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The drab brown walls were unadorned save for a few windows cut in them, and they lacked even a basic pane and frame.  What few pieces of furniture there were seemed to be made out of the same particle board the rest of the room was, with superficial features etched into the material.  There did not seem to be any electricity, fireplace, or anywhere to put my things, just a wobbly square table and a bed with a wooden mattress.  Despite its flaws, the single square room was a marginal upgrade in living space from my dorm room and had about the same amenities.

 

Minor benefits aside, I had no idea how I ended up here.  The last thing I remembered I was on my way to a climbing lesson when I passed a group of unusually tall women who all gave me a knowing look.  A few steps later I felt light-headed and sat on a nearby bench to recover.  Maybe I had passed out, and someone brought me here for safety? 

 

However, I had no idea where “here” was.  The floor seemed to shake at random, and it sounded like boulders kept falling from the sky.  Every so often there was a loud rumble either in front of or behind me that almost sounded like someone talking, though I could not make out the words.  Through the shoddy window all I could see was a wide field that looked like astroturf with a white wall that seemed to move at the far side.

 

It would be easier to get my bearings outside, I figured, and headed for the door.  There was no knob, and I puzzled how to open it a moment before I tried simply pushing.  The door swung open with more resistance than I expected, the hinges loudly grinding with the movement.   I stepped over the threshold, eager to start the journey back to my room.

 

As soon as I got outside I froze.  A man had apparently been waiting for me and had a gun barrel in my face.  Not wanting any trouble, I backed away from him only to bump into someone else who’d been lying in wait.  I spun and saw that he had a pair of swords and looked ready to attack.  Trapped between the two of them, I simply waited for one of them to make a move and hoped their scores were with each other.

 

A second passed, then another, and neither of them moved.  Not to breathe, and after some studying I noticed they didn’t even blink.  Up close, I saw hundreds or thousands of brush strokes all over them, almost imperceptible from even a few feet away.  No longer afraid for my life, I reached out to grab the gun and found it had the distinct feel of plastic.  I stepped closer and began pushing the statue, trying to push it over, but the wide black circle under its feet kept it steady.

 

“Hey!”  The sudden shout cracked through the air like thunder, and I let go of the statue.  “Stop moving my models!”   I turned to see who was shouting at me and froze again.  It was one of the tall women from earlier, but it looked like she’d undergone a massive growth spurt.  Now she loomed over the landscape, which appeared to be a little below her waist, and I figured her white dress was what I had seen through the window earlier.  She was slender, at least for someone hundreds of feet tall, and though her features dwarfed me they were relatively petite aside from her long nose.  A pair of turquoise eyes stood out amid her pale skin, and long strands of hot pink hair fell in front of her shoulders.

 

“Jackie, you should have models ambush before you move anything, and definitely not out of terrain features,” another voice rumbled from the other side.  “But that model seems to have a mind of its own, so I’ll let it go.”  I hadn’t seen her before, but since she was also several hundred feet tall somehow she was probably also part of Jackie’s group.  Most of her was obscured by the building behind me, but I could at least see her raven hair, and her deep green eyes were magnified by large, round glasses.  She was a little more tan, though clearly still no friend of the sun, and high, defined cheekbones made her look almost gaunt.

 

“I’m not a model, I’m a man!” I protested up at them.

 

“Yeah, you are,” Jackie agreed, then leaned forward and placed her hands on the table.  She kept moving in until her face was right above me, blocking out every other feature of the sky.  A ribbon of pink hair hit the ground beside me, curling where it landed, and her eyes belied a simmering fury.  “And you’re messing up my turn!”  I covered my ears from the booming shout, but they were already ringing, and a few flecks of saliva had sprayed onto me.

 

With me thoroughly intimidated, Jackie stood back up to survey the ground before her.  “Don’t take it out on the little guy,” the other woman said.  “You were losing well before he popped out.”

 

“Shut up, Eve,” Jackie shot back.  “You know, you’re right though, I’m technically breaking the rules by putting a new model on the table right now.  You should take control of him in the name of fairness.”

 

“No way!” Eve replied.  “You know the rules regarding shrinks.  If one of them comes out during a player’s turn, he becomes controlled by that player.  Besides, you need all the help you can get right now.”

 

“Fine.”  Jackie did not sound thrilled to have me on her team, and for my part I was not too excited about being controlled by her, whatever that meant.  “Shrink, you’re up since you already started moving like a jackass,” she said.  “Walk up until you can touch that guy with the gun and then step an inch to the right.”

 

“My name’s not Shrink, it’s…”

 

“Your name is Shrink!” Jackie bellowed, cutting me off.  “It’s what you are and it’s your name!  Now do what I said!”

 

“Calm down, it’s just a game,” Eve interjected.

 

“That’s easy to say when you’re winning,” Jackie began, “and you don’t have some insolent shrink just standing there staring at you!”  She leaned again so she could glare at me more furiously, and the only thing keeping me from backing away from her enormous face looming over me was the house behind me.  “Get.  Moving.  Now,” she growled, and continued glowering at me while she stood.

 

I was rooted in place.  What if I did the wrong thing?  Or the right thing, but in the wrong way?  I was new to being a game piece, and I wasn’t sure that I was entirely comfortable with it.  What did it mean to me after this game was over, if anything?  Out of a mixture of fear and confusion I looked between Jackie and where she wanted me to move, unsure if I should do anything at all.

 

“Fine, I’ll do it myself,” she said, and reached toward me.  I was still locked in place, and her thumb and forefinger easily pinched around my torso.  In a sudden, sharp movement she carried me to where she wanted me to be, then let go.  I staggered to get my bearings, but she sternly warned me to stay in place, so I did my best to keep my feet from moving.  Curious, I looked at the model she wanted me to move towards, wondering why it had to be this one.

 

The table shook when a pair of dice landed on it, and Jackie sighed loudly.  “You missed, shrink!” she exclaimed.  “I knew you were bad luck the moment you stumbled out of that house!”

 

“Come on, it’s just a bad roll,” Eve said, trying to assuage her.  “If a single shrink ruins your game, is it really his fault?”

 

“I can sure as hell blame it on him,” Jackie quipped before moving the sword-wielding model beside me.  The table shook with the impact of dice again, and Eve discretely pulled that model away.  Jackie’s demeanor improved somewhat after that, and I guessed that something good had happened for her.  Not wanting to get yelled at again, I stayed exactly where I was, only shifting my weight from foot to foot when I felt the need to move.

 

Jackie manhandled many other models after me, some of which I only saw because of her hand dragging them around.  Each time her dice hit the table she either cheered or sighed, and the latter happened much more often.  Whenever I so much as turned to the side she fixed me with a harsh glare, and I went back to how she had set me down.

 

Eve started moving models around, and I surmised it was her turn.  As she moved things, I got so used to the clatter of dice that I barely even noticed them, though Jackie seemed to get more distraught each time.  She seemed to move her pieces around me aside from one, after which Jackie pulled the swordsman from the table.

 

The game swung back to Jackie, and she started her turn with me.  “Okay, the shrink’s going to attack the guy right in front of him.”  I stepped forward and took a swing at the model, twisting my hips as I made contact.  He did not fall over, but I felt like if it weren’t for that platform stabilizing him it would’ve been a knockout.

 

Jackie pinched my collar and dragged back to where I had been.  “You don’t have to do anything, dummy,” she chided, and the table shook as more dice landed.  “Ha, he hit!”  Another clatter of dice, and Jackie’s spirits fell.  “No damage, though.”  She mostly ignored me the rest of the time she moved her models around, only reaching toward me when an errant die tumbled over the earth near me.  I thought she was coming back to me at ont point, but she was jut moving a large blue model that looked like a robot behind me, then Eve pulled one out from near me.

 

The game went back to Eve, and I was not even a factor in its resolution now.  Most of the action happened beyond a copse of trees, settled by a series of furiously rolled dice.  As it went Jackie got increasingly frustrated, while Eve was almost joking by the end.  Just by reading the two of them I felt the outcome was fairly evident, but Jackie seemed to hold out hope.  She removed the final piece with a loud sigh even though Eve looked rather satisfied by the results.

 

“Hey, good game!” the dark-haired woman said, extending a hand partway across the board.

 

“Yeah, good game,” Jackie said, taking her hand.  After a couple of shakes, however, she let go and jabbed a redwood-sized finger in my face.  “You, however!  You came out at the worst possible time and never stopped fucking things up for me!  I could’ve had that if it weren’t for you.”

 

“Now come on, there’s no way he knew what he was doing.”  Eve was trying to calm Jackie down, but she only seemed to get more upset.  “Aren’t you being a little hard on him?”

 

“I’ll show him hard,” Jackie said, moving her finger away from me.  She raised her hand beside her head and extended her fingers, flattening her whole hand out.  I stood transfixed as the angry giantess’s hand raced on a collision course toward me, rapidly getting more defined until I could see every slight line and wrinkle.

 

Eve reached to grab her wrist, but she was too late.  Jackie’s hand slammed into me at full force, hitting me hard enough that I wasn’t even knocked down before my body crumpled under it.  The immediate pain from the blow was excruciating, but it faded when my spinal column collapsed in a split second.  Her fingers hit the table, and the last thing I heard was the dull, resounding thud of her hand slapping the table.

Chapter End Notes:

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