Late night, Friday, February 6, 2009

Kenny

“No, no! Stop! Stop shrinking!”

Somehow, I wasn’t myself anymore. I was the house. It seemed like the kind of thing that had to be a weird dream, but it felt very real. And I was shrinking, trapping my family members inside the house. One of my sisters had gotten caught up in one of the walls, and I could feel her presence in my mind.

I tried to tell her, “Wake up, Deirdre! Break loose! Run while you still can!” I got a “What’s happening?” response from her, and then nothing. She had passed out.

With all the rest of my strength, I focused on stopping the shrinkage of the house. My other family members weren’t caught in the walls yet. I might still be able to save them. But they were asleep, and impacts with walls had not woken them up.

I could sense them, all of them, asleep in the house. But I could feel my sister most of all. Her bed had gotten flipped upright by shrinking walls and she was embedded in one of the outside walls of the house, but I could feel everything. The bed against one side of her body. The wall against the other. Her nightgown. Her breathing. She was still breathing. I could sense her mind somehow, but it was asleep, as asleep as everybody else. I couldn’t wake her up. And then she was gone.

Eventually it seemed like I had gotten the house to stop shrinking, but it had taken all my effort. And that was the last I remembered.

---

Morning, Saturday, February 7, 2009

Greg

It was a pretty boring morning at NANA when the official phone rang.

“This is Kingsman at NANA.”

“Kingsman, this is Officer Riley with the Normal Police. We need you guys to come over and check out a shrinking house at 227 Fowler Street.”

“A shrinking house?”

“Yes, it was a two-story house and now it’s the size of a garden shed. There seems to be a person embedded in one of the walls.”

“All right. I’ll gather up some people and get over there.”

---

Pretty soon I’d assembled the people we had handy who might help and we drove over. And when we arrived, we had to agree with what the policeman told us. There was a house which looked similar to the others in the neighborhood, except at a third the scale. And on one side there was the back of a head covered with hair, bare shoulders, and what appeared to be a tiny bit of the buttocks of a person protruding from one wall.

“I expect I’m taking the lead here,” Miss Tix suggested.

I agreed, and so did the others. She picked up a lawn chair from the yard and brought it close to the house, and sat to do her thing.

“There are four people alive here. They don’t appear to be possessed by ghosts or have the potential for that to happen. The reading of the one embedded in the wall is very strange. The house is part of the body. It’s all one person, with a normal sized space for a soul, and there is a soul which fits the space well. If that’s a ghost, then the original occupant of that body is dead. There’s no activity; they are all asleep, unconscious, entranced, or otherwise immobilized.”

When she stepped away, Illinois went up and pressed his stethoscope to the exposed skin near the shoulders.

“Despite being embedded in the wall of the house, this body has normal life signs: A pulse and normal, restful breathing. I’m not entirely certain, but I think this is the body of a girl or young woman.”

“The one who developed powers?” I suggested, having seen too many strange things happen in Normal because of such events.

“Quite possibly. It would make sense, to the extent that anything makes sense about this scenario.”

I asked, “Can we reach the others somehow? They might be in danger.”

“If the house really is part of her body, it might harm her to break in.”

“Other powers?”

Jump, a teleporter, said, “There’s no way I could teleport into such a confined space. I’m actually wondering how there’s enough space for their bodies. Are they perhaps stuck in walls too?”

“It could be,” Miss Tix replied, “But only the one visibly embedded in the wall appears to have the house be part of her body.”

When nobody had any other ideas, we got some tools from the police and tried to gently pry the doors and windows open, and also used a suction cup device to try to slide the windows up. But it was no use, even with windows we could see were unlocked. It didn’t even behave the way we would expect building materials to. It was unusually elastic. I could push the middle of the door inward by at least an inch with my bare hands, but it didn’t move apart from the frame on any side. It was almost as if the house wasn’t made of house anymore.

Illinois examined it at my suggestion. “Whatever it’s made of, it doesn’t appear to be living flesh. I can only sense a distant pulse, the pulse of the girl on the far side conducting through the walls. There isn’t blood flowing inside the wall itself, however much it may be a part of her.”

Miss Tix then suggested, “If the house really is her body, then maybe that boy Dawson can help. The one who takes control of people’s bodies by kissing them. I believe his powers do work on unconscious people, and he doesn’t need to kiss their lips. If he takes control of her body, maybe he could open the doors and windows.”

---

Dawson, mid-morning

“Teddy, you’re wanted on the phone by NANA.”

“They want me, really?”

“They asked for you by your code name Dawson, so it’s official business, not testing.”

I took the phone from Mom.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Kingsman from NANA. We’re looking for Dawson.”

“That’s me.”

“We’ve got a tricky situation with new powers and we are hoping you can help us. There’s a girl here whose powers have made her become one with her house, but she’s unconscious and there are other people inside. We don’t think we can get them out without hurting her, but we are hoping if you could gain control of her that maybe her powers will let you open the doors and windows to help us get the other people out.”

“My powers only work on people and things shaped like people, like statues, not houses.”

“Well she’s got a human body and the house.”

“Hmm. I’ve never encountered somebody like that so I have no idea if this will work.”

“We don’t know how much time the people inside have. If you are available we want you immediately.”

I put the phone down and told Mom, “They want me right now. They think I can help save some people.”

“Well go ahead! Go save some lives!”

I told Kingsman on the phone, “I can do it.”

“Great. We’ll send a teleporter right over, one by the name of Jump.”

“Oh, like immediately immediately. OK. Let me go deanimate my other bodies so I’m at full strength for whatever happens here.”

“You have other bodies? Oh, I guess that makes sense. Is that going to be quick?”

“Yes.”

“Are you at home?”

“Yes.”

“OK, Jump will be at your door in seconds. Just tell her when you’re ready.”

“OK, see you real soon, I guess.”

I hung up the phone, and ran to go deanimate Jack and Trixie. Jump was ringing the doorbell before I got back, and Mom let her in.

“Are you Jump?” I asked when I returned.

“Yes. My name is Cynthia, but my code name is Jump, and on this kind of official business, it’s all code names. You’re Dawson?”

“Yes.”

“OK, I’m ready when you’re ready.”

“Ready, I guess.”

She held out her hand, and I took it, and instantly we were in another place.

A man there asked, “Dawson?”

“That’s me.”

“Kingsman here. This is part of NANA headquarters but we’re going to take you right out to the house now.”

“OK.”

Jump took both our hands and we were then outside, on the street. There was a strange miniature house there, the size of a shed, but with all the doors and windows and trim you’d find on a full size house, just smaller. It was bigger than a dollhouse (unless you had some pretty large dolls). The police had it cordoned off, but Kingsman took us through, just saying I was with him, and up to the other people waiting nearby.

Kingsman now said, “Over on this side, you can see where part of the girl’s body protrudes from the house.”

I went there and looked. “Ew! It looks painful to be inside the wall like that.”

“And it’s possible it is. It seems like everybody in the house, including her, is asleep or unconscious. We don’t know how it happened or why the house shrank. But we are hoping, if you can control her body, that you can open the doors and windows of the house and at least let us get the other people out.”

“OK. Let me try a quick kiss that’ll just give me a feel of her body for a minute so I know what I am getting into.”

I walked up to where her shoulders protruded from the house, with Kingsman following me. And I gave her a pretty ordinary kiss. I touched her with my tongue between my lips just for a moment, not that anybody else could see it. And whoa!

I was a bit overwhelmed by how much sensation I got from the girl and house, and my body fell over backward. Kingsman caught me and guided my body to a lawn chair that was nearby. But the sensation was brief and almost immediately after I got in the chair, I was just Teddy again.

“Are you alright?” another man who was there asked. “I’m Illinois, and I am a medical doctor for ordinary people in addition to helping out with some of the strange cases we get here in Normal.”

“Yes, I’m fine. It was just that the feeling I got from her was so intense. Usually it’s just a body, but she really is that entire house, and I could feel every nail and board that makes up the house in addition to her body. I’m not used to feelings like that. Usually once I am in, even if I’m animating a statue, it’s all flesh and bone.”

“OK. Is she in pain?”

“No, no pain. But she might be overwhelmed by the same feelings I got.”

“What about the other people?”

“I wasn’t in long enough to notice them. How long was it from when I kissed her to when I was in the chair?”

Kingsman replied, “Not very long at all. Less than 10 seconds.”

“I was out of her a second or two after that. So I got maybe twelve seconds for what would have been a one-to-two minute sense-borrowing for a normal person.”

“Maybe the time is reduced because of the size of the body?”

“Maybe. OK, I think I’m ready to try again, but I’m going to need to be in longer, and I am going to need control and not just senses, so this isn’t going to look like the kiss I did before.”

“Do what you need to do,” Illinois requested of me.

For my second attempt, I went up to her, raised her hair with one arm, and turned my head sideways. After working up a good deal of saliva in my mouth, I gave her a lick with my full tongue from one shoulder to the other.

My own body didn’t fall over this time, but Kingsman helped me back to the chair and with my mouth, I explained what I was now feeling to the group assembled there.

You’re right that this girl is one with the house. There are three other people inside, two on the second floor and one on the first floor. And I think I can control the doors and windows. Let me try.

I managed to open the front door, and it came swinging open. However, it was only about a foot wide and two feet tall, and the door and house were too small for people to move around inside. I slid open some windows, too, but they weren’t right next to the people inside. The effort wasn’t completely useless, because they reached in and pulled one person out. About that time, my animation of the girl-house stopped and I was just Teddy again.

“OK, that’s it. I’m not the house anymore,” I told the group. Illinois was overseeing a medical crew who were moving the one person they got out into one of two ambulances that had arrived while we were doing this, but I now had the attention of the rest of the group.

“Can you do it again? Or make the house bigger so we can get in and get the others?”

“I was starting to have the feeling that I could move or enlarge the windows and doors when I lost the connection. But I’m going to need more time to help get the other two out. Do you have a bowl, like one you’d eat soup or cereal from?”

Kingsman started to say something, but Jump reappeared beside me at that moment and handed me a white ceramic cereal bowl with a blue line around the outside.

“Thanks, this will do.”

I started working up a lot of saliva and spat globs of it several times into the bowl. Jump provided me with a glass of water as well to allow me to continue doing this, and when I had about two eggs’ worth of saliva in the bowl, I decided I was ready. I moved her hair aside again and poured the saliva out where I’d licked her before, letting it run down onto parts of the house as well. Where it was running fast, I smeared it to the sides so that it all stayed on the house rather than running to the ground.

And I sat my own body down while I resumed figuring out how to manipulate the house. Pretty soon I had figured out how to rearrange the windows and moved one adjacent to where each other person was inside the house, and opened them. They pulled out one, and then the other, and then, very quickly, the house shrank further, remaining at the same height but shrinking in length and width until it was only the size of a normal door on each side.

“So I guess I don’t have complete control over the house,” I commented.

Once Illinois finished seeing the other two patients off in the second ambulance, and canceled a return trip for the first, we gathered to decide what to do next. “You’re a telephone booth,” he commented.

I vaguely recalled a telephone booth as the place where Clark Kent changed into Superman in old shows, and in even older ones as a place people actually made calls. I hadn’t seen an actual usable telephone booth in my life. They just had pay phones mounted on poles these days, where they had them at all. But Illinois was right about the size of the house now. It was just big enough for one person, or two chummy ones who didn’t mind their bodies touching, if there was nothing else inside.

“Let me see if I can make it more like a telephone booth.”

I raised the second floor to near the ceiling, above the girl’s head, and cleared all the windows off one side. The house was unusually flexible, and I could somehow bend the windows around the edges without breaking them. Then I expanded the door to cover that side. I was just about to open the door at this larger size when I lost control again.

“Sorry, my time’s up. Do you want me to do it again?”

“I think it’s less urgent now,” Illinois responded. “Even if you take control again, I doubt we’re going to get the girl out of there if she’s one with the house.”

Kingsman asked him, “You mind helping me check if the house is actually attached to the ground at all now?”

“That’s a good idea.”

They tilted the house slightly, enough to show it was not in fact attached to the ground. Jump showed up with a flashlight and with it, we could see under the house to confirm that there was no connection whatsoever between the house and the concrete slab we were standing on. They tried to have Jump teleport the house, but it was beyond her capacity. So they called in a truck with a lift on the back and loaded it inside to take back to NANA. Jump teleported the rest of us there to meet it when it arrived.

They moved the house into a doctor’s office in which the usual bed had been removed, and I went with them since I thought they were going to have me animate the body again. But when we got there, the door opened without prompting. The girl inside was still wearing her nightgown, part of which was embedded in the wall, just as it was when I was controlling her. She spoke, “Are we done moving now?”

“Yes. I’m glad to see that you’re awake,” Illinois responded.

“I’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

“How much of it do you remember?”

“The beginning, before you arrived, up to a point where I was a larger house than I am now, but a lot smaller than the house started, with my family members still inside. Thank you for getting them out! I hope they’re OK.”

“They are all receiving medical treatment now. I can’t be certain of the size, but I think the house was the size you remember when we arrived. It had shrunk to that size and wasn’t changing size until we pulled the last of the people out.”

“Well, at some point it was shrinking, and I was trying to keep it from crushing everybody! It already got my sister. Um, I need to explain something.”

“Go ahead.”

“The body you see is my sister’s. I’m her brother, Kenny. Somehow, overnight, I turned into my house. I don’t understand it. But my original body’s gone. The house started shrinking, and somehow my sister got caught up in one of the walls. When she did, I could feel her. I could feel every part of her body, as if it was mine. I could also communicate mentally with her, but her thoughts were only ‘What’s happening?’ and I tried to tell her I was going to save her, but I couldn’t. I felt it when she died. Her mind died, anyway. I thought her body was going to die, too, but it didn’t. Her body was part of the house now, part of me. If I took it from her, I didn’t mean to, nor do I know how it happened.”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that, and even more so for your sister.”

Kingsman interrupted, “Jump, can you go fetch Veritas?”

Jump replied, “Sure thing,” and teleported away.

“Kenny, because someone died, we’re going to have you repeat your story in front of someone whose powers allow them to tell when somebody is lying. It’s not that we doubt you, but that this has to go into official records that anybody might doubt. But go on with your story for now. What happened after your sister died and her body became part of yours?”

“The house continued to shrink, and I was determined not to let it take the rest of my family members. They had all hit one wall or another already and were knocked out, though none of them had been pushed so much into the wall that they got caught up in it. I knew that I was the house, but I wasn’t in control of the activity that was causing it to shrink. So I studied what was going on, and figured out how to stop it. Well, not stop. Pause it. The effort of doing so knocked me out, but I guess it stayed paused while I was out.”

Kingsman commented, “It did until just after we got the last of your family members out. Then the house quickly shrank to the size it is now.”

“I woke up for a moment, as you were taking out my remaining sister. My parents were already out. And I could feel how much of a toll keeping the building at that size was taking on me. With nobody left inside but the body of my dead sister, I let go of what I was doing, figuring that if my sister’s body was crushed, it would be a loss, but a much less important one since she was already dead. I passed out again, and awoke in the truck you moved me in.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re OK,” Illinois commented.

About that moment, Jump returned with the woman who was apparently Veritas, and they had Kenny repeat the whole story about his sister’s death and how he gained control of her body.

“She’s telling the truth. Or he is. What pronouns would you like?”

“Well, I was always a he, but given that I have this body now, I’d probably better get used to being a she.”

“OK, then. Her whole story is true, how her sister’s mind died and how she gained control of the body,”

Kingsman replied, “Thank you, Veritas. Jump can take you to where you can sign a statement attesting to this truth and then back to whatever you were doing.”

And Jump took her away.

Illinois said, “I’d like to examine you further, if you don’t mind. If you have good control over your sister’s body then I may not need any of the rest of this crew.”

“I think I do. I can’t separate from the wall entirely but I can move around.”

Inside her little room, she turned around - revealing her completely bare back - and when she turned back around, she was naked in the front, too.

“Oops!” the girl cried, and the door slammed shut.

Illinois ordered, “OK, guys out! Miss Tix, you stay so you can help our patient with her wardrobe problem.”

Even though I was part girl most of the time, I knew the boy-turned-girl who’d just sealed herself up wouldn’t know that, and I accepted the dismissal. A few minutes later, Jump came out and told us we wouldn’t be needed anymore, so Kingsman went back to wherever he worked in the building. Jump led me to where I could get my pay for the day, and then teleported me home.

---

Four months later

Dawson

Kenny, now going by Kendra, and her family invited all of us who helped them over for a housewarming party for their newly rebuilt house. It was at the same location as the original one that shrank. After I arrived, Kendra explained how she’s getting along.

“It looks like you have good control over the house,” I commented. Kendra now had her entire head and arms sticking out the roof, most of her legs out the floor, and she wore the house like a weird sort of dress.

“Yes, it’s still inconvenient at times, but I’ve learned to live with it. I can make it bigger or smaller, but only so much. It can get about as big as it was when you rescued the rest of my family, and small enough it only serves as a bikini top, but I usually leave it this size. But I also do this.”

She sat, but not using furniture. She maneuvered her legs to be coming out the side rather than the bottom of the house and extended the bottom to serve as a chair.

“I use the bikini size when going to the bathroom, and a large size when sleeping.”

“You have a bed?” Jump asked.

“Inside the house. Most of the furniture that was in our old house is still in here, miniaturized, but I can make it larger. When I make the large house, I can bring the bed up to a size I can sleep on. Mostly on, anyway. I can’t be entirely on the bed. Some part of me has to be embedded in a part of the house. So I sleep with my feet in a wall and the rest of me on my bed. While I can make the house the size you saw it when you rescued my family, it’s hard to keep it that size. But I can keep it without effort at a size large enough for the bed.”

She showed us around. Most of the new house looked pretty normal.

“NANA helped us rebuild,” she explained. “I wanted to make my house large enough for my family to live in, but I realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t. So they had to build us a new one, and we stayed in an apartment for a few months while they built it. We’ve only been back here a week, but I figured things out pretty well in the apartment so it was easy to set up here.”

Unlike the rest of the house, Kendra’s room was pretty bare. There was a desk, but no chair, since she didn’t need one, and a big space where she put the enlarged house when sleeping instead of a bed. Near the entrance there was a plaque hanging on the wall serving as a memorial for the dead sister whose body Kenny now used. There was a closet in one corner of the room, but no dresser. The closet was open, and pretty empty. There weren’t any clothes visible.

“Do you have any clothes at all?” Miss Tix asked.

“Yeah. I have everything of Deirdre’s. I keep it all miniaturized inside the house unless I want to use something. If I make the house small and wear it up top, I can wear pants or a skirt. Alternatively I can wear the house on the bottom, and wear a blouse of some sort, or even some kinds of dresses, with the skirt hanging down to cover the house.”

“And a bra, I assume,” Miss Tix interjected.

“Yes, I need a bra in that case. The adjustment from being a boy to being a well-endowed young woman was eased by having my breasts covered by the house most of the time. Dressing like a girl took some getting used to, but I have had months to do that and it’s natural to me now. When I am home, though, I usually still wear the house like this and go without clothes, because there’s no need. Nobody can get inside or look into my house unless I want them to, and that’s pretty much only the doctor. Another reason I don’t wear clothes inside my house is that they don’t survive going through the walls with my body. They’re fine when they go into the wall, but they get destroyed coming out, like the wardrobe malfunction some of you saw when I was in the examining room.”

She laughed and the rest of us laughed with her.

I asked, “The house is your body also. Does it need food? Maintenance? Cleaning?”

“It doesn’t seem to need any maintenance. When we identified some damage, the next time I moved part of my body through that area, it came out fixed. Anywhere I put my body through the house, it opens automatically and closes up fully repaired when I move out. And it doesn’t eat. My human body eats normally. The house does need cleaning, though. When I have my head inside the house, I have to breathe the air inside, so I have to open it up periodically. That opening lets dust get inside, and it’s trapped there unless I make the effort to remove it. But it’s not too bad, really, because I can put all the stuff inside the house anywhere.”

She demonstrated how she cleans things by opening a window which had some wooden surface, I assume a table, behind it, and wiped it off with a paper towel. And it was hard to tell exactly what, but different things were moving up to the same window in turn. Obviously it was easy to clean the dust off when the things were small and she could wipe them with a single swipe of her hand.

“I am not sure what would have happened without Deirdre’s body being part of it. I’m not sure you would have even realized I was stuck in here.”

Kingsman asked, “Do you have electricity inside the house?”

“I don’t. We were talking about hooking the electricity back up when I thought I would restore the house to its original size, but due to the size change, which affects everything including the wires, it wouldn’t be safe. And yeah, I could selectively make the wires larger, but it would be too difficult to ensure I always did it right everywhere. Instead, we got some glow-in-the-dark panels that I put on the outside of the house during the day, and on my ceiling at night. They only provide a low glow, like a night light, but it works well to keep things from being completely dark in there. I instinctively know where everything is inside my body, but it’s still less disconcerting waking up with a little light.”

“Did you choose a code name?” I asked.

“Yeah, I was required to. I chose Little House.”

“Haha! I don’t think your case was what was meant by the title of that book.”

“It’s appropriate though, don’t you think? I’m not sure my powers are going to be useful for anything, but I’m glad to at least be able to live with them.”

“Oh, I can see some use. You can change the sizes of things, like you change your clothes. What are the limits with that?”

“I’m not entirely sure. I know that I can’t make anything bigger than its natural size. When I want to restore some of Deirdre’s clothes so I can wear them, I just make them ‘full size’ and they come out right to fit my body. And it has to fit inside my house before the size change. I’m not sure of the minimum. I’ve made some stuff pretty small.”

“I’m sure there are uses for that. Imagine transporting things in miniature size.”

“Hmm. Maybe. But I’d have to be there at the other end to restore them, and we are keeping our abilities secret from outsiders, so it would be difficult.”

“What about people?” Miss Tix asked.

“It doesn’t work with people. Maybe not with anything alive. I can’t change Deirdre’s body’s size. And my sister wanted to experience being really small so I let her inside the house once but I couldn’t change the size of her body.”

“Well, we all have our limits,” I said. “My power only works on people and people-shaped objects, but when I was helping rescue your family I learned it worked on your whole, combined body, even though only part of it is people-shaped. Also, my power is limited in time and during the rescue I learned it lasts less time on larger bodies.”

“What are you doing about school?” Miss Tix asked.

“It’s complicated. So far I’ve been getting lessons sent to me and a tutor to help sometimes. They want to get me back in school, but Deirdre was a senior in high school. I was only a freshman. I don’t know what she knew, who she knew. I can’t go back to school as Deirdre. I have to go back as me.”

“As Kendra.”

“Right.”

“NANA will adjust your school records, make it so Kenny was Kendra and you can continue where you left off as Kenny.”

“But the kids are going to know, right?”

“The kids who knew you as Kenny will know you changed, yes. The ones who don’t know about powers will still see Kenny, but nearly all the kids learn about powers by the time they enter high school, and they will see you as you are.”

“Will it be a problem for those few who don’t know? Will they see Kenny in a dress?”

“Maybe. We’ll find someone who doesn’t know about powers yet to test it on. And whatever happens, we’ll do what is needed to ensure that you don’t have problems.”