This is my side blog for g/t so I can’t follow on this one but my main is @kgene17 if you want to know it’s me!
This page is mostly sfw but does have some (18+) and mature content.
This page does contain sfw vore.
All asks are tagged with the asks tag also pls send me them<3
{Fic List}:
The Snake Charmer Au
Summary: Tommy is a young naga hybrid living on his own and is on the run. He’s suffering from Loneliness and really just wants a friend. He eventually finds a forest that’s safe from hybrid hunters, but he finds it holds a secret as well when he happens upon a tiny singing mouse hybrid and is ultimately charmed by the mouse’s skill.
Status: Complete
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Oneshots:
Snake Charmer Au Schlatt Backstory
The Thrill of the Chase
His Brave Hunters
Summary: Quackity and Sapnap are monster hunters, but they are also romantic partners. They are tasked by a village to come and hunt down the monster that is terrorizing their town.
Karl is a monster, but he likes to think he’s a pretty nice guy, he’s just happens to “borrow” from the nearby town to get by. Did I also mention he’s a hopeless romantic?
warnings: presumed character death, mentions of death and injury, miscommunication, angst, psychological warfare between 2 fools, poor life choices, cliffhanger (?)
-
The human was acting weird.
That in itself wasn’t unusual– almost every human Virgil had ever seen was engaged in some incomprehensible nonsense, and the tales Roman had told him only further solidified his personal belief that beans had only managed to make it this far through a combination of size and luck alone.
Even that simple memory of sharing stories made his eyes sting. He’d been forcing himself to think about Roman more often lately, like he was picking at a barely healed scab. Any time he thought about Janus– no, the human without the proper amount of sickened fury, he ran his mind through the horrible facts, digging his nails in deeper until the wound felt freshly made.
(The facts were as follows: Roman had been caught and caged and killed. Virgil would never see his best friend again. And it was all the human’s fault.)
The injury wasn’t allowed to heal, not now, maybe not ever. It didn’t matter if the human shared his name or treated his wounds or gave him food. It didn’t matter how many little quirks and habits that he noticed, the little things that turned someone from a stranger to a fully-formed person. It didn’t matter because Virgil would never fall for the facade, would never forget that a borrower’s life wasn’t worth anything to the monster before him.
So, he refused to give up a single smudge of ground, his jaw locked and glare sharp. The human kept providing food and medicine and idle commentary, and Virgil kept himself from softening through constant mental reminders.
He wouldn’t need food or medicine if the human hadn’t captured him in the first place. He could certainly live without the snarky remarks and sarcastic flattery, no matter how much he sometimes wished to snap back, and the human’s apparent delight on the few rare instances he did bite out a scathing response. It was easier to keep quiet when he thought about how gullible Roman could be, how easily he might have fallen for simple acts of decency and insincere compliments.
It was harder when the human did things like spend an afternoon building a makeshift bed for him. It hadn’t been a hand-me-down; Virgil had overheard several hissed swears throughout the process, and seen the shiny burns notched across a few of Janus’s fingers as he set the bed down with a flourish. Still, at first he’d stalwartly refused to so much as glance at the wooden frame, its bumpy hot-glue edges, or the soft, hand sewn pillow serving as a tiny mattress.
Oddly, the human never seemed particularly put out by his stubborn refusals to engage. Wryly amused, maybe, but he hadn’t watched Virgil with those cold, hawk-sharp eyes since those first couple of days. The little interrogation session seemed to have reassured him greatly, forebodingly enough.
It was hard to feel good about the schemes that had to be going on out of sight, with Janus indubitably planning to root out the rest of the small colony in the walls, but at least the shift in demeanor meant Virgil was less likely to keel over from stress alone. His instincts had been worn to a thin, frazzled thread from all that intent staring, and he was glad for a break from it.
Still, because he was who he was, he couldn’t help but think about what might happen once the season turned. He didn’t want a human to catch any more borrowers, even ones who had so thoroughly screwed him over, but if summer arrived and the human hadn’t succeeded, Virgil was well within reach, small and injured and easy to take out a fit of temper on.
If the human didn’t believe he was telling the truth, subjected him to a more painful sort of interrogation to try and get the information Virgil just didn’t have, it could prove lethal. One break was bad enough, but if the weak spot was re-shattered? He could be left adjusting to life with one usable leg, with no family or companions to act as a safety net as he relearned vital skills. The life of an outside borrower was harrowing when one did know they were doing, let alone when they didn’t. The first time he messed up, he’d be as good as dead.
If the human did catch the other borrowers, well. Virgil wouldn’t have any more use to him, at that point. If he continued to sit here helplessly, his fate would probably match Roman’s.
(Why had Janus been stupid enough to kill Roman before figuring out what he needed to know in the first place? Had he misjudged his own strength and killed him accidentally? Or had it been an active, malicious choice, made with full confidence that he’d be able to catch more borrowers to replace Roman?
He had to stop thinking about this. He was going to make himself sick.)
So, no matter which outcome, he had to escape before then.
Easier said than done, of course, but nothing in his life had ever been easy, and he was still trying. At the very least, he thought the human’s strangely accommodating behavior could be turned to his advantage. If Janus thought he was falling for the nice guy act, he’d lower his guard, the same way he’d lowered it when Virgil had lost himself to panic and hunger before.
If a snappish prisoner was entertaining to the human, he would stop keeping his replies trapped behind his teeth. He would banter and complain and drop little bits of useless information whenever his captor pried, pretend that he was softening under the improved treatment. He would do what he had to do, give as good a performance as he could through the bitter hatred, if it meant upping his chances.
So be it. As long as this human insisted on pretending to have a heart, Virgil would gladly take advantage of every faux beat of it.
He wasn’t going to just lie down and accept his fate. He refused to give the human the satisfaction of an easy kill. If he couldn’t escape, he would at least go down fighting tooth and nail, vicious and determined all the way to the end.
He thought Roman would have wanted that much, at least.
–
Janus was feeling good about the progress he’d made with his little guest.
Sure, they had gotten off to a poor start, what with the violation of several ethical, moral, and legal boundaries, and certainly, his first impression had been a ludicrously evil one, but even so!
V didn’t spend as much time sulking behind the fake shrubbery lately, had been eating and drinking with reassuring regularity, and after an initial period of resentful silence, had even occasionally deigned to reply to one of Janus’s mostly-cursory questions. All promising signs, though Janus still felt like the olive branch he’d extended was always a mere moment from being sharply swatted away.
That was fine; he didn’t really have to make nice with the borrower he’d abducted, in the end. In fact, he doubted that V was truly feeling as grumpily peaceable as he seemed. The borrower had spent the first week of their acquaintance trying dedicatedly to escape, and his placidity now was likely just a long con.
It didn’t matter. So long as he could retrieve what had been stolen, he didn’t mind at all if V vanished without a trace the very next day. Janus was oozing with charisma and wit. He certainly wouldn’t miss the reticent company of someone so morose and petulant, even if that someone also happened to have a dry sense of humor and a remarkable talent for razor-sharp rebuttals.
Janus suspected that he would have an easier time ignoring his tiny hostage’s sparkling personality if he hadn’t taken to spending at least one meal a day forcing V to endure his presence, but his recent attempts to become a more gracious host didn’t extend that far. He had to take his amusements where he could find them, and lately he’d been finding them in bothering his snappish guest.
It was during one such meal that he was forced to admit, even if only to himself, that V truly had been an innocent bystander.
Janus was an expert at convincing himself, but the evidence was overwhelming— the most obvious being that there were quite a few marked differences between V and the other borrowers he’d spotted.
For one, their knowledge bases.
He’d realized early on that in order to survive in such close quarters with humans, borrowers needed to have excessive knowledge of not only human architecture and technology, but also of humans themselves, particularly the routines, habits, and personalities of the ones they robbed. They certainly wouldn’t have managed to get one over on him without that keen understanding of the layout of his apartment and his schedule alike.
V, on the other hand, had nearly concussed himself trying to hide in faux foliage the first time Janus had turned on the television.
The borrower tended to survey everything with a level of narrow-eyed suspicion, but whenever he was confronted with something he didn’t understand, that wariness was joined by a somewhat comical expression of poorly-hidden bewilderment. Janus had noticed that V even tilted his head sometimes, as though trying to use a different angle to puzzle out the function of a toaster.
(The little gesture was not charming. Not remotely. Janus remained thoroughly uncharmed.)
If V had truly been living in the walls of this apartment with the others, he would have been spotted by Janus long before the current situation. So then, the question became: where had V been living?
To his horror, the answer became more and more clear with every sour response V provided during their mealtime conversations.
Simple offhand comments that went like,
“Something that bright is bound to be poisonous. Do you even know who harvested it? You might be fine making yourself sick, but I’m not.”
and,
“Look, it doesn’t matter if it warms up, not even insiders are idiotic enough to try and move homes during the spring. A single thunderstorm and they’d lose most of their supplies, if not their lives, to the mudslides.”
and even,
“I’m not scared of a little garden snake. It couldn’t eat me if it tried, and besides, I’ve fought bigger beasts as a teenager.”
If Janus had been perturbed by the knowledge of tiny people secretly living in the walls and watching his every move to steal from him, he was outright horrified by the realization that there were some borrowers who lived outdoors, entirely in the elements.
Outside, where they were towered over by squirrels and storm clouds alike. Frankly, he considered it a miracle that V had survived long enough to be pushed into his sink. Maybe he did care if V escaped, if it meant that he would return to living the terror-filled life of, essentially, a wild mouse with thumbs.
Janus had felt the rapid near-buzz pattering of V’s heartbeat, held the weight of V’s life in the palm of his hand, knew that he was so incredibly small and breakable and determined to survive despite it all. To imagine the borrower being snuffed out by something as banal as the life cycle made an inexplicable unpleasant twisting begin in his gut.
Not that he actually cared about the guy or anything. It was simply a shame, and horrifying to think about to boot.
Still, the thoughts were pervasive enough for him to begin reconsidering the terrarium V was currently residing in. It had sufficed as a temporary holding cell for a borrower he planned to release once he’d reclaimed what was his, and he’d added a few small touches for comfort, but it certainly wouldn’t do as a more permanent residence.
If he planned on extending V’s stay past the season’s turn, he would have to come up with something better. Luckily, he had the perfect starting point: he’d recently run into a neighbor a few doors down with a particularly undersized hobby…
Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was habit. Maybe they just needed something to ground them. But now, you’ve found yourself nestled in the crook of their hand, no more than a fidget to them—a living, squirming, whisper-soft thing to be idly toyed with.
Their thumb strokes over your back in slow, absent arcs. Over and over. Not unkind—never cruel—but aimless. Comforting for them. Your body shifts slightly with each motion, pressed into the warm plane of their palm, legs sprawled across the bridge of their fingers. You’re pliable, yielding. Small enough that they can wrap their entire hand around you and still feel like they’re being gentle.
They squeeze.
Not enough to hurt. Just enough to feel you. To remind themselves that something small and real and warm is there, with them. Their fingers curl slowly, pressing your body between pads of skin the size of sofa cushions. You let out a quiet breath, barely a noise, but they hear it.
And they smile, lazy and fond, their thumb dragging lightly over your chest.
“Cute—,” they murmur, their voice a rich vibration that thrums through your spine. Their thumb taps your head. You flinch, half-playful, half-defeated, and they chuckle low in their throat like you’ve done exactly what they needed you to do.
You’re rolled gently between two fingers next—a shift of pressure here, a twist there. Stretched, squished, repositioned. Like putty. Like something soft and satisfying to keep their mind from spiraling. They don’t even need to look at you. It’s all instinct now.
And weirdly? You don’t mind.
There’s something comforting in being used like this—absently, affectionately. A warm, fidget-sized tether keeping their anxiety at bay. Their hand is a fortress. A place where pressure is control, and touch is intimacy.
Eventually, they let out a deep sigh. Their fingers uncurl slightly, opening like a flower to reveal you, tousled and breathless.
“Still alive?” they ask, teasing, brushing your hair back with a fingertip the size of your face.
You just nod, flushed and blinking up at them.
They press you into their palm again and exhale—steady now.
A borrower grows up and currently lives in a western themed antique shop.
He lost his family at a young age and with what little survival skills he had he learned to survive and has been on his own since.
The only skill he knew for sure was to stay hidden from Beans, because if you got caught then surly you would meet death or worse. His family had made a fine example of that.
But the one constant in this borrowers young life without parents to raise him is the never ending playing of old westerns on the many retro t.v.’s He sees these characters in himself and the many ways the these hero’s survived the Wild West.
His favorite film was about a simple boy named Jessie. Jessie just like the borrower grew up with very little and no family, he lived a very hard life.
But when Jessie was falsely accused of stealing the towns cattle and money, the boy has to go on the run and become the ultimate gunslinger, cattle roper, and hero to prove his innocence and find the real culprit to save the town.
And the borrower swore there was no better film on this earth. Jessie could do anything and be anything. Not to mention Jessie’s actor was in many other western films where he was this unstoppable hero.
So from then on the young Borrower decided he himself would be called Jessie, and he would live up to his name. He dressed like him, talked like him, and tried his best to live like him, while all the while hiding from the many beans who entered the shop.
And so the Cowboy Borrower was born…
—————-
Katie is a young woman who had just recently inherited a small amount of farmers land and the simple cottage that came with it. She’s ready to start her new life with her college friends the town over to help support her.
After living in her new home for about three months she has managed to start to raise chickens, a single dairy cow, of course her trusted barn cat Lucy.
It is after these three months that her college friends invite her on an outing to go antique shopping, and with at a glance at an empty shelf and her friends calling her how could she decline on a fun outing.
The group had just finished walking the square of this small town when a certain antique shop caught the young women’s eye. It was almost completely western themed.
It was no secret that Katie’s house was decorated in almost every fashion imaginable, but she did have a western collection that she would like to grow, and what better place to do that then here?
It was in that shop that she found truly the best find. A whole set of cowboy themed tea cups with a matching picnic blanket and basket, and the best part yet was the adorable tiny cowboy doll inside.
[ The Art of Love and War - Chapter 7: Unmarked.]
@fireflywritesgt has captured me with their story and universe and characters and there's no stopping this madness.
First draft + final lineart. I'm not extremely happy with the final result, especially since they don't look like Harry and Joe at all. But here we go :')
Part 27 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
"Look for the big house on a hill. Castle Hill, they call it. You can't miss it." Were the directions the professor had given to Joe.
The directions had hardly been necessary. As the two reached the base of the great hill, Joe could immediately smell the scent of the tulips and marigolds that carpeted it. Soon, from where he hung out of Harry's pocket, he saw the garden come into view. Thousands of delicate flowers nodded sleepily in the late spring breeze, shuddering and swaying in the sunlight. Then as Harry climbed upwards one tower shyly emerged from the sea of flowers, and another, like the mast of an approaching ship. As if making a grand entrance in its own right, the entirety of Castle Hill finally revealed itself to the guests when they reached the top, and Joe was greeted with a sight that hardly seemed real. When professor Hill had said the word house, he had imagined a regular house much like his and Harry’s, not something nearly so bizarre as this: high upon the hill it sat, a mass of stone parapets and arches, incomprehensible in its scale and immensity to poor Joe, for whom even the Stinson House was unthinkably vast.
He wished he had brought some charcoal and paper.
When their journey up the sweet-smelling hill was complete, Harry stopped short at a stone wall with a wrought-iron gate fused into it.
“This looks like Castle Hill all right.” Said Harry.
“So how are you supposed to get in? Is it locked?” Asked Joe.
On the wall next to the gate sat a box sleek and modern, one that reminded Joe of the telephone at home. He kicked his legs backwards and jabbed Harry in the chest.
“Try picking up the phone.” He added.
“I will, I will.” Harry assured him. “Just… give me a minute.”
“To do what?”
“…I’ve never been to a castle before.”
Joe tossed his head back in frustration.
“You think I’m any different? Think I got some secret hideout you don’t know about? Come on, Harry, hurry up!” He said.
Joe felt Harry shift uneasily, then finally he picked up the mouthpiece.
“Hill residence.” Said a starchy voice from the box.
“This is doctor Avery for professor Hi-”
Harry hadn’t even finished speaking when the electric gate began to open.
“Welcome, doctor. I will be down with the papers in a moment.” Said the voice from the box.
“Papers…?” Said Harry.
The man behind the box hung up abruptly, and Harry and Joe were left with nothing to do besides cross the gate and speculate.
“Maybe you should hide.” Harry whispered.
Joe, one step ahead of him, had already slid into Harry’s front pocket out of view. Within seconds it grew stuffy – Joe had decided to give his nice suit a break, and opted for wearing his good borrowing gear to the occasion, a notable miscalculation in the rising heat.
Harry made it ten steps in when the starchy voice returned.
“Not another step until you sign the agreement, doctor, if you please.” It ordered.
Joe braced himself as Harry lurched to a stop.
“Agreement?” Harry said.
“Professor Hill requires all visitors to the grounds to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.” The stranger explained.
Joe heard the shuffling of papers from where he was hiding.
“Right… my apologies. I’ll have a look.” Harry said.
“And Mr. Piccoli, too, if you will.” Said the strange voice.
Joe couldn’t resist the urge to poke his head out from Harry’s pocket at the mention of his name. He was greeted with the sight of a sullen, dark-haired man in an even darker suit. His face contorted in confusion as the man in the suit, in cool and businesslike fashion, handed him a stack of papers that were more or less his size. He stared at them in wonder as Harry motioned for him to crawl out of his pocket. Sitting on Harry’s hand, he shuffled through the agreement intensively.
“You have a pen?” Harry asked the strange assistant.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Joe barked. “Don’t sign a thing until you’ve read it all the way through.”
“I’m sure it’s fine, Joe...” Said Harry.
“Miniatures love to do this, don't they?” The man in black mused.
Joe suppressed a scowl as he scanned the boilerplate and contemplated the agreement’s definition of the word “disclosure.” So intently did he read that the voice of professor Hill behind them came as a surprise.
“Geoffrey, Geoffrey, please! There’s no need for that today. Save it for the media.” Professor Hill said the last word with no small amount of disdain.
Joe watched as the professor politely confiscated the agreement from Harry. Cautiously he turned in his as well, and professor Hill handed them back to Geoffrey and sent him on his way.
“Go set the tables, will you?” Joe heard the professor mumble to the sullen assistant.
Joe’s ears pricked up. He had been dreading coming to Castle Hill to discuss Tiny Town, for he had imagined it would be a depressing occasion. The prospect of free food certainly lightened his mood.
With his sleeves rolled up and his jacket tossed over his shoulder, the ebullient professor led the two up the hill to the main entrance. Joe, now perched on Harry’s shoulder, was treated with a bird’s eye view of the garden and the street below.
“This was my father’s estate.” Professor Hill explained. “He struck it rich selling greeting cards of all things... before getting lost in Antarctica, that is.”
Harry and Joe were both much too in awe to speak as the professor led them through the tall, wooden doors and into the main foyer. A seemingly endless wooden floor stretched ahead while an elegant archway towered above, and mere feet away from that a chandelier hung from the ceiling. A strange, wooden trim jutted out several inches from the walls at what was slightly below the height of Harry's shoulder, though that was not the strangest thing about the Hill residence. Already Joe could see a number of odd giant artifacts, namely the skull of a large beast with two very long, pointed tusks that sat casually on the hallway table. Next to it more mounted animals guarded the area – what Joe could recognize as an upright bear, and another large, striped creature on all fours he had never encountered before. Before he had a chance to ask about any of the oddities that greeted them, Harry gently took him down from his shoulder and placed him next to the skull on the table. The coolness of the interior came as no small relief to Joe. Meanwhile a maid heckled Harry into giving her his jacket, though Joe wouldn’t let her anywhere near him when she approached. To Joe's surprise, when he backed away she let him alone without question.
With the crisis averted, he craned his neck up and admired teeth on the skull that were several times as long as he was.
“That is a Smilodon.” The professor said to Joe.
“Makes sense. It’s sure got plenty of teeth to smile with.” Joe said as his skin crawled.
When he was done being badgered by the staff, Harry began to extend a hand to Joe to pick him back up again, before the professor rapped on something that protruded from the wall.
“You can take the walkway if you like, Mr. Piccoli.” The professor said.
“Walkway…?” Joe mouthed.
Turning around, Joe could see that what he had initially dismissed as a trim along the walls was actually a platform with a guardrail. As he scanned the room, he spied a number of ladders and steps leading up and down from them, allowing him to move about without fear of being stepped on.
“Oh, I am definitely taking the walkway.” Joe said, leaving a dejected Harry in his wake as he climbed up onto it.
“Are there miniatures here, professor?” Harry asked hesitantly.
The professor simply chuckled.
“We get all kinds of guests, I’ll put it to you that way.” He said. “And please, call me Billy! My ah, colleague will whether I like it or not, so may as well get used to it.” He grumbled.
“Okay professo-er, Billy.” Harry said.
“I must apologize for my wife’s absence, too.” Said Billy as he spun the wedding ring around his finger. “She’s been very ill lately. Out in Nova Scotia taking in that good sea air.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Wish her well for me.” Harry responded.
Joe was so preoccupied with the novelty of seeing the giants at eye level that he was only half-listening. He didn’t speak up until they turned down a long hallway and something amusing caught his eye.
“Watch out, Harry! There’s a naked lady!” He crowed.
Before them in the corner stood a sight that delighted and perplexed Joe in equal measure: a marble statue of a nude woman.
“Joe, mind your manners!” Harry scolded him.
Joe, who was minding his manners perfectly well as far as he was concerned, kept on going.
“Hey professor Billy, why are you giants so afraid of naked people?” He asked. "And if you're so afraid of 'em, why do you have statues of 'em?"
“It's artistic nudity, Joe! And you can’t just ask him that!” Harry hissed, bringing Joe to a dead stop for a moment – it was one thing for Harry to scowl at him from high above or from across the room, but quite another for him to do it while making direct eye contact.
Billy simply chuckled.
“Why are you miniatures not afraid of naked people?” He countered.
Joe thought long and hard for a moment, then answered honestly.
“I don’t know.” He said.
“That’s culture, my friend. We all have it. If we were fish, it would be the water we all swim in.” Billy replied.
“Culture?” Joe repeated.
“The values we share. The things we have in common. The things we consider to be right or wrong. Our traditions… here’s one of mine.” He said, leading the two of them into a large parlour half-filled with cardboard boxes.
Billy Hill gestured to a portrait above the mantle. It was of a man dressed entirely in a light brown uniform of sorts on a grassy knoll. He wore a funny hat that was egg-shaped at the top, with a wide brim at the bottom. He knelt down with a gun in hand, holding the limp body of another strange animal by the scruff of its neck. Standing beside him was a wiry young boy dressed identically to his father, who gazed solemnly ahead.
“My father wanted me to be a big game hunter just like he was. Took me on my first safari when I was nine.” Joe could sense disdain in the professor’s voice as he told the story. “…but culture changes, Mr. Piccoli. We are the ones who determine the culture, culture does not rule us.”
Joe leaned against the walkway rail and nodded. Something about the professor’s words rang true, spoke to the sight in Tiny Town that had so disturbed him. He was contemplating this newfound concept of culture and how one could possibly change it when Harry bumped into one of the cardboard boxes and jumped, causing him to lose his train of thought.
Harry let out a string of apologies then asked,
“…what are these for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“The family collection.” The professor said. “My father brought back a lot of ah, souvenirs from our trips. I’ve decided to return them... if I can find out where on Earth they were taken from.”
“Why would you do that?” Harry studied a wooden mask that jutted out from the box. “These look very rare. They must be quite expensive.”
“Good anthropology has a way of changing one’s point of view for the better.” Billy declared. “Bad anthropology… well, there’s plenty of that in the world. I’d rather not add more of it… though I’m hardly an anthropologist myself.”
“What are you talking about?” Harry laughed. “You’re a professor of anthropology, aren’t you?”
“Oh, we’ll get to that.” Hill assured him.
Joe scurried along as Hill took Harry by the shoulder and led him down another turn. As they neared the end of this hallway, something caught Joe’s attention. A peculiar sound that chortled and wavered, but one he recognized instantly. It was the sound of voices. Not the hearty trumpeting of exuberant giants, but the more muted, yet no less boisterous tone of his fellow tinies in high spirits.
“So there is miniatures in here!” Joe exclaimed.
"Joe!? Joe!" The professor called from behind him.
Joe took no heed as he raced further down the walkway in search of the miniatures. The professor, now unsettled, chased after him and as the three approached the rear of the house, where the hallway they were traveling down merged with another, they reached a door that read: AVIARY.
“No no no!” The professor stammered. “Those aren’t miniatures, Joe, those are just… birds. Endangered birds that mimic the sound of human speech.” Joe stopped where the walkway ended and tilted his head at the door as the professor continued. “They scare very easily. Come along, this way now!”
Harry, meanwhile, crossed his arms and shot him a glare that was even icier than the last one.
"Don't be rude." He ordered.
Joe looked from Harry to the professor to the door then back again, plainly skeptical, but at Harry's bidding he ultimately followed the two over to the doorway across from the Aviary. Billy stood before this door with one hand on the doorknob, and right as he was about to open it he turned around to face Harry and Joe.
“...I have a confession to make.” Hill said. “I’m not the real professor Hill, and we aren’t really meeting my colleague. It’s the other way around. I’m her colleague.” Joe exchanged a puzzled glance with Harry as Billy continued. “Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to the real professor Hill.”
Joe climbed the ladder from the walkway down to the floor and crossed the threshold onto marble tile that was so well polished he could see his own face in it. The room below, palatial in appearance, was set deeper into the ground, and he scurried over to another small staircase built just for him and climbed down the curved steps to the meeting place below. Looking up, he could see the room was lined with shelves upon shelves of books, though not giant-sized ones. In the center of the white-walled study sat two giant-sized chairs, and a circular table, on which another, much smaller set of chairs and tables had been set out. As Joe raced down the staircase he could see that the centerpiece of the table was a vase of firey orange flowers, and leaning against that vase was a fellow miniature.
He couldn’t get a good look at her at ground-level when he reached the bottom of the staircase, so he whistled for Harry to pick him up. True to his training, the giant did so, and from where he crouched in Harry’s palm he eyed the woman with no small amount of suspicion. If ever there was an archetypal hotshot borrower, this woman was it: she was stocky and muscular in build, farmer-tanned and decked out in the best borrowing gear money could buy. Enviously he counted the pockets on her cherry red jacket, as all career borrowers did when sizing one another up, and noted that hers had precisely two more pockets than his did. Normally this would have been a non-issue, he would have paid her proper respect and went on his merry way, but there was one glaring problem Joe had with this woman: her auburn hair was twisted back into a braid and tossed over her shoulder, revealing a missing left ear.
As Harry carried him closer and closer to her, Joe wanted nothing more than to scurry away. Her mere presence felt like a threat somehow, an indirect admission of something on Joe's part by proximity. Joe had not feared marking at Calloway’s, and the incident outside of Tiny Town was one he could swiftly put out of sight and out of mind, but here, now, seeing a real marked tiny in the flesh and being expected to commit the unforgivable sin of fraternizing with her? It threw everything inside of Joe off-kilter.
She only smiled at him as he wore his unease all over his face.
“Welcome to my study.” She said with open arms. "Ain't it grand?"
Something about the smile on her face told Joe that she was expecting a showdown, and Joe was reluctant to give her one.
“Harry, don’t put me down there.” He begged under his breath.
“Why not?” Asked the oblivious giant.
“I can’t talk to her! She’s a pet tiny!” He spat.
“Be a good guest, will you!?” Harry chided.
The woman on the table threw her head back and cackled.
“Oh, don’t worry about it, kiddo! I don’t bite. I’m very well trained.” She sneered.
As Joe fought with Harry to get away, he saw the real professor Hill beckon to the fake professor Hill. They launched into a cryptic whisper-fight for a passing moment until Joe was finally overwhelmed by Harry and deposited onto the table. Billy backed off, and the woman closed in on Joe like a cat to a mouse as he drew back in fear.
“Well well, look at you.” She said. “You look different than I expected. From what Billy told me I was picturing a dockie.”
“I’m not a damn dockie!” Joe said, swearing at a woman the way a damn dockie would.
“What’s a dockie?” Harry whispered.
“It’s miniature slang for a criminal.” Billy explained.
When Joe backed into the edge of the table and teetered over it, the lady in red snatched his left ear and wrenched him forwards, causing Harry to flinch as Joe let out a squeal.
“You don’t like pet tinies, huh?” She growled into his ear, then released him. “Tell me, who’s that over there, huh? Who brought you here?” She gestured over to Harry while Joe fumed at her, then, feeling betrayed by the giant, he turned his scowl to Harry as he rubbed his sore ear, who quickly averted his gaze.
“Lorraine… easy now. He’s still new to this.” Billy coaxed her.
The pet tiny, Lorraine, looked Joe up and down with an expression equal parts smugness and scorn. Then she reached out a hand to him.
“You better start liking pet tinies real fast at the rate you’re goin’.” She said. “Name’s Lorraine. Lorraine…”
Before she could finish her greeting, Billy erupted into a flurry of more esoteric gestures. She mouthed what Joe guessed were the words I won’t at Billy, before casting him an exasperated glance and turning her attention back to Joe.
“…Burroton.” She concluded as Joe reluctantly reached out and shook her hand, nearly losing it to her death grip in the process. “Lorraine Burroton.” Joe massaged his sore hand once she freed him. “And you, what’s your name big guy? Come here.” She beckoned to Harry who tensed up, then offered her his pinkie.
“Harry Avery.” He said.
He too gripped his pinkie once it was shaken and freed.
“Pleasure. All right. Joe, Harry, I understand you guys have some questions about Tiny Town, which is great because I’m the one who invented Tiny Town. Ask away.”
Lorraine pulled out her miniature chair and sat at her miniature table with chin in hand as the waitstaff tended to the giants, seemingly relishing in Joe’s discomfort. As Joe sat down, he barely noticed the pitcher of lemonade before him or the impeccably made little cakes. All he could focus on was Lorraine’s missing ear.
“You're the one who invented Tiny Town?” Harry’s voice was incredulous.
“I did. I could tell you the whole story.” She said as she poured herself a glass of lemonade.
“Please do.” Harry said.
Joe then watched in sickened fascination as Lorraine did the most giantlike thing he ever saw a fellow tiny do: she reached into her pocket and pulled out what appeared to be a hand-rolled cigarette. She lit it and puffed away as she launched into her tale while Joe took note of the strange ring that glinted from her left finger.
“So here’s the story.” Lorraine began. “Long, long ago, about ten years ago now, Billy and I got talking philanthropy one day and I thought, gee, wouldn’t it be nice if us tinies could have homes of our own? A happy place to be where we don’t have to live rough and worry about all the thousands of things out to kill us?”
Joe looked over to Billy, who was nodding along and smiling at Lorraine as her story continued. Something about the fondness in the man’s smile made Joe all the more uneasy. He knew what a smile like that meant in a giant. He had daydreamed about a giant smiling at him that way as a boy. Some part of him deep down knew what this miniature woman and this giant man really were, but he was too afraid to articulate it even to himself in the privacy of his own head.
It was real now. There were others like him. Rather than being elated or relieved, all Joe felt in their presence was his own internalized shame.
“…so I started drafting up the plans for this place called Marigold Acres.” She gestured up to the vase of flowers on the table. “It’s my favourite flower, in case you were wondering. Anyways – Billy manages to pitch it to the university as an experimental housing project and drums up enough support. The only problem is securing the land. Nobody wanted a bunch of miniatures in their back yard. They all thought we’d come into their houses and steal things… never mind the whole idea was for us to have houses of our own, but anyways…”
She flicked her cigarette and took a sip of her lemonade as Joe and Harry took in the tale with fascination.
“…the only place the city will let us build it is in the park, by the zoo, on land we’re renting from them. They won’t let us buy a plot for it. Originally they wanted to make it an extension of the zoo, but the owner of the zoo wasn’t having that and we weren’t either. So Marigold Acres gets built, close-to-but-not-part-of the zoo. Nobody actually calls it Marigold Acres, because giants are assholes. It gets de-facto renamed to Tiny Town, which is so pejorative. …still with me?”
Lorraine eyed Joe and Harry as they nodded, then launched back into her lecture.
“Okay, so the thing about this first Tiny Town, Tiny Town One, is it had no security. Nada. Zilch. We kept bugging the city over and over to at least post some guards around it – something. Tinies were getting snatched left and right! According to the original agreement we signed with them, it was up to them to keep Tiny Town secure, but they weren’t living up to their end of the bargain, and can you guess what happened?”
Joe sat up straight in his chair.
“Some giant kicked all the buildings in?” Was his educated guess.
“No, but close! Some drunken asshole sped right through the park and drove a motor-car into the entire thing. Killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people in a split second. Finally after all that bad press we’re able to convince them to beef up the security, but they’ll only agree to it if we renegotiate the agreement and put Tiny Town completely under their control. …and people were dying, and everyone blamed me for the incident to the point that they… y’know.”
To the point that they marked her, Joe presumed, as he watched Lorraine’s hand hover around her left ear. Something softened in Joe as she appeared distraught at the memory when it hit her, then steeled herself again.
“…so we renegotiated.” She said. “After that, they rebuilt it into the fire hazard it is today, and that’s how Tiny Town Two was made.”
“The city set up a new board of directors to oversee the second Tiny Town after we gave up control.” Billy added. “Now it consists of a number of chairmen for right-wing public interest groups who are paying the city good money under the table to stay on the board, each of them with a keen interest in shaping how the public behaves and thinks. Lately they’ve been using Tiny Town as a testing grounds, a social experiment if you will, to see which tactics work best for spreading certain unsavoury ideas. Meanwhile, as part of the new agreement, I’m forbidden from speaking ill of the Tiny Town project whenever our students ask me about it. I have to sit in my office and preach the good word of Tiny Town to them while knowing damn well what’s going on underneath.”
“Unsavoury ideas? But why here? Why miniatures? Why would they want to teach anyone such a thing?” Harry asked.
“Why not miniatures?” Lorraine cut in. “Think about it: they have little frame of reference for how the giant world works. If these groups find something that works to divide tinies at a small scale, they can start using those tactics on giants at a large scale. Hell, if they used the same tricks on schoolchildren they could raise a whole generation that’s falling over itself to march off to war.”
“War… I see now.” Said Harry. “They’re trying to avoid another conscription crisis.”
“Bingo.” Lorraine replied as she snuffed out her cigarette on the tabletop. “The government was none too impressed with that fiasco. The next time a world war comes around – and another world war will come around – they wanna be ready. They want to raise a generation who’ll hop right into their uniforms with no fuss about it. Now, I dunno what conclusions they’ve reached since kicking us outta the project, but if you want my educated guess: they’re cooking up a bunch of tactics to get one group of people to hate another group of people. From what I’ve heard, they’ve already done a fine job of recreating the Irish-Italian mob wars going on in the states.”
Harry looked utterly stunned. As Joe sat there with near uncontrollable energy coursing through him he couldn’t help but envy Harry, and Lorraine and Billy as well. They all seemed to know what they were talking about. Joe had no idea what “mob wars” were and he had little interest in finding out.
“A social experiment like that, here in Canada? With all due respect, professor Burroton, that sounds like something the Americans would do, not us.” Harry said.
Billy eyed him and gave a sad smile.
“Well, it is true that many of these interest groups at the helm are based in the states.” He said. “...but let’s not kid ourselves, doctor. Plenty of them are Canadian too.”
Harry appeared downright scandalized for a moment, then fell into deep thought. Joe was so full of nervous energy now that he nearly launched out of his seat. Nobody was asking the real questions as far as he was concerned.
“So why isn’t anyone doing anything about this? You can’t just let it go on like that! You’re the ones who made it, aren’t you?” Joe said.
“We are doing something about it. We’re fighting it in court. That’s where these battles happen, I’m afraid.” Billy explained.
“Well, why not go there and talk to them in the meantime?” Joe insisted. “Tell them they’re part of some experiment! Maybe if they know they’ll go somewhere else.”
“Tried that too.” Lorraine remarked. “They don’t believe us. Even if they did, most of ‘em don’t care enough to leave. Some of them benefit from it too much to change… others just wanna punish anyone who they see as inferior to them, and Tiny Town gives them an easy way to do that. Either way their minds are made up, there’s no reasoning with these people.”
Joe didn’t want to believe what Lorraine was saying. He wanted to live in a world where things were simple, where people were reasonable, where the evils of the world would fall away when confronted with good, keen sense. He made a mental note to swing by Tiny Town later to find out for himself whether or not what she was saying was true.
“Where do I go, then? Where does anyone go?” Joe asked. “Tiny Town is bad, colonies are hit and miss, the wild life is brutal… do I just hop into a gilded cage and sacrifice my dignity at the altar of petdom or something?”
“What’s so bad about living with me?” Harry murmured.
Lorraine rolled her eyes at Joe. Billy, meanwhile, leaned in and mouthed something to her that resembled the words tell him. She scowled at him once again, shook her head, then looked Joe up and down as though she were sizing him up. For a hot second she and Billy appeared to be on the verge of another whisper fight, but instead he leaned away and looked on expectantly.
“…what was that about?” Asked Joe.
Lorraine sighed and locked eyes with him. Joe could see the mistrust written all over her face, so he was surprised by what she did next. He watched curiously as she tossed her braid, bent down in her chair, and rolled up her right pant leg. Harry immediately looked away as she undid her boot for good measure, but Joe, who was not afraid of naked ankles or the people attached to them, craned his neck to see a scar not unlike like the one that had been around Totsy the elephant’s leg.
“I know a thing or two about escaping cages.” She said dryly, not taking her eyes off of Joe. “What you’ve got going on with your giant ain’t it.”
“You were…” Joe began, though he didn’t know how to phrase the rest of his question.
Lorraine simply nodded, did her boot back up and sat up straight as Joe gazed into the center of the table with a sinking feeling. Now he felt deeply sorry for this pet tiny he had initially spurned, though he was unnerved in no small part by the fact that everything about this woman was an unwelcome reminder. It was as if she were the physical manifestation of everything Joe was afraid of becoming, and he didn’t like that. He wanted to live with Harry without all the baggage and social stigma it came with. To have his giant and his left ear, too.
“Yeah, well… some giants are nice, sure, but we’re still so different. He’s always gonna have power I don’t. Even he was saying that, weren’t you Harry?” Joe said.
“I was…” Harry admitted.
“Having power isn’t the same as abusing it.” Lorraine said. “Hell, we’re not even that different when you get down to it. Look over there.”
Lorraine pointed to a diagram on the far wall. On it Joe could see drawings of what appeared to be three skeletons of primitive humans in varying degrees of upright posture. In front of them was a fully upright modern skeleton, and leading the procession in front of it, so small Joe could barely make it out from where he sat, was the skeleton of a modern miniature.
“Don’tcha think it’s a little messed up how, whenever people talk about us and them, they call the big people the humans and the tiny people the tinies?” Lorraine asked him, and Joe nodded in agreement. “Well here’s a little secret: the only thing that really separates us and them is a chemical here and a lump of cells there. Aside from that, we’re the same damn species when you get down to it.”
Billy lit up at the reminder.
“Ahh, yes, I was meaning to ask you about that, doctor. I was wondering if you had encountered any recent discoveries in your journals about the mac-”
Joe’s mind immediately tuned out the medical jargon he had no hope of understanding. Meanwhile, as Harry launched into a doctorly diatribe about strange chemicals, Joe struggled to pick up what Lorraine was putting down. What did species have to do with it? Lorraine seemed to sense what was going through his head as the doctor and the professor chattered away. She leaned across the table, clapped him on the shoulder and in a voice so low neither the professor nor Harry could hope to hear she said,
“Tell me something: is your giant nice to you?”
Joe nodded. Of course Harry was nice to him! He had been nice from the very start.
“Does he listen to you?” She continued.
Though that battle had been hard won, Joe nodded again.
“Here’s the most important question: when you say no, does he respect that?”
Joe thought long and hard about the last question. His mind wandered back to the trinket box, to sleeping in the kitchen, to the way Harry fretted when Joe had said yes after he had said no. How Harry worried so much about Joe’s capacity to say no that the man shot himself in the foot sometimes. Taking all that into consideration, Joe nodded again and added,
“I think he listens a little too well sometimes.”
“Then cherish that!” Lorraine said, shaking him as she spoke as if to shake the words themselves into his brain. She released him and sipped on her lemonade. “It’s not every day you find that in a giant. You’re not a pet, Joe. I’m not either, not really. We’re just lucky.”
In the background, Harry was laughing at something Billy said to him, a laugh deep and lovely.
As Joe stared into space, he accepted it was a sound worth being mutilated for.
-
Joe scoured the grass along the grounds of Tiny Town for the hole he had crawled through only days before. As he ran his foot along the inner fence, what surprised him was not a sudden dip in the ground, but the hardness of pure concrete. Bending down to look closer, he could see what he swore were the remains of the hole, clearly filled in after he had left.
Of course lightning wouldn’t strike twice. He got up and tried his best to peer through the gaps in the wooden slats as evening grew near, trying to devise some other way to get in, or at the very least catch O’Grady’s attention. He was about to give up when a whistle blew, and the deafening sounds of hundreds of footsteps filled the streets. Shadow after shadow passed through the gaps in the fence. Maybe if he was lucky one of them would be O’Grady’s, Joe reasoned, and he whistled as loudly as he could then started shouting for good measure.
“O’GRADY! OH-GRAY-DEE! YOU IN THERE, PAL!?”
Soon enough an irritable brogue could be heard through the mass of marching feet.
“Joe!? What are you doing here? I gotta get home.” O’Grady complained. “Let’s walk and talk.”
Now he could see O’Grady’s green eyes through the fence. Like a little dog he trotted along as O’Grady made his evening commute.
“O’Grady, you gotta leave Tiny Town. It’s not safe. It’s an experiment! The whole thing is – it’s evil, Tim!” Joe jogged along the fence, trying to keep tabs on where O’Grady was – he couldn’t tell if he was too far back or too far ahead.
“Experiment? What are you talking about!? This the latest borrower rumor going around?”
“No, it’s not a rumor! I heard it from the lady who made Tiny Town herself! A buncha giants took it over and now they’re doing all this weird stuff to-”
“Psssssh, there’s no lady who made Tiny Town! It was Dawson’s idea, everyone knows that!” O’Grady said, stopping dead in his tracks. “I’m not leaving, either. Ye can’t do that! Dirty bastard got marked the other day trying something like that, digging holes all over the bloody place. Pet behaviour, that is.”
You mean you marked him. He didn’t get marked, Tim. You marked him. I saw it happen. Joe thought, but wouldn’t dare say it.
Joe broke into a cold sweat at the mere mention of the incident. Growing up, Joe had been taught that you never, ever accused someone of being a pet without good reason. A marking could ruin a person’s entire life, so there had to be solid proof and evidence before reaching for the knife. The idea that someone could be marked for a crime as insignificant as leaving someplace they didn’t want to be was unthinkable to Joe. As he processed O’Grady’s words, more questions began to plague him: was Joe himself the reason that man had been marked? Had he drawn attention to the holes by sneaking in? He tried not to think about that as he pleaded with O’Grady through the fence.
“C’mon, Tim! You gotta believe me! We’re Calloway kids! We stick together, don’t we?”
Joe was hoping this would be O’Grady’s secret weak spot. Captain Calloway had been less of a proper father to the both of them and more of an employer. As a result, there were many times in the boys’ lives when they had only had each other to rely on. The notion that O’Grady could abandon him completely in favour of Tiny Town was just as unthinkable as marking someone without evidence was.
“I was a Calloway kid.” O’Grady corrected him. “Now I’m a Tiny Town tiny. Look, I gotta get to dinner. It’s been a long day! Worry about getting that shiny thing, not these stories, will you?”
Just like that, O’Grady disappeared from the side of the fence and into the sea of moving shadows, leaving Joe alone with his deepening sense of unease.
-
“So how’d it go?”
“Guess Lorraine was right. There’s no reasoning with them.” Back at the Stinson House, Joe buried his hands in his pockets and strolled from the windowsill into Harry’s palm. He sat down for good measure.
“So Tiny Town really is a no-go…” Harry trailed off.
Joe sighed as he looked up at Harry, studying him. He sensed a glumness in the giant’s voice, but couldn’t place the reason why. It wasn’t until Harry spoke that Joe pieced it all together.
“Joe… do you like living here with me?” Harry asked.
The fact that Harry even raised the question was enough to break Joe’s heart. The sad look in Harry’s eyes was even worse. Joe scrambled to his feet in Harry’s still-moving hand, wishing he could see the giant eye to eye again as he had at Castle Hill.
“Of course I do! I never said I didn’t like living here. What makes you say that?” Joe blustered as panic brewed within him.
Admitting that he enjoyed life at the Stinson House was something Joe never would have dreamed of saying to Harry months earlier. Now he said it frantically, as though his life depended on it.
“Well, from the way you were talking, you seemed eager to find someplace else to go, and I know you don’t want to get marked… you were awfully rude to Lorraine about that, you know.” Harry said.
"...I know. I'm sorry." Joe said.
"Say that to her the next time you see her."
Suddenly Joe was furious with himself. Once again, he had been so intent on preserving his own dignity that he had forgotten all about the possibility of it rubbing Harry the wrong way. What a gentle creature Harry was! What a sin it was to hurt him! As Joe shifted uncomfortably in Harry’s moving palm, he realized that there was something he wanted even more than dignity.
"Harry, it's not that I don't wanna be here..." He began.
"Then what is it?" Said Harry.
“I want you.” Joe blurted out, and it was only when the words were spoken that he realized just how forward they sounded.
Harry stopped halfway through his climb up the stairs.
“…run that by me again?” The stunned giant said.
“…I wanna live with you, I mean. More than I don’t wanna be marked. See how that evens out?” Joe’s voice wavered as he sank back down into Harry’s palm and shook with embarrassment.
“Mmm…” Was Harry’s response.
The giant started climbing again.
“Really the whole thing wasn’t because of any problem with you, Harry!” Joe sputtered, digging his grave further no doubt. “It’s just… it’s hard. When the world doesn’t give you a lot of options and you have to make the best of it. Tiny Town ain’t an option, colonies ain’t an option, and you… Lorraine says I’m lucky to have you, if that means anything.”
Harry gently set Joe down on the nightstand.
“Why ain’t colonies an option?”
Joe grew feverish with fear at his question. In order to answer it, he would have to tell Harry the truth, the real truth, to reveal to the giant the secret that had cost him his family and his old community. He swallowed and took a deep breath as Harry turned away from him and slackened his tie, treating Joe to a lovely view of his broad shoulders. He admired them and hated himself for admiring them in equal measure.
“There’s something wrong with me, Harry. My old colony didn’t want me when they found out. My mom took me somewhere to make me better, but it didn’t work.” He said to those shoulders.
Their owner looked back at him, sweet and concerned as he always was.
“What’s so wrong with you that your family would abandon you like that?” Harry asked, in the delicate voice one used when someone was crying.
It seemed he had noticed the tears in Joe’s eyes even before Joe had. Harry sat back down on the edge of the bed and studied him.
"You... you wouldn't get it." Joe said.
It was the best non-answer he could muster.
The giant leaned in.
"Try me." Was all he said in response.
Harry's voice was gentle but firm. Now it was as if Joe were sitting in a portal to two universes. There was the one where he revealed his secret to Harry, and the one where he didn’t. He couldn’t tell which of the two would bring the two of them closer, but he knew which of the two was the most honest one to live in. As he weighed his options he decided that, even if what he said next ruined everything with Harry, he could at least look back at himself with the knowledge that he had told the whole truth.
“…I wanna be a pet.” Joe said out loud.
“You do?” Harry responded, and now Joe couldn’t take what he had said back.
Joe just nodded, curled into a ball in the soap dish, taking the moment in. Harry waited patiently as Joe processed what he had just said.
“Not the way a cat or a dog is a pet. I don’t mean like that.” He clarified, when the words finally came to him. “I wanna live with you giants. The way the pet tinies do. Always have. Tinies… I care about ‘em, sure, but if they all disappeared tomorrow it’d take me a minute to notice. I wanna live with you giants, and it scares me, so that’s why I was giving Lorraine so much shit. It's why I've lived alone all this time. ‘cause there’s something wrong with me, Harry.”
Joe buried his face in his hands and shook. Meanwhile, Harry said nothing. It was a silence that devastated Joe. He needed to hear something, whether it was praise or condemnation Joe did not care; the uncertainty alone bored into him like a drill press. It was paralyzing. Sickening. Maddening. All he could do was hide his head in shame and feel dirty.
Then Harry’s fingers curled around him and swept the feeling away like the waters of the Jordan. He was too afraid to open his eyes and look up as the giant gently held him in his palm. Harry’s touch filled the spaces words could not until finally he spoke.
“I don’t think that’s being a pet, Joe. We all have ways we like to live. I think that’s just being human.”
Human. Now Joe understood the point Lorraine had been trying to make with the skeletons. Whether it was with giants or tinies, Joe wanted the same thing everybody else on the planet wanted.
Part 26 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
In which Joe introduces Harry to The Concept of Gender Fluidity and Harry reacts... about as well as a cis guy from 1926 could. He's learning!
Harry was supposed to be looking at the art and not at Joe, but as the little man shuffled through his portfolio the doctor simply couldn’t help himself. Seeing him well-groomed in that pristine outfit stirred a near-forgotten joy in Harry. Joe had transformed himself from a borrower into a dollhouse prince; metamorphosed into a being so delicate and refined that the sight reminded Harry of an expensive toy on Christmas morning, something so treasured it was near forbidden, like the dolls his sisters received that Harry in all his maleness had not once been allowed to touch.
He held his breath and waited as Joe, now back on the nightstand, searched through the matchbook for something that was good enough to show to Harry. Joe flipped through page after page, biting his lip and shaking his head, before reaching the end and going back to the start.
“Y’know, I don’t remember my art being this bad the last time I looked at it, but on second glance…” Joe trailed off.
“Come on, you have to show me something.” Harry insisted.
He leaned in as Joe sighed, grimaced, and pulled out a random page with his eyes shut. Deciding it was acceptable, he laid it out on the nightstand for Harry to see.
“All right, I guess it’s gotta be this one.” Joe said.
Harry delightedly examined Joe's work at first, though when he saw what it was he became deeply heartbroken. It was a simple charcoal sketch about the size of a postage stamp; the only colours Harry could see were yellows and reds – where Joe got those pigments from he couldn’t tell. The work itself was grotesque and expressionist in style, more closely resembling a political cartoon than a formal piece of art. The subject of the painting was surrounded by a sea of disembodied arms, all sleeved in colourful circus attire and reaching towards the center of the page, forming a cage of sorts around the chained elephant that sat in the middle and sadly looked up at them. The miserable creature was tiny in comparison.
“I drew it after I had a bad dream. …it’s kinda stupid.” Joe continued.
“It's not stupid, Joe. I think it’s a very powerful image, in fact!” Harry said.
Joe snorted in response. He always seemed insecure whenever he showed his art, though Harry couldn’t imagine why.
“What else have you done?” He asked.
Joe was looking as flustered as Harry had been moments before. Holding back a nervous smile, Joe pulled out another study.
“Here’s some I did of that mouse.” Joe said. “I was trying to get it to look like the ones my dad painted.”
This page was twice as large as the elephant drawing, but the images were even smaller. It was covered in studies of the mouse they had taken into the woods, each in a different pose. Harry narrowed his eyes as his brain processed the delicate strokes, which were finer than the letterwork engraved on a coin. The shapes were simple but lifelike. It struck a pleasing balance between real life and imagination.
“They’re very charming. Did you draw that from life?” Said Harry.
“Well, you saw yourself I didn’t kill it. Is that something you giants do, Harry? Kill things just to make art of them?” Joe’s voice was equal amounts appalled and disbelieving.
“No, no, I don’t mean it like that. Some artists draw from life, and some draw from memory.” Harry said.
“Oh. …well, here’s one I did from memory. This was actually my first one.”
Joe laid down another page. On this one was a minuscule rendition of Ms. Tucker in the park, painting the landscape around her. Everything had been rendered as faithfully as possible, right down to the melting snow. Harry gazed at it in awe.
“You did all that from memory?” He breathed.
Joe nodded and blushed like a school girl.
“Joe… have you ever considered showing at an art gallery?” Harry asked.
“The hell are those?” Joe replied.
“It’s where artists go to show their work. Some of them even become quite famous. You could be one of them if you’re lucky.”
“Yeah right! Nobody’s gonna be interested in tiny stuff, Harry.”
As Harry laid eyes on the pretty little man who sat before him, a light-bulb went on above his head. He could sit there and argue with Joe. He could certainly do that - or he could come up with a clever excuse to see more of Joe in that beautiful new suit.
“…why don’t we go to one and see what people are interested in? How about that?”
Joe’s eyes widened at first, then they traveled to the picture of Totsy.
“…it’s not gonna be like the circus, is it?” He shifted uncomfortably as his gaze then met Harry’s.
“Of course not! It’s nothing like the circus. An art gallery is the polar opposite of a circus!” Harry assured him.
“Well, all right, but first we gotta talk to the professor.” Joe said.
He gathered up the artworks and filed them back into the matchbook, and as he did so Harry could plainly see that Joe hadn’t shown him half of what he had drawn. Every fiber of his being wondered what those other works looked like.
“We’ll do that tomorrow. For now, we should get some sleep.” Harry said.
“Way ahead of ya’” Said Joe, who was already halfway through taking his pants off.
Harry jolted up in shock and covered his good, dubiously Christian eyes.
“JOE!” He exclaimed.
“…what?” Joe said.
It was the voice of a man who had neither shame nor the slightest inkling that what he was doing might be questionable.
“Warn me before you get undressed, will you?” Said Harry.
“…why? Is undressing dangerous?” Harry could tell by his voice that Joe’s puzzlement was only growing.
“It’s not dangerous, it’s just… manners. Giant manners.” Harry said. "Is this something miniatures do? Just run around with their clothes off?"
All Joe did was laugh at him.
“Not with everyone, but we live in the same burrow so who cares? Aside from you, I mean." Joe said. "First the romance novel and now this... You giants are real scared of naked people, huh?”
Harry suspected this would be the first of many cultural differences he would have to navigate in the coming days.
-
“I’m telling ya’ professor, there’s something really wrong with that place.” Joe said into the phone.
Harry listened in on the one-sided conversation from the dining room as he read the morning paper.
“I know I should stay away from it… …because my best friend is in there, that’s why! Look, all I wanna know is why Tiny Town is going nuts. You had those plans and everything so – yes, actually. Yes, that would be wonderful. Hold on – ”
Harry braced himself for whatever Joe was going to spring on him.
“– Harry can we go to Professor Hill’s house?” Asked Joe.
“What!?”
“He said yes.” Joe lied, then hung up the phone before Harry could so much as stand up. When he reached the doorway to the hall, all he could do was stand there and scowl at Joe, who was leaning against the candlestick phone and looking quite proud of himself.
“Joe, what was that about!?” He exclaimed.
“I made you a new friend. You gotta get out more, Harry. Talk to people. Live a little!” Joe said.
Harry rubbed his face. Like it or not, Joe was right. Harry was hardly an exciting person – though he wasn’t fond of the fact that Joe was catching on to that.
“When is he expecting us?” He asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon. We even get to meet his colleague, too. How about that?”
“That sounds… lovely.” Harry said, in the most unenthusiastic voice imaginable.
Harry could do little more than frown about it as Joe, still smug, simply shrugged at him.
“Hey, if you’re gonna drag me somewhere it’s only right I get to do the same thing." He said. "So where’s this art gallery…?”
-
The Art Gallery of Toronto was downtown on Dundas street, and a mere twenty years ago it had not existed at all. Already the nascent gallery sported several expansions in spite of that, and it seemed to be growing bigger by the day. It was symptomatic of a larger trend in the postwar Canadian art world, that of a nation in search of an identity that gave way to growth unprecedented.
Neither Harry nor Joe were fully aware of this when they entered this surreal realm of precisely arranged paintings. Joe sounded especially perplexed when he leaned in towards Harry’s left ear and whispered to him from under the scarf he was hiding in.
“Harry… what’s the deal with all these funny looking landscapes?”
In the center of the gallery’s off-white walls, Harry, armed with only an exhibition pamphlet, was now tasked with explaining the Group of Seven.
“It’s... art, Joe” Harry said, trying his best not to attract the attention of the other patrons, “a distinctly Canadian school of art. A like vision, so they say.”
“What’s so Canadian about it?” Joe hissed.
“…I don’t know.” Harry admitted.
He had been following the group for a while, noting its various compliments and criticisms. The Group of Seven were certainly distinct and Canadian, if only because they aggressively branded themselves as such. It was all rather odd, Harry found, though he had grown fond of them nonetheless.
He tensed up at the feeling of Joe shifting about on his shoulder.
"Even though an artist may not necessarily look for the support of approval from his people, it is from them that he must draw his inspiration.” Joe read from the pamphlet.
Harry looked over and saw that Joe was scratching his head. He strolled along and watched the little artist squint at Lawren Harris’s Mountain Forms, scowl at A. Y. Jackson’s Pic Island, and glower at Arthur Lismer’s Old Pine Tree. When Harry asked his next question, he could already guess what Joe’s answer would be.
“Well? What do you think?”
Joe huffed.
“...look. It’s not bad. I’m not saying it’s bad.” He stressed. “I just can’t figure out what makes it so Canadian. It’s just trees and shit. If these guys are so big on finding inspiration from other people, why do they only paint trees?”
Harry tried and failed to contain his laugher, throwing Joe off his shoulder. He swiftly caught his disgruntled friend and returned the poor man to his perch.
“Sorry…” He said, and flinched as Joe seized his earlobe in a death grip. “They are Canadian trees, though, wouldn’t you agree? And Canadian mountains? Canadian landscapes?”
“These could be anyone’s landscapes, Harry." Joe said. "I wouldn’t know they were Canadian if you didn’t tell me. What’s this actually saying about Canada? That it’s a whole lotta nothing?”
“I guess so.” Harry said, contemplating the rolling emptiness of Frank Carmichael’s Snow Clouds as he did so.
“Why do you giants even like this stuff?” Joe groused.
“I suppose paintings of really big landscapes make us feel small.” Said Harry.
“Huh… now this whole thing makes sense." Joe said. "It’s giant art for giants! Of course I’m not gonna get it. I always feel small.”
“Let’s look at something else, then.”
Harry wasn’t expecting to linger in the French Canadian half of the exhibition as long as he did, but Joe seemed to take well to the subject matter. He wondered if Joe’s time in Usine had something to do with it. Miss Emily Coonan’s Girl with Cat was one work he was fond of, as was Suzor-Coté’s Youth and Sunlight. Robert Pilot’s Old Habitant House, Beaupré got the strongest reaction out of him.
“Hey, that looks kinda like our house!” Joe said. “Maybe we should paint our door like that.”
“So you like some giant art after all.” Harry remarked.
“When there’s neat stuff in it I guess. How many times do you think I get to see a cat up close and live?” Joe said. Harry chuckled as he turned down a hallway off to the side. “Also, Harry, I don’t wanna alarm you, but I’m going to take my jacket off. It’s getting stuffy in here.” He added.
“You don’t have to warn me every time you take something off, you know. Only when you get completely naked.” Harry explained to his scarf.
"I beg your pardon?" Said a stern voice from beside them.
The old lady standing next to Harry was quite unimpressed with his statement. With Joe hidden, she clearly thought Harry had been talking to her, and with his soul leaving his mortal body he narrowly dodged her umbrella and ducked into the nearest gallery he could find. Joe, meanwhile, clung to him for dear life.
“Whoa! Hey! Where are we going!?” Joe exclaimed.
“To jail for public indecency in all likelihood.” Harry muttered.
The sound Joe made was snort and laugh in equal measure.
“Was taking off my jacket that big of a crime to you people?”
As Harry rubbed his face and smiled, a strange feeling came over him when he realized he couldn’t remember the last time he had enjoyed another person’s company so much. Ever since the war it had been as though Harry were surrounded by invisible glass walls that cut him off from the rest of humanity, not only physically, but emotionally as well. Now here he was, on an outing with a friend, getting into mischief just like he had when he was a boy. He felt almost normal.
Ever since meeting Joe, for the first time in ten years Harry remembered what it was like to have fun. He contemplated this as he approached the doorway ahead.
A sign next to it read, MINIATURE MASTERPIECES – LENT BY THE ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM
“Oh, I gotta see what this one’s about.” Joe said.
Harry could feel Joe wrapping the folds of the scarf tighter around himself as a woman in a long, flowing gown made from a chaotic, abstract print stomped out of the exhibit in a huff. She slowed down as she neared the two of them, and Harry could see that she was carrying a bunch of rolled up canvasses under her arm.
“Don’t tell me you’re headed to the miniature exhibit.” The stranger sighed.
“We—I am, actually.” Harry said.
“Don’t bother.” Was her recommendation.
A scowl crept over Harry's face.
“What’s wrong with it?” He tentatively asked her.
“It’s just a bunch of tiny things in a glass case! There’s no depth, no substance. People only like it because it’s very small. It’s not real art.” She scoffed. “I’ve been trying to get shown here for years, but nobody pays any mind to my work! They only want to stare at more tiny things.”
“…right. Well, thank you for the warning, ma’am! I’ll keep that in mind.” Harry nervously backed away from this absurd looking woman until he was all the way through the doorway and awkwardly waved at her. Without saying another word, she continued her righteous crusade down the hallway, and Harry turned his attention to the exhibit.
“What was that about?” Joe whispered.
“She must have bad taste.” Harry said.
As he approached the crowd in the center of the room, even Harry, who was taller than most of them, struggled to see what was inside the case from behind the small army of downward heads.
“Look at the cute little mice! What does that mean?” One woman commented.
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does.” The man who was presumably her husband replied.
“It probably doesn’t mean anything. Tinies aren’t smart enough for that kinda stuff.” Another gawker interjected.
Harry could feel Joe’s fingertips digging deeper and deeper into his earlobe.
“Don’t say a word.” He breathed to the tiny sitting right there on his shoulder.
Joe didn’t say a word, but Harry could tell from the bitter laughter in his ear that the poor man was fuming.
“Now if you’ll follow me into the adjacent gallery here…” The tour guide, an elderly man in a light brown suit, struggled to hold the attention of his audience. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “EXCUSE ME! It’s time for the next exhibit! Come along!”
Reluctantly the gaggle of giants followed, and Harry waited impatiently until the last of them was gone. With the exhibit all to themselves, he reached a hand up to Joe and took him down from his shoulder, placing him right in front of the glass case. He followed along as Joe paced about in front of the case until he stopped at one title card that caught his eye. The two read it in tandem.
Artist Unknown
Miniature Maiolica
n.d.
Tin-glazed ceramics
Like their larger counterparts, Italian tinies have a fondness of istoriato wares, though the symbolism and meanings unique to the small folk remain unknown.
Harry jumped as Joe’s palms collided with the glass.
“WHAT!?” He shouted. “Waddaya mean it’s unknown!? I know what this stuff means! Doesn’t everyone?”
“You do…?” Harry leaned in and peered over Joe’s shoulder at the immaculately decorated little plates.
“’course I do. Like that one there –” Joe pointed to the plate in the middle. On it was a miniature rendition of what appeared to be a selection of meats and cheeses served on a piece of wood bark. Next to it was a bead of wine contained in a leaf. “–that’s to commemorate a wedding. I can’t tell exactly what they’re eating ‘cause it depends on what you borrow, but if there’s wine there, that’s probably what it’s celebrating.”
“So when you get married you paint the food?” Harry raised an eyebrow. “Why not the happy couple?”
“Of course you paint the food! Your partner’s gonna be there tomorrow, but if you’re a tiny, you’re only gonna eat stuff this good a few times in your life.” Joe explained.
He strolled along in front of the plates with all the air of a university professor.
“Now this stuff here,” he continued, “it’s all giardino stuff. Stuff the wild tinies have. They live outside and travel around a lot, so they put art on everything to document things. My dad was one of those. My mom, she was casa, she lived inside and borrowed, so her side of the family didn’t make stuff like this.”
Harry nodded vigorously in fascination. His eyes were drawn to one plate on the right that looked familiar.
“What’s this one with the mice on it? You have one of those too, don’t you?” He said.
“That one’s a family portrait.” Joe said. “The number of mice on it tells you how many people are in a family. Usually it’ll be two big mice and a bunch of small ones representing the kids.”
“What about that really big mouse at the top?”
“Really big one at the…” Joe stopped dead in his tracks and raced over to where Harry was pointing. He clutched his hat to his chest in awe at the sight of it. “…oh. Wow… this plate is something special.” He croaked, and his eyes glistened as he turned to look up at Harry then back to the plates.
“It is?” Harry pressed.
Joe nodded. From the look on his face he may as well have just discovered the ark of the covenant. He pressed his nose right up against the glass as he studied it.
“That big mouse at the top means this family had a grandparent.” Joe stated. “It’s extremely rare to have a living grandparent, especially if you’re wild. It’s… god, Harry, I can’t even describe it. It’s a blessing to have a grandparent." He stammered. "…I wonder what happened to these people.”
Harry’s heart sank. He hadn’t met all of his grandparents – the two on his father’s side were in England, and his grandfather on his mother’s side had passed away. The only grandparent he had met had been his grandmother on his mother’s side, but knowing her had been something he had taken for granted as a child. The idea that miniatures were so short lived that even having one living grandparent was considered a blessing saddened him deeply, yet there was also something deeply touching and human about it.
Once again, he found himself worrying for Joe. Fearing that one day he, like so many miniatures it seemed, might leave someday and never come back.
“…oh. I know what happened. ...that’s a cat.” Joe said.
“A cat?”
Now Harry examined the plate on the left. It was a cat all right, albeit an ugly and abstract one, its ears pointed like daggers and its frizzled whiskers jutting from the corners of its open mouth. It was blood-orange and arched and angry looking.
“We paint those when something really bad happens.” Joe concluded.
Harry didn’t know what to say. He just stood there with Joe and their shared sense of gloom as he thought about these nomadic miniatures who had once lived halfway across the world, with their art and their weddings and their grandparent. How strange it was to see these plates walled behind a glass case and artificially divorced from the people who had made them.
“I’m sorry, Joe.” Was all he could manage to say.
Joe shook his head and shrugged.
“No, you know what? I'm glad I saw this. I get this art. It's like you and your landscapes.” Joe said.
Harry reached out a gentle hand to Joe at the perfect moment. In came another tour group, and Harry stealthily slipped Joe into his pocket as yet more giants flooded the room.
An idea came to him. He hovered around the case as the curious onlookers started talking.
“Look at the little plates!” Someone gasped.
“It says here nobody knows what they mean.” Another giant said.
“Yes, they are quite mysterious.” The latest tour guide concurred. “We’ve yet to uncover the symbolism of them.”
“I know what they mean.” Harry said, as fifteen pairs of eyes fell upon him.
"Do you, now?" The guide sounded none too impressed.
Harry nodded sheepishly and pointed to the mouse plate.
“Well, I know a little bit. That one there with the mice is like a family portrait.” He said.
“A family portrait?" The guide repeated.
He eyed Harry in disbelief over the rims of his spectacles.
"Yes, a family portrait. The big mice represe-"
"A family portrait!?” The museum guide howled overtop of him. “What, did they gather the mice together and tell them to sit very still? How could this possibly be a family portrait?”
Harry looked on helplessly as laughter rippled through the group of giants, immediately taking the wind out of his sails. Without a care in the world, they went right back to gawking at the plates in the case with zero understanding of their context or meaning. With that, Harry realized to his dismay that the woman leaving the exhibit had been halfway right, albeit for the wrong reason. The art did have meaning. His fellow giants just didn't care what that meaning was. Why wouldn't it seem meaningless to the outward observer, then?
A voice tinier than the maiolica reached his ears from inside his front pocket.
“Just forget it, Harry. I've seen enough art. Let’s go home.”
-
“You know Narcissus wasted away and died from looking at his own reflection like that.”
“Oh, I’d die happy.” Joe sighed.
It was hypocritical of Harry to say, for he was admiring Joe just as much as Joe admired himself. He looked on fondly as the little man turned and spun, taken with his own reflection in the silver lighter on the nightstand. After a few more turns Joe had enough fun, and the little fellow soon grew tired of his own vanity and prepared to join Harry, who was already prepared for bed.
“All right, cover your eyes. I’m getting changed.” Joe declared, and Harry obediently did so. “…do I really have to do this every time I-”
“Yes you do.” Harry interrupted him.
“I just don’t get what’s so scary about—”
“It’s not scary, it’s just… manners.”
“But how is it even rude to be--okay, you can look now.”
Harry uncovered his eyes to see Joe, back in his rags, sitting on the base of the lamp. He opened the matchbook and started flipping through the works inside once again.
“Looks like your art has an audience after all.” Harry said.
Joe did not appear convinced as he shuffled sadly through his portfolio. After tossing sketch after sketch aside he looked up and said,
“Harry… would you giants only like my art because it’s really small?”
Harry froze. He didn’t know what to say to Joe in response. It was true that giants loved looking at tiny things, but surely Joe’s art had more merit to it than that.
“I don’t think so.” He said.
“That lady at the gallery did,” Joe murmured, “and those other giants didn’t care what the plates meant at all!” The tiny artist grew tense as his angst grew in equal measure. “Is my art even worth making? What if she’s right? What if it does lack substance? What if a bunch of giants like my art and I get real famous when I’m not even good, and it takes away from a bunch of other artists and all the real artists hate me!? What then, Harry?”
Harry approached the nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed as Joe became increasingly frazzled with anxiety.
“She only said that because she didn’t see what you saw. Maybe a lot of people won’t see what you see, but that’s no reason to quit making art.” Harry said.
Joe sighed and stared ahead with his chin in his hands, and Harry stared at him, frustrated with himself. He did not consider himself a real artist, but at the very least, what Harry could do was tell a story. He leaned in.
“Do you know what I wanted to be when I was a boy, Joe?” He said.
Joe looked up in confusion as Harry continued.
“I wanted to be a concert pianist. My mother wanted me to be one too, but my father told me that the world already had plenty of pianists, that it didn’t need another pianist. He said, what the world really needed was more farmers. So I never became one. I didn’t become a farmer either, because I wasn’t going to let my father win that easily. Still, I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had kept at it. Maybe I would be playing at a picture show somewhere instead of lancing boils and watching families fall apart.”
Harry paused and studied Joe, who appeared to be deep in thought.
“People like that woman remind me of my father. The world does need farmers, it’s true, but it needs pianists too, because no pianist plays the same way. Do you understand?”
Joe nodded, then looked up at Harry with a devilish grin.
“…so you play, huh?”
It was only now that Harry realized his mistake. He felt himself growing flustered once again.
“I used to a long time ago, but I’m very rusty now. Besides, I can’t do much with one hand. I couldn’t play anything if I tried.” He said with great haste, though he could tell by the wry smile on Joe's face that the damage had already been done.
“Let me get this straight. I show you all my art, but you won’t even play a song for me?” Joe said.
It was hard for Harry to say no to him outright.
“Maybe once I see the rest of your art I’ll play you something." Harry proposed. "How does that sound?”
Joe considered his offer for a moment.
“Only if you let me read you more books.” He said.
This seemed fair enough to Harry, who nodded in agreement as Joe sorted through his home library and picked out another romance novel.
“Is that one the spy novel?” He said of the book in Joe’s hands.
“Detective story, actually.” Joe said. “I was thinking you might like this one better. It’s got murder in it.”
Harry chuckled.
“Does it, now?”
Harry braced himself as Joe ran and leapt off the table, landing squarely in his lap. He picked Joe up and sat him down by the pillow, then eased himself into the bed.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s got romance too, I guess. It’s about this hardboiled detective whose health is failing while he’s trying to catch this murderer.” Joe yammered away. “So he hires a guy to be his assistant, and a few hundred thousand words later he finally figures out he’s in love with him.”
“…wait. In this one two men fall in love?”
Harry's astonishment bled into his voice. He sat up in shock and looked at Joe in confusion.
“Well, kinda. I mean, the assistant’s only a man about fifty percent of the time.” Joe carried on.
“How can someone be a man fifty percent of the time? You either are one or you aren’t one... aren't you?” Harry thought out loud.
“Exactly! ...unless you are one and also not one at the same time. That happens too sometimes." Joe's statement made Harry's mind implode. "The assistant is one fifty percent of the time. The rest of the time she's not one. …or maybe they're a man and a woman at the same time, all of the time? I can’t remember.” Joe tossed his hand, then paused. “…why do you look so stricken?”
Harry propped himself up with his one arm as he looked down at Joe in disbelief, desperately trying to wrap his head around the miniatures’ absurd gender politics. The woman in trousers was hard enough to understand, but men falling in love? One of whom was occasionally a woman, somehow? All of it was so counter to everything Harry knew he could hardly parse it. At the same time, however, he found himself feeling oddly safe with Joe in that moment, safer than he had felt around any other man before. Never in his life had he expected to encounter anyone who was so indifferent to things that were, in Harry's culture, incredibly strange if not downright dangerous. It filled him with hope and affection in equal measure.
“You gonna read this thing with me or what? Or should I just lie here and…” Joe’s voice snapped Harry out of his rumination.
Focusing on Joe once again, he noted that the miniature was lying on his back underneath him, gazing up at Harry the way he would a night sky. There was something oddly intimate about it, frighteningly so. He had imagined himself in this position with other boys before, boys who gazed up at him much the same way Joe was doing now. In these fantasies he would inevitably lower himself down and kiss them.
His heart started to pound. Blood rushed to his head. This was getting awkward. He had to say something!
“No.” Harry said, and Joe, still smiling, furrowed his brow in bewilderment. “Don’t… lie there and…”
He let out a great sigh, hoping some of the humiliation would leave his body along with it, and lowered himself back down onto the bed. Joe cuddled right into his neck, and Harry half-listened as his little friend read to him while he tried with all his might to seem as normal as possible.
Georgie smiled at him from across the room all the while. Next to the picture his mother's ring box lay in wait. Much as he wanted to focus on this strange borrower’s tale about men falling in love with other occasional-men, his mind was elsewhere. He thought about Georgie instead, and his mother, and everyone else in his life whom he had failed. He thought about the ring, more poignant than a reaper’s hourglass counting down the rest of his days. He wondered what would happen to Joe when he inevitably had to give it to someone. This in turn made him wonder if his father would be proud of him once he finally did. Did he not owe it to the family to do so after leaving his poor mother on her deathbed? He had chosen his final exams over his own family; he couldn’t allow himself to choose Joe over them now. He thought about June, fast approaching, about Georgie’s birthday, his father’s yearly visit in July, and how everything Harry had come to dread now loomed over the horizon.
He thought about Joe’s art. How Joe himself was a work of art, so beautiful it made his heart ache. He cared for Joe too much to ever throw him away, or so he told himself, but what would the rest of the world have to say to that?
It was then he realized that Joe’s voice had stopped, and in its place there was only the sound of snoring. With great caution Harry propped himself up again and looked at the little man who had passed out on the bed. That familiar tenderness came over Harry, as it inevitably did whenever Joe was passed out. Taking care not to wake him, Harry delicately scooped him up and placed him into the soap dish on the night stand, then folded the hand towel over him. He plucked the book from the bed for good measure, and clumsily returned it to the stack next to Joe’s bed.
Joe was a work of art in his own right. What more could Harry do besides cherish him?
Part 25 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
This chapter gets so gay. Warning to readers: a tiny gets injured in this.
“…and now whenever I go in one door, he goes out the other. It’s almost as if he’s avoiding me on purpose! I don’t understand you men, Mr. Piccoli. You have no idea what behaviour like that does to a girl!” Said Miss Wilkins through the phone.
Joe had no idea what behaviour like that did to a girl, but he certainly knew what it did to a boy. Joe eyed the man who was avoiding him from where he sat down the hallway. It was as if his newfound physical proximity to Harry had driven the two of them apart in every other way. Meanwhile, Harry grabbed his medical bag and prepared to head out.
“Yeah… I hear ya’. I don’t understand it myself.” Joe said. “Tell your father the doctor’s on his way. He won’t be long.”
Bidding Miss Wilkins farewell, he hung up the phone and whistled for Harry. The doctor’s back was turned to Joe, who watched as his shoulders rose with what seemed to be unease. Joe tapped his foot against the table impatiently as Harry took his sweet time turning around to face him. When he eventually did, the giant seemed to be downright nervous, which made Joe nervous by extension.
“Do you want down from the table?” Asked the giant who was obviously stalling.
“Well I sure as hell don’t wanna be put on the roof.” Joe quipped.
Joe watched Harry internally panic for a moment until he finally worked up the nerve to reach out his hand. When Joe stepped into it as he had a hundred times before, there was one major difference: now whenever Joe climbed into Harry’s hand, Harry was as fearful as a young child handling a live animal for the first time. Their interactions had been like this for the last three days, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why.
“…right. Well… if this is a simple chest cold, I’ll be back in a couple hours. If it isn’t, I won’t be back until later tonight." The second he set Joe onto the floor he started backing away. "I uh—I have to hurry, actually. Take care!” Harry said.
"Harry, wait-"
The floorboards shook as the doctor bolted from the scene like a startled deer, throwing Joe off balance. All the little man could do was cross his arms and look on in disapproval. How rude of Harry to leave so suddenly! Joe didn’t even have a chance to tell Harry where he would be going that day, something that could cost him his life if his last trip to Calloway’s was anything to go by!
The last thing Joe wanted to do was return there but a deal was a deal and fine clothes were fine clothes. Gone were the days of wearing ten year old rags, he had decided. If he had to be a borrower of any sort, he would be an enviable one, a respectable one, winning the approval of tinies and giants alike and maybe even Harry too.
With any luck it might be enough to get Harry to stop running from him.
-
The month of May was much too fleeting for Joe’s liking, and as dusk fell over the docks he wished there was a way to beg it to stay. Although Joe could hardly enjoy the weather out in the open at his scale, there was something about late spring’s ephemeral nature that gripped him tightly and refused to let go. The last few rays of the sun coloured the lake a beautiful blue, and waters that had once held a monstrosity mere days ago now sat placid and calm, sloshing lazily against the gravel. The scent of fresh grass and spring flowers perfumed the night air as it grew cool and crisp. This giant’s sunset was a borrower’s sunrise, and what a spectacular sunrise it was!
As Joe sat in the dinginess of Calloway’s and waited for the tailor to deliver on his promise, he wished he were watching it instead. The booths were closer to gull’s nests than they were proper tables and chairs, and the twigs always prodded him in the worst possible places. The unpleasantness of it all doubled when a plate of rancid offerings was slid under his nose.
“Say, Cast-iron Joe! You wouldn’t mind taking this off my hands for me, would you?”
It was the voice of Gutters, of course. Joe stared into the plate the way a traumatized war veteran would stare off onto the distance. On it there was a soggy trimming of spinach, an even soggier crumb of bread, and – crown jewel of the dish – egg whites. Two slices of them, each ice cold and utterly joyless.
Joe had no choice but to accept the offering. Anything less would be tantamount to admitting that he was a pet.
“Thanks, Gutters. You’re a real pal.” He said.
The lanky man smirked at him as he slid into the seat across from him, head bobbing with suppressed laughter.
"Saw your owner looking for ya' a few nights ago." Said Gutters.
It took everything in Joe's power to suppress the primordial terror that came over him. He kept his eyes locked onto the sad eggs and prayed that Gutters wouldn't smell his fear as adrenaline surged through him.
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about." Joe lied as his heart thumped in his chest.
"Really? You don't know? Rumour has it there was a big guy on the beach calling your name." He said.
Joe shot Gutters a look of pure, concentrated rage. He stabbed his fork into the eggs and twisted it.
"Must've been looking for his dog or something. The hell is it with you, Gutters? You and your pet tiny conspiracy. Can’t you find something better to do?" Said Joe.
"Hey, easy! I'm just looking out for ya', Joe. I know you won't believe me, but I used to be you." Gutters said.
Something about the way Gutters spoke to Joe reminded him of the circus manager: it was a voice rife with insincerity, one clearly in search of a desired reaction. He knew exactly what Gutters was doing. Gutters was testing him, and Joe wasn't having it. As his fear gave way to calculated determination, he found he wasn't scared of losing his ear anymore. He feared losing his agency, an agency he constantly had to fight for, against regular giants, against Harry, and now against his fellow tiny.
"I don't remember asking for the help." Joe stated.
With those words, Joe locked eyes with the man across from him and saw that they were full of contempt. Gutters simply sighed in response the way a parent would sigh over a misbehaving child. Then a strange sadness seemed to possess him, one Joe had never seen before, and for one ghost of a second all the insincerity left his voice to the point Joe was thrown by what he said next.
"Just remember something for me, will ya'? If they say they love you, maybe it means they love you now, but that could change by tomorrow. They think we're stupid, Joe. They always will. They're evil." Gutters warned.
Joe tilted his head back and looked straight down his nose at Gutters. Oh, Joe knew damn well the giants were evil. He was well aware they thought tinies were stupid, too. What Gutters didn’t realize, as far as Joe was concerned, was that he was treating him no differently than any giant would.
"You obviously think I'm stupid too if you're gonna sit here and lecture me about how to live my life. What makes you any different?" Joe's voice was deadpan as he spoke. “You can sit here and act like you know what’s best for me all you want, pal, but my business is my business.”
Joe could tell by the look on Gutters' face that his opponent was stumped by this response. Victoriously, Joe took one, performative bite of his cold eggs and forced himself to swallow them down as Gutters' once rational demeanour twisted into something ugly and dark. His hand shot towards Joe faster than lightning, but Joe, who was done being talked down to by anyone, for any reason, didn’t break eye contact when it snatched his collar and pulled him in.
“Listen here, you cockroach! You might be able to lie to everyone else, but you’re not gonna lie to me! I saw what I saw.” Gutters growled.
Joe’s hands curled into fists. Joe was not a fighting man, but he was cornered and angry, which in turn made him capable of anything.
“You don’t scare me.” Joe hissed, not blinking once as he stared into Gutters’ icy eyes.
He was on the verge of throwing one of those fists when the tension was broken by a low laugh that drifted over from the bar counter.
"You can't see your own hand in front of your face, Gutters. Everyone knows that." Calloway said without even looking up from the glass he was polishing. "You're just jealous he's got himself a rich boyfriend."
"I saw what I saw." Gutters repeated.
“The hell you keeping tabs on Joe for anyways? You like him? Jealous or something? C’mon.” Said Calloway.
Joe, still halfway prepared to fling Gutters across the table, breathed a sigh of relief when his nemesis released him.
“…fine. Learn the hard way. Idiots like you are beyond helping.” Gutters said.
When Gutters released him unceremoniously and retreated to the other end of the bar, a lead weight may as well have been lifted from Joe's chest. The captain sidled up to Joe’s booth soon after and his presence was as welcome as a breath of fresh spring air. He poured Joe a glass of spills, though after his experience the other day Joe wasn’t about to risk drinking it.
“Don’t let him get to ya’. He’s just taking his own baggage out on you, that’s all. How’s the sweetheart?” Asked Calloway.
“The uh… oh.” It took Joe a moment to remember the lie he had been telling. “Well, he'll let me sleep near him and everything, but now he won’t talk to me.” He explained.
Calloway cackled as he dusted off the twiggy booth.
“That right? Is this guy uh… unseasoned, by any chance?” Calloway's voice was low and conspiratorial, and a raised eyebrow arched over his eyepatch.
Joe nearly spat out his eggs at the question. It was something he had neither considered nor wanted to consider, but now that the subject had been brought up he knew it was going to live in his head rent free.
“I don’t know!” Joe stammered. “Haven’t asked him.”
Captain Calloway nodded.
“Well he’s acting pretty unexperienced if he can barely handle sleeping in the same room as you. See, that’s why the tailor needs to hurry up and get here. Get yourself into something nice, ease him into it, then he’ll be all over you!” The captain said.
Joe, meanwhile, was covering his face in sheer embarrassment and resisting the urge to rip his skin off completely and crawl out of it.
“I didn’t ask for your advice.” Joe groaned.
Captain Calloway gave a half-hearted shrug.
“That’ll still be 200 scraps regardless. I’ll give you the unsolicited advice discount.”
-
The tailor had arrived just in the nick of time, and Joe had escaped with an elegant fabric bag and whatever was left of his dignity. The lake and the bucket arm seemed to pity him today, for after that dreadful time at Calloway’s they didn’t even bother trying to take his life. Even the snatcher and the turtle were absent that night and the streetcar was calm as could be.
Things were shaping up to be a little too easy, but Joe pushed that thought aside as he scampered from the trolley in a direction he thought led to home. Traveling as a miniature was an inexact art, especially where the streetcar was concerned. Sometimes Joe could head straight home without hassle; other times he would end up in the general vicinity of home and improvise. The latter was the situation he found himself in after getting off on Gerrard Street and wandering onto the edge of Riverdale Park. With the night growing older, he looked for a landmark as he always did. Tiny Town in all its electric glory would do just nicely considering it was very well lit at night.
Lit up with torches, Joe noted.
He squinted at the angry mob of miniatures that spilled out of the town's gates and watched as it descended upon a single fleeing individual. Though he immediately felt uneasy, his feet automatically carried him closer and closer to the spectacle. When he was near enough he could see that a man was running at light speed across the field as the crowd pursued him. So hasty was the target of the crowd's ire that he didn't appear to notice a dip in the ground. It tripped the escapee and he landed violently, too shaken to get up. Joe's stomach twisted into knots as the leader of the gang loomed over the victim. He didn't tear his eyes away until the ringleader of the mob knelt on top of the target, pinched the man's ear, took his knife and-
-Joe could have sworn it was O'Grady wielding that knife.
That was enough for him. He turned around and sprinted as fast as the newly marked tiny had, taking care to watch his footing for fear he might be the next victim. Bolting into the darkness that swallowed him, he fought back tears as he wondered what evil force was possessing his fellow miniature.
When he stopped to catch his breath a new idea came to him. Maybe tinies were just as evil as the giants were. The giants may have invented Tiny Town from what Joe could tell, but it was the tinies who invented marking. Oddly enough, Joe found himself equal parts disgusted and comforted by this thought. It meant he had nothing to lose by living as he did. It re-enforced what Joe had known to be true deep down all along: that he wasn't just a stupid borrower. He could understand the evils of war and suffering just like anyone else. He could look his own potential ruination in the face and decide it was a risk worth taking.
Faced with that grisly sight outside of Tiny Town, Joe had no choice but to make peace with his new understanding of evil.
-
The clothes were high self-esteem in fabric form. It was the latest in townie fashion: a light blue-grey suit not unlike the ones the giants wore, with a hat and shoes to go with it. Clean as a whistle and dressed to kill, the reflection that stared back at Joe from the blade of the abandoned butter knife may as well have been that of a completely different person. As he tilted his hat this way and that, trying to get it at a perfect angle that would complement his cheekbones, he wondered if Mr. Dawson would be impressed.
With that passing thought, all the horror of the night crept back over him like a cursed miasma. Although Joe had made it back home to the safety of the kitchen, he was still small and alone in a house endless and empty, and an eerie feeling came over him. He kept expecting something, or someone, to find him and attack him, to grab him by the neck or to cut off his ear - the specifics didn't matter. For years he had lived in the Stinson House without this vulnerable feeling coming over him. Then again, maybe it had always been there, and Joe had tuned it out in order to function. Now that he was sleeping in Harry’s room he was beginning to understand what real safety felt like. It was another form of forbidden knowledge, he supposed, another thing he would miss so much in its absence that he could never bear to part with it in the first place.
The sound of Harry’s key in the front door exorcised the sense of trepidation immediately, though Joe still hid behind the cookie tin out of principle. Light after light went on in the hallway, then the parlour, and then finally the kitchen, until the darkness was purged completely and only the giant remained. Although some part of him debated remaining hidden and saving the surprise of his new clothes for later, another more tender part couldn’t resist being with Harry in that moment. For three days now Harry had been avoiding him, but Joe, especially now, couldn’t bear to avoid Harry.
So he stepped out from behind the tin and whistled as the contemplative giant leaned over the sink. As had been the case for the last three days, Harry’s eyes widened and that look of unease came over him. Now there was a new development: the giant’s face turned bright red at the sight of him.
Unseasoned. The word crept back into Joe’s mind. Calloway had a point, he realized; Harry wasn’t acting all that different from some of the lesser-experienced boys of Joe’s own size that he had toyed with. Surely, though, Harry didn’t find Joe attractive. That would be absurd!
When the giant said nothing at the sight of him, Joe took a few more cautious steps forward as the moment grew increasingly awkward. Heart-rate rising, he cleared his throat and said,
“Waddaya think?”
Harry kept on staring.
“Uhhhhhhhhh… I uh…” Sputtered the giant who was not at all thinking.
Harry rubbed his hand over his face and collected himself. Joe’s heart swelled with pride when he saw that a familiar look of wonder had returned to the doctor’s eyes. He felt oddly powerful in that moment, as he so often did at Calloway’s whenever he was drunk and flirtatious. Pretending he was there instead, he gave Harry his coyest smile and took his hat off to the giant.
“I took your advice and went clothes shopping. Thought you might wanna admire the stitching.” Joe said, thoroughly enjoying Harry’s reaction.
Absurd as it was, imagining Harry as just another flustered boy he was hitting on at a bar seemed to be helping. At the very least, the giant hadn’t turned tail and run yet. Joe kept drawing closer.
“You can have a look if you want.” He offered.
“I… okay.” Harry said, his voice wavering with surprise.
Still thoroughly malfunctioning, Harry extended his hand to Joe who noted that it was visibly shaking. Joe climbed in, careful of it at first. When he saw that Harry’s hand was clean, he didn’t stand in it, or sit in it for that matter, but lounged in it as though he owned it, then smiled up at the jittery giant who dutifully carried him upstairs.
“So how’d the visit go?” Asked Joe.
Harry shook his head gravely.
“It wasn’t a cold. Miss Wilkins’ father came down with tuberculosis. I spent the day arranging for him to be taken to the sanatorium and comforting the family.” Harry said.
Joe had no idea what to say to such a thing. In his ten years as a hermit, it was a rare occasion when he had to comfort anyone. He tried his best for Harry's sake.
“Are you all right after that?" He said.
“I'll live. It's part of the job." Harry assured him.
"Yeah, well, it's a shit job." Joe said. "You sure you'll be all right?"
"I'm sure. At least one of us had a good day by the looks of it.” Harry replied.
Joe suppressed his nervous laughter. Thought of the gruesome occurrence at Tiny Town had melted away when Harry showed up, but now it came back again in full force. He wanted to deny it away, to bury it, to pretend everything was all right. Instead, when he disembarked Harry’s hand, he stood before his new bed on the nightstand and debated with himself over whether or not to talk about it. Ultimately he decided that he wanted Harry to know. He wanted the giant to understand that tinies were also capable of evil. Maybe if he did, he would finally stop sheltering Joe.
He couldn’t turn around to face Harry when he said what came next.
“Saw a guy get marked outside of Tiny Town today.” Joe could feel the giant’s concerned eyes on his back. “A whole crowd chased him down. I don’t know what he did. I just ran. Maybe I should’ve done more to help. Tinies are just… we’re evil, Harry. We’re just as bad as you are sometimes.”
Joe was fighting back tears again as he turned to face Harry. The giant was sitting on the bed with his chin in his hand, looking deeply worried.
“I’m glad you came home in one piece.” Harry said.
“We gotta do something about that place, Harry! Find out what’s going on. The professor might know… I should call him.” Said Joe.
“Do it tomorrow when the poor man’s awake.” The giant advised him. Then his brow furrowed. “...why didn’t you tell me you were going there?”
“You left before I could! You ran off so fast today I didn’t even get a chance to bring it up!” Joe exclaimed.
Harry’s face fell.
“…I did, didn’t I? I’m sorry for running off on you like that.” He said.
Joe had said enough about Tiny Town, he decided - more than he could stand to say. He didn’t want to dwell on the horror any further, so he shoved it away and turned his ire against Harry instead.
“Yeah, well, you should be. What’s gotten into you lately, anyways? You don’t talk over breakfast, you won’t read with me, any other time you’re busy with your files, and when I try and say anything you run out the door!” Joe ranted at Harry, who had gotten up and started rifling through his dresser. “You’re gonna leave right now, aren’t you?”
Harry froze.
“I uh… I have to get changed.” Harry insisted.
Joe crossed his arms.
“Then do it when I’m done telling you off. This is important, Harry.” Joe said. “You still scared you’re brainwashing me or something?”
Harry shook his head no. As the giant clutched his pajamas and cast a defeated look off to the side, a strange feeling of satisfaction came over Joe. It was there on the nightstand, dressed in his finest, that Joe embraced his twisted nature. He wanted Harry, and by extension he wanted to know about Harry, to learn who the real Harry was. He couldn’t do that if the giant was constantly hiding from him.
“I’m just… not good at taking compliments, I guess.” Harry said.
Joe tilted his head at him in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“The other day, you were drunk at the time and you ah… said something very nice to me.” Harry explained.
Joe couldn’t help but laugh. The horror and anger fled from him again at the sheer ridiculousness of Harry’s statement.
“That’s what you’re wound up about? Really!?” Joe cried.
The embarrassed giant nodded at him and Joe, little devil that he was, immediately took aim at Harry’s weak spot and fired away.
“Well what did I say? Did I say you were smart or handsome or kind or something?”
Joe watched in delight as Harry grew so worked up his only usable hand started to fidget. The giant sank back down onto the bed and sat there as Joe smiled with cruel joy.
“…I’m not going to repeat it.” Harry said.
“Did I say you have a nice ass? ‘cause we can add that one to the pile.” Joe continued.
“What!?”
“I said what I said.”
Poor Harry looked like he wanted to melt into the floor. Joe, meanwhile, was laughing in sadistic glee as Harry looked at him helplessly.
“What are you so afraid of?” Joe threw the question at Harry in the same deadpan fashion he had done with Gutters earlier.
“You.” Harry admitted.
“Me? Little old me? Really, Harry?” Joe said.
Harry? Afraid of him? This knowledge turned the entire world on its head. All this time he hadn’t thought it possible for Harry to get flustered at him. He had imagined the doctor a cool seducer, even, hellbent on getting Joe riled up. Learning it was the exact opposite changed everything! So Harry wasn't a seductor. He was a precious, darling innocent ignorant to the wonderful world of boys. Was that really why Harry was blushing at him so intensely?
Joe had no better option than to test his theory. He shrugged off his suit jacket and hung it over the metal lighter on the nightstand, then took off his waistcoat and tie for good measure. What he was about to do was thoroughly unprecedented. His inner, sexually confused twelve-year-old was screaming at the mere thought of it. Still, it had to be done, for Harry’s sake and for Joe’s as well.
First he took a few steps back and judged the distance from the nightstand to Harry’s left knee, then he sprinted at full speed and launched himself toward it. Harry jumped and yelped when he landed – predictably – and Joe scrambled to stay balanced as the giant panicked. Within seconds Joe was swept into Harry’s hand, and as he lay there he gave the doctor the best puppydog eyes he could muster.
“Harry, there’s a lot of awful shit in this world you need to be afraid of, but I’m not one of ‘em. You know that.” Joe assured him. “Tuberculosis, Tiny Town, that’s shit worth being afraid of. Not me.”
“…right.” Harry said.
He couldn’t stop smiling up at Harry. The giant was innocent, painfully so if the dumbstruck look on his face was anything to go by. Joe wouldn’t dare corrupt that innocence, but he would use his newfound knowledge to bridge the growing gap between them. He sat up.
“But hey, here’s an idea: if you wanna be scared you can go ahead and be scared, but that’s no reason to avoid me. Wanting to run away is normal but we’ve been through too much shit for that. Just do it scared.” Joe said.
“I’ll try to do that.” Harry sighed.
With that, a timid smile came over Harry and his thumb started stroking Joe’s face the way it used to. Joe, triumphant, leaned in to Harry’s touch. He was proud of himself, for in an odd way Joe had caught the giant, had lured him in and cornered him. Harry had no excuse now. He would have to stop running and start enduring.
“By the way, there’s something I’ve been meaning to show you…” Joe said.
Part 24 of my story! See the index and content warnings here.
In which Harry drools at Joe like a cartoon wolf while convincing himself he's not gay.
Harry Avery barely held himself together that day. He sat through appointment after appointment, assessed patient after patient, but each time part of him was somewhere else entirely, worrying about the tiny man who now lay passed out upstairs. Now that the day was done emotions boiled between his ears like the water in the pot in front of him. He couldn’t even tell what they were at this point. Anger? Outrage? Disappointment? Fear? What did Joe think he was doing ending up drunk in a lake like that?
He tossed a coin of ginger root into the pot as he dwelled on the events of the day, dissecting and quantifying and rationalizing. One question above all others still persisted in his mind: is this the right thing to do?
Harry still couldn’t answer. Joe was tough stuff; that much was apparent. The little man could hold his liquor down. Joe had been thoroughly green the entire journey home but hadn’t once thrown up, which was more than Harry could say for himself whenever he had been in Joe’s shoes. The so-called floating thing by the lake which Harry had gone in search of that morning had been considerably far away from the Stinson House, much further than expected. To think that Joe traveled all the way across the city with such regularity astounded Harry. Maybe Joe could make his own decisions, but would they be safe decisions? Could he really trust Joe’s judgment when he had found him at the mercy of a snapping turtle?
Then there was the fact that Joe had the audacity to horse around after nearly getting bitten in half. To look him in the eyes and call him a big, sexy giant on top of everything else. It was practically an insult. Surely Joe had been joking with those words, but joking in what way? How big was big he wondered? How sexy was sexy? How giant, exactly, was giant?
He could only hope that Joe had been joking. Anything else disturbed Harry far too much to think about. Whatever pathological attraction Joe had towards Harry was sure to get him killed, just as his own attraction to Georgie had gotten that boy killed. He knew what the medical journals had to say about homosexuals; hell, he had read them! He had to give himself some credit, however. The little bastard had been drunk as a skunk, lying helplessly in his hand, and the worst Harry had done was march him straight upstairs to tuck him into bed. Whatever pathology Harry himself had, it had not gotten the best of him yet.
Harry tried to put it all out of his mind as he eye-droppered the ginger tea into the misshapen glass he had plucked from the floorboards, then carried it upstairs to his live-in patient.
Sure enough, Joe was stirring as nighttime crept closer. As he approached the nightstand he could see that the poor man was thrashing in his sleep and rubbing his face. Joe had been fully clothed when Harry had tucked him in, but sometime during his nap he had shrugged his jacket off and tossed it aside. He watched as Joe jolted awake from whatever nightmare he was having and sat up in a slump.
“…shit.” Was his greeting to Harry.
Joe gave him a lazy wave for good measure, then when he’d gotten his bearings he started removing his shirt without a second thought. Disrobing without a care for Harry's presence was a strange tendency of Joe’s, and normally when he did it Harry fled the room accordingly. This proved to be a challenge now that he was holding a minuscule glass of boiling hot ginger in his only usable hand - one that he didn’t want to run all the way back downstairs to refill in the event it spilled.
Much as he wanted to look away, he decided to assess Joe’s condition instead. That’s all he was doing, he told himself. That or he was brushing up on his anatomy, perhaps: deltoid, biceps brachii, brachioradialis, all of these muscles were ones he could plainly see on Joe’s arms now, where before the poor man had been skeleton thin. He was thrown for a moment upon realizing just how toned Joe was, though it made sense with the sheer amount of climbing the man did in a day. It was the body of a dancer or a figure skater – something graceful and beautiful that was built to move with ease.
“What?”
Joe’s sharp glare drew Harry’s attention to the fact that he was staring. Immediately he went rigid and tried to wipe the dumbstruck look off his face as the tiny glass quivered in his fingers. He reached out and handed it to Joe. Previously, all Harry had needed to do was look at Joe and the miniature would start blushing. Now the roles were reversed, and Harry could feel himself turning scarlet red with embarrassment.
“Brought something to help sober you up.” He said.
Joe took the glass and sniffed at it, rubbing at his head with one hand.
“What’s this? Ginger? You got any willow bark to go with that?” He asked.
“I don’t, I’m afraid.” Harry said.
“Nothing for a headache at all?”
Harry shook his head no. There wasn't anything Harry had on hand that wouldn’t run the risk of poisoning Joe if improperly dosed, and Harry wasn't competent enough in miniature medicine to try. Joe cursed under his breath in response and chugged the ginger tea. To Harry’s horror he realized he could not take his eyes off of Joe. It was getting awkward. He had to say something.
“Do you… usually do that?” Harry stammered.
“Do what?” The hung over miniature asked him.
“Go to the lake and drink.” He said.
Joe polished off the last of the ginger tea and lounged in his new bed.
“Sometimes. When I’m really pissed I do.” Said Joe.
Harry braced himself. He knew they had a score to settle.
“I’m tired of being the tiny, Harry. And you being the—y’know. I can make my own damn decisions.”
“Me being the what? The big, sexy giant?” Was what Harry wanted to say.
What he said instead was,
“Well, whatever decisions you made last night ended with you drunk in a tin can with a turtle after you.”
Joe squinted at him.
“What? That’s bullshit. You’re lying.” Joe said.
“Tell me something, Joe. What animal were you dreaming about just now?” Harry replied.
Joe's scowl only deepened.
“That’s not important!” He said.
So Joe didn’t remember the turtle. That must mean he didn’t remember what he had said after the turtle either, Harry realized. Some part of him wanted to bring it up but he had no idea how he would even broach such a conversation. For all he knew, Joe would be downright offended if he did. Right then and there Harry decided that he would put whatever drunk Joe had said out of mind and take it to the grave for good measure. Harry, though he hated to admit it, was afraid – not of Joe himself, but what Joe represented.
“I’m tired of being the tiny.” Joe reiterated.
Harry watched in bewilderment as Joe curled up into the crisp, white towel. He was still at a loss for words when Joe’s head perked up from below the blankets.
“Hey. Could you do me a favour? Could you bring me my clothes?” Joe asked.
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
All of them? The ring box, in other words, Harry reasoned. Harry, who would do almost anything for Joe at that point, had no other option but to comply. He marched all the way back downstairs to the kitchen, grabbed the ring box, and marched all the way back upstairs with it again. He presented it to Joe as though he were the tiny man’s personal waitstaff, and Joe gave a catlike grin in satisfaction.
“Put that over there.” He gestured to his right. “Then get me my shelf.”
“Your shelf…?” Harry said as he set the ring box down and looked at Joe in confusion.
Joe simply nodded as he gazed up at Harry with an expression the giant couldn’t pin down. He was smiling in a very self-satisfied way, but there was something else to it. Mischief, perhaps.
“And my plates, too. Don’t break ‘em.” Joe ordered.
Harry, who by this point was sick and tired of arguing with Joe, nodded awkwardly and ventured downstairs once again, mentally replaying every event in his life that led up to the current moment. He knelt down and contemplated the logistics of single-handedly transporting the “shelf” – the cracked ring dish that held Joe’s heirloom plates. He settled for carefully setting the three plates down flat and stacking them on top of each other on the ring dish, then picking up the dish in its entirety with all the care of a waiter at a busy restaurant. Keeping one thumb on the stack of plates, he took a moment to mentally fortify himself for the anxiety-ridden journey ahead, then transported the precious cargo upstairs. He held his breath all the while and didn’t start breathing again until he reached the upstairs bedroom.
Joe was, fortunately, fully clothed in his pajamas when Harry returned to the nightstand. Harry set the ring dish down by the wardrobe unprompted.
“I’m not touching that again. You'll have to move it yourself.” He said.
Joe immediately went to inspect the plates. Right when Harry was about to sit down on the bed and give himself a break, he heard the last thing he wanted to hear.
“Aw, Harry, you broke one!” Joe cried.
“What!? Let me see!”
Harry jumped back up again, now on the verge of a stroke. It was bad enough that the two had been fighting; a broken plate was the last thing he needed.
Joe only laughed in response.
“Take it easy. I was just messing with ya’. God, the look on your face!" Joe said.
Harry gave Joe a dirty look as he prepared to sit back down, only for Joe to interrupt him again.
“…but while you’re up, there’s a couple more things I need you to grab for me.” He said. “The rest of my novels and a matchbook with some other stuff in it. Don’t open it! The rest can stay downstairs.” Joe halfheartedly waved a hand as he went about setting up his plates. “Then I’ll be all set.”
Now knee-deep in the sunk-cost fallacy, Harry obediently went back downstairs once again to fetch the stack of novels and the matchbook. He had grabbed everything else at this point, so why not these, he reasoned? He had seen the novels before, but the matchbook intrigued him. It was a small one he remembered receiving at a restaurant a while ago, about an inch and a half in size, and he could now see that it was filled with paper. He could only guess that this matchbook was where Joe was hiding his art.
True to Joe’s wishes he didn’t open it; he simply marched everything upstairs and placed it in front of Joe like a hunting dog retrieving game. He watched as Joe stacked the novels up beside the soap dish and then heaved the matchbook, which was quite large in comparison to his size, onto his new bed. Harry leaned over curiously when it appeared that he was about to open it, but Joe hesitated in the last second and eyed him with suspicion.
“I don’t think I'll show you this yet.” Joe said.
“Why not?” Asked Harry.
“’cause I’m still kinda mad at you.” Joe sneered.
“Haven’t I redeemed myself? I saved you from the turtle, didn’t I?” Harry’s tone grew more and more emphatic as Joe crossed his arms and turned up his nose. “And I just moved your entire house for you, too, after you invited yourself into my bedroom no less!”
Joe let out one single, smug laugh.
“So you admit it. I’m up here because I manipulated you, and not because you manipulated me.” Joe said.
It was only now that it struck Harry how seamlessly Joe had used him as a de-facto moving service. It was hard to stay upset at him for it as he watched this endearing little man shuffle through his endearing little things. It had been fascinating enough to see Joe’s living space from beneath the floorboards, but to see it right there on his nightstand was mind-boggling. He tried to find some way to argue Joe’s point but soon realized he couldn’t.
“Fine. You can stay here if you want. I’ll listen.” Harry promised him.
Joe’s nose was still in the air, but he was smiling now.
“I’m sure you will. You have to. If I’m gonna be the tiny, then it means you have to be the giant and do everything I say all the time.” He said.
When Harry finally sat down on the bed, he found himself smiling at Joe. Now he could fully appreciate what sway Joe had over him. It was that desire of Harry’s to help and to heal that Joe had played like a fiddle. It was what had allowed Joe to live rent-free in the Stinson House. What had drawn Harry to the docks in search of him during the wee hours of the morning. What had now allowed Joe to set up camp on his nightstand. Tiny or not, Harry couldn’t help but begrudgingly respect the fact that Joe held his own subtle power over Harry, a force silent and invisible but no less potent than the power Harry held over Joe.
“So what do I have to do to see your art?” Harry asked.
“You have to not make me mad at you.” Joe answered.
Joe tossed the matchbook aside, but one page in particular had other plans. It went flying out and landed on the hand towel, and Joe grabbed it and clutched it to his chest – but not before Harry caught a glimpse of it. They were more studies of hands, only these ones were accompanied by miniature figures, some being held, some perching upon them, some hugging the fingers as Joe had after their trip to the circus. Harry leaned in, fascinated by them. There was something so raw, so tender, so affectionate about the artwork that it couldn’t help but strike a very deep chord with him.
Joe, meanwhile, was mortified.
“…and don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong!” Joe snapped.
“All right! That’s your business.” Harry showed his palms. “…those are very good, by the way.”
Joe, for reasons Harry couldn’t discern, appeared even more stricken.
“Yeah, well… we’re not supposed to draw this kind of stuff, so pretend you didn’t see it.” Joe said.
Something about Joe’s reaction provoked an uneasy thought in Harry. What if Joe hadn’t been joking when he made that big, sexy giant remark? What if Joe on some level was just like he was, a deviant maligned by society. Wasn't that the case for most artists? What would Harry do then? Certainly, Harry cared for Joe, but the prospect of loving him now stretched out before him like an endless, terrifying sea.
“Whatever you say.” The giant said.
He lowered himself into the bed and watched as Joe, who was now wide awake, sorted through drawings and studies that Harry was no longer privy to. He contemplated what he was getting himself into as he did so. The only person who had held this much sway over Harry had been Georgie, and that friendship had ended as well as anyone would have expected: when Harry had confessed his love to Georgie on the eve of the day the two were both fated to die, Georgie’s response had been,
“Go to hell.”
Georgie had then stomped off, and shortly after Harry had been assigned stretcher duty. Maybe if Harry had never said such a thing, if he had never made Georgie walk off the way he did, Georgie would have carried stretchers along with him and lived instead of coming back on one in pieces.
Harry’s love was a dangerous thing, and Joe was a delicate being, a small and precious thing, intricate as the artwork he created. Yet whether Harry liked it or not, he had been tamed by Joe. He was as much Joe’s pet now as Joe was Harry’s pet. Maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do. Then again, maybe it was. Maybe there was no easy answer.
Maybe the both of them were thoroughly beyond helping, Harry feared.
As Harry drifted off to sleep to the sound of the scratching of Joe’s charcoal on paper, one thing was certain: Joe wasn’t just a tiny to Harry. He was so much more than that.
Part 23 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
Today we get to meet drunk!Joe.
It was not alcohol Joe was seeking when he hopped through the entrance to Captain Calloway's that evening, but the monthly night market. Due to the time and effort involved in their maintenance, it was rare for miniatures to have dedicated store fronts unless they were from exceptionally well-to-do communities. Rather, for the vast majority of them, places of social gathering also doubled as flea markets of sorts during their off-peak hours, especially on nights of the full moon as this night was. This was the time when the wheeler-dealers of the miniature world came out of hiding to haggle and barter, trade and negotiate, split hairs and pinch pennies and make offers their fellows couldn’t refuse, all in the name of scoring the best deal. This sprawling mass of makeshift stalls took up the entire lower portion of the abandoned steam dredge’s engine room on their best months, and boasted everything from jewelers to tailors to cooks to salons and anything and everything in between.
Joe, who could wheel and deal with the best of them, had thrown on his good borrowing gear, stuffed his pockets and rucksack full of soap and pure chocolate, and left in the hopes of making a quick scrap or two that night. To his amazement he had been cleaned out shortly after arriving, and after making more than enough from his dealings to buy a few nice things for himself, he sat at the counter after going on a date with a straight razor at the barber’s and putting in an order for new set of clothes. All he had to do was wait for the tailor to finish them and he would be a whole new person.
Even Captain Calloway barely recognized him it seemed, for instead of giving Joe his usual greeting he just smiled at him and poured him a drink. Joe, still fuming at what Harry had said earlier, downed the entire thing at the speed of light and asked for another.
“That’s never a good sign.” Said Captain Calloway. “What’s up? Trouble in paradise?”
As Joe sat before the bartender he debated how to play his cards. The argument with Harry had irritated him so much it was hard to keep it in, but he had no idea how he would articulate any of it to the captain without losing an ear. At the same time, this was a position Joe was sick of being in with Harry. He had been here before, when he had broken the teacup and the clock and hijacked the phone. Joe had thought Harry had genuinely learned to listen to him then, but now here they were back at square one.
After much consideration he decided to begin with,
“…so there’s this guy.”
Captain Calloway gave a knowing nod. This was an opener Calloway had heard many times before. Joe was no Casanova, but he was not inexperienced with other men either, and every so often when problems arose Joe would air out his grievances at the bar.
For much of his life, Joe had known deep down that he was usually the source of the problem whenever he ran into relationship issues. He had already done the math back when he was eleven or twelve and concluded that other miniatures would never do anything for him. One very large man was superior to even multiple small ones because there was more man per cubic inch - it was simple economics! This posed a logistical problem among his fellow miniatures, who on a cultural level wouldn’t bat an eye at Joe for being romantically involved with another man… as long as that man was the same size as him. He had tried for many years to date within his size and fulfill those expectations, and each time he had failed miserably. Now, as he geared up to unload about his issues with Harry, he had no idea what the source of the problem was, or even how to articulate his relationship with Harry for that matter. So when Captain Calloway asked his next question, Joe had to think on his feet.
“This about your new sweetheart?” The captain asked.
“I guess so.” Was Joe’s vague confirmation.
“The hell’s going on there?” Said Calloway, slinging Joe another glass of spills.
Joe decided to approach the conversation as a sort of mind game. Whatever issues he was having with Harry were ones he had to couch in metaphor to avoid detection, but if he wanted good advice on what to do, he would have to use the right kind of analogy for the captain to identify the root of the problem. After much uneasy internal debate, he finally landed on one.
“So picture this: this guy is freaking loaded. He’s got good borrowing. High social standing. He’s way more powerful than I am.” Joe said, as the captain nodded and uh-huh-ed along to him.
“I figured he was either loaded, a good cook or both by the looks of you.” The captain laughed.
“He’s more than that! He’s… tall. Really tall. ...and sexy.” Joe could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks again as he finally said what was secretly on his mind. “…and he doesn’t even want to sleep in the same room as me because he thinks he’s taking advantage of me somehow by giving me nice things.”
“Taking advantage of you?” Captain Calloway raised an eyebrow. “How?”
“I don’t know!” Joe admitted. “I guess he thinks that ‘cause…”
Joe searched high and low for a way to explain the situation. What was Harry thinking? Joe could never pin that down.
“…’cause he’s way better off than I am, it’ll make it harder for me to leave him or something. That he’s luring me in. I mean—” Joe laughed nervously as he steeled himself in preparation for how the captain would react to his next statement “—if it were a giant treating me the way he treats me, everyone would call me a pet.”
“Well of course they would, Joe. That’s because giants are evil.” The captain said matter-of-factly.
He may as well have poked Joe squarely in the eye. Nonetheless, the bartender continued.
“…but everyone needs someone in life to watch their back. It’s not pet shit to be looked after, that’s just being human. Sure, maybe he has more power than you do, but the thing about power is, it’s not having it that’s the problem. It’s how we choose to use it.”
“Yeah…” Joe finished his second glass and slid some more scraps across the counter.
He wondered what it was about Harry that had him pulling his hair out and stomping his feet and drinking like a fish.
“And you, you’re over the damn hill for a wild man. If you don’t settle down now, these next few winters are gonna do you in. I’ve seen it happen. You could use someone like that. Sounds like you’re not the one with the problem here.” The captain said.
Joe’s eyebrows rose in disbelief.
“I’m not?”
“Not if you’re being open about what you want and everything. That’s how love works, Joe. You gotta want it. If he don’t want you in the same way, that’s his loss.” Captain Calloway set glass number three onto the counter, and Joe stared into it.
He had to give the alcohol credit: with less inhibition came greater introspection. Gone was the usual denial that came over him when he thought about Harry. Joe wasn’t being open about what he wanted. How could he be? As far as Joe was concerned, enthusiastically wanting Harry to hold him, to tend to him, to love him, was all akin to romanticizing a very dangerous thing. He had to lie to himself instead, to pretend that he did not want what he wanted, to tell himself that anything Harry offered that he secretly did want was something being imposed upon him. There was plausible deniability that way. He could turn around when all was said and done and insist that he was being unwillingly and cruelly domesticated by Harry, not voluntarily opening his heart up to the giant. Any time Harry offered something Joe couldn’t say no to, it was because Joe knew his real answer was yes – he was just too afraid to say it overtly. He argued and fought and begrudgingly accepted it instead.
What was that saying to Harry?
“What if you shouldn’t want it?” Joe asked when he was done gazing into the abyss.
“Who decides that?” Said Calloway. “Tell me, Joe. Show me the panel of judges who decide what the right things to want are. I’ll wait.”
Joe sighed into his glass as he sat with his own guilt. The words of support were getting harder and harder to listen to with the knowledge that if the captain knew the whole truth, he wouldn’t be talking to Joe at all.
“It’s up to you to decide what you want in life.” Calloway continued. “Hell, you know what, Joe? If you really wanted, you could cut your damn ear off, live in a cage and be a pet. That’s a thing you can do. You have the freedom to decide that for yourself. We’d all kick the shit out of you for it, but none of us would be able to stop you.”
Was Joe being a pet, or was he being human? He certainly felt human with Harry, moreso than he had ever felt in years. Moreso than how he felt now sitting before the captain, with all his conditional acceptance.
“This guy… whoever the hell he is, he’s gotta learn to listen when you say yes, just as much as when you say no. Anything less and he’s not really treating you like a person.” Captain Calloway concluded.
There it was: the thing Joe had sat at the counter for. Captain Calloway didn’t know it, but he had just put the entire problem between Joe and Harry into words. Joe was afraid to say yes, and when he did, Harry wouldn’t take it seriously anyways.
Joe looked up at Captain Calloway and nodded.
“Yeah… yeah, I think you’re right about that.” He said.
“That’ll be 500 scraps, please. Advice surcharge.” The captain replied.
-
It was morning when Joe emerged from Captain Calloway’s – the wee hours to the average nocturnal miniature. By the time he left his hair was evenly cut and he was over 1000 scraps poorer after the captain’s advice surcharge and a round of poker dealt a one-two punch to his wallet. He had done quite well for himself in spite of all that, he decided, since he would have a nice outfit waiting for him once he returned in three days’ time. So Harry thought he relied on him for everything? This would show him, Joe figured! Now all he had to do was suss out how to get home when he was so drunk he could hardly see.
Joe was well aware that he was in no good condition to be going anywhere. The skyline and shore that stretched ahead of him blurred and spun in his inebriated vision until he could barely tell where he was. If one thing kept him going, it was hubris, and that was what propelled him to crawl, slowly, surely, carefully, on all fours down the bucket arm of the steam dredge as the lake once again threatened to swallow him whole. It was on this journey down when Joe’s luck finally ran out, and he lost his footing when he was halfway across. He grasped and clambered at the cold steel in a blind panic, trying desperately to climb back up. The harder he fought to get back up, the further he slipped from the arm, until he reached a point where he had no choice but to decide where in the water below he wanted to fall.
If he landed straight in the water he was good as dead. Even if he could make the swim from halfway across the bucket arm to the shore, it was very likely that a predator would eat him first. The only hope for Joe’s survival was in the form of a sardine can that was floating right underneath where he hung from the side of the arm of the steam dredge. If he aimed it just right, he could fall into the can and not drown instantly. He squeezed his eyes shut and listened to the panicked thumping of his heart in his ears, timed the perfect moment, and let go.
When he fell, he hit the can with a clang so hard it threatened to capsize. He lay inside and looked up at the morning sky as he contemplated the dire situation he was now in. If he was patient, he reasoned, maybe the can would float to shore and he would be able to escape unharmed. Joe sat back and once again found himself wishing for Harry, but he knew full well he would have to find some way save himself as he always did.
That was the moment when Joe learned he was not alone. Something stirred in the water, then launched out of it like a missile with such force it sent the sardine can coasting along a great wave. It was a creature with a bite force of 210 newtons, capable of swimming roughly 20 miles an hour at maximum speed, with a diet consisting of almost anything, up to and including small mammals such as tiny humans.
It was a common snapping turtle, and it was very interested in Joe’s sardine can.
Now he wished for Harry so hard he could almost hear the giant calling his name. Joe sat up and watched as the dark mass of the turtle circled the can beneath the water. Maybe if he were sober he would have thought up some clever way to escape the situation, but as he drifted further and further away from the dredge, seeing double and with all his hooks and lines spent, all he could do was take in the futility of it all.
“Joe!?” Cried a voice in the distance.
It sounded so much like Harry’s voice.
Joe did not want it to be Harry’s voice.
What Joe wanted was to stride home confidently and wait for Harry to spot him sitting smugly in the windowsill, well-dressed, well-groomed, and well sobered up. The last thing he wanted was for Harry to find him drunk in the lake at the mercy of a common predator.
“Joe!?” The voice cried again.
It was Harry’s voice.
The neck of the turtle shot out from the water once more, narrowly missing the can and causing it to spin. Now two different kinds of dizzy and on the verge of being bitten clean in half, he knew that there was one thing he could still do. It would hurt his pride immensely to do it, especially when he was still mad at Harry, but it was likely the only thing he could do if he wanted to save his own skin.
“HARRY!” He shouted as the beast dove again. “HARRY I’M OVER HERE!”
He whistled with his fingers for good measure and sat up as tall as he could without tipping the can over, waving to no one in particular. He couldn’t even see where the giant was, let alone tell if Harry had worked out where he had floated off to. Like a spiny, murderous blessing in disguise, the creature after him would at least draw attention with all its splashing. In an act of drunken hubris, Joe began to rock the can again to entice the turtle to bite one more time.
His attempt was a little too successful. The turtle’s maw emerged from the waters of the lake like the gaping mouth of some ancient monster that fed on the souls of sailors. The grimy lakewater rushed over its beady little eyes as its beak, sharp as a dagger, flew towards Joe faster than a gunshot. He covered his head at the sight, paralyzed by primal fear as the turtle’s jaws closed with a loud snap.
Joe looked up to see that the turtle had bitten onto a large tree branch. It wrestled with the stick before giving up and letting go. On the other end of that branch was Harry. He kept the turtle busy by taunting it for a few more strikes until it gave up good and tired. When the excitement was over, he pulled the can to shore using the stick. Joe, equal parts shaken and stirred, clutched his rucksack, crawled out of the can, and tried to think sober thoughts as he faced his saviour.
“When you said you were in a floating thing in the lake this wasn’t what I was imagining.” Said the voice of Harry as Joe blushed at his shoes.
Before Joe could answer he was swept straight off his feet by Harry’s one good hand as the giant turned to leave.
“What were you doing in there?” Harry asked him.
Cast-iron Joe, in the meantime, was doing everything in his power not to throw up in Harry’s palm.
“Questioning my life choices.” Joe said.
Joe, rattled, watched the world whirl about as Harry effortlessly crossed the beach and sat down on the front steps of a building. All he did, meanwhile, was lounge in the giant’s palm and swoon like a schoolgirl as he looked up at his knight in shining armour. Harry wasn’t supposed to save him, but that wasn’t stopping Joe from appreciating the fact that he did. It took everything in him not give up and let the alcohol do the talking. What the alcohol wanted to do was to flirt with Harry aggressively. Joe knew that this was not an option, so he said whatever else he could think of.
“I owe you one. You really came through for me back there.” Joe sighed.
“Are you okay? Can you get up?” Harry asked.
Joe could not get up. Joe was overtaken by the warm, fuzzy feeling that filled him from head to toe as he looked up into the giant’s worried eyes.
“No.” Joe said through a smile. “I’m not getting up. You can’t make me.”
“Are you…” Harry laughed nervously. “Joe, are you drunk?”
“No I’m not.” Joe insisted as he watched one Harry spin and melt into the other Harry. “I’m just tired.”
“Uh-huh…”
“Really!”
“Well, sober or not, you look very handsome.” Harry said of Joe's freshly-cut hair.
Harry’s words cleaved Joe into two halves.
To one half of Joe, heaven itself may as well have opened up. Choirs of angels may as well have sung in reverent absolution. God himself could have called in the rapture at that very moment and Joe Piccoli would not have cared, because his life was now fulfilled. Harry Avery had called him handsome! This half of Joe wanted to say, "thank you."
To the other half of Joe, these words were his cue to flee halfway across the world and never be seen again. He would now have to wear a bag over his head for the rest of his days. He was a monster, a temptor, a vile and ungodly thing that should not be. A giant had called him handsome! This half of Joe wanted to say, "fuck no I’m not."
When these two halves mixed together with the alcohol, what came out of Joe’s mouth instead was,
“Fuck you!”
Harry was none too impressed.
“I beg your pardon?” He asked.
Joe jolted up into a sitting position, which was no easy feat when his whole body felt like lead. Thinking further, Joe decided to stick to his guns.
“I meant that. You don’t get to call me handsome until you start listening to me.” He slurred. “You gotta—you gotta want it.”
Joe crossed his arms and scowled up at the beautiful man and his beautiful face as Harry tried to parse what Joe was saying.
“Want it…?” Harry echoed.
“Yeah. You gotta want to be my friend. And screw what anyone else thinks!”
Joe struggled to remain stable as he sat in Harry’s palm and fought against the temptation to lie back down again. He knew if he did he would likely pass out.
“I do want to be your friend.” Harry said. “I just worry. That’s all.”
“You worry about all the wrong things. You get so damn worried about what you think that you don’t care what I think, Harry.” Joe swayed as he pointed a finger at Harry.
“Half the time I don’t know what you think, Joe.” The giant argued. “You turn red and get all quiet… what am I supposed to do with that? Am I frightening you? Intimidating you? I don’t-”
Joe laughed so hard he cut Harry off completely.
“You think I’m scared of you!?” He crowed.
“Well, I don’t know for sure…” Harry said.
Joe was doing a fine job of holding down his liquor so far, but he still kept one hand over his mouth and another over his upset stomach for fear if he laughed too hard he might throw up. At those words Joe lost his hold over himself completely, and what the alcohol made him say next was something he would never be able to take back.
“That’s not ‘cause I’m scared of you, Harry! That’s ‘cause you’re a big, sexy giant!”
“I’m... what?”
A strange sense of triumph came over Joe as he watched Harry’s face turn about as red as his was.
“Harry. I like the shit you do. I just have to pretend not to like it because if I don’t I’m—I’m—romanticizing the altar of petdom or something! I dunno. Captain Calloway said I was just being human, wanting to be cared about, but most people don’t treat me like I’m human, so what do I know about that?”
Joe’s motor mouth kept on running as Harry sat there, stunned.
“You’ve treated me the most human out of any giant I’ve ever met.” Joe continued. “The trinket box, the assistant thing, sleeping upstairs the first time… I say no and you listen. And that’s good! Now you just gotta listen when I say yes and we’ll be all set.”
“Joe… can we go back to the big, sexy giant part for a second?” Poor Harry still could not compute.
Only when those words were parroted back to him did Joe understand the implications of what he had just said.
“…I said that out loud. Fuck!” He exclaimed.
With all the grace of a camel having a stroke, Joe tried to stand up in Harry’s palm and bid him farewell.
“Sorry Harry, I lied. We can’t be friends anymore. I’m leaving. Changing my name. This is it for me.”
He got halfway to his feet and then toppled over again. Once again he was on his back, looking up at Harry helplessly, red-faced, with no pride or dignity to show for himself.
The difference this time was that Harry was nervously blushing right back at him. To Joe’s surprise, the giant began to smile.
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere at this rate unless I take you. Come on. Let’s get you home.”
As he faded in and out of consciousness, all drunk Joe could do was lie there and hope that sober Joe would know how to handle the situation when he woke up.
Part 22 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
Elder financial abuse CW!
They're idiots, your honour.
It was not endearment that Doctor Harry Avery felt when he woke that morning and saw Joe sleeping peacefully beside him on the nightstand. What he felt instead was nothing short of self-disgust. Inviting Joe into his room had been an act of selfishness, after all, for lately an irrational fear had gripped Harry and refused to let him go. It was the fear of suddenly losing Joe, and it was this fear that had driven Harry to suggest the sleeping arrangements that he did. He couldn’t be certain what had triggered it; maybe it was the photo of Georgie Joe had momentarily stepped into, or the way Davidson Sr. had eyeballed Joe at the circus, or how Joe had returned muddy and half-dressed from Tiny Town. Joe Piccoli was a very small man who lived in a very big world, a violent one at that, and the thought of losing him was keeping Harry up at night yet again.
Yet as he watched Joe snooze on the nightstand, buried in the plushness of the hand towel, Harry couldn’t help but feel as if he had taken advantage of Joe somehow. This was too real, too close for comfort for Harry to process. Joe could sleep in the upstairs bedroom so long as Harry slept downstairs on the couch. Joe could even fall asleep in Harry’s hands without issue so long as Harry spent the night in a different room. It was the prospect of Joe sleeping in the same room as him that felt odd to Harry - after all, Joe did not know what Harry was. He was not aware of the proclivities that Harry had. Surely Joe would be disgusted with Harry if he knew about the secret he harboured! Joe himself was especially vulnerable due to his status as a miniature. What right did Harry, sinner of the Oscar Wilde sort that he was, really have to lure this tiny, unsuspecting man into his bedroom the way that he was?
With all of these thoughts colliding in his mind, Harry did not awaken Joe when the mourning doves announced that it was time for breakfast. He did not pick him up and carry him downstairs. He did not so much as touch the little man at all for fear he was secretly indulging in some sick, twisted perversion on an unconscious level by doing so. Instead, he went down to have a smoke and thought about their day at the circus.
What did it say about him and Joe, Harry wondered as he mindlessly puffed away on his cigarette in the crisp morning air, that the circus mogul he had encountered the other day immediately assumed that Joe belonged to Harry? Was that what most people would think? As the doctor listened to the birdsong and reflected on his entire relationship with Joe to date, one question and one question only plagued him: is this the right thing to do?
When Harry was done brooding and returned inside with the morning paper, he was not met with an answer. He was met instead with a winded Joe who was now standing at the base of the stairs.
“I climbed all the way down.” Joe puffed. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I thought I’d let you sleep in.” Harry lied.
Joe tilted his head at him, then scurried down the hall and over to the dining room table. Harry followed suit, set the paper down and reluctantly placed Joe onto the table, studying him for a moment.
“I got a couple things you can see, but one of them isn’t finished yet.” Joe said.
“A couple of what?” Asked Harry.
“Artworks, remember?” Joe’s brow furrowed.
“Right.” Harry said.
“So what’s for breakfast?”
Joe Piccoli was not Harry’s pet. But Harry still fed him like a pet and chauffeured him like a pet and gave him a bed to sleep in like a pet. Why wouldn’t the circus manager see a pet when he looked at Joe? All Harry saw was a friend and neighbour, but he couldn’t help but wonder if some dark part of his psyche was unconsciously idealizing his entire relationship with Joe. Joe, who was relying on him for food, comfort and safety. Joe, who Harry could squash like a bug if he were so inclined to. Joe, who after his horrible outing in Tiny Town, clearly had nowhere else to go.
Harry was a degenerate, a menace to society – or so society itself told him he was. Knowing that, how could he be truly certain his intentions towards Joe were pure?
“Joe… can I ask you something?” He said.
Harry watched as Joe turned to face him and blinked in confusion.
“What?” Joe replied.
“Did you really want to sleep upstairs last night?” Harry asked.
“I said I would, didn’t I?” Joe was scowling at him now.
“Did you want to?” Harry pressed.
He watched with dread as Joe’s cheeks began to turn red.
“Yeah… I did. I’ve been having bad dreams lately. What’s the problem?” Joe said.
Harry let out a long sigh.
“I don’t like the way you said yes after you said no.” Was his blunt response.
Joe narrowed his eyes and tossed his hands in confusion.
“What? Am I not allowed to change my mind? Downstairs, upstairs, what does it even matter where I sleep?” Joe ranted.
Harry should have stopped there, but the feeling of guilt he had woken up with compelled him to press further.
“I just… don’t you find that associating with me may not be healthy?” Harry asked him.
“What are you talking about!?” Joe growled. “I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life thanks to you!”
Joe ventured right up to the edge of the table, his face contorted into an expression between anger and confusion. Harry just stood there, not knowing what to say. Joe was right. He had been at death’s door when Harry first laid eyes on him, and now he was the picture of health. In any other circumstance it would be something Harry took pride in, but now it was part of the problem: Joe’s life, quite literally it seemed, depended on Harry.
“I’m not certain this is a position either of us should be in,” Harry rubbed his forehead as Joe paced about in irritation, then added, “one where I could take advantage of you, I mean.”
Joe stopped short at those last few words. To Harry’s surprise, he began to laugh, then looked up at him with a disbelieving smile on his face.
“Let me get this straight. You think you’re taking advantage of me?” Joe said.
“I think I could, yes.” Harry agreed.
Harry spoke in the most dire tone he could muster, but Joe kept on laughing. Harry could only assume that Joe, borrower that he was, incorrectly figured he had the upper hand because he was materially benefitting from their relationship. He certainly didn’t expect Joe to understand the nuances of the power imbalance between them. Joe, meanwhile, doubled over with his hands on his knees.
“…what’s so funny?” Added Harry.
Joe just smiled that boyish smile back up at him.
“You are, Harry. Oh, you’re funny.”
“Joe, this is serious.” Harry scolded him.
Joe straightened up and shrugged at him.
“Well, what are we gonna do about it, Harry? Stop being friends? Should I go back to eating bugs? What are you even gonna get out of worrying about this stuff?” Joe asked.
Harry hadn’t thought that far. He was less interested in finding a real solution than he was in sitting around and feeling bad about the problem, so that was what he did.
“I don’t know.” He said. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Why can’t we talk about it now!?” Joe exclaimed.
When the household received the first of many phone calls of the day, Harry pointed to the ringer box in the hallway and said,
“That’s why.”
He had just enough time to watch Joe’s face fall before he turned towards the kitchen to make breakfast.
“You giants never listen!” Joe shouted after the doctor as the ringing of the phone drowned out his voice.
-
“…I don’t like the sound of this one, Harry.”
Harry didn’t look away from the case record he was in the middle of opening. Joe kept airing his grievances as he sat on Harry’s shoulder nonetheless.
“He says his mom is going senile and should be put in the asylum, but I had to fight with him to get him to bring her in so you could talk to her. Told me he wants a letter from you telling them to send her there. I dunno, Harry, something ain’t right about this guy.” Joe said.
“No need to make assumptions, Joe. I’ll look into it myself.” Harry responded.
“Yeah… sure you will.” Joe paused for a moment, then said, “…I just don’t get this stuff, Harry. I mean-when someone ain’t right in the head, you don’t lock ‘em away. You love them, Harry. That’s what me and my brother did.”
A knock at the door robbed Harry of the chance to hear more of Joe’s story. He went out and set the little man down on the phone table.
“It’s going to be all right. Trust me.” He said to Joe.
When he turned around and entered the hallway, he was met with a familiar face. It was the woman who had been painting in Withrow Park the day Joe had stowed away in Harry’s medical bag, only now instead of smiling at Harry her eyes were downcast. The man who was presumably her son stepped in after her, and appeared for all intents and purposes to be an archetypal middle-aged Bay Street businessman. He quickly ushered his elderly mother to the couch in the parlour before she could so much as greet Harry, then gave the doctor a firm handshake.
“Wilfred Tucker, and this is my mother Evelyn.” Said the man with the radio announcer’s voice. “Please excuse her, she’s very frail.” Wilfred’s voice lowered into a whisper and he added, “I suspect what we’re here to discuss may upset her. If you and I could meet privately first, I think it would be of much help to her.”
Harry nodded and received the man into the examination room. As he glanced back at the nervous old woman sitting with her head bowed on the couch in the parlour, he was starting to understand what Joe meant.
“So what seems to be the problem with your dear mother?” He asked the son.
“I believe she’s losing her faculties. She’s leaving food out at night. Not outdoors, not for the animals, but inside along the baseboards. Knitting tiny clothes nobody could ever wear. Talking to herself… if you ask me, she’s gone mental.” Wilfred said.
“Mmm-hmm…” Harry scribbled single-handedly as he took note. “And you want me to refer her to the asylum?”
“For her safety, yes.”
Harry eyed Wilfred with no small amount of suspicion. All of the things Ms. Tucker did were things Harry himself would do if someone caught him living with Joe. He wondered if something practical like a group of miniatures taking up residence was a more likely culprit, but he was uncertain if he should say such a thing to the son. If there were indeed miniatures, it seemed like a good way to get them all exterminated.
“How is your mother’s speech and memory?” Harry asked.
“She’s becoming increasingly incoherent. Why, she can barely hold a conversation!” Wilfred asserted.
“And her coordination?” Was Harry’s follow-up question.
“She’s very feeble. She can barely hold a pencil.” Wilfred insisted.
“Does she go outside often?” Harry kept on scribbling.
Wilfred simply laughed.
“Oh, she hasn’t gone out in years! That’s why I think the asylum would be good for her. She would finally have some company.” Wilfred declared.
Doctor Harry Avery, who had seen Ms. Tucker painting in Withrow Park a little over a month and a half ago with his own eyes, had written only one word in his notebook: LIAR. He closed the book and smiled at Wilfred.
“Right, this should be an open-and-shut case, but for posterity’s sake I must also assess your mother directly before rendering a decision.” Harry said.
When he got up to go to the parlour, Wilfred reached out to shake his hand again.
“Of course, doctor. Thank you so much for your time.” Said Wilfred, in the glib manner of a man who thought he had put one over on someone.
When Harry entered the parlour, it seemed that Ms. Tucker was already being interviewed.
“The miniatures in my house aren’t as talkative I’m afraid, though they take the food and gifts I leave them. It took years of trying before they would do that.” Said the voice of Ms. Tucker.
Inching closer, Harry could just make out a second voice.
“I’m sure they appreciate it. Talking to you giants isn’t something we really do ‘cause you can get in a lot of trouble for it. The fact they’re even taking stuff says a lot. They must really trust you.” Said Joe.
“I would like to keep it that way.” The old lady said. “If Wilfred finds out they’re living there I know what he’ll do to them. I would rather he think I’m crazy than find out about the neighbours, but we may not have a home at all by the end of it. I love him, but I know he cares about money over anything else, including me. He’s itching to sell the house.”
As Harry leaned into the doorway he could just make out the outline of Joe, who was sitting on the coffee table and chatting with Ms. Tucker.
“I’ve never liked that about most giants.” Said Joe. “The way they treat people. How they don’t care about the important stuff. Harry, he doesn’t always listen but he’s a good person. I hope he’ll listen to you.”
Harry cut the conversation short when he rapped on the parlour doorway. Ms. Tucker soon joined him in the examination room once her son was unceremoniously shooed out of it, and Harry looked her up and down as she sat before him. She appeared to have regained some confidence after speaking to Joe.
“Is that your friend?” She asked after their introduction.
Harry smiled into his notes. Hearing Joe being referred to as a friend provoked no small amount of relief in him.
“He is, yes. I understand you have a few as well.” Harry said, and quickly added, “I won’t tell your son about them.”
A hopeful look came across Ms. Tucker’s face as she nodded. It seemed as though that reassurance opened something up inside of her, and the interview went much more fluidly than expected. Harry learned that Ms. Tucker was a former schoolteacher who painted as a hobby. Her husband had predeceased her and Wilfred was one of four children. She lived mostly independently aside from the occasional check-in visit, enjoyed hiking well into her seventies and presently took regular trips to the park. She had a stint as an actress in Shakespearian theatre years ago and could still quote a few lines. By the end of their chat Ms. Tucker was vivacious and lively, making herself laugh as much as she did Harry.
When the interview was concluded, Harry had learned all he needed to know. He advised Wilfred that he would be in touch in the coming days after thinking things over. Once the two were seen off, he sat back down at his desk to contemplate the verdict he would render later that night.
-
“You’re writing to the asylum!?” Joe cried.
He stood before Harry on the desk, white faced and quivering with indignation. Harry sat back and let Joe get everything out of his system.
“You can’t do that, Harry! Didn’t you see her? She’s fine! There’s nothing wrong with her! I—you—”
Finally Harry cut in when he could sense the tears coming on.
“Do you want to know what I’m writing?” Harry asked.
His eyes followed Joe, who was stomping across the desk and tugging at his hair in rage.
“Not really!” Joe snapped.
“I think you do.” The doctor assured him. “Here’s what I have so far: Dear Sirs, I am writing to warn you of the questionable conduct of one Wilfred Tucker in relation to his mother, Evelyn Tucker.”
Joe stopped in his tracks as Harry read the letter aloud.
“Upon assessing Ms. Tucker personally, I have reason to suspect that his claims regarding his mother’s capacity are false.” Harry continued. “I would ask that you please treat any subsequent referrals Mr. Tucker may obtain in relation to his mother with utmost skepticism. Yours very truly, Herman Richard Avery, M.D.”
Joe breathed a sigh of relief that was so deep even Harry could see it despite his small scale.
“So this’ll keep him from sending her there?” Joe said.
“Hopefully it will. There’s only so much I can do.” Harry set the letter aside to dry as he spoke. “Seems like you two had quite the conversation.”
Joe lit up.
“Yeah. I wanted to ask her about painting but I got sidetracked.”
That feeling of unease hit Harry again as he wondered whether or not Joe was becoming too bold around the giants. He spent more time talking to them now than he did his fellow miniature.
“…speaking of, I had some art to show you if you’re still interested.” Joe deferently reminded him.
Harry tapped his pen on the side of the desk.
“You don’t have to show it to me if you don’t want to.” He said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
He watched Joe’s frustration grow yet again. The art was another area of uncertainty for Harry. After the way Joe had reacted last night, Harry couldn’t be sure if Joe wanted him to see his art at all. Harry couldn’t be sure of anything Joe truly wanted, he realized. How much of his relationship with Joe was genuine, he wondered, and how much of it was Joe going along with Harry’s suggestions in the name of diplomacy?
“Harry, what the hell has gotten into you today? Why is everything such a big deal all of a sudden?” Joe was tensing up again. “I never said you were intruding. Can’t you just listen to me the way you listened to Ms. Tucker? I said I’d show you, didn’t I?”
“Well…” Harry opened his mouth and promptly inserted his foot into it. “…Ms. Tucker isn’t a miniature living in my house who relies on me for everything, is she?”
That really pushed Joe over the edge.
“No, this is my house, and I’ve lived here ten years without you just fine, thank you very much.” Joe admonished him.
The two looked at each other uneasily for a moment before Joe added,
“…what are you so afraid of all of a sudden?”
Joe. Joe was what Harry was afraid of, but he could never tell the little man that.
“Joe… doesn’t it bother you that when we sat down in front of that circus manager the other day, he treated you like you were my property?” Harry asked.
“Of course he did that, Harry!” Joe stepped towards Harry with open arms. “That guy was an asshole! Everyone’s property to him.” His arms fell limp at his sides as he said, “Ms. Tucker thought we were friends. Hell, I thought we were too, but now I’m starting to wonder, if all you’re gonna do is-is-doubt me like this.”
Joe’s words cut Harry to the bone. Scared as he was of not doing the right thing, he was even more afraid of losing Joe. As the tiny man walked off and sprung from the edge of the desk to the floor, it hit Harry that Joe was the first real friend he had made in the last ten years.
“Joe? Joe, wait-”
“Whatever, Harry. I’m going to Calloway’s. It’s in a floating thing by the lake. I’ll be back tomorrow.” Joe said.
All Harry could do was watch helplessly as Joe raced off. By the time Harry made it from the chair to the doorway, his best friend was already gone. He stared into the now-empty house in bewilderment, not knowing what to do.
Maybe he was sparing Joe in an odd way, he reasoned. Sparing the miniature from the pain that inevitably came with knowing him. Still, pushing Joe away like this was splitting Harry in two, and in spite of all his guilt and sadness and shame, he still did not know if it was the right thing to do.
If Harry Avery wanted anything in life, it was to live in a world where it was okay to want Joe.
Part 21 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
Warning to readers: O'Grady gets increasingly xenophobic in this chapter...
The fingers surrounded Joe Piccoli like a swarm of insects, curling and grasping, twitching and beckoning. Most of the hands were young, some of them were old, half of them were absolutely filthy, all of them were reaching directly for him. Joe could not tell if the shiny bars in front of him existed to keep him inside or his audience outside, and they were doing a piss poor job at both either way. Every so often one would seize the pretty bow around his neck and pull, and he would have to fight against it with all his might as the fabric tightened to the point it threatened to take his head clean off. He managed to slip out of it, but not before one pair of hands got the bright idea to grab the chain around Joe’s leg instead, and tugged on that until his ankle bled. The faces behind these hands were a mystery, but the voices were not, though they did collapse into an amorphous wall of sound like echoes in deep water. He covered his ears as the noise assaulted his senses and horror hit him like a bolt of lightning when he discovered his left one was no longer there.
None of the hands were Harry’s. He watched and waited in desperation for the two hands he knew best in the world to come along and save him, to rescue him from the writhing mass and take him home to safety, to comfort him and cuddle him and tell him everything would be all right.
Harry wasn’t there. He was just on his way, Joe told himself, as the bars of the cage gave way and the abominable fusion of fingers closed in. He wouldn’t leave Joe like this. He wouldn’t forget about him. Harry was on his way.
He wouldn’t stop telling himself this, not even when a victorious set of fingers curled around him and snatched him so hard he felt whiplash.
Awakening with a start, Joe lay there in shock in the blue light and struggled to come back to reality. He took a moment to process who he was, where he was, and whether or not the dream was real before finally embracing the waking world with no small amount of relief. It was the wee hours of the morning, and from the dim light of the missing floorboards above he could guess that it was a good hour or so before Harry would be awake. He wanted to go see the doctor, and he wished desperately that making his way upstairs wasn’t such an excursion; that he could walk right across the kitchen and climb the staircase like everyone else. As it was, if he left now, by the time he got upstairs Harry would already be up. Whether he made the journey or not, all Joe could do for the next hour was lie there on his bed of gauze, wrapped in his cotton swatch, and desperately wish for someone who wasn’t there.
He should have accepted Harry’s offer last night, he thought. When Joe had finished reading to Harry, he had prepared to be carried down to his room in the kitchen as always. Instead, Harry had looked at him with that mix of concern and pity and asked,
“Are you sure you want to sleep alone tonight?”
On top of that, he had offered to clear some space on the nightstand, to bring Joe’s bedding up or to provide more. Joe, as usual, had blushed at him and stammered out a refusal, in spite of the fact he had actually wanted to say yes. It had felt almost perverse to accept such an offer, especially since Harry was unaware of the way Joe’s brain was wired. Joe couldn’t help but feel as though agreeing to such a thing would be tantamount to taking advantage of Harry in some way. Now it turned out that Harry’s sixth sense had been right, for maybe if Joe had said yes he would have slept a little easier.
With nothing better to do, he pulled out his pencil and began to draw in the hopes that it would put the bad omen out of his mind.
-
“How are you doing today?” Harry’s voice sounded more doctor-like than friend-like over breakfast.
Recently Harry had convinced Joe to venture all the way out to the dining room table to eat. Joe sat on the edge of the plate of grapes that formed a makeshift centerpiece and slumped over his piece of French toast. He wished he could give a convincing answer as the sticky maple syrup ran over the stray cuff-link he was now using as a plate. All he could do this morning was prod at what, on any other day, would be the food of the gods. Today it was going cold.
“I’m fine, Harry.” He mumbled.
When the giant let out a light sigh, Joe didn’t bother looking up at him, for he already knew what kind of expression Harry had on his face. He listened to the rustling of Harry's newspaper instead and tried to shake off the lingering unease the nightmare had left him with. Harry let out an incredulous hm as he read the morning news, which only deepened the feeling of dread that was following him like a specter.
“Joe… that O’Grady friend of yours from the watchmaker’s… his first name isn’t Tim, is it?” Asked Harry.
Joe snapped to attention and looked up at Harry in shock.
“Yeah, that’s my friend. Tim O’Grady. Why? What’s wrong?” Said Joe, his voice wavering.
Joe didn’t wait for an answer. He set the cuff-link down and strode over to Harry’s elbow to read the paper himself.
“It says here he was involved in the Tiny Town brawl-” Harry said.
“Is he okay!?” Joe cut him off.
Joe’s heart rate spiked as he spotted the headline TERROR IN TINY TOWN from where he stood beside Harry. His last interaction with O’Grady hadn’t been the greatest, but the man was still his friend - the closest thing to a real friend he had in a fellow miniature. The last thing he wanted was for O’Grady to get hurt.
“-it says here he was just released from the Tiny Town General Hospital.” Harry continued. “Joe? Joe, where are you going!?”
A mouse can survive a fall of over twelve feet thanks to its small surface area, and Joe could survive a fall of about as much. Before Harry could stop him, Joe ran and vaulted clean off the table, then tucked and rolled when he hit the floor. He only stopped running at the sound of the screeching of Harry’s chair when the giant got up to follow him. Turning around, he craned his neck up as the shock waves of the giant’s feet drew nearer. For a moment, as he looked up at Harry from where he was on the floor, the old jitters came over him again and he froze in place. They abated slightly when the giant knelt down.
“I suppose you’re thinking of paying him a visit.” Harry said.
“W-well I—of course I’m gonna visit him. He’s my friend.” Joe asserted.
Joe couldn’t be certain what he expected Harry to say in that moment. The response he received, however, was the last thing he would have expected.
“It’s in Riverdale Park, right?" Harry began.
"Yeah?" Joe said.
"Want me to take you?” The giant asked.
Tongue tied, Joe stood there for a moment at a loss for words as Harry extended a hand to him. Of course he wanted Harry to take him. He wanted nothing more in the world after yesterday’s harrowing day at the circus and last night’s dream than to be cared for and looked after. The social forces at play had other plans.
“You can’t, Harry. They can’t see us together, remember?” Joe said and pointed to his left ear for good measure.
Harry slowly withdrew his hand.
“…right. I forgot about that.”
Joe braced himself against the shaking floorboards as the giant’s feet carefully stepped around him and disappeared into the kitchen. In a moment he came back with a hat, a scarf, and a jacket in his one good hand. Harry knelt close to where Joe was waiting patiently and set them down in front of him, then picked up the jacket first.
“Don't forget these.” Harry said. “It’s looking like it’s going to rain out. Here, put your arm out.”
Joe’s heart melted when the giant held out the jacket for him, and he slid the sleeve over one arm, then another. By the time Harry strung the scarf around his neck and placed the hat on his head (albeit crookedly) he realized he was smiling. Harry’s hand lingered when he was done, and his thumb stroked Joe’s face the way he had during the night of the storm.
“Come home safe, okay?”
“’course I will, Harry. I’ll be fine.”
-
When Joe reached the sagging mass of miniature wooden buildings in Riverdale Park and passed through the first of the two fences that surrounded Tiny Town, he was posed a curious question.
“You got ID?” Asked the fellow miniature guarding Tiny Town’s main entrance.
The entryway into Tiny Town was much larger than the door to the housing office next to it. It was made of thick wire, cage-like in construction, as though someone had taken a bunch of coat hangers and welded them into a barred gate. The gate was built right into the second, wooden fence that enclosed the city, and Joe could see that it was barred shut for good measure. Hardly any miniatures passed through it when compared to the sheer number who went in and out of the housing office, and to Joe’s surprise, he had been able to walk right up to the guard without even waiting. The man was a head taller than him and carried a big stick to boot.
“Eye-dee?” Joe blinked in confusion as he tried to discern what the guard was talking about.
“That card we gave you when you got in? Can’t let you in without it.” The guard said.
“Oh, I don’t live here. I’m just visiting a friend.” Joe explained.
The guard made a sound that was somewhere between laughter and wheezing.
“We don’t take visitors here, pal.” The guard pulled out his stick and jabbed it into Joe’s shoulder, pushing him back from the gate. “You’re either with us or you’re not.”
“Oh, but—sir, please, I’m here to see my friend. He got in a big fight and they just let him out of the hospital and-” the guard lowered his baton and for a moment Joe thought his pleading was working “-I just gotta see him, sir. He’s my best-”
Then the guard’s mitts shot out and grabbed Joe around the collar. The folks waiting to get into the housing office stopped and stared as Joe’s slim frame was flung so far away from the gate he nearly collided with the line. Joe hit the ground and his ears rung for a moment, then he sat up in a daze.
“Think you’re special? You’re not special! If you wanna get in here then you gotta stand in line like everyone else!” The guard ordered.
Well shaken, Joe scuttled backwards and stumbled to his feet with his face flushed, glaring at the guard whose eyes were now locked onto him. He had no scraps to his name, and nothing to trade with; not that these snobby Tiny Town tinies would care to trade at all, he figured. Joe pretended to mosey on down to the end of the line instead, if only to ease the watchful guard’s suspicion. He did not want to get into Tiny Town, and he did not want to stand in line like everyone else, which left him at a loss for what to do.
He started searching along the wooden fence that surrounded the city proper and paid special attention to the spot where he had run into O’Grady on his last visit. The narrow gaps in the wooden slats were too slim even for him to fit through, but he could vaguely make out the outlines of buildings, people, and movements on peering through them. He watched them in fascination as he moved along the perimeter, further and further away from the end of the line, until a dip in the ground interrupted his sightseeing when it caused him to trip and fall.
It was a hole. One that someone appeared to have dug and then covered with a layer of dead grass. Joe looked around to find that there was nobody nearby, and he debated with himself for a moment as he squinted into the pitch black opening below the fence. Scary as the guard had been, not knowing whether O’Grady was okay or not was even scarier, for at this point Joe had known the man for more years of his life than he had not known him. Accepting that he had no other real option, he crawled inside.
Joe may as well have taken a trip to the moon - that was how strange a sight Tiny Town was. He crawled out of the tunnel and stood still as a post while the creaky wooden apartment buildings sang as the May breeze rushed through them. All of them were so tall they were virtually skyscrapers in comparison to Joe himself. When he exited the alleyway where the hole had been dug, Joe was greeted by a paved street not unlike the kind the giants had, only at much smaller scale. The pavement existed in tandem with a series of raised wooden boardwalks that connected the various buildings together. Other buildings had makeshift bridges built across them, or hooks hung from the windows, as though the miniatures living there had not fully shaken their borrowing tendencies. Although “buildings” were something that existed to Joe in theory, seeing them now at his own scale, with windows he could look into and doors he could open and close, was eerie enough to make his hair stand on end.
Even eerier was the electricity. The same kind of Christmas bulb he had seen in Dawson’s office also lined the streets, mounted on poles this time. They weren’t turned on in the daytime, but other lights in the windows were. Harry’s electricity was difficult enough for Joe to adjust to as a miniature after a life under the floorboards, but seeing others of his kind in giant-like homes with giant-like utilities felt wrong somehow.
The sound of a voice to his right startled Joe out of his rubbernecking. Down the quiet street, a round older man appeared to be waving at him. Joe couldn’t make out a word of what the man was saying, though the language he spoke sounded familiar. It was not the Casa his mother spoke, or what little of his father’s Giardino she had passed along to him, but a secret third dialect that Joe had never encountered before.
One thing was certain: this man was very fearful of something. He raised an open palm to Joe, as if trying to stop him from doing something, and pointed to a white line that was painted on the street between them. Joe watched as the stranger stuck out his left hand, then struck its palm with the side of his flattened right hand. It was a gesture Joe knew well from his days of tagging along with his older brother on their borrowing missions: you must go.
So that was it! The man must have pegged him as a trespasser, he reasoned. Fearing the stranger might call the guards, he quickened his pace and hurried away from the man and the line, deeper into the row of buildings on his left. As the man’s shouting intensified behind him Joe powered into a sprint and turned at an intersection. Joe ran a ways and then stopped to catch his breath, but found it difficult when a cloud of dust fell down on him. He looked up to see a housewife beating dirt out of a blanket on a balcony above, each strike echoing across the walls of buildings that were bathing the ground below in shadows. She was the only sign of life that cut through the electric stillness of the dead-end street, and as the buildings closed around him like an impenetrable fortress Joe wondered how he was supposed to find O’Grady at all in such a maze.
So this was Tiny Town. In all his time trying to make it in, Joe had not known what he expected the place to be like. He had hoped for someplace lively and vibrant at the very least, with the same trappings a giant’s city had. Restaurants and speakeasies and libraries, all the things the giants spoke fondly of were what Joe had imagined Tiny Town to be, not this sad, sordid little ghost town.
Joe was just about to give up and return to the hole when a familiar sound rang in his ears. A sound that Joe had heard during his last trip to Tiny Town. A sound somewhere between a scream and an air raid siren.
It was the sound of Mary biting her brother.
Joe followed the sound and traced it to one of the units far above him and to the left. Against his better judgment, Joe took a deep breath and began to shout.
“O’GRADY!”
He was surprised by the loudness of his own voice as it bounced off the row of buildings. The screaming of the child above stopped at the sound of his voice. Joe watched the curious onlookers stir in the windows above, then tried again.
“OH GRADY-DEE!”
All the yelling he had to do in order to be heard by Harry was paying off in the form of incredible lung capacity. Joe’s face lit up as O’Grady scowled at him from the window above. Then his old friend’s eyes widened and O’Grady smiled back at him and waved.
“Finally got in, did ya wee bastard!” The Irishman answered him, his voice not nearly as loud as Joe’s. “Hold on! Keep your mouth shut! I’m coming down!”
After another five painstaking minutes, O’Grady finally joined him. He pulled Joe into a rib-crushing bear hug, and Joe could see that his head was still covered in bandages.
“I’m not here to stay.” Joe wheezed. “I’m just visiting.”
“Visiting?” O’Grady released him from his grip with no small amount of concern and the two started to walk and talk. “Best be careful they don’t catch you. ‘specially not the guard up front.”
“Relax, Tim. I’ll be in and out in no time! Just wanted to come see you.” Joe said. “You were in the news and everything. What the hell happened?”
“Damn Italians, that’s what happened.” O’Grady said.
“…Italians?”
That feeling of unease hit Joe again.
“They invade our end of the city, take our jobs, show up at our bar… did we invite them? No.” O’Grady was practically ranting. “And when we politely tell them to leave, what do they do?” O’Grady pointed to his bandaged head. “Watch out for them once you get here. They’re not good Irishmen like you and me, Joe.”
“Right… I’ll do that, Tim.” Said the Italian standing right next to him.
There was that feeling again: the sense that the Tim O’Grady Joe used to know had been replaced by something else, something much bigger than him. First borrowers, then Germans, now Italians; Joe had never known O’Grady to be a contemptuous person, but ever since he moved to the strange dystopia that was Tiny Town it was as if the Irishman’s life now depended on hating everybody else. Joe had no idea how to break it to O’Grady that he himself had been designated an Italian at Dawson’s desk, and he feared what O'Grady might do to him if he did. As he strolled along the boardwalk outside the building’s entrance beside the man who was supposed to be his best friend, Joe felt about as safe as he had felt when he was hiding from the snatcher in the pipe.
Not knowing what else to do, Joe changed the subject instead.
“So uh… where is everyone, anyways? It’s awfully quiet around here.” He said.
O’Grady laughed at him.
“Ah, right, I forgot. You don’t have a job!” O’Grady said to the medical office assistant. “They’re all at this place called work. It’s where they go to make scraps. I’m on medical leave, but I gotta go back tomorrow.”
Joe wrinkled his nose.
“I know what a job is, O’Grady.” He said. “What do you work as, anyways?”
“I push buttons.” The Irishman declared with great pride.
“…you push buttons?” Joe said.
“Mhm!” O'Grady confirmed.
“What kind of buttons? What do they do?” Asked Joe.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure it's more important than whatever you're doing. I’m the best at pushing ‘em, too! Employee of the month three times running.” O’Grady said.
Joe thought about his own job. About Mme. Bélanger and Miss Wilkins – and even Ms. McConkey, senile as she was. Joe hadn’t been working as an assistant for long, and he hardly considered it work to begin with so much as free entertainment half the time. Nonetheless, although he would probably never see any of those people face to face, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was making their lives happier in whatever small way he could. Joe couldn’t imagine a future for himself where he did something as menial as pushing buttons.
“I dunno Tim, that sounds a little pointless don’t you think? Why do you need to push buttons in order to get scraps?” Joe said.
“Because that’s how life works!” O’Grady insisted. “You push the buttons, you get the scraps, you pay your rent, you get to live like the giants do!”
“I get that, Tim, but why can’t they just let you do that without the buttons and the scraps? Why even have money?” Joe asked him.
It was a question that had been lingering on Joe’s mind ever since O’Grady had introduced the concept of Tiny Town to him. The sheer absurdity of the buttons had finally compelled Joe to ask it out loud.
“Why even have money?” O’Grady parroted in falsetto. “That’s not how the real world works, lad! That’s borrower talk.” Joe’s left ear was nearly pulled off when O’Grady reached out and pinched it. “It’s the kinda shite a pet would say, expecting handouts from the bloody giants… you’ll never make it in at this rate.”
O’Grady let go of Joe’s scarlet red ear, and Joe clapped a hand over it and scowled at him.
“Well what do you know about giants anyways?” The words slipped out of Joe’s mouth on accident.
O’Grady tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at Joe, who was starting to shake in equal parts fear and anger.
“The same thing I know about Italians: you can’t trust ‘em. Whose side are you on, lad!?”
Pets. Italians. Borrowers. Joe now understood that when O’Grady talked about any of them, he was really talking about Joe himself. He felt so torn up in that moment. So raw and devalued and hurt. He wanted to argue further, to ask O’Grady about the four armed giants who stood outside of Tiny Town, or to tell him about the plans he had encountered in a giant professor’s office, or to remind him of the fact that the only reason Tiny Town was built on a former garbage dump and not somewhere nicer was because a bunch of giants at City Hall had decided where it should go in the first place.
Joe wanted to bring up all of those things, but he knew that even if he did, it wouldn’t bring his old friend back. Now what Joe really wanted more than anything else was to go back to the new friend who was worried sick about him at home.
“I’m on your side, Tim. Really, I am! I’m just new to the whole Tiny Town thing, that’s all. Y’know, seeing as I’m just a dumb borrower and everything…” Joe trailed off.
“There is a little bit of a culture shock here.” O’Grady nodded. “You’ll figure it out if you get in.” He stopped in his tracks and turned to Joe. “Speaking of, see anything shiny lately?”
Joe gulped. He had indeed seen something shiny lately, a diamond in fact, but he wasn’t about to tell O’Grady that. What kind of a person would he be to deface a ring that belonged to Harry’s mother?
“Nope. Still looking,” Joe said, and sensing his opportunity to leave he added, “I uh… should probably get back to that, actually.”
Joe hurried off before O’Grady could open his mouth to protest, relieved that he wouldn’t have to hear another word from the man who was supposed to be his best friend.
-
Joe Piccoli almost made it back to the hole in the fence without getting his face bashed in. Unfortunately for him, the three strangers who fell in step behind him had other plans. Before he had a chance to react, their ringleader snatched him by the scarf and flung him into the beam of a boardwalk so hard it shook. Joe blinked as he realized he was now face to face with a grizzled tiny’s scarred face and crooked teeth.
"Air tax." The strange Irishman said.
"...air tax?" Joe repeated. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Joe choked as the man lifted him up and held him against the beam with such force that it thoroughly winded him.
"You're in the Irish ward, but you don't look very Irish to me, does he lads?" The leader of the gang turned to his two henchmen, both just as grizzled and scarred as he was, who shook their heads in disagreement. "If you're going to come in here and breathe our air, then you gotta pay the air tax."
"I don't have any money." Joe heaved.
The man's hands were squeezing the pressure points in Joe's shoulders so hard that the feeling was draining from his arms.
"Then I guess you don't get to breathe our air, do ya' laddie?" Said the man to the leader's right.
He pulled out a knife while the henchman on the left cracked the knuckles on his bare fists. As he watched the blade glint in the meager sunlight of the side street, Joe wondered if he was still trapped in last night’s bad dream. Certainly, bandits were a problem a borrower occasionally had to face, but he had never encountered a racket like this before - especially not in a place that advertised itself as a civilized place to be.
He squeezed his eyes shut as the edge of the blade stroked his neck and wished for Harry. Ear or no ear, if Harry were nearby all Joe would have to do is scream and the giant would come running. Now here he was, trapped and surrounded in a place he never should have gone to in the first place.
As Joe wondered which layer of hell someone with his particular flavour of perversion was destined to go to after he died, a curious thing happened. With all the force of a speeding train, a boot flew out from somewhere to Joe’s right and struck the knife-wielder in the head, causing him to drop his weapon. It was the boot of the older man Joe had encountered earlier, and Joe could see that he was now accompanied by a small group of friends. A flurry of stones and sand followed as they pelted the trio with anything they could find, and although Joe could only halfway understand them he could tell that they were unleashing insults and swears just by the looks on their faces. Then two of them ran directly across the white line that divided the street in two, and it was that action that caused the gang of Irishmen to lose nerve and let Joe go. Joe scurried blindly towards his defenders, right in the direction of the man he had encountered earlier.
Across the safety of the white line he watched the gang flee down the road. The older man lectured him in the unknown dialect all the while, and although Joe didn’t understand a word the stranger was saying, he didn’t need to. Joe could tell exactly what the stranger was getting at by the gesture he was making. He was tapping his finger to his head and scowling at Joe: you are crazy.
For one brief moment in time, the first time in Joe’s entire existence at that, Joe understood what it was like to have a real father. This sentimental moment was cut short when a familiar voice cut in.
"Hey! What'th going on over here!?"
It was the voice of the guard who had been at the front gate, now relieved of his duty over lunch and chewing on a hunk of sandwich meat. The guard stopped dead in his tracks and dropped his lunch at the sight of Joe. His expression twisted into one of pure rage.
"I know you..." The guard said.
Joe backed away slowly at first, then turned and ran at full speed when the guard pursued him. Within seconds Joe was caught by the edge of his sleeve. He wrestled and fought as the guard pulled him back, then shrugged his jacket off like shedding a skin. He kept sprinting, back across the white line and down what he thought was the right alley to reach the place where he hoped the hole still was.
A small black speck grew larger and larger as Joe closed in on the spot where the end of the alley met the bottom of the fence. With the footsteps of the guard hammering on the pavement behind him, Joe knew he had two options: he could dive into that hole and hope the guard didn't pull him out, or he could surrender and find out what Tiny Town’s prison was like. Taking option one, Joe flung himself straight into the darkened opening and crawled on his belly through the dirt. A heavy hand clasped around his ankle and yanked at his boot, but fortunately for Joe it slipped clean off. Blessed in that moment by his small stature, he kept on crawling until he was all the way across the fence. The guard was much too big to follow him, and when he emerged from the other side of the tunnel he knew he was home free.
Joe kept on running, past the line of hopeful miniatures and the chain link fence, halfway across the field until he dove and hid behind a raised knot of an exposed tree root. He sat there with no jacket, a missing hat and one good boot as it started spitting out, limp from exhaustion and questioning everything he had once thought he knew about society. He felt hollowed out in that moment as he reflected on his terrible morning from start to finish.
Then Joe remembered something that gave him a minor heart attack. He had lost a boot, and possibly his knife along with it! His hand flew to his one, good boot and to his relief he found the knife was still inside. He pulled it out and examined the signature O'Grady had engraved on the hilt when he had made the knife for Joe.
In a decision that would forever change the course of Joe's life, he contemplated throwing the knife away completely. As his own reflection stared back at him, he couldn't bring himself to do it. To let go of the knife would be to let go of O'Grady, the man who had been his best friend since age twelve. Deeply unsettling as O'Grady's recent behaviour was, to cut him off completely would be like cutting off a part of himself. It was something Joe was not emotionally ready to do yet. All he could do for now was feel hurt and betrayed, so that was what he did as he got up, trekked across the park and twirled the knife in his hand.
If there was one thing that eased the pain, it was the knowledge that Joe was not alone. Even if O'Grady was no longer a good friend to him, he still had somebody in his life who was.
-
"Joe? What on Earth happened!?"
Joe stood once again on the windowsill after his latest ride through hell. The front of his shirt was coated in mud, his left boot was gone, his jacket was missing, his hat had disappeared, and his scarf had flown off in the wind halfway through his journey home.
"I didn't pay my air tax." Joe said.
"Air tax...?" Harry echoed.
Harry reached up and carefully curled his hand around Joe, who eased himself into the giant's palm.
"I dunno what to tell ya', Harry. Tiny Town has an air tax." Joe chattered away as he lounged in Harry's hand. "The whole world's been going to hell lately."
"Is your friend okay?" Asked Harry.
"Physically he's fine. I dunno what's going on with his brain, though. He hates Italians now, and pets, and borrowers, and... me too, I guess, even if he doesn't know it." Joe curled up in Harry's hand and hugged his knees as he spoke. "I dunno what to do about it. It's like ever since he moved to Tiny Town he’s become a whole different person."
"I don't think there's much you can do about it." Said Harry. "Sometimes people change in ways we have no control over, and we can either accept it or find better friends."
"Yeah..." Joe trailed off as Harry set him down by the open floorboards and once again helped himself to Joe's wardrobe.
"Let's get you some clean clothes." Harry said.
Joe fidgeted for a moment as he fought with himself over whether or not to say what he really wanted to say.
“…hey, Harry?” He began.
“Mhm?”
“Thanks for being a good friend.”
Joe looked at his feet first, then up at Harry. When the giant’s face lit up into a smile, Joe didn’t regret saying a single word.
-
"So that's it, huh?" Said Harry of the romance novel's unsatisfying end.
Joe couldn't help but smile at the sound of Harry's voice. He seemed awfully disappointed by the tragic fate of the main characters.
"Yeah, the ending on this one isn't great. They're cowards. Could've at least said they loved each other." Joe said.
He closed the book and snuggled into the crook of Harry's neck.
"Have any better ones?" Harry asked.
"I do, but it's in French. I could try translating it." Joe offered.
"A French romance novel?" Harry sounded uneasy at the prospect. "...please tell me they keep their clothes on."
Joe cackled in response.
"Oh, they do... for the most part. You might like it, actually. It's about a spy who falls in love behind enemy lines." Joe said.
"Hmm... sounds promising." Joe struggled against the shifting mattress when Harry rolled over to face him. "You'll have to show me your art first though, won't you?"
Joe began to blush as he looked into Harry's eyes. He had forgotten all about the deal he had made. Now he was tempted to fight, to argue, to renegotiate, but the giant looked so innocently curious that he couldn't bring himself to do so. Joe had become very protective of his art over the years, fearing that anyone who saw too much of it would learn too much about him by extension. In spite of that, the sense of safety Harry brought with him had a way of melting Joe down and lowering his guard.
"I-uh-I'll show you tomorrow." He said.
"You could show me tonight when I take you back downstairs." Harry suggested.
Joe's heart raced. This wasn't how the conversation was supposed to go!
"I... I'll sleep up here then!" Joe blurted out.
Now Joe had done it! He couldn't sleep near Harry; the giant would find out he had something wrong with him if he did! Petrified, Joe had no hope of taking his words back, and he sat mortified with himself as Harry rolled back over.
Then the worst possible thing happened: Harry sat up, took his one good hand, and scooped Joe into it. Joe, embarrassed, lay there splayed out in the giant's palm and looked up at this beautiful man with his beautiful face as his heart pounded away in his chest. That bastard had him right where he wanted him yet again! Smiling, Harry lowered his hand onto the nightstand and the disgruntled Joe sat up and slid off of it.
"In that case, you can sleep here then... let's see if I have anything you can use as a bed." Said Harry.
Joe, meanwhile, screamed internally as Harry searched the room. What would O'Grady say to this? Or Captain Calloway? Or Gutters? Hell, what would his mother say!? One side of his nature hated himself while the other, darker part admired the curve of Harry's shoulders and the slope of his back while the giant was facing away from him. Then Harry disappeared into another room, and Joe was left alone with himself to reflect on what he was doing.
He was taking advantage of Harry. That was what he was doing. Harry thought Joe was a normal miniature, after all. Joe had tried all his life to be a normal miniature; it was why he had hidden away for ten years in the first place. He knew that if he lived around others, knowledge of his tendencies would eventually spread, so he had lived alone instead and not bothered a soul. Quietly he had romanticized the giants between his ears while fearing them deeply in person. Since meeting Harry, that line between fantasy and reality had blurred in a way that was making Joe increasingly uneasy with himself.
He could not sleep downstairs despite all that, he realized. Not after last night's dream and the awful events of the day. He knew he wouldn't feel safe down there. He would lie awake and suffer as he obsessed over the ills of the world. Joe sat on the nightstand and hung his head like a dog, ashamed once again that his need for security kept running up against his mind's faulty wiring. Surely Harry would be disgusted with Joe if he knew the truth of what he was!
He sat straight at attention when Harry returned, and he saw that the giant was carrying a square dish and a hand towel.
"Here we go." Harry said.
He set the dish down on the nightstand next to the lamp. It was quite a handsome thing, made of white porcelain with a gold trim around the edge. Three of its sides came up to Joe's thigh, but the back of the dish was much taller and stretched well over Joe's head. This side was reminiscent of a rear wall and sported an embossed art nouveau fleur-de-lis. Joe had seen this dish before holding soap in the bathroom, and a calming scent still lingered on it.
Joe watched as Harry folded the hand towel and set it inside the dish. The giant placed one half of the towel in the bed of the dish to serve as a mattress, then folded the other half over, presumably to cover him like a makeshift sleeping bag.
"Let me know if that's too stuffy. I can get you something lighter." Harry said. "Hopefully this'll help you sleep better tonight."
Now in no position to refuse it, Joe got up and crept towards the makeshift bed. The towel looked so crisp and so comfortable it beat even the gauze he had downstairs. A wave of emotions hit Joe as he sat down on it and looked up at Harry, who was smiling back at him.
Joe, sleeping next to Harry. Like a pet. Or like something even worse than that. Something he still couldn't admit to himself. Something disgusting and backwards and wrong. As always, he couldn’t say no, not with the natural proclivities he had. One night, Joe decided, cursing himself as per usual. He would sleep upstairs for one night, and he would be very normal about it, and then for Harry’s sake he would never do it again.
Joe couldn't help but wonder where the line was between love and taming upon sinking into the softness of his new bed. How easily he succumbed to the will of the giant! As Joe bid Harry goodnight and drifted into a nightmareless sleep, he couldn't help but wonder if Harry would bend to his will in the same way if the tables were turned.
Part 20 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.
It's a nice long one this time! Warning to readers: this chapter takes place at a circus. The cruel and exploitative nature of the circus towards animals and people alike is addressed directly in this chapter. The word "freak" appears in this chapter, and its usage is duly criticized.
S/o to @remordsposthume for helping Joe unleash some fine Venetian swears. ✌️
Harry Avery could not solve all of Joe's problems, but that didn’t stop him from trying as he puffed away on his cigarette that morning. He knew that last night’s news about Tiny Town had troubled Joe, and he was dead set on finding some way to cheer his friend up. The problem at hand was that words were never Harry’s forte. Half the time, whenever Joe was sad, he could never be sure if what he was saying was the right thing or remotely helpful at all. Instead of facing that uncertainty he stuck to simple gestures, to favours, to touch, because in an odd way it kept the both of them safe. Harry’s emotional world was the equivalent of standing on the shore of a placid lake: although the mirror surface was pristine, the depths of those waters held untold pain that even he was afraid to face. He dared not disturb the surface above for fear of what lurked underneath, and instead he settled for an existence ruled by gentle clinicism, one where everyone was carefully kept an arm’s length away from the truth of Harry's nature.
Because of all that, it was not what to say but rather what to do that was on Harry’s mind as he brainstormed ways to lift Joe’s spirits. Perhaps they could go somewhere. It was a nice enough day, he reasoned. The late May sky was already a beautiful azure blue, and the breeze was soft and gentle. Birdsong filled the air as the elephants paraded down Danforth on their journey to Bloor Street. The flowers were starting to bloom as if to announce that spring was now in full swing…
Elephants? Harry’s cigarette fell from his fingers as he did a double-take. There were three of them marching down the street, each of which bore a white banner with words scrawled in black paint. The first one read, J. J. DAVIDSON JR.’S, the second read, ALL-AMERICAN – though as they were now in Canada, the word ALL had been crossed out in red and replaced with NOT – and the third one simply read, CIRCUS. The elephants were followed by a brightly coloured procession of clowns and acrobats who cartwheeled and bounced this way and that.
Harry raced inside to awaken Joe. With barely any time to explain, he beckoned the groggy tiny to crawl into his hand and carried his half-asleep friend to the windowsill in the parlour. He watched in delight as Joe sat up, rubbed his eyes, ran a hand through his messy hair, then froze when his eyes fell on the parade outside of the window.
Joe leapt to his feet and pressed his nose against the glass. He looked to Harry in wonder, then back to the parade.
“Do I wanna know what that’s about?” He finally said when words came to him.
Harry chuckled at the sight of him. Joe already looked much happier than he had been last night.
“I think you might.” Harry said.
“Seer-cuss…” Joe read, mispronouncing the word circus. “Harry, what’s a seer-cuss?”
“Sir-cuss.” Harry corrected him. “It’s a place where giants go to have fun. Those fine folks are on their way to pitch up a tent it looks like.”
“Oh. A giant thing, huh?” He could sense the disappointment in Joe’s voice. “I suppose that means I couldn’t go with 'em, huh?”
Harry couldn’t stop smiling down at Joe. He knew what he was about to propose was a bad idea, yet he simply couldn’t resist the urge to do it. Joe, after all, had survived a trip to the hospital, a thunderstorm, and a ride on a motorcycle. Besides, Harry reasoned, he had learned a thing or two since their ill-fated trip to the picture show. Though Harry himself had not been to a single circus in his entire life, he figured all he had to do was take the proper precautions and maybe, just maybe, the two could have a fun outing together.
“If you want to go, I’ll take you. Just promise me you’ll be careful.” Harry said.
He could tell by the way Joe’s face lit up that the tiny had forgotten all about last night’s news.
-
“Harry? Are we in yet!? What’s going on?” Shouted Joe from Harry’s front pocket.
Harry himself was standing in the gridlocked line to get into the circus grounds. The line was inching along in tedious fashion, but fortunately he was nearing the gate. It wasn’t a moment too soon, for he could sense from the way Joe was struggling inside of his pocket that the tiny was getting impatient.
“It’s so stuffy in here!” Joe complained.
Harry single-handedly shuffled through his wallet to hand the carnie at the booth his admission fare. When he looked up, he could see that the ticket taker’s curious gaze was locked onto his front pocket, which Joe had picked a bad time to poke his head out of. With a shaking hand, Harry pressed a handful of coins that was well over the admission price into the carnie’s palm and hurried through the gate as a sinking feeling came over him. All Harry could do was hope that whatever security this circus had wouldn’t chase him down for bringing a miniature onto the grounds.
Joe wasn’t the only one who was feeling stuffy. Harry had worn a scarf this time around, in the hopes that Joe would be able to sit on his shoulder without being seen. He veered off to the side and took Joe out of his pocket, then carefully placed him into the folds of the scarf.
“Hang on tight.” He said.
Now the two were free to explore the circus grounds, which were divided up into a series of streets. There was Animal Alley, where the menagerie was, Daring Drive, where the stunt performers resided, and Freak Street, where the sideshow was held.
None of these options appealed to Harry, who had much too doctorly things to do than go to the circus. He decided to let Joe choose instead.
“Where do you want to go? They have elephants, high divers, medical curiosities…”
“The hell’s an elephant?” Joe asked, and Harry knew what he had to do.
Soon the two were in line to see the star of animal alley: Totsy the baby elephant. Mothers and children swarmed the gilded cage where the animal stood with a pretty red bow around its neck, waving with its trunk to the passers-by.
This part of the circus was the one Harry was least fond of, a trait he had picked up from his mother who had been a fervent believer that no creature ought to be caged. Now, as he laid eyes on this sad little elephant that waved its sad little trunk at an army of children who were all grasping for it, Harry understood why she had never allowed him to set foot in a circus. Joe seemed to sense the unpleasantness of it all as well.
“What’s wrong with its leg!?” He yelled into Harry’s left ear over the sound of the crowd.
Harry looked down to see that, on top of being caged, the baby elephant was also chained. The metal was digging into the creature’s ankle and causing scar tissue to form around it.
“Why is it locked up like that?” Was Joe's follow-up question. "It looks so sad."
“It’s what people do to wild animals, I suppose. So it doesn’t run off or... go on a rampage.” Harry’s answer was unsatisfactory even to himself, and he was already beginning to regret his trip to the circus. “Come on. Let’s go see something else.”
A horse and rider perched atop an incredibly tall ladder down Daring Drive was the next attraction. Lining the shores of the nearby lake were rows of makeshift bleachers where a crowd waited in anticipation for the horse diving act to commence. Harry couldn’t grab a seat in time, so he slowed his pace and the two watched from afar as the rider prepared to make a death-defying leap.
“What the hell is this?” Joe’s voice was growing more irritable. “Look how high up they are! That thing’s gonna get hurt.”
Harry couldn’t tear his eyes away from the act. He stood and gawked along with everyone else as the horse plunged into the water with a great splash. Although the crowd cheered as the horse and rider emerged from the water safely, Joe was none too impressed.
“What the hell was that, Harry?” He said.
“A stunt man.” Harry explained. “A… thing giants do for a thrill.”
“That was stupid.” Joe spat. “This place isn’t fun, it’s scary and weird.”
“Well, this is just the sideshow.” Harry argued as he turned towards Freak Street. “We haven’t seen the circus yet.”
“I don’t even wanna see whatever this is. Freak Street? What’s a freak, Harry? I don’t get it.” Joe said.
Harry stopped in his tracks as he searched for an answer. He couldn’t think of a proper definition – at least, not one that didn’t sound downright wretched.
“You see Joe, a freak is… it’s…”
What was a freak? Was it someone physically different from the norm? Someone mentally different from the norm? Someone whose lifestyle or proclivities were strange or unusual compared to average people? Which people bore the burden of such a label, and which ones were safe from its reach? As he really, truly thought about the definition of the word freak and to whom it could be extended to, he realized to his great unease that it was a label that could apply not only to Joe, but also to Harry himself.
"Normal" boys did not kiss other boys, after all.
The more he thought about the word and its usage, the more sickened and enraged he felt towards those who had the power to wield it. Then the crowd forced Harry out of his rumination as it shoved him along, and he found himself sandwiched among a group of people that had gathered outside the tent of one particular attraction along the side show. Craning his neck and peering inside, he could vaguely make out something in the shape of a box on a table.
SEE THE WONDROUS TINY TROUPE, a sign by the tent promised the two.
“Do you want to-” He began.
“No, I don’t want to.” Joe hissed. “It’s just gonna be sad and screwed up like everything else in this place.”
Harry’s heart sank. Joe was right; this place wasn’t fun at all. The longer he stayed, the more depressing and alienating it became. Still, as the barker emerged from the big top to announce the beginning of the afternoon show, Harry wanted to give it one more chance - he had accidentally overpaid on his way in, after all. Maybe the circus show itself would be fine, he reasoned. Maybe he and Joe still had a chance to sit there and feel normal like everyone else. And so Harry shuffled his way inside the big top, all but clutching Joe to his neck. The tiny was so light that half the time Harry couldn't tell whether or not Joe was even there, and it left him in a state of perennial unease as he sat down in the bleachers, until a little pair of hands tugged at his earlobe. He tilted his head closer towards Joe.
"I don't know about this, Harry." Said Joe into his ear.
"Relax! You're hidden this time. Nothing bad is going to happen." Harry whispered.
"That's not what I mean and you know it-"
Joe's voice was cut off by the bellowing of the ringmaster.
"LAAAAADIES AND GENTLEMAAAAN, WE HERE AT J. J. DAVIDSON JR.'S NOT AMERICAN CIRCUS HOPE YOU ENJOY OUR SHOW!" Hollered the crusty voice of the ringmaster, who Harry could only assume was J. J. Davidson Jr., into a cardboard megaphone. The man, complete with a top hat and well-oiled mustache, was hastily dressed in a garish crimson costume and perched upon a tall ladder that swayed with his movements. "HOW ARE YOU FINE PEOPLE DOING TO-"
The ladder, which appeared to have one leg slightly shorter than the other, tipped over as the ringmaster was surveying the audience and sent him flying. Harry flinched as the man hit the ground and the crowd hooted and hollered in delight. From where he sat front and center in the second row, he could just hear the disgraced ringleader say,
"Ah, screw it. Send in the clowns."
He couldn’t tell if the accident was part of the act or not. In the clowns were sent regardless, handspringing and cartwheeling, juggling and tricycling, as J. J. Davidson Jr. regained his composure. Harry could feel Joe shuffling around in the scarf, no doubt peeking his head out from underneath it to see. Dutifully the clowns began to form a human pyramid at the blow of the recovering ringmaster's whistle.
"What are they doing?" Asked Joe.
Harry had to resist the urge to shrug.
"Clowning... I suppose. Don't miniatures have clowns?"
Harry didn’t get a chance to hear Joe’s answer before the ringmaster piped up again.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" He shouted, as his sharp-heeled boots stepped on clown after clown on his climb to the top of the human pyramid.
"We have a very special occasion today. Our friend Mutters-" the ringmaster pointed to a spot on the ground in front of the pyramid "-is getting married. Do you see him, ladies and gentlemen? He's one of our freaks!"
Harry could see Mutters, though just barely. Mutters the clown was a miniature, and he stood before the audience like a colourful speck in a sea of sawdust. The more sentimental types in the audience began to clap for him, and ringmaster Davidson urged them on. "That's right, ladies and gentlemen, give him a hand!"
Once the sound of the applause died down, Harry could faintly make out Joe's voice in his ear.
"Harry, I don't like this." He said. "Look at him! He's scared!"
The noise of the circus cut Joe off again.
"Our job, ladies and gentlemen, is to get this little sad sack ready for his wedding!" J. J. Davidson Jr. announced, as he stepped on each and every clown again on his way to the bottom of the human pyramid. "All right, boys! Let's go!"
Davidson Jr. clapped his hands and whistled at the clowns. A few of them scattered, but three of them stood behind Mutters and waved to the audience: one tall, one round, and one wide.
"Our pal Mutters has some groomsmen here!" The ringmaster explained. "Let's see, fellas! What does he need?"
The clowns pantomimed a state of being deep in thought for a moment, then one of them appeared to have an idea. The tall clown ran out of the ring, and came back with a long firehose.
"There's a thought!" The ringmaster exclaimed. "Let's give the poor guy a bath. God knows those tinies need it."
Harry recoiled at the ringmaster's words as the rest of the audience howled in delight. Ever since Joe had access to warm water, he was bathing sometimes as much as twice a day. Mutters, as far as Harry was concerned, needed accessible infrastructure with running water, not a firehose.
"Harry, can we go? I can't watch this. It's dangerous. Water’s really sticky at our size. We drown easy." Joe said.
Hearing that, Harry winced as the wide clown turned on the hose and blasted poor Mutters with it. The tiny clown was sent flying while the crowd kept on laughing. Harry wanted to leave in that moment, he truly did, but some morbid curiosity bid him to stay and watch. It was the same effect a train wreck or a house fire had: try as he might, Harry Avery could not avert his eyes from the clown's suffering. He was still standing on the shores of that imaginary lake, and no matter what horrors happened before him they were ones Harry observed distantly from where he stood safely on the shore.
As the tiny circus clown was flung across the ring by the water pressure, the round clown pulled out an umbrella and with enviable precision bounced Mutters off of it and into a sack the wide clown was holding. Harry could feel Joe writhing in discomfort as the wide clown shook the sack with all his might and unceremoniously tossed Mutters out of it. The once colourful speck of the clown was now all black - presumably dressed in his evening finest.
"Nice work!" The ringmaster praised the clowns. "Now he's looking somewhat civilized."
The crowd clapped along.
"Harry." Joe hissed.
"What else are we missing?" Asked the ringmaster.
The round clown stepped forward and showed off a gold wedding band that was much too big for any miniature to wear to the audience.
"Ah, of course! A ring for his beloved!" Shouted Davidson Jr. through the megaphone.
The crowd watched in amazement as the round clown tossed the wedding band some six feet up in the air. It glinted in the afternoon light as it flipped and spun, then landed perfectly around Mutters - pinning both of the tiny's arms to his sides. The crowd cheered as the tall clown picked Mutters up and held him up to the audience.
"Mutters the clown is all ready for his wedding, everyone!" The ringmaster crowed. “Got anything to say to the lovely people here, Mutters?”
The ringmaster lowered the megaphone to Mutters, who remained quiet as the dead. Straightening up again, the ringmaster went back to shouting through the tube.
“Aww, see that? Looks like he’s getting cold feet. Let’s give him some encouragement!”
J. J. Davidson Jr. bid the audience to clap again. As they did so, the calliope tooted out the notes to an archetypal bridal march.
“Would you look at that!? HERE COMES THE BRIDE!” The ringmaster announced.
Harry’s heart sank into his stomach as the silhouette of a giant-sized figure appeared behind the curtain leading into the ring. From the curtain emerged a woman who was easily as tall as he was and about as broad as he was as well. She was dressed in a white gown and carrying a shotgun. The whole crowd howled with laughter as she stood next to Mutters’ minuscule form. The whole crowd except Harry, that is, who sat there feeling slighted in an odd way for reasons he couldn’t articulate to himself. This woman and this clown were like him in some intangible way, but he didn't know how.
It was that laughter, that jeering, that inhumanity of the crowd and the circus that emboldened it that finally cut through the surface of Harry’s placid emotions like a stone. Down it sank, all the way to the depths of his psyche, right to the place where all the rest of his pain was buried.
On an unconscious and implicit level, it struck Harry that this crowd was actually laughing at him and Joe.
“Wait a minute, is this even legal?” Said the ringmaster over the sickening sound of the crowd.
Harry grasped at his shoulder as he began to stand up.
“You’re right. I can’t watch this either.” Harry whispered. “…Joe?”
Harry turned away from the ring as the tall woman stuffed the miniature clown into the barrel of a shotgun.
“We call this a SHOTGUN WEDDING!” J. J. Davidson Jr. cried.
Frantically Harry searched his person for any sign of Joe. He froze in absolute horror as he realized that his friend was no longer there and scanned the afternoon crowd in cold-blooded terror. As the gun went off behind him, he couldn’t bear to turn around again and look at whatever had just happened to poor Mutters in the ring.
“Ah, tinies…” the ringmaster mused “…don’t you just love ‘em? Like a chef loves a roach infestation!”
The crowd’s hysteria hit Harry like a thousand cuts as he made his way through the bleachers and out of the tent in a desperate search for Joe. He was lucky that the afternoon show had drawn most of the giants into the tent, but the circus grounds were a maze nonetheless. He tried to think the way someone Joe’s size would think. Joe, in all likelihood, would be drawn to certain landmarks, and Harry decided to retrace his steps in search of them.
He checked the sideshow first, wandering back through the rows of pickled punks and peep-shows until he got to the tent where the Tiny Troupe was. The crowd that had once been so fascinated with them had since disbursed, and finally Harry was able to see what all the fuss was about. He was greeted with a small-scale replica of the circus grounds he was currently in, all contained in a large, glass aquarium with an open top. Inside of the aquarium languished a group of miniatures, all of whom were dressed up as clowns. Naively Harry approached the miniatures and began to ask them for assistance.
“Excuse me…” He began, in the same gentle voice he occasionally used with Joe.
The tallest of the bunch, a woman with curly red hair, shot him an icy glare.
“I… uh… I’m looking for my friend. He’s a miniature like you. Have you seen him?” Harry continued.
The woman in the aquarium did not break her stare. She didn’t answer him either. As he stood there, bewildered as to what to say next, he remembered what professor Hill had told him about the taboo miniatures had against speaking to the giants.
Knowing everything he knew now, Harry couldn’t blame them for having it.
“…I’ll stop bothering you. Good-bye!” He said.
Feeling foolish, Harry left the tent and set his sights on the horse diver’s stand on Daring Drive. The show was on hiatus until 4:00 p.m., and with the bleachers now deserted he reasoned it might be the perfect place for Joe to sit and hide. He checked under the benches and around the ladder and came up with nothing.
“Looking for something?” A gruff voice asked him.
Harry looked up from the grass he was combing over to see the carnie from the gate, the one who had given him a bad feeling earlier. He still harboured that feeling now, and tempting as it was to get another pair of eyes on the lookout for Joe, he knew better than to trust his fellow giant with this sort of problem. Listening to his instincts, he shook his head no and race-walked in the direction of Animal Alley.
It was the last place Harry could think of where Joe might want to go. The lions, tigers and bears, though in cages, were still hardly the sort of thing he could imagine Joe enjoying the company of. Then his mind landed on Totsy. If there was one thing that Harry knew about Joe, it was that Joe was the sentimental type. Maybe he would pay the sad little elephant a visit, he reasoned, as he moved through the row of gilded cages. To his disappointment, when he reached the baby elephant's prison he saw that she was now waving her trunk at nobody in particular.
Or so Harry had initially thought. By simple chance he turned around to face the signpost that bore the elephant’s name, and movement from down below caught his eye. To his immense relief he saw that it was Joe sitting at the bottom of the post, waving up at the caged animal before him. When Harry crept towards him, Joe’s waving stopped and he buried his head in his knees. Joe was so upset he didn't even look up at him as he neared; he just kept sitting there, curled into a ball.
"Wanna go home?" Harry asked.
He waited patiently as Joe processed the question. When Joe finally looked up and gave him an answer, it wasn't the one Harry was expecting.
"You know what I want, Harry?" Joe began, and Harry could sense a rant coming. "I want to be able to go outside without being reminded of how awful the world is, that's what I want! I hate this, Harry. I hate the way you people treat things. I hate the way you treat each other. I hate the way you treat us! Like we don't matter. Like we're not even human to you. Like I'm some... freak."
If there was one thing Harry found oddly endearing about Joe, it was how easily the little man came to tears. He couldn't tell if this was a quality true of all miniatures or something unique to Joe; either way, Harry could see that his face was misty-eyed now, with a deep anger burning behind the sadness. He could tell by looking at him that Joe was hell-bent on not letting those tears fall, and as he watched Joe wrestle with his feelings Harry prayed that his dear friend would never end up as emotionally hollowed out as he was.
"...I'm tired, Harry." Joe concluded. "I'm tired of feeling like I'm nothing."
Harry's heart broke for Joe as he knelt before him on the grass. Hollowed out as Harry was, that clown act had cut him deeply, and he couldn't stop himself from saying something to make Joe feel better. Stirred by everything he had encountered that day and oblivious to the person who was listening in on their exchange, his words spilled out pure and from the heart.
"You are not and never will be nothing, Joe. You're not a freak, you're courageous, you're smart, you're talented, you're human. Of course you're human! You laugh and cry and create just like everybody else, and maybe nobody else sees that right now, but they will. I promise you - someday they will."
Immediately Harry felt embarrassed with himself for saying what he said. He watched fearfully as Joe raised a quivering hand and wiped away a stray tear that, in spite of his best efforts, had decided to roll down his cheek. To his surprise, his words seemed to help somewhat. Joe’s expression lightened up a little bit, and he replied with a shaky,
“Thanks.”
Sensing their cue to leave, the giant human reached out a hand and beckoned to the tiny human, and Joe climbed into it without hesitation. Gingerly he placed Joe into his pocket and stood up with the aid of the signpost.
That was the moment when a heavy hand fell on Harry's shoulder. He turned around to see the face of the carnie at the gates.
"Boss wants to have a word with you." The rough-looking man said.
That sinking feeling came over Harry again when he noticed the other two carnies closing in behind him, and it became clear that the shady man's words were not a suggestion so much as an order. Harry, who had only one arm to fight with, found he had no other option but to comply.
Soon the two were ushered out of Animal Alley, past Daring Drive and Freak Street, beyond even the big top, off to a small white tent that looked deceptively innocent as it billowed in the mild May wind, well out of the way of the festivities. There was a table inside of it where a lanky man with well-oiled silver hair sat and shuffled through papers. Harry sat down in the folding chair across from him at the carnies’ bidding as the stranger barely looked up from the documents he was reading through. He felt Joe squirm in his pocket as the carnie from the gate whispered in the man’s ear and caused him to light up with interest. Suddenly this man’s eyes were now locked onto Harry, and he dropped the papers and reached across the table to shake the doctor’s one, good hand.
“Hello, hello, how are you today sir?” Asked the stranger in a voice that was a little too performatively genial for Harry’s liking.
“Fine, thank you.” Said Harry, as he gripped the man’s hand a little too tightly and delighted in the grimace he was able to squeeze out of him. “Doctor Harry Avery. It’s nice to meet you. May I ask what this is about?”
The man pulled his hand away and shook the pain out of it.
“Ahh, a doctor, are you?” The stranger said in wonder. “My apologies,” he laughed, “I should’ve given you a more formal uh-welcome committee.” The stranger said as he side-eyed the carnies that now stood around the exit of the tent like bouncers. “My name’s J. J. Davidson Sr., circus manager, and you have something I’m very interested in.” He added, talking a mile a minute.
Through an obnoxious act of sleight-of-hand magic trick, the circus manager produced a card from thin air and slipped it into Harry’s hand. Harry scowled at Davidson Sr. when he was done admiring the shoddy design of the business card. He could guess what was coming next. Senior leaned in over the table with his chin in his hands and a devilish glint in his eye.
“…how much for the talking tiny?” He asked.
Harry looked at the man with utter contempt.
“He’s not mine, and he’s not for sale.” Harry said.
The circus manager sat back and studied Harry.
“One hundred dollars.” Was Davidson Sr.’s starting offer.
“He’s not for sale.” Harry repeated. “He’s a person, not some curio you can buy and sell.”
Joe was kicking and fighting inside of Harry’s pocket now. Harry's hand migrated to his chest.
“Two hundred dollars.” Davidson Sr. continued.
Harry had to resist the urge not to clock the snake who sat before him right then and there while Joe kept on fighting.
“No deal.” Harry spat.
Davidson Sr. slowly rolled his eyes.
“Three hundred? I could do this all day.” The manager said.
“What’s so special about him anyways?” Asked Harry.
“He’s a talking tiny, doctor. Do you know how hard those are to come by? Most tinies are wallflowers. They keep their heads down and their mouths shut, but yours is something really special. He’d be a huge hit with the kids! Why, he could be quite rich and famous if he toured with us!”
“He’s not mine to sell you!” Harry snapped.
Harry could sense that the manager’s frustration was only growing as Davidson Sr.’s eyes darkened. As Harry returned the look, Joe went spilling out of his pocket and onto the table.
“I don’t need you to speak for me, Harry. Let me do it. I’m sick of this.” Joe stood, tense and rigid before the massive stranger with his face all red and his hands curled into fists. Harry’s arm hovered between Joe and Davidson Sr. for fear the man might snatch him clean off the table if given half a chance.
Davidson Sr. leaned in with keen interest.
"Okay, tiny. What do you think?" The circus manager asked Joe in the world's most cloying baby-talk. "Do you want to join the circus and make lots of money?"
Harry watched as Joe seared at the man a hundred times his size and shook with blind rage. Then he let out a bitter chuckle.
"Why are you talking to me like that, giant?" Joe said to the manager, in baby-talk that was just as, if not more, patronizing in tone than Davidson Sr.’s was.
The manager turned to Harry in delight.
"Oh, he’s funny, too! See? He's a born entertainer." The manager insisted.
That was the final straw.
“Shut up and look at me.” Joe ordered, in a voice so loud and authoritative he sounded like an entirely different person.
Davidson Sr. was thrown by the sound of it, as was Harry, and the giants did as they were told. Harry could do nothing but watch as Joe stood at his full height on the circus manager's makeshift table.
"Listen up, magnasbora." Joe held up his fingers as he listed his grievances one by one. "Firstly: don’t call me a tiny if you’re not a tiny yourself. You don’t get to use that word for me anymore. Secondly: I’m my own damn person and I don’t need your stupid circus, thank you very much! Thirdly: there is no amount of money in the world that will make me join you after what I saw you do to that poor clown.” Joe jabbed his finger at the giant with his teeth bared like a wild animal as Davidson Sr.’s eyes continued to darken. “You like that I can talk? Well what if I tell you to go fuck yourself, huh!? What then!? Chei cani dei to morti, you son of a bitch." Joe snarled, in a voice so malicious it gave Harry goosebumps.
The circus manager rose from his seat, and Harry's adrenaline rose along with him.
"Don't you speak to me like that, you lousy little-"
Harry could tell from the look in the manager's eyes and the man's uncurling fingers what was about to happen next. As the man's shadow fell over the table, all the bravado left Joe and the miniature drew all the way back until he was standing at the edge. Immediately Harry's brain went into autopilot and his army training took over as the manager scrambled to grab Joe. With a single sweep of his right hand he pulled Joe into the safety of his pocket before his assailant could so much as touch him, then Harry grabbed the manager's neck in a single-handed chokehold and flung him back with all his might, throwing the man so hard he went ass-over-teakettle in his folding chair. Anticipating the carnies closing in, he fled at full speed – not for the tent exit but around the table and then straight through the tarp – as the shouts and footsteps of the aggravated circus security kept close pace behind him.
An intermission at the circus tent was a blessing in disguise for Harry and Joe. Timing his movements carefully, Harry powered across the emptier parts of the circus grounds with the carnies hot on his heels, taking care to weave through areas that the crowd would soon start spilling into: the popcorn vendor, the hotdog stand, the cotton candy booth. Soon the moving bodies created enough of a barrier that Davidson Sr.’s lackeys fell far behind.
Harry didn’t stop running. He kept moving until he was well past the gates and only stopped once he was a solid block away from the circus grounds. He braced his one, good arm against an electrical pole as he huffed and puffed on the street corner, then took Joe out of his pocket.
“You were right.” Harry said between breaths. “We should’ve left earlier. We should’ve just gone home. The clown act… wasn’t good anyways.”
Harry didn’t know what he expected from Joe in that moment. Would his friend be angry with him? Would he tell Harry off? Would he rub it in?
Joe, to Harry’s surprise did none of those things.
“Yeah, well... you still got me outta there. I guess I should say thanks for that. For not selling me to the circus, I mean.”
Harry could have sworn he heard Joe’s voice crack as he was speaking. He could sense that Joe was brushing the experience off, but he didn't want to press further.
“Don’t thank me, Joe. Nobody should sell anyone to the circus. It’s basic human decency!” Harry said.
“Human decency... I could get used to that.” Joe said.
Harry walked along with Joe as he caught his breath.
“What was that thing you said, anyways?” Asked Harry.
“What thing?” Said Joe.
“Cani to morta or… something? What does that mean?”
Joe only cackled in response.
“Chei cani dei to morti. It’s Casa, Harry. My mom's language. You don’t need to know what it means. You're too innocent for that stuff.” Joe said.
Harry wasn’t about to argue. If anything, Joe keeping his secrets made Harry appreciate him all the more.
-
Back in the safety of the house and with their harrowing excursion finally over, Harry reached into his front pocket and held still as Joe clambered into his hand. Holding him carefully, he tilted his palm so that it sat flat and prepared to place Joe back inside the floorboards when a curious thing happened. Instead of disembarking as he usually did, Joe scrambled back up and clung to Harry's sleeve.
"Harry I don't--don't put me there." Joe stammered.
Harry slowly lifted his arm back up again. Joe let go of his sleeve and Harry caught him when he fell back into the giant's palm.
"Where do you want to go?" Asked Harry.
Joe, it seemed, hadn't thought that far ahead. He sat in Harry's palm with his head bowed and his arms wrapped around himself. Harry gently brought his thumb towards Joe's face and lifted his chin, and as he did so he could see now that Joe was crying - really, truly crying, not fighting tears back as he usually did. When Harry went to remove his thumb, Joe lunged for it and threw his arms around it the way he would throw his arms around another person, then buried his face into it as he wept. Joe was squeezing so hard that Harry could feel the swift beating of the little man’s heart through his ribs.
Harry hadn't seen Joe this shaken before; even the night of the storm couldn't compare to the no-holds-barred vulnerability on display at that very moment. He thought back to that night, and to the hospital and the movie theatre. He wondered if every other adventure Joe had gone on had been as emotionally taxing as this one was. For all he knew Joe had simply been hiding that fact from him! The longer Harry knelt there, the less he knew what to do. He wanted to comfort Joe somehow, to connect with him in that moment, but that old bewilderment came over him again. For Joe's sake he put his best foot forward when he said,
"I'm really proud of you."
Joe's quiet sobbing slowed to a stop at those words, and he looked up at Harry with eyes full of tears and disbelief in equal measure.
"Really?" Joe said.
"Really." Harry replied. "Do you have any idea how-"
"-scared I made you?" Joe cut in.
"-how brave you were to stand up to someone like that? Without even stuttering once? Joe, the things you do astound me sometimes." Harry's statement hung in the air as he watched Joe's face light up in surprise.
Joe let go of Harry's thumb, still shaken but smiling now as he eased himself back into the giant's palm.
"Yeah, well... I only did it 'cause of that stuff you said. If you hadn't been there with me, I don't know what I would've done. Joined the circus, probably." Joe fidgeted as he confessed to Harry.
"Maybe so, but I wasn't the one who told J. J. Davidson Sr. to go fuck himself, was I?" Harry reminded him.
A timid smile spread across Joe's face.
"Yeah... I guess not." He said.
A moment of silence passed before Harry found the courage to say what he really wanted to say.
"You shouldn't have had to experience any of that. The next time we go somewhere I'll make sure you never have to again. I wasn't on your side today and I apologize for that. I was trying too hard to be normal." Said Harry.
"Well... maybe instead of that you could try being happy." Joe offered, his voice gentle and sincere. "You don't have to be normal. I don't care about that."
For the second time that day, something shook Harry to his emotional core - though this time it was for the better. He couldn't help but love Joe in that moment, the way he would love a brother or a dear friend. All the world was a warzone to the human who sat before him. Harry might not be able to fix all of Joe's problems, but he could offer Joe his support, his presence, his encouragement. He could pick Joe up whenever the rest of the world beat him down, and although it wasn't much, Harry hoped with all his heart that it would be enough.
Part 19 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here!
Joe sat at the base of the lamp and stared at his feet as he clutched his knees. He was fully-clothed, but after sharing his life story he may as well have just stripped naked in front of a live audience. Not even O’Grady or Captain Calloway knew this much about his background, and now that he had shared it, he was powerless to take it back. As he waited for Harry to render a verdict, he picked apart everything he had just said and wondered how the doctor would react. Maybe Harry would find the whole thing pathetic. Maybe he wouldn’t believe Joe’s story at all. Worst case scenario, the doctor would be downright offended at what he had just impulsively spouted off about Canada; he had seen enough newspaper headlines to understand that Canada was an abstract concept Harry’s kind were very eager to fight and die for. For all Joe knew, Harry would think less of him for not being as “Canadian” as he was! The longer he sat there, the more embarrassed he felt for sharing anything at all, and his heart beat like a hammer in his chest where the sensation of Harry’s touch still lingered.
Finally, the doctor spoke up and put an end to Joe’s torment.
“Well, Canadian or not, I think you’re pretty incredible.”
Harry’s words sent Joe’s head spinning. When he found the courage to look past the toes of his boots and up at Harry, he could see that the giant appeared downright proud of him. In that second it hit Joe that it was not food or water or air that now sustained him, but Harry’s approval. Ever since the night they had returned home from the hospital, the words you look good had been festering in his brain like a fungus, and now these ones were sure to join them. It was the taste of unpoisoned chocolate. It was warm water. It was a soft bed to sleep in. Another forbidden thing he wasn’t supposed to know the nature of, that he now did.
As he looked up at Harry with eyes that were two wells of inky-black sadness, all he could say in response was,
“Really?”
“Really.” Harry assured him.
“I… thanks.” Said Joe, who wanted to say so much more than thanks.
The problem with forbidden things was that, once one knew how lovely those things were, they risked enjoying them to excess. Now Joe's heart was an endless well of wanting, and what he wanted in that moment above all else was for Harry to touch him again, to be caressed and stroked, cuddled and petted, no different than any pet would be, for what was a pet if not something cherished? Joe was not Harry’s pet, but the want of Joe’s that ruled all other wants was to be cherished by this giant in a way that no one else had ever cherished him before. He could not fully admit this to himself as he watched the subtle twitching of Harry’s right fingers, for in doing so he would have no other choice but to also admit to himself that his mother had been right: Joe was dangerous, a liability, a scornful abomination who had to be shunned. Wanting what Joe wanted was not normal. Having the proclivities that Joe had was not normal. Asking a giant to touch him was not normal. He had no idea how well Harry would even receive such a request!
He decided to sidestep the issue entirely by creating an intricate ritual instead.
“Hey, Harry?” He began, as he laid eyes on the table across the room. “Can I see what’s over there?”
Now the giant laughed at him – a single, incredulous laugh.
“Well, there’s not much worth seeing, but you’re more than welcome to.” Harry said.
And so, Joe’s master plan was set in motion, and for two sweet, blissful seconds he got to enjoy Harry’s touch before he was deposited onto the table and deprived of it again. He paced along the desktop and scanned his new surroundings. He had been here once and only once, months ago, in search of trinkets and other treasures to sell. He had found nothing of interest then and now it looked much the same: to his left there were two large boxes, one of which was attached by a cable to an even larger brass horn that stood on a base. This strange, alien thing was flanked by an unplugged headset. Across from those on the other side of the table sat a notebook, a half-open pack of cigarettes and an ashtray. The only new addition was an ornate silver box that was similar to Joe’s wardrobe in size.
“Joe! Stay right where you are.” Harry said.
Joe stopped in his tracks and glanced around in confusion.
“…what?” He asked.
“You’re in the picture.” Said Harry.
As Joe turned around, his eyes fell on the centerpiece of the table. It was a framed photo. In the right of the picture Joe recognized a younger Harry Avery, and to the young Harry’s left stood a giant shorter than Harry who Joe had never seen before, a sharp-eyed boy with light hair and high cheekbones. Both were kitted out in those strange uniforms all the giants were wearing some ten-odd years ago. As he looked back at Harry he realized what was happening: it was a trick of perspective, one that made him look as tall as Harry was as he stood in front of the frame and replaced the figure to the left. When the novelty wore off, he ventured nearer to the photo and studied the strange giant.
“Who’s this?” Asked Joe.
“Georgie Marshall. He was a friend of mine.” Said Harry.
Harry pulled the chair out and sat down in front of Joe at the desk. Joe took a few steps back as Harry picked up the frame and examined it fondly.
“A friend, huh? I didn’t know you had any friends.” Joe jabbed at him.
“I used to a long time ago. We went to Europe together.” Was Harry’s distant response as he set the picture frame back down again. “I didn’t make many friends after that.”
“Why not?” Joe said.
“I was too busy becoming a doctor I suppose.”
Joe craned his neck up at Harry, and for a moment he pitied him. Joe had been deliberately isolating himself for ten years below the floorboards, but even he had some semblance of a social life. He could see there was a deep sadness in the giant’s eyes as Harry gave him a quick smile.
“Want a cigarette?” Harry joked.
“Those tobacco sticks? No, we don’t really use ‘em. Well, some of us do, but that stuff’s a waste of fire if you ask me.” Joe said.
“A waste of fire?” Harry repeated.
“Yeah. When there’s giants in your house you can’t go using fire whenever you want. Use it under floorboards and you’re asking for something to get lit up and attract attention. Or to die of smoke inhalation. Matches, fire… you gotta be careful with that stuff. It’s easier when you use it outside, but that also gets attention.” Joe explained. “Fire works best when you use it in an abandoned house or something.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed as he lit the cigarette that was now hanging from his mouth.
“Is that why there are burn marks all around the kitchen baseboards?” He asked.
“I had to eat somehow, didn’t I?” Joe protested.
His excuse seemed to satisfy Harry. That photo was still lingering in Joe’s mind, so he sat down on the silver box and asked,
“What about you, anyways?”
“Mmm?” Harry hummed.
“Well, I told you my life story…” Said Joe.
“I’m not all that interesting.” Harry insisted. “I grew up on a farm outside of Winnipeg, went to Europe, came back and went to Toronto to study.”
“Where’s Winnipeg?” Asked Joe, and Harry stifled laughter when Joe added, “…is that part of Italy?”
“No, that’s another place in Canada, very far from here.” Harry said.
“So you got on a train too?” Said Joe.
“I did.” Said Harry.
As Harry flicked his cigarette into the ashtray, Joe couldn’t help but feel that there were many things the giant wasn’t telling him. Joe didn’t know much about the giants’ world, but he knew enough to tell when he was being patronized. He was well aware that an entire war had happened, that Europe had something to do with it, and that based on the photo, Harry had gone to fight in it.
“So what was Europe like?” He asked, and he watched as Harry’s face pulled into a forced grin.
“It was very nice.” Harry said. “The people there were very friendly.”
Some part of Joe wanted to confront Harry; to call the giant out for not telling Joe the whole truth. What did this doctor think he was? Some clueless borrower who scratched his ass with one hand and picked his nose with the other? He couldn’t bring himself to do it, though; he simply had too much respect for Harry in that moment to go prying into the finer points of the doctor’s life. Instead, he got up from the silver box to find something to distract himself with. The box itself soon drew his attention and, unable to resist the urge to see what was inside, he pulled out his boot knife and pried it open at the hinge with a single flick of his wrist, then heaved the lid over.
The shiniest thing Joe had ever seen glimmered back at him from inside. It appeared to be a diamond, one of the rarest treasures a borrower could find, laid in the center of a golden flower which was in itself set in a beautifully engraved gold band. Joe recognized this as one of the many, many ostentatious gifts the giants liked to shower on each other: an engagement ring, perhaps, or maybe one for a wedding. Joe could never remember which one was supposed to be for which.
“I was wondering when you’d find my mother’s ring. Be careful with that.” Harry warned him. “I’m saving it for someone special.”
“Someone special?” A sinking feeling came over Joe as his own reflection gazed back at him from the diamond. "Like who?"
"I don't know yet." Harry admitted.
Marriage was something some miniatures had and others didn’t. Joe’s own family had more politics and conventions surrounding it than most he had encountered. In spite of that, it had not occurred to Joe until now that, being a single man living on his own, Harry would eventually be expected to find a wife, get married, and have children.
He didn’t want to think about it, so he slammed the lid shut and turned his attention to something else.
“Hey… what’s this thing do?” Asked Joe of the horn that towered beside him.
Harry chuckled and perched his cigarette on the ashtray.
“It’s for the radio. Here, I’ll show you.” Harry reached out a hand to Joe, who happily stepped into it.
He stood and lifted Joe up, placing him at the top of one of the two boxes. This box had a hinged lid on it that was open. Joe could see a black panel with a set of knobs and dials on it, and he tiptoed along the edge of the wooden case until he came to the hinges at the back. Joe could just make out a set of instructions on the inside of the lid of the receiver box that identified the device as the Everyman Radiophone Receiver.
“This is the receiver. It picks up sounds traveling on the airwaves” Harry explained. “It’s hooked up to the amplifier, which plays the sound through the speaker.”
Joe turned back to Harry and watched with suspicion as the giant pointed out all the different parts of this ludicrous setup. Then the giant turned the dials and the horn emitted a horrific scream that caused Joe to jump and fall back in shock.
“It takes a moment to get it right!” Harry shouted over the noise.
After some fumbling, the scream was tamed into a low static hum.
“There. That ought to do it.” The giant said with relief. “Some of these stations are commercial, but a number of them are independent. These are everyday people broadcasting from miles away. Isn’t it fascinating that we can send information that far?” Harry gushed as he flipped open the notebook. "I've been taking notes on the stations I find. You can get a lot of news coverage right as it breaks.”
As Joe scrambled to his feet and listened to what sounded like the clanging of a cow-bell come through the horn, he decided that fascinating was certainly one word to describe it.
“WHAT DO WE GOT TODAY, JED?” Said a voice from the horn once the cowbell subsided.
Joe could immediately guess that these particular airwaves were coming from a barn somewhere.
“TODAY WE GOT BIG TROUBLE IN TINY TOWN, BRUCE.” A second voice warbled through the horn. “AN IRISHMAN AND AN ITALIAN ARE IN THE HOSPITAL AFTER A MASS BRAWL OUTSIDE A BAR ENDED IN A CRACKED SKULL AND A STABBING. NEITHER OF ‘EM HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED YET.”
At the sound of those words, Joe’s nerves were put on ice.
“TINY TOWN, JED?” Said Bruce.
“TINY TOWN, BRUCE.” Jed confirmed.
Joe shared the broadcasters’ skepticism as the blood drained from his face. A mass brawl? Miniatures did not do these sorts of things. Joe, who had been resisting the urge to cry ever since his father’s snatching came up, kept up that good fight as he stood there and listened helplessly to the hyena-like laughter that spilled from the horn.
“A TINY IRISHMAN, HUH? HEY JED, DO YOU THINK THEY WERE FIGHTING OVER A POT OF GOL-”
Bruce’s quip was cut short when Harry turned off the radio. Joe, shaking, sat on the side of the receiver case with his chin in his hands and processed what he had just heard. His face was burning.
“Joe? Are you all right?” Harry's voice was so gentle that, paradoxically, it made Joe's pain worse somehow.
Joe thought back to the other fight he had witnessed, the one between the giants on the way to the hospital, how brutal and pointless a fight it had been. He couldn’t think of any occasion where his fellow miniature would need to attack one another so viciously. If anything, his kind tried to avoid fighting at all costs. Life was hard enough for the average miniature – why make it harder by risking mutual injury? Of all the fights Joe had seen at Calloway's, most ended in the clinking of glasses after two or three hits.
“We don’t do that kind of stuff, Harry.” Was the best Joe could say to explain this concept to his friend. “We’re not supposed to fight like that. Tiny Town… I have a pal who moved there, and ever since he’s been acting all weird. Now people are out here killing each other. I don’t get it!”
“Easy, Joe. It’s okay.” Harry said.
Reflexively he tensed up when he felt the giant’s fingers stroking him along his back, but the tension soon melted from him. He looked up at Harry, who was now leaning in and examining him with no small amount of concern from where he stood before the radio receiver. Harry, who was still fresh out of the hospital, with one usable arm. Harry, who had spent half the day seeing a patient he in all likelihood shouldn’t have been seeing in his current state. The last thing Joe wanted was for Harry to be concerning himself with his problems, so he did everything he could to keep himself together.
“Yeah… I’ll be all right, Harry. Don’t worry about it.” As Joe searched for a distraction, from where he sat on the receiver his eyes fell on the book that was still on the nightstand. “…hey. Why don’t we read some more?”
“I'll take a romance novel over whatever that was.” Harry said.
Soon he was on the bed, curled into the crook of Harry’s neck as he read the book straight into the giant's ear, just as he had done in the hospital. Meanwhile, Harry asked this question or that question about miniature social conventions; why the woman was wooing the man in this case, or why she wore trousers (she was a borrower of lower social standing than the man who wore trousers to do her job, Joe had explained). Now, without a nurse surveilling the both of them, it was hard for Joe to resist the urge to climb straight on to Harry’s chest. As it was, he could feel the giant’s pulse rushing through his veins, and that was fascinating enough to Joe; it sated that secret desire of his for touch and closeness for the time being. The thought of being able to feel Harry’s heartbeat absolutely captivated him, however, as did anything about the raw power of the giants. That strength of theirs, their effortless accomplishments, the striking nature of their size, all had drawn him to the giants as a boy, and all had indirectly led him to where he was today.
It was Harry’s heart Joe was really after – in more ways than one.
Read the next part here!
Smalls, Talls, and no In Between. @beansthough - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
