Deirdre usually left her back door unlocked, so I just let myself into her kitchen. She wasn't there and I considered what, if anything, I should tell her about my size remote. I was scrutinizing the thing, thinking about what to do, when she slipped into the room and boomed out a greeting.
"Karen," she said. "How are things this morning? Want some coffee?"
I was startled, and shaky to start with, so that the damned remote slipped out of my hand. I made a mad grab for it and managed to snag it with my left hand and somehow catch it in both hands before it dropped on the floor. I really didn't want it to hit the floor. Who knows what it might have done.
"God, Karen, what's wrong?" Deirdre put down the armload of folded clothes she was holding and turned to face me. "You look all shook up."
I gripped the remote tightly and took a deep breath. "Uh, I don't know what to tell you," I answered her. "You startled me and...and it's been a strange morning." I tried to calm myself and look at Deidre but I kept staring at the remote in my hands.
"Strange, how? And what is that thing you're staring at? It looks like a TV remote."
"It was a TV remote but now it's something else. Now it works on people," I blurted.
Deirdre looked at me oddly and moved slowly away, just a step, just out of my reach. "Works on people how?" she asked.
"It shrinks them," I told her. She just stared. "And it grows them too," I added. Deidre looked at me wordlessly, a stunned look on her face. Then she decided I must be pulling some sort of gag and tried to grin at me. Finally her eyes narrowed and she drew further back. She thinks I'm crazy, I decided.
"I'm not crazy, Deidre," I told her. "This thing shrank me, then I used it to grow, only I grew too much, so I used it to shrink back to normal. By now Deidre knew I was crazy but she didn't know how to handle me. She was concerned for me, but she didn't want me to go postal on her either.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author