Bare trees casted witch fingers across the sky. From the towering ashtray to my left to the roughened wood beneath me, and past the misted green grass, the cries of birds and the gentle lullaby of a cricket. The soaring moans of cicadas, the warmth of early morning heat. A gentle breeze worked its way under my clothes, I crossed my arms and pulled my knees in tight. Puffs of smoke drifted lazily above me, sometimes in the shape of hoops and other times uncharacteristic blobs. The acrid smell of a burning cigarette inhabited my nostrils, I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes. One, two.
It had taken a while, but I now understood that I wasn't dreaming. Everything that I had witnessed up to this point was more or less real, non-hallucinatory. Despite my best efforts to understand why I was here, nothing was really turning up in my favor. All I understood at the moment was that I was on Jade's porch, with her above me nursing on a cigarette, and I was smaller than my regular size. Why I was this small, no clue yet. Jade and I still hadn't exchanged any words. She came into her room, dressed in pajamas fresh from a shower, and took me from her dresser, gave me my clothes and took me to where we are now.
I heard the pops of Jade sucking on her cigarette, and then she brought it down and extinguished it before me, in the grubby ashtray. I saw her enormous fingers working powerfully, twisting in a grinding motion. The sound was loud and vivid, a dense scraping. She stopped and let go of the butt, then turned her head to me. Her gaze was strangely empty. I saw a light smile creep on her lips, and she offered a hand out to me, on the edge of the table I was sitting on. Sighing, I stood to my feet and walked to her palm, lightly stepping onto the uneven flesh. The warmth of her body immediately enveloped me. Before I could reach the center, I stumbled and fell flat on my face. I heard a light chuckle.
As she began moving, the air around me felt like it was moving too. Although I felt fine for a moment, soon motion sickness overtook me as she kept her hand in motion, carrying me almost casually. She opened the front door to her house, a cold gust of air came over us. My eyes stung from the temperature change, lightly watering. After she entered she closed the door and began the walk to her room, immediately left from the door down a hallway, to two doors where she takes the right one. As soon as we entered her room I coughed violently. It smelled like cat piss and weed. I hadn't noticed it earlier because I had grown used to it overnight, but now it was readily obvious that her room seriously stinks. I tried to suppress any further convulsions so I wouldn't offend her.
After a moment we're at her computer desk in the far right corner. To the left of us was her dresser, atop it a stack of clothes and the cage I slept in, slightly obscured. She sat down, the bottom plummeted from my stomach and my nausea increased. In a quick motion she emptied me from her hand, sending me tumbling into a heap on the surface of her desk. As I stood I groan in pain, my body slightly aching. I looked to Jade angrily, but she did not look back. Instead she opened her laptop, to the right of me, and moved around her mouse to bring an image to the screen. I watched as she navigated to her internet browser, but soon the brightness of her screen hurt my eyes and I had to look away. My view moved down to my feet, bare and sore. I pulled them toward myself and looked at the soles, colored black from when I was sitting on dirty table outside. My butt was probably black too.
I heard Jade typing on her keyboard, but I didn't feel inclined to look back to the screen and risk burning my retinas. For now I was busy thinking about where I was, and why I was here. Last night I remembered staying up late on Tumblr, but regardless of me staying up late I fell asleep normally. There wasn't any interference or weird sensations, I just drifted asleep like normal. Before that, before I went to sleep my mom had cooked hu tieu and it had tasted fine to me. The only relevant thing that had happened was after school Jade stayed over for a couple of hours and we had argued. I didn't think that it was very serious at the time. Arguing was just a thing her and I did often.
Why did I have to be here anyway, I didn't deserve this. Thinking so much was just making me frustrated and upset. Whenever I don't understand something it makes me unreasonably angry. I felt lost and powerless. Plus it was getting hard to hear my own thoughts over the massive sound of Jade typing. I looked back to her screen and saw that she was making a text post. I tried to make out the letters but the screen was so large and I was at a bad angle, I just couldn't make anything out without extreme amounts of concentration. It didn't seem to be relevant anyway, so I blinked the tears out of my eyes and stood up, and walked to the edge of the table.
Looking down from the table, I thought to myself how easy it would be to just jump. I could have jumped right then, it wouldn't have been hard at all. I would fall and that would be it. But I remembered reading that most people who attempt suicide by jumping and survive say that they regretting it as they were falling, so I backed up. I sat down and dangled my feet off the table and just looked down over my surroundings. The room, once a small and ratty place that stunk majorly, was now like an enormous habitat. I wondered if it was bigger than the Grand Canyon at this scale. Enormous landmarks came to my head, places I've seen like Lake Michigan, or large valleys. Scattered across the blue carpet were articles of clothing, a large majority of the far right side of the computer desk was covered in glass cups, the room was generally a mess.
My eyes were still burning. And my body still hurt from when Jade tossed me onto the table. What was her problem, why was she just ignoring me, using a laptop, giving me weird smiles and smoking cigarettes and typing so gosh darned loudly? And what was with the smell of her room, why was she fine just living in a pig sty? I realized how cool it would be to spit off the edge of the table, so I did it. The fall was so far that I eventually lost sight of the saliva, but I was expecting that any way. So what was with Jade, what was her major malfunction right now and what was she even blogging about anyway? She knew that I follow her Tumblr and I would see it when I got home anyway, why not just show it to me now? There was a sensation of a rubberband around my forehead, compressing my thoughts and emotions into a small bundle.
I backed away from the edge carefully, stood back up again and walked over to Jade's left elbow, resting on the desk as she typed ridiculously loudly. Her pale flesh bent and pressed each time her hand shifted. I got as close as I could before it seemed like the erratic movement was capable of reaching me. After a second of deliberation I ran up to her anyway and kicked at her as hard as I could. Instantly regret flooded over my body. She was solid as a rock, and the inertia shocked through my body. I fell on my back and moaned, I could feel that my leg was numb now, which only added to the distress of my sore ankle. At the least I saw that Jade had stopped typing, it was pretty obvious since there wasn't constant banging on her keyboard, and she looked over to me. There was a look of concern on her face, but not like concern for a friend. She looked at me like she felt bad for me.
That pissed me off. I rolled over onto my face and curled into a ball. I didn't really like letting anger control me but I guess that's how it was going to have to be. For a second it was very quiet and I was just left alone with my rage but then I felt a strong pressing on my back, and soon it was so overpowering that I uncurled and was just on my belly. I turned my head and looked over my shoulder and saw that she was pushing down on me with her finger, but as soon as I met her eyes she stopped. I turned back over and sat up, and looked back at her. Again she had the same smile on her face, and she did a sarcastic little wave down at me.
"Hey, how are you doing down there?" Finally she said something to me. To tell the truth I didn't know how I was doing down here, especially because I could only just now start thinking again after all of that racket from the keyboard stopped. I took my eyes away from Jade and started thinking again. So what was all of that stupid pressing stuff about now? Not only did I not understand what was happening, I didn't understand what Jade was even trying to do at this point. I didn't even feel like I knew myself, with this new size and all. My hands were shaking. I felt a lightness in my head, and my vision slowly clouded at the edges with haze. My heartbeat felt irregular and fast. I breathed heavily and felt like I was going to cry, but I didn't feel like I needed to, not over something like this. I put my face into my hands.
Soon enough I felt normal again. I took my hands away from my face and looked back up to Jade. I opened my mouth. One, two.
"What the fuck is your problem?"