The Forest Lake Incident
By NFalc
7:30
When I come to, my eyes won't focus, everything around me a complete blur. I can feel the cold concrete behind the back of my head. The steps above seem like they're far away, unreachable.
Everything came back slowly. I'd been late to Physics after talking with Jen, and subtly making sure she didn't know about me and Alexa. She hadn't heard, thank God. And what she didn't know couldn't hurt her. I'd been preoccupied with thoughts of how I'd break the news to Alexa at lunch, when the rumbling began, and I was thrown off my feet... and apparently half the way down the stairwell. There was a dull pounding in the back of my head, and I wondered whether I'd be able to show up for practice that afternoon.
Then I stood up, and saw that my head was even with the top of the handrail.
It took me a few minutes to sort myself out. Somehow, while I was out cold, I'd shrunk to half my normal size. This was, of course, completely fucking impossible. You don't become captain of the football team when you're three feet tall. I still had my letterman's jacket on. I patted myself down, checked to make sure I was completely the same. And I was. I was just much shorter.
Now the question was simple. What the hell am I going to do about this? Short guys don't get much respect, and now I'm the shortest. What would Jen say? Or Alexa? If I tried to break up with her now, she could kick my ass single-handedly. And just how had this happened to me, anyway?
The steps of the stairs are now two feet tall, each. I start to clamber up the stairs towards the physics classroom, but find my way blocked by a gigantic slab of fallen concrete. So it isn't just me... Something has clearly happened in the science building. I turn and go over to the window, pull myself up onto the windowsill.
Nothing looks the same.
Half the bridges between buildings are broken. C building has been damaged, and now leans like the Tower of Pisa. And the ground between the buildings has changed completely. There's no grass in sight; the space between buildings is filled with tons of strange boulders, maybe a foot long each, colored red, tan and grey. They fill the space as far as I can see.
Have we crash-landed on some other planet? Some other dimension? It seemed like while I'd been unconscious, the world had suddenly decided to go insane and change everything before I got back.
I take some deep breaths, try to get a hold of myself. Right. First thing you have to do in emergency is find help. There has to be someone who knows what they're doing around here, who knows what's going on.
I negotiate the steps carefully. If I jump down, I actually risk spraining something, and the last thing I want is to be stranded on the science lab staircase. It takes me ten minutes to get to the bottom.
When I open the doors, everything is exactly as I saw it from above. I was almost hoping that in the time it took me to go head out, it all would have somehow gone back to normal. No such luck.
I look around the side of the building, trying to see what caused the damage to the staircase. Instead, I find a massive hole torn out of the walls and classrooms, floor to second-story ceiling, through the side of C building. The classroom I can see through the hole is burnt to cinders. The one below it, however, is just mixed up, desks and filing cabinets strewn about the room. So it couldn't have been multiple bombs. And just one isn't enough to cause that kind of destruction. What the hell happened here?
I need to go find help. If there are any survivors left, that is. I look towards B building, but the path is completely broken up, and I don't want to risk climbing over the strange boulders. I have no idea what they are, for all I know they could work like quicksand. Being trapped under a mound of strange boulders is pretty much the last thing I need right now.
Suddenly, I feel the ground shake beneath me. Is it happening again? Whatever it is...
I turn around, and find myself looking at a rough, grimy black surface. It takes me a moment to realize that it's leather. That this is the upper sole of a boot. And I'm about as tall as the top laces.
Without warning, the boot lifts in the air and surges forward, knocking into me like a couple of linebackers with a mean streak. I go flying, hitting the ground hard only to see the sole of the boot coming down on me, filling the sky with black rubber. Oh my God. This is it. Game over, the end, I'm finished. I close my eyes.
When I open them, the black rubber sole is hovering about five feet away from me. It moves to the side, and I find myself staring up (way up) at a girl's face. She has long dirty blond hair, and is wearing heavy eyeliner, and a leather jacket. I'd seen her around the school before, beating up some of the nerds, although I didn't know her name.
"Holy shit," she whispers, then bends down, her simply huge body looming over me. How is she this big? I only shrank to half my size, yet she's something like ten times taller than me. "I almost stepped on you." She sounds almost fascinated.
I scuttle backwards a little, instinctively. I notice my hands are shaking.
"You're that jock, right? Paul Linnerman. The one Rose asked to Homecoming."
Rose... Right, that was that red-headed girl she always hung out with. Her, Rose and the Latina chick. I barely remembered turning Rose down, but by the look on the blond girl's face, she must have been pretty broken up about it. That's just my luck.
"You know, I could crush you under my boot right now," she says, her gigantic mouth spreading into an evil grin, "And nobody would know about it. Hotshot quarterback Paul. A smudge on my shoe. A stain on the sidewalk. No one would know." She leans in closer, her face fills my vision. I can feel her breath on me, smelling like mint gum but with a hint of cigarettes behind it.
"No, you couldn't do that." I protest. "Why would you want to kill me? I didn't hurt your friend on purpose, and I never hurt you. I don't even know you!"
"Hmm. I'm not convinced. And besides, why am I talking to a bug anyway?" She stands up, her face pulling away rapidly. "You don't talk to bugs, you step on them." And just like that, she raises her boot high into the air, and it plummets towards the ground.
But once again, I don't die. The boot stops close, way too close, right above me. I could reach out and scrape the bottom. I'm surprised I haven't pissed my pants, I just came so close to death.
The girl just laughs. "You really thought I was going to, didn't you? I bet I just scared you shitless." What kind of psycho was I dealing with? She could have killed me, if she had stopped just a second later. If I stayed, I was probably going to wind up dead. So I picked myself up, and did the first thing that came to mind.
I ran, as fast as I could, in the opposite direction. My feet flew across the pavement. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, but I ran anyway. Behind me, I could hear her footsteps pounding after me. Four years of running two miles a day, and still this smoked-out bitch was gaining on me. I keep running, but it's clear the huge size difference is gonna screw me over, big time. This chick was bigger, but she wasn't any slower.
A wall of black leather smashes into the ground in front of me, and I skid to a stop in front of it. The girl has made it clear: I'm not going anywhere.
"What the fuck did you do that for?" She asks, peering down at me, annoyed. "Did you actually think you could get away from me?" This is probably one of those questions I shouldn't answer.
Without any other warning, she reaches down and wraps her hand around my waist. She's got long, pale hands, the nails cut short and unpainted. The fact that she can hoist me up to eye-level makes me nervous. The fact that she's only holding me in one hand makes it worse. "I'm not letting you get away. You're a little too much fun to play with."
I know it's a bad idea, but I struggle a little against her grasp. Her palms are soft, but her grip's like iron. I can't help but think she'd be a good receiver, if she wasn't a forty-foot tall bitch from hell. "I'm not a doll. I'm not something to be played with!"
"Well, neither are we," she smirks, her heavily made-up eyes glittering. "Women, I mean. And everyone in the school's heard about your little affair with Alexa Briscoll. That sort of thing just shouldn't be allowed to slip by. You played with women when you were big, Paul, and now I'm gonna play with you."
I'm not sure if she's power-tripping, getting high on her own bullshit, or is just plain stupid. All I know is this stopped being funny right after she almost crushed me.
She changes her grip on me, and suddenly I'm dangling above her face, one of my legs pinched between two huge white fingers. "And just so you know, Paul, I like to play rough."
Just like that, she opens her mouth wide and begins lowering me towards it. I can see the darkness at the back of her throat, just behind the huge, spit-covered mountain that is her tongue. And, for the third time this morning, I think about the fact that I might be about to die at the hands of one of my classmates. Then two gigantic rows of shiny white teeth come crashing down on top of each other, right in front of me. I'm pulled back from her mouth, far enough to see that she's smiling.
The girl turns her head, looking off into the distance. I feel a rumbling beneath us, and crane my head to try and see what's coming.
I can barely believe what I see. Three immense shapes moving in our direction. Three giant girls, even bigger than the one who's holding me in her hand. Even worse, I know these girls. One of them I know real well.
Alexa's leading her group, dominating as usual. She's almost twice as tall as the girl who's got me. Behind Alexa are her two friends, Aisha and Christine. The three of them usually form Jen's main group, but since she's not here, Alexa's in charge.
"Well, well, looks like the losers grew too," Aisha says. She's always been good with insults, although this last one wasn't all that great.
"Watcha got there, Jamie?" Alexa asks, peering towards me. I'm both hoping she'll see me and dreading it. If she finds out that I was planning on breaking up with her, I'm dead. Literally.
I can get a glimpse of Jamie's face, and she looks worried. I smile to myself. Pick on someone your own size, bitch. Then she closes her other hand over me, hiding me from sight. "None of your business," she says.
"Bullshit," I hear Alexa say. The voices are muted behind Jamie's hand, but I can still hear them, barely. "I saw something squirming in your hand."
"Just back the fuck off, okay, girlfriend?" Jamie says, exaggerating 'girlfriend' to make it into a taunt. Alexa's always been seen as kind of a ditz, and she's really insecure about it.
"You think you're tough, huh?" Alexa says threateningly. "Well, you might be a giant, girl, but you're a pipsqueak compared to us. Plus, there's three of us big girls, and just one little you."
"Your odds aren't too good," Christine says, her voice ice-cold. She's the brains of the outfit, and although she doesn't talk too much, she could kill you with a look.
There's a silence. I'd bang on Jamie's palms, or shout like crazy, but I don't think it'd do any good. Plus, bad as my chances are with Jamie, they might be even worse with Alexa.
"Give it here." Alexa says. "Now."
I feel myself moving towards her, and then the huge fingers beneath me give way, dropping me onto a warm, soft surface. Jamie's hands above me move away, and once again I'm in blinding light.
"Now get out of here," Alexa spits, and I hear Jamie running off in the distance.
I have to look up, way up just to see the girl's faces. I thought Jamie was big, but Alexa and her friends are just ridiculous. I mean, I was sitting in the middle of her palm, and there was room for me to lie down if I wanted.
Jamie's gone, so Alexa looks down at me. I see her face filled with surprise. "Paul?" She gasps. "Ohmigawd. No way." Her friends peek over her shoulders, and I notice they have to tiptoe to do this; they're shorter than she is. Day I choose to break up with a girl, she suddenly becomes the tallest of a school full of giant chicks. Has my luck turned completely to shit?
"He's so... small," Christine whispers, staring down at me like I was some sort of freak. And for all I know, I might be. Still, the only giants I've seen so far are girls. Maybe the guys didn't grow? No time to think about that now. I've got to show them I'm still me, or else they could just squash me like a bug. So I lift a hand and wave.
"Awww, he's waving at us. That's so cute," Aisha says.
"Is that really you, Paul?" Alexa asks. I get the feeling she might still be in shock.
"Yeah, it's me!" I call up. She squints, and leans closer. "What was that?" She booms. With her mouth so close, it's like she's shouting at me full blast even though she's just talking normally.
"It's me! I'm all right!" I yell, loud as I can.
"Oh. Okay. Good!" Her head pulls away, and I take my hands off my ringing ears. "What are we gonna do about this?" She asks her friends.
"You mean the little guy?" Aisha asks.
"Well, yeah, but also, where are we going to stay? We can't fit in any of the buildings."
"The gym's got a pretty high ceiling," Christine says. "We might be able to fit in there while we're sitting."
"Um, could you put me down now?" I yell up.
Alexa ignores me. "Okay, so we're heading to the gym."
"What about me?!"
"Yeah, what are we going to do about him?" Aisha asks. She's got a funny look in her eyes that I don't trust.
"Duh. He's coming with us. He's way too teeny to make it on his own. I'll just look after him. I know, he can ride in here!" She gestures to that little handbag she always keeps with her.
"Aw no, no way!" I shout. "I am NOT going in there!"
But she just picks me up between her thumb and index finger, lifts me soaring into the air, then drops me into the darkness of her bag.