This isn’t right, this isn’t right. The kitchen chair collapsed under his weight. She screamed. He looked more startled by her screams than by landing on the floor. She ran towards him to stem the tide of flesh rising and overflowing, to hold back what would harm and hurt him. This was too much for his own good, too fast, unnatural. He was now too big for the kitchen so that she had to back out. The kitchen was full of his springy, healthy flesh, his smooth skin and softness; and there was no space for her, she was squeezed out to the corridor. The bigger he grew, the smaller she was becoming, crushed and forced. He was now too big for the cottage. Out, Adam, out. You have to leave. You have to go. He stood up and banged his head on the ceiling. He moved forward and got stuck at the door, his head jammed at the top, his arms cutting the frame. He whimpered in pain. He sat down and his head, still growing, reached the top of the door. He was now taking up the whole width of the kitchen, his elbow wedged underneath the kitchen tap, his hair touching the ceiling. In the vestibule, there was less and less room for Moni. She was hemmed in by his expansion, squashed by his need for more space. She was squeezed by what he had become, and she knew that she hadn’t acted fast enough. If only she had got him out of the cottage in time, or if only she had run to save her own skin. Instead they were both trapped. And if he went on growing, the cottage would explode.
Her screams and his cries of distress. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Adam. She was the responsible adult and he was a child in her care. She had miscalculated, she had overindulged, and this was the result. So much less of her, so much more of him. He’s suffocating me, she realised. He doesn’t want to, but he is. He can’t help it. It’s not in his control. She pushed back at him. To save them both. But there was too much of him pressing against her. The constriction in her chest increased. She blacked out.
What is worse than a nightmare is waking up to find that it is not a nightmare. When Moni opened her eyes, she found herself rolling like a ball from side to side. She found herself tumbling and somersaulting in a concave enclosure crisscrossed by fine grooves. Her body had become round. Her arms hugged her legs, her forehead rested on her knees, her feet were drawn in. She had become bunched up. Constriction was her new consciousness, plus the lack of gravity, this loss of substance and weight. Where was she? Certainly not in the cottage. There was sunlight and air. She was outdoors and moving, carried along. It was Adam who was carrying her in the palm of his hand. The springy enclosure was his hand, the fine grooves that stretched out beneath her like patterns in a carpet were the life lines on his palms.
She screamed when his face loomed in close to her. The sheer magnitude of it. Nothing menacing in his smile or eyes. The same rounded cheeks and boyish chin. He could not help any of this. He had been eating the cookies she had baked and suddenly he had grown. ‘Put me down, put me down.’ He could not hear her. Hers was a small voice under the sky and she was no longer standing tall. Moni could not untangle herself. She could not stretch out. Her hands were clasped round her knees, neck arched forward, feet drawn in. She twisted and bounced in his palm. He was holding her loosely, but he could crush her if he wanted to. All it would take from him would be a gentle squeeze.
Rolling like a ball, rolling like a ball. Moni would be on her back looking up. Then she would be on her knees, looking down. On her left side and right side. There was no constancy, no stability. Put me down, put me down. She felt him moving in the forest, swiping at tall trees with his arms, terrifying and jolting her in the process. This is a temporary aberration, she comforted herself. He will return to normal, I will return to normal. This cannot go on. Surely. Surely. All the kindness I have given him, all the sacrifice.
He dropped her. Inadvertently or because he had heard her, she would never know. The free fall made her scream like she had never screamed before. With all the power in her lungs, with every ounce of energy in her body. It felt as if her insides reached the floor of the forest before she did. As if all the organs in her body were squeezing down her birth canal and she must give birth to them. The landing was not as painful as she expected, if she could think straight enough to expect. Her new body shape saved her from injury. She rolled on the damp floor of the forest. She was the same size, but all perspectives had shifted.
The silence was the absence of her screams. She was bruised, and she could not stand up. She was still contorted, forehead to knees, feet drawn in, but her body was more relaxed. Her hands were no longer gripping each other. She could unclasp them and move them around. But she could not stretch out her legs or arch her back. She lay down on her side and looked around
