The Shrinker

PROLOGUE (PART-1)

THE SHRINKER

By P.S.Gust

Prologue

There was a sudden flash of light so blinding she saw only red. With it came an agony so great it was as if her eyes had been touched by fire. She screamed as her hands flew to her face, expecting to feel blood from the sockets.

She became aware of a bizarre sensation at her feet; the short brown carpet she'd been standing in appeared to grow alarmingly at a shockingly rapid rate and she felt as if she was surrounded by long grass up to her waist.

Mercifully the burning pain in her eyes was fading. The shocking moment had come from nowhere, with no sign it could happen in all the time she knew the child. Nothing abnormal or terrifying before, but now...

She slowly opened her eyes, terrified the red would only give way to white from being blinded forever. The wave of relief she felt upon learning she could see again dissipated like water meeting sand, as she beheld the horror before her.

The ceiling now seemed as far above as the clouds in the sky, the living room's walls were impossibly gigantic, the carpeted floor was suddenly a thick grassy field of brown, and the sofa to her left was a great towering structure with an ominous darkness underneath like a tunnel, beckoning. The light bulb on the ceiling shone so high and bright it looked like the sun.

But the most terrifying sight was the child. That innocent vulnerable child of a moment ago no longer even appeared human anymore. It was a monster, a freak, a GIANT, and it had done this to her.

The thing had begun to throw a tantrum, screaming and screaming whilst it suddenly aimed the palm of its right hand at her. Then from the hand came that sudden flash of light.

The child jerked and drew back its outstretched hand from her, as if taken by total surprise. A startled gasp croaked loudly from its throat. That suggested to the woman this bizarre situation had been an unintentional accident, that the kid had no prior awareness of its own supernatural gift. But this was a toddler; getting it to say anything useful was dubious.

It wasn't just the size that petrified her, however. It was that mask.

With Halloween approaching tomorrow, they'd spent the day indoors, just the two of them, creating a hand-crafted paper mache mask for the child to wear when they'd be out tricking and treating in the early evening hours.

She came up with the idea to craft the mask into the face of the one thing the kid most feared, in an effort to show it was nothing to be scared of; attempting to erase that fear by letting the child have some fun and enjoyment pretending to be a good version of the creature.

Since being told tales of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs, the toddler spent sleepless nights cowering in its room, crying despairing tears; convinced the monster would come blow the house down and devour it, or pretend to be someone close to strike. It feared the big bad wolf.

The woman had been impressed and proud of how well the wolfs head turned out but seeing it like this, with the kid wearing it and towering above, it looked far too convincing, menacing and utterly horrifying.

The mask was grey with long ears, a pointy snout with a black nose and yellow eyes with a hole in the centre the child could see through. It even had a pair of white jaws the toddler could open to reveal its own mouth. The three paper teeth either side of the wolf's jaws had traces of red paint like blood.

The child's shock was fading, replaced by a toddler's wide-eyed curiosity and wonder, as it stared at the lady in a deeply intent way that compounded her terror. She scrambled back across the brown field of carpet in a blind panic, never taking her eyes off the kid. What she saw next made her wet with fear.