The Roommates

I met my best friend Will for the first time about six years ago. He and I both worked at a television station, but for the first couple of years we didn't work very closely together so we didn't really know each other very well. Then my job responsibilities changed and he was put in charge of training me in my new position in the newsroom. It was then that I got to know him and his family really well.

I hit it off with his two kids, David and Tyler pretty much from the moment I met them. They were having a bit of an argument the first day I spent with them because David had a friend over & didn't want to include Tyler in what they were doing. I jumped in and asked who wanted to play hide & seek with me, and it was the start of a really cool relationship with them.

It seemed to me that Will and his wife had a really close marriage, but obviously there were problems there that I couldn't see. I guess it was about a year and a half ago that she decided to leave, and suddenly Will found himself as a single dad to his young boys. I made myself available to assist whenever and wherever I could, and found myself spending more & more time at their house helping out. Pretty soon it just became obvious to all of us that the most practical thing to do would be to rent a big house and just live there together, and that way either Will or myself would be available to look after the kids at all times.

I remember coming home from work that night about two months ago. I was very tired after an extremely long day at work, and so immediately decided to get some sleep. My bed is basically just a queen sized mattress that sits on the floor in the corner of my room, and I do recall climbing into bed and setting my alarm clock to get up relatively early the next morning. That was the last moment of normality for the rest of my life.

I have no idea what time it was when I woke up. The shade over my window usually kept my room pretty dark even in the daylight, but it was so dark I literally couldn't see anything at all. I got out of the bed and was trying to feel my way to the door when I tripped over something big. As I was feeling it trying to figure out what it was, all I could come up with was that it was some sort of big plastic manniquin. I thought maybe it was something the kids, especially Dave, had brought up to my room to try to scare me. I was somewhat cold being that I was just wearing the denim shorts I usually sleep in. I kept groping in the dark trying to find the door, when it hit me that there was no carpet on the floor. I was crawling on a wooden surface. Something was most definitely not right here. I kept moving forward and came upon what felt like a bunch of very large blankets all stacked up on top of each other. They extended up way higher than me.

It was then that I heard the voices. I could tell it was David and Tyler, but they seemed very loud, much louder than they should have been, and I couldn't tell where they were coming from. Suddenly everything to the left of me was engulfed in light, and I turned my head the other way to give my eyes a moment to adjust. It was then with shock that I looked back and discovered where I was and what had happened to me. I was standing on a little shelf in the closet in Dave and Tyler's room. What I thought was a big plastic manniquin was in fact a G.I. Joe action figure, a little larger than three inches in height, which was about how big I now was. The "blankets" were Dave and Tyler's socks which were neatly folded and laid out across the shelf.

The next thing I knew Dave's giant hand was coming right at me. In sheer terror I started bolting back toward the bed and dived for it. Dave simply grabbed a pair of the socks off the shelf, laughed at me a little bit and walked away, leaving a very happy Ty to study & watch me as I went to hide under the covers. From somewhere outside the room I heard Will call out to Tyler to come and have breakfast. Tyler reached in and easily pulled the covers off of me, leaned his face in real close to me and whispered,"You'll be ok here until we get home from school. Don't make any noise. I don't want Daddy finding out about you." He dropped the tiny blankets back on top of me and shut the closet door, leaving me once again in total darkness.

I spent the next few hours going back and forth between thinking I had gone totally insane and this HAD to be a horrible dream, to wondering if this was just one of Dave's extremely elaborate practical jokes and he would have me normal again when he returned home from school. In any event I knew Will would most definitely be looking for me when he got home from work around this afternoon, so something would have to happen at that point. He usually arrived somewhere between three and five o'clock, so I would just have to wait until then. The shelf I was on was about three and half feet or so off the ground, and in pitch darkness I knew that to try to make my way down to the floor was pretty much a hopeless thought, so I just waited.

Three fifteen sharp the closet door opens and there is David looming over me. By this point I had found the dresser and put on some clothes which seemed to make Dave happy. "I see you've found your clothes," he said.

"That should make it a little easier for you to get adjusted to your new life." Tyler came running into the room and was immediately next to Dave looking at me.

"Guess what I grabbed when I was at school today," Dave said to Tyler. He turned around and picked up his school backpack off the floor and took out a small plastic container with some liquid inside. "We were using this in our science class today. It's ether. If our little Joshua boy here breathes just a little bit of this he'll sleep for hours. I figured we might need it now and then."

"Cool," said Tyler. "Let's try it out on him right now."

"No, let's just have a little fun with him for a while. He needs to be awake for that" David put the little bottle of ether into his pocket.

"Why don't we take him to the kitchen with us while we have a snack & watch Pokemon? Then we can both play with him." The next thing I knew he simply picked up the entire mattress with me on it and started making his way out to the kitchen. I was lying on a queen sized mattress, but to Dave it was just a small little square of about three inches by four inches.

Tyler turned on the TV on the kitchen counter and turned it to Pokemon which was just starting, and then went to the pantry & pulled out a few crackers & Slim Jim's. David rather carefully laid the mattress onto the counter and then walked to the refrigerator & pulled out a can of Coke. Tyler was rather engrossed in singing along with the Pokemon theme song and didn't seem to be paying a whole lot of attention to me, and Dave walked back to the counter in front of me and sat down on one of the wooden stools. He joined in singing along with the song and neither of them heard the front door open & Will walk in.

"Hey guys, what's up?" he said. "How was your day?"

Without thinking Tyler immediately ran over to Will & yelled out "Dave shrunk Josh."

"Shut up, Tyler" was David's immediate response.

"What?" Will asked with a smile, thinking it was all just a joke. It was then that he noticed me on the counter. The look on his face went from a smile, to complete amazement, to anger. "Come on, guys, what's going on here? This is not at all funny."

"Well, there's not a whole lot that can be done about it now, Dad." said Dave.

"I'm not sure I understand, Dave. You're going to have to explain this to me." You could tell that Will's temper was rising every second.

"We can't do anything about it now. It's permanent."
"What do you mean it's permanent?"

"He's permanantly shrunk. There is no way to reverse it."

For a moment Will seemed a little too stunned to respond. "This is just a little too much for me to grasp, Dave. You're telling me he will stay this size for the rest of his life?"

"Dad, do you really think we should be talking about this in front of him?" Dave asked.

"Well, of course not, Son. We need to figure out what to do."

David reached into his pocket & pulled out the bottle of ether. He took a napkin and poured some of the liquid onto it. Of course I knew immediately what he had in mind so I was instantly on my feet backing away from the napkin which was now coming right at me. I backed right into Dave's other open hand, and was instantly pinned into his hand by his thumb across my chest. The last thing I heard before the ether took effect was Will saying "Be careful with him, Dave."

I could hear Will and the kids out in the living room and it sounded like they were watching TV and maybe working on homework. It was only a matter of moments before Tyler came into the room to check on me. He was wearing boxer shorts, a red t-shirt and a pair of somewhat dingy white socks, so I knew it was probably somewhere between 8 and 9 o'clock at night and the kids were about to go to bed.

He opened the door at the top of the cage and reached in, and even though I tried to escape it he easily caught me up in his hand. The skin of his hand was soft and I could tell from the smell that Will had grilled steaks for dinner. He was rather gentle with me as he lifted me out of the cage and took me over to his desk which he set me on. He sat on the chair right in front of me and rather excitedly said "Daddy said we could keep you. He said we had to take care of you and feed you, and NEVER show you to anyone. He also said we have to make sure you never get away. We can have fun with you as long as we don't hurt you. I would never hurt my little Josh."

He opened up the drawer and took out four G.I. Joe action figures and then spent the next fifteen minutes or so playing with them and me.

So, this was it. These kids who had become my roommates so I could help make life easier for Will were now going to own me forever. From that moment on I spent every waking hour trying to figure out how I could escape. I knew that to try to get out of the cage would probably be impossible, so I had to be prepared at some point when they had me out to make my move. At some point they would let their guard down.

I now rarely ever see Will. I'm not sure if he was just too wierded out by the whole thing, or too ashamed to face me for putting the kids in charge of me. Maybe a little bit of both. I quickly found out that the little plate with the folded up Kleenex was actually a form of a toilet David had dreamed up for me. I just pull up the top fold, use the bathroom, and then fold it back up again. The kids change it out daily, and it actually works very well. Tyler pretty much makes sure I get a bath every other day or so. I just put on my bathing suit (which was shrunk with my dresser) and he holds me under the warm running water in the sink. I have a pretty large variety of things to eat. Both of the kids like different things so it basically depends on who feeds me.

The weekend rolled around and it was time for the kids to go visit their Mom. David thought it would be best for me to stay in the cage at the house, but Tyler was determined to find a way to take me along. He took a piece of string about 12 inches long and held the ends of them down on my back. Then he took a long strip of Scotch tape and wound it around my arms and chest taping the string to my back. Then he wrapped another piece around my ankles to make sure I was totally immobilized. Instant necklace. He wore me around his neck most of the weekend. If he was doing some roughhousing with his brothers or swimming in the apartment complex pool he left me in his backpack. He didn't want to keep me taped up all night, so he found a rather large jar, poked some holes in the top and put me in there to sleep. This has become the regular weekend ritual. It's always rather nice to get back to the "freedom" of the cage.

David was off the phone instantly and came running in as Tyler was picking me up. I laid in Tyler's hand while they argued for a moment or two about how badly David had screwed up, and then they decided that they had better come up with some "punishments" for me to make sure I never tried to do that again. Tyler locked me back into my cage again and the two of them sat down on the floor to play Mario Party on Nintendo 64. They played for probably 30 minutes or so when Tyler wandered out of the room, and David instructed me to change into my bathing suit. He told me he'd be back in just a few minutes.

As I changed I thought about what I could have done differently in my attempt to escape. Maybe if I'd just hidden somewhere in Dave & Tyler's room I could've avoided being caught. At my small size there are a ton of places I could hide. But at this point there was no point in second guessing. I'd just have to wait until another opportunity presented itself and go for it again.

I guess it was just a few days later that Tyler had a couple of friends over to spend the night. Michael & Tyler had been pretty good friends now for a few months since we had moved into this house and David had started going to his new school. Michael is almost 10, has blond hair and brown eyes and looks a lot like Jonathan Taylor Thomas did when he was younger. His 8 year old little brother named Perry, who has brown hair, brown eyes and looks a little more oriental than Michael, was also invited to come and hang out with the guys. I had met them before and even jumped with them on the trampoline before being shrunk down to a living toy. Obviously Dave and Tyler had to keep me hidden from them now. It was a Friday night and they were all having a blast playing video games, watching TV, eating junk food and wrestling around with each other. Tyler had hidden me by shoving the cage under the bed and ordering me to be silent.

Every time they came into the bedroom I watched their giant feet moving around the room, with all four kids laughing, pushing and playing with each other. At my size it felt like a rather major earthquake and sometimes it even moved the cage a few inches.

The kids slept on the floor out in the living room. It was early the next morning and everyone was still asleep except Perry, who came wandering into the room to play Nintendo 64 while he waited for the rest of the guys to wake up. He was wearing white Nike socks which were scrunched down around his ankles, and I watched him go over to the desk to select a game to play. He must have been looking at Tyler's Pokemon cards which were sitting there on the desk, because he accidentally dropped one of them. The card didn't just drop straight to the floor, but as cards will sometimes do when you drop them it flew sideways and landed just under the bed. When Perry bent down to pick up the card he saw the remote controled car, which was also under the bed near my cage, and started to reach for it. It was then that he saw me.

"Whoa," he said rather excitedly as he slid the cage out from under the bed. "I remember you," he said, and then he got up and closed the bedroom door. He took me out of the cage and laid down on the bed and just sort of studied me. He played with me in his fingers for probably 10 minutes or so, when Tyler & Michael opened the door and came in. Perry immediately jumped up and held me up to his brother & said "Hey Michael, look what I found under the bed."

Tyler tried to grab for me and yelled out "What are you doing?" Like Perry, Michael recognized me and said "David, how did you do that?" as Tyler was now trying to wrestle Perry down to get me. By this point Will had heard the commotion and was coming in to investigate and saw what was happening. He stopped the fighting, told Perry to put me back into the cage, and had Tyler leave the room while he talked to Michael & Perry. Will looked at them very seriously and said "Boys, I'm only going to say this to you one time. You must never tell anyone about this."

Will figured the best way to insure their cooperation was to scare them. "If you ever do tell someone you saw him, we will be forced to do the same thing to you and you'll spend the rest of your lives living in that cage like Josh. Now as long as you don't say anything, you are welcome to come over anytime and play with him, as long as you don't hurt him.. Do we have an understanding on this?" Both kids nodded their heads.

As Will went out to the living room to talk to Dave and Tyler about what just happened Michael pulled me out of the cage so he could get a good look at me. Perry grabbed the remote controlled car and said "Let's give him a ride on this." It was a wireless, well built, plastic car which was yellow & green, and none of the doors or windows opened so there was no was to actually put me inside of it. Michael got an idea and opened up the desk drawer and found the tape. He gently laid me on the hood of the car and secured me to it with two strips of tape, one across my chest and one across my legs. Perry took the remote control first as Michael set the car down on the floor and immediately the car was in motion. It was an extremely rough ride as he rolled the car over cords and books, took sharp turns and bounced it against Dave's shoes. He started rolling it towards Michael trying to ram it into his bare feet with Michael just laughing and running around the room trying to dodge it. Then Michael turned and stopped the fast moving car under his foot, with his toes coming down right across my chest.

Now that Perry and Michael knew about me the four of them spent the entire day dreaming up fun things to do with me. I was taped to the handlebars of the Tyler's bike and ridden numerous times down the hill, was bounced by all four of them on the trampoline (which was a little bit painful), was traced around with pencils & crayons, and was used by Perry & Michael to dip up their Fun Dip candy powder. (When they heard about that they thought it was just hilarious, so they had to try it.) Sometime in the middle of the afternoon they were in Dave and Ty's room rolling me around in the plastic gerbil and hamster ball Will had bought for them when the doorbell rang. It was their mom coming to pick them up. Perry said he had an idea, picked up the ball and opened it up He scooped me out of it, and dropped me in one of Ty's dirty socks which was lying on the floor. Then he tacked the sock up to Dave's bullitin board with three tacks across the top opening of the sock. All four of them were incredibly amused by that and Dave said he was just going to leave me hanging there for a while. What they didn't realize, though, was that the sock I was in had a rather large hole in the bottom, and with about 15-20 minutes worth of effort I had been able to tear it enough to crawl out of it.

Dave's bulletin board was hanging up right above his desk, and I could see that it was still about a 12 inch drop down to the desk, which at my size was huge. But I knew if I could get myself down there I had another pretty good chance of escape. Tyler had left one of his shirts sitting out on top of the desk so if I could swing the sock back & forth a little bit I could jump out and hopefully land on that shirt which would cushion my fall. That plan worked like a charm and I found myself running for the lamp cord to climb down to freedom.

I reached the floor just in time to run for cover as Tyler came walking into the room. He had been outside saying goodbye to Michael & Perry so he kicked off his shoes, grabbed his Gameboy off his bed and wandered back out into the living room. I decided once again that I'd better make a run for the door and try to get outside the house if I really wanted to get away. I reached the door, looked around the corner down the hall toward the living room and started sprinting in that direction. I didn't really have a plan, except that I knew I would somehow have to get past them without them seeing me, and then I just hoped that one of the doors out of the house would be open just a crack big enough for me to fit through.

David was lying on the floor watching TV while Tyler was on the couch with his Gameboy. The front door to the house was open and I knew that sometimes the screen door didn't shut tightly, so that just might be my escape route. It was very easy to run to it since neither kid was anywhere near the front door, and sure enough I could see that there was plenty of room for me to slip through. So there I was out on the front porch ready to escape off into the world, when it suddenly occured to me that I might face even bigger dangers than these kids out here in the neighborhood. What about cats? What about dogs? What about squirrels & birds & spiders? I could very easily be caught by another kid and tortured just because I'm small. The fact of the matter is I had never even found out exactly how David managed to shrink me, so how in the world would I ever find a way to reverse it? Was running away really the right thing to do? As I was turning around to head back into the house I suddenly found myself surrounded by a giant hand & being lifted up off the ground. It was Tyler who was heading out to the garage to ride his bike. "Dave how did Josh get out here on the front porch?" he said in an effort to blame Dave for my escape. Dave was off the floor and over to investigate and said "I thought he was in your sock hanging on the bullitin board. I have no idea how he got out here." As I was taken back into the house I knew they would come up with some sort of awful little punishment for me. But I also knew they would never really hurt me.