The Roommates
(by anonymous).RATED PG.
My name is Joshua and I'm 34 years old. I've had a lot of interesting experiences in my life, but as you will soon find out the most bizarre twist
that anyone could ever imagine happened to me as a result of moving in with my three 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.
The house we found is really cool. Pretty much the perfect scenerio for me because my personal area of the house is a big bonus room over the garage
clear at the other end of the house from where the other three guys have their rooms. David, 11, and Tyler, 9, share a room together. David is
somewhat tall & skinny, has sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and has always been a bit of a practical joker. He's always looking for something to
do to tweak people. Tyler is just slightly more stocky than his older brother, also with sandy blond hair and blue eyes, and is just pure bounce off the wall
boy. He's the type of kid who hates wearing shoes and loves to wrestle. Favorite activities for me to share with the kids include jumping with them
on the trampoline, going to movies, playing tennis, buying Pokemon cards, eating at McDonald's and riding bikes. I knew moving in with them would be a
bit of a change to my "single" lifestyle, but who knew how much these kids would REALLY change my life?
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.
Then I saw them. From my perspective Dave and Ty were so huge I literally wanted to scream in terror. These were the same kids that I was used to
being able to pin down on the trampoline, and now I would be a toy in their hands. David was smiling from ear to ear as I heard him say "Good
morning, Josh Ole Boy. How'd ya sleep?" With that both of them exploded into laughter. As I looked up and saw the giant faces of the kids looking
down at me it was clear that Tyler was just now seeing what had happened to me for the first time. Obviously David had found some way of shrinking me and I could
tell Tyler thought it was just the coolest thing. I looked over across the shelf and there was my bed and my dresser, both also reduced down to a small size. It looked like Dave decided that if I was going to be small I would be needing some clothes to match.
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 woke up with a terrible headache. As I rather slowly raised myself up I had a little bit of trouble focusing on what was around me. When I finally
did I was shocked to find that I was in a small hamster cage on Dave & Tyler's nightstand. It wasn't a very big cage, probably about 16 inches long by 11
inches wide, and was made of metal. They had arranged my bed & my dresser inside of it, and there was also a small little plate on which lay a kleenex
which had been neatly folded into a square. The only door to the cage was on the very top and there was absolutely no way to climb up to it. I
realized the only was to get out was to be taken out. I didn't think the kids had
ever owned a hamster and the cage looked brand new. It was beginning
to occur to me that Will had gone out and bought this cage for them to
keep me in. Sitting right next to the cage was one of those plastic hamster &
gerbil balls that small animals are put in for running around. It too was
brand new and obviously bought for me.
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.
Then came that one day when someone let their guard down. One of the things the kids like to do with me is to tape me down to a clipboard and hang me on
the wall like a picture. So one day Dave reached into the cage to pull me out and take me to the desk. He set me down and opened the drawer to get out
the tape when the phone rang out in the living room. Tyler answered it and yelled out "David, it's for you." Dave set the tape down next to me and
said "You stay there, I'll be right back." When he walked out of the room I realized this was my chance. My best hope was to climb down the lamp cord,
and I went right for it. As I was climbing down I realized that this was
just like that show "Land of the Giants" that I had seen in reruns on the Sci-Fi Network recently, only for me it was REAL. I could still hear David
talking on the phone when I reached the floor, and my first instinct was to hide under the bed. But then I decided that if I was really going to escape
I needed to hide out in another room, because they would turn this room upside down looking for me. I had almost reached the door when I started to
feel the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP and I knew I was in trouble. There wasn't even
time for me to turn around when Tyler came walking around the corner. I ran
right into his tube sock covered right foot and tumbled down onto the floor
in front of him. Instinctively to make sure I wouldn't get away he pinned me
down under his foot and yelled out "Dave, you idiot, he almost escaped."
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.
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