The job really was as simple as Sarah had said it would be. I talked a big game, but in the end I found some wet wipes and cleaned up the… problem. I’m not going to say I’m proud of it, but in the end what could I do? The value of the life of an Afflicted around here was clearly null. It wasn’t really a big surprise even – there were plenty of stories in the news about people ‘accidentally’ killing Afflicted and getting nothing but a small fine or a warning. I wondered for a moment if maybe that was a sign of the general direction of society. We really were creating an underclass based on size. That sounded insane to even talk about considering the world that I had grown up in. Well, mostly. I had been in High School when the Pandemic happened. Well, this pandemic. There was the other one too but I’d rather not talk about that. This one was way, way harder to deny after all – half the population shrinking down to being smaller than most children’s toys? No cure, no recovery? It was ridiculous.

I remember that we tried to just… carry on. Where they could, they just built new smaller scale rooms onto schools. Where they couldn’t find Teachers of the right size, they just put tiny desks on tables at the front. That was a real trip. My best friend, Jackie, she caught it. I didn’t see her for weeks after she told me about the diagnosis, crying on the phone. I mean, let’s be honest. If you’re a half inch tall you don’t use a cell phone. That’s rough. Like most folks back then she got quarantined with a few other Afflicted until they found out that the disease wasn’t actually transmissible human to human. Science never did figure out the transmission vector, but fortunately we did at least get vaccinations for it. Not that it did any good for those who had already shrunk.

She told me a bit about that whole thing, actually. Getting taken to a Public Health facility. About how her and a few other unfortunates got locked in a room as she shrank. Apparently, some Doctor lady came in to check their vitals every once in a while wearing a mask, but that was about all of the human interaction anyone got in there. Shrinking away, losing yourself… Sounded like a fucking nightmare to me to be honest. The part she told me was scariest was when she had her final big decline – from about a foot to an inch. They say that one comes fast. Apparently for her and the others in the room it was fast enough that they couldn’t get back up onto the beds, which sounds like a stupid fucking design for a SHRINK quarantine room. So she just slept on the floor. Losing everything really takes it out of you, so you sleep a lot. Apparently. Wouldn’t know and thank fuck for that, sorry Jackie. Let’s be honest here, I love ya wherever you are but if it has to be you or me, I’d rather you be the one the size of my big toe. Shit, got distracted. Anyways, apparently she was sleeping on the floor and that Doctor lady came in. Seemed like the protocol was these kind of real thick socks, trying to cushion force in case of accidents like this. Kind of like a Tabi sock you’d see in an anime, right? But like, if you’re an inch tall and this lady has size 10s – that’s basically a god damn building in motion. A building with a few hundred tons of weight that can move faster than anything you ever imagined. And those Doctors are overworked as hell, so they’re not looking out too stringently.

So we’ve got a perfect recipe for disaster here. A few little Afflicted, freshly dwindled, scattered around on the floor. A big thick ass sock that makes it impossible to feel what you’re walking on. An overworked gal that’s probably checking a few hundred if not thousand afflicted a day since she’s either got natural immunity or the first round of Vax. A socked foot that is supposed to be cushioned, but… Jamie told me that she heard the footsteps and managed to wake up as she stomped on in, but some of the others weren’t so lucky. Crunch. Crunch. Wham! Is how she described it at least. Two poor bastards, or bitches, or nonbinary or who knows – gender is really pretty irrelevant when you’re a red stain on the bottom of someone’s foot – flattened in an instant. And Jackie… Well, I wouldn’t call her lucky or anything, but I guess whoever came up with the Tabi sock idea was at least not entirely stupid. She apparently ended up in that little niche between the toes and the ball of the foot, and the thick cushion meant that she only had a couple broken bones instead of turning into a grease smear.

I kind of wonder what happened to that Doctor after that. She had to notice what she’d done. I mean, she was missing two patients and clearly found Jackie. But I’ve never heard of a Doctor with Public Health getting fired or charged with murder. So maybe… we were already splitting up the rulebook into two classes even back then? But flashback in a flashback aside, when Jamie did come back to school it was… different. The Afflicted got their own special desk at the front of the room, right in front of the teacher. They didn’t really interact much with the rest of us, although they did need a student volunteer to help them off the desk if the Teacher wasn’t available. They had miniature scooters provided by the Government back then too… until they figured out that was a terrible idea. RIP Terrence, you were pretty cute, for a guy, but even a shrunken teenager is still a teenager, and the first person I’d ever seen killed considering he managed to rig a ramp to launch himself up into Katie Bullock’s shoe after she had taken it off. I suppose I technically didn’t see him die, but I did see her slide the shoe back on. He got up close and personal with the Prom Queen at least? Dreams do come true.

 In the end, the government settled on paying tenders to carry the smaller students around after so many were doing stupid things on those scooters as a temporary measure until Afflicted scale facilities were fully finished and staffed. But aside from a few conversations, I more or less lost track of Jamie and most of my other Afflicted friends. I mean, it was just plain hard to keep eyes on them after all. In all kinds of ways.

Anyways, digression aside, the job. Once I cleaned up my mess I waited for my queue in the back room. That was Reina coming out of her private room, which eventually she did. Yeah, this was the woman I’d expected. She was dressed for the show of course – she’d set her hair and makeup, and her outfit was a Suit that fit her… decently. Blue, with a red undershirt and white tie because of course she has to keep it thematic. She looked at me, nodded and gave me a wink that made my blood run cold. The little flash of teeth as she did it made me remember that poor man from earlier. Dangled before those lips, tossed inside and chewed… a death worthy of nightmares to be perfectly honest. But here I was without much room to talk. I had just accidentally crushed someone under my big fat ass.

She went out to sit behind her desk on the set, and I got to work. Making coffee. I poured enough dubious health supplements into the cup after it was done that I was honestly surprised that a human being could survive them and then looked at the piece de resistance. The jar of Afflicted. I took a deep breath as I reached for it. It felt… strange. I’d held Afflicted plenty of times, that was no big deal. It was just a fact of life that these days there were humans not much bigger than my close cut fingernails. But to have a group of them, naked and screaming in a jar was a trip. There were a pair of chopsticks velcro’d to the side of the jar with a pretty obvious purpose. I swallowed hard as I held it, my hand perhaps shaking a little. Yes, I know I said I didn’t have much room to talk. That I had just sat on someone. But this… I looked from the jar in my hand, my fingers wrapped around it despite that there were several people inside of it. They were screaming, pleading. Desperate. Hoping for escape. But what could I offer them? They’d find out if suddenly the Afflicted jar here was empty. I couldn’t lose this gig. This was my break in. I needed it. I don’t want to be poor, damn it!

“Stella! Where’s that coffee? Do you want to be fired on Day 1?” Sarah’s voice echoed in from the studio. My back went straight and my hand whipped the lid off. I took the chopsticks in hand. I’m pretty good with them, actually. I love Sushi. Turned out it was good training because I managed to snag a man between the sticks, lifting him up. He screamed and pleaded even as I lifted him up and I winced a bit, but… Well, sorry little dude. It’s Me or You, and I’m going to pick me.

I dropped him in the freshly brewed coffee and remembered something terrible. Freshly brewed coffee is HOT. Really hot. Boiling, basically. No shit, right? Well, I had forgotten it for a moment. And do you know what boiling water does to someone a half inch tall? The screech the man made as he was very thoroughly cooked alive made me stagger back and damn near drop that jar, which would have been exactly what I needed at that moment – a bunch of broken glass everywhere. And anyways, that’s how I got my second bodycount. Yeah, I’m fucked. That was the thought in my head. I’ve been on this job for all of two hours and I’ve murdered two people. This was not a very promising start.

“Stella! Coffee!” Sarah roared from the other room and I yelped, grabbing the cup. The little body had sunk beneath now, blissfully out of sight and out of mind. I scurried out onto the set and placed the coffee cup before Reina who was getting some last minute makeup done while Sarah read her basic news points. She nodded to me again and lifted the cup, taking a sip. I could swear I saw her chew a little as a wicked little smile came across her face.

“Three… Two… One…” Came the countdown a few moments later. Standing to the side, I watched as Reina came alive before the cameras after the opening graphics of assorted bald eagles and such played.

“Goooooood Evening Patriots! Welcome to the one show on air for God Fearing, Flag Waving, Freedom Loving Normal People BY God Fearing, Flag Waving, Freedom Loving Normal People! Waging a war on Lies and the Government Conspiracies that want nothing more than to grind YOU underfoot! Welcome to… Reina James and the Big Picture.”