You sit in your room, flipping between a few different channels on your small TV. All is reasonably quiet, however, until you hear your mom shriek loudly from the other room.
“CARLY!” yells your mom at the top of her lungs, clearly from your sister’s room. You roll your eyes. No doubt Carly’s done something else wrong and left the evidence laying around out of sheer laziness.
“CARLY!” your mom shouts again, and this time you hear the pounding sound as your sister dashes up the stairs.
“Stop yelling, mom! What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong! You want to tell me what this is?” says your mom angrily.
“Err…”
You don’t know or care what the pair of them are talking about.
“…they’re my friend’s cigarettes, mom.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Yeah. They’re Elaine’s. I didn’t… want to get her in trouble, and she was here, so I told her she could leave them here. I’m sorry…” says Carly, her voice cracking as she starts to turn on the waterworks like she so often does when in trouble.
“They’re Elaine’s, hmm? Then I think we better pay Elaine’s mother a call…” says your mom, striding past your open bedroom door, still holding the pack of cigs.
“No! Mom, wait, just listen to me!” shouts Carly after her, dashing past your door.
You think for a moment. While it certainly is of no concern to you, it does occur to you that Carly did not, in fact, ever use a cigarette. It was only a few days ago, exactly a week after your mom found the text message from Carly’s friend Blake that the guy showed up at your front door when your parents weren’t home. Not really caring at all, you let them alone, and you’re reasonably certain the cigs belong to Blake, not Elaine. Obviously, Carly’s not going to be tossing out the truth for the simple fact that she’d be in the doghouse like you were last week for the emergency room trip. Maybe even worse, considering Carly is only 14 but invited in a smoking eighth grader into the house. This gives you a brilliant idea.
“Hey, mom?” you yell, getting up and walking to the door. Your mom looks over at you and so does Carly, looking rather confused, similarly to the way you reacted a week ago when she saved your ass from more trouble.
“They are Elaine’s. She was here last week and I heard them talking.”
“Really?” says your mom, tilting her head, still not completely sold.
“Really,” you say. She considers your face for a moment, then nods.
“All right, then. I think we should just stay away from that family altogether now. Carly, I don’t want you hanging around with Elaine anymore now, either. She’s a bad influence…” says your mom, shaking her head in disapproval and heading back downstairs. After she’s out of view, Carly turns to you, her nose in the air.
“What are YOU doing?”
“What do you mean? I’m just having your back,” you say calmly with a fake smile.
“Uh-huh,” says Carly, clearly and correctly not well assured. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because the lawn is looking pretty cruddy today, and SOMEONE has to pick it up!” you say, grinning.
“What? That’s your job. Mom SAID last week, Jack, you have to pick up the lawn…” says Carly. “Do you actually think I’M doing it because you told mom that Elaine left her cigarettes here?”
“Well, no…”
Carly smiles smugly, looking triumphant. “Yeah, didn’t think so, bro,” she says, turning to walk away.
“Hold up,” you say after she takes a step. She looks back over her shoulder.
“What?”
“You’re not doing it because I just saved you. You’re doing it because I happen to be a pretty good photographer.”
“WHAT are you talking about?” she says, turning back around to face you, squinting at you in annoyance. You confidently reach into your jean pocket, whip out your phone, and with a few taps quickly produce a picture you took of Carly and Blake sitting next to each other on your back porch from last week.
“Wha-wha-you took a PICTURE of us?” she hisses angrily, keeping her voice down to avoid detection by your mom. Your smile widens.
“Yep. And unless you want this thing leaking to certain media outlets, I’d suggest you go grab a rake and a shovel and get to work out there.”
“But…”
“Sorry, but this offer expires in ten seconds.”
“But…”
“Ten, nine, eight…three, two, one…”
“FINE.”
You grin. You can’t help but sympathize with your sister’s constant attempts to do this. Holding this much leverage over her is actually pretty fun.
“Cool. Have fun out there,” you say cheekily, disappearing into your room.
“Okay, kids, your dad and I are going now!” yells your mom from the bottom of the stairs at you and your sister in your separate rooms. You each poke your heads out. You look smugly over at your sister, looking pretty tired still from the yard work she did to answer your blackmail. So far, it’s been a full week, and your sister still isn’t done with the yard, even though she goes out there everyday to work. Your mom questioned what was up, but you insisted you were paying your sister to get it done, which your parents quickly left alone, seeing it as a sign of the two of you bonding or at least learning to cooperate. As if…
Carly wipes a sweaty, matted bang off her forehead, still fresh from an hour of work in the muggy air, and gives you the evil eye but doesn’t say anything in front of your mom.
Your parents have been planning this weekend trip for a long time now, sort of as a second honeymoon. Seeing as you’re seventeen years old, you were promised a good chunk of change to babysit for your sister until Sunday night when your parents return. It’s not going to be a pleasant weekend, with your sister moaning at you the entire time for the job you’re forcing her to do, but the fact that you still are in control of the situation ensures it will at least be bearable.
“Okay…” you say, disappearing back into your room.
“Have fun!” yells your sister in her best fake happy voice, disappearing as well into her air conditioned room as she tries to return her body temperature to normal.
An hour later, you peek absent-mindedly out the window. You can see dark storm clouds twisting across the sky, nearing you. It’s going to rain any minute now, maybe even thunder a little. Your eyes fall down to the yard and see your shovel and rake that Carly left laying out in the grass. You may be “paying” your sister to do the work, but you just know you’ll catch hell if your equipment is ruined by the rain.
“Hey, Carly! You left the stuff out in the yard!” you yell, not moving. She doesn’t answer.
“I’ll show mom the picture when she gets back! Go pick up the shovel and rake!” you yell again, standing up and heading toward the door.
Her bedroom door is closed and locked, and her fan is on full blast. As is her small stereo, playing some random pop song you aren’t particularly familiar with. Even if she can hear you right now, your tools are going to get soaked out there. With a groan, you jog downstairs to do it yourself.
By the time you head outside, it’s already starting to rain, and it’s getting harder with each passing second.
“CARLY!” you yell out at no one in particular with great irritation, dashing across the wet grass to grab your shovel and rake. Scooping up the damp handles of each, your eyes quickly dart around the yard, searching desperately for the shorter handled rake you use for behind the bushes. Looking up into your backyard’s tall tree, you see it lodged snugly up on a branch eleven or twelve feet up.
The little bitch apparently felt brave enough to annoy you a little after a week of servitude in the yard. Groaning and wiping rainwater out of your eyes, you grab the metallic rake and begin clawing up at the branch, just out of reach. Carly must have used a ladder, but you don’t really feel like going to get the ladder right now, as it would just mean getting more soaked having to carry it out.
A bolt of lightning flashes in the distance. Your heart skips a beat. You don’t really want to be out here in the middle of a storm. Your hair, now sopping wet, clings cold to the side of your face, but you brush it away, standing on your tiptoes and taking a long swing with the rake. Almost…
What happens next is so quick you hardly notice it, but in the briefest of nanoseconds you see a flash of light before your eyes, a tingling sensation traveling down from your hand and into your torso. Your eyes see black but open up again with you flat on your back in the muddy grass. You blink the large raindrops out of your eyes, trying to deduce what just happened in your boggled mind. It occurs to you that you must have been struck by lightning. Strangely, you feel no pain. You figure you must be in shock, which is probably physically preferable to actual pain.
You swing your arm over your chest, still in a daze, trying to right yourself. However, as you do, your arm nearly slips as it hits a slab of slick mud, your hand having disappeared into your sweatshirt sleeve. You blink again, staring at it. You stretch your arm out as far as it will go, but you still can’t reach the cuff of your sweatshirt. Looking down, you realize that the neck of your sweatshirt has been creeping up your face, soaked completely by the rain, climbing up to your nose and covering it up. You gasp for air, your heart flutters. “What the hell…” you mumble groggily, still in a little bit of a daze. You punch your limbs around wildly, wondering what’s going on as you find a billowing tent of fabric sitting above you, your pants having long ago disappeared off your feet.
Not thinking at all about what’s going on, you instinctively run for it, pushing upward against the fabric to avoid being trapped inside. You dash out into the mud and look up as the lightning cracks across the dark sky. Then you look over at the tree.
Or rather, you look up at the tree, because from this point it looks like a mountainous skyscraper, stretching into the clouds themselves. In shock, you fall backward, the sky lit up again by lightning, and you land in the mud. It is also at this moment you realize you are completely naked.
Your mind begins to swirl with fear and paranoia, unable to decipher what’s going on. You mumble a little, but no sound comes out. You have to figure out what’s going on. You have to.
The freezing cold of the rain suddenly wraps itself around you, soaking you anew in the dirt and filth covering the ground. You stand up and reorient yourself and stare up at your house, which looks to be over a hundred meters away from this distance. It also happens to resemble a castle from some fictional universe, because it too appears to be legions higher than just two stories. Your eyes and mind swim in the sight.
You don’t know why. You can’t explain how. It scares the living shit out of you. But you realize at this point that you have shrunk down to a matter of inches. You can’t even fathom how small you’ve become. 2 inches? 3 inches? You don’t really want to think about it.
You don’t have long to contemplate this, though. You feel your survival instinct kick in. “I need to get inside. I need to get help,” you say as calmly as possible to yourself in your mind. Bravely, you begin dashing across the mud-ridden grassy forest, heading toward your backdoor.
The screen door is closed, but you remember noting how the screen has a small tear in the bottom corner, which tends to be how ants and other bugs find their way into your house in the summertime. It’s scary to imagine the fact that you’re about to use the same door that insects normally use, but there’s no time to think about.
The chill worsens, and you feel your digits go numb in the freezing conditions. Have to get inside. Have to get warm. Have to get help. You’re getting tired already as you dash breathlessly with all you’ve got across the slick muddy ground.
Eventually, you arrive at the screen, and thanks to your weightlifting you’re able to pull yourself up the small indent in the screen door frame and clamber through the torn fibers of the screen. You plop down what feels like several feet onto the wooden floor of your kitchen, and collapse to catch your breath.
Taking a breather, your eyes wander around. The countertops stretch up into the air like buildings in New York City, the massive kitchen table legs going up seemingly forever like incredible spires of a palace. The ceiling seems miles away. Far across the floor, you can make out the stairs. Not that you’d be able to climb them at this height. You tremble, trying to slow your breathing, attempting to work it out in your mind. You’re a self-dedicated man of science. You can figure out what’s going on. You can. You know you can.
What the HELL is going on, you think to yourself.
No. No. No. Just keep calm. Slow your breathing. Cool. Cool. You can work it out. You have to. You have to. Or else.
Or else what?
You shake your head, trying to shake the fears from your mind. You can’t think rationally when you let your mind wander like that. You have to THINK.
You take a seat, leaning your back against the frame of the screen door. And then you let yourself think.
You were struck by lightning. That much is clear. What isn’t clear, of course, is how you managed to shrink down to the size of a small action figure from an occurrence that happens to hundreds of people on a regular basis. It’s weather. It’s lightning. It’s been around for centuries. No, it had to be something else.
Chemistry class. The lab. It hits you. What you were mixing, the chemical changes you forced it through by heating it. Being melded into you. And the catalyst of the electricity. It all adds up. It’s the only explanation. It makes sense.
Of course, a moment later you shake your head again, realizing how ridiculous you just sounded to yourself by suggesting that any of this “makes sense.”
Your time to think about this is up, as under your ass you feel a pounding. Like an earthquake, getting more severe with each smash. You try to stand up but instantly fall down again, as you don’t have your sea legs yet. Then your eyes rise. Carly.
From the top of the stairs, you can see her massive form smashing down the stairs in her normal haughty fashion. Her hair tossed over her shoulders, a white t-shirt barely covering her abdomen, tight jeans clinging to her toned legs. A pair of pink flip-flops carrying her bare feet.
You quickly calculate in your head. Technically, Carly is about twenty feet away from you right now. But from where she’s standing, with no depth perception, it seems as if she’s standing literally a foot away from you. Perhaps less. She continues her descent, growing larger and larger with each massive footfall, sending shockwaves through the ground into you, until she reaches the bottom of the stairs.
A chill runs down your spine. You know you need help. You know that, in all honesty, Carly is your only chance. And yet the sight of her, this girl that for the past week has hated your guts with a burning passion, standing so massive and powerful compared to you, like a hateful and vengeful goddess descending on a doomed village. The cold hits your core, and you almost feel sick.
“JACK!” comes the incredible boom of Carly’s voice, echoing through the high halls of the kitchen. You almost want to cover your ears in defense. “JACK!” she bellows again, stomping her foot as hard as she can in protest of you not showing up immediately at her call. This actually does send you toppling to the floor again, even from this far off. You take a deep breath, then let it rip.
“CARLY!” you scream at the top of your lungs from the door. But there’s no reaction. She hasn’t heard you. “CARLY!” you yell again, stepping forward a little. You know it’s the best chance of her hearing you, but with each step forward, the reality of her size becomes more and more real, and your legs begin to turn to jelly as you inch forward.
“CARLY!” you yell, your throat starting to protest. You go for another step, and almost trip, your head getting fuzzy and light. It occurs to you that you are abjectly terrified right now.
No reaction. Then, lifting her foot in the air, Carly starts walking toward the screen door. You look way up at her face, trained on the screen door. “JACK, you left the screen door open! It’s going to rain inside!” she yells, rattling your eardrums. She comes nearer and nearer. You try to back up, but find your feet glued to the ground. You’re frozen in fear. Your throat goes dry.
You stare ahead at Carly’s van-sized feet, barreling across the wood floor in huge bounds. Suddenly, they stop right in front of you as Carly opens the screen door to close the wooden door.
Her big toes, not much shorter than your whole body, wiggle in the faded pink rubber of her flip-flops. Her other toes, long and pink, bend absentmindedly, turning her joints white in rhythm.
The absolutely colossal forms of flesh stand before you. From here, you can see almost every detail of those gigantic peds. The veins, so small at regular size, seem like speed bumps running endlessly around her ankles and along the smooth, fleshy tops of her feet. As she wiggles her toes, you can see the damp underside, wrinkled and pruned still with water from the mucky yard outside. A few blades of grass remain trapped in the deep wrinkles of her sole, as well as between a couple of her toes, the tips of which are white and chalky with dried and peeling skin.
You look down at your naked dick, and realize you are spurting piss all over the ground in front of you in terror.
But you can’t think about that right now. You look straight up at your goddess-sized sister, towering above you with such raw and gut-wrenching power you want to puke just having to tilt your head all the way back to see her face.
“CARLY!” you scream with every last ounce of energy left in your vocal cords.
Using her right hand to brush hairs out of her face, Carly tilts her head down to her feet. Her eyes boggle, glistening with an indescribable shine, her mile-long lips curling into a massive smile.