“Hey, thanks for coming!” Jackie exclaimed, getting up from her friend’s couch to give her brother a hug hello. “Aliyah’s boyfriend broke up with her this morning,” she explained, looking at her friend sympathetically.

     “On fucking Valentine’s Day too,” Aliyah muttered, crashing back onto the couch.

     “Yeah, like he couldn’t even wait a week?” Jackie chimed in, before turning back to her brother. “They were together for like, 3 years or something.” Then, quieter: “So I’m just tryna cheer her up.”

     “Oh. Sorry to hear about that,” Denver said, although he didn’t sound very genuine.

     There was a few moments of awkward silence, before Aliyah spoke up with an annoyed look on her face, “Yeah, I can tell.”

     Denver looked back and forth between the two girls. “So, why’d you want to come over here then? Like, we all know that you never really got along with me growing up, so I don’t see how I’m supposed to help you out.” He’d practically answered his own question, although was too naive to realize it.

     “Cuz I don’t really feel that appreciative of men at the moment,” Aliyah answered, pronouncing Denver’s gender like it was dangerous to even say out loud. “Any of them. I think, that you’re all assholes—except maybe Jack Harlow, he can get a pass. And whoever plays Fez in Euphoria, he’s fine too.” She thought over it for another few seconds, and then nodded, finalizing the list of acceptable men. “Yeah, that’s it. The rest of you all are dickheads. Especially you,” she added, nodding at Denver.

     He threw his hands up and sighed in exasperation, “What did I even do,” he muttered to himself.

     Jackie laughed, not thinking anything much of their interactions. “I gotta use the bathroom, I’ll be right back,” she said, turning and leaving the room.

     Aliyah eyed Denver up and down, who was still standing in the middle of the room. “You gonna sit down?” she asked.

     “I thought you hated me,” came his retort.

     “Not you specifically, I just hate men. And you’re a man. A typical, average, stereotypical man.”

     “What’s the difference?”

     Aliyah crossed her arms, “See? That kind of stupidity is part of it.” She snickered as Denver looked at her with growing frustration, before he rubbed his face in his hands, already tired of having to interact with his sister’s friend after barely a minute.

     “This is gonna drive me fucking crazy,” he muttered to himself, sighing into his palms. He took a deep breath and set his hands down, looking at Aliyah again and crossing his arms. “You still never told me why you wanted me to come here, specifically.”

     “Cuz you’re easy to make fun of,” she answered simply, “and I need someone to take my frustration out on.” He looked down at his feet, wondering if maybe he should just turn around and leave anyways. But he wasn’t sure if Jackie might see that as ‘wrong’ of him to do. But he could at least ignore her for now.

     “What, can’t handle it?” she continued. “Gonna lose your temper already, after like two minutes? See, that’s another guy thing, you guys get angry so easily. You’re either like you are now, you just sit around and don’t say anything, or you’re pissed off at something dumb. And so many guys are violent too; I mean my ex never hit me, but like, I could tell he wanted to, like a LOT. Like I genuinely wonder, do you guys all have violent tendencies cuz of like, societal upbringings and stuff, or does it just come naturally? OH, that reminds me of a few years ago when we were at that cabin, and you really got mad at me for some reason, you looked like you were gonna punch a wall or something too, and then your mom got mad at you for overreacting.” She laughed as she remembered that last part, and Denver suddenly spoke up, a pent-up anger having built inside of him (see? Aliyah was right!), and let loose to reprimand the bitter girl.

     “It wasn’t ‘some reason,’ it’s cuz you were being a fuckin bitch to me the whole day,” he argued back, swallowing nervously as he realized he should cool his language, “and it wasn’t—”

     “JACKIE!” Aliyah shouted, interrupting Denver, “He just called me a ‘fucking bitch,’ that counts right?”

     Within a second, Denver realized what had happened: Jackie had probably told Aliyah about her special power over her brother, and that she’d only used it as a means of punishment, so Aliyah had purposefully been pushing Denver’s buttons to try and provoke a reaction out of him to get Jackie to shrink him down again. He didn’t want to wait around to find out if he was right, so he immediately turned around to get out of there before anything else could happen.

     But Aliyah sprung up from her seat and ran to grab Denver’s arm, yelling, “Now he’s trying to leave!”

     “Get off me,” he growled, trying to pull away from her grasp, but she was surprisingly good at anchoring herself while maintaining a white knuckle grip on the guy who was noticeably larger than her. With one arm on the open door’s handle and the other caught by Aliyah, his struggles increased in franticness until he eventually ripped his arm away as hard as he could. His lashing out practically flung the girl towards the nearby wall, which she hit her head against after forcefully stumbling into it. He was stunned for a moment, surprised at his own strength (although she was pretty short), and was about to apologize when he noticed Jackie was standing at the edge of the hallway, eyes wide and mouth agape, having witnessed what he’d just done.

     “Fuck,” he muttered, and turned to continue dashing out the door, but Jackie bolted over to him and grabbed his shirt to stop him. Aliyah had taken a moment to recover herself, but quickly joined in on her friend and grabbed Denver’s arm again. He was already out the door this time, and had one hand on the guard rail outside, but now he was fighting even more backwards momentum, and had an air of hesitancy over any sudden moves since he didn’t want to cause any serious hurt to anyone.

     “Told you he’s a piece of shit,” Aliyah grunted, even angrier now that her head was throbbing a bit.

     “Don’t make this any worse than it has to be,” Jackie added, and Denver had a quick flashback to his previous tortures. He didn’t know how bad it ‘had to be,’ but he knew there technically wasn’t any limit to how long she could keep him for. A couple hours, the rest of the day, or even another week-long stint. But besides that, with how much he was struggling against them, he wasn’t even sure if a successful escape was an option in the first place.

     With gritted teeth, he let go of the bar and allowed himself to be yanked back into Aliyah’s apartment. The two girls stepped aside and allowed him to stumble backwards onto the floor. With her friend standing gleefully beside her, watching with a fire in her eyes, Jackie stepped over her brother and looked down at him, a look of frustration and disappointment in her eyes.

     She didn’t even say anything as she dug her fingers into her pants and lowered them along with her panties, as casually as if she’d already done it a dozen times before. And Denver knew better than to fight her as she turned around and lowered her bare ass over his face, before settling with her crack perched right on top of his nose, while everybody waited for the first round of shrinking.