Alana of 17

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Well... if you’d have told me this story would take me a year to finish when I started, I probably wouldn’t have tried to tackle it. I’ve had some version of this rattling around in my brain for probably 20 years, but never felt confident enough to try putting it down. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale, which is probably well worn territory at this point, but I can only hope my take on it is unique. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter One-Prologue-"Hunter in the Dark"




A pair of feminine eyes squint, illuminated by a thin band of blue reflected moonlight in the otherwise perfect darkness. They're fixed and strained. Determined. The eyes of a hunter focused on her prey.

She's patient, as any hunter must learn to be. She's waited for so long, stalking this particular game for days. Signs of its presence... footprints and piles of its droppings... began to appear nearly a week prior.

It's been so long since she's tasted fresh meat. Her mouth waters at the very thought, but she can't get distracted now.

She remains crouched. Hidden in the shadows. Waiting for her victim to draw near enough to attack. Her long crimson hair is tied behind her head, out of the way... can't have it dangling in her face when the fight begins. No distractions. With only a wooden spear to execute her kill, this young huntress knows she must be quick. She must have perfect timing. This particular creature is especially swift on its feet... and if she doesn't pounce with absolute precision, she'll have no chance of ever chasing it down.

The night feels both claustrophobic and vast at the same time.

So she waits. Beads of sweat grow and trickle down her pale, freckled face in anticipation. She wrings the shaft of her weapon ever tighter. As the beast's dark coat becomes backlit by the moon's dim rays above, her adrenaline begins to pump... readying her for action. She's trembling now, like a human trap wound too tight.

A trap ready to be sprung.

It's close enough that she can smell its foul natural odor. Its large black eyes reflect the shallow light, just as hers do. She could easily reach out and touch its thick coat of course fur. Ever so slowly, ever so silently, this girl raises into a fighting stance. Her prey's back is turned to her and she eyes her window of opportunity. This is it... now or never. A single bare foot takes a cautious step forward on the smooth surface below it, careful not to make a sound as she moves forward. Then the next. Her nerves make her knees feel weak with each carefully placed step, like her legs could give out beneath her at any moment.

She's exposed... and this can only go one of three ways. One: it sees her and flees into the long, infinite dark. Two: it stands its ground... perhaps turning the tables and making her its prey instead. And three: she somehow pulls this off, taking this enormous animal down, just as her father had trained her to do since her early teens.

Not that she's a seasoned veteran of the hunt mind you. She's still green, a mere eighteen years of age, but closer now to womanhood than the innocence of childhood. Most born into this particular dystopia are forced to grow up fast. Any hope for survival depends on it.

She takes another silent step forward. Then another, rolling soundlessly on her heels to her toes. She sneaks along side the animal... and it remains completely unaware of her presence. It lifts its head and sniffs the air just as she lifts her weapon. With a deep breath, another wave of adrenaline courses through her system, giving her the strength she needs to thrust her spear. She buries the sharpened tip as hard as she possibly can into the fur covered neck of the hulking creature. It shrieks, recoiling in pain. It claws desperately at the wooden staff. She dodges each swipe of its deadly claws and continues to push the shaft further into its flesh... until the terminated end exits the other side of its neck.

Suddenly, the animal's defensive struggles find purchase and the girl is kicked away with enough force to send her airborne. She lands on the hard, even ground, but slides and rolls to safety on the layer of decades old dust with the skill of a cat. She jumps back to her feet and charges back towards her writhing game. It kicks and thrashes and rolls in terrible agony. She knows it's a dangerous move, but she can't risk it getting away. Her family... hell, her entire tribe is depending on this meat. Food is in short supply, and fresh food is even scarcer.

The girl takes hold of the end of the spear and flings herself over the animal's neck, mounting it like an unbroken steed. She straddles its shoulders and takes its large, sensitive ears as her reigns. She plants both of her feet on the exposed tips of the spear, and with all the strength she can muster, pushes it forward. Her teeth clench and grit as she grunts as the monster fights back. The soles of her feet slip and slide across either end of her weapon, made slick by the beast's thick, oozing blood. Still she tries. Still she strains. The skin on the animal's neck begins to give and tear until... finally, it snaps. The spear is launched outward, spinning end over end in the air as it disappears into the shadows. The girl loses her balance and falls forward over the creature's head and lands back on the ground with a thud. She is immediately showered in the blood spraying from the gaping slit in its neck.

The animal is much larger than her and she tries to put as much distance between her and its wildly struggling mass as fast as she can. She slips in its pooling blood multiple times before finally finding her feet again. She turns to gauge her proximity, only to be met with the monstrous bared teeth of the creature. She bolts, slipping repeatedly as she flees, narrowly escaping its gnashing jaws. Once at, what she hopes is a safe distance, she pauses to catch her breath... and to keep an eye on her prize. Once again, she waits... this time watching the beastie as it bleeds out... letting its own heart finish the job for her.

She takes a seat on floor, panting hard, and rests an elbow on single propped up knee. As her prey begins to slow and eventually slumps to the ground, she smiles. Pride fills her soul with what she's just accomplished completely on her own, taking down a dangerous creature many times her own size. She's drenched in blood and will need a good bath, if there's enough water at home to do so that is. Water is just as prized anymore as solid food. Her clothing, consisting of a well-worn loincloth and a crude top clinging to her shoulder with a single strap, are completely ruined with blood. She doesn't care, she doesn't even think about how angry her parents are going to be with her when they find out she went after such large and dangerous game without help. The young woman just sits patiently with a stiff lip and her chin held high as she watches her first solo kill take its final breaths

One wouldn't fault you for thinking that what just took place occurred in some remote jungle, some ancient and unforgiving forest. What little moonlight that seeps in does so from one of several skylights, installed in the roof of an old... yet grand edifice, many... many years ago. The expiring beast doesn't belong to some great herd in Africa or Asia. It's nothing more than a common rat, large by a rat's standards sure, but still just a simple rodent.

And as for our exhausted huntress? She didn't survive a plane crash in the wilderness like some female Tarzan. She wasn't raised by apes or wolves. Her parents, who are very human, named her Alana after a long deceased family member. The world she grew up in is harsh and frightening. She and the rest of her people have had to scrape and hoard their entire lives just to get by.

Alana herself stands a few notches on the ruler above three inches tall. Not particularly tall, nor particularly short among her people.

As is the way the world is now.

As far as Alana knows the world doesn't reach much further than the walls of the aforementioned building she calls home. What was once known as a "grocery store," serves now as a refuge from the terrors that lurk beyond the safety of its wooden frame. As far as the tiny young woman is concerned, this is the way the world has always been... and always will be. She isn't burdened with memories of the way things once were like her parents and grandparents, truly a luxury afforded only to the young.

The Store is all there is, and to venture outside its gargantuan transparent gates is to welcome death. The human race is no longer at the top of the food chain, and hasn't been for a very long time.

But little Alana is unconcerned and blissfully unaware of such things. For now she is happy, she has bagged her first kill, and all on her own. For this she feels a kind of self satisfaction she's never really experienced before, pride. When the massive rodent finally stops moving, Alana rises and approaches her prize with newfound swagger. It's when she finally stares into its lifeless eyes that she can't help but ponder about the nature of life and death itself, something she's never paid much mind to until that very moment. As proud as she feels about her win, strangely she also feels remorse for what she's just done. Alana sees the idle beast for what it really is, just another lowly creature simply trying to eek out an existence... just as she is.

"I'm sorry, great rat. I'm sorry that I had to take your life," she tells it as she runs her hands through its fur, "you truly were a worthy adversary." She takes in a deep breath and rolls her eyes back in an attempt to quell the tears welling within. "I assure you though, your death will not be in vain. Many more will continue to live because of your sacrifice. So I say... 'thank you'."

She offers the fallen rodent an almost bowing nod and then turns around and tries to spot her missing spear, really... just an old toothpick, coated in super glue to give it strength. When finally found, she finds its thin shaft is now stained red after having tasted blood for the first time. Once again she wrings it in both hands, feeling its familiar imperfections turn against her palms, hands themselves stained with the lifeblood of another creature. Her swirling and conflicting emotions build until all she can do is raise her weapon above her head wand release the unbearable tension in what can only be described as a battle cry.

Her scream of triumph is cut short though. Alana drops her spear and cups her hands over her mouth. Her eyes dart around the darkness, knowing she's just made an enormous mistake. She kicks herself, wondering how she could have let her emotions get the better of her like this... how could she be so stupid.

There are others out there. Many others... with stomachs just as empty as hers.




End Chapter one

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Two-"Four of the Shoppocalypse"




The dark could hide Alana's kill until morning, but then it would become fair game for anyone else who wanted to take it. She hadn't really thought far enough ahead concerning moving the animal. It was far too big to drag herself and cutting it down into smaller, more manageable chunks could take days.

She decided to rush back to her village and wake her friends for help. Alana had a small, but close-knit group of female comrades she knew she could trust, and would have shared her prize with anyway. They'd known each other since childhood, which shouldn't be all that surprising considering their particular predicament.

Alana herself was quite the striking young woman. She wore her crimson hair long to the middle of her back, usually tied with a piece of string to keep it out of her face or sometimes braided by her friend, Sarah. If it weren't for Sarah actually, Alana's gorgeous locks would probably fall into matting like so many others in The Store, as the little ginger paid little mind to her own grooming.

On her face, Alana bears a faint jumble of freckles speckled at the tops of each of her cheeks, and penetratingly beautiful green eyes peeking above those. Other than a few ribs showing a little more than they should due to the dwindling food supply, she is as healthy as anyone else her age, but lightly scarred here and there from the many dangers that come daily when you're only a few inches tall.

She generally clothed herself in a minimalistic fashion, usually little more than a short loincloth, made from old rags or paper, and a revealing top fashioned from the same. In fact, most of the younger generation chose to dress in such a revealing way, except during the long brutal winters that frequented their part of the greater world. Then, donning heavy fur coats cut from the hides of rodent intruders was the only way to survive the cold.

Footwear had become an almost forgotten luxury, but wasn't really needed on the smooth, tiled floors of The Store. If anything, it only allowed the residents more traction in the dustier spots. The adults, who still clung to the way things used to be in one way or another, tried to fashion their coverings as close to what they wore in the old world as possible. But like all kids transitioning to adulthood, the youth needed to separate themselves from their parents in any way they possibly could. It's funny how some things don't change, even after the end of he civilized world.

At the the current moment, Alana's skimpy attire was soaked in the giant rat's blood, as well as covering most of the rest of her body. Sarah would be the first of Alana's friends who's peaceful slumber she'd interrupt that night, not fully realizing that the young huntress' shocking appearance might give the impression that she had just murdered an entire tribe.

"Psst... hey... Sarah... wake up," Alana whispered.

Sarah's bed, cleverly utilized with an old Kleenex packet, laid below one of three windows inside her parent's home. The structure itself was built from Legos, as were several others in the village, acquired from the toy aisle and assembled by her grandparents almost four decades prior. It still stood as sturdy as the day it was built, and unlike some of the flimsier cottages and huts made from the abundant cardboard boxes that littered The Store, withstood both rot and insects...the latter of which being much more formidable at their tiny size.

Alana considered Sarah her closest and dearest friend. With well kept, naturally curly blonde hair and fair, milky-white skin, Sarah herself was quite a beautiful girl in her own right. She was the shortest member of the group, in fact, she was probably the shortest adult in their aisle at barely three inches tall.

Among her tribe, Sarah had developed a bit of a reputation for being a little on the odd side. She had a strange way of looking at things, and could often come across as a little ditzy. Metaphor and innuendo were almost completely lost on her. While the rest of the tribe didn't really know what to make of the strange girl, Alana found Sarah's naive nature to be quite enduring. In turn, Sarah adored Alana. Lacey, another member of their little clique, would often joke that Sarah might leap from the top shelf of Aisle 17 if Alana asked her to do so.

Unable to get a response from her snoring friend, Alana took it a step further and gently slapped Sarah across the cheek. The confused blonde snorted herself awake. She struggled to bring the dark silhouette of Alana's face above her into focus.

"Alana? What the...? What are you doing here?" She yawned.

"I need your help. I found food, but I can't get it all myself. Will you come?"

Sarah rubbed her eyes and yawned once again. "Of course I'll help, but do we need to do this in the middle of the night? I was having such a nice dream."

"We do if we don't want 'them' to get it," Alana replied. She could just make out Sarah's sullen, yet understanding nod in the darkness.

"Right," the pretty blonde agreed. She threw the soft Sheet of tissue from her naked body and threw a nearby tunic, pieced together from the fading orange wrapper of a forty year old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, over her head. She tied it around her waist with a twisty tie and then Alana helped her climb out the window, not wanting to wake Sarah's parents by leaving through the front entrance. Staying out after dark was not allowed in The Store.

Too many things could be waiting in the dark.

Alana took Sarah by the hand and the pair took off towards the distant homes of the other half of their gang, Lacey and Roberta.

"What is it, 'Lana?" Sarah asked, calling Alana by her nickname. "What did you find?"

"You'll just have to wait and see," Alana replied. "I'd hate to ruin the surprise."

It was too dark for Sarah to see Alana's face, but the little blonde had known her friend for so long that she could easily picture the confident grin that was certainly painted across it.

Roberta and Lacey's houses sat next door to one another, but on the other end of the village at the back of the aisle. The pair of curfew breakers ran as fast as they could through the veritable obstacle course of oversized trash that instructed every turn, all the while still trying to remain as silent as possible. Sarah's crinkling outfit wasn't exactly making that easy.

"For fuck sakes, Sarah, why did you wear that noisy thing?!" Alana whisper-shouted at her groggy friend. "Every Kenner from here to the front of the store will hear that goddamn thing crinkling!"

"It's Orange," Sarah replied.

"Huh?" Alana asked in confusion.

"It's the only thing I could see in the dark, 'Lana," Sarah explained. "Should I go back and get something more appropriate?"

Alana smiled and shook her head with amusement, "next time I promise I'll give you fair enough warning so you can pick out the perfect outfit."

"Speaking of inappropriate garb, why the hell are you soaking wet... and sticky, 'Lana?" Sarah countered. She could only feel the blood trickling down onto Alana's hand, but not see it.

"All in good time, my impatient friend."

Just as she said the words, the duo rounded an occupied Maxwell House can and arrived at their destination at the end of the village. They chose Lacey's house first, a small single story dollhouse, once again brought over from the toy aisle. It was no Barbie's dream house, but the interiors were still quite oversized in scale for Lacey and her family. The building was probably much more suited for someone the size of a Hasbro than a tiny Kenner, but dibs are dibs, and Lacey's grandparents had scored one of the most prized homes on the entire Salesfloor. Alana often wondered how the hell they managed to move the palatial home to its current location... it must have taken "them" to pull it off, and they weren't known for being helpful.

Sarah wrapped on the thin plastic window of Lacey's room. The sneaking girls were greeted by a pair of bright, white eyes in the pitch black within... and they most certainly did not look welcoming.

Alana cupped her hands over the immovable plastic window and tried to force sound through it without waking up the entire neighborhood. "Lacey! Get up! We need you! Meet us at the front door."

Alana and Sarah waited impatiently at the entrance to the dollhouse for several minutes before Lacey finally made her appearance. She carefully closed the comically oversized front door behind her and approached the other two with her arms folded across her chest. Alana and Sarah could just make out the old and worn out white Barbie doll t-shirt in the dark that Lacey enjoyed wearing as a baggy nightgown to bed. She was much taller than the other two, towering over Alana by at least a full inch.

In fact Lacey's entire family were much taller than anyone else in their community. They were looked up to by the others both literally and figuratively, as they also acted as tribal leadership when the other aisles would gather once a month. Lacey's parents were kind and just people and alway looked for the compromise when it came to conflicts within The Store.

As stated before, Lacey was very tall for a Kenner. That combined with her dark colored skin and thin structure really made her stand out in a crowd. She wasn't quite as dark as her father, with mixed parentage, but he was also the only fully African-American man left in the entire Store once his parents passed away.

Lacey was always a sweet natured girl, but her unique beauty intimidated most of the boys in The Store. The kind of girl who's so out of everyone's league that she can only be admired from afar. But even Lacey's usually kind and generous nature was being put to the test at that late hour of night.

"You two assholes better have an excellent reason for this. You know we're not supposed to be out after dark. And besides, if I don't get my eight hours of sleep, I'm going to have bags under my eyes."

Ok, so she could also be a little vain at times. Who isn't?

"Well?! Out with it! What do you two weirdos want?"

"L-Lana says she found food, fresh even. S-she needs our help," Sarah stammered. Not unlike the Kenner boys, Sarah was completely intimidated by Lacey when she was being nice, let alone when she was clearly miffed.

Lacey uncrossed her arms, and from the expression in her almost glowing white eyes, her friends could tell they had her attention.

"Well," Lacey said, "lets go wake up Rob." Something much easier said than done.

Roberta, or Rob as she preferred to be called, had lived right next to Lacey their entire lives. Her family lived inside an empty canister of Quaker Oats where her grandparents had managed to create separate floors, three to be exact, using spent popsicle sticks driven into cut slots in the cardboard. I'll give you one guess which floor Rob's room was on.

"How the hell are we gonna get up there without waking her family?" Sarah asked.

"With this...," Lacey replied. She felt her way through the dark until a flat, vertical surface presented itself.

It was actually the base of the mountainous shelving unit that ran the entire length of the aisle, creating a sort of chasm of faded consumerism. There were ten long rows running from the front of The Store to the back, with a single intersecting aisle known as The Dividing Corridor cutting through the middle. This created twenty separate aisles with each supporting its own little community between the steep walls of shelving gondolas. Each of these villages lying between the massive aluminum browsers were referred to by their aisle number, which hung on plastic signs from the vast ceiling high above the Salesfloor. Alana and her friends belonged to:

17
Pet Supplies Lawn and Garden
Seasonal Hardware
As Seen On TV

"As Seen on TV." The adults would often try to explain what 'tv' was to the younger generation, even pointing out the massive blank-screened security sets hanging from the ceiling. Alana herself couldn't quite understand what made certain sections of the aisle walls important enough to hang the mammoth glass boxes above them, or what the purpose of doing so was in the first place. More importantly, why her people would have exhausted so much time and energy to put them there in the first place... they didn't seem to serve any real purpose. It was a lost concept, to say the least. I can imagine her pondering over how it was done the same way people used to marvel at the great pyramids.

Lacey felt her way down the smooth metal wall until she found the gap between the floor and what was actually about a three foot long kickplate beneath the lowest shelf, and she did so completely from muscle memory. She retrieved a curved pice of metal with a razor-sharp point at one end, and the other curved into a loop with a length of floss tied to it... a fish hook. She brought the item back over to show the others.

"Since when did you become some expert gondola climber?" Alana quipped. To think, this younger generation regarded shelving and floors in the same way the older generations regarded mountains and plains.

"When I was little," Lacey explained, "I would get terrible nightmares. I made this so I could sneak into Rob's house at night and climb in bed with her. She always made it easier to sleep after a particularly bad one."

"You never told me about that," Alana admitted, feeling slightly ashamed for her insensitive crack and not knowing something that seemed so important about such a close friend.

"I haven't had them in years. In fact, I'd forgotten about this little contraption until you two came knocking in the middle of the night." As soon as she finished her friendly little jab at her companions, Lacey spun the end of the grapple like a cowboy twirling his lasso and released it skyward. The hook caught the edge of the canister on the first try, filling Lacey with a pride... the kind that only comes with looking cool in front of your friends. She gripped the string tight in her hands and pulled herself up while planting her bare soles against the curved wall. About half way up, she couldn't help but muse over how much easier the task seemed when she was smaller and lighter.

When she finally huffed her way into the frame of the round, cutout window of Rob's floor, Lacey tumbled inside. Her landing thumped the floor planks pretty hard, startling Rob out of her slumber.

"Who's there... I have a knife, fucker," Rob lied. It wouldn't have been the first time someone had tried to sneak into their house at night to steal food from them.

"Ssssshhhhhhh... it's just me," Lacey whispered.

"Lacey?! What the fuck are you doing?! You're gonna wake up my parents," Rob scorned.

Though she was right to be worried, Rob's parents' room was on the bottom floor, as a means to protect their children on the third and her grandparents on the second floors. Somehow Roberta's parents never stirred, and her grandparents were both so hard of hearing they could have slept through a shelving unit collapse.

"Come with me," Lacey beckoned in a breathy whisper. "Alana says she's found food and needs our help."

Rob sat silently for a moment. It was far too dark for Lacey to see her friend, but she did finally answer... her voice filling the pitch black room with the very seriousness of the situation. "Go back down, I need to get dressed, I'll be right behind you."

Like the other girls, Rob was incredibly beautiful. Her mixed European and Japanese decent set her apart, not unlike Lacey, from most of the Caucasian citizens of The Store. She had dark, almond eyes inherited from her Japanese mother that only hinted at the mischief that lied beneath. Her short, spritely black hair only added to the look. Rob was a born cynic to a fault, so she was skeptical about Alana's claim from the get go.

In just a few more minutes, Rob's feet hit the grainy surface of the old, cheap tile as she finally joined her friends, "well... are you gonna lead us to this bounty or not?"

As the tiny quartet crept off towards the front of The Store, you may be asking, if food is so scarce, why they don't just wake the village and spirit the rat carcass away as a group? It was deemed many years ago that galavanting about The Store after dark was far too dangerous, not just from whatever horrors that may have found their way inside, but even if there there an accident it would be too difficult to aid any injured party. So in turn, curfew was strictly enforced.

By whom? Well... you'll meet them soon enough.

The long journey to the far side of the cash register corrals, where Alana's triumph lay, took quite some time to return to, as expected. When stepping out of the black into a beam of pale moonlight, cast down at and angle from one of the skylights, the rest of the group received their first view of Alana's ghastly appearance.

"Holy shit, 'Lana!" Rob remarked. She began to chuckle before continuing, "you look like you've had the worst period in history!"

Alana halted in her steps and gazed over her shoulder for a moment, glaring at Rob with contempt. Little Sarah didn't find it any if it funny in the least. She was physically shaking with fear. Her candy wrapper attire crinkled loudly with each tremor, only exaggerating her frightened state.

"Uh-uh-Alana? Are you hurt?" She crept slightly closer, leaning in to whisper to the blood-caked figure in front of her. "You're not... you can't be...," she paused for a second, "you're not uh... uh... ghost... are you?"

"Ppppfffffthahahahahaha," erupted in stereo from both Rob and Lacey behind her. Sarah's love for reading the trashy fantasy novels and comics that littered the floors of the periodical section had momentarily allowed her imagination run away from her... and now she knew she'd never hear the end of it.

Sarah only connected eyes with Rob and Lacey for a second before hanging her head in shame. She felt a damp, sticky hand appear beneath her chin and raise her head back up. Alana was standing there with a calming, compassionate grin gracing her blood-streaked face.

"I'm fine, Sarah. In fact better than," Alana assured her. She booped Sarah on the tip of her nose, leaving a dark red dot behind. Taking Sarah by the hand, the excited redhead pulled her diminutive friend along behind her. "Come on, we're almost there."

Rob and Lacey continued to snicker at Sarah's expense as they brought up the rear of the little party. "Think blondie there knows we've secretly been undead for years? Muahahahahah...," Rob cracked in a whisper exclusively for Lacey's ears... who in turn pulled a spit take in response.

Sarah couldn't make out what Rob had whispered, but she was certain it was at her expense. She simply put her head down again and tried to fight off the warm, uncomfortable flush of embarrassment.

And then... suddenly.. there it was, basked in a halo of moonlight. Alana's game truly was a hideous creature, but to these four hungry girls, that rat was like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The rodent at the end of a moonbeam!

"Oh my god...," Lacey gasped in awe, "I can't believe it... it's... it's so big!"

Rob was equally in a state of shock, "I can't believe it... I can't remember the last time I tasted rat. Fuck! I think I've forgotten what it tastes like!"

Sarah pulled her captivation away from the huge rodent, and gave her attention to Alana. The blood-soaked woman hadn't said a word since they arrived. Sarah could see even in the way her friend was stoically standing how proud and strong Alana felt. How pleased the little ginger was to have done this for the people she cared about.

"Alana?" Sarah asked. "You took that thing down all by yourself?!"

Alana only answered with the same compassionate smile she flashed Sarah earlier.

The others approached the enormous rat, running their tiny hands through its fur and feeling the fatty parts out for the best meat. They circled it several times, pondering the best way to get its bulky body back to the village.

"I'm open to any ideas as far as moving this big fucker," Alana put to the group. "I have no idea what to do."

"Can we roll it?" Rob asked.

"We can sure try," Alana replied. The four of them assembled at the belly, planted their feet, and put their shoulders to the rat with all of their collective might. The limp monster rolled feet up onto its back easily enough, but when it flopped back down on the opposing side, its legs kept it from going any further.

"Shit," Lacey exclaimed, "this isn't going to work. It'll take us all week to move it this way." She crossed her arms across her chest and shifted her weight onto one foot out of frustration.

"Hold on, I have an idea!" Sarah announced, only to immediately get shushed by the rest of the group. She took off towards one of the fortress-like register corrals and ducked under the swinging door. When she eventually reappeared, she was dragging an enormous sheet of paper behind her like a tarp. There were stacks of the stuff behind each station, notes and figures the likes of which most who resided within The Store had little understanding of, or would particularly care to.

"Here," the little blonde said with a heavy pant upon her return, bracing her hands against her knees to catch her breath. "Maybe we... can roll it... onto this... and drag it... back home."

Alana gave her friend a loving pat on the back and helped to stand Sarah back up straight. "It's as good an idea as any."

Sarah's pale skin flushed pink, as it did nearly anytime Alana said or did something kind to her.

The four girls positioned the sheet next to the carcass and pushed it over once again from the opposite direction. As soon as they heard its feet plop onto the surface, the covert party hurried to the end of the sheet to try and budge it

It was an astounding success! The combination of smooth tile, the decades of dust coating its surface, and basic human ingenuity had their future meal sliding like a sled being drawn by four human-shaped dogs.

It was a slow pace, and moving something of the rat's size and mass was quite taxing on the four tiny women. Frequent breaks were necessary along the challenging route. Between the time it took for Alana to get back to the village, rally the troops, then return and start moving the rodent... they had lost a lot of precious time. Dawn would break soon and, on top of the risk of getting caught outside their homes, the chance of losing the meat they were working so had to save was of even greater concern.

At least for now...



End Chapter Two

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Three-"The Pecking Order"




Taking a much needed break from dragging the hulking weight of a deceased rodent across the vastness of the Salesfloor, the four small Kenner women paused to catch their breath and muster the strength for one final push. Home didn't lie much further, but as seen through the towering glass doors at The Store's face, the world beyond was growing ever brighter. The morning sun would peek over the distant mountains soon enough, which meant the tiny foursome's chances of getting the precious meat home and hidden were getting slimmer by the minute. Still, there's only so much the human body can endure, so there they sat... stretching and panting... prepping themselves for the final grueling stretch.

Alana, nestled with her back against the rat's shoulder, noticed that Sarah's eyes kept darting from her... then to the gory slice in the rodent's neck... then back again. The little hunter finally had to ask, "something on your mind, Sare-Bear?"

"Oh... uh... I don't know," the diminutive blonde stammered, "I just can't believe you could do that all by yourself! I wouldn't think the four of us could stand a chance against something this huge! How'd you do it?!"

Alana patted the back of the rat's huge limp paw, who's size dwarfed her own minuscule hand. "It wasn't easy... I just got really, really lucky. This big guy was one hell of a fighter."

"Can I ask you something, 'Lana?" Sarah queried again following a brief pause.

"Of course, Sare-bear," her pet name for Sarah since childhood... though the only bears Alana'd ever seen were the ratty and rotting stuffed ones shelved the next aisle over in 16. As a child she would marvel at how enormous they were, and wondered how anything so adorable could be considered a danger. She had no idea that the cute, fuzzy stuffed animals were but two or three foot representations of the real thing. Her pint-sized self wouldn't make for much of a snack should she ever encounter one of the full-grown predators.

Sarah glimpsed behind her at the other two, wondering if what she was about to ask would result in even more relentless teasing. Luckily for her, Lacey and Roberta were preoccupied, grossing each other out by wagging the hairless end of the rat's tail in each other's faces. Seeing that she was potentially safe, Sarah leaned in and whispered, "after you killed it... why did you take a bath in its blood?"

Alana couldn't help but smile at the ridiculousness... yet innocent nature of her odd friend's even odder inquiry. She took a good look over herself, with enough warm morning illumination to finally do so. The little redhead couldn't help but laugh out loud at her gruesome state. She whipped her arm around Sara's neck and gave the silly blonde a light rub on the top of her skull with her knuckles. "Just reveling in the spoils of victory, my silly Sare-Bear."

Alana's response only served to compound Sarah's confusion.

The victorious hunter and her ditzy friend rose to their aching feet and stretched one last time, "let's get this done, ladies. We really don't have much more time."

The four of them managed to drag the kill around the corner of the gigantic endstand that caped the gondola separating Aisle 17 from 18, then into their village by the time the morning sun made its grand appearance. Each young woman breathed a sigh of relief and grinned with pride, as it seemed they were finally in the clear.


They couldn't have been more wrong.


"Whatcha got there, Kenners?" An unfamiliar voice boomed from behind the group of amateur rodent smugglers, stopping them dead in their tracks.

"Nonononono... fuck... no...," Alana grumbled under her breath. "This can't be happening..."

That was the end of it... she'd been caught, and wrapped her friends up in trouble in the process. The girls turned around nearly in unison, their heads hung submissively and avoiding eye contact, something every Kenner parent teaches their young ones when in the presence of The Store's imminent enforcers, the Mattels.

Leaning against the supporting column of the endstand, with all of the smug confidence of a smoking cattleman in a western story, was a young man. He hid his nakedness with a pair of worn out slacks, frayed at the cuffs, along with an open vest cut haphazardly from dark blue denim. The slacks themselves were pilfered from a Ken doll by a relative many years prior and handed down, as clothing not tailored from scraps was a rare thing to see inside the walls, indeed.

The stranger, perhaps the same age or a little older as his much smaller audience, couldn't quite grow a full beard yet, but a sprinkling of dark hairs amid the blonde showed he wasn't far off. In his hand, he twirled and fidgeted with a piece of broken razor blade that he'd fashioned into a crude, but effective knife. The imposing figure repeatedly flipped the blade in the air and caught it, something that's outward appearance seemed fidgety... but was obviously an intimidation tactic for his tiny, terrified onlookers. From their submitting reactions, he was pleased to see it was working.

"You little shits weren't planning on keeping all of that for yourselves, were you?" He asked condescendingly. "That'd be an awfully... selfish... thing... to do." With each word, the stranger tapped his blade against his palm.

"Yeah! You little Kenner bitches should know as well as anyone there's a shortage of food! Are you stupid or something?" A new male voice, more nasally than the first, announced itself before its owner appeared from behind the opposing endcap. This new unwanted guest was clad in nothing but a simple loincloth. His big, toothy smile bore more like a shark's than that of a man.

Behind him, a third figure stepped forward, this one a strikingly lovely girl. She was very pale (as were her companions) with long, light brown hair. How she'd managed to keep the pink Barbie doll prom dress she sported as clean and bright as it appeared was anyone's guess. The final member of the trio didn't say a word, she just leaned against the first boy, obviously a couple, and stared down with authority at the miniature criminals.

And when I say down, I really do mean it. All three of these would be regulators had to be more than ten inches tall. Hell, they could have been twelve! Absolute giants to Alana and her friends. This wasn't the first time any of the smaller girls had seen the giant race, of course, but they were reclusive... choosing to remain locked away behind the impenetrable door of The Stockroom. It didn't matter how many times in her life she'd ran into the enormous and intimidating Mattels, their impossibly huge size always filled Alana with fear. The little redhead was strong, but even with the help of her three friends, she knew they stood no chance against any single Mattel.

Let alone three.

"Did the four of you take this big ol' fucker down yourselves?" The first giant asked with an even thicker condescending tone in his voice than before.

"N-n-n-no, sir," Sarah replied sheepishly, "Alana killed it by herself last ni-." The nervous blonde was immediately cut off by Rob's elbow drilling her hard in the side. She got the gist from the 'I'm-gonna-fucking-kill-you' look her almond-eyed friend was burning into her, and shut right the fuck back up. Sarah wasn't trying to rat (pardon the pun) her friend out in any way, she was just proud and amazed by what Alana had achieved.

"Huh! You hear that, gang... this messy little ginger here fancies herself some kind of great white hunter!" The first giant said with his voice dripping in sarcasm. "Whatcha say, rat slayer? Think you could take me on, too?"

He approached the four and crouched down... directly in front of Alana. The other three backed away to make room... and to have a leading step in case they needed to make a break for it. The stranger placed the tip of his blade beneath Alana's chin and used it to direct her head to meet his face. Even with the man crouched down low, she still had to crane her neck to do so.

"I asked you a question, KENNER," he stated with menacing emphasis on her race. "Do-you-think-you-can-take-me?" The way he asked had such a beat to it that it almost sounded like music.

Alana gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, "no."

"No what, killer?" He lifted his head slightly so he could look down his nose at her.

"No, sir," she groaned, humiliatingly.

The terminus of the jagged razor bit into the soft skin just above Alana's neck and released a trickle of fresh blood, quite separate from the dried animal blood coating the rest of her. She winced at the sudden sharp pain, shutting her eyes tight and bracing herself for the looming giant to take her head.

Unexpectedly, the blade pulled away... and Alana cautiously opened, first one eye, then the other. The giants face was hovering just above her own... far too close for comfort. She could feel his hot, rancid breath flowing all around her. Alana didn't want him to see her tremble, but her knees were about to give out in fear.

"I didn't think so," he whispered, though because of his size, it still sounded loud enough to the trembling curfew breaker.

With a wink and a smile, the stranger raised his mammoth hand to Alana and flicked her hard on the shoulder, the force of which sent her falling backwards onto the hard tile. As she tried to sit up, she noticed faces in the windows of the village for the first time, staring back at her in terror. Some in the floor dwellings, others in the hollowed out product that made up the row houses lining the lowest shelves of the aisles. She pleaded to them with her eyes for rescue, but her fellow villagers just stood there and shook their heads helplessly.

The giant stretched back to his full height, displaying to Alana just how superior he was to her in every way. Finally, he turned to the other three and gave the ultimatum he'd come to deliver. "Alright you little shits, listen up!" And for the rest of you pests who don't think I can see you watching, this goes for you too. I've been assigned as peace officer for Aisles 15 through 18 of The Store, so get used to seeing my face." He thumbed towards his companions and added, "these two are my deputies, and if you know what's good for ya, you'll show them the same level of respect that I expect you'll show me."

The giantess took off to the other side of the endcap, disappearing briefly before she returned with a rectangular package of adhesive notebook tabs under her arm; red yellow and green to be exact. She handed it over to the leader and he raised it above his head to make sure everyone saw it. Just as he did, Alana's parents arrived, awakened by the booming voice of the boisterous Mattel. They slid across the dusty surface of the tile as they fell to their knees and embraced their terrified daughter.

"Ah, you must be Killer here's parents." The giant observed. "Good. I'm glad you'll be present as I'm about to make an example of her." He stepped over the three of them as if they weren't even there and walked to the center of the village to address the filling street. He turned back for a brief moment. "Oh, uh... Killer, dear... what was your actual name again?"

Her father spoke up for the poor girl who was sobbing too hard to answer by this point, "Alana, her name is Alana."

"Ah... thank you, good sir," the the stranger replied with devilish charm. He turned back to his growing audience, "little Alana here broke the law. She went out after curfew. She convinced her accomplices here to do so as well. A minor infraction sure, but she and her comrades conspired to hide precious food without paying the necessary tax on such a treasured find."

He paused for a moment to crack open the package of notebook tabs and removed one of the yellow ones. "Each of these girls' homes will now be marked with a yellow tab. This is your first and only warning. Any further indiscretions will result in an automatic red tab." He turned back to stare down Alana and her family, "and do you know what a red tab gets you, Killer?"

No one said anything. Even the crowd was silent.

He revealed the red tab's significance... with less than subtle relish, "a red tab is grounds for automatic exile."

An audible gasp rolled through the crowd. With this revelation, Lacey's father stepped forward as patriarch and elected representative of the aisle. "Who do you think you are?! You can't just exile someone without unanimous agreement among The Store Council! And I know damn well I would never have agreed to such harsh repercussions! Who authorized this?!"

The giant stranger greeted Lacey's father with a big, fake smile. "How rude of me, little man. I completely forgot to introduce myself... my name is Boyd... Boyd of 1. My deputies here are Anthony and Faye, respectively."

"Feel free to call me, Tony," the second Mattel offered out of faux respect.

Boyd took a few steps forward and knelt down on a single knee to explain to Tyrone, "...and as for your second question, the Council did authorize this... you're just no longer a part of it."

"What the hell are you talking about?! How am I not a part of the council?! Each aisle has two elected members to represent their villages," Tyrone exclaimed. "These good people voted for me to look after their interests!"

"Things have changed, little man," Boyd said with sickening joy. "The Constable has decided that such important decisions shouldn't be left in the hands of such tiny, small-minded creatures as yourself. We Mattels have taken care of you all for a long, long time. Trust us... we know what's best for you."

"This is a goddamn coup, you fucking fascists! You can't do this!" Tyrone screamed at the towering young man, shaking his small fists with rage.

The giant stood up again and glared down at Tyrone, "well, I don't know what the fuck a fascist is, but this is the way things are now. Resources are getting harder and harder to come by and tough decisions need to be made. There's no longer room in The Store for those who can't abide by the rules." Boyd paused once more for dramatic effect, "and be very careful what you say next, little fella. I believe that that one over there is your daughter... am I correct?" Boyd asked rhetorically with a thumb pointing towards the accused.

Tyrone could only at Boyd in disbelief.

"It wasn't hard to figure that one out, my good man." Boyd smirked, as the members of Lacey's family were the only dark skinned people in the entire Store. "Your own home will be getting a yellow tag, my good sir, and failure to comply with a peace officer is a very serious infraction. Care to keep pressing your luck?"

Even though Tyrone was boiling hot with rage and frustration... the man was known for his good sense... so he bit his tongue and backed off.

"Good. I'm glad we understand each other. Now back to our little Killer here." Boyd turned quickly and snatched Alana's mother from the floor, holding her upside down before the crying girl and her distressed father. "Now Alana, with as many violations as you've incurred within the last twelve hours... any, and I mean ANY future infraction... means exile would be our only recourse."

"No! Please, what are you doing!?" Alana screamed as she reached out to her mother, struggling in Boyd's grip. "Please! Please don't hurt her!"

"I'm not going to hurt your mother, Killer. I just want to make sure that I have your undivided attention...," Boyd shook Alana's mother at the ankle and let the woman dangle like a fish on a hook above her screaming family. "...and now that I'm sure I have it, hear this: if you break the law again, I'm not going to exile YOU, Killer. I'm going to take your mother."

Alana fell back to her knees and sobbed uncontrollably. Her father wrapped his arms around her, but his gaze never left his dangling wife's terrified eyes.

"I can't think of a better punishment than you having to live with the fact that you're responsible for your own mother's untimely demise," Boyd smirked. "Have I made myself clear as glass... little Alana?"

"Yes! Please! I'm sorry, don't hurt her, please!" The poor girl cried out in all consuming terror.

Boyd lowered the struggling woman and released her roughly onto the yellowed tile. She quickly joined in panicked embrace with her husband and daughter.

"Now...," Boyd continued, "since I've developed a bit of a soft spot for you delightful little Kenners, I'm willing to go easy on you this time and only give you a yellow tab, but it's gonna cost you that rat. A fair trade, if I do say so myself. What do you say?" He didn't receive the instant response he wanted, so Boyd kicked Alana's parents aside and grabbed the girl by the hair, pulling her painfully close to his enormous face once again. "WHAT...DO... YOU... SAY... Killer?"

"Th-th-thank you," Alana stammered through the excruciating pain of having her hair nearly ripped from the scalp. Boyd shot her a disapproving look that made her remember that she wasn't being formal enough. Through her shivering and blubbering, the little Kenner just managed to correct herself in time... "th-thank y-you... s-s-sir."

"Good girl," Boyd calmly replied and released his vice-like grip on her hair. Alana frantically looked around her... seeing that not even her parents had the courage to come to her aid. She was alone... with Boyd lording his enormity over her like a fairytale ogre. He stepped over the little redhead once again as she collapsed onto the floor.

"Come on you two, lets get this back to 1," Boyd ordered. Gramps is gonna get a kick out of this!"

Diligently, the cruel 'new sheriff in town,' as the cliche goes, stood by and watched as his subordinates folded the edges of the sheet the rodent rested upon over, then struggled to find the best hold to lift it. As Faye glanced towards the crowd of smaller people for just a second, she and Alana's tear-filled eyes met. The impossibly beautiful giantess quickly looked away with shame and tried to pretend it didn't happen. The knot that had been growing in her stomach since they'd arrived tightened even more. She and Tony disappeared around the corner of the endcap as Boyd stayed behind to twist the proverbial knife in just a little more.

"Before I leave, there's just one last thing, Kenners... this week's rations just got halved," he proclaimed. The new 'peace officer' flashed Alana one last smarmy grin. "Make sure you all show Killer here your appreciation."

Boyd gave Alana a wink and brought a hand to the side of his mouth, pretending that somehow the hundreds gathered wouldn't hear his voice, "...and Killer, if against better judgement, you should feel the need to break the rules and sneak out after curfew again... perhaps you could let your dim-witted friend here know that candy wrappers don't exactly make for stealthy attire... we could hear her shuffling from the other side of fucking The Store." With that last nugget of wisdom, Boyd flipped his blade in the air confidently and caught it, then followed his companions around the end of the aisle with a strut.

Alana closed her eyes and sobbed some more, covering her face with her hands. She was too afraid to face her fellow villagers. If she looked, would they shout at her? Would they throw things at her? Would they string her up? Growing roots and planting herself to the floor for the rest of eternity obviously wasn't realistic, so she rolled onto her backside and forced herself to choke down the bitter medicine.

A hundred... maybe two or more... people had gathered in the center of town, adults and children alike. Alana's partners in crime were weeping against their parent's shoulders... parents who glared at Alana with contempt. But the singled out young woman didn't see anger in the faces of the rest of the people of 17... only... pity. Somehow... that felt just as awful as being the object of scorn. Feeling so many eyes fixed on her at once was more than the maligned girl could bear, causing her to spring to her feet and run through the crowd towards the sanctuary of home.

Home itself was one of many row houses that lined the aisle. A hollow cardboard case, graced with Uncle Ben's rice logos the outside and modified to resemble a cozy mountain cabin. It sat elevated from the floor on the bottom of the long shelving gondola, bookended with many other examples of empty stock that other families called their own. A simple rubber door stop acted as a ramp to reach its corrugated flap of a porch.

Alana bolted up the wedge as if the incline didn't exist and rushed through the door. She blew by her grandmother, sitting at the window in her favorite chair, a rocker her late husband had spent many hours crafting from spent match sticks. Sitting in it always made her feel closer to him.

The old woman had heard the horrible things that awful Mattel boy was spouting about her granddaughter, and was deeply worried about Alana. She forced her old bones from the comfort of her rocker and followed her fleeing grandchild to her room.

The walls segmenting the house were thin, made from playing cards taped together into separate chambers. Three bedrooms, one for the grandmother, one for Alana's parents, and one for Alana herself. There was also a larger living room area for the family to spend time together. An exit cut in the back wall at the end of a long hallway between the bedrooms lead to the small stove and outhouse. There were no real doors to speak of, only some thin pastel-colored tissue paper from the Hallmark aisle to provide a little privacy.

Alana's grandmother pushed the crinkling paper aside and lightly tapped on the inside surface of the Queen of Diamonds that made up the partition wall of Alana's room. "Sweetie? Are you ok?"

"Please... just... leave me alone... please!" Alana's sobs were muffled as she cried into the comforting softness of her bed. All the beds in the home, and many others throughout The Store for that matter, were retrofitted from women's ankle socks originating from one of the discount bins in the Dividing Corridor.

"I don't understand! Why does everything have to be so hard?! Why are the Mattels so awful to us?!" Alana cried. "I wish we could just leave this place and never come back!"

Her grandmother, took a breath and stared blankly at the floor in defeat. "Alana, my sweet girl, I've been putting this off for quite some time. Please sit up. It's time we have a little chat."

Alana reluctantly did as told, but was still unable to stop crying. Her grandmother stood in her door, draped in the same long shawl she'd worn every day for years now. She had the same look of pity on her face as the others had outside, only hers felt more warm... more gentle. She hobbled over to the bed and eased herself down next to Alana. The grandmother wasn't as frail as she appeared, just in her sixties, but an old injury in her leg had only gotten worse with time. Alana stood up and helped ease the old woman down as best as she could.

"Thank you, my dear. You really are a sweet girl." The house matriarch put her arm around Alana and let the poor girl cry into her shoulder while she stroked her fingers through the teenager's lovely red hair. Once the young woman was finally able to calm down enough to speak again, she sat up and wiped the tears out of her eyes. "What is it, grandma? What did you want to tell me?"

Her grandmother's eyes darted back and forth from each of Alana's, then she dropped her head in submission. "We made a pact years ago... all of us in The Store, not to tell you kids certain things until we thought you were old enough to deal with what it meant." She took Alana's hands in her own and looked her in the eyes once again.

Just then Alana's parents charged into the room, each looking just as worried as the other. Like I said before, the walls of their home were thin... and they overheard the news Alana's grandmother was about to spill.

"I think she's ready," the old woman said to her son in law, who looked to his wife for approval. Both hung their heads, just as the grandmother had... and reluctantly nodded.

By this time, Alana... who was already in quite an emotional state, was getting increasingly concerned. "What?! What is it?!"

Her grandmother squeezed Alana's soft young hands with her own knotted and boney ones... then dropped a confession that would change the direction of the young woman's life forever...

"It's time you learned the truth about this place."




End Chapter Three

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Four-"Faye"




Earlier that morning...


When Faye's boyfriend Boyd jostled her out of a deep sleep, far too early in the morning, she wasn't exactly sure what was happening. He whispered something to her about a noise coming from the front of the store and that it was their responsibility to go investigate. If found that it was a Kenner or Hasbro sneaking around in the night, they were going to have to nip that behavior in the bud. The grogginess of interrupted slumber had a death grip on the twenty year old, and it was all she could do to shake it off.

Most of the Mattels slept communally, in makeshift bunks nestled within the shelving of the rolling bread and meat racks stored in the warehouse area. Most of the time, they remained sealed off from the rest of The Store like a military regiment. The only ones who didn't were the higher-ups, who stayed within the small office area located in the front corner of the Stockroom, situated at the end of a narrow hallway on the other side of the refrigeration units.

This mission was important, and Faye knew it. The three of them, Boyd, Tony, and herself, had only just been given their new positions over their allotted aisles the day before. She would eventually be working the night shift, something she wasn't entirely thrilled about, but still... she wanted to impress the Constable.

Faye wanted to look good, respectable in some way to the smaller people that she would soon be responsible for. Her late mother's dress, of course! The only thing she possessed of her mother's since her passing. A slightly frilly pink number that just covered her shapely thighs above her knees. It may have seemed a bit formal, but Faye needed to make an impression, she needed the Constable to know she could handle herself in a professional manner. This was what she had trained and committed herself to for so long.

Tony was already waiting just outside the stockroom door, which looked like an enormous gate, propped open just enough to allow a single Mattel to enter and exit at a time. It was only opened wider once a week to move rations for the Salesfloorers through.

"Shit, Faye! You gettin' married or somethin'?" He snarked.

The stockroom was dark, with no windows or light sources save for a few burning candles. When Faye had enough light... albeit moonlight, and could see that Tony and her boyfriend were dressed in their usual attire, she flushed warm with embarrassment at her state of overdress. She responded to Tony's quip with a sharp punch to his arm.

The three Mattel enforcers stealthily made their way towards the front of The Store, with Boyd instructing his companions to remain as quiet as possible. He desperately wanted to catch the perpetrators in the act for some reason Faye couldn't quite understand. So... sneaking about in the night, just like those they were trying to catch, the trio tiptoed toward the distant sound of paper dragging... and perhaps the crinkling of what could only be a wrapper.

When the Mattels found the four little women breaking curfew, they were surprised to find that they were also trying to maneuver a rather large rat carcass across the floor. Boyd couldn't help but laugh at the sight, and lucky for him, the little criminals didn't hear his snickering. It was dark enough to easily keep out of sight, so the three of them just waited, allowing the tiny quartet to do most of the work for them. Faye could tell Boyd was anxious, almost chomping at the bit to expose these miniature bandits... and she found it quite strange.

Playing stakeout wasn't exactly what Faye had in mind when she joined this little expedition, and she really regretted sporting a dress for it. She couldn't shake the nagging feeling that she was going to have to drag that filthy rat back to the Stockroom wearing the adorable frock. Like Boyd and Tony, she quietly watched the crime being committed from the shadows until dawn.

The time finally came for the trio of Mattels to make their move. The Kenners had dragged the offending rat back to what must have been their village, so Boyd told his companions to hang back while he made a "first impression."

'What the hell did that mean,' Faye wondered. Weren't they just there to give a bunch of teenagers a scare and a slap on the wrist?

As things escalated though, Faye started to wonder what they were really there for. Boyd was showing a side of himself she'd never seen, cruel and merciless... and it frightened her deeply. She kept an eye on Tony as well through the whole ordeal, but the guy seemed to be enjoying watching Boyd torment that poor Kenner girl just as much as Boyd was enjoying enacting it.

The only female member of this ambush began to feel sick... and when she made eye contact with that terrified, tiny girl... she felt like she her insides would wring her to death with guilt. Faye was ashamed of herself for being a party to what they were putting these little people through. Then... Boyd announced that he was going to cut their rations... why did he decide to cut their rations?! That's just... cruelty for cruelty's sake!

Boyd had, of course made his girlfriend and Tony deal with the rat as well, just as she'd feared. Her mother's dress was ruined with the rodent's blood, but that was the least of her worries. By the time the three of them got back to the stockroom, she couldn't even look Boyd in the eye. She just slipped out of her dress, now spattered with little splotches of blood, staining the coarse fabric... and crawled back into bed.

But sleep wouldn't come... Faye felt far too much guilt for that. Would that little Kenner be able to sleep after being traumatized by the very man Faye thought she loved?

She'd been taught for years that Mattels were the betters... the superiors... the protectors of the vertically challenged races of The Store. It was beat into her brain that, because the Mattels were so outnumbered, the smaller people needed to be herded and controlled... and that they'd been allowed to run amok for far too long. Faye didn't know that the children of the Mattels had purposefully been kept separate from the general population to be groomed and readied for something... else.

As she stared blankly at the bottom of the metal rack above her, Faye of 1 felt her entire ideology begin to crumble after a single excursion out of the Stockroom. For the first time since the death of her mother... she wept.

Despite Boyd's urgings, Faye refused to leave her bed for the rest of the day. She'd already made up their mind that they were done as a couple. There's no way she could love anyone who could treat others like he had, no matter how small they were. The troubled Mattel woman could hear him gloating about his conquest to several other Mattel boys, which only made her contempt for him grow.

In her heart, Faye knew she had to find a way to make it right if she hoped to be able to live with herself. So, that night after everyone else had gone to bed, she put on her clothes... a simple tunic this time, and crept out of bed. She crept her way towards the food prepping area near the back of the Stockroom. The meaty rat had already been cut and prepared, the smell of its cooking flesh had filled the air for much of the day. Faye was sure the smell had to be driving those poor starving people on the Salesfloor crazy.

Most of the animal had already been consumed and enjoyed by the others, leaving very little left. Faye snatched a couple of remaining slabs of meat... mostly ribs, from the cooling grill (constructed from large bricks and a cut section of shopping cart for the grilling surface). After nabbing a couple more items, she made her way to 17 as stealthily as possible.

This was by far the riskiest thing Faye had ever attempted. If the others found out she'd stolen food, and given it to a Kenner no less, there would be serious consequences... perhaps even exile. She tried not to think about it, deep down she knew this was the right thing to do. The young woman hadn't had a whole lot of interaction with the smaller races, but they were still people... right? Everyone deserves to have some version of happiness, what little The Store afforded anyway. They certainly didn't need an unhinged, barking lunatic like Boyd had become seemingly overnight.

It took quite some time for the miniature giantess to sneak her way across The Store to Aisle 17. She hadn't thought about it until she'd already arrived, but Faye had no idea where Alana lived. As quietly as she could, Faye soft-footed through the little homes and piled up trash until she found one with a yellow tab, just bright enough to stand out in the dark on the cute little edifice's front door. There were four distributed that morning of course, so the nervous Mattel just had to hope she chose the right one. Faye knelt down and peaked into the little window. It was extremely dark, but she could just barely make out a single young girl curled up in her bed. Cautiously, she reached in and nudged the tiny figure awake.

"Uurrrgh... 'Lana... go away... are you trying to get us in trouble again?" A faint, groggy voice from inside asked. The little figure turned over in bed to face who she thought was her friend.

Faye knew she'd fucked up and picked the wrong home. The tiny girl gasped at the size of the shadowy hand entering through her window, preparing to scream. "P-p-please... don't hurt me... I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry!"

"Ssshhhh... keep it down, will ya," Faye pleaded. She removed her hand and got down on all fours to try and see the distressed girl through the Lego-framed window. "You're not in any trouble, I'm jut trying to find Alana. Can you help me? Which house is hers?"

"Uh... I don't know... oh no! Oh god! You're going to exile her!" The fear in Sarah's voice only continued to escalate.

"I'm not here for anything like that... please, can you calm down?" Faye continued to try to ease the understandably frightened girl. The larger of the two's gaze darted left and right, looking for any movement in the darkness that could mean trouble. "What's your name?"

"S-Sarah."

"Ok, Sarah... please understand, I'm not here to take you... or Alana... or anyone else for that matter away. I just need to talk to her... understand?"

There was a brief uncomfortable silence until Faye decided to break it, "Sarah?"

"Oh... uh... sorry... I nodded... I forgot how dark it is."

'Really?' Faye thought to herself, 'are all the Kenners this dense?'

The Kenner girl climbed out of bed, making sure to grab something less conspicuous than the previous night's apparel that helped get them into so much trouble. She threw one of her tissue bedsheets around herself and tucked an edge into her breast to hold the sheet in place, then attempted to crawl out the window. Sarah lost her balance in the dark and landed flat on her face in the process. She suddenly felt Fay's enormous fingers wrap around her waist and then lift the tiny girl to her feet.

"Are you alright, Sarah?" Faye asked. She was still on her knees, crouched down to try and appear as nonthreatening as possible.

"Uh... y-yes. Thank you. People in the village always say that, 'as long as Sarah lands on her head, she'll be fine'," Sarah informed her unexpected guest, not realizing that the comment wasn't meant to be endearing. "So... uh... you... your name's Faye, right?"

"Yes, it's nice to make your acquaintance, Sarah."

"Yeah... well... your buddy Boyd didn't quite make the same impression this morning," as soon as the words left her mouth Sarah clapped her hands over it, regretting everything she'd just said. "I'm sorry... I... uh..."

"It's ok, Sarah... you don't have to be afraid of me. I'm just as disgusted with what Boyd did as you are."

"Really?!" Sarah nearly shouted.

"Sssshh... we have to be careful... I could get in way more trouble for being here than you for being out after dark. Please, Sarah... I need to see Alana."

"Uh...," Sarah, not exactly being the greatest decision maker in the world, finally agreed, "...uh... follow me."

Sarah led Faye to the section of shelving where Alana's family resided, feeling slightly unnerved by the towering woman's massive feet slapping against the tile behind her.

"It's that one," Sarah whispered, pointing to the outfitted box with the upside down Uncle Ben just barely visible in the alley between houses. "Her room is in the back."

Faye examined the box/home. The other residences bookending it were too close together for her to slip between without bumping into them and waking up the entire neighborhood. "Seems I'm a little too big to get back there, Sarah. Think you could slip through unnoticed?"

It took Sarah a few seconds of thought to understand the problem... yes... really. When the lightbulb above her head finally clicked on, the little blonde smiled up at the giant woman (who couldn't quite make out her face in the darkness anyway). She darted up the doorstop ramp to the bottom shelf and slid between Alana's home and the neighbor's to reach Alana's window that was cut into the back of the box.

The thought had never crossed her mind until just then, but Sarah wondered why Alana would ever want a view of the dark, empty shelving space and outhouse behind her home. In reality, it wasn't so much of a window as it was a way for Alana to sneak about at night... or more importantly... as an escape route should her family need to flee from the many horrors, old and new, that this life awarded them.

Before long, a single figure emerged from between the cardboard boxes. Faye could tell that it was Sarah again, but she was clearly whispering something to someone else, hidden away in the shadows.

"...I think it's ok, she just wants to talk to you...," Sarah explained to the unseen figure in an extremely hushed voice.

There was a long silence before the less-than mysterious person emerged from the cardboard alleyway. Even with as little light as the skylights allowed, Faye could tell that Alana was in better shape than she was that morning. The blood caking her skin was gone and she had a fresh, white loincloth and top to cover herself with. The look on the little woman's face was another thing altogether. The fear and hurt Faye had seen in Alana's eyes earlier that day had been replaced by pure... seething... hatred. It was as though Alana was trying to laser a hole through the enormous woman with her gaze alone. She remained sitting on the floor, even having to look slightly upward to the tiny redhead.

"What do you want now?" Alana's tone was deep and accusatory. She folded her arms across her chest with resentment. "Your buddy Boyd have a change of heart and decide to toss me out after all?"

She wasn't sure what had happened, but Faye hardly recognized this person as being the same girl from before. Something had changed over the past day, but she couldn't put a finger on it. Perhaps this was the person Alana really was, when not being ganged up on by a group of gigantic regulators. To be perfectly honest... the little Kenner kind of intimidated the larger woman.

"Uh... listen, Alana... I... I'm sorry that things happened the way they did. The way Boyd handled things... I had no idea he could be like that."

"Sorries aren't going to replace the food you people stole from me... from US! I risked my fucking life to kill that thing! That rat could have fed this entire aisle, but now we won't even have half of our usual miserable excuse for rations!" She looked over the giant girl's body, focusing in on the revealing sides of Faye's tunic. Alana could only shake her head with disgust, "don't see any ribs showing through your skin. Looks like you Mattels are staying well fed."

Faye was at a loss for words, so she opened her knapsack and began to fidget around inside... mostly for an excuse to not to have to look Alana in her hate-filled eyes.

"Um... that's why I'm here. There's not much left, but here... it's yours anyhow. Please... take it." Faye was practically begging at this point. "I also brought this...," she held out a pair of large (to the Kenners anyway) metallic pouches with the word "Welch's" printed on the outside.

"What's that? Rat poison?" Alana sneered.

"You... you've never had a fruit snack before?" Faye asked with genuine astonishment.

"Sorry, our palettes aren't so refined out here in the Outer Aisles," Alana replied sarcastically. "We tend to get whatever your people deem worth getting rid of."

Once again, Faye felt sick to her stomach. It hadn't occurred to her that things were so bad. The fact that she'd been lied to by the people she trusted was coming as a quite a shock.

Sarah sat quietly, her eyes darting back and forth from her friend to the huge woman... a little awe struck by the way Alana was handling her.

Faye ripped a corner off the pouch and reached inside. She removed a pair of dark, squishy orbs and handed one to Sarah and Alana each, then removed one for herself.

"Try it... look," Faye suggested. She took a bite out of the delicious, sugary little chunk to prove she wasn't trying to harm them.

Alana and Sarah looked at each other and simultaneously took a tiny bite out of the strange cake-sized blobs. The sweet, rubbery texture hit their tongues and began to dissolve with the most delicious flavor either girl had ever tasted. The little Kenners seemed to perk up, looking to their visitor in disbelief.

"Fuck me! Do you tall bastards eat like this every day?!" Alana wasn't even trying to be quiet at this point, something Faye was clearly very worried about.

"No, those are usually saved for special occasions. If the others knew I took it... I'm sure they'd send me outside the walls. Please, you have to keep this a secret," Faye pleaded with the tiny pair. She handed over the scraps of meat, which to people of their size was quite a significant amount. "I have to get back. It won't do any of us any good if I get caught out here. Again, I'm so sorry for what happened to you today, Alana... and your friends." She gazed over at Sarah, who had inhaled her entire fruit snack and was digging into the pouch for another the giantess couldn't help but chuckle to herself at the sight.

"Wait...," Alana interrupted, "before you go... there's something... there's something I need to talk about. In fact... both of you should hear this." Alana paused, seeing that Sarah was making a glutton of herself, then slapped the morsel the goofy blonde was holding right out of her hand and placed it back in the pouch. "You had yours. We need to share these with the rest of the village."

"Please don't do that," Faye interjected, "the more people know, the greater the chance of getting found out. Just keep them for yourselves, please... it's the least I can do."

"Trust me... Faye, is it? No one here is going to tell a soul," Alana tried to assure her, "turns out both our peoples are good at keeping secrets actually."

Needless to say, Faye's interest was peaked.

Alana had to gather her thoughts before she began, "this morning, I found out about something that's been hidden... hidden from everyone born into The Store. It's too important and too shocking to carry this burden myself, despite what our differences may be, I think you deserve to know the truth. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible, then fill you in with the rest later if you want to hear more."

Intrigued by the tiny redhead's words, Faye repositioned herself with her legs crossed in front of her. Sarah quietly pouted to herself, not taking her eyes off the package of delicious candy. Alana, always having a soft spot in her heart for Sarah, reached into the pouch and tossed the snack back into Sarah's hands. If human beings could glow, Sarah would have lit up the entire aisle with her joy. Alana just grinned and returned her attention to the still anxious Faye.

Alana was no fool. Staring eye to eye with a Mattel, even one trying to make amends, infuriated her... but something bad was coming. The chance to have an ally in Faye's position was too promising an opportunity to let her personal feelings get in the way.

"Come on, out with it... I really need to go," Faye pressed, checking down both ends of the aisle once again.

"This place... The Store... the outside world... everything" Alana began, "they lied to us... none of it is what you think it is..."

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Stunned by the revelations she'd just received, Faye wandered blankly back to the Stockroom. Nothing around her felt the same... that which was familiar suddenly took on a whole new perspective. Her entire world had begun to crack that morning, but shattered with Alana's damning information. The always faithful Mattel soldier felt alone... exposed... with only the sound of her own feet lightly patting against the tile beneath her to keep her company.

What the hell was she supposed to do now?!

Lost in her thoughts, Faye nearly walked right into an extraction already in progress. She wasn't sure which aisle it was, probably 4 or 5. She quickly ducked under the overhanging edge of an endcap and watched from around its corner at the troubling sight.

A pair of Kenners, a mother and father, were being torn away from their screaming children and carried away towards the Stockroom... clearly bound for exile. There was nothing the lone giantess could do but watch, her hands clasped over her mouth at the horrible scene. To make what she was witnessing that much more horrifying, not a single soul from the surrounding village peaked their heads out of their homes at the sound of the distressed children. Every one of them was too frightened and helpless to do anything.

Why was this happening in the middle of the night?

The usual silence of night in The Store was now filled with the sound of little kids crying out for their parents... and there wasn't a thing Faye could do about it. She just slinked off towards bed, while trying not to let her sobbing inform the others of her kind along the way.

This is what she was being prepared for?! To oppress people?! To tear parents away from their children?!

Sneaking back through the mighty Stockroom doors, Faye climbed back onto her shelf, taking care not to wake the pair of girls she shared it with... and weeped openly into the sanctuary of her bedding. As much as she just wanted this nightmare to end, the night's cruel surprises weren't over quite yet.

An unwelcome voice interrupted her secret sobbing with a start...

"... and what exactly have you been up to, babe?"




End Chapter Four

[AB23]

This is an interesting premise…

[littlest-lily]

Agreed, I'm super interested to see where this goes! I really like that we get to see the story from more than one POV, glad to see some nuance within the different factions of people. I really need to know what the big secret is, the cliffhangers are killing me haha

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Thank you so much! All will be revealed in due time muahahahahaha

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Five-"The Rapture"




Returning to the great confession...



Alana's mother had left the room and returned with a contact lens case full of water. She set it down on the opposite side from where Alana's grandmother was sitting... who was still trying to figure out where to begin. Her mother soaked some tattered cloth into the water and began dabbing the dried blood away from her daughter's skin.

"Grandma... I'm really freaked out right now... and you're just making me more anxious," Alana whined.

"I know dear, but there's no easy way to tell you what I'm about to tell you."

Alana's mother continued blotting the red coating away from Alana's arms while her father paced silently in and out of the room.

The family matriarch put a hand on her grandchild's face and gave Alana the saddest smile a person could give. "Alana, my dear... the world isn't as it should be... or perhaps... it IS as it should be... but it isn't as it once was."

Alana stared back at her grandmother in silent confusion.

"I know you're a smart girl... you have to know that this place, The Store... it was never meant for people like us?"

"What do you mean, 'people like us,' grandma?"

"Kenners... Hasbros... even the Mattels... you can tell that this place was made for much larger people, right? Much larger than even the tallest Mattel?"

"Um... yes, I suppose so," Alana replied.

"What exactly does that mean to you, child?" The old woman continued to press.

"I... I guess...," Alana struggled to answer such a strange and seemingly inconsequential question. "I guess I kinda always thought The Store was left behind by some great race of giants, bigger than the Mattels even... ones that disappeared a long time ago. Though, anytime I've ever brought it up, people seem to get uncomfortable and change the subject." She continued, "I just figured those giants must have done something so awful that no one wanted to talk about it... so I decided I shouldn't ask any more questions."

"You're not entirely wrong, Alana," her grandmother informed her. "This place was built by a much larger race of beings. What you don't know is that... WE... were that race."

Alana's head cocked back in disbelief at such a ridiculous notion. "You can't be serious, grandma...," she scoffed, "that doesn't make any sense... how could Kenners possibly have been larger than a Mattel?"

"We were, my dear... I mean, not that there were Mattels then... everyone used to be much, much larger," the old woman explained.

It was difficult for Alana to believe such nonsense, and the hell she'd been put through that morning made her even less inclined to be put on. What relevance could this possibly have to the morning's events? Her grandmothers eyes never left her own... and there was a little extra shine to them as Alana realized the woman was trying to hold back a dam's worth of tears. The worried looks on her parents' faces only added to the uncomfortable, heavy atmosphere.

"I wasn't born this size, Alana," her grandmother revealed. "Your mother and father were... but both of them were born after The Store became our home."

Alana sat silently as the shocking news continued to pour out of her grandmother.

"The were no Kenners... or Hasbros... or even Mattels back then. Just the human race... and if you can believe it, people lived in nearly every corner of the world."

The world was a concept far too large for Alana to even begin to fathom. "If what you're saying is true... then what the hell happened?"

"No one really knows, my dear Alana," her grandmother replied. "Two days... two days is all it took for the human race... and civilization in general to fall. What was strangest was the subtlety of it. There wasn't a doomsday weapon that dropped from the sky... no chemical cloud sweeping the planet, to anyone's knowledge anyway. If some kind of extraterrestrial race decided they needed us out of the way in order to take this planet for themselves, then the invasion never happened. Not that we'd ever know, isolated up here in the mountains as we are." The old woman leaned in to make her final point, "and if it was god himself come to judge us for our sins... then he picked a hell of a way to knock us down a few pegs."

Alana could see how painful it was for her grandmother to talk about this. As incredible and insane as all of it seemed... in her gut, she knew her grandmother had no reason to lie to her.

It had to be the truth. The evidence was literally all around them.

"Like I was saying... it just sort of... happened. At first, we didn't even know something was wrong. People simply walked outside to find piles of discarded clothing in the streets. Not long after that, we realized we weren't just looking at abandoned attire... people had gone missing... billions of them."

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Alana's grandmother explained the progression of events that followed. The old matriarch had to use a lot of bygone terminology that her granddaughter had a weak understanding of, so Alana was forced to interrupt quite often to clarify things. For those of us more versed in history, I'll try to condense things to the best of my ability.

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Keri Nelson only became aware of the silence when she was already surrounded by its uncomfortable embrace.

The former school teacher was engrossed in a trashy romance novel while sitting behind the desk of her little Main Street shop. Not her typical read, the bored shopkeeper usually enjoyed to read about history and social politics... you know the type, very high brow affairs. It was her turn to man the shop, which meant her husband Alan was at home with their young son William, but Keri was glad for a little alone time. The occasional steamy paperback was a guilty pleasure from time to time, something she wouldn't get to indulge in if she were still responsible for so many young minds.

The little shop mostly sold novelty souvenirs to the many tourists that arrived during the summertime, taking advantage of the kind of activities that only high mountain altitudes could offer. Hiking, four-wheeling, camping... even skiing during the wintertime were popular in the small-ish town of Silverfalls, Colorado... where Keri and Alan were happy to make their meager living.

The couple had took over their little shop at the end of the main drag in town, not a terrible location, but not the best either. They usually managed to pull in enough to get by each season so they could continue to live in the beautiful alpine surroundings, but not much more than that.

Some, especially her family, found it strange that Keri had given up her teaching job in Denver to come home and work in retail. In truth, Keri loved history and thought she would love teaching it... but after a couple years, she found that she hated having the work follow her home at the end of the day. And the kids... the kids were so awful. Just little zombies glued to their cell phones like their lives depended on it. Receiving so much indifference to a subject she was so passionate about really began to wear the otherwise cheerful woman down.

Keri had always been an upbeat and extroverted person, and Alan was the first to notice the change in his wife. She looked tired all the time and was clearly trying to hide her depression from him. It was he that suggested they move back home to Silverfalls and take over management of the family Store from her ailing parents. Though difficult to leave their life in Denver behind, this proved to be the best decision they'd ever made.

In the few short years the couple had been away, the town itself had changed so much. Silverfalls, an old mining camp like so many other mountain towns in Colorado, had undergone a bit of a second boom. For years, the town's isolation in the rugged San Juans had sparred it from the festering tumor of affluence, but with the widening of the only highway into town, it became easier to freight building supplies into the little valley. Suddenly, multimillion dollar homes began to spring up on the edges of town, which in turn drove real estate prices through the roof. There was even talk of one of the big hotel chains moving in and opening an upscale ski resort. Keri and Alan got into their modest home just in time before prices blew completely out of control, and not without calling in a few favors to some old friends.

Fall was approaching fast, as the busy season was drawing to an end. The leaves were turning and there was a distinct chill in the air. It wasn't all that unusual for it to be a little slow at that time of day, when most people were out enjoying the fresh mountain air. The altitude was such that it never seemed to exceed eighty degrees, even in the summer, so it made the natural bowl the town rested in perfect for outdoor activities (though often a little rainy). That said, this new quiet was different. There were absolutely no voices coming from the street, no sounds of feet tapping against and creaking the old wooden sidewalks

Nothing.

Keri's curiosity peaked, so she marked a place in her book and decided to check things out. She dropped her bare feet from the countertop and slipped them back into her hiking boots. With a casual stretch and a yawn, the young shopkeeper walked out of the propped open door with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her trendy romper. She wasn't quite sure what to make of what she saw when she stepped into the bright mid-day sun.

The streets and sidewalks were completely empty of pedestrians. And if that weren't strange enough, there were piles of discarded clothing scattered about along the old wooden planks that lined Main Street. She kicked one of the piles that sat close to her foot to examine what was left behind. Boots, shorts and a t-shirt... even the underwear was still inside.

To Keri, it looked as though the person they belonged to had simply melted into the ground, or disappeared without a trace... not realizing how close to the awful truth she really was. She stepped over the little mound of fabric and walked next door to chat with Fred Newkirk, an older gentleman and owner of the t-shirt shop she shared a wall with, wanting his take on the strangeness that had befallen Silverfalls.

"Um... afternoon, Fred," she greeted her neighbor politely.

Fred too was relaxing behind his counter, beginning to doze off from lack of stimulation. The sound of Keri's voice gave him a bit of a start. "Oh... uh... hey there, young lady... what can I do ya fer?"

"Sorry, Fred... I didn't mean to disturb you, I just...," Keri wasn't quite sure how to explain what was happening, "...could you come out here and take a look at something?"

Fred's knees creaked almost as loudly as his chair when he stood up. His back felt as stiff as ever, so he grabbed his cane leaning against the lighted glass display counter and joined Keri in the entryway. He could see, once close enough to the pretty young woman, that the color had drained from her face. Something was clearly bothering her. "What seems to be the trouble, young lady?"

"Look," she said, gesturing to the piles of clothing that scattered the sidewalk. By this point, other shop keepers and patrons were emerging from the rows of false-fronts, taking in the eerie scene for themselves. Keri looked to her older companion, hoping he had answers as to what the hell was going on. "Fred... something's wrong here."

At that moment, a particular grouping of empty clothing caught her attention. A pair of piles lay side by side. One of the mounds appeared to be male garb while the other was unmistakably female. Lying amid the folds and creases of each were a pair of gold wedding bands, and expensive looking ones at that.

As haunting as the sight before her may have been, it was the third little stack of accompanying garb that made Keri begin to anxiously perspire. A little striped polo shirt and a diaper, still taped at the corners as though it had just slid off, laid close to the woman's clothing... and had even been soiled.

Keri was right... something was terribly wrong. Seeing what was left of a family unit, not at all that dissimilar to her own, was chilling.

"Oh god... Alan... William..."

Without saying another word to Fred, Keri rushed through her shop and out the back. She tossed the door open, hopped into her jeep, and peeled out... throwing gravel against the side of the building as the wheels fought for traction. No one in the history of Silverfalls had dared drive as fast through those narrow streets as Keri had that day.

"Oh god... please...," Keri repeatedly chanted to any god who might be listening before perching the vehicle right up on the front lawn of their little Victorian-era home (a fixer-upper, for sure... but you wouldn't think that for what it cost). She fell out of the still-running jeep and stumbled her way up the porch stairs in her desperate attempt to get to her husband and child. She was screaming their names before she even made it through the door.

"ALAN! ALAN! WILLIAM!"

She blew through the house like a tornado, finding only empty rooms. Her heart was racing so fast she thought it might explode. The fear clenched her body like a vice and tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

"Honey?"

It was like music! Alan's voice had never sounded so beautiful.

The relief that came with hearing it was like having a boulder lifted from on top of her. Keri spun around and wrapped her arms around her husband like she hadn't seen him in years. Alan was a tall man, over six foot, so she always had to stand on the tips of her toes to kiss him.

"Woah! Honey... are you alright?" Alan was a little amused by his wife's hysterics.

"Oh god, Alan... when I couldn't find you... I thought...," to be honest, Keri wasn't really sure what she thought could have happened. She kept thinking about that cluster of empty clothing. She tried to shake the image out of her mind, all that mattered was that her family were safe.

"I was just out on the porch. William and I were getting our packs ready for a little hike," Alan explained. A handy individual since his youth, he'd spent the past couple of months screening in the entire porch so they could enjoy it without getting eaten alive by insects. Alan wouldn't know until later just how lucky he and their son were.

"Hey, babe," Alan inquired, "who's watching the store?"

The sound of little footsteps scampering across the floor caught Keri's attention, causing her to inadvertently ignore Alan's question. William had come stumbling back into the house from the patio, sporting his cute little Finding Nemo backpack.

"We go now, daddy?" The little three year old asked.

"Yep, let's head out, little dude," Alan replied.

"Wait!" Kerri suddenly shouted. "Don't go... there's... there's something... something has happened."

Alan looked at her perplexed, "what do you mean? Has there been an accident or something?"

"...I... I don't know," his wife stammered, "I don't know how to explain it, Alan. You'll have to see for yourself."

A firm wrap on the open door of the house startled Keri and sent her spinning right back in its direction. Conrad Hartman, sheriff of Silverfalls, was standing in the frame with his thumbs resting inside his gun belt.

"Can I have a word with you Mrs. Nelson?"

"Oh please, Conrad... you've known me since we were kids," Keri replied.

Conrad attempted to correct her, "I'm on duty, Mrs. Nelson, please refer to me as Sheriff Hartman."

Alan and Keri both had to struggle to contain what most certainly would have been an explosive spit take. Sheriff Hartman only grew more frustrated.

"Listen, I was just down in the armory conducting inventory, when I get a call from Mrs. Sanchez down the street. She claims you've been tearing up the streets like a bat outta hell in that there jeep of yours."

Keri had to compose herself a little. With all of the insanity that was unfolding in their town, the thought that she might get a speeding ticket seemed rather trivial. "Have you been downtown recently, Con-," She caught herself, lowered her brow as well as her voice, and sarcastically addressed the sheriff with the formality he desired, "I mean, Sheriff Hartman?"

"No I have not," he replied sternly. "What does that have to do with you breaking the law?" Some abrupt static from the sheriff's radio drew his attention away from the situation at hand. "Go ahead, deputy."

"Uh... sheriff... I don't know how to explain this... you better come down and check out Main Street, over."

"What cross streets? Over."

"Um... all of it, sir. The whole street. Over."

Sheriff Hartman side-eyed the Nelson woman, who was looking rather satisfied with her arms crossed in front of her.

"Ten four. I'll be right there." Conrad released the button on the radio and turned back to the Nelson family, "this isn't over with. Don't even think about leaving town."

This time, there was no amount of self restraint in the world that could quell the laughter erupting from the accused. Keri and Alan braced themselves against one another, laughing so hard that they might fall over.

Sheriff Hartman stormed out of the house and climbed inside his cruiser, slamming the door in aggravated frustration. Never one to be much of a people person, he enjoyed the quiet this particular mountain village allotted him.

Was that ever about to change.

This day was about to test how much the sheriff could handle in ways he never could have imagined. Before turning the ignition, he tightened his belt a single notch... if nothing else was going to go his way that day, at least his new diet seemed to be working.

Back inside the house, Keri and Alan were still chuckling to themselves about their uninvited guest.

"What do you suppose that was all about? Asked Alan.

"Just Conrad being Conrad," Keri replied.

Alan chuckled again, "right, but I meant what he got called away for."

"Like I said, you're gonna have to come see it... I don't know what is happening. It's really... weird."

The family of three loaded into the Wrangler and drove back to the store, parking in the rear once again. They got out and walked through the building, then out onto Main.

Alan only had two words to express the developing scene in front of him, "...the fuck?"

Keri shushed him and nodded towards the toddler, "little ears are listening, dear."

Alan didn't even acknowledge her, too engrossed in the unfolding events. By now, there were quite a few people in the streets examining the people-less clothing. Both of the sheriff's deputies were speaking to potential witnesses. Sheriff Hartman himself was standing over a large grouping of outdoors wear, scratching his head under his wide-brimmed hat.

"Did a tornado hit a trailer park, or something?" Alan asked.

"At nine thousand feet above sea level?" Keri asked, rhetorically. "I wouldn't think so. Don't think a twister would stack 'em up like that either... or... remove their jewelry."

Staring down at the same cluster that had sent his wife into a frenzy earlier, Alan's stomach turned. He put an arm around his wife's shoulder and pulled her close. He too, though unconsciously, had to tighten his belt a notch... his pants suddenly not feeling as snug as they did earlier. No big deal, probably just stretched the notch out a little. Nothing to worry about.

"HEY! EVERYONE! GET IN HERE! IT'S ON THE NEWS!" A voice from down the street called out. It was Earl Green, the owner of one of the local taverns. There wasn't even a hint of hesitation in the crowd as they filed inside the dimly lit bar.

On the screen of the old tube television, suspended from the corner of the ceiling, were images coming in from all over the world of the same increasingly frightening occurrence. London... Paris... Sydney... Hong Kong... Tokyo... it was happening everywhere. There were even shots sent in from a research station on the coast of Antarctica.

Men and women in hazmat suits across the globe could be seen picking up discarded clothing with tongs and placing them into sealed plastic bags. Tickers at the bottom of the screen proclaimed "Millions, Perhaps Billions Missing, Scientists Baffled."

Earl switched it from the local news station to his favorite 'fair and balanced' fear mongering network, where they were declaring the event as 'The Rapture.' Some plastic-haired putz was even reading passages from The Book of Revelation, supposedly having foreseen the very thing that had captured the attention of the entire world.

Keri couldn't help but laugh to herself, despite the seriousness of the situation. Even in a worldwide crisis, these hacks couldn't be bothered to engage in actual journalism. Then the President suddenly appeared on screen, interrupting the supposedly researched and hard-hitting "nooz."

"Hey Earl, turn that up!" An anonymous voiced shouted from somewhere in the back of the bar, as the bartender usually kept the tv on mute. Earl complied and the packed bar gawked in silence.

(Sound coming in mid-sentence)"...are in constant communication with various governments across the globe. The chance of this event coinciding with a terror attack does not seem likely, as the phenomenon appears to be taking place in every city... every small town... every home across the world."

The President continued, "rest assured that we will keep you informed as more information comes in. Your government asks you to, please... remain calm as we investigate further. That is all we have at this time. Thank you." The usual bombardment of flashbulbs hit the Commander in Chief as he made his exit, along with the incomprehensible melded shouting of journalists waving their notebooks in the air. Then, the cell phone footage resumed its loop.

"That's it?!" Old Fred exclaimed. "That's all they have to say?!"

"Bullshit! It's the goddamn A-rabs did it," another voice shouted from the corner. Conveniently, and as if on cue, video from Iran... Saudi Arabia... and Iraq, as well as from Moscow and even Pyong Yang, followed.

"How do you explain that, you racist prick," Keri shouted back. She would receive no response. The frightened mother and wife clutched at Alan's arm and stared up into his eyes. "What do you think is happening, Alan?"

"Fuck if I know," he replied dumbfounded. This time Keri wouldn't bother to correct his use of salty language. She couldn't have said it better herself. The couple watched for a while longer, then decided to go home as the crowd began to get more and more inebriated. Not exactly the kind of atmosphere they wanted to subject their three year old to.

The Nelsons locked up the shop for the day and headed home, where they spent the rest of the evening glued to the television screen. The couple had no idea it would be the last time they'd ever see the little store that they loved so much.

On the way home, William hilariously parroted his father..., "fack! Fack! Fack-if-eye-no!"

As the hours of endless cell footage rolled by on their living room flatscreen, Keri grew increasingly strained and exhausted, deciding to head off to bed. "You coming, babe?"

Alan was still entranced by the glowing screen, "wha... uh... no, you go ahead... I'll be in in a little while."

Keri's motherly instincts couldn't help but feel worried for her husband, but Alan was a grown man after all. "Alright... goodnight, love."

She walked down the hall to check in on their sleeping child, then towards the master bedroom. She reached out for the doorknob, but missed it strangely enough. Her hand landed just below it. She didn't pay it much of a second thought, probably a result of feeling stressed out and drained. She was glad she didn't have to fight her way out of her romper, as per usual. The thing actually wanted to cooperate for once. The muscles in her arms and legs felt particularly weak, even climbing into bed felt a little harder than usual... perhaps she was coming down with something. Keri pulled the comforter over her body and shut her eyes. Just a few minutes prior she couldn't stay awake, and now she couldn't shut her brain off to go to sleep.

Watching the world come to an end doesn't exactly make for the sweetest of lullabies.




End Chapter Five

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Six-"Rasmussen's Grocery"




"ALLLAAAAAN!"

The troubling sound of his wife's screaming from somewhere down the hall startled the man of the house out of his uncomfortable sleep. He had passed out on the couch at some point with the tv still on. Giving his eyes a chance to adjust before getting up, he could already tell something was off. His neck usually rested on the top of the sofa back when he sat down, but now it fully supported his skull. His legs were outstretched in front of him... they owned no coffee table for him to prop his feet on. Alan rubbed his eyes clear... only to be confronted with the shock and horror of his situation. The pants he'd been wearing the previous day were easily twice as big. His socks had slipped from his feet and he was swimming in his shirt.

As for Keri... she was just rounding the corner from the hallway into the living room, panting and looking absolutely terrified. The thin t-shirt and panties she'd worn to bed were gone, replaced by some oversized nightgown that hung loosely off her shoulder. In fact is was the shirt she'd worn to bed... and her underwear were lost somewhere under the now enormous bedding.

Alan couldn't believe how small his wife looked compared to the rest of the surroundings. Keri ran to him, her head filled with the irrational thoughts that somehow her husband could explain what was happening... that he could somehow fix it.

The groggy man was just as frightened and confused as she was of course. He hopped down off the couch, now a much longer drop than it was the night before. His pants pooled up around his feet with only his wrinkled shirt to cover his nakedness. From this new perspective, he could fully take in how the world had grown overnight. As soon as his feet hit the floor Alan felt Keri's arms lock around him.

"Alan... my god... what's happening?!" She sobbed hysterically. "William! We need to get William!" It had been Keri's first instinct when she fell out of bed into this strange, yet familiar environment. She had to get to William, but she panicked further when she saw how high the edge of his crib now stood. That's when she called out for her husband.

Hand in hand, the pair sprinted down the hall to their son's room. The hallway was so much longer now, and the ceiling stretched so far above them. The couple rushed to the side of William's crib, where the bars now rose above their heads, forcing them to peer through the plastic posts like the bars of a prison cell. William was still asleep, but he hadn't escaped whatever nightmare that was affecting his parents either. His diaper hung loose and enormous, and his face was hidden inside the collar of his oversized yellow ducky shirt.

With her maternal instincts really kicking in (along with a hefty dose of adrenaline), Keri wasted no time climbing the side of the crib, then falling over the edge to the mattress... something she wasn't sure she wanted to try without Alan there to spot her. The sudden impact of his mother landing on his bed jostled William awake. The poor child began to cry, not knowing what was happening or where he was. Keri pulled the small boy from his blanket-sized shirt and handed him through the bars to Alan's outstretched hands.

'Through the bars,' thought Alan in complete and utter disbelief. It was obvious what had happened to them, but it didn't make it any easier for his brain to accept it.

People simply don't shrink.

Physics simply wouldn't allow for it. They'd be compressed, unable to move from the sheer density of their own bodies, like waded up balls of paper. Nevertheless, here they were, the same people there'd always been... just... smaller.

Keri scrambled over the edge of the crib again and eased herself down to the floor. She took William into her arms once more and tried to comfort her crying son, all the while her own tears dripped down on his bare shoulders. Alan took them both in a family embrace, but even this felt... off. He hadn't noticed it when she hugged him before, but her head always rested nicely against his chest. Holding her then, he could rest his chin on the top of her head. All of this was too strange and overwhelming to process.

A loud screeching sound from the living room tv interrupted the moment, so the couple headed back into the living room together, carrying their son. The dread filling them as they passed familiar, every day household items that had ballooned to twice their usual size (if not larger) continued to grow more intense.

The screeching sound they'd heard had been from the emergency broadcast system alarm. The color bar pattern, familiar from the usual weekly tests, was glowing on the screen. Instead of the normal "this is a test..." message that usually accompanied it, the ticker at the bottom of the screen announced that the President was about to appear again. Alan and Keri sat down on the floor with their backs pressed against the base of the sofa, knowing damn well it wasn't going to be good news.

The shocking appearance of the leader of the free world showed the frightened couple that, whatever was happening, wasn't just happening to them. What they thought was his desk at first proved to be a podium, completely dwarfing the man. In fact, he was probably standing on a stool in order to see over the top. The microphone looked absurdly large in front of him, as did the sheet of paper he was about to read from. No TelePrompTer necessary. He had to have been been wearing a child's suit because nothing else would have fit him.

"My fellow Americans, if you're watching this, then you are already aware of what is affecting this great nation... and in fact, the entire world. We still have no understanding of what is causing this strange phenomena, and as the human race continues to dwindle away, we probably never will. That, of course, is under the assumption of our hopeful survival."

The President continued, "what we do know is that those who disappeared yesterday met the same fate as we soon will, only much more rapidly. Having reviewed security cam footage from various locations around the country, we've determined that those who vanished that were standing outdoors were almost instantaneously reduced to a microscopic size. Very few have been found and those who have did not survive the process.

Keri instantly thought back to the empty diaper sitting in front of their shop... and broke into tears.

"But make no mistake, the phenomenon is affecting us all," the President reiterated the obvious.

"There were never contingency plans put in place for something like this...because there wasn't anyone who could have predicted that this is how it would all come to an end. The world has been caught off guard... and I'm sorry to say... there is nothing we can do to stop it. We can only hope that at some point, the process will cease and we will not meet the same horrifying fate as those unfortunates who left us just a day ago."

The President paused to compose himself, as he could no longer hide his own tears from the American public.

"I will be joining my family as we wait out whatever fate has dictated our future to be. I can only suggest to you that, in case the event does falter, all of you make your way to locations with ample supplies. Grocery stores, malls, etc. There are already FEMA camps being set up in every major city, though I cant say what good they'll be."

"Stay together, my dear people. We will need our neighbors, our friends, and even strangers more than ever if there is to be any hope survival. If this nightmare does have a waking morning, the new world will not be rebuilt without each and every one of you."

"I wish I had better news, but this may very well be the end of the human race. I apologize on behalf of the government of The United States of America. Our priority is, and always has been, to protect our citizens... and I'm sorry to say we've failed you. I am praying for each and every one of you. Good bye... and good luck. May god have mercy on us all."

The emergency broadcast alert resumed... this time, the alarm held an eerie stillness as it filled the room.

Keri felt her jaw stiffen and sore in the joint as more tears poured down her cheeks. Alan was too stunned to believe what he'd just heard.

Was this really it?

In his mind... he'd always thought humanity would end up blowing itself up, not blinking... no, SHRINKING out of existence. It was hard for him to gauge which was the more terrifying option.

"The End? My god... what does he mean by 'The End?! Alan... what are we gonna do?" Keri's sobs muffled against her husband's shoulder.

"I... uh... I guess we do what he says," Alan replied. "I suppose we should head to the store. Maybe they'll our need help as people begin to file in." Having something to do always helped to level Alan's head when things got stressful. As the stress of the situation piled on, he needed to keep his hands busy worse than ever before.

Keri lifted her head and wiped the tears away with the free hand that wasn't holding William tightly against her chest. "Should we try to get somewhere with more people? Denver's only three hours away."

Alan scanned around the room, stopping on the doorknob which was now astoundingly at eye level. "I don't think we're big enough to drive a car anymore, Keri. Even then... in a couple of hours... who knows how much smaller we'll be."

As the words left his mouth, the weight of the situation really fell on Alan. How was he supposed to protect his family? How could they possibly survive this? His legs buckled beneath him and he collapsed to the floor. Alan had never been one to let his emotions get the better of him, but the man could no longer hide how mortally terrified he really was. He weeped openly in front of his wife for the first time in their union.

"Alan! Alan, stay with me babe!" Keri pleaded. Witnessing Alan, her emotional rock, collapse into a complete breakdown was more sobering than anything the President could have said. The equally terrified woman set William down on the floor so she could comfort her husband, despite her own shaking nerves. "I can't do this without you!"

They stayed there together on the floor for a little while longer, trying to accept their dire situation, then failing all over again. All the while, the world continued to grow. It wasn't easily perceptible, like watching the minute hand on a clock tick away, but it was definitely happening. Little by little, their family continued to shrink... and that same proverbial clock continued to steal more time.

An unspoken decision between the two was made to make their way to the store, like the President had instructed, where there were sure to be other people. Standing back to their nervously shaking feet only made their reality that much more horrifying. They could tell the sofa was slightly taller next to them, and if they waited around for too much longer, they'd be too small to reach the doorknob. Lingering much more would only result in their home becoming their prison.

"I... I don't think we have a lot of time, Keri...," Alan said with a shiver in his voice, "I think we should leave."

Keri nodded, but then looked down at the gigantic shirt she had on, barely covering her up. With the threat of being wiped from existence becoming more an more likely, even Keri thought it odd to be concerned with her family's modesty... but still, " let's see if any of Will's clothes will fit us."

The trio hurried back into the toddler's room, lying even further away now, and having expanded unimaginably in such a short period of time. Neither could reach the top drawer of the oak dresser, and it took the two of them working together to shake one of the bottom ones open. Nothing but weirdly fitting shorts and a couple of t-shirts were to be found within. Despite the gravity of their situation, it was difficult for the couple not to feel humiliated wearing their young son's ill-fitting pastel clothing, emblazoned with cutesy dinosaurs and superheroes.

William's shoes also felt awkward. Round and bulky, yet too small for either of their shrinking feet... at least for the time being. They decided to carry a pair with them each, knowing the gravel roads between their home and the store could potentially shred their feet.

Most of the wooden sidewalks from the old silver rush days had since rotted away or been torn up, with the exception of Main, where they had been frequently maintained for the tourists. State money rarely made its way to the small communities anywhere across the country, and Silverfalls was no exception... so few concrete sidewalks had been built to replace them. There were was nothing but grass lawns and jagged rocks between the Nelsons' and Rasmussen's Grocery, and the distance would only stretch out further the longer it took them to get there.

Once the couple got William wrapped up in a small hand towel, Alan attempted to turn the gigantic door knob, now above his head. He couldn't believe he could stand up straight underneath it without hitting his head. With both arms extended and more resistance from the knob than he expected, Alan turned the spherical door handle. The door cracked, hitting the little family with the, usually... refreshing mountain air.

The slowly dwindling husband and wife took one last look at the home they would be leaving behind. Family photo albums... Alan's well curated record collection... Keri's antiques, handed down to her from her grandparents. These things may have been superficial, but that fact didn't make leaving their life behind any easier. With their crying son in Keri's arms, the Nelsons exited their beloved little home for the last time, never to see it again.

The trek to the neighborhood grocer's, located at the other end of town, was no picnic in itself. The journey was over twice as long at the family's current size, and getting longer by the minute. When they had to traverse over gravel, the diminishing couple would curl their toes up and slide William's shoes on until they could find some softer grass to walk on. It would take over an hour before they reached the town grocery... and by then, Their toddler's cute little shoes had made ample space for their shrinking feet.

Rasmussen's Grocery now resembled a big city market in relative square footage from the family's diminishing perspective. The single business was actually made up of four smaller false fronts that the Rasmussens had bought up over the past century or so as the business expanded.

The Rasmussen family had made a conscious effort to maintain the rustic look of its boomtown days for the tourists, while updating the interior whenever possible, the most recent of which having completed the previous year. Dan Rasmussen, seeing opportunity on the horizon with the widening of the highway, went for broke on a full remodel of the interior. With the exception of the Victorian-era false fronts making up the exterior, the sales floor within more than resembled a Walgreens in layout, minus the pharmacy and photolab.

A large crowd of people had already formed outside the front gate, each varying in size, but all much smaller than they should be. Nearly all of them were in tears as they shuffled through the doors... when those already within had shrank enough to allow for more room. Many were smart enough to bring bags full of more supplies, something Alan kicked himself for not thinking of himself. Sheriff Hartman was positioned at the front gate, directing refugees inside like a Walmart greeter. The store's owner, Daniel Rasmussen was curiously standing in the middle of the street, trying to drag a Radio Flyer wagon stacked with gas cans toward his place of business.

Daniel Rasmussen represented the sixth generation of Rasmussens to own and operate the local mercantile, leading all the way back to the silver boom of the late 1800s. Alan and he had always been friendly, even though Dan could be a bit of a conspiracy nut at times. The two enjoyed a drink or two every now and then, which usually led to an argument about politics... but they always left one another's company on good terms.

As the Nelsons approached the exhausted looking man, clad only in rags wrapped around him to form a makeshift robe, Alan could only guess what kind of ideas the man had about all of this.

"Need some help there, Dan?" Alan offered, eager to do anything to take his mind off from the inevitable.

"Oh... only all I can get," Dan joked back... in surprisingly good spirits, considering.

Alan took a side of the handle and helped his friend pull the wagon across the rugged road towards the grocery doors. Dan had already set up a pair of boards to ramp the wagon up the steps, but with each trip back to the pump, it grew harder and harder to pull the loaded down cart up the incline. The old grocer couldn't have been happier to have Alan's help.

"What's all this gas for, Dan-O?" Alan queried.

"The generator out back. Figure us being on coal power, we won't have any electricity by tomorrow. This will at least help us keep the heat on and the coolers running... and... hopefully get us through the winter."

'Get us through winter.' The words reverberated over and over again in Alan's head. Was that the goal? Survive the coming winter?

What if they didn't survive the night?

The generator had received plenty of use during the past few years with the nasty winters they'd been having. A reliable alternate power source was a necessity in this particular part of the world. Alan and Keri had just replaced theirs with a brand new model... one they'd never get the chance to use.

"Assuming we don't disappear altogether," Alan added. Dan just shrugged him off.

"I been sayin' it fer years," Dan almost gloated, "no one wanted to open their fuckin' eyes or ears. Whether it's the Russians or the North Koreans or... or... fuckin'... fuckin' Martians for Christsakes. The kind who prefer their earthling snacks a little more... bite sized... I knew this was comin'." Dan seemed proud that his crazy, vague predictions had somehow validated him.

"You predicted the entire human race would shrink out of existence, Dan-O?" Alan asked sarcastically. "I'm sure you understand that this is happening everywhere else as well as I do."

Dan huffed a little and took hold of the handle again, "ya gonna help me with this or ain't ya?"

Daniel's feet were already bleeding from crossing the street all morning barefoot as he carted gas, so Keri offered him her shoes... or rather William's, so that he and her husband could continue their task. As for Keri, took it upon herself to help the elderly members get situated inside the store while the men continued to bring wagon load after wagon load back from the filling station.

Dan and Alan even raided nearby homes for more gas cans they could fill and stash away. After all, when the electricity did fail, there wouldn't be any power left to pump more fuel. They needed all they could gather at that moment... but with each trip, the wagon grew heavier and harder to pull through the gravel as their stature continued to diminish.

It took the rest of the day of hauling the little red wagon back and forth before Dan was satisfied, having accumulated a respectable stockpile in the process. But the pump itself had grown too tall to operate and the fuel nozzle too heavy lift with just a pair of people. The two men's clothes had since outgrown them, and they were only able to cover themselves with torn bits of cloth from William's sprawling dinosaur t-shirt. A couple of other men that neither Dan or Alan recognized, probably tourists, offered help to push from the back of the wagon for the final two loads before they too had grown too minuscule to move the truck-sized wagon.

Pulling the last load on the Radio Flyer through the store, Alan finally allowed himself to let the change really sink in. The ceilings reached so high above him, and the shelving gondolas felt more like he was walking down the street between the brownstones in New York City. By Alan's estimates, he and Dan couldn't have been more than a foot tall.

But that wasn't even the half of it.

As the hundreds of people now crowded inside the store stared on at the last wagon load of fuel, Alan could see that there was quite a disparaging difference in size among the crowd. Some were smaller than him, some looked like giants, maybe twice as tall as either he or Dan. Dan-O had to bite his tongue as he passed the larger ones, wondering why the hell they couldn't have come helped push the heavy wagon.

With the last stragglers making their way through the doors, many wishing to see their little mountain valley one last time before getting shut up inside the grocery store for god knows how long".. time came to face the music. Those who were still large enough to do so closed the doors behind them and locked the floor pegs in place, effectively sealing an entire town's worth of still-shrinking people within.

The last of the gasoline was too heavy to remove from the wagon, so there it stayed until it was time to fill the generator, which Dan had running long before he ever started hauling fuel. The machine even had a custom made funnel running through the wall so he wouldn't have to go outside to refill the machine when it became to cold to do so. A lucky bit of foresight that couldn't have proven more important.

The two tourists who helped push left Dan and Alan, after a gracious shaking of hands, to rejoin their families in the main shopping area. Dan and Alan leaned against one of the enormous wheels of the overgrown children's toy they had become so acquainted with, feeling exhausted and clenching their stiff, calloused hands open and shut.

Keri came in through the massive stockroom door to check on how her husband was fairing. She donned a crude toga, cut and torn from the green Incredible Hulk shirt she'd been wearing earlier. The once fashionable woman had always worn a pair of small studs in her ears, rarely removing them even for bed. One of those now pinned her coverings together at the shoulder.

"I have some water ready for you guys out here in a couple of bottle caps, I'm sure you're both thirsty," she told the panting pair of half-naked men. "I was afraid I'd spill them if I tried to bring them both.

"Thanks, honey," Alan replied, "I've never felt so thirsty in my life. Not sure I can move quite yet though." He chuckled a little, mostly as a means to ignore the looming truth of their situation.

"Think I'll have a beer while I'm still capable of opening one," Dan stated, staring at the cooler door and licking his dried lips.

Keri extended her hand to help her husband up off the floor, giving him his next big shock. His cute little wife was now as tall as he was... maybe even taller. By the look on his wife's face, she was just as taken aback.

"Alan... I...," she really didn't know what to say.

"I know... I know." Alan pulled her in close and held her, feeling her chin on his shoulder felt every bit as disorienting as standing a mere foot tall.

The three friends joined the rest of the town in the ever expanding aisles. The scene before them resembled a refugee camp more than that of a city mart. Keri had the portions of William's shirt that she wasn't wearing folded up like a bed. Their son was sitting on the soft surface playing with a marble he'd found under one of the lower shelves earlier, blissfully oblivious to the fantastic nature of what was happening to him. The little transparent marble, with a red and yellow wave inside its spherical body, looked like a solid glass basketball in his tiny hands.

To the sides were countless others nervously awaiting what was to come. Most were too exhausted to cry any more, just sadly trying to accept that their deaths could be imminently close.

Would they feel it... would it hurt? Would they shrink too small to breath and process oxygen... slowly suffocating in microscopic space?

Or... if they blinked out of existence... would they even know it happened?

Families held each other for what could be the last time. Others were hiding within the shelving, thinking no one could hear them fucking away what could've been their final moments... not such a bad way to go, if you ask me. Even perfect strangers offered one another a comforting closeness as they watched the surrounding world grow beyond them.

Keri and Alan were no different. They held each other close and watched their precious son play. They envied the fact that innocent little guy had no understanding of what was about to happen. Like any little kid, Will just wanted to roll his ball around like he would have if they were still back at home. The couple also watched, with a at least a small amount of amusement, as Dan Rasmussen struggled to crack the cap from the top of his gargantuan Red Stripe, the lowest hanging fruit in the cooler.

After a couple more hours the sun dropped behind the mountains. The green tinted fluorescent flicker from the long, cylindrical bulbs far above served as the only light left in the entire valley. The Nelsons... along with so many others... continued to shrink away. By that time... an entire foot of height would have sounded pretty good.

William's marble had grown too large for him to play with, but it wasn't long before the little guy passed out from exhaustion anyway, having missed his mid-day nap. Keri and Alan never let each other go. Neither wanted to fall asleep... worried that it would be the last time they saw one another. With William out cold, the loving couple quietly made sad, tearful love... one last time.

After that, the physical and emotional toll caught up with them... and the Nelsons drifted off to a restless, dreamless sleep... and an uncertain future.




End Chapter Six

[AB23]

Phew… That's really a horror story

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Phew… That's really a horror story

Yeah, that’s kinda my jam

[Little Sally]

Phew… That's really a horror story

Yeah, that’s kinda my jam

I've got to agree with AB23, but knowing your style from your previous works I didn't expect it to be a "feel good" theme.

That said, it's a compelling well written story and no mistake. Pray continue..

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Phew… That's really a horror story

Yeah, that’s kinda my jam

I've got to agree with AB23, but knowing your style from your previous works I didn't expect it to be a "feel good" theme.

That said, it's a compelling well written story and no mistake. Pray continue..

Thanks for always being so supportive, Sally… and this is only the beginning. There’s a lot more of this story to come, and not all of it is spooky and kooky.

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Seven-"Town Hall"




Alan's eyes fluttered open and slowly brought the world into focus. The overhang of the lowest gondola shelf loomed above him, while the softness of the enormous child's shirt he'd slept on felt cozy and warm. He had gotten smaller, that was certain, but just how small was still uncertain. That thought was immediately put on hold when Alan realized he was alone.

"Keri? Keri?! KERI!"

His wife had fallen asleep in his arms the night before, their legs entangled together in the hope that, whatever fate had in store for them, they'd be locked together as one to face it. Alan's heart began to race, fearing the worst... that Keri had shrunk away much faster than he. The desperate man began to scour the hugely exaggerated fibers of the makeshift bedding for his microscopic wife, praying to god he hadn't crushed her in his sleep.

"Alan? What are you doing?" Keri's sweet voice asked. Her face could just be seen peeking over a large fold in the green garment. As the pair had continued to dwindle throughout the night, the very act of shrinking had pulled them apart.

Alan launched himself over the dune-like wrinkle in the shirt's fabric and nearly tackled Keri in a hug. "Oh thank god... I thought... I thought I'd lost you," he confessed, feeling his tight embrace returned from the woman he loved.

Keri assured him, "if you hadn't woke me shouting my name, I might have had the same reaction."

Little William suddenly appeared into view, rolling around in the soft hills of fabric. At least the little guy seemed to be enjoying himself.

The sight that awaited the Nelsons that morning, and everyone else locked within the store for that matter, was shocking... but strangely not as heartbreaking as things could have been. They were alive, which was more than anyone present could have hoped for.

Judging by the size of the marble William had been playing with the previous day, Alan estimated that they had to have shrunk to somewhere near three inches tall. At least Keri had anyway... her husband wasn't so lucky. It was he who now had to rest his head against her breast when they embraced! Even William seemed relatively smaller to Keri by comparison.

The scraps they'd been wearing had outgrown them once again. This time it took both of the adults to rip the fabric apart at its only weak point, where they'd already torn it. As thin as the material in the child's shirt had been, the fabric had grown so much thicker and sturdy. The stuff didn't wear as easily as before either, feeling rather stiff and difficult to hold in place. All the tiny pair could do is wrap it around themselves like a couple of bath towels and try to figure something more practical out later.

The little family unit climbed out of their makeshift bed and began to check on some of the others nearby. It became apparent that most of the people in the store had been reduced to a similar approximation at two to four inches in height... that's several hundred people (actually more) that wouldn't even fill up a couple of five gallon buckets.

There were exceptions though.

There was a small portion of the population that towered over the majority, and there were others still that dwarfed even them. The most unfortunate victims of "The Rapture," as it would come to be called (with tongue planted firmly in cheek, of course) made the tiny Nelsons look like giants. Everyone else counted themselves lucky not to have been one of them.

When the rest of morning moved on by and the massive surroundings didn't seem to change or grow, at least a small amount of relief instilled itself in the people that the shrinking had finally ceased. Perhaps it was a good thing... or perhaps being spared this new existence would have been more merciful.

----

Dan's hangover finally subsided enough for him to stagger to his feet, so he too began to wander the canyons of commerce, taking in the new normal. In actuality, the former proprietor had an objective. He staggered towards a massive floor drain, clutching his head in pain, and relived himself into the gaping, grated hole. That's when it hit him just how much work needed to be done, and as soon as possible. "Christ I'd give an arm for a cup of coffee right now," he muttered to himself.

When Dan finished his morning business, he set out to enlist the Nelsons for their assistance. When he was finally able to track Alan and Keri down, he gave them their marching orders.

"Gather everyone at the front of the store. We don't have a lot of time to fuck around feeling sorry for ourselves. Trust me, there will be plenty of time later for that. We need to get things in order here," Dan dictated, gruffly.

"Good morning to you too, Dan-O," Alan ribbed his friend, who he was glad to see wasn't hadn't shrunk any more than himself. Dan huffed and went about doing the same.

The couple started going from aisle to aisle, telling others to spread the word that they were was going to be a meeting. It wouldn't take long before the area near the colossal front doors to fill up with frightened and desperate people, waiting for any answers... any kind of hope.

Dan took a stand on top of a broken brick he used to use as a door stop, but now made for a convenient stage. If waking up the size of a mouse wasn't disorienting enough, looking out over a crowd of people, wildly varying in size, was surreal. One thing he did gather initially was that there were a lot more people now calling the store home than he originally expected.

The last living member of the Rasmussen family wouldn't even need to ask for silence from the multitude, they gave it willingly. Still, there was a heavy unease about the whole thing Dan couldn't quite put his finger on. It was painted all over their faces... he'd never seen such fear in his life.

"Uh... wow...," Dan struggled with how to open. He'd never been much for public speaking. "Looking out over this crowd of half-naked people... uh... kinda makes me imagine what Woodstock must have been like," he continued, trying to bring some kind of levity to the situation. His attempt didn't work in the slightest, making him feel even more awkward and exposed. Random sobbing could be heard over the otherwise deathly quiet crowd.

"Um... alright everyone... for those who don't know me, My name is Daniel Rasmussen. I'm the owner of this establishment... or rather... I guess I WAS the owner." The nervous man cleared his throat and proceeded, "I suppose this is the first thing I wanted to discuss. This place no longer belongs to me... whatever caused this... this thing... to happen to us, saw to that. This is OUR store now... this is your home just as much as mine. For the foreseeable future, the people standing next to you are your neighbors... treat them as such. Remember, we're all in this thing together."

Dan cleared his throat again and continued, "first things first... we need latrines. It seems like a strange thing to begin this meeting with, I know. Every person here, every family, will need to make one. Hopefully the floor drains can handle our waste because god knows how long fresh water will continue to pump into the building. We need ideas now... we'll have a public health crisis on our hands if we don't."

An anonymous voice from the crowd spoke up, "can't we use it for manure? I mean... you carry seeds in the lawn and garden section, don't you? Can we use our... stuff... to grow fresh fruits and vegetables?"

"First of all son, you're old enough to say 'shit' without getting your drawers in a bunch," Dan teased. "And as an answer to your question, not unless you wanna find out what what having a tapeworm the size of an anaconda growing in you feels like." The young man hung his head in shame, which made the old-timer regret his ribbing. "It's not a bad idea, son, but it won't work. You are right about one thing, we will need to grow fresh food. The perishables in the produce section won't last for long."

Alan stepped up to join his friend atop the brick, "you mind if I add some things, Dan-O?"

Dan ushered him forward and whispered, "go right ahead, my man... having all these eyes on me is freaking me out anyway."

As Alan gazed out into the crowd, he too was hit with a wave of stage fright... which felt like a pretty strange thing to be worried about considering what they all were going through.

"Uh... hello everyone... my name's Alan Nelson. I own... owned a gift shop here on Main. I just wanted to add a couple of things about the food. I think it would be smart to use as much of the perishables as possible first. The produce, milk, meats... all of that is going to spoil, and when it does, the smell is going to be unbearable. At least with the produce we can use the rotted stuff as compost for this proposed farming experiment."

Alan stepped aside and gave the floor back to Dan, "we'll need infrastructure people if we want to pull this off. Ladders, scaffolding, places for people to live. I assure you it will not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. I'll do my best to keep the lights on, but know right now that that generator isn't going to last forever. Hopefully we can keep the refrigeration units running for as long as possible."

One of the largest of the largest figures was pushing his way forward from the back of the crowd, and it made Alan's stomach turn to see that it was Sheriff Hartman. The thought that this little bully of a man now towered above them all like a fairy tale ogre didn't sit well at all. The miniature giant forced his way to the clay block stage, but stood next to it to address the crowd.

"Hello everyone, I'm Sheriff Hartman... I-"

"WERE!" Keri shouted from the front row, eliciting the few snickers from the crowd that Dan couldn't.

Conrad snorted, "now Mrs. Nelson, I am still the law in this town and-"

"WERE," she shouted again, "you WERE the law!" Keri pulled herself up onto the brick with a helping hand from Alan and made her own proclamation, mostly just to spite the sheriff.

"In case any of you may have forgotten in the last twenty-four hours," Keri began, "but this is still America... and I think we all still believe in democracy. Rather than just having some fascist declare himself in charge, why don't we take a vote on it."

Conrad may have been more than three times her size, but in Keri's eyes he was still just the same mean little stooge who wet his pants until the sixth grade and picked on the brainy kids.

Hartman's face glowed so red with rage you'd think his head would explode.

Mrs. Nelson put an arm around Dan and smiled, "I nominate Daniel Rasmussen as our leader... mayor... chief... whatever you guys wanna call it, I don't care. By raise of hands, who agrees with me?"

With the exception of a few out-of-towers, the vote was almost unanimously in Dan's favor. The man who'd spent most of his simple life behind the counter, trying to keep his little grocery store afloat, felt quite overwhelmed and touched all at the same time. The gentleman couldn't help but get a little choked up when he thought most people in town considered him a kook.

Keri, on the other hand, side-eyed Conrad... who just grunted and stormed off to a distant, empty corner and sulked like a two year old.

"Well, gub'nah," Keri exclaimed in a terrible cockney accent, "what say ye?"

"I humbly accept... thank you... thank you all," Dan graciously agreed with the vote, while also trying to fight back the tears welling in his eyes. It's hard to put into words what it meant to him. "I promise I'll do everything I can not to let you all down."

"So... latrines then? Should that be the first order of business, boss?" Alan asked with a comedic salute."

Dan stiffened his lip and nodded, finding it hard to speak.

"I have a question," a woman's voice interrupted from the front of the crowd. She was young, maybe in her early twenties. "Sorry, uh... my name is Eleanor... Eleanor Brown. I'm not from here, I just came here to do some camping this weekend with my boyfriend... but he... he disappeared." Now it was this woman's turn to get choked up.

"I don't really know anyone here," Eleanor continued, "and I'm probably not the only one... so... I was wondering if maybe we should talk to people... like... maybe create a sort of... oh, what's the word? CENSUS! A census to see how many of us there are? Maybe take down everyone's names?"

"That's a fantastic idea... Eleanor was it?" Dan agreed.

"Yes, sir."

"Would you mind putting it together yourself? Maybe take some others with you to help?" Dan suggested.

"Oh I... uh... yeah... yeah, I'd be glad to," Eleanor accepted.

"While you're taking it, can you jot down notes as to where people were when everyone disappeared? Maybe then we can figure out why some of us will be driving new Barbie dream cars and why others will be checking out the used Hot Wheels lot," Dan joked, only to have it go over Eleanor's head. "Why some of us shrank smaller than others, sweetie," he clarified.

"Oh... uh... of course, sir," Eleanor agreed.

"You don't have to call me 'sir,' Eleanor... I'm not a general. Just call me Dan. We'll see what we can do about getting you something to write with, ok."

"Yes, s-... I mean, Dan." Eleanor nodded and stepped back into the masses.

"Anyone else?" Dan asked the crowd. He was met with silence. "Alright then, I know it seems like a strange thing to worry about, but let's see if we can get these toilets built. Trust me, you'll thank me when there isn't raw shit and piss filling up the building like a house pumping turds up hill." This time he at least got a light chuckle from a few of them.

The crowd began to disperse to scour the store for anything they could use for toilet building supplies. Dan, Alan and Keri stayed back to discuss things further. Little Will was crying at the base of the brick, impatiently waiting for his parents to finish up with their boring meeting.

"Well, that went... weirdly," Keri snarked.

"You really think it was a good idea to poke the bear like that, honey?" Alan asked.

Keri was confused by the question, "what do you mean?"

"Conrad," her husband clarified. "You know the big baby is gonna hold this against you, right?"

"Oh, please... I can handle Conrad Hartman. I don't care how big a bully is, all you hafta do is expose them for the cowards they really are," his wife stated confidently.

"I'm just sayin', the man looked pretty embarrassed. I just don't want this to bite us in the ass at some point. There are no more rules, Keri," Alan pointed out. "As much as Conrad wants to play Sheriff, he's just the type of guy that would abuse that power with no kind of oversight. Not to mention he's a lot bigger than we are now."

"Like I said, I can deal with big, bad Conrad." Keri bent over slightly to plant a little peck on her newly diminutive husband's cheek... a sensation that felt odd for both of them. The woman was determined to try and keep people in as high of spirits as possible, and she needed that to start with her own spouse. "But thanks for worrying about me, babe," she teased with the same cute little pout and wink she always used to get her way with Alan.

Alan was powerless as usual, "I love you, too Keri."

"Oh for Christ's sake," Dan scoffed, "if you two lovebirds are done eye-fuckin' each other, can we go build some shitters now?!"

The three tiny friends shared a good laugh, one much needed after the hell they'd been put through over the past couple of days. They helped each other down from the top of the brick and joined the rest of this newly formed society in their noble quest for the perfect 'shitter.'




End Chapter Seven

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Eight-"Building The New Normal"




Over the next several weeks, the tiny people living in the grocery store banded together admirably to make the place as suitable to long term living as possible. It took every soul trapped inside to make it happen. The key to their success, like in any venture, was to keep people busy and engaged.

Dan had no intentions or desire to become some barking slave driver, so he tried to keep things as light and friendly as possible. He'd joke around and chat with people in a way he rarely did in his previous life. Getting to know them, the former shopkeeper began to consider his fellow "cellmates," as he like to call them, as a giant family unit. In his mind, the more that the others saw it the same way, the more they'd be willing to help one another. For a man who most would have considered to be less than a people person, it was quite the turn around, indeed.

Keri was a huge part of the process of acclimation as well. She'd always been a beacon of positivity, it was the main thing that made Alan fall so hard for her in he first place (along with a great pair of legs). The only time in her life when she wasn't was her brief stint in teaching, something she thought she had left behind her.

Her husband would watch her interact with the other people of the store, the way she did everything she could just to get a laugh out of them. It cemented how he felt about her every time... and how he'd do anything for her. Always a bit of an introvert himself, Alan envied everything about the woman. He didn't just love her, he looked up to her (now literally, as well as metaphorically).

Even though Dan was technically in charge, the three of them worked very closely together to make sure things ran as smoothly and safely as possible. They weren't attempting to build the Great Wall of China here, and not a single human life was worth losing over any project... not even taking into account that the human race could now be regarded as an endangered species.

Building latrines was the first obstacle of course. Everything from cardboard to bottle caps were used to create them. In the seasonal aisle, Dan had ordered bags of wood chips for the tourist crowd to smoke meats in the summer months. Old Fred Newkirk volunteered to whittle the chips down into a finer dust so they could be used in the toilets to mask and absorb odor. Other than Dan's appointment as their leader, this would be the first job assigned to anyone in the new, post-Rapture community.

More positions were created as demand necessitated. The Mattels helped bring items down from higher places and move larger objects that would have been impossible for the Hasbros, Kenners, and Matchboxers. As far as those silly titles were concerned, no one really knows how it got started, but it most certainly began as a joke... classifying each other's size by which brand of toy product they most resembled. It was just a little bit of light ribbing amongst burgeoning friendships as they built camaraderie that ended up taking on an entire life of its own.

After many days of moving potting soil a little bit at a time, the front of the store near the windows was filled with enough dirt to resemble actual farming ground. A side panel of an endcap filled with seed packets supplied them with their first attempt at nurturing a crop. They settled on strawberries first, hoping that the roots might take to the shallow earth. Several individuals were tasked with tending to it, not exactly the most desirable position of having to deal with the ever growing and foul smelling compost heap, but for those blessed with green thumbs the task wasn't such a chore.

The rear of the stockroom was filled with decades worth of junk that had accumulated, as Dan-O could be a bit of a pack rat. Old warping two by fours, shingles, wire, a stack of unused bricks from when Dan attempted to repair the foundation himself.

Through a marvel of mini-human ingenuity, a group of Mattels pieced together some of this junk and created a raisable ramp system that they could adjust using a board, some rusting pulleys and wire. All of this was mounted to another pair of boards nailed together at a right angle with some old shopping cart wheels hammered into the base so it could be maneuvered easily throughout the store. This allowed the vertically challenged humans to reach the top shelves much easier, though sometimes it was better to send the smaller Kenners up the steep, narrow ramp so as not to risk a deadly fall for one of the larger citizens.

Dan's inability to part with things he could potentially find use for in the future had finally paid off for once in his life, but it was what he had stashed away in the back hallway that really raised a few eyebrows. Alan had discovered his friend's secret while exploring... and couldn't help but confront him about it.

"Dan? This isn't what I think it is... is it?" Alan inquired as he also tried to keep from laughing.

"Dunno... depends on what ya think it is, smartass," Dan crossed his arms over his chest, just waiting for what he knew was coming.

Lining the walls of the hallway were what had to be over a hundred five gallon buckets, at the two onlookers size, appearing like massive water tanks. The white buckets were stacked floor to ceiling and would have made sliding through the narrow hallway difficult at the former owner's original height. Each bucket was labeled, 'beans,' 'rice,' 'wheat,' etc. That alone wasn't what was so damning, but what else was emblazoned on those labels was enough to have Alan on the verge of losing his shit: a product of Jim Bakker Ministries.

"Oh Dan-O... how could you send your hard earned cash to that fucking hack? You know the guy is a convicted criminal, right?!" Alan prodded.

Dan got defensive in response, 'yeah... well... we'll see who's laughing when the rest of the food runs out."

Craning their necks at the rounded towers of pvc stretching to the sky before them, Alan finally couldn't hold back his amusement with the situation any longer. "How the fuck are we supposed to open those things?!"

------

Little communities began to spring up along the aisle floors as people used whatever they could to create their own little private homes. Having something to call their own helped to create some sense of normalcy that people so desperately desired. I'd imagine the scene, over a century and a half prior, hadn't looked all that different in Silverfalls during its boom days... only now playing out on a tiny fraction of the scale. On the other side of it, you could argue that the citizens and visitors of Silverfalls were just sadly clinging to something that would, and could, never be again... like little children playing house.

As the communities began to take shape, Alan suggested that it would be a good idea to have an elected representative from each aisle to work on a store wide board, a simple government if you will. Dan agreed and set things into motion. Within a single day, the first meeting of The Store Council took place to much fanfare throughout the building.

The people had work. They had shelter. They even had government. Things that seemed lost to an old way of life had returned again.

Ironically, it was Keri of all people who enthusiastically created the store's first school to cater to the many children within its walls. As someone with teaching experience, she felt obligated to do so. There were far more children than she alone could handle, so several others stepped up to help out. No one was more surprised than Keri herself at how much she actually enjoyed teaching this time around. Perhaps it's true what people say, that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

A few talented women (and even a couple of men) worked tirelessly to seem clothing together for as many people as they could from simple items such as paper, candy wrappers, and even gauze and bandages. A husband and wife who practiced medicine were present, the couple having been in town on vacation when the event occurred. The pair made a point of teaching as many people that were willing to learn basic medicine. With the very small and basic drug selection available and no pharmacy within the building, it was imperative that as many people as possible could help out in case of an emergency. Eventually, the residents of Rasmussen's Grocery would have to learn how to produce basic medicines from the recourses available to them.

--------

Eleanor Brown, along with four other women, conducted the first census as discussed, 'doing inventory,' as they jokingly referred to it. At its end, the quintet tallied 1781 people calling Rasmussen's grocery home, far more than Dan himself had initially estimated. In total, there were 980 men and 801 women. Of those, 126 were Mattels and 202 were Hasbros. The Mattels had been the most shielded from the event's effects. Most of them had been on the old mine tour up canyon, deep inside the mountain when The Rapture happened, the rest seemed to have been in their basements. The Hasbros, those who had shrank to somewhere between a Kenner and a Mattel were in their homes or cars when whatever it was hit.

There were more Kenners than any other group by far, 1403 to be exact. The event was beginning to be believed to have been atmospheric in nature, just as the President had implied. The Kenners had been exposed more to the open air than their larger companions, which resulted in their much smaller size.

As for the smallest group (both in size and number), the Matchboxers totaled an even 50 victims. The shrinking had effected them the hardest, with none of them breaking the single inch mark. Their whereabouts were too varied to pin down as to why they didn't just shrink to a microscopic size like those who had disappeared. For all anyone could figure, the sun itself could have caused all of this, and the Matchboxers could have just been in the shade. It made about as much sense as any of the other maddening reasons for the way things had changed.

The number of people who'd lost love ones in the event was truly heartbreaking, but another sad revelation reared its ugly head during the census: there were so many families that had shrunk disproportionately. Alan may have shrunk more than Keri, but he'd gotten off easy compared to so many others. Mattel husbands with Matchboxer wives. Hasbro children with Kenner parents. You wouldn't think that size would matter that much, but the more extreme the differences, the more it caused terrible strains on many relationships... ultimately resulting in many marriages disintegrating as the years went on. Truly a sad affair.

As mentioned before, the Marchboxers had it the hardest of all. The Kenners were quite small, but this particular group's extremely insignificant size prevented them from performing even the simplest of tasks. Luckily for them, there wasn't a single person in The Store unwilling to lend them the help they so desperately needed.
------

For months, things progressed along better than anyone could have hoped for, but that would all change in an instant. With the coming of the very first freeze, the overworked generator finally gave up the ghost... sending the building into an eerie darkness and deafening silence. A large group of Mattels attempted to wedge the rolling shipping door open, but it proved too heavy... even with their combined strength. Not that it would have mattered, there wasn't anyone left large enough to pull the rip cord hard enough to fire the generator up again anyway.

And just like that... mankind had been knocked back to the Stone Age.

But this group had worked far too hard to let this be their end.

After some more scheming, Dan put the Mattels to work moving bricks from the pile in the stockroom out into the aisles. There were so many left over from his errant project that each aisle were provided their own simple kilns. There was plenty of charcoal brickettes available to burn in the little kilns to provide life saving heat for the many shrunken people to gather around.

Even though Dan didn't want to use any of the canned products so early in this little social experiment, smaller cans such as mushrooms, mandarin oranges, and tomato paste were opened and their contents dumped into storage bags so the metal containers could be reused as stoves. Dan had also kept a small assortment of scented candles in the back of the household cleaner aisle which were dispersed throughout the store.

It wouldn't be an easy winter on anyone, but not a single life was lost when the spring thaw finally rolled around. No small accomplishment for a people who, just a year prior, wouldn't have known how to function without their cell phones. Keep in mind that many of the store's current residents were born into affluence. They had to learn to accept that their silver spoons had grown too large for their mouths. It was a tough pill for many to swallow. If The Rapture had one positive side effect, its that it reduced everyone to the same basic status, where money and social positioning meant nothing. The only thing that mattered was to ensure your family and your neighbors survived... and the citizens of Rasmussen's Grocery did so admirably.

Through much trail and error, the hardworking group of field workers were finally able to yield fruit from the modest little farm that spring. When the first strawberry finally turned red, the entire store held a celebration, and they'd earned it. A box of small leftover fireworks from two years prior was raided from the stockroom to celebrate. After the first and only firecracker was set off, nearly killing a man and ringing many ears for days, this mistake was never made again.

------

That's how time passed. Seasons came and went. Months gave way to years. Then, like in all things, nature began to run to course. Life came into the store in a surprising new baby boom. This remarkable time also created the first real schism among the otherwise unified people of The Store. Where most welcomed the sound of babies crying as a sign of hope and progress, others felt it too cruel to bring innocent life into the post-apocalypse. Tensions reached the point where the Store Council actually had to vote on whether or not they should outlaw breeding.

Of course the motion didn't pass, but not without concessions. The residents of The Store would not be allowed to have more than two new children to stymie exponential growth and reduce the strain on their finite resources. Most parties found that to be a fair solution. The controversy led Dan to call a storewide meeting and speak to the people as a whole once again.

To make things brief, he wished he knew why things had happened the way they had, but if the human race's only purpose was to go extinct... it wasn't going to be for lack of fighting it. The end of the species wasn't going to happen under his watch, that's for damn sure. For the first time in his stewardship, one of Dan's fumbling speeches actually brought people to tears.

The years passed on, and even with the endless chores that needed to be performed daily, fighting off the boredom and cabin fever that came with being trapped inside the building's walls grew unbearable. It was far too dangerous to venture outside now that the human race found itself were near the bottom of the food chain. One typically cool and wet August night would show everyone just how far down that chain they'd slipped.




End Chapter Eight

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Nine-"Night of Rain... and Claws"




The otherwise useless refrigeration units had done well to mask most of the stench of decay emanating from the compost heap stored within, but not completely. The smell of rot was not only unpleasant, but with it also came the rodents. Rats and mice began to chew their way in through the walls to get at the deliciously enticing trash pile, which obviously developed into a huge problem. The uninvited guests were usually dealt with by the Mattels, the only people large enough to stand a chance against the ravenous invaders, which was still easier said than done. The rodents were much faster and far stronger than even the largest Mattel. When they did manage to corner one and take it down, the meat provided fresh protein to hundreds of people in the store (once they got past the initial gag reflex).

It's what the vermin brought with them that was for more terrifying... cats.

The once cuddly little furballs were anything but now. Strays could be seen wandering the deserted streets for quite some time, but they'd begun to hang around outside the store more and more. Dozens of them showed up to feast on any rodents that may try to brave the open air... and the strange little creatures moving about behind the glass had certainly caught their predatory eyes. The constant sound of feline bawling could be heard outside nightly. It was unnerving for sure, but the people had faith in the safety The Store had given them thus far.

Until that night in August when The Store failed them all.

The summer storms and winds had taken their toll on the roofs of many of the vacant buildings in town in the years since the event. Rasmussen's Grocery hadn't escaped the heavy weathering either. Water would occasionally drip through the ceiling in several places throughout the building, but especially in the stockroom. It had always been a problem area for Dan when he was normal sized, constantly fighting leaks, but now dealing with it was damn near impossible. Like anything else, the people tried to make it work for them by collecting the dripping water from the weak spots and channeling it for storage.

The night in question brought a particularly bad storm to the little mountain valley. A large hole appeared in the back corner of the stockroom, blown open by especially high winds. Water began to rush in through the opening, flooding out many homes in the nearest aisles once the deluge crossed the threshold of the storage area and into the greater store. As most of the occupants rushed to the aid of their fellow citizens, the anxiously waiting cats began to claw their way in through the roof hole, finally finding their way inside. One after another, the formerly friendly house pets climbed in to escape the heavy rain and stinging hail... and to hunt.

Poor Eleanor Brown was the first to lay eyes on the drenched monsters as they violated the sanctity of the main shopping area. She tried to run, screaming to as many others as she could to do the same... but she was no match for the swiftness of a behemoth Maine Coon. The dripping, long haired beast pounced on the tiny woman with its polydactyl front paws, nearly crushing her under its significant weight. Eleanor kicked and screamed and struggled against the mighty paw, finding it difficult to breath beneath it, but the beast simply toyed with her as it tried to decide whether or not she was in fact food.

When the yellow-eyed terror made its decision, a handful of horrified onlookers witnessed the cat bite into the terrified woman with its powerful fangs, gobbling her down piece by bloody piece. A quick death would have been preferable to the slow... agonizing end she met as the Maine Coon ate poor Eleanor alive.

The water continued to pour in, spreading further and further into the store. The cats naturally tried to distance themselves from anything wet, so they spread out as well. People had no idea what was happening until it was too late, when massive paws burst through their homes or toppled them completely... snatching away their loved ones to a nightmarish and painful demise.

The entire building erupted into utter chaos.

People fled their homes hoping to find safety within the shelves themselves behind the oversized product. The cats followed them with their heightened senses, easily knocking the stock out of the way in their pursuit of the fleeing snacks.

It's not easy to put a number on how many cats had found their way in. Some numbers swing as low as a dozen, while others as high as thirty, depending on who you talk to. There were those who would go on to claim that a thousand cats terrorized Rasmussen's Grocery that night, which is absolutely preposterous.

Screaming men and women could be seen getting batted around and clawed up like lifeless chew toys. Small crying children were packed around in the jaws of the hungry predators. The tiny humans never stood a chance.

Those who escaped made their way behind the kickplate panels, under the gondolas themselves, where all they could do is cower in the darkness among the decades of filth that had accumulated beneath. Even there, the razor sharp claws of the hungry cats slashed and stretched to reach the thin, tender flesh that taunted them. The added risk of drowning grew with every minute spent below as the waters continued to rise. Things looked horribly grim as families clutched to one another, saying what may very well have been their final goodbyes.

All the wailing of hell echoed through the building. Bodies lay scattered, broken and bleeding everywhere. Limbs had been ripped from torsos like paper dolls. Women and children were torn in half and consumed... their haunting screams fading away inside the insatiable animals after being consumed alive. Men pinned under great furry paws could only watch on in horror as their own body parts were chewed off and swallowed in front of them. The very water that flooded the store began to turn a cloudy pink with spilling blood.

For such a big talking blow-hard as Conrad Hartman presented himself to be, when the shit really hit the fan, the former sheriff tucked his tail between his legs and hid himself away. He scaled the peg notches on the shelving supports in the breakfast food aisle and ducked behind the giant cans of coffee, never once feeling the impulse cross his mind to help anyone but himself.

Keri, Alan, and the now six year old William were sneaking along one of the browser bases in hopes of reaching one of the open panels, when a fat calico rounded the corner. It was hard to believe that such a cute and beautiful animal was there to kill them, but it most certainly was. The entire family froze in place as it locked its huge, glowing green eyes on its pint-sized prey.

"Keri... you need to run," Alan whispered, "...take Will... and run. She can't chase all of us."

Keri stared at her husband in disbelief. She opened her mouth to protest, only to be interrupted by the ferocious growl of the chubby cat. Alan kissed his wife on the shoulder and then shoved her to the ground. The brave man ran out from under the base of the overhang, waving his arms in the air to draw the cat's attention. Keri screamed from the shadows. Up to her waist in freezing water as she knelt, clutching her crying son. The cat's gaze followed Alan, just as he'd hoped. Keri was too frightened to move, certain she was about to witness the death of the man she loved. The cat reached out and took a probing swipe at the tiny man, knocking him to the flooded floor with a plop and leaving deep claw marks along his side.

"Alan! Noooooo!" Keri's scream inadvertently drew the cat's gaze back to her and her son.

"Goddamnit! Get out of here!" Alan demanded, pressing his hand against the stinging cuts in the side of his torso.

The cat reached out to Keri with its paw, its claws extended for the kill. She gripped William close and shut her eyes from the unstoppable death closing in.

Then... nothing short of a miracle occurred.

The Mattels were able to organize somehow amid the chaos. A dozen of them came running with a full head of steam towards the colossal feline baring down on the Nelson family. With plastic cutlery as their only weapons, they rushed the cat and managed to overwhelm it with their numbers. The prong of a jutting fork found a giant green eye and snapped off inside the socket. The cat let out an ungodly scream and clumsily bounced from one side of the aisle to the other in agony. The speeds with which the animal moved looked wholly unnatural for a creature if its size, making its wild and unpredictable flailing all the more dangerous. Building sized boxes of cereal and coffee cans as big as water towers began to rain down from above as the cat's throws of pain sent it crashing against the teetering gondolas.

Alan, suffering from serious injuries, found just enough strength to crawl back beneath the overhang against the rushing flow, to avoid being crushed by the falling boxes of Frosted Flakes. Keri pulled him close to her and kissed every inch of his face while crying hysterically. Boxes continued to smack the wet tile around them, knocking the Nelsons over with the rippling waves created from their tremendous impacts. The Mattels pushed forward, trying to corral the flailing cat back towards the stockroom.

Similar scenes were taking places across the store as the brave Mattels fought back against the invading feline force. The cats managed to kill a few of them, but the tiny resistance refused to give up. Whoever coined the phrase, "like herding cats," would have chuckled at the sight. The animals could easily leap over the Mattels' formations, making it extremely difficult to push the screeching furballs back.

But further and further into the store the miniature giants pushed, eventually forcing the cats back into the stockroom. With one final, well orchestrated surge, each Mattel charged forward with gritted teeth, adrenaline and determination. At long last, the doll-sized heroes scared the cats back through the hole the hellish beasts emerged from. The sheer feats and acts of courage these men and women showed was absolutely astounding... and no one would ever forget it.

Rain and hail continued to pour in through the gap, so the Mattels knew their job wasn't yet done. They rolled the mobile ramp in from the sales floor and began pounding nails into its entire surface for footholds. Then, cranking the incline up as high and steep as it would go, a group of three scaled its face. The lift still wouldn't reach near where they needed it to, so the last stretch between the rafters and the ramp had to scaled by rope, actually thin twine tossed through the beams. Once there were a couple of men through the hole and up onto the roof in the still raging weather, shingles were raised via the rope to try and seal the gap. Always the paranoid prepper, Dan had kept a stack in storage to fix the roof after the relentlessly brutal mountain winters.

In the end, the Mattels weren't able to completely close the hole while still allowing for the brave men outside to crawl back inside, but it was enough to stop the moisture from getting in... and more importantly, the cats. What they achieved by sheer will was more than anyone could have asked for. The Mattels who saved The Store that night would go on to be regarded by their fellow citizens as war heroes from that day forward.

Back in the cereal aisle, the flooding had continued to spread as gravity pulled the water towards the floor drains. Keri continued to squeeze her bleeding husband underneath the overhang like her life depended on it. She'd clenched her eyes shut, whispering... thanking everyone and no one in particular for sparing her Alan's life. When a nearby scream forced them open again, the little mother beheld an all new terror.

Caught in the water, which may only have been ankle to calf deep for the Nelsons, was a tiny Matchboxer. She was trapped in the current and getting carried away on the water's surface. The woman's impossibly tiny size made it nearly impossible to escape or even swim out of the strengthened surface tension. Keri could just barely make out the Matchboxer's garbled screams as the poor thing was swept ever closer to a massive whirlpool... a floor drain. If the woman went in, it meant almost certain death.

Keri let go of her family and dashed towards the helpless little woman. Her feet splashed through the water as they hit hard against the tile beneath. The little Matchboxer was just getting sucked into the spinning whirlpool when her giant (by comparison) savior dove into the torrent and caught the terrified woman by a minuscule arm. Keri pulled her out of the swirling hole and carried the shaking little thing back towards her own family. The grateful woman clung to Keri's neck and thanked her repeatedly for saving her life.

Alan's body felt heavy on his legs, but strained to his feet in any case. He took William by the hand and both rushed out to greet his wife. The couple swung around nearly a full 180 degrees from the force as they met, with the little Matchboxer squeezed between them in the embrace. The seriousness and singleness of the moment showed both of them that any time they let the other go... it could be the last.

Alan looked upwards into Keri's beautiful face, taking in her inviting features and nearly losing himself in her smile. Beyond her though, he caught a glimpse of something high above her teetering on the edge of the highest shelf. Alan's protective instincts took over once again and he shoved his family and the Matchboxer out of the way as hard as he could.

Keri had no idea what was happening, only catching Alan's eyes growing wide before feeling herself flying backwards along with William and the woman she had just rescued. The three of them landed with a plop, as none of them had enough mass to make a proper splash... before the unthinkable happened.

A massive canister of Folger's Decaf came crashing down in front of them. The bottom rim of the can caught Keri's leg, snapping it instantly. The huge can bounced slightly as it hit, causing a mini-tsunami of displaced water that nearly yanked the tiny woman out of Keri's arms. The water made its way into the crippled woman's lungs, causing her to cough violently through her pain and screams of Alan's name.

The can had come down flat on its base. Completely flat. There was no indication that anyone could have been under there... but the truth was too heartbreaking for Keri to accept. Not until a cloud of red began to creep into the flowing water from beneath the mammoth cylinder.

When Keri saw it... time itself stopped. She forgot the unimaginable pain in her broken leg. She forgot about the woman in her arms. Her stomach purged its contents and she unconsciously let go of the tiny woman she'd just rescued. Luckily, William managed to catch the helpless Matchboxer before she was swept off again.

With every once of strength in Keri's tiny body, she ignored the searing pain in her leg and rammed her body at the massive can, only to be knocked back into the rushing flood. She tried again... and again, but she was just too small and too broken to budge something as innocuous as a simple coffee can. She threw herself at the thing until she hadn't anything theft in her to do so... until she fell against its side and slid back down into the water, screaming to the heavens in defeat.

Alan was gone.

As she gazed above in dazed disbelief, the grieving widow accidentally caught some movement... a silhouette of a head, just peaking over the edge of the highest shelf... from right where that fucking can had just fallen. As soon as the silhouette realized it'd been seen, it pulled back into hiding. This was no cat... and it most certainly wasn't a rodent. The figure was... unmistakably... a man. A Mattel man.

Keri couldn't make out the face in the darkness, but there's only one person in The Store that would ever want to harm her or her family. Only one man who would think to find opportunity in a disaster.


Alan's death was no accident.




End Chapter Nine

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Ten-"Reality Bitten”




Eighty-four injured.


Twenty-seven confirmed dead.


Twelve missing... and assumed eaten.


The numbers were grim, but without the quick action of the Mattels, the results of the feline siege could have been so much worse. Of the twenty-seven known deceased, nineteen of them were Matchboxers. Most had been caught underfoot among those larger beings fleeing for their lives or the cat's themselves, while others simply drowned... being so tiny that they were unable to break through the water's surface tension once submerged. Some were still considered missing, but the presumption among those who searched for them was that they had to have been washed down the drains in the floor.

It they weren't being digested.

After all was said and done, only eighteen Matchboxers remained.

Despite facing the hungry felines head on, the Mattels only lost three men and a woman, miraculously. Most of the critical injuries, along with the remaining deaths and missing belonged to the Kenners. Their particular size must have made them resemble mice to the hungry predators, and therefore, were the most hunted. In the coming weeks, even more would succumb to their injuries, despite the doctors' best efforts. With what they had to work with, they may as well have been performing surgery in a medical tent during the Civil War.

Keri was among the critically injured. Her leg was in bad shape and there was discussion among the two physicians whether or not they could save it. Keri herself was barely present, lingering in a state of shock over Alan's death. Little Will would remain by her side as the doctors fought to save his mother's leg. Through hours of arduous surgery with the crudest of tools the clever doctors had managed to assemble over the previous three years, they managed to do just that. The leg would never heal quite right... leaving the grieving widow with a painful limp for the rest of her life.

The water that didn't dry up on its own in the poorly ventilated building was pushed down the drains by hundreds of volunteers to prevent mold from taking root... then, the rebuilding process began. The estimated twenty-one hundred or so residents of The Store had been reduced by seventy-seven, taking into account those injured who wouldn't survive their wounds.

Among the dead was Alan Nelson... loving husband and father.

Once healed enough to walk again, Keri went before the council to accuse the former sheriff, Conrad Hartman, of murdering her husband. A trial was held, the very first... even though ironically, the only person left with any law enforcement experience was the accused. Conrad claimed to have been helping fight back the cats when Alan met with his 'accident,' though no one could actually remember seeing him in battle. In the end, if there ever was any evidence to convict Hartman, it got washed down the drains along with the missing Matchboxers. The lack of experience with conducting the trial by those doing the conducting was almost laughable... to anyone but Keri and her son, anyway.

It came down to Keri's word versus, Conrad's... and Conrad's won out, much to Keri's horror. The bravery of the Mattels during the Night of Rain and Claws was something few had reason to question, or would even want to... and Conrad was a Mattel.

Keri was crushed. Not only had she lost the man she loved, but the mockery of a trial made her feel betrayed. The little school teacher had been more involved with the community than Conrad ever had. The fact that they took his word over hers, based solely on the idea that being larger somehow made him more credible, permanently soured her opinion of her neighbors... people she had once considered her friends.

Conrad, of course, used the trial to his advantage... to have the council install some kind of law enforcement... with him at the head obviously. In the three years leading up to the night in question, a police force hadn't been necessary, but that night proved that conflict will always exist as long as people do.

As for the rest of the recovering citizens, The Night of Rain and Claws became regarded with the same reverence as 9/11 or December 7th. One single night that would go on to change The Store forever.

The Mattels made the decision to move into the stockroom so they could monitor the breach, the very seed from which their eventual militarization would take root. Their leadership knew they were the smaller people's only hope for protection, so they encouraged the others to embrace their roles enthusiastically... at least initially.

Once the Mattels disappeared, it set a strange precedent and changed the way everyone else would live moving forward. Once, Kenner lived side by side with Hasbro, and so on... but with the Mattels taking up residence in the stockroom, people began mingle more with those of similar sizes. The Hasbros moved to the aisles furthest from the storeroom, eventually building walls to keep the Kenners away, whom over the years, the taller of the two groups would grow to consider undesirables. As the vast majority, the Kenners filled out the remaining space, with exception of Aisle 1, which the Mattels demanded remain clear for reasons only known to them.

As for the remaining Matchboxers... the events of that night shook every last one of them to their core. Religion hadn't reared its ugly head much under the great roof, being as most people felt betrayed by any god that could have done this to them in the first place... but that changed soon enough. What was left of the tiny group could be spotted having some kind of service on a daily basis within the fortress-like register corrals at the front of the store. Over the course of the next year, they even attracted a few Kenners and Hasbros, the last real interaction between members of the three "races" that weren't members of the Council for years to come.

Most just ignored the little gatherings, figuring the poor, pathetic Matchboxers had been through enough and needed something to hope for. Their assumptions couldn't have been more misplaced.

One year to the day, on the anniversary of the attack, Dan was on his way to Aisle 17 to check up on Keri, something he had done almost daily since Alan's death. What greeted him in front of Aisle 16 made his knees buckle and give with shock...

It looked like a massacre.

Bodies large and small lay in pools of their own blood, splattered all over the tile floor. The first thing that came to Dan's mind was that another predator had gotten in, so he high-tailed it towards the stockroom to begin mobilization of the Mattels.

The Mattel army would find no hungry carnivore prowling the lengthy aisles. None of the bodies showed signs of any predation. The investigation that followed came to the conclusion that every single one of the corpses...

Ten Kenners...

Three Hasbros...

And all eighteen remaining Matchboxers had committed suicide.

In the night, the little cult had snuck their way up the mobile ramp to the top shelf of Aisle 16. They walked along the edges to the endcap... then threw themselves over the side.

The event created quite the scandal among the various sizes, each placing blame on the other for the tragic event... further dividing the already growing schism between them. The dead would be buried along with those who'd perished exactly a year prior in the berry field beneath the large picture window at the front of The Store.

After this shocking incident, Dan found that his heart wasn't in it anymore. Things had changed, and not for the better... it was like the hope he once shared with the others had died. After another year of service, totaling five, Dan Rasmussen would step down from his position, leaving all authority to the Store Council.

It was bound to happen eventually, as Dan wasn't a young man when this hell was thrust upon him. When people were working together to build The Store into a home, it made his job easy... but now? Attacks... suicides... even potential murders, it was all too much for him. Things were getting unpleasantly political, something he no longer had the patience for.

After stepping down, the former proprietor would spend most of his days trying to bring Keri back from the clutches of sorrow that held such a tight grip on her. By that point he was the only person the spiteful woman would acknowledge in the entirety of The Store... her last and only friend.

Daniel Rasmussen would live another six years before finally succumbing to Kidney failure. The entire Store would attend his funeral... the final event to be attended by a gathering of mixed sizes. Some would say it was just as much a funeral for hope as it was for old Dan-O.

As for Keri Nelson herself? As mentioned previously, she'd cut herself off from society... from everyone. William was forced to step up and take on the mantle of man of the house as his mother grew more distant... even from him. Keri couldn't walk very well and she'd developed a complete lack of desire to even leave their home. She built up such walls in her mind, convincing herself that those who wouldn't believe her were just as guilty as Conrad for Alan's death... because they allowed him get away with it.

In the weeks following her husband's death, Keri started feeling sick. She'd spend the mornings puking her guts out, thinking her ailment was nothing more than another symptom of her grief.

In reality, Keri was pregnant.

Her pregnancy was the initial reason for Dan's frequent visits, not wanting to see her miscarry the baby in her deep abyss of depression. It wouldn't be easy to raise two children alone, but that baby inside her was still a part of Alan, and Dan knew in his heart that taking care of Keri and that child would be what his dearly departed friend would have wanted of him.

Seeing his mother torture herself day in and day out and feeling helpless to ease her suffering clawed at William's own mental state, grinding him down day by day. Living at a fraction of his original size had forced him to grow up fast, even as young as he was, but having to deal with his mother took its toll.

When his baby sister Evelyn was born, taking care of her became the most important thing in young William's life. He loved his little sister more than anything, giving her the affection that Keri hadn't the will to offer. As a good son, Will continued to be there for his mother, but she just wouldn't let him in. He missed his father too, but his feelings seemed to matter little to his endlessly spiteful mother. When he was finally old enough to do so, and felt like Evelyn had reached an age where she could care for herself, William left the house. The young man built his own home in Aisle 2, but if he could have, he would have built it on the surface of the moon. Even that still might not have been far enough away from his mother.

Despite living under the same roof, the mother and son would not speak again.

Keri hadn't realized the effect she'd had on William until he was already gone. She regretted every second of it, all the time lost feeling sorry for herself. She wanted to mend their relationship, but also had no idea of how to do so. Conrad Hartman may have lit the fuse of the destruction of the Nelson family, but Keri was the one who blew it up... and she damn well knew it. If there was a single positive to take away from the collapse of her family, Keri vowed not to put Evelyn through the same misery she had put her eldest through.

Among many of the other people of The Store, a different rift between the founding generation and the young began to form. The adults yearned for the time before... a time when things were easier and the world was molded to mankind's needs... an old life they were forced to leave behind. While the early years were filled with camaraderie among the shrunken and hope for the future, following the feline attack and the mass suicide, the honeymoon period was over. It really sank in for everyone just how small and vulnerable they really were... and just how trapped they felt.

The top of the food chain dangled high above them, teasingly. Life in The Store was all they had with no hope of rescue. The mass depression hit hard, and the children suffered as well from what their parents were struggling with. Even the youngest felt like they didn't belong, being constantly reminded by the adults that the world around them wasn't as it should be.

These concerns were brought before the Store Council in hopes that they could boost engagement somehow. Their solution would be something no one expected. The council understood that something drastic had to be done if there was any hope for a future in The Store.

So... an idea was presented.

It was controversial. The Council members anticipated that there'd be kickback... but if their children, and their children's children, wanted a chance at any kind of happiness... any chance to build their own life... to feel like they existed in a world of their own...

... their plan would have to be initiated. Secrets would need to be kept... controversy be damned.




End Chapter Ten

[littlest-lily]

Super fascinating stuff! The way everything is evolving is really well thought out, I'm interested both in the "flashback" and what this will all amount to for Alana's generation.

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Super fascinating stuff! The way everything is evolving is really well thought out, I'm interested both in the "flashback" and what this will all amount to for Alana's generation.

I can’t give too much away right now for spoiler reasons, but anytime in a society that the few hold all of the wealth and power over the majority, it’s like stretching a rubber band to its limits. Eventually it will snap.

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Eleven-"Osos"




The shivers crawled up Alana's spine with each new revelation her Grandma Keri heaved upon her. All of it seemed so wild, so sci-fi, but every question she'd ever asked now had an answer. The existence of people even smaller than she was, The Matchboxers, really caught her off guard, especially since they'd been all but forgotten.

Her mother Evelyn left the room to dispose of the contact case filled with murky red water; her father Bennett didn't say much, sitting against the wall with his head propped in his hands. Alana had wrapped herself in tissue like a shawl while Keri continued smashing the teenager's concept of the world.

"...it took quite a bit of convincing to the masses, but the council determined that we would hide the past from our children. We wouldn't teach history in our humble little school. We wouldn't bring it up in our homes." Keri continued to explain, "the idea was that you kids deserved to have a childhood without the burdens that we had to cope with. You'd be free to shape your own future. Then, when we felt you were old enough to deal with the truth, we'd let you in on the secret... just as I am now."

Keri paused to reflect on her own opinions of the decision for a moment, "I still don't think it was the wrong move, which is strange to say out loud considering I was a history teacher once. We should have foreseen the side effects keeping you in the dark was going to have. There was a saying in the old days, 'those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it'... and I'm afraid that's exactly what is happening right now."

"What... what exactly are you saying, grandma?" Alana asked, trembling.

"As the youth grew into adulthood, things really began to change. What once were just silly, joking titles for the many different sizes devolved into outright size-ism. At some point, people even quit using their last names and replaced them with the aisle they hailed from, like this is medieval fucking England or something. Do you have any idea how annoying that is when two families in the same aisle give their kids the same name?!" Keri realized that she'd gone off on a tangent and climbed back onto her train of thought.

"We were once one people, united in purpose... but now we're fractured and scornful of one another. The Hasbros want little to do with us and the Mattels hide in their precious Stockroom stronghold, lording their size and possessions over the rest of us. They figured out they could control us through the distribution of rations years ago, but...," once again, the old woman had to pause to piece things together.

"...but what I've witnessed this morning is on a whole new level."

Keri continued her granddaughter's crash course in history, who hung on the crippled old woman's every word... trying to find the relevance in them as to what had occurred that morning. "Over a century ago the people of a country called Russia overthrew their monarchy in an attempt to create a society where everyone worked for a common purpose. It was ultimately corrupted by a cruel dictator pretending to be a man of the people. Years later in another country called Germany, things became so dire after losing a world wide war that yet another madman was able to woo the public with his lies and overthrow the government. This resulted in the murder of millions and a worldwide war."

Keri took Alana's hands in hers once again and stared her in the eyes with great intent.

"I know everything I'm saying is completely alien to you, and I promise I'll explain more in depth later. What I'm saying... what I'm afraid of is... that we've let some... some combination of those two scenarios happen, right here in The Store. If you throw a frog in boiling water, it'll hop right back out... but if you slowly raise the temperature, the animal will slowly boil to death."

"Um... grandma... uh... what's a frog?" Alana asked with embarrassment.

"It doesn't really matter, my dear... for the purposes of this analogy... it's us. We've sat by and slowly let the Mattels take more and more from us. And after today, I can finally see how bad it's gotten... and how bad it's about to get. Please tell me you're understanding this, Alana?"

"I... I think so, grandma... I just... I don't know why you're telling me all this right now." Alana began to cry again, wiping her tears away on her forearms. "What does any of this have to do with me?"

Keri caressed her granddaughter's cheek and wiped some of the young woman's tears away. "Because I believe what happened today had less to do with you... and more to do with me."

Alana pursed her face up in a confused pout, "that doesn't make any sense."

Keri began to ramble, not unlike Dan Rasmussen used to when he got off on one of his wild conspiracy theories, "I can guarantee this was all a set up... that the bastard has been waiting for an opportunity. I could see it in that boy's eyes... I swear to god I could even hear it in his voice. God knows what kind of woman would have let that bastard knock her up. There's no mistaking it in his face. Shit, he even sounds just like him."

"Who?! Grandma.. who?!" Alana pleaded against Keri's insane sounding ramblings. "You're all over the place!"

"Isn't it obvious, Alana? Can't you see it?!" Of course Alana couldn't see it, because she'd never met the man in question.

Keri finally managed to pull her many threads of thought into pointed focus, "Boyd is Conrad Hartman's grandchild."

Alana's eyes grew wide as the pieces of the puzzle finally fit together in her head.

"I've known that bastard Conrad since we were children. He used to torment the other kids and shoot at the neighborhood pets with a slingshot for fun. The fact that the man grew up to be a cop and not a serial killer was nothing short of a miracle. He always came across as a goon, even trying to run his minuscule, small town police force like a gestapo. No one took him seriously then, but my eyes are wide open now."

"What does this all mean? What are we supposed to do?" Alana pressed further.

"It means that Conrad Hartman is finally going to play the role of the tiny Hitler he's always wanted to, and he's using the Mattels to enforce his will. That entire display this morning was about flexing his muscles, and a grudge he's held for me for decades. Why else would he send his grandson to do his dirty work? It's a fucking message. The fucker wants to make my family pay because he failed to kill me all those many years ago. As for what we can do about it...," Keri leaned in and touched her forehead to Alana's and whispered, "you have to fight back. Show them that you're not going to take it."

Alana pulled back, her face turning white with fear. Her grandmother sounded completely bonkers... or did she?

"The longer a party holds its power," Keri continued, speaking even faster and more intensely than before, "...the easier it becomes for them to abuse it. There's a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them, Alana. They may be bigger, but we have the numbers. You need to tell your friends... they need to help spread the word. The Mattels have to be stopped."

"Please, mom... this is all too much," Evelyn finally chimed in, "don't you think she's been through enough already?!"

Alana was indeed overwhelmed with the insane hard turn the morning had taken. What was her grandmother asking her to do... accept that she was going to have to start an entire revolution?! Just a few hours prior, the girl's only thoughts were of feeding her family. The whole thing was ballooning out of control, so the little redhead gathered up the tissue around her and bolted out the front door, trying to run away as far as she could from this spiraling nightmare.

Evelyn sat down on the bed next to her mother. She, Bennett and Keri stared at each other in silence, each waiting for the other to speak.

"Should I go after her?" Bennett proposed.

"No," Keri replied, "give her time. I just dumped the weight of the world on the girl's shoulders. Maybe I went too far, but Alana's a strong girl... I know she can handle this."

Alana ran through the village towards the front of the store, past the tiny hovels... past the very spot where she hunted down the offending rodent. Once she reached the colossal window to the outside world, the crying girl took hold of a dangling string and began to climb. It was once used to lower and raise the cobweb covered blinds that would shutter the store at closing time in times past, back when there were still people large enough to pull them anyway.

The traumatized girl plopped down with her back braced against the frame of the window sill and cried even harder into her folded arms. She vocally chastised herself for going out after curfew... for trying to hide the rat... for getting her friends into trouble. She wished she could take it all back and return to her blissful, innocent ignorance.

Unfortunately, reality is a cruel bitch. The world around her still looked the same, but everything in it took on its true artificiality... as if a veil of denial had been lifted from her eyes. Alana could finally see the aluminum 'canyons' and 'mountains' of browsers and aisles that she'd grown around for what they really were... the remains of a dead civilization.

The morning had been exhausting on every level imaginable and Alana's couldn't emotionally take any more. She passed out right there in the window sill, curled up in the warm sunlight like a fat house cat. Even the comfort of sleep evaded her with terrible dreams tormenting her already troubled mind. There she would stay, hidden away from the bustle of daily life within The Store for the rest of the day.

As the sun's bright light began to take on a dimmer, reddish glow in the west, Alana finally stirred. While the rest of the building was basked in the hews of a particularly beautiful sunset, the tiny Kenner found herself engulfed by a huge, dark shadow. The sight that greeted her when she peered out the window at what was casting it took her breath away.

An enormous beast was peering in from the other side of the glass. It was covered in thick, brown fur and a had fluffy, round face. The hulking monster seemed to be looking past her, deeper into the store... perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of hunger.

It took Alana a moment to process what she was looking at out of overwhelming fear, but soon figured out that what she was staring at with jaw-dropping awe was a bear... an honest to god bear! The flesh and blood creature was so much bigger than the stuffed effigies on the toy aisle shelves... and so much more beautiful.

Alan's fear was superseded by gaping wonder as she stood up to fully take in the titanic animal. She had witnessed the enormous deer that frequented the empty streets many times before, but this was unprecedented. She spun back towards the Salesfloor for a moment, her excitement blossoming and wanting to share the moment with anyone... but their view would only have been obscured by the registers anyway. Instead, Alana savored the moment, one she could keep all to herself.

The bear suddenly took notice of the strange little creature on the other side of the glass, a rather unnerving thing to experience, even in the time of original stature. The cuddly beast tilted its head slightly, more curious than anything else.

Not fully understanding what compelled her to do so, Alana placed her hand on the glass that separated the two of them. The bear opened its great maw in response, revealing its sharp, white teeth... and licked at the glass where she stood. It's prodigious pink tongue was so wide and long that it could have lapped the tiny young woman up in a single swipe. Alana's heart raced with a mix of fear and exhilaration... and then complete and utter happiness. The misery of the morning's events faded from her mind. She could feel the vibrations of the massive tongue and the rumbling of the bear's vocalizations through the glass. She couldn't help but smile, even as tears streamed down her cheeks.

And then she saw the mother.

The impossibly huge animal slowly lumbered by on the overgrown road, letting out a deep growl of her own to inform her cub know it was time to keep moving. Alana couldn't have imagined that the huge creature in front of her was only a juvenile. The sight of the mother stopped her breathing once again. She was was so large, so majestic. Alana laughed openly with a full heart, only to feel it break a little as her new friend turned away to rejoin its mother.

Alana didn't understand it herself, but the encounter gave her new hope for some reason. She felt inspired... rejuvenated. She watched her gargantuan visitors slowly meander down the street until they disappeared out of sight, then turned her back to the window and stared into the cluttered aisles.

The Store may not have been what she thought it was, but it was still her home... and she was determined more than ever to protect it. She still wished she could leave, to be free like those magnificent creatures who'd been spared from whatever end game had brought the human race to its knees. But The Store... The Store was hers... and every other Kenner's... and every Hasbro's... and yes, even every Mattel's...

...and she'd be DAMNED if she was going to let her home fall into outright... what did Lacey's father call it? Her grandma Keri had used the same word... fascism! She wasn't quite sure what it meant, but if what happened to her that morning was the beginnings of it, she felt every obligation to stop it.

Alana would go home and crawl into bed that night, still exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before... and even after a day long nap. Suddenly, the unassuming teenager had renewed purpose, and rest came easy...

... that is, until Sarah awoke her in the middle of the night to meet with a certain female Mattel who wished to make amends...




End Chapter Eleven

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Twelve-"Pillow Talk"




Conrad Hartman's grandson leaned against the side of the metal rack where Faye's bunk lay, darkly silhouetted and with the same swagger he'd shown earlier in Aisle 17. Faye could just barely make out his shadowy shape in darkness, but that voice couldn't belong to anyone else. Had he heard her crying? Surely it was still too dark for him to see the redness in her eyes and tear-dampened cheeks... wasn't it?

"I asked you a question, babe... what were you doing outside the stockroom in the middle of the night?" He prodded again. "You don't start working the night shift until tomorrow?"

Faye knew she had to think of an excuse fast. She took her shot and hoped it would be enough to convince him. "I was... uh... just... checking on 17 again. I wanted to make sure that little Kenner bitch didn't try to sneak out again. It'd be just like one of those little assholes to think they could get away with breaking the rules again... and I wanted to catch her red handed." It sounded pretty good, but would the smug bastard buy it?

Boyd stood there silently for what felt like an excruciatingly long time, but was only mere seconds in actuality. Then, the intimidating young man stood up straight and approached Faye's bed. He lifted the covers and slid in close against her body. Faye instinctually turned away from him, trying to mask the wet spots on her pillow with her long hair. He must have removed his ratty slacks before crawling into her bed because she could feel his growing erection pressing between the cheeks of her ass as he spooned her. Boyd's touch felt... different, and his hot breath on the back of her neck made Faye's skin crawl.

It felt so familiar. He'd fucked her just like this, many... many times before, but for the first time the Faye felt utterly repulsed by it. She wanted him gone so badly... to toss him out of her bed like he'd threatened to toss Alana's mother out of The Store.

But that would only raise more suspicion.

Faye knew she had to remain calm, like nothing had changed. She had to let him take her, even though his slimy touch made her sick to her stomach. The way his arms reached around her to twist at her breasts... the violating way his shaft felt as it penetrated her from behind... and his ever present breath, pungent and humid. He sped up as he worked his way towards orgasm... it all filled Faye with so much hate. Twenty four hours ago, she was in love with this man... but now all she wanted was to claw his eyes out so he could never gaze upon her with lust again.

But not yet.

In a drastically short period of time, Faye had gone from Mattel loyalist... sworn protector of The Store, to being fucked by a man who she no longer loved or trusted, and represented everything she no longer believed in...

...like a spy.

She had to ask herself if that's what she was now... a spy.

Faye still believed in protecting The Store, but came to the conclusion that it was her own people it needed protecting from. Dragging Salesfloorers from their homes in the middle of the night, only to send them to what could be assumed was exile... it hardly felt like defense. Alana was absolutely right... something frightening was happening. She couldn't be the only Mattel who saw it... right?

Boyd continued to pound away at Faye with little regard for her pleasure. He never had much of a mind for nuance when it came to love making, something that just made his efforts all the easier for Faye to ignore. Things she tolerated and shrugged away about Boyd when he was the apple of her eye began to feel embarrassingly obvious.

The secretly scheming woman continued to occupy her treasonous thoughts as a distraction from slithering cock sliding in and out if her anus. She needed to watch the others, analyze their faces, see if there were others feeling the same shock and disgust that she was feeling... other than the immediate disgust of Boyd's enthusiastic thrusting against her ass.

So yes... Faye accepted it. She was indeed a spy... that's how she could help... that's how she could bring about change. But what did spying mean exactly? The only reference she had for it were the yarns her late grandfather spun to her as a child about some legendary folk hero by the name of James Bond. He was smooth... calculating... stealthy... a consummate ladies man. The kind of man that men wanted to be and women wanted too be with. She knew she could at least attempt the first three anyway.

Faye would have to be careful... and smart. Even if that meant letting this charade, the one squeezing too hard at her tits and thrusting itself inside her, go on. She was going to play Boyd like a fiddle, a phrase she'd heard her late grandmother say once or twice. Faye hadn't the faintest idea what the fuck a fiddle was, or how one supposedly 'played' it. It sounded good in her mind though.

Boyd finished early as usual, shooting his disgusting seed into Faye like a venomous injection. His drool... his slime... dripped down the back of neck. From now on, she'd let him use her backside, and that was enough. The thought of letting him into her most holy of holies again... the even worse thought of having to carry his child... it sent chills through her body.

"You cold, babe?" Boyd asked, panting.

"Oh... uh... no... no... it just felt so good," she lied. "It always feels so much better when you take me from behind," she lied again.

Boyd squeezed Faye tighter and rested his cheek against hers. The grating sound of air wheezing through his nose was something akin to nails scraping on a chalkboard. "What's goin' on with you Faye? You've been actin' strange all day."

"Uh... yeah... I guess. I just didn't feel very good. It's like I had a knot in my stomach." That part wasn't a lie. "You always know how to make me feel better though."

Boyd continued to squeeze her tighter, wiggling and settling into the bed even more. "You're not upset about the way I took care of that piece of Kenner trash this morning, are you?"

Faye's heart began to beat faster, she hoped he couldn't feel it. "What? No! Of course not! That little crook had it comin'." The blossoming spy felt guilty for talking about Alana that way, but she had to make it sound good.

"You understand that they're inferior, right? They're just a bunch of dead weight. A bunch of beggars... waiting with outstretched hands for the next handout," Boyd insisted. "There's a lot more of them than us, so it's our job to shepherd the herd. They need to understand how good they have it and how well we take care of them."

"I know, Boyd," Faye lied again, ignoring the rage that was erupting inside her. It was the usual propaganda every Mattel was told from the time they were little, but Faye no longer believed a word of it... not after meeting Alana. She welcomed the sudden feeling of Boyd finally receding from inside her as his member went flaccid.

"The Rapture selected us above all others, Faye," Boyd insisted. "Our blood lines are sacred. God knew this when he gifted us with our superior size. We were chosen."

Alarms went off inside Faye's head. How the fuck did Boyd know about The Rapture?! For fuck sakes... was she the only one who didn't know?! And since when did Boyd give a shit about god?! What the hell was going on?!

As Faye puzzled over her unwanted bedmate's shocking ideas, Boyd began to hold her even tighter... much tighter. It felt claustrophobic, and difficult for the worried young woman to breath. "Boyd... Boyd! You're hurting me!"

Boyd squeezed her even tighter, like a python squeezing its prey. He brought his mouth so close to her ear that his lower lip rested on her lobe. "You wouldn't ever lie to me... would ya, babe?"

Faye began to panic, "Boyd! Please! I... I can't breath!"

"Answer the question," he whispered with unnerving calm.

"Of course not!" Faye screamed out.

Boyd put his hand over her mouth, realizing they might wake the others. "Ssssshhhhh, babe. No need to make a scene." He released her and Faye slid away from him, no longer trying to hide the fear she was feeling.

"Prove it," he ordered with a crooked smile.

"What? How?" She replied, gripping the covers to her chest.

"Show your loyalty to me... to our cause." He lifted the covers to impress her with regrowing erection. "Show me."

Faye knew what he wanted, she'd given it to him countless times up to this point. The thought of taking that thing into her mouth again made her want to vomit... regardless of where he'd just stuck it. Boyd didn't appreciate her hesitation, so he grabbed her by the hair and forced her face against his fleshy shaft.

"I said show me."

Faye did as ordered and serviced this man like she still loved him... again, she had to make it look good. Making a point to make it last as long as she could, she teased his cock... falsely worshiping it. Did James Bond ever have to endure such humiliation?

Perhaps she'd make a finer spy than he ever was.

With a mouth filled with Boyd's offload, Faye searched for somewhere to spit out his seed. When Boyd saw this, he violently clasped his hand around her mouth.

"Swallow it. It never bothered you before."

Faye winced her eyes shut and gulped down the disgusting load. A single tear dropped from one of her eyes. God, she hoped she could continue to do this, for the sake of everyone else.

Boyd released his death grip on her face and laid back with his arms behind his head, floating in a state of both satisfaction and confusion. "You really are acting strange, Faye."

Faye wiped the drool and cum dripping from her face across her forearm and coughed a little. "I told you, Boyd... I don't feel well."

Boyd regarded her in agonizing silence for a moment, then finally relented. Sort of.. "Yeah... I guess... maybe."

With his impromptu 'interrogation' completed, Boyd wiped the remaining sludge oozing from his tip onto Faye's bedding, then crawled off the old bread rack to return to his own bunk. The young captain of the Mattel guard was never one to hang around for any post-coitus snuggling, something Faye couldn't have been more pleased with. She hated herself for taking this long to see what a fucking bastard he really was.

When Boyd finally disappeared, Faye pushed the experience from her mind. She felt charged. Ready. Filled with the same newfound determination that Alana had felt as she gazed at those massive bears. The emotionally torn Mattel woman was more sure than ever that people like Boyd couldn't be allowed to run things. But even more than that, he had gone and made it personal.

She couldn't wait to bring the motherfucker to his knees.




End Chapter Twelve

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Thirteen-"Stirrings..."




Tyrone, Lacey's father and leader... or rather... former leader of Aisle 17, made his weekly journey to the Stockroom to retrieve his aisle's share of rations, taking along four other men to assist with the load. There was never any choice in what they would return with, they got what The Mattels offered or nothing at all. The giants took great pleasure in making the representatives from each aisle line up and wait for ridiculous amounts of time on Ration Day, just another cruel method used to put the little people in their place. When Tyrone saw what they were allotted that week, the usually level-headed man about lost his mind.

"You have to be jerking me off! This is it?! This is what you expect me to feed our entire community with?! Where's the rest of it?!"

Before him stood a single can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. Not even the Extra Chunky... just the classic, regular old can. One of the middle aged Mattels who he often received their supplies from, "Fat" Ben, was propping his foot on it like a comedian leaning on a stool. A smug, yellowed smile graced the Goliath's bearded face.

"Orders from above. '17's rations are to be cut in half this week,' I was told. Just followin' orders, ya know." The way the fat bastard had to keep himself from laughing showed just how broken up he really was about the whole ordeal.

"For Christ's sake man! It's... its Campbell's! It's more water than food! Are you trying to starve us to death?!" Tyrone pleaded and begged.

"I'd be more than happy to roll this back inside if you're that unhappy with it," the bulbous giant threatened patronizingly. "Such ingratitude."

"You can't do this!" Tyrone clapped back. "Its inhuman!"

The gloating Mattel pushed the can over on its side with his foot, then kicked it hard... directly at Tyrone. The red and white cylinder rolled at the tiny man with such speed that it could've easily crushed him like a steamroller. All Tyrone could do is stare back up at the taunting Mattel, wishing he had the courage to fight back... but what could he possibly do against someone so enormous?

"Learn to keep your flock in line, runt... and maaaaaaybe Boyd will find it in his heart not to halve your rations again. NEXT!" The giant hollered, making it clear he was done teasing this particular Kenner and ready for the next.

Tyrone's friends helped him back to his feet and the five of them begrudgingly rolled the pathetic soup can back to 17... with tails placed firmly between their legs.

Who could blame them? Even with five of them, they wouldn't have stood a chance against the colossal, fat Mattel.

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It was late in the morning when Alana finally emerged from her bedroom. Her grandmother was sitting in her rocker, staring out into the aisle through the big picture window that was cut into the front of the box they lived in. Alana's mother, Evelyn, was scrounging around their sorry excuse of a kitchenette for whatever scraps they might have left for breakfast. Bennett, her father, had already left to scour the dark places of the building for protein-filled insects.

Alana stood in the doorway of her room... fists clenched... eyes wide and serious. Keri felt eyes on her and turned to find her granddaughter staring back. The old woman lowered her head and flashed the slightest of grins. She wasn't sure what had happened with Alana, but she could tell that something had definitely changed in the girl since they last spoke. This was not the same broken, quivering, and frightened creature that ran from her the day prior.

Wordlessly, Alana was showing her grandmother that she was ready.

"I have food. Don't ask me where I got it... I can't tell you," Alana informed the other women in the room, curtly.

"Alright then," Keri complied.

Alana's mother stared at her daughter in silence, somewhat intimidated by the vibe the girl was giving off.

The intense eighteen year old continued, "it won't be much once we divide it up, but we need to share it with everyone in 17."

"I understand," Keri replied, just as simply as the first time.

"I'll need help," it was as though Alana was already laying down conditions to take on this mantle that her grandmother so desperately wanted her to. "My friends will need to get involved, too... but we have to do it quietly. That fucker Boyd can't find out about it. It won't just be us in deep shit."

Evelyn thought about correcting her daughter's foul use of language, but Alana had never looked so deathly serious before. The dutiful housewife kept her opinions to herself and let her daughter finish.

"When we're done, grandma... you and I are going to have another long talk."

"Of course, my dear... whatever would you like to talk about?" Keri queried, almost sarcastically.

"I'm going to bring down the Mattels, by myself if I have to... and I'm going to have Boyd begging for mercy at my feet when I do." Alana was filled with grand purpose, and the thought of a Mattel... a true giant, begging her for their life, gave her the warm and fuzzies inside.

Keri clapped her hands together, lifting the thick cloud of tension from the room and laughed out loud, "wooooohoooo! Now you're talking, goddamnit!"

"I need to know everything, grandma. These Germans? Russians? F-French... I think you called them? I need to understand every detail. I need to know who was stealing THEIR food, and what they did to stop them."

Keri laughed again, "its a quite a bit more complicated than 'stealing food,' my dear Alana... but yes, of course... I will be glad to help you. Let's get started..."

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There was quite a bit of reluctance from Alana's friends after the terror they had to endure the last time they assisted her, but ultimately they knew what she was doing was right. Along with her mother and grandmother, the small conspiracy of women broke up the barbecued rat flesh and chewy candy into generous pieces.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sneaking their bounty to the rest of 17, door to door. There wasn't much to spread around to almost two hundred people, perhaps a few bites per person, but the villagers were grateful to have it. Alana personally apologized to each person she encountered for any suffering they might have experienced because of her actions. She also asked them not to speak of where the food came from, not that she needed to... if Kenners were good for anything, they most certainly wouldn't sell out one of their own to the reviled Mattels.

Not a single soul held any ill feelings for the apologetic little redhead. They understood very well what she was trying to do, and that Boyd went frighteningly over the line. It was in their own best interests to keep quiet about such things.

This interaction with the people was precisely what Alana needed. She had to know she could win people over... she had to build trust, especially if a conflict was coming. For someone with almost no understanding of politics, Keri was astounded at how much her granddaughter figured out all on her own. The aged woman knew in her heart that if a full on rebellion was on the horizon, Alana was the right girl to lead it... and she proved it that afternoon.

Alana could have hoarded all that food for herself and her family... and no one would blamed her for it. Their family could have thrived off it for weeks, but the kind natured girl wanted to share it with her people, just as she had hoped to share the rat that fell into eminent domain.

Indeed... Alana was of a different sort.

When Tyrone and his team returned with their meager rations for the week, Alana made sure that each of them got a nice bite of candy, something none of their tongues had ever experienced before. She remained by their side and helped dish out the disappointing allowance to the entire aisle. Tyrone appreciated the young woman's assistance, but made sure to give her fair warning as well.

"Please be careful, Alana. I know your heart is in the right place, but...," he had to pause for a moment to compose himself, the weight of thoughts going through his head hitting him hard with their severity. "...my daughter, Alana. You involved my daughter last night. We're on thin ice here with the Mattels and... I can't lose her, Alana. I CAN'T lose her... do you understand me?"

Alana looked worried, but she took the kindly man's hand and nodded silently. The cost of what was coming hadn't really sunk in with her until then. She didn't want anything to happen to those she cared about, or anyone else for that matter. Tyrone was a good man and he and his wife always took good care of their people, but he wasn't cut out for a war. The youth were going to need to fight this fight... and as few of their parents knew about it the better, at least for the time being.

A secret resistance. That's what it was going to take.

Hopefully her generation could show their parents that equality in The Store was worth the struggle.

It was their own future they would be fighting for after all.

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That night, Keri and Alana sat on her bed and the old woman explained the abridged history of world conflict over the past century-plus to her granddaughter. To the best of her ability and in terms Alana could understand anyway. She used The Store itself as a model for the world and the different aisles as countries. Alana was quite an intelligent girl and managed to piece the metaphors together pretty well. She was quite fascinated by the Bolshevik Revolution and the French Resistance of World War II; and as equally repulsed and horrified by the rise of the Nazi Party and the atrocities that government committed.

Keri also went over the conflicts in Vietnam and the Middle East as well, using them as examples of how shit could go wrong and get completely out of hand. It boggled Alana's mind that a single conflict could go on for more than twenty years, and that it was still happening when the world came to an end. To be honest, it kind of boggled Keri's mind as well.

The old woman had always enjoyed history, and despite the circumstances, it did her heart good that Alana showed so much interest as well. There was such a disconnect when trying to explain things like fighting over borders or trade routes, but Keri could paint a clear enough picture for Alana so the young woman could begin to understand. Most importantly in what went right and what went wrong.

Through the scope of history, Keri hoped Alana could use the success and failures so the two of them could begin strategizing. With the majority of The Store having little to no background in any kind of history, Keri thought that even old and well worn tactics could prove themselves effective.

It would have given the widowed Nelson woman no greater pleasure than to walk right up to Conrad Hartman herself and give the alleged murder what he had comin'. But... she was an old now; the fire was there, but the furnace holding it had rusted and broken. She struggled with the thought that she may be using Alana, but the previous morning's incident showed her that her granddaughter was already mixed up in the thick of it.

Alana would have to carry that fire for her.

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Under great risk, Alana snuck out late again that night, and once again gathered her three apprehensive compatriots. They met behind one of the kick panels at the base of the far end of the shelving gondolas... where so many years prior, people had fled for their lives from gigantic four-legged terrors. Now they seemed more like abandoned and forgotten catacombs, not unlike the ones the French had used to subvert the Nazis...

...which is exactly what Alana had in mind.

Sarah had already heard the truth about their origins from Alana the night before, but for Lacey and Rob, it was new and shocking information. Rob took it the hardest, taking out her anger on an aluminum column with her fists. It would take both Sarah and Lacey to pull her back, each of the them terrified that the sound her punches were making might draw unwanted attention from their lingering Mattel overlords.

Alana remained calm. She had to. They needed to see her strength if she expected them to follow her into the storm. She loved each of them like they were her sisters, but now they would also have to become her generals as well, even the sweet... silly... and idiosyncratic Sarah. Little convincing was needed of each girl, as each felt betrayed and angry with being lied to, combined with the frightening direction things seemed to be headed.

Sarah would follow Alana into the very fires of hell, but she was going to need the most work. Rob and Lacey were both strong, independent thinkers... capable of making hard decisions if need be, but Sarah... Sarah was a very simple girl. She worshiped the ground Alana walked on because the friendly redhead had always been so kind to her, especially when others gave her those 'looks.' She hadn't had a revelatory and inspiring moment the way Alana had. The whole thing was a little over her head.

But Alana had faith in her dear friend. She trusted that wonky little blonde more than anyone in her life. She knew it, even felt it... deep inside her gut. Sarah would find her courage and purpose.

So there... in the dark amongst the lingering spiders... and dust bunnies... and decades of decay...

...hidden away to scheme... and plot... beneath the ruins of the extinction of consumerism...


... a revolution was born.




End Chapter Thirteen

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Fourteen-"Sarah"




Things had to change, this Sarah understood.

Day after day, more and more people were being dragged from their homes to be exiled for the most minor of infractions. There were even rumblings about others in distant aisles who had outright disappeared. No warnings... no allegations... just poof... gone.

People began to talk.

Rumors were circulating. The most distressing and rampant of them was that The Store was nearly out of food, and that the Mattels were dealing with the problem in the most drastic way possible, by covering it up and reducing the number of hungry mouths.

The Mattel leadership were even approached about the issue by the former Council members, only to have their concerns dismissed as conspiratorial nonsense. Proving any of it would have nearly impossible as no one but the Mattels were allowed entrance into the Stockroom. Every empty home had housed an irredeemable criminal in the Mattels' eyes, and those who gave harbor to these criminals were just as guilty. Even if the Kenners could prove wrongful intent, who could possibly enforce it? The Mattels were running the show completely. The Store had truly become a fascist police state.

And just to make matters worse, every day Boyd would make his dramatic appearance in 17 to "keep the peace." He'd walk the aisle, bowing and smiling at the citizens. I'm sure in his mind he was being courteous and stewardly, but it only came across as what it really was... regulating

Sometimes the young captain of the Mattel army would show up once, other days he'd appear three or four times... and always at different intervals of the day. People weren't stupid, they knew Boyd was trying to throw them off... hoping to catch them doing something they shouldn't. His constant prescence made any activity of a covert nature that much more dangerous.

As stated before, Sarah understood these things. She may have been a very simple person, some would say 'weird,' but these were terrifying times to live in. What Sarah was struggling with was finding her place in all of it. She'd read many a story in the giant comic books that were slowly rotting away in the periodical section. Great heroes with fantastic abilities saving the day time and time again. Many of her favorites had yellowed and begun to crumble at the touch, but she still loved the old stories just the same.

As much as the little blonde enjoyed reading about her favorite fictional heros, Sarah also knew she was nothing like them. She wasn't brave. She didn't feel particularly skilled in any way. The tiny woman always saw herself as one of the bystanders in the story... a face in the crowd, maybe even needing saving herself. She didn't know how Alana could expect her to help lead a rebellion of all things! Something far better left to those more capable.

At the same time, Alana meant the world to Sarah. She was her best friend and the last thing she wanted to do is let her down. But what could she do? Rob and Lacey were out in the aisles gathering others in whispers, bringing in more recruits in daily. Sarah was terribly shy, making the thought of trying to talk to strangers in the other aisles... especially the boys, extremely uncomfortable.

Alana herself proved to be a natural leader with each passing day. Every night she would welcome the new members of their meager, but growing... some might call terrorist cell, into the fold. She'd tell them the truth about the past and how important it was that they stand up to the Mattels before it grew too late. They had to be deathly quiet in their secret meeting space beneath the browsers, but the energy in the crowd was so electric when she spoke. More than once the miniature militia had to be shushed from their urge to cheer.

The skills Alana's father had taught her when it came to hunting translated easily enough to training the others for combat. Patience... stalking... finding your moment... anticipating your opponent's move... striking the vulnerable areas. Alana was born for this.

So what did little Sarah have to offer?

One warm night, while Alana was busy addressing 'the troops,' Sarah was feeling particularly useless as her red-headed friend attempted to inspire. The pint-sized blonde laid down on her stomach behind the sitting group, but still making sure to maintain a clear line of sight to Alana, whom she idolized so much. There wasn't much in the way of light, only a single tea light candle.

Dan Rasmussen, always the opportunist when it came to making a buck, stocked boxes upon boxes of them for the "glamping" crowd that had begun to frequent the valley towards the end. Now the tiny candles served nicely as self contained campfires, and had done so for a very long time.

Not even fully aware that she was doing it at first, Sarah began to trace out images with her fingertips in the decades-old dust beneath the gondolas. Doodles grew into shapes, lines connected to others and almost mystically created depth. The low angle of the light made the ripples in the dust really stand out. The image grew larger and Sarah found herself having to scoot backwards on her belly to allow for more room. Growing more and more invested in her subject, Sarah even forgot that there were others in the crowded space. It was just her and her art.

A sudden rap on the metal kickplate that made up the outer wall of their little hideaway attracted everyone's nervous attention. Silence befell the crowd and they began to look at one another in fear.

Fuck.

Was this it? Was this already the end of their infant movement? Had they been caught so soon?

Alana brought a finger to her lips, then made her way to the secret entrance of their sanctuary. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw several enormous feet and towering legs stretching above her, legs that could only belong to a Mattel... and huddled outside their supposedly secret entrance nonetheless. A breath of relief followed as Alana turned her gaze upwards to find that Faye was among the towering giants.

"I'm sorry we interrupted," Faye whispered, "We didn't mean to scare you." The lovely, dark-blonde giantess lifted her hand to acknowledge the others accompanying her, "these are friends of mine, Michael, Heidi, and Donovan. They're just as disgusted with what's happening here as we are... they want to help."

Alana scratched her chin for a moment as she looked the three new giants over, making for quite a humorous sight for those present as they watched their leader inspect a group of people nearly four times her size. "Can we trust them?"

The three newbies silently nodded in response to the tiny redhead.

"Do YOU trust them, Faye?" Alana asked specifically.

Without hesitation Faye said, "yes... I do."

"Then so do I," Alana replied.

Faye flushed with pride. She barely knew this girl, but Alana was already putting that much trust in her. Working as the night guard, Faye had been able to deter attention from Alana's goings on, but having the tiny revolutionary take Faye at her word... it made the towering spy feel like she finally belonged. The amount of respect she felt for Alana at that moment was immeasurable... and she saw the little woman in a way she'd never seen anyone before.

"Well... I'm sorry there's not much room inside for people of your... stature... I suppose we'll have to find somewhere else to meet from now on. But, I think if you don't mind laying on your stomachs, we can fit all of you inside."

Each of the newly arrived Mattels looked to one another, wondering who should go first, then Faye took the lead and knelt down. She crawled into the cramped space followed by Donovan, then Michael, and last but not least, Donovan. The sudden appearance of these four giants into their secret meeting hall caused an audible gasp amongst the crowd. Alana made sure to stand at Faye's side as she introduced their newest members. There was some obvious and understandable reluctance among the smaller people, but through Alana's enduring charisma and newfound ability to engage a crowd through her words alone, there was no question everyone in attendance was unified in purpose.

After some final words, the meeting was adjourned. The group, now numbering over thirty with the night's surprise guests, disbanded quietly into the darkness. The original four Kenners, plus Faye, were the last to leave. Alana wanted her friends to get better acquainted with Faye... her 'man on the inside,' if you will. But as the four of them chatted away, Alana realized someone was missing.

"Hey... have you guys seen Sarah?" Alana questioned the clique. "She didn't go home, did she?"

"Probably just forgot her own name and went off to try and find it," Rob rudely quipped.

"Be nice," Alana clapped back.

The four of them strained their eyes in the dark until Faye quickly spotted the little blonde near the back, passed out with her face down in the dirt. Her friends approached the snoozing girl, even Alana had a hard time keeping from chuckling at the sight.

"I guess these late nights are taking their toll on Sarah," She observed, amusedly.

"Hey, do you guys see this?" Faye asked. Even crawling around on her hands and knees, the statuesque Mattel could still see things from a higher perspective than the other three. "Did... did she make this?"

Faye scooted the flickering candle closer so that the lines etched into the dirt cast much longer shadows and grew more defined. "Do you see it? It's... it's incredible..."

There in the dust, at the top of sleepy Sarah's outstretched hand, lied a rather lovely work of art... and quite large to boot. It depicted what was unmistakably an image of Alana... her chin lifted, her fist raised in a gesture of strength and solidarity. Around her were featureless depictions of the rest of her followers, both large and small... each with their gaze fixed upon the central figure.

"It's beautiful...," Lacey remarked, feeling chills from the power in the image, just as the rest of them were.

Rob placed her fists on her hips and released a soft chuckle, "huh... who fuckin' knew?!"

A single tear trickled down Alana's cheek.

The four girls stood in silence and analyzed every last line in the image... none of them having any prior knowledge of Sarah's secret talent, and to be honest, they felt kind of guilty about it. The four Kenner girls had grown up together and thought they knew just about everything there was to know about each other. But then again, Sarah was always... a little different... a little odd... a little withdrawn. She seemed fine with her role as second fiddle.. or third... or fourth. The strangest things came out of her mouth... and then she'd recoil back into her shell when the perplexed gazes inevitably found her. Rob felt particularly guilty, as she tended to tease the poor girl more than anyone.

Sarah snorted herself awake, having breathed in an undesirable amount of dust from the floor. She was surprised to find her three amigas and her new gigantic acquaintance standing over her. The tears spilling from Alana's eyes cut Sarah to her core. She quickly jumped to her feet and hung her head in state of complete shame. "I-I-I I'm so sorry, Alana."

Alana laughed a little in confusion, "what do you mean? What for, Sare-Bear?"

Sarah couldn't bring herself to meet Alana's gaze, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry I fell asleep during your speech... it wasn't boring, I promise!"

"Pppppfffftttthahahaha," Rob blurted out in one of her famous spit takes. She swiftly received an elbow to the rib from Lacey.

"Sarah," Alana began, "did you make this?" She put an arm around Sarah and pointed to the earthen work.

Sarah felt mortified, "I'm so sorry, please forgive me! I promise I was paying attention... I'm sorry I fell asleep!" She repeated, almost to the point of tears. She had begun to kick away her masterful work with a her bare feet when Alana quickly stopped her.

"No! Don't! Sarah... this is... its wonderful! Is this... is this really how you see me?"

Sarah still wouldn't make eye contact with Alana, but nodded like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Alana responded with a warm embrace.

"Sarah, why didn't you tell me you were such an amazing artist?"

Sarah shrugged, "I don't know... I guess... no one ever really asked."

Alana couldn't help but laugh at the innocence of Sarah's response. She squeezed the confused girl even tighter to try and calm her down.

"Can you make more? Drawings I mean. Large ones! Things people are sure to notice!"

At that moment, the three girls watching the interaction had the same lightbulbs click on inside their heads as Alana.

Sarah scratched her head, "um... yeah... I guess... why, 'Lana?"

Alana rubbed her knuckles into Sarah's scalp and laughed again, "because I have a job for you, knucklehead!"

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Under the cover of darkness, four of the five young women snuck off towards the registers where they knew, from their previous experience with the rat, that there were reams and reams of paper still stored from years past. Having Fay there to assist made retrieving one of the enormous sheets so much simpler.

"It's almost like the different sizes should have always been working together," Alana thought to herself as she watched Faye roll the paper up for easier carrying, "just like in the old days." A perfect example of what they were working towards.

With the rolled up sheet tucked under the giantess's arm, the cautious party retreated back to their clandestine base beneath the shelving. There, Sarah was quietly waiting for them, having snuck home for a few minutes to retrieve her art supplies, mostly just the broken tips of crayons and old colored pencils. The long, quiet wait for the others was causing the exhausted girl to doze off again, despite her best efforts. When the others finally arrived, Sarah shot to her feet like a good soldier, not wanting the rest of them to find her snoozing again.

The others knelt down around the edges of the sheet to hold it in place as the old paper tried to roll back up on them. They stared at Sarah, then to Alana, then back to Sarah.

"Um... what do you want me to draw, 'Lana?" Sarah asked sheepishly.

"How about an image of that fucking Boyd, hanging by his goddamn neck with the words 'Death to Mattels!' written across the bottom!" Rob enthusiastically suggested. She quickly realized how out of line it was to say something like that with Faye right there next to her. She grimaced and turned to apologize to the gigantic woman. "Uh... ah fuck... I'm sorry about that, Faye."

Faye feigned a smile and then flicked Rob across her ass cheeks, eliciting a yelp from Rob and a snicker from every other girl there. "Don't worry about it, shrimp."

"We can't win people over that way," Alana told them. "People are already scared... and more threats of violence, even if they're inevitable, won't make things any better." She may have been addressing the entire group, but Alana had her eyes fixed on Sarah as she spoke. It was all about inspiration, and if it could just click in Sarah's head, the results could be magical.

"What people need to know is that they're not alone in their fear and suffering. That things can change for the better. They need to be bonded to one another by it... and that starts with us. I feel it in my gut, my friends. If the people of The Store see that someone is hearing their pleas for help, that someone wants to fight for them, then I don't care how much power The Constable or Boyd or whoever else thinks they have over us. They will not win. A strong, united Store will never let them."

There was a moment of silence as the other girls tried to deal with the chills they were feeling in their spines. In the long history of great speeches, this one wasn't particularly high on the list, but what you have to understand that none of these girls had ever heard anyone speak like this before. Ever.

Alana's long conversations with her grandmother were really paying off.

Faye found herself in tears, partially out of her admiration for this tiny woman, and partially out of guilt for being connected to those oppressing her kind. But that was just it... that was what Alana was trying to say. There should be no "us" and "them". They all shared the same four walls and the same leaky roof. Faye couldn't believe how much she'd grown to care for this person that she'd known for such a short period of time. Not unlike Sarah, Faye was ready and willing to follow Alana to whatever end.

"I think I know what to draw, 'Lana," Sarah announced, breaking the silent reverence.

"Then go ahead, Sare-Bear," Alana smiled, "we believe in you."

And with that boost to her confidence, Sarah carefully crept out onto the sheet. It crinkled beneath her dirty feet and the pale surface was instantly marred with little black footprints from each step. Her eyes darted around the blank page as she chewed on her index finger in thought. The would-be propagandist was composing the image in her head, and when she settled on where to begin, she knelt down and began waving the broken purple crayon in her hands in lines across the paper's surface.




End Chapter Fourteen

[Bloodthirstybutcher]

Chapter Fifteen-"Propaganda"




A small crowd had gathered near the door to the stockroom. This in and of itself was nothing irregular, it was the beginning of the week and leadership would begin to congregate in Aisle 1 for their collective people's rations. The colossal door creaked open, just wide enough for Fat Ben to squeeze his sagging gut through. While the rest of the store remained in a state of constant hunger, their resentment for the overweight Mattel in charge of their livelihood was no secret. The kind of smarmy, mean-spirited bastard that Fat Ben was took great pleasure in watching their little hearts sink when they saw it was his turn to run rations.

That day was different.

When the glutinous giant pulled the thick wooden plank of the door away from its frame, none of those standing outside even acknowledged he was there. In fact, their heads seemed to follow the motion of the door itself. Ben furrowed his brow, squinting at the tiny people standing entranced before of him.

'What the fuck was their problem?!' The scene in front of him was beyond irregular. Were they fucking with him somehow? 'They sure as fuck better not be if they want to eat this week,' he thought to himself.

"What're you miserable runts up to?" The burly Mattel barked.

A young boy, there with his mother for the first time to learn the ropes so he could assist in the future with ration retrieval, lifted his arm and pointed his finger towards the door itself. His mother wacked his hand back down and chastised him through an aggressive whisper at his ear. The boy dropped his gaze to the floor and pouted.

Fat Ben turned to have a look at the door everyone seemed so hypnotized by. There, a large sheet of paper was taped to its surface, and upon that sheet was a sketch of dozens of firsts raised into the air. The fists were of different sizes, but all appeared unified in action. At the top of the poster, in bold lettering, was written the word 'UNITE,' ...and at the bottom... 'RESIST.'

"What the fuck is this?!" Ben mumbled under his breath. He furiously spun back around to find the crowd's stares still fixed upon it. The chubby Mattel felt a fiery rage growing inside him, and not just that of his consistent heartburn. He lashed out at the miniature onlookers, "who the fuck did this?! Which one of you little fucks put this here?! Answer me, goddamnit!"

In his tantrum, Ben swiped at the poster, ripping it from the wall. He rolled it up and wagged it at the waiting people like an extension of his finger. "If no one wants to speak up, then no one must want rations today!"

The people present couldn't help but look to one another, hoping someone... anyone... would step forward. Obviously, none of them had any knowledge of who the perpetrators responsible were.

"Alright... have it your way then," Ben smirked, now savoring the opportunity to torture the ungrateful shits a little more. "Constable Hartman is going to hear about this, you can be sure of that. Come back tomorrow... perhaps he'll show you the mercy you don't deserve. You'll certainly get none from me."

The fat man squeezed back through the cracked door with his treasonous evidence in hand. He pulled the heavy partition shut again at the old makeshift handle, installed decades ago at a lower and more convenient night than the original knob high above their heads. The Kenners and Hasbros glanced at each other wordlessly, then lowered their heads in defeat and returned to their respective aisles. The grumbling of their stomachs was nothing new, but the scene Fat Ben had just made was. Why did the big baby get so angry about a drawing?

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The next day Ben cracked the door again. The freeloaders were there waiting, as expected, but their gazes were once again fixed on the other side of the door. Just as the previous day, there was another poster left to be studied and pondered. This time it featured silhouetted people of all sizes holding hands in solidarity. The same message was sprawled across top and bottom again: 'UNITE'... 'RESIST.'

Ben ripped this one down as well, only this time he tore it up and crumpled the pieces. "Didn't realize you little bastards were so well off. I suppose another day without food won't hurt you then."

Again, the door was shut. Again, the Salesfloorers returned home empty-handed, wondering just what the hell was going on.

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Sarah was ready to sketch something similar to her previous pair of works that night, but Alana wanted her to draw up a very different image. As always, the cynical and mischievous Roberta had a few ideas.

When Sarah had finished with her latest artwork, at Rob's suggestion this time, the result sent their collective into a fit of laughter. The five of them rolled around on the ground, trying to control the volume of their chuckling by covering their mouths. The new propaganda poster was handed off to Faye and her secret cell of Mattel spies to hang on the door, just as she had the previous two evenings. If only Ben knew that the perpetrators were of his own kind.

The following morning there was an unheard of number of volunteers ready to venture to Aisle 1 with Tyrone to assist with ration retrieval. Seems rumor had spread and few wanted to miss the look on Fat Ben's face when he locked his eyes on Sarah's latest masterpiece. When the door finally cracked open to the much larger than normal gathering, every one of them trying to quell their involuntary snickering, the little Kenners and Hasbros received a surprise of their own.

The towering Mattel that stepped through the door wasn't Fat Ben , but Constable Conrad Hartman himself, a rare visitation indeed. He was draped in black rodent fur, like a robe or kimono, that made him look even more impressive than his immense size already did. He was losing his hair on top, but more than made up for it with a thick, dark beard. Most of the younger generation had never really seen the mysterious man except in fleeting glimpses, but the older ones recognized him immediately. The lighthearted mood shifted dramatically.

"Good morning, fellow citizens of Rasmussen's Grocery!" He greeted his audience, cordially. "I hope you're all well."

His greeting was met with stunned and nervous silence.

"I know me being here is a bit... out of the ordinary, but my good man Ben here has told me there's been a bit of a controversy brewing out here the past couple of days. Is that right, Ben?" Conrad slapped his hand against the flabby flesh of his companion's shoulder affectionately, making a rather loud sound when he did.

The tubby Mattel clenched his fists and smirked, salivating at the possible punishments Conrad might have in store for the shifty little buggers. "That's right, Constable. One of these little shits keeps posting inflammatory messages on the outside of the door."

The Constable rubbed at his chin semiseriously, "hmmmm... interesting. And how about today?"

As if it were a choreographed response, the collective gaze of the Salesfloorers shifted to the door. Hartman and Ben both rounded the inner edge of the door to see the morning's newest work for themselves. This time, there was no rally to fight back against the Mattels... just a bulbous, cartoonish caricature of Fat Ben himself... portrayed as a spoiled, crying baby. His features were blown out to grotesque proportions and the rotund creature was stuffing his cheeks with food. Constable Hartman brought his hand to his chin once again while examining the image. The inspiration for the hilarious render himself turned deep red with anger.

"Who?! Who did this?! I'll fucking kill 'em!" Ben fumed while grinding his teeth. He looked to Hartman, who was still examining the details of the drawing, for sympathy. "Well, are you gonna do something about this?!"

Those watching and waiting for a swift Storewide punishment were completely caught off guard when Constable Conrad Hartman broke into a fit of laughter, laughter he'd been trying to hold back since he first laid eyes on the silly drawing. The Mattel commander turned around and stepped out from in front of the caricature to solicit the opinion of the smaller races staring dumbfounded at the pair of giants. "It's a pretty good likeness, don't you think folks?"

A reliving, collective chuckle rolled through the crowd.

"What?!" Ben screamed, his fists clenched so tight that his nails drew blood from his palms.

"Come on, Ben... get over yourself," Conrad said with a smile. "Just take it down if it upsets you so much... and for god's sake, will you feed these poor people already!"

Ben was left flabbergasted, "but..."

"Ben, you and crew's your job is to distribute rations and nothing else... so just do it." With that final bit of instruction, the Constable patted Ben on the back once more out of friendship. The enigmatic man then locked his fingers behind his back, and disappeared into the stockroom again. Ben followed after him, choking down his pride, and prepared to distribute the delayed food.

Alana was observing the whole thing in the shadows, crouched behind the corner of an endcap, just out of view. What she'd just witnessed didn't make a lick of sense to her. This was the man her Grandma Keri had warned her about?! He hardly seemed like the terrible ogre the old woman'd made him out to be. He almost seemed... kind, and gentlemanly. Was Keri somehow... wrong... about him?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I... I saw Conrad today, Grandma," Alana began. The family was gathered around the 9 of Clubs that was the top of their dinner table for supper. Alana had been dreading bring up the morning's events, but that didn't keep the questions she had from nagging at her.

"Oh?" Keri replied, her interest peaked.

"Yeah," Alana continued, "he was there with Fat Ben during rationing." Alana wasn't sure how to tiptoe around what she wanted to say next, so... just went for it. "He didn't... I mean, he didn't seem so bad."

A fire instantly lit behind Keri's pupils, the kind you only see in your parents' eyes when you know you've royally fucked up. The old woman's lips stiffened and she bluntly took Alana hard by the wrist. "What the hell do you think you know?!"

"Grandmother, please! You're hurting me!" The panicked teenager pleaded. She'd never seen her usually docile and kindly grandmother react in such a way before, and it scared the living shit out of her.

"You listen to me, child... and you listen well!" Keri scorned. "That man took my Alan from me! He's a goddamn monster! Don't you dare talk to me about what Conrad Hartman is like! You saw him for five minutes... I've known him for fifty fucking years," Keri's grip was surprisingly strong for someone her age, and it only grew tighter the more Alana struggled to free herself from it.

Alana's parents, Evelyn and Bennet, were just as stunned by Keri's outburst as Alana was. Bennett bolted from his chair and dug his fingers under his mother-in-law's to try and free his daughter.

Alana continued to beg her grandmother to stop, "Grandma! Please!"

Like the flick of a switch, the light of rage in Keri's eyes dimmed. She began to shake and her eyes grew wide with fear instead of anger. She quickly released her hold on Alana's wrist. Her granddaughter rubbed at it as she held her hand close to her chest. The strength of Keri's grip on her would later cause Alana's wrist to bruise.

Keri realized what she'd just done and began to sob with shame. "I'm sorry, Alana. I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to...," Keri trailed off, repeating herself in her desperate apology.

"Jesus, Grandma?! What the fuck!"

"Alana! Language!" Evelyn interrupted reflexively, realizing the second the words left her mouth how pathetic they sounded. Alana wasn't a child anymore, and she'd need to get used to that if her mother didn't want to embarrass herself in the future.

Keri continued to plead for her granddaughter's forgiveness, "...I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry..."

"Grandma, I'm sorry... I didn't mean to upset you." Alana put her arms around her grandmother and held the troubled old woman as she continued to weep.

It took a few minutes of crying on Alana's shoulder before Keri could compose herself. "I didn't mean to snap at you like that, my dear... I really didn't. I guess the wound left by Alan's death is still just as tender now as it was then. I'm sorry I took it out on you. You're right to ask questions... any smart girl like yourself would."

"I... I understand...," Alana said as she wiped the tears out of her grandmother's eyes for a change. "I shouldn't have brought Constable Hartman up."

"You're a very loving and trustful girl, Alana," Keri continued. "You try to see the best in people, and that's nothing you should ever have to apologize for. Why else would so many people be looking to you right now for answers? Do you think someone like... say... little Sarah could offer them any?"

Both of them shared a relieving laugh.

"Things are going to get much harder for you, my love. If you thought to have spies among the Mattels, who's to say they won't have some of their own soon? Don't let your beautiful, caring nature get you into trouble. I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you." Keri paused to take a much needed sip of water. "Now, as for Conrad Hartman... I'm gonna tell you about a man from decades before everything changed."

Alana sat back on her D-Cell battery stool and listened intently for what was to be that night's lesson.

"There was a man by the name of Theodore Bundy... Ted. Mr. Ted Bundy was very charismatic, good looking, those who met him would even say charming. But, Ted was also one of the most notorious and prolific serial murderers of all time. His kind, nice-guy persona was just a facade he had created to lure his female victims to their deaths."

Alana pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, bracing her naked heels on the edge of the battery. Her grandmother's story was clearly upsetting her.

"It took years for the police to finally catch him because no one could believe someone like Ted would ever commit such disgusting and violent acts. You see, serial murders like him tend to be very intelligent individuals... master manipulators. There are signs that can be spotted in childhood, traits that men like him all shared. Conrad would never have been mistaken for a great mind as a child, and definitely not adulthood... but there WERE signs, and someone... WE should have seen them for what they were."

Alana interrupted, "I'm not trying to upset you again, grandma... but... can't people change? Are these 'signs' you're talking about... can't someone... I don't know... get better?"

"I don't know, my love," Keri admitted, "I'd like to think so... I hope so. One might say Conrad DID get better. He joined the police force, made something of himself, even if he could be a bit of an ass about it. Sometimes he could be a real baby about certain things..."

"...but then again..."

"What, grandma?"

"The bastard always had a knack for getting away with shit as well. I can't put my finger on anything specific, it's been a very long time, after all. With all the horrible things he'd pull in school, he never seemed to get punished for any of it. Like, somehow he could talk his way out of any trouble coming his way. None of the rest of us quite understood it."

Keri leaned over and put her hand on Alana's cheek.

"I've watched Conrad for years now, and its like... like he's fully embraced that part of himself. Honed it somehow. The bully I grew up with... the bumbling sheriff... has somehow evolved into this... confident, charismatic fellow... but the son of a bitch doesn't fool me for a second. Perhaps he never was the idiot we thought he was... perhaps that was HIS facade. If that man had nothing to hide, why then does he lock himself up in the Stockroom, along with the rest of his minions? Why not just join the rest of the community, like he should be doing?!"

Alana looked away for a moment to think about what her grandmother was saying. Keri pulled her attention back and locked eyes with her.

"The love and trust that makes you such a wonderful person, Alana... is very, very special...," Keri leaned in closer to her granddaughter's face, "but trust ME when I tell you that that man doesn't deserve any of it. He'll only mislead you... and use it to destroy you and everyone else you care about. Do you understand me?"

Alana nodded her head, deciding to take her grandmother at her word.

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"You asked for me, grandfather?" Boyd hollered as he reached the apex of the ladder to the office desktop. It took him a moment to catch his breath from the intense climb.

"Boyd! Yes my boy! Come and give your grandpa a hug!" Conrad replied with open arms. The man was seated on the top of a dual tiered desk file, padded with old clothing to make for a comfortable day bed. The Constable, draped in his usual robe, might have resembled a lounging medieval king to anyone who would have remembered them from fiction. Boyd approached his grandfather with a beaming smile on his face and the two hugged one another enthusiastically.

"Tell me, Boyd my lad... how are you enjoying your new role on The Salesfloor?"

"I think it's going well, gramps. Those people out there are figuring out quickly that they need to respect me."

"Good. Good. And what about that little thing we discussed?" Conrad whispered for no reason in particular, being as they were alone.

"It went perfectly!" The young man gloated. "Would you believe I caught her granddaughter trying to hide food on day one?! It's like they're tying to make it easy for me! Ha ha!"

"Fabulous!" Conrad clapped his hands together with joy. "Just make sure to keep the pressure on them... that bitchy Nelson woman is going to learn her place, even if I have to... exile... her entire family in the process."

"Damn, grandpa!" Boyd exclaimed. "You've really got it out for the old hag! Ha ha! What the hell did she do to you?"

Conrad replied with a coy smile, "it's not so much about what she did to me anymore. It's been a long time since I worried about any of that. Let's just say, it's more about something I failed to do, and I'm just trying to get ahead of things before she can potentially make herself a problem."

Boy laughed, "always secrets with you."

"Just be sure you're careful, my boy. If it appears that you're singling the Nelsons out, the rest of the Kenners may grow even more suspicious of us. At this critical time... we can't have that."

"Don't worry. I've got this, Gramps. But you didn't call me up here just to talk about Keri of 17, did you?"

"Ah! You are a smart boy, aren't you?!" Conrad beamed. He pulled a large, rolled up sheet of paper from the file shelf beneath him and let it roll down from his lap to his feet. "I need you to look into this."

Boyd stared at the images on the paper, scratching at his head, "what exactly... is it?"

"It's a problem, Boyd. These have appeared on the stockroom door three days in a row now. Seems someone out there doesn't understand their place... and we certainly cannot have that."

"Right," the eager young captain agreed. "Should I start turning over houses to find the little bastards responsible?"

"No, no... investigate it quietly. With this sort of thing, you can't just charge through like a battering ram. Doing so can risk running the perpetrators further underground. They can't know we're looking into it. That's why I made sure the Kenners out there this morning saw that I wasn't concerned with the little art project plastered to the door. It'll show weakness... and we Mattels are not weak... understand?"

"Yessir," Boyd replied.

"Good boy. Always remember who you are, Boyd... you're a Mattel... the chosen race. God has blessed us above all, and the rest... well... they're just sheep to be herded."

"Above all!" Boyd repeated, as had become the uniting cry of recent among the Mattels.

"Boyd my boy... make me proud... make the Mattels proud... and above all else, make god proud."

"Yessir!" Boyd exclaimed. He puffed his chest out and saluted his grandfather.

Conrad rummaged around in the lower file slot, looking for something else. "Ah ha! Here it is!" He placed the strange object in Boyd's hands, the likes of which the young man had never seen before.

"There's just one more thing..."

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Conrad relaxed once again after his grandson's departure. He couldn't help but feel pleased with himself. Not only had Boyd bought into all this "chosen people" bullshit, but the rest of the Mattels seemed to be doing so as well. His own private army... who saw him as not only their general, but as a prophet of the lord. The old cop found it difficult to contain his laughter at such absurdity. He didn't believe in god... never had, but from years of seeing what people were willing to do in the name of faith... what they were willing to sacrifice...


...who they were willing to kill...


... it made for a convenient means to an end.

Conrad Hartman knew he could use people's need for faith and hope to his advantage. It was indeed a crucial time, though... that he wasn't lying about. In his mind, the very survival of The Store depended on his grand, secret scheme. So what if he managed to profit the most from all of it in the process?

Finding new reasons, excuses really, to keep the Mattels separate from the rest of the population had been difficult over the years. For his plans, he needed his people to see the smaller races as just that... smaller.

Inferior.

Less than human.



Cattle.



Staring down again at the raised fists in the drawing, he couldn't help but feel annoyed that someone out there was trying to throw a wrench into his plans. Examples would have to be made. But, the man never was one to back down from a challenge. Like anything worth doing to Conrad Hartman...

...he'd simply make a game of it.




End Chapter Fifteen