Chapter Text
She has to get away. Every muscle in her body is screaming at her as she runs, pushing through exhaustion, dehydration, sleep deprivation and potentially some mild starvation right now. She’s been living in the walls of this apartment complex for some time now, since she’s been on her own at least. Today isn’t the day she’s getting captured, no siree. The thunderous footsteps that fall behind her are rapidly gaining on her. The shockwaves they send out from each stomp make it increasingly difficult to run with any sense of grace, but she keeps pushing through.
A massive foot slams down directly in front of her path. Isabell veers right, dancing between the footfalls of the human so desperate trying to capture her… or crush her. At this point she isn’t sure what the goal is anymore. As she’s weaving through, one of his feet suddenly swipes forward, clipping her right across the torso. The impact sends her skidding across the room. She tumbles over herself until she comes to a stop, thumping against the baseboard of the wall. All of the wind is knocked out of her. She knows she has to get up, to keep moving but she lays there stunned for a moment. She hears the human swear, and he stomps over to her. He had kicked her right under a bookshelf. What luck. It’s a sour situation all around, but this at least buys her some time.
Limbs shaking, she pushes herself up to her feet. She’s sufficiently coated in a layer of dust and grime now. Once she’s standing, she realizes her ribs feel wrong. Her head is pounding, her limbs are shaking. She has to push through. She has to. The bookshelf is beginning to shift as the human attempts to pry it away from the wall. Think Isabell. Think. She looks out across the room. She’s almost there. If she can get inside the wall, she can take a break.
The nearest entrance would be behind the human’s TV stand. She’s close. She just has to make it over to the adjacent wall and she’s home free. Thankfully, with the human distracted by the bookshelf she is able to slip out from the other side and make a mad dash to her goal. Almost there. Almost there. She keeps telling herself this so she can push just a little more. The human spots her movement, she just hopes she had enough of a head start.
The human swears under his breath again and crosses the room in five long strides. He slams to his knees behind her, just as she slides under the TV stand. His massive hands plunge under the furniture after her, but they get tangled up in the wires as she was able to dart through them. She stumbles into the wall, closing the entry behind her. She leans against the inside of the wall, wheezing and trying to catch her breath. She drinks the last, unsatisfyingly small swallow of water that she had left.
Today was a total bust, that’s another apartment to blacklist. She pulls her pack around, and grabs her small notebook, marking it down. She marks the entrance behind her too. She has one more apartment to get through before she’s back home. It’s an easy one. Two college boys. Their schedules are currently a mystery, it seems to change every day. But when they are home, they’re usually heavily distracted by something, homework, videogames, whatever. She packs up her stuff once more, taking another deep breath with her burning lungs.
She wants to curl up right there, but the longer she rests, the heavier her limbs feel, the more everything hurts, and the pounding in her head is only getting stronger. If she can make it home, she has a supply of water, and a small stock of food. She’ll be fine there long enough to recover and make a new plan. But then her supplies will start looking pretty desperate. Her next outing has to be successful. It has to be. But that’s a problem for another day. For now, she just has to get home.
She makes the trek upward in the wall through modified pathways she built herself. She’s careful of where her shaking steps are landing as she climbs up her makeshift stairs. When she reaches the apartment, she’ll be in one of the kitchen cabinets. From there, she’ll have to get down to the counter, then to the floor. After that she’ll cut across the apartment from the kitchen into the living room, hopefully with more success than how it went in that last apartment. From there she’ll just have to navigate one more stretch of wall, and she’ll be home. She can do this.
She peeks into the cabinet, finding that it’s dark, and all is quiet. Good. She slips out toward the door. The cabinets must have been hastily made. Towards the front there is the tip of a long screw sticking out. Some poke through all the way down the front edge of the cabinet at random intervals. They’re not sticking out far enough to be seen by humans, as it’s hidden by the front facing of the cabinet itself. It was probably a detail that no one cared enough about to fix. But it’s good for her, because these screws have proven to be useful. She affixes her rope to the screw. This will help her scale down to the counter below. With one more tug making sure it is secure, she turns to the cabinet door.
The cabinet door is ripped away from her just as she is pressing into it to check into the apartment. The movement sends her falling forward. In the split second before she falls, she scrambles to keep her footing, desperately grabbing for her rope to stop her fall. She only manages to turn herself around, falling backwards out of the cabinet. Hot pain tears through her left leg as the screw messily rips a jagged line down her leg, all the way from her hip to her knee. She cries out in pain at the same time the human in front of her lets out a startled shout, so loud it hurts her ears and makes her teeth vibrate painfully in her skull.
It all happens so fast. As she’s falling down towards the counter, something obstructs her path. She comes to a sudden stop against a warm fleshy surface. The wind is knocked out of her for the second time today. Her ribs protest at the impact, but overall, she is unscathed. Then the surface she landed on shifts around her. She freezes, realizing exactly where she is.
The human, now suddenly holding a tiny person, is equally surprised to see her. She is jostled around as he fumbles her in his hands, panicking. He doesn’t know what she is, but he does know that he caught her. His wide blue eyes look her over.
“Oh my gosh… What are you?” He is surprised but delighted to learn that she is not a mouse or some kind of horrifying insect. She’s a person, or rather she looks just like a human, but she can fit in his hand. “Are yo- Oh. Oh God.” He was going to ask, ‘are you okay’ but then he must have seen the blood. She is very obviously not okay. She’s had a second to catch her breath as he inspected her. Running on pure adrenaline, and the hope that he’s too stunned himself, she pulls herself up and tries to jump from his hands. “Hey! No, you don’t.” He’s faster than her, his massive fingers block her escape path and the whole world seems to jolt as he hastily moves her closer. His hands come together covering her completely.
He holds her tightly for a moment, his unfathomably gigantic fingers constricting around her in a fist pressed against his chest. He isn’t squeezing her painfully, but it is certainly uncomfortable. Panicking herself, she pushes out against his fingers. Her movement has such little impact she doesn’t know if he can even feel her. If anything, her thrashing causes the fingers to close in tighter around her. She feels him shifting, and she trembles, not knowing what he’s planning on doing with her.
“Okay.” His voice is somewhat muffled by his hands, but she’s held right against his chest so she can still feel it vibrate right through her. “Okay,” He says again, “I’m really sorry about this.” He deposits her on the counter, the movement isn’t rough, but it isn’t what she would call gentle either. She doesn’t have any time to think, before a translucent plastic container is placed over top of her with a solid thump. She looks up, engulfed in the shadow of this human, she can only see his gargantuan fingerprints pressing into the plastic ceiling above her.
“Zeke!” The human yells over his shoulder before stepping away. Instantly her mind is plotting an escape. The container is wide, but it isn’t deep. She wouldn’t be able to do more than crouch underneath it. Perhaps she can use that to her advantage. If she can press against what is now her ceiling, she might be able to tip it, or lift it enough for her to get out? If that doesn’t work, she might be able to push the whole container to the edge of the counter? But then she would have to get to the floor, and she doesn’t have her rope. At least she has a plan semi-halfway-almost formed. She gathers her strength to stand. Just push a little more. Gah. Her leg is burning. She pushes herself up on her elbows and quickly wishes she hadn’t. There’s so much blood. She sucks in a breath, twisting her leg to get a better look. Her shaking hands reach forward and tenderly peel the fabric of her pants back away from her wound. The cut is deep, and it’s jagged. It’s not the kind of injury that will just heal on its own. She swallows thickly, biting back tears. She rips her shirt and ties it around her thigh. She knows that isn’t nearly enough. All she can do now is wait for the humans to return and decide what they want to do with her.