Adult-FanFiction.org : Books

.Movies	By : keithcompany Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Gulliver's Travels Views: 2234 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, based on Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Any resemblance to person(s) living or dead is purely coincidental.

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
- 4
I was watching a fairly standard summer-stupid movie when Spooky showed up. We'd submitted each other's treaty offers, then actual diplomats met in the Crown Plaza downtown.
Talks were going good, from what I heard. But I wasn't supposed to seek Spooky out until we had ratified terms of what I could ask her, and what I had to give her.
So I was a little surprised when she ran in, dragging a woman behind her.
Spooky DID take a moment to make sure no one else was in the store, then ran over to where I stood next to the TV set.
"Quick! You need to hide us!"
"Run upstairs, my apartment," I said. She looked angry. The woman being dragged in her wake just looked confused.
"I need to hide her from the cops!"
"Upstairs, my apartment," I repeated.
"I need to SHRINK her."
"Shrink her yourself."
"I can't, she's human." There was nothing in the treaty about her revealing my identity to the humans. I looked her over. She was a head taller than Spooky.
But that's not unusual, there are dogs taller than Spooky. "Tell me," she interrupted my thoughts, "that you use a shrink ray."
"Up in my bathroom, spare toothbrush, brush your teeth, then go hide under the bed."
"Right!" Spooky said, stepping towards the stairs at the back of the store. "Come on!" Two steps later, she paused. "With or without toothpaste?"
"The shrinking drug is in the toothpaste. Who brushes without toothpaste?"
"Why is it in the toothpaste?"
"Do you want to discuss it or are you in a hurry?" Just as I asked that, there was a squeak of brakes outside the store, at the curb.
"Real quick," Spooky said. "Mary's an abused spouse."
"Call the cops," I said just as quickly.
"Her spouse IS a cop!" Then they were running up the stairs. I walked back and shut the door to the stairs. Then I went back and rewound the college road trip film to the four-woman pregnancy scare.
Detective Bill Barasano entered my business. He showed me his badge and asked if I'd seen a young woman enter the store. "Yep," I said. And just stood there, watching the film.
"Where is she?" he asked after a moment.
"I don't know," I shrugged. "I think they ran out the back." I pointed a thumb behind me. He walked back and looked out the door. There's an alley, there's one wall of Sister Sarah's mission and a dumpster I share with the bakery next door.
He didn't see anything that interested him, so he came back to me. "Sir, can I ask you some questions?"
I stopped the tape. "I'm NEVER going to find out if you can get a woman pregnant on a snowmobile," I sighed.
"The redhead?" he asked. "Turns out Tiffany is experiencing a false pregnancy. The tummy bulge is the result of a yeast infection fermenting the beer she poured into herself while using the bottle as a masturbatory aid."
I did not know if this man was the wife abuser Spooky had alluded to. I did know it was now my mission in life to one day smash his head down into his rib cage. Back home, we arrested people who ruined a performance like that. The fact that it wasn't a felony here was one of the reasons we'd delayed making formal contact.
"Thanks," I said. I tossed the remote onto the top of the TV. "And what is it you would like to ask?"
"Well, I would like to search the building. Just in case they did not go out the door to the alley."
"You can search this floor," I said. "It's open to the public. But the basement and the apartment upstairs? You'll need a warrant."
"Mr… Um?"
"Peter," I said.
"And your last name?"
"Peter," I said.
"Oh! I'm sorry. What's your first name, Mr. Peter?"
"Peter," I said softly.
"So, you are Peter Peter?" Then he got that face. Everyone gets that face.
"Go ahead and say it," I said. Even plot revealers didn't deserve the torture. Every human in this benighted country seemed to suffer a curse when they said my name.
"No, no," he said. His mouth twisted a bit. It was trying to get out.
"No, you have to. Now, or when you get back in your car. It's an imperative," I told him.
"Pumpkin-eater," he mumbled. Then he smiled.
"Feel better?"
"Actually, I do," he smiled.   "So. Mom had a bad delivery, or Dad had a rotten sense of humor?"
"Dad lost a bet," I said. And if I ever found the women working Identification Insertion the day I showed up, I would make them eat drywall.
"Anyway, Mr. Peter," he said with a smile. "If you won't let me search the premises, it appears that you have something to hide."
"Not at all," I said. "It's like a game of poker. If you didn't call my last bet, then you haven't earned the right to see what's in my hand. I COULD show you, but I don't think I should have to. So I won't.
"If you call, or if a judge agrees you have a good reason to search, then it becomes YOUR right."
"I never thought of it that way," he said. "Maybe we'll have to play poker some time."
"Maybe," I said.
"I should warn you, though, Mr. Peter, that after 22 years on the force, almost no one can bluff me."
"Well, Detective Barasano, I should warn you, I've been observing people for over 300 years, and it IS impossible to lie to me." He stared. And got angry. I knew he couldn't detect a lie because I really am 328 years old. And he assumed I was human, so he looked for human traits in liars. After a long moment of silence, he frowned and stopped trying to stare me into a confession.
"I guess I'll just look around the business premises, shall I?"
"Feel free. I have to go burn Beer Blitz and find something else to watch." I went with Reno 911. Barasano circled the racks and snuck up on the door to the apartment. He didn't open it. He tried… The door isn't steel, but there are some iron ingots inside it. And the frame is made out of a giant magnet. _I_ can open the door, once it's closed, but no one else is going to budge it. And he'd need explosives to get through the wall around it.
He made a couple more loops around the place, ignoring the cop-disparaging comedy on the screen, then coasted to a stop next to me. "How about your security cameras? Any chance of looking through the pictures of your open-to-the-public area?"
"Not without calling my bet," I said. He nodded, then walked out without saying goodbye. I let the movie run until the finish. I half expected him to pop back in, trying to catch me running up to see how my guests were doing. If he did, he was going to find me apparently content to idle away my time.
He wasn't parked outside when the movie was over. It was within a few minutes of closing time, so I closed up, locked up and went upstairs. Spooky sat on the foot of my bed, holding a naked, shrunken woman in her hands. Clothes and shoes were piled at the foot of the bed.
"Your shrinking system doesn't shrink clothes!" Spooky yelled at me.
"Of course not! It's biochemical. Why would it shrink clothes?!" I swept up the discards and hid them in the wall. The building used to be part of a restaurant, the dining portion. The kitchen was now the bakery next door. There was an old dumbwaiter that I'd fixed a false wall over.
"MY system shrinks clothes!" Spooky pointed out.
"Then you should have used THAT! Beggars can't be finicky." I went into my kitchen and found a cloth napkin. I put that down for her to wrap the tiny in.
"Our system is entirely on the Isle," she said. "We can't use it on Mary until she's been to Lilliput."
"Wait, what? You shrink all the time."
"I've BEEN to Lilliput," she said, rolling her eyes. "Once I've been through the process there, I can alter my size myself." She looked down at the rather terrified looking woman. "She hasn't been initialized, so she can't access the system's effects."
"Interesting," I said. "So, can you tell me why a cop wants into my private space?"
"Um…"
"I'm Mary Barasano," Mary yelled. I gestured for her to stop shouting. It really isn't necessary and it makes them hoarse after a bit. At least, that's what happens to humans back home for the first week or so. She swallowed and went on. "My husband.   He, uh… He's…"
"An ass," I said, still rankling about the spoiler. "Why are you mixed up with Spooky, here?"
"I'm, I was… I wanted to get away from him. But he's got friends everywhere! So I was hiding in the Downs."
"That's where I found her. She's hopeless at living on the streets. But it turns out she's a literature major! Just what my superiors have been asking for!"
"Really?" I nodded. "That makes sense. So she can help you sort fact from fiction in all the stuff these people write."
"Like you and the movies," Spooky nodded. "She'd be perfect on staff."
"Too bad she can't go," I said.
"What?" the two women asked. I stood up and walked to the living room. There were no cop cars visible from the window. I sat and waved at the sofa. Spooky had followed me and now sat down.
"Well, how much toothpaste did you-"
"And who the HELL uses shrink toothpaste?" Spooky asked.
"I figured a bottle of pills was risky. If they don't have a prescription, cops might test them to see what I'm on. They would not like the behavior of certain reagents exposed to my shrinking medicine." Spooky opened her mouth to reply. I raised a hand to silence her. "And if we had a fake prescription, they'd try track down the fictional doctor, and then they'd still analyze the pills to see if they're really what the label says they are."
"Yes," Spooky said, "but if you're ever arrested, then you might be able to get a cop to come get your heart medicine. He's not going to come get your toothpaste."
"A thought," I admitted, rubbing my chin.
"Can we PLEASE get back to the shrinkpaste?!" Mary squeaked.
"Ah. Yes, of course. So, how much did you take?"
"I dunno… Same amount I usually brush my teeth with?" She looked up at Spooky, who shrugged. I thought for a bit.
"I don't think you could fit more than three doses on the brush," I said. "But you were scared, in a hurry and distracted by the arrival of Detective Barasano, so-"
"He's HERE? Already?" Mary panicked. Spooky tried to calm her.
"He was, he looked around, he left," I told her. "He's getting a search warrant."
"So we need to leave," Spooky said.
"No," I told her. "See, I don't know when she's going to recover her original size."
"So it does wear off? Then how long does it last you?" she asked.
I shook my head. "It's my maintenance dosage. I take it twice a day, there's a fairly constant level in my system at all times." I pointed at Mary. "But she took somewhere between one and three doses."
"So…if you take it twice a day, and she took three doses, that's a day and a half, or come morning two days from now?" Spooky guessed.
"Not likely," I said. "Oh. Food.   The bakery next door does excellent calzones?"
"Whatever," Spooky said. Mary just rubbed her eyes. I went over to an intercom over the sink and ordered four large.
"Expecting company?" Spooky asked.
I slapped my forehead. "Oh, yes, your posse." I looked around the walls. "Anyone allergic to feta cheese? Or sausages?" There was no protest so I ordered another one. Back with my guests, I said, "See, the dosage is correct for my size, my original mass and my metabolism."
"Oh!" Mary waved her hand, nearly dropping her napkin. "And you're really twelve times my size. So, twelve times a day and a half, that's a little over two weeks!"
"No. I'm twelve times your height, normally. And that much wider than you are. And that much thicker. More than seventeen hundred times your mass."
"Oh," she said, almost too quiet to hear. Spooky looked distracted for a moment. She put Mary down on the table and stepped closer to the window. She didn't hold anything, but she looked like someone taking a call on a phone. Mary looked forlorn, so I scooped her up and held her. And rubbed a finger along her back, careful to keep on top of the napkin.
"So ONE dose," she said, staring at my thumb, "that'd be… Seventeen hundred times a day and a half… That's… That'd be… Um."
"Seven years, one month and six days," I told her. She sagged like the kid in the foxhole who just told Sarge the name of his fiancé back home, then got shot. "And that was for one dose," I went on. I did not want to depress her. But I was trying to scare her, scare both of them from doing something stupid. I didn't doubt that someone had a microphone pointed at me. "Worst case, three doses, that's 21 years, 3 months and 19 days."
I felt the little sob almost as much as I heard it. I lifted her to my face. "But that assumes two things not in evidence. One being that my medication affects humans the exact same way."
"That, that seems unlikely," she said in a shaky voice.
"Yep. You MIGHT recover in the next five minutes."
"Might," she repeated in a wistful voice. She put on a brave smile and asked, "What's the other?"
"That my people do not send our very, very best experts in human physiology, and shrink biochemistry, to see what we can do to fix this. Okay?"
She smiled, still sad but a bit less so. "Thanks."
"Least we can do," I said. "Because you're going to explain 'It was a dark and stormy night' to me, Miss Literature."
"Oh, no!" she said in mock shock, then we shared a smile. I thought that would distract her. Of course, I was perfectly serious. No one back home knew why Snoopy kept writing that story…
"Okay," I said as Spooky came back over. "So I assume most Lilliputian routes home involve time spent in walls, under floors and in corners, nooks and crannies?"
"Maybe," she hemmed.
"Well, Mary could be coming back to normal at any time. It's dangerous for her, for anyone around her, and it'll give away your hiding places."
"I'll obliterate their hiding places," Mary said. "Plus I'll be naked."
"A good point. I propose she stays here. My experts can come see her, your literary analysts can come see her, you and I'll both protect her."
"About that…." Spooky said.
"Where will I sleep?" Mary asked.
"Spare bed," I said. "Just stay in the middle. If you recover in your sleep, you don't want to roll out of bed before you get a chance to say 'yay!' and all that." I got a smile out of her, which I dashed instantly. "I just need to know everything about you and Detective Barasano."
"Oh."
"He's next door," Spooky said. "Sitting in the bakery where you just ordered five calzones to eat while you're home, apparently alone."
"Eek!" Mary wailed. I mean, seriously, she said 'eek.' That's how it looks in the transcript. I've never seen anyone just SAY eek unless it was in a really bad parody. What was wrong with this woman? Aside, of course, from being on the run from an abuser, and being the size of a Lilliputian in a human-scaled apartment, and being possibly a bomb just waiting to explode.
I stared down at her miserable figure for a moment, then shook my head. "No problem," I said. "He's probably already asked them about my order habits. Five is hardly out of the norm."
Spooky was rubbing her temples. "Okay. Okay. You go take care of that. I'm going to get Mary dressed, then we'll look for a hiding place."
"How are you going to… Oh, you've got people bringing over Lilly clothes?"
"Lilliput, or Lilliputian," she said testily. "Not Lilly. It's too close to Lolly, short for Lolita."
"Well, there's no real counter for 'giant.' Midget and dwarf don't go far enough, and fairy implies supernatural powers and-"
"Did someone say clothes?" Mary shouted.
"Yeah, honey, I'll wear them, then shrink to your size. Then give them to you." She went to where the dumbwaiter was hidden.
"That means you're going to be naked twice?"
"Barasano!" she shouted.
"What?" Mary Barasano asked her.
"Alright!" I replied. I went into my room to change my shirt. I never went to the bakery dressed for work, and I was trying to match whatever they might have told the detective. When I came back out, Mary's clothes were folded on the table and Spooky stood beside her, shrunken…er, normal, taking her own clothes off.
"GO!" they both squeaked at me.
----------
Barasano was sipping a beer and watching some sports game on TV. I greeted him and went to pick up my order. Leslie was behind the counter tonight, stacking up the take-out boxes.
"So, expecting company?" Barasano asked me.
"No, this is my usual order."
"We love him," Leslie said. "He always eats like a high school wrestling team."
I nodded towards the beer. "You're off duty?"
"More or less," he said. "I'm waiting on that warrant, for your cameras." I looked him over. He was lying. It's always easy to tell in humans. They never live long enough to really gain control of their tells.
I decided to brace him. "No, you're not," I said. I put my boxes on the table and sat down. "Which makes me suspect you don't really have a legal reason to ask for it. Are you using your badge to do something….personal?"
"Maybe," he said. "But if I am, that's between me and my captain. I haven't violated any of your rights. I haven't searched anywhere without your permission." He seemed relaxed. That was at odds with him chasing down his victim wife. But then, maybe he was just more psychotic than I'd suspected.
"True," I said. "And I suppose as long as you do, it's not my business how you spend your free time." I stood to go.
A voice behind me shouted, "Nobody move! This is a stickup!"
I spread my arms and turned around very slowly. "Really? You're ripping off a BAKERY?" I asked. "There are four bars on this street!"
"Shut UP!" The robber was a small man, not as small as Spooky, but below human average. He held a very, very large shotgun, though. He had my attention. I wanted to duck out of the way to let Barasano just shoot him. I was blocking the line between the cop and the criminal right now, so I hoped the detective was getting his gun out.
But that line between the three of us extended to the counter, to where Leslie stood. If guns went off, one of them was pointed at my friend. And since Barasano was a wife-beater, not The Hero, it was inevitable that he couldn't take the guy out with total surprise. The robber would get at least one shot off.
I couldn't take it, because then Barasano AND Leslie would insist that I go to the hospital.   If there were gunshots, there'd be X-rays and I could not stand for an X-ray of my insides. Not and keep my cover.
The gunman waved his gun, telling me to move closer to the counter. But that would keep the gun pointed at Leslie's general direction. I played dumb and moved the other way. I skirted tables, and he tracked my movement. Eventually the gun was 90 degrees away from Leslie.
The guy was shouting at me to stop moving, the usual threats. Then Barasano stood up swiftly and put an enormous revolver in his ear. In this wonderfully subdued voice, he said, "Put it on the table or kiss your ass goodbye."
"I was expecting a Dirty Harry Speech," I said. Barasano didn't blink until the gun was down and the guy raised his hands. I thought about moving the gun further from his reach, but figured the cop didn't want yet another armed person in the room right now.
Once the zip-ties were in place, he stood and emptied the shotgun. Then he turned to me. "Some guys spend time coming up with a speech. But the bad guys don't always wait for you to finish.
"And," he added nonchalantly, "never, ever offer yourself as a target, ever again. I had it under control without your help."
"Okay," I shrugged. I went to get Leslie into a chair. Once she was down, I called her husband, Phil, to come over. Then I called the police emergency line.

-------
"Where were you?" Spooky asked.
"I assumed you had people watching me," I said.
"Yeah, but the robbery was, like, an HOUR ago! The food's cold!" The cops had finally left the bakery, and Phil had taken Leslie home.
I heated one calzone in the oven, slid it back in the take-out box and left it on the coffee table.
Then I warmed up the rest and ate at the kitchen table. When I was finished, Mary and Spooky were alone in the living room, using the napkin to wipe off. The calzone was almost entirely gone.
"Okay," I said, "Barasano's gone for the rest of the night. He's looking for you on his off time, so eventually he'll be dragged back to work. What can we do for you in the mean time?"
"I, uh…" Mary looked at Spooky.
"She's given us a shopping list," the Lilliputian agent told me. "Clothes, toiletries, a toilet she can't fall into, the usual."
"But where will we put it?" Mary asked. "I mean, it'll be dollhouse furniture. And you don't strike me as a dollhouse owner."
"We'll build a cardboard dollhouse on the headboard," I told her. "If you grow, you'll just rip out of it. If anyone see it, we'll just mark it… Um…"
"Toys," Spooky said. "Look, we have to go. I've got to make some reports, get some supplies, and my people are exhausted. You'll keep an eye on her, keep her husband away?"
"No," I said. "I'm looking forward to the chance to push the spoiler-revealing bastard through my garbage disposal. But I'll keep him away from HER, at least." Mary smiled up at me, Spooky shook her head. Then she ran out. I heard a few clunks from the air vents. I guess the little people really were exhausted.
And then we were alone.
Mary was a lot more relaxed with clothes on. She was also exhausted, but too wired by events of the day to go to sleep. I turned on my stereo and started playing some music. Then I sat on the floor next to the coffee table and we talked. "This is weird," I said.
"What?"
"I, uh… Well, I have spent some time with humans and with Lilliputians. It's weird that the Lilliputian I know the best is the one I can look in the eye."
"What's it like around your own people?" she asked.
I shrugged. "It's home. What would you say if I asked you what home is like?"
"It's like being an undercover narcotics officer in a cartel's headquarters, never knowing which mistake is going to be the one that gets you beaten." She paused. "No. I KNOW I'll get beaten, the mystery is which one'll be fatal."
"Ah," I said. "No, home isn't like that. For one thing, we have very large brains. And we live a long, long time. We have a lot of experience watching people. So when people say 'she got her black eye from walking into a door,' and they're lying, they won't get away with it."
"Heavenly," she said with a sigh. "So… What happens if you do find an… abuser?"
I thought for a second. "Did you ever see the first Indiana Jones movie? Where the big ugly German got hit by the plane's propeller? And spattered everywhere?"
"Yeah…" she said slowly.
"That's roughly what we would call an arraignment." She laughed. Then sobered suddenly.
"I just have to get there, though. And avoid him until then."
"Yes," I agreed softly. I put a finger around her shoulders. "Of course, to get you, he has to go through me. All 1728 of me." She cried, then, just a bit. Then that opened all the pent-up emotions of the day and she broke down. I held her in my cupped hands and said soothing things. "Shh, shh, it'll be okay. You'll be fine. The Lilliputians will take care of you like a treasure." That sort of thing.
Oh, and one of the best things we got from humans: lullabies. I told her "I will hit him with a flyswatter that weighs as much as a Chevy," and she went right to sleep. I tucked her into the middle of the guest bed and shut the door. I paused in the hallway. I told an air vent, "Be sure to get handkerchiefs. Or tissues." There was no reply. I didn't know if that meant we were alone, or if they were just being discreet. I went to bed.
-----------
I looked in on her as soon as I woke, asked if she needed to go to the sink for a wee. There was no immediate reply. I stepped closer. A little lump in the blanket moved slowly towards the foot of the bed. There was a muffled call, probably for help. I lifted the top of the blanket and called, "Move towards the light, Mary."
She ran into view. "Thank you.   I, um, was a little overwhelmed." I carried her to the bathroom.
"I'm sure there will be some amenities provided today." I placed her beside the sink and started running water. "Now, do you want me to leave, for your privacy? Or do you want me to stay, for your safety?"
"I'm not… Okay," she said, "I'm not saying you're not a nice guy, but I'm more afraid of you than I am of slipping in the sink."
"Okay." I went to my room and showered in the master bath. When I was clean, shaven, dressed and ready, I went back to the other room. "Ready to greet the day?" I asked.
"Help!" Mary was screaming from the sink. I found her caught in the drain, trying to hold the sides. Water continued to run, a steady stream pouring over her head as she slapped and slipped at the steel ring. The drain plug was laying on its side in the sink.
I turned off the water and gently pinched one of her hands. She was wet and slippery, covered with some sort of grunge from the hips down.
I didn't ask for an explanation, I just replaced the plug, then started to wash the grime off of her. She lay across my palm, face down, and let me.
"I just wanted to take a crap," she whimpered. "And I didn't want to crap on your shiny, clean plug."
"It's shiny because no one uses this bathroom," I said. Once she was rinsed clean, I wrapped her in a wash cloth. "No one would think anything of you using the sink instead of the toilet."
"But I thought, I thought, I could just stand there, you know? And then, and then put the plug back. But I slipped and…"
"Shhhh," I said. "You're okay."
"But I didn't know if you were coming back and…" She sniffed. "I don’t want to be small in a world of giants."
"And once you get to Lilliput, you'll fit right in," I promised her. "But for right now, I can tell you you'll never need to be ALONE in a world of giants, okay?"
"Okay."
There was no reply when I called to the air duct for someone to come out and stay with her, so I took her to work with me.
She put her clothes back on, I wore the loosest shirt I had, and she rode in my pocket.
The bakery was still closed, so I went further down the road to Lucky's, a diner that does breakfast and lunch. If anyone noticed me slipping some hash browns and bacon into my pocket, they didn't cry out in alarm.
Mary snored a tiny bit as I was paying the bill. I snorted my nose and complained about allergies. The waitress didn't seem to care.
I considered the sleep on the way back to the store. I guess ten or fifteen minutes fearing a watery grave may have dumped a lot of adrenaline into Mary's blood stream, now it was just a load of toxins.
Or maybe it was just part of her adjustment to the toothpaste. When I first took it, I could NOT sleep for three days, but I wasn't human. Well, I'd include it in my report. Which I was late writing.
Then again, I thought, I usually had plenty of time at work to do my real job. I was thinking that exact thought when I looked up and saw what was in front of my store.
Detective Barasano was leaning on his car, waiting for me.
"Mr. Peter," he said, without the slightest smirk, "I was wondering if you've seen this woman?"
He showed me a picture of Mary, cropped from a wedding photo. She was happy, then. Clearly unaware of what this man was capable of, what he'd be doing in the near future. The future she was obviously looking forward to in the picture.
I could honestly say I never saw that woman. I told him so. He accepted my reply.
"Alright, thank you. I'm sure she's somewhere in this area. If you see her, would you contact me?" He handed me his business card. I opened the front door and he watched me tack the card to the bulletin board behind the counter.
He nodded and went out to show the picture to some other people in the neighborhood.
I wrote up my report. It was a little harder than usual. I hadn't had too many reasons to report on 'toothpaste,' 'treaty,' 'Lilliput' or 'wife abusing son of a sea-slug' in the past. I actually had to look up the code words for some of them.
I asked for permission to fold Detective Barasano into a wallet, but I already knew what the answer would be. We cannot afford to draw attention to ourselves by murder, however justified, especially of people who the authorities would note their passing.
Plus, we're not sure if human society can withstand a sudden increase in justice. So many people would be out of work. Lawyers, judges, bondsmen, pawn brokers, whoever it is that makes those aggressive lawyer commercials…
Then I decided to do some research. I have a wonderful filing system and looked up Spouse Abuse. I put 'Men Don't Tell' in the machine and sat back.
Turns out, there are cases of men being the abused partner. Who knew? It was…odd, to say the least. I briefly imagined getting Mary up to my normal size, then giving her a birdcage with her husband in it.
The fantasy conversation continued with her taking the moral high road, with the standard phrases about revenge not fixing anything, and she wanted to be better than the abuser.
I offered up some rather winning logical arguments for turning him into a little bit of paste.
He screamed and cried and wet himself. Mary remained, in my head, firm in her high moral convictions. But she set the cage down and while we were arguing, the cat ate him.
"PETER!"
"Hmm?" I spun around. Spooky was inside the store, looking anxious. "I wasn't going to let anything happen!"
"What?"
"Um… Hey. What's up?"
"Mary's missing," Spooky told me. "We don't know if she left or continued shrinking. I've got my tech people combing the bed for an ultra-tiny Mary, and my trackers are going through the bedroom.
"If she did wander off, we don't know if she is or isn't rational, so we're either recovering her before she gets hurt, or we're rescuing her from the effects of your toothpaste."
"You've been in my rooms?" I asked.
"Focus, Peter, we're looking for Mary."
"Mary's asleep in my pocket," I said. "She had a bad scare this morning, so I decided it would be unwise to leave her alone and-"
"You wouldn't let us take her under a doorway," Spooky said slowly, hands on her hips, "or along the Underfoot Railroad, but you're carrying her in your pocket? Which she might burst out of at any time?"
I explained the morning discussion and scare. She rolled her eyes, but accepted that she would not have left the poor woman alone, either.
THEN we discussed just shrugging off a long sleep after a long night's sleep without seeking medical attention.
"She's snoring! She sounds fine to me!"
"Do they have concussions on your planet?"
"This planet IS my planet!"
"Tangentially," she said, shaking her head. "I brought a doctor. Gimmee our patient."
"Sure," I said. I pulled her out of my pocket. She smiled and sleepily waved up at me. When I handed her to the Lilly (Please, don't tell her I said that.) agent she smiled wider and called Spooky's name.
Then went back to sleep. Spooky shook her head and headed upstairs.
--------
"Mary's fine," Spooky reported a half-hour later. She appeared on the wall behind me, dangling from a rope hanging from an air duct. "My doctor thinks she just didn't get much sleep when she was on the run. Or when she was living with…"
"Fuckwit," I offered.
"Detective Fuckwit," she corrected with a smile.   "I'll have to spell that out in my report."
She swung over to the counter and walked over by the register. We both glanced to be sure she wouldn't be visible to anyone entering the store.
"But she's sleeping now? I mean, just sleeping, it's not the drugs or anything?" I asked.
"Apparently she finds my presence, or your pocket, to be… Places of maximum security. So she's catching up on lots and lots of lost sleep. Doc actually says it'll be good for her."
"Great," I said. "Now, why did you come down through the vents?"
"Because something's wrong with your door," she said.
"Ah. Actually, no, it's just got a refrigerator magnet holding it shut."
"I'm stronger than a fridge magnet," she said. "Heck, even at THIS size!"
"Not if it's from my fridge," I replied.
"Oh." She was about to ask a question when the door opened.
A man walked in just as Spooky ran to duck behind my Return Policy sign. He was a stranger. Never seen him before.
He walked straight up to me and showed me a picture of Mary. Probably from her driver's license. "Have you seen this woman?"
"Who is she?" I asked back. "And who are you?"
"Oh. Sorry." He flashed a badge. "I'm Detective Barasano."
"Nuh-UH!" a tiny voice said. The imposter looked around as if he sort of heard Spooky, but not clearly.
I stepped down from the raised flooring behind the counter, coming around to face him. "What's the woman done, Detective?"
He turned to face me easily enough. He wasn't aware anyone was behind him. "She's just…missing. We want to ask her some questions. No real crime has been committed. Not yet," he added the last in an ominous voice. Like it'd be my fault if Mary was left free to work her mayhem on an unsuspecting public.
Over his shoulder, I saw Spooky step out from hiding and jump over the edge of the counter.
I shrugged. "Can I see the picture again?" He handed it to me. Spooky stepped up behind him, full sized, or as full sized as she ever gets, and asked, "Can I see?"
The imposter gave a yip of surprise and turned, his hand reaching under his jacket, presumably for his gun. Spooky saw that and instantly disappeared.
I grabbed the back of his head and ever so gently smashed him against the back of the register. It's difficult to knock humans out.
It's really easy to crush their bones to powder, but I wasn't authorized to do that in Mary's defense. I'd have to add that to my report, making a request to protect her with deadly force.
I eased him to the ground and took the gun and some zip-ties away from him. Then I secured his hands and searched for a backup weapon.
Spooky stepped up and asked why I was massaging an unconscious man's calves.   "Hey, I'm okay with whatever you're into," she said. "But now is not the time to-"
I pulled a small revolver out of a calf-holster. Then I stood up and went to the bulletin board. "I need to allay some suspicions, doing my civic duty."
Barasano answered on the second ring.
"Detective Barasano! I wanted to tell you that someone's been impersonating you down here."
"Tall guy?" he asked me. "Parts his hair on the left? Two acne scars on his nose?"
"Yes. You know about him?"
"Does he have a badge from San Francisco?"
"Wow, that's a poor impersonation," I said, taking a closer look at the badge. "He can't even get the city right."
"Is he still there?"
I looked down. He was almost completely flat on the floor. His head was tilted and he drooled onto the Japanese Monster BetaMax shelf.
"Yeah, he's here. He'll be here for a while, Detective, if you want to take your time coming to arrest him."
"No. No, I'll be right there. So I can introduce you to my brother, who is on the force in Frisco."
"Oh! Uh huh… Well. That…would be good to know, yes.   We'll, uh, we'll expect you."
I hung up and turned to face Spooky, who was tightening the zip ties on his wrists.
"You know, it just occurred to me, that we never really had Mary make a positive identification of the man I thought was her abusive husband."
"I thought she was in your pocket when you met him? Did she say anything?"
"She was asleep in my pocket. And, do you remember her being surprised that her husband was here 'already?' Almost as if she thought he'd still be in, oh, I don't know, San Francisco?"
She looked down at the unconscious form for a moment. "I'll just take his driver's license upstairs and ask her if she recognizes him."
"And I'll take the ties off before he develops gangrene," I said. But first I had to go let her through the door to the apartment.
- 2
- 3
- 4
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

.Movies