Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

“Not again,” Ms. Melville said as she stared at the tiny house in her back yard. She went into her home and grabbed a can of pest fogger from the basement, ripped the roof off of the miniscule house, and dropped it in. She gave a satisfied smile as she placed the roof back on and walked back to her home. A faint hiss emanated from the house and just barely covered up the shrill screams of the tiny inhabitants.

She knew you were technically supposed to call a handler and have them relocate these things (some hippie outcry about ethics or something), but this was cheaper and had worked out just fine so far.

* * *

That night Ms. Melville woke to a strange hissing sound in her bedroom. She rose groggily and saw smoke. Wait, that’s not smoke! Someone had set off a pest fogger in the middle of her room! She bolted out the door and slammed it behind her, but the noxious fog crept under the crack. Thinking fast she took off her nightgown and stuffed it into the doorway. Now, she found herself standing in her hallway, naked, and knowing that there was someone else in the house.

She tiptoed her way to her purse and reached in to get her cell phone. 

She screamed and quickly drew back her hand. Someone had put one of her mousetraps in her purse. Her middle finger was clearly broken and her ring and index finger were bleeding. She pried off the trap her vision blurred from pain. The phone was gone. She limped towards the landline fighting back tears only to find out that the power cord was gone.

She heard a skittering noise and looked towards the kitchen. Her phone was hovering next to the kitchen door occasionally knocking against the wall. It was tied to a string that was being fed through the air vent.

She was relieved to realize that she wasn’t dealing with a burglar, but she never knew those little buggers were this smart. She looked down at the furniture between her and the floating “bait”. The cord to her landline had been tied to the chair and the coffee table as a makeshift tripwire and several thumbtacks had been strewn out on the other side. She smiled.

“Very clever,” She quietly edged towards the table. Carefully, she stepped over the cord and tiptoed to the cell phone. She yanked the phone hoping to pull whatever was trying to lure her down with it. The grate in front of the vent came crashing down and she sidestepped it walking right into the thumbtacks. She let out a cry and could hear tiny voices laughing in the walls. Her right hand and her left foot were now in great pain, but she wasn’t going to give up this easily.

While she sat down to pick out the tacks she saw a shadowy figure scuttle across the floor. Without thinking she threw one of the tacks at it. The one in a million shot pegged the little guy in the head and he dropped to the ground.

“Bullseye!” she yelled as she crawled over to inspect her “kill”. She picked it up and examined it carefully. It looked just like a tiny person in jeans and a t-shirt, and it was still breathing. She almost felt bad for pegging it, that is, until she saw the blood on her hand and remembered what they did. She was working off its clothes when it groggily came to. It let out a gasp as it saw her smiling down.

To this thing I’m probably a terrible monster.

It let out a shrill cry and started yelling and gibbering. Hoping the others hadn’t heard it she ran into the kitchen locking the door behind her. The tiny naked being stared up at her, its eyes pleading, but she had already decided its fate. Her stomach growled.  What she was about to do was strictly forbidden, but they had to learn that you didn’t just invade a human’s house.

She brought the panic stricken being to her lips making sure to breathe heavily on it. She could tell it knew what she was going to do and was doing its best to beg her to stop. Ms. Melville smiled and slowly drew her tongue across its body. She enjoyed the way it struggled. She had never done anything like this before, but people used to do it all the time before it was outlawed.

Ms. Melville slowly sucked the tiny being into her mouth feet first enjoying its frightened thrashing. She was sure it was small enough for what she had planned. She waved playfully at it just before its head vanished between her lips. She tossed it around in her mouth savoring the struggling sensation before she braced herself and swallowed hard. It took some doing, but she worked it down her esophagus. She was shocked to realize she could still feel it wiggling the whole way down. There was something extra satisfying about knowing it was trapped inside her, still alive.

Ms. Melville’s reverie was cut short when she realized she was being watched. Another small being stood on her countertop near the sink giving her a cold stare. It had a white peg leg, an eye patch, and a small sword that looked like one of those novelty toothpicks, but was very real. There’s. No. Way.

* * * 

She remembered back when she was a little girl at the old house on the east coast. She was playing in her mother’s garden when she saw him. He looked like a tiny person. He was even smaller than one of her dolls. She reached over and picked him up from the flowers he was trying to hide behind. Her eyes wide with wonder. People had talked about them, but she’d never seen one up close before.

Without warning he had stabbed her finger with his sword. She shook him and bit off one of his legs.

“Hermena!” her mother yelled. She spit out the leg and threw the tiny man into the rose bushes. She was spanked for “torturing that poor creature,” and ever since then she had detested the little things.

* * *

If that is the same one, how did it get to California? It smiled when it saw the recognition in her eyes.

“Aww, did you come all this way over one little leg? Let’s see what you do when I turn you into a bloody stump,”

She rushed towards it completely missing its friends on the floor who set up another tripwire. She fell and bumped her head on the cabinet.  As she turned around holding her head she saw that she was surrounded by the things. Some of them were hefting her kitchen knives as if they were battering rams. Others carried tiny bundles of rope. They had knocked down the elephant she had sat out to thaw, but it was still in its cellophane and Styrofoam. When they got too close she smacked them away only to have a new swarm replace the old one. They were running around her feet with the ropes trying to bind them. When she fought the ones with the rope the ones with the knives charged. When she fought the ones with the knives the ones with the ropes worked quickly.

Soon they were firing grappling hooks into her flesh and trying to pull her to the floor. She tried to stand up and the creatures working on her feet pulled bringing her to the ground with a crash. She could see their leader turning on the knobs of the oven while a crew used grappling hooks to pull it open.

 They worked frantically to bind her as she saw an ominous thundercloud work its way under the doorway. The pest fogger! The tiny things were falling down dead shortly after the cloud reached them. The creatures that had the ropes were pulling her with all their might towards the open oven while others did what they could to divert the fog. Ms. Melville was able to reach one of the kitchen knives and slowly worked to free her feet.

She began to cough. The fogger was toxic to small creatures almost instantly, but if she stayed in it long enough it could kill her too. The leader saw that she had a knife and was yelling at the others to warn them, but its efforts were too little too late. She cut the last of the rope and ran for the glass sliding door that lead from the kitchen to the back patio just as the fogger reached the oven. There was a loud explosion behind her and she was thrown into her back yard. She lay on the ground laughing and bleeding and coughing as a heavy black cloud bloomed from the fire that used to be her house. A thunderhead rolled in and it began to pour.

I beat them! I beat them!