I forced myself into a sitting position, groaning. My ears were ringing, and something was on top of my left leg, pinning my foot in an uncomfortable position. With a grunt, I pulled my leg free and shakily got to my feet. A quick survey of my surroundings revealed nothing significant, as the area was pitch black. As I squinted around, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, I stood on one foot and tried to shake some feeling back into the one that had been pinned. Where was I?
As the ringing in my ears subsided, I became aware of a loud noise coming from all around me. It sounded like music playing on speakers with the volume and bass cranked up to max, but lacked any kind of melody. Just as my eyes were beginning to adjust, it felt like the whole world tilted, and I tumbled hard to the right. I found myself planted against a somewhat soft plastic wall, before everything tilted again and I fell to what I assumed was the floor I had been standign on.
“Jesus, what the hell was that! Hello?”
The only answer I got was the chaotic rumbling bass sound, which must have been coming from outside wherever I was. Squinting around again, I could make out several large shapes, each about as tall as I was but far more massive. As I worked my way to the nearest of these objects, I noticed that the ground was almost continuously shifting, like boat moored in relatively calm water.
Reaching my target, I found it to be a foot or so taller than I was. Running my hands over it, I was surprised to find that it was a smooth plastic cylindar, almost like an oversized water slide tube. Was I in some sort of construction warehouse? Or, no, maybe a shipping container on a boat. I rubbed my eyes, groaning softly. “HELLO? Can anyone hear me? Anyone? Urgh, what am I DOING here?” I rested my head against the plastic tube. It was rougher here than the area I had been touching before. I reached up and ran my hand along the rough part: it felt like raised lettering.
Curiously, and with nothing better to do, I stared at the text. After nearly a minute, I was able to tell the dark-colored letters apart from the lighter color that made up most of the tube, and read the writing. “Fine point… Per… Per-ma-nent.. Marker? Huh. What is this, some kind of giant... Prop…”
I stared at the gigantic Sharpie, feeling faint. My memory came flooding back; I had been delivering an order of office supplies to an advertising firm when rumbling and crashing sounds from outside had drawn everyone to the windows. Enormica, the size-changing superhero, was fighting some kind of huge robot. We had been watching for several minutes, cheering at the blows Enormica landed, when the action suddenly found its way directly in front of the building. The majority of the people in the office retreated from the windows, but seeing as the heroine had the robot on the ropes several people (myself included) kept our front-row seats and continued cheering.
The robot’s pilot had then (in true villainous fashion) done the obvious and made hostages of us foolish onlookers, launching us into the air to distract Enormica. She used her powers to grow more quickly than we were moving and catch us, and put us in a compartment on her utility belt.
“I must have blacked out… Didn’t she say something about a bomb?” I mumbled to myself. The concussive force of an explosion could easily have knocked me out. Had the enormous superheroine been rendered unconscious as well? I cast about in the darkness of what I now knew to be Enormica’s storage pocket, then cleared my throat and called out. “H-Hello? Um… It’s me, I… It’s Liam, the… The UPS guy? Is anyone here?”
No response. I swallowed nervously and started to slowly walk around, looking for the (hopefully) unconscious forms of my fellow rescuees. After several minutes of searching, occasionally calling out and listening for responses, I saw a dark shape on the ground. It was far too small to be a person, but about the right size for a human head. I knelt next to it and gingerly reached out, touching it with my fingertips. An enormous (well, relatively speaking) feeling of relief spread through me as I felt the smooth leather of my camera bag.
Overcome by how strange things had been since regaining consciousness, I hugged this one small bit of normalcy I had found tightly to my chest. Letting out a small sigh, I sat down and set the bag in my lap. I didn’t know how I had managed to hang onto it long enough for it to end up in the utility belt, but I was glad. Before I had a chance to do much else, the world suddenly lurched sideways again, and was filled with a blinding light.
“Absolutely, anything for a fan!” boomed the single loudest voice I had ever heard. I squinted into the brilliant light, just in time to see two gigantic black shapes descending into the compartment. They wrapped around the Sharpie, then carried it into the sky before the light disappeared with a loud TUHK sound. Left in the darkness again, I strained to hear.
“So, this is for…?” Even muffled by the soft plastic of the utility belt’s compartment, the voice was incredibly loud. The rumbling bass sound from earlier must have been a crowd of people, talking and cheering all at once.
“For Mary Jane and Peter, my parents,” came another, slightly more distant voice, “They’re HUGE fans of yours! Oh, haha! Huge… I guess you know a thing or two about that!”
“Haha, yeah. Well, I’m glad that citizens appreciate my efforts; that’s all that really matters. Aside from catching criminals, I mean.”
I listened to several similar exchanges, dumbfounded by what sounded like an autograph session. At first I wondered what she could possibly be signing; billboards, water towers, city busses? As more and more people with gigantic voices thanked her for her services, however, I was forced to reach a conclusion: Enormica had resumed her normal size.
“HELP! HELLO? CAN ANYONE HERE ME?!” I screamed, but the conversations outside continued unabated. I felt sick to my stomach. How was this even possible? When Enormica changed size, did everything she had with her change size as well? Her green, black and yellow costume certainly adjusted to whatever size she made herself, but that’s because it was made of a special material, right?
I sat down and put my head between my knees, trying to calm my breathing. There was no use denying or bargaining with the facts; I had been shrunk to less than the diameter of a marker. To make matters worse, Enormica didn’t even seem to realize I was there, and the two people who did were nowhere to be seen. As if on cue, right as I thought that the spandex-clad heroine’s voice spoke out, even louder than it had been
“Excuse me, but how are those office workers doing? The ones attacked by the robot.” It sounded like she was calling out to someone a ways away.
“They’re doing fine,” a deep man’s voice responded. “They’re both still out cold, but the paramedics say they’ll make a full recovery within a day.”
“Oh, that’s great!” Enormica boomed back, doing something to jostle the compartment and make me fall over backwards. “With that, then, I should be going! Crime never sleeps, but I need to comb a few pieces of the Grant Building out of my hair!” The joke was met with thunderous laughter and applause, and once again the compartment lurched and was filled with light. I barely had time to make out her black-gloved hand dropping the Sharpie before the light was gone, and the world immediately began shaking and jumping as she walked.
I started to scream and shout again, in the vain hope that I would somehow get her attention, but I already knew it wouldn’t work. At less than half an inch tall, I would be lucky if she didn’t unwittingly splatter me the next time she reached into the the compartment. I hugged my camera bag tightly against my chest; who knew where I was off to next.