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witcherfan · 24 hours

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A Civilized Place to Be

Part 5 of my story. See the index and content notes here. You can read part 1 here or the previous part here. And now we get into the plot. This one will be a difficult read.

“You’re leaving so soon?” The question Joe had never been asked before echoed from above the floorboards.

“I have a life outside of you, doctor.” Joe shouted up at him.

He rolled his eyes and pried open the ring box that served as a dresser. Irritating as his upstairs neighbour was, he had to admit: there was something irresistibly novel about having another person to talk to. For once, he had to actually use the part of his brain that processed language, and now he was constantly surprising himself with the things that came out of his mouth. His more cynical side was waiting for the part where the doctor grew tired of all his mouthing off and popped his head off like a dandelion. That time had not come yet, and instead the doctor simply chuckled.

“Where are you going, then? Do you have a job? A friend to visit? …a doctor’s appointment?” Doctor Avery’s voice petered out as though he sensed the irony in his last question.

Joe scowled in irritation as he rummaged through his clothes. What was this guy, his mother? He shrugged his jacket on and slammed the lid of the ring box down again, counting his blessings that the giant was up there and not right in front of him. At least this way he could speak to him without clamming up. He counted his money for good measure – the five thousand scraps were still in his pocket, right where they had been the night before.

“Doc, look, I have some important business to do with the city. I’ll tell you all about the Orders of the Day when I get back.” He said, borrowing a term he learned from a tiny who had taken up residence in the legislative assembly in a haphazard attempt to sound educated to the doctor.

“…so you’re a politician, then?” The doctor asked. His attempt seemed to be working in the worst way possible.

“Doc, please. I’m not a monster!”

Although half the time Joe couldn’t tell whether doctor Avery was laughing with him or at him, this time, at least, the doctor laughed when he was supposed to. Maybe there was hope for their budding partnership after all, Joe thought.

He turned to leave, but not before the doctor squeezed in one final question:

“When will you be back?”

Normally the answer to that question would be the dead of night. If Joe were still scavenging, and his food reserves were bare (as they often were in March), then he would have needed to set aside several hours at the start of the day to see if he could scrounge up anything worthwhile to eat and store. Only after that would he allow himself to set off on a day trip. Through the simple act of giving Joe a piece of scrambled egg, the doctor had shaved roughly six hours off of Joe’s daily schedule.

And so, in an answer that surprised even Joe himself he replied:

“Probably this afternoon if I’m lucky.”

The milkman was long gone by the time the doctor’s gentle knocking on the floorboards had woken Joe up that morning. Fortunately, milkmen weren’t the only lower-risk travel option Joe had to spare, and when traveling the shorter distance from Danforth to Cabbagetown any old carriage would do the trick. Every so often he would encounter other passengers when he hopped a carriage, as was the case with the one he was riding on today. Sat across from him at the rear of the carriage was an elderly man with a bushy white beard who spoke a language Joe had never heard before. He spent the trip pointing out the city’s sights to a pair of what Joe could only assume were his rambunctious grandchildren. Joe had nodded at the other passengers when scampering up to the rear of the carriage, the old man had nodded at him, and that had been the extent of their mutual acknowledgement of one another.

It was a strange area to go sightseeing in, admittedly. From what little Joe understood of the giants’ social order, the Cabbagetown slum, with its run-down row apartments and shady boarding houses, had taken a nosedive after the war. It was, apparently, the part of the city where the Irish had settled in. “Irish” was a word that had little meaning to Joe, until O’Grady burst into Captain Calloway’s shortly after being accepted into Tiny Town with his arms thrown wide open in celebration.

“Wouldn’t you know it, lads? I’m an Irishman! Isn’t that a fine thing to be?” He had declared.

The patrons at the time had all nodded in agreement: an Irishman did indeed sound like a fine thing to be. The only problem was, not a single one of them had any concept of what an “Irishman” was.

Seeing the state of the Irish humans’ living conditions, with the broken windows on their houses and the shoeless children running through their streets, Joe could only hope that wherever in Tiny Town O’Grady lived, it was somewhere nicer than this. The road was so uneven in places it threatened to throw him off the carriage completely, though today, with both arms free and more energy than he ever had in a lifetime, he had a much easier time staying on board.

After much debate at city hall, Tiny Town had been built over a filled in garbage dump in Riverdale Park, and as the carriage trotted along it came into view: a section of land about the size of a baseball diamond surrounded by chain-link fence. Behind the fencing he spied a wooden wall, at least two giants high, looking downright martial as a group of uniformed tinies on patrol at the top and four human police officers posted at each corner surveyed the comings and goings of the residents. Behind that layer of security was the mass of miniature wooden buildings that didn’t look too far off from full-sized apartment buildings, albeit a much more bric-a-brac rendition of such. Haphazard electrical wiring zigzagged from the service poles to the roofs this way and that, and some buildings sat more diagonally than others. Nonetheless, when compared to the coldness of the floorboards, Joe still agreed that Tiny Town was, as the slogan below the sign put it, “a civilized place to be.”

He gave his fellow passengers a farewell nod and disembarked, heading straight for the line of other tinies that snaked from the head office all the way around the perimeter of the inner wall. To his dismay, he found himself standing behind two hundred other tinies, all just as gaunt and grubby as he was, who each wanted the same thing as he did. The line, he could sense, was moving slow as a death march, and as the wait dragged on he kissed his hopes of being home by afternoon goodbye.

Running his fingers over the bills in his pocket he reminded himself that, in spite of their numbers, every single tiny in front of him didn’t have the same luck that he had. All he had to do was fill in whatever form the clerk gave him, put the money on the table, and he would be at the top of the list. Simple as that.

“Tell me, sir: what is your name?” Asked the interviewer.

A flash from the Christmas light above them glinted from the stern man’s glasses as he tented his hands and sized Joe up, not even bothering to leave his seat to greet him. Gingerly, Joe slid into the chair in front of him and extended a filthy hand.

“My name’s Joe, sir. What’s yours?”

The interviewer, sharp-eyed, high-cheekboned, and clean as an angel, gave Joe a look of disgust and tapped the foil card on his desk that read DAWSON.

Joe lowered his hand, his heart already pounding. Maybe he should have let the doctor throw him in the sink after all. He slid both hands over his knees and dug his fingers into them.

“Your legal name, sir.” Mr. Dawson clarified. The interviewer readied the lead of a mechanical pencil that had been wrapped in thin paper. The application process had just started, and already Joe was faced with an essay question.

“Well… on most forms it’s Joseph. On some of them it’s Giuseppe, but only my ma’ and brother called me that by the time I was eight.”

The interviewer sighed and rubbed his brow.

“And your last name, Joseph?”

Joe could sense the proverbial quotation marks that surrounded his name when Mr. Dawson parroted it back to him. The grip on his knees tightened.

“Piccoli, but… that’s kind of complicated too. It got shortened when my mom came here, it used to be Piccoli Dal-“

“Piccoli will do just fine.” Mr. Dawson cut him off as he scribbled Joe’s answers into the form in front of him. “So you’re an Italian, then?”

Joe blinked. Whatever faulty wiring there was in his brain that caused him to run his mouth picked the worst possible time to act up.

“...the hell’s an Italian?” He blurted out.

The interviewer let out a frustrated sigh.

“From Italy. The place your family came from before they arrived in Canada, correct?”

Joe looked at the interviewer helplessly. He had no idea if it was correct or not. He barely had any concept of “Canada” or “America.” Joe didn’t even know which one of those two he had been born in. “Italy,” like “Ireland” may as well have been in outer space for all he was concerned; his mother had her own name for the place she had come from, and to Joe’s family, that had been good enough.

His head was a flurry of questions now, but one in particular tormented him above all the others.

“Why does that even matter?” Joe asked him. The interviewer’s glasses glinted again as he scowled at Joe from over the rims.

“I’m afraid we can only accept so many applicants.” Was Dawson’s non-answer. “As a result, we must conduct a thorough background check and only take in specimens of exceptionally good character.”

Joe felt sick to his stomach. Specimens. Like he was a lab tiny or something! His hand wandered into his pocket and he ran a thumb over the bills. Would it even be worthwhile to invoke the money when dealing with someone like Mr. Dawson?

“Can you tell me your father’s name?” The interviewer asked.

A bitter sadness stabbed Joe directly in the heart.

“…Captain Calloway.” He answered.

The interviewer gave him another stern look.

“Your last name is Piccoli but your father’s last name is Calloway?” Dawson interrogated.

Joe could sense the interviewer’s disdain from all the way across the table. He already knew what the interviewer was assuming about his mother. Joe had no idea how he did it, but in spite of being a fellow tiny, Mr. Dawson had created an art form out of making Joe feel smaller than small. The doctor, frightening as he was in the flesh, couldn’t compare to what the look of judgement in Mr. Dawson’s eyes did to him on an emotional level.

“I-well-my family lost my real father when we landed.” Joe explained, trying not to choke up. “I wasn’t even born when it happened. They were corralling everyone everywhere and—the women and kids went one way. My real dad went the other…” Joe breathed out the sadness in the form of a sigh, like pressure escaping through a release valve that kept his tears from spilling out. “Then I met Captain Calloway when I was twelve and he kinda became like a father to me.”

All the pain Joe was fighting desperately to hide was met with a single, indifferent response:

“…I see.”

The interviewer kept on scribbling. Joe had no other option but to sit there and feel utterly inadequate in every possible way. Suddenly the doctor’s questions weren’t so irritating - at least when doctor Avery asked him something he was genuinely interested in the answer.

The application process dragged on for an excruciatingly long time, and by the end of it Mr. Dawson knew everything from Joe’s religion – dubious as his relationship with it was, to his occupation - which was the same as almost any other tiny’s occupation, to his marital status, to the languages he spoke, to every single place Joe could recall living in. Everything about Joe’s life was met with a disinterested “hm.”

When all was said and done, the interviewer shuffled his papers.

“Very well.” He said. “We will consider your application. Come back in about… ten years or so and it should be processed by then.”

“Ten years!?”

Joe shot up in his chair and gripped the edge of the table that separated him and Mr. Dawson. The man across from him didn’t even flinch; he simply waved a hand at him.

“Could be closer to eleven. Now run along.”

Joe seethed at this wretched man in his wretched suit with his wretched superiority complex. What gave him the right? What made this other tiny act so much better than Joe? Because he was clean and well dressed and knew his father?

The last thing Joe wanted to do was hand the man a wad of cash. Yet, paradoxically, he also wanted to prove himself worthy. To stand in the same league as Mr. Dawson instead of feeling minuscule in comparison. Besides, where else could he go when a human had infested his house? Roping doctor Avery into playing the part of his personal manservant was fun and all, but the threat of that gilded cage ever lingered in his mind.

So he took the bills from his pocket and set them on the table.

“You think this could speed things up a little?” He asked.

Mr. Dawson’s face lit up, and for the first time he smiled a snakelike smile at Joe. In a fluid motion the interviewer swept up the scraps and counted them at lightning speed.

When he was finished, he looked at Joe in dismay and sighed.

“Tell you what.” He began, which to Joe was never a good opener. “I appreciate the payment of your fee,” Dawson said, adding more proverbial quotation marks, “…but as you know, prices are always going up. I’ll hold on to your application for now. If you can bring me another five thousand I can have it processed within three years.”

With the way Joe grimaced, he may as well have taken a punch to the gut. Dawson continued nonetheless.

“If you pay me that five thousand and I see a Tiny Town tiny… I’ll let you in on the spot. Right now, I don’t see a Tiny Town tiny. I only see a borrower.”

Joe, who for years had unashamedly referred to himself as a borrower, suddenly found himself insulted by the word. He sat there for a moment and fumed at Mr. Dawson, his face scarlet red. In spite of that he replied,

“It’s a deal.”

If anything had stripped Joe of his dignity, it was that interview. His head spun as he sulked, strolling along the border of Tiny Town with his hands jammed into his pockets.

What the hell was a Tiny Town tiny, anyways? Did he wear a fancy suit? Did he have a shiny foil name placard? Did he bathe more than once a week?

A voice from the fence snapped him out of his ruminations.

“Psst! Hey! How’d it go?”

He looked over and saw O’Grady pressing his nose against the fence.

Joe shrugged and tossed his arms to the side.

“Guy said I had to pay him another five thousand scraps and come back later.”

“Oh, you got Dawson, didn’t you? That’s rotten luck.”

At the sight of the sadness written all over his face, O’Grady lit up with an idea.

“Hey, how about this: let’s meet up at Calloway’s again, just like old times. I can give you some tips on how to get in. April full moon work for you?”

“I’m just a borrower, Tim. Any moon works for me.” Joe said.

In a flash O’Grady’s head whipped back. Suddenly he was shouting at someone else behind him.

“MARY!” He roared. “QUIT BITING YOUR BROTHER!"

He returned his attention to Joe.

"…sorry about that. Better go rein 'em in.”

Joe couldn’t see the kids from behind the fence, but he could certainly hear them. Whatever Mary was doing to her brother sounded like a war crime.

O’Grady reached through the fence and jabbed Joe in the shoulder.

“Hey. Listen to me. The interview’s rough but once you get in?” O’Grady’s green eyes glowed at him from behind the fence. “You’ll never worry about another winter again.”

“Do you have any more plates?” Asked the voice from above the floorboards.

“Why are you so interested in my plates?” Joe asked in return.

He barely had the heart to respond to doctor Avery at all. The emotional aftereffects of Mr. Dawson’s presence had clung to Joe like a bad stench for the rest of the day. Since getting back hours later than expected he kept pacing back and forth in his den beneath the floorboards, animated by anxious energy that refused to leave him.

The answer doctor Avery gave suddenly dispelled it:

“Because they’re art.” He said.

Joe stopped in his tracks. Art? Since when did borrowers like Joe own anything that could be considered art?

Beside the pile of discarded fabric swatches that served as a bed sat a cracked ring dish where Joe stored his most fragile items. He pulled the plate from the dish and had a good look at it for the first time in years. Even in the dark of the floorboards, with his sharp night vision he could still make out his father’s delicate brushstrokes, warped over the years by the cracking and the crazing and the unrelenting march of time.

Art. The word was like a healing balm to a burn wound.

“Sure.” Joe said. “I can show you more plates.”

Read the next part here.

#joe #avery #borrowers #borrower

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witcherfan · 1 day

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Forbidden Knowledge

Oh my goodness four parts already! See the index and content notes here. Read part 1 here and the previous part here.

Doctor Avery wondered what the old owners of the Stinson House would make of the tiny man living in his floorboards. Countless questions swirled in his head as he puffed his morning cigarette. How long had he been there? Why was he living there? Were there more like him living under the floorboards? Being a man of science, the doctor’s initial motive when he had pieced together what was going on had been to capture the sneak-thief. To poke him and prod him, to measure and weigh him, to question and sample and categorize him. Then, upon seeing that look of fear in the tiny’s face in all its raw and inescapable humanity, “study” had shifted to “befriend.”

There was a saying that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but that was true for every living organism, the doctor found. It had been true of the chickens who had followed him from the farm to the schoolhouse once they figured out that he was the lone soul who possessed the grain. It had been true of the feral cat he had fed tuna scraps daily over the course of three years, who had graduated from scarfing them down beneath a wagon to eating them from a bowl in the kitchen to accepting them straight from his hand while purring beside him on the counter. Although it had been unlikely at first, it had also been true of the mother raccoon he had charmed down from the church steeple. She had taken an egg from him once – not directly from his hand, but when he had set it down a foot away from himself she had drawn closer than she ever had to any human before, placed her front paws on it, and looked him straight in the eyes for a moment as if to express gratitude. It seemed to be true of this tiny as well. Whatever bridge existed between them hadn’t been burned yet – at the very least the tiny, crass and irritable that he was, had accepted yesterday’s peace offering. And so, as the doctor thumbed through his copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War from where he sat in his chair on the front porch, he contemplated the next move he would make. Food might be the key to befriending an animal, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to get a man to talk.

One line stuck out to him:

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.

It gave the good doctor an idea.

“You’re leaving?” The tiny asked through the stethoscope.

“If all goes well I could be out of here within a month.” Doctor Avery bluffed.

He held the chest piece of the stethoscope to the wall beside him with one hand while he scrambled some eggs with the other, wondering what his neighbour would have to say to this. He braced himself for more insults or at the very least an irate “good riddance.”

What he got instead was simply,

"…oh.”

“You are the landlord after all. My title is clearly moot.” The doctor added.

“Well… see… about that...” The tiny’s voice chirped through the stethoscope. “I was thinking that maybe we could make a deal.”

“Were you?”

“Yeah.” His neighbour insisted. A pause followed as the tiny, in all likelihood, made up whatever the terms of the deal were supposed to be on the spot.

After a moment he landed on:

“You give me free food, I let you live in my house.”

The doctor smiled to himself as he stirred and folded the eggs. If that little feral cat he had taken in all those years ago could talk, it was the sort of thing he imagined it would have said.

“Well, I would need to know your name in order to make a deal.” The doctor replied. Through the stethoscope, he could make out a faint tapping sound. He wasn’t certain what it was – the nervous drumming of fingers? The bouncing of a jittery foot?

Doctor Avery stirred the eggs and waited in anticipation until the tiny replied,

“…Joe. Joe Piccoli.”

Joe Piccoli. After two days of trying, his new friend finally had a face and a name to go along with it.

“We have a deal then. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Piccoli. My name is-“

“Doctor Herman Avery. Yeah, I know. I hear it every time you pick up the phone.” Joe answered for him.

“You’re a very good listener.” The doctor said, keeping the words of Sun Tzu at the forefront of his mind. The crude manners of the little folk certainly fascinated him. They weren’t unlike those of a soldier in the trenches. He took the eggs off the burner.

“Would you like some eggs, Mr. Piccoli?”

“Eggs!?” Joe repeated, as if scandalized by the thought of them. “Okay, new rule: whatever you give me has to be good food, it can’t be something like eggs.”

“Do you not like them?” Asked doctor Avery.

“Who the hell likes eggs? Why do you people eat them!? Nobody gets it.” Joe ranted. “They taste terrible. Like rubberized despair!”

It took everything in the doctor to keep himself from laughing as he asked his next question.

“Mr. Piccoli… when you eat your eggs, are they cold or are they warm?”

Another silence followed.

“…you’re supposed to eat them warm?”

The doctor couldn’t hold his laughter in any longer and Joe was swift to take offense.

“Why are you laughing!? It’s a serious question!” He exclaimed through the stethoscope.

“Come down to the radiator and I’ll show you.” Was all Doctor Avery said in response.

He listened in amazement at the sounds of footsteps as they moved further and further down the wall, wondering what it was that Joe was climbing on. He tracked his movements downward, then six inches or so to the left at a spot two feet up the wall, then downward again, until he lost him at the baseboard. There must be an entire network of ladders and tunnels, the doctor reasoned – and if that was the case, then Joe must have been living here for quite some time.

He went to grab a plate for his eggs, then searched the kitchen cabinet for a tea saucer. He was holding one in his hands when a sharp whistle from the direction of the radiator interrupted him.

The doctor looked over and watched in stunned silence as two tiny arms emerged from the hole near the pipe, gripping what appeared to be a dinner plate. The arms slid it onto the wooden flooring and disappeared below again. Doctor Avery silently put his own dish back into the cabinet and crept over to where the miniature one sat.

“Mr. Piccoli… may I see this?” He asked, fully expecting the answer to be no. The trained professional tone he had picked up in med school seeped into his voice once more - the one that was specifically designed to mask any form of excitement.

“All right, but if you break it I’m evicting you.” Declared his self-proclaimed landlord.

With the steady hands of a surgeon, doctor Avery knelt down and plucked the dinner plate, which was about the size of a dime, from the floor. As he turned it over, he was gobsmacked by the sight of a hand-painted country scene depicting a human shepherd leading a flock of sheep at the center of the plate. A series of villas disappeared behind the main subjects into a grotto, each of which were rendered to such a fine degree it put the work of any human hands to shame. Floral designs so intricate that parts of them were nearly invisible to the human eye surrounded the scene in a circular frame and the greens, yellows and blues of the piece were richer and more vibrant than any human work he had encountered in his lifetime. On the back the doctor could just make out the flourished signature of an artist who in all likelihood was long gone - an artist no human had ever known about.

“Mr. Piccoli, this is-“ The doctor wracked his brain for a word to describe the sight, but all of them seemed so lacking. “Beautiful” was too generic; “stunning” was cliché; “splendid” made him sound like his grandmother.

“…kinda tacky, right?” Joe interjected. “It was my mom’s.”

The doctor let out a breath he didn’t even know he had been holding as he set the delicate work of art down again. It seemed a sin to taint such a thing with scrambled eggs, but Joe didn’t seem to mind, and Joe struck the doctor as the sort of person it was useless to argue with.

A hand reached up again with a wooden three-pronged fork and placed it onto the plate. Doctor Avery noted that the hand was absolutely filthy.

“Would you like to… maybe… wash up first?” The doctor offered in the most tactful tone he could muster.

“I’d love to, doctor, but someone took away my wash basin.” Joe replied.

“Your wash basin…?”

“That bowl you threw out? The one under the front steps with the crack in the side? It was the perfect place to go. The rain and dew would fill it up, but none of that gross shit would get in and the hawks couldn’t getcha down there. Now I got nothing!”

“…I see.” The doctor replied, taking in the fact that a seemingly meaningless gesture on his part had thrown off Joe’s entire routine for a moment, until a solution struck him: “would you like to use the sink?”

Crowing laughter rose from the hole in the floor.

“No way. I don’t trust those things.”

The doctor frowned at the hole with grave concern, but ultimately decided not to push the issue. If he waited any longer the eggs would get cold, and Joe would never let him hear the end of it if they did.

“How do you want your eggs? Salt? Pepper? Anything?”

“I have no frame of reference.” Joe responded.

“Plain eggs it is, then.”

The doctor, too afraid to touch the miniature plate a second time, got up to plate his own eggs first. Kneeling down again, he carefully took a small piece, one that to his relief was still quite warm, and transferred it from his plate to the tiny one below.

Years ago at the church, when the mother raccoon had accepted the egg, she had stretched out her paws towards it as far as she could reach while still keeping her body as far away from him as possible, then rolled it backwards towards herself. Joe’s motions mirrored hers now, his arms stretching all the way up from the hole and pulling the plate in again without allowing doctor Avery a single glimpse of his face.

“You could come sit up here, you know.” The doctor said. He sat cross-legged before the radiator now, as though he were conversing with it and not someone living in his walls.

“I could but I-“

The doctor leaned in when Joe stopped short.

“...Mr. Piccoli?”

The doctor blinked. No answer came from below the radiator.

After a long pause, in a voice scolding and accusatory Joe asked, “how dare you do this to me, doctor?”

“What did I do?”

Doctor Avery was clueless. His heartrate began to spike. It struck him that Joe could very well be allergic to eggs. Could it be, he wondered, that tinies weren’t fond of eggs because they had bad reactions to them? He leaned forward, straining to hear Joe’s answer.

After another painstaking silence, Joe spoke again.

“...you’ve given me forbidden knowledge. Eggs are good now! I now live in a world where eggs are good! What am I supposed to do now that I know this, doctor?” Asked Joe.

Doctor Avery cackled in relief.

“Feel sorry for the people who don’t.” He answered.

Read the next part here!

#gt #borrowers #borrower

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witcherfan · 4 days

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The last time we were on a long flight, my wife and I invented a game we call "Little Guy."

You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.

She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.

And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."

We're big Twenty Questions to kill time in a waiting room people, but Little Guy is more about the journey than the destination. It's got a different kind of sauce that's nice if "killing time" and "lowering anxiety" need to happen hand in hand.

#games #game

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witcherfan · 4 days

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When I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music. Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another. For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it. Post Malone blew me away on set as our tortured tragic hero and I’m so grateful to him for everything he put into this collaboration. I’m still laughing from getting to work with the coolest guys on earth, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles (tortured poets, meet your colleagues from down the hall, the dead poets). I still can’t believe I get to work with the unfathomably brilliant Rodrigo Prieto on cinematography and my team of dream collaborators: Ethan Tobman (production design), Chancler Haynes (editor), Anthony Dimino (1st AD), Jil Hardin (producer) and Dom Thomas (executive producer). Parliament aced the VFX as always. Joseph Cassell, Lorrie Turk and Jemma Muradian made these tortured looks come to life. The entire crew made this a dream to shoot. Thank you to everyone involved and everyone who has watched it!! https://taylor.lnk.to/FortnightMV

#fortnight #musicvide #bs #taylorswift

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witcherfan · 4 days

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G/T Hannibal/Will

Alright technically this is my first post by imma just dive right in:

What if Will was a Borrower?? Like????

I mean - I tooootally haven't started writing a work about just that or anything-

"For a moment, Hannibal remained in a state of shock that was utterly unlike himself, wherein he did nothing but stare at the diminutive figure dangling by its thin arms from the grate of his ceiling.

Only for a moment, however.

It took him twice that to stand, briskly walk the three feet over to where the minute being was now struggling desperately - fruitlessly - to lift itself back up, and it was then that the little thing’s head snapped to the side in his direction, face nearly too small for Hannibal to make out.

Nearly. But not quite. In the brief span of a second, Hannibal cataloged the creature’s delicate, impossibly small features, from its twitching button nose, to its quivering lower lip, to its glistening, fear-bright eyes. A corresponding increase in its scent came with it, and Hannibal luxuriated in allowing the mouthwatering fragrance to fill his lungs.

“I don’t recall inviting you into my home,” he softly mused, lips curling upwards in the corners as he watched the being’s arms tremble with the strain, its face turning red from the effort despite its bloodless lips still revealing its terror."

:3333

Ch. 1

#hannibal #will #borrower #gt

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witcherfan · 4 days

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#men #cats #funny

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witcherfan · 5 days

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Captain Calloway’s

Part three of my thing! You can see the index and content notes here, read part 1 here or the previous part here.

Though many city tinies swore by the streetcar, if you asked Joe Piccoli the best way to cross the city in style, he would tell you to look no further than the milkman’s carriage. It was slow, certainly, as the driver made frequent stops, and in many respects it could be just as dangerous as braving a crowded tram – how safe it was depended entirely on how friendly a milkman you got. In spite of all that, Joe still vastly preferred the carriage for one, simple reason: there was only one giant to worry about.

He was lucky that today’s milkman was quite a conversationalist. This milkman had spent a good fifteen minutes chatting with doctor Avery at the door, giving Joe just enough time to finish his climb to the kitchen window, slide down the twine he had left hanging out of it, and dash over to where the carriage waited. Irate as he was at the rude awakening, he had to give the doctor some credit: if the big oaf hadn’t started thumping around, he would’ve slept through the milkman’s arrival and missed his cue to leave entirely.

It was hard enough to stay awake now. He had spent half the night fighting his own animalistic hunger. He had wrapped the brick of chocolate in a swatch of white silk and placed it at the far corner of the room, then tried – and failed – to pretend it didn’t exist. He clutched it now in his hands as he sat upon the lower frame of the carriage and swayed with its motions. He had considered putting it in a backpack, but feared it would melt inside one. For now, he hoped that the brisk early spring weather was enough to keep it solid. Were he still a rookie he just might have given in and devoured the damn thing instead of going through all this trouble to transport it, but his ten years of living at the Stinson house had left him with a robotic degree of self-control. It was something most tinies who made it to adulthood had no choice but to cultivate in their lives in a world where the process of acquiring food was more like winning the lottery than going to the general store.

It was for that reason he had to get the money. He had to buy his way onto that list. He had to finally know what it was like to live someplace that accommodated him, someplace that did have a general store, an economy and infrastructure. Thus, exhausted and running on empty already, he had set out on the brutal half-day journey to the docks in search of Captain Calloway’s with thoughts of the doctor still lingering in his mind. The why that had haunted him had now mutated into why not, tormenting him as it seamlessly answered every question that arose in his mind.

Why had he broken the golden rule?

Why not?

Why had he accepted the food?

Why not?

Why should he even stay in that house now that the doctor was there?

Why not?

He hoped that some time at the old watering hole would set his head straight and, with any luck, put his finances in order.

The sun was at high noon when his journey ended, and, after experiencing the excitement of nearly being thrown off the rear of the carriage and crushed under the wheel several times, he finally touched down at his destination. Gazing straight up as he stumbled over the gravel shore of the newly filled in harbourfront, Joe took in the sight of the bucket arm of a large steam-powered dredge. It had once pierced the sky over the lake as it chugged along and did its duty, but now it lay dormant near the shore. For ages now the city had been filling in this shorefront in an effort to reshape it, and though the construction was all but finished, several of the decommissioned dredges still dotted the shoreline like skeletons.

This particular dredge was the home of Captain Calloway’s Den of Drunkards, a quaint little watering hole with a special place in Joe’s heart. Tired, hungry, exhausted and sore, Joe’s eyes traced along the end of the bucket arm of the dredge that had fallen into the gravel, then ran all the way up to the very top, calculating how high he would have to climb in order to get there. It was easily a good four or five giants tall, and, assuring himself it would be a smoother journey going back, he gritted his teeth and began the trek. The waters of Lake Ontario sloshed around below as he tiptoed up the arm with catlike precision, as if the lake itself were trying to reach up and grab him. One silver lining to the journey was that the angle of the arm wasn’t terribly steep, and many a tiny who had come before him had left ample hooks and lines for him to make use of. Nonetheless, doing it all with only one hand to spare while guarding his merchandise in the other was no easy task, especially not when one slip-up meant certain death.

“You die getting up here it’s your own damn fault.” The Captain had said to him once.

Luckily for him the reaper stayed his hand that day, and when Joe got to the top he was met with a surreal view of the world he rarely got to see: the tops of houses, toy-sized streetcars, giants no bigger than himself, all were dwarfed in the distance from his bird’s eye view of the harbourfront. He stood for a moment admiring the sight, and then, when his strength returned to him, hopped into the nearby hole in the roof of the dredge’s engine room. It was there, in that space between the roof and the rafters of the ceiling, where Captain Calloway’s made its home. His feet landed on the solid steel below the hole with a clang that announced his presence.

“Oh boy. Look who just dropped in! Waddaya got this time, lad?” Exclaimed a voice with a bouncy brogue. Joe lit up at the sound as a strapping Irishman in finely tailored clothes loped over to greet him.

“O’Grady!?” He blinked in disbelief. It was the first time he had seen the man in years. “What’re you doing here?”

“Hiding from his wife.” Answered a voice that sounded like it had eaten a bag of sand. “He’s in the birdhouse again.”

The voice belonged to a shaky string bean of a fellow with thinning grey hair and watery blue eyes.

“Can it, Gutters, or I’ll put you in there along with me.” O’Grady retorted.

Neither Joe, nor Gutters it seemed, could tell what O’Grady’s threat was supposed to mean, though O’Grady didn’t seem to care. He simply clapped Joe on his sore shoulders and ushered him to the counter, where a burly man about the same size and shape as a large human’s thumb stood with his back to the three and poured a glass of beer. The light shone off the man’s balding head as he turned around and, although he only had one eye and three teeth to smile with, the Captain made each of them count.

“You look like hot garbage, Joe.” He said, seamlessly sliding the beer across the counter to Joe using only the screw-eye hook that had replaced his right hand. It would be an insult to most, but to the regulars it was Captain Calloway’s standard greeting.

“You as well, Cap'n.” Joe replied. He set the silk wrapping down on the counter, gave the Captain a wink and drank it down.

The offerings on tap at Captain Calloway’s changed with the seasons and the weather. Most were sourced from what tinies called “the spills” – those small remnants of alcohol that the giants left behind in discarded empty bottles. The poorest-and tiniest-children in the city would crawl into those bottles, collect those remnants, and sell them for 50 scraps a piece to bartenders like Calloway. During prohibition it had been a dying art, but with the reinstatement of the sale of low-alcohol beer, bars like Calloway's were starting to see signs of life again. To any human, and even to some tinies, beer as flat and stale as the spills would be downright affronting, but after Joe’s grueling journey it may as well have been manna from heaven.

“So.” Captain Calloway leaned against the counter and looked from the silk to Joe. “What piece of junk are you gonna try and sell me this time?”

Joe’s face spread into a smirk.

"You get one guess what it is." He said as Calloway narrowed his eye at him.

"A cheap earring!" Shouted Gutters.

“Nope.” Joe said.

"Fake jewel?" O’Grady volunteered.

“Done that already.” Joe reminded him. His insufferable smirk was gluing itself to his face.

After much squint-eyed staring, Captain Calloway finally outmatched the other two suggestions:

"It's poisoned chocolate, isn't it?"

Joe beamed in absolute delight.

“Oh, it’s chocolate all right.” He assured him. “Poisoned, though? Wouldn’t say that much.”

“Pure chocolate?” O’Grady gasped, his eyes widening as though he were in the presence of the holy grail.

“Pure chocolate.” Joe repeated, nodding as he unwrapped the silk to reveal his prize.

“I’m calling B.S. on that.” Said Gutters. “It’s Joe, guys. He always does this. It’s nothing but a brick of rat poison.” Gutters shrank back when Joe shot him an icy glare, then added, “no offense.”

“…none taken.” Joe said as he reached for his boot knife. He carved out a piece the size of his fist as the faces of the others contorted in dismay. “I can prove it. If I don’t turn purple after eating this you’ll know it’s safe.”

“Joe are you certain—“ O’Grady, who had always looked out for Joe since their days making watches for the soldiers together, could barely move to stop him before he had shoved half of the chunk into his face. As Joe chewed he mouthed out something that sounded like,

“It’th good th’it, too.” Swallowing, he added, “real quality stuff,” then bit into the other half, the smile still not leaving his face.

Seeing the others were stunned into silence, he then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his card deck, staining the box with melted chocolate in the process. He gestured to one of the booths behind them that had been crudely built from stray twigs.

“Card game?”

The afternoon drew on and Joe barely turned a shade of pink, let alone purple. He didn’t dare add his chocolate to the betting pool, so, having nothing else of value on him, he bet the card deck itself, which he lost to Captain Calloway in a royal flush. As the game drew to a close and the men returned to the counter where the chocolate sat, it was time to complete the sale. Bringing his best showmanship to the table, Joe took off his cap and bowed to the audience.

“…so. As you can see I’m not dead yet.” He gestured to the hunk of chocolate. “We’ve only got so much time before it melts or goes off. Food of the gods: going once… going twice…”

“I’ll take some.” Piped O’Grady.

“Think it’ll get you back in Sophie’s good graces, huh?” Gutters quipped. O’Grady turned bright red as Joe pulled out his knife again.

“How much? I can give you the Angry Wife Discount but it’s still gonna cost ya’.”

O’Grady, looking pained, replied,

“Two handsworths.”

“Seven hundred fifty scraps each.”

”Seven fifty!?” O’Grady exclaimed.

“That’s with the discount. You don’t run into this kinda stuff every day, Tim.” Joe reminded him. “C’mon. If you were able to pay your way into Tiny Town then you can swing this.”

O’Grady huffed and puffed in indignation, but ultimately coughed up a stack of paper bills.

There it was: the almighty scrap. Ever since the local Tiny Town's formation after the war, those who were lucky enough to live there had been attempting to create a currency system like the one the big people had. It was going about as well as one could expect, with hyperinflation running rampant to the point thousands of scraps were worth only a fraction of a single human cent. Still, if everyone who was anyone wanted to get behind those walls and live the good life, the paper scrap was what they needed in order to pay their way. No attempt at bartering would do – Tiny Town was civilized society after all. Joe glowed as he examined the bills and counted them up – his one way ticket to a better life.

“Would be nice to see you on the other side, lad.” O’Grady added.

“Yeah…” Calloway chimed in, hesitantly at first. “Y’know what? I’ll take some too. Having something fancy like that on the menu might class this place up a bit.” Calloway stooped down and rifled through the cash box below the counter. “You gonna buy some, Gutters?”

“You kidding?” Gutters grunted. “I ain’t eatin’ that! That’s pet food is what that is.”

“Pet food?” Joe echoed. Panic hit him like a freight train.

“Yeah, y’know - you eat stuff like that and you’re never the same again. Start thinking too highly of yourself. Wanting life to be better.”

Gutters rose up from his stool and shuffled closer and closer to Joe.

“Before you know it, you’re sucking up to some giant. Singing a little song and dancing a funny jig for their amusement in exchange for treats. You know what happens then, Joe?”

Joe shrank back as Gutters, now nearly on top of him, continued. From how fervently the man spoke, he may as well have been a pastor spitting fire and brimstone.

“You lose your ear and end up locked away in a gilded cage, with a pretty bow tied around your neck in exchange for your freedom after sacrificing your dignity at the altar of petdom!”

Joe flinched as strings of spit flew into his face. Gutters jabbed a crooked finger into Joe’s chest and concluded, “that’s what happens, Joe! Tell me, why would anyone wanna live like that?”

“Gutters, relax.” Calloway’s self-assured voice put a swift end to the theatrics. “I raised the kid right. He knows better than that, don’tcha Joe?”

Sweat trickled down Joe’s forehead as that dirty feeling crept up again. What would they do to him, he wondered, if the guys found out how he’d gotten his hands on the goods? Worse still, what would happen if they found out he’d broken the golden rule? The question that haunted him above all else, however, was: what would happen to him if he kept interacting with the doctor?

“Yeah…” Joe said, in the most cool-headed tone he could muster. “I know better than that.”

“How much for the rest?” Calloway asked.

Although Joe had no idea what to expect when he returned to the Stinson house that evening, if anything were at the very end of his list of expectations it was dead silence. Yet, as he scanned the empty kitchen from his vantage point by the window, he heard no stomping from his uncouth neighbour. It wasn’t unusual for the doctor to be up and down like a toilet seat taking house calls, though Joe couldn’t help but feel a twinge of what he would never admit was disappointment at the giant’s absence. He had wanted a showdown before the last of his brain power for the day died out on him. To show that tall bastard that he was a smart, strong, independent tiny and give him what-for once and for all so that way, the next time he walked into Calloway’s, he wouldn’t have to feel like he was hiding something.

Instead, after sliding his aching body into the inner wall through the crack in the window sill, climbing all the way down the row of staples hammered into the plaster, and crossing the wooden floorboards he couldn’t wait to curl up and sleep inside of, all he was met with was another offering in front of the pipe by the radiator. The note that accompanied the saucer was scrawled more hurriedly than the last.

“Dear friend,

I wanted to apologise again for getting off on the wrong foot with you. I also wish to apologise for missing breakfast with you after I had promised you some. I received a house call from outside of the city and may not be back until to-morrow. I hope this will tide you over until then.

I look forward to seeing you when I get back,

H.F.A”

This time, the doctor had thoughtfully covered the saucer in brown paper and, thrusting it off, Joe was met with a little bit of everything: a chunk of cheese, a smear of peanut butter, a piece of cracker, a crumb from a biscuit, a cut of sandwich meat, a slice of strawberry, a slice of banana, and a thimble of apple juice that came up to his waist. He rarely saw that much food in a week, let alone a single day. The mere sight of it sent his animal mind in a frenzy, but he didn’t dare touch it, for Gutters’ words echoed in his head and tugged at its proverbial leash.

“You lose your ear and end up locked away in a gilded cage, with a pretty bow tied around your neck in exchange for your freedom after sacrificing your dignity at the altar of petdom! That’s what happens, Joe! Tell me, why would anyone wanna live like that?”

To which the voice of the doctor that so stubbornly refused to leave his poor mind alone replied,

“Why not?”

With that, Gutters' question, like all the rest, was answered. He had five thousand newly-minted scraps in his pocket. Tomorrow, he would go straight to the gates of Tiny Town, slap it down on the counter, and see how far up the list he could bribe the clerk into placing him. He hadn’t had any time to scavenge today, and he wouldn’t have any more time tomorrow after making that journey. Besides, he was only staying with this giant temporarily. Soon he would be behind those gates, in one of the world’s first communities made by tinies, for tinies. What did he really have to worry about?

Why not give himself a break, then, he reasoned? Why not listen to his aching shoulders for once, or the pain that was shooting up his ankle bones, or his stomach, which was well past growling and well into eating itself from the inside? Why not let his body rest a moment before he punished it further? There were other days he could hunt for ants or dig up worms or chase down crickets to eat, other days he could wait for the blackberry bush out back to bloom or, if he were feeling especially desperate, strip the bark from the trees to chew on. For now, why not celebrate his good fortune? How gullible did Gutters think he was, anyways!?

And so he exchanged one piece of his dignity for some peanut butter, another for a bite of the sandwich meat, another still for the strawberry. That was how he would do it, he decided: bit by bit, incrementally, so that by the end of it he would still have plenty of dignity left intact. He wouldn’t sing a song or dance a jig, and he most definitely wouldn’t allow himself to be caged; he would simply milk the doctor’s kindness instead until the time came to leave.

Why not?

Read the next part here!

#borrower #borrowewrs #gt #cool

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witcherfan · 5 days

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THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, the new album from Taylor Swift. Listen Now On Spotify

#taylorswift #thetorturedpoetsdepartment #musci #music #typewriter #vintage #2024 #11 #11thstudioalblum #April 192024 #April #19

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witcherfan · 9 days

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Talking to the Walls

The second part of a thing I'm writing. See the index and content warnings here. Start from the beginning here!

Newly-minted Doctor Herman Avery was the kind of man who never forgot a face. Some of those memories comforted him, like his father’s beaming smile as he left for university. Other faces haunted him, like the desperate eyes of his mother on her deathbed, begging him to stay by her side. Some faces doctor Avery remembered, like the grisly sights at Ypres, he had nearly destroyed himself trying to forget.

If there was one face at the forefront of the doctor’s mind as he stared out across the wilderness of his front yard and puffed his morning cigarette, however, it was the face he had caught a glimpse of last evening. Something about that face bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. Certainly, it was the sort of face better suited to the silver screen than to dusty floorboards, he thought: the black eyes had jumped out at him first, then the arched brows, and although it was hard to tell the age of its owner given its sunken cheeks and dark circles, the face had certainly appeared younger than he expected, in all likelihood not much older than his ripe old age of twenty-nine.

So this was the face of his sneak-thief. This was who had been tipping the lid off his sugar bowl, leaving stray twine on his kitchen floor, and scampering across the top of his nightstand in the wee hours. None of that was what had given the tiny away, of course: the heating system was what had set doctor Avery on his mission to catch the little bugger. The tiny had, unwittingly it seemed, taken up residence somewhere near the pipes of the kitchen radiator. For weeks the doctor, believing himself going mad, had been convinced he had left the radio on upstairs only to find each time that it wasn’t playing. That faint voice of the miniature, it turned out, had been carrying through the pipes of the radiator and straight into the doctor's ears.

He had never been able to make out what that voice was saying, but today, as he listened to call of the mourning doves in the mist of the late March air, doctor Avery had an idea. After collecting the day’s copy of the Toronto Star, he made a beeline for the medical bag he kept at the ready by the doorway and pulled out his stethoscope. Starting at the hole by the radiator pipe, he got down on his hands and knees, pressed the chest piece to the floor, and listened.

To his dismay, all he was met with were the echoes of the wind rushing through the foundation. He worried for a moment that the ambient sounds of the old house would drown out any noise his neighbour made that was quieter than a shout. Then, another bright idea struck him: why not test the acoustics?

He made a fist and began to hammer on the ground as loud as he could. One, two, three, stop. One, two, three, stop. Then he strained his ears and waited intently.

Somewhere from the far corner of the kitchen the doctor could just make out the words, “oh for CHRIST’S sake” followed by a string of lovely terms of endearment that were no doubt meant for him.

Doctor Avery crawled closer to the spot where all the swearing was coming from and banged again. The voice was clearer now.

“Good morning to you too, asshole!” It shouted up at him.

Had it been a normal sized person the doctor were dealing with, he would have told the fellow off for his profanity (unless he were dealing with his fellow soldier, in which case he would have swore back at him louder and more brazenly). Here, however, the experience of being cussed out through his floorboards by someone a fraction of his size was so surreal that he could hardly be offended by it. If anything, he felt as lighthearted as a child who had just uncovered an ant colony.

A scrambling noise followed as the tiny presumably jumped out of bed. To the doctor’s delight, he could hear through the stethoscope what he could only imagine were the movement of household objects in the little fellow's den below the boards, like the irate slamming of a trunk or door and the hurried rustling of fabric. Was his neighbour getting dressed?

The doctor gave three more knocks, then finally felt bold enough to speak.

“Apologies for the rude awakening. I wished to ask you what you wanted for breakfast.” He called through the floorboards, in the most professional tone he could muster.

Silence followed, then the sound of rapid footsteps that drew further and further away. The doctor rushed to follow them with such haste that he nearly ran into the far wall.

Lost him again! He ran his fingers along the baseboard, wondering if his neighbour had a hidden escape route that led beyond the kitchen. Moving the chest piece to and fro along the floorboards, he listened for any signs of life with as much care as he would give a human heart. When scanning the floorboards yielded no results, out of desperation he tried the wall. Further and further up he moved, until he was standing at full height.

Then, he heard it – a light, repetitive rapping sound, as though the little fellow were climbing something.

“Hello my good man, are you in there?" The doctor asked the silent kitchen in a chipper tone.

Ever so carefully he rapped on that wall, then pressed the chest piece of the stethoscope against it until he reached a spot where he could just make out the sound of the exhausted tiny’s breathing. In a momentary lapse of judgement the doctor knocked again in the middle of that spot, harder this time. The doctor then heard a yelp, and more scrambling erupted through the stethoscope.

It hit doctor Avery that he had in all likelihood nearly knocked the poor man off his ladder.

"My apologies," said the doctor to whoever it was he had just given a near death experience to, "did I knock too hard that time?" He spoke gently now, in the voice he had used with the yearling horses whenever he had to trim their hooves during his days on the family farm.

The voice that responded was anything but gentle.

“What do YOU think, idiot!?” It snapped.

Doctor Avery had certainly earned that one.

“I’m only trying to talk to you.” He assured the tiny, in a desperate attempt to repair the bridge that was clearly on the verge of disintegrating. “I could cook you something. Anything you want. My house is your house.”

He listened patiently as the foul-mouthed tiny repeated his last sentence back to him in a sneering tone.

“No.” The tiny corrected him between gasps for air. “This is my house, and my house…” he paused to catch his breath again. “…is not your house.”

“What makes you say that?” The doctor asked.

A long pause followed.

“…there’s no way this guy can hear me.” The tiny said to himself.

“Oh, I can hear you.” The doctor said to the tiny.

Another long pause, and then a loud “SHIT!” reverberated through the stethoscope. The doctor couldn’t help but chuckle in utter amazement. Had the little fellow really thought he was only talking to himself until now?

“Can you tell me your name?” Doctor Avery asked, his voice hushed and delicate.

“No I cannot tell you my name. I should not even be talking to you.” The tiny grumbled, more to himself than to the doctor.

“Why not?” Asked the doctor.

No answer.

“You could tell me over breakfast.” He offered. “The milkman should be here any minute. Soon we’ll be the proud owners of a carton of eggs. How do you like them?”

Still no answer.

“…would you prefer French toast?”

The wall remained silent.

“I could offer you more chocola-“

“Why?” The stethoscope cut him off.

In that moment, doctor Avery became hyperaware of himself and the absurdity of what he was doing. Many would regard inviting a tiny, a being with a widespread reputation for carrying diseases that dated all the way back to the days of the black death, as the equivalent of inviting a rat or a cockroach to breakfast. Even the tiny himself seemed puzzled by the offer.

The doctor thought for a moment, and his mind wandered far across the ocean, back to Europe, to the blood and the bullets, the shells and the stench. Back to how desperately he had wished himself to be a giant then, something powerful and unkillable, able to scoop his men up, cross the ocean in two strides, and return each and every one of them back home to their mothers.

Doctor Avery had not been a giant at Ypres – he had been a crying, bleeding, desperate human much like the rest. …but he could be that giant to this person, no matter how much he was cursed at, or how unappreciated his efforts went. Something about this tiny’s gaunt face bothered him, and now he knew what it was: it resembled all the friends and countrymen he had never been able to save a little bit too closely.

He desperately wished he could explain all of this to the little sneak-thief, but the words refused to string together in his mind. It was bigger than him; much too big to fully articulate. So instead, the doctor simply answered:

“Why not?”

More silence followed from behind the wall, until it was broken by a heavy sigh. Before he could hear the sneak-thief’s counterargument, a swift knock at the door turned the doctor’s attention to the hallway.

The milkman had arrived.

You can read the next part here!

#doctor #giantdoctor #giant #tiny #borrower #gt #talking #walls #talkingwalls

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witcherfan · 9 days

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The Trick to Eating Chocolate

Part 1 of an ongoing story. See the index and content warnings here.

When Joe Piccoli had set out to grab a few things from the pantry that day, he had expected a journey that was identical to the last day’s journey, which had been identical to the journey of the day before that. What he had not expected to encounter was the brazen insult that now stood before him.

“Dear sneak-thief”, read the handwritten cursive on the folded note that stood as high as he was tall, “if you want something to eat, just ask!”

Sneak-thief. Sneak-thief! The audacity of it. Didn’t his new neighbour know that Joe was practically the landlord when squatter’s rights were taken into account? Oh, but that was not the end of it! That tall bastard was not only accusing him of being a thief for taking food from his pantry, but clearly attempting to murder him as well. The note had been set upon a small saucer, and on that plate was a brick of brown gold that the guys down at the docks would kill for: a piece of chocolate about the length of his forearm. Easily worth a fortune, deadly though it often was.

To top it all off, the offering had been placed next to the wall in the kitchen, directly outside of Joe’s favourite entry and exit hole where the pipe from the kitchen radiator entered the floor, as if this human whom he now regrettably had to share air with were saying, I know where you live.

Still, as he circled around the saucer and examined the delicate floral designs that, being hand painted by a giant, left much detail to be desired, he couldn’t help but think that this peace offering had some merit to it. If there were one thing it was almost impossible for a tiny like him to acquire, it was chocolate. Unlike the stray crumbs of chips or the half-eaten pieces of toast or even the stray spillings of sugar that lingered on countertops everywhere, the big people either devoured their chocolate down to the last atom, or kept it sealed away in boxes or wrappings that were a nightmare to get into.

So it was no secret to the borrowers who knew their stuff that, if a human ever wanted to get rid of a tiny infestation quickly and easily, all they had to do was offer up some chocolate that had been laced with rat poison. The poor fools of the world who ate it would be dead within the day. Many tinies who had a death wish would stubbornly partake knowing full well it could kill them; a delicacy was a delicacy after all. Joe was one such individual, and to date he had survived a total of three poisonings. There was a trick to eating chocolate and surviving, Joe had discovered, knowledge that had narrowly cost him his life to acquire.

He pulled out his boot knife and shaved off a piece about the size of his thumb and no larger – that was the first step. The second step was to take exactly one bite of it, and so he did. The third step was to wait for the nausea and the chills to set in. It was an inexact science. An act of playing chicken with death. Sometimes the sickness set in within minutes of the first bite depending on the amount of poison that had been used; other times it set in closer to the third. At most he had a half an hour before it doubled him over. Smarter borrowers than he would wonder why Joe would bother taste testing such a thing at all, but if there were any delicacy greater than poisoned chocolate down at the docks, it was unpoisoned chocolate – the white whale every career borrower dreamed of finding and reselling at least once in their lives.

As he sat on the edge of the saucer and waited, he tried not to let his hopes of finding that white whale get the best of him. There was not a single human in the world, he was certain, who didn’t have ulterior motives. His thoughts turned to the human who had invaded his home. What had given him away? Had the tall bastard found his footprints? Had he dropped something on his travels? Had - god forbid - he been spotted while roaming what had at one point been his house? If you want something to eat, just ask! As though that doctor was the boss of the place!

The clock in the parlour ticked away as the afternoon shadows crept along Victorian green wallpaper that had to be well over 50 years old by now. Motes of dust drifted lazily through the still air, as though they were only half-heartedly bound by the passage of time. Joe, who very much was bound by the passage of time, felt no chills. He took the second bite and continued to think.

A haunting realization hit him much too late: if this man were a doctor, perhaps the poison was more discreet than the average person’s. Maybe Joe was a dead man walking already. Maybe so much as touching the stuff with his bare hands had already marked him for death. His mind cycled back through every instance of cruelty from the big people he had witnessed in his young life, of which there were many: stompings, torchings, crushings, among countless other heinous crimes. If he were already good as dead, what would the doctor in all his humanity do with him afterwards? Would he be dissected? Put on display? Sold to some science museum? Grappling with the sudden regret of his decision, he started weighing his options. Should he induce vomiting? Would it help at all if he did?

In spite of all his worrying, the chills still hadn’t set in. He felt no pain. No tingling. The half hour had passed unceremoniously; if he were going to drop dead, it was taking an awful long time to happen.

That hope rose within him once again, louder now and the hope – well, that was what killed you, Joe reasoned. Either that or it made you rich. In this case, the amount of chocolate he had been left with would easily be enough to buy himself a place on the housing list of his local Tiny Town, so that he could have the privilege of waiting three years to once again have a home all to himself... provided he could remain financially stable enough to pay the rent.

If this was the Canadian dream, he didn’t want to know what the American tinies were getting up to.

Dead man or not, as the time kept ticking by the point came where he had to know for certain: he had to take bite number three. Every borrower had their respective borrowing “style,” as those in the trade called it, and his style just happened to involve fucking around and finding out. They didn’t call him Cast-iron Joe for nothing, he supposed.

His frustration grew as the clock kept ticking, and the shadows kept creeping, and the motes kept drifting, and all the while he remained stubbornly alive after three bites of dubiously poisoned chocolate; an aliveness that raised a question that vexed him:

Why?

Why would this doctor be nice to him? Why would he offer him food? Why write to him? Why do any of this? He began to feel dirty, somehow. Disgusted with himself. He wanted to crawl out of his own skin and run far away from this house and this kind man who would call him a sneak-thief but feed him a delicacy nonetheless without even bothering to try to kill him with it. Joe knew that even eating the food that had been left out for him was the sort of thing the guys at the docks would call “pet behaviour” – but what they didn’t know wouldn’t kill them, and the less they knew, the richer he would be in the long run.

He took out his knife and carved off another piece, a larger one this time, taking bite number four, then five, until he was passively munching on it as if it were any other afternoon snack. With each bite and each passing minute the looming threat of death grew weaker and weaker, until-

-the porch steps creaked under the human’s heavy footsteps and a key scraped the lock from down the hallway, snapping Joe back to attention. Fear paralyzed him, as though he were a boy about to be caught misbehaving by his father. The chime of the clock striking six rang in his ears as if the house itself had issued its condemnation, causing all thought to leave him. Then a newer, larger shadow crept along the house’s walls, closer and closer to where Joe stood. Even the motes seemed to scatter in a frenzy as the human, with all his thumping and bumping and banging and clunking, disturbed the quiet peace of what had once been Joe’s sanctuary. Joe scattered along with them, skidding into the space between the floor and the pipe – but not before taking the brick of chocolate along with him.

In the safety of the floorboards, clutching his prize as it slowly melted into the sleeves of his jacket, he dared not move a muscle as the footsteps drew closer and closer, until they shook the wood above and hammered in his very head. He could faintly see the wooden slats shift under the human’s weight as the doctor knelt down to inspect what remained of his offering.

Through the floorboards, Joe could hear the incredulous doctor let out a low chuckle that somehow only managed to add further insult, for it was not unlike the way an adult would chuckle at a small child. Against his better judgment, Joe crept closer to the light above, pulled by that morbid curiosity, that lingering why. He only ever saw the doctor in glimpses, and each time it had been involuntary, but now he couldn’t help but find himself drawn back to the light above like a man in search of forbidden knowledge.

As he craned his neck up from his place in the darkness, Joe could just make out the blur of the human’s hands before he was blinded by the spark-and-burn of a struck match and the darkness was no more. His dumbstruck gaze was met with a single, gigantic eyeball peering at him from behind the flame, the orange light dancing across its bands of amber-brown colour. The eye blinked and narrowed, then widened into a shocked expression that matched Joe’s own.

Primordial fear overtook him at the sight. He fell back in shock, scrambled to his feet, and sprinted into the darkness. As he ran, the voice of the doctor, omnipresent as the voice of a god rang through him:

“Wait, don’t run! Come back!”

The floorboards shook again in what Joe could only imagine were the doctor’s attempts to pull the floor open and grab him. He didn’t know for certain what the man’s motives were and he didn’t care: he had escaped with his life and five thousand scraps’ worth of unpoisoned chocolate. The rest, Joe decided, as exhaustion forced him to come to a halt all the way across the other side of the house, he would figure out tomorrow.

Oh, how he wished this day had been a normal day like any other. Something told him tomorrow would be even worse.

If you've read this far, you may want to check out the next part here! Thank you so much for taking interest in my work.

#chocolate #thettricltpeatomgchocolate #the #trick #to #eating #gt

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