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The strange wave had radiated out, leaving Jessi’s kayak bobbing in the currents. She considered her options.
That large a wave, and that loud a sound, both coming from the southern part of the island meant that a lot of energy was just suddenly released there, and Adam could have gotten hurt. She took the Hippocratic oath that she had taken 10 years ago seriously, and she believed that inaction counted as harm. As a doctor, she was obligated to check on him.
Even if he was insane, or violent, he didn’t deserve to die from a treatable problem. She had bear-strength pepper spray in her go bag – she would pull it out if she picked up on any truly threatening vibes.
Jessi paddled south, going past the cliff that had the house on it, past the soft beach and the dangerous rocks, finally getting to the jutting-out edge of a cliff that blocked her view of the southern shore. After she turned the corner, she saw the stark, southern cliff that was at the end of the forest path, to her right, and the open ocean to the left. At the base of the cliff, a half a dozen evergreen trees lay strewn about, some upside down, some laying horizontally across the rocks. Other trees, whole and in parts, were floating in the water.
“Adam?” She cried out, before kicking into man-overboard training: look for small shapes bobbing in the water. Tree, branch, root bundle, fleshy blob, tree, wave cap. She stared closer at the fleshy blob, dozens of feet away, and started paddling towards it.
She called his name again as she paddled closer to the blob. It wasn’t a head. There were five of them in a row – like toes. On second look, they weren’t like toes, they were exactly toes: five toes in a row, each of which was roughly the size of a human torso, sticking up from the shallow water, close to the shore, their nails facing the ocean.
It must be a sculpture. She had seen realistic giant people sculptures in a modern art museum once, maybe Adam was a big fan of Ron Mueck?
“How could a sculpture crash through a forest, Jessi,” her internal monologue mocked herself. Their whole thing is that they don’t move.
Jessi got closer to the humongous toes, close enough to reach out and touch them. She wouldn’t dare. She could now see, past the trunk of a half-submerged tree, another set of giant left foot toes two dozen feet further south.
The Northern Atlantic ocean water was dark, and impossible to see through, except for when Jessi was right on top of it, and the water was shallow enough. Through the water, she could manage to see the giant right foot connected to the giant right toes next to her kayak, connected to a giant ankle 8 feet under the water. She paddled away from the shore , staring down at the yacht-length shin under her kayak, before the water got too deep and dark, and she failed to discern the expected right kneecap through the water’s murkiness.
Something deep in Jessi’s instincts screamed at her to stay perfectly still, to go home, to use the computer to call the coast guard, to hide in a hole to avoid being killed by an animal several times her size. She ignored these instincts, because she was too busy marveling at the completely unique creature she was witnessing.
This thing might be a new species. She wanted to study it, even though she knew it was risky, as it may have been responsible for Adam’s death.
The waves this far out, as she was going towards the open ocean, were getting too choppy for the kayak, so Jessi started turning back towards shore. As she did so, what sounded like a whale breaching came from her right, and she turned to watch. The giant creature’s face breached the surface, bellowing air out and then in, before it went back under water. It glanced directly up at the sky as it took a deep breath, not seeing her.
The face was fully human. The face was Adam’s. She’d recognize that beard anywhere.
Jessi pieced everything together in her head. She had been staring at this mystery creature like it was her ticket to scientific fame. She had been thinking about it as a thing. Him- thinking about him, as a thing.
No wonder he was completely paranoid. She knew for a concrete fact that “monster,” or at best “specimen,” is how the world would see him, if he was really discovered. She could guess at what the previous accidents were. She was impressed that he had managed to avoid killing anyone during those events, after she had seen the violence that he had done to the trees, apparently more than once.
She had been furious at and afraid of Adam, all for his reasonable reactions to having this unreasonable… condition. She owed him an apology.
Regardless of everyone’s emotions, it was still risky for Adam to not know that Jessi was in a kayak floating on top of his giant body, in case he suddenly moved. She picked up the pace of her paddling, heading back towards the shore.
“I’m fucked, I’m fucked, I’m fucked, I’m- glurg, p’too-” she heard his pitched-down voice say from behind her, apparently catching some seawater from a wave while he had what sounded like a panic attack. Before she could react, the sea beneath her cascaded away, and Jessi ran aground for the second time in a week. This time, instead of a sharp rock, the kayak was stuck on top of a giant, hairy set of cushioned abs. She could feel the air around her heat up instantly.
“I’m extra fucked. Jessi,” he said, exasperated. Jessi turned around, just able to see his deep brown eyes from an extreme angle, before he turned his neck up again, leaving just his chin visible from her position.
“I’m going to sink down again, so you can leave. Please, go back to my house. I’ll be back soon, just like how you knew me. I float in the ocean, it calms me down, and then I get back to normal. It’s never taken more than an hour.” He took a deep breath, and sunk again, leaving her boat floating freely. Every move he made rippled the water around her kayak.
Jessi paddled back, and docked the kayak. She deleted all the photos she took that morning, and unpacked her items from the go bag. She wouldn’t be needing the pepper spray. She decided that she was going to stay in this house until Wednesday.
She weeded in the garden, and harvested some tomatoes, and then an hour had gone by. She thought about staying until longer than Wednesday. She browsed books from his shelf, then, two hours had gone by.
She was worried about Adam. It had been too long. She kayaked back to the southern cliff.
In those two hours, Adam had removed all of the downed trees from the ocean and the rocks, and stacked them in a neat pile on the forest’s edge. He had also apparently given up on the idea of floating to calm himself down. He was now leaning on his right side, supporting his head with his right arm, his back underneath the cliff. The cliff curved above him, providing some shade and shelter. The waves only covered the right side of him, from his navel down.
Jessi couldn’t help but marvel at the majesty of his entire size, laid out in her full view for the first time. He must have been ten stories tall. She scanned every inch of him that she could see, going from his feet up. All of the proportions of every part matched her memories from yesterday, but the new scale of them filled her with a feeling she hadn’t felt about a human being before: awe.
When her gaze got to his face, her ogling flipped over like a coin, to concern. It looked like he had been solidly panicking for the past two hours, and he was utterly miserable. His breaths were also too fast, for his resting posture. She sped up, and paddled closer.
Adam had been avoiding looking at her as she approached. He now directed his gaze at her and weakly waved with his left hand. Jessi didn’t feel afraid, but the eye contact from a head that enormous sent an instinctive shiver down her spine.
“I really thought you’d leave after you saw this,” he said, gesturing to his whole length.
Jessi shrugged, emphasizing it by jiggling the two-sided-paddle, and continued rowing closer. She knew it would be hard for him to hear anything she said, so she switched to big gestures.
“I’m sorry this happened near you. I tried to prevent it. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t end it. It’s never lasted this long.”
She gave a big shrug again. She was now just one his-arm-length away from him.
“Are you still going to flee this island on that kayak?” he asked.
Jessi shook her head, “no.”
“Have you taken more photos of me, where I’m like this?”
“No.”
“Are you going to post the photos you took earlier online?”
“No.”
“Do you still think I’m crazy to be this paranoid about people finding me?”
“No,” this time, shaken vigorously.
“That’s a relief,” Adam said. He visibly softened: his shoulders and his neck relaxed. He started feeling his pulse with his left hand.
Jessi waved at him, and gestured, “stop,” then pointed to herself.
“You want to take my pulse, little doctor?” he asked, half-amused.
Jessi nodded, “yes”.
His terror at what might happen if she posted those photos had lasted what felt like all day to him. That’s why he was still the size of a cruise ship. Now that he had her assurances, he was willing to let her take some control. If, as a doctor, she knew something that could end the panic attack at the core of this growth event, he would do whatever she asked.
“You’re not afraid of me?” He asked.
She shook her head, “No.”
“Hold tight, I’m grabbing the boat,” he said.
He cupped the fingers of his left hand into a loose u-shaped-claw around the kayak. He lifted it, with her in it, up and out of the waves, and held it flush against his left shoulder. The two-seated ocean kayak was 14 feet long, a little longer than his hand. Now that she was right next to it, she noticed that she was about as tall as his middle finger.
Jessi tucked the paddle between his loose grip and the boat, unstrapped herself, and clambered onto his neck. She shimmied across, brushing against the thick fibers of his beard, which smelled like minty aftershave. She felt for his massive carotid artery. It pulsed under her hand like a river of blood coursing under his warm skin. His pulse was around 130, which was very high for a fit person. She had seen these symptoms countless times in the E.R in her 10 years as a med student and resident.
Jessi moved over to his ear to speak, holding onto his earlobe for balance. When she touched the extra soft skin of this part, he visibly got goosebumps, all over his body, and breathed in suddenly. She remembered a previous boyfriend who considered his earlobes an erogenous zone.
“You’re right to be concerned Adam, your pulse is high. But it’s a normal number for a run-of-the-mill panic attack. Based on that, and your other non-supernatural symptoms, that’s all that this really is. Have you done ‘box breathing’ before?” She asked.
He replied with a rumbling, “Mmm-hmm.” The vibration from his vocal chords shook her all the way through, like she was standing on the subwoofers at a loud rock show.
“That’s great. I’m going to stay on your neck and monitor your pulse for a few minutes. All you have to do is that ‘box breathing’. Can you do that for me, Adam?” she said right into his ear.
“Yes ma’am,” he rumbled back.
She laid on top of his horizontal neck for a few minutes, checking the pulse as each minute went by. 120, 110, 100, 85. As she did so, despite the precarious position of straddling his neck, she felt totally safe on top of him. She knew he wouldn’t let her get hurt. The loud sounds of his breaths slowed down as he did the box breathing, until they blended in with the soothing sound of the waves.
“Your pulse is going down, Adam.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I can feel the panic wearing off.” From her angle, she could only tell that he was half-smiling by watching the edge of his cheeks tense.
“While I’m here,” Jessi said, speaking directly into his ear again, “I think you’re beautiful, at both sizes,” she finished, before she squeezed the edges of his earlobe in a makeshift hug. His cheeks got more tense, as his closed-lips smile widened.
Jessi got back in the boat, and he held her out in front of his face for a moment.
“Watch out, you little temptress, with compliments that huge,” he said. His big face was blushing.
He moved his hand down, letting the boat back into the water, right as his arm started getting too small to hold the weight of it. Every new breath he let out, he was smaller. He was now small enough for the 10-foot waves to cover sideways, then he was the length of the kayak, then shorter than it, and finally, he was normal.
He swam to the edge of the kayak by Jessi, and climbed up on the boat’s edge to kiss her madly, almost tipping the two of them over with the instability. He then moved to the back seat, and strapped in, finally able to relax, as she paddled herself and his naked ass on the short trip back to his home.
