Chapter 2

It had been two years since Jeremiah’s wife took the girls and left for her new beau. Stephen had gotten to work quickly, spoiling Jeremiah’s daughters and he could feel the emotional distance growing. So, when he saw that their favorite musician was doing a concert an hour away he started planning. VIP tickets that included a meet and greet with opportunities to sign merchandise would be the perfect gift with Christmas fast approaching. At $350 a piece, though, he felt his plans unravelling. Jeremiah’s wife left him because he lost his job and in the two years since, he hadn’t found another opportunity. His unemployment benefits had long expired and he found himself doing odd jobs to make ends meet while paying his mother rent to cover his basement bedroom.

Jeremiah wasn’t a bad looking sort at forty-four, but he had definitely started to feel his age since everything fell apart. It didn’t help that he had no one to comfort him physically. It’s not like he could afford to take anyone out, much less take them back to his man-child hovel filled with badly taped boxes of a life lost. He had never had a problem satisfying a lover, something he prided himself on. Unfortunately, being attractive in your forties was less about your sexual prowess and more about emotional and financial stability - things Jeremiah was sorely lacking in.

He had become reliant on the work he found on local message boards and marketplaces for the meager income that he did bring. People desperate to move a couch before their landlord threw it in the dumpster. Short-term security jobs, et cetera. But one night Jeremiah spotted an ad for work that was suspiciously good. Go to a local lab where he had been before for drug testing and submit blood, hair and saliva samples - the pay? $500. That put him more than halfway to Christmas victory which was much further than he was now, so he couldn’t turn the opportunity down. It was even more surprising when he got a follow-up packet in the mail asking him to provide more - directly. Enclosed vials and a hypodermic needle slid out onto the table when he opened the manila envelope. Papers inside held instructions and promised an additional $1,000 that erased any concerns about the shadiness of the arrangement. Jeremiah pricked his finger, supplied the other samples in the apportioned vials and put it in his mailbox. He imagined the permanent smiles affixed to his daughter’s faces when they left the concert venue with signed posters and t-shirts, still warm and tingling from the meet & greet hugs they’d surely receive.

The instructions advised to make himself available for a week and ensure that all pets and children were cared for. He wasn’t sure why - he had sent the samples off just now, what more could they need? But he had the girls every other weekend and had just dropped them off a couple days ago, so he was in the clear, regardless.

As he laid down to go to sleep that night, he mused over the instructions. The last item in the list said he’d be contacted within 24 hours, which seemed strange since he put them in the mailbox around 9PM, but he shrugged off the strangeness as amusing and nothing more. Maybe they’d give him a bonus if they were late? Maybe he’d enjoy a t-shirt at the concert, too. And a hug.

He stirred the next morning with the oddest feeling. Like when you wake at a sleepover in the dead of night. The smells are different. The air is different. The silhouettes in the darkness all play to your worst fears. Just taking in the strangeness of your unfamiliar surroundings in the still dark. He opened his eyes expecting to scan the same sad unfinished basement as always. Instead, he found himself in some sort of child’s reconstruction of a sparse turn of the century doll’s room. The wallpaper was peeling, showing the fabric scraps for what they were. His back ached and he noticed that he was laying on a piece of thin plywood. Jeremiah himself was folded into a giant washcloth that served as mattress and duvet and as he looked across the room to see a wall was missing, he realized he was tiny.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and shook his head hard. Some afterimages from a dream must have stayed with him. All that did was give him a much sharper image of the situation he was in. He did in fact appear to be inside a room within an old dollhouse, which was split in half for easy access to the interior. Where his room stopped at the missing wall the space expanded into a dark and dingy attic space. The ceiling sloped on either side above, buttressed with cross beams that faded beyond the reach of a single lightbulb that spasmed overhead. The dim yellow it emitted highlighted the tufts of dust the size of his head that drifted through the stale air. A football field away, a few feet at most, Jeremiah finally spotted the giant.

Jeremiah held his breath and stepped to the edge of the room, taking in the sight. He could see the entire beast. A giant man, masturbating furiously.

The giant’s fingers were columns of flesh that wrapped around his cock, truly prodigious in its enormity. With each stroke the look of ecstasy on the man’s face made Jeremiah confident that he wasn’t in danger of being seen. In the dollhouse room above him, Jeremiah heard sharp gasps and moans cutting through the booming grunts and heavy breathing of the thing overhead. On either side of the room were cutaways in the wall that served as doors. Jeremiah tested the space, stepping into the room next to him. There was a wooden staircase that circled upward in an impractically tight spiral. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t meet the required building codes. He wasn’t an athlete, but he wasn’t in such terrible shape that he couldn’t scale a too small set of stairs. He also was more than a little intrigued by the noises he heard coming from above.