Hailey made sure to move out of the bed when she felt the first signs of Paul stirring next to her. She didn’t know if Paul had detected her moving in with him at any point durring the night, but seeing how quiet he had been over the last twenty-four hours it seemed unlikely that he would say anything even if he did.

When Hailey entered the downstairs floor of the dollhouse she discovered that Carla was already awake, reading a novel she had found on one of the shelves. Carla looked up as she heard Hailey arrive.

“Morning,” Said Carla, then turned back to her book. Hailey sat down on an armchair and let her mind drift. She was not fully awake—she had slept fitfully last night. Though she had slept at sizes smaller than full-size over the last few days, this was the first night that she had slept this small. It had been odd enough sleeping in a secret bedroom behind a cabinet; several times in the night she woke up with the realisation she was sleeping in a dollhouse bedroom up on a table within a strange compound. It was a very unsettling thought.

She didn’t know how Carla got on so well with it. Carla sat there, calmly reading her book. Carla, who had not been even as small as eighth-size before the maze competition, seemed to be taking this in strides. Maybe Carla is the kind of person who has a rock-hard inside that can take this kind of thing without becoming paniced or worried. As for Paul, well, he had been eliminated for two days, so she assumed he was a tad bit more used to it know, but even he seemed sturdy and quiet about it.

Paul came downstairs a short while later. He looked a bit grumpier than usual as he looked from Hailey to Carla and said, “Morning,” gruffly. He stood around waking up for a few moments before heading to the kitchen cabinets and digging around with them. Hailey suddenly realised that he was going to fix breakfast! That struck her as awfuly generous.

To Hailey’s amazement, every appliance that Paul flicked on seemed to work. Someone had obviously taken great lengths to ensure that this dollhouse functioned as a mini-house. Before long the smell of cooking omlettes had filled the tiny dollhouse, and Hailey would not have been surprised if a hint of the smell had traveled to another room.

Without saying as much as a word Paul cut a slice out of the omlet and put it on a place for Hailey. He put another slice on a place which he placed on the table, presumably for Carla when she paused from reading her book, since as of yet she had not acknowleged the cooking a few inches away. He took a third piece for himself and sat down at the table. Hailey joined him, and a minute later Carla put down her book and came to the table as well.

They were just about to take their first bite when the door to the room opened and Betty entered. This unexpected arrival caused them all to jump—there had been nothing but the movements of their own small bodies thus far and heaing something so large move was a shocking reminder of their scale.

Betty was wearing a top that was a cross between a small tank-top and a sports bra that exposed her belly and most of her breasts, and very short shorts. The exposure was overbearing, expecially as she bent down to talk to the three of them.

“Good morning people, I see you’ve got the kitchen equiptment working fine there,” Betty said.

“Good morning,” Hailey and Carla responded; Paul just looked up at her silently.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Betty said, bringing her right hand from around her back. In it she held something—no, a person—no, Dale! “He was the one we eliminated last night.”

She placed Dale on the kitchen floor a few inches away from the others. He looked out of sorts—he had an expression of confusion and fear on his face, but it gave the impression of having been fixed on there for some time. He even seemed diminished beyond his size; he was holding himself less proudly, less like a confident football coach and more like a child who feared being caught in wrongdoing.

“I’ll leave you to mingle for a little bit,” Betty said. “I’ll be back in a little bit so we can play dress-up. So long!”

And as simply as that, Betty left the room closing the door behind her and leaving Dale standing fixed on the spot where Betty had left him. All eyes were on him and they were staring at him without knowing what to say.

Hailey had been angry at Dale for saying that she embarrassed him, expecially after she allowed him to lay her on the very first night before any sizechanging had taken place, and she was angry that he somehow finished first and she last in the maze competition when she encountered him and stole his ribbons. But now she felt a pang of pitty for Dale, who was standing there like a man who didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

Dale could not think of a less comfertable group to be with right now. Hailey had humiliated him twice, and he and Paul had been bitter rivals since the game started. And Carla—she had sacraficed her fourth ribbon, her safety, to help him recover from the encounter with Hailey, and that cost her finishing the game as one of the first three. He had sworn to help her if he could but here he was, eliminated right along with her. What a waste, he was sure Carla was thinking.

The staring went on for several more minutes until an expression of softening seemed to come to Carla’s face. She had little reason to be angry with Dale, and seeing him here in such a pathetic state was causing her heart to melt a little bit.

“Dale, there’s some omlete on the counter if you want it,” Carla said, pointing to the top of the range where the remainder of Paul’s omlette sat. Dale turned his body as if he was going to walk over there, but his feet did not move. It was as if he was scared to go over there, scared to touch it, scared to do anything.

“Aww, have this one,” Carla said, pushing her own plate of omlette to the place at the table that had been Tom’s last night, motioning for him to sit down. She could not stand him looking like this. Dale took a few steps forward, more baby steps than anything. Sighing, Carla got up, walked over, and grabbed Dale on the arm, almost pulling him over to the table and forcing him down in the seat. His body responded limply and automatically.

Carla walked over to the range to get herself another piece of omlette trying to be as fast as she could, because she knew the last two people Dale wanted to sit with right know were Hailey and Paul, though she was pretty sure Betty would not be a welcome sight either.

As Carla sat down she noticed that Dale was staring down at his omlete, fork in hand but not moving at all. This was getting exasperating.

“Eat!” Carla said loudly to everyone. “Eat, dammit!”

Dale began to move his fork hand to stab the omlette, and a fraction of a second later Hailey and Paul were both eating. The four of them ate in silence, the tension hanging thickly in the air around them. It must have been Betty’s way of being funny sticking Dale in here with us, thought Carla.

“So how did you get eliminated?” Carla asked. She realised that depending on the circumstances it might be difficult for him to say. His moved and nothing but short gasps of air came out for a few minutes before he was ready to talk.

“I—I, Marie eliminated me,” Dale said at last. “It was a vote, the Queen. I voted against her, so I was eliminated.”

“Ah, that Marie,” Said Carla rolling her eyes, though understanding why Marie would have done it. She would have likely done the same if she was in Marie’s shoes. If Carla had been the queen though, it would have been goodbye to little Vera instead.

After the rest of the breakfast passed in complete silence Paul rose quickly and untactfully loudly, clearing up all the plates and bringing them back to the kitchen for washing. Hailey got up a little more slowly, nervously, and went to follow Paul.

“Come upstairs with me,” Carla said kindly to Dale, putting her hand on his arm. “Come on,” She urged Dale to his feet and together they walked out of the room and up the stairs to the upper floor of the dollhouse.

Carla motioned for Dale to sit down on a chair, and she sat across from him on another chair. He continued to sit very still, not moving and looking utterly defeated. It shocked and even disturbed Carla to see Dale this way.

“Tell me what happened,” Carla said. Dale made some noises in his throat and said nothing.

“What did Betty do to you?” Carla asked, for she knew this was the only way he could be acting like this.

“She—” Dale began, but his voice froze up again.

“Did she stuff you into herself?” Carla asked bluntly. There was no point beating around the bush.

“Yes…” Dale said.

“And did she do anything else to you?” Carla asked.

“Not…not really,” Dale said. He could have been lying, of course, but Carla could tell that it was probably true. It confused her a little. Paul and Hailey had both been in Betty’s cunt, and they had not turned out this way. Although Carla herself hadn’t taken the plunge, she couldn’t see how it would be that terrible. Either Betty was extrodonarily rought with him or there were other things going on internally.

“Dale, you’re not the first person she’s done this to,” Carla said. Dale said nothing, and with an embarrassing start she realised that Dale was crying a little.

“Listen,” Carla said, trying to sound sympathetic while beating down twin demons of annoyance and revulsion at a full-grown man blubbering like a child. “In a few days it will all be over, you’ll be on a plane back to—God damn it, stop crying!! Are you a man or not?”

Carla finished in a shout, startelling Dale so much that he stopped crying. For the first time since he was dropped in the dollhouse he looked Carla in the eyes. His face was red and puffy.

“You knew you were signing up for something unusual, but you never expected shrinking. But now that it’s shrinking, who cares?” Carla said loudly. “Deal with it! That’s what the rest of us are doing. Why are you so scared? Do you think that everyone hear hates you? Someone’s going to step on you or swallow you or, whatever?”

“Damnit Dale, I thought you had balls,” Carla said. “Pull yourself the hell together. I’m listening to you just because I hate to see people act like this. Now grow up Dale like the rest of us.”

Dale sat stunned through this verbal lashing, and finally things started to click together in his head. She was right of course—none of them came into the game in any different states. He just dug himself a hole and barried himself inside it.

“I’m sorry, Carla,” Dale said, in a calm and almost normal tone. “I just feel like I’ve been living a nightmare. I just…want to get out.”

Carla thought about yelling at Dale again, but decided against it. She tried to picture what it would be like to be Dale—large an in charge out in the world but put him in here and suddenly he was at the whim of gigantic women. Add to the fact that Betty made Carla look like a passive sex partner in comparison. Carla recalled a time when she came down with the flu, back when she was thirteen. Her fever got so high that she hallucinated in her sleep—she thought she was a prisoner of war for what seemed like days, thought it had only been for one night. The dream was very realistic and she thought it was actually happened—it no longer scared her to think about it, but it had for a number of years afterwards. Dale must be feeling the same way as she did durring the dream, but in his case it was for real.

“Come here,” Carla said, opening her arms, “Give me a hug.” Slowly Dale complied, laying his head right down on Carla’s chest as she put her arms around him, feeling his tense body on hers and patting his back slowly. Carla knew that although she had a very sexually-charged personality, she was not “affectionate” in the truest sense of the word; she rarely cuddled unless she liked the person considerably and almost never did cutesy things like holding hands. That was more of Marie’s thing, probably. But the fact she was giving Dale a hug was an odd one in itself.

Downstairs, Hailey was watching Paul clean the dishes. Hailey thought about asking but Paul had a very steady frown on his face and she was afraid to say anything to them. He scrubbed the plates furiously, then wrinced them and dried them with a towel. Hailey dowbted that Paul really needed to do any dishes at all and it was just giving him something to do.

“What do you think Carla’s doing with Dale?” Hailey asked, trying to find something to start a conversation around.

“Knowing Carla, she probably has Dale flat on his back and she’s bouncing up and down on him,” Paul said with a hint of a growl, and Hailey was taken aback.

“Do you really think Carla would do that?” Hailey asked.

“Use somebody like that when they’re down? Sure,” Paul said, rubbing a particularly nasty spot vigerously.

“You really don’t like Carla, do you?” Hailey asked.

“No I don’t.” Paul said, a tone of definiteness in his voice.

“You hate her more than Dale even?” Hailey asked, wondering how he could hate the competitive, sneaky, but reasonable girl over the chauvanistic, shallow spineless man.

“Dale is too pathetic to hate,” Paul said. “He’s not worth my time.”

Hailey was stunned at Paul’s vitrol. He never seemed to get quite this angry. Slowly, he turned towards Hailey and she felt a prick of fear.

“You wouldn’t have known, but I was watching the competition,” Paul said. “You didn’t see it, because you were locked in that pit, but I was there at the maze competition; I was watching from that big streetlamp in the center. Carla jumped on Vera to prevent her from surviving the competition. She almost tore Vera apart. If it weren’t for the fact that Vera was a little stronger and faster Carla would have seriously hurt her. I’m not surprised Carla didn’t bring that up while we were playing bridge.”

Hailey was shocked yet again. Carla, who had always seemed so mild, had savagely attacked Vera at the competition? Hailey, who had not been present when Carla had flipped out the previous morning, was surpised at this new revelation.

“You really care about her, don’t you?” Hailey asked.

Paul looked up at Hailey. Memories came back of staring up at a smiling, taunting Hailey four times his height as he and Vera rubbed her feet for a favor that never came because of Jerry. Hailey, who was so low on scruples that she allowed the transparently useless Dale to bed her on the first night. She was almost a female Dale in her way, Paul thought. But she was standing here staring at him looking honestly concerned, and Paul felt himself soften just a little.

“Yes I do.” Paul said. He put down his rag, he had finished his dishes. It was true, he thought, we were all equalized in elimination. We’re all humble toys together.

“You are so lucky,” Hailey said. Paul could swear he could feel her tremble a little bit as if she was going to cry. Was Hailey cracking as well, was the strain of the game finally getting to her? Paul didn’t feel he could comfort her very well; he and she had very little in common and even the fact that they had had sex—albiet in an unconventional and not quite consentual way—didn’t change that.

However, Paul heard footsteps coming down the stairs of the dowlhouse and saw Carla approaching. She looked neutral, even a little annoyed.

“Leave Dale alone for a bit, okay,” Carla said, trying to sound tender and utterly failing, sounding stern instead. “He’s in a bad way.”

Paul slammed his hands down, heaved an angry sigh, and walked out of the room. Carla’s eyes followed him coldly for a second. Men, she thought. Hailey remained there, herself looking close to tears for God-knew-what reason. Man, of all the people I had to get stuck with I had to have a passive-aggressive Navy brat, a spineless coward, and an overly emotional bimbo, Carla thought, am I the only one whose keeping her head here?

Hailey looked at Carla for a few moments as if she was afraid of her. Finally, Hailey meekly said, “Did you know Paul really loves Vera?”

This was the wrong thing to say. Carla’s frustration broke. “Of all the things!” Carla yelled, “Why the fuck would I care about that? The navy brat and the little she-bitch together. And a crying, thirty-year old baby upstairs. What the fuck!”

As Carla shouted she realised that she was loosing it too. Was she not as immune to the stresses of shrinking as she thought, or was it just the people getting to her.

“Look,” Carla said, pretty quickly as she saw a tear start to eek out of Hailey’s eye. “I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” Hailey didn’t say anything and sniffled a few times, then pity got the better of Carla. “Okay, what’s bothering you?”

Hailey looked at Carla trying to steady herself. Finally, she responded with a question. “Do you love Andy?”

Carla stared at Hailey for a second, then broke into laughter. She was asking him about Andy? This was truly absurd.

“Andy?” Carla struggled to quell the laughter. “I…I like him and everything. Do I love him? I don’t know, I don’t think so. Maybe there hasn’t been enough time. Or maybe because he licks my boots, and I can’t love somebody who licks my boots. Or whatever, I honestly don’t know.”

Hailey continued to stare at Carla almost pleading, so Carla continued talking, “I mean, what am I supposed to say? Why are you so interested in couples all of the sudden, are you—wait. You’re lonely, aren’t you.”

Hailey nodded grimly. The connections had fallen into place in Carla’s mind. Hailey had had a lot of bad relationships in the past, Carla could tell. Women had a way of reading each other’s behavior better than any man could, and she knew just by watching her that Hailey had been hurt in the past. Then there had been the whole thing with Dale, then Jerry. And how she had snuck into bed with Paul a few hours after Betty had made them have sex together, sleeping beside him even though she knew his mind was fixed on Vera. Hailey was lonely, perhaps desperately lonely, and all this drama was unhinging her. It didn’t have to do with the shrinking at all.

“Hailey, I understand.” Carla said. “You want a solid man in your life. You’ve dated many but none of them have turned out to be that way.”

Hailey nodded. “It’s like I have a knack for attracting male garbage,” Hailey said miserably.

“Don’t think it’s your fault,” Carla said, but a little voice in the back of Carla’s mind that always whispered truth was telling her the reason Hailey attracted trash was because she thought so low of herself that she subconciously acted the part of a trash magnet because she thought decent guys were too good for her, but she obviously said nothing.

“I don’t know,” Hailey said uncertianly.

“Well, I understand what you mean,” Carla said. “I’ve had many boyfriends but not a single one lasted more than three months. None of them were staying material, if you know what I mean.”

“At least you knew when to give them the boot,” Hailey said. “I dated a complete looser for two and a half years.”

“Sometimes you have to travel through a bunch of jerks to find the right one,” Carla said lamely, not really knowing how to relate. Hailey seemed to appreciate the support, however, and she looked greatful.

“I often don’t think I’ll ever find him,” Hailey said.

“Don’t think like that,” Carla said. “Just think more positively about yourself. You deserve a good man, remember that. The more you think it the more likely men will think it. Then you’ll stop attracting trash.”

Carla observed a hint of a smile coming onto Hailey’s face. “Thanks, Carla,” She said.

“No problem,” Said Carla. “You’re a sweet girl and the guys here aren’t good enough for you. Well, Andy’s all right but he’s mine.”

Hailey laughed. Her spirits seemed genuinely lifted and it made Carla feel good. The annoyance at her other team members seemed to be ebbing away—Dale and even Paul were pretty petty people when she thought about it.

“I’ll be in the other room taking a break,” Carla said. “I’m sure Betty will be back at any time.” Hailey nodded as Carla left to sit down on her own, thinking about what had just happened. Poor Hailey, still going after “the one” at twenty five and getting nothing but junk. It wasn’t that hard to find an alright man, but some girls know how to hone in on them and some don’t. Or in Hailey’s case she had chosen men that were the opposite of what she really wanted.

In any case, Carla couldn’t really relate to Hailey personally about it, because a steady man was never something Carla really wanted in life. She was too fiercely independent and men were more toys to her, even full-sized ones, as well as tools that drove her places and bought her gifts. She always called it off when things began getting too serious. Some of them took it better than others. There had been one boy who had proposed to her—fucking proposed to her—after only having known each other for just under three months. She dumped him on the spot and it hurt him a lot. That was the only one that really bothered her, the others she could care less about. She always had the tendancy to find guys who would kiss her feet. That was a flaw as well as a gift—they worshiped the ground she walked on but she could not respect them. She could never respect a man who kissed her feet, but she would never date a man that didn’t because there were few things Carla hated more than a man who thought of himself as more important than her. There had been one like that when she was eighteen. That relationship hadn’t made it a month. When she had tried to break up with him he had started yelling at her; real angry yelling unlike the pleading whining yell she was used to hearing. She wondered idly if he still had the scar above his right eyebrow from the lamp she had swung at him. In any rate he had not spoken to her after than, in fact Carla thought he probably moved. The thing that had happened with the other boy, the one who had proposed to her, had been a year ago. She had taken his virginity, that was probably why. She wondered if he had managed to find another girl after her and the pessimistic part of her mind dowbted it. She had made a personal policy after that not to break in virgins. She had only slept with one virgin since, and she hadn’t known he was one until afterwards, but for the way he acted she thought he could have been nearly as experianced as her. He said he learned a lot through pornographic movies. He was twenty-four years old who looked thirty and spent all of his time watching porn and learning from it. Pretty pathetic. But Andy had not been a virgin. She had suspected it before she asked him, assuming he had had sex but not that much, and it was confirmed; he had had three partners before Carla, the first one five years ago when he had been twenty-one. Carla wondered what kind of a hormonal mess Andy had been back when he was nineteen or twenty. She was glad she knew him now and not then. She had been seventeen five years ago and was already very experianed. She had even been suspended for three days for getting to third base with a senior in the boiler room after school when she was a junior. She had promised to handcuff him to the pipe of the boiler room sink but that never panned out. He had been feeling her through her open fly when Mr. Doughraty had discovered them. Idiot boy had been making too much noise. Oh well, if he had come five minutes later they probably would have been fucking through their zippers. Ah, high school memories, it was a fun time. She had already been experianced by that point. She had her first time when she was fourteen, two months to the day before her fifteenth birthday, with an equally curious fifteen-year-old boy in his parents’ house while they were out shopping. It had been the summer before her ninth-grade year and she had entered that year broken in, already seeking out new guys, because that summer love fling didn’t last. They had stayed friends and even hooked up one other time when they were eighteen, but Carla hadn’t seen him in two years. Carla had been able to go straight to college after eleventh grade, being as fucking brilliant as she was, and she managed to bed a twenty seven year old divorcee with two kids a month in. Thank god for liberal sex laws, they had said, because almost anywhere else that would have been highly illegal. She had never slept with someone that many years older than her again, and she had never slept with anyone more than two years younger. Wait, had that one boy been three years younger? No, two, his birthday had been just a few months after hers. That was only five or six months ago wasn’t it? He had been a college sophmore and he thought it was awesome to sleep with someone he precieved as a high-powered businesswoman, though she was merely an accounting assistant, an interning accounting assistant at that. Still, she had worn her work attire durring sex and it had driven him crazy. Well, at least the top half anyway, the bottom half was naked and busy pumping her up and down. She was on top almost all the time; she liked the control. She remembered the first few times she tried it when she was fifteen she got the angle all wrong and ended up sore for a few days, but she got the hang of it quickly. She only did it the traditional way with guys she liked a lot. Or rather, guys she was about to dump because that usually ment it was getting too serious. She had let Andy take her lying down that first night, she wondered what that ment. Probably she had liked him. Or else the shrinking was messing with her brain.

Shrinking, thought Carla, it’s so weird, it makes everything different. Her sexual exploitations of the past sounded so normal and rational compared to the last several days. It was like the two Carlas were different people; she couldn’t imagine lumping this experience with the rest of her exploits, it was too different. …and then there was this time with a shrunken man… it was just too surreel.

She didn’t know what to make of it. She couldn’t even wrap her head around the fact that even as she was sitting here thinking about her past sex life she was four and a half inches tall. With a starting revelation she remembered that at this moment she was smaller than any of the penises of the the men she slept with. That was a disturbing thought. She thought of them all in her mind, all erect and eager to meet her. They had been the joysticks to a great game; play the level right and you could win any number of things from those suckers. But the thought of her standing next to a giant penis was not an appealing one.

No, Carla did like shrinking, but she liked to be the larger person. It made sense, it was part of her personality. She loved how Andy treated her; how much he loved to be toyed with by Carla. She thought what would have happened if she had been able to shrink any of her previous exes. Most of them would have loved it, she assumed. The boy she fucked with her work clothes on would have loved to have been carried around in her leather purse, which was another present from a guy who would have made a carreer out of pleasuring her if he could, likely to move into her pants and undowtedly spend tons of his parents’ money on building a little comfertable pad down there. That rugby player she had slept with when she was sixteen would have resisted at first, she was sure, but would have gotten into it dispite himself anyway. The man she had hit with the lamp would have hated it no matter what, but she would stuff him inside head first and watch his little legs kick from inside her just to humiliate him.

She had not been able to fuck with Andy at anything less than quarter-size, but she had done all sorts of things when she had caught Tom the night before last. The feeling of an entire man wriggling around in her pussy was the most empowering feeling Carla had ever felt. He had been good-natured about the whole thing, which really felt much more like masturbation than any kind of sex, but if it was masturbation then it was the most erotic masturbation she had ever had.

Carla had felt so high with power that she even made a pass on Sherri, which was highly unusual in itself because before the show Carla had had very few experiances with girls. There had been a couple, but Carla was not particularly attracted to girls. She had one two-girls-and-a-guy experience, but as she found the guy was mainly getting off from watching Carla and the other girl, a short redhead, go at it, she decided to go for the guy himself, causing the redhead to get angry and the guy to feel guilty. They had been a couple but did not last long after that; Carla felt pretty sure that experience had been a major contributer. She had not done a trio like that again until Marie and Andy, and she was even regretting that a bit because of the sexual possibilities it opened up between those two.

Then there was the matter with Betty—what a crazy woman. As many men Carla had slept with over her nearly eight-year sexual carreer, she was sure Betty had slept with far more. She was even more of a power junkie than Carla, and that astonished her. Carla knew better than to compete with Betty—she was the hostess and she had the power. Even if Carla had run into her in the outside world she dowbted she could compete with her. Betty seemed like the kind of woman who could take whatever she wanted whenever she wanted and no one could stop her.

Then there was the whole deal of a giantess Betty playing with her. That was a strange experience and Carla truly didn’t know if she enjoyed it or not. She wouldn’t repeat it voulintarily. Betty putting her up to her waste in her mouth and licking her between the legs was too much for her. But she had managed to fuck Tom the normal way then, and that was good. Tom was a pretty dynamite bedfellow, and if she had met him in the outside world she probably would have slept with him a couple times before going separate ways because Tom was far too self-assured for her taste.

It was a strange place, all right, and Carla knew that it was not likely to end here. Carla would consider herself very fortuanite if she got out of this competition without first taking a trip to Betty’s cervix. Well, it would be a funny story to tell some day. Or not, because it was unlikely anyone would believe her.

Carla realised that much time had passed through their remeniscing, and that Hailey had rejoined her in the living room. She did not say anything, but smiled at Carla as she settled down in a nearby chair. Carla didn’t know if Hailey wanted to say anything of just sit there, but before she could find out there were footsteps approaching—not the small footsteps of Dale or Paul, but the low booms of Betty approaching from the other room.

The door to the room opened and Betty walked in again, dressing in much the same revealing way as she had yesterday. Following her was full-sized Sherri, who was wearing a more conventional tank top and shorts. Betty’s eyes flickered first to Dale who was lying on the bed, Paul who was sitting alone in the dining room, and Carla and Hailey who were sitting in the living room.

“Well,” Betty said, “It’s eleven o’clock and there’s going to be a vote in one hour. One of you is going to be un-eliminated.”

All four of them immediately lit up, now interested. Betty beamed down at them.

“But you have to look your best for the competition,” Betty said, “So that’s why I brought body paint and costumes. We’re going to play a little dress-up, so everyone come here to the table edge.”

Betty grinned wickedly at the reluctance of Dale and Paul to get up from their spots and come come over, as well as the more resigned acceptance by Hailey and Carla. Oh well Carla thought as she walked over, at least I’lve have this story to tell.