The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “Expand! Expand!” Shrinky squealed. “Oh! He’s going to bite! Look out! Run! Run!”

  I tried to run. It was like trying to outrun a nightmare. This fellow was used to hard, bumpy surfaces. Beneath my feet was the floor of concrete which formed the base of the steel fence. To one of my size it was a series of boulders and sandpiles. But I ran, jumped, and hurdled rocky obstructions, and suddenly—

  Spat! A raindrop struck directly in his path. For just an instant it disconcerted him. Just time for me to double my fists tight enough to start expanding. Was Shrinky expanding too? “Shrinky! Shrinky! Where are you?” I shouted.

  My rapid swelling had a wonderful effect upon the inky monster coming at me. My voice, too, made him thoughtful. Two more raindrops spatted down between us. I concentrated on clenching my fists as hard as I could, to hurry my expansion. My scare didn’t diminish as my size increased—not according tc the perspiration that dripped from my forehead.

  But in a moment I was as large as a young frog. That did it. The black monster wouldn’t have hesitated to battle a young tadpole, or maybe a baby mouse. But there were limits to his foolhardy nerve. His steps came slower. On top of a crest of concrete he paused. His eyes opened wider. His jaws closed. His antennae drew back.

  Abruptly he whirled around and raced away.

  I mopped my wet brow, The blood began to circulate through my plumsized body once again.

  “Shrinky! Shrinky!” Where had she gone? “Shrinky! Come on, we’re getting out of this.”

  I don’t mind saying I was sore. I was already formulating a bit of unpleasant conversation for her benefit. It had been her idea, to come down to this concrete and play god to these little bestial monsters. All right, we’d faced them. But far from seeing that justice was done we had only postponed their fight. Already the bristling black ant was on his way back for another go at the big puffy green worm.

  “Shrinky!” I kept shouting. The heck of it was, I didn’t know what size Shrinky I was looking for. She might have shrunk too small to be seen. On the other hand, she might have returned to normal already. (She had spoken of staying large to keep watch for any elephants in this pen who might chance to stray along the fence.) I glanced upward. All I could see was the high steel fence towering toward the gray misty sky. The raindrops were bouncing around me. When a man is no bigger than a hen egg, a few raindrops make an awful impression. If Shrinky were out in this—

  I saw her, now. She lay almost directly beneath the steel of the fence. She lay as if asleep. She was still quite small—no larger than a jelly bean. Her white skirt was twisted in disarray.

  Near her was the big puffy green squirmer, fully three times her size. Its head was less than an inch away from her body. Whether it had already struck her I couldn’t tell. Its big green jaws gaped open. I saw the glistening wetness of its mouth. How much poison was in that liquid?

  The puffy green worm lifted its head like the end of a crawling question mark. It was poised to strike.

  I must have shouted like a fire alarm in that moment. I must have bounded like a bolt of lightning. I ran with clenched fists. I expanded as I ran, and my rapid-fire steps widened.

  Shrinky didn’t answer me. She didn’t move. The big green ugly head arced downward, In that instant I caught the vision of certain death.

  CHAPTER III

  Dungeons of Black Earth

  A couple of slashing raindrops played me in luck. They smacked the monster-creeper across its blunt nose. It drew its head back. For a split second it was stymied. Raindrops were under some of its hundred feet, and it skidded like a cat running too fast to turn the corner. In that split second I pounced.

  I grabbed both hands around its cold, spongy neck and swung it like a sack of flour. It rolled and went into a spasm of jerking. But the advantage of its size and weight was mine. I jerked it off its hundred feet, I whirled it, threw it. It sailed over Shrinky’s head, caught on the low bar of the steel fence. It hung there, stunned. Its big greenish purple eyes spun with color like whirling marbles.

  “Shrinky! Shrinky!” I was wild, desperate. The poor little thing, still less than half the size of an ant, lying there like dead . . . She was breathing softly. I gathered her up in my arms. I hurried off with her toward the other side of the fence—and that just goes to show how your human-sized habits will keep a grip on you. The enemies that had assailed us were no respecters of such large fences as this big steel elephant fence.

  So, on second thought, I took refuge beneath the fence, for the raindrops were coming down fast now. I paused directly under the bar of steel, so that Shrinky was sheltered, lying limp in my arms.

  I must have been still breathing hard from the fight. For Shrinky opened her eyes looked up at me, and shook her head groggily. Then she whispered tensely, “What is the matter, Espando? Did they—did they get you?”

  “Not me. You.”

  “Not me,” she said, trying to smile away the terror that must have been in my eyes. “All that got me was a raindrop. How it smacked me! Guess I’m just a sissy, but it sure gave me an awful jar.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  But at the moment I didn’t see the inky-black ant that had started all this trouble. In fact, I saw no ants. So we hesitated and caught our breath. It wasn’t a comfortable thought to be emerging from our tiny size to full stature in the midst of a solid rain. I shrank down to Shrinky’s size, just to be congenial, and we stuck to our shelter.

  Now the wounded green crawler slipped, kerplop! to the bumpy concrete a few lengths away from us. It lay there, its fat body throbbing with pain. I thought it best to keep Shrinky’s eyes away from the sight, but she turned and stared. Her face lighted with a strange mixture of terror and pity.

  “Oh, ’Spando! What happened?”

  “That big boy ran into some trouble,” I said sarcastically. “If the black monster comes back for him, he’ll be a pushover. In fact, I think he’ll die.”

  “Then you—you took sides, Expando! You did it!” Her little body stiffened with anger. “You’ve already played god and settled the fight. Oh, ’Spando!”

  I tried to get a word in edgewise, but poor little Shrinky was in tears. She was sure I had acted impulsively. How could I know I hadn’t struck out against an innocent life?

  I shook her and made her listen to me. “Shrinky, dear, that creature was all set to take a bite out of your pretty face when I grabbed it. Is that any way for an innocent life to behave toward its god?”

  This terrifying revelation was too much for her and she buried her sobs against my shoulder.

  “There, there. You just forget it. I’ve got you right here in my arms—”

  But I didn’t have. If there’s anything that takes the wind out of a fellow’s sails it’s to be caught off guard just when he’s cooing to his lady-love that he’s her big strong hero. I was caught off guard. The roar of rain, and the screen of spraying drops all around us, gave that inky monster all the sound and smoke screen he needed to slip up on us. Something thudded against the small of my back like an oversize baseball bat. Shrinky flew out of my hands and went sprawling. Her little yellow blouse and white skirt caught a spray of muddy raindrops as she fell.

  The inky monster was on me, kicking and slapping like an iron-clad grizzly bear. Three awful wallops got me across the back before I could recover my balance. Believe me, that ant was fast and treacherous. His legs were more like metal and leather than flesh. I was only flesh—god-flesh! In that terrifying moment, with poor Shrinky wailing for help, and myself facing death, I could have sold all my god-playing talents for a pair of wings, and never quibbled over the price. In my reduced state, that inky monster could walk over me as easy as a milk horse over a traffic button.

  He walked into me, like a prize fighter going after a midget opponent. But this time he didn’t strike me. He grabbed me. He grabbed Shrinky. He carried us off through the rain.

  On the way to the ant hill Shrinky stopped crying twi
ce. The first time was when she saw two other black ants standing alongside our path, staring. She must have seen what I saw—that they opened their eyes with a look of amazed respect. But not for us—oh, no. For the black ant that was carrying us, and for his scars of battle.

  They might have been saying, “Look at Tuffy, He must have been in one devil of a scrap. Look at that left front leg with half the hairs ripped off. Well, anyway, he’s bringing home some dinner. The queen will like that.”

  Whether or not they actually said any such thing, it was plain enough that they were taking in a situation which could have been summed up in those words. For we were on our way to the depths, and again Shrinky was crying like a spanked baby.

  Then her howling stopped for the second time, just after we came to the end of that long path covered with rain-slapped grass blades. Now we were on a small hillock of little rocks—sand and dirt to you. From this ant hill vantage point we caught our last view of the wider world before we were carted down into the earthen dungeons. What Shrinky saw was an elephant.

  That was a sight I’ll never forget. I never saw an elephant that didn’t look pretty big; but when you’re reduced to less than the size of an ant, well, the little boy wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was a hellova big elephant. Shrinky and I both saw it. We both saw that it liked the rain and had concluded that this would be nice weather to take a stroll along the fence. It was sauntering toward us.

  Then we went down. Down through spirals, curves and coils. Down through the passages full of strange odors that were more than soft dry earth. Passages that grew so black that Shrinky kept whispering to me to be sure I was still there.

  CHAPTER IV

  Favor for the Queen

  “There’s the queen,” Shrinky said, nudging me quietly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she’s the largest. And you can tell by the way she’s looking us over, wondering how we’ll taste.”

  “I thought the queen was supposed to have wings.” I was sure that Shrinky would know about such things, and the more I could keep her mind on them, the less she’d think about the dangers.

  For my part, I was in a whirl. These ants were surrounding us by the thousands, from the sounds of scratching feet along these black paths. And they could brush past us and scrape our torn legs with the tough, saw-like hairs on their legs, without ever bothering to inquire whether we were gods, on humans, or snails. If our godlike ideals hadn’t been thoroughly punctured by this time, nothing more than this was needed to lay us low.

  Shrinky was squeezing my hand when our captor, “Tuffy,” pushed us back into the corner. We could still see the queen, and as we became more accustomed to the nearly total darkness, our eyes succeeded in making out the form and contour of this earthern chamber. Some of the tiny rocks glowed with a dull light, and against this background we could see the forms of many ants parading back and forth.

  The queen presided over this turmoil. She was three or four times as large as some of the underveloped members of the colony. According to Shrinky, she lived and grew fat by virtue of their work, and when she felt like it she would lay another batch of eggs and hatch out another family of workers.

  “But she’ll always stay right here,” Shrinky said. “She has torn off her wings because she doesn’t need them any more. You know how married life is; the wife is supposed to quit fluttering around, and the husband is supposed to see that she has a comfortable home, and gets plenty of delicacies to eat—”

  “Such as us.”

  “And has plenty of maids to work for her, and plenty of cows to furnish milk for the whole household—”

  “Cows?”

  “Ants do have them, the aphids, you know. They need them, with such large families. But they need other food, too, and that’s probably why Tuffy picked on the big green worm”

  It was interesting to watch the comings and goings of these tunnel dwellers, and to speculate upon their plans for us. It became a game with us to watch our chance to expand ourselves in size. We crowded as far out of sight as we could, not to be discovered in this process. For I had not forgotten that my impressive size had once caused Tuffy to turn tail and run.

  As we expanded ever so carefully, we began to damage some of the tunnels overhead. Seven or eight officious ant guards came around to see what was the matter. They crept close and one of them gave me a push in the stomach. He tried to reach the top of my head, but this required him to crawl up on my shoulder.

  “We’re as big as olives,” Shrinky whispered. “They don’t like it.”

  “No one likes olives at first.”

  “They’re pounding me on the head. What shall I do?”

  “Grab them. Squeeze the life out of a few of the devils. We’re not taking any torture off these little brutes,” I snapped. “And if that queen gets too arrogant—”

  “We’re not in danger, are we, ’Spando? There aren’t enough of them to—”

  “Of course not. As long as we keep our size.”

  Shrinky threw off the inky monsters that were crowding her, and they fell back, somewhat dismayed over finding so large a captive. They began to run around in circles, apparently passing the excitement along the line.

  Shrinky’s hand was trembling against my arm, and again I tried to assure her that we were in no real danger. But we both knew what neither of us admitted aloud. As long as that heavy thump-thump-thump kept jarring the earth we were in plenty of peril. That elephant was stamping around close over our heads.

  If our bodies grew much larger his foot could crush us like eggs. If we got much smaller, the ants could mob us. At present we were trapped, and the best we could do was to remain no larger than olives.

  Now the swarming denizens of this underground chamber arranged themselves more or less like an audience assembled for a concert or a public speech. The queen was the mistress of ceremonies, and did she do some fancy prancing back and forth in front of her public!

  “I don’t like her,” Shrinky whispered. “She puts on too many airs.”

  “She’s got a chorus of boy friends there that are running her a close second. Look at ’em strut. They must be prime ministers or something.” When the little group of swaggering males took their places like statues around the queen, she gave some sort of signal, and who should step out in the center but our own scrappy, hardbitten Tuffy!

  “They’re doing honors for Tuffy!” Shrinky whispered. “He must have won some competition for bravery.”

  “He conquered us,” I whispered. “Look out, something’s going to happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he’s going to present us to the queen for her dinner.”

  “But he can’t do that,” Shrinky objected. “We’re gods. We won’t stand for it. How can we come down here and do them good turns if they eat us?”

  “A chance to eat us is the only good turn they want. But they’ve got a surprise coming, Shrinky. When that tough boy captured us we were small. Now we’re fifty times his size. He’s gonna have trouble making his story stick.”

  And that was exactly what happened. You could see it in their gestures. A dozen of those jealous prime ministers stood back stiffly, waiting to see what sort of prisoners Tuffy would bring forth.

  At the same time they carried on a sly play of signals to the hundreds of worker ants that made up the surrounding audience. As if to say, “Keep your eyes on Tuffy, boys. He thinks he’s going to gain the favor of the queen that belongs to us. But just wait. If she doesn’t like what he’s got to offer, she’ll probably bite his head off. And we’ll help her.”

  Well, Tuffy called us out and we scraped our heads along the dirt ceilings, and piled the dirt back of us with our hands to make room for ourselves in the tight little chamber. Tuffy looked at us, from the legs up, and he almost fell over.

  Then he looked back at the row of mockers and scorners, and suddenly he stiffened. He was going to stick by his bluff. He swaggered, and toss
ed his head, and beat his front feet on the floor and bounced around, all as if to say, “There they are, your majesty. I captured them single handed.”

  If ever I saw twelve ants laugh and make sport, that was the moment. They jumped over each other and went through mock scuffles, sparring and beating and biting. Then the queen made some sort of signal that brought everybody to attention again.

  Tuffy was on the spot, all right. Those twelve prime ministers were all ready to jump on him. They snapped at his feet. They kicked at him. One of them tried to push Mm over.

  And poor Tuffy didn’t even feel it. He was just standing there, staring at us, completely dazed. He knew darned well he had captured us, and yet, from our immense size, he knew darned well it was impossible.

  The queen was urging him to demonstrate. His honesty and honor were at stake, and it was all too plain that in another minute or two this gang of scoffers would tear him limb from limb. He was an inky monster, a savage ant, a ruthless fighter with more nerve than sense; but I confess that I felt sorry for him, caught in a jam like that.”

  “Expando, we’ve got to shrink,” Shrinky whispered tensely. “We’ve got to. We can’t let him take this rap on our account.”

  CHAPTER V

  Shrinky Over-Shrinks!

  What a man won’t do for a weeping woman! Yes, he’ll even destroy himself. That’s how it has been, all down through the ages; and I suspect it would be true whether humans were as large as elephants or small enough for ant sandwiches.

  The doughty little Tuffy waded into his task. He was supposed to show those skeptics exactly how he outfought us, and he did it. He struck at us, and we pretended to weaken at the knees. At the same time we gritted our teeth and made ourselves smaller, just as rapidly as we could.