Mason - (Postponed Chapter - Part 2)

EDIT: the client and i have decided this chapter would fit better in the future of the story, so it's being taken off the public release table atm (this was previously chapter 6) but will stay up for patrons

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For the next half hour, Skye slathered her mouth with every cold dairy product they had in their fridge, and ended up vomiting so much of her stomach’s contents that she was dry heaving by the time her mouth started to recover enough that she felt safe talking again. Mason obviously couldn’t just go back to playing his game as if she wasn’t puking her guts out in the next room over, so he had to just sit and watch, feeling worse as the time wore on.

Eventually, after her head had hung over the drain without any urges to vomit for several minutes, while her hands clenched the sides of the sink, she turned around to address him. Her eyebrows had narrowed in anger, and Mason knew there wasn’t even any point in trying to reason with her. He hadn’t actually planned an escape plan, but after seeing what he’d just put her through, he knew he couldn’t allow Skye to get her hands on him. As soon as she lurched out of the kitchen he turned around to run, and jumped off the end of the couch just before her hand was able to swipe him up.

Diving off of “heights” was something Mason never liked to do, but it was something he could tolerate if he needed to. He was in the air for about a second before landing with his arms and legs outstretched, akin to how cats land. And as soon as he was on the floor, he scrambled to get himself under the couch, a thin space that would at least give him some time to think of how to get away before Skye was able to move it.

Skye jumped to the ground, practically growling at seeing Mason able to escape her wrath. She tried to look under the couch, but it was surrounded on all sides by flaps to make it more flush with the floor, which also made it too dark underneath for her to easily see where he might be. He saw a bit of light enter the area he was at, but he didn’t even bother to turn around to look, and just kept running forward.

Once he reached the end of the couch, he peeked around the flap and over the corner to see where Skye was. Seeing that she was still on her hands and knees, he quickly dashed over to the single-seat recliner that was diagonal to where their couch was. He’d been able to successfully hide from Skye and Mikayla a few times before when they were mad at him (aided by how much they played hide and seek as kids), but it wasn’t often he could successfully get away.

The unmistakable sound of her stomping back onto her feet made him keep from running back over to the couch. She was looking around the coffee table and the side table and the plant; basically everywhere that was in between or near the section he’d just run across.

He stood with his back to the inside of the recliner’s corner leg, deciding it was too risky to try and keep a lookout for her feet to see when she’d move away; she was so massive that he’d just be able to feel her instead. But it eventually became a little quiet, quiet enough that Mason started to worry. Just as he was daring to look out, the entire roof above him (and the “wall” that he’d been standing up against) raised up into the air, as Skye lifted the side of the chair clear over his head. His heard skipped a beat as he saw what amounted to a building easily raised right into the air. It didn’t matter how many times he saw giant people exert a display of their “normal” strength, it was still unnerving how massive the difference was for someone like him. The recliner he’d hid under wasn’t even the kind of thing he thought about lifting. He thought about lifting mini-chairs and mini-tables and mini-furniture and other things that were sized for him, or maybe paperclips and pencils and toy cars. But to him, a normal-sized chair like what Skye had just lifted wasn’t even something his imagination would toy around with.

“There you are,” Skye said, her voice already raspy from the ghost pepper’s damage. Knowing he had to immediately get past her somehow, he opted to run between her feet. As much as it seemed more dangerous, Skye’s reflexes to slide their feet together was technically slower than their reflex to just kick their foot out to the side, coupled with the fact that no matter how angry they were, they were always at least a little subconscious of having to be careful not to seriously injure the tiny boy.

A fit of coughing saved him from being grabbed, and he’d made it back under the couch before she was recovered. He felt bad, like it was unfair that he could still run away while she was temporarily indisposed, but he brushed the thought aside. Skye got onto her hands and knees, and then the flap that kept the bottom of the couch flush with the floor was lifted and the blinding flashlight on Skye’s phone pointed in Mason’s direction. Mason had been in this position before, and he backed away before her arm shot under the couch as she strained to grab him. But she couldn’t get any further than her elbow. It had only been a few years ago that she’d been able to fit her whole arm underneath, all the way up to her shoulder. But ever since then, Skye’s arm seemed to fit a little bit tighter every time she tried to reach for something (usually Mason) under the couch. Even though her growth spurts had slowed down now that she was in her final few years as a teenager, it had apparently been after growing just big enough that only half her arm now fit.

“Shit!” she exclaimed, throwing her phone against the couch as she stood back up in a huff. Mason heard her walk away from the couch, and he wondered what she was planning on trying next, knowing it was unlike her to give up just yet. Beginning to back away towards the back of the couch, just in case he needed to flee, he placed himself in her shoes and immediately realized she was probably heading to go grab a broom. He muttered his own quick curse as he heard Skye opening the door to the garage, and turned around to bolt out from under the couch.

The garage door opened again and out came Skye with a broom, just as Mason had reached the hallway. He kept to the side of the wall so he wouldn’t be as visible as he raced as quickly as he could down the corridor. Staring straight ahead, not bothering to look back, he waited until—“Where the fuck?!”—he heard her exclamation upon discovering that he’d disappeared from his hiding spot.

Skye ran to the other side of the couch and spotted the 3-inch boy just as he was turning into his room. Clenching her teeth and gritting them together, she sped towards him, her stomping footfalls strong enough to vibrate the floor and rattle his legs. Skye was running so fast she had to grab the doorframe just to slow herself down, and spun into his room as he was sprinting the last bit of the journey to his log cabin. Knowing he was seconds away from escaping her wrath, she hurled over to his house, and on her final stride she reached out with her leg so she could slam her foot down right in front of the structure, trying to stomp his body beneath it. But Mason collided with the front door, and practically fell into his house before she could trap him. Her foot had come so close that he could feel the wind against the back of his neck as it fell right behind him, millimeters from making contact. Mason was filled with so much adrenaline that he was still shaking nervously as he lay collapsed on the floor while his racing heart slowed itself down, knowing that there was nothing she could do to get him now. He heard her scream out an enraged “FUCK!” and she stomped the ground again with seething fury.

In the past when he’d gotten into a fight with one of the giant girls, whichever one he’d pissed off would simply take the roof off of the toy house and grab him. He would almost never even try to use the Lincoln Logs as a means of escape since he knew there wasn’t any point. But one day Nicole had had the suggestion that he rebuild his personal abode, but this time by laying out gorilla glue on top of the logs. Sure enough, neither of them had been able to pry the house apart after that. Mason had felt captivated that he’d been able to build something that such insanely giant people were unable to break.

Then the giant girls had realized that they could just turn the shake the house, starting out gently and slowly increasing the longer he didn’t forfeit. But he’d come up with a solution for that too: he glued his bed to the floor of his bedroom, and padded its underside and the floor beneath it with a thin layer of foam. The space was tight enough that he could make sure he wouldn’t get rattled and shaken towards one of the windows or doors to get grabbed, but also cushioned enough that he wouldn’t hurt his body no matter how hard they shook (although he did get some pretty insane headaches the first few times they tried).

After a while of them growing increasingly annoyed at Mason being untouchable in his little under-bed bunker, Mikayla had one time brought his cabin over to the sink, plugged the drain, and then turned the faucet on. The place got flooded within minutes, and even though she obviously had never planned to actually drown him, Mason had been too terrified of the rising waters to let the situation come anywhere close to that possibility.

The back and forth came to a standstill a year ago, on Mason’s 18th birthday. Knowing he wouldn’t be moving out anytime soon, but that he ached for the independence of adulthood, Nicole’s big present for him had been a set of appliances for his house, to make it the kind of place he’d actually want to spend time in. Turning it more into a kind of home, and not just the cute decoration surrounding where he slept at night. A heater and air conditioning unit for his bedroom, a fridge and a stove for his kitchen, a washer and dryer for his closet, and a television for his living room; all miniatures, made specifically for people his size. Even though they were smaller than their full-sized counterparts, they were still well-made quality products and weren’t cheap. In fact, some of the appliances were more expensive to manufacture, since assembling such small devices was an extraordinarily intricate process. So because his house was filled with valuable things now, it was off-limits to mess around with. The appliances were secured to the flooring and walls, so the house could still withstand bumps (or events like Nicole tipping his house over that morning). But it couldn’t be pried apart, roughly shaken, or submerged in water anymore.

Which is why Skye was so furious now that Mason had made it back to his house. There wasn’t anything she could do to retrieve him. At least not physically…

“Jeez, it’s been a while since you were last pissed at me,” he shouted up at Skye from his living room window, already gloating from the supposed victory. Seeing how angry she was, but knowing that he was effectively invincible, was an incredible feeling. “Pretty good workout too, maybe I should put ghost peppers in your food more often if it gets me to run like that.” He grinned with a smug sense of satisfaction; it was a dark joke, or at least a bit of a mean one, but he didn’t feel too bad since he knew she’d be completely fine by tomorrow… or the day after.

She stopped in her tracks and glared down at him, her eyes still red from the crying. Her bottom lip was quivering, a faint glimpse into how much energy she had pent up in her system. But even in her blind rage, she was smart enough not to take it out on Mason’s house. Even though Skye didn’t have a job, Nicole wouldn’t hesitate to make her daughter pay to replace everything she’d break.

Skye paced around the room, racking her brain for a solution. As long as her throat continued to burn, she’d continue to wait right outside his doorstep. But then her eyes fell on something in the corner of the room, and a new idea formulated in her brain.

Mason’s smile faltered as he saw her notice his model plane in the corner of the room. And then as he watched her pick it up, his face drained of its color. Mason had only just gotten into model building, but it was a super fun hobby for him, and a great way to pass time when he was home alone. It had cost a couple weeks of allowance to buy, but it wasn’t the price that scared him as he watched her pick it up. He knew that Nicole would just make Skye pay for a new one. It was all the time that had gone into him cutting out the pieces, assembling and gluing them, and then painting every inch of the aircraft. It was barely twice as long as he was tall, but the whole process had still been a labor of love, working on it here and there over the past few months.

“Either you give yourself up, or I’ll stomp on it.” Her intimidation was cool and collected, which sent a chill through Mason. He believed her. A lot of Skye and Mikayla’s threats would never actually come into fruition; saying that they were gonna do something cruel was pretty easy, but actually following through required being meaner than either of them actually were. Her threat to crush his plane seemed completely honest though.

“What are you gonna do to me if I come out?” he yelled up at her. But she didn’t answer him, and left him to imagine how far she might be willing to go to get back at him. While he continued to think the decision over, she lowered it to the floor and lifted her right foot above it, gently testing the cockpit’s flexibility against her sock. He watched as the plane strained beneath her effortless weight, bending and flexing as she applied just enough pressure to scare him without breaking it.

“Skye, I…” He began getting riled up again seeing her come so close to destroying what he’d worked on for so long.

“Just come out,” she shrugged, twirling the propeller with her toe.

Mason would probably rather endure whatever Skye was thinking of putting him through rather than let all his work get ruined. But he wasn’t convinced her threat was fairly aligned with what he’d done to her in the first place. “Skye, OK, I’m sorry. It wasn’t a good prank, you’re right.” Although she knew he was only saying that now that he had something to lose, and continued to hover her foot above the plane though, slowly circling around it like a vulture. He gritted his teeth and glared back up at her, frustrated with the fact that she didn’t seem to understand its significance. “Skye, I literally spent months on that thing. Like, hundreds of hours probably. You can’t just fucking use it to get back at me!”

“Oh I can’t, huh?” she retorted, feeling angrier too since he was still trying to get his way.

“NO!” he yelled up at her.

She set her foot down next to the plane, and saw the relief wash over his face. But he continued standing by his window, simply waiting to see what she’d do next. And the audacity for him to make her eat ghost peppers, hide in his house where he knew he was untouchable, and then insist that she couldn’t go through with her payback? She hated it. He needed some kind of penalty for what he did.

“You wanna have everything your way?” she asked, bending over to pick it up again, and held it out in front of her. “Then I wanna have something go my way too.”

As she raised her leg behind her, Mason saw what she was about to do and called out her name one last time. “SKYE, NO!” But she’d already committed, and her leg swung forward as she dropped the plane, allowing it to crash into her foot and explode instantly on impact. It splintered into a hundred pieces, which all flew around the room, and littered the floor with broken fragments of Mason’s work.

In a fraction of a second, everything he'd built had been demolished.