1:  Worm

Shelby watched the first rays of dawn glisten on the mirrored surface of the lake as she inhaled deeply. There had been a booming, flashing, house-rattling thunderstorm last night, but now the forest behind her was still and damp, just waking up. Hoping she would be alone out here this early, she still scanned up and down the lakeshore making certain. Satisfied with her solitude, she made her butt at home on a boulder at the top of the beach. The secluded patch of sand that Shelby called her “tiny beach” was shadowed by trees and enclosed on her left by a steep bluff.  Bird and animal tracks wandered through the wet sand and scattered rocks. Here she could pretend this was her world and hers alone for a moment.

She had brought with her only a blue bag containing essentials and a cheap coffee thermos made of clear plastic. The essentials were a few silver keys on a ring, a sadly empty wallet, an outdated phone, a fancy ballpoint pen, an extra tampon, her favorite wintergreen gum, a red Bic lighter, a tiny glass pipe, and a 1 gram weed baggie just with a single bud. She fixed up her usual wake and bake. Another chaotic day at the café awaited her. They were increasingly busy these days and chronically understaffed. The owner asked her to work all the time and cover extra shifts on weekends. Shelby was sick of it; she longed to quit and travel the world but could not afford it anytime soon.

She lit the weed and inhaled, the relaxing sensation returning as her immediate surroundings came back into focus. Even when life seemed hopeless, watching and hearing the water lapping over the shore always calmed her.

And that was when she saw it first. While she absentmindedly gazed across the field of wave-worn stones, something tiny and pink just barely caught her eye. As she took another hit and blew the smoke away a subconscious alarm was slowly going off in her head. The ‘thing’ was probably just a scrap of litter left by those kids who sometimes partied out here at night. Shelby scanned the beach again slowly and suddenly her sky-blue eyes locked onto a tiny spot of color against the gray shadowed rocks.

There: about ten feet away, was a pale and wormlike thing maybe an inch long, laying frozen on an old leaf. Her eyes weren’t perfect, so she squinted and fixated on the shape, and it materialized into sharper detail. The alarm in her head grew louder. She wasn’t sure anymore if it was a worm. It didn’t look like any sort of bug she had ever seen before. It looked more like a person. It was a man?

She almost laughed out loud with relief. It’s just some toy! She thought. The thing was like a mini action figure or maybe a piece from a game, laying on its back with arms out as if dead to the world. Shelby finished smoking while staring out towards the lake. From where she sat, the thing appeared to be quite accurately detailed in anatomy… and it was moving in the wind in a strange way that kept drawing her attention back.   

Curiosity overwhelmed her and she rose suddenly not even bothering to brush the sand off her pale legs, and in a few steps, she was standing over the object. She lowered into a squat, examining the mysterious and lifelike toy. The brain alarm grew louder again as she saw even more details. The inch-long male figure appeared to have realistic brown hair and stubble, chest hair, pubic hair even, and was completely naked. She marveled at the attention to detail. The tiny hands and feet were exactly right. Everything perfectly in proportion to a normal man but so adorably small. As fine as it was, out here on the beach it would be blown away in no time. It had probably been left here by the storm, she guessed. She decided to pick it up, curious to see how well the back side was crafted.

Her heart hammered just as her finger touched the toy and she instantly knew it was not just a solid piece of plastic. As her fingers began pinching it so lightly it squirmed sideways falling between her fingertips. Her hand yanked back involuntarily as a yelp escaped her throat. Shelby was so stunned it took her five full seconds to notice the thing was running away! He was making surprisingly quick pace away from her – back up towards the woods at the top of the beach. She tried to comprehend what she was seeing. It wasn’t a bug nor a toy; but she wanted to know what it was.

Shelby sprinted back to her bag, grabbing her thermos, ripping off the lid and dumping a full hot coffee into the sand. She ran back to the spot where she last saw it. Looking frantically around the maze of beach debris, she saw only sand and rocks. Was he hiding or had she just hallucinated the whole thing?

She picked her way carefully in the direction the “toy” had run off. Her flip-flops slid on the wet rocks and suddenly she noticed a line of tiny dots leading towards a rugged boulder five feet to her right. Shelby crouched again and the faint depressions did look enough like human footprints, but they were so small, it was only a hunch. Still clutching the warm thermos in one hand she got down and peered into the dark crevice under the boulder.

Not expecting to see anything, she was again uncomfortably startled when the tiny man came running straight out at her face! She screamed again involuntarily but her blue eyes stayed fixed on the running creature. He dashed to her left; covering about 2 feet of distance so far in the few seconds she was frozen in astonishment. Shelby suddenly lunged forward and scooped the thermos into the sand, coming under him from behind. She quickly righted the thermos causing the tiny man and a clump of wet sand to plop! down to the bottom.

She looked inside and didn’t see it, looked around the ground then back through the sides of the clear plastic thermos. It was buried in the sand! Carefully Shelby tipped the thermos sideways, but the wet sand was well packed and didn’t budge. So tiny! She thought, instinctually becoming terrified of ‘hurting’ the toy with even the slightest pressure. She again crouched down so it wouldn’t fall so far, and with a little extra force she emptied the thermos onto the ground. She gingerly moved the sand aside with two fingers until the toy’s face and body emerged. It was either unconscious again, dead, or pretending. Then she saw the chest moving, it was breathing. Breathing?

Shelby put a small handful of sand into the thermos to cushion the bottom, then lowered him gently down into the cup, dropping him the last 2 inches onto the sand. She stood up, triumphantly raising the thermos up to her eye level to get a good look finally at whatever she had caught.

She possessed a sweet, charismatic face with a pointy nose, sculpted chin and curious blue eyes framed by waves of chestnut hair, and she held the thermos close to her visage while rotating it to examine her catch from all sides.  

Through the plastic, now dirty with grains of sand, she observed the tiny toy, the naked man that had run away from her, and then had charged at her. Now trapped, he looked stunned and sat holding his head in the sign of someone whose head is in serious pain. What the hell is this? She thought.

“Uh… hello?” She said in a normal voice. He heard it, looked up and they made eye contact.

 In that instant Shelby’s world changed. She had captured a tiny man! The adrenaline was leaving her system now that everything was under control, but a new raw excitement was flowing into her at the same time. She couldn’t help but smile. She studied his face and decided he was pretty handsome, he looked sort of familiar, but she didn’t think she knew… him?

“Who are you?” She blurted out to the thermos in a loud interrogative manner. Toning it down she repeated; “Who are you? What’s your name?”

She could barely see his lips moving, much less hear a reply. The tiny man stared at her looking left and right, over and over. She realized he must be looking from her left eye over to her right eye and back, unable to look her in both at once from this close distance. This made Shelby feel incredibly powerful and wise. She moved the cup around and put her ear to the opening, listening for an answer to her questions. She could hear nothing but the sounds of the waves, the birds and the wind now picking up as the sun rose.

 Shelby looked straight down into the cup, and he looked back up at her as she watched one hand feebly moving to cover his crotch. It’s embarrassed about being naked? She squinted up and around the beach, making sure she was still alone. Normally she would be heading back down the trail to her mom’s house about this time and getting ready for work. Shelby sighed and trudged back to her belongings cradling the thermos with both hands.

As she walked, she thought it was odd that her brain had so quickly accepted the fact that tiny people, or at least one tiny person, existed for real. Seeing them in movies and cartoons must have softened the mental shock of making a discovery that defied her understanding of physics. A nagging, paranoid part of her was suspicious that the tiny thing must be robotic, a high-tech spying device maybe. Another dwindling part suspected the events had all been a dream, or that she had slipped on a wet rock and was in a coma somewhere. Is any of this real? Does it even matter?

Shelby peeked down into the cup at the tiny, sprawled out naked man. The thing clearly was fragile and needed help. How long had it been laying on the rock? The storm last night had been ferocious. How had he survived? She would get the answers after work. Calling out would just be more trouble than it was worth, she decided.

She emerged from the trail at the dead end of her street and proceeded straight to her car, a faded blue 2-door little SUV that was waiting in the driveway. Shelby couldn’t let her mom see the sand filled thermos with the little dude inside, so she left him in the center cupholder, and went inside to get changed.

As she suspected, her mother Selene was present in the kitchen when she walked in. Shelby acted as casual as possible, saying “Good morning” but she generally avoided her mother like one avoids an angry yellowjacket. She took a quick shower and slid into a worn-out pair of black pants and the uniform white shirt with the little green collar and café’s logo. She had worked there so long the uniform was like a second skin that she had outgrown long ago but couldn’t shed. She fixed her makeup and managed to sneak back out while Selene was distracted.

It was already becoming an oppressively sunny summer day as Shelby skipped back out to her car eager to check on her little discovery. Inside the car it was suffocatingly hot already, and it was only a quarter to ten. She plopped down into the stained gray driver seat and checked on the cup. Her guy looked to be breathing heavy and looking up, his face shiny with specks of sweat. He was overheated! Shelby tipped the warm thermos sideways gently until he fell against the side of it, then kept tipping but he was stuck to the plastic. She had tipped the thermos almost upside down when gravity finally pulled him down and he fell into her cupped palm with a tiny, delicate smack. She could instantly feel that his skin was burning, so she lifted her cupped hand up to her lips and blew gently across him while she stalled to think of a better idea.

He needed water, so she bit the bullet and climbed out of the car, gently placing the tiny man down on the middle of the driver’s seat. He seemed far too distressed to mount an escape right now, but she closed the car door, trapping him anyway and darted back into the kitchen. Her mother was eating breakfast at the round kitchen table and seemed startled at Shelby’s hasty return.

“Where are you going with that glass of water, Shelby?” Selene asked as her daughter tried to depart without explanation. The lie came effortlessly.

“Um, there’s a stray cat out here… he looks super thirsty. I was gonna give him this!” Shelby tried to smile all sweet and innocently. Her mother loved cats so she hoped this answer would mollify Selene, but it backfired.

“Ooh let me see! Does he look ok?” Now she was too concerned. Selene started to get up and was coming over to the door that her daughter was halfway out of. Shelby ducked outside and pretended to look around.

“He’s gone, Mom. I don’t see him. Oh well. Maybe you can leave some water out? I gotta go”

“Aww hope he’s ok, poor guy. OK, here, I’ll take the cup back.”

She waited, holding out her hand. Shelby was furious inside that her mom was so thoroughly thwarting her plan like this. Then she thought of an idea. She lifted the cup to her mouth to take a big gulp but didn’t swallow. Quickly she handed the cup off to Selene and turned away, hiding her cheeks bulging with liquid. Shelby scooted back to the car and hopped in, shut the door, and turned the ignition on in one motion. She looked up to see her mom waving. So annoyingly nice sometimes, was Selene, other times a bit crazy. She waved and tried to smile back but her mouth was still full of water. Her mom went inside shaking her head. She had to spit out this water! Shelby looked over into the cup- it was empty.

Oh shit! She spurted some water as her rear flew up off the seat like she had been shocked. She felt around underneath her ass searching for the little guy. Her fingers located him and gingerly lifted him off the seat. He was stuck between her thighs and was mercifully not pressed too badly when she sat down. A couple inches farther back and she might be cleaning his remains off her seat right now.

Shelby examined him closely for new injuries as the tiny guy twisted limply in her palm. It’s so cute! And helpless as a baby… Shelby thought as he feebly tried to shield himself from her fingers and her piercing gaze. She parted her lips slightly so that a couple drops of water from her mouth fell into her palm. He seemed confused as the warm water and saliva mixture dropped onto him, until he was sitting a small puddle of watery spit trapped in the center of Shelby’s cupped palm.

“Hey little guy… are you hot? Are you thirsty? You can drink!” Shelby said in a quiet voice so not to startle him. Now he was looking all around at her giant fingers behind him, to her face in front of him, and around the car. It must be all so confusing for him! Does he even know where he is? She thought with subdued amusement.

“C’mon, drink!” She insisted, patience gone. She was trying to help him!

The tiny man in her palm got on all fours and lowered his head into the in the clear, viscous puddle she held. Shelby watched him submerge his tiny face, wipe it, and proceed to cup a handful of the mouth water and swallow it back. She was filled with the thrill of success and smiled.

“How was that? Feel better, dude?” He was busy drinking directly out of the pool now with his face in it. Shelby pondered what to do with the little guy during work. Leaving him in her car was now out of the question. In the last half-hour he had already almost died twice! Once from overheating and then from her simple forgetfulness.

The reality that she possibly could have killed him instantly just by sitting on him brought the situation back into cold focus. This man needed medical attention and she was acting like she had just got a new pet! She had to admit it was highly unlikely that he had been changed into his current shrunken state on his own free will, judging by how defenseless he was. But who had done it? Should she call the police? Had a crime been committed here? She didn’t love or hate the local PD in general but the idea of turning over HER discovery to someone like that made her queasy. Shelby got the same sick feeling when she thought about taking him to a hospital. Dropping him off with strangers. But wasn’t that the rational thing to do, seek professional help? Her old best friend, Carla, was a possibility, but they hadn’t talked in weeks at this point. Carla was smart but always focused on work. Shelby groaned loudly in frustration.

She looked back down and saw him staring back up at her, in apparent fear probably from the sudden angry noise she’d just produced. She softened again and flashed her pearly whites.

“It’s ok, friend!” Shelby said, noticing the man relax. Her smile had that effect. Then “I wish I knew your name!” She sighed, not waiting for an answer, and letting her hand fall into her lap as the remaining water ran off. The man slid and bounced but stayed protected by her fingers cupped loosely behind him. It tickled as he readjusted his grip on the folds of the skin of her hand. He was so cute. She suddenly wished he could just be hers to keep. Finder’s keeper’s…? She pushed that idea away knowing it was wrong. Who would she cause to weep? She would do the right thing and help him as soon as she could!

The little dude wasn’t struggling or trying to escape her hand. Shelby assumed he had accepted her stewardship for now. But where to keep him safe during her shift? Scouring the cluttered interior of her car she spotted a black sunglasses case that would fit in her purse. She could check on him discreetly.  Perfect! She reached for it, pressuring him with her fingertips gently as she twisted around into the back seat. Then she unveiled the open case to its future occupant.

“Listen, OK? I will keep you safe- in here.” Shelby giggled at the absurdity of it all. “I’m going to put you in here, OK? Just for a little bit.” It would be more like nine hours, at least. “I’m sorry!”

He looked scared as she tipped him off her hand into the case. He fell onto the pink felt lining and she hoped he would be comfortable. She lifted it to her eyes just to make sure there wasn’t an arm sticking out and she snapped the lid closed. No way this weak worm can open this by himself! The case went carefully into her purse, a turquoise bag patterned with irises that sat in the passenger’s seat. She heaved a sigh of exhaustion but there was no time to rest. She was already going to be a few minutes late. She reached for the radio knob then remembered it had stopped working three months ago.