“We meet again, loser.”
In the following seconds of silence, Brett heard a tinny creak as the car door was pulled shut. Amber had changed from her earlier attire of running shorts into jeans and appeared much freshened up. The battered green Buick stank of mildew, as one of the windows had been letting in moisture. The mildew was pinch-hitting for her sweaty gym bag, which wasn’t in the car at the moment.
Amber’s keys jingled as she started the car and drove a few blocks and posted up in a Checkers parking lot. She parked on the side of the street and addressed her nemesis, while he fumbled to lift the lid of the lunchbox compartment and see what was happening. Brett’s heart was pounding. He felt true fear. The chicken he’d just eaten started tickling the back of his throat and threatened to reemerge, as he felt the nausea of doom. Amber was totally unpredictable, had a huge chip on her shoulder, and was in the most diabolical mood.
“Let’s talk, micro-dick.” She was waving the control in front of his box lid gap, flaunting that she had total control of the instruments of shrinking and that she could hear him if he used his wrist device. She had apparently taken or been given custody of the control from Brett’s mom. What’s more, she had his bag, which meant she had his clothes, his phone, his wallet, and his keys. He was totally powerless.
Shaking himself out of it, Brett tried to calm down. “Yes, what do you want?” he said into his wrist as nonchalantly as he could.
“Only one little thing…. to dispose of you. What would be a good way? Have you ever thought how you wanted to die, Brett?” She asked with conviction and intense curiosity, speaking like a veteran interviewer. It was the same tone and poise she had shown on the local news when she had won multiple state records for girls track last year and was feted as a wunderkind.
“Wha--! You’d never get away with it. Not in a million years. I’ve got-“
Cackling, Amber replied. “I could 100% get away with it. I could swallow you in one gulp. You’re so small there’d be no evidence – you’d just have vanished.”
“But what about my mom? She is expecting me.”
“Pshaw nobody expectin’ you, loser. She dunked her phone this morning. As far as she knows, you’re still with that big-shot whore ‘Yawn’ and her sister.”
Brett was just stunned at the way she spoke of Yuan, who was supposedly a hero of hers. How deep did this hatred go?
“What about Mrs. Gu? She knows you’re taking me home. She’ll tell the police!”
“Right, like she is going to testify. They’re both Chinese nationals. Her big-shot whore sister was just abusing you. Your mom’s old ex that she talks about, the lawyer. Who is she gonna go crying back to when you turn up missing? And who do you think they’re gonna believe, dumbass? They are gonna deport both their asses back to China!”
Brett started to tear up. She was a maniac. This was some kind of real-life MAGA homefront war to her. This white trash kid had a chip on her shoulder the size of the Continental Divide. My God, she was actually serious.
He choked out, his voice breaking, “B…but why?”
“Would like to say it ain’t personal, but you’re the one fucking us over hardest. You are enabling this fucking shrinking shit. You are making it happen because you’re so fucking horny for shrinking. Fuck that shit.”
“I’ll stop! It’s not finished yet!” He pleaded.
“The hell it ain’t, asshole! Your mom submitted her certification application just today and it’s prolly gonna be approved too. Don’t even fucking matter, the rules are already changing. You are fucking up education and bringing us into this brave new world bullshit. You don’t know how to be a man and it’s gotta fall to me to teach you how to die like one.”
“Do you want money?? I’m getting a scholarship from this, I can get money from my dad, I’ll do anything you want!”
Amber paused. “Nope. Me and my mom might be trailer trash but we got our pride. We’re real Americans and we are gonna learn and grow the old-fashioned way. But I ain’t gonna eat you, or feed you to my dog. I got a better idea. Somebody else who’d have a better time eatin’ you and who I can use for the purpose. Let’s see if I can kill two birds with one stone and snag a bitch ass liberal foreigner...”
She turned to a pile of papers in the passenger footwell. It was a printout of the shrink certification training reports that Lee-Reilly had been amassing. Every detail that Brett or the teacher had said had been captured in these reports, and each teacher got to read what had happened in the previous sessions. They were part of the reading that Nancy had been given yesterday for the training. Seemed that Amber had managed to liberate these as well. Brett knew that his mom was deeply disappointed in him and had shown tremendous rancor in her treatment of him in the past few weeks, but he could scarcely believe that she knowingly gave information to a girl that harbored homicidal ideation against her own son. It had to be some elaborate prank or
“Hmm… wonder who I can convince to eat you… “
“please Loren, I’ve been captured by Amber”
ERROR – The message could not be sent.
“were near mrs. Gu’s house but I don’t know where were going”
ERROR – The message could not be sent.
“please help”
ERROR – The message could not be sent.
As the minutes dragged on and she pored over the reports, Brett was frantically trying to text Loren, but he had no reception. The lunchbox was mostly metallic, and acted as an effective Faraday cage, blocking the wrist device’s cellular antenna. Increasingly desperate, he tried to climb the side of the box and kept falling down its slippery edge like a mouse caught in a bucket trap. It was hopeless. On one final painful tumble he just laid there in a heap in the box, bawling and feeling intense regret for having ever started down this path.
If I ever get free, he said to himself, I will go to church for the first time in five years and thank God. I will treat my mom and Don better. I will-“
Interrupting his thoughts periodically with crass judgments, Amber jauntily cried “Damn dude, you been in so many women’s mouths. Damn you a whore!” More page flipping. “ugh…. Wait! This is perfect. You had that fucking jihadi bitch Erenli? She is SUCH a bitch! She gave me a bad grade on my government paper just because I defended President Trump’s Muslim ban. Fuck her fucking bleeding heart ass back to asscrackistan where she came from.”
If the remark hadn’t come at such a terrifying time, Brett would have found it hilarious that Amber would blame her teacher for that and concoct such an implausible delusion of political persecution, when Amber had plenty of mental deficits that could account for bad grades. But starting to grow numb to her cruelty, and unable to come up with an effective plea, Brett decided to blast the idea. “She’s too smart to fall for this stupid stunt, Amber.” Was it possible to talk Amber out of this?
Amber thought a moment. “Might be right, but I bet her mom ain’t. She wanted to eat you, says here.”
Fuck, Brett thought. Was that in the report? Had he written down or told Lee-Reilly that Umaima Erenli had offered to eat him? Maybe in a throwaway context? He still couldn’t work out if the older woman had shown such a profound misunderstanding that shrinkees were real people that she seemed to potentially believe he’d make an offering of himself, or if it was a clumsy attempt at humor that didn’t translate properly. He hoped fervently that it was the latter, as this would grind Amber’s murderous plan to a halt.
A keychain jingled as she flicked on the motor. There was a squeaky belt on startup that went away after a few seconds. Brett was stuck with nothing but sounds to indicate the progress being made towards his plotted demise.
But she made sure to let him know. “Oh yeah this is great. We’re definitely going to her house. Sounds like her mama is going to eat some American micro-dick for dinner, and I’m gonna get some Bedouin bitches busted with time to spare.”
As the sun set, the rickety Buick approached the apartment complex where Miss Erenli lived with her mother. Brett was treated to an opening of the lunchbox lid for the first time as her big, powerful hand came for him.
Now was the chance! He tapped “send” on a detailed message to Loren. A spinner indicated sending progress.
“Loren come quick and call the police! Amber is going to kill me! I’m at Fatima Erenli’s house!”
ERROR – The message could not be sent.
Brett frantically tried to tap out another shorter replacement. Each one prompted a short attempt to send followed by a message of failure, though it seemed to be trying.
But it was too late. The hand grabbed him by his lower half and held him upside down as he was clenched tightly enough inside her clammy fist that his arms could not reach one another to resume texting.
His world swung around nauseatingly as she slammed her car door and took a heavy set of steps toward the Erenlis’ door, then knocked on the door insistently.
KNOCK KNOCK knock knock knock.
Within 15 seconds, Umaima answered the door. “Hello yes?” she asked of Amber, a smile fading as she didn’t recognize the stranger. looking at her with skepticism.
Amber put on her best bemused smile and tried to look like she also found this weird. “Hi… is this Fatima Erenli’s home?”
“I am her mother.”
“Is Fatima home?” Amber asked.
“No, she is out teaching tonight.”
“And, um, are you Umaima?”
Umaima nodded, unblinking.
“Okay. Um… I’m Kelly, and I have with me a shrinkee named Brett – he claimed very adamantly that he wanted to see you.”
Suddenly Umaima’s smile was back. She beckoned for Amber to enter the house.
“How do you know Brett? Is he your friend?”
Amber bit her lip and pretended to think. “Well… yes, I guess…. As much as shrinkees can be friends. They aren’t really normal people though, of course! They live such short lives and can’t really talk.”
Umaima nodded vigorously. She was doing so with great defensiveness, as though acknowledging the humanity of shrinkees made her somehow old-fashioned or parochial, and was something to be avoided. As Brett saw it through the gaps in Amber’s fingers, his heart sunk.
“He told me he wasn’t going to have much time anyway, and he wanted you to eat him.”
Umaima’s eyes bulged. “He wanted… ME… to do that?” she said, flustered.
“I know, it’s really weird right! I guess some people might not like it, but… would you be willing to do it?”
Umaima sputtered. She thought it unseemly to show any enthusiasm for it. It was immodest and selfish. But it had been a desire of hers. Her stomach groaned slightly as she had been making dinner later and later in the evenings for the benefit of her daughter.
Finally the woman spoke quickly. “I can if he really wants. Are you sure?”
“I am totally sure. He was very specific. He said that he wanted you to eat him whole today.”
Umaima blushed and inhaled sharply. “Yes, ok… you set him down there. I will do as he wants. Please sit… I guess maybe this is nothing new for you. How many shrinkees have you had?”
Amber looked upward as though trying to count. “Oh lots… I guess maybe 10 or 11.” Brett was flabbergasted as he looked up at the two ladies, as he knew that Amber had never eaten a shrinkee and this pretension was ridiculous.
But it seemed to be working to soothe Umaima’s remaining doubts. As she came over and looked expectantly at Brett, he started hollering at her to stop, flailing his arms. She picked him up in a warm hand and held him close to her face.
“Do they always yell when you do it?”
Amber nodded. “Oh yeah. Even if they really want it, they do make noise and wave their arms like they’re trying to tell you something.”
Umaima smiled broadly at Brett, showing her teeth. Very quietly, in a tone Amber couldn’t hear, she murmured “Thank you young Brett, I hoped you would agree, let me eat you.”
The plunge into her mouth was rapid. He could still hear Amber talking outside, but it was distant, as though hearing someone while underwater.
“…and you can drown him in your mouth if you want, but it takes a while, or you can swallow…”
The word swallow hit him with horror as Umaima evidently felt empowered at the sound of it. Her tongue, defeating the strongest opposition from his whole body, worked him backwards to the back of her throat, positioning him face-first towards the dark orifice. She was holding her breath and the air was cloying, stale, and oppressive.
Then, the tongue curled up and over him, pressing him into the gap. Her throat muscles closed around him. It sealed him perfectly and tightly, like a sleeping bag squeezed on all sides by a hydraulic press, but the pressure had a directionality downward. Inexorably, despite digging his fingers into the walls, he was swallowed.
Flying through open air, he landed in a splash into a sticky, hot liquid. Her stomach smelled of stale, acrid vomit and there was very little food particulate. He heard churning. The stomach was greeting his presence as though he were sustenance. His presence necessitated the production of more fluids. This was the reality of his new eternal prison.
Jesus, don’t let me die here, Brett thought. I don’t want to die as food.
But maybe he would die of massive burns first. The stomach was mostly acid, and he knew its effects. His skin would start to tingle, and then it would burn, and the pain would get progressively greater until his final moments.
And then, very distantly, he heard laughter. It was Amber. He could not hear what she was saying during the laughter. Umaima’s response, though, echoed through her body. She was speaking with trepidation. “Now what is funny?”
He couldn’t make out Amber’s words, but it had the tone of triumph and mockery. She was resplendent in the sarcasm that she could deliver when in this mode. It was probably getting the best of her.
He could hear Umaima losing her temper. She cursed in Turkish, and growled “This was a joke? You cruel girl!” He heard the unmistakable sound of an open hand slapping flesh, as Amber was evidently being accosted for the perfidy. More yelling ensued. Umaima seemed to get hit hard in the gut as he felt his world shaken backward. The woman screamed that she wanted nothing to do with this, to leave her alone.
In haste and panic to undo her mistake, Umaima stuck two fingers into the back of her throat, and subjected Brett to a final roller coaster ride. Brett felt an overwhelming joy as he was expelled out of her stomach. He was starting to believe that he was safe, that Amber’s hubris would be his rescue.
But he was wrong. Amber hit the cowering woman again, who fell to the floor in tears. The fleeing girl scooped him out of a shallow heap of puke, and ran out the door, cursing at her luck and how the plan had failed. She slammed the door, running back out the way she came.
Why did this always happen to her, Amber thought? It was such a good plan, to tar those fucking Chinese and Muslim invaders. All her life, she had been undercut by wimps and weaklings. Why such a fuckup when she finally had her rival where she wanted him? What a stupid mistake. Well, she would just have to get out of here, nobody knew her real name around here anyway, and no way would anyone believe she had done this. A clean getaway, then she would gather her thoughts and do the deed more inconspicuously. She would eat him herself tonight, wash him down with vodka, and pass his body in her morning shit tomorrow. They’d never find his remains in her fecal matter, no matter what was alleged- she’d still get through this.
The stern figure of Loren Issakinen greeted Amber, who stopped gobsmacked in the parking lot before she could get into her car.
“Hi Amber. Fancy meeting you here. Have you seen Brett Henderson today?” She said, dripping with sarcasm.
“Oh, um…. I don’t think so, not after he, uh went out with Coach Henderson’s friend.” Amber sputtered.
Loren rolled her eyes. “Right. I already called Wendy and she said that she had, erhem, dropped off Brett with you.”
“Did she say that? I don’t know why-“
“Look kid. This is no joke anymore. You’re in big trouble and you’re going to be in really big trouble if you don’t hand him over to me now.”
“If you’re suggesting that I would hurt him, I’m a little insulted.” Amber said nervously. “And actually, I saved him from being accidentally eaten.”
At his shrunken height, Brett screamed bullshit with all his might, but he took comfort that Loren was not having any of it.
Hissing, the computer science teacher approached within inches of Amber’s face. “I’ve heard enough. Open your hand right now. Put him into this pouch. Gently.”
The girl complied, tears starting to form at the corners of her eyes. Brett slid into a soft, fabric-lined pouch, into which she had thoughtfully place a small swatch of alcohol-coated wipe. He eagerly wiped off the sticky substance still covering him, holding his breath against the powerful fumes of the alcohol, and then collapsed in the exhaustion of existential relief.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to him, but if you tried to eat him or set him up to be eaten, you could be in for attempted murder. As it is, I think at least aggravated assault, don’t you? Medals don’t count for anything in state prison.”
Amber was silent. She was holding back tears at finally facing the threat of repercussions for her vile machinations.
Loren continued in a wrathful tone. “I’m going to take Brett to unshrink and see what shape he is in. If he wants to press charges, I will be behind him every step of the way.”
As the teacher took Brett back to her house in her Tesla, her mind raced. She was pleased with her rapid, military-like response to the delayed texts Brett had sent, and that she had been able to find him from the last GPS fix that the app in his wrist device has gotten. That was a stroke of luck. Amber had disposed of the original shrink control, but, again, they were fortunate to have a few spare prototype devices handy in Loren's lab. But that was just the beginning.
Despite all he’d been through, Brett still had a rocky path ahead.
Many of the faculty had shown great callousness and lack of empathy in their treatment of Brett. That bode poorly for how he would be treated in the future, and for how unprofessional the shrinking process had become – Loren was now convinced that it was could not be done appropriately with secondary school students.
It did not end there. The student body would be brutally bullying him next year, many of them reacting with resentment at his contribution to the shrinking rules, on a smaller scale but similarly to the way Amber likely had been motivated to act. Everyone would find out sooner or later who he was, as Lee-Reilly was barely even attempting to keep his identity secret anymore among the faculty and parents. This was causing a rift between the principal and Loren, who was starting to wonder if this was all a crappy political game. A game that Brett didn’t deserve to be punished by.
Maybe moving to another school would help, but she cursed Nancy most of all for this outcome. There might be backpedaling and apologies, but Loren didn’t believe them anymore. By abandoning custody for that of a comparative stranger, his mom had effectively abused him and invalidated any trust he might place in her. He had already told Loren of the uncaring judgment and fierce punishment he’d been receiving. To give him back to her now would be a cruelty.
Loren sighed and shook her head as she pulled up at a stoplight and glanced over at Brett sleeping in the pouch.
Maybe he’d be okay with his existing circle of friends. Maybe she could protect him. Maybe this would all fail and they could abscond to another city. Maybe she was projecting her feeling onto him because she had once wanted to be rescued and was intoxicated by the feeling. Maybe he would finish growing and have no further use for her, and all of her planning was just daydreaming.
The possibilities teemed chaotically in her anxious mind, but Brett did look downright serene sleeping in that pouch. Peering down, she smiled warmly at the young man whom she loved.