On the Shoulders of a Giant
Marco had never felt so big.
He looked around the bus, scanning the small crowd of familiar faces. There was the old lady with the ugly hat that looked like a pile of salami, the man with the battered briefcase always muttering to his reflection in the glass window, and even Gary the mortician with his crazy eye-makeup that made him look like a Sailor Moon character. The same old crowd he’d always ridden with. But something was different today. Something was wrong.
“Sit down, Marco,” Agnes the bus driver barked at him. Even she seemed different — smaller somehow? “I can’t drive with you up here gawping like that.”
Probably just his brain playing tricks on him. He shook his head and sat in his usual spot near the front, dropping his bag into the seat beside him.
An unusually petite young woman sitting across the aisle caught his eye, someone he’d never seen before. She was staring at him, big emerald eyes framed by a purple hoodie.
He turned away, face warming. Marco was used to the staring. He didn’t mind that. It was the comments and strange looks which followed that bothered him. The snickering, the whispering.
“Dude, you’re bignormous,” she said in nothing resembling a whisper.
Marco nodded and gazed out the window. He swallowed, waiting for the follow-up.
He’d always been a big guy, towering over everyone at six foot nine. The tallest in the room since the eighth grade, when puberty had sent him rocketing to the ceiling. The “growing pains” were nothing short of pure agony for Marco at the time. Each morning, he’d wake up feeling like he’d been strapped to a rack and pulled like taffy. And now, at the ripe old age of forty-six, those ghostly memories of pain had returned with a vengeance. Arthritis.
He cracked his knuckles, flexing his gnarled fingers as he stared out the window.
“Gross,” the girl said. “Your hands sound like bubble wrap.”
Marco shrugged, grabbing his knapsack. “Sorry.” He reached up and pulled the cord. This wasn’t his stop, but he needed to get off.
“Huh?” She snapped her gum. “Sorry for what?”
He hurried past her as the bus slowed to a stop. The doors couldn’t open fast enough.
“See ya later, Bigfoot!”
He leapt off the bus.
Marco considered walking to the park the next day, but the sky threatened rain. He hated walking in the rain — umbrellas were always too small or the wind would flip them inside-out and render them useless. Despite his best efforts, he’d inevitably end up soaked and miserable in seconds.
Better to suck it up and take the bus.
Arriving three minutes late, the bus roared in at a terrifying speed; ten thousand pounds of steel and rubber coming to a screeching halt in front of him had Marco stumbling away from the curb. The doors shuddered open as he caught his breath.
“Sorry for the little scare there, Marco!” Agnes called from inside. “Having a bit of difficulty reaching the brakes today.”
His brain flailed, screaming that such information should concern him, and he even considered waiting for the next bus before remembering this was the only bus to come out this way. Besides, it would be rude not to get in after she’d stopped for him. He gulped and boarded the death wagon.
Agnes was now a child. No, not an actual child but small enough to be one, surely. She was even smaller than she was yesterday, her sneakers now barely grazing the pedals.
We are so dead.
“Come on, I’m running late.” Agnes shooed him along into the bus. “Git!”
Marco stepped past, unable to tear his gaze away from the shrinking bus-driver. What’s happening?!
He sat with a squeak. Wait, a squeak? Tiny fists pummeled his backpack.
Marco shot up and whirled around.
“Hey, Bigfoot!” It was Hoodie-Girl from yesterday. “Watch it!”
“S-sorry.” Marco took a seat across from her, next to the meat-hat lady. Meat-Hat grumbled something, but Marco didn’t hear it. He was mesmerized by how much the old woman had shrunk since yesterday, the same as Agnes. Like a child playing dress-up, oversized clothes draped her small frame.
“Mind your manners, boy,” she snapped, fumbling with her purse. “It’s rude to stare.”
What’s going on here?
Meat-Hat certainly hadn’t been blessed with a sip from the fountain of youth, not with a face as brittle and wrinkled as dry autumn leaves, and not with that crusty attitude. So what was it?
He mumbled another apology then looked away. How strange that both Agnes and Meat-Hat had come down with this bizarre affliction. Marco considered asking the girl he’d nearly squashed if she, too, had become smaller overnight, but then he noticed that everyone on the bus had turned hobbit. Their legs dangled from seats like school-children. Their clothes drooped, and in some cases, were falling off altogether. The addled window-mutterer clutched a briefcase that was nearly as big as he was. He scowled in Marco’s direction.
“Strange, ain’t it?” Hoodie-Girl caught his eye. “I mean, I’m used to being small, but now so is everyone else. And they’re all acting like it’s just another Tuesday.”
“But it’s not Tuesday,” Marco said, face scrunching up in confusion. “It’s Thursday.”
“Huh? Oh.” She shook her head, a crooked smile finding her lips. “You’re a strange one, you know that, Bigfoot? Totes weird.”
Marco chewed his bottom lip. Why did she have to keep calling him that?
“But the good kind of weird. Like me.” The girl pulled back her hoodie, revealing a pair of pig tails: one black, the other a nearly translucent white. They were tied up by what looked like little squid hairclips. “You’re not the wrong kind of weird, ya know? Not like them.”
“Right.” Marco nodded, thinking he was beginning to understand. The way she talked, the way she’d stressed them, reminded him of when he was younger. When he’d hated the world for making him feel different and strange and so unlike everyone else… resented them for making him feel weird. He didn’t want to be reminded of that. “You know, you probably shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
She laughed, a bright and chirpy sound like the tiny songbirds in the park. “I’m nineteen, dude. I think I can decide that for myself.”
“Oh, I didn’t — you just look so young.”
She bristled at that, tugging her hoodie back up and letting it cast a shadow over her eyes. “I know, like a little kid. That’s what everyone says.”
Marco couldn’t understand why such a comment would upset her — didn’t she want to blend in? Fly under the radar? He didn’t have that luxury.
“Hey, it could be worse.” Marco gestured to Meat-hat who’d started snoring beside him. “Imagine looking like a sad pile of bologna.”
Hoodie-Girl laughed, even snorted before she could raise a hand to smother it. “So weird, dude.”
“So you tell me,” Marco smiled.
“I’m Dess.” The girl adjusted her hoodie, her gemstone eyes sparkling in the light again. “Short for Destiny, but if you value having your limbs attached to your body, you’ll do your best to never call me that.”
“Hi, Dess.” Marco crossed his legs. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Sure. You got a name, Bigfoot?” Dess chewed on a strand of her black hair. “Were you always so big?”
“Marco.” He rubbed his neck. “And yeah, I guess so.”
“Must be nice,” she huffed. “You have no idea how much I’m relishing not being the tiniest person on the bus right now. Though you probably feel like Gulliver wandering into the land of Lilliputians.”
“Or Godzilla,” Marco suggested. “Terrorizing helpless townsfolk.”
Dess made a strange screeching roar, hands twisting into little claws. “Die, puny humans! Tremble before my napalm breath!”
Marco discretely fetched a mint from his bag and plopped it into his mouth.
“I think they’re being punished.”
“What?” Marco coughed over the mint. “Who?”
“Them,” Dess said, waving around the bus. “All of them. By God or aliens or… whatever. They’re being punished for being shitty human beings.”
Marco looked around. They couldn’t all be horrible, could they? And aliens?!
“I mean, it makes sense, right?” The glimmer in her eyes didn’t allow for disagreement.
“Maybe,” Marco wondered. “I mean, it could be a great number of things: government bio-weapon, some sort of ancient curse, evil space wizards…”
“Evil space wizards!?” Dess clapped. “Sign me up for that, Marco, my man. Poof! Make all them bitches disappear. Where’d that idea come from?”
“I read a lot.” Marco fished into his backpack, pulling out a book. “The bad guys in this one turned the entire human population into blobs of slime, all except for the chosen few. I’m at the part where Piotr, the main guy, steps in a puddle that turns out to be his ex-wife.”
“Oh. My. God.” Dess whipped out her phone and snapped a picture of Marco awkwardly holding his book. “You have to let me borrow that after.”
“Uh, sure.” He returned the book to his bag. “It’s really not that good.”
The bus came to another sudden stop, and Meat-Hat woke, sputtering in indignation. They were outside the college.
Dess stood. “This is my stop.”
“Okay. Nice chatting with you.”
“You too, Bigfoot.” She winked at him. “Stay weird.”
Marco didn’t watch TV or spend much time on the Internet. He liked books, physical things he could hold like magical artifacts… grimoires with the power to teleport him to other worlds. But today he was scrolling through his phone as he sopped up puddles of syrup with fluffy bits of waffle.
The internet was abuzz, from big news sites to his Facebook feed. “Shrinking Population Brings Big Problems”, “Hocus Pocus: Humanity’s Disappearing Act”, “Honey I Shrunk… the Planet?!” That last one made him chuckle. But after an hour of reading and three plates of waffles, Marco had even more questions and no real answers. When would it stop?
And what was it?
All sorts of theories were put forth, from genetic manipulation to a world-wide pandemic, each more fantastic than the last.
Marco turned off his phone. “It’s space wizards, dummies.”
Whatever. Let the scientists work it out.
The bus didn’t come that day. But the sky was clear, and the breeze felt nice on Marco’s skin, so he walked to the park instead.
Before he could get settled on his favourite bench, a pair of rabbits bounded up to him, their noses twitching in anticipation of a treat. They looked as pudgy as ever; certainly not any smaller than yesterday, and certainly not shrinking. Must just be a people thing.
But why wasn’t he shrinking, too?
He sat down, pulled out his book and a brown paper bag that held a stale loaf of bread. Marco wondered if the baker who’d made the bread had shrunk, too. He imagined a tiny person rolling giant loaves around like a Keebler Elf.
Another rabbit joined the pair, who in turn moved closer still.
“Hungry today, huh?” They seemed bolder than usual. Perhaps because he was the only one around.
“Hey, Bigfoot!”
Marco yelped, knocking his book off his lap and nearly falling off the bench himself. The rabbits took off. “Oh. Hey.”
Dess flopped down beside him, dropping her bag in the dirt. “Whatcha readin’ today?”
He picked up the book and dusted off the cover. “Some dystopian thing, not terribly interesting yet. Just started.”
“The real world is ending around you, and you’re just chillin’ in a park reading about… the end of the world.” She blinked, perhaps expecting Marco to respond.
He shrugged and stared at the rabbits now regarding them from a safe distance. At least they hadn’t disappeared completely.
“So what are you going to do?” She asked.
“Do?”
“Yeah, once everyone shrinks down rabbit size.” She nodded toward the puff-balls who waited patiently to return for their treat.
“I’m… not sure.” He shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it. What about you?”
“I’m going to squash them all like spiders.”
He turned to her, expecting a laugh or at least a smirk underneath that moody hood of hers. Nothing. “That’s murder!”
“Yeah, well they’d do the same to me.”
“I don’t think so.”
One of the rabbits had returned — white with a single floppy ear. Marco sprinkled some bread crumbs on the ground in front of it, and Floppy happily nibbled away.
“How do you get them to just come up to you like that?” Dess shuffled down the bench to get a better view, being careful not to startle the bunny this time.
“Well, I’m not that scary, am I?”
“You could crush them with one hand.” Dess fidgeted with her sleeves, tugging at bits of lint. “They should be terrified of you.”
“I could.” Marco smiled at the bunny as it hopped closer, its whiskers tickling his fingertips. “But why would I?”
There was a long pause between them. Not uncomfortable, but heavy with thought. He dropped more crumbs along the ground. Soon, the other two bunnies returned. Marco offered Dess the paper bag and a trace of a smile finally made an appearance on her face.
“My mom was nearly as tall as you are, you know.” Floppy had started to nibble on her shoelaces. “Well, in heels, I mean. Now she can’t even reach cupboards for cereal in the morning.”
“You could give her a piggy-back,” Marco suggested.
She snorted. “True, man. True.”
Marco scratched behind a bunny’s ear. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I don’t work.” Marco flicked the corner of his book. “It’s just me, my stories, and the park now.”
“Lucky bastard.” Dess returned his bag. “I guess I should head to class. Adios, Bigfoot.”
He smiled. “See ya, Smurf.”
To Marco’s surprise, the bus showed up the next day. On time, too, and without nearly running him over.
“Back to our regularly scheduled programming, Marco.” Agnes winked at him from the driver’s seat. Back to her regular size, too — she had no trouble reaching the pedals anymore.
He dropped his pass into the slot and felt a wave of relief to see everyone else had returned to normal. Dess sat beaming at him from his spot at the front.
“Bigfoot!” She scooched over so he could sit next to her.
“Hey, Smurf. Looks like everything is back to normal.” He twisted his bag around and sat beside her. “How’s your mom?”
“Hunky dory. She’s back to her full Amazonian height and everything, though complaining about a bit of back pain.” She rolled her eyes, but her exaggerated gesture was betrayed by the smirk on her face. “I’m makin’ s’ghetti tonight to celebrate. You should come! I make the best s’ghetti you’ve ever tasted. Well, it’s Mom’s recipe, actually. I think she wants to meet you.”
“S’ghetti?” Marco had to think… it sure would beat the peanut butter and toast dinner he had planned, but what would he wear? He’d have to cut the park trip short and do some laundry. “Sure.”
“Good. We always have lots left over, and Minion is getting too fat. Minion’s my cat, though he acts more like a dog or a bear than a proper feline. Do you like meatballs?”
“Are you kidding?” Marco patted the sides of his gut. “I am a meatball.”
Dess nodded, scratching at a tear in her jeans. “You know, I gotta admit — a piece of me is a little sad everything went back to normal. It was nice to be big for once. To not be so freakishly small. I felt… strong. Important.”
The bus came to a halt in front of the college.
“Move over, big guy.” Dess nudged him. “This is my stop.”
Marco stood and let her pass. But instead of returning to his seat, he followed her out.
“Oh, changed your mind about school, huh?” Dess teased him.
“Can I show you something?” He held his hands out towards her, waiting. “If you let me.”
She took a step closer, face scrunched up, curious. “Okay.”
Marco hauled her up by the armpits, then lifted her over his head as she squealed in surprise, finally setting her on his shoulders. “There. Now you’re the biggest person in the whole town. Bigger than me, even. How do you feel?”
Her feet dangled, drumming against his belly. “Um, a little dizzy, actually…”
“Dizzy?” Marco worried he’d hurt her, or perhaps she was sick.
“It’s so high!” That soft, bird-song giggle. “There’s like no air up here!”
Whew.
A couple waiting at the bus-stop glared at him.
Marco set her down. “See? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Like I always say, good things come in small packages.”
She smiled and thwacked his arm. “Thanks, Bigfoo — Marco.” She squinted at him, her smile dropping. “You know, they were right about you.”
Marco’s breath caught. His face warmed as he felt the couple’s judgmental looks upon him. Maybe he should have just stayed on the bus.
Stupid.
“I think I see now what’s behind all those giant walls you put up.” She cocked her head to the side, as though studying him. “There’s something even bigger. Much bigger. That big ol’ heart of yours.”
Marco didn’t know what to say to that. He just grinned like an idiot.
“And don’t you dare tell anyone I got all mushy and shit, you hear me?” She gave him a stern expression, which was far from intimidating. “I will squash you like a spider!”
“You got it, Smurf.”
Her smirk returned. She plugged in her ear-buds and headed off to class.
The bunnies in the park looked so much smaller today, miniature balls of fluff snatching bits of bread from Marco’s giant mitt.
In fact, the whole park appeared tiny.
His heart pressed against his massive chest, and he smiled to himself.
Marco had never felt so big.
