“Can we go over that last part one more time?” You stumbled a bit on the delivery near the end,” said the director to her two co-stars.
Michael was worn down and worn out. They had been running this scene all day.
Sweat was starting to glue his peachy blonde hair down to his scalp, and his voice was gonna give out any minute. Miranda wasn’t doing much better. She had worn herself ragged from the day’s rehearsals. And it showed, what with how unkempt her usually spotless chestnut curls had gotten. Her headspace was somewhere between frustration, despair, and murderous intent. She kept ruffling through her hair, pacing in a circle on the other side of the stage. Michael couldn’t tell from this distance, but she had started to break out into a sweat. It was in these odd moments that Michael looked at her, dainty frame, dorky outfit, big nose and all, and for a few seconds fell in love with her.
“We’ve been rehearsing for three weeks now, the show runs Thursday, for the love of all that is holy get it together Michael!” yelled Miranda. Of course, three seconds was never quite enough time to really get to know someone.
“I know my stuff. You’re the one who keeps making this scene so, so….”
“So what?” she responded, staring him down.
“So awkward! You keep reading off those last lines like they’re your funeral rites, and then you walk up to me and give your best impression of a robot learning to kiss.”
Miranda stormed his way. She made sure to make every footstep clank against the wooden floor. “Well maybe I wouldn’t be so bad at kissing if you weren’t such a shitty, wooded actor!”
“And maybe I wouldn’t be such a shitty actor if you weren’t always such a-!” Michael’s entire vision went dark. A great big something came up behind him, taking his legs out from underneath him. He felt a strong vertigo as the floor went soft and malleable, like a bed. Another ceiling, more wall now, closed tightly around him. He tried to speak, but every sound he made was muffled by the wall of flesh almost twice his height. He couldn’t even wriggle his legs; he was trapped like a fly in molasses. The only thing to do was wait.
Meanwhile, far above the miniature stage, Ruby was starting to panic just a bit. These two were easily two of the best Gulliverian actors in the school. They might have been the best actors, period. Yet in some cosmic irony they couldn’t stand to be in the same room as each other. Something about artists and big egos probably. When she got the opportunity to cast them both in a show, a one act play for her directing class, she thought she was getting quite the steal. Now it was more like she was robbed. There were only five days left before the show, the lead actor was forgetting his lines, the lead actress was forgetting how to act, and Ruby was one passive aggressive quip away from crushing them both in her fists right there and then. Not that she would, but it was rather tempting. This right here was the longest they’d shut up since rehearsals started.
She quickly looked around her dorm room. Technically roughhousing the smaller students like this was against school rules, but people still did it. This was just how it worked in mixed size schools. It was kind of hard not to, when she could pin down half the student body with her pinky finger. From her perspective the Gulliverian students couldn’t have been more than an inch tall, which was dwarfed by the pencils on her desk, her ID card in her pocket, her toothbrush in her shower caddy, the head of said toothbrush in said shower caddy, and so on and so forth. For Pete’s sake the whole stage they had been rehearsing on fit on her nightstand with room to spare! If she wanted to she could shove the two in one of those drawers and leave them there the whole night and there was nothing they could do about it.
Ruby had tried to keep her cool and show restraint, but “cool” and “restraint” were words that only applied when the night you’d been losing sleep over for weeks wasn’t less than a week away and the two little shits you’d been riding your hopes and GPA on weren’t running everything seemingly intentionally. Well, little shits was a bit of an exaggeration. Her actual business probably considerable outweighed them by a considerable factor. Ruby chuckled a bit at that thought, then gagged at how gross it was.
Out of some morbid curiosity, Ruby started shaking her hands around a bit, up, down, left, right, then again. It was an angry impulse, but she wasn’t sorry for it. It served them right for being so ungrateful. She had done everything to make this work. She even managed to talk the head drama coordinator into letting her sign out this mini stage for the weekend. She thought that some time in her dorm would help Miranda and Michael unwind for a bit, let out some steam at a nice, casual get together, but it hadn’t helped a bit. They got here at little past one, and now it was nearly seven and they hadn’t made any progress. She uncurled her fists to let in some air and light, keeping her palms clenched just the tiniest amount to keep her tiny starlets held firmly in place.
Miranda was about to hurl. She told Ruby before rehearsals even started how prone she was to motion sickness. She would have thrown up right then and there, if she weren’t so incredibly upset at being such a disappointment. This show was supposed to be her chance to show off her acting chops, but this one kiss was ruining everything. She would have cried, but her heart was too full of murderous rage at Michael. Who the hell did he think he was? He showed up to rehearsals late, didn’t do his work in class, didn’t bother being courteous and holding open the door, didn’t care about shit. If it took even a smidgen more effort to stay alive, his heart would have stopped beating a long time ago. Good riddance. Having the gall to be so otherwise adorable in his goofy faux-dashing smile and general ditzy nature must have offended every god in the heavens. It certainly offended Ruby. And she’d’ve told it all straight to Michael’s face if she wasn’t at that particular moment filled with such an overwhelming, indescribable, mind-breaking fear of Ruby at that particular moment.
If she had an autobiography of her times at the academy, it would be titled Brobdingnags Are Actually Really Terrifying Guys, because they were. For all her time here, she still hadn’t gotten used to the multi-hundred-foot-tall monoliths that casually wandered the larger halls of the academy. There weren’t any back home. She hadn’t been within arm’s reach of one until she applied. They were just unbelievably intimidating. Miranda had a couple of Brob friends, Ruby among them, but sometimes they could just be, well, scary. Like right then.
She couldn’t even pinpoint what exactly it was about Ruby that was gluing her lips sealed right then, outside of the cavement talk of “she big me small”. She looked human, if they were on the same scale Ruby would probably come up right to Miranda’s shoulder blade. But Miranda wasn’t on the same scale as Ruby, not by a long shot. Every part of her was amplified ten thousand times fold, both her terrifying aura and her inescapable dorky beauty. And, uh, well, the less said about Ruby’s chest, the better. Miranda was trying so unbelievably hard right then to keep her eyes away from the effective mountains a few dozen feet away. They would have turned heads even if they weren’t so comically out of scale. Her mind wouldn’t stop replaying the image of her falling in between that precarious chasm over and over, every time her body bursting under that- oh god, it had to be a ton, or close to it, didn’t it? It would be humbling if it weren’t so humiliating. She’d be mentally chiding Michael for most certainly getting turned on by this, but she’d be lying if she didn’t think this was kind of hot herself.
It was just… too much. Everything about Ruby was too much. Her boobs were too much, almost popping out from her thin white blouse and lime green bra. Her body was too much, what a slightly chubby frame to someone Ruby’s size thousands and thousands of pounds of Ruby on Miranda’s scale. The miniscule pressure that Ruby was putting on the two of them to keep them in place a firm pressure on either side of Miranda, the strongest force that Ruby could put out without seriously hurting them. Ruby’s huffed, frustrated breath a constant torrent of warm air directed Miranda’s way, further ruffling her already fairly disheveled hair. Ruby’s gaze, twin lasers from some long-forgotten deity cutting Miranda open and branding Ruby’s frustrations and annoyances upon her heart. Ruby’s hair, a sea of long flowing thick wires of deep black hair that did as it pleased, settling gently upon Ruby’s shoulders. Ruby standing completely still as she was now was still making enough noise to drown out the sound of Miranda’s own breathing. It was hard for Miranda to even stay mad at Michael; all she could think about was Ruby.
Across from Ruby’s right hand, Michael was having a quasi-religious experience of his own. He was glad he brought khakis and not sweatpants, because his boner was getting ready to fire on all cylinders right about now. Not that Ruby would probably even notice such a stray grain of rice under his pants. Well, probably not rice, rice on Ruby’s scale would more be like a medium sized watermelon to him. Definitely not a blade of grass. Maybe pebbles? It was somewhat difficult for Michael to accurately capture adequate size descriptions for the gap between himself and Ruby. He was trying to speak, but all he could do was sputter out words under his breath and hope they reached her.
It wasn’t like Ruby was even listening to Michael’s mutterings right then, so easily drowned out by the sound of her taking a deep breath in, holding it tight, and breathing it out. And then she spoke. Or more accurately, she boomed, her voice ringing clearly in and through her subjects.
“I have had enough of all your petty bullshit. I don’t know why you two hate each other; I don’t care why you hate each other, but you two are going to get your shit together, and start acting like mature, responsible adults. I have been trying to get you two to work together for weeks now, and if you aren’t going to do it yourselves then… then…”
Ruby stammered off for a bit. She thought briefly about the two people in her palms right now. And then she brought both palms in towards each other. Ignoring (or perhaps not hearing) the whimpering of the two figurines in her hands, she brought both palms together gently, until both actors were forced face to face with each other. She touched hands, pushing their faces in to each other. The two tiny actors couldn’t see each other in the darkness of Ruby. But they could feel each other, and for a second Miranda looked at Michael, and Michael looked at Miranda, and, propelled by fear, or exhaustion, or some deeply sewn sexual tension that had underpinned their interactions with each other for the last few months, the two actors locked lips.
Ruby wasn’t quite able to see or even really feel what was going on between her hands, but she knew perfectly well anyways. She held her little lovebirds there for another split second before pulling apart her hands and turning them to face her.
“And that,” said Ruby, “Is how you do a fucking kiss scene.”
Neither actor nor actress said anything.
“Well, seeing as there are no disagreements, I’ve made the executive decision to prolong rehearsal until I fucking feel like you two are actually doing your jobs. But since you’ve already wasted enough of my time, I’m going to take a quick nap,” she said.
She turned her head slightly to Michael. “You’d better know your god damn lines when I wake up. And you,” she began, bringing Miranda close to her face, “You’re going to spend some time learning how to fucking emote. Good night.”
She opened both hands, letting Michael and Miranda tumble back down to the stage on her nightstand. She tumbled back into bed, pulling her sheets over. The heavens rumbled above her little dolls as she did. With one outstretched arm looming high over the small stage, Ruby turned off the nightlight, leaving them in the almost complete darkness of the dorm room. The two had a front row view of the sleeping giant as she had her first good sleep in weeks. Michael raised his voice to say something, maybe apologize, maybe curse, but it was inaudible above the muted roar of Ruby’s snoring.