This choice: You decide to hang around in the living room until someone gets back • Go Back...Chapter #3There Is Another by: Doom   No. now that you're in the quiet, alone, you're going to spend some time getting used to this new world. Adjust to your condition, see what your strengths and limitations are.
Scrambling over the tough strands of carpet fibre is difficult, as each gap between them is a drop you have to carefully step over. There's no way you'd be able to pick up the pace to a run without great risk of stumbling, and hurting yourself.
The scenery is as baffling as the staircase and shoes were when you first awoke here, outrageously out of scale with your perceptions, cyclopean structures of unknowable design.
Trekking through the room, you come across a fallen tree, a thick, curved black trunk barring your path. You ponder it for moments, walking around to see how it was rooted in the ground, only to notice a pale ball of matter at its end. Wait... This isn't a tree, it's a discarded eyelash, and it alone is huge to you!
A sobering thought indeed, and you hurry on your way. Perhaps too quickly, as you do indeed trip and fall.
No harm done, but as you get up again, you see it's not a carpet strand you've tripped over, but a white rock about the size of your head. One that has a pair of large holes in one side, dropping off to a series of smaller stones in sequence...
It's a human skull.
You're not the first here! At least one other people has been shrunk and ended up in this house, only to met a horrible fate. And now their remains are scattered unknowingly about this family's home, too small to even be sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.
You don't know how long you spend sitting there, contemplating the implications.
But then movement registers at the periphery of your vision, and you turn to see a figure approaching. A figure of your scale! Is this a mirage?
The wild-haired old man, with a full beard and unkempt hair, stalks forward steadily, avoiding pitfalls with a practised gait. He doesn't seem as surprised to see you as you are to see him, merely giving you a nod as he speaks.
"Another one."
"Oh my God! Am I glad to see you!" you gush, moving over to check that he's real. "How many more of you are there here?"
"It's just me," he growls. "Used to be more, but no-one ever lasts long here. I've seen so many die over the years, and even more just disappear..."
"Years..? How long-"
"Figure it's nigh on twenty years. I appeared here just in time to see a young man carry his blushing bride over the threshold into their first home. Gods striding over me, telling me in one instant what my life was going to be like. Guess that's why I lived so long: I got to adapt slowly as the family grew, change my routine for each new child. If you get dropped into this house of five people, you'll be overwhelmed."
"That can't be it. You must have some special set of skills-!"
"Time was, I used to be an outdoorsman. And that's helped me survive here, indoors." A cracked smile edges its way between the masses of hair on his face. "That's the joke I tell every new arrival."
"Huh. So... what is there to eat around here? Ants?"
"HA! I wish I were big enough to take on an ant. You keep clear of them; they're built like tanks, and will take you apart in moments. That's why it's best to stay inside, since there're things so much worse than ants out there... What were we talking about?"
"Food. I'm kinda hungry..."
"Oh. I mainly get by on dust mites, spiced up a little with whatever skin flakes the gods see fit to drop my way. This quiet time, when they've taken their holy presence away, is the safest time to scavenge. I have the run of the house, so long as no one comes home early!"  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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