The Shrinker

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (PART-1)

Chapter 17

Jamie woke with a piercing scream, springing from the ground and frantically looking around. There was nobody there nor any sign there ever had been. It wasn't even night; dawn had barely arrived, shining dully on the field among the usual grey clouds.

Nonetheless she frantically searched through her pockets, but found nothing amiss. Everything was there and where it should be. She examined the muddy ground nearby for any sign of another set of footprints but saw no tracks aside from hers.

Just a dream. Just another stupid fucking dream, like all the rest, Jamie told herself stubbornly, That cannibal 'Lyza' doesn't exist. She CAN'T exist. She's just part of my fucked-up imagination. I'm not in any real danger from her, am I Trudy? If I was, you'd do all you could to guarantee our safety, right? If Lyza were real, how would ignoring her threat help us survive it?

No response. Jamie knew Trudy had used its power all-night to shrink any ill effects she'd get from being out in the freezing cold the whole night. It'd clearly worked; Jamie felt no physical symptoms, but she was stiff and achy from sleeping on the rock-hard ground. She guessed the effort involved exhausted Trudy into one of its recovering slumbers.

Jamie looked at her palm and focused on summoning the blue light. Nothing happened, confirming her suspicions. She still felt tremendous gratitude to Trudy for shrinking her injuries and nullifying the pain from Frankie's savage beating. She chose not to bother Trudy further.

In a rush of horrified nausea, Jamie remembered last night's other traumatic event; one she definitely knew wasn't a dream. She rushed to the nearest tree and vomited on the ground against it. She stood back and felt the guilt assault her within, like a monstrous parasite shredding her insides.

I killed her. I killed my balmy, cranky, mad, bitter old battle-axe of a next-door neighbour. I'm an actual guilty-as-charged murderer, she thought.

Jamie desperately reminded herself she'd never once intended or planned to shrink Mrs Finley; it was an total accident. She'd done everything she could to try and take back her mistake. She told herself it was a heart attack that'd killed her, not the shrinking itself. But no matter how she tried justifying it, she knew she was at least guilty of manslaughter.

The previous night, after a shrunken Mrs Finley fell dead to the floor, Jamie recalled gazing blankly in shock; then Trudy sharply brought her back to her senses. At its direction, she rushed to take her neighbour's keys, turned off every light in her flat, and locked the door; making it look like she'd just left. She fled as swiftly as possible with the old woman's tiny corpse.

The only place private enough Jamie could think of to hide the body was the abandoned scrapyard field. Having arrived unseen in the darkness of near-midnight, Jamie had run toward an overgrowth of nettled bushes on her near-right. She'd dug a small hole in the ground within it using her hands, placed the corpse and keys inside, shrank them to a microscopic state and filled the hole, smoothing the dirt over it.

Gazing at the spot where she'd buried Mrs Finley, Jamie felt deeply ashamed, with a great sense of self-loathing. Those feelings had prevented her returning to her flat and bed.

Against Trudy's protests, Jamie had insisted on spending the night sleeping rough out in the open there, as a form of self-punishment for what she'd done and for her panicked cover-up, Thought I told the brat I WANTED to suffer the cold, but I guess it ignored me while I was asleep. Least Trudy kept its promise about not shrinking my memory of what happened. Forgetting it occurred won't change the fact it did. I deserve to suffer this guilt...for life.