The break of dawn woke Diego from his groggy slumber. His face felt plastered and heavy on a cold surface. He lifted the pressure off his right eye, pulling away from what sounded like glass after a few taps. He immediately pushed up his upper body, scanning his surroundings. This wasn’t his bed. This wasn’t even his house. Nothing recognizable came to mind. He could barely even see beyond the glass. Everything was warped and expanded from his position, not to mention the window blinds shielding the morning light and giving everything triple layers of shade.

Diego looked down at his body, realizing that he was practically naked, all expect his wieners and beer boxer shorts. No wonder he felt so cold. He stood up, taking light steps as his soles adjusted to the freezing glass. He also felt weariness in his bones. Like he spent two days straight pumping iron without rest. But he never gone to the gym. Never even considered the idea. He was a scholar, not a buff boy.

He took it slow, physically and mentally. Any efforts of reconstructing familiar memories seemed pointless. What happened, he wondered. He couldn’t remember anything at all. Nothing that could explain why he was in a glass prison with nothing but his shorts. The more he tried thinking, the more it disappointed him, which eventually led to frustration. Diego didn’t like the sensation of surprise. He needed to know things in the moment. Talk about mystery or suspense didn’t bode well, and just being left out in the loop overall was annoying.

He scanned his cylindrical cage once more, taking notice of another body. Another person in the same predicament as him. He walked to the limp body and gave it a kick, hoping that it wasn’t dead. The body stirred a bit, and Diego kept kicking until a lazy hand waved him away. The sun was gaining more brightness each passing minute, and Diego could see more features of this guy. He was skinny, milk white with light-brown freckles sprinkled around. His hair was mocha, and he also wore nothing but plain black briefs. And it didn’t become even more clear once those sleepy eyes faced Diego, and began digging a pit in his stomach.

“Stool?” Diego greeted. The mocha-haired guy gave a quick nod.

Fuck, he thought.

Anyone but Stool. Anyone but the school’s massive stoner. Stool was the kind of bum who everyone knew couldn’t be responsible for anything. From what he heard, Stool would regularly spend his lunch periods in the bathrooms, thus the name ‘Stool’. He would always be blazing a joint alone, or sometimes with his customers. He never got caught, mostly because no one wanted to be a snitch. There was also the reason that Stool never done anyone harm. Sure, he was an idiot. But a harmless one.

But the last thing Diego needed was an idiot. He watched as Stool underwent a similar experience: getting his morning stretches, looking around his surroundings, and actually accepting the situation without any surprise. Just a mild raise of the eyebrows, and nothing more.

 “You know where are we?” Diego asked, peeved by Stool’s calm nature.

“Not a clue.” He said. He then extended a hand. “Name’s Stool.”

“Then why do you look so calm?”

“I just woke up from a pretty sick dream. I was about to enter a three-way between me, Jennifer Lawrence, and Betty White.”

“Betty White?”

“Right? I had the same reaction. But I think I was having a moment with my dream self, so of like “Inception”. We were planning on trying make her watch from a corner, but then you woke me up.”

“Oh,” Diego said flatly, “Sorry to have woken you from your weird sex dream, but in case you haven’t notice, things don’t look very normal here in the real world.”

“You could say that again.” He took one more glance around the prison.

“I just want to know if you can remember anything? Maybe something that seemed weird before all this. Like last night? Last week?”

“Remember…?” Stool took a moment to collect his thoughts, rubbing his left temple like it was the ticket to their problems. “Remember…remember…who you are, Simba.”

Stool laughed.

“Funny.” Diego sneered. “Real nice. Glad one of us could see the humor in all this.”

“Relax. Take the stick out your ass, would ya?”

“Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? We are naked! In a goddamn glass whatever this is. I don’t care if you think this is all funny to you, but I’m not letting loose. Not until I know what the hell is happening.”

“You do that.” Stool picked himself off the ground, also wincing of the possible pain in his joints. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“How the hell should I know? Just pee near the wall or something.”

“I like your style.” Stool flung a finger gun gesture towards Diego before walking towards the far side of the glass wall. Diego didn’t know how this was going to work. Him, trying to solve this mystery with a laid-back pothead. He didn’t do drugs at all, and Stool gave him another reason why. No sense of leadership. No care for bigger issues. Such characteristics couldn’t fit with the debate team. Diego was the president, and pretty damn good at it. He knew what he wanted out of life, and to achieve most of his dreams and goals, he needed to be the man with all the answers.

Starting with a way to get out of here.

To his right, the blaring sound of an alarm clock echoed through his suddenly sensitive ear canals. Even with the glass as protection, the alarm was incredibly loud and felt like it was playing through the world’s largest intercom. He ran away from the deafening noise, closer towards Stool still taking his pee break, before witnessing the overwhelming shadow of a hand rise from below and silence the alarm.

Diego slowed his pace, studying the events that unfolded. The hand itself was a bit pudgy with long fingers. A scrunchie was wrapped around the wrist, brushing against the corner of the glass for a brief second. To Diego, it looked feminine, but powerful. He could even hear the smack laid down on the snooze button. The mental image of that slap scared Diego, making him think how grave their situation might be.

Soon, he listened more closely to what sounded like springs in a bed, setting off in different positions before inner lighting illuminated the outside of their glass. Diego dropped all his insane ideas of what torture dungeon they might be in and absorbed the rosy-pink walls outside his glass prison. It became more obvious that they were in a room. An average teenage girl’s bedroom. A Faulkner high school student, based on their school’s calendar near the door. Large posters of DNCE and Justin Timberlake sharing one wall, with the other occupied by a computer desk. 

Distracted, Diego didn’t notice right away the enormous shadow casting over his body. He turned back to see a massive pretty head with dotted eyes, raven-black bed hair, and elastic squirrel cheeks smiling down their insignificant nature. She gave a long, pleasant look at Diego before peering down Stool, who was still taking the longest piss right in front of her.

“Disgusting!” Her titanic, slightly muffled voice boomed over their heads. Diego dropped on his knees, stunned by what he was seeing. A girl the size of a mountain was right in front of him. He felt like he was in some twisted fairy tale. Diego and the Beanstalk. This had to be a dream, he thought. There’s no way this could be possible. He wished someone would just kick him awake from this nightmare.

But it continued. The girl’s hand hovered over them, twisting what seemed to be a plastic lid with holes, and slanted it just enough for Diego to slide closer to Stool, almost connecting with his pool of piss. Then he watched in horror as three teal-colored fingernails tried raking them out. It took a couple tries before they felt the warm grease of her pads stick to their bodies. She pushed them over the edge of the glass jar, letting them free-fall for a couple seconds before landing in the soft cushion of her other hand. Diego heard the bed springs creak again as the girl planted her full weight down, sitting and staring at her fresh victims.

Marisa Feliciano, Diego recognized. She was one of the girls on the volleyball team. Not much of a looker compared to the rest of the team. She had a chubby physique, usually in the center of the formation. That way, from all angles, if she failed to do her share, the other girls would step in without a moment’s hesitation. The only reason Diego knew all this was that he watched the volleyball team religiously. Something about his pubescent needs turned his lust towards sporty girls. Marisa just so happened to be literally caught in the middle of it all.

Now here she was again. Without her glasses, but the size of a giant. So many questions ran through his mind, but he was afraid answering to the sour mood she was giving them.

“Jesus, Stool, why’d you have to go and pee in the jar? Couldn’t you just hold it until everyone woke up?”

Stool didn’t speak.

Go on. Tell her a joke. Be funny, man. Diego wanted to tell him off so bad. Rub it in his glazed face that he was right to be scared. But couldn’t force himself to do it since he was also scared.

“Why can’t you be more like Diego? He was awake, and he didn’t need to go piss.” Marisa shook her head in disappointment. “If you’re going to be living here, I can’t have you peeing whenever you like. It’s bad manners. If it becomes a problem, I just might have to put you somewhere more absorbent. Like my sweaty gym socks.”

She brought herself to giggle over such a threat, with Stool looking stupefied in awe, and Diego stuck on her mention of the word ‘living’.

“I’m sorry, live here? What do you mean by live here?”

“Oh, it’s okay, Diego.” She said while curling her index finger over his head to give him a little comfort nudge. “You’ll be safe here. I know my mom would kill me if she knew guys were living in my room, but she rarely comes in here. I have a good bit of privacy.”

“That’s not the issue.” Diego stated. “Do you know what happened to us, Marisa? Why we can’t remember anything and, more importantly, are the size of ants?”

“Um…” Marisa looked away with a feeling of hesitation. By the looks of her frowned eyebrows and wry smile, she seemed worried. “I’m not really supposed to say anything.”

“What?!” Diego yelled. “You can’t be serious. Marisa, if you know something, we have the right to know. This is flat-out kidnapping on a serious degree. You know that, right?”

“Um…” Her voice sounded fragile. Diego never spent time alone with Marisa, but he could tell from a distance she was shy. It would be easy to get info from her if he kept pestering.

“You know something, don’t you?” Diego pushed. “Tell us, Marisa.”

“Go easy on her, man.” Stool broke out of his terrified silence. “You don’t know what you’re doing, and are probably going to make things worse. Better to just ride this out and listen.”

Diego turned to Stool with a look of suppressed anger. “Oh, so you do know what’s going on?”

“Still nothing.”

“Then why in god’s name are you just sitting there acting like everything’s going to fix itself?! She just gave us the indication that she knows something about all this!”

“Maybe we should just let her talk.” Stool suggested.

“I was trying to before you interrupted.” Diego cooled down his flush of anger and came back to Marisa with ease. “Please, Marisa. We just want to know why.”

“I’m sorry, Diego…I can’t say anything.”

“Why? Are you being threatened? We can help you get out of this. You just need to fill us in.”

“I can’t…” Marisa pleaded. “Please understand, Diego.”

“No, I won’t.” Diego denied. “I woke up scared out of my ass, thinking that I was going to die. And now I’m here, still thinking that, while standing on a girl’s sweaty hand who could give me all the answers, but won’t and expects me to just accept all this. Do you really expect me to be okay with this?!”

“They said you would. They said you would just accept it.”

“Who? Who are ‘they’ Marisa?”

“Damn it, Diego!” Marisa yelled. “Just let it go!”

“No! I refuse to ‘let it go’ until I get some damn answers!”

 “Fine!” Marisa snapped. She gripped her palm into a fist, engulfing Diego and Stool into the depths of her palm with the odorous scent of her natural Puerto Rican musk. “It’s pointless, you know? The two of you are mine now. That was the deal, and I don’t have to tell you anything more. If you want answers, hear it from the bitch herself.”

Deal? Diego couldn’t even focus on that slip of the tongue while his entire world was shaking violently by Marisa’s fury. He didn’t see anything until he entered a second free-fall, this time landing in a foamy, moist surface. Diego landed fast first into a rancid scent of dry musk and sweat. He cocked his head back, watching Marisa’s hand sliver away from the opening of what appeared to be her shoe.

Diego jumped to his feet and raced towards the light, but it was quickly blocked by one of her gym socks shoved into the mouth. The smell was fresher, and even more killer towards the nostrils. He backed away in simultaneous waves of terror and anger, before bumping into a disapproving Stool.

“Smooth.” Stool said. “Real smooth, asshole.”