s at work.”

“Wait, are you one of the friends who’s about to be all itty-bitty like?”

“Uh, yeah,” Elias said, a frown forming on his face, visible to the tinies beside him. “She tell you about that?”

“Oh, Robin tells me everything,” the woman said, with a coy tone.

Elias maneuvered through the user interface, and held his thumb over the button to leave the voice chat. “Ok, well, it’s been nice to meet you, but I’m-”

“Are you the one she wants to bite in half?”

The white-haired guy froze, his eyes widening, “What?”

“Or are you the muscular one?” she said. “The one she wants to stick needles into, and sew to the inside of her sneakers?”

“That’s not funny.”

“I think it is,” the voice on the other side said, with predatory glee. “I’m really hurt she’s not inviting me over to the murder party.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Elias growled, as he lowered his thumb on the button to leave.

“Tell her to unblock me on Dis-”

His frown had sunk further, in anger and confusion, as her words lingered. It was crazy, the things some people would say to someone suffering from the glow. The internet was full of people who delighted in their own cruelty, but why would Robin have someone like that in her friend list? Even worse, why would she be on a first-name basis with someone so vile, and tell that person about the four of them?

“Who was that?” Jade said, seeing the sour look on her giant friend’s face.

“No one, just some troll saying fucked up shit.”

“What he say,” Oscar said, assuming ‘troll’ meant it was a guy.

Elias looked down at his friends, not sure if he should tell them. After the meltdown Theo had the day before, he didn’t want to put the thought in their heads. He didn’t want the thought of it in his own head. The thought of Robin having any sort of morbid ideas about them. The thought she might be planning a ‘murder party’ for them.

He didn’t believe a word of it, after all, this was Robin she was talking about. But the idea of it, the ‘what if’ was enough to send shivers down his spine.

“It doesn’t matter,” Elias said. “Let’s just finish this game already.”

It took Elias a few more hours to finally get to the end of the game. He could see Theo get emotional about it. He could see why. This wasn’t just a piece of entertainment the little guy had been waiting for. It was a series he had loved for his entire normal life, watching its most recent game conclude, just as his own normality did, that must’ve struck a chord.

The suggestion of what Robin might have in mind for them lingered in Elias’ head the entire time he’d been playing. After the game, he put on a streaming show for the entire gang to watch. It was some sort of comedy cartoon, but either the jokes didn’t hit for him, or he was just too in his head to care.

Robin? Really? Was she really joking about biting them in half behind their backs? Should he ask her about it once she got home?

While Theo and Oscar were laughing and repeating lines of dialogue from the cartoon, Jade had taken notice of Elias’ demeanor. She slowly walked up to the giant, whose fingers had begun quickly curling and unfurling on his lap.

“What’s wrong?” Jade said.

“It’s nothing.”

Jade didn’t let up, “Elias, something is up, can you please just tell me.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” Elias snapped. “You wanna know what the problem is? My mind keeps running in circles, with these fucked scenarios, while I have to babysit the rest of you, and I got nothing to take the edge off.”

His words struck like thunder above the rest of the group, the anger in them made all the more intimidating by his size. Oscar and Theo fell in complete silence, the funny dialogue of the cartoon in the background falling on deaf ears, as they all looked up at their friend, whose upper body swung back and forth as he tried to contain his nerves.

Jade swallowed her fear, “Elias, I think I speak for all of us, when I say we’re proud of how you’ve been holding up today.”

“Nah, fuck that,” Elias said, as he launched himself upright out of the couch, without warning. “I’m getting a drink.”

Oscar shouted back at him, “Robin stashed it all away, man. Just chill.”

“Like anyone can hide all those bottles in an apartment this small,” Elias said. “I’ll find them.”

“What about us?” Theo said. “We need you sober.”

“All you need is to be safe,” his giant friend said. “Sounds easy enough.”

Elias stormed off to the kitchen, and returned with a wide soda glass. He walked up to the couch seat on which his friends were all clamming up, and lowered the glass on its side.

“Inside, all of you.”

“Dude, no way,” Oscar protested.

“I said inside.”

Elias gave him a quick shove with the tip of his finger, causing Oscar to fall over. Theo shouted his name and ran over with Jade to help their friend up. Looking up in shock at their friend’s sudden shift in character, they slowly made their way to the glass and climbed inside.

The look in Elias’ eyes showed his insecurity, the knowledge that what he was doing wasn’t right, but he needed them out of the way. He slowly began to tilt the glass upward, making them gently slide to the bottom, before he held it upright, and began marching towards the bathroom, where he put the glass down next to the sink.

“There,” he said. “All safe, and far away from me. Robin is coming home soon, then you can be her problem.”

Elias walked out on them, and slammed the door to the bathroom, leaving his friends in disbelief and shock.

“Fucking asshole,” Jade said.

Elias moved through the apartment like a storm, from kitchen to living room, checking everything with a door on it, beneath every piece of furniture from the couch to the TV cabinet, before continuing to Robin’s room. He rushed inside, rummaging through the clothes in the closet, pulling open her nightstand, digging through her desk, until his eyes fell upon the bed.

He lay flat on his stomach as he reached under Robin’s bed, until he felt his hand collide with something, the feeling of cardboard, a box. He grabbed hold of it, and pulled it out into the open. The weight of it didn’t feel like it contained the drink he was looking for, but in a mix of curiosity and trying to make sure, he opened it.

Inside was but one shoe, alongside what looked to be a picture. Elias pulled it out of the box, seeing two strangers in sunglasses smiling back at him. Neither of them seemed familiar, but he assumed it must’ve been Robin’s parents. Despite her having seen Elias’ mother multiple times, she always seemed to avoid having her friends and family meet each other. His eyes fell upon another item in the box, paper.

He pulled it out, and unfolded it, to reveal multiple pages. He started reading the entirety of the life of a man called Dave Rotleigh, from the hospital where he’d been born to the end, which was described in vivid detail, from the perspective of the person who had caused it.

The soft crunch of his bones I could barely sense, as the rest of him gave way with a deliciously smooth squeeze, squelching into nothing but human sludge beneath my foot. A man as studied and achieved as Dave, made magnitudes inferior to a line cook like me, and reduced to goo beneath a simple step, what a delightful horror it must have been.

The quest for alcohol, which had hitherto been at the forefront of his mind, faded to the back, at the insanity of what he was reading. Robin wrote this. He didn’t have to ask himself; it wasn’t a question; he couldn’t delude himself into doubting it. This was Robin’s perspective; writing by Robin, with an unsettlingly gleeful undertone.

His eyes returned to the box, and the shoe inside it. His breathing was a subconscious effort no longer, but a labored task. He reached for the sneaker, pulling it up between pinched fingers, as if he expected spiders to crawl out from all sides.

He turned the front to him, the part the story detailed, the part under which Dave had met his end. Any hope that her words were nothing but sick fiction was smashed at the sight of dark, dried, gory residue sticking to the bottom of the sneaker, lined inside the ridges of a shoe, which Elias could remember his friend wearing over a year ago.

Elias let out a barely vocalized yelp as his fingers let go of the shoe, which crashed back into the box with a rough thud, that made him jump. The manual breathing became harder, as the air went in easier than it came out. Robin enjoyed this? She enjoyed this.

The fantasies Robin’s online friend had told him about returned to the front of his mind on repeat; bite in half, sewed to the inside of her sneaker, murder party.

The woman he thought he knew was a monster.

There was a metallic crunching: the sound of keys entering a lock, the sound of a door opening, then closing, followed by the padding of sneakers getting closer.

Elias watched frozen in fear, as the lanky frame of the friend he had known for years stepped into the doorframe with the tired smile of someone who was happy to be home from work.

Her hair had somewhat turned greasy, stuck in thicker strands of copper. She looked strangely beautiful as always, but somehow taller, more intimidating than she had ever been.

She looked at him, sitting on her bedroom floor. “Where is everyone?”

When her glance fell on the box Elias had pulled out from under the bed, her smile vanished. something in her eyes had changed as she stepped into the room, dropped her bag beside the doorframe, and kept her eyes locked with Elias while slowly closing the door to the bedroom.

“Where are the others?” Robin said quietly, calmly.

Elias’ voice shivered as he asked, “Who are you?”

He could see the creases between her eyebrows forming, as her hands folded into fists. As smart as he thought himself to be, Elias had just done the dumbest thing he could do. His question had hurt her.

“Where are they?” Robin said, maintaining her unsettling patience.

“Don’t hurt them.”

Robin stepped away from the door, and closer to him, “Are you scared of me?”

Elias didn’t answer with words, but with a gulp he couldn’t quite swallow.

“I bet your heart is pounding,” Robin said. “That’s a lot of stress, adrenaline.”

It was. He was at the end of his nerves, barely able to breathe, his heart beating out of his chest. This was bad news, he knew how elevated stress levels could worsen his chances of it finally happening. After being full sized the longest, and stressing all day, this would be the worst moment for him to shrink, but with this amount of pressure…

“Please, let’s just talk about this. It’s messed up, but, uh-” he said, searching his mind for any way to maintain common ground with someone who enjoyed ending a life; searching for any way to go back to normal from here.

“Thud-um, thud-um,” Robin said, teasing the fear out of him by trying to emulate a heartbeat.

She didn’t do so with a smile, but with a sickly neutrality, a tired face with a haunting emptiness, repeating the sound of a beating heart with a low tone of voice.

“Robin, please.”

“Thud-um, thud-um,” she continued, before quickening up the pace, willing his heart to beat faster. “Thoom, thoom, thoom.”

Elias’ eyes began to water, “I’m your friend.”

“Where are the others, Elias?”

The white-haired boy broke, “B-Bathroom, next to the sink. I wanted to not hear them. I wanted to drink.”

“They don’t know?”

“No,” he said, “and I won’t tell them, I promise. We can just pretend this never-“

“Rat-tat-Thum-Thum-Thum.”

“Robin, please don’t hurt me,” he cried out, at the rough but kind-hearted person he knew, at his friend, at the woman he trusted, at the girl he liked.

Elias gathered all he could, all the will that was left in his body, to lean forward and crawl into an upright sprint. If he could just rush past her, if he could open the door, could run out, open another door, hallway, run, run, run.

He had barely stood up, as the mark on his upper arm began to burn.