“Who did this to you?” asks Julia with an eerie calm in her voice as she studies Anna’s reluctantly revealed pregnant belly.  The rest of us are staring guiltily at the ground, hoping not to be picked on for information.  “WELL?” she blurts out, beginning to quiver with bubbling rage.

                “I… I…”

                “Stop stuttering!  I want to know who did it!” booms Julia, stiffening up in her seat and looming dreadfully over the desk like the dictator that she is.

                “Julia, please, just leave her alone, she’s…” I quietly protest.

                “I swear to God, Jack…” cuts in Julia without looking directly at me, her words steely and curt.  Her words, like cold silver, slice to my bones and make me shiver violently.  “If you did this, I will…”

                “It was ME, Julia, okay!” calls out Brian quickly, pulled from his stunned stupor as he steps forward.  Taken aback, Julia nods and turns to face him, looking disdainfully down at him, although there’s a distinct change in her face.  Almost a hint of relief.

                “So… you two, then?” asks Julia quietly, sounding mildly disgusted at the mere suggestion of it.  “Brian… did you make her do it?”

                “No, I…”

                “DID YOU MAKE HER DO IT?” roars Julia, fury flashing up for a moment, her eyes dancing with fire.

                “HE DIDN’T MAKE ME DO ANYTHING!” screams Anna, bursting into tears.  Brian wraps an arm around her to comfort her, although this only seems to make Julia look angrier.

                “I see,” answers Julia, frowning again.  “Brian, take your little hands off of her, NOW.”

                Reluctantly, Brian obliges, stepping away and cringing as he does so.  Julia clears her throat.

                “So, Anna… I guess that makes you a little whore, doesn’t it?” our captor asks quietly.

                “Please…” Anna gasps, sniffling.

                “DOESN’T IT?”

                “Yes,” answers the pregnant woman quickly, nodding vigorously.

                “Say it back to me,” commands Julia, the same icy tone remaining in place.  We know that when it gets to this point, Julia’s about ready to snap.  We can tell just from the sound of her words how close we could be to annihilation under the crushing weight of one of her fists.  “Say: I am a dirty little whore.  Say it back to me, just like that.”

                “Hey, wait, now!” growls Brian, taking a few steps forward, but without even breaking stride, Julia smirks pitifully down at him and with a simple flick of her massive thumb and middle finger to his gut sends him reeling backward away from his more aggressive stance in front of Anna, coughing uncomfortably as he struggles for air, his body rolling backward and slamming into the tiny stage backdrop with a painful-sounding smack.

                “BRIAN!” cries Anna, reaching out for her lover and taking a step toward him, but Julia’s fist comes down hard on the desk, rattling us all enough that we almost fall over.  Anna staggers, more tears welling in her eyes, and moves back to where she was standing.  Julia, smirking with satisfaction, raises her fist back up from the desk.

                “Say it now,” continues Julia as though nothing had happened, folding her fingers back together on top of the desk and observing Anna’s worry-stricken face looking back at Brian as he wearily pulls himself to his feet.  Julia snaps her fingers together to get the little woman’s attention back, then grins devilishly at her again.  “Say it.  Tell me who’s a dirty little whore.”

                “I am,” swallows Anna slowly, looking down and fighting to speak through the tears.  “I’m a dirty little whore.”

                “Very good,” says Julia slowly and happily.  “I guess this means I haven’t done as good a job teaching all of you about values as I thought I have.  And I’m sorry about that.  So, I guess we’re going to have to start from the ground up, then,” she concludes, nodding to herself.  “That will… conclude practice for today.  Today, you all… well, most of you,” she says, shooting me a quick glance.  “…are going to be eating lunch in the house today.  I’ve got… other plans today.  But don’t be too upset, I’ve got something extra-special for you today,” she continues.  “Spaghetti with marina.”

                My heart flutters in my chest.  I shoot a glance at the others, and they all nod.  We know what this means.  Not only did we just miraculously survive what all of us have been dreading for so long without so much as a scratch aside from Brian, but phase two of the plan is finally in place.

                “It’s so peaceful out here,” smiles Julia, staring out at the trees beyond the estate as we sit on a large blue checkered picnic blanket on some fresh green grass in the expansive backyard.  Of course, what would already look like a sizeable chunk of land to a normal-sized person looks like the Amazon jungle to me, stretching on for endless miles, and as I sit perched on Julia’s shoulder, my arm wrapped around a lock of her hair to keep me balanced, it’s hard to look at and not get some equivalent of vertigo.

                The day is actually turning out better than I would’ve ever dared hope when I woke up.  Of course, it doesn’t take more than a few token good items to raise my spirits considering I wake up every day feeling like I’m in a concentration camp circa 1943, but all in all, I can’t complain about a single thing.  For starters, Anna’s little secret was discovered, and there were no immediate consequences to be seen.  Of course, we don’t know if it will come back to bite us in the end, but the five of us prefer to not discount the fact that Brian and/or Anna are still “safely” in the dollhouse and not on their way through the murkier part of Julia’s large intestine right now.

                And, of course, I’m outside.  I’m literally in the outdoors for the first time in two years.  I’ve never felt so liberated in all my existence.  To inhale deeply and feel the cool breeze on my arms as I hold them out in the air fills me with a sense of euphoria that’s admittedly only matched when I lock lips with Gina, but that’s of course a much different scenario.  Here, even though I’m perched on Julia’s shoulder and have no possible way of escaping without being caught by her hawk-like vision, I can pretend I’m not a three-inch-tall doll person being sickeningly idolized by a monstrous giant of a teenage girl, and instead simply be in the moment.

                “Yeah, it is pretty nice,” I say dreamily, hardly hearing her words as I drink it all in.

                “Like it out here?” she says sweetly.

                “I love it,” I nod back, and for once I don’t have to act.  It really is marvelous.

                “Well, just keep on being you, and maybe we can have more dates out here.  Would you like that?”

                “Yeah.  Definitely.”

                “Good.  So would I,” she coos, her hand rising up to her shoulder.  Her fingers slide their way around my sides, gripping me and plucking me off her shoulder.  She cradles me in her palm as she brings me slowly down toward the picnic blanket, laying me down in front of a napkin with a few plunks of corn kernels, a grape, and a small hunk of bread.  “There’s your food.”

                “Thanks, Julia,” I respond, picking up a corn kernel and politely taking a nibble out of it.  Julia, meanwhile, reaches the same hand down toward a paper plate and picks up a strawberry, which she proceeds to raise to her lips, smacking them together for a moment, obviously to get my attention.

                I turn fully around, looking up at her huge, adorable face, the blinding light of the sun coming in between the uneven canopy of her silky and radiant chocolate brown hair.  She’s so pretty as I stare up at her, I can almost conceive of forgetting just what a psychopathic monster she is.

                Almost.

                Julia parts her lips and lets her tongue flick outward at the tip of the strawberry playfully for a moment before retracting it into the dark, moist recesses of her cheek.  She giggles, then clacks her teeth loudly together before making room and inserting just the tip of the bright red fruit.  She quickly slams her teeth down, easily slicing through the soft fruit with a wet plop that causes a few droplets of strawberry water to dribble down her chin.  One of them cascades down towards me, landing just at my feet.  I flinch but keep my ground, looking back up as she grinds the bite into a pulp between her molars, the red shreds being mashed into a watery paste along the back of her tongue.  Then, satisfied, she closes her lips and swallows hard, allowing it to easily slip down her throat.

                She really is trying hard to make this “relationship” work.  I imagine that if certain circumstances were different here (ie: Julia wasn’t a murderer, I wasn’t her shrunken slave), then I would’ve found such a display by a cute young girl to be reasonably sexy.

                “Mmmmm… oh, that’s fantastic… I guess I picked these right when they were ripe,” says Julia giddily, opening her jaw and popping in the rest of the strawberry, munching it too into fruity mulch.  “Would you like to help me next time?”

                “Absolutely,” I say enthusiastically.

                “Good,” nods Julia, twiddling her thumbs nervously for a moment.  “You know, Jack, you really have surprised me.  We’ve been dating for a month and I just… keep seeing new sides of you.”

                “Um… thanks,” I answer uncertainly.

                She snickers.  “Don’t be embarrassed, baby, I just like you, is all.”

                “Maybe you should give people a chance to surprise you,” I suggest.

                “Yeah… I… I guess,” she nods in agreement.  “Will you tell me something?”

                “What?”
                “Was I too hard on Brian and Anna earlier?”

                I gulp.  What’s going on?  What’s happened to our relationship that we’ve reached the point where I’m actually consulted by Julia for an opinion?  Obviously we’re not nearly at equals status, but it’s a major step into uncharted territory.  I hardly know what to say.

                “I… well…”

                “Don’t be nervous.  Just tell me.  I want to know.”

                “Maybe a little tiny bit,” I respond quietly, bowing my head.  Julia shakes her head, taking it in.

                “Yes, I guess I was.  I mean… they ARE both adults, they can choose who they love and who they want to make love to,” she concludes.  “I guess it would be unfair of me to try to take away their happiness when…” she continues, her hand lowering toward me.  Gently, pointer finger extended, she begins to stroke along my back lovingly.  “…I’ve already gotten so much happiness from you.”

                When the hell did Julia grow some humanity?