Erin's Living Nightmare - Ch 12

…and I wish…

The first change came in a blink, with Erin finding herself suddenly cramped by a room which had only a second before been vast as a landscape. There was a series of crashes as she fell on her bum and tried to right herself, arms and legs knocking into things with every movement, and Yvette was yelling. Erin twisted around to land on her hands and knees, head as high as the light fixings, and she found her manager side-stepping around into her vision, gesticulating furiously.

“What have you done! Do you know how expensive that desk was? My computer! This is all coming out of your pay!”

Erin had to take a second to take it in – the grand desk on its side and cracked, the computer shattered – and as she backed up her rear hit the wall with a loud crack.

“Stop!” Yvette shrieked. “Stop moving you enormous imbecile!”

She froze with an unblinking grimace.

The door burst open and Russel skidded to a standstill on the threshold, more people coming in fast behind him. Seeing Erin, the colour drained from his face. “Yvette. Should I call security?”

“We don’t need a circus in here. No, Erin’s going to clean this up.”

Erin frowned, not liking that scolding tone. She held up a hand to inspect herself, flexing her fingers. Big. She was really big. From the way she was penned in, maybe three times her normal height? The doorway was filled by watching faces, phones held up and flashing. The lights in the office flickered, damaged in Erin’s growth. She heard whispers of annoyance and judgement from outside, and saw Russel’s face at the front shifting from initial surprise back to his usual pitying mockery.

“Not a good look, Erin,” he mouthed, as Yvette thumped to the remnants of her desk.

“Idiot girl,” she said, as if this was all another of Erin’s clumsy accidents. “I want you to put this right and get back to bloody work. Is it too much to ask that we just have a drama-free day?”

Erin rested on her haunches, as much as the space would allow, mortified at having done so much damage and drawn everyone’s attention again. This wish was getting more and more unmanageable, unpredictable. She was huge, unavoidable now. The floor groaned under her, the building itself seeming to complain at her presence.

“Don’t just sit there gawking,” Yvette shouted, snapping her fingers. “Put the desk back.”

Automatically, Erin leaned forward and lifted a hand to help, taking hold of the part of the desk. She paused, though, seeing how small it appeared in her hand now, this desk that was too giant for her to climb down before. Yvette, standing beside it with her arms crossed, was barely wider than her forearm. Erin tilted her head to one side. This was different to before. Equally embarrassing, maybe, but she wasn’t so vulnerable. Her life wasn’t in immediate danger, for one. But the wish had a habit of giving her hope, didn’t it…

“Has the blood stopped flowing to your head?” Yvette snapped, getting some not-so-hidden laughs from their audience. “Today, Dobson! I’ll be writing you – argh!”

 There was a chorus of gasps as Erin found she suddenly had Yvette in her hands, both clamped around her torso, pinning her tight. She held her off the floor, so her legs kicked, making Erin absently think it was like she’d caught a chicken. She held on tight, crushing Yvette enough that she couldn’t find air to make words, and Erin could feel how fragile the smaller woman was, how easily she could break her.

“Hey! What the hell, Erin!” Russel shouted, running in and grabbing at her fingers. Another two men bustled in after him, pushing past the staring women, and their charge startled Erin into shifting aside. Her tree-sized arm knocked into them together, knocking them down like bowling pins. She carried Yvette higher, banging her head on the ceiling. As Erin’s other coworkers scattered into the main office with shrieks of surprise and fear, she fixed her gaze on Yvette, whose face was going purple from pressure. Growling, acting on primal instinct now, Erin tightened her grip more, squeezing both hands on her terrible boss. Her monstrous, overworking, inconsiderate, inconsistent, murderous boss.

Something cracked and Yvette made a shocked sound of pain, her kicking feet going limp. Erin paused in surprise, releasing the pressure slightly. Russel and the other two men fell over each other running from the office, yelling for help. Yvette inhaled deeply, drooping forward, and Erin regarded her worriedly. Had she done some serious damage? How much worse was this going to get, if she ended up arrested, in prison? The world was watching on a live stream, she realised suddenly, and she let go. Yvette collapsed to the floor and tried to crawl aside, weakly, tears streaming and one hand up in fear.

Erin looked at her own hands, shocked at what she’d done. She could’ve killed her!

“My, my,” Janet’s voice cut through her shock, and she found the nine-foot woman bending through the doorway. Some of the others were regrouping behind, given new courage to hover by her. “How do you always find new ways to screw up, Dobson?”

Erin retreated as far as the tight space would allow, holding up her hands in innocence as Janet bent to help Yvette to her feet. In the growing calm, some tiny shapes sped out of the wreckage of the desk, moving like spiders – Yvette’s capture little people, freed from the drawer.

“Ew, gross!” Janet said, as a tiny man ran towards her waving his arms for help. She brought her high heel up and stomped on him as quickly as she might’ve an insect, with a brief crunch. Erin flinched at the ruthlessness, and in that moment missed Janet stepping to aside and stomping on another one – cutting off a woman’s tiny scream.

“That’s it,” Yvette croaked, stopping Janet from killing anyone else. But she wasn’t talking to the nine-foot woman. Regaining some composure, resting against a wall for support, the manager’s gaze was fixed hatefully on Erin, and she snarled, “You’re done here, Dobson.”

“I didn’t – I mean –” Erin stuttered, shaking again, just as before. Only now the room shook with her, lights swaying, shelves rattling. She tried to steady herself but it only made it worse.

“Forget losing your job,” Yvette spat, hobbling out towards the door. “I’ll see you in jail for this.”

Janet, guiding her out, looked back over a shoulder and smiled slyly, as if it was exactly the fate she expected for Erin. Erin quickly shook her head, falling on her hands again to follow them and protest, but her weight hit the floor hard enough to quake it and drew a few cries from out in the office. Janet shifted to block the doorway as Yvette scurried away.

“That’s enough, Dobby!” Janet said, glaring into her eyes. Erin was a lot bigger than her now, but cumbersome in this small space, still somehow feeling dwarfed by her presence. The nine-foot woman leant in a little closer and whispered, “Guess I got my wish, after all. You’re not a little freak anymore – you’re a massive one.”

Satisfied, she ducked out of the door and started saying something to Yvette, no doubt confirming how they could punish Erin. Erin stared at the space they’d left, and the damage she’d done, and saw she wouldn’t even be able to fit out of this door to follow them. She looked at her dusty hands again. She was a massive freak now. She could’ve killed someone.

Then the memory of the bridge came back to her, Radik being devoured and Janet’s words beforehand. I really just wish you weren’t such a little freak at work. It still felt like her nightmare, but was it that wish which had come true? Erin had come in small this morning. She’d been tiny enough to fit in Yvette’s pocket – tiny enough to end up technically late, as the clock hit nine. When work actually started.

“Oh my God,” Erin said aloud, eyes finding the clock broken on the floor. She wasn’t so little at work, now. Not since work began. This was Janet’s wish, not hers. That’s why she hadn’t felt so powerless. Maybe… just maybe, this wish was going to backfire on someone else.

She could have killed someone.

And there was more, she realised. Those little whispers of the half-forgotten wish she’d made, the possibility of still making this right. I wish… With the air clearing, a new wish coming into play, she was starting to remember something about how this all started.

“Just so you know,” Russel said, popping his head back in the door. “I’ve called the police. It’d be best if you –”

Erin roared, a feral sound from deep inside her, and the walls shook, the floor shook, the lights flickered. Russel fell back in fear. She reached towards him, fingers stretching out the doorway, and as she did her arm extended. Her hand swelled. The door frame exploded around her wrist and the wall tore apart like paper. She lurched forward onto her knees and broke through the floor, shoulders rising and smashing into the ceiling. Everything was breaking around her, glass shattering and desks splitting apart, but she kept her eyes on her target, and with animal instinct snatched Russel from the blistering chaos. He barely filled her hand now, and he screamed as she dragged him back to bang against a mess of debris. She jammed him right into her mouth. She ignored his struggles against her chewing teeth, grinding him up as she refocused, already sweeping an arm through the mess to grab someone else. It didn’t matter who – she caught a shrieking woman by the leg and dragged her back as she swallowed Russel, then crammed her next victim in her mouth. The room was collapsing around her – multiple rooms were collapsing, as she felt her legs stretching down, crushing their way through floors in barely interrupted jolts to keep supporting her, her shoulders broadening through Floor Eight. Water sprayed as her bulk smashed apart a washroom, and everywhere in the tumbling breaking mess of the office people were being flattened by collapsing debris as they ran and crawled screaming in panic. Erin snatched at them hurriedly, hungrily, desperate to get as many as she could before they disappeared into the damage and dust. Her arms flashed back and forth, pulling little colleagues out of the office and flicking them into her gnashing jaws. They were even smaller now, bite-sized, and she managed to gulp some down without chewing.

Erin slid back, out of the office, as her feet finally found solid ground and she managed to stretch out of the mess, shaking off chunks of broken wall and a cascade of office furniture. She squinted into daylight as the dust cleared from her face, looming higher and higher, outside the broken side of the building. The office was still standing, just, its twelve storeys creaking on their foundations, Erin’s head not quite reaching the top. It looked as though it had been hit by an immense bomb that had torn through an entire facade, leaving floors broken apart and still tumbling, the interior exposed like a cross-section diagram. Fires sparked and water sprayed, and everywhere people were falling over themselves in the dust, trying to get clear. People were struggling on Erin, too, she saw, as she heard little shrieks on her body. She’d come out with office workers hanging from her top and skirt, one woman desperately trying to get a leg up on her belt buckle. Erin picked that one off and put her screaming into her mouth. As she rolled the frantic little person about with her tongue, enjoying her fear, Erin considered the building before her, and all the little occupants who remained.

She was as big as the building. As powerful as the whole office. At last, she could stand up to them. Grinning malevolently, she took a ground-shaking step closer, crunching the street underfoot, and reached into the mess again.