Every cubic centimeter of my body felt like it could collapse into its own black hole. It had been a long day and I barely had the strength or fortitude to continue forward. I slumped and welcomed the release of no longer having to hold myself upright.
“Psst…” I felt a nudge on my elbow. I shrugged it off. “PSST” was given more forcefully with an elbow into my diaphragm.
My eyes open to see a sweet face - a mane of wavy, raven hair framed porcelain skin and ruby red lips. Her brown eyes peered at me intently. She mouthed at me, “You’re snoring.” She then smiled. I needed a pot to collect all the pieces of my molten heart. Her name is Aria and she is my heart’s song.
Bellowing came from below. Rubbing the crust out of my eyes, I looked down the stadium seats. Standing as if in perpetual attention was a graying professor. The years had failed to dull his military precision. Behind him was a stoichiometry example. “Well, in all my years of dealing with petulant youth, Mr. Conrad, I have never had such a narcoleptic in my class. Perhaps you should bring a pillow and blanket to all of your lectures. Maybe I should start delivering my lesson as nursery rhymes. Would you like that, Mr. Conrad?”
“Uh….” I tried to find my voice but couldn’t. “No, Mr. Axelrod, sir. Please excuse my interruption to your lecture.”
“While you should be sorry to me, son, you should be more sorry to whomever provided you the money that you are wasting. Remember you pay to be here,” the tirade exhausted Mr. Axelrod crisply did an about face and returned to his lecture on the moral arc of The Odyssey by Homer.
I looked down at my notes in embarrassment; my face flushed. Aria took and squeezed my hand. She then rubbed my shoulder. I turned my head and smiled at her. Her fingers passed through my hair and she pinched my cheek. Sitting back, I continued to admire her. Her face soured as she pointed towards the front of the room to remind me why we were here.
As Mr. Axelrod’s drone was luling me back to sleep, I recognized the need for distraction. Looking at the clock on the wall, I saw that the three arms would not settle. They would surge into high speed and then slow down. Squinting at it, I eventually put aside the need to know the time. Staring at my notes, they were indecipherable - as if they were written in a foreign language. I rubbed my eyes and they became strange mathematical expressions. Staying up late to play video games was not doing me any favors.
This whole situation was odd but it didn’t feel strange. The more I thought about this though, the more the thoughts slipped away from me. It was like trying to grab Jello. Forcing a single idea to lock, my stomach began cramping. The feeling escalated and I attempted to stand. Aria touched my shoulder as I clutched my middle.
I rolled out of the chair and onto the floor. Aria’s touching became more insistent. She began rubbing my shoulders. Her voice was echoing in my ears but I could not muster enough concentration to understand what she was saying. Rather the pain in my middle surged.
With an explosion my scale grew by a factor of three. Aria was thrown back. I could see that she tucked and rolled. She was a star gymnast in high school. She waved at me and told me that she was fine. My pain subsided for a moment and I could hear her say “Sweetie, just stay calm, I am going to get you some help.” Her arms were up with palms down in a soothing gesture. I felt reassured by this.
The row of people who were sitting in front of me were not as lucky. The chairs in this classroom were old wooden stadium seats. The kind with a small table that folded down between the chairs when not in use. My growing body pushed those seats forwards breaking the hold down bolts. The motion was so fast that the lucky ones just had their faces smashed into the row of seats in front of them. The unlucky ones had the little table out - now their legs were broken. Since I hadn’t noticed this, I didn’t realize that I had been pinning them for the past few minutes. This was causing significant injuries.
When I did realize the harm I was causing, I rolled over. I could see a small blonde woman who had been sitting in front of me and reached down to pick her up. I knew that I should not move someone who potentially had broken bones, but my frame of mind rationalized it was ok since she was so...small. She was now a third my height and weighed about as much as a bag of sand. Her body ragdolled as I pulled her out from the twisted pile of metal and splinters. Her legs flopped in unnatural ways and her eyes had rolled back into her head. I ran my fingers over her body until I reached her neck. Out of a curiosity I wrapped my hand around her head. It was the size of a small orange in my hand. Her hair was soft like silk.
Lowering my hand to her shoulders, my finger and thumb wrapped around her neck and pressed gently. I wanted to see if she still had a pulse. If she did, it was much too weak for my clumsy fingers to register.
I felt the pain return and involuntarily clenched. Whatever pulse she had was definitely gone now as I felt several sickening pops between my fingers. Recognizing what I had done and in a panic I threw her against the wall. She slid down and landed with a wet smack.
The row of chairs she had been sitting in failed completely. I rolled forward snuffing out whomever was left pinned under me. My momentum caused several more rows to fail. The unfortunate classmates, who were frozen in place like deer, were steamrolled under my body as I collided with Mr. Axlerod’s table in the front of the hall. This dislodged and smashed the projector being used to project various historical paintings during the art lecture.
As I began to stand to help people whom I rolled over, my feet crashed through the floor into the room below drawing a scream from that class. My crotch landed on a beam causing a flash of pain to roll over me. My height jumped again and the beam gave way. This resulted in a rain of coeds and chairs onto me as the stands from Axelrod’s classroom collapsed into the hole I created.
As I push down to get up, I feel an odd mixture of squishing and crunching under my fingers. My hands were resting on what appeared to be two dolls. They were approximately 8 inches tall to me. They must have been students as undoubtedly there was a class occurring in the room I fell into. My hands were pressing on their thoraxes - the palms of which were cracking ribs and squishing their internal organs simultaneously.
I recoiled in horror.
My mind starts to fog. I hadn’t harmed even a flea before today. Now I had directly caused at least three of my classmates to die....but my mind couldn’t connect those thoughts. Were they really students now? I picked up this ginger haired woman. Her stomach was purple and distended. I poked at her chest. No doubt it was a sight to behold, but now her breasts were smaller than the grapes I had for breakfast. As I studied her, occasionally bouts of life fluttered within her, but I knew that this doll was no more alive than a plastic fashion doll from the nearest dollar discount store. Grasping her thigh and pulling her leg clean off it was clear that she was no more robust either.
Then the thought hit me - had she transformed into a toy, or did I become a monster?
The door to the classroom was forced open and several men entered with weapons drawn. They yelled at me to stop. One got too close and in my confusion that He-Man action figure was chucked through the hole in the ceiling to the room above.
I got up to run, more screams and moans were released from the rubble with each step I took. The walls of the classroom and the hall beyond crumpled like paper until I found myself outside. Those action figures had been shooting at me and their bullets - as small as they were - left me feeling a bit like a sponge. I heard Aria gasp as the world turned red and spiky. I reached out my hand and she took a seat. I pulled her towards me as my body curled into a ball around her.
The chaos subsided as I clutched Aria like a treasure. Tears ran down my cheeks and saturated her hair. She calmly hummed me a song as she tried to hug me back as best she could. My body engulfed her like she was the perfect filling inside a messy chocolate candy. Listening to her, feeling her body, smelling her hair, my body calmed and I felt at peace.
We stayed there for several minutes - much shorter than the forever that I desired - when she started beeping. My mind could not process this. “Aria, what is going on? You sound like my…” The brightness of this world peeled away and I was in darkness. “...alarm clock.”
I was folded into the fetal position and was clutching tightly my digital assistant. As I unrolled, I placed the fuzzy cylinder back on the nightstand. I apologized to the device even though I knew it could not interpret malice.
As my mind raced through what was apparently a dream, I stepped into my bathroom, stripped and stared at my pauch in the mirror. I was getting fat...a freshman 15 would have been lucky. The stellar combination of stress, rushed eating and lack of exercise was taking its toll. As I washed off I considered that my mind must really be concerned as this was the third time this month I had dreamed about becoming a giant and destroying the school.
There must have been something else… Getting large enough to destroy a school wasn’t the only common thread through these dreams. I towelled off and reached for my phone. A voicemail was present from Aria. Opening it, I was embraced by her sweet voice, “Hey Brian...it’s Aria, your classmate. Say listen, I like hanging out with you in class and study group. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out. You’ve said before that you think college has packed some weight on you...shit...not that I think you are fat, I...uh...just thought you might like to go hiking this weekend. There is this clearing I found my first week at school. It is secluded and beautiful, just like a dream…” the voicemail droned on as it clicked.
Looming larger in each of these dreams than the dread of becoming a giant monster was how my heart sung for Aria. A dawning smiled across my face - it was time to make that portion of my recurring dreams a reality.