Vanessa got out of her car and flicked her cigarette into the rocks along the driveway. She remembered how she’d painstakingly cleaned up all of the old butts when she’d quit smoking.
“Ugh.”
She made her way into her house, and sat her keys and clutch down on the small table by the door. She looked in the mirror that hung above the table. She was tall, around 5’10”. She had mostly Asian features, but also a darker complexion. Her dad was from Trinidad, her mom Japan. A first generation American, she had done well for herself. But if you’d have told her a few years ago she’d be on a mission to save some inch high people from becoming food, she’d have thought you were crazy.
She walked into her bedroom and changed into some PJs - a tight t-shirt with a rainbow on it, and some short blue shorts - booty shorts her mom called them. She went and sat on the couch, and looked at the clutch sitting on the table by the door. She lit a cigarette and exhaled into the air.
“Shit, I need an ashtray.”
She walked over to the table and opened the slim drawer on the front, and pulled out the crystal ashtray she’d saved for when her mom or sister visited. She looked at the clutch again, and with a little hesitancy, picked it up and made her way back to the couch.
She placed the ashtray on the end table and the cigarette in it, and opened the clutch. The tiny people inside looked terrified.
“Relax, I’m not going to eat you.”
One of the women looked up and spoke.
“There were forty of us, and that woman was we eating a few of us every morning and every night. It was terrifying!”
Vanessa looked at the tiny woman. She was petite, blonde, and very pretty. She could’ve easily seen her working downtown in one of the buildings next to Vanessa’s office before she shrunk.
“When the shrinking started, they told us it was criminals and the destitute being shrunk. Then a few weeks ago, while at work, a group broke in and shrunk us all, capturing us before we knew what was happening.”
This shocked Vanessa. As an investigative journalist, she felt she’d just found her new story.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this. But I’ll need you guys to trust me. I’ll keep you safe until we can figure out what happened.”
The tiny people all looked up at her, no longer cowering. Vanessa picked up her cigarette and took a long drag. Before she realized what she was doing, she exhaled a thick plume of smoke into the clutch, and watched as the tiny people coughed and tried to bat it away.
She closed the clutch quickly. She wasn’t sure why she’d done that… but she enjoyed it.
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