Best posts made by Kisupure

Because I do more of these than any kind of finished work I should be proud of.

I don’t have hair nearly this luxurious, or sunglasses nearly this cool.

@Olo

@littlest-lily Agreed! However, I disagree that love needs to be part of it as per my first bullet below…

My list is:

• Really exploring the nitty-gritty of what it means for a dominant/predatory personality to need the submissive/prey personality in order to express and justify itself. Like, sure, the giant can huff and puff as much as they want but if they break their toy and there’s no one left to push around, then what? At the end of the day they’re just as powerless as the rest of us. (And to be menacing/dominant/authoritative in spite of that is one of the places where things get really interesting for me.)
• Physics and anatomy. Like, get as detailed with the physics as possible without breaking the fantasy. What does a follicle of a giant’s hair actually feel like? Is it the same diameter and texture as a regular human hair, or is it thicker and more wiry? What is the texture of their skin? Can you draw blood as easily? Can they move through water with more or less effort? What about their clothes? At a certain point fabric has to be engineered to a completely different degree than at a normal size, and it probably won’t feel soft to a tiny whatsoever. What are their caloric needs? Where does the food come from and how often do they need to eat? What’s the texture of a giant’s cum? Does its aesthetic viscosity match the size or is it exactly the same stuff that a normal-sized human produces and is only gloopy at that scale? (Thoughts on the physics of giant dicks could warrant an entire postdoc research career, too.)
• Logistics. Spending time thinking about how giants get around, how much damage they do or don’t do, or what might engineering for a giant look like.

The details of a giant’s very existence is just as important to me as their interrelations with tinies!

CHAPTER 2: DISCOVERED

Later that evening the man ordered pizza and Dawn could smell it when it arrived. He had neglected to check under the couch earlier, and out of sheer terror she hadn’t dared leave her sanctuary all day, but the fatigue, thirst, and hunger were finally getting to her.

She had woken up that morning to find herself in a most impossible and horrifying situation: shrunk down to the size of a Barbie doll, and taken into some stranger’s apartment. She’d spent all day trying to figure out how it all happened, and where she’d wound up. By the street noise outside, she knew she was at least still in New York City. Good. That was a good start.

The owner of the apartment–she only knew it was a man by his voice–thanked the delivery driver and drew nearer to where she hid in the under-structure of the sofa. Dawn bit back a yelp when he sat down right above her, but she resolved to stay hidden. When he went to bed, she’d come out to find the phone. That’s it. She’d call the firm, let them know something terrible happened…

The man clicked the TV on. It was one of those older ones that didn’t have a remote. She’d think he was some bohemian if the rest of his apartment wasn’t so clean and white and spartan, and judging by what she could see from under the couch, she guessed that he was an artist of some sort. There were a few paintings on the walls and there were interesting wooden or plaster carvings in various corners of the loft. She recognized an elephant-headed god from India, as well as some other hyper-intellectual pieces, that resembled… well, they didn’t resemble anything that she could think of. Those were probably from just across town. Hmph. Art was such a waste of time and money.

The woman made a face as her stomach growled, hoping he wouldn’t hear–he didn’t–and tried to take her mind off her misery when he put on the news. God the pizza smelled good. She imagined the phone ringing and the man getting stuck talking long enough for her to slip out and make off with a gob of cheese…

But that didn’t happen, and the anchorman continued droning on and Dawn felt more and more scared and sorry for herself. The segment ended, though, and she froze when she heard her name.

“A Manhattan lawyer has been missing since Thursday night, a police spokesman said. Thirty-two year old Dawn Cooper, a defense attorney with the firm Raymond Thurlow, was last seen leaving the Bistro Les Amis in SoHo at about 9:30 that night, when eyewitnesses say they they saw the victim get into a taxi cab. If you have any information regarding Dawn’s whereabouts, police have opened their tipline…”

A sob wracked her body, she couldn’t help it.

The exhaustion, the fear, the hunger, it was all too much. She’d been hoping that this was all somehow just a bad dream, but any lingering doubts were now gone. It was real.

The crying wasn’t stopping, and she didn’t have the energy to try and fight it anymore. Dawn shakily released herself from her uncomfortable and precarious perch under the couch and sunk to the floor, where she let the tears flow. Who did this and why? Was there any hope in going back to normal? What would the police say when they found her like this? She’d make headlines all right, and not the good kind.

She was so tired that she didn’t notice that the man had gotten up from the couch and was in the process of getting down on hands and knees to see what that sound was. It was when he gave a startled yell that she screamed and darted out into the open.

Looking wildly around, she finally grasped just how small she was. The back of the couch loomed above her, and behind it, standing even taller, was the man. His face was slackened in pure shock and he kept a finger pointed at her.

“Y-y-you’re… real…”

"What did you do to me! Change me back!"she hollered at him through the tears.

“I-I didn’t do anything!”

“Bullshit!”

“I found you in the trash! I-I thought you were a-an art piece or something!”

Dawn’s frustration just made her cry more; it didn’t happen often, and she hated when it did. She started at him as he took his eyes off her to pace.

“I’m calling the police.”

“No!”

“No? You’re a lawyer, give me one good reason not to!”

“Please! I have a reputation!”

“And you know what? That’s not my problem.”

He sped over to a side table and grabbed the receiver. Dawn found herself sprinting over to him.

“Please, please. Just give me time to process things. I don’t even know what day it is! I’m starving and thirsty and I have to pee!”

He looked down at her with thoughtfully panicked brown eyes for a moment, fingers hovering over the keypad. Eventually, he set the phone down.

“Alright. Let me get you some water. And, uhm, something to cover up with,” he muttered.

As he dashed up the stairs to the kitchen area, Dawn looked down at herself and remembered that she was completely naked. A blush reddened her from head to toe and she sat down on the floor to hug her knees to her chest while she waited. She was surprised that he hadn’t seemed distracted by her body.

He returned with a shot glass and a tea towel, which she snatched from him with a sniffle. He turned around while she wrapped it around herself.

“I’m Keith Morgan, by the way,” he said, peeking over his shoulder after a few moments. “It’s Saturday night and you’re in Flatbush.”

Dawn lifted the glass and gulped half of it down.

“Nice to meet you, Keith.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

"And why should I be?"she snapped.

He frowned. “I’m trying to help, remember? Now come on, you said you were hungry. I’m not going to eat this whole pizza myself.”

Keeping their distance, they both went back to the couch. It quickly became apparent that she would need help to get to the food.

“Do you… want a lift?” he asked awkwardly, holding out his hand.

“No! I can get up there myself.”

Both the coffee table and couch were several inches taller than she was, which was something she hadn’t thought through. The tiny woman tried to see if she could hoist herself up–maybe she had some kind of bug strength now–but to no avail. She growled in exasperation.

Keith sighed. “Here.” He reached under the glass table and pulled out a few large books. Each of them had an artists’ name on the front in big letters, with a photo of their work. They looked expensive. Out of them, though, he managed to create something of a staircase for her, and when Dawn stepped up to the top, she was much closer to the table, and she was able to climb up the last few inches without too much trouble.

“Thank you.”

Keith circled around to turn the volume on the TV set down, presumably so they could talk.

He watched her warily as she went for the smallest slice of the pie and began to wolf it down.

“So… what was the last thing you remember?”

Chewing mozzarella cheese with a mouth this small was strange and difficult, while at the same time the flavors seemed just that much more pronounced. It was… fascinating.

“I remember leaving the restaurant and hailing a cab home.”

“Do you remember getting out of the cab?”

She nodded and took another bite. “I remember pulling my keys out of my purse to go inside…”

“…And?”

Dawn thought about it. Things were hazy. “There was a… man behind me. He pulled something out of his pocket, I thought it was a gun.”

“What did he look like?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. His face was covered.”

Keith nodded, reaching for another slice for himself. Dawn watched as his enormous hand drew near, grabbing it by the crust, and she couldn’t help but compare it to a piece of construction equipment grabbing a tree or chunk of concrete and dragging it away. It was… incredible.

They sat in silence like that for a little while, and it occurred to her that she was technically an uninvited guest in this man’s home. He deserved to have her hold up her end of the social contract, at least.

"So… are you an artist or something?"she asked.

“I’m a sculptor and furniture designer,” he said. Well that explained it. “The coffee table’s one of mine.”

The tiny woman looked around at the expanse of table under her. It was a big piece of glass held up by some kind of contrived shape in wood. She didn’t like it.

“Very nice. Could you show me the restroom, please?”

“Oh! Uh, yeah.”

Keith stood up, towering over her again as he brushed passed, and it was almost enough to give her vertigo. His long strides devoured the floor and on his way to the bathroom he grabbed another armful of books from a stack on the floor. By the time Dawn caught up to him, he had already had them arranged into stairs next to the commode.

“Try not to fall in,” he joked with a little chuckle, and eased the door shut. “I’m just outside, give me a knock when you’re ready to come out.”

She did almost fall in. Almost. Reaching for a scrap of toilet paper had thrown off her careful balance, but in the end she succeeded at doing her business.

“I’ll leave the books there for you I guess.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

Dawn looked at the wood grain in the floor and worried her now very small lip. She was not calling the police, that was for sure. This story didn’t need to get any bigger than it already was–she just need to call her firm, the people who probably reported her missing when she didn’t show up to work Friday, let them know she was still alive. There was just a medical emergency that came up, and she’d be taking some time off work. They could shift her caseload to Tim and Joyce in the meantime.

The worrying turned into full-on chewing. Keith seemed to sense her anxiety because he crouched down to get a little closer as he waited for her reply.

“Can I… can I stay through Monday?”

Stupid, stupid! What a stupid thing to ask! He was going to say no, she knew he was. But there was nowhere else to go. Not home, not even to her friend’s. Not yet.

He studied her with expressive eyes and thought for a moment.

“Why the hell not,” he sighed, and stood up again.

“Great! I-I’ll call the firm first thing in the morning. Crystal’s usually there at 8:30 sharp, she’ll answer. She may not recognize my voice, but one of the partners will, they have to… Thank you Keith. I owe you, I really do.”

“It’s, ah, no big deal, really. It’s not like you can eat me out of house and home,” he laughed nervously.

“As soon as I get back to normal, I’ll cut you a check to cover expenses.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“Surely your time is worth something?”

“Yeah, if you were wasting it,” he retorted. “Frankly, Miss Cooper, this whole thing has been quite a trip. What’s a couple more days?”

Keith let her watch TV as he put the pizza away upstairs, and mentioned that he would cut one of the slices up for her into more manageable pieces. He asked if there was anything else she wanted, and Dawn knew that her usual routine of slimming shakes and freshly pressed carrot juice was probably out of the question. Maybe he could run down to a video store and rent her an aerobics tape tomorrow. Staying fit helped her stay focused. She liked getting the blood pumping.

Before Dawn knew it, it was ten o’clock and Keith said he was ready to head to bed. He brought out a clean pillowcase for her to sleep in if she wanted, but it was still so warm that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to sleep under anything. Still, she took it with thanks and he went to shower off before disappearing behind the closed door of his bedroom.

Clambering onto the coffee table and from there jumping onto the couch, the little lady realized that the pillowcase would be cooler than the tea towel, and quickly she slipped out of the one and into the other.

Feeling much less panicked than earlier, Dawn gave into her exhaustion and fell asleep.

I’m no stranger to the macro community, but I thought I’d introduce myself here. I’m Kisupure (yes, a nod to the infamy of Kiss Players!), I’m a FTM and sizeswitch, though I lean more towards the giant end of things.

The good lord above put me on this earth to bring a little more Heavy Metal Magazine to macro/micro world, so here I am, with guns and engine grease in tow. Oh, the gravel truck’s here? Tell 'em to dump it just out back.

I like realistic size difference, and wildly unrealistic size difference. I like gun play that involves stuffing tinies down the barrel of a nice, loaded M4. I like giants with their boots on, muscles bulging behind their body armor. I like daddies in dusty kevlar. I like giants who are cyborgs, robots, and machines that are designed to have people sit inside of them. Giants who are large and in charge, but also giants who are soft and kind and scared of losing their little lovers or allies or fuckbuddies, giants who have flaws as well as sexy things they’re really really good at. Giants that are unapologetically dominant, and giants that are good at faking it. Vore and endosoma are A+ too.

I’m also an objectum sexual (as in orientation), so to me, “male” can mean flesh and blood as well as axles and ailerons. An A-10 warthog is just as much a lovable giant to me as the guy on your bag of frozen peas. OS representation all the way.

I write, I draw, and I’ve got some long-form stuff in the works including a “graphic novel” that I hope tickles somebody’s fancy (other than my own, of course). So howdy!

@olo

holy shit I’m tired now, goodnight

Late to the topic, but it’s been something I’ve been thinking on as well as I get further along in my transition and as my tastes… metamorphosize lol. I think I have a unique perspective to bring in that regard, especially as the more I become myself, the “straighter” my orientation gets. (I put that in scare quotes because I still am absolutely queer as all fuck, including being primarily asexual and aromantic. That is, I don’t experience primary sexual attraction or desire to romance people. But I still experience “physical attraction”, which for me is most aligned with the desire to do kink and other physical activity, even if it’s not explicitly sexual/orgasmic in nature.)

Some of yall who’ve been following me for years have seen my struggles, and seen the lengths I went to explain away my dysphoria. For those unfamiliar with me, I went from SW to giant. In my personal life, the dominants I met were never dominant enough, or dominant in exactly the way I was looking for; I kept wanting to tell them what to do to me. Turns out I’m a shit sub and wanted to call the shots the whole time!

But even now, even as a straight-passing, cis-passing male in my day to day life, I am extremely comfortable with writing from the female sub POV, and I enjoy it. In my years trying to be a woman, I learned to enjoy parts of it, I learned the play the part I wanted to see in someone else, so when I write from a woman’s perspective, I don’t half-ass it, I throw my whole being into it all over again. I get into her mind, I don’t think “OK I’m a chick”, I think “OK, I’m a human”. The vast, vast majority of men don’t understand that because they’re fucking narcisstistic idiots. Except it’s worse, because they don’t even enjoy themselves! They don’t even insert their whole selves into the works they make, and enjoy all of who they are as men - they reduce the whole of their own humanity down to dick-n-ball, just enough to have the fully-rendered recipient to interact with.

As I start looking at straight porn more from the male perspective too, I’m super underwhelmed for this reason. I remember something an internet rando said once regarding futa porn and why it’s so popular, and it haunts me a little. They said that you could do stuff with futa you couldn’t do with straight porn. You could have intimacy, you could show the penis-haver’s pleasure. It wasn’t always about dick-in-hole and violence. The futa could have a face. It frustrates me to no end to see faceless dude-shaped thing after faceless dude-shaped thing in porn. Men, stop doing this to yourselves. Fucking enjoy yourself for once!

I try to avoid this at all costs, which is easy because I don’t get off on it. Everyone’s real person in everything in write, that’s always my #1 goal. If that means that what I write is chick-lit, that’s OK by me. It’s much more gratifying to write everyone as complicated people and women who are sometimes at odds with their male counterparts. As a character in one of my non-size short stories said about why he bothers to spend time pleasuring the sex workers he hired: “If I wanted to just stick my dick into something, I could make a fist. What I’m here for is sex.”

For real though, imagining myself as a giant makes me feel confident and attractive like I never was as a SW. Being small allowed me to hide. Being a GT feels transgressive, to be honest, because I’m on display, the subject of the gaze. Feeling sexy as opposed to just sexual as a man is a big source of shame and internalized homophobia. Even being clean and well-dressed is enough to make a man feel effeminate - or why did society need to come up with “metrosexual”? Like seriously, men, interrogate yourselves about why you’re uncomfortable with the things you are. Because I guarantee you, it’s not natural and it’s not how it’s always been.

I think the problem with topics like this is that there is always going to be the implication, however small, of entitlement. It’s never “I wish more people were into the thing I’m into”, but always some kind of “I wish creators would make things for me for free”. Creators make all kinds of free things already, the internet is full of them. That none of it, or enough of it, is your favorite thing isn’t anyone’s problem but yours. Creators don’t owe you their time, skill, money, resources. It’s kind of a slap in the face to creators who make things for free already, like myself (and I even take requests!), because it’s not the thing you want to see.

But that’s what commissions, trades, and financially supporting creators who make things you like are for. The more you actually pay people to make things, the more your interest is going to be noticed and acknowledged.

Griping like this is not a good look, especially when there are creators reading and posting here.

@TakoAlice8 It’s an interesting thing, but I think @Nyx is right in that men are just overrepresented in cultural discussions and research about sex. One of the godfathers of research into fetishes even framed his whole theory about it in a way that completely erased women by stating that that “odd-hitting” experience in childhood makes men paraphilic, while it supposedly makes women “frigid”! I don’t think he’s taken seriously at all anymore, but if that’s where we started, we haven’t strayed far.

“But I wanna sleep HERE tonight!”

I would hope to god I could still use my phone so I could start calling up everyone in my rolodex that I’ve been interested in to see if they want to “meet me for beers”.

Then, while I waited for the first of my dates to show up, I would take the opportunity to severely punish all of the fuckers who make illegal turns onto my street at rush hour. Because what’s a growth spurt without some car stomping?

I keep them very separate. There was a period a number of years ago when I thought I wanted to reconcile all my online lives, then realized that it would be a bigger logistical and mental nightmare than keeping them separate. Even if I did start getting “horny on main”, I would feel the pressure to self-censor some of my weirder, harsher, or more experimental stuff. Also the stuff that’s more personal to me - in other words, I’d feel like I’d have to be a “content creator” and all the baggage that goes with that rather than just an artist and writer expressing and exploring himself without shame.

In fact, it was the space created by keeping these worlds separate that led me to discovering that I was FTM and that I needed to transition. Not getting horny on main could very well have saved my life!

I do use different styles for different spheres of my life. For one thing, my mainstream work is very analog. I’m a conceptual painter who works on commission, as well. You can’t really get much further away from smut than that. My kinky art is all done digitally anyways, and I permit myself to be sketchy and lazy. I even have an entire brush pack that I basically reserve for smut now. It’s fun.

I don’t really talk about sex or sexuality very much with anyone IRL, though I’d like to change that in situations where it’s appropriate rather than feigning stoic disinterest. There’s a lot of reasons for it, but it was because most of the friends I’d made in public school wound up being ace, or just never dated or talked about dating. My family didn’t talk about sex very often either, and my parents were both pretty body-averse people that kept very hush hush. So I never learned how to be open about it, and combined with crippling dysphoria in my teen years that I also didn’t know how to talk about, even thinking about having sex as a woman made me feel disgusting!

That said, my partner knows and has zero problem with it, though we’ve never really acted anything out in bed. I used to have a few friends who knew, but they’re long gone. If someone asked me in plain english if I had a thing for giants or really tall men, I don’t think I’d lie. It’d be easy to turn it into something understandable. Something like “duh, the more man you can get the better!”

Male renders are finally starting to look good! This is fantastic

I prefer this one: http://www.mrinitialman.com/OddsEnds/Sizes/sizes.html

It’s simple and doesn’t involve silhouettes of children

Whew, my experience with height was a bit of a rollercoaster!

When I was a little kid I vividly remember telling everyone I was going to grow up to be over 6 feet tall like it was some kind of competition? Like most kids I was excited to see how much I was growing and I still have the closet doorway that we marked my height on for my entire adolescence. (Some of those growth spurts were excrutiating.)

Of course female socialization kicked in and around puberty I started hating my height. I had horrific posture (so many dysphorias), and would regularly try scrunching myself down to 5’8" no matter what it took. At 20 I reached 5’9", and ugh it was awful.

Fast forward 10 years and one transition later and now I get height dysphoria going the other way LOL. Thankfully men come in all shapes and sizes, and working with the public I’m reminded every day that I’m average for my country, and above average for most everywhere else. I’m diligently working on my posture, and combined with some relaxing/thickening joint and soft tissue from testosterone, I’m actually closer to 5’10" now. Even my shoe size has gone up and I’ve outgrown all my old clothes. If I had a process kink I’d be in heaven lol.

In hindsight, I think the interest in size disparities was the prior to everything else. When I was trying to be a woman, I wanted to fit the size kinked ideal of small. Now that I know I’m not, it would be nice to be taller (but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much because I’m just happier in so many other ways).

As for correlation, I don’t think there is any. Kinks have much, much more to do with formative experiences that hit in just the right way at just the right time,; I’ll bet what was on the TV when we were 6 or 7 is far more relevant than how tall we are at high school graduation.

A Brooklyn artist stumbles across an interesting find in the trash and brings it home. Turns out “it” is a curt and demanding Manhattan lawyer who has been mysteriously and maliciously shrunk down to 12 inches tall. Will she ever get her hyperproductive, busy life back, or will the artist have time to show her how much sweeter things taste when you slow down to enjoy them?

Giving that idea a go, @tiny-ivy !

========

CHAPTER 1: THE MAIL KEY

Keith Morgan hauled himself up the 100 year-old stairs of his Flatbush loft. They creaked louder than a setpiece in the Haunted Mansion ride, and he winced. It was almost 3am, and seventy-year-old lady on the first floor always seemed to notice when he was coming home by the noise. She liked sticking her head out to mention it when he was grabbing his mail, and would sometimes ask when he was getting a real job. Wait–mail!

“Ah, shit,” he hissed, louder than intended, and spun back around on the third-floor landing. Keith had realized, while out to dinner with some friends, that he’d accidentally thrown out his mail key that morning–it had gotten swept into the trash along with some old magazines and taken out. Being five glasses of wine in, however, would make it a nearly impossible task to find it. He was going to try, though.

Nearly stumbling down the last few stairs, he surged outside and toward the pile of garbage bags on the sidewalk. His would have been the one right on top. Street trash was already accumulating on it, though, and with a wince he brushed away banana peels, pop cans, and other whatnot.

Underneath a bag of Lays, though, was something that distracted him from his mission. It looked like an arm. Not a person’s arm, of course, but a doll’s arm. He lifted his bag of garbage away from the pile, then, and saw, bathed in the buzzing orange light of a Brooklyn streetlamp, what looked like the most lifelike toy he had ever seen.

“Weird,” he said. Grinning, Keith grabbed it gently by the waist and lifted it free. When he could see it better, he realized that it was so lifelike that it had perfectly sculpted breasts and genitals. He gasped before bursting into laughter. This was so fucking bizarre! As an artist himself, he could tell that a lot of work went into this. There was an inner structure he could feel through the skin, but it didn’t seem able to hold a pose. Why include one if it was going remain limp? He imagined the artist’s statement already: a feminist piece about how women are required to be strong but punished for exercising agency. Maybe someone doing sculpture at Cooper Union made it. But why would it be thrown away? It probably cost a fortune in materials.

Keith was fascinated by the find in his drunken state, and with a sloppy grin he brought it upstairs, hoping to learn more about it in the morning and forgetting altogether about the mail key. If nothing else, she’d make an interesting coffee table piece. Maybe he could have some people over for life drawing with it.

The doll weighed maybe three or four pounds and seemed to be about a foot tall, just big enough to be slung over his shoulder. Soon he’d climbed the stairs back up to the third floor without dropping her. Inside the loft, he flicked a switch and a long line of Christmas lights lit up along the whitewashed brick walls. He swayed across the open floor and put her down on the couch. Something about the way she felt made him want to be very careful… she seemed very fragile.

“Jesus,” he murmured as he pushed and pulled the doll into laying prone on her back. It was, um… it was an attractive little thing. Through the wine he could see that there was a slit between her legs, small enough to be able to cover with the pad of his thumb. A blush reddened his cheeks at the thought. It’s just a doll, he reminded himself. This wasn’t a person, there was nothing wrong with looking. He lifted one leg a askew so he could satisfy his curiosity, but scowled deeply and let go when he thought he saw a clitoral hood. “Oh come on, it didn’t need to be this real,” he said to the cavernous loft, as if the walls themselves were judging him.

He hoped to god that it was a feminist piece, and left it there as he crossed the floor to his room on the other side of the building. He collapsed into bed and thought about the strange piece of art until he drifted off to sleep.

Keith’s head was pounding when he woke up the next day around noon. His hands smelled like the garbage he’d been digging through, so he shambled into the adjacent bathroom and washed up in a porcelain sink older than his great aunt. The tile work beneath his feet was charming and old, just like most other things in the building, and everywhere the high ceilings were covered in pressed tin. He loved the old loft, and rent was good for someone like him because he didn’t need to have a separate studio and clients could meet him here.

The summer sun was blasting through the windows. Keith winced as he shed last night’s clothes on his way back to the bedroom. His hands weren’t the only things that smelled funny. Finally down to his underpants to cool off in what was sure to be another sweltering summer day, he went about his next task.

“Coffee,” he grunted. “Coffee, coffee, coff–”

Keith froze when he passed by the couch and the doll was no longer there. For a brief moment, he wondered if it happened at all, if maybe he hadn’t dreamt up the whole thing. No, no, the smell on his hands had been real.

The man glanced wildly around the space, expecting to see it anywhere, at any moment. He’d never believed in things like ghosts and demons, but maybe it was time to start.

Sweat prickled on the back of his neck as he thought up his next move. That’s when he decided to go get coffee somewhere else. Buy himself some time. In record speed he was dressed again, key held in a shaking hand as he bee-lined out the door.

“Something’s in my apartment,” he muttered to himself, and headed for the diner a few blocks away. “M-maybe it’ll let itself out while I’m gone…”

He sat at the counter at Ray’s for over three hours. At some point he’d ordered food, one more coffee, a Coke, and gotten through two different newspapers.

“Hey buddy, you can’t sit here all day. I got other payin’ customers that want that spot.”

Keith glanced around. “There’s only six people in here, Ray.”

“Get goin’, Picasso.”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“Go? Go home, buddy.”

“I-I can’t go home.”

“Then go see a movie or somethin’. All I know is you’re not staying here all night.”

A movie. Yeah, yeah he’d go see a movie. Theaters were nice and cool, too, and he’d save on water by not sitting in the bath like he did every day when it got too hot.

“Fine.”

Keith paid his bill and left. A movie was perfect. There was no way he was going home now. Not with that thing there. He had to buy his time until he thought of some way to deal with it, somehow. Was there a chance that he maybe brought home a squirrel or something? Keith balked. No way, that was the most realistic human vagina he’d ever seen on a sculpture.

Maybe he could go to animal control, or the police. Or maybe they’d laugh him out of the building if he said anything about what they could be looking for.

In the meantime, Keith resolved to go see a movie. With subway token in hand, he headed for the station across the street from his building to take himself to Manhattan. Then afterwards, maybe he could have a nice stroll through the botanic garden, go out to dinner again, maybe call up one of his friends to meet up for a late-night game of pool…

No. Keith pocketed the token. From where he stood with his hand on the brass handrail leading down to the station, he looked up at his loft and its tall windows, expecting to see something, but he didn’t. He couldn’t avoid this forever, that was ridiculous. Setting his jaw, the man crossed the street and returned to figure out what was going on once and for all.

He paused on his doorstep after making that damned creaky climb up the stairs, listening through the door. There was nothing for a long time, and Keith finally let himself in. He groped for the umbrella stand, grabbing one and wielding it like a sword as he stalked through the loft. He started on the main floor, carefully winding his way around the foyer, to the living area, then around to his partitioned 600 square foot studio.

It was a mess, as all good studios should be, with plaster and wood and unfinished pieces strewn about. He held still, eyes darting around, looking for movement before slowly circling through the space. He poked at a few things with the end of the umbrella, things where a small creature might hide, but there was nothing. He headed toward the guest room next.

“I know you’re here,” he said, trying to sound commanding and fearless. Another section of the ancient wooden floor creaked as he passed over it. “I know… you’re… here…”

He stood in the doorway of the guest room, did his initial survey of the space, then ventured further in. He stood in front of a wardrobe and flung it open, but it was empty. There was nothing under the bed.

“Damn,” he said, and stroked his chin. He was now more baffled than before. Maybe he had just imagined all of it.

Moving with a little less tension now, he headed back out and to the stairs that would take him to the kitchen. There was nothing up there either. Last place to check was his own bedroom.

He crossed the floor again, more confidently this time, and went through the same motions as before. He poked and prodded at the curtains, checked under the bed, looked through the closet. He even went through his pile of dirty clothes on the floor. Nothing.

“Christ, I must be going crazy.”