It was early in the afternoon when Evan drove over to our apartment complex. Sarah went to meet him downstairs, while Emily tried to keep me from becoming too agitated. Neither of the girls had gotten dressed for going out yet, but they both figured that the time they’d spend getting ready would be a great time for Evan and me to get to know one another.

“Just tell him about how you and I first met,” Emily said, trying to get me to cheer up. “He’d probably find it fascinating…”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure he’d love to know how I had to eat dead bugs to survive, or how you almost threw me away in the trash, or how…”

“Oh, shut up, Alex! You’re acting like a baby, you know that? He’s not going to squash you the moment he sees you! Relax and try and be friendly, that’s all! Sarah’s already told Evan about you, so it’s too late for you to wimp out now.”

I nodded and sat down silently in the palm of her hand. I knew she was right, but I hated having to admit it. At least I would be spared the indignity of having to meet Evan naked, or wearing nothing but toilet paper for a skirt. Emily had found a couple of collectible action figures of popular film characters that were roughly the same size as me. Not all of their clothes had fit me, but at least I now had several T-shirts and pairs of shorts to wear, so that I felt a little bit less self-conscious around strangers.

I could hear voices outside the front door of the apartment – Sarah’s and an unknown male voice – and a few seconds later the door opened. The guy who entered after Sarah was a few years older than me, tall and quite handsome – quite unlike myself, in other words. He noticed Emily and came over to say hi, but didn’t notice me sitting quietly in her hand until she held me up in front of his face. At first he didn’t seem to realize what he was looking at, but then he jumped back as if he’d had an electric shock. Emily laughed, trying to make light of an awkward situation.

“Yeah, that’s how most people react when they see Alex for the first time!” she said. “Don’t worry, he won’t bite you! He’s just a regular guy, really – only a lot smaller than you and me.”

“What…what the hell?” Evan said, coming closer for a better look. “You guys are messing with me, right? That’s not really…I mean, that’s not a real person, right? He’s fucking tiny!”

“Alex is a real person, and he really is my boyfriend,” Emily said. She was used to having to explain this to people by now, but I could still see she was annoyed. “Alex, say something! You don’t have to sit there in complete silence, it’s not very polite.”

I got to my feet as Emily tried to keep her hand steady for me.

“Um...hi, Evan…it is Evan, right?” I said to the giant who loomed over me. “Nice to meet you, I guess. I’m Alex.”

As I decided what to say next, trying to be less awkward, Evan suddenly reached towards me with his open hand, as if he meant to grab me. Emily immediately closed her own hand, sheltering me underneath her fingers. I fell down on hands and knees, feeling suddenly terrified. I’m sure he hadn’t meant to hurt me, but if he had grabbed me like that he could have easily crushed me.

“Hey, take it easy!” I heard Emily cry out. “What are you trying to do, crush him to death?”

“What? Seriously? I just wanted to pick him up,” Evan said, laughing. “Look, I actually have no idea what’s going on right now. Sarah just told me yesterday about some little freak or something…”

“Sarah!” Emily yelled. “I told you not to call Alex a freak! He’s a normal guy who just happens to be a lot smaller…”

“Yeah, yeah, normal guy, just like everyone else, I hear you!” Sarah interrupted. “Nothing weird about your relationship at all, nuh-uh. Right, Evan?”

“Hey, whatever you say, baby,” Evan was still laughing. “Hey, can I have another look at that little, uh, guy, again? I won’t touch him, I swear.”

Emily hesitated. She kept her fingers tightly folded around me. I was incredibly grateful: for some reason, I had no desire to be left alone with Sarah’s boyfriend.

“Come on, Emily, let’s go and change,” Sarah said. “You can leave your little buddy on the table there. I’m sure Evan would look after him, right? You’re not going to hurt little Alex, are you Evan?”

“Nope.”

“You can hang out with Alex while we get ready, right?”

“Uh-huh. I can do that.”

I heard Emily sighing. She walked over to the table and carefully opened her hand for me. Then she tilted her hand slightly, and I jumped off and onto the tablecloth. The three giants in the room were all watching me closely. Emily turned to Evan and gave him a severe look.

“Don’t even think about hurting my guy, you got that?” she said, sounding deadly serious. “In fact, don’t even touch him, okay? You can talk, but that’s it. Understood?”

Evan looked over at Sarah awkwardly. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Emily.

“God, lighten up already!” she said. “You act like we’re monsters or something. No wonder the little guy’s so scared all the time –maybe it’s you he’s scared of. Come on, let’s go. Evan sweetie…just do as she says, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Sure, sure,” Evan said, as the girls headed for their bedrooms. He grabbed a chair and sat down at the table. I sat down too and tried to stay calm, but my heart was racing and I was sweating like crazy. He looked at me for several seconds, then laid his arm down next to me. I suddenly felt trapped and wished Emily would hurry up.

“So…Alex,” he said, smirking a little bit. “Sarah told me you were shrunk by, I don’t know, some kind of magic or something.”

“Yeah…yeah, I was,” I said. I tried to make my voice as loud and deep as possible, since I knew it would sound faint and high-pitched to his ears and I didn’t want to be mocked any more than I already was. “I still don’t know exactly what happened, but it happened, and now I’m stuck like this.”

“Holy shit! That’s fucking terrible, man! Why don’t you go to a doctor or something, you know…someone who can fix you? Or do you like being a tiny little freak?”

I cringed when he said those words.

“I don’t want to attract attention, okay?” I said. “Emily and I are happy together. She loves me just as I am.”

“Really?” He looked very sceptical. “She likes having a midget-sized boyfriend, huh? Actually, no, even midgets are huge compared to you. You’re just the size of a bug! So does she just, like, carry you around in her purse all day?”

“Yeah…sometimes. Or in a pocket, or in her hands…”

“That’s pretty pathetic if you ask me. I’m surprised she hasn’t gotten herself a real man already. Oh, no offense…but most girls don’t want a guy who’s smaller than most guys’ dicks.”

“Well…Emily isn’t most girls,” I said feebly, wishing I could end this conversation. He suddenly leaned in to get a closer look at me. I also noticed his hand reaching towards me, so I jumped up and started backing away.

“Hey, relax, dude!” Evan said. “Not going to hurt you! I promised your ‘girlfriend’ that, didn’t I?”

“Emily said you’re not allowed to touch me!”

“Yeah, but Emily isn’t here, is she? And you’re not going to tell on me, are you? Come here…”

He swept his hand against me from behind, knocking me off my feet and scooping me up into the air. I was terrified, even though he hadn’t really hurt me. He stood up and smiled down at me, as though he’d just beaten me in a contest.

“Gotcha! Wow, you really are tiny. I can barely even…”

He stopped short in the middle of his sentence. On his face was a look of confusion, which gradually turned to fear. I had no idea what was going on.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I called up to him. “Are you feeling okay?”

“What…what the fuck…” he stammered, before dropping down to his knees. I was still in his hand, lying flat and holding on as hard as I could.

What happened next was so fast and so unexpected that I barely registered it before it was over. Evan began to grow smaller, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until he disappeared into his clothing. The hand I was held in shrunk around me, form over fifteen feet across to no bigger than my body, and it kept on getting smaller. It wasn’t long before it was too small to hold me and I dropped down. I landed on the fabric of his sports jacket and jumped up just in time to see him vanish beneath it. Al the while I didn’t hear any sound from Evan: he must have been too scared to even scream. It took me several minutes to come to my senses again. I began to comprehend what had just happened – Evan had been shrunk, just like I had been – but how or why it happened, I had no idea.

“Did…did I do this?” I wondered. “That can’t be possible. How could I possibly have the power to shrink someone? This is fucking crazy! There must be another reason, but what?”

I decided, before I went insane trying to figure things out, to look for Evan and see if he was okay. His jacket and shirt lay spread out beneath me and his denim jeans were not far off, and I realized he could be trapped underneath. I walked to the edge of the jacket, where it bordered his trousers, and began to call out for him. It wasn’t long before I saw movement. He wasn’t buried too deep, thank God, and I kept on calling out to him to lead him to safety. Eventually he crawled out right next to me. He was completely naked, of course, and it seemed he only realized this after he stood up in front of me, because he immediately covered his groin with his hands. He was now the same size as I was – a little bit taller, actually, but that was just because he would have been a few inches taller than me if we’d both been normal-sized.

“Wh…what just happened? What’s going on?” he cried out. When he saw me just standing, looking bewildered, he charged towards me and grabbed me by the shoulders. I tried to break free and to get him to calm down.

“You’ve been shrunk down to the same size as me,” I said, finally breaking free from his grasp. “Listen, Evan, I have no idea what happened, but maybe we can fix this if…”

Evan wasn’t listening to me. Instead, he was looking all around him in panic. He spun around, seeing the immense table and chairs which rose high into the sky, and the apartment’s ceiling even higher above us. His own clothes lay beneath us, stretching for dozens of feet in every direction. I tried to take hold of him and reassure him, but he grabbed me again, much harder than before.

“What did you do?” he screamed at me. “Did you do this to me? Huh? Did you do this?”

“I…I don’t know! Hey, let me go, and we’ll see…”

He suddenly swung his fist at my face. I had no time to duck and he hit me hard on my cheek. I fell down flat, but before I could begin to stand up again he was on top of me, pummelling me with all of his strength. I fought back as best as I could, but I was not as strong as he was, and his rage and fear were so great that I really didn’t want to hit back, in case it made things even worse. Eventually I managed to kick him in the stomach, which knocked him off of me for a brief moment. I sprang to my feet and backed away, my face and body aching with pain.

“Stop it!” I yelled, as he stared at me with obvious animosity. “I told you, I don’t know what happened, okay? Don’t you get that? This isn’t my fault…I hope.”

“You…you did something!” he yelled back. I could barely make out his words, his voice was trembling so much. “When I picked you up, that’s when…that’s when you…oh God, what the fuck did you do? This can’t be happening, this can’t…”

Before I could do anything to resolve the situation, the girls came back into the living room. I saw Emily’s black leather boots, each fifty feet high, heading straight towards us. She had no idea we were down here – she was going to step on us! Evan gave the approaching giantess one look of sheer terror, then turned around and ran underneath the table. I tried to follow, but it was too late. Emily’s boot landed just inches – about fifteen feet from my perspective – from where I was standing. Thankfully, she’d noticed that she’d trodden on the empty pile of Evan’s clothes. She looked down in amazement.

“Where’s Evan?” I heard Sarah ask. “Hey, that’s his jacket on the floor! Emily, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know…unless…oh no! Oh God, no! Please tell me it didn’t happen!”

“What? What are you talking about?”

I hurried over to the side of Emily’s boot, hoping she’d notice me. She did, and she reached down to pick me up. I sat down in her hand as she lifted me up to her face. Sarah stood by her side, the look of confusion on her face gradually giving way to distress. Emily looked a little upset as well as she asked me what happened.

“I still don’t know how it happened,” I said. “But…how do I put this…Evan…well, he’s been shrunk down…to the same size as I am.”

“What?!” the girls exclaimed, almost at the same time. Emily struggled to hide her dismay, while Sarah just stared at me as if she thought she didn’t hear right.

“Alex, what the hell happened here?” Emily asked. “What happened to your face? It looks like you’ve been hurt. And where’s Evan? Where is he really, I mean.”

“That’s really what happened!” I blurted out. I began telling them everything, as quickly as I could, right up to the part where they entered the room and Evan ran off. When I was done Emily just stared at me, completely bewildered.

“That…that can’t be true!” Sarah cried out. “You…you’re lying! You little freak, you’re lying to me! Evan! Evan, where are you? Baby, please come back! This isn’t funny! Evan!”

I watched in dismay as she became more and more hysterical. Even though she called me a liar, I knew that she believed me – she just didn’t want to. She fell down on her hands and knees, picking up the abandoned clothes on the floor and flinging them around, all the while yelling out her boyfriend’s name. Emily put me down on the table and got down as well, to help look for Evan. I was helpless to do anything now – an all-too-familiar feeling for me – so I sat down close to the edge of the table and listened as Sarah began to cry, first softly, then bursting into a flood of tears. I knew then that, in some way, somehow, I was the one responsible. I hoped that Sarah – and Evan too – would be able to forgive me.

They found Evan eventually, hiding underneath the fridge in the kitchen. He was terrified when Emily stretched out her hand to pick him up, screaming and trying to break free from her fingers. She easily subdued him and carried him over to Sarah, hoping that the sight of him unhurt would make her feel better. But the despondent girl took one look at the tiny, naked, trembling figure of her boyfriend in Emily’s hand, cried out in anguish, and ran to her room, slamming the door shut behind her. While I definitely felt sorry for her, I also felt that she was overreacting, and that her hysterical behaviour was making the situation worse for everyone. Emily stood silent for a moment, before sighing loudly and making for her own bedroom. She had gone to find a safe place to leave Evan for the moment, until everyone was feeling a lot calmer and we could all figure out what to do next.