Sunlight trickled through the curve of the jelly jar glass. However, this wasn’t what brought Peter back to wakefulness, but rather the incessant droning thunk of Mandy’s middle finger flicking the side of the container again and again and again. Rubbing his aching neck, and blinking as his vision cleared up after a bleary night, the miniature freshman watched the girl’s longest digit continually curling back against the spiral pad of her thumb, bracing, then ejecting the pressure and striking blows that made the whole jar shudder. Accompanying this act, just above in his distorted view through the glass, was the countenance of the girl herself, standing under the park bridge before the hiding place, with a familiar expression of smug glee molded to her deceptively cute features.

                “Wakey-wakey, eggs and bakey!” Mandy sang, though still in a low enough voice that her taunting wasn’t projected too far away, as they were still in public. It was early enough that there wasn’t another soul visible on the green horizon. The sky was still a fuzzy enflamed hue, suggesting the sun hadn’t been up for long; Mandy had gotten an early start. Her bike lay discarded on the path nearby.

                For a final blow, having noted that her chosen pet was indeed awake, Mandy pulled back her middle finger across her thumb as though readying a bow and arrow, then let it rip with a flick that caused the jar to bounce backwards by a whole inch.

                Despite the fury of this hit, though, Peter remained remarkably still. His breathing kept relatively steady, hastening for just a moment, before he got ahold of himself. At any point during his horrible previous evening spent with Mandy, if she’d so much as lifted a finger to him, let alone fired it in his direction, his every muscle would’ve flinched in unison, earning a cackle from his cruel classmate and likely another round of whatever-it-was she’d done to earn such a hilarious reaction from the toy boy. But he didn’t this time. It took him a moment to understand why, but once he did, the pain in his neck and the lingering chill he’d experienced through the night seemed to all but dissipate.

                There was a flash of disappointment in Mandy’s face upon realizing that Peter wasn’t going to wince at her rude wake-up call. She grasped the punctured lid and unscrewed it, setting it aside, and wadded her hand through the created opening above, though stopped short of grabbing him, which the little fellow knew must’ve taken incredible willpower on the part of someone so tragically unhinged. Instead her fingers dangled around him like vines, batting gently at his head but otherwise simply balling and unballing until her knuckles popped.

                “So you wanna come out of there, or what, Tom Thumb?”

                For a peculiar instant Peter just thought she was sarcastically throwing his theater character’s name back at him, until remembering he was still wearing his itchy costume, which she was “gracious” enough to give back to him after the naked fairy photo shoot. Much as he’d come to resent this odd old-timey fantasy garment during the dress rehearsals, it was now worth double its weight in gold to him, compared to the very-real threat of the girl taking away his clothes again to emphasize his animal nature to her.

                “Yes, please,” he said, placid. “Ma’am.”

                “Wow, you even have manners now. I guess maybe you’re starting to learn, kinda, after all,” Mandy remarked. Her fingertips gathered the boy up against her palm, about as roughly as before, though Peter could feel signs that she was at least partially becoming educated herself in the art of holding a tiny person in her hand without inflicting injury. It wasn’t a skill he was exactly keen to have practiced on him, but seeing how it was starting to look like he’d need to get used to Mandy performing it on him for the foreseeable future, it was good that she was improving.

                Mandy withdrew her firm fist from the jar and brandished Peter in front of her cheesily mugging face. Her serpentine digits rippled around him, not quite squeezing, but demonstrating the more-than-sufficient musculature lurking beneath the skin; her palm, a touch spongy, cushioned at his back. As Peter wasn’t accustomed to being gripped in a closed hand much before this school year, it was a bit alien still, feeling flesh and muscle folded all around him in a tube. Yet the boy avoided shaking, as though the dawn itself had reinforced his whole constitution.

                “So, did ya learn your lesson last night, midget?” Mandy questioned. With her back to the path that crawled beneath the bridge, she hunkered down and sat in a patch of dew-crusted grass. Her ratty-denim-clad legs crossed pretzel-style, and she bowed slightly, ensuring it was impossible for any passerby to see what she had in her hands without coming in right over her shoulder. Though there still wasn’t another person in sight, anyway.

                “Yes,” Peter answered, without stammering, and without an ounce of attitude either. Realizing, again with surprise, that he had such steady command of his voice, a skill especially honed in his limited yet condensed acting lessons for the previous weeks, the seeds of a quasi-plan formed in his mind.

                “And… what’s the lesson, huh? Tell me.”

                “I… learned it would be stupid for me to keep on not… you know, accepting this.”

                “Accepting what?”

                “That I’m… yours now.”

                The girl’s eyes, normally in an eternal scrutinizing squint, widened suddenly to shell-shocked white saucers. Her lower lip quavered then, but swiftly fitted back up against the upper. For an instant, Peter saw she’d been thrown off balance, at least in part if not in whole, which was an impressive feat, considering the girl herself was such a living embodiment of chaotic unbalance. This whole ploy was a gamble that might fail before it even started, yes, but then again, even speaking to Mandy at any given time was a gamble dependent on her ever-fluxing physiological chemistry, and either way, all Peter’s remaining moves were gambles. The teenage demoness puckered her lips, inhaled sharply, and blew a stream of muggy halitosis-flavored wind right into the tiny creature’s face, though he did little more than blink.

                “You think you can trick me again? Seriously, is that itty-bitty brain inside your itty-bitty head actually that itty-bitty? Maybe I’m not some lame genius person but I’m not stupid, either. So don’t try it. It’s not gonna work,” she warned.

                “I understand why you wouldn’t believe me,” Peter sighed, ever-so-subtly layering his performance. He threw in a defeated shrug. “I was an idiot. I thought I could get away from you yesterday, but then I saw that, obviously, you won’t let that happen. So, I know I have to earn your trust. It might take a long time.”

                “It will,” she spat, though more due to being flustered than her usual bipolar rage. The girl was conditioned to see everyone as an enemy, and was less equipped to function when that expectation was subverted. Her fist trembled, but luckily still didn’t clench.

                “I know,” Peter said. “That’s fair. I just had to say that to you, so that… as soon as possible… maybe you can accept me again, too, as someone worth… taking care of. Because you’ve won. I’m yours. And I just have to… accept it. That’s all I want now. It’s better, like this. For both of us. Right?”

                “Yeah, um… right…” Mandy drawled suspiciously, clearly still trying to puzzle out how she was being bamboozled. Nevertheless, perhaps against her will, the girl’s body language had changed. It relaxed. Her hand turned on its side and rested against her jeaned thigh, gradually unclenching her fingers and allowing the five-inch lad to crouch in her palm. With her opposite appendage, she idled in her usual pastime, twirling a finger through that light-brown ponytail, a tad frizzier than usual. Those hazel-gray eyes pierced and probed the visage of the boy in her hand, though Peter was unaffected still, at least on the inside. “So, what you’re telling me is… you’re ready to be-”

                “Your pet,” Peter finished for her. Now that he was free to move of his own accord, he knelt in a royal bow upon the altar of the girl’s clammy palm. Even as recent as last night, just before sleep, having to say these things or stand like this might’ve made the boy start to choke up, but not now. “And… if I’m going to be a pet, I thought, it’s for the best that I try to be a good pet. Not a bad pet. Isn’t that right?”

                “Okay…” Mandy looked incredibly befuddled at the sight of Peter bowing, both uncomfortable and yet simultaneously joyful. It was clear she expected the rug to be pulled out at any instant. Her fingertip stroked the top of his head. “You’re so dirty.”

                “Sorry,” Peter said.

                “Well, whatever. We’ll clean you up. You can’t be a good pet if you smell.”

                “I agree.”

                “This is so weird,” Mandy blurted. Her fingers curled almost protectively around the still-kneeling form of her living acquisition, much like his family did. She cocked her head and increased the velocity of her ponytail-twirling. “Why couldn’t you say this stuff last night sooner, huh?”

                “I just wasn’t ready. Just like you said, I… had to learn my lesson. It was hard, but I don’t want to be unhappy with you. And I know you want to be happy, too, and you probably can’t be happy if I don’t agree to be yours. So… yeah.”

                The enigmatic brunette sadist looked Peter over once more, turning her hand from side to side to examine him in his cheap Tom Thumb uniform. She nudged a pinky finger against the boy’s stomach, ordering him back to a stand, which he obliged.

                “This means you’re not gonna freak out anymore when I wanna do fun stuff with you, right?” Mandy reticently asked. Two of her fingers rested at Peter’s shoulders.

                “Right.” He had to suppress a gulp.

                “Huh.” The girl nodded, clearly mulling over the possibilities anew, as the catalog of games surely expanded when her subject was actually willing instead of whining and rebelling through every horrific stage.

                “Ma’am?”

                “You sound so lame when you call me that, but I like it, so whatever. What?”

                “Do you think… once I’ve proved to you again that I mean it this time, that I’m here to stay and be yours… you could … you know, be gentle with me? Please?”

                Mandy’s fingers tapped at Peter’s shoulders, alternately massaging and bopping. One of them curved inward, stroking the side of the boy’s head. “I guess so,” she said with bizarre calmness and honesty. “But you still gotta prove it first.”

                “I know. And I will.”

                “So you’re not gonna cry every time when I’m ready to pick you up.”

                “No.”

                “And you’re gonna eat and drink what I give you, and sleep where I tell you.”

                “Yes.”

                “And you’re gonna wear the wings more for me when we’re back home again, so I can draw more and take more pictures and maybe make some secret movies too?”

                “Yes.” This was a particularly hard answer to deliver without stuttering, even in his actorly mode, but Peter was this deep already. He didn’t intend to throw away the work he’d put in already. Readying himself, he then took a calculated risk: “Are we… going back to your house now?”

                “Why do you want to know THAT?” A hint of her usual paranoia flared up, but didn’t take over.

                “I’ve just been out here a while, and it’s… still cold.”

                “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Mandy replied, suddenly recalling that she’d left him out in the late-fall weather for a whole night. “Well, we’re gonna go back and do stuff, but we can’t yet. I think they’re gone now, but there were people looking for you, like police people, at my house. They were actually there when I got back from leaving you here yesterday. My mom got all mad and after they looked through everything, they left, but came back one more time this morning. Only they weren’t allowed to come back in, my mom said so, so it’s probably almost safe.”

                Peter’s heart pounded, but he didn’t let his face change. The Lisa who’d visited him in his dream-delirium was correct. The people who cared were working hard to find him. And they’d only just missed him last night. Which meant he just needed to rely on his unique talents, the parts of “him” that made him “him,” as illusion-Lisa had called it, for a while longer until the storm clouds of the last wretched twelve hours cleared.

                “Okay,” Peter said. “Just… can I please stay with you now? It’s… warmer with you, and I know I’m safer than out here. I really do see that now. Please? I’ll do whatever you say from now on.”

                Mandy paid him a surreally bug-eyed look, unnaturally pouting her lips. It took a second for the boy to decipher that he was staring at the girl’s best stab at showing compassion. Her version of it was a bit nightmarish, but this was a good sign, all things considered. She was moved, somehow or other.

                “Yeah, yeah, you can,” Mandy relented. Still, it was obvious that whatever microbial capacity she had for empathy, buried under all the selfish sociopathy, had been contacted. Her fingers gradually closed back around his body, holding him surprisingly tenderly, which would’ve been comforting to Peter if it wasn’t Mandy doing it. “Those people might come back looking for you again, though, so we’re gonna have to hide you at night for a while. Still in your jar, but probably under the part of the floor wood that comes off when you pull it. I can give you a tissue or something so it’s softer, though.”

                “Thank you.”

                “Are you still cold now?”

                “A little.”
                “I bet we can fix that, too,” Mandy said, her chapped lips widening back into a more familiar Cheshire-cat grin. She remedied this by slaking her tongue from one corner of her mouth to the other and back, double-painting her pinkish skin in glossy saliva.

                This sight, too, Peter endured without flinching, though it was getting trickier now.

                “Plus, you’re dirty from all our playtime last night,” she added. “We need to get you cleaned up good. But… I think we can do both at the same time.”

                Peter nodded, already having some idea where this was headed, yet even with this foresight, and the knowledge of Mandy’s near-insanity, it was a tough concept to swallow for him. Any other day of his life, being ensnared in the girl’s fingers like this, with no absolute promise of rescue on the horizon, and the increasing threat of what he thought was coming, Peter would’ve fallen to hysterics. He wouldn’t have been able to bear it before: crying, quaking, descending into the madness of self-worth and human identity. But this was a new day.

                He was going to see Lisa, and everyone, again.

                “So I think I’m gonna put you all the way in my mouth,” Mandy announced. “And that way, we’ll wash you off and keep you warm.”