Convenience Store (Part One)

“Oh my god, how did this happen?”

“I… I don’t know. I was just picking out a soft drink and it just kind of happened, out of nowhere.”

She starts to kneel down. Seeing him flinch, she slows her movement towards him. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Jess.” He relaxes a little, but even small movements on the part of this petite brunette seem huge and dramatic to him. The whole convenience store, by virtue of its sheer scale, has become a terrifying and alien landscape. The glossy cliff side of the refrigerators stretch impossibly high above him. In the other direction, the undersides of the shelves loom like ominous dusty caverns.

She raises her eyebrows, gently inviting a response with her patient smile.

“I’m, um…” He stops. Hearing how tiny his voice sounds, his words catch in his throat. “I’m Mark,” he says, making an effort to project.

“Nice to meet you, Mark.” She slowly lowers her hand towards him. For a second he has a visceral urge to run away, not wanting her to pick him up. But before he does her hand reaches the floor, palm turned up, inviting. “I’ll take you back behind the counter so you don’t get hurt,” she says. “My shift is over in about half an hour, I can take you to the hospital then.”

“Can’t you take me now?” he says, trying not to sound suspicious. “I’d really feel a lot better if…”

“Sorry but I’m the only one here, so I can’t leave.” The interruption annoys him, but she looks genuinely sympathetic, putting him at ease. “Don’t worry, it’s just half an hour. Then we’ll go straight there.”

He nods grimly. “Okay.” Tentatively, he climbs into her palm. She stands up slowly, careful to keep her hand level, but even so he loses his footing and falls on his back. “Sorry,” she says, smiling down at him with an apologetic shrug.

When they reach the register, she lays her hand palm-up on the counter and allows him to climb out.

“Okay, so I have to run around and get a few things done to close up the store, and then at half-past we can head out. You can just hang out here.”

He nods, not wanting to speak and expose the smallness of his voice again.

Satisfied that he’s okay, she grabs a spray bottle and some paper towel from under the counter and walks away.

For the next while he mostly just sits, leaning against the side of the register, watching the clock on the wall behind the counter. He’s anxious to get to the hospital, nervous that they won’t be able to return his normal size. There are no customers. Jess bustles around the store cleaning and tidying, returning every few minutes to check on him.

With only a minute or so left before the store closes, the front door swings open. A girl walks in, about the same age as Jess, around nineteen or twenty. She stops just inside and peruses the magazine rack next to the door. She’s tall and blonde, and unmistakeably –intimidatingly- attractive. Watching her flip through celebrity magazines in her miniskirt and skimpy top, chewing gum loudly, he experiences a wave of dislike. Even aside from the fact that she’s inconsiderately entered the store at this inconvenient time, seemingly just to browse, she strikes him as being very aware of her beauty; privileged and used to getting what she wants. A brat.

When she settles on a magazine and turns toward the counter, his stomach flips. Somehow while he was quietly glowering at her, it didn’t occur to him that she would soon be coming over to the counter. He looks around frantically for a place to hide, having no desire to interact with this humiliatingly beautiful girl in his current state.

To his horror, he realizes that there’s no way out from in between the two enormous registers; each one takes up the entire counter and in between there’s just clear, open space with nothing to hide behind. The girl is almost at the counter, each step closer making her even more huge and terrifying.

What is he going to say to her if she notices him? Where the hell is Jess? He’s furious at her for leaving him alone in this situation.

She's still looking down at her magazine and hasn’t spotted him yet. As she reaches the counter, the hem of her short skirt grazes over its surface. Her impossibly tall figure is like a mountain appearing on the landscape, casting a huge shadow over him. He runs over to one of the registers and presses himself as tightly as possible against the cold metal, hoping that in its shadow he’ll be concealed.

She puts down the magazine and a cool wave of air washes over him. She looks around for the store clerk, drumming her fingers on the counter and bouncing impatiently on her heels. Given that she was taking her time browsing the magazines, he thinks to himself, she can’t be in a hurry. He reflects bitterly that she must be acting impatient because she’s used to being given what she wants in a timely manner. He knows this impression of her as a spoiled brat could just be in his head, but he's annoyed at her for delaying his departure. And the way she casually flaunts her sexuality scares him, makes her too powerful; her presence makes him feel like some combination of a scared mouse and a humiliated little boy, and feeling this shame and fear at the hands of this young and careless girl makes him angry.

She leans forward to try and look into the back room. The counter shakes under her weight, only slightly, but to Mark it feels like a small earthquake. He holds his breath as her massive body slinks past him, her exposed midriff close enough that he’s suddenly overwhelmed by her sweet perfume.

He stifles a cough. Then another. She slides back off the counter onto her feet, and is about to pick up her magazine again when he lets out a cough. Her gaze flicks over to him immediately.

There’s a terrible moment when he holds his breath, frozen, her just staring at him, expressionless. Slowly, her lips curl into a delighted smile that he doesn’t like at all. “Oh my god!” She giggles, stooping to get a better look at him.

Right then, Jess emerges from the back room. "Hi," she says. Seeing the girl lowering her head to stare at Mark, she adds "I see you've met my little friend." Mark tries to catch Jess’ eye, to signal for rescue, but she’s busy fiddling with the register. The way this girl is looking at him is unnerving. She’s looking right at him, but not really making eye contact; she looks him up and down with a gleam in her eye, almost a look of hunger.

“He’s so cute!” she says, not taking her eyes off him. It pisses him off that she’s talking about him and not to him. And condescendingly, at that. “Where did you get him?”

Mark’s face turns red, anger and humiliation bubbling in his stomach.

“Uh…” says Jess, probably also thrown off by the weird phrasing of the question. Mark is about to cut in and protest being talked about like he’s a hamster or something, but Jess decides to just answer the question. “He was over by the drinks fridge. It was the weirdest thing, he um…”

Just then the store’s phone rings in the back room. “Hang on a sec,” she says. Mark strains desperately to make eye contact with Jess as she walks away, but she’s too distracted by the phone and she disappears into the back. To his horror, the girl calls out “Can I hold him?”

“Oh, uh…” Jess’ distracted voice rings out from the back room. Mark shakes his head furiously but neither of the girls are looking at him. “Um, sure,” she says, then “Hello?”

Mark’s mouth goes dry as the towering figure of the girl happily turns her gaze back to him. “Come here cutie,” she coos. He scrambles to get away but her hand easily overpowers his struggles, wrapping around his body and gently tightening until he’s immobilized. She lifts him to her face and smiles down at him, slowly licking her lips in a way that makes his stomach turn. “You’re so adorable!” she giggles, and starts petting him with the fingers of her other hand. He’s furious, tries to shout at her, but she’s holding him a little too tight and he can’t get enough air in his lungs to vocalize. “I’m Amy. Do you have a name, little guy?”

Jess comes back in. “Sorry about that. So is it just the magazine for you then?”

Without taking her eyes off Mark, Amy says “Can he talk?”

Mark grits his teeth, enraged. He tries again to shout but all he can manage is a grunt, and neither of them hear it.

“Uh, yeah,” says Jess, sounding confused.

“He’s a shy little guy, huh?” says Amy. “What’s his name?”

“Its um, Mark,” says Jess, ringing up the magazine. She’s clearly weirded out by the conversation, but her reaction seems frustratingly mild to Mark, who’s absolutely enraged. He swears to himself that when he gets big again he’ll track Amy down and find a way to humiliate her.

“Mark?” says Amy. She tilts her head, looking at Jess. “That’s kind of a weird name.”

“Is it?” says Jess, glancing at Mark. “I think it’s pretty normal.”

Mark’s stomach sinks as he realizes what Amy means. She thinks Mark is a weird name for a pet.

“Okay,” says Jess. “So for the magazine, that’ll be…”

“Wait, so where did you get him?” Amy’s frightening gaze is on Mark again. She’s holding him up close to her face in her left hand, playing with his hair with her right pinky.

“Well um,” Jess is starting to sound a little unnerved. “He was over by the drinks fridge, I found him like half an hour ago. He has no idea how it happened. After I close the store I’m taking him to the hospital to see if they can figure it out.”

“Oh, so… right, right.” She lowers him to the counter, allows his feet to touch down but pens him in protectively with her hands. Just behind him her skirt billows gently against his back, as if threatening to engulf him.

“Look, are you gonna buy the magazine? My shift ended like ten minutes ago, I want to get out of here.”

“Umm…” Amy mumbles, absent minded, indecisive. Mark glares up at her. “Um, right, yeah,” she says, blinking a few times. “Actually, you know what,” she continues. Her fingers tighten around Mark. The possessiveness of the gesture infuriates him and he struggles against her, punching her hands repeatedly. She doesn’t even notice.

“Let’s actually forget about the magazine.”

“Uh…” says Jess.

“Instead of the magazine…” says Amy, smiling down at Mark.

No way, he thinks, realizing what she’s about to say. This can’t be happening.

“How much do you want for him?”