Chapter 2: The Stairwell Descent
The door to 4B was ajar, a sliver of darkness that smelled of cat litter and boiled cabbage. Mrs. Garroway, a woman in her sixties who had always been tall and thin, now seemed to fill the entire hallway, her hands fluttering like trapped birds. Her eyes, magnified behind thick glasses, darted from Jimmy’s face to his shoulders and back, widening impossibly.
“Oh, thank god,” she breathed, her voice cracking. “Jimmy, you’re… you’re still big.”
He forced a nod, feeling like a specimen. Lena hovered just behind his shoulder, the borrowed sheet from their bed wrapped around her like a makeshift sari, covering the most obvious of her new curves. It didn’t hide much. The sheer scale of her was undeniable.
“Harold’s in the bathroom,” Mrs. Garroway wailed, turning and lumbering back into her apartment. “He fell in. After… after he changed. He was on the seat and he slipped.”
They followed. The apartment was a shrine to knick-knacks and floral patterns, now thrown into surreal relief. A ceramic shepherd boy figurine on a side table was nearly the same height as the teapot beside it. From down the hall, a high, reedy shouting was audible.
“Dammit, Eunice! Get me out! It’s cold! And it’s… it’s undignified!”
The bathroom was a pale pink nightmare. Harold Garroway, a retired postmaster with a glorious white mustache, was indeed stuck. He was standing chest-deep in the toilet bowl, his little arms braced on the porcelain rim, his tweed trousers soaked. His face was a purple moon of outrage and terror. He looked up as Jimmy ducked through the doorway, and his jaw went slack. His shouted curses died in his throat.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Harold whispered.
Jimmy knelt. The act made the small room feel like a shoebox. His knees pressed against the tub. He reached into the bowl. His hand, thick-fingered and powerful, looked like it could crush the entire toilet. Harold flinched, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Easy, Mr. Garroway,” Jimmy said, keeping his new, rumbling voice as soft as he could. He slid his hand under the man’s armpits, lifting him from the water with less effort than plucking a grape from a stem. Harold dangled, dripping, over the bowl. He weighed nothing. Absolutely nothing. A bag of bones in soggy tweed.
Jimmy stood, holding the shrunken man carefully in his palm. Harold’s entire body trembled. Up close, the details were heartbreaking: the precisely knotted, now-soaked tie, the gold wedding band like a bracelet on his tiny finger, the way his magnificent mustache quivered.
“Eunice,” Harold squeaked, not taking his eyes off Jimmy’s face. “A towel. For God’s sake.”
Mrs. Garroway fumbled with a hand towel, unfolding it. Jimmy gently placed Harold onto it on the vanity. The old man immediately began wringing out his jacket, avoiding everyone’s gaze, his pride in tatters.
“Thank you, Jimmy,” Mrs. Garroway sobbed, her giant hands clasped together. “What’s happening? The TV says it’s everyone. Is it everyone?”
“Looks like it,” Lena said from the doorway, her voice gentle. “All the men.”
“But not you,” Mrs. Garroway said, looking at Jimmy with a awe that was edged with something like fear. “You’re… more.”
Harold finally looked up, his old eyes sharp. “A genetic anomaly. A throwback. Or a leap forward.” He squinted. “Do you feel different, son? Aggressive? Primordial?”
Jimmy thought of the wall in his apartment, of the primal roar in his blood minutes before. “I feel… strong,” he said, which was both the truth and a vast understatement.
They left the Garroways with a few canned goods from their own nearly-bare pantry—Harold insisting from his perch on the towel-draped easy chair that he would compensate them when “this nonsense was sorted.” The gratitude in Eunice’s eyes was overwhelming, a heavy thing that followed them out into the hall.
Back in their own wrecked apartment, the silence was different. The immediate crisis had passed, leaving the vast, yawning future in its place.
“We can’t stay here,” Lena said, pulling the sheet tighter. She went to the window. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. The street below was a bizarre diorama. A woman was directing traffic, her gestures broad and impatient. Several others were gathered in a cluster outside the bodega on the corner. “They’re figuring it out. Organizing. Without men. What happens when they realize you’re not just a big guy? What happens when they realize what you are?”
“We need clothes that fit,” Jimmy said, pragmatic. “Food. Then we figure out the rest.”
Lena found a pair of his old basketball shorts. The waistband was tight, straining over his hips, but they hung to mid-thigh. They were better than the ruined sweatpants. She fashioned the sheet into a crude dress, using a leather belt to cinch it at her expanded waist. It revealed the stunning, heavy slope of her cleavage and did nothing to hide the majestic swell of her hips. She looked like a goddess from a fallen pantheon, draped in rags.
They had to leave the apartment. The stairs were the only option; the elevator was a death trap for Jimmy’s new height.
The stairwell door groaned shut behind them, cutting off the last familiar thing. The air changed instantly—cold, damp, smelling of concrete dust and the faint, sweet rot of discarded garbage. A single bare bulb on the landing above flickered, casting jumping shadows. Their footsteps echoed. Jimmy’s were deep, seismic thuds that vibrated through the iron railings. Lena’s were softer, but the weight behind them was solid, a measured thump on each step.
They descended one flight.Two. The world outside was muffled here, replaced by the drip of water somewhere in the walls and the sound of their own breathing.
On the third-floor landing, they found the first group.
There were five of them, all women from the building, now giants. Hendricks from 3C, the stern librarian, now well over seven feet in a torn silk bathrobe. The Chavez twins from 3F, college students, huddled together in oversized hoodies that now looked like crop tops, their long legs bare. An older woman Jimmy didn’t know, and a younger one with a shock of pink hair.
In the center of their loose circle, standing on an upturned milk crate, was a tiny man. He was maybe fifteen inches tall, dressed in a pinstripe vest and shouting in a voice that scraped the air like a rusty needle.
“…and the distribution of resources must be logistically prioritized! We need to establish a chain of command! I am a senior project manager for—”
“Oh, shut up, Kevin,” the pink-haired woman muttered, not looking at him. She was staring at her own hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time.
“You will not dismiss me!” the tiny man—Kevin—screeched. “My IQ is one hundred and sixty-two! My skill set is invaluable in a crisis! You need my mind!”
Ms. Hendricks sighed, a sound like wind through a canyon. “Your mind is currently eighteen inches off the ground, Kevin. It’s hard to take seriously.”
The twins giggled, a low, rumbling sound.
Jimmy and Lena stopped on the stairs above them. The group hadn’t noticed yet. Jimmy felt Lena’s hand brush his lower back, a light press of warning.
He took another step down. His shadow fell across the landing.
Five giant heads turned as one. Ten eyes, wide and startled, lifted. The chatter died. Kevin kept shouting, waving his arms, until he too noticed the shift in attention. He turned, his small body pivoting on the crate.
His tiny mouth formed a perfect ‘O’.
Jimmy didn’t speak. He just looked at them, at the path between them and the next flight of stairs. He felt the space he occupied, the sheer physical dominance of it. It wasn’t a thought; it was a gravity well.
“Move,” he said.
It wasn’t a shout. It wasn’t even loud. It was a low, quiet command, a vibration that seemed to settle in the dust on the concrete floor.
The effect was instantaneous. Hendricks took a step back, her bathrobe belt trailing. The Chavez twins parted, pressing themselves against the damp wall. The older woman simply bowed her head, looking at the ground. The pink-haired woman’s eyes dropped, then flickered up Jimmy’s body, taking in the impossible width of his shoulders, the cords of muscle in his neck, the way the cheap basketball shorts bulged with a dormant, terrifying potential. A flush crept up her neck.
They cleared a path. Just like that.
As Jimmy took the first step onto the landing, the pink-haired woman whispered it, the words breathed into the silence like a prayer.
“He’s the real man.”
Jimmy heard it. Lena, right behind him, heard it too. He felt her tense.
Kevin, on his crate, found his voice. “Hey! You! Sir! A moment of your time! We need to establish a civic framework!”
Jimmy glanced down. He didn’t stop walking. His gaze passed over the tiny, gesticulating figure with the same weight as it had over a crack in the pavement. Insignificant. Background noise.
Kevin’s demands sputtered into silence.
Jimmy reached the next flight of stairs. He was aware of every eye on him, of the heat of their stares. It wasn’t just fear. It was a hungry, desperate fascination. He was the sun, and they were cold planets suddenly pulled into orbit.
“Wait.”
The voice was Lena’s. It wasn’t loud, but it carried. It had a new, authoritative timber he’d never heard before. He stopped, turning.
Lena had stepped onto the landing. She was looking at the women, her chin raised. The sheet-dress, for all its absurdity, looked regal on her frame. Her auburn hair was a wild crown. Her warm brown eyes were no longer just warm; they were assessing, protective.
“You should stay inside,” she said to them. Her voice was firm, a teacher addressing her class. “It’s chaotic out there. And it’s not safe for… for the smaller ones.” She didn’t look at Kevin. “If you need something, wait here. We’re going for supplies. We’ll be back. Form a line. We’ll see what we can do.”
She wasn’t asking. She was directing. And after seeing Jimmy, after feeling the shift in the very air he displaced, the women listened. They nodded. Hendricks adjusted her glasses. “Thank you,” she said, her voice oddly formal.
Lena gave a short, sharp nod and turned, following Jimmy down the next flight. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. She had done that. She had spoken, and they had listened. Because of him. Always because of him now.
The stairwell descended into deeper gloom. The flickering bulb was far above them now. The only light came from a grimy window on the ground floor, casting a sickly green pallor.
“You handled that,” Jimmy murmured, his voice echoing off the close walls.
“I had to,” she said. “They were looking at you like… like he was a pet and you were a god. Someone had to be practical.”
He stopped on the last landing before the heavy metal door to the lobby. He turned to her. In the semi-darkness, his green eyes glinted. “It was smart. It gives us control.”
“Does it?” she asked, the question bursting from her. “Or does it just make us responsible for them? Jimmy, that woman called you the real man. What does that make Kevin? What does that make every other man on the planet? Furniture?”
He leaned against the cold concrete wall. “I don’t know. But I know I can’t fix the world. I can only handle what’s in front of me. Right now, that’s getting us clothes and food.”
He pushed the metal door.
It opened with a shriek of protesting hinges into the building’s small, tiled lobby. The mailboxes on the wall were askew, doors hanging open. The floor was wet with tracked-in rain. And standing just inside the glass front doors, peering out at the street, were three more women.
These were different. Younger, harder. Two of them looked like they worked at the gym down the block—muscular even before the change, now powerfully built, one with a shaved head, the other with dark braids. The third was leaner, all sharp angles and watchful eyes, a kitchen knife held loosely in her hand.
They turned at the sound of the door.
The shock on their faces was pure, unvarnished. The woman with the knife actually took a step back, her weapon-hand dropping to her side.
“Holy shit,” the one with the shaved head breathed. Her eyes traveled up Jimmy’s body, lingered on the strained fabric of his shorts, then snapped to his face. There was no submission in her gaze. It was calculation. Avarice. “You’re him. The one who didn’t shrink.”
“We’re going to the hardware store,” Jimmy said, keeping his tone flat. He moved past them toward the front door, his presence forcing them to step aside. Lena stayed close, her shoulder brushing his arm.
The woman with the braids blocked the door. Not aggressively, but her body was a barrier. “It’s a mess out there. Lots of confused ladies. Lots of tiny guys getting stepped on.” She looked Jimmy up and down, a slow, deliberate appraisal. “You might cause a stampede. Or start a religion.”
“We need clothes,” Lena said, her voice cutting through the tension. She stepped slightly in front of Jimmy, a move that was both protective and defiant. The woman with the braids was tall, but Lena was taller, her hourglass figure a lush, powerful contrast to the woman’s athletic leanness.
The woman’s eyes flicked to Lena, taking in the sheet-dress, the impossible curves. A smirk touched her lips. “Yeah, I can see that. Nice outfit.”
“Move, please,” Jimmy said. The ‘please’ was an afterthought, devoid of request. It was a courtesy before an action.
The woman with the braids held his gaze for a three-second eternity. Then she smiled, a slow, knowing thing, and stepped aside. “Sure thing, big man. The store’s two blocks down. Good luck.”
Jimmy pushed the glass door open, the damp, chaotic air of the street washing over them. The sounds rushed in—shouts, crying, the rumble of a few moving cars (driven by women, he noted), a distant crash of glass.
As they stepped onto the sidewalk, the woman with the shaved head called after them, her voice laced with a dark promise.
“We’ll be here when you get back!”
The street was a study in surreal adjustment. A woman was on her knees outside the bodega, carefully using both hands to lift a sobbing, shrunken man into a baby carrier strapped to her chest. Another woman, her face pale, was sweeping something small and motionless into a dustpan with a look of profound horror. Eyes followed Jimmy and Lena everywhere. Whispers coiled around them like smoke.
“Look at him…”
“Is that a man?”
“He’s gigantic…”
“Look at her, though. My god.”
They walked. Jimmy kept his pace slow, deliberate, making himself a predictable obstacle in the flowing, confused current of giant bodies. He felt like a shark moving through a school of tuna. The awareness was a physical pressure. Every giantess they passed stared. Their eyes held fear, wonder, desperate hope, and a dark, flickering hunger that made his skin crawl and, treacherously, stirred that low, primal pulse in his core.
Lena walked beside him, her head high, but he could feel the tremor in the arm that brushed his. She was putting on a show of strength, of belonging beside him. He knew her. He knew the insecurity that was curdling inside her, fed by every awestruck glance thrown his way.
A block down, they passed an alley. A sound made Jimmy stop. A soft, desperate whimpering. He looked down the narrow passage.
A giantess, a young woman in a torn waitress uniform, had a shrunken man backed against a dumpster. He was holding up his hands, pleading. She wasn’t hurting him. She was… petting him. Stroking his hair with a single, enormous finger, a possessive, fascinated look on her face.
“So small,” she cooed, her voice echoing in the alley. “So perfect. I could just put you in my pocket.”
The man’s whimpers turned to choked sobs.
Jimmy’s jaw tightened. He took a step into the alley. His shadow fell over them.
The waitress looked up, her eyes going wide. The shrunken man saw Jimmy and froze, his tiny face a mask of utter confusion.
“Leave him,” Jimmy said.
It was all he said. The waitress snatched her hand back as if burned. She scrambled to her feet, mumbling something, and hurried out the other end of the alley without a backward glance.
The tiny man remained against the dumpster, shaking. Jimmy nodded to him once, then turned and walked back to Lena. He didn’t know what else to do.
“That’s going to happen everywhere,” Lena said quietly as they resumed their walk. “They’re not all going to be like Mrs. Garroway. Some are going to like the power. Some are going to get… strange ideas.”
The hardware store’s neon ‘OPEN’ sign was cracked, but the door was unlocked. A bell jingled feebly as they entered.
The familiar smell of sawdust, metal, and fertilizer was overpowering. The aisles were narrow canyons. Jimmy had to turn sideways to fit. They headed for the workwear at the back.
It was there they found another group. Four giant women, ransacking the racks, pulling down the largest men’s coveralls they could find. They were laughing, a tense, edgy sound.
“This one might fit my left leg!” one cackled, holding up a pair of XXL jeans.
They fell silent as Jimmy rounded the end of the aisle.
The largest of them, a woman with arms thick as firelogs and a blunt, handsome face, dropped the bundle of clothes she was holding. Her eyes locked onto Jimmy. They weren’t like the others. They held no awe, no immediate submission. They held a sharp, competitive challenge. She looked him over, her gaze a physical scrape.
“Well,” she said, her voice a low contralto. “What do we have here?”
“We need clothes,” Jimmy said, meeting her stare.
“Don’t we all,” she replied, not moving. Her friends shifted behind her, forming a loose wall. They were all big, powerful-looking. “Seems there’s a shortage of things that fit real men. Or,” she smiled, a thin, humorless line, “the one real man.”
“We’re just taking what we need and leaving,” Lena said, her voice firm but tight.
The woman’s eyes slid to Lena. They traveled over her with a dismissiveness that was more insulting than hatred. “He can speak for himself, honey. Can’t you, big man?”
Jimmy felt the familiar heat begin to build in his gut. The challenging tone, the blocking of his path—it triggered something ancient and territorial. He took a step forward. The floorboard creaked under his weight.
“Move,” he said, the word a low growl.
The woman didn’t flinch. She raised an eyebrow. “Or what? You gonna make me?”
The air in the aisle crackled. Her friends tensed. Lena’s breath hitched.
Jimmy didn’t plan it. It was pure reaction. He reached out, not with a fist, but with an open hand. He placed it on the woman’s sternum. He didn’t shove. He just pressed.
The effect was immediate and profound. Her eyes bulged. Her feet scrambled for purchase on the linoleum. She was strong, but against the raw, rooted power in his arm, she was a sapling in a gale. He walked forward, his arm extending, and she was forced backward, step after stumbling step, until her back thumped against a shelf of paint cans. He kept the pressure on, pinning her there. She gasped, her hands coming up to claw at his wrist. It was like trying to bend an iron bar.
Her friends stared, frozen.
He leaned in, his face inches from hers. He could smell her sweat, see the panic finally dawning in her eyes. “I said,” he rumbled, the sound vibrating through his arm into her chest, “move.”
He released her. She sagged against the shelf, sucking in air, her face pale. All the challenge was gone, replaced by a stunned, dawning fear. And beneath that, a flicker of something else. A shiver of involuntary attraction to the absolute dominance she’d just been shown.
He turned from her, as if she’d ceased to exist, and reached past her friends to the rack of painter’s coveralls. He found the largest size they had. It would be tight, but it would work. He grabbed two pairs. He took a heavy-duty knife from a display, a hammer, a coil of nylon rope. Practical things.
He handed a bundle to Lena. “Find something for you. Overalls. Big shirts. Whatever.”
She nodded, moving quickly to the women’s section, though even the largest sizes there would be a joke on her new frame.
Jimmy stood guard, his bulk filling the space. The four women didn’t speak. They didn’t move. The leader just watched him, one hand rubbing her sternum where he’d pressed, her expression unreadable.
Lena returned with an armful of men’s flannel shirts and a pair of denim overalls meant for a large man. They would be tight across her chest and hips, but they would cover her.
“Let’s go,” Jimmy said.
They walked back down the aisle, past the silent women, past the shattered ‘OPEN’ sign, and out into the grim, grey light of the new world.
The walk back was quieter. The word had spread. People saw him coming and cleared a wider path. The stares were more intense, more loaded. He saw a woman point at him and speak urgently into a phone. He saw another, perched on a fire escape, watching him with binoculars.
When they reached their building, the three women were still in the lobby. The one with the braids was sitting on the mailboxes now, swinging her legs.
“Find what you needed?” she asked, her tone conversational.
“Yes,” Jimmy said, not breaking stride.
“Good,” she said. “Because folks are starting to talk. They’re saying there’s a king in the old walk-up on 5th. A real, live king.” She hopped down, landing lightly. “Kings need things. Subjects get those things for them.”
Jimmy paused, the heavy door to the stairs half-open. He looked back at her. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying me and my friends,” she gestured to the woman with the shaved head and the one with the knife, “we’re good at getting things. We’re not confused. We see how the land lies. You’re the top of the food chain now. We want to be near the top.” She smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Think of us as… your first volunteers.”
Lena’s grip on his arm tightened.
Jimmy looked at the three women. They were offering loyalty. Or something like it. In exchange for proximity to his power. It was a transaction. The first of many.
He gave a single, slow nod. “We’ll talk,” he said, and pulled Lena into the stairwell, letting the heavy door slam shut on the grinning face of the woman with the braids.
The climb back up was silent. The women on the third-floor landing were still there, now in a semblance of a line. They watched him pass with solemn eyes. Kevin was nowhere to be seen.
When they finally crashed back through their own apartment door, the familiarity of the ruin was almost comforting. Jimmy dropped the supplies on the floor with a thud. He leaned against the wall, suddenly exhausted to his marrow. The adrenaline was bleeding away, leaving the monstrous reality of it all.
Lena stood in the center of the room, clutching the new clothes to her chest. She was shaking.
“They want to serve you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “They look at you and they either want to worship you or own you. And those women downstairs… they want to use you.”
Jimmy pushed off the wall and went to her. He took the clothes from her hands and let them fall. He put his hands on her waist, his thumbs brushing the indent where her hourglass curved in. “I don’t want worshippers. I don’t want soldiers. I just want us to be safe.”
“There is no ‘just’ anymore,” she said, a tear finally escaping and tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. “You heard her. You’re a king. What does that make me, Jimmy? The queen? Or just the first woman in your harem?”
He pulled her to him, crushing her against his chest. She melted into the embrace, her arms winding around his back, her face buried against his neck. He could feel the heavy, soft weight of her breasts flattening against his abdomen, the generous swell of her hips in his hands. Even now, terrified and lost, his body responded to hers. The thrum was there, a constant, low-grade current.
“You’re Lena,” he murmured into her hair.