A loud, though muffled, thud pulled Mira away from the mirror. Maisie was muttering to herself, the words growing faint as she walked away. Walking to the door, she set the garment bag down on the back of the chair by her vanity. A bizarre squeal followed by a string of fading profanity coming from her living room pulled her through the door. “Maisie?”
The room was silent, no footsteps, no doors closing or zippers being pulled. Stepping over the threshold, Mira froze. The room was empty. Maisie’s weird camera lay on the corner of Mira’s living room rug, lens facing the ceiling. Scratching her head, Mira strode across the floor.
A weird smear on her window caught her eye, like an oil sheen in a puddle. Tilting her head, Mira scanned the shape. Perfectly spherical, shimmering slightly. The smear was fading, evaporating in the morning sun. The purple fibers tickling her feet. The plush material had been tamped down beside the camera case, as though Maisie had stormed off.
The space was liminal, eerie. Though only way in or out of the room was to walk through her front door or head down towards her bedroom. Maisie appeared to have vanished into thin air. “Maisie?” Mira called. “Where are you?”
Mira’s skin felt cold, the hair on the back of her neck erupting straight off her shoulders. There was nowhere in the modest space for even someone of Maisie’s stature to hide. Turning around, Mira examined her apartment. Checking the bedroom and even the bathroom Mira had been standing in mere moments ago, picking up her phone as she searched.
Activating the screen Mira called her friend, the familiar sound of Maisie’s voicemail emanating from the speaker. “Well… that’s not good…” She said softly. “What’s going on here?”
--
3 minutes, forty seconds ago…
--
Smirking, Maisie adjusted the…special… lens she’d attached to her analog camera. “This is going to be so funny…” She whispered, peering through the eyepiece. “She’ll never see it coming.” The eyepiece showed the breadth of the windows in Mira’s eastern wall. Pausing, she could almost see the taller redhead get caught in the beam. See her falling in space down towards the floor.
Grimacing, Maisie inched forward, stepping onto the plush carpeting. Ivana had explained the process to her, but the thought of her friend tumbling backwards as she shrank filled her with dread. “Don’t want her hurting herself…” Smirking, she turned back towards the windows.
*Click*
Maisie was rocked on her heels, her skin boiling as the laser struck her stomach. The camera toppled free of her hands, falling to the floor in slow motion. She watched it spinning in space, right at her eyeline. “Fuck! Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit…” She grumbled to herself, watching the camera expand and grow before her. Her brown hair floating about her face as she shrank instantaneously.
Clenching her eyes shut, she felt her stomach twisting in knots. Similar to when she took the elevator back down from the observation deck at the Crown tower. With a lurch everything went still, followed by a loud crack. A strange rumbling echoed all around her, groaning from the earth beneath her feet. After a beat, she saw stars in her closed eyes. Gasping for breath, she opened her eyes. Heavy ribbed walls of material surrounded her, colored an otherworldly purple. High above her, stood a massive tower of mottled stone. It wasn’t until she read the words Leica that she realized what had happened. “I bloody shrunk myself!”
The towers of dyed cotton swayed like trees in the breeze, individual fibers creaking and straining with an ethereal noise. Wincing, she heard a deep omnipresent sound wafting through the towering fibers of the carpet. Hazy and in the distance, she could see a massive shape walking towards her. The shock of red hair atop the titan filled her with dread.
Shadows swept back and forth as the towers moved with each titanic step. Mira approached, pausing just shy of the camera. “MAISIE?” The noise was omnipresent, pressing on her from all sides. “WHERE ARE YOU?”
Jumping up and down, Maisie swung her arms above her head. “MIRA!” She screamed, her throat aching with the effort. “MIRA! DOWN HERE!” The giant shape twisted, before stomping off in the distance. “My god…” Maisie whispered. “She can’t hear me anymore!” Her pulse surging in her ears, Maisie leapt forward. Sprinting as fast as she could towards the camera.
“Can she even see me!” Maisie thought, her small body tingling whenever she drew near to the carpet fibers. Tendrils of dust and stray micro-threads fluttering towards the towering purple structures.
Jumping over a seam, she felt her tiny body pulling towards one of the towers. Blood draining from her cheeks as she pondered the implication. “Static… I can be moved by static!”
The tower that had been her camera loomed high in the distance, when the ground shook once more. Mira was stomping back, moving with fluid, terrifying speed. Skidding to a halt as one of Mira’s bare feet slammed into the ground in front of her, crushing a wall of purple carpet beneath it.
High above her, she could see Mira’s face turn towards the camera. A look of confusion and bewilderment on her planet-sized face. In her hand Maisie could see Mira’s cell phone, her own last name at the top of the active call screen. “Well…. that’s no good…” Maisie groaned, the shrunken cellphone in her back pocket wasn’t ringing. “What do I do now?”