“Alright, what are we up to now? Five-three to you, right?”

“Six­-three, actually, although I suspect you know that full well. Nice try though, Alice. If we weren’t playing for money, I might have even let that one slide.”

“Don’t get all smug on me, anyone can succeed at a game of luck,” she sniped back, stubbing out a cigarette and immediately lighting another. “It’s like genetics or something – some people get lucky, and some don’t.”

It was bitterly cold outside, and the ladies had gone no further than the first bar they both agreed on – the sixth, overall. It was too small and too warm, but it had corner seats, indoor smoking and wasn’t excessively loud. Most importantly, it wasn’t outside.

“If it were a game of luck, we’d be even-stevens, or near enough at least. You’re just bad at it,” she added, sipping on a daiquiri.

“Alright, Lou, if you’re feeling so confident, let’s swing fifty bucks on this one.”

“Fine by me, I need a new pair of gloves anyway. I’m starting to feel the winter chill already. I’ll even let you pick the target this time too.”

“I’m gonna buy a new pair of gloves to smack you with.”

Alice cast her eyes across the room.

A group of men were lining the bar front, cheering intermittently at some sort of sports game on the TV. Nah. Bar flies were sniping at a few of the more attractive loners at the edges of the bar. Not interested. A suspiciously young-looking group of people sitting suspiciously close to the door. That boy’s cute. A couple cuddling in one of the booths. I wonder if Lou’s brother is still with that Canadian hussy. Tired shift workers speaking to each other in Spanish. Could really go for a taco right about now.

Hmm, no obvious candidates.

“You’re terrifying when you stare, you know that, Alice?” She had her elbows up on the table, resting her chin on both fists, as if demonstrating the proper ladylike etiquette for staring.

“Shut up, Lou.”

She had made two rounds of the bar with her eyes and was just about to announce the youngish boy as tonight’s pick when a shadow fell over her – and strong smell of booze.

“D’you ladiesh believe in love at firsht site, or should I walk by again?”

Old. Drunk. Probably alone. Creepy. He’s perfect!

“Alright, Lou, I pick him!”

“Eh?” The man stared at her. Probably waiting for a punch-line.

Lou sniffed. “Good as any, I guess. No great loss in any case.”

“Ssho…you ladies want to get out of here? There’sh enough of me for the both of you, and then some.”

“You’re pissing up the wrong fire hydrant, buddy. Go on, shoo,” Alice waved him away with her hands. More confused than hurt, he shambled off towards the bar flies.

“Did you hear that in a movie somewhere?”

“What?”

“’You’re pissing up the wrong fire hydrant, buddy’. There’s no way you came up with something that clever,” Lou kept her eyes on the bottom of her glass as the last of her daiquiri travelled up her straw.

“I’ll piss up your fire hydrant in a minute. Anyway, I’ve made my choice. I pick him.”

“No accounting for taste, I guess. I’ll bet 50 on him not lasting 15 minutes.”

“Nuh-uh, it’s lively tonight. He’d be lucky to last 5 minutes. I won’t bet against that. Oh shit, my cocoa’s gone cold.”

“Alright, let’s split the difference and call it 10 minutes then. Less than 10 minutes, you win; more than 10 minutes, I win.”

Alice looked over at him again. He had trapped one of the bar flies, who was giving him her polite, but waning attention. She couldn’t tell what he saying at this distance, but she thought she heard the word “marines” a couple of times, and he seemed to be trying to show her something on his arm.

“Deal. You look for a good moment, and I’ll grab us some more drinks.”

Alice left her seat and wandered off toward the bar. Lou had the sneaking suspicion that her next cocktail was going to be cheapest item on the menu. It didn’t really bother her though; Alice hadn’t yet realised that the last of her muffins had gone missing.

She was right about it being lively tonight though. There was a lot of laughter in the air, and frequent traffic going to and from the bar. From Lou’s perspective, it was a good thing. She needed a lot of noise and distractions for what she was hoping to accomplish, and bars were good places for that sort of thing. It’s harder to eavesdrop when you can barely hear the person next to you. Harder to tell a pickpocket when you’re constantly being bumped by the crowd. Harder to notice a person disappearing.

Well, not disappearing exactly, but close enough.

Lou waited for the bar fly to excuse herself and disappear into the restroom. The couple in the booth looked to be dozing off. The young friends were occupied with something on one of their cell phones. The sports cultists were too tied up in their game to notice anything else. Alice was slutting up the barkeeper.

It didn’t take long for a good moment to appear. Aaaand…

One moment he was there, the next he wasn’t. Everyone was tied up in their own affairs to notice what had happened – except for Alice that is. She looked at the spot where he had been moments before, at Lou, at the clock on the wall, back at Lou again, before the barkeeper took back her attention with a question.

The man hadn’t really disappeared, of course. In fact, if you were to look very, very closely at that particular spot where had just been standing, you’d see a tiny creature – almost unnoticeable against the dark wood floor.

“I started counting, you aren’t cheating me out of this one!” Alice thumped down two glasses to mark her return. One hot cocoa, and one vodka tonic.

“I always love this part, Lou. I like to imagine their tiny faces as they try to make sense of what’s going on. ”

The man who had the misfortune to catch Alice’s attention, and who until moments ago was happily leaning against the corner of the bar, was now no more than an inch tall; an unwitting, unwillingly participant in another one of Alice and Lou’s games.

They had been through this routine a dozen times before, in different locations with other participants. The people they chose to play weren’t always male and sometimes the rules changed depending on the circumstances, but the game was essentially the same each time: how long could each tiny last.

It usually took a minute or so before any of them were spurred into movement. One of the women at the bar hopped down off her stool and passed by him on the way to the jukebox. It hadn’t really been that close, but her titanic figure looming over him or perhaps the vibrations of her heel against the floor had shaken some life back into him. His tiny, inch-high form darted towards the cover of the bar.

“Oh shit, we forgot to ask his name,” Alice’s wide eyes tracked the tiny man’s journey across the floor. “Let’s call him Gary.”

“Did Gary dump you in high school or college?” Lou asked. She hated vodka, and she was sure she had mentioned this to Alice before.

“Shut up, you. You’re just bitter because you’re about to lose 50 bucks.”

One of the sports fanatics swore and stamped his feet against the metal rungs of his stool. Gary froze, then changed course towards for the opposite direction.

He was a good 12 feet or so away from the two of them, but he was surprisingly quick for his age. Alice sipped her cocoa. Maybe he was in the Marines after all.

The bar traffic was picking up. The doorbell clinked as a pair of young dates walked into the bar and strode down the aisle, hunting for an empty booth. Lou wondered what a terrifying sight it must make to see such colossal figures walking straight towards you. Alice gasped as a petite, red-head’s boot landed inches from his body. It dwarfed him tenfold; a giant, black uncaring thing that would have ground him into oblivion if he had veered slightly further to the left.

There wasn’t anything he could do at his size, of course. With the noise and general drunken status of the bar, there was almost no chance of anyone noticing him. And even in the event that someone were to look down and see him, there was an even slimmer chance of that encounter not ending with him smeared across the sole of someone’s shoe. Lou knew exactly what she had to do to render him helpless - and she had done it. There was no chance of him surviving the night unless she wanted him to. Unfortunately, that was not what she wanted.

Four minutes had passed since the game had begun and their little gladiator was still going strong. He had been closing the gap between himself and their table, although his speed had slowed and he was starting to move more cautiously.

“Hey Lou, remind me again why this isn’t a sport. This is much more entertaining than watching a bunch of walking fridges toss a lump of pig skin to each other.”

“You mean aside from the fact that there’s only a handful of people who can do this? Probably for the same reason that they don’t duct tape knives to hamsters and make them fight in an arena.”

“That’s horrible!” Alice looked aghast. “Ooh, that loafer nearly got him!”

Someone’s loafer had indeed sailed over him, catching him in a draft of wind and throwing him forward.

When he had regained his bearings, he diverted his course slightly towards the young couple sitting at the nearby booth. The immediate uncontrollable panic and confusion seemed to have worn off, replaced by a slightly more logical and directed panic: the need to find help. Lou knew how this worked by now. She’d seen it many times before.

He was nearing the leg of their table when one of the young friends from the next booth over shrieked, flung her arm out and sent a glass flying forwards toward their table. It flew past Gary, smashed several feet in front of him, and fortunately shattered away from him. Unfortunately, some of the liquid from the glass had landed on him.

Alice looked alarmed, but the group giggled, and the young culprit sheepishly poked her head above the partition and began apologising to the couple behind her. One of the boys drummed his fingers on her back, and she aimed a mock punch at him in return.  Kids being kids.

The girl slid off her seat and set off towards the barkeeper, a sneaker falling very close to the tiny creature that was no doubt fast using up its source of luck. Alice winced and looked at the clock nervously. Six minutes had already passed and that $50 was looking less and less likely.

“Do you think I should buy Cashmere gloves or cotton gloves?” Lou teased.

Alice glared back and briefly through about marching over there and ending the game prematurely, but that would, of course, mean a forfeit. Besides, Lou usually let Alice have her fun with any survivors from their little games – the latter usually saw it as an added bonus or her consolation prize (more often the latter).

What Alice really wanted, however, was to keep one of those tinies as her little pet. She had begged and pleaded with Lou countless times over it, but Lou rarely entertained the topic for long. Despite the fact that Alice held the lease on their apartment, Lou was the only one who had the ability to shrink people. It was a petty issue, but one of that came up often in their household, as neither side was willing to give in to the other. Alice was persistent, but Lou was a rock.

The tiny man had been frightened back into the aisle and now had a new course of direction. He was making a beeline for Lou and Alice’s table.

“Do you think he noticed us staring at him?” Alice asked.

“Probably. Looks like he’s waving his arms.”

“You’ve got better eyes than I do.”

He was clearing the distance as quickly as his little legs would take him. It became obvious as he approached that he had indeed noticed the attention they were giving him, and was darting towards them in the hope of rescue. Lou thought it was funny, and even Alice appreciated the irony.

He was scarcely four feet away from the table, and the pair had their gaze firmly fixed on him.

“Hey Lou, what if-”

Crunch.

In the spot where Gary’s tiny form had been moments before now stood a giant black heel. A set of milky white toes with chipping red nail polish peeped out from behind the strap and scrunched instinctively.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Did you happen to see a man walk out that door within the past few minutes? Kind of tall, forty-ish, wearing a blue shirt?”

Alice continued to stare, but Lou kept them from an awkward silence.

“No, sorry. We didn’t notice anyone like that, but we were in a world of our own,” she replied.

“Oh, well…thank you anyway,” the woman sighed. “I was just talking to him not even 10 minutes ago, went to go freshen up in the ladies’, and come back to find that he’s pulled a fast one on me.”

Lou smiled. “Maybe something cropped up.”

“Yeah, I bet. Anyway, sorry for disturbing you. Have a good evening.”

She pivoted on her heel, grinding what remained of the tiny man beneath the ball of her foot, and walked off, tracking an almost imperceptible red mark for a couple of steps.

“I won.” Alice couldn’t quite believe it. “I actually won.”

Lou sipped her vodka tonic and stared at the stranger as she rounded the bar and disappeared from view.

“I really could have done with that pair of gloves,” she mourned.

“Use your pockets, princess, that’s what they’re there for,” Alice picked up her bag and coat from beside her. “Let’s call it 30 bucks, and you can buy the cab on the way home.”

“Fine.”

“And I get to eat your leftover noodles.”

“No dice.”

“Well too bad, because I already did.”

“Well, I ate the last of your muffins.”

“Bitch.”

It was the early afternoon by the time Alice rolled out of bed the following day. Whereas Lou had diligently washed up, gone to sleep and rose early for her morning classes, Alice whittled away the hours watching Netflix, updating her blog and had even got caught up in a Skype chat, arguing with a bunch of Australians about different cat breeds. Lou had already finished up college for the day, and was sat on the couch reading a magazine by the time Alice’s dishevelled form appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, you’re alive. I was just about to go and poke you with a stick,” Lou proclaimed.

“Shut up,” Alice muttered. It was the full extent of her wit at this time of day.

Lou watched her shamble over to the refrigerator, pull out a carton of juice, swig from it and channel her inner truck driver through the medium of belch.

“You are a foul creature,” she noted, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

In truth, her overall evaluation was far more positive, although she would never admit it. Alice was tall, long-legged and very well proportioned. She had thick, blonde hair that cascaded down her neck and past her shoulders (though in its current state more closely resembled a cross between a lion’s mane and a bird’s nest) and large, crystal blue eyes that gave her an authoritative and sometimes icy stare. A pair of high cheekbones, long nose and a set of red, natural pouty lips rounded out the rest of the features on her long, elegant face. Lou was impressed by the fact that Alice could rise from bed in the morning and still look so captivating, even if at times she also felt the stirring of a somewhat uglier emotion.

“So, what’s on the agenda for you today? Are you going to pretend to look for a job, or are there some cat videos on the internet you still haven’t seen yet?” Lou teased.

Alice flung herself down onto the couch next to her, weighed up a few possible retorts in her mind, then articulated the most impressive one – an aggressive grunt.

It had been just over six months since Alice’s parents had completely cut her off. She had never admitted what the major offence was that caused the rift, and not even subtle prying could ring any information out of her. Based on her childish behaviour and general tendency to annoy anyone within range, Lou had a few working theories on the topic.

Fortunately, Alice’s parents happened to be wealthy New England real estate developers, and the perks of disownment had left her with a fully paid off apartment, car and an undisclosed sum of money that, judging from her spending habits over the past few months, was by no means small. If they were hoping to rid her of her Princess Syndrome, they had gone about it in a very strange way, Lou thought.

All things considered, Lou considered herself lucky. She had arrived in town with a modest budget and expected to live a frugal existence over the coming years. The prospect of house-hunting was daunting to her, and most of the places within her price range seemed questionable at best. The first one she checked out had a very nice pair of drapes in the living room, but a few too many used needles laying around for her liking; the second came with its own washer and dryer, but no lock on the bedroom door. When Alice gave her a tour of lucky apartment number three – a spacious residence in the city centre with high ceilings, lavishly decorated interior and a fully furnished bedroom with an en suite bathroom – she was sure there had been some mistake with the price. Alice had evidently not inherited her parents’ business acumen.

The only downside was the slob who threatened to kick her out every time she took the television remote in the evening or finished the last of the cereal, but who also grew quiet when reminded of who cleaned the kitchen and kept living areas in an orderly state. Both reserved their right to complain (and reserved it frequently), but there was little animosity behind their words and neither wanted to upset the symbiosis that kept the household running smoothly.

“Lou, what do you do all day in school?” Alice asked, poking a table leg with her foot.

“Attend lectures, take notes, sometimes study in the library if I haven’t been drained by that point. Why?”

“Just curious.”

“No, really, why? I’ve been here over four months now and this is the first time you’ve ever asked me about school.”

School had started up a couple of months back, but it hadn’t had a huge impact on Alice, aside from the fact that instead of bringing free donuts home from her part-time job, Lou now brought home stress and homework.

“I was just thinking about your, you know…thingy,” she replied.

“I hope you’re not talking about my cooch.”

“Gross, no.” Alice flicked her on the arm. “I’m talking about your ability.”

She had known about it for a while now. Lou had initially considered keeping it a total secret from her, but the burden of hiding it for such a long time and the fear of Alice’s unpredictable reaction to accidentally discovering it one day had convinced her to be open and honest from early on. Besides, she enjoyed confiding in Alice, despite their differences.

Her response had, at first, been predictable; quips, funny stares and general disbelief. When Lou presented the tiny form of what appeared to be a college age boy from her pocket as evidence, Alice froze mid-sentence, gawked, squinted, then gawked some more. She had been rendered speechless, and that was by no means an easy thing to accomplish. The point at which reality diverted from Lou’s internal script was when Alice’s shock soon turned to fascination, and Lou thought she saw something unnervingly predatory in her gaze. The helpless boy in the giant female palm had not elicited much sympathy from Alice, but instead led to a barrage of excited questions about this unbelievable ability her new lodger possessed. They had even played with him after Alice had finished her length interrogation. It did not end well for him.

Most surprisingly of all was that Lou found it entirely unnecessarily to fall back on any threats or what fate would befall Alice if she went to the Police. The conversation had gone far more smoothly than expected, and she had ended up sharing not only a secret with her new roommate, but apparently also a passion. The only difficult part had been getting through to Alice that no, she could not keep the little demonstration; no, she would not be getting her own tiny pet; no, she could not learn how to do what Lou just did…

As it turns out, declining the wishes of someone who is physically larger than you and used to getting their own way is not easy.

“What about my ability? I didn’t pick it up in school y’know.”

“No, it’s just that I mean, why do you even bother to go to school? You get up five days a week for class, bust your ass off studying for these exams…what’s the point?” Alice turned to face her. “You’ve got this amazing ability that almost no one else has, the sort of thing that could make you some serious money, and yet you spend your time reading medicine books and stuff.”

Lou put down her magazine. She had gotten used to the questions over these past months, but this was a new line of enquiry.

“Well, first of all, believe it or not, I do actually enjoy what I study. It’s hard, but I enjoy the challenge and working towards something, it gives me direction and a sense of purpose,” she paused, but Alice offered nothing in return. “Secondly, I know what you’re alluding to when you mention ‘making money’, and it’s a terrible idea.”

“Why?”

“Because the moment I sell a tiny person, they’re out of my control. You’d get thrown in the nut house if you went to the Police with nothing but wild claims about my ability to shrink people, but think about what would happen if someone had physical, tangible evidence, what would happen if someone turned up to the authorities with a tiny, shrunken person in hand. That would cause me and my family a whole world of trouble.”

“Oh.” Alice sunk back into the couch. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Mmm,” Lou sighed. “We have our fun, but I have to be careful.”

“Is this the reason why you won’t let me have a pet?”

“Partially,” Lou admitted, picking her magazine back up.

“What do you mean ‘partially’?”

“I mean, you wouldn’t feed it, and it’d die.”

“Bitch.”

It was starting to get dark early in the evenings.

Alice was standing by the balcony door, looking down on the busy street below with a mug of cocoa in hand. She had brushed her hair and put on a pair of shorts, but that was probably about as good as it was going to get without leaving the house.

“Alright, I’m out,” Lou appeared in the doorway. “Time to hit the books in a place where people don’t scoot around in their underwear all day.”

She hardly needed to announce it. Alice recognised the tell-tale signs of Lou in study mode: hair tied back in a bun, the focused look, her well-worn pair of mid-calf boots, the minimal but perfectly applied make up and satchel of books slung over her shoulder. She had spent some time trying on a few different outfits Alice had encouraged her to buy, but ultimately fallen back on the familiar and comfortable. It worked for her.

Much to her irritation, Lou was not a tall person, and did not stand out quite as much as her roommate. Her brunette hair was not quite as thick and her cheekbones not quite as high, though they did have a terrible habit of flushing bright pink at the slightest hint of heat. She had a serious look about her that was accentuated by a pair of glasses she usually wore to combat myopia, and a small mouth that did not smile often. Though attractive in her own right, Lou drew an unfavourable comparison of herself against Alice, failing to notice the jealous looks the latter occasionally cast at her petite form and generous bust.

“You’re heading to the library at 6pm?”

“Midterms are coming. Besides, it gets quiet around this time and I like having the building mostly to myself.”

Yup, she’s an odd one, Alice concluded.

“When are you coming back?” she asked, eyes locked on the little people below.

“If I’m lucky, never. Otherwise, probably a couple of hours. I’m not feeling it tonight, but I need to squeeze at least an hour or two of hard study out of myself this evening.”

Lou had been spending more and more of her evenings in the library recently, in attempt to allay her pathological fear of ‘falling behind’. It was great news for Alice, who got to splay her long body across the couch and watch whatever she wanted - until she realised that half the fun came from fighting over what to watch and smugly reminding the lodger who owned the couch and the TV and the apartment. She detested the cold that had kept her increasingly housebound lately, and the evenings had begun to get boring. Lou’s earlier words about having a “sense of purpose” were also ringing in her ears a little.

“Have fun,” she uttered.

“If you’re good, and promise not to shit up the apartment when I’m gone, I’ll bring you back something nice.”

“Noodles?”

“Sure, if that’s what you want to name him.”

It took a few moments to sink in.

“Wait, are you serious?” Alice asked.

“Yes, but you know the rules,” Lou replied. She was a whole head shorter than Alice and couldn’t command as much authority, but she had given no ground on this subject. “No, you absolutely cannot keep him, this is for tonight only. Yes, you have to clean up the mess. No, you cannot take him outside of the apartment. Yes, I will be pissed if you do. No, you cannot take pictures. Yes,—”

“Alright, alright, alright, I got it!” Alice rushed over and threw her arms around Lou, pulling her into a tight squeeze. She smelled like an odd mixture of cocoa and peaches. “Did I ever tell you how you’re, like, the best friend ever? I’m pardoning you for those muffins.”

“I will rain hellfire down upon you if you step out of line,” Lou added, while Alice continued to pat her head.

“I won’t, I swear. I can be responsible too, I’ll show you.”

They left each other in good spirits – Lou to study and then hunt, and Alice to do the things that Alice did.

October was more than halfway over and calendar was looking pretty congested with forthcoming school events and holidays. It had been a strange half a year for Lou. Strange, but not unpleasant. She had not arrived at college with the expectation of making any close friends, especially not one who was so radically different from her in background, behaviour and personality. Nevertheless, she had grown to appreciate the change of pace Alice offered, and silently conceded that she probably saved her a lot more stress than she caused her. Despite this, her roommate had found new and worrying way to annoy her – by creeping into her thoughts when she was supposed to be studying.

There were not many places that Lou felt comfortable in, but the college library was one of them. Although it was a new building, the scent of thousands upon thousands of old books that lined the shelves reminded her of familiar, safe places, such as her high school library, grade school library and the local public library of her hometown.  

It was a short cycle to campus, and she wasted no time locking her bike up, striding up the stairs to the third floor and securing her usual two-seat couch in the corner of the Applied Sciences section. She sat across both seats with her nylon legs tucked up beside her, charging a phone and an old laptop from the nearby socket, marking the entire area as her territory. Only the occasional coughing and rustling of papers in the distance ruined the illusion of privacy.

She was nose deep in a copy of The Fundamentals of Health and Diseases, attempting to absorb all the relevant information from a chapter on human anatomy into her brain. Ordinarily, it would have been a riveting read, and she would have devoured her way through it, made notes, summarised the key points, and maybe even produced little flashcards to test herself afterwards. Instead, she found herself re-reading the same page for the fourth time and fidgeting with a button on her jacket. It had taken her an hour and a half to move halfway from a little orange post-it note to a little green post-it note that marked the boundaries of the reading she had assigned herself for tonight.

Goddamnit, she thought, pausing to snack on a banana she had packed with her.

Lou was a careful and sensible person by nature, but her actions had not reflected that over these past few months. Ever since she had revealed her ability to Alice, she had been taking more and more risks to satisfying their thrill-seeking behaviour. A couple of people going missing here and there was nothing that drew any attention in a large city, but they had recently broken the double digits and Lou was finding it harder and harder to justify her decisions.

When she was back at high school, she satisfied herself with only a few a year. She stalked them until she was sure they were good candidates, planned the moments when she pounced carefully and made sure to vary the age, gender and profession of her victims. Even then, each tiny pet usually lasted her at least a couple of months, as she limited her play time to after all chores and homework were done.

Her process was methodical. First, she would lie and pretend to stumble upon each of them, feigning ignorance at what just happened and promising to help them as much as she could. She would pick them up and take them home, smuggle them back up to her room and listen to them talk about what friends and family they wanted, where to take them, who they thought she should get in contact with (usually the Police, the FBI, the CIA and any other governmental body they could think of).

Lou kept the ruse going as long as possible; that was part of the fun. Her first few pets saw through the lies quickly, but she got better at it over time, learning from her mistakes and what excuses she could use to delay their suspicions for just a little longer. The first few hours of panic and helplessness were sweet, and Lou savoured them.

Eventually, they all noticed that their families were not coming, the authorities had not been informed, and Lou herself was not exceptionally concerned by their predicament. The turning point could be messy, but Lou was stern and not easily intimidated by the threats of a four or five inch tall human, though she admired their bravery. Ones who adapted to the situation quickly were usually a little boring, but their obedience could be endearing. Some tried to reason or negotiate with her for their release and sometimes made interesting conversation partners when they weren’t too whiny. The criers were the worst, and disgusted her; she couldn’t stand them for longer than a few weeks. One time a lady even dropped to her knees and began to pray. Lou kept that one for nearly four months and eventually became the object of the poor woman’s prayers. That was a special high she had yet to recreate.

The first night was always spent in an empty drawer in Lou’s desk, as she hoped to demonstrate her capacity for cruelty without actually hurting any of them. The early ones had permanent homes there, but Lou’s schooldays were long and filled with bonus classes and extracurricular activities. Too much time alone in the dark made even the strong-willed ones too depressed and unresponsive to have fun with.

Subsequent nights were spent in a hamster cage Lou had bought especially to keep her tiny pets in. A reward and punishment based system largely determined how they were treated from then on. The ones who were good and obedient were allowed out of the cage when Lou was home, to wander the desk or her bed, or sometimes just to sit on the windowsill and watch the world outside. The very good were even allowed to accompany her to school in her backpack, although there were strict rules about being seen and making noise. They were rarely broken, but when they were required physical punishments that Lou disliked inflicting. She was squeamish.

On the other hand, those who were bad, disobedient or otherwise displeased her (sometimes through words or actions, and at other times just through the clashing of personalities) became very familiar with the cold, empty desk drawer, went hungry often and suffered from shorter life expectancies. Some learned quickly what pleased their owner and did their best to keep her happy, but others simply did not adjust well to their new lives, and Lou quickly wrung all enjoyment out of them.

She recalled fondly the one time she allowed herself the pleasure of shrinking someone she knew personally. For obvious reasons, the vast majority of the people she targeted were total strangers, but there was a greater thrill to be had in re-establishing an existing relationship dynamic than creating a new one.

He was a boy, he was cute and he hated Lou – hated her before he became her plaything. Lou could think of no specific thing she had done to attract his attention or to earn his ire, but she often found herself the target of his vindictiveness. What started as name-calling evolved over the months into physical bullying and increased in frequency. She had been shoved in the hallways, had water thrown at her when she tried to keep a wide berth from him and his friends, and one occasion had put her bag down to retrieve some books from her locker, only to look back and see it dumped in a garbage can. She was fourteen then and more than a little sensitive towards the treatment she received from her peers.

One day, she delivered a message to him that the gym teacher wanted to see him about some graffiti that had been found on the walls in the sports hall. He smirked and shrugged at his friends, but set off towards the gym anyway, wondering if one of his buddies had set him up. The gym was deserted, and he was disappointed to find no giant obscenity or crude drawing scrawled across the walls. Then he recalled that the gym teacher had thrown his back last week during football practice and was still off sick. And then he saw Lou.

Something strange was happening, but Lou didn’t give him any time to ponder it. It took her less than a second and almost no effort to reduce him to no more than a finger’s length. That was the easy part though. She also wanted to reduce him to a quivering, sobbing, broken mess – but that could wait for later.

The sight of his tiny face staring up at her in horror as she lifted her sandal high above him, dangled it for effect and slowly lowered it towards him, before averting its course at the last second and slamming it down next to him, was something that still filled her with giddiness to this day. It was all the fun she allowed herself at the moment though, and she quickly snatched him up out of fear that someone might see what was going on.

She was rougher with him over the coming days than she had ever been with a tiny before or since. She deliberately held him too tight, swung him too quickly when she held him in her grasp, rolled him out of her hand onto surfaces that were too hard from too high up. Even when he did what he was told, Lou contrived some petty infraction to punish him with, leaving him constantly sore and bruised.

She made him tell her that she was pretty and that was he a jerk, and confess to a whole slurry of offences that she felt he had committed against her. When he meekly asked what was going on at school, she told him nobody cared he was missing and that his old friends said mean things about him now that he was gone (though she doubted he entirely believed her on that one). She made all kinds of threats against him, like how she was going to feed him to a cat, or cover him in sugar and leave him beside an anthill, or that she was going to put him in a bottle and throw him out to sea. There was never any danger of him suffering those fates, as she wanted to keep him close, but it was therapeutic for her to release those months of pent-up, angry teenage feelings on the helpless thing in front of her.

Frustratingly, however, she never could get a straight answer out of him about why he picked on her in particular. He had tried to pass it off as his way of attracting her attention, saying that he had a crush on her, but it was a bad lie. Lou was not pretty then, at least not in her mind, and she felt angry that he would even suggest that. She was not outwardly interesting either and only had a couple of friends she spoke to at school. It hurt that she had become the target of what she considered to be an unjustified and unfair campaign of terror against her, when she had done nothing to deserve it. Well, nothing to him at least.

She grew bored of teasing him after a few weeks and their interactions became less and less fun. The day she ended the affair was the day she discovered the thrill of lying. She had come home one day from school, taken her tiny captive out of the drawer and placed him on the floor by her feet. Sitting upright in her desk chair, she informed him that he had been pardoned of his crimes against her, that she now considered them even and that he was going to be restored to normal size.

His beaten expression changed in an instant and he tripped over himself explaining how sorry he was, how kind she was to forgive him and that he would (of course) never, ever pick on her again as long as he lived. Lou flicked off a sock with her finger and told him that if he was really grateful, he would kiss her feet. He knelt down and eagerly began planting tiny kisses on her toes. She told him that she expected him to do that in the school hallways in front of everyone whenever she wanted. He agreed emphatically. She told him to apologise to every single person he had ever been mean to. He thought it was a fantastic idea. She wanted money too. He agreed, everything he had.

When it was over, he had sworn a dozen different promises. Some of them were beyond the realms of physical possibility and others contradicted each other, but it didn’t matter, he swore them all anyway.

Lou sighed. It had been fun, but he bored her now. She stood up, startling him, and glared down at the pathetic thing kneeling at her feet. He stared at up her expectantly, waiting for something to happen that would release him from this nightmare.

“Mmmm,” she breathed, folding her arms. “You know what? I changed my mind.”

The tiny, helpless being down on the floor look confused. Then he looked scared. Finally, he began to run.

Lou raised a socked foot and lazily dropped it on top of him. He wriggled and pushed against her sole, and she suspected that he begged too, though she couldn’t hear anything coherent from her distance. She pushed down slowly, drew out the experience for a few seconds, and then shifted her whole weight onto her foot. There was an almost inaudible crunch, and then it was all over. She cleaned up his tiny mess with a tissue and flushed the remains down the toilet.

Someone in the library coughed and Lou snapped back to attention. She was clutching her book tightly and her cheeks were glowing bright pink.

The risk no longer seemed like much of a concern to her now. 8pm had come and gone, and with that Lou felt the “one or two hours of hard study” she had committed to earlier had been fulfilled. She slipped her boots back on, packed away her books and set off from the library. Alice was probably at home, bored and impatiently clockwatching, just waiting for Lou to come through the door with a little present for her.

As she was unlocking her bike, a friendly voice called out from across the plaza. It was Emma, or Em, a fellow student studying towards a similar degree, who shared some of her lectures. She had been sitting in a nearby café, pretending to study, and asked Lou if she had any plans for the rest of the evening. She was about to affirm that she did indeed have plans with her roommate, but an idea formed in her head and fell into motion before she had time to evaluate it.

“No, no plans,” she lied.

Emma mentioned a party she was just about to head to, but it was all background noise that Lou was only half paying attention to. Brunette. Cute face. Medium build. Friendly. A little quirky. Often alone. No idea about friends and family. Hmm. A boy would have been preferable, but that wasn’t too important. Lou knew that Alice wasn’t into girls, although that didn’t seem to matter to her for this sort of thing. Besides, she considered herself an equal opportunities sadist and prey was offering itself to her.

“Yeah, I’d love to join you,” Lou replied ecstatically. “Still a lot of people around I haven’t gotten to know yet. My brain feels frazzled from all the studying already.”

“Tell me about it.” Emma unchained her bike. “I mean, they told me college was gonna be hard, but I barely have time to read one book before another two are thrown at me.”

Lou smiled. She wondered what Alice would do to her.

“Alright, let’s go. It’s not far, and he’s got a garden we can keep our bikes in. It’s supposed to be BYOB, but don’t worry about it, I’ve got a couple bottles of wine with me.”

They wheeled their bikes across the plaza as Emma led the way towards the party. A party that Lou had no intention of letting her reach.

“Honey, I’m home,” Lou announced, stepping through the front door.

She kicked off her shoes, walked over to the living room and set her backpack down gently on the table.

Silence.

“Alice?” she called.

Where the hell did she go? Lou thought.

She peeked her head into the kitchen, but saw no sign of her there. The balcony door was locked and the communal bathroom had no occupant, not that either of them really used that one anyway. Thick nylons and small feet muffled her steps as she wandered further down the hallway, leading her to two doors opposite each other. One was closed and on it hung a white wooden placard that read “LOUISE” in bright pink, surrounded by a few cartoon bunnies and flowers – Alice had bought that for her a few days after she moved in. The other door stood ajar, like always, and opened into Alice’s room. She never used the lock on her bedroom door, despite Lou’s repeated warnings about burglars, sarcastically replying that if any burglars had already broken into the house, a little lock on her door wasn’t going to impede their progress any further. Unflattering impressions of Lou in a state of worry usually accompanied this line of reasoning.

The larger bedroom belonged to her, of course, and it was far larger than any single person needed, but Alice had still managed to find a way to fill it with stuff. A king-size, frilly bed with a mattress about as thick as a bank vault door took centre stage against the back wall, bookended by a couple of nightstands, with a mixture of pillows, stuffed animals, magazines and hair care and beauty products strewn across the floor. Lining the opposite wall was a computer desk, though Alice usually preferred to sit cross-legged on the bed with her laptop, and mostly used the chair as an impromptu wardrobe. There was a door that led off into a walk-in closet and another on the far side of the room that curled around into an en-suite bathroom. Why do we have so many bathrooms?  Lou wondered. Across from the entrance, the window jutted out over the street below and provided a cosy little alcove that would have been perfect for sitting in and reading books on a rainy day, were it not covered in makeup accessories and other junk. Pleasantly, it no longer carried the smell of cigarette smoke; Lou had, despite not anticipating much success, convinced her roommate to cut down on her habit, and Alice now tended only to smoke in bars or when she was particularly stressed.

It was a beautiful room, despite the sorry state it was often left in. Lou especially liked the cream and chocolate brown colour scheme, as well as the gold and silver chandelier that looked a little bit like a jellyfish to her. There was no sign of its owner currently, however.

Lou trudged back to the living room. She noted a new candy wrapper on the table and a pair of Alice’s shoes that were missing from the shoe rack, but there were not enough clues for her to piece together why she had left.

I guess I can have a tiny bit of fun while I wait for her to get back.

Lou unzipped her backpack and took out a number of items from it: her study books and laptop (which she promptly returned to her room), a thermos of cold tea (rinsed and placed in the dishwasher), two bottles of cheap red wine (Emma was apparently not fussy) and a phone charger.

Finally, she removed a small black purse. Familiar feelings of excitement bubbled inside her as she unbuckled it and looked inside; a tiny, frightened face stared back at her.

The miniscule form of Emma backed away as the giant hand reached inside and wrapped its fingers around her. She struggled against it, but the laws of physics were not on her side, and soon found herself lifted into the air and set down again upon a hard mahogany surface that stretched out in all directions before suddenly ending in a steep drop.

The hand that removed her from her own bag – the hand that somehow, defying any reasonable explanation she could come up, belonged to a now gargantuan Louise – rested itself in front of her. Five huge pale digits, each ending with an unpainted but neatly manicured nail, were drumming on the surface menacingly. Altogether, they formed something that dwarfed her by half, and she instinctively feared it.

“Hello, Emma,” came a voice from above.

No, she was definitely not imagining it. Looming over her was Lou’s face – magnified a hundred times over and smiling sweetly.

“L-Lou…” she began to mutter.

“You’ll have to speak up a bit if you want to be heard now,” boomed the reply. It made her flinch.

“Lou, what’s happening?” Emma managed, just barely keeping her voice from breaking.

Having expected to find an excited Alice jumping all over her from the moment she entered the apartment, Lou had decided not to play the role of the concerned citizen this time. She had simply waited for a good opportunity, lured Emma into a darkened alley under the pretence of seeing an injured cat, and shrunk her before she even had time to question what was happening. Lou wheeled the spare bicycle into a dumpster and plucked the tiny, dazed woman from the floor before something could claim her, using her own handbag as a temporary prison. No words, no explanations, just a quick and practical acquisition.

It was crude, but the best she could come up with under the circumstances. The Lou of last year would have planned the whole thing better, struck in a more secluded area, disposed of the bike in a less suspicious manner and covered herself with an alibi, just in case. The important thing was that it worked, though she vowed to be more careful in the future.

Lou still couldn’t resist lying, however, and decided to improvise until Alice arrived home.

“I’m sorry, Emma. It’s nothing personal. Despite what’s going to happen to you, I didn’t target you out of spite or because I have anything against you. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Lies were easier when they had elements of truth of in them.

“W-what do you mean ‘what’s going to happen to me’?” The tiny girl squeaked. She was hugging herself, and looked equal parts confused and terrified.

“I work for an organisation. We…” Lou juggled with the right word. “…procure people for wealthy clients. It’s a status symbol among the elite to have a tiny human pet. I search for appropriate individuals and supply them to my associates.”

Emma looked mortified. Lou suppressed a giggle.

“Wait…wait a minute,” she started.

“I’m sorry,” Lou interrupted. “As we speak, another member of my team is working on a cover for your disappearance. Officially, you’ll probably turn up as a suicide or perish in a house fire tonight. Very unfortunate.”

“No, no…” Emma shook her head. “Look, I don’t know why this is happening. I’m not involved in any of this business. There’s been a mistake.”

“No mistake,” Lou corrected, lifting a finger. “You’re female, in your late teens, Caucasian, brunette, blue-eyed – just what the client asked for.”

Emma blinked.

“There must be some way we can work this out,” she pleaded. There were hints of tears in her eyes, but she was holding herself together remarkably well. “Maybe, we can make a deal?”

Ah, the negotiations, Lou thought. These were always fun.

“Do you have any idea how much you’re worth, Emma?” Lou asked. “This service caters to only the most wealthy, well-connected individuals in the world. You are worth a lot of money to me – what could you possibly offer in exchange?”

She stared at the ground.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

Lou sighed and opened her hand. “Come here.”

The tiny woman’s instincts told not to, but she saw no alternative. Fear of what would happen to her if she disobeyed outweighed the fear of what she expected to happen next. Lou’s palm lay open in front of her, fingers stretched out towards her, inviting her in.

Emma crept forwards warily, crawled onto the soft, warm surface and sat in the middle of the hand, avoiding the five appendages that seemed as if they were going to close themselves around her at any moment. She couldn’t help but notice the vague aroma of something sweet, like banana, perhaps. Her stomach lurched as Lou lifted her away from the table and repositioned her hand about a foot or so away from her face. The giant woman was loving every moment of this. She watched with amusement as the poor little thing peered gingerly over the edge of her hand, noted the drop, and pushed herself deeper into Lou’s palm.

“It’s going to be okay,” Lou spoke softly. “I know the family you’re going to and they’re nice people. You’ll have to learn to be obedient, but if you do what you’re told, they won’t hurt you. They’ll keep you well fed and give you nice new outfits to wear.”

“Please, I don’t want this. I don’t want this at all.”

“It could be a lot worse,” Lou added. “Some owners can be very cruel to their pets. They do horrible things to them.”

“W-what things?”

“Well,” Lou feigned hesitation. “I know a few families who like to watch little people fight each other to the death. Some get shipped abroad to wealthy businessmen and women in places like China or Russia on impulse purchases, but…the owners sometimes get bored of them. We explicitly forbid reselling, under the strictest of penalties we can administer. What usually happens to a toy that someone gets bored of?”

Emma looked horrified.

“And some just spend the rest of their days in special brothels, earning as much money as possible for their new owners.”

“What do you mean ‘brothels’?” Emma asked.

“Oh, it’s a fetish or something. I don’t really understand it. Some people – a lot of people actually – like doing all sorts of things with tiny people.”

Some people, indeed.

“You’re definitely one of the luckier ones, all things considered, Em.”

Suddenly, Lou heard a key turning in the lock, followed by the appearance of Alice in the front doorway, clutching an assortment of shopping bags. She had forgotten about her.

Lou lowered her palm back down onto the table and gently coerced Emma out of it.

“Stay.” There was no warmth in the look she gave her.

Alice was kicking off her boots and staring over at the exchange.

“Is that…?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“All for you,” Lou answered, a little regretfully. She walked over to Alice and gave her a firm look. “Now, remember what I told you. If you manage not to break any of the ground rules, then I might – I might – let you do this again. Someday. Maybe.”

Alice looked over her shoulder at the table behind. There was a tiny thing on it that looked to be staring back at her. Lou watched as she walked slowly over towards Emma. It was the first time she had allowed one of the tinies inside the apartment, and the first time Alice had been given free rein to do whatever she wished with one. Previously, they had only ever played short games outside the apartment, always within controlled settings and they never lasted long, for fear of getting caught.

Lou sat down in one of the armchairs and crossed her legs. She was both excited and curious to see what would happen – it felt like a science experiment to her, or witnessing first contact between two tribes.

“Hello,” Alice waved down at the table.

“A-are you my new owner?” Emma asked.

“I…guess so?” she replied.

They stared at each other awkwardly for a few moments.

“I’m going to pick you up now, if that’s okay,” Alice informed her. Cute, Lou thought.

The tiny woman braced herself as Alice lowered both her hands and scooped her up in them. She had bigger hands than Lou, with slender, elegant fingers that made Emma look even tinier than she had done previously.

“Lou, this is amazing.”

Without ever removing her eyes from the tiny prize in her hand, she brought her over to the couch and sat down in it.

“How much did you pay for me?” Emma croaked.

“Huh?”

Lou waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, just ignore that. I told her that I sold her to you.”

“Why?” Alice asked.

Lou shrugged her shoulders. She really didn’t have a good response beyond “it was funny”.

Two diminutive hands rested themselves on one of Alice’s fingers, and a tiny head nervously popped up. Lack of courage and balance had prevented her from standing upright, but she had bravely gone from prone to kneeling in the palms of this new set of hands.

“I don’t understand. If you didn’t buy me, then what’s going on exactly? Why did you do this to me?”

Lou had a few different answers that she thought would be entertaining, but she decided to sit back in her chair and let Alice take the lead on this one.

“Uhh…” she began, ever the master of elocution. “I thought it would be fun. I like tiny things. Lou said if I was good, I could have a tiny pet to play with.”

“For the evening,” her roommate reminded her.

Alice smiled coyly. Lou tried to quell something in her stomach that made her feel fluttery.

“Oh, I forgot to ask! What’s your name?”

“E-Emma,” she stammered.

“I like that name, it’s really pretty. My name Alice’s, by the way.”

Emma stared blankly at her. Another awkward silence.

“Are you hungry or thirsty, or…?” Alice asked, but she didn’t give the little thing any time to respond.

Lou winced. It was entirely unintentional, but Alice had dropped Emma with little care or grace onto the coffee table in front of them and darted off towards the kitchen. Emma fell awkwardly on her shoulder, but Alice didn’t notice. There was likely to be a bruise appearing in the near future, and Lou knew from experience that it would make her more fearful around Alice.

The clueless offender reappeared shortly carrying several things in her hand, setting them down on the table. There was what looked to be a shot glass full of water and a saucer containing some chocolate pieces, a broken off piece of cheese and a segment of an orange. My orange, Lou noted, though she said nothing.

Alice noticed the tiny woman rubbing her shoulder and staring up at her nervously.

“You have to be a bit gentler with them,” Lou explained. “They’re very squishy. Even a small drop can hurt them a lot. Picture what would happen if I dropped you from the second storey window onto the floor below.”

“Oh,” Alice looked incredibly remorseful. “I’m so, so sorry! This is my first time handling one of you. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was an accident, I swear.”

It didn’t do much to diminish Emma’s fears, and she neither said anything in return, nor moved towards the plate of food. A third awkward silence threatened to brew.

“Alright, I’m taking a quick shower,” Lou announced. She had been monitoring the two and, satisfied with Alice’s initial behaviour, decided to leave her to get to know her new plaything better. Though merely a spectator, Lou was nearly as excited as Alice was, except unlike Alice, her excitement extended to something that made her feel flushed and tingly.

She definitely needed 15 minutes or so to cool off.

“Do not—” she started, but Alice interrupted her.

“Take her outside the apartment, take pictures of her, let her out of my sight, lose her – I know, I know, I know.”

Lou smiled.

“I’ll be back soon. Be good,” she stressed teasingly, wagging a finger in mock discipline, before disappearing down the hallway into her bedroom.

“I’ve got you all to myself for a while,” Alice chimed, returning her attention to the tiny woman in front of her, smile stretching from ear to ear.

Emma shifted uncomfortably. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t quite know what to make of things. She was still scared, but also felt sick with confusion at the events unfolding. At least this Alice person seemed friendlier than the other one. Though she was taller and clumsier, she radiated a completely different aura that made her feel merely ill-at-ease instead of terrified.

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot!” Alice reminded herself. She leapt up from the couch, startling Emma, and bounced over towards the entryway, bare feet slapping against the wooden floor.

“I bought some things for us to play with.”

Tiptoeing, Emma watched the crouched form of the giant woman rummaging through some shopping bags. In the distance, she could faintly hear the hissing of water coming out of the shower.

Hot showers on cold days were all the proof Lou needed that a benevolent force had designed this world.

Day after day and week after week spent mostly in a series of lecture halls, seminars and study rooms had left her with knots in her shoulders and the occasional headache – and that was before she came home to Alice. Nonetheless, every burden she had melted away as soon as she stepped into the shower and felt the rush of warm water over her skin. It was bliss.

And yet, on this occasion, Lou was unable to completely relax.

When she closed her eyes and attempted to empty her mind, there intruded visions of Alice taking a midnight stroll through town with Emma in hand, or snapping selfies of the two on her phone for her blog, or losing track of the tiny girl and frantically turning the apartment upside-down before Lou could find out…

Stop worrying, everything’s fine, she reassured herself. Poorly.

Stepping out of the shower and onto the bath mat, Lou wrapped one large towel around her hair and began drying herself with another. Her whole body was pale from too much time spent indoors, but trim and well taken care of, thanks to her carefully monitored diet and regular exercise. Three times a week, she would go for an evening jog around the local park, alternating with another three days spent performing a series of light, indoor exercises. The final day of the week she spent in rest, usually clad in pyjamas and barely leaving her room.

With some degree of jealousy, she noted that Alice never jogged, never exercised and never seemed to eat anything besides convenience food – except when Lou cooked – but still managed to look like something out of a catalogue every time she bent down to take food out of a cupboard. She did have a gym membership, though only because the deluxe package gave her 20% off all smoothies at a nearby café.

It’s like genetics or something – some people get lucky, and some don’t. That’s what Alice had said the other night. Maybe she had a point.

On second thought, no. It was a silly argument. More importantly, Alice couldn’t be right. She probably just did all of that stuff privately.

Lou rubbed her hand across the mirror, clearing away the condensation. She felt as if she were in a relatively good mood, but the face staring back at her looked serious and had a slight frown on it.

I look like an angry boy, Lou thought.

She ambled back into her room and slid on a fresh bra and pair of panties. If the hot shower were dinner, then the hairdryer was definitely dessert. The warm blasts of air provided a second wave of relaxation as she drifted it all across her body, finishing up by brushing her hair and tying it back with a scrunchie.

Lou looked across at the clock on her nightstand. 21:25. That “fifteen minute shower” was running way over schedule. Alice had been left alone for nearly half an hour.

Emma was cute and probably would have even made a good pet, had Lou been inclined to allow it. She didn’t feel bad that the girl would die, one way or another, by the end of the night, but she saw how quickly Alice took to her and felt a few pangs of guilt that she and her new pet would have to be parted. Lou already knew that Alice would beg and plead and try to get her to reconsider, that one tiny little pet wouldn’t be a problem at all, that she would even feed and take care of it…

Under no circumstances would it be allowed, however. It was important for Alice to understand that each little tiny human was not only a piece of evidence, but a very smart piece of evidence that could come up with clever ways to escape confinement and manipulate its captors. Without proper conditioning and a specially designed system for containment, it simply wasn’t worth the risk to keep a single one around for too long. They grew too familiar with their environment and their owners, and began to see things that larger people missed. Emma was smarter than Alice too, and in this particular sense, that oddly made Alice the more vulnerable one.

She knew there would be pouty faces and puppy dog eyes, but Lou would promise to get her a new one and that would be the end of the matter.

I wonder how those two are getting along.

Lou crept towards the door and peeked her head around the corner. Still sitting on the sofa with her back towards the hallway was Alice, frantically waving her arms around in explanation of something she had seen on TV. It was hard to catch the full conversation from that distance, but apparently lions could jump really, really far (really!) and that they were solitary hunters (oh no, wait, that was tigers, lions hunted together in a group), and lions don’t actually live in the jungle, that’s just a myth…

Jeez, talk about a captive audience, Lou thought. Unlike her, Emma did not have the option of walking away from Alice when she was droning on and on.

Emma stood sheepishly on the table and stared up at Alice. In the past half an hour, she had become less scared but far more confused.

The giant woman in front of her was sitting-cross legged on the couch, telling her all about a documentary on large feline predators she had watched recently. She was very curious about Emma and had asked her lots of questions about where she came from, what things she liked and what she was studying. Alice didn’t really know anything about physiology, but she wanted to offer something useful in return, and thus began recounting as many lion and tiger related facts as she could remember.

Though friendly enough, she seemed to speak largely through a pair of hands that frequently zipped and zoomed through the air, illustrating and emphasising things she was trying to describe. Sometimes she would suddenly lean forwards or shift about in her seat, which always made Emma feel as if the larger woman were about to collapse on top of her like an unstable building.

Definitely a nice person though, one who would surely help her out of this predicament - as soon as she could get in more than a few words. The general pattern seemed to be that Alice would ask a question to which Emma would provide a terse response, drawing a lengthy and convoluted anecdote back from Alice that would eventually end in another question.

“Do you like Italian food, since you’re part Italian and all? Not that I mean you should like Italian food just because you’re Italian,” Alice hastened to clarify. “I just mean, you might have had it at home growing up. My family’s mostly Anglo-Dutch, but I prefer Chinese food. I don’t even really know much about Anglo-Dutch cuisine, but they have these amazing things in Holland called ‘stroopwafels’ that are like two thin waffles stuck together with caramel in the middle…”.

Emma’s head was starting to hurt. Still, all this talking was preferable to what Alice had been doing with her before.

When her new owned announced that she had “things for them to play with”, Emma’s blood ran cold, and she recounted Lou’s words about tiny people forced to fight each other to the death in an arena. She pictured herself in a brothel doing…unflattering things. The image of her being duct taped to a table while the woman above her gleefully prodded at her helpless body with sharp instruments forced itself into her mind, and she felt paralysed with raw terror. Maybe she isn’t the nice one after all.

Alice slammed something down on the table next to her. Emma screamed.

A box of doll’s clothing.

More thuds hit the table as Alice continued to empty out one of her shopping bags.

“I bought these because I thought you might like them. Getting new outfits always puts me in a good mood,” she explained.

Emma looked around at the collection of boxes scattered about the table, standing high above her like giant monoliths. She felt like she was in the middle of some kind of bizarre art installation decrying the influence of traditional feminine toys on modern women.

Most of the boxes and the clothes therein looked expensive; some even appeared to be collectors’ items that were clearly never intended to leave their boxes. That didn’t seem to matter to Alice, however, who was ripping the lids off of each one and removing the contents. The dresses were being laid before Emma, accompanied by commentary from Alice about which ones were the cutest or how she also had something similar in her own wardrobe.

Mercifully, very few of the clothes fit Emma. The majority were far too large to even entertain putting on, designed for dolls two or three times her size. Alice was intensely disappointed, until she found a set of miniature Little Bo Peep clothing that looked to be a near enough perfect fit.

“You have to try this one on,” she beamed enthusiastically. It was meant as a friendly suggestion, but Emma’s heart was still pounding and she interpreted it as a command. She would soon come to regret that decision.

The material was itchy and uncomfortable, not meant for human skin, and the dress was more than a little baggy, but Alice either didn’t mind or couldn’t tell. She squealed, told Emma that she was without a doubt the cutest thing she had ever laid her eyes on, and then proceeded to take her phone out for a picture, before thinking better of it and putting it away again.

Emma felt ridiculous, and desperately wished she could change back into her old clothes, but Alice had put those on the floor along with the rest of the mess that had been on the table. This situation was truly bizarre. She wondered how (and more importantly when) she was ever going to be able to explain this to someone.

“…and I also hear the people there eat rotten fish out of a can too, bleurgh, though I guess there must be some appeal in it if people still eat that sort of stuff. I’m not really a fan of fish in general, except for salmon. Do you eat a lot of fish?”

Finally, a chance to get some words in, Emma thought.

“I think—”

“What the hell are you two doing?” asked Lou, appearing from behind the sofa. She was clad in a loose-fitting t-shirt and a pair of pyjama bottoms, and stood with her hands resting on her hips.

“Just talking,” Alice replied.

Lou scanned the room, noting with disapproval the empty boxes littering the floor.

“What’s all this mess? And…what’s your little pet wearing?”

“We were just having fun,” Alice explained. “I bought some clothes for her, but most ended up being too big.”

Lou frowned and walked into the kitchen. She didn’t like where this was heading, but she also couldn’t be bothered to start an argument at the moment. The two bottles of red wine stood unopened on the kitchen counter; Lou was tempted to crack open a bottle, but quickly became turned off by the gaudy label proudly displaying the ABV – 14.5% – in large, prominent letters. In the end, she opted for a glass of milk.

“This is boring,” Lou declared, returning to the living room. “Why don’t we do something a little more fun?”

Both women turned to look at her.

“Like what?” Alice asked.

Lou walked over to the coffee table, plucked Alice’s plaything from it and studied her. Despite the fact that she was beginning to annoy her, Lou couldn’t help but find the tiny, doe-eyed Emma, all dressed up in a frilly blue and white outfit, adorable. Nevertheless, it was time to start getting things wrapped up, and she promptly set Emma back down again at her feet.

“How about we play game?” Lou suggested. “Just like we usually do. We’ll give her a few minutes’ to hide and see how long it takes for us to find her. The winner decides how to end it.”

She looked down at the increasingly nervous woman and teased:

“Little Bo Peep is at my feet

And doesn’t know where to go

I think she should flee, to a place I can’t see

And better not to be too slow”

Unfortunately for Lou, Emma was not the only one in the room who didn’t appreciate the sudden shift in tone. Alice stood up and approached the pair, taking special care not to tread on Little Bo Peep.

“No, that’s okay. I think I’d like to keep talking to her for a little while longer. Maybe we can do that later or something.”

“Alice…”

“I just don’t want to, okay,” she protested.

“Why? What’s wrong with you? You never had a problem with this before. What’s turned you into a wuss?” Lou shot back at her.

“That was different,” Alice argued. “Those were always creepy people who deserved it. I’ve gotten to know Emma and she’s actually quite a nice person.”

They were all in dangerous territory, for one reason for another. A Mexican stand-off was brewing between the good, the bad and the tiny.

“Well, colour me surprised if the woman you’re holding hostage is trying to endear herself to you. Real fucking big surprise there. If she could worm her way out of this situation in a moment, she would. She doesn’t care about you, she doesn’t like you, and you’re acting like a big baby just because you’ve never actually killed one of them yourself before.”

Emma stared up at the heated exchange above her. She didn’t feel lucky.

Caught in the crossfire between the two tormentors squaring off above her was nerve-wrecking. On side of her was a pair of enormous pale feet with neat, unpainted nails atop toes that were pressing themselves into the floor. They contrasted sharply with the even larger pair of feet on the other side, though the latter were tanned with long, purple-painted nails. Both sets made her feel acutely aware of her own diminutive status.

Alice was raising her voice slightly: “It’s my damn apartment, okay.”

“You’re damn apartment that I pay rent for, yes,” Lou countered. “How was I not clear about this? Jesus Christ, I’ll get you another one; just get rid of this one already.”

“No.” Alice would not bend. “I want to keep her, at least for a little longer. We can see what happens later on.”

Lou opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it. All that was happening right now was that she and Alice were digging deeper and deeper trenches between each other. There were easy solutions to this problem, but Lou didn’t like any of them. She could stomp Emma out of existence in an instant, but that would damage her relationship with Alice, probably irreparably, or at the very least for a long while. She could simply get rid of the two of them, since they were both being annoying after all, but the idea of hurting Alice was even more unthinkable.

No, there was a smarter way to go about this, one that didn’t involve souring Alice’s opinion of her. This whole situation only arose because Lou made a snap decision and didn’t plan properly – that was her great advantage, she knew; her ability to plan well and anticipate. She had not utilised these ability and that was how things had gone so wrong. With great annoyance, she decided to opt for the safest option in the long-term. The battle would have to be conceded.

“Okay. How about this,” Lou raised both of her hands up in the air in defeat. “Let’s call a truce for tonight. We’re both getting a little flustered and I think we should discuss this calmly tomorrow with a clear head.”

Alice backed down a little.

“I promise you that I will not harm Emma in any way, shape or form. I swear it to you, Alice. But in return, you have to meet me halfway on this one.”

“What do you mean?” Her roommate asked.

“Emma spends the night with me in my room. She won’t be harmed, but I want to keep an eye on her. Tinies are very, very good at escaping, but I’ve been keeping them for years and I know what I’m doing. Maybe in the future you can keep her in your room, but until we figure something out, I want her in my room at night.”

Alice hesitated, but Lou’s offer was reasonable and she had sworn not to hurt Emma.

Looking down at the little woman below, she considered that this might be the best option for the time being. Alice was confident that she could bring Lou around to the idea of having a third permanent person share their apartment.

“Okay, fine,” she huffed.

“Good. Bring her to my room when you’re done.” Lou gave Emma one final baleful look before storming back off towards her bedroom to plot.

Her absence left the room with an awkward atmosphere.

“I’m sorry about that,” Lou apologised, scooping the tiny, frightened shepherdess into her hands. “I won’t let her hurt you, don’t worry. That was pretty intense. I don’t think we’ve ever had an argument that bad before.”

In truth, Alice was a little shaken. People didn’t often stand up to her quite so forcefully, and Lou was usually easy to sway as long as Alice smiled enough and looked cute when she begged. Despite whatever Lou thought of her, Alice was not unobservant. She understood things that neither of them wanted to discuss.

“How about we settle down and just watch a little TV for a bit? There’s another episode of that animal documentary on tonight. You remember, the one I was telling you about earlier? I think this one’s about elephants, I think.”

Alice lay down on the sofa, cupping the tiny woman protectively in her hands and resting them on her stomach. She soon became transfixed by the grazing herds of elephants on the screen, absent-mindedly stroking Emma with a gentle thumb, as if in reassurance.

These people are fucking nuts, thought Emma.

Lou was reading in bed when Alice knocked on her door later that evening. She had stayed up a couple of hours past her usual bedtime and was quickly losing patience. If that damn woman didn’t come to her soon, she really would storm in there and smack that whore out of her hands. Fortunately, that turned out not to be necessary.

“Lou?” Alice asked through the door. “I brought you Emma.”

Silence reigned for a few moments before Lou unlocked the door and faced Alice.

“I have class tomorrow. I’ll take care of Emma for the night and leave her in the kitchen for you tomorrow morning. Maybe it’ll convince you to roll out of bed a bit earlier.”  

“Okay, well…here.” The tiny woman swapped hands. “I don’t like arguing with you, y’know. It makes me feel bad.”

“I see. Goodnight.” The door closed and Alice heard the lock slide back into place. Lou could be very cold when she wanted to.

Setting Emma down in the middle of the floor, Lou wandered into the bathroom to brush her teeth and splash her face over. She spat into the sink, turned off the light and reappeared in the doorway. Predictably, the problem on the floor hadn’t budged an inch.

“You’re causing me a lot of stress,” she told Emma, as if this were somehow all her fault.

The evening had started well and ended horribly, and Lou blamed only herself. If she had sat down and thought about this for a while, she would have seen it all coming, instead of drifting off into reveries of Alice dangling tiny people above her or forcing them to grovel at her feet. Not even another shower could put her in a good mood after this. Soft-hearted bitch, she thought. Happy enough to watch old creeps, racist ladies and douchey-looking businessmen ground into dust, but no guts to do it herself.

A number of ideas had occurred to her about how to deal with the “Emma Problem”, and a couple even made pretty solid plans that Lou was confident would probably work. But it wasn’t enough. Emma had pissed her off something rotten and she wanted to be rid of her in an exceptionally cruel way. Nothing she had come up with yet was good enough.

“Let me be perfectly clear about something,” Lou said, retrieving the unfortunate woman from the floor. “I promised Lou that I wouldn’t hurt you tonight, and I intend to keep that promise. But you have no home here. You will die, and you will die soon. Don’t get comfortable.”

Emma had no words. She was too scared of upsetting Lou further to say anything.

The angry student lied down on her bed and dangled her annoyance above her. It was very late and tomorrow’s classes would be painful, even if she were to fall asleep immediately.

“I’m pissed off at you, but there’s something you can do to make me feel a little better.”

Lou removed her glasses and placed them on the nightstand. With one hand, she pulled down her panties and with the other, lowered Emma down past her stomach. She struggled, but they always did. Lou preferred it like that anyway.

One set of fingers played with herself, while the other played with the wriggling woman. Lou ran her fingers across the tiny body as intrusively as possible. They parted her legs forcefully and rubbed the inside of her thighs, traced themselves along her stomach and across two tiny bumps, worked their way around her back and down towards her legs again. Lou had promised not to hurt Emma, that was true. She was pretty sure this didn’t count though.

It had been a while since she did this, and she had forgotten how much she enjoyed it. The thrill of owning someone, completely and utterly dominating them, forcing them to obey and pleasure and please against their will – it was all just so sweet.

Emma was a fighter, but she was only human, and it didn’t take her long to grow tired from resisting. Lou seized the opportunity and repositioned her prize right in between her legs.

By the time it was all over, Emma had done things that made her arms ache and her body feel dirty. Under the guidance of her captor, assisted by prodding and poking from giant fingers, she had learned exactly which spots made Lou feel good and how to treat them. It was far more information than she ever wanted to know.

When Lou had had enough, she simply dumped the tiny woman in the top drawer of her nightstand without a word. It was neither empty nor particularly cold, but it was dark.

Very dark.

Alice rose from her bed obscenely early the following morning – shortly after 10am.

She had hoped to wake even earlier in order to catch Lou before she left for college, but her roommate had long since departed by the time Alice had found the will to stop ignoring the series of alarms on her phone.

“Lou? You there?” she asked, sluggishly rapping on the door.

No response. Then she looked down and noticed the lock in place. Alice had to let the engine run for a bit before the car was ready to drive, so to speak.

The apartment was quiet as she ambled down the hallway towards the kitchen. That was not particularly unusual, since she frequently had the place to herself when she woke up, but it felt different somehow today. More oppressive.

Last night, the two of them had argued. It had been short, but bitter and ended without a resolution.  As Alice lay in bed last night, she had tried to understand Lou’s side of the argument. It was true that the little woman – the object of their disagreement – could potentially cause a problem if found. It was true that she would most likely do anything to return to her former size, if she saw the opportunity. It was even true that Alice was the guiltier party in the whole affair, seeing as how it was she who broke the rules that had been established before Emma had even set foot in the apartment.

And yet, Alice could not bring herself to hurt this tiny woman. She was not like the other people that they usually picked on; Emma was younger, smarter and generally nicer (not very talkative, that was true, but perhaps she was just shy around new people). This had become a little too personal for Alice to feel comfortable with and Emma was no longer a stranger to her, but someone she knew. Moreover, she found that she had no desire to take such an active role in what she had always previously been a spectator to. Besides, it didn’t seem necessary for this episode to end in violence, especially not when Emma made such a cute little pet. Arguing with Lou had gotten her nowhere, but she was sure that there must be something, some line of reasoning or appeal to logic, just waiting to be discovered that would flick a switch in Lou’s head and make her agree.

There was something different about the kitchen this morning. Instead of sparkling surfaces, chairs tucked neatly under tables and an empty sink, the room had mostly been left in the same state as it was when Alice went to bed last night. Lou tended to give it a quick a clean and tidy before she left in the mornings, though she rarely found it maintained when she returned in the evenings. The fact that it had been left untouched did not bode well for Lou’s mood.

On the countertop sat a large, upturned cereal bowl with a heavy book resting on top of it, and a note completing the stack. Alice walked over to inspect it.

Sorry about last night. Let’s talk again this evening. Won’t be back late – Lou.

Beneath the note was a copy of Goncharov’s Oblomov.

When Alice lifted up the bowl from the table, she saw a cowering Emma, sitting on the hard surface and hugging her knees tightly against her chest. The light made the tiny woman wince, but she kept her head down.

“Good morning,” Alice greeted her. “Are you okay?”

Emma didn’t respond.

Alice scanned the tiny body for any sign of cuts or bruises, but found none. Her Little Bo Peep outfit had acquired a few new tears in it, however.

“Hey, look…I know you must be feeling pretty down right now, but I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. The thing about is Lou is, well…” She paused and wondered how best to phrase what she had to say next. “Lou is a little bit tightly wound at times and about certain things. I’d really appreciate if you could keep this between the two of us, but I think she’s a little bit jealous of you too.”

She is, agreed Emma. Lou didn’t use that exact word, but she had made it abundantly clear earlier that morning.

Predictably, Lou had gotten up that morning in a bad mood. Like clockwork, she woke up at exactly 6:30am, washed her face, dressed herself, packed her books and supplies for the day, and checked the news and weather on her laptop. It was a routine she followed most days of the week, with the only difference on this occasion being the tiny woman on the bed who had been allowed to watch. Lou only turned her attention towards Emma after everything for the day had been prepared.

“We haven’t really gotten to know each other, have we?” Lou asked.

Emma gambled on it being a rhetorical question and said nothing.

The giant woman made her way over to the bed, laid down on it and propped head her up on the palm of her hand. Her two socked feet were rubbing against each other at the other end of the bed. She would have seemed playful, were it not for the distinctly unfriendly look in her eyes.

“Let me ask you some questions. You’ve been very quiet and I want to know more about you.”

The room felt ten degrees colder already.

“Are you happy?” Lou asked.

There didn’t seem to be a good answer to this question.

“I said, are you happy?”

Emma shook her head.

“I can’t hear you.”

“No, I’m not happy,” the tiny woman managed.

“An honest answer, that’s impressive. Let’s try a harder one now,” Lou sucked on her bottom lip. “Do you hate me?”

Emma shrank into herself and wished dearly that something would interrupt this interrogation. She pictured the other woman, the friendlier one, knocking on the door and enquiring about her wellbeing, hoping to will that scenario into existence through the sheer power of wishful thinking.

“Do you hate me, Emma?” Lou lazily swung her other arm over the bed and began to trace little circles with her index finger on the bedspread.

“Yes.”

Emma’s answer surprised the both of them.

“That’s okay, I hate you too,” Lou shrugged. “I hate you, and you hate me. If you could kill me and escape, you probably would. I think that more or less makes us even and puts us in fair competition with each other.”

It didn’t feel very fair to Emma at all. Lou started to rise from the bed, but a little squeak caught her off-guard.

“Why do you hate me?” The words tumbled out almost instinctively.

For a long moment, the two women simply stared at each other. The larger one was impressed by the question. The smaller one wondered if she had made a horrible mistake.

“Why do I hate you? I hate you because you’re a thief. Did you know that?” Lou didn’t wait for a response. “There’s a book I read once that had a quote in it I really liked. I’ve only ever read it once, but the quote stuck with me; a tiny, bite-size chunk of philosophy that I sometimes find myself thinking about. It goes like this: There is only one sin, and that is theft. When you murder a man, you steal his life. When you lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you rob someone of fairness.”

Emma blinked. She could think of nothing that she had stolen from Lou. Before last night, there were no problems between the two that she was aware of, and she was even starting to like the serious but amiable student. Thinking back, she found it strange that she had ever considered her to be both petite and a little on the cute side.

“You stole Alice from me,” Lou informed her. “Well, that’s not entirely true. You’re currently in the process of stealing Alice from me. You came into this house and you’ve started to steal her attention away from me. And do you know what the worst part is?”

The tiny woman looked nonplussed.

“Despite all that – despite the fact that you’ve started to steal Alice away from me, with no thought as to what I might be feeling – it wasn’t enough for you. You had to have your way with me last night. I know I’m not pretty like Alice is, but that didn’t stop you, did it? You probably just see me as a stepping stone.”

None of these things were true, but Emma was not inclined to argue. She bore the accusations in silence and struggled to reconcile two conflicting thoughts in her mind: the thought of beating Lou into a bloody pulp with her bare hands, and the thought that maybe there was something, anything, she could do to win Lou over and make a bit nicer towards her.

“Well, I have to get going or I’ll be late for class. I usually enjoy it, but I’m exhausted – thanks to you, I might add – and I just can’t wait for this day to be over. At least it’s Friday today. I think I’ll come back home and take a nice, relaxing bubble bath this evening.”

The conversation was winding down and Emma was actually looking forward to some spending time with the other one. She would not let this sort of thing continue, and perhaps she could even be convinced to help return her to normal size. That might take a little time, however, Emma reflected, since Alice seemed both enamoured with her tiny form and far too excited for a mentally healthy human being to have a little human pet.

Unfortunately for her, Lou had anticipated this. Without any warning, she reached forwards and pinched Emma’s legs between a finger and thumb, hoisting her high into the air. She looked down; the floor far below was an indistinct blur, and she instantly felt nauseous.

“Oh, before I forget, there is one more thing.” Lou poked Emma’s stomach with another finger. She screamed and swayed back and forth. “Let’s keep this conversation between us, as well as that thing that happened last night. I don’t think either of us really want Alice finding out about that, do we?”

All colour drained from the tiny woman’s face as Lou described to Emma exactly what she would be forced to do if Alice found out about anything that had occurred between the two of them. Until that moment, she had not considered how terrible human existence could be, but by the end of Lou’s speech, she was thoroughly convinced that things could be much, much worse than they currently were.

“I think I’ve made myself clear,” Lou concluded, laying the trembling creature in the flat of her palm.

“But hey, that’s only if you’re bad. If you’re good, I might let you take that bubble bath with me later tonight,” she added, winking.

Emma hoped not, but she knew it wouldn’t be up to her in any case.

She buried herself in Lou’s hand and was vaguely aware that they were leaving the bedroom for a new destination. To try and get those horrible images out of her mind, she focused on current sensations: the warmth of the soft surface she was lying on and the sweet smell of synthetic vanilla that Lou had decided to cover herself in today. It was only a little comforting.

Their journey ended in the kitchen. Emma was set down on the kitchen counter and immediately began to scan the area for a way down, ready to attempt escape at any cost the moment her captor left the house – and then a shadow fell over her. The last thing she saw was Lou’s cold eyes staring down at her through a pair of glasses before she was entombed in darkness.

Every second those two women spent together would make it harder to separate them, Lou thought. I should have just gone with one of those simpler plans.

She was laying down flat across her usual couch in the university library, staring at the ceiling with The Fundamentals of Health and Diseases spread open on her stomach. After making it a whole three pages closer towards that little green post-it note over the course of twenty minutes, she could no longer even pretend to study. The Emma Problem was occupying all of her attention and she still had not come up with a method of resolution that satisfied her. There were three components it needed to have: first, and most importantly, it had to result in the eradication of Emma in an especially cruel and preferably drawn out manner. Secondly, it must not, under any circumstances, cause any deterioration in the relationship between herself and Alice. Thirdly, it had to be done soon and discreetly with minimal risk.

So far, nothing fit the bill.

“Excuse me, are you done charging? My phone’s nearly out of battery, and I was wondering if I could have one of those sockets.”

Boy. 19 or 20 years old. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Tall. Little skinny. Would you have made a better candidate, or would she have liked you even more?

Lou looked across at her phone and laptop. 100% and 96%.

“No, sorry,” she smiled. “I’ll be gone soon though. Come back in about twenty minutes.

“Oh,” he looked disappointed and lingered awkwardly for a few moments. “Hey, if you’re not busy sometime, do you maybe want to—”

“No. Go away.” One polite response per customer today, apparently.

He looked shocked, but slunk away dejectedly without another word. It would probably be a while before he worked up the courage to ask another random stranger out, but Lou considered it not to be her problem. Her problem was probably resting in Alice’s soft, warm hands, mewing about her family that was probably just starting to miss her, or some crap along those lines.

It was only 5pm, but Lou was already pooped. She thought about that bubble bath, and how much longer her pride was going to prevent her from returning home. Only adherence to her usual routine had kept her in the library for so long. Adherence and stubbornness.

A loud crash from down the hall interrupted her wallowing, and she sat up on her elbows to investigate. The gangly youth who had tried to hit on her had bumped his bag against one of the bookcases, liberating a dozen books from their shelves. He looked around to see who had noticed, caught sight of Lou staring at him, and blushed bright red. The books were promptly returned to their homes in more or less the correct places, though fixing the mess did not make him feel any less embarrassed. He checked his surroundings one more time to make sure that everybody had gone back to their own business. Lou was still staring at him.

She was staring because she had an idea.

Would that really work?

Lou ran it over in her head a couple of times; it fulfilled all three of her three criteria perfectly. If she could find a way to mitigate the risk slightly, she would have herself a winner. I can make this work, she told herself.

“I’m really, really, really sorry about that just now,” Lou explained, approaching the boy. “I just…I lost my grandmother earlier today. Things have been really stressful, it’s made me kind of snappy with people.”

She swapped a few of the books around on the shelves next to them. The Dewey Decimal System deserved to be respected.

“It’s okay,” he tripped over his words, trying to explain himself. “It was kind of intrusive of me anyway; I cornered you there a bit. I didn’t mean to.”

The only downside to this new plan of hers was that it would take another day to put everything comfortably into place. It hardly mattered though. She refused to rush anything this time, instead relying on careful deliberation.

The skeleton of the idea was solid and she had already fleshed out most of the plan in those first few minutes. This evening could be spent going over the details again and again, reviewing the best possible execution and identifying any potential flaws. Perhaps she would even brood over it in her mind while spending time with Alice and the Emma thing. Happily, there was no need for her to threaten violence on the little creature tonight. She would be nice to both Alice and Emma, and pretend to slowly acquiesce to the idea of keeping the latter around as a little household pet over the course of the evening. Then, by tomorrow night, everything would be over and she could get things back on track with Alice.

This is all just so perfect.

“I’m Mark, by the way,” the young man replied, when Lou had not said anything for a while.

They exchanged numbers and made vague plans to meet up and do something the next day. Fortunately, tomorrow was Saturday and Lou was glad to finally have a break from classes, though instead of diligently spending it in self-study and revision, she would instead need most of the morning and afternoon to set things into motion.

Lou ended the conversation with a kiss on the cheek for added effect, rendering the young boy mute, and departed the library. She briefly wondered if she were a bad person, but then decided that she didn’t really care.

Sorry, Mark, she thought. Wrong place, wrong time.

Alice was once-again sitting cross-legged on the couch, though instead of prattling on about one thing or another, she had fallen into contemplative silence. Her brow was furrowed in concentration and she was absent-mindedly running a fingernail back and forth across her lip. On the table nearby sat Emma, back in her old clothes and finishing up a tiny portion of apple. The core if it lay on a coaster nearby, the remains of Alice’s light lunch (along with a Snickers bar and a bag of family-size potato chips), patiently waiting for Lou to come and clean it up.

The tiny woman had not entirely recovered from her earlier ordeal, but the presence of Alice was making her feel much more relaxed. Getting out of that ridiculous outfit also made her slightly less uncomfortable, and eating had returned a little strength to both her body and mind.

In the choice between two bad options, Emma had decided on what she considered to be the least dangerous: she had tattled. She had not wanted to at first, but Alice noticed that something was very wrong and gently encouraged her to speak her mind. Though initially reluctant, she could see no point in hiding the truth when Alice correctly guessed that Lou had been intimidating her. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that nothing good would come from being silent, especially not when Lou had explicitly told her that she was going to die regardless.

There were some things she left out, however. She did not tell Alice about the thing that had happened last night. It was too embarrassing to put into words and she did not want or know how to describe it. She also downplayed the threats Lou had made towards her and spoke ambiguously about the things that had been said.

It was terrifying and she immediately regretted it. Those terrible things that had been threatened upon her flooded back into her mind in vivid detail, and she was unable to hold back her emotions. Ashamedly, she sobbed in the palm of the giant lady until her eyes were red and her throat was sore, while a huge finger rubbed her back and a soft voice attempted to console her with kind words. Alice vowed to not let her ward out of sight from now on, explaining that Emma would be spending all future nights in her room and that Lou would not be allowed to touch her until things had been straightened out. It made Emma feel slightly more reassured, but she still feared for her safety over the coming days. At least she had an ally now though.

Strong words needed to be exchanged with Lou, that was certain. Alice had no idea how to broach the subject in a way that would get through to her, since this was a topic that her roommate had always been firm and unwilling to bend on.

“I think…” Alice began slowly.

Emma looked up at the towering woman, staring down at her with pursed lips and large eyes narrowed through the effort of great thought.

“…we have a serious problem,” she summarised.

It was the conclusion of a morning’s worth of contemplation. While not exactly a solution, the inclusive use of “we” made Emma feel slightly better; she shared her problem and someone had taken her seriously.

“Can I ask you a question?” asked the tiny woman, rising to her feet.

Alice’s eyes widened as if a delicate train of thought had suddenly been derailed.

“Of course,” she replied.

Two huge, icy blue orbs swivelled to focus on Emma. It was unnerving despite Alice’s friendly nature, and the diminutive woman considered that she and Lou would be better suited with each other’s eyes.

“Why are you friends with her? She’s not like you at all. She’s…” The sentence trailed off.

“Well, I mean, I can hardly blame you for not liking her. She did sort of put you in that state.”

Amongst other things, Emma thought.

“But Lou isn’t a bad person. I know you don’t believe me when I say that, but it’s true. She gets funny about certain things and way more stressed than she’d ever want you to know. Sometimes she does bad things, and I’ve even kinda been a part of those bad things at times, but I don’t think there’s a bad person behind them. I’ve known some bad people in my time, believe me – I’m even related to some of them – but Lou doesn’t give off that vibe to me. Sometimes people do bad things not because they’re bad people, but because they’re…well, sad people.”

She was right, Emma did not believe her. Not in the slightest.

“Plus, we actually get along great. I think we complement each other pretty well. We fight a fair bit, but it’s always just playing around – until now, at least. I’ve seen her really angry at stuff before, just never at me.”

Alice sighed and ran her fingers through her long, blonde hair. Emma suddenly felt self-conscious about her own dull brown locks. They were a little greasy, but she doubted anyone could tell at her size.

“Alice?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for, uh, taking my side in all this.”

“Oh, no problem,” Alice replied, attempting to subdue the tiniest stirrings of guilt. After all, it was she who had been begging Lou for a little pet over these past few months and was partially to blame for her transformation. She could not recall if Emma had been made explicitly aware of this, but decided not to ask.

“I’m not actually trying to ‘take sides’ though. I like you and Lou. Ideally, all three of us can get through this, and you and her can be friends with each other. It’s hard to please everyone, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, right?”

How painfully naïve, thought Emma, almost pityingly. The orbs had gone from narrowed to widened and now looked down at her quizzically, as if searching for signs of reassurance or agreement.

“Personally, I feel as if the best solution would be to return me to normal size. Then we can all discuss this together as adults on an equal footing,” the tiny woman suggested.

Alice stared at her for a few moments, expression unreadable.

“No.”

“What do you mean by ‘no’ exactly?” asked Emma, trying to prevent any hint of fear or anger from creeping into her voice, and mostly succeeding.

“Well, for starters, I can’t actually do the thing that Lou does. She’s the only person I know who can do that. I can’t undo what she did or do it to anybody else.”

It was a reasonable point, Emma conceded.

“And…okay, don’t get mad at me or anything, please. I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but try to understand: we can’t let you go, at least not yet. I actually agree with Lou on this one. The first thing you’d do is…something crazy. Maybe attack her or go straight to the Police. It’s not what I want at all. Maybe if you two could talk to each other first and try to find some common ground, we can resolve this whole thing without any big drama.”

Alice had not lied, but neither had she told the entire truth. Privately, she wished that Emma would grow to enjoy her new station and that the three of them could live together happily without any fear of each other. If Lou and Emma did have any common ground, it was that they both would have found this suggestion laughable.

“Without any big drama?” The tiny woman repeated, throwing her hands into the air.

Drawing her shoulders closer together, Alice bowed her head in admonishment and looked off to one side.

“I mean, if you really think about it…” The words came out as sweetly as she could make them. “...it’s more like a tiny drama.”

The woman before Emma looked like a giant naughty schoolgirl who had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have. She wiggled her toes and waited; apparently Emma was expected to say something.

“Where am I going to sleep tonight?” she asked, steering the conversation into less hostile territory.

“Oh! I already took care of that one actually. Wanna see?”

Emma did indeed want to see, but before she had a chance to respond in the affirmative, five huge digits wrapped themselves around her body and lifted her up high into the air. Prying open two of them, she saw the living room disappear into the hallway and then the appearance of Alice’s bedroom.

At times, Alice scared her, not because she believed there were any ill-intentions lurking behind those icy eyes, but because she was just so damn clumsy and excitable all the time. Earlier that morning, she had briefly set Emma down in the middle of her bedroom floor and wandered off into her wardrobe to pick out an outfit for the day. Upon returning, she realised that she had forgotten where she left the little woman. It took a full ten minutes before Emma was eventually found, safe and unharmed, underneath a blouse that had slipped off the desk chair and muffled her cries for attention. Profuse and reiterated apologies followed soon thereafter, though Emma remained unimpressed.

“Ta-da!” Alice announced, placing her pet with somewhat greater care down onto her unmade bed.

Squinting at the object in front of her, it took Emma a few seconds to make sense of the giant blue cuboid. The thing was a shoebox, with its lid neatly trimmed off and a hole cut into the side (Emma guessed) for to allow for access and egress. Peering inside, she saw that the floor had been layered with some kind of soft, padded material, while a thinner textile sheet lay folded up in the far corner.

 “I did that last night,” Alice proudly declared.

The little woman looked up with cheeks burning red from humiliation; the giant woman beamed down with pride. Neither could understand the other’s reaction.

“Alice?”

“Yes?” She smiled.

“I need to pee.”

Lou was a mixed bag of emotions by the time she arrived home in the evening. She was simultaneously exhausted, angry, excited, cheerful and a little hungry too. Although the Emma Problem still existed to annoy her, she now had a plan. Plans made her happy.

Racking her brain all day had given her a headache, but it was not until the incident with Mark in the library that she realised a fourth participant was the vital, missing ingredient for what she needed. There did not seem to be a way for this affair to end well for the boy as well as Emma, but to be honest, Lou had not given it a huge amount of thought. It was immaterial as long as she was gone. Collateral damage.

The lock clicked as she turned the key and prepared her award-winning smile for Alice.

Sitting across from the entryway in an armchair was her roommate, staring at her with those piercing blue eyes. Cupped inside her hands, resting in the middle of her lap, was Emma. Lou couldn’t read the expression on the little woman’s face from so far away, but Alice looked unusually serious.

“I’m back,” Lou declared, attempting cheeriness. “And I even brought you home a me”.

Alice did not smile. Lou was instantly suspicious about what had occurred in her absence.

“I want you to come over here and sit down. I have something serious I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Can it wait? I’m exhausted and I wanna jump in the bath. I was thinking that maybe you and me and Emma could do something tonight. Watch a movie or something? Maybe even attempt to cook dinner as a house?”

The counter-proposal hung in the air for less than a second before Alice shot it down.

“No. This is really important, it can’t wait.”

Lou attempted to keep up the façade, but dark feelings were beginning to swish around in the pit of her stomach. She did not need this right now.

“Okay…I’m guessing this isn’t about the muffins then.”

“It’s about Emma.”

That little whore.

Warily, Lou closed the distance between them, stopping just beside the arm of the sofas, though she declined to sit. With any luck, this conversation could be ended quickly or delayed for another time.

“What’s wrong?” asked Lou with faux innocence.

Alice shifted in her seat slightly. “Look, in order for this to work, we all need to be open and honest with each other – all three. I’ll start: I know that you’ve been…hurtful towards Emma. It’s not appropriate and it needs to stop.”

“I was a little upset last night. I already apologised to her.”

“No, you didn’t. I told you, we’re going to be open and honest with each other.”

Lou’s sunny veneer was quickly crumbling. The accusation, though correct, insulted her.

“Emma is a problem that we need to fix. That’s my honest opinion. She’s a danger to the both of us, and the longer we keep her around, the more danger we’re in of being found out. She doesn’t like either of us and you shouldn’t defend her. You’ll also find it harder to get rid of her when it comes to it.”

“I’m not going to ‘get rid’ of her. That is not happening and I want you to understand that.”

How dare…?

“I don’t have a problem with Emma, it’s just that—” Lou began, but Alice cut her off.

“Open and honest with each other,” she belaboured the point. “We’re going to talk about our feelings and resolve this matter together. I want to hear what you have to say, and then Emma is going to speak.”

“Why are you defending her?” asked Lou.

“Why do you hate her so much?”

“Because!”

“Because why?”

Her calm composure had all but departed her.

“I just hate her! What else do you want me to say? I’m a hateful person. I hate.”

“You’re not a hateful person,” Alice replied.

“Yes, I am. You know I am. What happened to ‘open and honest’? I don’t care about most people, but I can hate easy enough. You’re the only person I don’t hate or not care about, despite how much you annoy me at times.”

Sirens echoed outside somewhere in the distance. The conversation paused briefly.

“There must be other people you don’t hate. Didn’t you have friends growing up?”

Lou rubbed her face in irritation. This was not what she had planned for this evening.

“Yes, as hard as it may be to believe, I did actually have a friend once, and I didn’t even hate him. His name was ‘Mario’.” She hesitated for a moment before a memory bubbled to the surface. “He used to always say ‘it’s a me, Mario!’ just like that video game character. I always thought it was really funny, even though I didn’t really get it. He must have said it 500 times and it still made me laugh.”

“Why aren’t you friends anymore?” Alice enquired.

“He’s dead now,” said Lou quietly. “He died a long time ago.”

The room fell silent.

“I’m sorry.” Alice broke the silence. “How did he die?”

Lou rubbed her face again, more due to fatigue this time. She didn’t know why she was saying all this.

“I don’t know. At the beginning of one summer he went away to visit his grandparents for a couple of weeks – or at least that’s what he told me. He came back three months later looking like a bag of bones. I didn’t see him much after that, and when I did, he was usually just sleeping. Maybe it was leukaemia; children sometimes get that. No one ever told me though, they just said he was sick.”

“And then one day,” she continued. “Someone took me to a thing called a ‘funeral’. Everyone stood up and said nice things about Mario even though he wasn’t there. I didn’t really get it though. As a matter of fact, I turned up the next day at his house asking if he was well enough to come out and play yet. Isn’t that funny? His mom answered the door, but she just told me to go home. I was very confused for a while.”

No one interrupted.

“I did a bad thing after that, you know. I was in school just kind of dorking around in the playground not long after and I overheard some kids making jokes about it. About him, I mean. They were just dumb little kids making dumb little jokes about things they didn’t understand, but I got so, so angry about it. I did…the thing. I couldn’t help it, I was just so incomprehensibly mad.” Lou balled her hands into fists. “And before I could stop myself, they were both dead.”

“I was dumb too though. I didn’t plan it and someone saw me – probably several people actually. I didn’t get to go home after that.”

“Where did you go?” Alice asked.

The room was silent for a full half a minute now.

“You know…it’s real easy to flip back through someone’s life like a book and point to things to try and explain how they are. Do you know what they call that? They call it ‘confirmation bias’. It’s where you start out with a theory and then you look for evidence to support that theory, discarding or ignoring contradictory evidence. It’s completely backwards; you’re supposed to collect evidence and then build a theory based on that. Did you know that until not too long ago, doctors used to ask gay people if they had been touched as children? The theory was that was how people turned gay. Whenever a gay person said ‘yes’ to that question, it was taken as evidence to support that theory, but whenever they said ‘no’, it was mostly ignored. I’m gay, but you probably already knew that. I’m lucky too, I was never touched as a child.”

Lou threw up her arms, demonstrating herself to the two women in front of her.

“I am how I am because…that’s just how I am. A spiteful, hateful person who likes to hurt other people. Because I enjoy it.”

Alice was just starting to notice how drained her roommate was. Bags hung heavily underneath her eyes and her shoulders were slumped.”

Emma looked from one giant woman to the other. No one knew what to say next. Finally, Alice tried to reel the conversation back in.

“It’s okay to be upset. The important thing is to deal—” she began, though she didn’t get far.

“How dare you?” asked Lou, with a renewed sense of angry energy. “How dare you question me with your armchair psychologist bullshit? What do you know about these sorts of things? What do you know about loss? All you ever had to worry about was upsetting mommy and daddy. What are your problems, Alice? Remember to be open and honest now. You know what? I changed my mind in these past 10 minutes. I do hate you.”

Alice stared directly at Lou, expressionlessly. She looked neither happy, nor sad, nor surprised, nor angry. Her eyes bore into Lou, but her face looked as if she were posing for a set of passport photos. This time, she did not break the silence.

The stillness was making Lou increasingly uncomfortable, and her cheeks burnt red with shame at how much information she had been tricked into revealing. She felt betrayed.

“I…”

It was enough, Lou decided. Without any further words, she stormed off towards her bedroom and locked the door.

To her surprise, Lou discovered that she was crying. Fifteen minutes was all she allowed herself, sitting in the shower and trying not to think about what had just occurred. When it was over, she returned to her room, sat down on the floor and emptied out her backpack. She would have to spend the evening alone, but at least that gave her more time to plan.

There was no energy or motivation left for studying, but plenty enough for revenge. If there was nothing else she could have, she could at least have that.

One week ago, Alice and Lou had made plans to spend the following Saturday shopping for Halloween outfits. Neither had a specific party or event in mind, but Alice enjoyed shopping and Lou enjoyed tagging along, partially for the company and partially because her patience was sometimes rewarded with new clothes. Pride disallowed her from explicitly asking Alice for anything, but there was apparently some truth to the rumour that rich people never discussed money outside of business, and the woman who dragged her around town for hours upon hours was good at picking up on the slightest of hints. Alice had wondered whether or not she would be able to able to convince Lou to go as a sexy bunny rabbit, while Lou had wondered how she was going to wriggle out of wearing whatever Alice had in mind (personally, she wanted to be a pirate). Plans, however, often go astray.

Propped up on a stool in the kitchen was a very defeated Alice, arms spread across the countertop and head resting sideways in the crook of an elbow. She had thrown on a pair of blue shorts and a black tank top, deciding that she was already on friendly enough terms with the new addition to the house to forgo a little modesty.

Her eyes tracked Emma as her little body disappeared behind a box of cereal, reappeared on the other side and then approached the base of a spoon Alice had been using. With a surprising amount of grace, Emma pigeon-stepped along the handle towards her before neatly pirouetting and vaulting off at the other end. She caught Alice watching and bowed theatrically.

“That was pretty good. Where did you learn to do that?”

“From the last crazy couple who captured and shrank me,” Emma replied dryly. “Naw, I used to do ballet when I was younger. I had ankle problems and quit for a couple of years, and by the time it was better, I was too lazy to start it again.”

Alice had the inexplicable desire to take the tiny woman in her hands and play with her. Wisely, she suppressed that desire.

“Your friend was very upset last night,” remarked Emma.

It was an obvious thing to say, but the conversation needed to begin somewhere.

Through the night and into the early hours of the morning, both Emma and Alice had sat outside Lou’s room, mostly in silence or quietly mumbling to each other. Occasionally, Alice knocked and tried to elicit a response from the woman within, though nothing was able to break the deathly stillness that persisted on Lou’s side of the door. Neither Alice nor Emma could think of anything substantive to say beyond gentle cooing for her to come out. Alice feared rocking the boat further. Emma simply feared Lou.

In the end, Alice drew a heart shape on a piece of decorative kitten notepaper, slid it underneath the door and took Emma to bed. This time, she rose promptly at 7am to resume her vigil, but Lou had managed to sneak out while she was sleeping.

For the most part, Emma slept soundly in her makeshift bed, having spent most of the previous night shivering in terror and suffering from fatigue even more than Lou. She woke only once during the night and only because something in her subconscious detected an imminent threat to her being. When she opened her eyes, she was greeted by the sight of Alice’s giant sole hanging limply over her, toes pointing downwards and purple nail polish glinting in the moonlight. Emma stared up at it for a few seconds before shuffling out of its shadow towards the other end of the box. She briefly thought about throwing something at it, but she was starting to get the impression that Alice was a deep sleeper and that it would do no good. Instead, she lay there and watched it, trying not to picture it suddenly descending and landing on top of her. It was moments like these that drove home the absurdity of her situation and she half-expected to wake up in her own bed.

High above, Alice snorted and rolled over. Thankfully, she seemed to catch a chill, as she soon tucked her dangling leg back inside the covers, although the snoring never ceased. Fear of knocking the container off the nightstand with a wayward arm, but a desire to keep Emma close, had led Alice to place the shoebox nearby on the floor next to the bed, adding an extra level of humiliation that the giant woman missed. Emma resolved that she would spend all future nights in a higher place, preferably far out of the reach of Alice’s sprawling limbs. Hopefully there would not be too many more of those nights.

 “Mmmm,” Alice agreed, though she had nothing else to add. She craved a cigarette right now.

Emma strutted over towards the dispirited woman, stopping just shy of a giant, pretty hand. Despite what had happened last night, she still had very little sympathy for Lou and certainly no warm feelings towards her, but she knew that if she were ever to return to normal size, it would be with her aid. The possibility of that happening seemed, at best, improbable to her and she could not envisage how such a scenario would come to be. Attempting to repair the relationship between these two giant, crazy women seemed like a good place to start, however.

“We should do something,” she suggested.

“Every time I try, I just make things worse,” mumbled Alice, sighing deeply. “I don’t know what to do anymore. She’s like…one of those little armoured bug thingies. Every time you try and touch her, no matter how gently, she just rolls up into a little protective ball.”

“She’s certainly a bit more sensitive than she tries to let on,” replied Emma, attempting a diagnosis. “She’s more than a little jealous and definitely a bit stressed from all the studying – I noticed that even before all this – but I think the main issue is that she’s just frustrated. Lou quite clearly loves you and I think she craves your attention.”

Tired eyes scrutinised Emma. It was nice to have someone else to talk to for a change, present circumstances aside. As a consequence of her disownment, Alice had been forced to cut off all ties with her old acquaintances, and though Lou was a good, reliable, trustworthy friend (most of the time, at least), Alice did not really have anybody else to discuss these sorts of personal matters with. It was pleasant; she only wished they could be bonding over nicer things.

“I know, I noticed. The thing is, I love Lou, just not in that way. I’m not quite built the same way – if you, uh, know what I mean.”

Emma did. Once she stripped away the exceptional factors, the root problem seemed fairly mundane.

“And now that I’m here, sleeping in your room and stealing your attention, as she put it, it’s made her flip her shit – not that I don’t appreciate your concern, of course” she quickly added. “I’m grateful for it. I know you think she’s not a bad person, but…those things she said she was going to do to me, they didn’t sound like the thoughts a particularly nice person would have.”

The tiny woman shuddered.

“I just don’t know what to, Em. Direct confrontation didn’t work, but I guess that was doomed to fail from the start. It just made her all defensive.”

“What did she mean when she brought up your family yesterday anyway? I’m guessing you must be pretty loaded if you can afford to rent somewhere like this,” said Emma. Under normal circumstances, the apartment was impressive; from her perspective, it was awe-inspiring. Each room was a cavernous expanse that stretched miles above and miles beyond, filled with structures that dwarfed her by orders of magnitude and parodies of objects she had once used, now thick and imposing and weighing countless tons. She felt like a little lost explorer from a storybook – there was even the complementary giant who wanted to kill her, though she could have done without that part.

“I don’t rent it, I own it. My parents gave it to me,” Alice retorted. “We…don’t actually talk anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t really wanna go into it. Let’s just say I did something to offend and I’ve been cast out from the family. Of course, I’ve never actually had a job before and I never bothered to go to university – except that time I went to fashion college, but I didn’t really like it and I dropped out pretty soon after enrolment. I just kind of sit here and brood a lot; or at least I did until Lou moved in, and now I get to annoy her. That keeps me busy most days. She’s kept me sane. Cleans well too.”

Emma patted a huge finger reassuringly. It was a painfully cute gesture that made Alice smile. She raised her head from the counter and stared out the window. Grey, miserable clouds were hanging over the city below, threatening rain. None of the cafés and food shops below had bothered to put out chairs and tables for their customers. A bored waiter was smoking in one of the doorways, scanning the street for anything interesting.

“I have a question for you,” Alice said. “And following on from last night’s theme, I want to stick with being open and honest.”

Emma shot her a curious look. “Alright, go for it.”

“Hypothetically, if I were able to convince Lou to bring you back to normal, what would you do?”

The question stumped the little woman.

“I don’t know. The obvious answer would be to run away from Lou as fast as possible. I don’t think I could tell anyone because no one would believe me, and I’d certainly be giving you and your friend a wide berth from now. Maybe drop out of college and go elsewhere.”

Me too? Alice thought, a little hurt.

“Lou’s paranoid that you’ll escape or someone will find you eventually. I don’t think she can rest easy as long as you’re around,” she informed Emma.

Emma stepped across the counter over to Alice’s other open hand. Turning around, she spread her arms wide and fell backwards onto the soft surface. For a very brief moment, it felt as if she had just returned home and collapsed onto her bed.

“I don’t want to be like this forever. If I could escape, I would”, she confessed. “Let’s not mince words here: I’m your prisoner.”

Hardly a thing that could be denied by Alice. She didn’t want to get rid of her new pet, but in the interests of restoring peace, it might be for the best. Alice wanted Emma to stay; Lou wanted to kill her. Perhaps the healthiest compromise would simply be to let her go, if she could convince Emma not to do anything crazy and Lou to ease her paranoia. Of course, that meant no more pet. Alice really wanted to keep her pet.

Am I being cruel? Do I really have any right to be moralising when I’m nearly as bad as Lou?

“I want you to promise me something, Emma,” said Alice.

Two little hands reached out and wrapped themselves around Alice’s middle finger as the tiny woman stretched across her palm.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“I don’t really know how this is going to end, but if I did – somehow – manage to get Lou to bring you back to normal size, I want this to end peacefully. Don’t hurt her or anything. Also, don’t ever mention any of this to anyone. And before you leave, I want you to speak to each other for a little bit, just to clear the air.”

Emma opened her mouth to speak but Alice continued.

“I know that sounds like a big ask, but consider this: if she’s been convinced to put you back to normal, she’s probably not in crazy mode anymore. I’m not asking you to get all buddy-buddy with her, it’s just that, if I can bring her halfway and you halfway…” Alice’s brow furrowed with thought again. Cogs were turning. “If you can promise me that, I’ll take you at your word, and I’ll even try and help you get back to normal size.”

That penetrating stare fell upon her once more. Emma rolled over onto her stomach to avoid it and began to gently run her hands up and down Alice’s thumb. Considering that a “no” would only push her further away from her old life and keep her trapped in this situation for longer, there did not really seem to be much of a choice.

What am I supposed to say, Alice? I want to go home. You know that.

“Alright, I promise,” she said, keeping her eyes down.

“Okay, I believe you,” replied Alice. With two careful fingers on her other hand, she rolled the tiny woman back over onto her back. Emma blinked in surprise. Though she looked exhausted, Alice was smiling.

“I have an idea that I think might work.”

Rain had driven both Lou and Mark into a small, crowded coffee shop by the university plaza. The skies had opened up shortly after the two began what the latter considered to be a date and the former an unwanted necessity. The people constantly brushing past Lou and bumping against her chair did nothing to alleviate her foul mood. Hot and humid air from too many bodies in one place was making her sweat, and she was starting to wish she had ordered something cold to drink.

Mark was pretending not to notice the scowl on his companion’s face or her preoccupied behaviour, choosing instead to try and cheer her up by recounting a few funny anecdotes about his pet dog back home. Every time he spoke, it annoyed Lou a little more, though in truth there were few things at the moment that would not have annoyed Lou. Emma smeared across the sole of her boot would have been one of few those things.

“Do you have any pets?” Mark asked.

“Not for much longer,” replied Lou.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The young man was feeling increasingly awkward. “It sucks to lose pets, but hey, at least they got to live a long, happy life with you, right?”

Lou’s phone vibrated in her pocket; she did not need to check to know that it was another message from Alice. That made close to thirty so far, along with another dozen or so missed calls.

“Are you…feeling okay?” The boy was staring across the table at her with concerned eyes. “You seem a little down. Is it your grandma?”

“What?”

Oh, right.

“Yeah, sorry, she’s been on my mind a lot lately,” Lou explained. She had no idea whether or not either of her grandmothers were still alive.

“If you want, we can cut this short and maybe pick it up again another time. Don’t feel like you have to stay just because you said you would,” he suggested.

Why does everyone annoy me?

The only reason why she was going through with this bothersome activity was because she wanted to vet Mark before putting him into action. During their first encounter, she had determined that he was fine for the task, physically: tall, strong-jawed, a little wiry but with enough muscle; good enough for what she had in mind. He had a meek and somewhat submissive personality that mismatched his masculine features, but that worked well too. He would probably even make Alice a little jealous, although that was more of a pleasant side-effect as opposed to his main purpose.

Lou had probed him for a while that morning on a number of pertinent topics: his family, his friends, his studies, where he lived, etc. By the end, she deemed him a suitable candidate. If Alice had Emma, then Lou would have her own little pet to bring balance to the house, or at least that was how she planned to explain herself to Alice. In reality, she had no interest in keeping him around after he had done what needed to be done.

Lou’s problem was thus: Emma was untouchable. That was deeply frustrating and a new challenge for her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get at her by proxy.

So what if they judge me? Lou went over in her head the night before. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m know I’m not good with people; I open up about as well as a rusty can. I’m definitely not good at making friends either. I know how to intimidate someone though. Could either of them do the things that I’m capable of?

Last night’s debacle ensured that Lou would not be trusted around Emma, of that she was sure, and she doubted Alice would ever let her out of sight when she was around. Whatever else Alice might be, she was certainly good at sensing emotions in people, and Lou could barely suppress her anger of the little pest. Mark, however, could get closer to her than Lou could…close enough to do something. The boy seemed to have no mean bone in his body, but it would be simple enough to convince him to do it. If he did not bend to threats against himself, then Lou was sure his family would make good leverage – he had told her all about them and where they lived. Perhaps she would visit them and kill them all out of pure spite when this was all over with anyway.

Of course, she would not get Mark to actually kill Emma, even if it were the easiest, simplest and most risk-free thing to do. He could be coerced into murdering her and then suffer a similar fate himself once Alice saw what he had done. Lou doubted that her roommate would defend the boy with the same level of zeal and enthusiasm as Emma after discovering her body. She’d probably cry a lot and Lou would get to comfort her. Yes, that was a good plan; it had a high probability of success. But it just wasn’t enough to satisfy her.

What if instead of killing Emma, he simply hurt her? If he were to hurt her badly enough that it required attention, Lou could swoop in and take back control of the situation. Once Alice was offset by panic, Lou could offer her assistance to help the tiny woman, claiming that one of her previous tinies had suffered from something similar. She would demand some place quiet to take care of little Emma – her bedroom, for instance – before coming back out with a tiny, bundled body. Last night, Lou had spent hours fiddling over a selection of arts and crafts supplies she picked up on the way home from the library. Though hardly an artist, a tiny bundle wrapped respectfully in a bloody white sheet did not have to be overly convincing, especially not when the person you were trying to convince was squeamish and would not want to look too close. The real Emma would remain in Lou’s room for her to have fun with over the coming weeks, perhaps even months.

Now that was a delicious plan that would bear sweet fruit if she could get it to work, though admittedly there was far more that could go wrong with it. Alice’s intuition would be hard to fool. She might even demand that Emma be taken to a real hospital. Perhaps Mark would not hurt Emma badly enough, or perhaps he would hurt her too badly and she would die before Lou laid hands on her. The drawbacks could only be minimised so much, but the reward was just so sweet compared to the risks involved. She could do whatever she wanted with Emma while Alice lay completely unaware in the next room – and there were plenty of things she wanted to do. This unhappy situation presented her with a thrill that was hard to resist.

And yet…

Maybe this was a terrible idea that would backfire horribly after all. It was pointless to deny that things had the potential to go very wrong, even though it felt like such a smart plan at the time. Misgivings about how convoluted it was prevented her from feeling fully dedicated to it, but she wasn’t sure what else to do. Lou hated unnecessary risk, but she was getting desperate.

She wondered if she had fallen victim to what she had lectured on yesterday. Had she become obsessed with the idea that Emma was going to be hers no matter what, and was that why she was dismissing risks so easily – because she would just find a way to deal with them somehow? It did not feel like exactly the same thing, but there was similar logic behind it.

Her phone buzzed again; this time she checked it.

Pls come home. Want to talk with you. Not angry, I swear. Don’t ignore meeeeeeeee

“Uh…Well?” asked Mark.

Lou looked at him, wondering why Alice even bothered with her.

“Actually, there’s somewhere else I want to go,” she replied.

“Where?”

“It’s a surprise. Let me show you,” Lou responded, luring Mark out of the coffee shop. The rain had let up and the sun was beginning to break through the dark clouds overhead, but it was still cold and wet.

Taking Mark by the hand, she dragged him uncertainly down the street.

Treading slowly up the stairs towards hers and Alice’s shared apartment, Lou felt like a condemned criminal making the long walk towards the gallows. Her anger and self-confidence had crumbled over the course of the day until she no longer had the will to enact her bold plan. All that remained was sadness and resignation.

She felt humiliated by last night’s events, so much in fact that the only thoughts that filled her mind for hours afterwards were ways by which she could undo what had occurred and somehow save her beaten pride. It took her a full day to realise that it was pointless. There was no way to undo what had been done or unsay what had been said; she may as well as have attempted to turn toast back into bread. Hours had been spent wandering the city, loitering in different shops and traipsing around public parks, delaying her return home. Afternoon gave way to evening and before long, Lou found the crowds in the shops too lively and happy to brood amongst, while the darkness made the streets too unsafe for a lone woman to roam. Eventually, she had decided to follow in the footsteps of Oblomov and simply go home to sleep, hoping that somehow all of her problems would be gone when she woke up.

Two choices had presented themselves to her earlier. One was to go through with her plan of revenge: kidnapping Emma through artifice and tormenting her for as long as her tiny body would hold out. As nice as that would be, the more she thought about it, the more Lou considered it to be a terrible plan whose probability of success had been inflated by her obsession with retribution. It would fail, she would destroy her relationship with Alice, and then she would have nothing left.

The other choice was to abandon her plan for revenge, go home and concede to whatever would make Alice happy. That was almost as bad as her first option, but at least her one and only friendship would remain intact. Emma would stay, frustratingly, in their apartment, a constant liability to herself and Alice and always in danger of being discovered. She would sleep in Alice’s room, eat with her and spend time together with her when Lou was out of the house. They would share happy moments and have private jokes that would make no sense to the third wheel who also occupied their apartment. It was a miserable thing to imagine, but sometimes there are no happy outcomes.

And then there was Mark.

To her credit, Lou did think about just letting him go. After all, once she had made the decision to forego revenge, he was useless to her. She had absolutely no desire to add yet another member to an increasingly dysfunctional household and he would have just annoyed her by taking up space and requiring attention. The simplest and safest thing to do would have been to make up some excuse about it not working out and never speak to him again. If Mark had been aware of the different fates Lou was mulling over in her mind for him that afternoon, it would have certainly been his pick.

Lou lured the clueless boy into an alleyway she had scouted weeks ago; one of a few different nearby locations that she considered appropriate for such activities. It spiralled around in three sharp corners, backing on to the emergency exit of a tenement building that looked as if it had not been opened in about two or three decades. High, narrow walls with few windows set into them made it feel claustrophobic, but it offered a high degree of privacy for a public space. She wondered why it was that people were so easily led into situations like these – the only person she would ever trust to lead her into a quiet, secluded location was Alice. Perhaps it was because Lou was a girl, short of stature and did not look especially threatening or dangerous. Perhaps the boy had something bawdy in mind.

Nonetheless, after all the effort she had gone through, she could hardly bear to waste Mark. A lot of time had gone into their “date” and a lot of patience spent listening to him talk and talk and talk. Her grand plan was unworkable, she ultimately decided, though there were parts of it that could be salvaged. Why shouldn’t there be some reward for her after all she had been through?

She had imagined that the poor tiny creature on the floor in front of her was Emma; it was an easy thing to pretend when he stood little more than three or four inches high. Though Lou could hardly call herself a “people person”, she enjoyed their company when they were tiny and vulnerable. People really weren’t so bad when you had complete control over them.

Being in public was, despite the concealment, always risky, and Lou had to poke Mark a few times with the tip of her shoe to bring him out of his dazed state a bit faster. He ran around aimlessly for a while, directed by a pair of huge black boots that always came down just in front of him whenever he got a little bit too close to a wall or a drain. The harsh clack of leather on concrete echoed throughout the alley, but Lou was wary of interlopers and said nothing to avoid drawing curious ears.

There’s no Alice here to protect you, Lou thought, nudging Mark back into the centre of the alleyway.

She kicked the tiny thing and pretended it was Emma that had just fallen flat onto her face. She let the sole of her boot rest on top of its body and pretended that it was Emma’s two tiny hands pushing back against it. She rolled it back and forth across the wet ground and pretended those tiny squeals were Emma’s. Rough, cruel treatment was all that Emma deserved, and unfortunately Mark was Emma for this afternoon.

Unusually, Lou grew bored of her plaything before it became tired. A combination of the cold weather and recent events brought forward images of warm showers and comfortable beds. Home felt like an unwelcoming, hostile place at the moment, but Lou realised she was only delaying the inevitable. Maybe Alice would even pet her and play with her hair if she looked sad enough.

It really was a shame to cut things short, but Lou was pining for home and business had to be concluded. She would have appreciated a little more begging and debasement from Mark, though it was a satisfactory performance overall. He kicked and squirmed and struggled, and that was what Lou really wanted. With one dainty step, she brought the ball of her foot down on top of him and pressed him into the ground. He made a pleasing crunch that made Lou feel slightly better. The rain would wash the mess away and nature could have what was left over.

As she followed the corridor down to the front door of the apartment, she wondered what concessions she would have to make in order to restore peace. However harsh they may be, whatever made Alice happy was probably going to be worth it in the end – or at least the best outcome, given the circumstances. Acting out of mindless anger had resulted in disastrous consequences in the past and some very unhappy years for Lou. Still, this was new territory for her; relinquishing control of a situation was not something she was used to.

Silence greeted Lou when she opened the door. She kicked off her shoes, stumbled over to the couch and collapsed face-first onto the soft cushions, listening for signs of activity. At first, she thought that the apartment was empty and that perhaps Alice gone out to look for her, but the sound of approaching footsteps from down the hall announced the presence of her roommate.

“Lou?” A voice asked.

She grunted in response.

“I’m glad you’re home. Are you okay?”

Lou said nothing. Shame prevented her from showing her face. Unexpectedly, she began to experience the sensation of warm fingers running through her cold hair. It made her feel safe and tingly.

I really must look miserable, she thought.

“I was pretty worried about you, y’know. Me and Emma spent hours last night outside your room,” Alice said softly.

Emma.

“This is a difficult conversation for all of us to have, but we’ll all feel much better once we have it.”

I doubt it.

“Please say something to me, Lou.”

Reluctantly, the woman on the couch turned her head to the side. Immediately before her were two pert breasts restrained behind a black tank top, brazenly filling her vision. The concerned face above them was looking down at her with a kind smile.

“I don’t deserve a friend like you,” Lou uttered.

“Don’t be silly. You’ve done more for me than you’ll ever know,” countered Alice, tapping her on the nose. “We can’t move forward unless we communicate with each other. Are you okay to do that now?”

Lou nodded. It was the first set of negotiations she was not looking forward to.

When Alice rose from her knees, Lou caught sight of Emma standing awkwardly on the far end of the coffee table, near to the armchair that her roommate had just settled herself in. Warily, the two women watched each other.

“There are a few things we need to talk about, but let’s talk about Emma first,” Alice began.

Lou was prepared for it and ready to accept the sacrifice.

“I don’t think we should keep her anymore, Lou.”

Wait, what?

“You…don’t want to keep Emma?” asked Lou, raising her head up a few inches.

“No. It’s driving a wedge between us. Your friendship is important to me and I don’t want to jeopardise it. Just for the record though, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, you’re really bad at dealing with feelings of jealousy.”

Big pouty lips and large, widened eyes formed an odd expression on Alice’s face. It was a soft, motherly look of disapproval that made Lou feel as if she had been caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar.

“So does that mean…?”

“It means that I’d like you to return Emma to normal size, so we can let her go.”

Lou shifted her gaze across to Emma. The tiny woman had manipulated Alice, just as she expected her to.

“I told you this would happen, right from the start,” was all she could manage to say.

“Do you remember what you said to me a few months back? How it wouldn’t matter if I went to the Police with wild stories about shrinking people, because without evidence no one would believe me?”

“That’s different,” Lou responded indignantly.

“No, it’s not, silly. You don’t want Emma around and I don’t want to hurt her. This is a good compromise for both of us. Good for Emma too,” she added, looking down at the tiny woman in front of her.

“And what, pray tell, do you imagine Emma will do once she’s back to normal?” asked Lou, shifting herself into a sitting position.

“A better question is: what can she do, really?”

In all her years, Lou had never once let one of her tiny playthings go. Being shrunk may as well have been a death sentence for anyone unfortunate enough to attract her attention; a long, drawn-out stint on death row that lasted only as long as they were able to keep their giant owner entertained. Though not ideal, Lou had steeled herself to the idea of living with a tiny housemate indefinitely. Caught off-guard, Lou was unsure how to react, and her one-track mind had not prepared a response to this question. Emma had worked her charms much quicker than expected.

“I…don’t know if I can do what you’re asking me to,” said Lou. “I mean, I’ve never actually tried before. I’ve never needed to.”

“Would you try? For me?”

That sweet, supplicating tone had crept into Alice’s voice. It was a shameful, dirty tactic to play on the woman who was already half-broken.

Why the hell not? At least then she’ll be gone and I’ll have Alice back.

“Fine. I’ll give it a try.” Lou sighed. “Bring her over into the middle of the room.”

“That’s okay, I’ll let you handle her. I trust you.”

Concurrently, both the large woman rising from her seat and the tiny woman watching her approach pitied the naïveté of the third women, while both continued to do exactly what she had asked of them.

A single hand reached down and pulled Emma up into the sky, setting her down into both palms. She was shaking slightly, but trying her best to look brave. Emma was certainly no Alice, but she had a moderately cute face made all the more adorable by her worried expression.

True to her word, Lou set her back down gently on the hardwood floor in the middle of the living room and strode off to the side. To the surprise of all parties, the tiny Emma became regular-sized Emma in an instant. She looked tired, haggard and slightly dirty, but otherwise outwardly unharmed and in one piece. Brushing herself off, she stumbled to her feet and turned to look at Lou.

Lou expected Emma to attack her. Emma expected Lou to attack her. Alice expected Lou and Emma to attack each other. When it was clear that none of these events were going to happen, it was the cheery voice of the naïve optimist that broke the silence.

“This is good! No one has to worry about anyone hurting else anyone if we all agree not to hurt to each other. See how easy that was? Why don’t you both come back over and sit down?”

Emma fought the urge to bolt for the door and quietly stepped over to sit as close as possible to Alice. Lou sat back down on the couch. The two continued to stare at each other nervously.

“You’re both doing really well,” Alice commented reassuringly. “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, Lou. It’s about you and me and…things.”

Lou’s face dropped a little. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Alice pushed on nonetheless.

“I love you a lot, just not quite in the same way as you love me. I know that’s quite difficult for you.”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“I can’t do…Well, you know. But I did have another idea. It’s kinda odd really and I don’t know what you’ll think of it. I asked Emma what she thought but she doesn’t know you that well.”

Curiously, Lou looked over at Emma. She shrugged her shoulders and continued to glare unwaveringly, saying nothing.

“It’s a very strange proposition, but I’ve been thinking about it and it feels like it might make both of us happy. I was wondering…” said Alice, monitoring the expression on Lou’s face carefully as she drew out the words. “…Do you want to be my pet, Lou?”

“What?”

“It’s just, I really liked having a little pet to play with and do things with.”

Emma flicked her glance to the woman by her side for a moment, narrowing her eyes, but remained silent.

“I can’t give you exactly what you want,” continued Alice. “And it might even be a tiny bit awkward at first too…You’d belong to me though – I mean, not literally, and not all the time. You could do the thing and change back whenever you want to, of course. It’s really odd suggestion, I know, but—”

“Yes,” Lou replied.

“Yes?” queried Alice.

“I want to be your pet.”

Visions of Alice’s long fingers entwined around her body, caressing her naked flesh and touching her all over flooded into Lou’s mind. She pictured herself nestled in between a pair of enormous breasts, comforted by the steady rhythm of Alice’s breathing and the gentle rise and fall of her chest while the two laid down together and watched TV. She imagined trying on tiny dresses while two huge blue eyes admired her from above and watching with approval, while a giant pair of thick, pouty lips smiled and told her how adorable she looked. Thoughts of Alice lying stretched out naked on the bed, breathing heavily and clutching Lou’s tiny body, bringing it closer and closer to…No, best not to get too carried away.

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting that to go over quite so well. I think it would fun for the both of us though…Are you feeling okay, Lou? You’ve gone all red. Maybe you should take off your jacket.”

“Just a little hot,” she replied, moving towards the coat rack and trying to purge her mind of intrusive thoughts. “I’ve never tried shrinking myself before though. I’ve never even given it a huge amount of thought. I wonder what it’s like.”

“Scary,” piped the third voice. The two other turned to look at her. “But as long as there’s someone to protect you, it’s not so bad.”

Her stern gaze had not left her former tormentor. Lou suddenly had the impression that she was supposed to say something; it didn’t particularly matter what, but an exchange of words would probably serve as a gesture of friendliness to impress Alice. Something akin to an apology began to form in her mouth, but it fizzled out before it could find substance, replaced by more diplomatic words.

“Alice is a kind person. I can’t imagine her ever hurting anyone. I’m glad she stopped me from hurting you.”

Emma frowned. Alice gave Lou her “at-least-you’re-trying-your-best” smile.

“I know!” Snapped Alice, springing up from her chair and turning to face Emma. “How about this: as a symbol of peace, why don’t you stay the night? Just a single night, nothing more. Lou can spend the night in my room as my…as practice, to see what it feels like – I’ve even got a bed ready for you – and you can stay in Lou’s room. In the morning, we can go our separate ways with a small amount of trust restored.”

Lou was repelled by the idea of a stranger staying in her room…and intrigued by the idea of spending the night in Alice’s. For the second time, she fought against some unwanted thoughts. Staring at the door longingly, Emma wondered whether it might be best just to make a break for it, though she also wanted to leave these two freaks on the best of terms to avoid any nasty reprisals in the future.

“Fine. I’ll stay a single night if you want me to.”

Alice beamed and looked towards her housemate. You’d belong to me. That was what Alice had said. It echoed inside Lou’s head.

“I suppose it’s acceptable.”

The tall, blonde woman bubbled with excitement. Things had gone so much better than expected.

“I must say, I really am impressed with you two. You’ve both gone above and beyond to make peace. I’m proud that you’ve both made the effort.”

“You may sleep on my bed, but don’t touch anything else,” Lou firmly cautioned Emma. There were a few more rules that she wanted to lay out, though Alice silenced her with frosty look that immediately melted away when Lou stopped talking.

The truce broker wandered off into kitchen to search for pizza leaflets. The remaining two women stared at each as sounds of clumsy rummaging through drawers intruded from the adjoining room.

“Can I have my stuff back?” asked Emma.

“Your bag’s in my room. Wine’s in the kitchen,” replied Lou, folding her arms.

“You can keep the wine.”

“I don’t like cheap wine.”

A surprised shout interrupted their awkward exchange. Alice had just found the butter churner she had bought on a whim back in August and subsequently forgotten about the next day.

“What about my bike?”

“It’s in a dumpster,” said Lou, trying not to smile.

Emma fought the urge to smack her.

If one were to peer inside the shoebox on Alice’s bedroom floor, they would find a tiny, contented Lou. She was lying awake in her makeshift bed, snuggled between a soft piece of fabric and a thicker, spongier material underneath in a state of blissful unawareness, not yet realising the gravity of her error. Shortly, she would wonder whether she had committed the worst or merely second-worst mistake she had ever made in her life. There was only one other strong contender for the title, the details of which she had practically bawled out to both Alice and Emma the previous night.

High above, the giant body of her roommate lay sprawled out inelegantly across her bed, limbs spread far and wide, and mouth agape in mid-snore. A limp hand dangled over the side of the bed, whose long, pretty fingers were silhouetted against the ceiling by moonlight streaming in through undrawn curtains. For the umpteenth time, Lou reflected on what a beautiful, kind, gentle person her roommate was, despite her lack of in grace in sleeping, eating and a fair few other daily activities. There were no perfect people, but Alice certainly came about as close as one could. In comparison, Lou felt herself to be a petty, spiteful, hateful person who had done nothing good in her entire life to deserve such a friendship. It was, however, this petty, spiteful and hateful nature of hers that would soon cause her to realise the severity of her error.

Earlier that evening, Lou had made an uncharacteristically impulsive decision for the second time that week. She had returned home with an entire conversation planned in her head about Emma, but Alice had gone off-script almost immediately and ended up offering her something that she didn’t even know she wanted. Although it wasn’t everything that she wanted, it brought curious, half-buried, half-formed thoughts to the forefront of her mind that teased at certain possibilities. It hurt that she couldn’t have Alice, though the idea of Alice having her, as she had put it…wasn’t that pretty close? The opportunity had seemed incredible at the time: Emma would depart from their lives forever and Lou would replace her as a permanent (though part-time) pet for Alice to lavish attention on. It would have been infinitely sweeter if Alice had thrown Emma into the bargain too, as a consolation prize for Lou to have her way with over the coming weeks (she craved that almost as much as she desired Alice), but even she could admit that was a bit too much to ask for. Overall, it was satisfying conclusion that later turned out to be neither satisfying, nor a conclusion.

Lou pushed her doubts aside and readily accepted, later cringing at the eagerness she had shown. The smarter course of action would have been to rebuff Alice and let her whittle away at Lou’s obstinance over a week or two before crumbling to the suggestion. Nevertheless, she had made the bold and terrifying (yet exciting) decision to render herself vulnerable before another human being that evening. After an extremely awkward and somewhat tense dinner, during which Alice had thankfully done the vast majority of the talking, the three women retired to settle down for the night; Emma to Lou’s room, and the remainder to Alice’s. A very excited Alice sat on the edge of her bed, spilling out words of encouragement to Lou and explaining how careful she had become at handling the tiny Emma. Lou sat on the floor with a similar excitement, though tempered by nerves and the persistent, niggling voice in the back of her mind that was trying to forewarn her with some rather valid objections.

In a moment of courage, Lou took the plunge and reduced herself into a measly, four inch puppet-sized version of her former self. She expected to feel a little nauseous, but the sudden change in perspective made her feel sick and she struggled to remain standing against the vertigo. When she opened her eyes, it felt as if the ceiling had given way to an open sky looking down on a bizarre, alien landscape that rolled off in all directions. Strange, brightly coloured formations dotted this new world, rising and falling across the flat land, resembling sand dunes that had leapt out of a Picasso painting. Further in the distance were…things. Megalithic superstructures that thrust themselves into the sky imposingly. Mountains that had been carved into the shape of human objects, whose sole purpose was to humble the viewer and make them feel insignificant. It was oddly beautiful. A sublime scene that made Lou’s heart flutter.

And then the Earth shook.

One of the structures was moving towards her. Two beige sequoias uprooted themselves and began to lumber across the landscape, drawing closer and closer to Lou. Sheer terror kept her rooted to the spot as their forms shifted from shambling trees into the recognisable shape of Alice’s legs – or at least, something that looked like Alice’s legs. They acted surprisingly quickly for things so large, moving with long, graceful strides instead of lumbering with the slow, lugubrious movements she expected from a creature of biblical size. Graceful? This can’t be Alice. The experience made Lou feel dizzy and disoriented, and she was suddenly possessed by the strange idea that she was no longer herself, but instead had become something else. Something unimportant, unwanted, unseen.

Am I an insect?

She felt the ground rumble each time one of Alice’s gargantuan feet hit the floor, sending fresh waves of icy panic up her spine. One of them would land with a thud, bend just behind the toes, push off from the ground back into the sky, and come back down again with a louder thud, even nearer to her. They were moving far too quickly and contact with them was unavoidable. Lou knew she couldn’t outrun them even if she were able to get her legs to move. She was sure that she had become an irrelevant, annoying thing that was about to be removed from existence by the creature moving towards her. Soon, she would look up to see the sole of Alice’s foot hanging above her, then it would fall on top of her and that would be it; an ignoble end to her short life.

Stop. Stop. Stop. Please stop.

Five enormous, purple-painted toes came to rest immediately before Lou. The largest was as thick as her waist and as long as her forearm. It was perfectly pedicured, though at her size, she couldn’t help but notice the slight rough edge of the tip and the very thin unpainted line at the other end, where the nail had grown out slightly. They were minute imperfections that only an irrelevant insect like her could notice.

A noise thundered from above. It sounded oddly like Alice, except as if she were speaking over the PA system at a football stadium.

“Lou? Are you okay?”

Giant feet were replaced by giant knees as giant hands supported by giant arms came to rest down on either side on her tiny body. Lou recognised those long fingers, the pretty purple nails, the perfect thighs and the stylish blue shorts. She recognised the sweet voice and the familiar scent of peaches. It removed all doubts from her mind: this celestial titaness whose attention she had just attracted was – somehow – Alice.

Alice the Titaness loomed over, drowning Lou in her shadow. Everything was closing in on her and she was beginning to feel like trapped prey; a helpless, pitiful thing at the mercy of a predator. Eclipsing the light above was an immense visage, scrutinising her with two enormous light blue eyes and smiling kindly through a pair of thick, red lips. Lou tried to take some comfort in the latter, but the usual friendliness of Alice’s expression was offset by its magnitude, as well as her newfound potential to cause harm and hurt in ways that Lou was very familiar with. Though it was Alice in front of her, it did little to quell the fears she had, for they were the raw, primal fears of an animal in the presence of another much larger, much deadlier animal that could not be turned off by the higher functions of logic and reason.

I’m scared was what Lou wanted to say, but nothing would come out.

Patiently, Alice waited. She figured that there would be a fair amount of confusion and dizziness resulting from such a rapid transformation, even if she had no appreciation for the fear Lou was feeling (it was only Alice after all, why would Lou feel afraid?). This whole situation was exciting, though she was careful not to give Lou a poor first impression, lest she decline to ever volunteer for this sort of thing ever again. The unwilling Emma had made an adorable pet that she was reluctant to part with, though if she were to gain through exchange a willing, permanent pet – one who was not only comfortable with being touched and held and played with, but actually enjoyed it – Alice considered it more than a fair bargain. There was no need to rush things, especially not when they had all the time in the world to get used to this new situation. Well, Alice had all the time in the world; Lou would have to squeeze it in around college.

As she stared down at her miniature roommate, gawking back at her in complete silence, Alice wondered where she had put that Little Bo Peep outfit.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s only me. It’s still Alice, just a bit bigger than before.”

A bit?!

Lou forced herself back a few steps and stumbled. Although her legs had initially refused to move, standing stock-still as if locked in place by metal clamps, they were fickle, hypocritical things that were also apparently made of jello, causing her to buckle under the weight of the rest of her body.

I don’t know if I like this, she thought, regretting her earlier eagerness. So far, reality had not matched up to the expectations of fantasy. The awe to be found in the sights and sounds from this new altered state were counterbalanced by the fear, nausea and other negative physical sensations intensified by her vulnerability. She felt the regret of someone midway through a rollercoaster ride who had come to realise that there were more negative thrills than positive ones.

“I’m going to reach down slowly and pick you up. Then we’re going to go over to my bed,” Alice informed her. “Don’t be scared.”

Sure enough, the giant hand to the left of Lou opened up, splayed its pretty, purple-tipped fingers, and began to reach for her. Lou tried her best not to be scared, but in the end, the best she could manage was blind panic. Instinct compelled her to run, but Alice’s fingers caught up effortlessly, rolled underneath her and scooped her puny body into the palm of their hand. The tiny woman’s stomach lurched as she was sent flying into the air and she closed her eyes as the wind whipped against her face. These were all sensations that she had subjected to dozens of her playthings over the years, yet all completely new to her. Experiencing them first-hand was giving her a newfound respect for those who managed to hold their stomachs during transit.

Alice relinquished the hold on her roommate and set her down gently on the bed.

“So far, so good?” she asked, sensing some discomfort.

“I feel like I’m gonna puke,” Lou responded.

“You know, Emma actually said the same thing a couple of times too. Well, more than a couple. It took me a while to get the hang of moving slowly enough. Apparently you get used to it anyway,” said Alice, attempting reassurance.

When Lou’s vision had straightened out, she turned to take in the sight of her new surroundings. As far as the eye could see, stretching from end to end across the entire panorama, was the most incredible, breathtaking thing Lou had ever seen: Alice. Her colossal form stretched out across the horizon like a mountain range, from the beautiful, smiling face looking down sweetly upon Lou, rolling down along a long, elegant neck into a voluptuous body that led into a pair of long, curvaceous legs before ending in what Lou knew were two enormous bare feet, though they were blurry and barely within sight. She made a beautiful woman and a beautiful piece of scenery.

“Is this better? I thought it might be a bit less painful on your neck. Not that you aren’t used to looking up at me anyway,” she added mockingly.

The words barely registered. Lou was too astonished to think of a witty comeback. Instead, she met Alice’s gaze, resisted the urge to say some very awkward and embarrassing things, and hoped that her diminutive form would help obscure her tiny red cheeks that had begun to glow.

“How is it so far?”

“It’s…” Lou paused to try and find the right word, but there was nothing for it. It was indescribable. “It’s…weird. The world’s a different place from this perspective. Everything’s so loud and just…huge. I thought I was a bug at first.”

“Bugs aren’t as cute as you are right now. Except for maybe ladybugs.”

“I feel a little defenceless,” Lou added.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’ve got me to protect you then,” Alice chirped, clumsily bringing a hand to rest beside Lou. She didn’t seem to notice the disharmony between the gesture and her words. “As long as you feel comfortable, we can stick to what we had planned. Are we okay to go on? Do you still want to spend the night like this?”

Tiny, wandering eyes drifted down a slender, swan-like neck and came to rest on a modest, well-shaped bosom, whose shape was teasing her from within a black, woollen prison.

I want to spend every night like this, Lou thought.

Her initial fears and nerves began to subside as the towering, threatening, predatory Alice came to resemble the happy, good-natured, familiar Alice of 15 minutes ago. They were one and the same person, and it was a person that loved and cared for Lou; a person who would never hurt her, despite how bitchy she had been to her at times. Alice was Alice; friendly and sweet. She was a well spout that drew feelings from Lou that no one else could.

You can do anything you want with me, you know. Pick me up. Hold me. Touch me. Pet me.

Lou imagined those five slender digits wrapping themselves around her, while a pretty purple nail flicked up her shirt, allowing Alice’s thumb to tease itself underneath and rub against her bare stomach. She imagined herself wriggling in mock resistance while Alice playfully held her tight and forced her legs open, caressing the insides of her thighs and brushing against what lay between. She wanted to struggle against her firm grasp, to be used to pleasure Alice in the same way that she had used Emma to pleasure her. She ached to press her lips against those pretty fingertips, to kneel and worship, to massage tired feet and submit to whatever Alice’s whims required and whichever parts of her figure they took her to. She yearned to explore her body, to kiss it, to discover new ways to make her happy; to be used and discarded as she had done to so many others, as if she were a thing that existed to please Alice and Alice alone.

Do it. Take me. Use me. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. I love you. Pet? Slave? Lover? Anything. I belong to you, that’s what you said.

It was getting harder and harder to hold the confession back. Lou the Friend worried about damaging their friendship through unwanted advances, but Lou the Pet no longer cared. She had needs and feelings that required expressing. Lou the Friend chided her slothful housemate for her poor lifestyle and inability to take care of herself (let alone a whole apartment), yelled at her to clean, and drew favourable comparisons of her own fastidiousness against Alice’s lazy habits. Lou the Pet, who was gazing up at Alice the Titaness, was finding it difficult to care about silly things such as her pride or dignity. She cared only about Alice and the things she could do to please her.

The pets I owned had no idea how good they had it. They got to pleasure a mistress who appreciated them. Emma should have thanked me for what I did to her.

Alice’s eyes were glazed over and her attention had drifted inwardly. Her thick, pouty lips became slack and had parted the tiniest amount. The Pre-Raphaelites would have fought over each other to paint such an expression, Lou thought, admiring her vacant gaze.

Are you thinking about me and the things I could do? You could even hurt me if you wanted to. I don’t like being hurt, but you’re so kind and gentle, I’d probably deserve it if you ever did. Just grab me; I won’t resist. Well, I will a little bit, but only because that’s more fun. I know that from experience. It’s exciting when they struggle and you force them to submit. I can do that for you. I can—

“Aha!” yelled Alice suddenly, slapping her hand on the bed. “I just remembered where I left it!”

With that, Alice sprung up from the bed and rushed out of the bedroom, leaving the tiny beetroot-faced woman alone. When she returned, tiny shepherdess dress in hand, Lou’s cheeks had faded to a rosy pink.

Emma was profoundly unimpressed. She had retired to Lou’s room that evening in a predictably rotten mood for a collection of obvious reasons. For one, she had been coerced into spending the night in a room that was bringing back some very unwelcome memories, feeling as if the very scent and presence of the woman she hated was seeping into her skin. All around her were signs of Lou – things she had touched, things she had worn, things she had used. Being in this room made her feel dirty. For another, she now learnt that her bicycle – a $450 cruiser she had worked her ass of for during the summer – was lying in a dumpster somewhere, perhaps even in a landfill site or maybe even in some lucky rummager’s back garden. Those two things were bad enough. But now there was this.

It was with a sigh of relief that she discovered Lou had not been lying when she said she had kept her handbag. She spotted it easily; a black, cheap-looking thing perched upon a shelf just above Lou’s desk. These past two days had been a bad dream that Emma was only just beginning to wake from; she had lost her bike, her dignity, and something else that she didn’t quite know how to put into words. Despite everything that had occurred, at least she would not have to face the stress of having to acquire new bank cards, a new driver’s licence, new keys, a new phone…

No, that was apparently too much to hope for. Her bank cards? Bent and unusable. Driver’s licence? Snapped in half. The phone? Broken and slightly damp. Money was missing from her wallet. Personal photos had been ripped up. Only the keys had survived intact, she suspected, due to their inability to bend, break or tear easily.

What the fuck is her problem? Is she actually psychotic?

If Emma were not absolutely terrified of Lou, she would have marched into the other room and smacked her across the face – or splattered her across the floor, if those two freaks had gotten around to playing their weird games.

What started as a terrifying ordeal became more and more pleasant as the night wore on. Although reality failed to meet, or in fact even come close to Lou’s wild and quixotic fantasies, it had filled her with a special kind of happiness to indulge Alice, who herself was expressing a level of joy uncommon even for the perennially joyful Alice. With great reluctance, Lou had donned an uncomfortable and slightly torn Little Bo Peep outfit, humiliating herself before giant roommate. It was painful and she felt barely one step above a chihuahua in a handbag, but she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed the fussing and cosseting. Just a little bit.

It was a remarkable departure from their regular dynamic. Lou the Friend usually smacked away any hand that offered her clothes to try on that were not unicolour and standard wear; no frills, no sequins, no trailing ribbons or decorative laces. It rarely made any different to Alice, of course, who simply bought them for her anyway. There were about a dozen outfits warming Lou’s wardrobe that she would sooner stroll out into the street naked than wear. Nonetheless, Lou’s new size had altered their relationship (at least temporarily) and she felt just about confident enough to allow herself to be persuaded into this embarrassing dress, as long as she put up the appropriate level of resistance before acquiescing. Lou the Pet liked to please her owner, even if she were careful to show it.

“Can we get you a normal-sized version of this too? How do you feel about being Little Bo Peep on Halloween? ”

“Bite me,” the tiny woman sassed back.

Privately, she hoped that Emma wasn’t rummaging through her stuff back in the other bedroom. Her only major regret of the evening was that she had been allowed to stay over, in her room, at the behest of Alice. Lou decided not to dwell on it, though it sat at the back of her mind for the rest of the night, never quite leaving it entirely, despite the fact that Alice had not mentioned her name in hours. Besides, it made her smile to imagine the expression on Emma’s face as she opened her handbag and discovered what Lou had left for her. It was a terrible thing to do, Lou admitted to herself, but how was she supposed to resist? She had excused herself during the dinner and the bag simply caught her eye on the way on the way to the restroom. It was practically asking for it. Perhaps if she had not tried to steal Alice away from her, the whole thing wouldn’t have been necessary.

Yes, it had indeed been a wonderful night, filled with friendly self-abasement and gentle teasing from both Alice and Lou. The stress of last night that lingered all throughout the day and caused her so much worry just melted away in a few short hours.

Lou had even allowed exactly one picture of herself to be taken in the dress. Alice took fourteen, silencing her tiny, indignant rage with a hand that held her steady for the camera for ten of those photos. Lou wriggled and pretended not to enjoy it, while silently vowing to destroy that camera the moment she returned to normal size. The giant woman even began to plug the camera into her laptop, but the protestations of the tiny shepherdess jumping up and down on her keyboard convinced her not to do that. As long she agreed to try on more tiny dresses in the future. And let Alice take more photos of her in them.

It was a vicious cycle whose deviousness impressed Lou. There was no counter for it, so she decided to pull a trump card instead.

“Fine. But do you know what? I found your little hiding spot at the back of the cupboard. Ate all the snickerdoodles I found there too. Yum yum, bitch.”

Alice began to get the camera back out, while Lou swore it was a lie (it wasn’t) as she struggled against fingers that poked and tickled her.

Afterwards, they spent an hour watching a documentary about blue whales that Lou had downloaded for Alice last week. It always amazed her how the loud, garrulous, frenetic Alice was rendered mute and still by these sorts of programmes. Not even when she was sleeping was Alice this quiet Lou discovered, shortly after moving into the apartment and before she got used to the snoring coming from the opposite room.

For Lou, it was an ineffable moment, and the only one that resembled any of her earlier fantasies. They were lying together on the bed; Alice on her side, with Lou sitting near to her chest. The former was transfixed by the behaviour of these animals, while the latter was transfixed by Alice, whose beauty was constantly drawing her attention away from the programme. Lou could feel the warmth radiating off her body and the scent of peaches was omnipresent. She felt safe and protected. It was making her sleepy.

Alice stared slack-jawed at the screen as a pod of whales drifted through ocean and descended into the depths as a single group to search for food.

“I wish I were a whale,” she said.

“Keep eating those snickerdoodles and you will be,” Lou yawned.

Lou sensed something hovering over her, and looked up just in time to see a pink and fleshy surface fall on top of her. There wasn’t pressure enough to hurt her, but neither did she have the power to push the hand off of her. Alice let her squirm and wriggle in penance for a couple of minutes before she decided to show mercy.

Eventually, the early hours of the morning approached and both parties had run out of energy to mock and tease each other. Neither had slept particularly well these past few nights and decided that they should get at least a little bit of sleep if they were to wake up in time to see Emma off in the morning. Lou let Alice carry her over to what seemed to be a shoebox made fit for sleeping, impressing her for the effort that had been made, though not at all in the construction of the thing. It was soft, clean and reasonably secure, however, and there was no great reason to her object. A better place to sleep would rank high on the list of things to consider when she had the chance to evaluate the experience come morning. Alice was snoring away before Lou had even managed to get into a comfortable position.

It was a strange change of pace, not only to be the tiny half in these sorts of interactions, but also to have such a long, protracted evening of fun derived from mutual enjoyment instead of one-sided malevolence. I hope we do this more often, thought Lou, as she began to drift off into sleep.

And then a very dark thought suddenly occurred to her.

Alice is asleep. I’m awake. Emma’s in the next room, all alone.

She tried to brush the suggestion aside, but it was like wet cement that dried quickly and weighed heavily on her mind.

This is a bad idea, said one part of her. Alice won’t find out if you keep it quiet, said another part, much louder. Better yet, why not just get rid of Emma tonight and pretend you heard her sneak out in the morning? Chimed a third, the most influential part of all.

Sneak into the hallway, return yourself to normal size, do whatever you want with Emma for a few hours, and sneak back into the box before Alice wakes up.

Those long, pretty fingers continued to hang over the side of the bed. This course of action wouldn’t please Alice and Lou the Pet resisted it. Lou the Pet, however, was a weak, pathetic thing. She had a feeble will.

Lou the petty, spiteful, hateful person left the safety of her bed to discover the cruel consequences of her ill-considered choices.

No, thought Emma. No, I can’t do this.

The bed was soft, the sheets were clean and she was absolutely exhausted. Under normal circumstances, those three factors would have been enough to lull her into a restful slumber. These were not normal circumstances, however.

There was one crucial ingredient missing, one unfulfilled need whose necessity was hard-wired into the brain and without which she was unable to force her body into leaving itself unguarded for hours; it was the need for safety. Emma did not feel safe in this house, therefore Emma could not sleep in this house.

Instead, she lay wide awake and fully clothed on top of Lou’s bed, her thoughts directed by irrepressible feelings of fear and anger that brought forward unpleasant, unwanted memories for consideration. She thought about the last time she had been on this bed and the things that had occurred between herself and Lou. That made her angry. Then she remembered that Lou was mere feet away in the next room and only her odd obsession with Alice was preventing her from doing those things again, and probably things far worse too. That brought back the fear. Those two emotions fought each other for control over Emma’s state of mind for hours upon hours, until the night gave way and rolled into the early morning.

I need to leave.

Emma had no idea where she would go after she left the apartment, but she knew that staying in this place was not an option. The universe had accidentally punished an innocent person and now, in order to rectify its mistake, it had given her an opportunity that she thought unwise to squander. Moreover, the presence of Lou in every object around her – even the air itself – had become overbearing. It was simply too much. She needed to flee this house of freaks while she still had the chance. Neither of the two in the other room were of healthy mind and neither could be trusted to keep their promise (had they even promised?) to let Emma go in the morning.

While it was true that Lou was a cold, cruel, calculating individual who seemed to derive far too much pleasure from the pain of others, that other one didn’t fool her either. The tall, blonde, beautiful Alice spoke kindly and acted friendly enough – and to her credit, even stopped Lou from doing those terrible things she had threatened Emma with earlier – but she was nearly as bad at her core. It had not escaped Emma’s notice what had happened earlier that evening, and she had no doubt that it had happened many times before. In Alice’s desire to have a little human pet to play with, the faithful and smitten Lou had seen an opportunity to earn praise and approval. Unfortunately for her, but thankfully for Emma, she was not as smart as she liked to think she was and the plan had backfired horribly. When Emma turned out to be an unenthusiastic plaything, Alice (who lacked Lou’s capacity for brutality to force her into submission) simply decided to turn her lovelorn housemate into her little pet instead.

For the first time, Emma did feel a small amount of pity for Lou. Although she had not changed her mind about her being a bad person, Lou was evidently a person who craved affection from someone who was unable to reciprocate. Whatever the cause of Lou’s strange behaviour may be, whether best called love or just a strong infatuation, it was being used to take advantage of her. It was a mean thing to do – but then again, Lou was a mean person, so maybe she deserved it. After the events of the night before last, Emma’s heart would only bleed so much. Even so, bad people were still people, and usually not exempt from the same needs and longings possessed by other people. Lou had an unfocused anger and frustration that Alice was selfishly extorting.

How cruel people are to each other, she thought.

There would be plenty of time for reflection later, however. Under such stressful circumstances, Emma’s fight-or-flight response had kicked in and finally settled on the latter. Enough energy had been wasted pitying that detestable woman and her inexplicable desire for retribution. Anger was beginning to dominate fear, and she had concluded that Lou was much less sympathetic when she was nearby and eager to cause harm.

The clock on the desk showed that it was nearing 02:30. It had been a while since the low droning of the television had ceased from the other room, though when Emma strained her ears, she could only hear a single chorus of snoring. As she slipped off the bed and prepared to flee, she prayed that Lou was fast asleep as well.

All of Lou’s drowsiness had faded away before she had even taken ten paces from her shoebox. In seconds, she had gone from warm, snug and satisfied to alert and filled with a hunter’s excitement. Alice, as usual, had left her door ajar, though the piles of clothes, shoes, beauty products, stuffed animals and other junk provided a frustrating and somewhat eerie obstacle course for the diminutive Lou to navigate through. At her present size, she did not have the option of simply stepping over these obstructions, instead being forced to meander between hillocks of fabric that towered past head height and around giant, immovable plushies that blocked her path. This vast, new world before her was a strange, scary place that made the familiar seem unfamiliar and turned the mundane into the extraordinary. Little labels on nail polish bottles became posters, pencils were toppled streetlamps, magazines were industrial scrap that had been dumped irresponsibly, handbags looked like weird buildings that had been melted down by an intense heat, the desk had become an unfathomably extravagant monument to vanity. The sweet smell of Alice lingered, though it was slightly mustier down here on the floor; fresh peaches dominated, mingling with the stuffier scent of clothes that needed washing and a more natural odour that Alice’s feet had pressed into the carpet over months. It was amazing how this was a world that had always existed for as long as Lou had lived here, yet remained completely unappreciated until now.

It would have been wondrous, except the darkness coated everything in a sinister tint. Her mind fancied that it saw movement inside overturned shoes or that lurking behind the next crumpled shirt was some ill-intentioned creature waiting for her. When she looked high above, she half-expected to see indistinct forms peering over the seat of the desk chair at her, or shapes in the shadows coalesce into monsters as soon as she turned her eyes away. It emphasised her sense of vulnerability, but Lou was too excited to feel truly afraid; she felt like a naughty girl sneaking out at night to do something she shouldn’t be doing. It felt dangerous, but adventures always did – that was why they were fun. Nearby, Alice’s snoring provided some level of comfort, filling her with enough bravery to press onwards towards the open door and into the hallway beyond.

The scene aroused a happy memory for Lou that she had shared with one of her playthings a couple of years ago. Before there was Alice, a lonely, sixteen-year-old Lou had her heart fixed on another person whom she thought about with great warmth and tenderness. The unfortunate young woman who had caught her eye was a tall, athletic legal assistant in her late 20s, with an old-fashioned name and a predisposition for rebelliousness. It was risky to pick on someone who was young, pretty and female, since their disappearances always attracted a disproportionately large amount of media attention, but Lou was drawn to her beauty and intelligence. She admired the little Ava’s spirit too, and was softer on her than she had been with any of the others that came before. Unusually, Lou also found it difficult to take joy in hurting her, preferring instead to talk and play around, aggravating her just enough to get her to wriggle pleasantly in her hand when she wanted to have fun. She even thought that if she were nice for a change, things might turn out well.

Nonetheless, Lou loved to tease and Ava had plenty of courage. Lou was curious to see how far it would take her.

One night, five weeks into her captivity, the tiny Ava discovered that the monster holding her prisoner had neglected to fasten the latch on her cage door properly before heading off to sleep. She watched the giant woman’s face for signs of realisation as she pushed Ava’s prison back underneath the bed, seeing nothing as Lou smiled, blew Ava a kiss and climbed onto the bed above. It was just the stroke of luck the tiny woman had been waiting for and yet never expected to actually materialise. She waited for the squeaking of the mattress above to cease and for the sounds of slow, deep, rhythmic breathing to begin. It took nearly an hour to build up enough confidence to do what could potentially end very badly if she failed.

Two, tiny trembling hands gripped a metal bar and pushed the door, causing it to swing forwards in a 180-degree arc and clash against the bottom of the cage with a deafening clang.

Ava froze. Nothing above squeaked and the heavy sighs of deep sleep breathing remained uninterrupted.

She swung one leg over, then the other, and dropped down onto the soft carpet below. Looking up, she scanned her eyes along the bottom of the mattress and the huge timber beams that served as wooden slats for signs of movement. Nothing at all. Straight ahead, she could see a clear path to a door that had been left slightly open, leading into regions unknown. If she ran quickly, she could probably close the distance in less than 10 minutes, though she had absolutely no idea what to do next. She had only briefly seen the outside of this room once in all the time she had been kept prisoner, not even knowing who else shared this house or how many of them there were. Stairs would be a challenge. Getting out the front door would be next to impossible. Still, she had to try.

Ava took a deep breath and sprinted out from underneath the bed as quickly as her legs would allow, eyes locked on the crevice that would guide her to freedom. As long as she could get away, she could find help. Only one other person needed to notice her and then her torment would finally be over. This Lou person would be going to jail for a very, very long time.

And then she heard a squeak. Behind her, something immense and familiar was climbing out of bed.

Feigning a yawn to hide her laughter, Lou sat up, rubbed her eyes and stepped slowly towards the door, savouring every moment. She knew that she been too easy on Ava, but there was no doubt that the little woman had been brave; after five weeks, most of the pets she brought home were far too broken and obedient to attempt escape. Ava really was something special: beautiful, daring, energetic, even unafraid to stand up to Lou a lot of the time. At times, she desperately wished that she and Ava could share some more traditional, intimate moments together at a regular size, but Lou was short and weak and that sort of thing would not have ended well with someone who did not appear to like her very much. As amazing as the things that Ava did to Lou felt – after her tiny arms had been bent back and she had been made aware of what a delicious meal she might make for a spider – sometimes Lou just wanted to cuddle and be held and have someone run their fingers through her hair. It was fun to force people to do things, but why should they always have to be forced and threatened?

Ava considered herself a victim of poor timing, though in reality she was more a victim of poor circumstances. It was true that she had picked a bad moment, but it was also true that there were no good moments to choose from, for Lou had been waiting to see if the bold woman would take advantage of the chance she thought she had. Her plaything had been disobedient, but it was a form of disobedience that Lou found amusing. Ava would be punished – not excessively though, she just needed to learn not to run away. That was a good first step to making Ava love her.

Something large and pale thumped down mere inches away from Ava, followed by another symmetrical something on her other side shortly afterwards. She held her screams, but she knew exactly what they were even before she spotted the blue painted nails and high arches, and she knew the terrible person that they belonged to. For a few naïve, hopeful seconds, she wondered whether or not she had been spotted. It was a short-lived hope that died quietly when Lou began to speak.

“Where are you going?” demanded a voice from above.

Ava was too terrified to respond. Way up in the sky, an arm stretched out and pushed the door in front of her closed. With mounting despondency, she watched as the crevasse narrowed and then disappeared behind a thick slab of wood.

“I asked you a question,” ordered Lou, lightly stamping her foot.

Slowly, Ava convinced her body to swivel around. Tiny pink and white bunnies stared back at her above the cuffs of a pair of pyjama bottoms that swung loosely around a pair of giant ankles.

“Well?”

No good response existed and Ava knew this going to end poorly for her, irrespective of what she said. She craned her neck up and forced herself to meet the glare of the girl staring back down at her. Lou had her eyebrows set high in disapproval and rested her hands upon her hips, tapping her foot expectantly. It was an infuriating gesture from this brat who wasn’t much more than half her age.

“Fuck you!” yelled Ava.

Lou shrugged. “If that’s what you wanted, all you had to do was ask nicely.”

For the second time that night, Lou grabbed the tiny woman in her hand, lay down on the bed and lowered her pyjama bottoms. Ava was absolutely furious, but her struggling did little to stop the giant, wandering fingers that rubbed between her legs and played with her breasts. Each woman moaned and wriggled, though for entirely different reasons.

Now that she thought about it, that was more of a bittersweet memory for Lou. If Ava had been a little less belligerent and a little more loving towards her, she would have been sorely tempted to keep her around indefinitely, and probably convinced herself to do it in the end. Perhaps they could have even become friends (or more than friends) once the tiny woman had grown to accept her situation. Lou did not come to like people easily and loved them rarer still, but she would have made the effort if Ava had tried too. As it happened, Ava remained obstinate and headstrong long after it had stopped being amusing, picking up on none of the hints Lou had dropped and always ungrateful whenever she was gentle and tried to make her happy. Bitterly frustrating was the fact that Ava would never pleasure her owner unless she was forced to, even when Lou was tired and not in the mood to play games. Everything Lou wanted, she had to extract through threats and punishments, hurting when she had no desire to hurt and harming when she would have preferred to love and pet and nuzzle. For some reason, Ava never warmed to Lou and eventually began to annoy her, never showing any concern when Lou was stressed or having a particularly bad day. Once she had become annoying, her days were numbered and it was only a matter of time. It made Lou unhappy to get rid of Ava, but the tiny woman had not given her a choice.

Presently, she felt a lot like Ava during that moment, except the giant woman in this bedroom was kind and sweet and had a little pet that loved and appreciated her. She was also a heavy sleeper who wouldn’t wake for dogs or the Devil. Better lips too.

The apartment hallway was even more ominous and imposing than the bedroom; a huge, unnaturally square cavern that stretched from darkness to darkness and ascended upwards for hundreds of feet into even more darkness. It was quieter out here too; Emma apparently did not snore, or at least not loudly. Though she yearned for the familiar sounds of Alice chatting or the television (or Alice chatting over the television) to reassure her in this cold, creepy place, Lou knew that silence would help to mask her approach, and she didn’t want to spook the girl before she had a chance to pounce. As she crept into the middle of the hallway, Lou wondered whether Emma had been smart enough to lock the door – not that it would matter, of course. Lou steeled herself to deal with incoming feelings of dizziness and nausea, and then brought herself back to normal size.

Except she didn’t. Or rather, she couldn’t.

What the hell?

She tried again. Nothing.

What the fuck is going on?

The ability that Lou had always taken for granted was as effortless and instinctive as raising her arm. It was quick, required little thought or energy and needed no special concentration to perform. That was true both for the dozens of people she decided were hers over years and for when she reduced herself before Alice earlier. The fact that she was unable to turn herself back did not make any sense to her whatsoever. At first, it puzzled Lou. After several repeated and unsuccessful attempts to return to normal size, an alarming feeling crept into her spine and began to slowly spread itself around her entire body. As the door to her bedroom creaked opened in front of her, she felt a completely new sensation, something utterly alien but instantly recognisable: fear.

Slipping on an old pair of high-top converse, Emma worried about how far Lou’s vindictiveness would take her. Escape was definitely a good course of action for the immediate future, though hardly a long-term solution to ensure her safety. Absolutely no one would ever believe her about what Lou did or what she was capable of, and Emma envisaged a life of constant worry unless she could come up with a better plan. She did not enjoy the prospect of having to look over her shoulder for the rest of her days until Lou finally caught her at a vulnerable moment. That, however, was a riddle that could be pondered from inside the safety of her own apartment, with sturdy locks on the doors and a safe place to rest her tired head.

Emma spared Lou’s handiwork one last resentful look before picking up her bag full of useless and broken things from the desk. At least the keys had survived. She could make a beeline straight for home and lock herself in.

Luck already seemed to have a chosen a side when the door creaked as Emma pulled it open. She halted, listening. Aside from Alice’s snoring, the stillness remained unbroken. Emma pulled the door open just enough to squeeze her body out and closed it gently behind her. Another wait. Still nothing.

She was about to turn and walk off down the hallway when a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye drew her attention to something on the floor. Emma crouched down to get a better look at the thing, squinting in the poor light. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the blurry, moving thing sharpened into focus and slowly took on a human form.

Lou watched with disbelief as the bedroom door opened and out crept a colossal Emma. An enormous sneaker touched down softly on the floor in front of her, twice her size and pressing against the ground with orders of magnitude more pressure than her own tiny body. It was a white, inhuman, menacing thing that would have obliterated her if she had been standing slightly closer to the door. It was an unfriendly thing, just like the person they belonged to, with laces as thick as her arms that dangled down over the sides of it, past scuff marks and patches of dirt.

Lou’s mind was abuzz with questions. She barely had time to register one before another popped into her head and pushed the previous one aside. Things had gone very wrong very quickly and she was struggling to understand why.

Why isn’t she asleep? Where’s she going? Was she coming for me before I could come for her? Why can’t I change back? Why can’t I shrink her? What did she do to me? How did she do it?

And then something else came into her mind. This time it was not a question, but a statement of certainty.

I’m going to die. This is how it ends.

The bedroom door closed, startling Lou. Mercifully, she recovered the use of her legs much quicker than when Alice had approached her tiny, quivering form earlier.

I’ll hide. I’ll just go back into the room and hide. She can’t hurt me if she can’t find me.

Something thick and noxious was starting to brew in the pit of Lou’s stomach. Powered by white-hot panic, she sprinted back towards the open door that led into Alice’s room, hoping that she could perhaps dive into one of those piles of fabric before that murder-lusting harlot caught notice of her. Alice was a terrifically deep sleeper, but surely even she would notice a stranger rummaging around in her room in the dead of the night.

Lou chanced a look over her shoulder and immediately regretted it. Looming over her was the enormous face of Emma, tracking her flight with two cold brown eyes. They did not sparkle with the warmth of Alice’s eyes, but instead looked down on her with scientific coldness and gleaming with antagonistic intentions. Her brow was furrowed in pure hatred, lips fixed into a sneer. Her nose was wrinked. What did that mean? Disgust? Contempt? Nothing good, Lou knew. Emma had won, she was just drawing it out for her amusement. She had done something to Lou and was about to extract gleeful revenge from the tiny, defenceless woman in all manner of hideous forms.

How did I lose? What did I do wrong?

“Lou?”

How incredible that a single syllable could turn every drop of blood in her body into ice.

“Lou?” asked a very confused Emma.

The moment she recognised the little woman in front of her, a wave of paralytic terror befell her – but only for a moment. Something was clearly wrong here. A tiny Lou had been standing outside in the hallway when Emma left the bedroom and was now rapidly running away from her. She had apparently taken up Alice’s offer, just as Emma suspected.

This made absolutely no sense to her. Emma simply stared as the tiny figure continued to dash, inch by inch, across the floor towards Alice’s bedroom.

“Lou?” she repeated.

This time, the tiny woman stopped, fell to her knees and crumpled into a ball.

What the hell?

Emma felt as if she ought to be afraid, but instead she just felt confused. This was fast becoming awkward for her.

“Are you…okay?”

There on the floor, in the middle of the apartment hallway, part-way between a giant, crouching Emma and the sanctuary of Alice’s bedroom was a helpless, pathetic creature who had resigned herself to the unhappy end she knew awaited her. Someone had stuck a spigot into her and drained every last drop of courage and confidence she had until the thing that remained could no longer even stand. She thought of all the horrible things that would happen to her in the immediate future. She pictured broken bones and bent, useless limbs twitching feebly while Emma poked, prodded, snapped, crushed, tore and squeezed. She imagined giant fingers pressing down into her back and twisting against her spine while Emma mocked and told her that Alice was next. Her screams would never be loud enough to alert the woman next door. In fact, she could scream and scream until her tiny lungs felt as if they were about to burst and no one would hear her – no one except Emma, who would drink them in happily and then make Lou choose which of her limbs she liked the least.

“Did you slip?” asked Emma. “Do you need a little help or something?”

A short, tiny murmur erupted from the kneeling woman. Emma leaned closer to try and catch what she was saying.

“What?”

“How did you do it?” pleaded Lou, rubbing her eyes. “Please tell me that much, at least. Just tell me…before you do what you’re going to do.”

“How did I do what?” queried a nonplussed Emma.

Lou flapped her arms in frustration.

“This! How did you do this?!”

The gesticulations meant nothing to Emma. This apartment and the weirdoes in it kept finding new ways to make less and less sense to her. Something had quite clearly happened to upset Lou though – more than that, actually. She was distressed. Distraught, even. Perhaps she had argued with Alice? That seemed like the sort of thing that would drive Lou into a fit of sobbing. The front door of the apartment, the exit to this bizarre show, was sorely tempting her right now. For the second time, she went against her impulses and decided not to bolt for it. Not just yet, anyway.

“Do you need any help?” Emma repeated. “Did you have a fight with Alice?”

The tiny woman turned her body to face Emma, trying to understand the nature of the game she was playing. It didn’t really make a lot of sense to Lou, but Emma had beaten her at what she believed she was very good at, so perhaps she was better at these things too. At present, Lou lacked the will to play these sorts of rigged games that she knew always ended in favour of the interrogator. The house always wins, and for the first time, Lou was not the house. Risky as it was, she decided to lay all her cards flat on the table and hope for the best.

“Please don’t hurt me. I know I don’t have any right to ask you that. I don’t like pain. I don’t want you to hurt me. Would you accept a surrender? I give up. You beat me. I don’t know how, but you beat me. Will you be nicer to me if I’m obedient? Just tell me what you want me to do.”

Emma simply stared and blinked, then stared some more. Lou had just thrown a lot of puzzle pieces at her and she was struggling to put them into a meaningful picture. Whatever had upset Lou was evidently pretty serious; red-ringed eyes, a sniffling nose and slumped shoulders were all a testament to that, though Emma had no idea why she was apparently the cause of it or how she had “beaten” her. The tiny form of Lou continued to look up at her forlornly.

I have absolutely no idea what to do, thought Emma.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she suggested, trying to moderate her sympathy. Lou was entitled to nothing of the sort, yet Emma found it difficult to suppress her instincts that wanted to console and comfort the crying thing on the floor. Tentatively, she reached out towards Lou with an unsure hand, zipping it back immediately when the tiny woman screamed out in terror and threw her arms over her head.

Lou really was terrified of her for some reason. That sparked a thought in Emma’s mind that evolved into an unlikely theory she tried not to pay too much attention to. It was a silly thing to consider and might even be a dangerous assumption to make, given Lou’s volatile emotional state. The underlying forces of the universe did not administer punishments to the wicked and bestow rewards upon the charitable, and they especially did not use the medium of poetic justice to impose order. It was implausible, but then again, so were the events of these past two days. Perhaps it was less the work of a cosmic arbiter, however, and Lou had just messed up somehow. Nevertheless, Emma was compelled to ask.

“Are you…stuck? I mean, stuck that way?”

From between a tiny pair of hands, a frightened face looked up and met her gaze.

“Yes. How did you do it?”

“I didn’t do anything,” said Emma.

“Then what are you doing out bed?”

“I was trying to sneak out while you two slept,” she admitted, unashamedly. After a pause, she added: “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I was…” The sentence trailed off into nothing.

Emma picked up the conversation again: “This is starting to make a bit of sense. You’re stuck and that’s why you’re so upset. That doesn’t exactly explain what you’re doing out here at nearly three in the morning, but I’m starting to get it.”

The two women fell into an uncomfortable silence, studying the look on each other’s faces and trying to make sense of the senseless situation before them.

“And I’m guessing you can’t get back at me, otherwise you would have done it already,” she summarised.

Lou meekly nodded, feeling as if they were just going over the obvious. She was starting to feel a second wave of nervousness and fear that was twisting her stomach muscles in uncomfortable ways.

“I see,” breathed Emma, after a long intermission of tense, silent staring. She now found herself in a difficult position, though not quite as difficult as Lou’s. “What do you think I should do?”

“Be nice?” she suggested. It was more plea than suggestion.

“Why?”

Lou’s stomach lurched as if the roller coaster she was on had taken a sudden turn. This conversation was not heading in a direction she liked.

“Shall we talk about it together with Alice?”

Emma ignored the question.

“Why should I be nice? You weren’t nice to me.”

Try as she might, Lou could not come up with an answer that did not involve her fear of pain and suffering or the desire not to end her life prematurely. She was unable to make an appeal to logic work and something in Emma’s eyes told her that an appeal to emotion would not work either. There was no convincing lie she could think of that might help her out of this situation. The only thing she had left to offer was the truth.

“I don’t know,” said Lou. “If I were you, I wouldn’t bother. If the roles were switched, I wouldn’t be nice. I think I’d just hurt you. Afterwards, I would probably kill you. There aren’t any good reasons to be nice. I’m just scared.”

That seemed to be an honest answer, but Emma wanted more.

“Why would you do such horrible things?”

“I don’t know,” Lou admitted. “Because I can, I guess, and because it makes me feel better. You took all of Alice’s attention away from me. I don’t have any other friends. You just made me so angry.”

“I see,” said Emma, drawing herself back up to full height.

Lou’s eyes made the journey from the tips of dirty, white sneakers resting before her, up along a pair of faded blue jeans towards the lip of a black t-shirt shielded behind a tan, leather jacket, past button after button until she reached a bescarfed neck and finally Emma’s face. Despite her stern expression, Lou thought she looked pretty. Not as pretty as Alice, nor even as pretty as Ava, but still pretty.

As one of those huge sneakers began to raise itself into the air, a sudden thought popped into Lou’s head.

Yes, I probably deserve this.

The sole of Emma’s shoe was dirty and the rubber grips had worn down. She had taken a lot of steps, but this was likely her first time stepping on a human being. Well, a tiny human being, definitely. Lou considered it to be a bit of a waste – she thought she would have made a good, obedient pet. At the very least, Emma could have made her scream and cry and beg, getting whatever revenge she desired. She could have done whatever she wanted, but she was apparently too kind to draw out Lou’s suffering and planned to end it quickly. She really was a nice person. Lou was starting to think she had misjudged her slightly.

When Emma’s foot reached its zenith and began to descend again, Lou had another, contradictory thought.

No, I deserve worse.