It was Kevin and Helen.  Or, at least, Anna thought it was them; it was their faces, at least.  The difference here was that each one appeared to be just shy of four inches in height.  They were standing on the table, jumping up and down, waving their arms, and screaming for help.

                “ANNA!” yelled out Helen, gasping for breath; clearly, she had been in a state of emotional wreckage.  “Thank goodness you’ve come!  We thought…”

                “What’s going ON here?” cried Anna, becoming light-headed at the visage of the pair of animated doll people that stood before her, her logical self refusing to acknowledge the sight before her..  “This… this can’t be happening, it’s not possible…”

                “Anna!” called out Kevin, his yell coming off as relatively soft because of his size.  “We don’t know what’s happened.  One minute, we were just having a glass of WINE!” he called out, indicating toward a tall glass of red wine still in the glass on the table, which of course towered over him.  “And the next thing we knew, the… the whole HOUSE was getting bigger, and… well, we ended up on the table.”

                “Oh… my… God…” whispered Alison, finally catching them in her viewpoint, her jaw dropped all the way down, her arms slumped at her sides.  Helen, who was already very on edge from the excitement, began to weep onto Kevin’s shoulder.

                “Anna, we need you to call the hospital, or… or…” stuttered Kevin, but Anna wasn’t even over the sight of them yet, her jaw hanging just as openly as her daughter’s, and Kevin noticed this.  “Well, what are you STARING at?” he scoffed.  “Call!  Get on the phone, now!  Hurry!”

                “R-R-Right…” babbled Anna, refusing to take her eyes off the incredible sight before her.  She backed away slowly, her eyes still trained on them, while Alison continued standing by the table.  Anna’s hand struggled at the phone, trying to grab at it, but she just couldn’t tear her eyes away from the table, her pupils still bugged out.  Her conscious mind simply refused to process the sight before her.  She batted her eyes a few times, hoping this Alice-in-Wonderland-esque moment would pass, but it didn’t.  Her own breathing began to quicken slightly.

                “ANNA!” bellowed Kevin as loudly as he could, although it didn’t come off as much.  “The CALL!”

                “S-Sure, sure,” muttered Anna, picking up the phone in her shaking hand.  She tried to dial, but her mind was swirling so deeply in the madness and non-reality of what was happening that she had to keep looking up.  She was sure it was a dream.

                Alison placed a hand on the table, resting against it, which caused Kevin and Helen to take a few steps back in slight disdain; Alison quickly drew her hand back, not having thought about it.  “Sorry…” she whispered, although her aunt and uncle only shook their heads and continued watching Anna intently.  As Anna placed the phone to her ear, though, she heard no dial tone; her eyes shifted to the storm outside, which had turned to thunder and lightning off in the far distance.

                “T-There’s no dial tone, Kevin, there’s…”

                “What do you MEAN there’s no dial tone?  Our phones don’t just cut off in the middle of a storm,” retorted Helen.

                “It… it might be…” struggled Anna.  Even when Kevin and Helen were the size of action figures, she still couldn’t sum up the courage to speak straightly with them.  “It might be somewhere far off, where the phone lines run to, I… I’m not sure w-where yours run…” she sputtered, placing the phone back on the wall.  Alison felt bad to see her mom struggling to much, so she turned and looked down at her tiny aunt and uncle on the table and spoke softly.

                “Uncle Kevin?  Do you have a cell phone somewhere?” she asked as kindly as she could.

                “Yes, but… I’d rather you not handle it, if that’s all right,” he said with the slightest of sneers.

                “But, I mean, if you could just tell me where it is, I could bring it to you, if you’d like, and…”

                “Forget about it, you’re not touching my phone,” he answered a bit more gruffly.  “All of my work information is in there.”

                “K-Kevin…” stuttered Anna, still feeling nervous and bewildered by the complete shattering of the realm of possibility that was simultaneously taking place.  “She won’t hurt your phone, and this is, after all, kind of an emergency.”  Kevin groaned, rolled his eyes, and finally looked back up at Alison.

                “In my bedroom, the bedside table drawer.  And don’t touch anything else in it!” he yelled after her as she dashed back to the hallway to go upstairs and retrieve it, her mouth still hanging slightly open.

                “H-Helen?” asked Anna.

                “What?”

                “Do you remember at all what you might have been doing in here?  Maybe something you ate, or…”

                “Anna, just try to use some common sense: I mean, look at us.  We’re still, pretty fortunately, wearing clothes.  It must have been some outside force.”

                Anna looked nervously around the room, twiddling her thumbs.  “Listen… if there’s something dangerous that’s caused you to… to… become… s-smaller…” she choked the words out, the very idea sounding off-the-wall insane to her as she spoke it, her skin growing more clammy.  “…then maybe Alison and I should get outside, just for now, until the police or someone can…”

                “You are NOT leaving us!” screeched Helen.  “We need your HELP, and what are you going to do?  Just walk away?”

                “No!  No, no, no… we would just go outside to make the call.  Just let me get Alison, and…”

                “Anna, wait!” called Kevin, a bit more gently.  Despite her nervousness about the threat of shrinking as well, Anna turned to look at her sister-in-law’s husband.

                “What is it, Kevin?”

                “It’s Ashley!  Oh God, we’re not even sure… I mean, we’re not even sure what’s happened to her, if she’s all right.  This happened while she was in the other room, making a lot of noise, and I don’t HEAR her anymore.  I think she may have… may have…”

                “She might be smaller t-too?” gasped Anna.  “Which direction is she?”

                “Her room is top of the stairs, first on the left,” answered Kevin.  “Her boyfriend was up there, too, with her.”

                “I’ll go and find them.  Just… stay here…” mumbled Anna, realizing how redundant a request it was.  She entered the hallway and began bounding up the stairs, and, reaching the top, twisted the handle on the first door to the left.  She entered a room almost purely of pink, with a large queen-sized bed with a canopy in the middle, a sizeable HDTV near the window, a laptop set up on a desk, and a leather couch.  Anna, again quite impressed and miffed at the same time at this room of the house, strode forward, looking around the room.  “Ashley?” she whispered, turning around in all directions, searching for any sign of her.  “It’s… it’s me, your Aunt Anna.  If you’re in here somewhere, I need you to speak up, so I can find you; your parents are downstairs, and they’re all right, but they want to see you!”

                After another minute of this soft calling, Anna heard a barely audible yell, coming from down near the floor.  She instantly dropped onto her hands and knees, crawling forward, to find the source.  After scanning the carpeted horizon for a few moments, Anna spotted them: Ashley, her silvery-blond hair bounced over her shoulders, her torso clad in a pink top so tight it left nothing to the imagination and exposed her navel, stepped out from under the bed.  Behind her followed a blonde guy in a gray t-shirt and jeans.

                “Anna!” called out Ashley, waving her arms.  “We’re here!”  Anna quickly darted forward, stopping roughly a foot away from her tiny niece, and brushed a thick curly lock out of her own eyes that had fallen into place.  She couldn’t help but let her jaw drop again.

                “There you are…” she said softly, knowing her voice had to be very loud to a person so small, so she quickly lowered it to a whisper.  If Ashley had been waiting in here for help, Anna knew that she had to be the young woman’s first experience seeing a person the size of an office building walk in.  “I’m so glad you’re all right, Ashley.”

                “What about Mom and Daddy?”

                “They’re fine, they’re fine, they’re downstairs on the kitchen table.”

                “What the hell HAPPENED?” screeched Ashley.  “Tony and I were just in here together, and we were… umm, well, what I mean is, we were just hanging out together, and suddenly, for no reason…”

                “You became smaller, right?”

                “Yeah.  What happened?”

                “I don’t know, Ashley, but I’d be glad to take you downstairs to see your mom and dad, I know they want to know you’re safe.”

                “How?” asked Ashley, raising an eyebrow in disgust.

                “I… I guess I could carry you, you don’t look like you weigh very much.”

                The tiny blonde teen raised her chin up in the air regally.  “Well, you’re right, I don’t.  I never do.  But you’re NOT carrying me!”

                “Hey, wait a minute, babe…” drawled Tony, stepping forward.  “I know that this shit is kinda whacked out, but…” he said, realizing what he had just said in the presence of an adult.  “…but we really oughta just go for it and find some help.”

                “I agree,” nodded Anna.  Slowly, she extended a large hand, palm up, uncurling her fingers.  She let it come to rest right in front of Ashley, who leapt back.

                “No way!”

                “Hey, c’mon, Ashley, it’ll be all good… look,” he said, taking the first leap.  He placed a foot on Anna’s fingers and climbed on, walking into the center of her palm.  Anna couldn’t help but get an odd chill down her spine from the feeling of tiny, rubber-shoe clad feet walking across her palm flesh.  He held out his hand to his girlfriend.  “Let’s get out of this whole thing, all right?”

                “I… I guess so…” whimpered Ashley, cautiously stepping forward.  She took Tony’s hand, as she stepped onto the uneven, soft surface of Anna’s hand that made up her floor.  “Walk REALLY slowly!” she barked, practically ordering her aunt, who nodded.

                “Of course I will.  I won’t let you fall.  Now, hold on tight to each other…” said Anna, pushing off from the ground and standing up, keeping her palm perfectly level.  For a moment, she subconsciously marveled at the amazement before her, right in the palm of her hand: two human beings, one of whom she’d known since she was a baby, standing up the size of an average cell phone.  Shaking her hair around to get this odd image out of her mind, she began to walk very slowly, carrying her niece and the boyfriend downstairs.  Thunder cracked across the sky, louder than before; the storm was getting worse.  As she re-entered the room, she saw that Alison was already standing in front of the table, and Kevin seemed to be in a foul mood.  His cell phone sat opened on the table in front of him.

                “I TOLD you, I didn’t touch ANYTHING!  I didn’t even open it!” cried out Alison, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation.

                “Look, all I know is, I have… no… SIGNAL… once again…” grumbled Kevin, leaning over his phone and smashing in a few more key strokes with his tiny fists.  “You must have done something to it.”

                “No, I didn’t do ANYTHING!” protested Alison desperately, starting to sound upset.  “Why would I do something to it?”

                “Oh, you expect me to believe that act, after some of those cute little “pranks” you used to pull at all the family reunions?” he said, narrowing his eyes.  Alison gulped, knowing full well that Ashley had always been responsible for every bit of trouble-making, and had used the meek Alison as her scapegoat for everything.  There was no point in further arguing this idea, either, since Kevin’s mind was firmly locked to the idea that his daughter Ashley was practically the female incarnation of Jesus.

                “What’s going on here, you two?” asked Anna, trying to sound as concerned as she could, although her true feeling of sternness was showing through a bit for the treatment her honest daughter was being shown.  She lowered her palmed hand to the table, where Ashley jumped off and began madly hugging the still-weeping Helen, crying herself at that point.  Tony calmly stepped off, taking in all the insanity in relative stride.  “There a problem?”

                “I’ll say there’s a problem; I’ve got no signal on my cell phone either!”

                “It’s a storm, Kevin, there might be…”

                “This company doesn’t GO out!” he bellowed.  “It doesn’t work like that!”

                “Look, I’m sorry, Kevin, but that’s the way it is.  Alison isn’t lying, I know it.”

                “Oh, big whoop,” he mumbled.  “Big god-damned deal…”

                “KEVIN!” gasped Helen in disgust at his language.

                “What could Alison possibly gain from messing up the signal somehow on your phone?” asked Anna, trying to stay calm and rational; however, the anger she already had for Kevin was only being built up by his abrasive treatment during these minutes where she was actually trying to help the man and woman who had nearly destroyed her own livelihood.  Anna had always found this to be one of the greatest pitfalls of her personality: she helped far too much, even when the recipient didn’t deserve it, and people often took advantage of this once they found out.”

                “Oh, I don’t know…” said Kevin sarcastically.  “Maybe… she’s trying to get some of my work information off of there?  Use IT, maybe?”

                “And why would she do that?” gasped Anna, her irritation fully hearable by this point.

                “Don’t play dumb with ME, Anna; I know why the two of you are here: to grovel for more money from me, right?”

                At this, Anna felt a tear roll down her cheek, setting aside the impossible and mind-blowing predicament of her extended family’s shrinking just for a moment, instead settling again on the emotional pain she was in.  “W-We need the money, Kevin, we need it so badly… after Tom’s passing, we…”

                “Wouldn’t have happened if you’d let him get a better car…” mumbled Helen, drying her tears, still hugging her daughter.  Anna was taken aback, at a loss for words, at this terrible accusation by her sister-in-law, but she continued.

                “O-Our house is going to b-be foreclosed in less than two months.  Our… our savings, they just won’t carry us for very long, not long enough for me to get a job.  Besides, we… we had a fund saved up for Alison to go to college, she… she won’t be able to if we don’t get…”

                “I believe I made myself pretty clear before,” snarled Kevin.

                “We don’t want charity.  W-We just want what was in Tom’s fund, what YOU took from it, what’s RIGHTFULLY ours!” cried Anna, her voice rising, flushing with anger.

                “NO!” bellowed Kevin passionately.  “You are not getting a single PENNY of MY money, and THAT’S that!  If you want a place to live, then go find a soup kitchen.  I bet you’ve got friends in places like that, anyway, right?” he asked snidely, clearly referring to Anna’s less fortunate past.  Tears were flowing down Anna’s face now, and she had to wipe them away as she cleared her clogged throat.  Alison, as well, had a tear on her cheek, and she hugged herself tightly to her mother, refusing to look upon her cruel aunt and uncle.

                “We’re your family, Aunt Helen,” sniffled Alison, hoping to make an appeal to her father’s sister.

                “YOU two…” breathed Helen with disgust.  “Were NEVER part of OUR family.”

                At these words, something inside Anna’s mind snapped.  All the intense pain of losing her beloved, sweet, caring husband in such a blindingly terrible and brief moment, only to have her entire future dangling in the balance simply because Kevin wanted his stocks to go up, Helen wanted a new kitchen, and Ashley wanted a brand new car, rushed through her brain.  The unbelievable unfairness of everything involved in the situation was stinging to her, and she realized that no matter how thickly she laid on the kindness, or how many pleas she made, or how many desperate appeals she made through the use of her daughter, it wouldn’t be resolved.  Nothing she had ever tried before would resolve it.  At this moment of pure, clear, thinking, Anna suddenly understood what had to take place if she was going to make sure her daughter had a place to sleep and food to eat in a year’s time from her thoughts.  She had to break a few of her own rules.

                “Alison, honey,” said Anna, quite clearly without a single stutter, her voice having returned to normal, feeling completely refreshed on the entire situation.  “Take your cousin and her boyfriend up to the bedroom.  Uncle Kevin, Aunt Helen, and I have to have some grown-up talk now.”