Into the Lioness’ Den

If he was normal sized, he would definitely have something to say about how they were referring to him and while he desperately wanted to step out and defend himself against their lambasting and impugning of his character, he felt the fingers of fear gnawing away at his gut. They were massive. It was one thing to be walking around inside the empty environment, but actually seeing these girls in the flesh, towering over him and gaining a sense of their size was incredibly daunting and filled him with trepidation. A shadow of doubt drifted through his mind as he wondered if they talked about him this way, maybe they wouldn’t be as sympathetic to his plight as he originally thought or hoped.

Aside from his apprehension based on their less than favorable conversation about him, he wanted to hear more, maybe gain a better understanding of the root of their surprising negative attitude and use the information surreptitiously gleaned to enhance their opinion of him.

He could conceive of no way to get down the stairs while they were down there, so he figured he would go into Madison’s room and hole up somewhere, maybe do a little more eavesdropping before approaching his sister to see if she would be willing to call the gypsy girl and reverse the curse.

By ordinary terms, Madison’s bedroom was already considerably spacious, nearly twice the size of his own room, furniture including a sprawling canopied California king-sized bed, several tall five drawer dressers, a desk set up for her computer, a couple of night tables on either side of the bed, huge plush chair, and an antique makeup vanity with built in mirror with matching chair. A handful of framed pictures hung on walls painted a fade pink rose color. There was also a large cork board with multi-colored pushpin holding cartoon, business card and other such thing in place.

The interior of the room held a subtle yet lingering odor of some body fragrance or perfume, slightly sweet and airy.

Aside from the door he was standing in, there was a double set of doors with almost full length windows opening onto the deck at the back of the house across from him and another door leading into her sizable walk-in closet. All of the trim around the doors and window, including the baseboard were an eggshell white.

There were a few leather purses and cloth handbags scattered about the room, a dozen or so empty soda cans and a couple of empty assorted potato chip bags.

Seeing the food packaging, his stomach complained a little, gurgling. He paused, looking down at his belly. He realized feeling sick as he did when he had come home, he hadn’t bothered to eat anything since the blowfish lunch and now that he was feeling better, albeit much, much smaller, he was hungry.

Fortunately for him, there were enough crumbs and chip fragments on the floor he was able gather up stray bits and pieces and put some food in his belly.

Priority one taken care of, he now needed to focus on priority two, where the heck to hide. Being so small, there were a host of possibilities available to him. Under furniture, though he didn’t like not being able to see. The closet? Same issue.

In the corner of Maddie’s room on the wall with the doors to outside was a triangular shelving unit specifically designed for a corner and made out of enameled black metal with transparent glass plates serving as shelves. There were a myriad of baubles and other curios and assorted ‘dust collectors’ on the six levels of the shelving unit, though the majority of the space was consumed by different types of small penguin plush toys and plastic figurines. Why she was obsessed with penguins, he had no clue, she just claimed to adore them. She even had one enormous plush toy almost as tall as she was in her collection. Evaluating if he was able to scale the metal latticework at the rear corner of the unit and get up to the second from the top shelf, it would give him a great overview of the room and with enough stuff on it providing him the ability to remain well concealed.

Smiling to himself, he trotted over to the stand. The way the unit was designed, the spine actually resembled a ladder and he was able to scale up it relatively easily, squeezing between each shelf and the wall to get up to the shelf he wanted.

The glass underfoot was slick and cool to the touch as he moved off the spine and onto the shelf directly beneath the highest one. Navigating through the host of articles on the shelf, three stuffed penguins, each bigger than him, two more colored glass penguins, these a little bit shorter than him, a black ceramic mug with a bas relief face of Jack Skellington containing a handful of pencils adorned with fuzzy haired Troll head erasers, a black hair scrunchie, and the plastic back to an earring.

Getting to the leading edge of the shelf, he leaned forward and peeked over. While no more than four and half feet above the floor in actual height, to him it felt at least a hundred feet or so. Turning back, he tapped a finger to his chin, he trying to envision how to set up a blind where he could conceal himself. He wasn’t sure how obsessive compulsive Maddie was and didn’t want to make too many changes that might inadvertently draw her attention. Dragging the elasticated crinkled hair tie between and slightly behind two of the larger stuffed toys, he positioned it so that he could fold it over and hide inside the fold itself, keeping his naked body off the cool glass and hidden from above.

Checking it from the front to ensure he would not be detected, “Why it’s an absolute stroke of genius,” he said triumphantly, adopting a nefarious tone and rubbing his hands together in pantomime of a cartoon villain.

He could hear the sounds of the girls returning. Slipping into the middle of the scrunchie on his belly, he waited.