by Ken Brosky
“That’s pretty funny coming from an action figure. You’re taller than I expected, Mr. Thumb.”
Tom Thumb stood straight, glaring at me. He had a narrow jaw and leathery skin that stretched awkwardly around his lips, as if he was a twenty-year-old trapped in a forty-year-old’s body, not quite sure how to make his face contort without looking like a total creepazoid.
The dandruff didn’t help things.
“I’ll have you know I’ve been stretching,” he said defensively. “Been through all manner of devices to grow a few inches here and there. Painful stuff, I’ll have you know.”
“Congratulations.”
“I suppose you’re wondering about the lights,” he said, glancing up.
I shrugged. “Meh.”
“My helper, Hans, spliced the power cable from the resort!” Tom Thumb jumped up and down with glee like a little marionette, rattling the beakers. One of the glasses fell over, rolling before landing on the cavern floor and cracking. “It was my idea, of course. He he he! They deserve much worse for ruining such a beautiful valley.”
“I can’t argue there.”
“Are you, perchance, wondering about the skeleton? Surely the giant skeleton has piqued your interest, at least.”
I stepped forward, keeping my saber in front of me. “I’d rather just kill you.”
“I ate him!” He giggled. “Well, not all of him,” Tom Thumb confessed. “I had to use some of him for my potions. This is a long time in the making, hero woman. Er … are you a woman?”
“Yes.”
“A shame,” he said, tsk-tsk’ing me.
I growled and took another step closer, glancing at the shadows beyond the giant’s leg bones. It looked clear. Free of traps. I felt confident. Tom was smart, but he was tiny. And I was fast.
“You want to see something really interesting?” he asked. “Poke the bones with your fancy-looking sword.”
I glanced at the massive thighbone to my left. “Why?”
“Oh, just do it.” Tom Thumb rolled his eyes. “I promise he doesn’t bite.”
I reached out with the saber, poking the femur. A burning blackness appeared, slowly spreading across the white bones until the entire skeleton was consumed. Ashes blanketed the cave floor.
“You see? You see?” Tom clapped his hands together with demented glee. “Not quite dead! Perhaps if a hundred years had passed, he would have come back to life. Grown new eyes and a new tongue and new skin and been right as rain. Of course, then I would have had to eat him again. He was quite tasty.” He paced on the table, arms folded behind his back. “Strange stuff, this Corruption. It’s magic, you know. Mysterious. It has strange rules. It bends the laws of nature. For every answer I find, I have a dozen more questions!”
“What are you really doing down here?” I asked, moving closer.
“I’ve been studying my people,” Tom said. He nodded with his head to the parchment paper. “Learning about the Corruption. I’m certain it serves a purpose, but to what end? I’m a bit of a scientist, you see. I sent out Hans to collect various things for potions and experiments, but what has fascinated me from the start is the balance. Nature is all about balance, isn’t it? The Brothers Grimm bring their fairy tales to life. The Corruption overtakes us. The hero arrives to destroy the Corruption. But who or what created the Corruption?”
“Probably someone with less dandruff,” I said, stepping closer. “Tell me about your potions.”
“What does it matter?” Tom asked. “I’ve already drank them. Drunk them? Drinken them? Oh, how I hate English. Your words can get so confusing.”
“You spoke English fine in my dream,” I said.
“Oh, the dream! Now that is an interesting aspect of this whole situation. I’d love to know more.”
“I saw you trick the giant into crawling into this cavern,” I said, waving my sword around the cavern.
“Intriguing! Beguiling! I didn’t know English back then. Anywho, the potions! Yes, I feared Hans might have gotten himself into trouble with this latest shipment and so I soldiered on, substituting some ingredients. And when the potion was mostly complete, I drank it. Unfortunately, my time has run out. Oh well.”
He rolled up the sleeve of his loose-fitting doll’s shirt.
“Really?” I asked.
He frowned. “This is what you do, no? You stab people like me and they go poof?”
“Well, yeah …”
“So get it over with already. I have no interest in drawing this out.” He closed his eyes. “Lament, lament! My time was too short, my potions didn’t work, blah, blah, blah.”
I inched my way closer, waiting for the other shoe to drop. When none came, I jumped forward, tapping Tom Thumb’s bare arm with the sharp edge of the blade.
“Excellent!” he said, staring at the burning blackness. He rolled down his sleeve. “Thank you for providing me with the last ingredient.”
“You’re welcome. Wait, what?”
He smiled, scratching his head. His right hand suddenly doubled in size, blowing up like a pink balloon. “Whoops, there it goes, starting up already.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, pointing the blade at his throat. “Tell me the truth, you little rat!”
“I tricked you,” he said, jumping off the table. As he did, his legs and feet grew, ripping through his doll’s pants but thankfully sparing his undergarment. He was misshapen, all of his limbs and body parts growing out of proportion, righting themselves, growing again. “Silly, cocky girl.”
I stabbed his shoulder but he ducked, knocking over a beaker. Glass shattered on the cave floor. Bubbling liquid hissed.
“No stabbing me again. Once is quite enough.” His hand grew again and he swatted me away, knocking me to the ground. A piercing pain flashed through my ribs, radiating across my chest. I drew in a deep, painful breath, pushing myself up off the rock. The giant’s ashes stuck to my sweaty palm.
“Crud, Alice … what did you do?” I whispered. Couldn’t learn your lesson the first time around with Hans, could you?
Tom Thumb began laughing maniacally. He was taller than me now, marveling at his long, alien-like fingers. He’d ripped through his shirt, revealing a pale thin torso and a tiny little black wound where I’d stabbed his shoulder. The burning blackness wasn’t spreading.
“I’m … tall!” he exclaimed. “Finally! After two hundred years … I’m tall!”
“That’s what this was about?” I asked incredulously, clutching my ribs. I took a step closer, the saber shaking in my hand. I wasn’t sure if the pain would let me make a quick strike again.
“Of course,” Tom Thumb said in a gurgled, low voice. “And I needed a hero to complete it. My potion was created with the very essence of the giant. The potion isolated the Corruption’s unique properties, enhancing the giant’s quintessence. The hero balances the Corruption. Hans was merely a ruse. I didn’t think it would take so long for one of your kind to hunt us down, but all is forgiven. After all, I do have an infinite half-life and—”
His hand doubled in size. And weight—it landed on the table with a thump, knocking over a dozen beakers.
“Um …”
His left eye expanded, growing bloodshot as it pushed down the skin on his cheek. My masked face stared back at me in the glassy blue iris. Tom Thumb cried out, his voice dropping a full octave. I stepped forward, stabbing him again and again. The burning blackness spread, then stopped as his torso grew to twice its previous size, stretching his skin and stretching it like rubber.
He cried out again, his voice dropping even deeper. His massive hand grew again, breaking through the table and landing on the cave floor with such force that I could feel it in the rock under my feet.
“That’s my cue to leave,” I told him, turning and hurrying back to the secret entrance. There was a crash behind me. I turned in time to see Tom Thumb’s massive hand pull down the string of lights from the ceiling. His fingers were each the size of a couch, his arm impossibly
long, the rest of his body slowly catching up. His left eye bulged, throbbing, monopolizing his face.
The bulbs popped when they crashed into the rock floor, the cord snapping like a whip. In the darkness, the giant roared again.
I turned left, into the secret passage, one hand on the wall to guide me. I tried to take short breaths to keep the pain in my ribs at bay, cursing the 70’s track lighting for going out. When I bumped into the wall where the tunnel suddenly made a hard left, I felt the fiery pain in my chest all over again. My panicked breaths came quicker. A terrible fear flashed through me: I wasn’t going to escape. I was going to be trapped down here.
I see you trapped in a dark cavern …
But then I could see the exit, and the trap door was still open, and I realized Agnim’s prophecy about me being trapped in a cavern hadn’t come true. I jumped through the entrance, rewarded with a soft whap by a furry paw.
“Hey!” I wheezed.
“Sorry,” Briar said. “I thought you were a monster. What happened?”
“I made a huge mistake and now there’s a giant growing gianter and his hand is all big and weird and his bulging eye was looking at me so now we need to run!”
Briar’s mouth quivered.
“Come on!” I said, grabbing his paw.
We ran to the parking lot, where a gentle layer of snow had suffocated the warmth and blanketed the asphalt. I took short breaths but refused to slow down, letting the wiggly lines on the soles of my shoes do their job ensuring I didn’t slip. The resort seemed impossibly far. Why did they need such a massive parking lot?
“What are we doing?” Briar asked. From under our feet came a low rumble, tickling the crisp snow and sending flakes bouncing up from the ground like popcorn kernels on a skillet.
“Tom Thumb. Big. Getting bigger,” I huffed. “Tricked me. We need to build a catapult.”
“Do you … do you know how to build a catapult?”
“No!”
We reached the rear entrance to the resort. The big wooden doors were flanked by fake, old-timey-looking torches sticking out of the brick exterior. There were windows at the far end overlooking the lake, but no lights on inside.
“Tall windows aside, it certainly looks like a castle,” Briar said. “Perhaps they’ll have a catapult ready and waiting for us.”
I bent over, trying to catch my breath. Another bolt of pain flashed through my ribs. “Something tells me being able to withstand a giant attack wasn’t one of the designer’s priorities.”
There came another low rumble, tickling the soles of our feet. A dozen car alarms went off, screeching. I turned in time to see a large boulder fall away from the old cave entrance, rolling to a stop at the edge of the parking lot.
“This could be bad,” I told Briar, pulling open the door and hurrying inside. I was surprised to find myself in the lobby. No one stood behind the glass check-in desk, which was flanked by little marble waterfalls. Tall black lamps with reversed shades radiated their dim light up toward the ceiling. It was New Age-y all right.
“What are you going to do?” Briar asked.
“Save these people,” I answered, walking over to the red fire alarm on the wall. I broke the seal, pulling the little white handle. The alarm began ringing, drowning out the chorus of cars in the parking lot.
It only took one wheezy breath before people began streaming into the lobby. Some were speaking hurriedly in different languages. Others couldn’t get past the fact that a young girl dressed in black wearing a green mask was waiting to greet them. They wore pajamas and underwear and fuzzy white bathrobes. Everyone looked freaked.
“What is this?” someone asked in English.
“Everyone needs to get out of here,” I shouted over the din of voices. “Like, right now!”
“Who are you?” asked a middle-aged man with straight, dark hair. He was the only one dressed, his white button-down shirt untucked and wrinkled. “Are you a guest here? Why did your personal assistant not remove your mask this afternoon?”
“What? No, this isn’t … Listen! Everyone needs to go to your cars right now!”
There came another crash from outside, as if the ground had split open. One of the women standing in the doorway between the lobby and the dining room screamed, and suddenly we were all rushing between the fancy dining tables to get to the windows.
There, at the edge of the parking lot: a massive hand, reaching through the old cave entrance, brushing aside the massive boulders as if they were pebbles.
More screams.
“Everyone get to your cars!” I shouted.
No one was listening. Everyone panicked, hurrying in every direction except toward the rear entrance. One couple hid underneath one of the tables, pulling the white tablecloth low. I pushed the table over, glaring at them and clutching my sore ribs. “Get out of here!” I shouted.
“We took a bus!” the man said with a heavy accent. “We do not have a car!”
“Then run. Just don’t hang out here!”
There came another chorus of screams near the windows. The ground shook, nearly knocking me off my feet. I turned back to the window and felt my stomach hollow out.
Tom Thumb was bursting from the mountain. Boulders broke away, tumbling down the gentle slope and rolling onto the parking lot. Another boulder rolled farther, splashing into the steamy lake and sending waves lapping at the shore. Most of his hair was gone, save for a few long strands decorated with massive chunks of dandruff. One ear grew, then the other, each one deformed and pointed at the tip.
“What is it?” a woman screamed.
“Someone call the authorities!” yelled a man.
“My cell has no service!” shouted another.
I hurried past them, to the rear entrance. Briar was waiting outside, hopping from foot to foot.
“This is bad,” he said. “Bad, bad, bad!”
“I know.” I knelt down, drawing a short gladius sword. “We need a catapult. We need …” I looked up at the tower. A light bulb in my head turned on. “Briar. See the tower above us?”
Briar glance up, twitching his whiskers. “Yes.”
“I need you to go up there and prime the cannon.”
“The what?!”
“The brochure for this place said they fire off their cannons as part of their weekly festivities.” The giant cut me off with a roar, clutching the ground and tearing apart the asphalt. He crawled slowly out of the massive hole in the earth, knocking aside more boulders. His hand grew again and the pink skin turned gooey, like it was made of Silly Putty. “Find the powder. Prime the cannon.”
“But surely they don’t have any cannonballs lying around!”
“Briar! Just trust me!”
“Oh I do,” he said, hurrying to the rear entrance. “I just think you’re crazy.”
“That makes two of us,” I murmured.
Briar disappeared. The rear door opened and closed. I turned back to the giant and—before I could rethink it—took off running.
OK. Charging toward a giant. Ribs sore. Breaths shaky. Hands sweaty. Plan? Well, the plan wasn’t that good.
The giant turned his massive head, glowering at me as I slid between two sports cars. One of his eyes was still larger than the other, and for good reason: he was still growing, slower now, but he’d already surpassed the giants in my dream. His right hand slowly reached down, grabbed one of the massive boulders at the edge of the parking lot …
And threw it right at me!
I turned left, kicking off the bumper of the nearest car. The closer the boulder got, the bigger it got. Not the size of a pebble or my head but a car! I dove, rolling, kicking up puffy snow, feeling my ribs cry out with a flash of pain. The boulder landed on the red Mercedes right next to me, squashing it like a pancake.
“Too close,” I said, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to my feet. He crawled closer to the building, closer to me, his thick glob-like fingers digging into the parking lot. I had to slow him down to give Bri
ar more time to set up the cannon. And hopefully, people would come to their senses and eventually, you know, run away.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” the giant roared. The heavy bass sound rattled my sore ribs. His left ear began to grow, then his nose, then some of his teeth. He tried to stand up, but his massive legs were nothing more than mutated globs now. He fell to his knees and landed hard on the ground, tearing through the asphalt with his yellow fingernails.
“Ya!” I shouted, stabbing one of his fingers. His roar pushed me back a step, giving me ample room to dodge when he tried swatting me with his other hand. His palm slapped the asphalt, sending a shockwave through the ground. I fell over, heart thumping against my sore ribs, butt thumping against the asphalt. Snow soaked into my pants. The short sword slipped out of my sweaty grasp, leaving me with nothing but my fountain pen for a weapon.
I forced my tired body to its feet, running around him and stabbing the pen into his leg. I grabbed onto him, climbing onto his butt. Or what should have been his butt. He was losing his form quickly; he looked more like a humanoid blob than anything else, constantly morphing as his limps grew longer and longer while the rest of his body tried to keep up, his skin stretching like pink taffy.
He crawled closer to the resort.
“No you don’t!” I said, drawing another sword in his back. He howled with pain as I pulled it out, waiting for the steel blade to fully materialize before plunging it into the gooey skin.
The giant’s entire body flinched, knocking me off my feet. I rolled off him, landing on top of an old box-shaped car. The wind was knocked out of me, sending my entire body into a protective roll away from the blob of flesh. I landed on the ground, the snow freezing my fingers.
“All right,” I said, watching the burning blackness on the giant’s finger completely engulfed by the gooey mutation. “I’m sufficiently grossed out at this point.”
I spun around, giving the giant a wide berth. He was nearly double the size he’d been when he’d burst from the cave opening, and twice as slimy. He looked almost as if he was melting now, growing more and more blob-like. Instead of roaring, he made a gurgling sound deep within his throat. His right ear grew larger, pulsating like a marshmallow in a microwave. The lobe hung low like an earring, no longer able to maintain its shape.
