The long night under Adela’s foot lasted another fifteen minutes, until she heard the sirens and parked the car about three blocks away from the house. From inside her shoe, I could hear them wailing, faintly, as though the cats in a neighbor’s apartment hadn’t been fed for a full week. Using the firm surface of the carpet fibers under the driver’s seat for traction, as a shoehorn, Adela popped off her sneaker with a loud, wet squeak. Inside, I tried to stand and walk up the slick and slippery incline to her heel. But I lost my balance and fell over, face down, onto the moist pad of the insole. 

As a precaution, before leaving the car, she dumped me out into her waiting hand, stashed me roughly, like a wad of cash, into one of her frilly, ripe, well-worn socks—the one pair that always seemed to go with her sneakers—and then finally stuffed me, sock and all, into her inner coat pocket. No words were spoken because no explanation was needed. I had a good idea of what had happened, and so did she. She was also afraid to have that fear confirmed, and wasn’t ready to speak yet.

Adela hugged the jacket close to her t-shirt. As the seconds passed, and as she walked toward the house, I could hear her heart—much bigger and heavier than I was—beating faster and faster. The volume and pitch of the siren-sound grew. Through the hot and smelly fabric of her balled-up sock—which made me gag every time I breathed in through my nose—I started to make out the muffled voices of many men talking, the amplified voice of one man shouting orders through a megaphone. The voices of policemen and the growling engines of police cars.

She pivoted abruptly and started powerwalking back the way we had come. I felt that. Meanwhile, the odor of the sock blended with the potent, flowery perfume under her t-shirt, and the combination was making me feel pretty weak in the knees. (At my shrunken size, I often took in Adela’s cocktail of different smells, but that late afternoon the cocktail tasted like it was spiked with something strange and undefinable—it was very, very different from being with Holly. And, I admit, I was beginning to feel powerless against her.)

Her last few steps were a blur until I heard the door open. Adela sat there, her heart racing, her lungs gasping for air. She reached inside her coat and pulled out the balled sock, flattened it out, and shook me down into her hand. Her eyes were alert and scared. I’d never seen her like this.
“Martin, you’ll have to get your clothes on again.”
“What’s happening?” I knew, but I wanted to hear it from her.
Adela gently dropped me behind her, onto the seat cushion, and then picked up my little bundle and lobbed it into the backseat beside me. Not even a flash intervened before I regained my regular height. (There were never any intermediate steps: one moment I was two or three inches, and the next I was the old five nine. The change was faster than the fastest thought I’d ever had.)

I whipped out the pants and jumped into them, flapped out the shirt and tugged it over my face and arms. The only thing I was missing was a good, long bath. I really smelled, though Adela pretended not to notice anything. She had her neck partway out the window, and was gazing down the street, through the late shadows of that gray afternoon, toward the source of the siren-sound. It was coming from our house.

It was because of the two kids, I thought. It was either the two kids, or the missing drunks from the other night. Friday and Halloween. The police had got probable cause to act and had obtained a warrant. Possibly nothing indictable would be found inside the house, after a search—Holly would have taken care of that—but surely they would want to see Adela. And if they knew I still existed, they’d want to see me too—so in the beginning I couldn’t understand why Adela had given me again my original size and the change of clothes. Unless she knew something I didn’t.
“Sit up here,” she whispered back to me. She patted the passenger seat with her right hand, and then gripped the wheel again so tightly her knuckles turned white. I straddled the seat and plopped down beside her. She didn’t say anything.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet. Just wait.” She sighed, and seemed so nervous, that for a moment I imagined that her eye was moist with tears. It was some effect of the light.
We waited. The wail of the siren stopped, and we heard the megaphone again, but couldn’t make out the words.

I rolled down the window. Along the shoulder of the road, the crickets were beginning to chirp with their cold and agonizing late autumn slowness. The wind shook through the trees a few times, and a car drove past us, moving toward the scene of the action. A couple oglers were passing us on their way down, chatting one to the other, where a large crowd of spectators was beginning to gather. When I was just ready to turn to Adela and suggest that we drive to a safer distance, and talk about what ought to be done –I didn’t want anything to happen to Adela any more than she did—something happened.

A titanic shadow spread over the earth and sky and covered the car and all the neighboring houses. There was a thunderous, resounding boom, some terrified, high-pitched screaming, and then the unmistakable popping of gunfire. I looked ahead, and saw a billowing cloud of smoke advancing toward us down the street, under the high canopy of shade trees. Then, abruptly, the gunfire stopped, and there was total silence. No people ran toward us from that direction, and there was no one behind us either. The stillness was eerie, and I checked over at Adela to see her reaction. She returned the look—wide-eyed surprise, curiosity, apprehension—and then her hand reached for the ignition.
“No.”
“What?”
“Let’s get out and walk,” I said. She let out a huge sigh, and nodded.

When I exited the side-door and crossed around the hood of the car to meet Adela, she took my wrist and squeezed it.
“Don’t move,” she said. “Someone’s coming.”
She had sharp ears. It took me three seconds till I could make out the sound of footsteps coming toward us along the sidewalk. There were two people, and they were running.

Through the smoke, two children in costume appeared and then darted breathlessly past us, down the street. I don’t think they even noticed us standing there. We watched them go, and soon lost them in the shadows. They were dressed like ghosts, apparitions. Darkness was falling quickly.
“The two kids,” Adela murmured.
“Who?” I said, and then remembered.
“Let’s go.” The smoke began to rise and dissipate, and we passed through it fairly quickly. No one else passed us or disturbed us or held out bodiless hands through the fog to detain us. At the end of the block we saw her.

Holly was sitting on the stoop outside her house with a box over her knees. In the center of the front lawn were two gigantic footprints, each five yards long. An oak tree blocked the road, its wide trunk shredded at the base. Police cars, their revolving lights still turning and turning in red, white, and blue, seemed to huddle around the house in a silent semicircle, as though waiting for orders to disperse. They would wait forever. That order would never come, and after Holly turned off their lights and they blinked out, one after another, they would never turn from that place.

Adela and I approached her, and she greeted us with her usual sardonic smile. She was getting dressed.
“Well, it’s time,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“What about the upstairs?” Adela asked.
“Oh, it’s all taken care of. We can start tonight.”
Adela looked unsure for a moment. I thought she was still kind of scared. I hadn’t expected it to happen like this.
“Well, I guess I’m ready, then. Martin’s here.”
Holly noticed me. “Hi Martin,” she said. “How was your afternoon?”
I shrugged noncommittally, and Adela looked over and cracked a little smile. Her nerves were on edge. Holly saw it all, and scratched her cheek thoughtfully for a moment. 
“Yes,” she said. “Well, I’m in contact with the others. We’ll meet tonight in the country, the usual spot. The plants are shut down, and the rest is on its way.” She looked up. “Adela, where’s the car?”
“Down the street.”
“Get it. I want to try the radio.”
She ran up the street at a brisk pace. I followed her with my eyes. It was a pretty sight.
“Martin,” Holly sidled over to me, and took my shoulders in her hands. “You’re with us, aren’t you?”
Wasn’t I? “Yes. What can I do?”
The way Holly was gazing into my eyes was starting to make me nervous.
“Not much for now,” she said. “Get some food from the house, and pack up the car. I’ll pay a visit to the neighbors.” She picked up the megaphone, and walked across the street without looking back.

I walked up to the stoop. The cardboard box was still there in plain view, and there was a lid over it. I didn’t have to pry open the lid—I knew what was inside, and roughly how many. Some of them were restored to their original sizes, most of them because of their sex. The men generally stayed tiny, with only a few exceptions. 

The night was going to be a long one. The longest.