Josh in the Box

“We don’t know her name for sure,” Ham said, shrugging his thick shoulders.

“Okay, so what does a girl in the library have to do with all of this?” Josh said, spreading his hands. “One minute I’m looking at my paper and then I wake up here balls naked with you guys.”

“Okay,” Henry started, “I’m not sure how to convey this,” he said, frowning and shaking his head.

Julian stepped up, “Here’s the skinny kid. The chick is some type of a witch or something and we,” he said, circling his hand in a clockwise motion to indicate the group, “have all been subjected to some kind of shit that makes you small,” he stated.

“What?” Josh asked, confused. “Small? What do you mean small?”

Julian laughed coldly, “And this? This my naïve friend is a fucking shoebox. Those lights,” he pointed at the ceiling, “Holes in the top of the box. Every few days, she brings in someone new and takes out someone else. Today you arrived and Colton was taken,” he said.

Josh shook his head, “That doesn’t makes any sense,” he said, looking to Ham in askance.

Ham nodded glumly, “It’s true Josh,” he confirmed.

Josh laughed, “Bull,” he asserted.

Now it was Julian’s turn to laugh again. “If only it were a load,” he stated, “But take a good fucking look around boy,” he urged angrily.

“But?” Josh said, head moving as if on a swivel.

Julian nodded.

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re saying she abducts people, shrinks them down and then puts them here in this box?” he questioned. “A goddamn shoebox?”

“Ding, give the boy a prize,” Julian said caustically.

Josh shook his head. It’s not possible. “Horseshit!”

“You’ll see, next time she peels off that lid,” Julian stated, “See what it does to your balls when she brings that giant fucking hand down and you realize there is jack shit you can do about except pray she not coming for you.”

“A shoebox?” Josh challenged.

“Under her bed,” Julian replied, grinning widely, taking pleasure in Josh’s befuddlement.

“Give him a moment to process,” Ham said, raising a hand to halt the slender man.

Josh looked up at the ceiling, they did look like holes rather than lights. “No,” he said softly. It is not within the realm of feasibility. It just cannot be! Maybe the some type of university psychosocial experiment involving hallucinogens, like the CIA did back in the 60’s with LSD. Has to be some kind of mind trip. Josh laughed to himself. Giant fucking girl, right.

“You going under?” chided Julian, smirk on his face as he watched Josh intently.

Shaking his head, “If what you are telling me is true, then why? Why would she do this?” Josh asked, trying to deconstruct the argument the others were making. Which one of them was in on it? Who was the controller? Was it more than one? It had to be Julian. Had to be.

“We don’t know,” Carver said, shrugging his rounded shoulders.

“I know why,” Julian stated, “but they don’t want to believe it,” he added with a snort.

“No, Julian,” Ham countered, raising a cautioning hand.

“Yes,” he barked back, stepping up close to Josh, “You see, every time she takes one of us from the box, sooner than later you hear the sounds, moans, the racket from the mattress over us. We are just little playthings to her, toys for her sick fucking amusement, used and then discarded,” he spat.

“You don’t know that,” Henry countered, shaking his head.

“Listen for it, shortly after she pulls another one of us out. Mark my words,” Julian said, eyebrows raised for emphasis.

Ham shook his head, “Don’t listen to him, he’s wrong. What we do know is that no one who has ever left the box has come back though,” he said softly.

“Used and discarded, like the Kleenex you jerk off into,” sniped Julian, smirk on his slender face as he mimed masturbating.

“For crying out loud Julian, will you just shut up already?” Carver said disdainfully.

“You shut up,” he snapped back.

“Has anybody ever tried to escape?” Josh asked, looking at the faces of the other men, a half smirk on his own face. He was going to turn this experiment on it ass.

Ham looked up at the ceiling, “It’s too high and there’s no way we could get it to budge even if we could reach it,” he said.

“What was that I saw back in the corner?” Josh asked, pointing to the dark thing he espied when Ham had roused him.

Julian laughed, “You want to know?” he asked, walking over to the corner and pointing, “a soiled pair of her panties, just to let us know what we’re in for,” he informed, holding his lower lip with his teeth and nodding, eyes mocking.

“Panties?” Josh asked, walking over to stand by Julian.

“There,” Julian said triumphantly, “it’s like her pussy fucking sneezed in it.”

Up close, in the diffuse light, it did indeed look like a mammoth pair of women’s underpants with residue in the gusset. Josh crouched low and reached out with his hand, touching the still congealing tacky mess, rubbing his now slick thumb and forefinger together before bringing them back to his nose to smell it. It smelled like vaginal secretion. Wiping his hand on the floor, he stood back up. Nice prop. “If this is a shoe box, does anyone have a guess at how small we are?” he asked, holding his hands out.

“I was curiously about that too, near as we can tell It’s about four or five body lengths from one end of the box to the other, so I put us at somewhere between two and three inches in height, depending on the size of her shoes,” Henry suggested.

Having pegged Julian as the insider, Josh thought it would be the slender man who responded. Could it actually be true? They were small? What if he set aside logic and assumed the preposition that they were all shrunk was true? It obviously wasn’t, but, for the sake of playing along, he would suspend his disbelief. He tried to remember her feet. She was wearing running shoes, white ones, but how big were they? He frowned, it hadn’t been her feet he had been checking out. It was her immaculate ass that had captivated his attention. Did it really matter anyway? No. Either way, if he accepted Henry calculations, they were at or just below her ankle height, and far too small to pose any kind of threat to her. The part he was having difficulty rationalizing was, why would she make them small? If someone had that power, or ability, why make people small? Didn’t make any kind of sense.