“Martha… don’t make a…” whispered Jason, holding his wife tightly as they felt the slight vibrations of Amanda’s feet slamming down on the carpet in the room adjacent to them.
“Jason…” cried Martha, her voice cracking, as she hugged him back.
“Don’t talk,” he whispered back. “Don’t.”
“Where are you two?” called out Amanda kindly, loudly enough that she was easily heard. “Come on out… I promise, I’ll make you both so, so happy…”
“I’ll bet...” hissed Jason so quietly, only he could hear it.
“Jason… what’s that?” asked Martha in an equally quiet voice, ignoring her husband, hearing a plastic clicking sound from the other room.
“I don’t know.”
“Really. I’m going to find you. But I’ll tell you what: come out RIGHT NOW…” called out Amanda with a cute little giggle. “…and I’ll go easier on you next. Stay where you are, make me look for you, and… well… I won’t go easier. You have until the count of three. ONE.”
“Jason?” gasped Martha. “W-What are we supposed to…”
“TWO.”
“Don’t worry, Martha. She can’t find us. She…”
“THREE. Time’s up! Ready or not…” sang Amanda, and the clicking sound came again. A gentle hum hung in the air, coming from the same direction as Amanda’s melodious voice.
“J-Jason…”
“Shh…” he answered, covering Martha’s mouth gently. They waited a few more moments breathlessly, staring out at the crack of light coming under the hamper, their hearts frozen in their chests, before feeling the carpet dip ever so slightly with the approaching weight of Amanda’s bare feet applying pressure to the ground. A shadow fell over the crack of light. The ground shook again, and suddenly Jason found himself staring into Amanda’s eye at the entrance.
“Told you I’d find you…” she said, sliding her hand in slowly, barely squeezing it in under the hamper. Her fingers neared them, ruffling the shallow sprigs of the shag carpet, bulldozing through the hard fabric with her muscular fingers, blocking out the exit.
“Martha, GET BACK!” cried Jason, pulled out of his state of shock, crawling backward awkwardly. An instant later, though, his head was clasped between two of Amanda’s fingers in a scissor-like motion so tightly his temple started pounding as he was dragged helplessly back toward the shadow of Amanda’s immense body, the light cut off completely. He could feel Martha’s hand brushing his own fingers weakly as they were slid out into the light, their bodies meeting cold air as they were rushed into the stratosphere of Amanda’s apartment, clasped warmly into gargantuan woman’s thick, confining palm flesh, her fingers closing around them like skin-tightened tree trunks.
“Oh, God… h-h-how d-did…” cried Jason, the tears returning hopelessly.
“Oh, believe me, Jason,” said Amanda, holding him so near to her mouth, he could smell the hot, slightly bacterial aroma of her breath washing over him in a heavy haze. “I’ve done this enough times to be able to find all the little vermin who run around in my house. And besides… I’ve got a motion detector,” she added, her lips closing and curving into a sly grin. She laughed. “Now… sleep again, my little ones. Sleep.”
Jason and Martha shook so violently and were breathing so heavily that they went unconscious again with fear and exhaustion after being held for not much longer. As they did, Amanda walked back to the cage to deposit them back inside, slowly sliding a finger between each of their legs and stroking it against each of their crotches softly before laying them back on the pile of woodchips in the hamster box. As she did, she noticed their hands clasped together tightly still, and smiled to herself.
When Jason came to again, he felt so groggy he doubted he could move, but it happened with surprisingly little effort as he stood up, albeit still awkwardly in his sides. It took a moment to register, but as Jason took a step and nearly tripped, he realized his entire body was numbed. He slammed his foot down on a woodchip, only feeling the faintest of sensations, although he couldn’t tell if this was just from the vibration. He touched his face gently, shivering, unable to feel there either. He breathed a sigh of relief. For now, the pain was gone.
Martha was already trying to stand up as Jason turned to help her up. She smiled for the first real time since the ordeal had begun. By the awkwardness of her first step, Jason had a feeling she could no longer feel anything as well, and that was enough for him to know she was out of the pain, particularly in the deep wound in her back.
“Jason, what happened to…”
“She numbed us,” answered Jason simply, striking himself lightly in the stomach just to make sure.
“Jason, what if…”
“What?”
“What if she’s done with us, and…”
At this thought, Jason’s face lit up. “She said her point was to make us find one another again. Do you think she…”
Both went silent then, blushing heavily. They recalled what had transpired under the hamper, and realized that they had, indeed, accomplished what Amanda had set out for them to do. They locked eyes. Their eye contact, powerful and earth-silencing, was shattered, though, as they heard the metallic rattle of the cage door opening quickly. They barely had time to turn before Amanda was unceremoniously swiping them both back into the same hand, clasping them against one another. As they were removed from their temporary abode, Jason was glad to be given the opportunity to pretend he could protect Martha at this size, and hugged her body to his own, receiving a similar treatment from his wife as they were clenched firmly between their captor’s totalitarian fingers.
“How do you both… feel?” asked Amanda calmly, stepping into her kitchen nook and holding her pet married couple up to her eyes. She clearly meant this ironically.
“W-What did you d-do to…” stuttered the tiny wife.
“It’s morphine, Martha, and plenty of it. I will admit, getting the dosage right for someone your size is always pretty difficult, but it looks like I’ve succeeded this time,” she smiled encouragingly. Far below, her other hand grasped at a drawer handle and pulled it open, ruffling through the contents, although Jason wasn’t in a position where he could see what. “I’m so proud of both of you.”
“Really?” asked Jason, trying not to get his hopes up, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, yes,” she said with a reassuring grin, nodding. “I can sense it. Your feelings for one another. Your… REAL… feelings for one another. They’re back, aren’t they?”
Jason and Martha, face-to-face with one another since Amanda had them pressed conveniently together in her left hand, looked into one another’s eyes again, and smiled. “Yes,” answered Martha almost dreamily, not breaking eye contact. She felt giddy as a schoolgirl.
“I thought so,” continued Amanda, closing the drawer with a loud fist pump.
“D-Does this mean that…” panted Martha woozily. “…you’ll let us g-go?”
“Don’t worry, little Martha. Do one last thing for me, and I promise you: all of this will end.”
“Thank you… thank you…” breathed Jason incredulously.
“Hold still, Jason,” said Amanda kindly, allowing Jason and Martha to slide into the center of her enormous, pale palm. Bunching her fingers up around Jason, then, she raised him just above Martha’s head, allowing the puny woman to remain trembling and cold in the relative safety of her palm. And finally, her other hand came into view, her thumb looped into a metal ring attached to another, larger ring, through which her middle and pointer fingers were also looped.
Amanda was holding a pair of scissors.
“What is t-that?” gasped Jason, squirming uselessly in Amanda’s grip.
“This? It’s my favorite tool, Jason.”
“TOOL?” screeched Jason, sweating again.
Amanda chuckled. “Too adorable…” she whispered off-handedly before clearing her throat. “Yes. THIS…” she said, brandishing the scissors, snipping metallically at the air a few times for show. “…is going to prove to me that you and your wife truly have learned your lesson. That you truly are meant to be married. Your last lesson. Your last game.”
“WHAT?” gasped Jason, huffing and puffing heavily.
“Your love, Jason. Love. Because… after I’m through with you,” she said, bringing the scissors nearer to Jason’s body. “…and Martha can still look at you just the same as she can now… then I’ll know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Smile, Jason. You’re in this together.”
Jason’s pupils dilated, his skin crawling cold. Amanda lowered the opened scissors down toward him, fitting the ends over his left arm, which was pinned into an outstretched position by Amanda’s constricting fingertips. He shivered, trying to process it in his mind as Amanda calmly brought the scissors closed just enough so that he could feel the cold metal touch on the top and bottom of his arm, opposite sides, right by his shoulder on the bicep. He looked upward into Amanda’s eyes, his own tearing up, his lips quivering.
“Please… no…” he whispered, hardly able to make a noise from shock. “You c-can’t possibly mean you’re going to…”
“Hold still, little one,” ordered Amanda, and without flinching, she snipped the scissors, cutting cleanly through Jason’s upper arm, severing it from his body. Jason screamed so loudly his lungs felt like they would cave in. Not from pain, as the numbing effect was still in full force, but from the violation. He turned his head back to the gaping hole in his body, spurting blood into the grooves of Amanda’s huge fingertips, and held his jaw wide open, unable to make another noise, his eyes widened. Amanda quickly supported the dead space, though, by jamming a fingertip against his shoulder to stop the bleeding as best she could, although it didn’t do much.
“Good job Jason, good job,” said Amanda soothingly, as if she was a bedside nurse in a hospital during a procedural amputation. “Other side now…”
“NO! PLEASE, GOD, STOP!” yelled Jason, his voice scratchy, prying with all his might against the grip of Amanda’s fingers. He tugged so hard that he felt his shoulder pop out of the socket. This didn’t do any good, though, as Amanda still had a firm hold on his hand. Just as he turned his head back to his right side, he saw the guillotine-like set-up of Amanda’s kitchen scissors fitting over his other arm. “DON’T… CUT…” screamed Jason as Amanda snipped his other arm off with a gentle sigh from deep in her throat, his words cut off by crying and shock. His other arm flopped down into Amanda’s palm, showering his blood down onto his wife, who was screaming just as loudly as he was.
Martha tried to reach up to Jason, trying to pull him down through the gap between Amanda’s caged fingers, but she was no match for the raw, steel-cable strength of the firm fingers, especially in her wounded state. She looked up, and received a splash of her husband’s blood on her face as it squirted from the newly formed hole in his right shoulder. She wiped it away, shaking so hard she could barely make a sweeping motion across her face. She closed her eyes, feeling more cold droplets trickling down her back from above as her husband was literally taken apart by Amanda’s scissors.
Amanda plugged up both holes with her fingers, and held Jason in place for several more seconds, allowing him to continue sobbing dryly, quivering so much that more and more blood was spilling out against her fingers, staining much of her palm red. Jason’s face was beginning to turn pale, and Amanda calmly lowered him back into her palm. Martha hugged herself to him, crying heavily, before she was grabbed up by Amanda’s fingers around her ankles and tugged into a pinched position, now laid above her husband, who was cradled unmoving in Amanda’s palm.
“Time to join your husband, Martha,” said Amanda sweetly, ignoring Martha’s pitiful and tear-muffled cries for mercy. “Shhh… shhh… shhhh…”
“P-Please… don’t do this to my b-body…” sniffled Martha, slowing her struggling as she discovered how fruitless it was.
“Why not?”
“B-Because it’s m-mine… and you’re g-going to cut…”
“Martha, I want you to remember something. Your body isn’t important. That’s what I’m about to show you. Martha, do you know something?”
“W-W-Wh…”
Amanda smiled, calmly brushing her bangs out of her eyes for the tiny woman to get a better view. “You’re a beautiful woman. You always have been, and you will be as long as you’re alive. I’m going to take a little piece of you right now and make it mine. But you’ll still be just as beautiful.”
“To WHO?”
“To your husband. And… to me, of course,” said Amanda, raising her hand to her lips. Puckering, she laid her moist mouth upon Martha’s chest and kissed, slobbering slightly into her cleavage before pulling away with a wordless smirk, leaving Martha speechless. “Beautiful…” she cooed as she brought the scissors onto Martha’s thigh, cutting calmly through the tiny woman’s leg. Martha screeched, wincing, and almost blacked out from horror as she felt the large, dead weight of her right leg plop down on top of her barely conscious husband’s body below. A steady trickle of blood began pouring down onto Jason as well, filling in the deep creases of Amanda’s palm. “Beautiful.”
Martha closed her eyes, not even wanting to look. In the darkness, she tried to refocus on something. Anything. A distant, happy memory. Childhood. Her parents. Her siblings. Her friends.
Jason.
She felt her body become lighter as her left leg was snipped off lovingly by Amanda. Still with her eyes closed, she felt colder as she began losing more and more blood. Amanda plugged up the holes with her fingers, and laid a final wet kiss onto Martha’s breasts before unpinching her fingers, allowing the legless Martha to plop next to the armless Jason in the center of the humongous hand.
Jason, his head going extremely light as he lost more and more blood, rolled his neck to the side and saw his wife, breathing more and more slowly, her eyes barely open.
“Martha…” he squeaked. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes…” she whispered, crying. “Jason…”
“Don’t talk, Martha. Hold still…” whimpered Jason pathetically, wondering if there was any chance for them at this point.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, Martha, no…”
“I am. F-For…” she gulped, swallowed deeply before hacking up a ball of blood onto her chin. She coughed, regaining herself slightly. “It w-was always en-nough for m-me… w-what you d-d...”
“Martha, p-please…” hacked Jason, his throat dusty and empty. “Forgive me. Your d-dreams… I always w-wanted them as m-much as m-my…”
“I know…” she whispered through her blood-slurred throat, coughing again. She reached a hand out blindly, fishing for Jason in the steadily blurring environment, then found his cheek. She stroked her fingers along his face, feeling his eyes, nose, ears, and lips, etching the sensation of touching him into her mind. She smiled weakly. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Martha.” Jason couldn’t help but smile, his eyes welling with tears. He had never in his life felt feelings like these for any human being, ideal, or deity. “Forever.”
“Forever and…” she gulped, hacking up another bloodball. “…ever.”
Jason’s world went dark, his last vision being the pale, serene face of his oddly smiling wife, as her eyes closed finally.
Amanda smiled, watching the whole scene, then slowly brought her hands together, crushing the two bodies into one another. Their bones snapped inside their bodies, more blood spurted out through the openings from their stolen limbs, their skin smashed together. Bracing her knuckles, Amanda mashed them together with great force and strength, crushing both of them into entwined, bloody pulps between her palms. She repeated the motion continuously, half a dozen times, smushing their bodies together until she could barely distinguish the horrific mess between her hands.
Wasting little more time, Amanda balled the mash into one fist and raised it to her mouth, parting her lips gleefully. Carefully, she dropped the pair of tiny, deformed bodies into her mouth, adding their severed limbs as well. Then, closing her lips, she allowed the rush of salty, metallic blood to mix tastefully with her saliva. With a lift of her sopping tongue, she pushed their bodies nearer to her teeth and began to munch thoughtuflly, grinding them up into swallowable, partially liquefied morsels.
A glistening tear of joy welled in Amanda’s eye, and she swallowed the crushed bodies of Jason and Martha slowly and thickly, placing a hand on her throat and stroking it, a warmth rushing through her body.
“I love you, Jason and Martha. Forever and ever.”