You woke up again some time later. You would have immediately checked the clock on the wall to see what time it was, though you were greeted by the looming face of Wendy upon waking up. You couldn't help but frown at the giantess, who seemed to take that as a sign of approval.
"I watched you sleep the whole night" she said. From what you can tell, neither you nor her moved an inch. "Do all people make such weird gurgling sounds when they sleep?"
You were confused. What was she talking about? You realized she had listened to you snore. You didn't know that you snored. You definitely didn't like that she sat and watched you the entire time you slept.
"I thought you were choking, that maybe the dress was too tight. So I thought about waking you up."
"...if you thought I was choking, why didn't you want to wake me up?" you ask, slightly afraid of what the answer might be. The Abners probably thought choking was like laughter or something. They were such weird, macabre people.
Wendy shrugged. "I wanted to see what you would do." It was a plain answer, and it made you feel almost like an insect in her eyes.
She exhaled out of her nose, still staring at you with an iron gaze. You realized right then and there that you have never once seen her blink. Whenever Mr. and Mrs. Abner were out in town, they always wore black sunglasses. You wondered if that was because they hated the sun or because they didn't want people to see them never blink.
Speaking of insects, you quickly looked around to make sure that Mrs. Webb wasn't around anywhere. At least with Wendy watching you that meant that Webb couldn't sneak up on you and do anything to you. You hope. You guessed that Wendy might let Webb "play" with you. The thought terrified you. You managed to glimpse the clock - it was already 9:30 AM.
Wendy sat up in bed. She was still wearing the same outfit she was wearing yesterday, consisting of a mismatch between a black skirt that reached below her knees, a black blouse, and a black leather jacket. She stretched, grabbing her head with her hands and roughly cracking her neck. Based on the sound, you would think such a movement with such force would snap a normal person's neck. But what was normal about the Abners?
She then reached down to you and grabbed you in her vise-like grip. She held you with her fingers curled around your torso, closing around your waist, while her thumb pressed into your side just next to her fingers. Your arms, once again, were trapped, leaving you uncomfortable. She held you almost perpindicular to her torso, tilting you so that she could look down into your face with ease.
"Normal people like to have coffee in the morning, right?" she asked after a minute.
"Y-yeah" you said, almost uncertainly.
She swallowed, almost sounding nervous, like she wanted your approval. "I liked the coffee that we had early this morning. I'm going to take you to the store and we can pick out some more." Her voice sounded stern instead of confident, like she was ordering you around.
You nodded, trying to readjust yourself in her grip. Your shoulders and back were starting to hurt from being held like this.
"Mrs. Webb, hold down the fort" she said. She stood up, carrying you as she walked to the door and opened it. The door looked massive and ancient, as though it would need five people to pull it open. She did so effortlessly. She snapped her fingers as she walked out of the room, causing the lights to turn off, and then pulled the door shut closed behind her.
"I'm going to show you around my house later. My family should just be having breakfast right now, so I'm going to hide you so they can't find you. They don't like normal people visiting. Not unless they get a chance to try to scare them. And I don't want them to have any fun terrorizing you. You're my friend, so nobody gets to have any fun with you except for me."
You think she meant to sound reassuring with that, but it came across as almost a threat. At least she wasn't going to leave you to the mercies of her whole family, though...
"Just be quiet when I go through the kitchen. I haven't eaten anything yet today, so I am going to go get some. As long as you don't make a peep, they won't suspect a thing."
Before you can protest, the giantess pulls her coat open, revealing a large pocket on the interior of her black leather jacket. She brings you towards it at an alarming speed, pushing you into it head-first, leaving your tiny, bare feet poking out. You begin squirming and kicking your legs, trying to get a good angle to reorient yourself, but she presses her hand against the exterior of the jacket, pinning you in place against her ribs. "No moving. Not right now." She doesn't remove her hand until you stop squirming.
It's dark and cramped inside the pocket, and you have no choice but to stay put. You'd surely fall to your death if you got out of the pocket, anyway. You hear relatively little until you feel Wendy push open a heavy door, causing the jacket to shift and sway.
You know you have entered the kitchen as you hear a lot of people eating and talking. It sounds like quite the commotion. You feel Wendy walk briskly towards the table full of people, and feel gravity reorient you as she bends over to grab some things off of the table. You almost feel like you are falling as her jacket shifts, causing you to swing away from her body.
You feel Wendy's arm press against you as her hand reaches for her jacket lapel, pulling you back towards her body. She presses you in place, keeping you from swaying again. You wonder why she's doing that. Your immediate guess is that somebody might have seen your feet poking out of her coat, which could be disastrous for you. But you aren't completely sure. It's hard to hear anything except for Wendy's responses to the multiple threads of conversation occurring right now. You occasionally hear people as why she isn't sitting down to eat, or where she's going so early in the day. You think you hear Mr. Abner ask her about going out "dressed like that at such an hour", which is not typically what parents ask their children at 9:30 AM.
Wendy then turned and speedily walked away, shouting back to her family that she needed to go "get some needles" for a "special project". That seemed to quell some opposition, though they still wanted her to sit and eat with them.
You wondered what she was talking about. You hoped you weren't the special project in need of needles. You didn't think she was going to hurt you, but... was she lying? You hoped not.
You felt Wendy open and close another door, and begin to walk down a tall set of winding stairs. After a few steps, she stopped, and then you felt her hands pinch you around your ankles and retrieve you. She flipped you right-side up in her hands, and then held you up, allowing you to get a look at the house.
It was a grand and as big as it looked from a distance. Sure enough, the skies above it were cloudy and grey, and the grey skies seemed to stretch on indefinitely. You wondered if the clouds would still be there when you got into town or not.
"My room is that one right there" she said, pointing to a big window on the far left of the house. "We can gaze out the window and read suicidal poetry to each other. Won't that be fun?" she asked in her usual deadpan. She seemed genuinely excited by the possibility, though.
"You said your family made you stop playing with dolls like fifty years ago?" you asked abruptly.
"No, sixty. I haven't actually touched that dollhouse or a doll since 1961" she said matter of factly. She turned your body to face her when she spoke.
You felt your lips quiver as you tried to form the next question. "How old are you? You look like you're only a year or two younger than me, and I'm 24."
That question made her smile. It almost seemed to be a more genuine smile this time, though it still would have creeped most people out. "I turned forty in 1961. I just turned one-hundred three days ago."
You tried to do some quick math in your head. If she was supposed to be an "adult" at the age of forty... did that mean that her age forty was our age eighteen? It had to be something like that. But then at age one-hundred she only appeared to be in her early twenties, and her family seemed to treat her like a young upstart, based on the snippets of conversation you heard.
Your head span. You furrowed your brow as you thought.
"I see you're having fun thinking about something" she said, patting your head with a giant hand. It felt like being bopped on the head with a mallet. "But do you want to know something funny? When I celebrated my birthday, I didn't wish for plagues or swarms of locusts or any of the things that Abners usually wish for. I wished for a new friend, because I was tired of only ever seeing my family. And I bet that's why you and I met, so you can be my friend" she said with a smile. When she used the word friend, it almost sounded too possessive. You could imagine her describing you as "my pet" just as easily. She probably did think you belonged to her. You wondered how different this "friendship" would be if she succeeded in turning you invisible.
"Oh, and I got you some food from the table" she said. She reached into a pocket near her hip on the jacket and retrieved what looked like a massive sausage sandwich. Or part of one, anyways. She pushed you up against the sausage, accidentally smudging your face with a bit of grease, and held you there until you took a bite. You were hungry...
"I hope you like it. It's my grandmother's lizard blood sausage recipe from the old country. I was lucky to get one, since they usually all get eaten before I get to the table."
You swallowed the sausage reluctantly. Lizards? You felt like you were going to be sick. Noticing the grease on your face, Wendy tried to smudge it off with her thumb, which made it worse.
"Oops. Well, we'll fix it later."
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