No, thought Emma. No, I can’t do this.

The bed was soft, the sheets were clean and she was absolutely exhausted. Under normal circumstances, those three factors would have been enough to lull her into a restful slumber. These were not normal circumstances, however.

There was one crucial ingredient missing, one unfulfilled need whose necessity was hard-wired into the brain and without which she was unable to force her body into leaving itself unguarded for hours; it was the need for safety. Emma did not feel safe in this house, therefore Emma could not sleep in this house.

Instead, she lay wide awake and fully clothed on top of Lou’s bed, her thoughts directed by irrepressible feelings of fear and anger that brought forward unpleasant, unwanted memories for consideration. She thought about the last time she had been on this bed and the things that had occurred between herself and Lou. That made her angry. Then she remembered that Lou was mere feet away in the next room and only her odd obsession with Alice was preventing her from doing those things again, and probably things far worse too. That brought back the fear. Those two emotions fought each other for control over Emma’s state of mind for hours upon hours, until the night gave way and rolled into the early morning.

I need to leave.

Emma had no idea where she would go after she left the apartment, but she knew that staying in this place was not an option. The universe had accidentally punished an innocent person and now, in order to rectify its mistake, it had given her an opportunity that she thought unwise to squander. Moreover, the presence of Lou in every object around her – even the air itself – had become overbearing. It was simply too much. She needed to flee this house of freaks while she still had the chance. Neither of the two in the other room were of healthy mind and neither could be trusted to keep their promise (had they even promised?) to let Emma go in the morning.

While it was true that Lou was a cold, cruel, calculating individual who seemed to derive far too much pleasure from the pain of others, that other one didn’t fool her either. The tall, blonde, beautiful Alice spoke kindly and acted friendly enough – and to her credit, even stopped Lou from doing those terrible things she had threatened Emma with earlier – but she was nearly as bad at her core. It had not escaped Emma’s notice what had happened earlier that evening, and she had no doubt that it had happened many times before. In Alice’s desire to have a little human pet to play with, the faithful and smitten Lou had seen an opportunity to earn praise and approval. Unfortunately for her, but thankfully for Emma, she was not as smart as she liked to think she was and the plan had backfired horribly. When Emma turned out to be an unenthusiastic plaything, Alice (who lacked Lou’s capacity for brutality to force her into submission) simply decided to turn her lovelorn housemate into her little pet instead.

For the first time, Emma did feel a small amount of pity for Lou. Although she had not changed her mind about her being a bad person, Lou was evidently a person who craved affection from someone who was unable to reciprocate. Whatever the cause of Lou’s strange behaviour may be, whether best called love or just a strong infatuation, it was being used to take advantage of her. It was a mean thing to do – but then again, Lou was a mean person, so maybe she deserved it. After the events of the night before last, Emma’s heart would only bleed so much. Even so, bad people were still people, and usually not exempt from the same needs and longings possessed by other people. Lou had an unfocused anger and frustration that Alice was selfishly extorting.

How cruel people are to each other, she thought.

There would be plenty of time for reflection later, however. Under such stressful circumstances, Emma’s fight-or-flight response had kicked in and finally settled on the latter. Enough energy had been wasted pitying that detestable woman and her inexplicable desire for retribution. Anger was beginning to dominate fear, and she had concluded that Lou was much less sympathetic when she was nearby and eager to cause harm.

The clock on the desk showed that it was nearing 02:30. It had been a while since the low droning of the television had ceased from the other room, though when Emma strained her ears, she could only hear a single chorus of snoring. As she slipped off the bed and prepared to flee, she prayed that Lou was fast asleep as well.

All of Lou’s drowsiness had faded away before she had even taken ten paces from her shoebox. In seconds, she had gone from warm, snug and satisfied to alert and filled with a hunter’s excitement. Alice, as usual, had left her door ajar, though the piles of clothes, shoes, beauty products, stuffed animals and other junk provided a frustrating and somewhat eerie obstacle course for the diminutive Lou to navigate through. At her present size, she did not have the option of simply stepping over these obstructions, instead being forced to meander between hillocks of fabric that towered past head height and around giant, immovable plushies that blocked her path. This vast, new world before her was a strange, scary place that made the familiar seem unfamiliar and turned the mundane into the extraordinary. Little labels on nail polish bottles became posters, pencils were toppled streetlamps, magazines were industrial scrap that had been dumped irresponsibly, handbags looked like weird buildings that had been melted down by an intense heat, the desk had become an unfathomably extravagant monument to vanity. The sweet smell of Alice lingered, though it was slightly mustier down here on the floor; fresh peaches dominated, mingling with the stuffier scent of clothes that needed washing and a more natural odour that Alice’s feet had pressed into the carpet over months. It was amazing how this was a world that had always existed for as long as Lou had lived here, yet remained completely unappreciated until now.

It would have been wondrous, except the darkness coated everything in a sinister tint. Her mind fancied that it saw movement inside overturned shoes or that lurking behind the next crumpled shirt was some ill-intentioned creature waiting for her. When she looked high above, she half-expected to see indistinct forms peering over the seat of the desk chair at her, or shapes in the shadows coalesce into monsters as soon as she turned her eyes away. It emphasised her sense of vulnerability, but Lou was too excited to feel truly afraid; she felt like a naughty girl sneaking out at night to do something she shouldn’t be doing. It felt dangerous, but adventures always did – that was why they were fun. Nearby, Alice’s snoring provided some level of comfort, filling her with enough bravery to press onwards towards the open door and into the hallway beyond.

The scene aroused a happy memory for Lou that she had shared with one of her playthings a couple of years ago. Before there was Alice, a lonely, sixteen-year-old Lou had her heart fixed on another person whom she thought about with great warmth and tenderness. The unfortunate young woman who had caught her eye was a tall, athletic legal assistant in her late 20s, with an old-fashioned name and a predisposition for rebelliousness. It was risky to pick on someone who was young, pretty and female, since their disappearances always attracted a disproportionately large amount of media attention, but Lou was drawn to her beauty and intelligence. She admired the little Ava’s spirit too, and was softer on her than she had been with any of the others that came before. Unusually, Lou also found it difficult to take joy in hurting her, preferring instead to talk and play around, aggravating her just enough to get her to wriggle pleasantly in her hand when she wanted to have fun. She even thought that if she were nice for a change, things might turn out well.

Nonetheless, Lou loved to tease and Ava had plenty of courage. Lou was curious to see how far it would take her.

One night, five weeks into her captivity, the tiny Ava discovered that the monster holding her prisoner had neglected to fasten the latch on her cage door properly before heading off to sleep. She watched the giant woman’s face for signs of realisation as she pushed Ava’s prison back underneath the bed, seeing nothing as Lou smiled, blew Ava a kiss and climbed onto the bed above. It was just the stroke of luck the tiny woman had been waiting for and yet never expected to actually materialise. She waited for the squeaking of the mattress above to cease and for the sounds of slow, deep, rhythmic breathing to begin. It took nearly an hour to build up enough confidence to do what could potentially end very badly if she failed.

Two, tiny trembling hands gripped a metal bar and pushed the door, causing it to swing forwards in a 180-degree arc and clash against the bottom of the cage with a deafening clang.

Ava froze. Nothing above squeaked and the heavy sighs of deep sleep breathing remained uninterrupted.

She swung one leg over, then the other, and dropped down onto the soft carpet below. Looking up, she scanned her eyes along the bottom of the mattress and the huge timber beams that served as wooden slats for signs of movement. Nothing at all. Straight ahead, she could see a clear path to a door that had been left slightly open, leading into regions unknown. If she ran quickly, she could probably close the distance in less than 10 minutes, though she had absolutely no idea what to do next. She had only briefly seen the outside of this room once in all the time she had been kept prisoner, not even knowing who else shared this house or how many of them there were. Stairs would be a challenge. Getting out the front door would be next to impossible. Still, she had to try.

Ava took a deep breath and sprinted out from underneath the bed as quickly as her legs would allow, eyes locked on the crevice that would guide her to freedom. As long as she could get away, she could find help. Only one other person needed to notice her and then her torment would finally be over. This Lou person would be going to jail for a very, very long time.

And then she heard a squeak. Behind her, something immense and familiar was climbing out of bed.

Feigning a yawn to hide her laughter, Lou sat up, rubbed her eyes and stepped slowly towards the door, savouring every moment. She knew that she been too easy on Ava, but there was no doubt that the little woman had been brave; after five weeks, most of the pets she brought home were far too broken and obedient to attempt escape. Ava really was something special: beautiful, daring, energetic, even unafraid to stand up to Lou a lot of the time. At times, she desperately wished that she and Ava could share some more traditional, intimate moments together at a regular size, but Lou was short and weak and that sort of thing would not have ended well with someone who did not appear to like her very much. As amazing as the things that Ava did to Lou felt – after her tiny arms had been bent back and she had been made aware of what a delicious meal she might make for a spider – sometimes Lou just wanted to cuddle and be held and have someone run their fingers through her hair. It was fun to force people to do things, but why should they always have to be forced and threatened?

Ava considered herself a victim of poor timing, though in reality she was more a victim of poor circumstances. It was true that she had picked a bad moment, but it was also true that there were no good moments to choose from, for Lou had been waiting to see if the bold woman would take advantage of the chance she thought she had. Her plaything had been disobedient, but it was a form of disobedience that Lou found amusing. Ava would be punished – not excessively though, she just needed to learn not to run away. That was a good first step to making Ava love her.

Something large and pale thumped down mere inches away from Ava, followed by another symmetrical something on her other side shortly afterwards. She held her screams, but she knew exactly what they were even before she spotted the blue painted nails and high arches, and she knew the terrible person that they belonged to. For a few naïve, hopeful seconds, she wondered whether or not she had been spotted. It was a short-lived hope that died quietly when Lou began to speak.

“Where are you going?” demanded a voice from above.

Ava was too terrified to respond. Way up in the sky, an arm stretched out and pushed the door in front of her closed. With mounting despondency, she watched as the crevasse narrowed and then disappeared behind a thick slab of wood.

“I asked you a question,” ordered Lou, lightly stamping her foot.

Slowly, Ava convinced her body to swivel around. Tiny pink and white bunnies stared back at her above the cuffs of a pair of pyjama bottoms that swung loosely around a pair of giant ankles.

“Well?”

No good response existed and Ava knew this going to end poorly for her, irrespective of what she said. She craned her neck up and forced herself to meet the glare of the girl staring back down at her. Lou had her eyebrows set high in disapproval and rested her hands upon her hips, tapping her foot expectantly. It was an infuriating gesture from this brat who wasn’t much more than half her age.

“Fuck you!” yelled Ava.

Lou shrugged. “If that’s what you wanted, all you had to do was ask nicely.”

For the second time that night, Lou grabbed the tiny woman in her hand, lay down on the bed and lowered her pyjama bottoms. Ava was absolutely furious, but her struggling did little to stop the giant, wandering fingers that rubbed between her legs and played with her breasts. Each woman moaned and wriggled, though for entirely different reasons.

Now that she thought about it, that was more of a bittersweet memory for Lou. If Ava had been a little less belligerent and a little more loving towards her, she would have been sorely tempted to keep her around indefinitely, and probably convinced herself to do it in the end. Perhaps they could have even become friends (or more than friends) once the tiny woman had grown to accept her situation. Lou did not come to like people easily and loved them rarer still, but she would have made the effort if Ava had tried too. As it happened, Ava remained obstinate and headstrong long after it had stopped being amusing, picking up on none of the hints Lou had dropped and always ungrateful whenever she was gentle and tried to make her happy. Bitterly frustrating was the fact that Ava would never pleasure her owner unless she was forced to, even when Lou was tired and not in the mood to play games. Everything Lou wanted, she had to extract through threats and punishments, hurting when she had no desire to hurt and harming when she would have preferred to love and pet and nuzzle. For some reason, Ava never warmed to Lou and eventually began to annoy her, never showing any concern when Lou was stressed or having a particularly bad day. Once she had become annoying, her days were numbered and it was only a matter of time. It made Lou unhappy to get rid of Ava, but the tiny woman had not given her a choice.

Presently, she felt a lot like Ava during that moment, except the giant woman in this bedroom was kind and sweet and had a little pet that loved and appreciated her. She was also a heavy sleeper who wouldn’t wake for dogs or the Devil. Better lips too.

The apartment hallway was even more ominous and imposing than the bedroom; a huge, unnaturally square cavern that stretched from darkness to darkness and ascended upwards for hundreds of feet into even more darkness. It was quieter out here too; Emma apparently did not snore, or at least not loudly. Though she yearned for the familiar sounds of Alice chatting or the television (or Alice chatting over the television) to reassure her in this cold, creepy place, Lou knew that silence would help to mask her approach, and she didn’t want to spook the girl before she had a chance to pounce. As she crept into the middle of the hallway, Lou wondered whether Emma had been smart enough to lock the door – not that it would matter, of course. Lou steeled herself to deal with incoming feelings of dizziness and nausea, and then brought herself back to normal size.

Except she didn’t. Or rather, she couldn’t.

What the hell?

She tried again. Nothing.

What the fuck is going on?

The ability that Lou had always taken for granted was as effortless and instinctive as raising her arm. It was quick, required little thought or energy and needed no special concentration to perform. That was true both for the dozens of people she decided were hers over years and for when she reduced herself before Alice earlier. The fact that she was unable to turn herself back did not make any sense to her whatsoever. At first, it puzzled Lou. After several repeated and unsuccessful attempts to return to normal size, an alarming feeling crept into her spine and began to slowly spread itself around her entire body. As the door to her bedroom creaked opened in front of her, she felt a completely new sensation, something utterly alien but instantly recognisable: fear.

Slipping on an old pair of high-top converse, Emma worried about how far Lou’s vindictiveness would take her. Escape was definitely a good course of action for the immediate future, though hardly a long-term solution to ensure her safety. Absolutely no one would ever believe her about what Lou did or what she was capable of, and Emma envisaged a life of constant worry unless she could come up with a better plan. She did not enjoy the prospect of having to look over her shoulder for the rest of her days until Lou finally caught her at a vulnerable moment. That, however, was a riddle that could be pondered from inside the safety of her own apartment, with sturdy locks on the doors and a safe place to rest her tired head.

Emma spared Lou’s handiwork one last resentful look before picking up her bag full of useless and broken things from the desk. At least the keys had survived. She could make a beeline straight for home and lock herself in.

Luck already seemed to have a chosen a side when the door creaked as Emma pulled it open. She halted, listening. Aside from Alice’s snoring, the stillness remained unbroken. Emma pulled the door open just enough to squeeze her body out and closed it gently behind her. Another wait. Still nothing.

She was about to turn and walk off down the hallway when a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye drew her attention to something on the floor. Emma crouched down to get a better look at the thing, squinting in the poor light. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the blurry, moving thing sharpened into focus and slowly took on a human form.

Lou watched with disbelief as the bedroom door opened and out crept a colossal Emma. An enormous sneaker touched down softly on the floor in front of her, twice her size and pressing against the ground with orders of magnitude more pressure than her own tiny body. It was a white, inhuman, menacing thing that would have obliterated her if she had been standing slightly closer to the door. It was an unfriendly thing, just like the person they belonged to, with laces as thick as her arms that dangled down over the sides of it, past scuff marks and patches of dirt.

Lou’s mind was abuzz with questions. She barely had time to register one before another popped into her head and pushed the previous one aside. Things had gone very wrong very quickly and she was struggling to understand why.

Why isn’t she asleep? Where’s she going? Was she coming for me before I could come for her? Why can’t I change back? Why can’t I shrink her? What did she do to me? How did she do it?

And then something else came into her mind. This time it was not a question, but a statement of certainty.

I’m going to die. This is how it ends.

The bedroom door closed, startling Lou. Mercifully, she recovered the use of her legs much quicker than when Alice had approached her tiny, quivering form earlier.

I’ll hide. I’ll just go back into the room and hide. She can’t hurt me if she can’t find me.

Something thick and noxious was starting to brew in the pit of Lou’s stomach. Powered by white-hot panic, she sprinted back towards the open door that led into Alice’s room, hoping that she could perhaps dive into one of those piles of fabric before that murder-lusting harlot caught notice of her. Alice was a terrifically deep sleeper, but surely even she would notice a stranger rummaging around in her room in the dead of the night.

Lou chanced a look over her shoulder and immediately regretted it. Looming over her was the enormous face of Emma, tracking her flight with two cold brown eyes. They did not sparkle with the warmth of Alice’s eyes, but instead looked down on her with scientific coldness and gleaming with antagonistic intentions. Her brow was furrowed in pure hatred, lips fixed into a sneer. Her nose was wrinked. What did that mean? Disgust? Contempt? Nothing good, Lou knew. Emma had won, she was just drawing it out for her amusement. She had done something to Lou and was about to extract gleeful revenge from the tiny, defenceless woman in all manner of hideous forms.

How did I lose? What did I do wrong?

“Lou?”

How incredible that a single syllable could turn every drop of blood in her body into ice.

“Lou?” asked a very confused Emma.

The moment she recognised the little woman in front of her, a wave of paralytic terror befell her – but only for a moment. Something was clearly wrong here. A tiny Lou had been standing outside in the hallway when Emma left the bedroom and was now rapidly running away from her. She had apparently taken up Alice’s offer, just as Emma suspected.

This made absolutely no sense to her. Emma simply stared as the tiny figure continued to dash, inch by inch, across the floor towards Alice’s bedroom.

“Lou?” she repeated.

This time, the tiny woman stopped, fell to her knees and crumpled into a ball.

What the hell?

Emma felt as if she ought to be afraid, but instead she just felt confused. This was fast becoming awkward for her.

“Are you…okay?”

There on the floor, in the middle of the apartment hallway, part-way between a giant, crouching Emma and the sanctuary of Alice’s bedroom was a helpless, pathetic creature who had resigned herself to the unhappy end she knew awaited her. Someone had stuck a spigot into her and drained every last drop of courage and confidence she had until the thing that remained could no longer even stand. She thought of all the horrible things that would happen to her in the immediate future. She pictured broken bones and bent, useless limbs twitching feebly while Emma poked, prodded, snapped, crushed, tore and squeezed. She imagined giant fingers pressing down into her back and twisting against her spine while Emma mocked and told her that Alice was next. Her screams would never be loud enough to alert the woman next door. In fact, she could scream and scream until her tiny lungs felt as if they were about to burst and no one would hear her – no one except Emma, who would drink them in happily and then make Lou choose which of her limbs she liked the least.

“Did you slip?” asked Emma. “Do you need a little help or something?”

A short, tiny murmur erupted from the kneeling woman. Emma leaned closer to try and catch what she was saying.

“What?”

“How did you do it?” pleaded Lou, rubbing her eyes. “Please tell me that much, at least. Just tell me…before you do what you’re going to do.”

“How did I do what?” queried a nonplussed Emma.

Lou flapped her arms in frustration.

“This! How did you do this?!”

The gesticulations meant nothing to Emma. This apartment and the weirdoes in it kept finding new ways to make less and less sense to her. Something had quite clearly happened to upset Lou though – more than that, actually. She was distressed. Distraught, even. Perhaps she had argued with Alice? That seemed like the sort of thing that would drive Lou into a fit of sobbing. The front door of the apartment, the exit to this bizarre show, was sorely tempting her right now. For the second time, she went against her impulses and decided not to bolt for it. Not just yet, anyway.

“Do you need any help?” Emma repeated. “Did you have a fight with Alice?”

The tiny woman turned her body to face Emma, trying to understand the nature of the game she was playing. It didn’t really make a lot of sense to Lou, but Emma had beaten her at what she believed she was very good at, so perhaps she was better at these things too. At present, Lou lacked the will to play these sorts of rigged games that she knew always ended in favour of the interrogator. The house always wins, and for the first time, Lou was not the house. Risky as it was, she decided to lay all her cards flat on the table and hope for the best.

“Please don’t hurt me. I know I don’t have any right to ask you that. I don’t like pain. I don’t want you to hurt me. Would you accept a surrender? I give up. You beat me. I don’t know how, but you beat me. Will you be nicer to me if I’m obedient? Just tell me what you want me to do.”

Emma simply stared and blinked, then stared some more. Lou had just thrown a lot of puzzle pieces at her and she was struggling to put them into a meaningful picture. Whatever had upset Lou was evidently pretty serious; red-ringed eyes, a sniffling nose and slumped shoulders were all a testament to that, though Emma had no idea why she was apparently the cause of it or how she had “beaten” her. The tiny form of Lou continued to look up at her forlornly.

I have absolutely no idea what to do, thought Emma.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she suggested, trying to moderate her sympathy. Lou was entitled to nothing of the sort, yet Emma found it difficult to suppress her instincts that wanted to console and comfort the crying thing on the floor. Tentatively, she reached out towards Lou with an unsure hand, zipping it back immediately when the tiny woman screamed out in terror and threw her arms over her head.

Lou really was terrified of her for some reason. That sparked a thought in Emma’s mind that evolved into an unlikely theory she tried not to pay too much attention to. It was a silly thing to consider and might even be a dangerous assumption to make, given Lou’s volatile emotional state. The underlying forces of the universe did not administer punishments to the wicked and bestow rewards upon the charitable, and they especially did not use the medium of poetic justice to impose order. It was implausible, but then again, so were the events of these past two days. Perhaps it was less the work of a cosmic arbiter, however, and Lou had just messed up somehow. Nevertheless, Emma was compelled to ask.

“Are you…stuck? I mean, stuck that way?”

From between a tiny pair of hands, a frightened face looked up and met her gaze.

“Yes. How did you do it?”

“I didn’t do anything,” said Emma.

“Then what are you doing out bed?”

“I was trying to sneak out while you two slept,” she admitted, unashamedly. After a pause, she added: “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I was…” The sentence trailed off into nothing.

Emma picked up the conversation again: “This is starting to make a bit of sense. You’re stuck and that’s why you’re so upset. That doesn’t exactly explain what you’re doing out here at nearly three in the morning, but I’m starting to get it.”

The two women fell into an uncomfortable silence, studying the look on each other’s faces and trying to make sense of the senseless situation before them.

“And I’m guessing you can’t get back at me, otherwise you would have done it already,” she summarised.

Lou meekly nodded, feeling as if they were just going over the obvious. She was starting to feel a second wave of nervousness and fear that was twisting her stomach muscles in uncomfortable ways.

“I see,” breathed Emma, after a long intermission of tense, silent staring. She now found herself in a difficult position, though not quite as difficult as Lou’s. “What do you think I should do?”

“Be nice?” she suggested. It was more plea than suggestion.

“Why?”

Lou’s stomach lurched as if the roller coaster she was on had taken a sudden turn. This conversation was not heading in a direction she liked.

“Shall we talk about it together with Alice?”

Emma ignored the question.

“Why should I be nice? You weren’t nice to me.”

Try as she might, Lou could not come up with an answer that did not involve her fear of pain and suffering or the desire not to end her life prematurely. She was unable to make an appeal to logic work and something in Emma’s eyes told her that an appeal to emotion would not work either. There was no convincing lie she could think of that might help her out of this situation. The only thing she had left to offer was the truth.

“I don’t know,” said Lou. “If I were you, I wouldn’t bother. If the roles were switched, I wouldn’t be nice. I think I’d just hurt you. Afterwards, I would probably kill you. There aren’t any good reasons to be nice. I’m just scared.”

That seemed to be an honest answer, but Emma wanted more.

“Why would you do such horrible things?”

“I don’t know,” Lou admitted. “Because I can, I guess, and because it makes me feel better. You took all of Alice’s attention away from me. I don’t have any other friends. You just made me so angry.”

“I see,” said Emma, drawing herself back up to full height.

Lou’s eyes made the journey from the tips of dirty, white sneakers resting before her, up along a pair of faded blue jeans towards the lip of a black t-shirt shielded behind a tan, leather jacket, past button after button until she reached a bescarfed neck and finally Emma’s face. Despite her stern expression, Lou thought she looked pretty. Not as pretty as Alice, nor even as pretty as Ava, but still pretty.

As one of those huge sneakers began to raise itself into the air, a sudden thought popped into Lou’s head.

Yes, I probably deserve this.

The sole of Emma’s shoe was dirty and the rubber grips had worn down. She had taken a lot of steps, but this was likely her first time stepping on a human being. Well, a tiny human being, definitely. Lou considered it to be a bit of a waste – she thought she would have made a good, obedient pet. At the very least, Emma could have made her scream and cry and beg, getting whatever revenge she desired. She could have done whatever she wanted, but she was apparently too kind to draw out Lou’s suffering and planned to end it quickly. She really was a nice person. Lou was starting to think she had misjudged her slightly.

When Emma’s foot reached its zenith and began to descend again, Lou had another, contradictory thought.

No, I deserve worse.