Quiet Affair (2024)

“You sure he won’t be home?” Jay asked in between breathless kisses, his mouth trailing lower across his girl's body.

“Oh, yeah…” Stephanie gasped, her voice shaky with pleasure. Her thoughts tried to gather the name of her boyfriend, but it slipped, pushed aside by Jay’s hands. “He’s, uh… he’s out on some overnight job. Said it’s one of those late-site inspections or deliveries, pick-ups… whatever…He’ll be back in the morning. We’ve got all night…”

Jay didn’t need more assurance. His lips found hers again, and they melted into each other.

They kept at it for a while—hungry, tangled, careless. The sheets twisted around their limbs like vines. Somewhere in the heat of it, Jay paused just long enough to murmur, “Fuck, you’re so hot…”

Stephanie grinned against his mouth. She knew exactly where this was going. And she wasn’t stopping it.

She’d met Jay at an office event. Charming, cocky—too sure of himself. Nothing like Chris. Life with Chris was quiet. Comfortable. Predictable. But Jay stirred something reckless. Something alive.

It had started innocently enough. A conversation. A drink. A few texts exchanged after hours. But the spark was quick to catch. Faster than she wanted to admit.

Now here she was, in her own apartment, tangled in sheets she shared with someone else, her body still warm from Jay’s touch.

Cheating.

And knowing exactly what she was doing.

Now the two of them, flushed and sated, collapsed into each other, limbs tangled under the sheets. Their tryst faded into silence, and soon after, into sleep.

—



Stephanie’s eyes snapped open at the sound—that distinct, sickening sound of a wheels over gravel just outside the window.

Her breath caught. She sat bolt upright.

Jay stirred beside her, groggy and confused. “Wha—what?”

The engine of his truck turned off, confirming his arrival.

“Shit…Shit! That’s Chris!” she hissed, already scrambling across the bed, yanking a pair of pajama bottoms up over her thighs.

Jay sat up slower, blinking like he was still dreaming. “Wait… what time is it?”

She didn’t answer. She was scanning the room with wide, frantic eyes. Her phone—gone. She didn’t remember where she dropped it. The last she remembered, it had been tangled in the sheets. Maybe it fell. It didn’t matter now. Jay, still groggy, quickly got up and stumbled into his pants.

The yellow light bleeding through the window blinds made everything worse. Late morning. Way too late. Another door slammed outside—and the steady crunch of boots on gravel made her stomach knot.

Stephanie grabbed Jay’s arm as he yanked a tank top over his head. “Closet. Now.”

They scrambled across the room in a mad, graceless tangle, and slid open the closet door. She shoved him in first, and together they pulled the mirrored sliding door shut just as the jingle of keys turned the lock from the front of the house.

Click.

The door creaked open. Footsteps. Heavy. Familiar. Chris was home.



“What are we going to do…?” Jay whispered, one of Chris’ jackets hung in his face.



“Shh!” Was the only response he got.

From inside the closet, the bedroom felt unreal—lit like a stage, every surface a threat. Stephanie’s heart slammed in her chest.

She pressed herself into the coats, breathing shallow, clutching Jay’s thigh to keep him still. He was statue-stiff beside her, his eyes fixed on the narrow slit in the door they’d left ajar.

Chris’s presence moved through the house with easy confidence. A man who had no reason to be cautious. He belonged there.



“Babe? You home?” His voice called out, which made Stephanie even more nervous.

Keys hit the counter. Shoes thudded, then slid. The soft thwack of socked feet across hardwood echoed toward them.

Then the bedroom door creaked open.

Stephanie didn’t breathe.

Jay didn’t twitch. His eyes locked on the sliver of light like a sniper sighting a target. Through it, he caught a glimpse of Chris stepping into the room, his body haloed by morning light. The man was already pulling his shirt over his head, revealing the sun-browned plane of his back. The shirt landed in the hamper just feet from where they hid.

Then came the metallic snap of a belt being unbuckled. Throwing his belt to the floor, he let out a long yawn, arms stretching overhead as though he hadn’t a single concern in the world. There was no rush in him. No tension. He had no idea how close he was to the truth.

Jay watched, silent and pulsing with adrenaline, the contradiction twisting deep in his gut. Chris had no idea. And yet here Jay was—in this man’s bedroom, in his home, his bed—with his girl. A quiet smirk crept across his face.

Chris moved to the dresser, unhooked his watch, and placed it on the surface with a casual clink. Then he crouched, rifling through a small black bag beside the dresser. From it, he withdrew something compact and sleek—black, featureless. Jay couldn’t make it out, not clearly.

Then Chris straightened and turned.

Toward the closet.

Steph gasped—something in the weight of Chris’s footsteps told her exactly what was coming.

Jay instinctively pulled her in tighter, shielding her with his arms. His own heart was hammering against her temple. He got mentally prepared for a confrontation.

The closet door on the far side slid open with a quiet clack, its edge bumping Jay’s arm.

He froze.

Chris didn’t notice. Didn’t even pause.

Just reached into the shelf—like he’d done it a hundred times—and placed the device up there. Jay barely registered it. The man was just a foot away. One more step, one glance, and it would be over.


‘Just go away…’ Jay thought. ‘Just walk the fuck away…’

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t signed up for this.

Hangers scraped. Metal clacked. Shirts swung forward, brushing limbs and faces as Chris began looking for a shirt in his closet. Steph flinched, instinctively pulling back—but there was nowhere to go.

Then Chris shoved the clothes harder, clearing space.

Fabric pressed against them. A collar slapped Jay in the cheek. A sleeve slid over Stephanie’s thigh. They were seconds from being exposed.

Then—

A chime.

Chris stopped.

Without hesitation, he turned and stepped away from the closet, lazily closing the door behind him. He bent to the pile of clothes on the floor, fished his phone from a pocket, and answered without even checking the screen.

“Yo,” he said, his voice relaxed.

Relief rolled over the two in the closet in unsteady waves.


Chris turned, walking over to his bed and sitting down, completely unaware of the two half-dressed bodies curled in behind his hanging jackets. The phone call was nothing serious—just Aaron. His point of contact. 


“I’m back now, yeah… Nah, nothing much. Long day,” Chris said, voice casual as he scratched at his chest and stretched.


Jay dared a glance through the sliver in the door.

Chris sat on the edge of the bed, scanning the floor. His hand landed on a black cotton shirt—soft, worn, unmistakable. That logo. That shape.

The North Face.

Fuck.

Jay’s stomach turned. That was his.

Chris didn’t hesitate. He slipped it on in one smooth motion. It hugged his frame like it belonged there—like Jay had never existed in it at all.

Jay’s grip closed around Stephanie’s fingers, bone-tight. Her knuckles popped, but she didn’t react. Just held her breath.

“Yeah, nah, man,” Chris said into the phone, voice casual, eyes wandering the room. “Last night wrecked me. I just wanna chill tonight. Lay down, get a smoke, maybe play a little.”

His gaze drifted—slow, unhurried—and landed directly on the closet.

Jay didn’t breathe. Their eyes met.

A full second passed.

Then Jay snapped his gaze away, heart thudding in his throat.

Had he seen him?

Chris lingered. Just for a breath. Then looked away.

“Nah, she ain’t here anyway,” he said, unfazed. “Think she’s at her sister’s. Got the place to myself. I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

Stephanie looked at Jay. Her eyes were wide with panic. He didn’t look back. Just stared ahead, sweat beading on his brow.

How were they going to get out?

“Heh, yeah,” Chris chuckled, pushing off the bed and walking toward the hallway. “It was all Steve’s fault. The man wouldn’t fucking shut up…”

His voice faded down the hall. The two in the closet stood there until they heard it.

Click.

The patio door sliding open.

They waited.

Then came the soft metal snap of a lighter.

Cha-chink.

“…and then they started talking to him… yeah, exactly…”

Chris’s voice carried faintly from outside, muffled by distance and the haze of smoke drifting back through the open door.

Now.

Now.

This was their chance.


Stephanie moved first, pulling Jay through the rack of coats and shirts. In her rush, she knocked over the small device Chris had left on the shelf. It tumbled down with a soft clack. Stephanie instinctively caught it—awkward in her palm, lightweight and humming.


A red light blinked to life at its core.


“Wait—Steph—” Jay started, but the glow burst outward, enveloping the closet in a blood-red haze. The light washed over them like a scanner, hot and vibrating through the air—and then it was gone. The device fell silent again.


“What the hell was that?” Jay hissed, backing into the coats.


“Who cares? Let’s go!” She said, putting the device back.

Stephanie yanked open the closet door, dragging Jay out of the room. They were barefoot and shaking, but adrenaline had them moving like hunted animals.


“…yeah, I’ve got it here now,” Chris’s voice drifted from the patio. “No, it works. Of course it works. I just turned it on.” Stephanie could see him. His back was turned towards the doors.


They made it to the living room, but as they neared the front door, Jay stumbled.


“Ugh—Steph—my legs feel… weird. Heavy,” he muttered. His skin had gone pale, eyes wide and glassy.


Stephanie looked back, and attempted to assist, but her hand faltered. Her balance tipped, and she slid down to the floor along the wall as her limbs went numb. The furniture—the walls—they looked off. Farther away. Or... bigger? Her breath caught. Her hands shook uncontrollably. A low hum buzzed beneath her skin, like electricity under flesh.


Jay stared at her, horror rising in his face. “Steph… I think—fuck, the li… the li-li-li…” His body began seizing. 


Her joints began locking up. Torso convulsed. The air thickened as the room surged outward.


No—they were shrinking.


Steph attempted to drag herself toward the front window, toward the soft orange light of the patio, where Chris was standing—back turned, a cigarette between two fingers. She didn’t care anymore, she needed help, and fast.


She could see him. She could hear his voice.


But she couldn’t call out.


Her throat was dry. Her chest was shrinking. The words wouldn’t come. And her body felt like it was collapsing in on itself.


Chris laughed, his voice a deep, carefree rumble that reached her ears just before she blacked out from the pain. 

“Long as nobody touches it, it’ll be fine.”


He exhaled smoke into the air. The glow of the cigarette flared, illuminating nothing behind him.


Inside, Stephanie shrank beyond the threshold of sound. Jay was already gone.



—



The world had changed around them—violently, completely, grotesquely.

Stephanie crawled, carpet fibres scraping her raw. Her knees blistered. Palms burned. Each breath choked with dust and lint. The air down here was soup—thick, dry, cruel.


Behind her, Jay twitched.

Or what was left of him.

No bigger than the head of a pencil, he lay crumpled in the weave like a splinter that didn’t belong. His limbs jittered involuntarily, spasming like a stunned insect. His eyes were open—too wide. His chest fluttered in tiny, rapid pulses. His ribs were almost invisible, the rise and fall of someone whose body wasn’t built for panic at this scale.

He wasn’t speaking.

Couldn’t.

The transformation had stolen more than height. Something inside him had broken. Snapped. He was conscious—but trapped inside that shrunken frame.

Stephanie turned back to the expanse in front of her. Every inch forward was agony.

The living room had become a dead world. A canyon of muted colours and jagged threats. That mug on the floor—the one Chris left half-drunk, forgotten—was now a mountainous bluff, porcelain stained with shadow. The couch, their couch, where she’d once straddled Jay and laughed into his mouth, now loomed like a vertical abyss, sheer fabric rising into infinity. The coffee table’s legs were trees. The TV remote a black obelisk far off in the dust.

Nothing looked like it had before.

Nothing.

Even the silence had changed. It wasn’t quiet—it was waiting.

Then the tremor hit.


BOOM.

Her ears rang. A single, deep, seismic footstep had landed somewhere beyond them. The entire floor shifted, just a fraction, but enough to feel like a quake.

Then another.

BOOM.

The carpet bounced. Stephanie’s body lifted and fell, weightless for a fraction of a second before crashing back into the scratchy weave.

Tremors. Rhythmic. Slow.

Chris.

He was coming back inside.


He didn’t just enter the house—he descended into it. Like a force of nature, like gravity incarnate in human flesh, Chris tore the sliding glass door open with one arm, its frame juddering helplessly in its track. The slab of glass shuddered as if it had a will of its own, resisting his casual, monstrous strength. He stepped in without hesitation. No ceremony. No acknowledgment of the seismic shift his presence caused. Just a man—only now, a giant—breezing into his own home, still mid-conversation with someone on the phone, his voice a detached, rolling thunder in the distance.

The phone, small by his scale, was pinched between two knuckles thick as bananas, held up to the side of his head with zero awareness of the devastation in his wake. His free hand swung the door shut behind him with a solid thunk, sealing the house like a tomb.

He didn’t look down. Didn’t slow. Didn’t see them.

Why would he?

Stephanie and Jay were already written out of his world—two specks buried in the forest of shag carpeting, reduced to irrelevant particles underfoot. Not people anymore. Not even creatures. Just… background noise.

BOOM.

His first step into the living room landed like a cannon shot. The floorboards gave a low, tortured groan under his weight.

“Nah, she never goes in there,” Chris rumbled to the voice on the line, steamrolling Aaron’s reply without care. “Trust me. I could hide a dead body in that closet and she’d never notice.”

Jay collapsed like he’d been hit by a shockwave. Flattened against the fibres, both arms flung over his head in a posture of total surrender. His body spasmed involuntarily, a marionette seized by invisible panic. Stephanie stood motionless, every synapse in her body seized up. Her brain was caught between denial and overload, unable to process the thing towering before them. Nothing—no horror movie, no phobia, no prior trauma—had prepared her for this. It was like staring up at the wrath of a god.

Chris continued across the room, his strides slow and relaxed, casting shadows like moving skyscrapers as he passed.

“Chr… Chris…”

Stephanie’s voice was a whisper, barely even real to herself. She called across an ocean of reality too wide to cross, and it made no difference. He didn’t hear. He didn’t know.

He dropped onto the couch like a meteor breaking ground—an immense, full-bodied crash that made the whole house tremble. The cushions deflated in protest. Air whooshed outward from the point of impact, rushing over the carpet like a gust from an explosion. One leg slid forward instinctively, and his bare foot—slick, flushed, impossibly wide—planted itself carelessly into the shag just yards from where they stood.

The heat hit them first. Then the smell.

It rolled off him in waves—acrid, human, unfiltered. A heavy blend of stale sweat and the ripe musk of a night spent on his feet. The toes flexed lazily, mountains of indifferent flesh twitching to some idle impulse. Each toe easily dwarfed Stephanie in both length and mass, curled and lined with faint smudges of sock-lint and grime. They twitched again—casual, unconscious—and it felt like tectonic movement to those beneath them.

“Nah, I’m staying in,” Chris muttered again between yawns, raking his fingers through his hair. “I’ll just bring it over tomorrow.”

The foot lifted.

A brief, breathtaking pause as the sole hovered in the air, casting a shadow that devoured their patch of carpet. Jay’s scream tore out of him, shrill and immediate—but the distance might as well have been a continent. Nothing reached Chris. The heel slammed back down again, flattening fibres and forcing a new ripple of wind across their broken, microscopic world as the giant lazily fidgeted his leg.

Stephanie was sobbing now, arms outstretched in a hopeless, instinctive plea. Her body jolted with every motion Chris made. Her screams weren’t meant to be heard—they were primal, wordless panic venting from a system crushed under impossible pressure.

Jay didn’t move. Not now. His face was locked in a stare of pure horror, eyes wide and glassy, mouth twitching with shock. He hadn’t stopped thinking about the moment he’d laughed this morning. How he’d grinned at the idea of sneaking around with Stephanie, of pulling one over on Chris. Now? He was nothing. Less than nothing. An afterthought in someone else’s living room.

Chris leaned forward on the couch, scratching the back of his neck, idly shifting the titanic landscape of his body. And then—

His gaze dropped.

Stephanie froze.

For a single heartbeat, she was certain—certain—that he saw her. That moment suspended like a knife-edge: his brow tightening, eyes narrowing, his massive head dipping slightly forward. Her breath caught in her throat. She dared to hope.

Maybe he recognized her. Maybe her stance, her silhouette, her very essence triggered something in his mind.

But then—just a twitch. A grunt. His nose wrinkled with annoyance.

“…ugh. What the fuck?” he muttered, flicking his eyes away with disgust. “There’s bugs in here now...?”

He looked away. Entirely. Back to his phone. His voice rolled out again, thick and final.


“UGH, WHATEVER...”

“CHRIS!!” Stephanie shrieked, her voice raw and shredded. “IT’S ME! STEPHANIE! PLEASE—LOOK! JUST LOOK!!”

But it was no use.


“I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE HER…” Chris bellowed, still on the phone, rising from the couch with the slow, unstoppable weight of a skyscraper tearing itself loose from its foundations. The very air thickened as he stood, heat bleeding off his towering frame in invisible waves. His bare feet settled into the carpet again—massive slabs of damp, flexing flesh that shifted with a grace so casual, it had become lethal.

“B-Baby…? What do we do?” Jay’s voice cracked through the charged silence like a bone snapping under pressure. It came from behind her, panicked and pathetic. Stephanie didn’t need to look. She knew—he was still on his stomach, tangled in rug fibres the size of his arms. His voice held no control anymore. No bravado. Just raw, blind terror. And still, he tried to move. Tried to crawl. As if that would matter under him.

Stephanie dropped to her knees beside him. Her tiny hands gripped his shoulders, tried to pull, tried to lift. His body was limp with fear. Slippery with sweat. Useless. She yanked, he slipped. She pushed, he cried out. He was going nowhere. The rug was an ocean now.

Over them, Chris stood like a monument to ignorance—just skin, heat, and noise. He wasn’t thinking about them. He wasn’t even aware of them anymore. His attention was on the conversation. On Stephanie, sure—but not this Stephanie. The one he believed was out there, full-sized, fucking up his day. Not the one kneeling beneath his shadow, drenched in his scent, trying desperately to save a man she wasn’t even sure she loved.

“AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT I TOLD HER BEFORE I LEFT?” Chris boomed into the phone, spinning on his heel with a stormfront’s force. The volume vibrated the floor. It rattled her ribs. It made her bones tremble with the understanding that he could speak a person to pieces at this size. He didn’t even have to try.

Then his foot lifted.

There was no pause. No warning. No look downward. Just the slow, inevitable rise of a bare sole the size of a truck bed. Sweat lined its ridges. Dust clung to the cracks of its skin. It rose higher as Stephanie grunted and clawed at Jay. Her heart hammered.

Jay wasn’t moving.

She didn’t think. She ran.

“NOOO! BABY! DON’T LEAVE ME! NO! NO! NO! BUDDY, PLEASE—!”

The words shot after her like a lifeline, like a noose. She looked back only once—and in that second, the foot came down.

A single, wet THUD.

Not sharp. Not fast. It landed with slow certainty, the weight of a building coming to rest. The pressure wave threw Stephanie sideways—air ripped past her like a slap. Her body hit the rug just inches from the edge of Chris’s foot. She rolled once, then stopped, face to the floor, heart in her throat.

“Chris!!” she shrieked immediately, scrambled to her knees, eyes wide. “GET OFF HIM!! YOU’RE KILLING HIM!”

But her words didn’t carry. They dissolved in the atmosphere. Didn’t rise past his ankle. Chris didn’t pause. Didn’t shift. Didn’t react.

He just stood there.

His foot loomed above her—sweaty, pink, dense with motion. Not skin, but terrain. It twitched once, unconsciously, as if unaware of what it had just crushed. Faint flecks of grit clung to its ridges, sweat glistening in the cracks like dew on leather. The heat rolled off it in waves. She could taste it—salt, skin, and something raw and deeply male. It filled her mouth, her lungs, her skull.

Her body screamed to move. To run. To throw herself at him.

She didn’t.

She couldn’t.


One shift, one casual drag, and she’d be next.

“YEAH, EXACTLY!” Chris barked, mid-laugh, mid-rage, as he stepped off Jay like peeling his sole from a sticky floor. That sound—the suctioning squelch of flesh and bone detaching from carpet—was a violation.

He didn’t look down, completely unaware he had stepped on anything, much less a man.

Stephanie did.

What was left of Jay lay at the centre of a shallow crater pressed into the rug fibres. His body had folded under the weight, snapped and crumpled like paper soaked in water. Blood pooled where bones had ruptured through skin. One leg twitched. Just once. His chest rose.

Then again.

Then not again.

Gone.

Chris, meanwhile, was already walking away, his bare heel slapping lazily against the floor as he moved down the hall.

“FUCK, MAN—HOW HARD IS IT? JUST GET THE DAMN TRAPS!” Chris barked out a laugh, pure frustration laced with mockery, his voice still thick with the thrill of venting.

Behind him, the proof of his kill dragged with every lazy step—red, wet smudges bleeding into the carpet fibres. A trail of a crime scene. A smear of someone who had laughed and breathed and touched just minutes ago. His sole—the one that had ended Jay—moved without remorse. It flexed, it twitched, it gripped the rug with raw, damp skin. But it carried no shame. No sign of guilt.

Whatever pieces of Jay still clung to it were unworthy of recognition, rubbed away without ceremony on the slow march to the bedroom.

“AHAHA, YEAH, YEAH, I know…” Chris’s voice carried into the hallway, a booming echo that filled the small home like smoke, before the bedroom door finally clicked shut behind him.

Then—silence.

Not peace. Not safety.

Just silence.

Stephanie stayed kneeling, her legs folded beneath her, skin pressed to the carpet that still trembled with the aftershocks of what had happened. She didn’t cry. Couldn’t. Her body had gone still, nerves frayed to numbness, her thoughts looping and blank. The room was no longer familiar. It had become a cavern, a ruin. A place where people vanished. 

Her eyes drifted downward. Jay was still there. Not whole. Not right. His body unrecognizable in shape, crushed and split, bones poking through pulp. The warmth of him was already fading. She stared, helpless, as if looking hard enough could rewind the moment. It didn’t. All she saw were the remnants. Of a man, of a mistake. Of something she let happen.

She could still hear that laugh. That smug, weightless thing—like nothing could ever touch him.

That stupid, smug laugh from the night before.

His arm wrapped around her. His breath hot at her ear.

The way he’d said her name like it was a joke they shared.

Now he was a smear in the rug. And she was the one who ran.

In the room beyond, Chris’s voice lifted once more—another laugh, sudden and loud. Deeper this time. Honest. Like a man settling in, remembering something amusing. Remembering her, maybe. The full-sized version of her. The one who still existed in his mind. The one who hadn’t betrayed him.

Then… nothing. No more words. Just the creak of a mattress as hundreds of pounds of muscle stretched out. Wood strained under the weight. The building relaxed.

Her boyfriend had gone to sleep.

Stephanie didn’t move. She couldn’t.

The air was thick with him still—his scent, his heat, his presence. She was still shrunken. Still caught in the folds of a reality that didn’t care about her anymore.

She was alone now. Trapped with her boyfriend.

And he didn’t even know it.