“Ugh…” Mike moaned as he sits up, his eyes groggy, his head throbbing. Yet again something has saved him from absolute death, yet he still has no idea what or how.

            He looked down at his body, not yet knowing how to feel at the sight. He was intact. His ribs were un-cracked, his organs were back in place. But, he was still small.

            His view then rose to the world around as he tried to piece together what form of hell he had been dropped into this time. Row upon row of giant bookshelves formed high walls. Above, bright lights shown down like miniature suns complete with a slightly yellow hue. Looks like the school library.

            A glance to his left reviled a huge pile of books of all shapes and sizes. The surface below him was hard, rough to the touch. Wood. He was stranded on one of the library’s desks.

            His heart jumped as he heard a loud thud close by, the shockwaves of the impact jumbling up inside his tiny body. He cringed; already knowing the source wasn’t going to be any good for him.

            Slowly he crept to the corner of the stack of books, his head peaking out from the side in an attempt to gage his newest situation.

            His eyes went wide, his stomach plunged. Sitting at the desk, a few feet before him, her warm blue eyes berried in a book, her shoulder length red hair dripping heavily around her head, cascading over the pale face dotted with the slightest hint of freckles. It was Annie.

            Mike darted back behind the books as the girl glanced up. His heart was racing, his breathing was hard. Why did it have to be Annie?

            She was a shy girl, always keeping to her self. A bookworm in every sense of the word. But an adorable bookworm. From they very moment Mike had laid eyes on her he had developed a deep, lasting crush. It had been almost a year now and it still hadn’t gone away.

            And now here he was. Shrunken, naked, and in need of her help. But what choice did he have?

            Slowly he peeked around the corner again, his thoughts drifting from her beautiful face, to her perfect eyes, to the tiny dots on her cheeks, to the fact that it was rather cold in the room. Why did it have to be cold?

            He stepped out, slowly moving towards the girl one step at a time. Soon he had passed the protection of the books, his fragile form in the center of the table. Only a few more steps and he was right in front of her book. He stopped, not knowing what to do next.

            His heart stopped when he saw the girl’s eyes move to meet him. He stood frozen in place, unable to think, unable to move, as the giant eyed his tiny form.

            She squinted, leaning forward a bit. Her hands moved, closing the large, hardcover book she had been reading. Mike continued stare into her beautiful eyes, completely paralyzed by her delicate stare, his heart set fluttering. He didn’t even notice the book rising up before him.

             SLAM! The hardcover, thousand page textbook crashed down onto the tiny little bug, the sound reverberating around the library. Many people turned, starring at the usually quite girl, to which she shrugged and whispered, “sorry.” The people returned to their individual work, only some of them rolling their eyes.

            The girl returned to the book, lifting the impossibly heavy object off of her victim. She almost cringed at the sight of its poor body, smashed, clearly broken in some places, but still twitching slightly. Somehow the thing was alive.

            “Wow,” the girl said as she placed the book back to the desk. “Can’t believe you survived that.”

            Mike tried to sit up, but his efforts were only rewarded with a mouthful of warm, salty blood as his internal organs convulsed. He wanted to fall back to the cool ground, wanted to close his eyes, but he knew that if he wanted to live this wasn’t an option.

            He rolled over to his stomach, frantically crawling along the ground, hoping to outrun any other plans the giant girl might have. She was always so quite, so kind, so gentle. Now that he was a bug that had all changed.

            As Annie looked down at the poor, writhing thing below her, she couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt. She didn’t like to see things suffer, even if they were something so small, so insignificant. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she looked around her desk. Eventually her eyes settled on a pencil.

            Mike continued to pull himself away. His body hurt, but it was manageable. A broken rib, perhaps a fractured bone or two, but if he just managed to hide, just found a way to avoid these giants, he could live.

            His eyes went wide as he felt a blinding pain through his middle. His mouth opened, blood dripping out. When he looked, he saw a pencil going through his stomach.

            “Ew,” Annie said as she looked down at her pencil stabbed clean through the bug. She then lifted the writing tool, cringing as the bug came with it, harpooned on the point. It was still wiggling, still alive. “Oh, geez,” Annie said, cringing. “I’m so sorry.” She really needed to kill this thing. It had suffered far too much already.

            “Wait, please, Annie,” Mike moaned, his hand gripping the graphite tip of the murder weapon. He wasn’t able to speak anything else before the cute girl placed her index finger and thumb over his face. He tried to speak, tried to beg for his life, but her silky skin muffled any sounds.

            He knew this was it. Knew that there was nothing more he could do. Annie, his long time crush, wasn’t going to recognize him. He was just a simple bug.

            Annie’s slender fingers pressed together, the pressure slowly increased, building on Mike’s tiny head. He tried to scream, but the perfect fingers prevented even the slightest muffled cry. Then, in one simple moment, her fingers snapped together, his head disintegrating into lumps of brain matter on her forefinger and thumb.

            “Sorry buggy,” the girl said sincerely as she pulled her fingers away, wiping off the slight traces of bug goop. She flicked its body off of her pensile, it disappearing somewhere off the edges of her desk. She then returned to her book, not bothering to spare another thought to her kill. It was only a bug after all.

            Mike’s eyes opened slowly, the harsh light streaming through the window assaulting him in its normal, familiar fashion. He lifted a hand up to shield himself, his mind, for a moment, forgetting about the horrors he had faced.

            He rolled over, his cheek pressing against the soft fabric of his pillow, his hands pulling the warm blankets up around his shoulders. Then it all came rushing back.

            Instantly he sat bolt upright in the bed, his mind racing. He looked down at himself, amazed both at the lack of brutal injury and the fact that he wasn’t a microscopic bug.

            “Ugh,” he groaned, flopping back onto the bed. “That wasn’t a dream,” he said to himself. “There’s no way that was a dream.”