You can hardly dare to believe that your escape plans could have turned out this unfathomably fortunate. After getting you a drink and bringing you back from the brink of complete dehydration, Sophie had rolled up a Kleenex and given it to you to robe yourself in. You haven’t felt the reassuring touch and privacy of actual “clothes” in five years, and for a few moments it feels foreign to you, but after you realize you can now freely look your gigantic cousin in the eye without being mortally humiliated that she has full view of your junk, you become accustomed to it again rather quickly.
The next hour is spent sitting in Sophie’s two cupped palms, her fingers wrapped gently and protectively around you to help warm you up, the girl herself reclining on her bed and listening intently to you as you relate the extremely condensed version of this entire insane and dream-like five-year ordeal. It doesn’t take long to get the tears welling back in Sophie’s eyes, and you can feel her fingers quivering and her palms getting clammy as you describe in vague detail some of the horrible crimes violated against your life by your sister. So, for the sake of the girl’s sanity as she continues trying to accept the reality of being able to hold her doll-sized, presumed-dead cousin in her hands, you withhold the vast majority of the despicable events you’ve somehow managed to live through with your psych more or less intact. You feel you owe Sophie that much courtesy, at least.
“Jack… so… you’re telling me that this entire time you’ve just been at your own house?”
“Well… almost the entire time, I just spent the first semester of college in a dorm room, but yeah.”
Sophie has to fight back a gasp at this. She shakes her head, and wipes her damp eyes after freeing one of her hands. “But… but… I just can’t believe… I mean, Carly…”
“Yeah…” you grimace, knowing there’s little point in trying to debate the deeply disturbed mind of your unassuming and sweet little sister. “I know.”
“How could she… how c-could she…”
“Yeah…”
“How could she not d-do something… how could she not try to find some way to h-help y-you?”
You shrug, trying to move on from the subject of Carly and more into ending this once and for all. Eventually, you know you’ll have to have the very real consideration of whether or not it’s possible to ever return to normal size in your life, but for now, all you can do is sit and bask in the safety you feel perched in the warm, nervously trembling but trustworthy hands of Sophie. “I really don’t know,” you answer as honestly as you can. “I guess… that’s just the way she is.”
“She’s always… so happy, so excited about things. I mean, people LOVE her, they practically WORSHIP her. She’s the center of everything, she gets so much attention, how… h-how…”
“She’s good like that,” you mention off-handedly, knowing full well how skilled Carly is at keeping secrets.
“How could she DO this?” blurts Sophie painfully, clearly building up some steam over the fact that one of her idols is, in fact, a demented psychopathic tormentor and brilliant liar.
“I… don’t know. I’ve tried to understand that for a long time,” you answer earnestly. “But really, Sophie…”
“What?”
“I need you to help me get back to my parents. I have to…”
“Do you want me to call them?” she asks more suddenly. “Or… no, no, wait. I… I can take you home right now if you want, I can…”
“Sorry, hold up,” you say more sternly than you intended, clutching your temple in thought. Even being delivered directly into the hands of your parents and feeling momentarily safe, you have a bad feeling about this whole situation. Carly would still be there, and, in the heat of the moment and the shock of seeing both their son alive again and finding out that he’s no larger than a child’s toy, your parents might accidentally leave themselves vulnerable to the sugary-sweet deception of Carly. You’re not sure of specifically how, but you’ve got a feeling in your gut that your sister would use her knowledge of the situation fully to her own advantage in that moment. In turn, this would spell physical vulnerability for you, and you have a feeling that once the jig is up and Carly is faced with having her entire life’s empire of mad power and slave-driving control collapsing in on her all at once, smashing you into bloody jam under her punishing heel will not even appear as a blip on her moral radar.
“What is it?” asks Sophie, sounding surprised.
You quickly explain your concern to her, and she nods approvingly.
“I get it. I mean, I guess she’s pretty smart, to have hidden you so well for all this time…” admits Sophie dejectedly.
“Right. I… I can’t go back now. She’d… she’d…” you begin, but can’t quite get the words out.
“I know,” butts in Sophie, not particularly wanting to hear you say it either. “I get it, really. What do you need me to do?”
“We need to get Carly out of that house somehow.”
“I could offer to go shopping with her! She’s pretty cool with me, we actually… hang out sometimes,” says Sophie, the audible disappointment swelling in her voice. You can’t help but have sympathies for the girl in this situation. In the last hour, she’s managed to find that her dead cousin is not only dead, but also the breaker of several scientific and physical laws in the process. Additionally, she’s had to accept that one of her most respected cousins and even friends is something of a monster. “So it wouldn’t be weird, really,” finishes Sophie.
“Good!” you answer approvingly, before something else strikes you. “No! Wait. Wait. I… I mean, she hid me in her purse, that’s where’ve been during Christmas. She’s going to-”
“Wait,” interrupts Sophie, confused. “You’ve been in her purse for the last two days?”
“Well… more or less, actually I spent a lot of it in her fancy socks when she wore them on Christmas, but that’s not important,” you continue on casually, barely thinking of much of it because you are so used to it, as a look of horror crosses Sophie’s face, her hand quivering at the thought of such a thing. “The point is, she’s going to have to grab that to go shopping, and… well, when I’m not there, you know she’s not leaving the house, she’s going to stay there until she finds me.”
“Okay,” whispers Sophie quietly, looking you over with extreme concern. “Oh my God… she actually…” she gulps, hardly daring to say the words in conjunction. “She actually… put you… inside her sock… while she was wearing it?”
“Umm… yeah, I guess so,” you answer nonchalantly, realizing you probably made a mistake in sharing that little tidbit with your overwhelmed cousin.
“What the hell… who… who would…” she sputters.
“It doesn’t matter now, I’m never doing that again, Sophie. But right now, we need to think of a way to get Carly out of that house without her purse. I think…”
“God…” blubbers Sophie, her throat gurgling a few times before the tears begin flowing more freely, the sobs choking in her throat. “Oh my G-God…”
“Sophie, really, we need to-”
“That’s so sick…”
“I know, but…”
“She’s a freak… a f-fre…” mumbles Sophie, hardly able to process the idea as her eyes fall back to you rather piteously, her features softening even more as the tears streak down her face. “You’re… you’re just a tiny little person. You can’t do anything to stop her. How can she… how could she hurt you like that?”
“Sophie, please, it’s okay.”
“NO!” screeches Sophie, the dramatics rising quickly. “No, Jack. You can’t say that. It’s NOT okay. It’s NOT okay for your sister to treat you l-like… l-like her PET or something! Oh my G-God…”
“Sophie.”
“Tell me what we’re going to do, Jack,” whispers Sophie again, her voice instantly becoming more focused as her eyes narrow cunningly. “I’ll help you. But… but Carly has to p-pay for this, she can’t… I mean, she can’t just… get away with what she’s done. She deserves to… to…”
“She’ll get what’s coming to her, Sophie, believe me. I don’t know how, but if we do this right, I’m sure they can get… some kind of legal involvement here. But really…”
“NO. That’s NOT what’s coming to her,” says Sophie, her voice descending into a growl of sorts. You can tell the cogs in her brain are really whirring now. She seems to be plotting something, and whatever it is, no matter how well Sophie seems to mean in the favor of your wellbeing and no matter how much you subconsciously would tend to agree with her sentiments against Carly, seeing her aggression rise so quickly is making you uneasy.
“Sophie…”
“God, if I had her…” hisses Sophie. “Like… like she had you… tiny and helpless… I wouldn’t help her, either. I’d… I’d…”
“Hey, no, no, wait a second…”
“I’d do everything to her that she’s done to you. Everything. I… I’d put her in my sock, and… and I’d keep her in there for a week,” she grumbles with almost devilish glee, so desperate is her desire to avenge the wrongdoings against you. “A whole week… and… when I let her out, I’d… I’d put her in a cage, and keep her in there like a hamster, and… and I’d take away her clothes, too, so she’d be cold, and if she asked me to help her get warmer, I’d put her in the refrigerator!” declares Sophie, rapidly getting lost in the sadistic fun of her daydream as she continues to pour out her raw anger at Carly. “And… and then, if she asked me for food, or… or water, I’d just eat something right in front of her and… and not give her any…”
“That’s… actually usually what happens,” you point out against your better judgment. Despite the immediacy of your desire to return to your parents, you can’t help but realize how much you share your cousin’s plight, and having someone empathize so radically with you is so refreshing that hearing each acidic word coming angrily from Sophie’s lips is like music to you. The mutual feelings of detestation at Carly’s cruelty are swirling so powerfully around you with Sophie’s vivid suggestions that you don’t blame yourself at all for wanting to bask in them. “Actually, she’d chew it up, spit it out, and make me eat it.”
“T-T-That… That… that BITCH!” shrieks Sophie, after sputtering again for a moment. “Oh, I’d eat it in front of her. And swallow it. And then I’d puke it back up, just for her to eat. And if she didn’t eat it all, well… I’d… I’d…” stutters Sophie in white-hot rage, trying to get ahold of herself. “I’d eat HER! That little… I swear to God, I’d dip her in chocolate so she wouldn’t taste as bad and chew her up until there was nothing left.”
“Sophie! C’mon!” you shout out, shocked to hear this last bit. “There’s no need to think about killing here.” Despite how hypothetical the situation of your sister being shrunken is, it scares you anew to hear your cousin so willingly describing the murder of Carly, even if in enraged fantasy.
“I know, I know, I know…” sobs Sophie, a fresh wave of salty tears streaking her cheeks. “But… but that wouldn’t stop me, still. She’s… she’s kept you for five years like… like you’re her PROPERTY or something, and… and the things she’s done to you. I’d make her feel like she’s made YOU feel… I’d… I’d…”
“Sophie, please, really, it’s fine now. I’m safe. It’s over.”
“No. It’s not over, Jack. It’s not going to be over. Carly deserves it. She deserves to be sitting here, down there, on the floor where she belongs, begging me to let her live. And… and I’d let her live, but… but only if she bowed. Until she believed that I didn’t care about her,” growls Sophie, closing her eyes and letting the tears continue to plop onto her shirt. “And… and… what you s-said about her… when she first found you. Instead of saving you. She… she… made you k… k-k-k…”
“Kiss her feet,” you grimace.
“Oh… she’d learn how that feels. I’d stand on top of her stupid little body and make her kiss the bottom of my foot even after her little fucking lips fell off…” sighs Sophie in near ecstasy, clearly enraptured with the very idea of taking such ironic vengeance. “And God damn it… I wouldn’t let her stop until she liked it and was begging me for more like the stupid little whore that she is!”
You can’t lie to yourself. The idea of your colossal sister’s sickest scenarios involving you being reenacted on Carly herself with such glorious attention to detail brings a smile to your face and a sense of satisfaction to your mind. For a moment, your deepest wish is for such a thing to actually take place, with you in the first row to watch your suddenly equal-sized sister bruised, crying, pathetic, defeated, and completely subjugated by your apparently incredibly creative cousin’s bare foot, arched possessively over her body like a barely merciful god, allowing Carly to live only because she paid continuous tribute to it with the last dregs of human dignity she had left: each kiss on Sophie’s fleshy sole a sign of her utter surrender to her fate and what she deserved for her crimes.
It’s an appealing concept to see Carly rightfully reduced to dirt, you have to admit to yourself, but there will be plenty of time for fantasizing about revenge later on. For now, you have bigger things to worry about.
“Sophie. We can… talk some other time about that. But really. Really. Right now, we have to act. And I think I have a plan.”
“Tell me,” whispers Sophie with an eager smile, bringing you closer to her gorgeous face to listen in.