The house was quiet, Mary was quietly playing in a fresh diaper. Marissa, having dealt with a minor bug problem, was relaxing on her phone at the kitchen table. Sara and her friends were upstairs getting ready for a night on the town. 

Meanwhile, huddled under the couch, Jimmy, Rob, Simon, and Kelly huddled in relative darkness, having just witnessed Becca squeezed, sucked on, spit out, and then crushed into nothing in a dirty diaper. The mood was somewhere between solemn and hysterical. 

Simon had become hopeless, absolutely assured that he would end up crushed under a shoe or like his cheerleader friend, a diaper. 
"What are we even doing? We have no chance. We don't even know how this happened." He argued. Kelly, on the other hand, was determined to avoid such a fate.

"Okay look we just need to find that metal thing"

"That metal thing?" Simon said skeptically "We don't even know where that is. It's probably up on the table or something. We're dead." 

"Hold on" James interjected, "We can just get Sara to get it"

"You mean your sister. Your giant sister. Who's basically a building to us? That sister?" Simon rebutted, clearly irritated. 

"Yeah" James responded, ignoring the sarcasm. He knew it was a stretch, Sara wasn't exactly fond of bugs either. But what other options were there? At least she probably won't torture them like Marissa would. Giving an entitled 7 year old that kind of power was a mistake. 

"So what's your plan, superman?" Kelly asked. 

"Well, okay, first we need to get somewhere where we can be seen once she comes downstairs, like the kitchen table." James outlined how they would do it "First we climb up the rut on one of the legs, then once we're on the table we hide out under the rim of some plates, and once she comes down we give it a shot. She can't miss us."

"You're assuming she doesn't take out a fly swatter and squish us." Rob added.

"Do you have a better idea? No? Great. Lets give this a shot." James began to lead them out from under the couch. The group was not quick to forget the giant baby in the room. She could catch up to them in seconds, so they hugged the rim of the wall, slowly making their way towards the tile of the kitchen. The process was incredibly slow, the carpet was dense and made for feet, not minuscule people. All the while there were distant sounds of laughing from upstairs, intimidating but at the same time the group took comfort in knowing that their might be a way out of this. 

After a while they arrived at the tile. Back in the kitchen with its distant light fixtures and tall wood furniture. The team saw that Marissa was now sitting on the counter playing on her phone, her legs dangling down before them. 

"As quiet as possible" James motioned the group move quietly under her feet, the entire time knowing if the little girl decided to jump down, they would be crushed instantly. The scent of her dirty feet drifted down upon them as they did their best to stay entirely quiet. To their surprise, they made it to the table. In theory, the climb seemed simple, but when faced with the reality of how high it went, James became more nervous. He didn't give it away though, the entire group needed confidence to get this to happen, especially him. 

He lead the way, using tiny breaks in the old wooden table legs to hoist himself up. One at a time they began to scale the table. Inch by inch they made their way up. Finally, after what felt like hours but must've been minutes, James reached the top and lifted himself over the edge. He got his first chance to look back down, below him Kelly was only a few feet down, while Rob was close behind her. But Simon, Simon was significantly farther down. As James lifted Kelly and then Rob over the edge, he heard Simon start yelling. 

"I'm not going to make it! I can't hold on!" He yelled as he lost his footing. As he hung by a single arm, he began to scream.

The other three sat at the top, looking down upon him. "Don't yell back" James advised "I don't want to get her atten--"
As he said that Marissa's head looked up from her phone, a small miracle considering her obsession with it. 


"Another one?"