I woke up with a pounding headache and aching joints, laid out on a broad slab of wood without any covers. Clearly I had not made it back to my bed, and since my friends had all run off to do their own things I supposed it was reasonable none of them had come to make sure I got home. Instead of being bitter about it, though, I was simply thankful I woke up safely, and decided to sneak out before anyone decided to give me a hard time.
Standing up made me more aware of my surroundings, and I realized that, unlike I had thought, I was not on a piece of plywood or stuck in a spare room. The wood floor stretched a great distance in all directions, suddenly dropping off at the edges instead of meeting a wall. Near the closest edge there was a bundle of people standing in rows, but after watching them for a bit none of them moved a muscle. Statues, I presumed, though fully painted and indoors for some reason. Other than that, the only thing here with me was a thick layer of dust, as though no one had swept for ages.
Wherever I was it was raised a good bit from ground level, but if there was a way up or down it would be near those statues. I shook the cobwebs out of my head and strode toward them, kicking up clouds of dust as I went. While I drew closer I saw more details in the statues. Many of them shared the same pose, like they had been mass manufactured, and all of them had a weapon of some sort. Most looked like they were in the heat of battle, or on their way to it. Though they were visually interesting, I was not going to get any answers for them, and I stepped closer to the edge.
The statues were strange, but what lied beyond the precipice was straight up bizarre. It was a fairly standard college dorm room, except everything was bigger. Much bigger. My raised vantage point made it difficult to tell for sure how much larger everything must be, but in such a cavernous room that it was thousands of feet to the door the bed occupied an entire wall, and the clothes hanging in the closet would be suitable for a quarantine tent. For a person to wear them, they would have to be titanic in size.
I looked down and saw that they had even included a student to scale with this mock-up. She leaned forward, her elbows resting on the enormous desk, reading a book held open by the weight of its own pages. A curtain of hot pink hair ran down to her shoulders, and while I could not see her face since she was looking down her arms and shoulders were nearly corpse-like with how pale they were. Her white, low-cut shirt revealed a decent amount of cleavage, an unusual detail for a mannikin in such an exhibit. Pondering that would not get me off this platform, though, and I continued looking for a way down.
Something about that giant mannikin seemed familiar, and my mind turned back to last night. There was a woman at the party with the exact same haircut and skin tone standing by herself in one of the corners, and I decided to talk to her once my friends also left me alone, figuring we could both use the company. She was tall and wiry, and the longer I talked to her the taller she got. I wanted to get away, but there was something about her unusual, teal eyes that I found hypnotizing, and I could not so much as take a step away from her. When the side of her shoes had become taller than me I was finally free of her gaze, but by then her hand was already reaching for me, and I was quickly engulfed by her fingers.
Until now I had thought that was some sort of dream or hallucination after being dosed with something, but it was becoming apparent that it was real. Not only that, but she had taken me back to her room and put me somewhere high up, probably intending to keep me as her prisoner for some nefarious purpose. A sound cut through the still air, and I looked to see the enormous woman turn a page, confirming that she was not, in fact, an inanimate part of some art installation.
I was not going to be the captive of some gigantic nerd, no matter how pretty I thought she was, and started looking for a way out. Not far from the door there was an end table with a laptop resting on it, a power cord running down the side that I could use to climb to the floor. On the way there was a long table with a broken surface which, from up here, looked like a xylophone. She must have also been into orchestra music as well as being a huge nerd, but I would be more than willing to use that in my journey to safety. The only issue was the long drop onto it with no obvious way down.
With just this one obstacle in my way I began searching for something to help with the descent. Fortunately, I did not have to look for long since a pair of enormous, beaten-up shoes was set atop the mesa behind me. Cautiously I climbed up onto the shoe’s toe and crawled along its tongue until I reached the top hole for the laces. I grabbed the shoelace, working my hands into the woven material to seize the threads for extra grip, and began to pull, pressing my foot against the shoe for added leverage. To my relief it slipped out with a bit of effort, lengthening the amount of rope I would have to climb down.
When there was enough loose shoelace for me to feel satisfied I tossed it over the edge, then waited for it to stop swinging. I peered over the edge at the rope of shoelace I had cast over the side. It did not reach all the way down to the xylophone, but severely mitigated the distance I would have to fall. Figuring that it was better than nothing, I grabbed onto the shoelace and began rappelling down the side of the towering wooden wall.
The instant my legs landed against the side I felt my grip weaken while my legs splayed out beneath me. It had looked so easy in the videos I watched online, but apparently I forgot to factor in the years of physical conditioning of the people doing it. I changed to a much different, safer plan of inch worming myself down the shoelace. This would take a lot longer, but was much less likely to end with me in a broken heap on the floor.
When I finally reached the aglet at the end my arms and thighs burned from the effort of clinging to the shoelace. After making fun of her for being so nerdy, I realized that once I made it out of here it might be time for either some introspection or to hit the gym since this should not have been so exhausting. My grip on the plastic casing began to slip, and I looked down to make sure I would have a safe landing. It was still a decent drop, but it should be survivable. In a few seconds it would not matter how I felt about it regardless.
Wanting to maintain some modicum of control I released my hold on the shoelace, dropping onto the xylophone below. I landed right in the middle of a bar and crumpled, the immediate, resonating vibrations beneath me destroying any chance I had of dissipating energy from the fall. A loud, low tone emanated up from the ground, assaulting my ears with a constant low hum. While I pushed myself to my feet I realized that I had landed with enough force to strike a note from the bar.
I walked to the edge of the bar, nursing my right ankle as I went. The landing had been harder than I wanted, and while it was not broken I felt uncomfortable putting any weight on it and aggravating a likely sprain. At the bar’s edge I realized this would be a serious problem. The gap to the next platform was too wide to step over, but I could probably jump it. With a wounded ankle, however, a running start seemed inadvisable.
Not wanting to be stuck on a xylophone when I had just gotten out of being stuck on top of a cabinet, I resolved to suck it up. I coiled my good leg, doing my best to keep my bad one steady, and pushed myself forward in a clumsy, one-legged broad jump. While in the air I felt myself turning, and tried to stop my rotation before landing on the next platform. It was beyond my control, though, and I landed hard on my side, creating another assault of strong vibrations and an unstoppable hum emanating from the ground.
Plastic wheels clattered against carpet, and an immense wall of white shuddered into view. I looked up and saw the same entrancing eyes from the night before wide with excitement in the enormous face looking down at me, thick curtain of pink hair stopping just above her dark eyebrows. She had a long nose, and her narrow lips were parted in a smile, revealing white, shining teeth.
“Good morning!” she boomed, leaning in close so that her voice was especially powerful. “It’s almost noon, I was starting to worry you’d sleep all day!” She pulled back, giving me the full effect of her imposing size while she stared down. “Then again, you were pretty far gone last night, I’m surprised you woke up at all.” She placed a hand on her now rather sizable chest and continued, “In case you don’t remember, I’m Jackie, and you’re… well, we both know who you are, right?” To be perfectly honest I was unsure, but contradicting giant women was not a habit I wanted to start so soon.
She reached over me and picked up two long mallets, their heads hard rubber spheres, and took one in each hand. “You said you were very interested in 18th century orchestra arrangements last night, so I figured we could jam and see if we could finish each other’s lines!” Jackie said, her rumbling voice brimming with enthusiasm. That sounded not at all like anything I would say. The last time I listened to music that didn’t include a synthesizer or sick riffs was in high school. Still, disagreeing with her seemed like a bad prospect no matter how excited she was, so I decided to go with it.
“Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to it!” I shouted up, aware that with her being so huge I would have to put in extra effort for her to hear me. “My mind’s a little fuzzy from last night though, do you think we could start slow?”
She laughed, a resonating crack that managed to sound somewhat melodic. “Oh, nonsense!” Jackie said. “I’ve played hungover a lot, this stuff should be second nature to you.” She readied the mallets in her dainty hands and held their heads near the xylophone. “Okay, I’m going to get started, try to finish it!”
Jackie pounded the instrument consistently for several seconds, making a cacophony of racket blare from the other end, then suddenly stopped. She looked at me as though she were waiting, but I simply stood there, looking up dumbly at her and trying not to make my ankle pain flare up anymore. “I guess you don’t now that one?” she asked, then held a mallet to her lip. “Hm. It’s pretty basic… I’ll try something more over in your range.”
She turned toward me and waited a second, then began another flurry of bashing against the bars that I could not possibly follow. It created a deafening racket, and each time she hit the bar I was standing on I felt the note travel throughout my entire body. When she reached over I reflexively ducked out of fear that she would bring the rubber ball down on me, but it passed harmlessly over. Once the racket stopped she looked at me expectantly again, but I was even more lost than last time.
Jackie set one of her mallets down, making a clatter as it settled on the xylophone, then looked straight at me. Her eyes had lost the enthusiasm from earlier, and now I got a distinct sense of annoyance from her. “You don’t know any of these, do you?” she asked, though it was more of a statement. “I doubt you’ve ever seen a real instrument in your life. Be honest, were you just trying to get in my pants last night?”
If I was ever going to be honest with her, this is not where I would start. I limped away from her as quickly as I could with my sprained ankle, hoping I could take cover beneath the bar hanging over the one I stood on. Unfortunately, with a wounded leg I was a particularly easy target for the giantess, and a huge rubber mallet came down on me, fracturing my shoulder and sending me sliding along the bar.
It felt like my entire right side was in agony, which flared in intensity when two massive fingers grabbed me by the legs. Jackie dragged me along the smooth black surface, and I wished my ankle had simply fallen off earlier while her fingers pressed around it. The pain escalated further when she lifted me, dangling my body upside down by my legs until she delivered me into her other hand, its palm flat and waiting for me.
While I laid in Jackie’s palm she stared down at me, her irritation clearly focused in my direction. Her warm skin was soothing on my strained and broken joints, and the smoothness was evident even through the radiating pain. Jackie’s long fingers curled inward slightly while she held me, and I could feel the steady beat of her pulse reflected in the slight, regular twitching inward of her fingers.
“So. You were feigning interest in what I like to get me into bed, is that right?” Jackie asked. The joy had entirely gone from her voice, replaced by venom. “Do you have any idea how it feels to be seen as an object, used to get something, and then forgotten about? I’m a person with feelings too, did you ever stop to think about that?”
“Jackie, I think we-“
“Maybe you should have told me what you’re actually interested in, then we could have talked about that,” she continued, not letting my rebuttal interrupt her rant. “Found some common ground, some differences, had a real conversation instead of you acting like you gave a shit about me. Then you might have actually gotten some instead of getting crushed.”
“Wait, what?” I exclaimed, but Jackie’s fingers curled inward, engulfing me and plunging me into darkness. Her fingers pressed down on me, and the heat and pressure rapidly built. I tried to breathe but the weight of Jackie’s fingers pressing on my chest prevented it, and I was only able to gasp at her flesh. In seconds the pressure became too much, and my body popped in her grip, exploding and collapsing under the force of her powerful hand.
Jackie felt the puny body in her hand explode in a rush of liquid, and her grimace turned back to a smile. It was so rare that she got to feel the visceral pop that accompanied the crunching of tiny bones. She picked up a paper towel from the nearby desk and wiped the blood and ichor off her hand then dropped it in the trash, nothing more than another piece of refuse for her.
A dangling shoelace caught Jackie’s attention, and she got up to investigate it. The crafty little snake had managed to use this to help himself down. She pulled the shoe off and rethreaded the lace, then set it back where it had been. It was such a good idea she might have to start using it herself to let them have a little hope in escaping.