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  The seemingly deserted Marygold garage was awash with a procession of monotonous voices from the “Creative Management” team for the Daily Cornet newspaper, whose weekly team meeting was broadcast from the laptop on Benjamin's desk.

  The Chief Editor of Editorials, Crystal Sherbourne, currently held court on the conference call. “So in the wake of all the complaints received about Gary McBride's more toxic remarks on certain ministers, I stand by my decision to have a softer commentator in the hot seat when the government's new Brexit negotiation team is selected on Thursday. Mrs Klein, would you do the honours?”

  Beattie Klein, award winning political scientist with a quick witted quote for any occasion, responded only with silence. This elicited an irritated cough from her superior. “Sorry Crystal, I just noticed a message from Ricky in the chat. Is Ben alright?”

  Crystal sighed before addressing the technician. “What? Ricky, can you take yourself off mute and explain yourself.”

  Ricky did so, hastily. “Sorry, I know you hate interruptions but I’m watching the camera feeds and I think Mr Marygold’s collapsed!”

  Murmurs from around twenty writers, photographers and reality stars who’d been given columns echoed out of the speakers. “Oh God, are you serious?” Crystal exclaimed.

  “You can see for yourself if you go to the View tab and select All Participants.” Ricky’s explanation of VidMeet’s controls showed the seriousness of the situation. If management ever learned the basics of how video calls worked, he would be out of a job.

  After a few seconds of random clicking, Crystal sounded more annoyed. “He’s not there! Has he bunked off? Before I could give him his feedback?”

  Ben heard this accusation of desertion booming above him from his new position, standing three inches high and half-naked on the meadow of fabric that was his swivel chair seat. He’d been in a trance state for a quarter of an hour, the skin-crawling sensation of his body steadily reducing in size combined with the danger of his precariously placed position stranded storeys above the floor left him barely able to breathe. The first thing that penetrated Ben’s stupor is the realization that it’s taken a humiliatingly long time for anyone to notice his near-disappearance.

  He finally called out, futilely. “Crystal! guys! I’m still here, help! I’m… I’ve been…”

  His already tiny voice was further muted as his brain caught up with him. How could he begin to explain this to his team? He couldn’t explain his transformation from a regular human to a pixie any more than they could. It was a moot point as he couldn’t be heard even when screaming his bean-sized lungs out. And the desk edge hovering dozens of yards above Ben sank any chance of getting closer to the laptop mic. And so the conversation thundered on above him.

  “I don’t think he’s just up and left. It looked like he fell over, like he collapsed?” Ricky argued.

  “Oh goodness, what should we do then?” said Beattie. “He must be unconscious.”

  Crystal had no such concerns. “Can I trust Ben not to fake an illness to get out of this? That’s the trouble with you creative types, can never take criticism. And I told him on Saturday we needed a talk about his ugly and repetitive style.”

  Down below, Ben cringed under the weight of the deafening accusation. Much as he’d been dreading a confrontation over his beloved caricature sketches, he had intended to face it head on and argue his case for his artistic portrayals of the worst of the ruling class. This caused his mood towards his miniaturisation to shift from paralyzing fear to impotent rage, and thus the volume of his yells increased.

  “Am I alone in thinking this? Every day, it's the same ugly exaggerations of people we already don't like. It’s cliché, it’s shallow, who still finds it compelling?”

  The acerbic Gary McBride piped up. “I think you’re missing the evergreen sense of catharsis the art of political caricature inspires, which let’s face it, is the only consequences we can give the fuckers who keep screwing us over!”

  Ben gave a cheer at this support, which triggered a twinge in Crystal's looming face on the laptop monitor above. “Wait, what was that sound?”

  Ricky leapt in immediately. “That faint whining? That was on Ben's channel!” There were clamorings of praise for his genius ability to read the “playing audio” status icons next to each name.

  Crystal took her phone out. “He sounded hurt to me, and barely conscious? I have his address on file, I'll get a paramedic out to him.”

  “Yes! Thank you!” Ben leaped a mighty inch into the air with relieved joy, which was a silly thing to do. Ben knew his fantastical predicament would be equally confusing to medical professionals. However, having people physically present to help him, or even just confirm his shrunken state wasn’t just a symbolic dream based on how worthless he felt at this meeting, would be reassuring.

  The more pressing reason the excited jumping was a silly idea was the minute force of his feet shifting the swivel chair just enough to unbalance himself. The ergonomic curves that normally conform perfectly to his middle-aged spread now formed a nylon chute on which Ben slipped and slid over the edge of his seat. His last opportunity to avoid the dizzying fall was to grab his tablet pen, dangling by its cord from the desk. Ben missed this monolith by a centimetre, which at this scale qualified as an utter failure, and was left screaming on his plummeting trajectory.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Fortunately, salvation came in the form of a lake of denim. On his adventure as the world’s first mouse-sized human, Ben was clad in only boxers and a T-shirt. This embarrassing state of undress, while it would make a compelling argument for this all just being a nightmare, went previously unnoticed in his panicked fervour. But his other clothes hadn’t vanished, the checked flannel shirt he was wearing over his beleaguered shoulders was left hanging on the back of the chair, now impersonating a gaudy icecap upon a mountain. Below the daunting Mount Chair, Ben’s trusty black jeans had also retained their size and provided an enormous cushion to break his fall.

  As the rushing blood in Ben’s head drained, he could faintly hear Gary’s mocking voice from even higher above him. “Stay with us now, Benny. One of the last remaining ambulances in the country is on its way. Have hope!”

  Down on the cold, concrete floor, Ben tuned out the chattering voices on the call to ponder the new reality he found himself in. He scrambled over the giant folds of his own trousers, diverted around the perimeter of his own shoe and finally ducked under a web of computer cables before taking in the scenery of his skyscraper-sized furniture. The garage he had spent months shaping into a comfortable studio space was now an endless, unrecognizable landscape. The minute man’s pondering eventually settled on one unsavoury conclusion: he was helplessly trapped in this nightmare.

  Ben couldn’t wholly trust his senses at this point, but the news of an incoming team of medics seemed real enough and some preparations seemed necessary. They wouldn’t have any difficulty getting into the house, as the garage door was wide open, as it always had to be whenever the windowless, concrete room Ben worked in was in direct summer sunlight.

  Getting their attention, however, was the real puzzle. Ben quailed at the realization he would be dealing with real life giants as he scanned the clutter piled along the garage walls. “You know, you've never heard of this actually working for castaways.” Ben told himself as he used all of his diminished strength to rip open a flimsy cardboard box filled with nuts and bolts. Nevertheless, he grabbed as many pieces he could carry (six) to start making a message that could be seen from far above.

  “There’s not much time. Or maybe there is, how bad were those budget cuts? I'll just start with an arrow.” He gulped. His message wouldn't be noticed in the messy sides of the room, so Ben mustered the courage to take his materials towards the central thoroughfare, kicking a few of the longer bolts along with his bare feet.

  Ben nervously watched the outside view as he started arranging the shrapnel into a message, checking for signs of anyone approaching. The unwelcome thought of burglars taking advantage of his seemingly unattended personal space induced a cold sweat that didn’t help matters. Suddenly a shadow fluttered over the cartoonist’s tiny body.

  The most pleasant addition to the Marygold garden, in Ben’s opinion, was the bird table he erected on the front lawn to bring a colourful touch of nature to the drab view of suburbia from his desk. That table was now a tower of terror, with birds taller than Ben circling it like warplanes.

  A single wood pigeon had strayed from the seed feast Ben had prepared and soared over to land at the threshold of the garage. Ben’s love of birdwatching had led to a stand-off with a mighty voracious beast with a razor sharp beak. With a flutter of wings it hopped tentatively towards him, sending rippling tremors across the floor.

  Ben babbled. “No, shit, go away! I don’t have any food for you today! I got in trouble with Lin for dropping those breadcrumbs in here anyway. There’s nothing for you here!” In desperation he hurled a few small bolts at the roc-sized bird as he shouted. Thanks to Ben’s poor aim and fractionalized strength, they only brushed its feathers. This prompted a series of aggressive coos as the pigeon jerked its head and flexed its beak. Ben gagged as he vividly imagined the pigeon clamping his body in that beak and biting down. With terror gripping his mind, sirens blared in Ben’s mind as he felt his body do the one thing that could make everything worse.

  The monstrous bird swelled before his eyes. The nuts and screws grew larger and heavier in his arms. His head swam with motion sickness as he rapidly descended. Ben had lost one of his three remaining inches of height.

  The pigeon clawed the ground and began to spread its wings. Ben sighed in resignation. Oddly, he felt less scared about his position, as though his fear had drained from him along with his size, leaving him merely depressed.

  As wistful thoughts of his family, far away at work and in town, brought a tear to his eye, it became clear that the sirens in his head were not metaphorical, but literal and coming from the road. A gleaming ambulance glid into view as promised, its appearance scaring the pigeon into a rout. Though the breeze from the frantic flapping of its enormous wings almost knocked him over, Ben was all too delighted at the chance of rescue to be deterred.

  The towering ambulance doors opened and two paramedics emerged, a young male and and an older woman, both looking equally haggard. Their gazes were fixed towards the abandoned desk, far beyond where Ben was standing. It quickly became clear to him that both he and his half-finished ground-to-air signal were perceived as nothing but carelessly dropped litter to be brushed aside. In desperation, Ben was reduced to making as much noise and motion as possible.

  “Quick, look, down here! I have no idea what you can do for me, maybe we could go through all the medicines in alphabetical order but PLEASE! You have to look down!” Ben roared whilst quickly learning to juggle nuts and bolts.

  “Control, the patient seems to have awoken and is ambulatory, he isn’t in the garage as reported.” The woman reported stoically to her walkie-talkie. “Do we have clearance to proceed?” Ben sank to his knees before the colossi. He should have known better than to expect them to look out for the impossible.

  Then the younger medic suddenly dashed forward with a flash of inspiration. “Look, he’s left his clothes! That may be a sign of a severe fever, or a psych case.” He strolled carelessly forwards, his enormous feet descending like cataclysmic meteor falls as he advanced on Ben’s position.

  Ben was just quick-witted enough to remember the advice of the Cornet’s film critic, and refrained from trying to escape the oncoming giant by running in the same direction of travel as him, like so many action heroes. Instead he leaped to the side, in such a flustered state he flopped the landing and whacked his head on the concrete. His cry of pain wasn’t even heard by Ben himself, as it was drowned out by the deafening earthquake triggered by the bus-sized trainer slamming down beside him. The noise was the final straw to send Ben into unconsciousness, before he could register the world was starting to look less gigantic.

  “Karl, you can’t just enter a home without due cause” the older paramedic chided, even as she entered after him. “God, what’s this child doing in the middle of the floor, Didn’t you see him?”

  “Woah. I swear, Mags, he wasn’t there a moment ago. Bloody hell, is he… growing?”