Doubling Down

One morning, Mr. Brobdingnag awoke from troubled dreams, finding himself transformed in his bed into twice his size. Startled by the transformation, he sat up reflexly but suddenly slammed his head on the sloping dormer ceiling above his bed.

He looked around the bedroom, and surmised that either he was growing or everything else in the world was shrinking. Either way, he quickly realized he and the world would soon be incompatible.

Was he still having troubling dreams? he wondered. Was this a nightmare?

He fell back onto his bed, supine, with his arms by his side. He pronated his hands and felt something rough under him, which he rubbed between his thumb and fingers. It was a crumbly weave of delicate tissue-like material, and fell into pieces with the friction of the rubbing; some harder parts snapped apart.

Had this been some type magic cloak that had initiated the transmogrification?

The incongruence between him and the world surged again--himself bigger or the world smaller, or both--and he realized he'd best escape this room before it became impossible.

He couldn't stand upright now, he realized, and plotted his escape according to the physical constraints that forced him to, instead, crawl out through his bedroom door, like some sort of insect.

Wouldn't his father be pleased, his condemnations finding validation!

"You're just like anybody else," his father had barked. "You have nothing extra to offer. Like an ant on a mound. At least different ants have different jobs. When are you going to add something new to the world? If you disappeared, like any bug so casually crushed under my boot, the world wouldn't notice at all, you vermin!"

Those are the words his father had spoken to him right before he had died.

Final words, the rhetoric of deathbeds, are permanent enclosures of legacies. Like his father actually was, now going on a year, the cruel family patriarch had been dead to Mr. Brobdingnag long before life had spoken the final disposition between them.

He considered his size. Were his father alive, now he'd be able to casually step on him!

Once Mr. Brobdingnag had cleared the doorframe, he was thwarted by not being able to stand upright there, like in his bedroom, even with the higher ceiling. He eyed the staircase, whose width had been narrowed via the transformations. Now he fretted in two dimensions, height and width. He wondered if he could fit between the stairway's bannister and adjacent wall. He didn't rightly know, but he did know that time was of the essence.

Change happens quickly.

As such, change happened quickly.

At the top of the stairway, again he could't stand tall, so he began to wriggle down the steps like an insect hoping to make it downstairs, the edge of each step chafing his bare midriff. Once again he invoked his feelings about his father.

He saw a trail of the same tissue-like debris that had been on his bed, and again he felt like his father's insect, a panicked creature that scurries here and there in a house meant for men and women, not molting bugs.

Although his girth still fit between the bannister side-posts when beginning his descent, at the stairs' landing had become tight. He could only force himself to clear it. He continued crawling until free of his house. Outside, he could finally stand up to full height.

Like a man!

By now he had again doubled in size. He had become hungry, so he eyed the apple tree in his front yard with ravenous intent and began picking. The apples on their stems began receding away as he once again doubled in size. By this time, the townsfolk had gathered, shocked at his amazing metamorphosis.

"Say, Brobdingnag!" shouted Mrs. Gallivant, "What's this curious matter of your size? A curse? A plague? Will we, too, grow to your ridiculous size?"

His latest shedding had fallen upon her, draping over her. But that didn't matter, for by the time she was so silneced, he again had doubled in size. His clothes had already been shredded by his unbridled expansion, rendering him naked, so adults shielded their children's eyes from his menacing genitalia above.

Their panicky addresses to, and shrieks about, him, receded into silence as they faded into the infinitesimal, like minutia.

Thirteen iterations later, he had reached a height of two miles. He fretted over the havoc he must be causing down below—the destruction and the stomping on villagers like bugs.

Ten doublings later, 2,000 miles above New England, his colossal weight caused his feet to sink into the Earth's mantle. Ocean water quickly filled the depressions, flooding the continent. He knew that things would not end well for him, either.

Eight spurts later, he could reach the Moon one of his large hands and heave himself off his Earth. He knew he'd be lonely, but he also knew he'd finally be comfortable, free to grow forever in an infinite expanse.

He looked forward to meeting God but feared his heavenly father would be disappointed in him—as his Earthly Kafkaesque father always had—having always treated him like filthy vermin. Or, perhaps not.

Regardless, he now could stand tall, his height emblematic of his new sense of self-worth. He towered above all and everything he ever knew. And he no longer had to crawl, to scurry, in panicked escape from casual boots stepping overhead.

He no longer would have to crawl. Not for anyone. Even if he ever woke up.