Job Done (2024)

“Hey, how are you? Can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure.”

“I need someone to swing by the house while I’m out of town—water the plants, check the mail. You think you’ve got time?”

“Yeah, no problem. That all?”

“Yeah, that’s it. You’re a lifesaver. I’ll buy you a beer when I get back.”

That was the brief text exchange from last week…simple, casual, easy. Now, Chris found himself walking up the familiar path to Patrick’s front door, mail in hand, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across the walkway. He bent down at the porch, flipped over the usual fake rock, and retrieved the key tucked beneath it.

The door gave a soft click as he unlocked it and stepped inside.

Quiet. As expected.

Chris paused just inside the doorway, letting the silence of the apartment settle around him. The air was cool, a little stale from being shut up for a few days, but otherwise just as he remembered it. He leaned against the wall for a second, balanced on one foot, and toed off his sneaker with a practiced, lazy motion. Then the other.

They dropped beside the door with a soft thud.

No socks today. He hadn’t thought much of it when he left the house—just a quick errand, in and out. And besides, Patrick wasn’t around to make a fuss. He always had that one rule about people going barefoot in his place—something about foot oils or some other cleanliness thing Chris never remembered. But today?

Patrick wasn’t home. And what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Chris flexed his toes once against the smooth floorboards, feeling the slight chill of wood underfoot. It felt good, actually. The kind of grounding contact that made you feel present in a space.

He took a few slow, unhurried steps into the apartment, the soft slap of his bare soles against the floor marking each one. Nothing rushed. No need. Just a quick check-in: water the plants, drop the mail, maybe kick back for five minutes. Then he’d be gone.

Placing the small stack of mail onto the kitchen counter with a dull slap, Chris gave the space a quick sweep with his eyes. It looked just how he expected it to—tidy, borderline sterile. Patrick had always kept a neat house, almost too neat, like he was trying to impress someone who wasn’t ever coming over. Still, it made things easy.

Spotting a plastic pitcher near the sink, he filled it with cold water, the sound echoing briefly in the quiet house.

He wandered from room to room, pouring just enough water into each plant’s soil, careful not to spill or overdo it. A fiddle-leaf fig in the living room. A few smaller succulents lined up on the windowsill in the bedroom. One stubborn fern in the bathroom that looked like it had seen better days.

With the last plant soaked and upright, Chris returned to the kitchen, set the empty pitcher in the sink, and leaned against the counter.

He figured a short breather wouldn’t hurt. Patrick definitely owed him the favour anyway.

Reaching into the fridge, he grabbed a cold can of beer. He popped the tab with a satisfying crack, the hiss of carbonation following immediately after. Bringing it to his lips, he took a long sip, letting the cold bite wash over his tongue.

Yeah. This was fine. Just a few minutes.

Chris wandered into the living room, the faint hum of the refrigerator behind him fading into silence. As he stepped across the floorboards, something shifted in the corner of his eye—barely perceptible, a flicker of movement down low, near the centre of the room.

He stopped. Narrowed his eyes.

There it was. Something tiny, nearly invisible unless you were looking for it, creeping its way across the floor towards the couch. At first, he wasn’t even sure he’d seen it right. But no, there it was, inching along like it had purpose. He wouldn’t have noticed it if it weren’t for literally nothing else he could see on the ground.

“Great,” Chris muttered under his breath, suppressing a sigh. “He’s got bugs.”

He made a mental note to mention it to Patrick. The guy was always fussy about his place, and a pest problem would probably piss him off more than a little. But that was for later. For now, Chris walked forward, casual, barefoot, casting a looming shadow over the tiny crawler.

He stopped directly above it.

The thing froze. Didn’t run. Didn’t skitter away like it should have. It just… stopped. Almost like it was looking up at him.

Chris furrowed his brow, leaned in slightly, his expression blank and disinterested. Something about it was strange, sure…but not strange enough to care about. If it was a bug, then it was already dealt with.

He let out a small scoff. “Exterminator too?” he said flatly, shaking his head at it before standing up straight and setting his sights back on the couch. “He’d better thank me, the bugger.”

Then, without another thought, he shifted his weight forward and took a long, relaxed step toward the couch.

A faint, nearly inaudible crunch met his heel as it landed. Just a whisper beneath his bare sole.

Crossing the room without a second glance, Chris sank into the couch, crossed his ankles, and took another sip of his beer. With a lazy flick of the remote, the TV came to life in front of him. He had a half hour to kill, maybe less. One episode, maybe two, and then he’d head home.

Job done.

--

Hitting send on that last text was the final ordinary act of Patrick’s life.

He had just zipped up his travel bag, headphones draped around his neck, mind already half on the plane and half on the hotel minibar. But before he could even take a step toward the front door, a sudden, disorienting wave of dizziness crashed over him.

The room tilted. His knees buckled.

He dropped, first onto one knee, then to all fours, panting. Sweat beaded along his brow, his chest tightening with some unseen pressure. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. His skin prickled, and he felt as though his bones were folding in on themselves, compressing…not breaking—but shifting, reconfiguring.

It didn’t hurt exactly. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t human.

Patrick curled into the fetal position on the floor, trembling, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut as the sensation tore through him like an invisible storm. There were no voices, no flashes of light, no sounds to explain it. Just the sense that his entire body was being reworked without his consent.

Then… silence. Stillness.

He felt light. Weightless. Small.

The discomfort ebbed. His breath steadied. Carefully, Patrick opened his eyes.
And screamed.

What he saw wasn’t his apartment anymore. It was a world. An endless, monolithic realm of impossible proportions. The living room ceiling loomed so high above it may as well have been the sky. His bookshelf, just hours ago cluttered with novels and souvenirs, now towered like a vertical cityscape, the top shelf lost in the clouds. The coffee table stood before him like a monument, impossibly large. The legs of it stretched upward like titanic pillars, and the tabletop itself, flat, dark, and distant, rested so high it made his stomach turn just to look at it.

“Oh my god…” he whispered, staggering backward, bare feet slipping slightly on the smooth wooden floor beneath him. His voice barely echoed, pathetically small against the vastness of the space.

He turned in place, spinning slowly, his mind failing to process what he was seeing. The chair. The rug. Even a discarded sock on the floor now looked like a collapsed circus tent. It was all… impossibly big. He was impossibly small.

New York flashed through his mind. He’d been to the top of the Empire State Building before, looked down at the world like a god. Now, his coffee table rivaled that height. That wasn’t just frightening...it was soul-destroying.

“What the fuck is happening?” he said aloud, his voice trembling, barely louder than the rustling of a leaf.

He had no answers. No plan. No one to call for help.

--

That had been three days ago. Three long, agonizing, isolating days.

Since then, Patrick had fought to survive in what had become a hostile, indifferent wilderness…his own living room. He no longer lived in an apartment; he existed in a vast and barren expanse of woodgrain and carpet fibres. Every surface was a cliff face, every distance a marathon. Time moved slowly when you were the size of a breadcrumb.

He’d learned quickly how unforgiving scale could be.

Food was his first concern, and, by some miracle, he’d lucked out. A lone, dust-coated Cheerio had rolled under the coffee table, likely weeks ago, overlooked by even his compulsive cleaning routines. It had become his lifeline. That single ring of stale oats had been sustaining him in tiny, broken pieces. It wasn’t ideal, he hated processed cereal, but survival erased all preferences.

He slept under the table at night, as close to the leg as possible for the illusion of shelter. But the nights were still terrifying, full of phantom vibrations, the creaks of the building, the groans of a structure never meant to be heard from this scale. Every gust of air was a windstorm. Every distant sound could’ve meant death.

And now, as he scavenged near the perimeter of the living room—searching for stray crumbs, a drop of water, anything—he heard something that froze him in place.

Plastic clanking.

Faint, but unmistakable. A bag, maybe? A rock?

Then—click.

The unmistakable sound of a key sliding into a lock. Turn. Chunk. The deadbolt disengaged.

His heart leapt.

Chris. It had to be Chris.

He turned toward the front door—or, more accurately, the titanic slab of metal and wood that was the front door from his perspective. The doorknob turned. A rush of cool air spilled in under the frame like a gale-force wind. Dust stirred. Fibres trembled.

Then came the booming sound of the door opening, and the thunderous thump of footfalls on hardwood. Patrick stood frozen, breath shallow, staring up at the impossible figure filling the doorway.

Chris.

That was his brother. Maybe not by blood, but by every other measure that mattered. The guy he trusted with his apartment, his space, his life. The only person he reached out to when he knew he’d be gone for a week. He was dependable. Grounded. Familiar.

But right now, none of that felt real.

Right now, Chris was a god.

Each step he took caused the very floor to tremble, sending violent shudders up through Patrick’s shins and into his teeth. He staggered backward instinctively, eyes wide, heart jackhammering in his chest as the sheer mass of the man moved through the apartment like some ancient titan returning to a long-forgotten temple.

Chris looked so normal. So casual. His expression was relaxed, eyes scanning the room with the mild boredom of someone running a quick errand.

And then…

Patrick’s breath caught in his throat.

The shoes.

Chris leaned back and lazily began to kick them off. First one, his heel slipping free, exposing an enormous, pale sole with a faint sheen of sweat glistening along the arch. The sound of fabric peeling off skin echoed like tearing canvas. And then the second foot emerged, pressing down flat against the wood with a meaty slap that rattled Patrick’s tiny eardrums.

No socks. Patrick’s stomach turned with realization. Chris wasn’t wearing socks.

He had bare feet in the house.

He never went barefoot in the house. That was one of Patrick’s rules, unspoken but ironclad. “Shoes off, socks on.” A cleanliness thing. A respect thing. They’d joked about it a dozen times. Chris knew.

But now, barefoot and unaware, Chris casually kicked his shoes aside with a soft clunk and started walking off toward the kitchen, each step producing a wet slap of sole meeting wood. Slow-moving, yes, but only because of his size. In just a few steps, he was already out of reach, his enormous body covering what would take Patrick an entire day to cross.

Patrick stood there, mouth slightly open, stomach twisted into a knot of awe and dread.

His friend was here to help.

But at this size?

He was more dangerous than anything Patrick had faced in 72 hours. He spun in place, eyes darting across the vast floor around him. He needed something. Anything. Something that could catch Chris’s eye, force his attention down. But the floor was immaculate. Not a single piece of debris, not a stray crumb. That same obsessive attention to detail Patrick once took pride in was now suffocating him. He’d scrubbed away any chance of being noticed.

Except…

There…under the edge of the couch.

Two socks. Crumpled, dusty, forgotten.

His socks.

That was rare, very rare. He’d probably been distracted when packing. The thought annoyed him on instinct, but now? Now those socks were salvation. The only visible piece of fabric at his scale. They were massive, like collapsed parachutes, and he didn’t know what he’d do with them yet, but it didn’t matter. It was all he had. He started toward them, running at full tilt, his bare feet slapping against the floor. The scale of the task was overwhelming—those fifty steps would take time, and effort, and—

Boom.

Another step.

Boom.

He stopped. The floor trembled again, stronger now. Chris was coming back.

Patrick turned, dread tightening in his chest...and there he was.

Chris re-emerged from the kitchen, carrying a plastic pitcher full of water, and moving with that same effortless pace that made the floor quake beneath each step. Only this time, his eyes were focused. Intentional. He had a job to do—and he was walking right toward him. Patrick panicked. He cupped his hands and shouted up, voice cracking.

“Ch—Chris!! Hey!! Down here! Down he...here!”

But his voice barely traveled. It rose into nothingness, lost in the vast air between them like a whisper in a storm.

Chris didn’t even blink.

The giant moved past him without a glance, his steps shifting the air like low-pressure bursts. The sound of his bare feet slapping the wood echoed above like cannon blasts, and Patrick stumbled as the tremors shook his balance. Chris stopped briefly to water a potted plant on the far side of the living room, his focus entirely on the job. Patrick tried again, screaming, waving his arms.

Nothing.

He watched helplessly as the massive man moved through the room, calmly completing the very chore Patrick had asked him to do. The irony was suffocating. His only lifeline, his friend, his brother, was here, present, active in the space around him, and yet more out of reach than ever before.

And then, just as casually, Chris turned and walked out of the room again.

No glance downward.
No hesitation.
Not a clue.

Patrick stood there, chest heaving, adrenaline spent, lips trembling. He could’ve been anywhere, and Chris would’ve treated the space no differently. He might as well have been invisible.

Panic crept in like a rising tide, and Patrick stood frozen again, his tiny form dwarfed by a living room that no longer felt like his own. What was he going to do?

Chris wouldn’t stay forever. He’d check the plants, maybe sort the mail, maybe watch a quick show. Then he’d leave. Just like last time. And then what? No one else knew Patrick was gone. No family in town. No roommates. No girlfriend. No backup plan. Just him—and a best friend who didn’t even know he was screaming for his life underfoot. Would someone come looking eventually? Sure. Weeks from now, maybe. But that would be too late.

Would he starve in his own house?
Would he be stepped on before then?
Would he die in the shadow of his own goddamn coffee table?

His thoughts were spiralling when suddenly—

Ka-churr!

The sound snapped across the air like a gunshot. Familiar. Metallic. Followed by the echo of heavy footsteps. Slaps against wood. Slow. Unbothered.

Chris was back.

And this time, he wasn’t carrying a pitcher. He was sipping from a can of beer. Patrick’s beer.

“THOSE ARE MINE!!” Patrick screamed, practically leaping into the air with frustration. His voice was raw, high-pitched from desperation more than anger. “YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE MY BEER!!”

He didn’t actually care about the beer, not really. He would’ve gladly given Chris the whole damn fridge if it meant being seen, being saved. But this wasn’t the time for comfort drinking. This wasn’t a casual hang. He was dying down here, and Chris was cracking open a cold one like it was Sunday.

The tremors grew again as Chris wandered lazily toward his couch.

Patrick turned back toward the socks. This was it.

Now was the time.

If Chris was nursing a beer, that meant time. Precious, rare minutes before he got bored or comfortable or decided to head out. If Patrick could just reach the socks, he could… what? Wave them? Set them on fire? Trip the giant? He didn’t know. But he had to try something. Anything. His legs burned as he ran full-speed toward the massive, crumpled fabric piles. They loomed larger now. Closer.

“Great…” The word hit like a landslide—slow, deep, impossibly loud. It rumbled through the living room air like thunder, rattling the dust in the fibres of the carpet.

Patrick froze. That voice.

Chris.

“He’s got bugs…”

The sound wasn’t just heard, it moved the air. It vibrated through Patrick’s ribs and sank into his bones. His stomach dropped.

“No…no, no! Chris!” Patrick shouted, voice cracking in terror. “No! It’s me! I’m not a bug! I’m not a bug!”

But the giant was already coming. The ground shook with every footfall, Chris’s bare soles slamming into the floor like soft meteors. Each one sent out ripples across the wood that threw Patrick off-balance. And then, just as he scrambled back onto his feet, Chris was over him.

A wall of flesh to his left.

Another to his right.

Two enormous feet, planted firmly on either side of him.

Patrick craned his neck up. The silhouette of his friend towered above, casting him into shadow.

Chris looked down. Not with recognition, not with horror, but with that same blank apathy someone might give a dead fly on their counter. Eyes narrowed slightly. Brow furrowed, maybe in confusion. Or maybe in disgust.

Patrick’s chest heaved.

“Chris!” he screamed with everything he had. “LOOK AT ME! I’M NOT A BUG! IT’S ME! PATRICK!”

There was a pause.

For a heartbeat, the monolith seemed to hear something. Chris leaned forward slightly, eyes squinting, nostrils flaring.

A gust of humid air burst down from above. It carried with it the unmistakable stench of beer, sweat, and something sour: breath. Chris’s breath.

Patrick gagged, backing up slightly, shielding his face.

“Exterminator too…?”

Chris’s lips moved. The words barely translated into sound. Deep, warbled, distorted by size and distance. They didn’t even feel human.

Patrick screamed again, screamed until his throat burned, but the giant wasn’t listening.

He was already straightening back up. His voice rumbled once more as he stepped toward the couch:

“He’d better thank me… the little bugger…”

Patrick’s eyes widened, realization dawning like a slow, crashing wave.

“No…no no no-!”

The air changed. Heat descended as the sky itself darkened...no, not the sky. The foot.

Chris’s bare sole lifted high above him, the toes dragging the scent of stale shoes and sweat with them. The light disappeared behind the massive wall of flesh…creased, unwashed, damp. The weight of it pressed down on the air even before it fell.

Patrick dropped to his knees, hands raised, still pleading, still begging. And then the ceiling came down.

With one soft, indifferent step, Chris ended him. A faint, wet crunch was the only eulogy.

Chris didn’t hear it.
Chris didn’t feel it.

By the time he crossed his ankles on the couch and took another long sip of Patrick’s beer, his best friend was nothing more than a limp body on his sole.