#fireflywrites

[fireflywritesgt]

Artist Unknown

Part 52 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here! Yes! YES! The tiger is out!

London, Ontario. Crossroads of the world. Harry stood on the corner of the intersection that made up the entirety of the city’s downtown core and searched for the storefront that supposedly held the entrance to the Wilkins gallery, though it was not easy. A layer of fog had draped itself over the city, thick as the mists on the Atlantic, leaving only the windows visible from a distance. They flickered like jack-o-lanterns as shadows passed over them, and the further he moved blindly through this city that was not his, the more foolish he began to feel. It had been four months of fruitless searching, four months of empty barn houses, tiny fights, and failed police calls. Now he had dragged himself and his bike – quite literally – to a backwater repository of Toronto’s finest rejects, and for what? A newspaper advertisement and a hunch. If it was a testament to anything, it was a testament to how desperate he was, and as he prowled the corner in search of the gallery building something animal inside of him shifted and clawed as if trying to find its way out. It was this raw instinct that carried him forward, past any true logic and reason, twisting him moreso into a thing with a purpose than a person with a goal.

Harry Avery had never known love, yet he could not turn back, for he did not have the choice to any more than love itself was a choice.

The bike had been stashed in the horse paddock at the Brunswick Hotel several blocks away for a handsome fee, and now he was in search of a jeweler’s, seasick with unease. The storefront he was looking for was supposedly near a bank and a department store, both of which Harry had already found. Keeping an eye out for streetcars, he crossed the gravel road with hands in his pockets, and reached a corner where a newsie was shouting something about a doctor murdered by some Montreal mafia. Before Harry could stop and ask him for directions he was nearly knocked off his feet by a figure racing zig-zag through the fog.

It appeared to be a youth in a suit and hat, though Harry couldn’t quite make out his features, for he didn’t stop and turn to look at Harry until he was several yards ahead. When he did, he seemed to pause and lock on to Harry for a moment – only to teeter and collapse, much to Harry’s shock and dismay. That was when a stout police officer pushed Harry out of the way and dove towards the unconscious youth.

Harry slowed his pace as he walked by the unbecoming scene, and sensing his presence, the officer stooped over the boy said,

“Nothing to see here. Just another degenerate for the wagon.”

As the officer turned towards the curb with the limp youth in tow, his flashlight revealed that there were indeed a number of degenerates in the wagon, and Harry could tell from the whooping and hollering nearby that there were still more wandering about on the streets. He kept moving, and it wasn’t long before one accosted him.

“Got any pennies?” Asked a voice that reeked of gin.

A grubby hand reached out to Harry before he could even see the toothless face attached to it.

“No, sir, I don’t have any.” Harry was speaking as quickly as he was race-walking away from the man.

He had barely finished the sentence when another man approached him with his hat out. He slouched over his pockets protectively and ducked into the nearest shop front. When he saw where he was, he was met with a pleasant surprise.

The smell of old wood filled his nose as the building’s floorboards creaked below him, and as he turned around he was greeted with an elegant display of small, red, rectangular boxes, each of which held gold rings set with sparkling diamonds. There was a wreath in the window above them, a Christmas display no doubt, and a long line of people snaked past it, packed like sardines into the tiny storefront in fear of coming rain. Harry could tell by their dress alone that they were high society, and they weren’t so much shopping as they were waiting for something to happen.

This was the jewelry store he had been looking for, and above it, so far as Harry could tell, was the Wilkins gallery space. As he followed the line of people to a staircase at the far side of the room, it became clear that these were not shoppers in the traditional sense – they were patrons of the arts, who were being detoured through the jewelry store as part of what could only be some clandestine business arrangement between mister Wilkins and the store’s owner. It was certainly making for good marketing on the jeweler’s behalf, for the women in their fine fur coats tittered and gossiped over the jewels as their bored chaperones stood their place in line. Harry could only wonder how long they had all been standing there, for the line was barely moving. He headed towards the back of the queue while his skin itched to get inside.

The sound of a man clearing his throat from behind the counter snapped him back to reality.

“Excuse me! You there.” Said the tinny voice of the bespectacled man at the counter. “Can I help you, sir?”

Harry lumbered over to the warm glow of the oil lamp by the counter, and at the sight of the polished jeweler he suddenly felt foolish for even being there. There was no way he would fit in among these people, not with his scarred face or his ragged getup.

“I’m here for the exhibition.” Harry explained, growing ever sheepish as the jeweler’s hawkish eyes looked him up and down.

Weakly he pulled out the newspaper clipping from his pocket, only for the man to wave it away.

“Labourers enter through the other door.” The jeweler ordered, and pointed him to the doorway.

“Labourers?”

Harry glanced from the jeweler to the doorway and back again.

“Quickly now, would you!?” The jeweler snapped. “We have an image to maintain, you know.”

The look of disgust in the jeweler’s face alone was enough to send Harry running with his tail between his legs. Just as suddenly as he had entered the store he found himself back on the street corner in search of this fabled other door. He soon found it some six feet away, propped up with a cinderblock.

Through the doorway was a short hallway with a punishing set of narrow wooden stairs. A team of men, each of them tall, not unlike Harry, scarred, not unlike Harry, and bedraggled, not unlike Harry, were taking turns hauling goods from a wooden trailer into the waiting stairway above. One man was struggling with a large, stone pot, and without a second thought Harry jumped in to help him pick it up as rain began to spit down. He seemed to fit in with these so-called labourers a little too well.

At the cost of the well-being of his lower back he found his way in, and he grunted and heaved his burden up the stairs, taking care not to lose his grip on the pot that weighed about as much as he did. When they finally reached the top, Harry and the mover made the mistake of setting it down and resting for several seconds, earning them the ire of a black-tuxedoed servant who was ushering the rest of the men along.

“Don’t just stand there, you animals! Bring it in! We’re about to open!” The footman barked at them.

Harry resisted the urge to argue as the footman marched about the hallway like some little tin monarch. Treatment like this was something Harry kept on running into ever since the Tiny Town fire, and the injustice of it was starting to nip at his fraying psyche. He bit his tongue and hoisted the pot upwards again as the servant kept careful watch of him all the while. Without time to so much as remove his rain-soaked jacket – something that Harry would later be grateful he had not done – the two of them were moving again. Seeing that Harry was eager to make it into the gallery, the man he was lifting it with, an older fellow of about fifty, didn’t pull his share of the weight nearly as well as Harry wished he would. He persevered nonetheless, lugging the pot down yet another long hallway. This one led to a back doorway that seemed to be a hidden entrance into the gallery proper.

Turning inside of it, Harry passed what appeared to be a storage room which was now in the process of being emptied out and converted into a coat check. He passed that doorway, and found himself in a much larger open space where the artwork was being placed. He had no idea that what he was actually moving through was not a gallery, but a dance hall that had been rented out for the occasion, a hidden place that would be the stuff of local legends in a hundred years’ time.

It wasn’t the gallery that Harry was truly focused on, or the pot in his hands, which was now swiftly turning his arms into rubber. It was the narrow possibility that he might find the whereabouts of Joe Piccoli, and he kept his eyes peeled for the paintings he had seen in the newspaper to no avail. The space seemed to host everything but Joe’s art, and it felt more like Billy Hill’s old living room than anything else, filled with masks and plates and exotic artefacts from faraway places that Harry couldn’t name. It reminded him of the display of maiolica at the art gallery, albeit on a much larger scale, and the more time he spent there, the more uncomfortable he became with the place.

He thought back to the question Joe had asked him during their trip to the art gallery:

“Do you giants only like my art because it’s really small?”

It was more than just the art that people liked, Harry had since learned. There were people out there who liked Joe himself for no other reason than because he was really small. As he studied the passing art pieces, he sat with the uncomfortable realization that he too had been one of them. There was a point in his life where he would have loved to gaze in fascination upon Joe’s tiny paintings with little care for Joe himself. Only now, when it was becoming far too late to change anything, did he see the error of his ways.

The pot jerked, bringing Harry back to his senses. To his horror he realized that the other mover was not only faltering, but they were both about to run into a well-dressed man in a white suit standing in the center of the room.

“Easy! Easy!” Said Harry, though the other mover didn’t seem to hear him.

“Where is he!?” The wailing of the man in the white suit was drowning Harry's protests out.

Harry, who was heading towards the man in white whether he wanted to be not, noted that he was inspecting a gilded cage on a stand.

“Easy now!” Harry said again, and pulled backwards on the pot for good measure in the hopes of slowing the mover down.

The mover started pulling the pot away from Harry in turn.

“This is a disaster!” The man in white continued. “The last thing we need is a loose tiny running about! He’s going to frighten away the guests, I just know it!”

At the sound of the words loose tiny Harry’s grip weakened, causing the pot to fall towards the mover and narrowly miss his feet. He yelped in fear and went hopping backwards into the man in white as the pot toppled onto the floor with a thud, and while it luckily didn’t crack, it did roll halfway across the room.

Harry stood there cluelessly as the man in white shoved the mover away from him and then suddenly pulled him in again by his collar, spitting venom like a snake.

“What on Earth do you think you’re doing you ugly, brainless, good-for-nothing idiot!? Pick this thing up, will you!?” The man in white barked. “Don’t you know I have bigger problems to attend to than babysitting you trained monkeys!?”

Bigger things like catching an escaped Joe Piccoli, it seemed. As the mover blubbered his sincerest apologies, the man in white jabbed a finger to a spot over Harry’s shoulder, near one of the beams that held up the ceiling.

“Put it over there.” The man in white growled.

He let go of the mover, and that was the end of it. The men obeyed the orders to the letter, though the mover side-eyed him all the while.

“Of all the people you had to piss off, it had t’be the richest man in London. Well done.” The mover grumbled. “Thanks for nearly breaking my feet, by the way.”

“I’m sorry.”

Harry set the pot down gingerly, taking care not to mash either of their toes this time.

“Who was that?” Asked Harry.

Being the richest man in London, Ontario, to Harry, was a little bit like being the prettiest pig in the pig pen. The mover’s face went blank in exasperation at the question.

“Walter Wilkins. Haven’t you heard of him!? He’s writing our paycheques, you know!”

The disgruntled mover limped off, giving Harry a moment to brainstorm.

So that was mister Wilkins: a short, angry little man with too much money for his own good. Supposedly this was the man who had bought Joe from the snatcher, and Harry had in all likelihood just blew any chance he may have had to speak to him one-on-one. Harry kept his eyes locked on Walter and watched as he crawled on his hands and knees about the gilded cage towards the table beside it, in search of Joe no doubt. Harry’s blood ran hot in his determination to find Joe before he did, but he knew that however he managed it, he would have to do so discreetly, out of sight of Walter or the servants or any other villains lurking in the gallery.

He had just finished that thought when something dark met the corner of his eye, and as he turned and saw what, or rather, who it was, terror froze him in place.

It was an old man in a long cloak and sleek top hat, with a sharp, birdlike nose and wispy white hair. A man whom Harry had learned to fear and obey implicitly. He was headed straight for him and he looked like he was about to kill.

“Father!? Wh… what are you doing here?” Harry did everything he could to make the panic in his voice sound more like good-natured curiosity.

“Buying art.” Said his father as he looked down his nose at him. “What else would I be doing?”

“Uh…” Dumbly Harry looked from Richard to where Walter was crawling about beneath the table and then back again.

“Now that you’re here, everything is starting to make sense. Do you care to help us find that foul-mouthed tiny of yours?” Richard continued.

The blood drained from Harry’s face.

“Excuse me. Whose tiny?” Walter looked up from the feet of the table as if activated by Richard’s words.

“His tiny.” Richard responded before Harry could so much as open his mouth. “I’ve seen the little bugger before. Herman here is the one who trained him.”

“Oh, really?” Walter pranced over with the cage in his hand to where Harry was standing, and all Harry could do was brace himself for the worst.

He had to think of a lie to sell them. Something that wouldn’t let them catch on that he was looking for Joe.

“I… well… you see…” He stuttered.

“No need to explain yourself, I know exactly what to do about this.” Said Walter.

After the fiasco with the pot, Harry was fully expecting that Walter would call security or the police, or at the very least cause another scene. As Harry drew back with his hands at the ready, he wasn’t expecting Walter to thrust something into them with a smile on his face.

It was the gilded cage.

“Take him back to mister Lessard’s then when you find him, will you?”  Walter asked cheerily, as though he had suddenly become Harry’s best friend. “Why, I’ll tip you handsomely if you do. I’ve a feeling the little bastard is out to ruin my show, so if you could be so kind as to take him off my hands...”

As Harry looked down at the cage it took a moment for the words to register. Walter must be mistaking him for a snatcher, and if so, he had just made Harry’s life a thousand times easier. Now all he had to do was find Joe and convince him to get into the cage. If he could manage that, the both of them could walk right out of the building Scot free.

Harry nodded at Walter, too afraid to say anything that might upset their delicate arrangement.

“Wonderful.” Walter clasped his hands together and grinned. “Tell mister Lessard I’ll be in touch.”

His father gave the cage a quizzical look.

“That pastime of yours is certainly… interesting.” Richard said of the cage. “If you’ll excuse me.”

His father turned down the rows of artwork, in all likelihood hoping to get first dibs on whatever early bird specials Walter had offered him. Harry could only hope that the direction Richard was headed led far away from Joe.

Dutifully Harry clutched the cage and scanned the gallery space as Walter turned his attention to the contingent of tuxedoed footmen, all of whom were frantically rushing about and trying to make the gallery presentable. The faster they moved, the faster Harry’s heart pounded. He would only have so much time to look before the guests started pouring in, and once there were a hundred feet on the ground he would have no chance of finding Joe at all.

He started his search around the wooden table that had so fascinated Walter. It bore a guestbook and ink well, and Harry soon noted that the quill had been upended from it and the feathers on the end mangled. Leaning closer, he spied a set of tiny shoeprints soaking into the tablecloth, seemingly leading to nowhere.

Harry had learned to think like a borrower, and he followed the table cloth to the tassel, then to the curtain that hung next to that and concealed a work of some great import. He was about to peer behind it when a pair of striking black eyes caught him off guard from the corner of his eye, and his gaze snapped to them.

Hanging a foot away from the curtain was the portrait he had seen in the newspaper, part of a series that grew increasingly abstract, Harry noted. Each canvas was barely the size of a post card, and they surrounded the curtained work as though someone had built a shrine to the artist who had made them. There were other paintings still, a sad circus elephant, a painting of a man – with features uncomfortably close to Harry’s – wading through a swamp, all of which repelled him in some way.

They felt like Joe’s paintings, and yet they also felt alien to him. The colours were tired and faded, and there was something inexplicably listless about the brush work and the detailing. Harry was stricken by just how few of them there were, and whoever had hung the paintings seemed well aware of that, for a slew of landscape paintings clearly not made by the same artist surrounded them and padded the contents of the wall out.

The artist behind the landscapes had a name, but the miniature painter did not. Harry’s skin prickled as he noted that the placard for each miniature piece read, Artist Unknown.

He turned his attention back to the curtain and was just about to open it.

“Have you found him yet?”

Harry flinched as Walter clutched his shoulder in a manner that could only be described as desperately genial. Walter, Harry could see, was smiling from ear to ear, though the beads of sweat dotting his forehead were betraying him.

“I—no, I—”

“Could you perhaps look over there, then?” Walter asked politely, pointing Harry to some nebulous corner of the room. “We’re about to open you see, and as they say, the show must go on.”

“Right.” Said Harry.

Walter’s voice was thin with tension, and his head bobbed about as he nodded profusely at Harry in a way that felt more puppet than man.

“Good, good, jolly good.” Walter warbled.

Harry had no choice but to bumble about with cage in hand as Walter took his place before the table and patted down his pristine suit. There wasn’t a hair out of place on the man, Harry noted, though whatever shoe polish he had put in his hair was beginning to run.

It was only when the doors opened and the army of impatient guests spilled in that Harry spotted a flutter of movement from behind the curtain next to Walter, and as the giants surrounded the table he hoped against his better judgement that it was only the wind.

One of the servants rolled a silver cart of hors d’oeuvres through the crowd, and with wine glass in hand, Walter commenced his opening speech with Harry as a captive listener.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I must thank you all for joining me here today, to celebrate the birth of a new era of cultural enlightenment for our humble, but no less extraordinary, city…”

More and more patrons filtered into the gallery, to the point that Harry, cage still in hand, could hardly see where Walter stood. He tried to push his way through the crowd nonetheless.

“As we all know, London is sadly well known for its ah, high concentration of the less fortunate…” Walter continued.

Sensing that the cart of hors d’oeuvres was the crowd’s weak spot, Harry very politely shuffled towards it and joined the waiting line, squeezing through any odd break in the crowd that brought him closer to the curtain.

“I wanted to ensure that we remain mindful of that upon this gallery’s opening. It is, after all, the duty of men of our standing to take to the betterment of the world and the lives of those in it. Without our steady hand to guide them with kindness and compassion, the less fortunate are apt to fall to ruin, and take us along with them.” Said Walter, as a ripple of dignified laughter ran through the crowd.

Harry’s head bobbed above the curious onlookers as he kept careful watch of the curtain. His heart skipped a beat as it moved again.

“What’s that?” A woman behind him whispered.

“I can think of no better example of this than the Tiny Town Tragedy.” Said Walter, his eyes gleaming with sadness that had no doubt been carefully rehearsed. “There are few souls more unfortunate in this world than the miniatures, and as that tragedy taught us, they cannot be trusted to govern themselves. We have seen, first-hand, the horrors that befell the ones who tried.”

Walter reached out and pulled the tassel beside the curtain, and as it opened the whole room gasped. Harry, who was fourth in line for hors d’oeuvres, could not yet see what they were gasping at.

“And so, as people of wealth, let us not lose sight of what happens when the natural order is disrupted. Let us instead inspire the lesser among us to be their most useful, their most productive, their most respectable selves. It is my hope that in showcasing this collection we will keep them in our thoughts and – ”

A wave of shocked whispers rippled through the crowd, and finally Harry caught a glimpse of what scandalized them so.

“TINY!” One lady shrieked in terror.

“Get it out! Get it out!” A gentleman barked.

“– and ensure that our… society remains… a civilized place to…” The words tumbled out of Walter’s mouth as the crowd fell into disarray, and his head turned slowly in wide-eyed horror to look at what was really behind the curtain.

Sitting atop the picture frame was Joe Piccoli, presently giving the crowd the finger. His entire forearm was covered in ink, and in his hand was a tuft of slick, black feathers. The canvas within the frame had been vandalized with the face of each figure blacked out completely and the clothing painted over with exaggerated genitalia.

As the onlookers screeched in terror and fled to the corners of the room, Harry watched Walter Wilkins turn white as his suit.

"Excuse me." He said.

Calmly, Walter handed his glass of wine off to a waiting footman. Then his hand shot towards Joe, who leapt from the wall down to the floor, prompting more shrieks from all the well-to-do gallery patrons who huddled into a circle and left Joe Piccoli alone in the room’s empty center.

Alone with the exception of Harry, of course. Clutching the cage, Harry gently pushed the silver cart aside and stayed put as he studied the ring of frightened faces that gawked at the both of them. His father’s was among them, scowling at him, and as Harry stepped towards Joe, who sat between him and Walter, he felt like a part of some twisted circus act.

“Well don’t just stand there!” Walter said to Harry. “Grab him and be done with it!”

The room fell silent as Harry and Joe trembled in unison. Harry looked down at him, utterly lost as to what to do.

There Joe stood, in the ring of gawking giants, looking up at Harry and standing rigid as a boy whose father was about to beat him about the ears. The cage rattled in Harry’s fearful hand with utter disgust, not only with Walter, but with himself as well.

He couldn’t shake the thought of how easy it would be to grab him up and take him. He could keep up the act and put Joe in that cage at that very moment and run right out of the building with him, no hassle, no fuss. He could let Joe out and beg for forgiveness later if he had to. That was the easy way, the path of least resistance. Wasn’t Harry used to taking the path of least resistance?

Even if he was, by now he had seen the snatcher’s den and the jars and the cages. He felt the weight of the metal in his hand as he held it over Joe like some untouchable god. How naïve he had been to think he could ever convince Joe to get into such a monstrous invention after what had happened between them! Joe’s little black eyes sparkled as he looked up at him with a terror Harry himself had put there. This was a bridge that Harry could not cross, for it was one he had burnt long ago. He already knew where it would lead them.

“Go on…” Walter prompted him. “Just pick him up already!”

The crowd gasped as Harry threw the cage aside, and his throat tightened in revulsion as he said the only thing he could think to say to Walter in response:

“Fuck you, mister Wilkins.”

A chorus of scandalized chatter rose from the crowd.

Walter froze in bewilderment.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said fuck you, mister Wilkins!" Harry repeated, louder and more forcefully this time, as the frightened guests looked on in shock. With nothing more to lose he nodded to where Richard stood and added, “and fuck you too, father.”

Walter glanced back at Richard and did a double take. By now the entire gallery had collapsed into a state of barely controlled chaos and more and more guests shuffled hurriedly out of the room.

Harry stooped down towards Joe, sensing the perfect moment.

“Run.” He said, though Joe still quivered in place. “Go. Now!”

Before he could convince Joe any further, Walter cleared his throat.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, mister… Avery, is it? Is this really your son, Richard?” He said, glancing coldly at Richard once again. "Whoever you may be, Herman, I suggest you get out!"

“I’ve never met that man in my life, and I want no part in this.” Harry heard Richard reply, and it neither surprised him nor mattered to him anymore. “Good day, Walter.”

Harry watched in silence as his father walked straight out of the gallery. He could only hope — incorrectly — that Richard had also just walked out of his life forever.

"If you could be so kind as to join him..." Walter said, turning his attention back to Harry.

“Oh, I’ll leave, mister Wilkins,” said Harry, “and Joe can come with me if he likes to, but I’m not putting him behind bars. I tried that once and it didn’t do either of us any good. Why can’t I just let him go free?”

Harry’s eyes darted nervously between Joe and Walter. Why wasn’t Joe running? Walter, meanwhile, was smiling at his shoes with his hands on his hips. When he looked up at Harry his eyes were hair-raisingly empty.

“I see what this is. Some activist demonstration, is it? Have you come here to embarrass me in front of my buyers? Stay put, then. I'm sure the police will be here soon.” Walter snarled.

Harry stepped right over where Joe stood and placed himself between the miniature and Walter as white hot rage coursed like venom through his blood.

“After what you did to mister Piccoli you’re the one who ought to be locked up.” Said Harry.

He jabbed a finger at Walter as the final drop of human decency evaporated from him.  

Walter’s eyes shifted from left to right, taking stock of his art exhibition that was now in shambles. He had the look of a cornered animal, one that Harry was poised to kill. Walter’s eyes, Harry noted, were fixed on Joe Piccoli as he said what came next.

“We’ll see who gets locked up, then, you filthy, tiny-loving degenerate.” Walter’s voice was eggshell thin. “If you won’t cage him for me, then I will take him away myself!”

Harry knew what was coming next, though he barely had time to brace himself as Walter lunged for him. His instincts kicked in and he dodged Walter’s first strike, then narrowly missed landing his own. Walter only flinched for a second, but it was a precious one, for when Walter struck out at him a second time Harry timed it perfectly. He seized Walter’s right hook with one hand and hammered him in the ear with the other, then shoved him back towards the wall.

Harry’s capacity for violence had hung over him like a sword on a thread since the great war, and his encounter with Lessard had sent it roaring back to the forefront of his psyche. He was a big man, built more like a piece of farm equipment than a person, and his hands fit perfectly around Walter’s starched collar. As Walter struggled against him, red-faced and sweaty, Harry wasn’t thinking about him in that second, or his father, or the frightened patrons of the gallery. He wasn't even thinking about Joe. Harry wasn’t thinking at all, for instead he had become a dreadful thing with a dreadful purpose: the terrifying and exhilarating duty to kill. Whether Walter lived or died was secondary to him, as were the terrified people fleeing the gallery, or his father talking to the officer on the street corner.

Harry Avery had never known love, but war had taught him that its purest expression was murder.

He slammed Walter against the wall once, twice, three times, until the canvas behind the curtain shook off and fell to the floor. Walter, half his size, howled like a hyena during the valuable seconds in which Harry gave him any opportunity to breathe.  

Harry was contemplating all the ways he might rearrange Walter’s face when a little voice from behind him stopped him cold.

“Doc, that’s enough! Let him go! He's not worth it. Let's just go home.”

It was Joe Piccoli, who still had not run when he should have. Harry’s humanity came rushing back to him at the sound of his master’s voice, and he tossed Walter aside like a rag doll.

"Please?" Joe continued as Harry turned and scooped him up in his hands. "Let's just go home."

There was a snapping sound from behind them as Walter thrashed about, one that filled him with dread. He couldn’t tell if it was a bone, let alone what bone of Walter’s it was. Not the neck, he hoped. Perhaps he had done it — perhaps he had killed in the name of love. In front of Joe, no less! Cage or no cage, surely Joe thought him a monster after this dreadful display—

“MY ART!” Walter howled. “The ugly brute destroyed MY ART!”

The sound had been the tiny canvas, snapped to pieces under Walter’s own weight. Relieved, Harry paused, clutching Joe as though he were the last thing he had left to hold onto. In one vital miscalculation he turned to face Walter a final time.

“Joe’s art.” Harry corrected him.

For a split second Harry stood triumphantly in the now empty gallery, his purpose served and his good deed done. There was nothing left to do in his mind besides walk out and return to business as usual. That was, after all, what society had allowed him to do up until this point, and what Harry was unaware of was this: the world was one big club, and Harry was no longer in it.

The second he turned back around he was hit not once, not twice, but three times over the head with a baton and then wrestled to the floor. His vision blurred in and out and the voices surrounding him grew distorted. The most he could make out was Walter shrilly asking,

“Did you see the way he lunged at me, officer!?”

The dark-circled eyes of the stout officer he had encountered earlier came into view. By the time he was coherent enough to realize what was happening he was already in handcuffs and being marched through the doorway – with no sign of Joe Piccoli once again. His fingers curled and his eyes darted as frustration burned inside of him.

“Wait—wait!” He protested, though the officer didn’t wait.

He dug in his heels as the officer dragged him down the stairs, across the street, and tossed him into the paddy wagon on the corner — one final degenerate to be added to the collection. Nothing more, and nothing less.  

-

Harry woke to the cold sensation of a prison cell floor against his missing ear as an unfamiliar voice echoed through the stone building.

“…the man at the gallery, Richard, identified himself as his father.” Said the officer – a different one than the man who had arrested him. “Richard told me Herman here showed up at the gallery to harass him and recommended we lock him up in an asylum.”

“Really?” Asked another officer who was clearly half-listening. “Geez.”

“According to Richard he’s one of those, uh… y’know. Those guys who came back from the war and were never the same after. Shell shock, I think they call it? Some new medical thing.”

Harry was relieved to find that his hands were free. He sat up and rubbed his throbbing temples.

“Shell shock? Sheesh, does everything have to have some fancy label these days?” The second officer scoffed. “I went to war, you went to war, we all did. Just call it what it is: cowardice! Cowardice is not a medical condition.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just what Richard’s telling me, okay?” The first officer shrugged.

Harry lugged himself to his feet and staggered towards the bars as the first officer continued.

“So far he’s wanted on charges of assault, public obscenity, swearing in the presence of a lady, suspected tiny snatching… but if he’s as much of an imbecile as his father says he is then it might be easier to throw him in the loony bin. Could send him as early as tomorrow morning, even, depending on when the doctor gets here.”

Harry’s fingers curled around the bars. With each listed charge more memories came flooding back to him. Where had Joe gone? Where had they taken his coat?

“Hey!” When Harry called out into the blue stone corridor he only half expected a response. “Officers! Excuse me, officers? Where is Joe Piccoli?”

“Is that him?” Asked the second officer.

“Yup… hold on.”

There was a slithering sound as the first officer, who was out of Harry’s view, got out of his chair and drew closer.

“Good morning Herman.” The man cheerily greeted him, though Harry still could not see him in the dimly-lit hallway.

“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry repeated.

“Who is Joe Piccoli? He a friend of yours?” The officer asked in turn.

Harry’s aching head slumped against the bars.

“Never mind.” He said. “Is the tiny okay?”

“The one at the gallery? We were hoping to ask you the same question. We have quite a few questions for you as a matter of fact, Herman.” Said the stern officer.

Some small amount of relief came over him. If the officers had no idea where Joe had gone there was still a chance that he was out there somewhere in one piece.

“If I answer your questions will you let me go?” He naïvely asked.

“Not if we can help it.” The officer replied with barely restrained sadistic glee. “We’ll get to it when the doctor arrives. In the meantime, if you want anything, just ask!”

With that the officer returned to his place down the corridor and sat back down next to his buddy, quieter this time. Harry, meanwhile, wracked his battered brain for a solution only to find that there was none.

He backed away from the bars, sat down on the bench, and stared up at the ceiling.

Maybe it didn’t matter what happened to him, he figured. Maybe his freedom was the price he had to pay in exchange for Joe’s, and as he sat there in the sadness of the cell he decided there was no place he would rather be. It was the least he could do after all the horrors the two had faced, and all the ones Harry had failed to respond appropriately to. It was only right that Harry got a turn in the cage considering all the dreadful things the world was constantly itching to do to Joe.

He had realized far too late that the two of them were on the same side. As he sat there, he lamented all the time and goodwill he had wasted trying to appeal to people like Walter and his father. For what reason, he wondered.

Safety. Safety was the reason, a very conditional type of safety that could easily be revoked. It was granted on the condition that Harry drifted through life with his head down and his mouth shut and admitted to everyone, himself included, that although he was a degenerate, he was a good degenerate, one that did what it was told, and jumped when they bid it to jump, and honoured its father and its mother and the likes of Walter Wilkins, richest man in London, Ontario.

Harry Avery had never known love. He had exchanged his capacity to love for safety. What Harry had not been counting on was love’s capacity to find him, whether he wanted it to or not, and turn him into something untamed. Though he was now caged, he had never felt a freedom like this before, and he would see the inside of a thousand jail cells if it meant he would be able to keep it for just a moment longer.

This was love, in its purest and most desperate form. Love he had buried and rediscovered far too late, and could now do nothing with. It was love he had squandered, fragile as a pearl clutched in the teeth of a swine, and he held onto it all the same, for whether he died in the cell, in the asylum, or somewhere in the crossroads of the world, he would die holding onto one fundamental truth:

Harry loved Joe Piccoli.

Next part coming eventually!

[fireflywritesgt]

Scars

Part 50 of my story! Holy bingle! Read the index and content warnings here. ...pation. There's fighting and stuff in this.

Harry Avery was no stranger to the horrors of war, and the display in front of him was no less revolting. Never in his life had he seen two men fight as wildly and desperately as the men on the table in front of him were fighting: no decorum, no rules, no limits, one punch landed after another until each fighter's face was downright unrecognizable. The heads of drunken giant patrons bobbed in front of him all the while and cheered with delight at the carnage. The basement they were packed into reeked of cheap beer and their rancid breath. Then the excitement swelled when the tiny fighter to Harry’s right knocked the one to his left over and clambered on top of him, pummeling his opponent’s face repeatedly as Harry waited for a referee that would never come to call the match. There was no tap-out, of course, no ringing of a bell - the fight wasn’t declared a victory until the man on the ground had stopped moving and the victor had shakily risen to his feet, throwing his bare fists up in glory.

This was a tiny fight, a pre-show of sorts to a dog fight that would serve as the main event, Harry had learned.

“Those roaches aren’t gonna come back to that farmhouse.” Danny had said of the snatchers. “They’ll find some new place to infest. Where you WILL find them is at the fights... unless they got locked up or had a sudden change of career.”

In his four months of searching Harry had encountered neither Frankie nor Lessard. Fortunately, he hadn’t encountered Joe either, though he had heard the name Piccoli being bandied about various underground fighting venues with worrying frequency. This was what had kept him coming back to basement after basement and barnhouse after barnhouse, helplessly scanning the fighters in the ring in search of the one face that he would always recognize, no matter how battered or broken it may be. It sickened him to be part of this crowd, and he didn’t know how to feel about the way they had welcomed him in with open arms. His burn scars, his patched clothes, the dark circles around his eyes, all ensured he had an intimidating look about him that allowed him to fit right in.

The organizer plucked the unconscious man who was not Joe from the tabletop and the rest of the crowd grew electric with anticipation for the dogs to come out. This was Harry’s cue to leave.

These things weren’t supposed to happen in Canada, Harry maintained. This was not what he had fought for. As he returned home the pointlessness of the fight weighed heavy on him. He knew all too well how those fighters felt.

-

“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Avery. We’ll look into it. In the meantime, try calling the SPCA." Said the officer on the other end of the phone.

Harry, who had already called the SPCA and been told to call the police instead, hung up on the cop without a word and felt no shame in it. Reporting the fights to any halfway-relevant authority had become as much of a ritual as attending them, and every officer promised the same thing: we’ll look into it. Naturally they never did, and he felt as though he were going mad. Tiny fighting, he had learned, had been theoretically outlawed since the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1892. What was the point of laws, he wondered, if nobody enforced them?

He looked down at his knuckles. Remembering the blood, he felt hollow. He tried to turn his brain off as he ventured up the stairs to ready himself for bed, but the silence lent itself too well to thinking, and right now all Harry could think about was how much noise Joe used to make without Harry realizing it. There had once been the rustling of movement, the flipping of paper, the sound of tiny pencil scratches, subtle reminders that he was not alone. That there was still humanity left in the world.

Harry hardly felt human as he glanced at his reflection in the mirror. The crescent-shaped burn along his jawline had turned shiny then scarred over, leaving him looking not unlike those who had survived the gas attacks during the war. In hindsight he was thankful to Danny for stopping him in the woods and talking him into going home, for in the days after Danny had left his burnt earlobe had turned gangrenous to the point of needing surgical removal. It was a blessing of modern medicine that the infection had not spread, and while he couldn’t be certain, he could hazard a guess that wading through lake water, ripping across a cornfield, and slogging about in the woods had done his injuries no favours.

He wondered what day of the trial Danny was currently on as he brushed his teeth. Maybe he would see the fake Danny at tomorrow’s picture show, gleefully dancing for his masters while the real one was fighting them in court.

Better that than fighting a fellow miniature on a table for the giants' amusement, Harry figured, though only barely.

-

It wasn't the shells or the snipers or even Georgie that had been haunting Harry's nightmares lately. Ever since the fire, it was the threat of gas that plagued his animal mind every night. The smoke, the burning, the helplessness, all of it had been twisted into nightmares that were not about the fire itself, but about gas, to the point even the smell of his own morning cigarette left him queasy.

It was the gas that had been most insidious, after all, not through its presence but its absence. The threat of it had lurked in the back of every soldier's mind and driven even the bravest of them mad with anxiety, to the point that being gassed in itself had brought some odd relief when it finally happened. Every man knew what to do during a gas attack; you donned a mask if you had one, pissed on a rag and covered your face with it if you didn't. What truly eroded the spirit was the perpetual state of uncertainty they lived under in the interim while waiting for the gas to come, that maddening sense of never knowing what they would be dealing with.

How strange it was, Harry thought, that it was these things that weren't there that held the most sway over people.

He put his cigarette out on the porch railing and turned his attention to the paper. He took it inside and sat with it on the parlour couch, appreciating the dullness of the present moment.

Front page news of the latest bank robbery would soon be of great interest to Harry, but for now he flipped past the most recent article in favour of the classifieds section. Joe and Danny weren’t the only ones he was thinking about. Susie was another soul who had gradually disappeared as the months had rolled by, and although she had told him she might be hard to reach, it was still worrisome. He kept on searching for rooms to let all the same and occasionally sent her clippings in the mail to no response. It was possible she was busy, of course, or she didn’t like his offerings, or had made new friends and forgotten all about Toronto. He tried not to think too hard about it.

He turned the page and his chest tightened. Right in the middle of it were a bunch of naked figures falling like ashes from a burning building. This was an ad he ought to have been used to by now, for it was in the paper every day – it featured the image of a painting curated by an out-of-town art gallery, one of many works at a reception that was supposedly COMING SOON. Soon in this case seemed to mean in three months or longer for that was roughly how long the ad had been running, and the image of the painting had gone from sketch to flat colours to shaded in that timeframe.

It was an obvious marketing ploy, and a good one at that - whenever the painting was finished, the gallery would surely open. He could only roll his eyes at the pretentiousness of it all and refuse to pay it any more attention out of spite, yet something about that image haunted him. The scene was too disturbingly familiar for his liking. It felt a little too real.

The clock in the parlour ticked away as Harry’s part time job drew near. It would be work today, then the errands, then, perhaps, he would finally make good on his word to Danny and pay Billy a visit – only after he had drawn a cheque for his mortgage at the bank, of course. Ever since his licence had been suspended Billy had insisted upon helping Harry pay his everyday expenses, and Harry, in turn, had insisted upon politely refusing. Thus, if he was going to talk to Billy, he would have to ensure all his expenses were covered so the man would have no opportunity to pay him any kindness.

Unfortunately for him, his latest job was also the most emotionally harrowing one he had taken to date.  

-

The waffle iron slammed down. Danny bared his teeth in agony and clawed at his leg. The other two dancers rushed to his side, tried to pull him out once, twice, three times…

This was the part of the film where Harry inevitably missed a note, and today was no different. His piano playing was stellar otherwise, or so the manager at the picture show had told him. He had seen Taking the Cake so many times now that he could pinpoint the second Danny sustained his life-changing injury. It had reached a point where he could even tell the scenes shot before Danny’s injury apart from the ones shot after - in the later scenes where Danny was dancing injured, he kept wincing through the smile on his face.

Playing piano at the picture show was nothing like playing alone with Joe, that much Harry had anticipated – there was no pride in it, no freedom, no happiness, just duty. The only reason he had agreed to the job was because abject homelessness would be even more shameful in his mind. What he had failed to consider was how surreal it was to watch his fellow giants howl in delight at a friend's pain and suffering. Not only that, but to keep on performing in his own right, adding a jaunty soundtrack to it all the while. It was the same feeling of dread that filled his chest whenever he saw empty jars.

When the show was over, he collected his thirty cents for the day and headed for the bank, making a mental note to find a better gig. The only silver lining was the possibility he would be able to pay his mortgage this month. Maybe the electricity, too, he thought as he shuffled into line at the marble banking hall on Yonge. Coal was another matter – winter was coming, and if he wanted to stay warm he might have to-

“Excuse me, sir.”

Harry jumped as a wrinkled hand tapped his shoulder. He turned and looked behind him to an elderly gentleman in a green suit smiling back at him. The stranger's voice sounded like a warmer version of his father's.

“If it’s not too intrusive, I just wanted to thank you for your service.” The old man continued.

Harry suppressed his nervous laughter and tried his best to smile. Exchanges like these were a regular occurrence now that he had visible scars.

“Oh, there’s no need to thank me, sir, it was the right thing to do – the only thing to do.” Harry stammered.

What had Harry done, he wondered?

“You’re too humble. That mustard gas…” The old man wheezed and Harry, slave to human decency that he was, could only listen patiently as the line to the teller moved at a pace that would put molasses to shame. “…awful stuff that was. You, you’re a real soldier.” The man said, patting Harry on his shoulder for good measure.

“Thank you, sir.” Was all Harry could say to such a thing.

“Not like that lousy nephew of mine. They discharged him for gas anxiety.” The stranger chuckled, then mercifully turned away from Harry, leaving him sickly with guilt in his wake.

Though it had been going on for weeks, Harry still wasn’t used to being scrutinized like this. He had always drawn attention for being tall, but ever since the burn wounds had healed, it was as though people saw his face and then filled in the blanks of who he was on his behalf – and whether they imagined his character to be positive or negative was something out of his control. Where some saw a criminal others saw a soldier, and anything in between. Lately he moved through the world with a strange sense that he had to prove something to these strangers, but he couldn’t figure out what that thing was.

The customer in front of him reached the teller after no less than an eternity had passed, and Harry’s mind wandered back to finances. He likely wouldn’t be able to afford coal, and if he couldn’t, it would mean he would have to sell something. His radio, or perhaps the motorcycle…

Finally another customer left and he neared the teller’s counter with his thirty cents in hand, knowing that selling either item would be equally painful. It would depend on how low his bank balance was, and he approached the counter with trepidation.

He was just about to make his deposit, cut his cheque and leave when the doors flung wide open. Harry looked on in confusion as the dying afternoon light spilled over the marble columns and arched cubicles like something out of a movie scene.

When a bank robber strutted through the doorway with rifle in hand, it became clear to Harry that he was now a part of the cast.

“Everybody get on the ground! Put your hands on your head!” The robber shouted as he pointed the barrel at anything and everything that dared to move. “No sudden movements!”

There were none. The bank-goers sank to the floor as slowly as they had moved when in line and did just as they were told. Everyone except for Harry, who was staring at the robber in disbelief.

Seeing that Harry was the only one still standing, the robber homed in on him and then aimed for the ceiling. Although the robber pulled the trigger three times, only two shots fired, and that was the moment all fear left Harry Avery.

The robber, seemingly unaware of the grave he had just dug for himself, drew closer.

“Get on the ground, you tall bastard!” The robber barked upon his approach and aimed the rifle straight at Harry's chest. “I’m not messin’ around!”

He certainly could have had Harry fooled. With his misshapen hat, his dusty coat, and his sorry excuse for a mask – which Harry was certain the robber had made by dismembering some poor woman’s silk stockings and cutting eye holes into the remains - he looked like something out of a clown act. That wasn’t what Harry was truly interested in, of course. It was the rifle in the boy’s hands that told him everything he needed to know; he may not have been a real soldier according to the fellow in the green suit, but even he could call the robber's bluff based on his choice of weapon alone. He would recognize the thing anywhere.

Harry straightened himself up to his full height of six foot three, and when the boy’s blue eyes widened behind his makeshift mask, Harry knew exactly what he was dealing with. If the comically half-assed get-up hadn’t given the little buffoon away the shivering certainly had. Harry only had thirty cents in his pocket, but he may as well have just won the lottery.

Frankie Van Assen approached Harry with all the bravado he could muster nonetheless, and with his rifle at the ready he said,

“Get on the ground or I’ll blow you to pieces.”

A dreadful silence filled the banking hall, broken only by the sound of tellers and clients shifting nervously as they watched the scene play out with horror. Harry glanced to the side table beside him, which the old man in the green suit had crawled underneath. He was gazing at Harry as if in worship. Somewhere behind the teller’s counter he could hear the sound of a phone receiver lifting from the hook.

Harry crossed his arms, turned his attention back to Frankie, and in the hopes of drowning out the whispers of the terrified bank teller behind him he replied,

“You’re gonna blow yourself to pieces. Don't you know what kind of rifle that is?”

Frankie blinked. His eyes darted down to the rifle, then back to Harry with a scowl.

Harry prodded a finger at Franke's rinky-dink, limp-dicked, pathetic excuse for a weapon and continued.

“That’s an old Ross rifle. We used those in the war. If you’re lucky it’ll fire, if you’re unlucky it’ll jam, and if you’re really unlucky it’ll explode and take you along with it.”

Frankie’s scowl widened into a look of confusion. This clearly wasn't in the script – nobody was supposed to know that the rifle was a bluff, as everything else about the boy was.

“Yeah? Wanna bet?” Frankie stammered.

“I do.” Said Harry.

Frankie’s finger tightened around the trigger. From behind the mask he looked as if he were about to cry.

“I-I’ll show you, then.” He said, his voice wavering.

Harry stood unimpressed as the boy squeezed his eyes shut. Only then did he squeeze the trigger. When nothing happened his eyes snapped open, and he squeezed it again, and again, and again, and he would have squeezed it a fifth time if the sound of a siren in the distance hadn’t broken his concentration.

The bank hall soon echoed with the sound of footsteps as Frankie’s would-be hostages saw their opportunity to escape and took it.

Frankie tried to join them, which was as predictable as his jammed rifle, and Harry, unscathed, snatched him by the coat collar and dragged him back before he could sprint off. The rifle spun out of Frankie’s hands, and when it hit the ground the third shot finally fired, not into Harry’s chest but into the base of a column across the room.

“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry growled.

“What!?" Frankie wrestled and fought so intensely that Harry had to hoist him clean off the ground with both hands. "Who the hell is-”

“Joe Piccoli! That tiny you sold last summer. I know it’s you, Frank.” Harry said.

“I-I don’t know anything! I don’t know any Piccolis, I swear!” Frankie insisted.

“Then I’ll hand you over to the police and you can tell them where you took him.”

Frankie dangled in the air as the sirens grew louder and his terror grew along with them. Harry watched with satisfaction as the last of Frankie's defiance turned to resignation.

“Mr. Wilkins has him!” He blurted out.

“Which Mr. Wilkins?” Asked Harry.

Harry knew an entire family of Wilkinses. It didn’t exactly narrow things down.

“Some rich guy!” Frankie cried, which narrowed things down even less. “Listen, I might have his address in my pocket somewhere.” Frankie kept on struggling against Harry’s grip in vain. “Put me down and I’ll try and find it for ya'.”

Harry glowered at him – he couldn’t be certain that Frankie wouldn’t run off again. Scanning the room, he deposited Frankie in the nearest corner and took great care to tower over him in menacing fashion.

Frankie rifled through his pockets as promised, and Harry could only stare in wonder as he carelessly dumped a staggering amount of junk onto the floor: a pile of of old receipts, crumbled dog treats, assorted nuts and bolts, a handful of acorns, a slingshot, a very smooth rock, six different keys in six different sizes, two real nickels and one fake one on a string, a lady's hairpin… everything except for the address of Mr. Wilkins. Harry drew closer and tapped his foot impatiently.

“Okay, maybe I don’t have it on me, but—look, he’s an art dealer or something.” Frankie spoke frantically, as if sensing Harry’s impatience.

This was oddly familiar to Harry – though none of the Wilkinses he had met were in the business of art.

"Why do you care so much, anyways?" Frankie carried on. "It's a tiny, you can just-"

A police whistle cut Frankie off before he could finish, and Harry could only envy how quick the policemen were to protect the now empty bank. The second his eyes were drawn to the officers in the doorway Frankie took off like lightning, and Harry lunged after him in one final, desperate attempt to seize him, snatching him by the shoulder of his oversized coat. Frankie shed it like the skin of a snake and raced deeper into the banking hall with the police in hot pursuit, leaving Harry in the dust with coat in hand.

Harry searched through the rest of the pockets only to find them empty. He tossed the coat aside and then froze at the sight of one of the officers, who was headed in his direction and twirling a baton. His hand crept towards his face before he decided it would be of more use covering up the patch on his jacket's left elbow. He didn’t like the way this grey-haired officer was sneering at him, as though he were some vagabond from the Ward, and he especially didn’t like the way the other two officers in the doorway were pointing at him and talking amongst themselves. Perhaps they saw Harry as a criminal. Maybe even an accomplice, considering he had just been holding Frankie's coat.

He shrank back as the officer marched up to him with all the pomp and import a badge could afford someone. That was when a familiar voice spoke up from beside him.

“See? You’re a real hero.”

It was the old man in the green suit from before, who had picked himself up from the floor and was now dusting himself off.

“Don’t you think, officer?” He continued as the officer stopped in front of them. “He was ready to take a bullet for us back there. Sent that little punk running for his mother!”

Harry couldn’t tell if he was shaking from nerves or sheer embarrassment – maybe it was a combination of both. Nevertheless, he watched the stone-faced officer soften in real time. His baton, once readied, now fell to his side.

"Yes, it was an interesting day, most certainly, officer." Harry said, then locked eyes with the man in the green suit as if in defiance and refused to break eye contact.

What Harry was about to say next filled him with dread, but he felt it must be said, not for his own sake but for the sake of the man's poor nephew.

"...almost as interesting as the day the army discharged me for gas anxiety." Harry added.

The old man's eyes widened in shock, and with that the officer politely took Harry aside to hear his statement.

-

The next morning, Harry was very interested in bank robberies.

FLYING DUTCHMAN FRISKS FINANCIERS: BANK ROBBER STILL AT LARGE, read the headline.

Harry didn’t bother to read any further. He could tell from the headline alone that Frankie was still on the loose, and so far as Harry was concerned, whatever the newspaper had to say about his involvement was cursed information he had no business knowing. Although the rest of the bank had lauded him as a hero he had declined every offer for an interview and made it home with as little fuss as he could get away with.

Now it was back to business as usual, and he turned to the classifieds to look for more rooms to let. To his delight he found one posted by Evelyn Tucker of all people:

Seeking a quiet and responsible tenant for a ground floor unit who would not mind assisting an old lady around the house. Must be fond of miniatures, it read.

Susie certainly fit the bill, and so he went about cutting it out of the paper. When he pulled the ad away a familiar face stared back at him, and his skin prickled at the sight.

He turned the page and once again he was greeted with that obnoxious advertisement for the art gallery, though now something was different. The image of the nude tinies had been replaced by a portrait of a man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a fox-like face. Harry knew that face, and try as he might he could not forget that face.

For the first time, Harry swallowed his pride and willfully acknowledged the advertisement. When he read the blurb above the painting, the whole room went cold.

GRAND OPENING TO-DAY: WILKINS GALLERY OF FINE ART, the caption read, and below that, FEATURING CURIOSITIES THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE!

He thought back to what Frankie had told him yesterday. No wonder the description had been familiar! He did know an art dealer by the name of Wilkins, not personally but subliminally, lurking in the back of his morning newspaper. The page scrunched as his hands tightened into fists.

Maybe Joe had been right there the entire time, speaking to him without speaking the way the author of On the Life and Death of the Miniature had done. Maybe the reason the painting of the burning building felt too real was because it was real. Who else could paint something so viscerally sincere besides Joe Piccoli? He thought back to the circus, the interview, the jars. Deep in his bones he knew that Joe could very well be one of the curiosities mentioned in the advertisement. That was how the sickening world Harry lived in worked, after all.

He grabbed his jacket and raced to the motorcycle.

Not once did he think to call the police.

Read the next part here!

[fireflywritesgt]

Untamed

Part 39 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.

!!Warning!! this is one of the darkest chapters in the whole series. People die in this, there is violence, and a large-scale disaster occurs. Read with caution.

Joe Piccoli had never seen war, and he had no idea that he was about to become acquainted with it. He was too engrossed by the forbidden words on the page to even consider the possibility.

“I can make the Irishman hate the Italian and the Englishman hate the German”. The passage read. “It can be accomplished through the simple redistribution of resources. If the experiment is to progress, however, it must move beyond small-scale enmity. What I now seek is a more universal villain than that, a monster to wage war against so that the people can feel self-assured that the values they uphold and fight for, the values of Tiny Town itself, are just and righteous. We must find a bogey-man so culturally backwards and so difficult for the average miniature to understand that no man would be bold enough to defend it.”

He had found the handwritten journal under a stack of files on Dawson’s desk, and a feeling of dread settled into him as he glanced at the next line:

“I can think of no better example than the pet tiny.”

His eyes snapped away from the page at the sound of footsteps, and he pushed the book back under the mountain of paperwork with all the adrenaline of a man on fire. Then he sat innocently in the main office with his hands folded into his lap and his back straight as a pencil while the hair on his neck stood on end. The lightbulb above flickered ominously all the while.

It wasn’t Dawson who entered, but the guard who had pursued him when he had first broken in to see Tim. The burly man threw Joe’s newly-minted ID card down on the desk as though it were rubbish and glared at him with utmost contempt. Joe swallowed as he took the ID with a shaking hand, a piece of paper worth all of ten thousand scraps, and tucked it into his pocket. He couldn’t be certain if he would be allowed in at all or robbed of his scraps and taken straight to jail. The lightbulb above flickered three more times as the guard himself appeared to be weighing his options, before he tossed his thumb toward the doorway and said,

“Get the hell outta here, and don’t try anything funny.”

Joe obeyed the guard’s orders and when he left the building he kept right on going, stumbling into the semi-open space of the town entrance. The claustrophobia of the intake office never left him, and as he looked up to the sky he noted that it was uncharacteristically black against the electric streetlights that lined the only road, as if the void had swallowed the moon and stars whole when he wasn’t looking. The entire area was an imposing tunnel of splintered wood, all of it dry as kindling.

Thus began his quest to find Danny, or so it would have been if Joe didn’t have company. Jumping at the sound of footsteps he turned around to find Tim O’Grady bounding up to greet him. The man was grinning from ear to ear, and over his back he carried a rucksack that no doubt contained the diamond Joe had just sold to him.

“Lovely weather tonight, isn’t it?”

Joe wondered to what extent the void above them counted as weather. Try as he might, Joe couldn't keep from turning his head upwards in the hopes of telling the time. Danny was to burn at dawn, but Joe had no idea when exactly that would be. The wait in the intake office had felt like hours, and he had the lingering sense that however much time he had was swiftly running out.

"Neat piece of engineering, isn't it?" O'Grady remarked. "That's our second sky."

"Second sky?"

O'Grady nodded.

"Used to be that when it rained, we'd all get stuck in the mud. S’why we put everything on those high support beams and boardwalks. Coupla wee'uns even drowned one time ‘cause they couldn’t get out. Then Dawson got caught in it one day, and not a day later he had that put in place. Real mysterious piece of work, it is."

"What do you mean?" Asked Joe.

"It appears and disappears on its own. Nobody knows how it works!" Said O'Grady.

"Isn’t it just a tarp or something? Don't the giants outside the wall just put it on and-"

O'Grady stopped Joe in his tracks with one hand and slapped a hand over his mouth with the other.

"Nobody knows how the second sky works. Got that?" O'Grady reiterated.

Joe was only freed when he nodded in agreement, and that was the end of that.

"So uh... how do you tell time around here?” Joe asked as innocently as possible.

"Excited for the burning, are ya'? You'll know when the bell rings." Said O'Grady, and Joe took mental note of it. “Let’s get going!”

The Irishman all but carried him towards an inner atrium composed of many different entryways. The one they were headed for had a sign over it that naturally read Irish.

“Welcome to the most Canadian ward in Tiny Town! Yer gonna fit right in with the lads at the pub, I just know it. Oughta go for a pint before the big event.”

Laughing nervously, Joe muttered a half-hearted, “yeah…” as he wondered for the life of him how he was going to get out of this situation and find Danny.

“Come on, hurry up! The night’s still young!” O’Grady carried on towards the gate of the Irish ward, and as he neared it a pint-sized fireball shot out and latched itself onto O’Grady’s leg.

“Da’! Da’! What’d ya’ bring me?” Asked the little girl.

It was Mary, O’Grady’s feisty first child. She climbed right into her father’s open arms, laughing as he twirled her around, and for the first time in a long time Joe was reminded of the O’Grady he once knew: the loving, tender father who doted on his wife and children.

“What did I bring you?” O’Grady echoed.

 “That’s your borrower friend, isn’t it?” She asked, pointing directly at Joe. “Did you get more chocolate?”

O’Grady laughed loudly and nervously as he set her down, earning himself a sharp look from the guard at the gate.

“Now now Mary, Joe’s no borrower.” He said at maximum volume, presumably just as much to the guard as to Mary. “He got himself an ID fair and square. He’s one of us now.”

“…oh.” Mary sounded a touch disappointed as she looked Joe up and down and reassessed his likelihood of supplying her with chocolate.

“He’s a fine, upstanding citizen who’s-” O’Grady’s words were cut short by a gasp. “Mary! What happened to your eye?”

O’Grady knelt down to examine her. Looking closer, Joe could see that the little girl had one very big shiner on her left eyelid.

“Slingshot.” Mary answered.

“Who did that to you?”

“The little boy from the Italian ward with the crooked teeth.” Mary pouted.

O’Grady looked up at Joe with utter fury in his eyes. Joe, meanwhile, averted his gaze. It fell on the piece of paper in his hands that had the word ITALIAN written on it in capital letters.

“The boy from the Italian ward… Piero’s boy?” O’Grady ran a hand through Mary’s hair and pointed to the gate. “Your mother and I will take care of this. You run along back into the ward, mouseling, and don’t cross the white lines.”

“’kay…” Mary sighed, and off she went.

Standing up, O’Grady rubbed his neck and beckoned for Joe to follow him inside.

“The only downside to living here is the neighbours.” He sighed.

Joe didn’t follow him. Instead, he looked from O’Grady, to the stern-eyed guard a stride away, to the ID card in his hands and weighed his options. There was no way he would make it into the Irish ward, and even if he snuck in somehow, he didn’t foresee himself receiving a warm welcome. O’Grady might be in denial, he reasoned, but the thugs who had attacked him before had not been. At the same time, by not following along he risked facing the wrath of O’Grady.

Deciding the wrath of one Irishman was better than the wrath of an entire ward of them, Joe hesitantly spoke up.

“Yeah… about that, O’Grady, I… I got something to tell you. And I know this might come as a shock to you, and I’m sorry I hid it for so long, but…”

The words tumbled out of Joe’s mouth before he could stop them and his heart pounded in his chest. He had never known fear like this, and as he spoke it was as though he were watching himself in third person, or being spoken for by some evil spirit that had taken possession of his tongue. Everything in his better nature told him that this was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and yet as Joe stood there, tongue-tied, watching the look of puzzlement creep into O’Grady’s face, he knew he could not live in a world where it went unsaid.

“…what is it?”

"I..."

"Out with it, lad!"

O’Grady was still his friend, he hoped.

“…I’m an Italian.” Joe said.

His throat tightened. His hands shook. His pulse throbbed in his ears. These three words could very well be enough to get him killed, and he automatically began to step away from Tim and prepare himself to flee once they were spoken. Tim was a head taller than Joe and twice his weight in muscle. If he wanted to bash Joe’s head in, he could easily do so.

Violence was what Joe had been expecting. Nothing in the world could have prepared Joe for what came next.

“No you’re not!” O’Grady grunted in disbelief.

“Tim… I…” He looked at O’Grady helplessly, then showed him the ID card, though he knew O’Grady couldn’t read it.

“That’s what it says on my ID. I can’t get into your ward without an ID. They’re not gonna let me in.”

Joe could feel the sharp eyes of the guard at the gate boring holes into him. Tim noticed it too.

He stood impatiently as the illiterate Tim squinted at the ID, then back at Joe. Laughing loudly he put an arm around Joe’s shoulder and steered him away from the guard.

“Well that must be a misprint! There’s no way you could be an Italian. I mean, you don’t act Italian!” Said Tim, giving him another sporty shoulder clap as though it would somehow entice Joe to agree with him.

Withdrawing the card, Joe rubbed his forehead. Then he lowered his hand, holding it outward with his thumb, middle and index fingers pinched together, and shook it at Tim.

“What does that even mean, Tim!? Waddaya mean I don’t act Italian!?”

O’Grady crossed his arms, turned up his nose and declared,

“Because you’re a good person, and those bastards in the Italian ward are not.”

Slowly, Joe’s hand fell to his side as O’Grady’s words cut him deeply.

“Never in my life have I met a good Italian.” O’Grady continued. “All they do is steal our jobs and our apartments and terrorize us in the night. You saw what they did to Mary! They’re a step away from snatching up our children and selling them off to Hollywood. Why, I don’t believe such a thing exists, a good Italian! You’re likely just deluded, or pulling my leg.”

Joe’s blood began to boil as he thought about his good Italian mother and his good Italian brother and the good Italian man at the restaurant who had gone out of his way to make polenta for him that night. For ages now Joe had been listening to O’Grady harp on about how horrid he thought Italians were, but it hurt on a whole different level now that Tim knew full well what was on Joe’s ID card and in his very blood.

“…Tim, don’t you ever think that maybe the world is bigger and more complicated than you want it to be? Is it really that hard to believe that an Italian could also be your friend?”

O’Grady paused for a moment, and for a split second he appeared to soften.

“Don’t get me wrong, lad, I’m willing to keep an open mind.” O’Grady said, clearly choosing his words very carefully. “Perhaps there are good Italians somewhere in the world, and perhaps you might be one of them, but...”

O’Grady didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. Joe had already filled in the blanks in his head:

“…but I’ll still think the worst of other people like you by default, and so long as we know each other, it will be up to you to prove yourself one of the good ones.”

It was O’Grady who would set up the goalposts, Joe knew, and O’Grady who would keep moving them out of his reach with every attempt he made to prove himself a decent person.

Instead of doing that, Joe pocketed the ID card.

“Well, Tim, I may or may not be a good Italian, but it’s not up to me to convince you one way or another.” He said as he turned in the direction of the Italian ward. “You’re gonna believe what you’re gonna believe, and I got a life to live and shit to do.”

“What!? No! I-I didn’t mean it like that!” O’Grady called after him. “Don’t go in there! Are you mental!?”

Joe looked over his shoulder once and only once, and saw Tim with his shoulders slack and mouth agape, looking absolutely gobsmacked. Joe didn’t dignify him with a response. He simply handed his ID card to the man at the entry to the Italian ward and passed through it easily as breathing.

-

"So what kind of Italian are you?" Asked the young man as he gave Joe an introductory tour of Tiny Town.

Thinking it was the right answer, Joe replied, "I'm Giardino on my dad's side, but I was raised Casa like my mom."

"Yes, but what kind of Giardino? What kind of Casa? These things are important, you know! You from the north? The south?"

"I'm… from Toronto Star, actually." Joe said.

"Yeah, so am I, but besides that!" The boy chortled.

As if his exchange with O'Grady hadn't been exhausting enough, Joe was once again confronted by the Townies' suffocating need to categorize and identify, to appraise and quantify.

"There's not many of us, ya' know." The curly-haired youth chattered on. "Not as many as the Irish. It’s nice to see a new face around here."

Joe jammed his hands in his pockets as several members of the ward trudged past hauling large twigs. He picked up the pace and trotted closer as the youth led him to the ward center where Piero was waiting to greet him.

"Why's it so important what kind of Italian I am? Why does any of this matter? Setting up these borders, not letting anyone else in... seems like it's doing more harm than good."

"It's to keep us safe! You'll see. It's how the giants do it." The boy explained. "You gotta know your friends from your enemies. The good people from the bad ones. Italians help other Italians. That’s how things work here." The sound of a snapping twig momentarily interrupted him. "You ever lived in a borrower town? Ever let in some stranger who stole all your food stores? It's like that."

"No..." said Joe, who had lived in several borrowing towns. "That's never happened to me. Has it ever happened to you?"

Catching up with the youth, Joe saw his eyes widen for a moment.

"Uh, well, I’m sure it happens somewhere.” The youth insisted, and whistled to Piero, who stood in the entryway of an apartment building. “Hey, Piero! Here's your first torch!"

Piero’s attention was elsewhere, it seemed.

"She bit me!" Wailed the little boy with crooked teeth.

"Who bit you?" Asked Piero, kneeling before the boy with great concern.

"That little Irish girl with the frizzy hair!" Said the boy.

"Tim's girl." Growled Piero. "Go see your mother. I'll take care of this."

As the boy dashed up the stairs Joe could hear Piero cursing under his breath.

"Damn Irish. Sending their own children after us..."

Clearing his throat, Joe stepped towards the wolfish looking man and waved shyly.

"Hey, I'm uh... I'm here for the public execution thing?" He said, noting how chilling the words sounded coming from his own mouth.

Piero lit up at the sight of him.

"Ah, yes, yes! You're the new guy. Follow me..." He motioned Joe over to a pile of twigs in the middle of the street as the two walked and talked.

"So this is the uh, Italian ward, huh? It's nice..." Joe lied.

Truthfully, it wasn't what Joe would consider a nice place at all. Long ago, when his family had lived in The Times, Joe had stayed at several borrowing towns full of tinies that giants would have considered "Italians." Those had been bustling places full of chatter and music and life. Here, what few Italians there were pushed past Joe with steely eyes and determined faces as they twirled their knives and patrolled their streets and guarded their borders, all with a sense of solemn duty.

"It beats living in a garbage dump, I suppose." Said Piero, who sounded even less convinced of Tiny Town's niceness than Joe was.

Joe cast him a quizzical glance. Then he debated with himself for a moment before allowing himself to finally ask a question that had been on his mind for several months.

"So... how'd it get like this? With all the white lines and the uh, fighting with the Irish?"

Piero stooped down and grabbed a twig from the pile.

"The Irish used to live in this ward before we showed up." Piero explained. "And they used to flip switches for a living like we do. Then Dawson went and changed everything around." Joe stumbled back as Piero thrust the heavy twig into his arms. "He moved the Irish out of these apartments and put them into the smaller ones the next ward over. Made them push buttons for a living - doesn't pay as well as flipping switches. They've been trying to run us out ever since."

As if on cue, a voice rang out from the Irish ward far down the street.

"HEY, PIEEEEERO!" Called Tim O'Grady from the very edge of the white line that divided the two wards. "FANCY A CHAT!?"

A small army of knives were pointed in Tim’s direction by the Italian ward's stalwart defenders. Joe could see that O'Grady had brought soldiers of his own, and Joe's blood ran cold at the sight.

Joe Piccoli had never seen war, but now he was seeing the beginnings of it.

"Go throw that on the pyre for me, would you? For good luck." Said Piero of the twig in Joe’s arms as he readied a small sword of his own. "It’s at the Garrison building, down that way."

Joe gulped, nodded, and staggered back towards the other end of the street where the tip of Piero's sword pointed him. As he followed the white line that looped around the ward, he noticed he was moving in alternating circular patterns, almost as if he were navigating a maze.

His pace slowed to a halt when he overheard something curious from outside the city walls.

“…no use. Talking our way in won’t cut it.” Said a voice that sounded a lot like Marty Hammerson’s.

“…can sneak in then. She’ll be able to…” Joe strained his ears at the sound of another voice that sounded an awful lot like Billy’s. “…but be careful. I know you have a bone to pick with Dawson, but don’t…”

Joe changed course and tried to follow them for as long as he could, only to find that they were headed back in the direction of the street war brewing between the Irish and the Italians. As they faded out of earshot, Joe was left with little hope after what Harry had done to him. For all he knew, even if it was Marty and Billy they could be looking to put Joe back in Herman's jar, not to save him and Danny from their predicament.

When he turned back towards the Garrison building he was met with a curious sight: a news stand, like the ones the giants had. Some papers were in English, some were in Italian, and none of them had any good news to share. Slowing his pace and turning his head he made out headlines that read, “HOW TO TELL IF YOUR CHILD IS BECOMING A PET” and “PET TINY KIDNAPS FOUR AND SELLS THEM TO HOLLYWOOD” and “IRISH GANG INVADES ITALIAN WARD.” Everything about Tiny Town, no matter the ward he was in, was steeped in an underlying fearful energy that put Joe himself on edge.

He kept moving down the winding streets and there it was, the Garrison building: the heart of Tiny Town. It was a near-windowless panopticon splintered by toothpicks that jutted out of the wooden monstrosity like a crown, and at the very front and center it bore a sign that read, “GARRISON INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.”

Joe's mind wandered back to something Lorraine had said ages ago, about the giant interest groups who were meddling in Tiny Town, and he shuddered to think what happened to any tiny who found themselves inside that building. Little did he know, he was about to find out.

The white lines on the ground narrowed down and converged into a triangular point, signifying that the Italian ward stopped just outside of the building along with the other nine wards as though they were the points of a star. Joe stopped along with that line and contemplated overstepping it. There was no law against it that he knew of, yet the thought gave him an uneasy feeling all the same. Looking from the end of the line to the front of the building ahead he saw a small army of guards moving in and out. Most of them were concentrating on setting up Danny's funeral pyre: one long stick stood upright among the rest, and the smaller twigs and strips of paper surrounded it like a nest. It sat a little ways outside of the front deck of the Garrison building, and behind it and to the left stood a podium. To the right of it all hung a golden bell that reminded Joe of a giant's Christmas ornament.

The pyre had not even been lit yet and the air was already heavy.

Joe flinched at the sound of a commotion so loud it rang out from streets away - Piero and O'Grady's confrontation had erupted into a full blown brawl, no doubt, which drew the guards from their posts. Seizing his opportunity Joe took his own twig and, acting as naturally as he possibly could as a line of them marched past, he set it onto the pyre and wished for the good luck Piero had promised him. Then, instead of going back from where he came, he scurried up the deck of the building and around to the side, looking for windows or any semblance of an entry point. He found one nearby, a basement window low to the ground, though it looked closer to a grate in the side of the building than anything resembling a proper window. It was doubtful Joe would fit through it, so he knelt down and peered inside instead. Through the grate he could see a figure in a stone basement slumped over and tied to a chair. His spirits rose alongside his adrenaline when he realized it was a figure he recognized.

"Danny! Pssst! Danny!"

His heart soon sank again when Danny didn't lift his head. At the risk of ending up in that basement himself, Joe's voice grew louder.

"DANNY!" He whisper-shouted, and quickly scanned the area for guards.

Seeing none, he rapped on the grating for good measure. That got a grunt out of Danny, and groggily the dancer lifted his head and turned to look at Joe. Both his eyes were black and his face was covered in bruises. When he smiled, Joe could see that two of his teeth had been punched out. Joe covered his mouth in shock at the sight of him before composing himself.

"Hey. You made it." Danny rasped.

"I'm gonna get you out of here, okay?" Said Joe, searching frantically for a way in. The basement was stone but the building itself was not, and Joe wondered if he might be able to pry his way in with the hairpin.

"Don't worry about that. Get the list first." Danny said.

"The list?"

Danny coughed and his head dipped. He appeared to be fighting against the pain. Then he continued.

"Ever wonder how Dawson got so powerful? It's that Garrison Institute. Any tiny he didn't like got marked and sent off to the labs. He never got anything in return from them besides power. But after a while..." Danny started rocking from side to side in the chair he was tied to. "He realized it'd be more financially lucrative to sell his people to the snatchers directly under the table."

Joe's white-knuckled fingers curled around the bars of the grate and squeezed as the footsteps of a guard grew louder nearby.

"Everyone in this hell-hole is a product." Danny explained. "They just don't know it." Danny's rocking intensified, and the chair began to wobble in Joe's direction. "Dawson hasn't figured it out it yet, but tonight I nabbed a list he keeps of every snatcher in the city. It's in my collar." The chair toppled and fell, painfully close to where Joe knelt at the window above. "Can you get it?"

"I... I can try, but what about you?"

"We'll get to that." Danny insisted, though Joe remained doubtful. "Just take the paper and run!"

Joe took the hairpin from his belt and drew it towards Danny's shirt collar. He could just see the little piece of paper rolled up inside of it, and the tip of the pin came desperately close to reaching.

The footsteps were growing louder.

Joe reached for the paper, once, twice, three times. The tip of the pin lightly caressed the list's curled corner when the footsteps turned down Joe's side of the deck and stopped.

Joe froze. Danny winked at him. Looking from the fallen prisoner to the hairpin in his hands, Joe had to think fast. He drew the pin back, then lunged it at Danny through the bars, hoping it would look as violent as possible to the guard who was now watching.

"That'll teach you to mess with us, you housepet!" Joe gloated, doing his best to talk the way O'Grady did. "You're lucky they won't let me kill you myself!"

The guard drew in behind him, observing the situation.

"Geez Louise," he chuckled, "give it a rest, kid! Kicking his teeth in is my job."

Two blocky hands fell upon Joe's shoulders and steered him back towards the front of the Garrison building where he could see that a crowd had gathered.

The bell rang without a second to spare. Dawson stood at the podium holding a paper megaphone in hand that reminded Joe of a circus ringmaster.

"First torch!? Who's our first torch?" He barked into the crowd.

“Not me this time.” He heard Piero protest.

Joe carefully slipped the pin back into his belt and made a beeline for where the Italian ward stood within their respective lines under the watchful eye of the guard. As he did so, he looked on as Danny, now gagged, was dragged from out of the building and tied onto the pyre. The audience threw a volley of garbage in Danny’s direction at the mere sight of him, making Joe’s stomach turn.

"Settle down!" Dawson ordered. "We haven't gotten started yet!"

Sweat rolled down Joe's temples as he shuffled into the spot where the Italian ward had congregated. There were hundreds of angry tinies in the vicinity and only one of him, and he sill had no plan to speak of for how he was going to escape this.

“Italian ward, where is your first torch!?” Dawson demanded.

Piero beckoned Joe to the very tip of the triangle, right in front of the podium. Standing next to the two of them, barely an arm’s length away, was the O’Grady family. Reining in their unruly children beside Tim O'Grady was a face that Joe had not seen in a long time: Sophie O’Grady, Tim's wife, though he hardly recognized her at first glance. The round woman’s hair was much longer and she was wearing a dress of all things, like the ones Tim had once sported. She caught sight of Joe too, and for a split second opened her mouth as if to greet to him before falling silent again.

Silence was especially unusual for her.

Joe could tell by the look of her husband beside her that Tim was still freshly riled up from his close encounter with Piero, though the sound of the bell seemed to have put their border skirmish on hold. When Joe looked to Piero he could see that the Italian ward boss was returning O’Grady’s icy stare. The tensity that flowed across the white line that divided them was almost palpable.

Piero’s face warmed as Joe drew near, and he pressed a long, ceremonial looking torch into Joe’s hands. All the while Dawson kept on barking.

“FIRST TORCH!?”

“Right here, sir!” Piero said, and horror crept into Joe as Piero turned to him and added, “You did good out there tonight. I want you to do the honours.”

Joe blinked at the torch and then at Piero.

“You want me to…” Joe gulped. “No, Piero, I couldn’t, really! I mean-I’m flattered that you would-”

“TAKE IT!” Piero snapped.

Dawson shot Joe and Piero a stern glance and the guards surrounding the Garrison building fixed their attention on the both of them. There was no saying no, Joe could sense, for even if he did he would end up on the pyre himself. Begrudgingly, Joe snatched the torch from Piero’s hands if only to draw the eyes of the crowd away from him. Meanwhile, Dawson launched into a bombastic introductory speech.

“I don’t understand. Why do you want me to…?” Joe’s heart was pounding so heavily that he couldn’t even finish speaking.

When he looked into Piero’s eyes he didn’t need an answer. He could tell by the deep despair in them that Piero had done these honours many times before, and in all likelihood would have to do it again. It was the face of a man who had been forced against his will to kill. The face of a soldier.

Casting his gaze down to the wooden torch, Joe wondered how he would get out of his predicament. He glanced up from it to where Danny was tied upon the pyre and saw that the dancer was staring at his shoes in defeat. Studying the crowd Joe could see that there were easily five hundred other miniatures in attendance, and only one of him.

“…larceny, petty theft, shop lifting, and uh… illicit gum-chewing, we the people of Tiny Town sentence you, Daniel Smalls, to…” Dawson turned his megaphone upwards and roared into the second sky, “DEATH BY IMMOLATION!" Clearing his throat to the sound of a roaring crowd, he concluded his speech with, "The Italian ward will do the honours.”

Now that the charges were laid, every pair of eyes looked at Joe downright excitedly, seemingly eager to see what came next. Joe remained silent as Piero lit the torch in his hands and patted him on the back, then stepped towards Danny at a pace slower than a funeral dirge, still trying to think his way out of the predicament he had found himself in. His eyes darted from the streets lined with guards, to Dawson at the podium, to Piero and Tim who both looked at him expectantly, to the five hundred cheering, ugly faces who called for the death of Danny Smalls.

“Come on Italian ward, we haven’t got all day!” Sneered Dawson.

He looked up to Danny, tied to the pyre, and his heart split in two at the sight, for when Danny looked back at him his eyes kept on smiling. The torch shook in his hands as he stopped dead in front of the pyre.

"Italian ward? Get mooooving!" Dawson taunted.

There, in the center of Tiny Town, with no hope of escape, Joe accepted what he had to do. There was only one right thing that he could do. He lowered the first torch.

"No." Joe said. "I won't do this."

Confusion leapt like a spark through the crowd of onlookers and Dawson lowered his spectacles.

"I beg your pardon?" He said.

Joe turned to Dawson and looked him in his cold, dead eyes.

"This is stupid." Joe said. "I won't do it. He's just a person. If you wanna punish him for ruining your party put him in a drunk tank over night or something, don't burn the guy to death!"

The audience tittered and gasped at Joe's words. He was about to drop the torch and stomp it out when someone sprinted out of the audience and clasped it back into Joe's hand.

In was O’Grady. The Irishman laughed nervously and cleared his throat as he tried to steal the spotlight.

"Erm, what he means to say is that he won't do it without me, seeing as we caught the pet together and all-"

Joe pulled his hand away.

"I don't need you to speak for me, O'Grady. I'm not doing this. Take your torches and shove it!"

The crowd fell silent as if in shock. Dawson, meanwhile, squinted at Joe in utter disbelief. Practically vibrating with adrenaline, O’Grady drew in closer to Joe.

"I'm trying to help you." He said under his breath.

"You're not helping anyone, Tim." Joe turned from O’Grady to the crowd. "None of this is helpful! None of this makes anyone safer!" He whipped a finger in Danny's direction. "You don't even know this man, and here you are burning him to death! You people call this civilized!?"

Joe scanned his audience. Some averted their eyes from him. Others remained stone-faced. Others still appeared completely irate. Piero appeared to be burying his head in his hands out of sheer embarrassment.

All the while O'Grady's face contorted as the realization set in that Joe was not the person he wanted him to be. His eyes grew distant and his pupils dilated into pinpoints of pure rage, aimed directly at Joe Piccoli.

The tension rose into an electric silence, and it reached a fever pitch when Dawson spoke up from his place at the podium.

"Well, well, well, looks like we've got ourselves a pet enabler." He crowed. "You lot know what we do with those degenerates!"

A blood curdling cheer of jubilation erupted from a solid majority of the tiny town tinies, and they began pelting things at the pyre once again - this time targeting Joe rather than Danny. He backed away and dodged the debris as the torch crackled irritably, blood boiling with rage and frustration. That was the moment when O'Grady pounced on Joe and tried to wrench the torch handle away from him with both hands.

"Let me do the honours, Mr. Dawson!" He said. "We Irish shoulda got first torch all along, not this traitor!"

The crowd concurred, throwing jeers and taunts in Joe's direction along with their sticks and stones.

"Yeah!" Said one voice.

"Get him!" Said another.

"Kill the pets!" Said a third, and soon the group devolved into a single unified chant: "Kill the pets! Kill the pets! Kill the pets!"

As he struggled against O'Grady Joe could see the fear in his adversary’s eyes, of what exactly he did not know. The fear of Joe being a pet, perhaps, or Italian, or a borrower, or anything else O’Grady had been taught to live in fear of. The Irishman's voice wavered with anger.

"Don't you remember what that bastard did to us!?" Rasped O'Grady.

With those words everything clicked. He knew implicitly who O'Grady was talking about: the earless son-of-a-bitch at the watchmaker's. The pet tiny who had captured and enslaved them ten years ago. Although he could see that O'Grady was on the verge of tears, Joe held the first torch firmly and didn't look away from his maddened stare.

"Danny's a different person!" Joe protested, pulling the torch back in his direction with all his might, the heat of it scalding his right cheek in the process. "Don't you get it, O'Grady? All of them are! Some of them are good, some of them are bad! They're just people!"

"They are monsters!" O'Grady snarled, finally overwhelming Joe. "I know people, and people are wretched things! They make a mockery of us good, honest folk, and so do you for supporting them!" O'Grady shoved Joe back will full force, causing the lit match to spin and fly from both their hands.

When Joe hit the ground O'Grady declared, “Gutters was right about you.”

Joe was too preoccupied with O'Grady to see that the burning torch had landed several strides away, dangerously close to a support beam that held up the Garrison building. O'Grady was on top of him now, with one hand around his throat and the other landing a blow that struck him with all the strength of an entire ward of Irishmen. His vision blurred and his head spun.

"Excellent work, O'Grady!" Dawson cheered through the megaphone as O'Grady dragged Joe through the dirt.

As blood trickled down Joe's temples he looked to his right through sideways vision and saw Sophie of all people, with her head bowed and tears in her eyes. The rest of the crowd erupted into murderous glee as Dawson announced,

"THROW HIM ON THE PYRE!"

Joe, who was only half capable of words at this point, could only repeat the same few sentences over again.

"I'm a person, O'Grady. Please don't do this. I'm just a person."

O'Grady didn't listen as Joe's voice grew thinner and thinner. He rolled Joe over, tied him with twine that a crowd member passed over to him, and sat Joe's limp body down at the base of the pyre.

Joe tried to scan the crowd in search of a way out, but his vision was obscured by the blood. Through it he could just make out Piero the outline of Piero, his last conceivable hope. The ward boss only gazed at his boots in shame as Joe pleaded with him through his eyes to do something.

In Tiny Town Italians helped other Italians, so long as neither was caught fraternizing with a pet.

"Light the second torch!" O'Grady ordered, and another cheer rolled through the crowd. Irish, Italian, English, German, regardless of how the tinies were categorized, they all sang for Joe and Danny's blood.

Joe squeezed his eyes shut as smoke filled his lungs, too tired to struggle, too tired to pray. A thought - what he was certain was his last thought - came to him:

If this is human nature, I'm better off dead.

The smoke grew thicker as Joe accepted his end. Little did he know, fate would not grant Joe the luxury of death just yet.

"FIRE!" Someone shouted from the crowd.

"Yes, yes, I'm getting to it!” O'Grady replied. “Damn cunts, where’d ya’ put my second torch…?"

"No, you idiot!" Snapped Dawson from the podium. "It's the Garrison building! You! Guards! Put it out at once!"

Joe raised his head at the sound of rushing feet. A growing panic swept through the crowd as the smoke from the Garrison building grew thicker. Looking up, Joe saw a flurry of fists as fights began to break out left and right between the various wards of Tiny Town. More and more miniatures were stepping out of line to escape.

"What are you doing!? Everyone stay put! Everything is all under control!" Dawson ordered, his composure swiftly unraveling.

That was the moment the sign atop the Garrison building crashed down behind the podium, and the crowd went ballistic at the sight. Joe heard Danny mumble something through the gag, and although he couldn't make out the words, he could tell it was a witty one-liner of some sort from tone alone. Wondering how Danny could remain so lighthearted at a time like this, Joe struggled to his feet as he fought against his bindings. The fire licked ever closer to the pile of kindling they were sat upon as he made his final, pitiful attempt to escape.

The rest of Tiny Town had forgotten them in the pandemonium. Fisticuffs turned to knives as Irish fought Italian and English fought German and hundreds of Tiny Town’s good, honest folk struggled in desperation to escape the blaze, each one at the expense of the life of another whom they had been socially conditioned to despise.

"STAY PUT! REMAIN IN YOUR PLACES!” Dawson squealed as the bodies fell, “WHY CAN'T YOU PEOPLE JUST BE CI-"

Dawson couldn't finish his sentence before one such knife came for him. It dove straight into his back, crumpling him over the podium, and on the other end of that knife was none other than Lorraine Burroton. Joe had just managed to get onto his feet, and when he turned around he froze at the sight her standing triumphantly over the skewered demagogue.

"I told you I'd be back someday." She snarled into the dying man’s ear.

Pulling out her knife, she raced over and turned it on Danny's bindings and then Joe's.

"Lorraine!? How'd you know we were here?" Said Danny.

"It's a long story, just follow me!” She answered.

Joe pulled out the hairpin from his belt and tossed it to Danny, who twirled it with a smile and hobbled after Lorraine. She kept him well within arm’s reach for fear he might fall, and Joe did the same as he brought up the rear. They circled the left side of Garrison building, still untouched by fire, and ran down a long forgotten side street until they reached a section of the fence with two valuable lifelines: a slit in the second sky, and a length of twine hanging in from outside. An easy means of escape.

“I know this place like the back of my hand.” Lorraine panted. “This street’s a dead end. They’re all gonna go for the main gate. It’ll buy us a few minutes to climb up. You boys okay?”

Joe looked from himself to Danny, who had received twice the beating he did. He could sense Danny’s hesitance to climb, for Joe had plenty of his own.

“Hey, compared to the time they sent a live cat after me in Hollywood this is... this is nothing.” Danny quipped as his knees started to give way.

“Yeah, I don’t trust that. You’re comin' with me.” Said Lorraine, catching him.

"I just gotta go get more blood." Danny slurred. "I'll be fine."

“It's a damn miracle you made it this far. How about you, Joe? You think you can make it?”

Joe could hear the sound of voices coming from the corner behind them. He ran a hand over his bleeding head and nodded. He had no choice but to make it. He had to do it for Danny’s sake, otherwise the entire night would be an exercise in vain.

“I can make it. Take him up first. He looks pretty bad.”

“Way ahead of ya’.” Lorraine said. “Guard the rear where you can.”

The burly woman pulled Danny in and slung him over her shoulder. Crouching low to the ground, Joe kept to the shadows with his bootknife in hand as the voices drew nearer. His eyes traveled from Lorraine and Danny, who were gradually making their way up the rope, to the pitch black unknown that lurked down the side street. Joe tightened the grip on his knife and every nerve in his body froze as the voices rose to a crescendo of rage and fear.

The smell of smoke filled his nostrils again. The fire was drawing closer.

Then a wave of feet ran past and missed the side street entirely. The voices fell with no one in sight, and when Joe looked up he could see that Lorraine and Danny were now halfway up the twine. Seeing that the coast was clear, he took his knife in his teeth and started climbing. His hands shook as he did so, and he pretended he was running a simple borrowing errand and not escaping mortal danger in a feeble attempt to calm his nerves. Some semblance of relief soon came over him when Lorraine and Danny, after another painstaking minute, neared the hole in the tarp. It would be one more minute, maybe two, Joe figured as the air grew hotter around him, and then this hellish night would be over.

That was the moment when a large fist closed around his ankle.

Looking down from over his shoulder Joe saw the green eyes of O’Grady, filled with animalistic madness. Like a hunter in a killing rage the Irishman lurched upwards, his face devilish and distantly inhuman in the light of the fire, kicking and punching and pulling at Joe until the Italian’s already week grip began to slide.

“JOE!?” Cried Lorraine from above as O’Grady’s knee collided with Joe’s stomach. The corners of Joe’s mouth bled as the knife blade dug into them and he was almost sent falling off the twine, only to catch himself in one last act of desperation. He carried on in pursuit of O’Grady, who had his eyes on the prize that was Danny Smalls. It was Joe’s turn to lunge upwards now, and he managed to wrap his left arm around O’Grady’s eyes, disorienting his assailant long enough to take the knife out of his mouth with his right arm and saw at the twine.

“Don’t worry about me!” He shouted to Lorraine. “Just get Danny out!”

Joe could see the pain that cut into Lorraine from halfway down the twine as she looked up to the tear in the tarp, a mere finger’s length away from her, and then back down to Joe. There was no more time to hesitate; the fire was climbing up the fence and now it was seconds away from torching the tarp above too, in all likelihood scorching her and Danny along with it.

Blood flowed from Joe’s left forearm as O’Grady sank his teeth into it.

“Get to the other side of the city! The others will be waiting there!” Was all the advice Lorraine could give before Joe’s knife cut through the final thread of the tarp and sent both him and O’Grady careening to the ground below.

Joe hit the ground first and had the fortune of getting up before his adversary did, knife in hand. He felt the weight of that knife as he studied O’Grady and weighed the Irishman's life along with it.

“I don’t want to hurt you, O’Grady.” He said to the man who had once been his friend.

O’Grady rose to his feet and trained his eyes on Joe the way a predator tracks its prey, not the way one human looks at another. Instinctively Joe bolted, but O’Grady quickly pounced on him and sent the knife in his hand spinning into oblivion. Joe struck him blindly in the jaw with a strength he didn’t know he possessed and staggered to his feet, running into the smoky blackness that had once been downtown Tiny Town. Now it was a labyrinth of orange light and bodies, some alive and some not. He followed the sound of the crowd until he reached a main street as the world grew steadily hotter. Hoping that the confusion of the crowd would help him shake O’Grady he ran head on into the chaos and let it swallow him.

He could see nothing now. When the world wasn’t on fire it was blotted out by smoke and ash. Joe couldn’t be sure if he was nearing the other side of the city or not, so instead he simply did what he did best: he ran. Down the winding maze of burning streets, he ran. Into the starless dark, he ran. Past the streetlamps that had long gone out, he ran. He wove through the panicked citizens until finally he reached the wooden fence that enclosed the far side of Tiny Town.

It was a dead end. Turning around, he saw that he was now surrounded by fire with no way out. Nonetheless, his feet kept on moving, he jogged left and right over and over, looking for some opening, some opportunity to get to safety.

The crashing sound ahead of him didn’t stop his running, neither did the shaking of the earth, the screeching of the tires, or the headlights of the motor car. Even the wooden fence falling away like ancient ruins struck down by an angry god wasn’t enough to stop him. Joe didn’t stop moving until he saw exactly who it was that had crashed that car into the burning city.

The figure of a giant stepped out and loomed above the burning buildings. Like a great beast of ancient legend it towered above the flames until the smoke parted to reveal…

“Harry!?”

Joe’s limbs turned to ice at the sight of him. The giant spotted Joe and immediately raced towards him, kneeling down, hands outstretched, his beautiful face haloed in the headlights like a creature otherworldly, and in any other universe this would have been the most romantic moment of Joe’s life.

This, however, was the universe where Herman Avery had put Joe in a jar mere hours ago, so instead of leaping into those hands and riding off into the morning light he stopped short and stared up at the giant who he no longer knew.

“Joe, come on! We don’t have much time!” The giant pleaded.

Joe stayed put. He watched the fingers as they shook and twitched, frozen in terror, as sirens wailed in the distance.

“Please come with me, Joe! I’m sorry. About the jar, about the interview, about everything!”

The fire surged above and the second sky was engulfed faster than lightning strikes, casting an apocalyptic glow over the two of them. The sight of the giant backlit by the headlights like some colossal monster overwhelmed him completely. He took one step back, then two. No amount of apologies would fix this, Joe knew, and upon that realization the imaginary thread that had once bound the two together frayed down to its final thread. When Herman's hand shot desperately towards him as if to grab him it snapped completely.

Joe turned and ran just as two of the buildings that were burning down beside Herman also snapped completely. They fell towards each other, crashing over the giant’s back and pinning him to the ground, his nose inches away from Joe.

Joe stopped and turned to look back out of morbid curiosity. He watched as the giant, with all his mighty strength, struggled beneath the weight of the wood and kept on crawling in Joe’s direction like a desperate hunter.

“Please, Joe! Please come home! Come back! I’ll do whatever you ask me to, just--please don’t do this!” Begged Herman, and whether the tears in his eyes were the result of smoke or desperation Joe could not be certain. His heart tore at the pain in the giant’s eyes, but he still couldn’t find it within himself to draw closer to him.

That was when the still-living townies decided to take their chances by running over top of the giant to freedom. They raced forward in Joe’s stead, but Joe, his trust in giants still freshly broken, dodged them as he darted the other way, into the light of the fire and the heat that outmatched any oven as soot filled his lungs. He ran like a thing untamed, straight into the mouth of this hell of humanity’s own making.

Joe ran, though he understood not what he was running from, and neither did he understand what he was running towards. As the smoke obscured his vision he had no idea that waiting for him within the chaos and the darkness was Tim O’Grady, whose hand clutched a knife and whose ears recognized the sound of the giant’s voice.

Joe Piccoli had never seen war. What he was about to see would be much worse than that.

For you, the reader, and for me too, for neither of us are above the behaviours depicted herein.

Read the next part here!

[fireflywritesgt]

A Happy Place to Be

Part 38 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here. In which Billy does what y'all have been wanting to do for a while now. CW for a child death mention.

Everyone in life had certain lines that could not be crossed. Herman Avery no longer had a mother, but he did have a ring, and so for Herman that line was drawn firmly at its defacement. He had forgotten all about apologizing to Joe as he strode across the threshold of the bedroom doorway, and only when he shut the door behind him did the weight of his actions really sink in. As a heavy fist pounded on the front door downstairs, he was torn between going down to answer it and going back into the bedroom to find some way to undo what he had just impulsively done.

Guilt crept up through the anger. He was supposed to have been better than this. He was supposed to have apologized. His temples throbbed to the beat of the knocking downstairs.

One way or another, if he wanted to stay remotely sane he would have to go down and put a stop to the noise.

When he ventured downstairs and flung the front door open, he was greeted with Marty Hammerson. The man looked him up and down, saw that he was still in his nightclothes and said,

“...sorry to bother you at this hour, doctor.”

Hoping the sight of Marty was a good omen for his case, Herman waved a hand dismissively.

“Not a problem, Mr. Hammerson.” He said. “Any news from the CPSO?”

The grey-haired man shook his head.

“None, I’m afraid.” Was the lawyer’s disappointing answer. “I’m looking for Danny Smalls. He was supposed to be back at the office by ten. It’s past midnight now.”

The guilt rose further, and Herman’s heart sank into it.

“I... I haven’t seen him.” Said Herman, nervously rubbing his neck.

“Have you seen Joe?” Was Marty’s follow-up question.

“Yes, he’s... upstairs.” He said.

“Did he say where Danny went?”

At the sight of the concern in Marty’s face Herman was sickened with regret. He cleared his throat.

“He... ah...” Nervous laughter escaped Herman as he spoke. “He mentioned some nonsense about a bunch of angry tinies from Tiny Town wanting to burn Danny at the stake or something.”

Marty’s eyes grew so wide they nearly fell out of his head.

“No. Not again. Not again! SHIT!” Marty rapped a fist against the doorframe and stomped back and forth irritably before composing himself. “...this isn’t the first time this has happened. I knew someday that little son-of-a-bitch was going to get himself killed!”

Herman had no idea what to say, let alone do. He thought back to what Joe had said and to what he had seen himself on the boardwalk. Only in retrospect did Herman appreciate how shaken Danny had appeared. It had all seemed so trivial before, but now, with his own lawyer losing his composure in front of him, Herman began to shake himself.

“So it’s true, then? It wasn’t just some... tall tale?” He asked.

“Of course it’s true! Haven’t you heard of what those townies have been getting up to? Danny’s a marked man. They’ll put his head on a pike.” Said Marty.

Herman gulped at the thought. He was hardly fond of Danny, but he had never wished harm on the man. As he thought back to the radio broadcast about the stabbing and the marking Joe had witnessed it dawned on him just how direly wrong his earlier assessment of the situation had been.

Quickly he replied,

“I’ll go get Joe. Maybe he can help.”

Herman clenched his teeth as he disappeared into the front hallway. When he was out of Marty’s view he stood for a moment and tried to calm himself down. What on Earth was he going to say to Joe? How would the two ever trust each other after this?

He thought back on his night with Susie. He would have to be honest, he knew. He would have to do everything in his power to correct the situation and set things right!

He climbed up the stairs to the master bedroom, opened the door, and began his apology without hesitation.

“Joe, I just made an awful mis-”

He was three steps in when he realized he was speaking to an empty room. There on the floor, several feet away from the shelf, lay the shards of the glass jar that had once contained Joe. Stepping closer to it and crouching down he spied the tiniest speck of blood, which hit him like a punch to the gut.

“Joe...?”

Herman ran his fingers over the remains of the jar, then crawled about on the floor in search of his missing friend.

“Joe, I know you’re mad at me, but I need you to come out. Please come out! You were right, Danny is in trouble! Joe...?”

He got up and searched the desk. There on the center of it was the open ring box. The diamond in his mother’s ring was nowhere to be found.

Herman no longer had the heart to be angry at Joe. Now he just felt foolish. All this time, all these months he had spent learning to listen to Joe, and he had failed him at the most critical moment just as he had failed his mother before him.

Maybe he deserved neither a mother nor a ring, he reasoned, as he put his shirt and trousers back on.

Fully dressed, he raced downstairs to Marty.

“Joe’s gone.” He said.

“Of course he would be. It’d be too easy if he wasn’t.” Marty rubbed his eyes.

For all the tension in their relationship, Herman still knew Joe, and he already knew the real answer to his next question.

“Do you think he’s gone to find Danny?”

Marty Hammerson pulled out a cigarette.

“I think I’m going to professor Hill’s, that’s what I think.” Marty said as he lit it. “If I’m lucky they’ll both be at Marigold Acres, and if I’m not lucky, the Hills might have some clue as to how to bust them out of the garrison.”

“Bust them out...?” The longer Herman listened, the more apocalyptic the situation became. “I’ll come with you. I-I owe it to Joe to sort this out.” He said.

He dipped in and grabbed a light coat that had a heavy pocket. Inside of that pocket he found his copy of On the Life and Death of the Miniature. He slid it back inside in the hope it might somehow be useful.

What Herman wasn’t expecting was for this simple decision to change his entire perspective on the world.

-

“No, Danny isn’t with us. I haven’t seen Joe either.” Billy said.

The sitting room fire at Castle Hill crackled in the background as the three of them sat around it. He turned to Herman.

“Did Joe say anything else when he left?”

The concern in Billy’s eyes all but broke him.

“Well... no... you see, we had a bit of a fight.” Herman explained.

“Go on.” Said Billy.

“I... caught him destroying my mother’s ring.” Herman said. “He told me it was payment to get into Tiny Town. That’s all I know.”

“Nothing else after that?”

Billy’s eyes were all but drilling into him now. Herman felt so, incredibly dirty and ashamed as he sat in front of him. He couldn't lie to this man. He had to confess what happened next.

“He didn’t tell me anything else. He didn’t have the chance, really. I... got upset at him and put him in a jar.”

Billy’s eyes scrunched into a bitter smile.

“A jar? You put your friend Joe in a jar?”

“Yes, sir.”

Billy let out a cold, distant, deranged chuckle. Then he lunged forward, grabbed Herman by the collar in his right hand, and clocked him in the jaw with his left. Marty Hammerson sprung up from where he sat, pulling Billy off of his prey.

"Easy now, easy!" Marty exclaimed.

Herman rubbed the bloodied right side of his face and looked at the enraged professor in disbelief as Marty kept hold of him. As Herman wiped the blood from his mouth he was reminded of Joe’s blood on the floor, and with that he could hardly hold it against his attacker.

The excitement quelled when a husky voice shouted at them from the walls.

“WHOA whoa whoa, time out! What the hell is this!?”

Lorraine stood on one of the many platforms that lined the Hill house dressed in a nightgown. She held a minuscule candlestick in one hand and rubbed her sleepy eyes with another.

“Billy go cool down would ya’?” She said. “Whatever this is, it’s probably a Lorraine problem.”

Like a guard dog that had been called off by its master, Billy Hill relaxed enough for Marty to confidently let him go. He stormed out of the room and down the hall, far from the reach of the firelight. Lorraine drew closer and casually leaned against the railing. Herman and Marty stood up and gave her their full attention.

“Okay. Sorry about him, Billy gets a little heated sometimes... What the hell happened? What’s he punching you for?”

Herman gripped his left hand with his right, hoping to still his fidgeting fingers. It was hard to look her in the eye.

“I put Joe in a jar.” Herman admitted once again.

Lorraine’s eyebrows rose.

“You put Joe in a jar!?” She squawked. “That’s stupid! What the hell’d you do that for!?”

“Joe was trying to tell me that Danny was in trouble in Tiny Town, and I didn’t believe him, so I put him in a jar. He broke out, and I think he’s gone off to rescue him.” Said Herman.

Lorraine covered her mouth in disbelief, then tossed her messy hair from her face, still swearing under her breath.

“Holy shit. Okay, that’s a lot.” She said.

“We, ah, believe they’re going to burn Danny at the stake by dawn.” Marty pitched in.

“Yeah. Of course they are.” Said Lorraine. “Marty, can I borrow you for a second? There’s some legal stuff we’ll have to tell the security company to get ‘em to let us go anywhere near Tiny Town without blowing us to smithereens. And there’s some lawyers we’ll have to write to if we wanna cover our asses. Harry, could you go get the contact book on the hallway end table please?”

Herman straightened up and did exactly as he was told. He left the comfort of the fire and ventured out into the long hallway, running a hand along the wall in search of a light switch. He found none, and instead he was forced to navigate in the darkness using the low light of an open door some ten feet away from him.

When Herman reached that door, his curiosity got the better of him and he peered inside. What he saw was utterly enchanting.

It was a cathedral of glass, octagonal in shape, about forty feet across. Surrounding the perimeter were flowers of all types: tulips, violets, marigolds, all gently perfuming the area. Moths fluttered around them, and batted at the tiny lights that dotted the circular platform in the center of the room for good measure. On that platform stood a miniature city surrounded by a moat of clear water, roughly the size of Tiny Town only much more well-maintained. It was made of stone, not wood, with stunning European architecture, complete with cobblestone roads and street lamps. The odd light or two shone from a window, but save for one tiny lamplighter missing a left ear who patrolled this great city on a hill and snuffed out the lights, the streets were mostly empty.

The sign above it, arched and gilded, read, MARIGOLD ACRES. The sign below that said, A HAPPY PLACE TO BE.

In front of it all, at a safe distance from the miniatures, Billy sat on a series of steps that spiraled around the platform. He didn’t seem aware of Herman’s presence as he puffed away on a cigarette.

Herman looked to his side and noted the sign on the door:

AVIARY

He remembered this place from before. This was the room where Joe had heard the other miniatures. Now Joe’s excitement which had once seemed so childish made perfect sense.

He was about to turn away when Billy spoke to him.

“Do you know why I built this place, Harry?” Asked Billy.

Herman cautiously stepped inside, and Billy didn’t wait for him to answer.

“When I was a little boy, my father only allowed me to have friends he personally approved of. Suffice to say, I didn’t have any friends, until one day...”

Billy flicked his cigarette and kept talking as Herman drew closer.

“This little boy about my age who lived in my walls came up to me and said, bonjour. And I said bonjour back to him. We didn’t speak the same language, but we still understood each other. For three years he was my best friend in the whole world. I gave him food. He brought me trinkets.”

He jabbed his cigarette in the air as if to emphasize this point.

“My father found out about it eventually, of course.” Billy continued. “He said, why isn’t that lovely? Here, why don’t you go give him some chocolate? My father handed some to me, and I thought nothing of it.”

When Herman sat down beside Billy he could see the man’s eyes were now brimming with tears.

“When I woke up the next day, I found him lying there, and... I didn’t have any friends any more after that.”

Tears were coming to Herman’s eyes too now.

“There are certain lines we simply cannot cross.” Billy said. “Certain things we can never come back from. That was something I could never come back from. This...”

Billy gestured to Marigold Acres.

“This was my attempt to come back from that. To build something better. But I made a crucial mistake when I built the first version. I didn’t take Lorraine’s word into account. I watched as the version we built in the park turned into something twisted and ugly, as if my father’s ghost had come back to haunt me. ...so I tried again. I listened to Lorraine. I built the Marigold Acres I should have made years ago right in here, where nobody could hurt it."

Herman could no longer resist the urge to speak up.

“That wasn’t your fault. The chocolate, Tiny Town, none of it was anything you had control over.”

“No.” Billy said. “And that’s the saddest thing about it. This world will grab you by the scruff of the neck and force you to kill whether you want to or not.”

Herman looked down at his own hands that had been forced to kill time and time again, and as he did so he could only hope that one of the lives they took would not be Joe’s. His mind couldn’t let go of the sight of the blood on that bedroom floor.

Herman reached into his pocket and pulled out the book. He flipped though it for lack of anything else to distract himself with.

“You won’t find it in there.” Billy said.

Herman landed on the page he had been reading the night before.

“Find what?”

“Whatever answer it is you’re looking for that will solve everything.”

 Herman ran his fingers over the page as Billy elaborated.

“You know, when I gave you that book, I thought you already knew how to read it. I could tell by the way you were talking about him you were truly concerned for Joe. You really valued him.” Billy said.

Herman nodded along to Billy’s words.

“To hear that you put him in a jar...” Billy shook his head. “I thought you were better than that.”

Yes, Herman had been reading through the book. He was an academic, of course. What more was there for him to do? He asked as much.

“What were you hoping I would do instead?”

Billy snuffed out his cigarette.

“I thought it might serve as a springboard to get you talking to each other, learning about one another. To me it looks like you’re taking the word of this researcher as gospel, and you can’t do that, Harry. Not with something as delicate as personhood.” Billy said.

Herman nodded some more. He had never suspected that the information he was absorbing would have such an effect on him. He had always sworn to himself that he would see Joe as a person no matter what, and yet...

“The lesser species is not a true person and should not be treated as such.” The text before him read. It had been struck through in red pen by Billy no doubt, and Herman had initially thought he had disregarded it on reading. Perhaps the author’s attitude was informing his view of Joe more than he cared to admit.

“...take the homosexual, for example.” Billy continued.

Billy’s words may as well have been a gunshot to Herman’s back.

“We see all of these cases of sad, sexually disturbed individuals begging to be cured. Miserable with themselves and their condition. However, a good many miniatures are homosexuals and feel no such way. As I studied them, I found there was this unseen social element to it... they’re more than crazed, self-deluded perverts. They have fulfilling, deep, mutually beneficial relationships. Love. Marriages. There’s more to it than defect or perversion. What the medical journals are reporting now is not painting a full picture of the depth and breadth of their experiences.”

Herman’s fear drove him halfway in and halfway out of his body. The moment didn’t feel real. What he was hearing from Billy sounded like an impossibility. Never before had he heard anyone in a position of power speak well of someone like himself.

The only other person who had done so had been Joe.

He was crying, still. Shaking. He felt simultaneously guilty and absolved. Maybe he could have had a beautiful relationship before his own ignorance had driven him away from it.

“The world is bigger than anyone can possibly comprehend – even us giants.” Billy continued, and pointed to the book in Herman’s hands. “The writings of those experts can help us understand it a little, but they will never give us the full picture. The only way we can truly know the world is to courageously... perhaps outrageously experience it for ourselves.”

Courage. That was the missing ingredient. Before Herman could be honest, before he could be strong, before he could fight, he needed to have the courage to do so. The very courage that Joe had been trying to teach him.

Herman closed the book and examined its cover.

He had to find that courage for himself now, he decided, not only for his own sake, but for Joe’s as well. He had failed to stand up for Joe at the interview because he had been afraid of worsening its outcome. He had failed to save Danny because he had been afraid the man would spirit Joe away from him. He had failed to listen to Joe because he had been afraid to lose the last piece of his mother.

Herman Avery was tired of being afraid. Now he was desperate to start living.

“Do you think I could do that?” He asked as he handed the long overdue library book back to Billy.

“Of course you can do it.” Said Billy. “If I can figure it out, so can you.”

“Then how do I start?”

A knock on the Aviary door answered his question.

“You guys are having a moment, I see.” Lorraine chirped.

Her eyes glinted from where she was perched on Marty’s shoulder.

“Wanna commit a felony?”

Read the next part here!

[fireflywritesgt]

The Altar of Petdom

Part 49 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here. Alcohol mentions. This chapter made me angry to write. </3

The heat of July gave way to a wistful August followed by a crisp September. Autumn's grisly fingers crept over the world after that, and in the blink of an eye it was late November, and Joe had been in London for roughly as long as he had known Herman. He had spent all this time waiting for the other shoe to drop where Walter was concerned, and unbeknownst to him, today was going to be the day.

His days started like this: in the wee hours of the morning, he would sit on the velvet pillow in his cage - where Walter had insisted he sleep - and worry about Susie. She only worked one night a week, but even being out at night for that long with uncontrolled seizures was a dangerous thing. Although Joe knew little about epilepsy, even he was well aware that each time she snuck out there was a chance she might never come back.

"I woke up in the back seat of an automobile once." She had told him. "That was when I still dressed as a girl. It's safer to go out as a boy. People think I'm some drunken lout and step right over me."

If all went well, she slipped back in through the window shortly before sunrise, got changed, and went back to bed. She then lay there for exactly thirty minutes until her mother came in to wake her up.

This morning was a morning like any other morning, and so she returned, much to Joe's relief, though when Aggie Wilkins entered the room he dreaded what was about to come next.

There was a hole on the bottom of one of the velvet pillows that Joe had taken great care to keep secret. Any time he heard Aggie's footsteps coming up the stairs he crawled through it and hid inside of the pillow.

"MOOOOOUSIES!" Aggie called into the room. "Can I come play with you?"

Susie shifted uncomfortably in her bed as her mother drew nearer. From the safety of his hiding place inside of the pillow stuffing, Joe listened with dread as Aggie's footsteps neared the mouse cage and pried the door open.

"Hello my little darlings!" Said Aggie. "Oh, aren't you cute? Come here-"

There was scuttling and frantic squeaking as Aggie Wilkins grabbed one of the mice. There was only seconds to spare before the inevitable happened.

"OUCH! You little--"

Joe flinched at the sound of her voice. Curiosity compelled him to crawl closer to the opening in the pillow, and in the morning light he saw her shadow on the wall. She was clutching one of the mice as it squeaked and squirmed.

Susie shot out of the bed at the noise.

"Mother, please! Put her down!" She reached for her mother's wrist, but Aggie slapped her hand away.

The old woman carelessly dropped the mouse back into the cage and then clutched her bleeding hand where the mouse had bit her.

"Rotten things." She sneered. "These mice are supposed to be pets, are they not?"

Susie closed the cage and positioned herself between the mice and her mother.

"It's daytime. They're tired now. Please, let them alone, mother." Susie begged.

Aggie Wilkins crossed her arms and looked down her nose at her.

"I hope your tiny is better behaved. We bought him so you might learn to talk to boys, you know. Ah, where is he...?"

Joe drew back and shrank into the pillow stuffing as the sound of Aggie's heels grew louder. When it stopped, he knew she was looming above the cage in search of him.

"I let him out. He'll come back soon." Susie lied.

"You let him out!?" Her mother exclaimed.

"Yes, mother, he needs his morning exercise." She said quickly.

Aggie let out a pfft sound and grumbled,

"That is no way to treat a pet. He will grow spoiled if you keep doing such a thing."

Joe relaxed when Aggie's footsteps retreated.

"How is courting coming along? Please tell me you’ve found a suitor." Aggie continued.

"No, mother." Said Susie.

Joe crawled closer to the opening in the pillow again and he could see Aggie's back. She was opening up the closet and inspecting it.

"I don't understand why you won't marry that nice doctor. He would take good care of you." Aggie sighed.

"He's far too old for me." Susie argued.

"Oh, please, he's only twenty-nine. A ten-year age difference isn't that large. Why, it would be a good thing for you. He's wealthy. Educated. Established."

Joe saw Susie's shadow on the wall. She was tilting her head the way she did when she was about to say something cheeky.

"You make a good point, mother. Why, if I married him I could start taking Luminal. I might even get it for free." She said.

Aggie gasped theatrically and shut the closet door.

"NO!" She cried. "No, no, no! You know what they say about Luminal! It will damage your fertility. You will never have children!" The old woman fretted.

Joe, who had spent months working at a doctor's office, had never heard of such a thing in his life.

"I’d rather infertility than seizures, but if you insist, I'll just have to marry someone else." Susie said.

Her mother tutted at her as she continued her search of the room.

"How about that Frankie boy, then? He's not rich, but he has two hands. He can work! Handsome, too. Black hair, blue eyes, why, you two would have beautiful children." Said Aggie.

Those words made Joe's stomach turn. He had heard that one before.

"Frankie's hair isn't black, mother," Susie gagged, "he's just dirty."

Aggie Wilkins was nearing the mattress, and Susie hovered nervously over her shoulder as she did so.

"Well if those are your only two options, we'll just have to find you someone better." Aggie said.

She was just about to touch the mattress when the breakfast bell rang, and both Susie and Joe breathed a sigh of relief at the sound. Susie's secret was safe for now.

When Aggie finally left for the dining room, Joe emerged from hiding.

"I don't understand why she doesn't let you have the Luminal." He said.

"Because it's not really about helping me." Said Susie. "Think about it. If they really cared about my safety, they would have put me in a first floor bedroom so I wouldn't have to climb a bunch of stairs to get to breakfast. And if taking my bathroom door really helped, they would have already done it by now."

Joe stepped from the cage into Susie's waiting hands.

"Then what is it really about?" He asked.

"I don't know." She said. "They're scared, I think. Scared of losing control. Why, if I had my way, I would have a nice first floor apartment, with a lady roommate or a neighbour who could check in on me. Maybe someone older who isn't up long into the night. Then I could actually sleep. I'd get lots of rest and take my Luminal and eat right and--and maybe write for the paper. I wouldn't have to worry about-"

"SUUUUUUSIIIIE! HURRY UP! BREAKFAST IS GETTING COLD!"

Aggie's voice rang from downstairs and shook the whole house, causing Susie's hands to flinch. Joe lurched upwards with them.

"Coming, mother!" She shouted.

Susie ventured to the staircase and stopped. She looked down at it as if it was a pool of deep water.

"Whatever the reason is, none of this is doing either of us any good." She sighed.

-

The most demeaning thing Joe had to do in a day was sing the greeting song at breakfast:

"Good morning to you,

Good morning to you,

Good morning dear humans,

Good morning to you."

The marigolds in the window box looked on as he sang, and each day when he was done Walter clapped and opened the gilded cage. Only then did the wait staff serve him breakfast. Joe had expressed dismay at the way the song used the word humans to Walter early on, and the man had assured him that the lyrics were merely a historical vestige from a more unenlightened age in history, and that they said nothing about Joe as a person.

Joe didn't buy it for a second.

"Do you think today will be the day?" Walter asked him.

The giant was reading through the paper as the rest of the family sat down to breakfast.

"Maybe. I mean, it's almost finished." Joe said.

The two were talking about a painting Joe was making for Walter. It was a full-scale production of the thumbnail he had drawn during his first night in London. Joe had been working painstakingly for three months to bring it to life.

London, Ontario didn't have much of an art scene at the moment, but it wasn't stopping Walter Wilkins from attempting to open an art gallery of London's own. Walter was a man of many talents, after all, with a spanning investment portfolio. He owned shares in entertainment companies, movie studios, art dealerships and even pharmaceutical corporations. If it existed, Walter had some sway over it, and so he had set about gathering a bunch of artists together to contribute to the opening of the gallery.

Joe Piccoli was one of those artists.

"Think of how this could benefit miniature-kind!" Walter had said once. "It will help the world to understand that miniatures are not imbeciles. That they are capable as anyone else of art and culture."

Joe was thinking about this very thing as he ate his breakfast and drank his first glass of wine of the day.

He also took this moment to light up his first cigarette.

Joe had only been to one art gallery, and he had not appreciated how the miniature art there had been treated. It had been oversimplified, distorted, and gawked at rather than appreciated for what it was. Joe had only agreed to have his art shown on the condition that an entire gallery wall was dedicated to his most important piece. The rest of the empty space was itself a part of the artwork. It helped suck the viewer into the tiny scene of carnage before them and encourage them to contemplate what was not there, what the world was not showing them, what horrors people were not talking about... or so Joe hoped.

The rest of his art, his various thumbnails and portraits and sketches which he did not consider to be as good, would be displayed on the adjacent wall.

"I have a good feeling today will be the day. Once it's finished, just say the word and we'll host the opening reception." Walter said.

He flipped the paper to the section on stocks.

"Sure thing, Walt." Joe said.

Joe had no idea that by the end of the day he would wish the painting never existed at all.

-

Joe was two wines into the day when he joined Walter downstairs in a room that served exclusively as an art studio. Walter himself wasn't an artist, but as a part-time art dealer, Joe gave him more credit than he would most people. Joe would paint, and meanwhile Walter would sort through the submissions they had received for the gallery.

It was odd, Joe thought, that he was spending much more time with Walter these days than he was Susie. He tried to put it out if his mind and focused instead on painting delicate strands of hair on a nude figure.

"Look at this." Walter said from across the room. "Submitted by Evelyn Tucker, age seventy-one. What do you think of it?"

Joe's ears perked up at the name. He lowered his brush and looked over from where he stood on a side table to see that Walter was holding up one of Ms. Tucker's latest landscape paintings. It was an impressionistic scene of a garden filled with flowers. She had taken great care to highlight where the sunlight hit the petals.

He remembered the first time he saw Ms. Tucker back at Withrow park in Toronto. The painting was achingly beautiful to him and filled him with a sense of homesickness for a place that never was.

"Oh, Walter, I think that one’s -"

"Ugly, isn't it?" Walter cut Joe off before he could finish. "Impressionism. Impasto! Such a dated technique!"

Joe's heart sank as Walter tossed it aside as though it were garbage. Then the giant ventured over to the easel Joe was working on. The artwork itself wasn’t very large in comparison to Walter, but the canvas was taller than Joe was.

"It's not nearly as good as your art. Nothing will ever be as good as your art." Walter said.

Joe gulped and nodded. Something about Walter’s constant stream of compliments left him uneasy. He turned his attention back to the canvas.

He didn't understand what it was that set his art apart from Evie's. Joe had used impasto strokes of his own in many of his paintings. In the painting he was working on, the one of the tinies falling from a burning building, he had taken great care to make the figures look dubiously human in a very visceral way using broad brushstrokes. The only thing that truly set his and Evie's works apart was the fact that Evie's painting was a happy one and Joe's was not.

He lowered his brush and stood back to study his work.

"Have you thought of a title?" Asked Walter.

"I don't think I want one." Joe said.

"Oh, please, it has to have a title! It's a gallery requirement!" Said Walter.

Joe really didn't want the work to have a title. The lack of one made a point in and of itself: there were no words to describe the horrors he had seen during the fire at Tiny Town. Who would he be to debase a painting of the scene with a name?

"Walter, I..."

"Walt." Walter corrected him. “If you must be formal, Uncle Walt is fine. We’re family, after all.”

Joe threw up a little bit in his mouth. It was just the wine, he told himself.

"…right. Walt. I think it's better without one. Could we at least call it Untitled or something?" Joe said.

Walter looked at him in disbelief.

"Untitled!? For a work this incredible! Nonsense. Please, I insist, it must have a title." He protested.

Joe sighed and looked back at the canvas. The entire finished painting was only about the size of a postcard to a giant, but somehow, if it were given a title, it would feel much smaller than that, and much less significant, too.

"July 18, 1926. That's the title." Joe finally said.

"Really?" Walter sounded taken aback.

"Yes, Walt. Really." Joe repeated.

"Right, well, you're the artist I suppose." Walter said dismissively. "I'm sure you have your reasons."

Joe hung his head before the canvas. He wished Walter cared to ask what his reasons were. Walter, ever chipper, went back to the spot where he had been sorting gallery submissions.

"I have just one more thing to ask of you Mr. Piccoli, and I do apologize for it." Walter said.

Nothing could have prepared Joe for what was coming next.

"What is it?" Asked Joe.

Walter reached for a wine bottle nearby and went to pour himself a glass.

"I need you to paint clothes on the tinies." He said.

The statement hit Joe like a shoe to the temple. His blood was beginning to boil. It was useless asking questions, Joe knew this, but it didn't stop him from trying.

"What!? Why!?" He exclaimed, though he could already hazard a guess.

Walter looked up from nosing his wine.

"Because if you have nude figures in your painting, people may get the wrong idea. They may think you're trying to sexualize a tragedy." Walter explained.

Joe screwed up his face in pure bewilderment and looked back at the canvas. Sexualize a tragedy? There was nothing remotely sexual about the burning figures Joe had painted, at least not in his mind. If some other soul out there did have lewd thoughts about it, that was nothing Joe could control. The last thing he wanted to do was change his art for the sake of modesty.

"Walt, there's a point to the nude figures." Joe said. "There's a point to everything in the painting. It's not supposed to be indecent, it's supposed to show that they're vulnerable. Hurt. Scared. You can see the burns on some of them, Walt. It's supposed to be alarming to people."

"Yes, well, that's all well and good." Walter said, and he spoke with such disinterest that he may as well have been filing his nails at the same time. "That doesn't change the fact that there are disgusting people out there who may take away the wrong thing from it, Joe. Why, the respectable sorts of the world may argue that you're romanticizing things that ought not to be romanticized."

Romanticizing. How was it possible for Joe, who had lived through the tragedy himself, to romanticize the deaths of his fellow miniatures that he had seen with his own eyes?

"You're a brilliant artist, Mr. Piccoli." Walter continued. "I'm sure you could make clothed figures look just as good as nude ones. You want it to be shown, don't you?"

Joe had never felt so helpless. Even in the snatchers' den he had felt more hope than this. Yes, Joe did want it to be shown. He desperately wanted to show the world how he felt. To get them to think more about people like him. To get them to respect them as people rather than treat them as things.

It seemed that in order to do that, Joe had no other choice but to allow himself to be treated like a thing in some twisted form of sacrifice.

"Okay, Walt. Whatever you say." Joe sighed.

He picked up his brush and kept painting.

"More wine, Mr. Piccoli?"

-

His fourth wine and second cigarette of the day began around noon, and this was the time of day where Joe was almost able to be at ease. Aggie left for lunch with her friends at this hour, and Walter retreated to his office to do business. This left him alone with Susie, who was regularly dying of boredom, and during this time she devised all sorts of plans to keep the both of them entertained.

Today she was building a walkway for him in her room out of an old shelf, spare scraps of wood, and some glue.

"I remember these from Castle Hill." Joe said.

For the first time in a very long time he felt excited for something. He had secretly wanted some walkways of his own ever since his visit to Castle Hill, but he had felt too foolish to ask Herman for them. He knew what the giant would say: it would be bad for business and tip off the patients that a tiny was present.

Susie ventured to her desk drawer and pulled out some jars of paint.

"What colour should we paint it?" She asked him.

Joe's eye lingered on the purple one. It was a colour Joe hadn't looked at twice in ages while panting, let alone used. He loved it all the same, however, and if he had to have a walkway in any colour he knew it would be that one.

"Purple." He said.

"That one? Really? They say it's for girls now, you know." She said.

Purple to Joe was an everyone colour, and more than that, it was an expression of pure, unadulterated joy. After months of tolerating the Wilkins household Joe needed that joy more desperately than he needed cigarettes, or alcohol, or air.

What a relief it would be to have a purple walkway. To be able to move around the room as he liked, on something in a colour that he liked. It was a trivial thing that giants and other miniatures alike would laugh at him for being happy about, but to Joe, having a walkway of his own was tantamount to saying I’m here, I exist, and I matter.

"Yeah, well, I don't care about that. It'll match the bedsheets." He said.

Susie smiled and started painting away, but the fun was cut short when a door closed downstairs.

"SUUUUUUSIIIIE! GET DOWN HERE FOR A MINUTE! NORA WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!" Aggie hollered.

Susie rolled her eyes.

"More marriage nonsense. Hold on, Joe. I'll be back in a jiffy."

Susie hopped up and turned down the hall, leaving Joe standing alone on the half-painted walkway. He took his own paintbrush from his pocket and painted in her stead, and he was just trying to decide what colour to make the hand rails when a voice from the doorway distracted him.

"What's this?" Asked Walter.

Something about his tone of voice filled Joe with dread. He turned to Walter and tried to keep himself from grimacing.

"It's a walkway. Susie made it for me. Isn't it neat? Now I can get up and down from the cage to the desk whenever I want." The words tumbled out of his mouth as quickly as they possibly could before Walter voiced his anticipated dissent.

Walter stroked his chin and studied the walkway carefully.

"A purple walkway?" He said.

"Yes, Walt. I like it, don't you?" He said swiftly. "It makes life easier, and more comfortable. And the colour makes me happy."

Walter slid his hands into his pockets and sighed.

"Joe..." he began, "...don't you know better than to treat your size like a toy?"

Joe was lost for words.

"I... what?" He said.

"A purple walkway!" Walter stressed. "It's like something out of a dollhouse! Why, if other giants saw you walking around on that, they might get the wrong idea. They might think you are a toy, and think to play with you. Don't you understand? And the nicer giants who wouldn't manhandle you would hardly find such a thing respectable. Why, even other miniatures would find this in poor taste!"

Joe could feel his heartrate rising. He wished he could run away somewhere, anywhere from here.

"I... yes, Mr. Wilkins-"

"Walt."

Joe cleared his throat and tried again.

"Yes, Walt, I know that. I know that some giants might get the wrong idea, but I can't control how they react to me. If they're gonna treat me like a toy, then they'll find some other reason to do it anyways.” He stammered. “And why is it on me to prove myself respectable!? Why can’t people just treat me with respect no matter what I do?"

Walter towered over him and jabbed a finger down at him as if in condemnation.

"It is on you to be respectful." He said with scorn. "In this house, we respect miniatures. Don't insult yourself with these vapid, stupid little things, Joe. You must treat yourself seriously, my dear boy.”

Joe, who was going on twenty-six years old and not at all a boy, looked at his shoes as Walter lectured him.

“There are far more dignified ways to get around.” Walter said. “You could walk on the ground, or talk to the staff, or have Susie carry you. I will not tolerate nonsense like this in my home. We haven't a single dollhouse on the premises, you know."

There it was – my home. So this wasn't really Joe's home. This was yet another giant home that Joe also happened to exist in. Just like that, Walter's entire façade of decency shattered before his very eyes.

It was not really about respecting miniatures, Joe knew, for if Mr. Wilkins truly respected them he would not be speaking to Joe as he was. It was about preserving the comfort of the giants in a world where there existed stringent ideas about how miniatures ought to be and how they ought to behave. Ensnared by their perceptions, Joe was left at an impasse. If he treated his existence as something gravely serious and grim as Mr. Wilkins suggested, then he risked inspiring fear in the giants who considered him a pest and vermin. If he took a lighter approach, in which he humanized himself and surrounded himself with simple joys - like his purple walkway - he risked being considered undignified and disrespectful by the giants who insisted they cared so very much about respecting his dignity.

Finally it dawned on Joe what this was really about: it was really about controlling his behaviour, just as Walter and Aggie controlled Susie’s behaviour. It was about cleaving him down into something more simplistic and more inhuman than he was in order to make him into a twisted spectacle who existed more for the pleasure of the giants than for his own. About forcing him to conform to an image that the giants had decided for him at the cost of his very real and very human right to joy. And that joy, Joe knew, was joy that he had fought hard for with gritted teeth and bloodied knuckles. To allow Mr. Wilkins to rob him of it seemed downright sinful.

"Walt," Joe began, masking his festering irritation, "I'm not trying to argue with you. I don't even want to fight. I just want to live in a way that makes me comfortable. I know what some giants and tinies might say about it, but I'm not those people, I'm me. You said this was my house too when we met. Shouldn't it be my business?"

"Nonsense!" The giant said with his nose in the air. "Miniaturism," he began, using a term he had doubtlessly invented, "is a serious condition! Why, there are real miniatures out there who don't lead such a cushy life as you do and I won't stand for you disrespecting them by treating yourself like some cheap dollhouse accessory!"

Joe couldn't quite parse what Walt meant by real miniatures at first. What was Joe, then, in the eyes of Mr. Wilkins? A fake miniature? Then it dawned on him: Walter was talking about wild tinies. Wild tinies like the very sort Joe had been for a period of over ten years. An experience that he had no way of proving to Walter that he had actually endured. There was nothing more dehumanizing than being robbed of the reality of his own experiences, and as he stood before Walter he felt less human than he had ever felt before.

He looked from Walter to the walkway, and soon found that he couldn't even find the strength to argue. Even if he tried, he knew he wouldn't win. It didn't matter how long Joe had lived in the wild. It didn't matter that he himself had been assaulted, trapped, and tormented by giants and miniatures in equal measure. It didn't even matter that he had arrived at the Wilkins house covered in bruises.

Walter's comfort was what mattered. Walter's superficial righteousness was what mattered. Walter's ability to speak over Joe was what mattered - not Joe's own comfort. He could have any colour of walkway he wanted, as long as it was no walkway at all. He could live any way he liked to, as long as he framed his so-called condition in a way that was palatably miserable to the giants.

If anyone was treating miniaturism like a toy, Joe reasoned, it was Walter Wilkins.

He set the paintbrush down.

"Okay, Walt. I'll do that. I'll walk on the ground or have Susie carry me instead." Joe said.

He didn't even make eye contact with him. He was too angry to.

"Thank you. Take this silly thing down, will you?" Walter spat with disdain, as though Joe had personally insulted him.

As Walter carried on down the hall, all Joe could think was,

I knew it.

As the red flag billowed freely in the wind, he could tell that it was only a matter of time before he ended up trapped again. He could only hope that he finished his magnum opus before it happened.

-

"He won't let you have your own walkway!?" Susie exclaimed.

Joe shook his head and gripped his hands behind his back. He feared if he didn't clutch them together he might punch something.

"He says we're not allowed to have any dollhouse stuff in the house. Out of respect for miniatures... whatever that means." Joe replied.

To his surprise, Susie snorted and then began laughing. She pried the walkway from the wall and set it on the desk.

"Oh, uncle Walt is definitely lying about that. There's a dollhouse up in the attic. I used to play with it every time I visited at Christmas." She said.

"Really!?" He exclaimed.

Joe lowered his head and looked both ways before adding,

"Can you show it to me?"

Curiosity was burning inside of him now. He needed to see it for himself. He needed visual proof that Walter was lying.

"Well... Walt might be in his office, and it's not safe for me to go up there." Said Susie. "But then again, it's not safe for me to go downstairs, either..."

"Don't worry about it." Joe said. "If you show me where the attic is I'll find my own way up."

He hopped onto her hand and soon they were off down the halls.

-

They had been lucky. Walter had stepped out of his office for lunch, and Susie had easily been able to pull the hatch to the attic open. Joe had then clambered up the string on the hatch and swung his way up through the opening.

When Joe arrived in the attic, he was met with something that was a little bit like a scene out of a fairytale. As his footprints traced through the layer of dust on the attic floor a ray of sunlight filled the room. It bathed everything in a mystical light, and right in the center of that circle of light was the largest dollhouse Joe had ever seen. It was blue and white and beautiful, and as he approached it he saw that every shingle on the roof and every paper flower in the window planters had been carefully considered by the creator. It looked more like the work of a miniature than that of a giant.

He gripped the golden doorknob and to his delight the front door opened without resistance. He ventured through bedrooms and kitchens and bathrooms and parlours, all of them perfectly scaled to his size. It was nothing like living among the giants, but nothing like any borrower's den either, or even Tiny Town for that matter. This home, with its glistening wallpaper and fine upholstering, had been painstakingly made with love.

This wasn't just a dollhouse to Joe. This was something else. This was art.

He went through every single room, up every single staircase and down every single hallway, until he reached the back door. Counting them, there were exactly thirty-one rooms in total, and Joe didn’t want to leave a single one of them.

Curiosity eventually drove him outside. Reluctantly he exited the back door and circled the premises, still stricken with wonder, until something out of the corner of his eye stopped him.

It was writing along the foundation that looked almost like graffiti. He stooped down to get a closer look, and what he saw blew his mind.

Designed and built by architect L. Burroton, 1912 read the black paint along the foundation.

Lorraine really had lived here, too. In a dollhouse no less. Seeing her name filled Joe with a sense of renewed hope. She had escaped Walter. So could Susie - so could he.

Frantic knocking on the attic hatch distracted him from his thoughts. He sprinted over to it and climbed into the crack of light where Susie was holding it open.

"Walt's coming back to his office." She whispered.

He leapt into her hand and she pushed the hatch shut. Walter's footsteps echoed through the hallway all the while, and Susie kept low and hid around the corner as he sat back down and placed a call to a business partner.

When she crept past the open doorway Joe wasn’t paying attention at first. Then something Walter said stood out to him.

"I'll need something ghostwritten for me. A speech and an artist's statement. Something along the lines of... the art of Mr. Piccoli draws great attention to the plight of the miniatures, reminding us all of how hopeless their fight for autonomy really is... only worded more tactfully."

Susie stopped and crouched by the radiator just outside of the office door.

"He’s talking about you." She gasped.

Joe held up a hand to shush her and kept listening.

"Yes, make it sound nice and marketable, but keep the underlying message intact. Oh yes, they are imbeciles my good man. Truly incapable of governing themselves. Tiny Town taught us that much! I'm sure the reception tomorrow will do well to convince the public of that. They'll look at that painting and think, so this is what happens when we let the tinies get out of control."

Walter threw back his head and laughed at whatever the ghostwriter said in response. Susie looked down at Joe, her eyes wide with panic.

"Hopefully tomorrow if I can get the little idiot to finish the damn thing. It's taken him months. I don't know what the problem is. Yes... yes, very good. I look forward to receiving it."

Susie darted down the hall to her room at the sound of the receiver falling. Meanwhile Joe sat comatose in her hands and wished he had another wine.

"Did you hear that?" She said to him. "Did you hear what he's going to do?"

Joe stared at his knees.

"Yeah. I heard." He replied.

"Joe, you can't let him do that!" She said. "Why, if I were you, I'd take some black paint and just--throw it all over the canvas, or tear it up or something. Are you listening, Joe?"

He was trying to. There were too many things going on inside of his head at once to focus.

"...if I do that, what do you think he'll do to me?" He finally asked her.

Back inside the relative safety of the doorless bedroom, Susie coaxed Joe into stepping from her hands onto the desk and then sat down on her bed to face him.

"I don't know, Joe. It's scary. You're right. But if we don't do something, he'll just make it worse, won't he?"

"I hope not, Susie." Said Joe. "I really hope not."

-

"So, did you have an artist's statement in mind?" Asked Walter.

By Joe's sixth wine and fourth cigarette of the day, he was back to painting with Walter. His stomach twisted and turned as he thought about what Walter had said earlier. Had Joe not been born a borrower he would have ran his mouth right then and there, but even with six wines in him he knew better than that. His old instincts kicked in, the old leash of self-control pulled tight around his mind, and he shut down instead.

Disdainfully he painted the final stroke on the last clothed figure, then turned to his other works which were still drying.

"I don't know." He lied. "Something about being nice to miniatures and treating 'em like people.”

He carefully examined the fake smile that spread across Walter's face.

"Excellent! See, you remembered what I told you about respect! If you don't know what to say I could provide one for you." Said Walter.

The irony of that statement.

Joe had never understood how deeply he could hate someone before that moment. Still, he bit his tongue until it bled and kept ghostly quiet. He turned to his other works instead and tried to decide if any of them were even worth working on.

There was a re-do of his sad circus elephant, a series of self-portraits in various sizes that became more abstracted the smaller they got, and a painting of a giant - who looked a little too much like Herman for comfort - wading through a swamp at twilight.

None of them inspired him.

"Once it's done being shown in the gallery, I'll send it off to the printing press." Walt added.

Joe hadn’t thought it possible for his face to fall any further, yet somehow it did.

"...printing press?"

He stared ahead, dumbfounded.

"It's a big machine that they use to reproduce art." Walter explained. "I signed you on to a contract with some friends at Canada Post. They want your painting mass produced as a postcard."

When this news hit him the strength drained from every single muscle in Joe's body.

"I... yes, Walt, I know what a printing press is. We borrowers have books and stuff of our own. I--I just... I--I--"

The paint brush slid out of Joe's hand and landed by his feet.

Walter chuckled affectionately.

"You're excited, aren't you? You ought to be! Your art deserves to be enjoyed by the masses, wouldn't you say?"

Joe looked from Walter to the painting, utterly sickened with what was happening.

"No, Walt, I wouldn't say that. I don't want my art put into a machine! I didn't intend for that, I-I mean look here!"

Joe strode to the side of the canvas and hovered a finger over the fine brush strokes on a woman's broken string of pearls.

"A machine's not gonna be able to reproduce that. If you print it out from a machine, you won't even be able to see their faces! And--and that's not even getting into why I painted it in the first place!"

He turned to look up at Walter. The man's eyes were boring into him and they looked empty as a pair of black holes. His eyes started wandering from Walter to the easel to the black paint on his palette. He wanted to destroy the painting right then and there.

He moved for the paint brush.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Walter cried.

Joe jumped and stumbled over backwards as Walter thumped his fist on the table. The giant leaned over him like a vulture.

"Do you know how privileged you are to even be able to produce art like this?” Walter asked him. “Not everybody can paint like you, you know. More still cannot afford to come all the way out to the gallery to see the real thing. Don't those people deserve art too? To keep this work locked up in a gallery is to be a proponent of the de-culturing of America and I won't hear it!"

"But-but this is Canada..." Joe stuttered.

"Same difference." Walter snarled, and threw back the last of his wine. "Your work is going into the gallery tomorrow and then it's off to the printmaker's. End of story."

Before Joe could even process what was happening Walter grabbed him and threw him back in the gilded cage, then latched the door. With his heart hammering in terror, all Joe could do as he was marched back upstairs to Susie's room was sit and think.

The machine itself wasn't the problem. Bringing art to the masses wasn't, either. It was the disrespect of Joe's personal wishes that was the issue at hand; the degradation of his personal autonomy. Walter had not asked before agreeing to put Joe's work through a printing press, and in doing so he had robbed him of his right to say no. He had done it quite thoughtlessly, too, for Joe's art wasn't a privilege that society had bestowed upon him, it was the end result of years of hard work and study. Throughout those years he had learned important principles for creating small-scale art that no piece of giant machinery could replicate well. Further, he had put heart and soul and meaning into the painting that could not be fully understood when divorced from its intended context.

Joe’s painting, on a fundamental level, was a work about dehumanization. It showed the consequences of what happened when people were reduced to things. The empty wall with the single, tiny, gruesome painting on it said something in a way that a mass-produced postcard could not. To put it on such a thing at all would be gauche by Joe’s standards. Now even Joe's art had been reduced to a thing, a commodity, something to be bought and sold just as he himself was.

Art had been the only thing that had kept him going in the cold of the cage, and now he had been stripped of even that.

"Light's out, Susie." Said Walt as he hung Joe's cage on the stand by the desk.

Susie looked up from her writing. She didn't break eye contact with Walter as her hands slipped the paper she was writing on underneath a blank sheet.

"Yes, uncle Walt." She said.

Walter flicked out the light and left, and when Susie's eyes fell on Joe he could already sense that she knew something had happened. It was plainly obvious from the way he sat there and shook. He felt like he had nothing. Like he was nothing. The only thing that brought him some semblance of joy had been stripped away from him and twisted into something it ought not to be. His head fell into his hands. How deeply he regretted ever coming to this place or putting pencil to paper. He wished he could run the entire painting out of existence, yet all he had done when he had the chance to was paint clothes on the tinies as Walter had insisted.

"Joe? Are you okay?" She whispered to him.

He looked up at her as she unlatched the cage.

"Walter’s putting my paintings in the gallery tomorrow." Joe said.

It was all Susie needed to know.

“Oh Joe, I’m so sorry.” She said.

She turned towards the mattress.

Joe sighed. He wasn't looking forward to being taken into that gallery tomorrow.

"Susie I... I think you're right. I think we need to destroy that painting." He said. "Walt said we're setting up the reception tomorrow morning. That should be a good time to do it. Could you help me?"

"Of course." She said. "But... what happens if he gets mad at us?"

Joe hadn't thought that far, though by now it was hard to care.

"I don't know." He admitted. "Does it matter at this point? You’re right. He shouldn't be allowed to treat us this way."

Susie ran her fingers over the suit jacket that she held bundled in her arms.

"...I wrote a letter." She said. "To Harry. I think I have enough to pay for a room in Toronto so I'm going to see if he can take us to one. I'm going to sneak out tonight and put it in the mail slot at the post office. You won't be upset, will you? I didn’t tell him you’re here."

Joe, to his surprise, found that he wasn't upset. If anything he was hopeful. He didn't trust Harry, but now he trusted Walter even less. Both giants were devils he knew by this point, and although Joe was notoriously unlucky at betting, he knew where to place his odds.

"Susie, right now I'll take help from a trained monkey." He said.

That got a laugh out of her from inside the bathroom.

"I'm sure he's more capable than that." She assured him.

When she emerged, she folded the letter on the desk into an envelope and scribbled down Harry's address, then opened the window and pulled out the screen. Carefully she tucked the letter into her inside pocket, then sat on the ledge and swung her legs into the outside world.

"Good luck." Joe whispered. "Don't get ca-

Joe had barely uttered the word caught when an angry voice bellowed from the doorway.

"SUUUUUUSAAAAAN GERALDIIIIIINE WILKIIIIIIINS!" Boomed an enraged Aggie, "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?"

With the flick of a switch the room was doused in light.

This kicked off a showdown that rivaled that of any cowboy movie.

Susie glared at her mother.

Susie’s mother glared back at her.

Joe sat caged between them with his heart frozen in terror and his eyes locked with Susie’s.

"Susie. Run." He said.

When Susie met her mother’s gaze, her face didn't even twitch.

"You can go ahead and take away my bathroom door, mother. I won't need it anyways." She said.

Susie had barely finished speaking when Aggie barreled towards her.

"SUSIE, RUN!" Joe shouted.

He leapt against the bars as the floor shook under Aggie's footsteps.

A split second before Aggie could catch her Susie disappeared out the window. Aggie, clad only in a bathrobe and slippers, pounded her fists on the window sill and then turned to Joe.

"You." She snarled. "YOU did this. This is YOUR fault!"

Joe slid down to the cage floor and backed up against the bars as Aggie stomped straight in his direction.

Her hand shot towards the door of the cage, only for another hand to stop it.

"Now now, Aggie, what's all this?" Said Walter. "What's going on?"

He latched the cage shut.

"She's gone! Susie's gone!" Aggie whined. "Call the police! Call the poliiiiiiiice!"

"Easy now, easy. We'll call them right away. I'll take care of everything." Walter patted her on the back, and guided her out of the doorway.

His expression grew blank when he returned to the side of Joe’s cage.

"You. Explain yourself. Right now." He ordered.

Joe rose up and stared the giant down. He didn't make a peep. Seeing this, Walter leaned down to his level and his tone lightened as if he were speaking to a small child.

"Now Joe, you're not in trouble. All you need to do is tell me where Susie went." He said.

Joe watched, disgusted, as Walter pulled something rectangular from his pocket.

"Here, I'll give you some chocolate if you tell me. What do you say?"

Joe would do no such thing, for the snatchers' lair had taught him well. He returned Walter's blank stare and slouched against the bars of the cage with as much attitude as he could muster.

Walter chuckled.

"Fine, then. I can wait. Been a while since I had to use this…"

From his pocket Walter produced a little golden chain with a cuff and some pliers. The second Walter opened the cage to put it on him Joe tried to bolt, but with the speed and precision of a falcon Walter snatched Joe up, then clamped the cuff around his leg. To Joe’s horror he heard a clicking sound, as though it had locked into place. When it was good and tight Walter threw him back inside and wound the chain through the cage bars, then attached it to the ring at the top. To add insult to injury he then produced a little golden lock to go with it, shut the cage door, and locked Joe inside.

The giant watched in delight with a vacant smile on his face as Joe tried to get to the door, only to be stopped by the chain.

"Wouldn't want you to go running off now, would we?" He laughed. "I'll let you out when you're good and ready to talk to me."

With everything said and done, the giant turned his attention back to Aggie, who was storming around in the background and mobilizing every servant in the house to go on the hunt for Susie. Walter switched the light off and that was that.

As Joe sat chained to the gilded cage, he found to his surprise that his dignity was still sitting there with him. It remained in spite of every attempt Walter had made to strip him of it and burned inside him like a candle in a stretch of deep darkness. That was the night when Joe realized that his dignity was not something that could be sacrificed, not really - it was a self-defined subjective truth like justice or passion or love, something that came part and parcel with Joe's very sense of subjectivity.

Tomorrow he would take that dignity and stand tall before the altar of petdom. He would go to that reception. He would cordially greet all the guests hoping to gawk at him like a sideshow curiosity. He would listen to Walter's insulting speech.

Then, when the time was right, he would take that little candle inside him and use it to burn the whole thing down.

All he had to do was find a way to reach those hinges.

Read the next part here (lmao finally)!

[fireflywritesgt]

Welcome Home

Part 47 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here. Local sad man has trust issues. You love to see it.

Joe could barely parse what was happening as he was tossed about inside of the box. Flashes of branches and grass and river and mud filled the view from the box’s air holes on the rare chance Joe was able to catch a glimpse out of them at all. He was more interested in keeping his neck unbroken, which was easier said than done when the ribbon stood to cut off his circulation any time he braced himself for impact.

Then the chaos stopped just as suddenly as it had started and all Joe saw was a dirt road. Echoing between the cardboard walls was the sound of Frankie, huffing and puffing and triumphantly laughing as he stumbled on his merry way. Joe could tell by the way he periodically slowed his pace that he was constantly looking over his shoulder for Herman.

He tried to piece together what he saw. First there was Herman's right hand, which came into view when the giant had stepped through the doorway. He would recognize that hand anywhere in the world, no matter the circumstances. Then there was the strange exchange with Lessard about running from the police, then a long silence followed by crashing and banging and screaming. Then followed an entire pack of dogs, chasing down Lessard who was now bloodied and terrified. Shortly after that Frankie grabbed the box.

Frankie grabbed the box, and in that moment over the sound of Romeo's incessant snarling Joe had seen a pair of tiny shoes, standing in Herman's hands, which were covered in blood. He had made the mistake of paying more attention to the dog than to the words that were being exchanged – something about Frankie’s boss. Joe didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out.

Herman was trying to save him. That was what the knowledge in his gut told him. Knowing something and believing it were two different things, however. Despite all of Herman's good intentions, Joe couldn't quell the mortal terror that had arisen in him at the sight of those hands. It wasn't reason, but instinct that commanded him, and instinct told him to run far away and never let that giant find him again.

It occurred to him in that moment that he didn't want Herman anymore. He wanted to make his art and to be left well enough alone by everyone and everything. Herman had failed him. His trust had been broken. There was nothing either of them could do to change it. No, what Joe wanted was for Herman to travel back in time and make it so the hurt had never happened, but even if Herman found some magical way to un-fail him, where the rest of the world was concerned he would always be the human, and Joe would always be the tiny - or perhaps the miniature if they were being nice about it. It wasn't enough for Herman to save him, he told himself, it wasn't enough for the man to brave a fire or beat Lessard or risk life and limb for Joe's sake.

Society simply wasn’t ready for someone like him to be with someone like Herman.

True personhood was too much for Joe to ask for, but he longed for it all the same. He could not have true personhood and be with Herman at the same time - that much he was sure of. He would see this new place, he decided. If Herman found him there, then he found him, and Joe would tell him everything on his mind and then kindly bid him good day. If he didn't, that was no skin off of Joe's nose. He would be treated like a thing all the same no matter which giant had him.

If he stayed in the pet trade and was especially lucky, he might even find his brother.

It would be no easy journey, of course. Joe was absolutely parched and the July heat had turned the box into an oven. He writhed and stretched as seconds turned into minutes and then hours, unsure if he would even make it to his destination alive. He busied himself by chewing on the ribbon that had been tied around his mouth, and while he struggled to tear through it, he was able to stretch the fabric out enough that he could luckily breathe.

It was only a matter of time before Frankie caught on.

“Hey! What’re you doing in there? You better not be ruining that ribbon. I worked hard on that!” He warned him.

Joe didn’t listen. He kept working away as Frankie trudged on, putting one miserable foot in front of the other. As one hour became two he began to count the grains of dust on the road as they rolled past the air holes. It seemed as though Frankie had been walking forever.

Joe knew what a journey like this was like, and if there was one thing he could be thankful for, it was the fact that he wasn’t the one who had to walk it.

Herman was long gone by the time the ribbon was worn enough for Joe to be able to speak. He tried his best not to, but as time tiptoed on boredom eventually got the best of him. There were too many questions on Joe’s mind, and all of them involved Lorenzo in some form or another. All of them in their most distilled form were reducible to only one question: why?

Money, he knew. It all had to come down to money – but why that?

“How much do you get paid for this?” Joe asked.

When the question slipped from his mouth he braced himself for Frankie’s ire. It never came.

“Well, you’re going for three hundred, so normally I get somewhere around ninety-nine cents,” Frankie said, as if he were matter-of-factly discussing grocery prices, “but now that my boss is outta the picture, I guess I get the whole three hundred for myself.”

Frankie sounded rather proud of himself, but the number sounded low to Joe after his foray into Tiny Town.

“What do you need three hundred dollars for?”

Joe wrestled with the ribbon as he asked his next question. His back and shoulders hurt too much to allow him to contort himself very far, and whenever he tried the ribbon tightened around the base of his neck and threatened to strangle him.

“So I can buy a gun.” Said Frankie.

Joe was taken aback by the boy’s answer. He knew very little about guns, but he did understand that they were bad things that giants used to kill other things.

The sound of automobiles puttering by grew louder in the distance.

“What do you need a gun for? Why don’t you get some chocolate or some nice clothes?” Asked Joe.

Frankie, much to Joe’s surprise, only laughed at him in response.

“So I can rob a bank.” He said. “Then I’ll get more money, and that’s when I’ll get chocolate and clothes. You gotta think ahead.”

Joe grimaced as the ribbon tightened around his neck again. He had stretched his legs out which had only made it worse.

“Can’t you just find a real job? I’m sure there’s someone out there who’d wanna hire you. Someone nicer than that Lessard guy.” Joe said.

There had to be in Joe’s world. A giant had hired him of all people, after all. If there was hope for him, then surely there should be hope for Frankie. Then again, things hadn’t exactly ended well with the CPSO.

“You think I haven’t tried that!?” Frankie snapped. “Nobody wants to hire me. I’m not strong, I’m not smart, I’m not handsome, I got a shit name. I can barely read. What decent person is gonna wanna hire me?”

Joe’s mind wandered back to the tinies in the cages and he realized that if Frankie himself were ever sorted into one, he would likely end up in the very same Low Value cage he was putting other people in. It was like looking into a mirror in some strange way. Joe could hear the boy’s stomach growling from where he was sitting all the way in the box, and he could easily imagine someone like Frankie fitting in among the other starving youth at the watchmaker’s while an earless Lessard ran the entire outfit with an iron fist.

It was a disappointing revelation to come to. Joe had thought the giants to be more enlightened than that. How funny it was that the giants who so often referred to themselves exclusively as humans weren’t remotely human towards one another.

Frankie stopped short, pulling Joe out of his reflections.

 “We’re here now. Keep your mouth shut and don’t make my job any harder than it is.” He said.

A set of rickety wooden stairs came into view through the holes in the box and Frankie began a seemingly endless climb.

Joe couldn’t stay quiet. As much as he pitied the boy he couldn’t forgive Lorenzo. For all Joe’s suffering in life he had never once turned a weapon on other people or shoved them in cages or robbed someone of his brother. The more he thought about it the angrier he got. They had faced the same brand of suffering in life, so what gave Frankie any right to add to his share of it? Why should Joe get shoved into an oven-hot box and sold like a commodity just so Frankie could move up in the world?

Evil was a choice. Often it was one that people were driven to, and when they freely allowed themselves to be driven to it, it was the people like Joe’s family who suffered. Sensing that this was his last chance to ever say anything to Frankie, Joe straightened his shoulders and took the deepest breath he could muster.

“Frankie…” Joe began, “I know nothing I say is gonna stop you. I know you’re not gonna listen. I know you’re never gonna see me as a real person… but money or no money, we all get what we’re deserving of. Mark my words, god has a sick sense of humour, and one of these days he’s gonna get you for this.”

Frankie laughed the warning off as he stopped at a door with peeling paint marked 201.

"He’ll have to catch me first, won’t he?” Said Frankie.

Joe watched through the holes in the box as Frankie knocked on the door. It swung open to reveal the corner of a girl’s blue dress.

“Oh no, not you too! Where’s Sam?” Frankie demanded.

“Frankie!?” The girl at the door exclaimed in turn.

Joe swore he had heard her voice somewhere before, though it was muffled in the confines of the box and he couldn’t place it. He felt Frankie shudder more than usual, and the boy cleared his throat nervously.

“H-here’s your doll, ma’am! That’ll be three hundred dollars.” He said.

The girl was having none of it.

“Frankie, what are you doing here!? Is this another one of your scams!?” She shouted.

“This is a perfectly legitimate delivery on behalf of Walter’s business partner.” Frankie insisted, and Joe rolled his eyes as Frankie fumbled around in one of his pockets. “See this invoice? This is the address I was given! Now will it be cash or cheque?"

When the girl at the door drew back and slapped Frankie in the face the entire box jumped into the air. Fortunately for Joe Frankie scrambled to keep hold of it and succeeded.

“Get outta here you little weasel!” Joe watched as the girl stomped her foot and took off her shoe. “And quit following me around like a creep!”

Something outside of Joe’s frame of view stopped her from throwing it.

“Now now,” said a male voice sweet and smooth as caramel, “that’s no way to treat a service-person, is it? Right on time, too, I see.”

Joe squirmed as a set of strange hands reached out and grabbed the box from Frankie. The girl retreated behind this new giant and disappeared into the house in a huff.

“Thank you, young man.” The strange giant continued. “Here’s your payment, and a tip as well for your trouble. And have a bottle of lemonade while I’m at it, fresh from the ice box. You must be sweltering in that heat!”

For a moment the box turned to face Frankie, and Joe could see that he was standing humbly in the doorway with his hands behind his back.

“No, thank you, Walter!” He said.

All Joe could do was sneer in disgust as the boy who sold him reached out to accept a bottle of lemonade and a wad of cash. He was smiling like a cat that had just eaten a canary as he counted up his money and sipped on his drink.

That smile would be etched into Joe’s memory forever.

-

Joe soon lost count of how many hours he had spent in the box. The rest of the afternoon had been a flurry of cardboard and panic, and a number of people carrying on about someplace called London. If the London they were all going to was the London he had read about in passing in newspaper clippings, which to his knowledge was far across the sea, then Joe suspected he would be trapped for a considerably long time yet. As it was, the box he was in was packed onto the back of an automobile, strapped down to a number of other boxes, and the most Joe could do was watch the land roll past, taking him ever further away from the only house he had ever truly considered home.

Herman’s house, Joe reminded himself.

Then as evening fell a funny thing happened. The automobile stopped, the people got out, and Joe was taken by Walter, the strange giant with the caramel voice, into some grand castle of a home, the likes of which was far too big for him to take in through the box’s measly air holes.

This place must be London, he reasoned.

Joe squeezed his eyes shut when the box was set down on a wooden surface in what appeared to be a bedroom. He knew that soon he would meet his buyer and he was far from ready for it. He tried to push himself into a sitting position as the box rocked about in short bursts. The giant was trying to get into it and it was a challenge to stay vertical while tied up with the ribbon.

He tried to think of something to say. He didn’t know what he could say to the kind of person who would buy another human being. Joe doubted he would even be treated like a person by this giant, let alone given a warm-

“WELCOME HOME!” Walter cried as he tore the lid of the box all the way off. “So sorry you had to join us on moving day.” He added.

Joe’s eyes watered as they were suddenly bathed in light. He didn’t want to look up. He didn’t care to greet this person.

“…oh.” Walter laughed nervously. “Looks like they went a little overboard with the wrapping. Let me get that for you, dear boy.”

Although the giant had freed him from his bindings, he still took his sweet time standing up. His limbs felt heavy. The giant, at the very least, seemed to pick up on this, and he was quite good at feigning concern. Gradually Walter began to tilt the box over.

“Are you okay?” The man continued. “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Tea?”

Joe rubbed his head and finally looked his captor in the face. He stepped forward cautiously and moved with the box as it tilted. The open lid became an open side he could walk out of, but he decided to stay put where the cardboard met the desk for a moment longer and peer out of it instead.

The man towering over him was lean but round-faced, with cheery dark eyes and a smile that never seemed to leave him. His hair was gelled back firmly to his head and he reminded Joe a little of a comic strip character; everything about his mannerisms felt slightly exaggerated and slightly choreographed. He watched as the man pulled the ribbon away with a flourish and nervously tugged at the bow with his fingers while he bent over Joe to inspect him. Then his right hand wandered to the tag on the ribbon.

“Your name is Joe, then? Joe Piccoli?” Walter asked.

Joe gave him a curt nod.

“Yeah. You’re Walter, right?” He grunted, still rubbing at his tired eyes.

“You can just call me Walt.” The giant replied, and held up his hands as if to caution him. “Just Walt, I beg you, and before I say anything further I just want you to know one thing, Joe: my home is your home.”

Joe’s brow furrowed and he tilted his head to the side. When these words hit his ears it was a little bit like the laying of a curse. Herman had never once said such a thing to him. Herman had kept him up at night with renovations and fought with him over patients and split hairs with him over the title deed. Herman’s home had never been Joe’s home; Joe had simply existed in it.

“You mean that, sir?” He said.

“Walt my dear boy, and yes, yes, of course! It’s why I adopted you.”

Adopted. It was an interesting word to use to refer to a human being someone had paid money for. Walt continued.

“My niece is very sick, you see. She has sudden fits of seizures. My brother – her father – is in hospital and I have taken her in along with her mother. She’s new to this city, and adjusting… she needs a friend, Mr. Piccoli. Someone who can comfort her and brighten her day and sing to her at night. If it isn’t too much to ask of you, I chose you to be that friend. Do you think you could do that for her?”

Joe was hesitant to say yes. He remembered what Frankie had told him about the girl. Then again, if the girl at the door was the same girl as Walt’s niece, perhaps they could bond over their shared dislike of Frankie Van Assen.

Joe nodded.

“Yes, Walt. I could do that.”

“Excellent! Wonderful! I’ll tell the wait staff to help you freshen up and then I’ll see you again at dinner.” Walt said.

The man practically skipped out of the room, leaving Joe reeling as he tried to piece together what had just happened. Before he could string a single thought together an onslaught of giants that reminded him of Geoffrey back at Castle Hill descended upon him, inspecting his clothes and his hair and his face. Once again he had clothes thrown at him – nicer ones than what the snatchers had – and with a whirl he was primped and plucked by them into looking, what he thought, was the nicest he had ever looked.

When he finally got a glimpse of himself in the mirror, it was as though he had died and become a prince.

He could get used to this.

When all was said and done, one of the wait staff held out a little golden birdcage with an open door, and motioned for him to step inside.

Joe, who would always be caged no matter where he went or what he did, stepped into it without question. Then the servant pulled a blanket over top of it, and his surroundings went dark.

-

"How are you settling in, my darling?" Asked Walt to his niece over dinner.

"Oh, I'm all right uncle Walt. No need to worry about me." Said the girl with the flute-like voice.

It was driving Joe mad. Where had he heard it before?

"No seizures?"

"No, uncle Walt. No seizures."

Joe could hear the scraping of forks on plates outside of the blanketed cage. He rocked back and forth where he sat. He was going mad with hunger.

"Well, isn’t that good news? Now would be a good time to give you your gift, wouldn’t it?" Walter said.

“Gift…?” The girl replied.

The cage began to sway and Joe stumbled to his feet and struggled to stay upright against the motion. This was it. He would have to make a good impression on this girl, otherwise there was no telling where Walter would send him.

He flinched and his shoulders hunched up as he was once again bathed in burning light. When his eyes adjusted he was met with a long, lavish dinner table stocked with more foods than he had ever imagined could conceivably exist. Sitting at the largely empty table was an older woman with a hunched back to his right and a young lady with dark hair and dark eyes to his left.

When he saw her green evening dress he recognized her immediately and his face contorted in disgust. It was the girl he had seen dancing with Herman at Sunnyside. What did the likes of her want with him?

"This little fellow is named Joe Piccoli. He's here to watch over you while I'm not around. I'm sure you two will be the best of friends." Walter continued.

Joe watched the girl's face turn to utter shock. Her hand rose to cover her mouth in surprise.

"Joe Piccoli? From the doctor's office!?" She gasped.

Only when she said his name did Joe recognize who she was.

"Susie Wilkins!?" He exclaimed.

His own surprise mirrored hers. Susie had been the girl dancing with Herman? That made no sense, not after what she had told him over the phone.

"Oh, you two know each other? How delightful!" Walter chirped.

He handed the cage over to Susie, who was still utterly gobsmacked.

Joe could only focus on his own surprise for so long. When Susie opened the cage, one of Walt's servants handed him a tiny silver plate of food, complete with silverware. It had clearly been prepared by a giant, but it had been made with care, and when Joe took a bite it was the best thing he had ever tasted.

“That’s smoked ham.” Walter said to Joe, then turned to his wait staff. “Get the man some wine and a cigarette too, would you?”

Joe accepted the dainty silver goblet of wine happily from where he had perched in the cage doorway, but he heeded Danny’s warnings about cigarettes. He tucked the tiny one the servant offered him behind his ear instead.

"Uncle Walter, I... I don't think I can accept this." Susie said.

As Joe demolished his dinner he looked over to Walter and saw that the man was smiling expectantly.

"Why not, my dear?" He said, with a hint of dryness creeping into his voice.

"Joe lives with his friend Harry." Susie said. "Isn't that right, Joe? Don't you want to go live with Harry?"

Joe swallowed his last bite of smoked ham as his eyes flitted between Susie and Walter. He noted that Walter was peering at him over tented hands with intense focus. It was a look that made Joe more than a little nervous coming from a giant.

He thought back to Herman. To the bloodied hands he saw earlier. To everything that had gone wrong between them. Herman was the devil Joe knew, and Walter was the devil he didn't. What more could Joe do than play the odds and milk his stint in this lavish mansion for as long as possible?

"Oh, no Susie." He said. "I don't live with that guy any more. He put me in a jar and kicked me out of his house for trying to save my friend." Joe replied.

"But... but when the fire happened he was-"

"SUSIE. Be grateful to your uncle!" The old woman leaned over the table and snapped at her.

Though the discomfort on Susie's face was plain to see, she ran a hand through her hair and quickly corrected course.

"Yes, mother. I'll be more grateful. Thank you, uncle Walt. May I take him upstairs please?"

"Why certainly my dear!" Walter said.

As Susie carried the cage past Walter's place at the table, Joe could see that the man was absolutely beaming. She then led Joe down a maze of winding white halls with marble floors that seemed endless. It reminded Joe of Castle Hill, though it lacked the quirkiness of the place. There were no tiny walkways to be found, and certainly no bad taxidermy or statues of naked people. Instead, the house felt more like an art gallery: sterile and clean, with everything in sight primed and polished for display.

Susie carried Joe's cage into her room, which was still being unpacked, past a doorway with no door in it. From where she sat him on the desk Joe spied the biggest bed that he had ever seen, a bookshelf that was halfway stocked with strange giant literature, and a standing cage that housed a troupe of little white mice, one of which was running on a wheel. In the back near the window was another open doorway that appeared to lead to an ensuite bathroom. Thankfully for the both of them, this one still had a door.

As he studied his surroundings, Joe wondered where it was he was supposed to sleep.

Susie sat down at the desk and rested her head on her folded arms as she studied him.

"Joe, what are you really doing here?" She asked.

As Joe studied Susie in return, he realized how tired and sad she looked. She reminded him of the girls he had shared a cage with back at Lessard's.

Joe shrugged.

"I left." He said.

"But Harry’s looking for you! Don't you want to go back to him?"

He stepped out of the birdcage and onto the desk.

"If he’s looking then let him look, but I have no reason to go back." Joe said.

To his delight he happened upon some broken pencil leads and a blank piece of paper. He stopped down and soon he was absent-mindedly sketching away. As he spoke with Susie he drew out thumbnails of the image that had so plagued him in the cage.

"Joe, I know it might seem nicer here, but you don't know my mother and my uncle like I do. They trap you, Joe. If you don't leave here soon you never will!" Susie said.

Joe looked up at Susie with the sternest expression he could muster.

"Everybody traps me, Susie. That's the problem. If I went back to the doctor’s office, he would do the same thing. If I went to someone else, well, they'd find some way to trap me, too. It's all you giants ever do." He sighed.

Susie looked from Joe to the bathroom door.

"I heard my uncle Walt and my mother talking, you know. They were saying that if I have another seizure they'll take away the door to my bathroom."

Joe stopped sketching abruptly.

"I can't do anything here." She continued. "They won't let me talk on the phone. They won't let me send letters. They won’t let me leave the house. They're scared I'll run away and escape. I'm tired of living like that, aren't you, Joe?"

Joe's eyes sank down to the paper and his sketching started up again. Before him was an image of a burning building, mid-fall. Bodies flew out of it left and right, all of them screaming. He thought about those people every night as he went to sleep. How none of them had any other place to go either.

"There's no other way I know how to live, Susie. You'll have to find another way yourself." He said.

Susie lit up and sat up straight. She pushed her chair back and was about to stand up when a voice spoke to the both of them from the doorway.

"How are you two getting along?"

It was Uncle Walter, leaning in the doorframe with a cigarette. He didn't hesitate to walk in and inspect the room, and as he neared the bed Susie’s voice grew shrill and flustered. She raced to sit down on it.

"Oh, we're all right! Everything's all right! We're having a lot of fun together, aren't we Mr. Piccoli?"

Joe smiled up at Walter and nodded profusely. Some part of him worried that he may have overheard what Susie was saying, and as Walter squinted down at him a shiver ran up his spine.

"What's this?"

Walter gestured with his cigarette towards the drawing Joe had made.

Joe stood up, dropped the lead, and pushed his dirty hands into his pockets. He wasn't sure if drawing such a thing was something he was even allowed to do based on the way Susie had been talking.

"Oh, it--it's just a thumbnail sketch, Walt. That's all." He said, fearing the subject matter of the painting might offend the good giant.

He wished he had painted a landscape.

"Why Joe, this is..."

Joe looked at his shoes as Walter bent over him and examined the piece.

"... absolutely breathtaking. Your work ought to be in a gallery!"

Joe blinked and looked up at him.

"Really, Walt?"

He looked back down at the sketch to make sure that he and Walter were talking about the same artwork.

"Really! Why, if you keep producing work like this, I could make it happen! You have a gift, Mr. Piccoli. It would be a shame to squander it."

Joe was turning bright red with flattery and pride.

"I... well... maybe. I could make a few things if you want." He said.

"How lovely! Isn't that lovely, Susie?" Said Walter.

The giant turned to Susie, who was sitting rigidly on the bed with her hands in her lap and smiling, though not excitedly.

"He sings, he’s an artist, ah, how talented you are, Mr. Piccoli! How talented you are..." Walter gushed.

He turned back towards the doorway.

"Light's out, now, Susie." He said, and flicked the light switch off.

As suddenly as he had appeared, Walter left again, and Joe could hear Susie's sigh of relief from where she sat on the bed. Joe turned to her and looked on in curiosity as she pulled out something from beneath the mattress, then slipped into the bathroom.

"Isn't that something, Susie!?" He called to her from behind the door. "He says he's gonna put me in a gallery. I've never had a giant do that before!"

"Yeah..." Susie sounded more hesitant than she ever had before. "...I hope it goes well, Joe. I really do."

Soon Susie had emerged, dressed in an ill-fitting black suit and trousers. She had tucked her hair up under a hat and traded in her pointed heels for a flat pair of loafers. It reminded Joe a little bit of borrowing gear.

He followed along as she rearranged the pillows on her bed and tucked them in as if to resemble someone sleeping.

"Can you do me a favour, Joe? If anyone asks, I'm fast asleep, all right?" She said.

"O-okay." Joe replied.

Susie pushed the window open and pulled out the screen.

"Wait, where are you going?"  Asked Joe, and though he knew better he was still compelled to ask, "...you're not going to see Harry, are you?"

Susie clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound of her own laughter.

"No, absolutely not! Even if he weren't miles away I have better things to do than to see Harry." She said with scorn.

Joe crossed his arms.

"Oh yeah? Like what?" He asked.

"Like earning money." Said Susie. "I'm going to find a job so I can go live away from these people."

"Oh." Joe's arms fell to his sides. "You're going borrowing?"

"Yes, Joe. I'm going borrowing." She said.

Joe remembered what Walt had said earlier about how sick Susie was, and for a moment he was tempted to try and stop her. Something about this place bothered him too much for him to do so. He knew from experience that it was the nature of trapped things to fight to be free. Who would he be if he were to stop her? No better than Lessard, no doubt, or Frankie, or Romeo.

It didn't change the fact that Joe saw much less reason to escape than she did. His standard of living had been lowered too far. For the moment there were no dogs snapping at him, no fires, no jars, no blood-covered Herman. That, in his point of view, was something worth celebrating.

Before Joe could even wish her good luck, Susie Wilkins disappeared into the night.

Read the next part here!

[fireflywritesgt]

In the Cold of the Cage

Part 43 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here. !!warning!! if you have ever been body-shamed or made fun of for how your body looks or don't like people being mean to children or the implication of tinies being forced to do Questionable Things this will be a difficult chapter to read. Readmore'd from the start due to spoilers.

From the moment Joe woke up with a splitting headache, an aching neck, and a bleeding ear, he knew exactly where he was. The bars of the cage gave it away immediately, but even without those he would have been able to guess where he was from the faded wallpaper and the sagging doorway at the end of the room, one which led to a hallway full of barking dogs. Dog fighting and tiny snatching went hand in hand, Joe knew from experience, and this was undoubtedly a snatcher’s lair.

Joe looked around and saw that a small group of twenty other miniatures joined him in the cage, all of whom kept a healthy distance from him. Most of them were men, all of them were shaggy and bedraggled, and the moment Joe made eye contact with any single one of them they looked away and shuffled nervously at the sight of his missing ear.

He pressed a hand to it, then his sleeve, and a mix of emotions stormed inside of him. There was anger, sadness, betrayal, alienation, but notably absent from the mix was surprise. No, Joe had seen this coming from miles away, and now that it had happened, he had no better option but to take it in stride.

The man who sat in the far corner of the cage with his face hidden below a tent of greasy hair wouldn't be so kind to Joe as he was being to himself.

“Well, well, look at you.” Said the only tiny willing to talk to him. “Do I need to say I told you so?”

The raspy voice was barely audible over the sound of a horse fly batting at the bare lightbulb above them. Joe didn’t need to turn around to face it. He already knew who it was. He did so nevertheless out of courtesy.

“Gutters? What are you doing here?” He asked.

Now Joe was surprised. His head was tilted almost completely sideways, as much out of confusion as it was out of pain.

“Oh, y’know. Went out to have a good time the other night, only for some lousy, rotten sell-out to turn around and stab me in the back.” Gutters explained. “That’s life. You get used to it.”

Joe was utterly lost for words.

“The better question is what are you doing here?” Gutters continued, though Joe could tell from the evil twinkle in his eyes that the greasy bastard had already found him out ages ago.

This was supposed to be it. This was supposed to be the part where shame gripped him and squeezed every last ounce of life out of him until he was an empty husk. The part where he screamed, cried, threw up, and crawled through the desert repenting for good measure. Yet as he looked upon Gutters and all his smug satisfaction, Joe found, much to his own bewilderment, that even at his most earless and his least free he simply didn’t care what this man had to say about his life anymore.

Gutters could think whatever he wanted of Joe now. He had nothing left to lose. No amount of praise or derision would bring Joe’s ear back, and it wouldn't change the core of who Joe was.

Joe cleared his throat.

“Well, as you can see I’m finally ready to settle down.” Joe began. “I’m here on the hunt for a giant boyfriend who will lock me away in a gilded cage, with a pretty bow tied around my neck in exchange for my freedom after sacrificing my dignity at the altar of petdom!”

Joe’s voice was sickly-sweet with sarcasm, and he watched in delight as Gutters’ face twisted into a snarl. Shakily the old man rose to his feet with the aid of the bars.

“You know what I can’t stand in life?” He began, jabbing a pointed finger in Joe’s direction. “Guys like you. It’s guys like you who disrespect guys like me, the ones with real trauma. You walk around with your missing ears, sniffing the giants’ crotches, sucking up to them, and you don’t give a shit.” Gutters tossed his arms. “You don’t give a shit about the shit they do to us.”

“Like what?” Asked Joe, and he truly hoped that Gutters would answer – for years he had wondered what it was that Gutters was so hung up about.

Finally, Joe got his wish. He watched as Gutters slowly bent down and began to roll up his dusty, grey pant leg. Around his ankle was a circular scar, like the one Lorraine had. Rising up again, Gutters said,

“Y’know how I got the name Gutters, Joe? It’s what they called me in the circus. My dear borrower mother handed me over to them in exchange for a brick of chocolate.”

For a brief moment Gutters grew animated, and spread his arms wide as though he were a circus ringmaster introducing an act.

“Gutters is what they named me!” He cried. “GUTTERS! THE! CLOOOWN!” Gutters’ voice grew so loud it drew concerned looks from the other people in the cage.

When Gutters froze, the whole room froze with him. Then he went limp again.

“They told me to jump, I jumped." Gutters continued. "They told me to dance, I danced. They told me to sit still while they sprayed me down with a fire hose, and you get one guess what I did, Joe. I had no freedom. No agency. And now…” Joe drew back as Gutters shuffled in his direction. “Here you are. Romanticizing my suffering. Thinking it’s cute and fun and sexy.”

Gutters stopped. He tried once again to point a finger at Joe but it fell listlessly to his side.

“...’cause guys like you have no respect for guys like me. You haven’t been through real trauma.”

Joe gave Gutters a blank stare. It was as though they were living in two different universes. He was dangerously tempted to tell Gutters about his own trauma he had suffered at the hands of the giants, about his life without a father, about the torment of the watchmaker’s, about his own brush with the circus and the panel of doctors and Herman's betrayal and the jar. About how absolutely, how totally he had trusted a giant and how swiftly that giant had shattered it all to pieces. He could tell Gutters about the years of grappling with his sexuality, with society, with spirituality, about his mother’s misguided attempt to cure him or O’Grady’s misguided attempt to destroy him. He could assure Gutters that no matter what anyone tried, and no matter what anyone did, Joe simply could not change the indelible nature of his own ontology, in spite of the fact that it brought injury after injury upon himself.

Joe could say all that to Gutters, but he knew better than to do that now. Gutters’ mind, like Herman’s mind, was already made up. There was no way that Joe could justify himself in Gutters’ eyes, so he opted for a more diplomatic approach.

“You know what I don’t get about guys like you, Gutters?" He said, as Gutters' watery eyes bored into him. "You spend all this time and energy being angry at guys like me, and none of it being angry at the giants.” Joe scanned the cage as his watchsmith’s mind ticked away in search of an escape. “At the end of the day, you and me both ended up in the same damn place, and I bet if we worked together we could help each other out of it.” Gutters’ eyes followed Joe’s finger as it pointed to a hinge on the side of the cage that was agonizingly close to being reachable. “See that pin inside that hinge up there? You're a tall guy. I bet if you gave me a boost, I could pull it out. We don’t have to be stuck in here like this. We could escape and then never see each other again. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Gutters let out a wheezy cackle in reply.

“Don’t make me laugh. If I helped you out, then you would get to go free along with me. Why should you deserve that?”

Joe was just about to answer when the dogs went ballistic and a pair of shadows filled the doorway across the room.

"There's no time for me to explain. Either we get out now or we get out never!" Joe said.

Gutters shrugged and smiled.

"Then I guess it'll have to be never." He replied, and Joe could only pity how readily Gutters had sealed both their fates.

The shadows grew larger, and the weather-beaten house heaved under two sets of footsteps as the snatchers entered the room.

“Frankie, you worthless piece of shit!” Scolded the voice of an older man with an accent that reminded Joe of Usine. “I want women, or strong men I can send to the fights, not these useless drunks!”

“I’m sorry, sir! I-I’m sorry!” Said the much younger voice that accompanied him.

Joe pressed himself up against the bars to get a closer look, and in the dim light he could see the figure of an immense giant holding a much smaller one by the collar and shaking him.

“Did you not see that their little city burned down? Why are you still searching on the beach? Why not there?” Said the voice of the larger man with the accent.

“There were too many people there, sir.” The smaller giant, Frankie, replied.

Frankie backed up into the room and stepped to the side. In the light, Joe could see that he was barely an adult. He wore a large coat in spite of the warm weather and clutched a floppy hat as he trembled in the larger giant's presence. Joe felt as though he had seen this young giant somewhere before, but couldn't place where.

“They were loading them all up into a car.” Frankie continued.

“What kind of car?” The older giant interrogated.

“I-I don’t know, Mr. Lessard. I dunno the breeds of car... but! There was a whole team of snatchers working together. Guarded them real closely, too. See this?” The quivering young giant gestured to a shoeprint on his forehead. “I tried to grab some up, I really did, but one of ‘em attacked me.”

Mr. Lessard tugged Frankie by the collar again.

“Is that a girl’s shoeprint? Beaten by a girl? Bah! Pathetic!" Mr. Lessard barked.

Joe flinched as Mr. Lessard tossed Frankie aside like a rag doll. A team of snatchers swarming Tiny Town? Joe would have been damned one way or another whether O'Grady had gotten him or not, he figured.

Mr. Lessard released the boy and stomped into the light. The man was a hulking mass of a giant who downright dwarfed the farmhouse he was in. He wore a starch-white shirt and he was rubbing his face with one hand while his fingers on the other held a lit cigar and twirled it about in frustration.

"Frankie, Frankie, Frankie... Why do I keep you around at all!?” Said Lessard.

Frankie raced over to the cage of freshly snatched miniatures, and Joe’s fingers squeezed the bars tight in fear. The other miniatures that surrounded him scampered away in anticipation. All but two of them, that was: in the center of the cage, a mother clutched a little boy in her arms and shook in abject horror as the giant approached.

“Look here, I got one woman. And a kid, too. That’s worth something, isn’t it?” Frankie pleaded.

The floor shook as Mr. Lessard drew closer to the caged tinies. The mother held her son tight and tried to esape, but in a flash the massive giant threw open the cage door, snatched her up, and pried her son out of her arms. Lessard’s face didn’t move an inch as the woman let out a devastating scream and fought against him in desperation, clawing desperately in the direction of her little boy. He ignored the noise as though it were the sound of a passing car and carelessly tossed the child back into the cage like garbage, then he examined the woman thoroughly through a jeweler's loupe.

A long plume of cigar smoke billowed from Mr. Lessard's mouth as he began to laugh.

“Worth something!? Look at her, Frankie. She’s as big as a house! Crooked nose. Ugly face. She looks like she has a drinking problem.” He said.

Joe heard more dry laughter coming from behind him. To his disgust, he turned around to see that Gutters was laughing at the poor woman’s misfortune as well. Turning his attention back to Mr. Lessard, he watched in horror as the giant coldly deposited her into another cage to the right of the table Joe's cage was currently sitting on. He could just make out a sign above it that read Low Value. He squeezed his eyes shut as his heart ripped in two at the sound of the little boy crying for his mother.

“Oh, shut up.” Mr. Lessard snapped at the boy, and snatched him up next. “This one is worthless too. Put these little piggies to work instead! Maybe it will inspire them to lose weight, you know? Make them healthier.”

Frankie laughed nervously.

“Yeah. We could uh… sell them by the ounce or something!” The young giant suggested, his voice shaking and faltering.

Joe could see that Frankie, too, was shaking with fear.

Mr. Lessard dangled the tiny boy upside down for three painstaking seconds before tossing him into the Low Value cage along with his mother, who caught him and held him like the treasure that he was. As sad as it was to watch the two cling to each other and cry, Joe was relieved that they would at least get to be together a little while longer.

Then Mr. Lessard stepped towards the cage the rest of the miniatures were in, and Joe was knocked off his feet as the entire thing was lifted into the air.

“None of these will fetch us much money.” The older giant declared. “We need a pretty face. One we can sell easily.”

“Yes sir.” Frankie croaked.

A series of screams rose from the cage as Mr. Lessard turned the entire thing upside down and dumped its occupants into the opening of the one reserved for low value tinies. Joe clung to the bars with all his might and refused to let himself fall in easily. Having been awkward and homely during puberty, he had been put in that cage before, and he knew where it would lead him. He would go to the watchmaker’s, or the factories, to be used as cheap labour and then discarded when spent. He fully expected that this was where he would end up the second time around, but he refused to go out without a fight.

He was soon forced to let go when Mr. Lessard’s square hand struck the side of the cage with all the force of an incoming meteor. Joe’s heart dropped first and the rest of him followed as he jolted downwards, though when he landed he was not met with the sting of metal but the roughness of calloused human skin.

When he rolled over and sat up he was met with the eye of Mr. Lessard, magnified through the lens of the loupe, gazing down upon him the way a falcon would lock onto its prey. Everything about the man appeared threatening to Joe, from his rectangular face framed by greying sideburns to his stony features; it was the sort of face Joe saw reflected in statues of important historical giants, the sort those giants would consider austere or noble. Joe saw nothing of the sort in this man, this monster, who was looking at him no better than one would examine a piece of meat.

“...this one is good.” Mr. Lessard announced after what seemed like an eternity to Joe.

He could hear Frankie breathe a sigh of relief from all the way across the room.

“His face is a little beaten up, but he has good bone structure. He is insured, too.” Joe’s skin crawled as Mr. Lessard’s finger stroked the left side of his face, and he could sense that insured had something to do with his missing ear. “If he heals well, he could be worth a fortune to the right person.”

Joe’s stomach lurched as Mr. Lessard carried him over to a cage that sat on a table to the left, across the aisle from the cage the other miniatures had been put in. Before Mr. Lessard placed Joe inside – much more carefully than he had handled the other tinies – he was able to sneak a glimpse of the sign above it. High Value it read.

Turning around, Joe could see that he was accompanied by five women, all of whom were slim and pale-skinned and some of whom were frighteningly young. His skin prickled at the sight of them and he wondered why only tinies that looked a certain way were being labelled as high value when Mr. Lessard knew absolutely nothing else about them.

“If we are lucky he will breed. He would have beautiful children, no?” Said Mr. Lessard as he locked up the cages.

Breed. Joe was revolted at the thought. How could anyone want to do such a thing in a place like this? Even if there was a boy of proper age there who Joe wanted to be with, he could hardly imagine himself taking his clothes off in plain view of strangers!

“Now, Frankie, let’s get to the dogs. How is the training going?” With that, the snatchers turned and left, and the entire room of miniatures breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Joe looked across the aisle and studied the members of the low value cage, still perplexed at what esoteric quality it was that separated Joe from them. The woman Mr. Lessard had insulted was gorgeous by miniature standards, with beautiful freckled cheeks and a heavyset build that was sure to survive the winter. Her son, too, was delightfully plump and sturdy, clearly in good health for his age. He tried to imagine what they would look like in a happier setting, smiling and playing games.

As he sat there and despised the fact that any of them were being commodified at all, he contemplated the ugliness of the world he lived in. Scanning the hopeless faces that surrounded him, he found the way they were being appraised and sorted oddly reminiscent of Tiny Town. There was a shallowness that was buried deep in the human soul, Joe thought. It compelled people to reduce other people to things, and that, he hypothesized, was the source of all the cruelty in the world.

As the woman and her son wept together in fear, he thought about the way Mr. Lessard had justified his cruelty towards them. Right now they hardly looked inspired to lose weight; they just looked sad and scared. How often it was that cruelty, like poisoned chocolate, was couched in superficial goodwill and feigned concern. Perhaps that way it was easier for people to convince themselves that the victims of the torment were deserving of it.

Joe sank down and shuffled into the corner as the girls in the cage eyed him with wary suspicion. He began to draw on the dust at the bottom with his finger just as he had done when he had been trapped in the jar. He thought of that poor woman in the cage across from him, and O’Grady, and the fire. He thought of Dawson at the podium and Danny at the stake. He thought of Herman, and the moment the buildings came crashing down upon him. He wondered if Herman was even alive after that, and further still he wondered if it was a bad thing that he would be sad to learn the giant wasn't. He wondered if it was a worse thing still that, in spite of everything that had happened between them, he still missed Herman deeply.

It was there in the cold of the cage that a vision came to him of a painting so visceral, so compelling, so heinous, that any viewer who saw it would not be able to look away. Joe tuned out the sobbing of the other miniatures as he sketched a thumbnail into the dust and filled in the blanks with his imagination, going over every detail again and again until its perfect image was emblazoned into this mind.

As Joe sat alone in his corner he knew he had no choice but to survive this ordeal. He had to make it out alive so that he could paint this image and mirror all the evils of the world back at anyone who was willing to look at it. Then, maybe, others would see the same ugliness that Joe saw. Maybe some of them would have the power to do something about it.

If others could see the world the way Joe saw it, maybe they could help make it a better place. Though he knew it was a long shot, all he could do was try his best and hope that the rest of the world would do the same for him in return.

It was all he could ask for in life.

Read the next part here!

[fireflywritesgt]

Dogs of War

Part 46 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here. Frankie goes to a speakeasy in this because it's the 20s and people just Did Shit back then.

The tiny man blinked at Harry.

Harry blinked back at the tiny man.

It was the same drunken patron he had encountered on the beach earlier at Calloway’s. Harry knew exactly what the little man was doing there and exactly how he got there, he just didn’t like the answer.

The man was sitting inside a rusty bucket in a banged up Ford Model T that Danny had believed to be Frankie’s, which was parked just outside of the Maple Leaf Tavern. Harry had looked in to inspect it only to be greeted by the man in the patchy suit.

He lowered the bucket down to the ground and gingerly turned it on its side. Slowly but surely the man stumbled out, and under his breath Harry could just hear him say,

“I gotta stop drinking.”

Quickly Harry set the bucket back onto the seat where he’d found it. The vehicle itself looked like a rolling death trap that was easily ten years old or more, and how Frankie got anywhere in it Harry didn’t know, for it wobbled and shook if he so much as touched it.

As reconnaissance went, Harry chalked this one up to a win.

Danny was off on his own scouting mission inside. Like any respectable illegal watering hole post Prohibition, the MLT was no piece of cake to get into. Even Harry knew that you had to have the right code word to get in and know the right people by extension – or have a little friend who could do all the heavy lifting for you.

Not that he and Danny were friends, Harry reminded himself.

He circled around to the front of the building. By the looks of its boarded up windows and door it may as well have been closed. The real entrance, Harry had been told, was around the back. For now he waited by the crack in the window where Danny had slipped in.

He didn’t have to wait long. Soon Danny limped out to greet him.

“The password is Romeo.” He said.

“Romeo? I wouldn’t have guessed that one.”

Harry reached out for Danny and put him in his pocket, then headed towards the back.

“You were right about that automobile. I found a miniature inside and let him out.”

“So if that machine’s here, then Frankie’s here.” Danny rambled. “All we gotta do it keep our eye on him and make sure he doesn’t slip away from us.”

Harry nodded. It sounded easy enough in theory.

Danny ducked into Harry’s front pocket when he knocked thrice on the back door, and a cock-eyed old man with a single tombstone of a tooth opened it and sized him up.

“Last week's winner?”

It was in this moment that Harry started to worry how well he would fit in at this fine establishment. He preferred the university library to the counter of a bar, and even back during his days as a soldier he only drank on special occasions.

Passchendaele had been one such occasion. He had been afforded two ounces of rum at dawn and two ounces at dusk, with extra awarded to anyone who went above the call of duty.

Harry had never earned an extra ounce.

“Romeo.” He said.

Wrapped in bandages and halfway drenched in lake water, Harry must have done a fine enough job of fitting in for the doorman ushered him through without question.

“Okay, find someplace to sit down where nobody will see you.” Danny said.

The first thing he was greeted with when he descended the stairs into the main bar was a wall of cigar smoke so thick that it made even his eyes water, which made excellent camouflage. With time he could discern the outlines of the tables and booths that dotted the room, and when the smoke finally cleared enough for him to see his hand in front of his face another fixture came into view. It was something hanging on the wall, a taxidermy mount of sorts.

As he drew closer and squinted he was able to piece together what it was. Initially he had expected it might be a moose or an elk or at the very least a white-tailed deer. When he neared it he realized that the thing lacked antlers completely, and finally he was able to see the thing for what it was: the head of a coyote, forever frozen in an ugly grimace with its tongue lolling out.

There were two leaderboards on either side of it, and Romeo’s name was at the top of the leftmost one. There were a number of Shakespearian names on there, mixed in with names like Thresher or Razor or Gunner. The rightmost one had names like Samson the Striker or Beat-down LeBrun. He was far too nervous to ask the bartender what either of them were for.

Framing all of this was a series of hockey sticks crossed into an X shape, which reminded Harry of what Lorraine had said about the fighting that was supposed to take place there.

He could only hope that it had been hyperbole. The bar was calm enough for now, and Harry ordered himself a beer of questionable brand and origin in the most casual fashion he could muster, then sat down at a table near what he could only hope was a well-positioned support beam. He could see that it was made of raw lumber, as was most of the wood that held up the building, and it obscured his seat from most of the other patrons quite nicely. The longer he sat there the more it sank in just how out of place he was. Harry had been to bars like these before, and every time he went something about them had made him want to crawl out of his skin. He was too afraid to open the beer bottle, let alone drink from it.

“How’s that Mabel treatin’ ya?” Asked a voice from the corner to another patron.

“I think it’s about time I found a second wife.” The other fellow answered.

They were sitting at a poker table of five men in total at the back of the bar, and all of them, Harry could tell, were out of town farmers who were there on business. Harry knew the type and it gave him some insight into what about this place was so unsettling to him.

Inevitably, whenever Harry had walked into these kinds of places in days past, he had needed to perform. To compensate. To prove himself manly enough. Granted, it wasn’t terribly often that people questioned his manhood on account of his size, but there was one topic that never failed to get the other farm boys looking sideways at him, and that was the topic of women.

He watched as the eldest man at the table pulled out a wooden box full of poker chips and two decks of cards.

“Talk to Frankie, maybe you can buy yourself a tiny one.” The eldest man laughed.

Although Harry’s ears perked up at the name he still fought to keep himself from gagging at the sound of those words. He averted his eyes and…

“…I see him! Over by the wall!” He whispered to Danny.

Through the fog of cigar smoke a familiar figure emerged. It was Frankie Van Assen, slouched over with his hands buried in the pockets of his big, grey coat. On closer inspection Harry noted that the boy appeared outright feral, not only on account of his worn boots and his trousers that came up short at the ankle, but in mannerism as well. He was slinking around the perimeter with his head down low and his nose stuck out like an animal scoping out prey.

Carefully, and with no small amount of help from the strategically placed pillar, he reached into his pocket and set Danny on the table so he could see.

“Good eye.” Said Danny. “This kid’s a real handful. I saw him around the Sunnyside dance hall once throwing eggs at the dancers. He got real interested in that chandelier where the tinies like to dance, so if he’s snatching, it explains why.”

“What on Earth is he even doing here!? Someone ought to tell his mother.” Whispered Harry through bared teeth.

“Probably doesn’t have one.” Danny shrugged. “I’ve been trying to steer him straight, but the kid moves fast. I call him the Flying Dutchman for how fast he can run. Don’t let him catch sight of either of us, got it? We don’t wanna spook him.”

Harry nodded.

Soon it became clear what Frankie was on the hunt for. Slumped over the counter slept a patron who was the size of a Holstein heifer. Harry hunched over and kept his head down as he watched the boy creep past the sleeping man in a way that seemed almost innocuous to those who weren’t paying attention. Few people were, and Harry followed along in fascination as Frankie slid two fingers into the man’s back pocket and pulled out something small and rectangular that he couldn’t quite see.

The sleeping man snorted and shifted his head, and even Harry grew tense as the boy quickened his pace and strode across the room to the safety of the wall. Fate seemed to smile upon the boy, for the man kept snoring away. Harry watched Frankie’s eyes widen as he examined his prize – whatever he had snatched must have been something good.

“This kid lives to steal, huh?” Said Danny.

He could only hope that Frankie wouldn’t set his sights on Danny. Harry tried to cup a hand over him, only for Danny to push it away.

The boy’s kleptomania was sated for the moment, it seemed, for instead of creeping their way Frankie puffed himself up and made a beeline for the patriarch of the poker table. When Harry strained his ears he could vaguely pick up the sound of his voice, and he noted that Frankie Van Assen talked like a Canadian youth who was doing his best to convince everyone he was part of the Chicago Outfit.

The only person in the room who was remotely convinced of it was Frankie Van Assen.

“Hey pal. How much’ll this get me?” The boy asked.

The man with the chips, a solid fifty years the boy’s senior who was still dressed like a frontiersman forty years past, took one look at the two coins the boy held out and chuckled. Harry watched in real time as Frankie’s shoulders deflated along with his ego. The boy stood and shivered before the poker table for a moment, then his fingers twitched and his hand flew into his pocket.

“I’ll throw in this as well.” Frankie said, with a hint of reluctance, as he held up the card he had just pickpocketed. “It’s a Bert Corbeau rookie card. Toronto Saint Pats. This’s gotta be worth something, right?”

Harry’s jaw grew tense at the sight. There were some things that good Canadian citizens simply did not do, and stealing another man’s hockey card and trading it in for poker chips was one of them – even Harry knew that. He had to look away, and found himself hunching over in frustration.

He couldn’t help but look back when a chorus of laughter rang from the table.

“Was this from an old sweepstake or something?” Asked the keeper of the poker chips.

The man rose up, snatched the card from Frankie’s hand, and held it out of the boy’s reach when he fought to get it back.

“I remember that one. Shoulda bet the skates, they’d be worth way more than this piece of junk.”

Frankie skidded back as the older man effortlessly shoved him off. Harry couldn’t help but pity him. He looked like a newborn baby next to this table of middle-aged poker players. Each one of the older men sat about as though they were members of some high council of manhood as they appraised Frankie from head to toe.

Frankie’s voice had barely broken. He looked as though he were built out of toothpicks. Nonetheless he puffed himself back up again and said,

“Hey, you don’t know that! Could be worth a lot someday. Could be worth—twenty thousand, easy!”

“Aw, let him play.” Said a more merciful councilor. “Get him a beer, too. Kid’s gotta grow up someday.”

Frankie glowed as the guardian of the chips, with his stone-cold poker face, nodded at the boy, reached into the wooden box, and produced two white poker chips. In exchange he took the coins and the hockey card and put them into a metal tackle box that held the pot. Frankie walked forward and took a seat farthest right, and from the awe on his face he may as well have just become a newly-confirmed member of the Church of Masculinity.

Harry clenched his hands and resisted the urge to stand up and drag the boy straight out of the building.

“Can’t we do something about this? He’s way too young to be here.” He whispered to Danny.

The likes of Frankie was the exact thing Ontario’s prohibition laws had sought to prevent. How ironic it was that a decade on they had solved absolutely nothing. Danny, who was now lounging in the empty ash tray with his splinted leg stuck out, coolly observed the scene.

“Then he might not lead us to his boss. Do you really wanna take that chance?” He said.

Harry didn’t. Deep down he knew that this was the way of the world. He couldn’t save Joe and Frankie at the same time. Nonetheless, in his mind he was imagining himself in a better universe. One where he took the boy to a medical office and put a phone receiver in his hand and gave him an honest job and taught him to say please and thank you.

“Take off your coat, Van Asshole! Stay a while!” Said one of the men at the table.

“Can’t. I’m a cold mortal.” Frankie said. “I wear my long johns well into June.”

He was met with another round of snickers.

“And guys, it’s Van Assen. It’s a place in the Netherlands. It's Dutch." He explained to the table of indifferent men. “I get it, it’s funny as hell, everyone loves to say my name, but can we just appreciate for a minute that there’s languages other than English out there?”

“We’re in Canada, Frank. We speak English here.” Said another player in a tone one would use with a small child.

The boy’s poker face faltered at the sound of the name Frank. A smile lit up his face like a flash of lightning and then disappeared just as quickly.

“Yeah, well, my boss doesn’t. Not always.” Said Frankie. “He’s a pretty big guy, y’know. If you talk smack about the French people, he’ll cut off our liquor supply.”

 “Oh yeah? He’s that powerful eh?” Asked one of the men.

Harry’s attention was drawn to the ash tray by a scuttling sound. He looked down to see that Danny had hopped to his feet.

“Yeah! Lessard’s got everything. You want booze? You want guns? You want dogs? Tinies? He’s got it. He’s a scary guy. You don’t wanna mess with him.” Frankie insisted.

Frankie appeared to be doing well enough at the game all things considered. His stack of chips had quickly multiplied after the first round. When it was over, a hand the size of Frankie’s face reached out and handed him a pint. He swilled as much of it down as he could, then made a face, then drank some more and asked for another.

“Speaking of dogs, how’s Romeo? You think he’s gonna win another match?” Was the next question the chip-keeper had for Frankie.

“Romeo’s retiring.” The boy said bluntly.

Now Harry knew the meaning behind the leaderboard, and his heart sank into the pit of his stomach.

“Retiring!? You can’t retire a dog like that! You should do the honourable thing and fight him until the bitter end!”

“Oh, I’ll fight him ‘til the end, but he’s gotta sire puppies first.” Said Frankie, sounding uneasy.

“Give the puppies better names.” Another player advised him. “What kinda girly name is Romeo for a fighter?”

Frankie turned red and stared into his cards.

“Well, my dog beat up your dog so what’s it to ya’?”

Although Frankie was inhaling booze, Harry could see that he was stacking up chips all the same. As Harry watched it all unfold, all he could do was sit there and hate the bar and these men and what they were doing to this little boy and his dog.

“Dog fighter, huh? Makes sense. Where there’s dog fighting, there’s tiny fighting…” Danny said, much to Harry’s horror.

He was leaning against Harry’s still unopened beer bottle with a hand in his pocket, his good leg crossed over his splinted one. Harry could only admire the indifference with which Danny observed the scene as Frankie was handed a cigar. Every man at the table laughed when the boy took one puff of it and teared up.

Harry’s stomach was turning. He could only hope that Joe wasn’t in the care of Frankie’s boss. If this was how the boy who snatched him was living, he didn’t want to think about what they were doing to Joe.

“You should learn to fight too by the looks of ya’. What’s that on your head? You get a girlfriend or something?” Another player asked Frankie.

“What!? No! Some crazy bird at the park went and hit me. I wasn’t even doin’ nothin’.” Frankie replied, and Harry had no doubt in his mind that Frankie had indeed been doing something.

“Crazy isn’t always a bad thing, Frank.” Frankie clutched his cards to his chest when the man who kept the chips put an arm around him as though he were the wise old uncle the boy had never had. “What you wanna do is find a normal woman who can cook and clean for ya’…” He began as the men at the table all nodded in agreement. “That’s the gal you keep at home, makes your sandwiches and everything...”

Harry could tell from the sight of him that Frankie was feeling the same discomfort Harry had whenever the topic of women came up.

“Watch his hands.” Danny said.

Squinting, Harry could see that Frankie was slipping something out of his sleeve while the table was distracted by the patriarch’s soliloquy.

“…and then ya’ get a crazy girl on the side who can-”

The poker player was cut off by a loud banging sound in the background.

 “WHO TOOK MY LUCKY CARD, YA FOOKS!?”

The voice from the counter shook the room so badly it nearly felled the lumber that held the building up. Fitting, Harry thought, for the speaker looked every part a log driver. It was the fellow Frankie had pickpocketed earlier, who was now fumbling about in his pockets for his lost card.

The entire bar felt silent, then flinched as the man at the counter pounded on the table a second time.

“MY BERT CORBEAU ROOKIE CARD!? WHO TOOK IT EH? YA STUPID FOOK-HEADS!”

Every single pair of eyes migrated towards Frankie Van Assen, who had a different card hanging halfway out of his sleeve.

The patriarch’s poker face twisted into a look of disgust, and he snatched the boy by the arm, wrestled him from the table, and threw him straight at the log-driver.

“I reckon the culprit’s right here, bud! Looks like he’s cheatin’ our card game too for good measure.” He said.

The log-driver wasted no time in barging towards Frankie, who was tripping over his own coat in a frantic attempt to escape. The boy’s rumrunner façade swiftly evaporated as he cowered before his assailant and he slipped into a dialect best described as low Canadian, one that Harry had seen come out many a time during tense situations back in Manitoba.

“Easy there, buddy, easy! It’s all just a big misunderstanding-eh-there-bud? We all root for the same team here buddy, don’t we? We just got the same card Isweartogod-” He stammered.

Harry was sitting at the edge of his seat. The boy’s neck was thin as a chicken’s and the log-driver’s cinderblock of a hand was reaching right for it. Should the man snap it they would have no chance of getting to Joe. Harry felt his fingers curl around the neck of the bottle on the table and, without thinking, he launched it in the direction of the log-driver’s head, nearly sending Danny flying along with it. It bounced right off the back of the man’s skull and rolled across the uneven floor, leaking everywhere.

As the log-driver stopped in his tracks, from down on the table he heard Danny say,

“Oh, no. Nice going, doc! You had to blow our cover!”

The log-driver, stunned, slowly turned around to face them as the rest of the bar watched with bated breath. It was the least natural position Harry Avery had ever been in. His job back in the day had been to defuse Georgie’s fights, not start any of his own!

He knew he had to say something to distract the man from using Frankie as a punching bag, but he couldn’t think of what. He lacked a metaphorical dog in this very literal fight: his own province had no team, and he had only ever played hockey as a pastime – the esoteric ways of the average hockey fan were a mystery to him! Regardless, he did his best to make something up, and make it up quick.

He tried to act natural as electricity filled the air, and from his place halfway across the bar, with shoulders squared, in his native Manitoban twang he shouted,

“SAINT PATS ARE A BUNCHA LOSERS! GET A REAL TEAM LIKE THE MONTREAL MAROONS, BUDDY!”

It was the most incendiary thing he could think to say in a bar full of Torontonians, and every set of eyes locked onto him like the scopes of German snipers.

Every set of eyes except for one, of course. The nickname Danny had given Frankie had been an apt one, and the Flying Dutchman took this opportunity to snatch the tackle box of money and bolt, diving straight through his adversary’s legs and out the door to freedom. The other five men at the poker table scrambled after him, only for one of them to be taken out by a thrown shot glass that had been intended for either Harry or Frankie – Harry himself wasn’t sure.

That was when the log-driver accelerated towards him and took his first swing. Harry stumbled back out of his chair and the log-driver picked it up, then made a worthy attempt at bashing it over Harry’s head. Harry caught it and tried to wrestle it from him with all his strength. Meanwhile, in the background, the man from the poker table who had been downed by the shot glass got up, grabbed one of the hockey sticks from the wall, and ran off in search of revenge. He swung the stick at the nearest person he could find, who swung their own hockey stick back, and soon a hockey game truly was on the verge of breaking out. At bare minimum the scene was now a full-blown brawl.

Finally the log-driver’s grip loosened on the chair. Harry pulled on it as hard as he could, and when it flew backwards and hit a boarded window Harry was able to land a well-timed punch to the log-driver’s jaw. Harry looked down in search of Danny, and his heart nearly stopped when he couldn’t see him anywhere.

The log-driver took two more swings which Harry blocked and returned in good measure.

He dodged another punch to the face and shoved his opponent backwards, then looked back down to see that Danny was still there, much to his relief. He was laying all the way back with his arms folded over his head, propped up on the edge of the ash tray. Something about the look on Danny’s face perturbed him. It was as if the man were ogling him.

“Are you going to be any help at all here?” He asked Danny.

“I’d rather enjoy the view.” Danny replied.

Then a second shot glass exploded against the nearby pillar, and Harry could see that one of the stick-wielding patrons was now slap-shotting them around the room while the poor bartender cowered in the distance. Another patron returned fire. Through all the chaos and smoke Harry spotted a narrow path towards the door.

“Come on.” He said.

He grabbed Danny and ducked, then shoved the table over and dashed straight ahead with all the speed his adrenaline could afford him. The log-driver, who had put all his weight into his fists, whirled and toppled over when his punch failed to land, collided with the falling table, then fell right into the line of fire of a whiskey glass that struck him clean in the temples and finally brought the man down.

“Why would Lorraine go here!?” Harry huffed as he raced out the door.

“Free entertainment!” Said Danny from his front pocket.

Much to Harry’s relief, Frankie’s automobile was still there. The boy was begging it to start as the four remaining poker players from the bar surrounded it like a pack of baboons. Two of them were trying to climb straight into it.

“Come on! Come on! Come on!” Frankie sobbed through the window.

Before Harry could react there was a pop, a bang, and a plume of black smoke. Then, like a blessing from above, the engine started and the automobile whirled backwards, shaking the angry men off. Harry was right in its path and dashed away to safety.

“Get to the bike!” Danny ordered.

Harry obeyed and raced all the way over to the secluded spot where he had parked it out of fear of thieves - a choice he now regretted. He could see that he had company as he kicked off the bike, for it turned out that one of the poker players was in possession of a Model TT pickup truck. He was ferrying the other four in pursuit of Frankie, and one of those four passengers in turn was in possession of a shotgun.

“Stay behind those guys. You don’t wanna get in the line of fire.” Was Danny’s advice.

“Would you quit backseat driving?” Harry complained in response.

Harry tried his best to follow Danny’s advice nonetheless, and tires screeched as the vehicles zig-zagged through Danforth, then Cabbagetown and down Bloor. Harry couldn’t help but quickly overtake the pickup truck, and when they turned a series of tight corners he almost lost it in the darkness. Then one of the passengers in the truck kindly fired off a shotgun round from behind him, nearly taking Harry’s other ear off and frightening the sleeping congregation of the Ossington Avenue Baptist Church awake in the process.

He worried for Danny in his pocket in spite of the fact that he knew Danny would be telling him I-told-you-so if he could speak. He was clocking 65 miles an hour. He had only taken Joe up to 30 out of mercy.

He glanced behind him to see that the heavy truck had fallen far into the distance, and the passenger with the shotgun was discharging it rapidly into the air out of frustration. The shotgun rounds attracted the unwelcome sound of the police, who were approaching neither by foot, or by horse, or by car, but by motorcycle. The police bike’s head lamp was swiftly gaining on them, and Harry knew that if they stopped him he would have no chance of keeping up with Frankie. Harry himself had never seen the inside of a jail cell, and he wasn't about to make his first trip that night.

Harry knew his motorcycles, and he knew that the Toronto PD was particular to Henderson bikes. They could hit 100 miles an hour at top speed and easily overtake his Hendee, but for one key detail: each police motorcycle was also equipped with a heavy sidecar.  As they neared the city limits, Harry knew they were also a stone’s throw away from the Henderson’s greatest weakness, and the bane of every motorcyclist in existence. That weakness was uneven ground.

Harry had a secret weapon. Born and raised on horseback in Fuck-it, Manitoba, he knew how to ride a dirt road better than he did a paved one. He took a gamble then turned down a narrow, unpaved side road, temporarily leaving Frankie. Then he slowed down and loosened his grip on the bars, then kissed the speed up to as much as he could get away with, noting when the bike started to squirrel. It was in that goldilocks zone that he was able to maintain some semblance of control over the bike, though his teeth did chatter so hard they nearly fell out of his head.

The police’s Henderson wasn’t so lucky. The weight of the side car combined with a healthy dose of gravel soon sent both officers flying into a ditch when they tried to replicate his turn.

Now he was faced with the question of how to get back to the main road. He could see the faintest outline of the Model T as it raced across the horizon with only a cornfield to separate them.

Harry slowed the bike to a stop.

“Danny?”

“What?”

“I’m about to make a very irresponsible decision as a motorcyclist, and if we die, I want you to know that I’m sorry.”

He turned the bike towards the cornfield and walked it inside. Corn was grown in rows that a motorbike could theoretically run through, and as the saying went it was supposed to be knee high by the fourth of July. The corn in this particular field was a little taller than that, but the path left by the harvester had formed a perfect track for him to follow.

Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he revved the engine and sped into the darkness. The leaves of the corn husks whipped across his face as the bike practically bounced along the uneven terrain. For a moment Harry couldn’t tell if the bike was even vertical - or running on solid ground for that matter - then he hit a steep slope and for a brief moment he became airborne before landing back on the main road again and swerving in Frankie’s direction. After the chaos of the field, riding on the regular dirt of the main road felt like a cake walk in comparison.

As Harry gained on the Model T he noted that the automobile was fishtailing as the boy, who was clearly unpleasantly buzzed from his time at the bar, made his best attempt to drive straight. Frankie had slowed down considerably since they had lost the truck, his nerves presumably at ease, and it wasn’t long before they passed through Downsview and, right when Harry had convinced himself the chase would never end, slowed to a halt at a farmhouse somewhere between Toronto and Woodbridge, on a lot surrounded by a thick section of forest. Exactly where on the map it was Harry could only guess.

He slowed the Hendee to a halt and watched the automobile snake in beside the building, then leaned his bike up against the nearest tree he could find. He dismounted slowly it and stood still for a moment as he waited for the feeling to return to his legs.

It was still dark out, though just barely. Danny was thrashing around in his front pocket and it wasn’t long before he climbed up for air.

“You should start charging tinies scraps for a ride like that, Henry. It’d be good business.” He gasped.

The miniature pulled on his crumpled hat and shook himself to his senses.

Beside the house, Frankie was doing the same thing. The boy sat in the car for a solid ten minutes before he was put together enough to stumble out. When he did, he promptly threw up and then lugged the tackle box out of the automobile. In the glow of the headlights, Harry watched as Frankie took the hockey card out of the box, kissed it once, twice, three times, then killed the engine and raced into the house, leaving the box full of money behind.

“So now what?” Harry asked the detective as he pulled him all the way out of his pocket.

Danny scratched his head. The frantic barking of a dog rang out in the background.

“We shouldn’t go in there guns blazing, especially if the place is full of fighting dogs. You heard what the kid said at the bar. If this Lessard guy is that dangerous, we don’t wanna get on his bad side.” Danny said.

“Then what do we do?” Harry whispered impatiently.

“We take out that automobile first.” Danny said.

Harry looked at him in confusion.

“That kid’s car trouble gave me an idea.” He continued. “If things go bad in there, we can slow ‘em down if we disable it completely.”

“Do you think it’ll get that bad?” Asked Harry.

“After what that kid was saying at the bar, it wouldn’t hurt to play it safe.” Danny argued.

Harry himself wasn’t so sure. The boy could just as well be lying and they could be wasting precious time in turn – if Joe was even in there at all.

“Do you know what a fuel line is?” Danny asked him.

Harry rolled his eyes.

“Yes, I know what a fuel line is.” Harry said.

“Do you know where to find one in a Model T?” Was Danny’s next question, and it gave Harry pause. “…no? Okay, I’ll show you.”

“And how am I supposed to see it in pitch darkness?”

“Guess you won’t, but I will. I always forget you giants can’t see in the dark. Now follow my lead...”

-

“Not like that. Not like that! NOT LIKE THA-oh, okay, you got it.”

Harry nearly took a face full of gasoline when the fuel came spilling out of the line. Danny had been perched on his forehead of all places and stepped over his left eyeball in order to dodge it. Harry wasn’t so lucky, and his right shoulder was doused in gasoline where he lay underneath the automobile. He dragged himself out from under it and sighed.

When he had left home that morning he hadn’t expected he would be going out for a rip, let alone sabotaging a snatcher’s car. The pain of the burns was still tormenting him all the while and some sad, self-pitying part of himself wanted to go home, take some morphine, and try again later. It was a luxury, he knew, to even be able to go home – a luxury Joe didn’t have – and the guilt of those thoughts spurred him forward just as they had during the war.

“Okay, genius, now what?” He whispered.

“We invoke Dennis Calloway and talk our way in.” Danny’s voice came from below the automobile’s front axle. “Are you any good at lying?”

Harry scooped him up and placed him back into his pocket.

“I guess we’ll find out.” He said.

Harry was good enough at lying to himself. That had to count for something.

With his burn wounds still throbbing he headed in the direction of the front door. He was still ten feet away from it when a dog started barking, and from that moment Harry knew there was no going back. He stopped nonetheless to collect himself. The door loomed before him all the while, like a gateway to some forbidden world.

He cleared his throat and knocked. He couldn’t tell from sound alone if there was a dog lunging for him on the other side of it or a full-blown wolf, but whatever it was he didn’t want to be in the way of its teeth. He tried not to think of how easily a creature like that could devour a miniature, and he could only hope that Lessard wasn’t as dangerous. Then the dog began to whimper and Harry could hear scratching sounds as someone behind the door pulled it back.

When the door swung open it wasn’t Lessard, but Frankie who answered. The boy had dark circles under his eyes, and he was holding a strange concoction that rivaled the stench of the gasoline on Harry’s shirt. Before Frankie could even open his mouth Harry asked,

“Is your boss home?”

He did his best to look menacing as he stepped past the threshold and pushed his way into the house. The bandages and the lake water and the corn leaves and the gasoline all worked their magic, for Frankie shied back at the sight of him. The dog sitting behind the boy was snarling at him all the while, and in the dim light Harry couldn’t make out what breed it was.

“I… uh… maybe.” Frankie answered.

He squinted.

“Wait. Have I seen you somewhere?”

It seemed that the boy hadn’t quite figured out that Harry had followed him there. He saw his opportunity and he took it.

“I’m a friend of Dennis Calloway’s. It’s an emergency.” Harry said quickly as he felt the tip of Danny’s hairpin dig into his chest. “The uh… the police are after me and I need to use his phone.”

Frankie took a swig of his concoction and forcefully swallowed it down. The boy seemed too tired to challenge Harry’s story, for all he said was,

“One sec. Romeo, guard.”

Frankie pointed the dog behind him to a box on a side table, then disappeared from the foyer into a pitch black hallway of the house. Frankie seemed to have excellent night vision of his own, Harry noted.

He let the door close behind him, and Romeo’s hackles rose as he did so. The dog seemed to be growling at a sound coming from inside the box. Out of morbid curiosity, Harry felt around for it and held it in his hands. He could feel something inside of it, something moving. Wishing he too had night vision, he strained his eyes to get a closer look and-

His eyes snapped shut when the hallway light flicked on and momentarily blinded him.

“Sir? What is the meaning of this?”

Quickly Harry placed the box back on the table without giving it a second look, then turned his attention to the hulking figure that filled the narrow hallway.

The man before him stood two inches taller than Harry’s six-foot-three and was about twice as wide. He looked more like a doctor or a politician than any sort of criminal, Harry noted from his fine clothes and shiny wristwatch, and Harry almost would have been fooled were it not for the fact that the man’s shirt sleeves were rolled up and crossed over his chest. There on his arms were a series of criss-crossing white scars, some as long as the man’s arms themselves.

Leashes, muzzles and wooden clubs all hung on hooks in the hallway behind him, and from the sight of it Harry knew exactly what sort of person he was dealing with. Nevertheless, Harry extended a hand and gave him a courteous smile. It was the hardest thing he had ever done.

“Mr. Lessard! I’ve heard so much about you.” He said.

When the man reached out to shake his hand, he nearly crushed it.

“I’m a friend of Dennis Calloway’s. I got into a spot of trouble with the police and I need to use your phone.” He repeated.

As Lessard tilted his head back and looked down his nose as if to appraise him Harry could only hope that his story would sound convincing. He was covered in bandages and reeked of gasoline – that had to help sell the story. 

“And your name, sir?” Asked Lessard.

“I’m doctor-“ Harry began out of habit, then stopped himself. “Moore. Doctor Moore.”

Lessard’s eyebrows rose, though only by a small margin.

“A doctor? You are with the labs?”

Harry studied Lessard’s face as Frankie pushed past him and into a sunroom with an old sofa. There was no indication to Harry what the right answer was, though Danny was squirming so intensely he feared the snatcher might catch sight of it. He shrank back and said,

“Yes, sir. I uh… I had an accident at the lab. The police got there and-”

Danny’s pin dug into Harry again.

“Don’t overexplain!” He heard the detective scold him from his pocket.

Lessard's brow furrowed at the sound, and Harry feared for the sake of both his life and Danny's that Lessard hadn't heard him. Then a voice from the other room momentarily distracted the three of them.

“Aww, c’mon. Lemme sleep!”

It was Frankie. He was standing helplessly before the couch which was now occupied by Romeo. Harry could now see that the dog in question was a large and stout creature with docked ears and boxy jaws, all covered in scars. The dog tucked his wagging stump of a tail under his body and licked his lips when Frankie tried to move him, but still refused to budge.

“Hey!” Lessard snapped. “What have I been telling you? Don’t show weakness. Get a club and correct him.”

Harry grimaced and glanced at his shoes.

“I-Is there a phone I could borrow, Mr. Lessard?” He said.

“Yes, yes, come with me.” Lessard sighed.

Harry glanced back out of morbid curiosity as he left, and to his relief he saw that Frankie had sunk to the floor and curled up there instead of following his boss’s orders.

It really was as though Harry had been sucked into an alternate world. Lessard opened the door behind him and led him down a room filled with two rows of cages with all the coolness of a realtor showing a home. A cacophony of barking rose from inside each one, and as Lessard passed by through the narrow aisle that separated them Harry could see that every single dog inside every single cage growled at the snatcher and started snapping.

“Excuse the noise. These ones are not broken yet.”

Harry was shaking with anger. The only thing he wanted to see broken was the back of Mr. Lessard’s skull.

He followed Mr. Lessard down a leftward turn into a room so dark that Harry couldn’t be certain if he was going to reach a phone or end up dead in the man’s basement. Then Lessard pulled a string and turned on the light. This was another room of cages, most of them empty. At first glance Harry couldn’t see what was inside of them, but when he drew closer he froze in shock.

Down at the far end were two cages of tiny people. One cage to his left held a small crowd of them, most of whom were men, though in the middle a mother protectively clutched her son and dealt a blow to Harry’s heart. Another cage to his right held five young girls. The former and the latter were labeled Low Value and High Value, respectively. He had forgotten all about Lessard when he reached them, and to his disappointment he saw no sign of Joe.

“They are nice, aren’t they?” Said Mr. Lessard of the five caged girls Harry was looking at in a tone that absolutely sickened him. “Five hundred dollars each.”

“Five hundred?”

It was more than Harry’s mortgage payment. It was enough to be a down payment on Harry’s entire house! Who on god’s green Earth, Harry wondered, was going to buy a miniature for five hundred dollars?

As Harry hunched over the cage he felt Danny tumble out of his pocket. He crouched right over top of him with panic written into every muscle of his face. Danny simply held a finger to his lips then limped behind the table leg.

The floor creaked as Lessard approached.

“The telephone is over here.” The snatcher said.

“…right.” Said Harry.

Lessard was looming over him suspiciously now, and Harry leapt up to meet him at eye level. Having no better idea of what to say, he landed on,

“Say, it’s awfully hot in here, isn’t it? You don’t mind if I just-”

Harry gave Lessard no time to answer. He slipped his jacket off and tossed it on the table, making sure one sleeve reached the floor when it landed. It obscured the table leg Danny was hiding behind nicely.

“-there.” Harry smiled.

Lessard was looking at Harry the same way the other men at the bar had looked at him whenever the topic of women came up.

“You mentioned you had a phone? Over here? Let’s go over here.” Harry stammered.

He led the bewildered criminal over to the candlestick phone in the side office.

“I’m very bad at technology, Mr. Lessard. Could you show me how to use this?”

“You are a doctor aren’t you? Can’t you figure it out?” Lessard glared at him.

“I-I’m afraid this must be one of those French models. The ones we use at the office are different.”

Lessard grumbled and picked up the receiver. As he did so Harry glanced over his shoulder and saw that the five girls in the High Value cage had formed a human ladder. One of them was messing with the hinge for some reason.

His attention was pulled away when Lessard shoved the receiver in his hand.

“Who are you calling?” He grunted.

”Um, before we get to that – ” he drew Lessard’s attention to the telephone directory “– does our lab have your updated address? I thought I did but then—”

Harry tried to keep his eyes off of the cage. With the help of the suit jacket Danny had joined the girls on the outside and he was using the hairpin as a lever to dismantle the hinge.

“—I had to get this one from Dennis.”

The sound of the pin hitting the floor rang through the room. Lessard moved to look, but Harry stood in his way with the telephone directory in hand.

"Is it this one, Mr. Lessard?"

“Yes, yes, it is the same address as always! Ostie! Would you just make the call and get out of here!?” Lessard roared.

Mr. Lessard stormed back towards the phone and threw the receiver into his hands.

“…of course.” Harry said.

A small amount of relief came over him when he turned his attention back to the other room and noted that the cage was now empty. Danny and the girls were nowhere to be seen.

“I just wanted to double check for our records…”

There was a clanking sound in the distance. Harry could only guess that it was the door on the Low Value cage swinging shut.

“What the hell…?” Lessard growled.  

Harry was already charged with adrenaline after the fight at the bar, and it became even worse when Lessard stomped out of the office and froze at the sight of the empty cages.

He turned to Harry with wild eyes.

“How did-”

That was the exact second Harry could keep his composure no longer. His fist collided with Lessard’s face in full force before the man could speak another word. The snatcher stumbled back into the table of cages and clutched his bleeding nose, then charged towards Harry, who landed a second and third punch. It was as if all the rage inside of Harry was being channeled through his hands. He couldn’t think coherently; his conscious mind was barely processing what he was doing as his farmhand fists kept wailing on Lessard, one strike after another, until Harry learned just how severely one man could beat another man.

When his fists were slick with blood, he stopped for a moment to appreciate just how badly he had mangled the snatcher’s face. Lessard shakily stumbled to his feet, showing Harry his palm with one bloody hand.

“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry demanded.

“I don’t know him.” Lessard said through blood and snot.

Harry threw him against the empty cages again, only for Lessard to stumble to his feet this time and sprint into the hallway full of dog cages.

This gave Harry an idea.

Calmly he walked into the hallway and started unlatching every single dog cage, starting with the dog named Juliet, then Mercutio and Tybalt and Laurence, all the way down an entire list of dramatis personae and ending with the one named Rosaline.

The dogs pulled back their lips and bayed for blood as they chased the star-crossed snatcher through the house with deadly precision. Lessard flew into the foyer, then Harry watched him clamber for the doorknob and scream as one of the dogs got him by the legs. Then the whole house shook as Lessard threw the door open and fell down the front steps with the dogs hot on his heels.

A Shakespeare quote came to Harry’s mind in that moment:

“Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.”

The miniatures from the cages had assembled behind Harry’s feet, with Danny at the head. Harry turned around and looked at them. They looked up at him. He opened his mouth to speak and that’s when the entire crowd bolted away from him and never looked back.

“Where are they going? Is there something we can do?” He asked Danny.

Danny pulled out a cigarette.

“Harry, after what you giants did to those tinies, the best thing you can do is leave them alone.”

Harry nodded. He picked Danny up and carried him into the entryway. When he got there he could see that the dogs had run right past Frankie, who was wrestling Romeo back from the half-open door. He fumbled around in his right front pocket and swore as the dog barked at the commotion outside. The boy stood between Harry and the door, paper white with fear, and Romeo stepped in front of him at the sight of Harry and Danny.

“What.. what’re you guys…” Frankie gasped, and his eyes fell on Danny, who was calmly standing in Harry’s hands. “Randy!?” He said, presumably using a fake name of Danny's. “Oh no, not you…”

“Randy?” Harry murmured. “He doesn’t know you’re the guy from the movies?”

“You think this kid can afford a movie?” Danny replied.

He cleared his throat.

“Frank, look, you’re not in trouble. We’re just looking for our friend. His name’s Joe Piccoli.” Danny said.

“Joe P-Piccoli…?” Frankie echoed.

Frankie’s eyes darted back and forth from Harry and Danny back to the box.

“He’s… I mean I didn’t do anything.” The boy stammered. “The boss just said to-”

“Said what?” Danny pressed.

Frankie took two steps back in the direction of the door.

Romeo kept on snarling.

“Remember what I told you at Sunnyside about making good choices?” Danny continued. “We just need you to tell us where he went and-”

Frankie pointed a finger at the two of them before Danny could finish.

“GO GET ‘EM!” He cried, and darted to the box.

It was only now that Harry figured out what had been in that box. When Romeo leapt for him he had no choice but to run back into the room of empty cages while the Flying Dutchman sped out the front door. He slammed the door to the dogs’ room shut and Romeo collided with it and gnashed at the both of them.

Harry clutched Danny in his hand and heaved.

“See if there’s a back door.” Danny barked.

Harry scouted around and found a door opposite the one to the miniatures’ room labeled Fighters. In that room was a third set of cages, and Harry couldn't have been less surprised at what sort of miniatures were housed there.

They were some of the tallest and strongest miniatures Harry had ever seen, some taller than Danny. He could tell exactly which of them were the winners and which were the losers just by looking at their cages. The guys at the top lived in cushy cages with velvet curtains and satin pillows while the guys at the bottom sulked about and nursed broken noses and bruises.

The crowd of freed miniatures had already gotten there first.

“We’re leaving!?” Exclaimed one of the top fighters. “Why are we leaving!? I got a good thing goin' here!”

The rest of the miniatures didn’t seem to care. They were climbing the cages at lightning speed and unlatching each and every one. From the very top of the stack of cages they were able to reach the window sill and tear their way through the screen to freedom.

“They’re just going to run off into the wilderness like that?” He asked Danny.

“Yup. You can’t interfere with these things, Harry.” Danny said. “Half of them have been snatched before and know what they need to do to come back from it.”

“…huh.”

“We should follow their lead.” Danny added.

When the last of the miniatures was done piling out of the window it was Harry’s turn. He set Danny down, stepped back, then took an empty cage and bashed the entire window pane in with it. With the glass mostly gone he then ripped out the screen using the hole the miniatures had made as a start. He took Danny in one hand and carefully slid himself through the window with the rest of his limbs, nearly getting stuck at the widest point. Soon his shoes touched grass and he was back on the ground again at the rear of the house.

Sunlight peeked in over the trees as Harry raced to the side of the house, where he knew Frankie would be waiting. Sure enough the boy was already in the automobile, trying to make his daring escape. Just as the two had planned it fired up and then puttered to a halt again.

“This is it! Run and get him!” Danny shouted.

Harry ran at full speed towards Frankie, and Frankie leapt out of the other side of the automobile and ran full speed into the woods, then disappeared like a ghost. Harry followed suit, into brush that grew thicker and thicker until he could barely move.

Harry slowed his pace to a jog first and then to a trudge.

“So much for slowing him down.” He said.

“Then we’re just gonna have to track him!” Said Danny.

Cursing himself, Harry knew he had to do it. He had already gone to a bar, outrun the cops, and beaten a man half to death.  

What wouldn’t he do for Joe Piccoli?

Read the next part here!