Smol Bean

Harry slowed his pace as he walked by the unbecoming scene, and sensing his presence, the officer stooped over the boy said,

“Nothing to see here. Just another degenerate for the wagon.”

As the officer turned towards the curb with the limp youth in tow, his flashlight revealed that there were indeed a number of degenerates in the wagon, and Harry could tell from the whooping and hollering nearby that there were still more wandering about on the streets. He kept moving, and it wasn’t long before one accosted him.

“Got any pennies?” Asked a voice that reeked of gin.

A grubby hand reached out to Harry before he could even see the toothless face attached to it.

“No, sir, I don’t have any.” Harry was speaking as quickly as he was race-walking away from the man.

He had barely finished the sentence when another man approached him with his hat out. He slouched over his pockets protectively and ducked into the nearest shop front. When he saw where he was, he was met with a pleasant surprise.

The smell of old wood filled his nose as the building’s floorboards creaked below him, and as he turned around he was greeted with an elegant display of small, red, rectangular boxes, each of which held gold rings set with sparkling diamonds. There was a wreath in the window above them, a Christmas display no doubt, and a long line of people snaked past it, packed like sardines into the tiny storefront in fear of coming rain. Harry could tell by their dress alone that they were high society, and they weren’t so much shopping as they were waiting for something to happen.

This was the jewelry store he had been looking for, and above it, so far as Harry could tell, was the Wilkins gallery space. As he followed the line of people to a staircase at the far side of the room, it became clear that these were not shoppers in the traditional sense – they were patrons of the arts, who were being detoured through the jewelry store as part of what could only be some clandestine business arrangement between mister Wilkins and the store’s owner. It was certainly making for good marketing on the jeweler’s behalf, for the women in their fine fur coats tittered and gossiped over the jewels as their bored chaperones stood their place in line. Harry could only wonder how long they had all been standing there, for the line was barely moving. He headed towards the back of the queue while his skin itched to get inside.

The sound of a man clearing his throat from behind the counter snapped him back to reality.

“Excuse me! You there.” Said the tinny voice of the bespectacled man at the counter. “Can I help you, sir?”

Harry lumbered over to the warm glow of the oil lamp by the counter, and at the sight of the polished jeweler he suddenly felt foolish for even being there. There was no way he would fit in among these people, not with his scarred face or his ragged getup.

“I’m here for the exhibition.” Harry explained, growing ever sheepish as the jeweler’s hawkish eyes looked him up and down.

Weakly he pulled out the newspaper clipping from his pocket, only for the man to wave it away.

“Labourers enter through the other door.” The jeweler ordered, and pointed him to the doorway.

“Labourers?”

Harry glanced from the jeweler to the doorway and back again.

“Quickly now, would you!?” The jeweler snapped. “We have an image to maintain, you know.”

The look of disgust in the jeweler’s face alone was enough to send Harry running with his tail between his legs. Just as suddenly as he had entered the store he found himself back on the street corner in search of this fabled other door. He soon found it some six feet away, propped up with a cinderblock.

Through the doorway was a short hallway with a punishing set of narrow wooden stairs. A team of men, each of them tall, not unlike Harry, scarred, not unlike Harry, and bedraggled, not unlike Harry, were taking turns hauling goods from a wooden trailer into the waiting stairway above. One man was struggling with a large, stone pot, and without a second thought Harry jumped in to help him pick it up as rain began to spit down. He seemed to fit in with these so-called labourers a little too well.

At the cost of the well-being of his lower back he found his way in, and he grunted and heaved his burden up the stairs, taking care not to lose his grip on the pot that weighed about as much as he did. When they finally reached the top, Harry and the mover made the mistake of setting it down and resting for several seconds, earning them the ire of a black-tuxedoed servant who was ushering the rest of the men along.

“Don’t just stand there, you animals! Bring it in! We’re about to open!” The footman barked at them.

Harry resisted the urge to argue as the footman marched about the hallway like some little tin monarch. Treatment like this was something Harry kept on running into ever since the Tiny Town fire, and the injustice of it was starting to nip at his fraying psyche. He bit his tongue and hoisted the pot upwards again as the servant kept careful watch of him all the while. Without time to so much as remove his rain-soaked jacket – something that Harry would later be grateful he had not done – the two of them were moving again. Seeing that Harry was eager to make it into the gallery, the man he was lifting it with, an older fellow of about fifty, didn’t pull his share of the weight nearly as well as Harry wished he would. He persevered nonetheless, lugging the pot down yet another long hallway. This one led to a back doorway that seemed to be a hidden entrance into the gallery proper.

Turning inside of it, Harry passed what appeared to be a storage room which was now in the process of being emptied out and converted into a coat check. He passed that doorway, and found himself in a much larger open space where the artwork was being placed. He had no idea that what he was actually moving through was not a gallery, but a dance hall that had been rented out for the occasion, a hidden place that would be the stuff of local legends in a hundred years’ time.

It wasn’t the gallery that Harry was truly focused on, or the pot in his hands, which was now swiftly turning his arms into rubber. It was the narrow possibility that he might find the whereabouts of Joe Piccoli, and he kept his eyes peeled for the paintings he had seen in the newspaper to no avail. The space seemed to host everything but Joe’s art, and it felt more like Billy Hill’s old living room than anything else, filled with masks and plates and exotic artefacts from faraway places that Harry couldn’t name. It reminded him of the display of maiolica at the art gallery, albeit on a much larger scale, and the more time he spent there, the more uncomfortable he became with the place.

He thought back to the question Joe had asked him during their trip to the art gallery:

“Do you giants only like my art because it’s really small?”

It was more than just the art that people liked, Harry had since learned. There were people out there who liked Joe himself for no other reason than because he was really small. As he studied the passing art pieces, he sat with the uncomfortable realization that he too had been one of them. There was a point in his life where he would have loved to gaze in fascination upon Joe’s tiny paintings with little care for Joe himself. Only now, when it was becoming far too late to change anything, did he see the error of his ways.

The pot jerked, bringing Harry back to his senses. To his horror he realized that the other mover was not only faltering, but they were both about to run into a well-dressed man in a white suit standing in the center of the room.

“Easy! Easy!” Said Harry, though the other mover didn’t seem to hear him.

“Where is he!?” The wailing of the man in the white suit was drowning Harry's protests out.

Harry, who was heading towards the man in white whether he wanted to be not, noted that he was inspecting a gilded cage on a stand.

“Easy now!” Harry said again, and pulled backwards on the pot for good measure in the hopes of slowing the mover down.

The mover started pulling the pot away from Harry in turn.

“This is a disaster!” The man in white continued. “The last thing we need is a loose tiny running about! He’s going to frighten away the guests, I just know it!”

At the sound of the words loose tiny Harry’s grip weakened, causing the pot to fall towards the mover and narrowly miss his feet. He yelped in fear and went hopping backwards into the man in white as the pot toppled onto the floor with a thud, and while it luckily didn’t crack, it did roll halfway across the room.

Harry stood there cluelessly as the man in white shoved the mover away from him and then suddenly pulled him in again by his collar, spitting venom like a snake.

“What on Earth do you think you’re doing you ugly, brainless, good-for-nothing idiot!? Pick this thing up, will you!?” The man in white barked. “Don’t you know I have bigger problems to attend to than babysitting you trained monkeys!?”

Bigger things like catching an escaped Joe Piccoli, it seemed. As the mover blubbered his sincerest apologies, the man in white jabbed a finger to a spot over Harry’s shoulder, near one of the beams that held up the ceiling.

“Put it over there.” The man in white growled.

He let go of the mover, and that was the end of it. The men obeyed the orders to the letter, though the mover side-eyed him all the while.

“Of all the people you had to piss off, it had t’be the richest man in London. Well done.” The mover grumbled. “Thanks for nearly breaking my feet, by the way.”

“I’m sorry.”

Harry set the pot down gingerly, taking care not to mash either of their toes this time.

“Who was that?” Asked Harry.

Being the richest man in London, Ontario, to Harry, was a little bit like being the prettiest pig in the pig pen. The mover’s face went blank in exasperation at the question.

“Walter Wilkins. Haven’t you heard of him!? He’s writing our paycheques, you know!”

The disgruntled mover limped off, giving Harry a moment to brainstorm.

So that was mister Wilkins: a short, angry little man with too much money for his own good. Supposedly this was the man who had bought Joe from the snatcher, and Harry had in all likelihood just blew any chance he may have had to speak to him one-on-one. Harry kept his eyes locked on Walter and watched as he crawled on his hands and knees about the gilded cage towards the table beside it, in search of Joe no doubt. Harry’s blood ran hot in his determination to find Joe before he did, but he knew that however he managed it, he would have to do so discreetly, out of sight of Walter or the servants or any other villains lurking in the gallery.

He had just finished that thought when something dark met the corner of his eye, and as he turned and saw what, or rather, who it was, terror froze him in place.

It was an old man in a long cloak and sleek top hat, with a sharp, birdlike nose and wispy white hair. A man whom Harry had learned to fear and obey implicitly. He was headed straight for him and he looked like he was about to kill.

“Father!? Wh… what are you doing here?” Harry did everything he could to make the panic in his voice sound more like good-natured curiosity.

“Buying art.” Said his father as he looked down his nose at him. “What else would I be doing?”

“Uh…” Dumbly Harry looked from Richard to where Walter was crawling about beneath the table and then back again.

“Now that you’re here, everything is starting to make sense. Do you care to help us find that foul-mouthed tiny of yours?” Richard continued.

The blood drained from Harry’s face.

“Excuse me. Whose tiny?” Walter looked up from the feet of the table as if activated by Richard’s words.

“His tiny.” Richard responded before Harry could so much as open his mouth. “I’ve seen the little bugger before. Herman here is the one who trained him.”

“Oh, really?” Walter pranced over with the cage in his hand to where Harry was standing, and all Harry could do was brace himself for the worst.

He had to think of a lie to sell them. Something that wouldn’t let them catch on that he was looking for Joe.

“I… well… you see…” He stuttered.

“No need to explain yourself, I know exactly what to do about this.” Said Walter.

After the fiasco with the pot, Harry was fully expecting that Walter would call security or the police, or at the very least cause another scene. As Harry drew back with his hands at the ready, he wasn’t expecting Walter to thrust something into them with a smile on his face.

It was the gilded cage.

“Take him back to mister Lessard’s then when you find him, will you?”  Walter asked cheerily, as though he had suddenly become Harry’s best friend. “Why, I’ll tip you handsomely if you do. I’ve a feeling the little bastard is out to ruin my show, so if you could be so kind as to take him off my hands...”

As Harry looked down at the cage it took a moment for the words to register. Walter must be mistaking him for a snatcher, and if so, he had just made Harry’s life a thousand times easier. Now all he had to do was find Joe and convince him to get into the cage. If he could manage that, the both of them could walk right out of the building Scot free.

Harry nodded at Walter, too afraid to say anything that might upset their delicate arrangement.

“Wonderful.” Walter clasped his hands together and grinned. “Tell mister Lessard I’ll be in touch.”

His father gave the cage a quizzical look.

“That pastime of yours is certainly… interesting.” Richard said of the cage. “If you’ll excuse me.”

His father turned down the rows of artwork, in all likelihood hoping to get first dibs on whatever early bird specials Walter had offered him. Harry could only hope that the direction Richard was headed led far away from Joe.

Dutifully Harry clutched the cage and scanned the gallery space as Walter turned his attention to the contingent of tuxedoed footmen, all of whom were frantically rushing about and trying to make the gallery presentable. The faster they moved, the faster Harry’s heart pounded. He would only have so much time to look before the guests started pouring in, and once there were a hundred feet on the ground he would have no chance of finding Joe at all.

He started his search around the wooden table that had so fascinated Walter. It bore a guestbook and ink well, and Harry soon noted that the quill had been upended from it and the feathers on the end mangled. Leaning closer, he spied a set of tiny shoeprints soaking into the tablecloth, seemingly leading to nowhere.

Harry had learned to think like a borrower, and he followed the table cloth to the tassel, then to the curtain that hung next to that and concealed a work of some great import. He was about to peer behind it when a pair of striking black eyes caught him off guard from the corner of his eye, and his gaze snapped to them.

Hanging a foot away from the curtain was the portrait he had seen in the newspaper, part of a series that grew increasingly abstract, Harry noted. Each canvas was barely the size of a post card, and they surrounded the curtained work as though someone had built a shrine to the artist who had made them. There were other paintings still, a sad circus elephant, a painting of a man – with features uncomfortably close to Harry’s – wading through a swamp, all of which repelled him in some way.

They felt like Joe’s paintings, and yet they also felt alien to him. The colours were tired and faded, and there was something inexplicably listless about the brush work and the detailing. Harry was stricken by just how few of them there were, and whoever had hung the paintings seemed well aware of that, for a slew of landscape paintings clearly not made by the same artist surrounded them and padded the contents of the wall out.

The artist behind the landscapes had a name, but the miniature painter did not. Harry’s skin prickled as he noted that the placard for each miniature piece read, Artist Unknown.

He turned his attention back to the curtain and was just about to open it.

“Have you found him yet?”

Harry flinched as Walter clutched his shoulder in a manner that could only be described as desperately genial. Walter, Harry could see, was smiling from ear to ear, though the beads of sweat dotting his forehead were betraying him.

“I—no, I—”

“Could you perhaps look over there, then?” Walter asked politely, pointing Harry to some nebulous corner of the room. “We’re about to open you see, and as they say, the show must go on.”

“Right.” Said Harry.

Walter’s voice was thin with tension, and his head bobbed about as he nodded profusely at Harry in a way that felt more puppet than man.

“Good, good, jolly good.” Walter warbled.

Harry had no choice but to bumble about with cage in hand as Walter took his place before the table and patted down his pristine suit. There wasn’t a hair out of place on the man, Harry noted, though whatever shoe polish he had put in his hair was beginning to run.

It was only when the doors opened and the army of impatient guests spilled in that Harry spotted a flutter of movement from behind the curtain next to Walter, and as the giants surrounded the table he hoped against his better judgement that it was only the wind.

One of the servants rolled a silver cart of hors d’oeuvres through the crowd, and with wine glass in hand, Walter commenced his opening speech with Harry as a captive listener.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I must thank you all for joining me here today, to celebrate the birth of a new era of cultural enlightenment for our humble, but no less extraordinary, city…”

More and more patrons filtered into the gallery, to the point that Harry, cage still in hand, could hardly see where Walter stood. He tried to push his way through the crowd nonetheless.

“As we all know, London is sadly well known for its ah, high concentration of the less fortunate…” Walter continued.

Sensing that the cart of hors d’oeuvres was the crowd’s weak spot, Harry very politely shuffled towards it and joined the waiting line, squeezing through any odd break in the crowd that brought him closer to the curtain.

“I wanted to ensure that we remain mindful of that upon this gallery’s opening. It is, after all, the duty of men of our standing to take to the betterment of the world and the lives of those in it. Without our steady hand to guide them with kindness and compassion, the less fortunate are apt to fall to ruin, and take us along with them.” Said Walter, as a ripple of dignified laughter ran through the crowd.

Harry’s head bobbed above the curious onlookers as he kept careful watch of the curtain. His heart skipped a beat as it moved again.

“What’s that?” A woman behind him whispered.

“I can think of no better example of this than the Tiny Town Tragedy.” Said Walter, his eyes gleaming with sadness that had no doubt been carefully rehearsed. “There are few souls more unfortunate in this world than the miniatures, and as that tragedy taught us, they cannot be trusted to govern themselves. We have seen, first-hand, the horrors that befell the ones who tried.”

Walter reached out and pulled the tassel beside the curtain, and as it opened the whole room gasped. Harry, who was fourth in line for hors d’oeuvres, could not yet see what they were gasping at.

“And so, as people of wealth, let us not lose sight of what happens when the natural order is disrupted. Let us instead inspire the lesser among us to be their most useful, their most productive, their most respectable selves. It is my hope that in showcasing this collection we will keep them in our thoughts and – ”

A wave of shocked whispers rippled through the crowd, and finally Harry caught a glimpse of what scandalized them so.

“TINY!” One lady shrieked in terror.

“Get it out! Get it out!” A gentleman barked.

“– and ensure that our… society remains… a civilized place to…” The words tumbled out of Walter’s mouth as the crowd fell into disarray, and his head turned slowly in wide-eyed horror to look at what was really behind the curtain.

Sitting atop the picture frame was Joe Piccoli, presently giving the crowd the finger. His entire forearm was covered in ink, and in his hand was a tuft of slick, black feathers. The canvas within the frame had been vandalized with the face of each figure blacked out completely and the clothing painted over with exaggerated genitalia.

As the onlookers screeched in terror and fled to the corners of the room, Harry watched Walter Wilkins turn white as his suit.

"Excuse me." He said.

Calmly, Walter handed his glass of wine off to a waiting footman. Then his hand shot towards Joe, who leapt from the wall down to the floor, prompting more shrieks from all the well-to-do gallery patrons who huddled into a circle and left Joe Piccoli alone in the room’s empty center.

Alone with the exception of Harry, of course. Clutching the cage, Harry gently pushed the silver cart aside and stayed put as he studied the ring of frightened faces that gawked at the both of them. His father’s was among them, scowling at him, and as Harry stepped towards Joe, who sat between him and Walter, he felt like a part of some twisted circus act.

“Well don’t just stand there!” Walter said to Harry. “Grab him and be done with it!”

The room fell silent as Harry and Joe trembled in unison. Harry looked down at him, utterly lost as to what to do.

There Joe stood, in the ring of gawking giants, looking up at Harry and standing rigid as a boy whose father was about to beat him about the ears. The cage rattled in Harry’s fearful hand with utter disgust, not only with Walter, but with himself as well.

He couldn’t shake the thought of how easy it would be to grab him up and take him. He could keep up the act and put Joe in that cage at that very moment and run right out of the building with him, no hassle, no fuss. He could let Joe out and beg for forgiveness later if he had to. That was the easy way, the path of least resistance. Wasn’t Harry used to taking the path of least resistance?

Even if he was, by now he had seen the snatcher’s den and the jars and the cages. He felt the weight of the metal in his hand as he held it over Joe like some untouchable god. How naïve he had been to think he could ever convince Joe to get into such a monstrous invention after what had happened between them! Joe’s little black eyes sparkled as he looked up at him with a terror Harry himself had put there. This was a bridge that Harry could not cross, for it was one he had burnt long ago. He already knew where it would lead them.

“Go on…” Walter prompted him. “Just pick him up already!”

The crowd gasped as Harry threw the cage aside, and his throat tightened in revulsion as he said the only thing he could think to say to Walter in response:

“Fuck you, mister Wilkins.”

A chorus of scandalized chatter rose from the crowd.

Walter froze in bewilderment.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said fuck you, mister Wilkins!" Harry repeated, louder and more forcefully this time, as the frightened guests looked on in shock. With nothing more to lose he nodded to where Richard stood and added, “and fuck you too, father.”

Walter glanced back at Richard and did a double take. By now the entire gallery had collapsed into a state of barely controlled chaos and more and more guests shuffled hurriedly out of the room.

Harry stooped down towards Joe, sensing the perfect moment.

“Run.” He said, though Joe still quivered in place. “Go. Now!”

Before he could convince Joe any further, Walter cleared his throat.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, mister… Avery, is it? Is this really your son, Richard?” He said, glancing coldly at Richard once again. "Whoever you may be, Herman, I suggest you get out!"

“I’ve never met that man in my life, and I want no part in this.” Harry heard Richard reply, and it neither surprised him nor mattered to him anymore. “Good day, Walter.”

Harry watched in silence as his father walked straight out of the gallery. He could only hope — incorrectly — that Richard had also just walked out of his life forever.

"If you could be so kind as to join him..." Walter said, turning his attention back to Harry.

“Oh, I’ll leave, mister Wilkins,” said Harry, “and Joe can come with me if he likes to, but I’m not putting him behind bars. I tried that once and it didn’t do either of us any good. Why can’t I just let him go free?”

Harry’s eyes darted nervously between Joe and Walter. Why wasn’t Joe running? Walter, meanwhile, was smiling at his shoes with his hands on his hips. When he looked up at Harry his eyes were hair-raisingly empty.

“I see what this is. Some activist demonstration, is it? Have you come here to embarrass me in front of my buyers? Stay put, then. I'm sure the police will be here soon.” Walter snarled.

Harry stepped right over where Joe stood and placed himself between the miniature and Walter as white hot rage coursed like venom through his blood.

“After what you did to mister Piccoli you’re the one who ought to be locked up.” Said Harry.

He jabbed a finger at Walter as the final drop of human decency evaporated from him.  

Walter’s eyes shifted from left to right, taking stock of his art exhibition that was now in shambles. He had the look of a cornered animal, one that Harry was poised to kill. Walter’s eyes, Harry noted, were fixed on Joe Piccoli as he said what came next.

“We’ll see who gets locked up, then, you filthy, tiny-loving degenerate.” Walter’s voice was eggshell thin. “If you won’t cage him for me, then I will take him away myself!”

Harry knew what was coming next, though he barely had time to brace himself as Walter lunged for him. His instincts kicked in and he dodged Walter’s first strike, then narrowly missed landing his own. Walter only flinched for a second, but it was a precious one, for when Walter struck out at him a second time Harry timed it perfectly. He seized Walter’s right hook with one hand and hammered him in the ear with the other, then shoved him back towards the wall.

Harry’s capacity for violence had hung over him like a sword on a thread since the great war, and his encounter with Lessard had sent it roaring back to the forefront of his psyche. He was a big man, built more like a piece of farm equipment than a person, and his hands fit perfectly around Walter’s starched collar. As Walter struggled against him, red-faced and sweaty, Harry wasn’t thinking about him in that second, or his father, or the frightened patrons of the gallery. He wasn't even thinking about Joe. Harry wasn’t thinking at all, for instead he had become a dreadful thing with a dreadful purpose: the terrifying and exhilarating duty to kill. Whether Walter lived or died was secondary to him, as were the terrified people fleeing the gallery, or his father talking to the officer on the street corner.

Harry Avery had never known love, but war had taught him that its purest expression was murder.

He slammed Walter against the wall once, twice, three times, until the canvas behind the curtain shook off and fell to the floor. Walter, half his size, howled like a hyena during the valuable seconds in which Harry gave him any opportunity to breathe.  

Harry was contemplating all the ways he might rearrange Walter’s face when a little voice from behind him stopped him cold.

“Doc, that’s enough! Let him go! He's not worth it. Let's just go home.”

It was Joe Piccoli, who still had not run when he should have. Harry’s humanity came rushing back to him at the sound of his master’s voice, and he tossed Walter aside like a rag doll.

"Please?" Joe continued as Harry turned and scooped him up in his hands. "Let's just go home."

There was a snapping sound from behind them as Walter thrashed about, one that filled him with dread. He couldn’t tell if it was a bone, let alone what bone of Walter’s it was. Not the neck, he hoped. Perhaps he had done it — perhaps he had killed in the name of love. In front of Joe, no less! Cage or no cage, surely Joe thought him a monster after this dreadful display—

“MY ART!” Walter howled. “The ugly brute destroyed MY ART!”

The sound had been the tiny canvas, snapped to pieces under Walter’s own weight. Relieved, Harry paused, clutching Joe as though he were the last thing he had left to hold onto. In one vital miscalculation he turned to face Walter a final time.

“Joe’s art.” Harry corrected him.

For a split second Harry stood triumphantly in the now empty gallery, his purpose served and his good deed done. There was nothing left to do in his mind besides walk out and return to business as usual. That was, after all, what society had allowed him to do up until this point, and what Harry was unaware of was this: the world was one big club, and Harry was no longer in it.

The second he turned back around he was hit not once, not twice, but three times over the head with a baton and then wrestled to the floor. His vision blurred in and out and the voices surrounding him grew distorted. The most he could make out was Walter shrilly asking,

“Did you see the way he lunged at me, officer!?”

The dark-circled eyes of the stout officer he had encountered earlier came into view. By the time he was coherent enough to realize what was happening he was already in handcuffs and being marched through the doorway – with no sign of Joe Piccoli once again. His fingers curled and his eyes darted as frustration burned inside of him.

“Wait—wait!” He protested, though the officer didn’t wait.

He dug in his heels as the officer dragged him down the stairs, across the street, and tossed him into the paddy wagon on the corner — one final degenerate to be added to the collection. Nothing more, and nothing less.  

-

Harry woke to the cold sensation of a prison cell floor against his missing ear as an unfamiliar voice echoed through the stone building.

“…the man at the gallery, Richard, identified himself as his father.” Said the officer – a different one than the man who had arrested him. “Richard told me Herman here showed up at the gallery to harass him and recommended we lock him up in an asylum.”

“Really?” Asked another officer who was clearly half-listening. “Geez.”

“According to Richard he’s one of those, uh… y’know. Those guys who came back from the war and were never the same after. Shell shock, I think they call it? Some new medical thing.”

Harry was relieved to find that his hands were free. He sat up and rubbed his throbbing temples.

“Shell shock? Sheesh, does everything have to have some fancy label these days?” The second officer scoffed. “I went to war, you went to war, we all did. Just call it what it is: cowardice! Cowardice is not a medical condition.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just what Richard’s telling me, okay?” The first officer shrugged.

Harry lugged himself to his feet and staggered towards the bars as the first officer continued.

“So far he’s wanted on charges of assault, public obscenity, swearing in the presence of a lady, suspected tiny snatching… but if he’s as much of an imbecile as his father says he is then it might be easier to throw him in the loony bin. Could send him as early as tomorrow morning, even, depending on when the doctor gets here.”

Harry’s fingers curled around the bars. With each listed charge more memories came flooding back to him. Where had Joe gone? Where had they taken his coat?

“Hey!” When Harry called out into the blue stone corridor he only half expected a response. “Officers! Excuse me, officers? Where is Joe Piccoli?”

“Is that him?” Asked the second officer.

“Yup… hold on.”

There was a slithering sound as the first officer, who was out of Harry’s view, got out of his chair and drew closer.

“Good morning Herman.” The man cheerily greeted him, though Harry still could not see him in the dimly-lit hallway.

“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry repeated.

“Who is Joe Piccoli? He a friend of yours?” The officer asked in turn.

Harry’s aching head slumped against the bars.

“Never mind.” He said. “Is the tiny okay?”

“The one at the gallery? We were hoping to ask you the same question. We have quite a few questions for you as a matter of fact, Herman.” Said the stern officer.

Some small amount of relief came over him. If the officers had no idea where Joe had gone there was still a chance that he was out there somewhere in one piece.

“If I answer your questions will you let me go?” He naïvely asked.

“Not if we can help it.” The officer replied with barely restrained sadistic glee. “We’ll get to it when the doctor arrives. In the meantime, if you want anything, just ask!”

With that the officer returned to his place down the corridor and sat back down next to his buddy, quieter this time. Harry, meanwhile, wracked his battered brain for a solution only to find that there was none.

He backed away from the bars, sat down on the bench, and stared up at the ceiling.

Maybe it didn’t matter what happened to him, he figured. Maybe his freedom was the price he had to pay in exchange for Joe’s, and as he sat there in the sadness of the cell he decided there was no place he would rather be. It was the least he could do after all the horrors the two had faced, and all the ones Harry had failed to respond appropriately to. It was only right that Harry got a turn in the cage considering all the dreadful things the world was constantly itching to do to Joe.

He had realized far too late that the two of them were on the same side. As he sat there, he lamented all the time and goodwill he had wasted trying to appeal to people like Walter and his father. For what reason, he wondered.

Safety. Safety was the reason, a very conditional type of safety that could easily be revoked. It was granted on the condition that Harry drifted through life with his head down and his mouth shut and admitted to everyone, himself included, that although he was a degenerate, he was a good degenerate, one that did what it was told, and jumped when they bid it to jump, and honoured its father and its mother and the likes of Walter Wilkins, richest man in London, Ontario.

Harry Avery had never known love. He had exchanged his capacity to love for safety. What Harry had not been counting on was love’s capacity to find him, whether he wanted it to or not, and turn him into something untamed. Though he was now caged, he had never felt a freedom like this before, and he would see the inside of a thousand jail cells if it meant he would be able to keep it for just a moment longer.

This was love, in its purest and most desperate form. Love he had buried and rediscovered far too late, and could now do nothing with. It was love he had squandered, fragile as a pearl clutched in the teeth of a swine, and he held onto it all the same, for whether he died in the cell, in the asylum, or somewhere in the crossroads of the world, he would die holding onto one fundamental truth:

Harry loved Joe Piccoli.

Harry Avery was no stranger to the horrors of war, and the display in front of him was no less revolting. Never in his life had he seen two men fight as wildly and desperately as the men on the table in front of him were fighting: no decorum, no rules, no limits, one punch landed after another until each fighter's face was downright unrecognizable. The heads of drunken giant patrons bobbed in front of him all the while and cheered with delight at the carnage. The basement they were packed into reeked of cheap beer and their rancid breath. Then the excitement swelled when the tiny fighter to Harry’s right knocked the one to his left over and clambered on top of him, pummeling his opponent’s face repeatedly as Harry waited for a referee that would never come to call the match. There was no tap-out, of course, no ringing of a bell - the fight wasn’t declared a victory until the man on the ground had stopped moving and the victor had shakily risen to his feet, throwing his bare fists up in glory.

This was a tiny fight, a pre-show of sorts to a dog fight that would serve as the main event, Harry had learned.

“Those roaches aren’t gonna come back to that farmhouse.” Danny had said of the snatchers. “They’ll find some new place to infest. Where you WILL find them is at the fights... unless they got locked up or had a sudden change of career.”

In his four months of searching Harry had encountered neither Frankie nor Lessard. Fortunately, he hadn’t encountered Joe either, though he had heard the name Piccoli being bandied about various underground fighting venues with worrying frequency. This was what had kept him coming back to basement after basement and barnhouse after barnhouse, helplessly scanning the fighters in the ring in search of the one face that he would always recognize, no matter how battered or broken it may be. It sickened him to be part of this crowd, and he didn’t know how to feel about the way they had welcomed him in with open arms. His burn scars, his patched clothes, the dark circles around his eyes, all ensured he had an intimidating look about him that allowed him to fit right in.

The organizer plucked the unconscious man who was not Joe from the tabletop and the rest of the crowd grew electric with anticipation for the dogs to come out. This was Harry’s cue to leave.

These things weren’t supposed to happen in Canada, Harry maintained. This was not what he had fought for. As he returned home the pointlessness of the fight weighed heavy on him. He knew all too well how those fighters felt.

-

“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Avery. We’ll look into it. In the meantime, try calling the SPCA." Said the officer on the other end of the phone.

Harry, who had already called the SPCA and been told to call the police instead, hung up on the cop without a word and felt no shame in it. Reporting the fights to any halfway-relevant authority had become as much of a ritual as attending them, and every officer promised the same thing: we’ll look into it. Naturally they never did, and he felt as though he were going mad. Tiny fighting, he had learned, had been theoretically outlawed since the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1892. What was the point of laws, he wondered, if nobody enforced them?

He looked down at his knuckles. Remembering the blood, he felt hollow. He tried to turn his brain off as he ventured up the stairs to ready himself for bed, but the silence lent itself too well to thinking, and right now all Harry could think about was how much noise Joe used to make without Harry realizing it. There had once been the rustling of movement, the flipping of paper, the sound of tiny pencil scratches, subtle reminders that he was not alone. That there was still humanity left in the world.

Harry hardly felt human as he glanced at his reflection in the mirror. The crescent-shaped burn along his jawline had turned shiny then scarred over, leaving him looking not unlike those who had survived the gas attacks during the war. In hindsight he was thankful to Danny for stopping him in the woods and talking him into going home, for in the days after Danny had left his burnt earlobe had turned gangrenous to the point of needing surgical removal. It was a blessing of modern medicine that the infection had not spread, and while he couldn’t be certain, he could hazard a guess that wading through lake water, ripping across a cornfield, and slogging about in the woods had done his injuries no favours.

He wondered what day of the trial Danny was currently on as he brushed his teeth. Maybe he would see the fake Danny at tomorrow’s picture show, gleefully dancing for his masters while the real one was fighting them in court.

Better that than fighting a fellow miniature on a table for the giants' amusement, Harry figured, though only barely.

-

It wasn't the shells or the snipers or even Georgie that had been haunting Harry's nightmares lately. Ever since the fire, it was the threat of gas that plagued his animal mind every night. The smoke, the burning, the helplessness, all of it had been twisted into nightmares that were not about the fire itself, but about gas, to the point even the smell of his own morning cigarette left him queasy.

It was the gas that had been most insidious, after all, not through its presence but its absence. The threat of it had lurked in the back of every soldier's mind and driven even the bravest of them mad with anxiety, to the point that being gassed in itself had brought some odd relief when it finally happened. Every man knew what to do during a gas attack; you donned a mask if you had one, pissed on a rag and covered your face with it if you didn't. What truly eroded the spirit was the perpetual state of uncertainty they lived under in the interim while waiting for the gas to come, that maddening sense of never knowing what they would be dealing with.

How strange it was, Harry thought, that it was these things that weren't there that held the most sway over people.

He put his cigarette out on the porch railing and turned his attention to the paper. He took it inside and sat with it on the parlour couch, appreciating the dullness of the present moment.

Front page news of the latest bank robbery would soon be of great interest to Harry, but for now he flipped past the most recent article in favour of the classifieds section. Joe and Danny weren’t the only ones he was thinking about. Susie was another soul who had gradually disappeared as the months had rolled by, and although she had told him she might be hard to reach, it was still worrisome. He kept on searching for rooms to let all the same and occasionally sent her clippings in the mail to no response. It was possible she was busy, of course, or she didn’t like his offerings, or had made new friends and forgotten all about Toronto. He tried not to think too hard about it.

He turned the page and his chest tightened. Right in the middle of it were a bunch of naked figures falling like ashes from a burning building. This was an ad he ought to have been used to by now, for it was in the paper every day – it featured the image of a painting curated by an out-of-town art gallery, one of many works at a reception that was supposedly COMING SOON. Soon in this case seemed to mean in three months or longer for that was roughly how long the ad had been running, and the image of the painting had gone from sketch to flat colours to shaded in that timeframe.

It was an obvious marketing ploy, and a good one at that - whenever the painting was finished, the gallery would surely open. He could only roll his eyes at the pretentiousness of it all and refuse to pay it any more attention out of spite, yet something about that image haunted him. The scene was too disturbingly familiar for his liking. It felt a little too real.

The clock in the parlour ticked away as Harry’s part time job drew near. It would be work today, then the errands, then, perhaps, he would finally make good on his word to Danny and pay Billy a visit – only after he had drawn a cheque for his mortgage at the bank, of course. Ever since his licence had been suspended Billy had insisted upon helping Harry pay his everyday expenses, and Harry, in turn, had insisted upon politely refusing. Thus, if he was going to talk to Billy, he would have to ensure all his expenses were covered so the man would have no opportunity to pay him any kindness.

Unfortunately for him, his latest job was also the most emotionally harrowing one he had taken to date.  

-

The waffle iron slammed down. Danny bared his teeth in agony and clawed at his leg. The other two dancers rushed to his side, tried to pull him out once, twice, three times…

This was the part of the film where Harry inevitably missed a note, and today was no different. His piano playing was stellar otherwise, or so the manager at the picture show had told him. He had seen Taking the Cake so many times now that he could pinpoint the second Danny sustained his life-changing injury. It had reached a point where he could even tell the scenes shot before Danny’s injury apart from the ones shot after - in the later scenes where Danny was dancing injured, he kept wincing through the smile on his face.

Playing piano at the picture show was nothing like playing alone with Joe, that much Harry had anticipated – there was no pride in it, no freedom, no happiness, just duty. The only reason he had agreed to the job was because abject homelessness would be even more shameful in his mind. What he had failed to consider was how surreal it was to watch his fellow giants howl in delight at a friend's pain and suffering. Not only that, but to keep on performing in his own right, adding a jaunty soundtrack to it all the while. It was the same feeling of dread that filled his chest whenever he saw empty jars.

When the show was over, he collected his thirty cents for the day and headed for the bank, making a mental note to find a better gig. The only silver lining was the possibility he would be able to pay his mortgage this month. Maybe the electricity, too, he thought as he shuffled into line at the marble banking hall on Yonge. Coal was another matter – winter was coming, and if he wanted to stay warm he might have to-

“Excuse me, sir.”

Harry jumped as a wrinkled hand tapped his shoulder. He turned and looked behind him to an elderly gentleman in a green suit smiling back at him. The stranger's voice sounded like a warmer version of his father's.

“If it’s not too intrusive, I just wanted to thank you for your service.” The old man continued.

Harry suppressed his nervous laughter and tried his best to smile. Exchanges like these were a regular occurrence now that he had visible scars.

“Oh, there’s no need to thank me, sir, it was the right thing to do – the only thing to do.” Harry stammered.

What had Harry done, he wondered?

“You’re too humble. That mustard gas…” The old man wheezed and Harry, slave to human decency that he was, could only listen patiently as the line to the teller moved at a pace that would put molasses to shame. “…awful stuff that was. You, you’re a real soldier.” The man said, patting Harry on his shoulder for good measure.

“Thank you, sir.” Was all Harry could say to such a thing.

“Not like that lousy nephew of mine. They discharged him for gas anxiety.” The stranger chuckled, then mercifully turned away from Harry, leaving him sickly with guilt in his wake.

Though it had been going on for weeks, Harry still wasn’t used to being scrutinized like this. He had always drawn attention for being tall, but ever since the burn wounds had healed, it was as though people saw his face and then filled in the blanks of who he was on his behalf – and whether they imagined his character to be positive or negative was something out of his control. Where some saw a criminal others saw a soldier, and anything in between. Lately he moved through the world with a strange sense that he had to prove something to these strangers, but he couldn’t figure out what that thing was.

The customer in front of him reached the teller after no less than an eternity had passed, and Harry’s mind wandered back to finances. He likely wouldn’t be able to afford coal, and if he couldn’t, it would mean he would have to sell something. His radio, or perhaps the motorcycle…

Finally another customer left and he neared the teller’s counter with his thirty cents in hand, knowing that selling either item would be equally painful. It would depend on how low his bank balance was, and he approached the counter with trepidation.

He was just about to make his deposit, cut his cheque and leave when the doors flung wide open. Harry looked on in confusion as the dying afternoon light spilled over the marble columns and arched cubicles like something out of a movie scene.

When a bank robber strutted through the doorway with rifle in hand, it became clear to Harry that he was now a part of the cast.

“Everybody get on the ground! Put your hands on your head!” The robber shouted as he pointed the barrel at anything and everything that dared to move. “No sudden movements!”

There were none. The bank-goers sank to the floor as slowly as they had moved when in line and did just as they were told. Everyone except for Harry, who was staring at the robber in disbelief.

Seeing that Harry was the only one still standing, the robber homed in on him and then aimed for the ceiling. Although the robber pulled the trigger three times, only two shots fired, and that was the moment all fear left Harry Avery.

The robber, seemingly unaware of the grave he had just dug for himself, drew closer.

“Get on the ground, you tall bastard!” The robber barked upon his approach and aimed the rifle straight at Harry's chest. “I’m not messin’ around!”

He certainly could have had Harry fooled. With his misshapen hat, his dusty coat, and his sorry excuse for a mask – which Harry was certain the robber had made by dismembering some poor woman’s silk stockings and cutting eye holes into the remains - he looked like something out of a clown act. That wasn’t what Harry was truly interested in, of course. It was the rifle in the boy’s hands that told him everything he needed to know; he may not have been a real soldier according to the fellow in the green suit, but even he could call the robber's bluff based on his choice of weapon alone. He would recognize the thing anywhere.

Harry straightened himself up to his full height of six foot three, and when the boy’s blue eyes widened behind his makeshift mask, Harry knew exactly what he was dealing with. If the comically half-assed get-up hadn’t given the little buffoon away the shivering certainly had. Harry only had thirty cents in his pocket, but he may as well have just won the lottery.

Frankie Van Assen approached Harry with all the bravado he could muster nonetheless, and with his rifle at the ready he said,

“Get on the ground or I’ll blow you to pieces.”

A dreadful silence filled the banking hall, broken only by the sound of tellers and clients shifting nervously as they watched the scene play out with horror. Harry glanced to the side table beside him, which the old man in the green suit had crawled underneath. He was gazing at Harry as if in worship. Somewhere behind the teller’s counter he could hear the sound of a phone receiver lifting from the hook.

Harry crossed his arms, turned his attention back to Frankie, and in the hopes of drowning out the whispers of the terrified bank teller behind him he replied,

“You’re gonna blow yourself to pieces. Don't you know what kind of rifle that is?”

Frankie blinked. His eyes darted down to the rifle, then back to Harry with a scowl.

Harry prodded a finger at Franke's rinky-dink, limp-dicked, pathetic excuse for a weapon and continued.

“That’s an old Ross rifle. We used those in the war. If you’re lucky it’ll fire, if you’re unlucky it’ll jam, and if you’re really unlucky it’ll explode and take you along with it.”

Frankie’s scowl widened into a look of confusion. This clearly wasn't in the script – nobody was supposed to know that the rifle was a bluff, as everything else about the boy was.

“Yeah? Wanna bet?” Frankie stammered.

“I do.” Said Harry.

Frankie’s finger tightened around the trigger. From behind the mask he looked as if he were about to cry.

“I-I’ll show you, then.” He said, his voice wavering.

Harry stood unimpressed as the boy squeezed his eyes shut. Only then did he squeeze the trigger. When nothing happened his eyes snapped open, and he squeezed it again, and again, and again, and he would have squeezed it a fifth time if the sound of a siren in the distance hadn’t broken his concentration.

The bank hall soon echoed with the sound of footsteps as Frankie’s would-be hostages saw their opportunity to escape and took it.

Frankie tried to join them, which was as predictable as his jammed rifle, and Harry, unscathed, snatched him by the coat collar and dragged him back before he could sprint off. The rifle spun out of Frankie’s hands, and when it hit the ground the third shot finally fired, not into Harry’s chest but into the base of a column across the room.

“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry growled.

“What!?" Frankie wrestled and fought so intensely that Harry had to hoist him clean off the ground with both hands. "Who the hell is-”

“Joe Piccoli! That tiny you sold last summer. I know it’s you, Frank.” Harry said.

“I-I don’t know anything! I don’t know any Piccolis, I swear!” Frankie insisted.

“Then I’ll hand you over to the police and you can tell them where you took him.”

Frankie dangled in the air as the sirens grew louder and his terror grew along with them. Harry watched with satisfaction as the last of Frankie's defiance turned to resignation.

“Mr. Wilkins has him!” He blurted out.

“Which Mr. Wilkins?” Asked Harry.

Harry knew an entire family of Wilkinses. It didn’t exactly narrow things down.

“Some rich guy!” Frankie cried, which narrowed things down even less. “Listen, I might have his address in my pocket somewhere.” Frankie kept on struggling against Harry’s grip in vain. “Put me down and I’ll try and find it for ya'.”

Harry glowered at him – he couldn’t be certain that Frankie wouldn’t run off again. Scanning the room, he deposited Frankie in the nearest corner and took great care to tower over him in menacing fashion.

Frankie rifled through his pockets as promised, and Harry could only stare in wonder as he carelessly dumped a staggering amount of junk onto the floor: a pile of of old receipts, crumbled dog treats, assorted nuts and bolts, a handful of acorns, a slingshot, a very smooth rock, six different keys in six different sizes, two real nickels and one fake one on a string… everything except for the address of Mr. Wilkins. Harry drew closer and tapped his foot impatiently.

“Okay, maybe I don’t have it on me, but—look, he’s an art dealer or something.” Frankie spoke frantically, as if sensing Harry’s impatience.

This was oddly familiar to Harry – though none of the Wilkinses he had met were in the business of art.

"Why do you care so much, anyways?" Frankie carried on. "It's a tiny, you can just-"

A police whistle cut Frankie off before he could finish, and Harry could only envy how quick the policemen were to protect the now empty bank. The second his eyes were drawn to the officers in the doorway Frankie took off like lightning, and Harry lunged after him in one final, desperate attempt to seize him, snatching him by the shoulder of his oversized coat. Frankie shed it like the skin of a snake and raced deeper into the banking hall with the police in hot pursuit, leaving Harry in the dust with coat in hand.

Harry searched through the rest of the pockets only to find them empty. He tossed the coat aside and then froze at the sight of one of the officers, who was headed in his direction and twirling a baton. His hand crept towards his face before he decided it would be of more use covering up the patch on his jacket's left elbow. He didn’t like the way this grey-haired officer was sneering at him, as though he were some vagabond from the Ward, and he especially didn’t like the way the other two officers in the doorway were pointing at him and talking amongst themselves. Perhaps they saw Harry as a criminal. Maybe even an accomplice, considering he had just been holding Frankie's coat.

He shrank back as the officer marched up to him with all the pomp and import a badge could afford someone. That was when a familiar voice spoke up from beside him.

“See? You’re a real hero.”

It was the old man in the green suit from before, who had picked himself up from the floor and was now dusting himself off.

“Don’t you think, officer?” He continued as the officer stopped in front of them. “He was ready to take a bullet for us back there. Sent that little punk running for his mother!”

Harry couldn’t tell if he was shaking from nerves or sheer embarrassment – maybe it was a combination of both. Nevertheless, he watched the stone-faced officer soften in real time. His baton, once readied, now fell to his side.

"Yes, it was an interesting day, most certainly, officer." Harry said, then locked eyes with the man in the green suit as if in defiance and refused to break eye contact.

What Harry was about to say next filled him with dread, but he felt it must be said, not for his own sake but for the sake of the man's poor nephew.

"...almost as interesting as the day the army discharged me for gas anxiety." Harry added.

The old man's eyes widened in shock, and with that the officer politely took Harry aside to hear his statement.

-

The next morning, Harry was very interested in bank robberies.

FLYING DUTCHMAN FRISKS FINANCIERS: BANK ROBBER STILL AT LARGE, read the headline.

Harry didn’t bother to read any further. He could tell from the headline alone that Frankie was still on the loose, and so far as Harry was concerned, whatever the newspaper had to say about his involvement was cursed information he had no business knowing. Although the rest of the bank had lauded him as a hero he had declined every offer for an interview and made it home with as little fuss as he could get away with.

Now it was back to business as usual, and he turned to the classifieds to look for more rooms to let. To his delight he found one posted by Evelyn Tucker of all people:

Seeking a quiet and responsible tenant for a ground floor unit who would not mind assisting an old lady around the house. Must be fond of miniatures, it read.

Susie certainly fit the bill, and so he went about cutting it out of the paper. When he pulled the ad away a familiar face stared back at him, and his skin prickled at the sight.

He turned the page and once again he was greeted with that obnoxious advertisement for the art gallery, though now something was different. The image of the nude tinies had been replaced by a portrait of a man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a fox-like face. Harry knew that face, and try as he might he could not forget that face.

For the first time, Harry swallowed his pride and willfully acknowledged the advertisement. When he read the blurb above the painting, the whole room went cold.

GRAND OPENING TO-DAY: WILKINS GALLERY OF FINE ART, the caption read, and below that, FEATURING CURIOSITIES THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE!

He thought back to what Frankie had told him yesterday. No wonder the description had been familiar! He did know an art dealer by the name of Wilkins, not personally but subliminally, lurking in the back of his morning newspaper. The page scrunched as his hands tightened into fists.

Maybe Joe had been right there the entire time, speaking to him without speaking the way the author of On the Life and Death of the Miniature had done. Maybe the reason the painting of the burning building felt too real was because it was real. Who else could paint something so viscerally sincere besides Joe Piccoli? He thought back to the circus, the interview, the jars. Deep in his bones he knew that Joe could very well be one of the curiosities mentioned in the advertisement. That was how the sickening world Harry lived in worked, after all.

He grabbed his jacket and raced to the motorcycle.

Not once did he think to call the police.

Danny nodded softly, and for the first time Harry noticed how exhausted the poor man looked.

"Just for now. It doesn't mean we don't care, but sometimes that's what you gotta do." Danny said. “You feel like shit, I feel like shit, we’ve been looking for hours with no sign of the kid or Joe. We’re probably lost. My leg’s killing me. …sometimes in life you gotta cut your losses.”

Harry's hands quivered with rage. He had been searching for a solid twenty-four hours. He had captured Calloway and braved the MLT and beaten a snatcher's head in. In his mind he had gone too far to turn back now. Much too far to be outwitted by a little boy playing in a river.

“I had him, Danny.” He said.

“I know you did.” Danny replied.

Harry slogged back towards the bank of the stream. Deep down he knew that Danny was right. There was nothing more for him to do, nowhere to go, no signs or footprints or clues. He had spent the last several hours painstakingly searching for them and by the end of it he had only been chasing phantoms in the woods.

His hand brushed against the stump of a log resting in the water while he was halfway across, and it was as though the last of his anger drained out through that hand. It closed around the log, and before he knew it he had whirled around and whipped it against a tree trunk with all the force he could muster.

“I HAD HIM!” His voice bounced off the trees as he shouted.

The log shattered into pieces on the far end of the bank, and Danny didn't appear phased by this display from where he watched on the opposite side.

As Harry neared him all he said was,

"It's hard. I get it. That kid... he probably grew up in this forest. We need a new strategy, that's all."

Harry didn't want a new strategy. He wanted Joe to be home safe and for all of this to be over. He wanted to be a better person who said all the right things and did all the right things and quit killing everyone and everything he loved. Beyond all that, he wanted to live in a better world where things like this didn't happen.

He was able to get a closer look at Danny as he neared the bank, and he saw in detail how tired the man was, not to mention how sad he looked. At the sight of him, something Joe had said during the argument came to mind:

"Am I the only tiny you even care about!?"

The mud of the river squelched under Harry's bare feet as he climbed onto the rocks. Danny waited patiently as he put his shoes back on and then scooped him up into his hands.

"Okay. Let's see if we can find our way back to the farmhouse." Harry said.

-

"I don't know how something like this could happen. In Canada of all places." Harry lamented.

He sat on the ailing front steps of the farmhouse with his head in his hands, too uneasy to even light up a cigarette. Romeo's barking bellowed from inside of the house, and neither of them were brave enough to venture inside.

Danny turned and locked eyes with Harry from where he stood beside him on the step.

"Yes, this is Canada." He said. "Bad things happen in Canada. You didn't notice?"

Harry lifted his head and glared at Danny, but soon accepted that he had a point. Harry hadn't wanted to notice it. If he did, it called into question everything he had fought for.

"We should call the police." Harry said.

"For what?" Asked Danny.

"So they can find these snatchers and put them in jail!"

Harry's teeth were gritting together. That was the lesson that he had been taught all his life: that the bad guys in life were supposed to get punished.

Danny wasn't wagging a finger at him, but from the sound of his voice he may as well have been.

"Doc, the only way the police would be able to arrest these guys is if they caught them in the act of fighting the dogs or tinies. Just having them isn't enough. Besides that, they'd have to jump through all sorts of hoops to even get a warrant to search - and all that isn't even the biggest hurdle we'd have to get over." He said.

Harry stared blankly at him in disbelief.

"It isn't?" He said.

Danny shook his head.

"Harry..." the detective began uneasily, "...who do you think is going to the fights?"

Harry's eyes drifted over to the horizon. He knew the answer, but he didn't want to say it out loud.

Danny shuffled about on his walking stick.

"There's a lot of crooked cops out there." Danny said. "More of 'em out there than good ones. It's sad to say, but what you did here is probably the most justice those people are ever gonna get. You should feel proud of yourself."

When Harry looked down at the dried blood on his hands he certainly didn't feel proud of himself.

Danny pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and read aloud from it, as if to drive home his point.

“Those ward bosses who show considerable loyalty shall become my real Canadians. They shall be promoted to guards and carry out my bidding. It is these superior tinies who shall rule over all the lesser masses. They shall keep them caged in their wards and I shall be their snatcher and judge their ultimate worth.”

He folded the paper back into his pocket again and added,

"That was on the back of Dawson's list."

Harry was starting to tear up again. He kept imagining that little box in his hands.

"I had him, Danny. I almost had him. I hate this. I hate that I ever hand a hand in him ending up here." He said.

"Don't be so hard on yourself." Danny said. "You remember what Marty told us about Joe making his choices, right?"

Harry clutched his knees and gazed at his shoes. It was true that Joe had made his own choices, but it had been Harry who had driven him towards making them in the first place.

He ran a hand over his face. He hated the feeling he was faced with now, that sense of total helplessness that drove him mad. He gazed across the seemingly endless frontage of the farmhouse lot and watched the grasshoppers leap through the long grass.

"Y'know, this is kinda nice actually." Danny said as Romeo barked away in the background.

Harry leaned over to look at him and Danny grinned at the apparent confusion on his face.

"Having someone to sit around and feel like shit with, I mean." He added.

They sat together in silence for a long while as life went on. A bird chirped above them. A chipmunk scuttled under the foundation below them. A cloud passed over the sun, darkening the land for a passing moment and then lighting it up again, and when it was gone the sky was an endless blue. All the while the cicadas sang their summer threnody.

"...it is." Harry said.

Somewhere in this maddeningly vast world Joe Piccoli was out there, but not here in this surreal place.

With the sun rising into high noon and no sign of Frankie, there was no other place for the two of them to go but home.

-

It was evening by the time they got back to the Stinson House, and Danny promptly downed more Salix tea and drifted off to sleep in the soap dish. Harry had been planning to treat his own wounds but the brightly coloured envelope he had found in the mailbox distracted him.

He opened it to find a thank-you card from Susie.

“Dear Harry,” it read, “thank-you for being a wonderful doctor. You have helped me tremendously with my seizures and I should be sad to get a new doctor when I get to London. I must apologise for not speaking to you at Castle Hill. I saw that you were busy and thought not to distract you.

P.S. are you aware of any rooms in Toronto to let? I should like to return soon. We will be leaving in the morning. I am unsure if I will be able to receive letters, but I have listed my new address below.”

He was surprised to find that the address Susie listed was one in London, Ontario and not London, England.

It was a sweet gesture, Harry thought, and he made a mental note to write her sometime when he wasn't focusing his efforts on finding Joe. Or on minding Danny, for that matter. Thoughts of Danny soon turned to thoughts of the patients at Castle Hill, and it wasn't long before he ventured to the phone and gave Lorraine a ring.

"The first few people moved into Mrs. Tucker's today." She said. "No injuries yet, but there is this guy hanging around, calling himself the new Dawson. Trying to lure people away to his own settlement."

Harry's eyebrows rose at the name.

"I don't think it'll be too big of a thing. I mean, the guy's not gonna get very far without Garrison's backing. We're keeping an eye on it." She continued.

"Right." Harry said.

He trusted Lorraine's judgment given what she knew about Tiny Town, but it worried him all the same.

"How's Danny?" She asked.

Harry had been fearing this topic would come up. He had hardly been acting as a proper doctor while Danny was in his care.

"He's sleeping like a baby." He said, though he glanced over to the soap dish on the coffee table to make sure.

"Good stuff, good stuff. Marty'll be around to pick him up tomorrow." Said Lorraine.

"H-he will?"

Harry was dumbstruck. It seemed as though the two had just gotten to know each other.

"Yeah!" Lorraine crowed. "Says the studio's giving him a settlement offer and he wants Dan there to read through it. Depending on how things go he could be headed back to America soon."

"Oh. Well that's... very exciting." Harry said.

As he clutched the phone receiver, Harry suddenly felt as though he was adrift at sea. It really was nice to have someone to sit around and feel like shit with, as Danny had so put it. He wasn't sure if he could bear to be alone after everything that happened.

"I bet you'll be happy to have him outta your hair, huh?" Said Lorraine, who was none the wiser.

-

When the next morning rolled around the house felt more like a deathbed than anything else, and Harry absent-mindedly busied himself as he prepared for yet another ending. Danny sat patiently on the soap dish all the while as he waited for his lawyer, in high spirits after receiving a second helping of eggs at breakfast.

As much as Harry hated to admit it, in the short time he had known Danny the two had formed a rudimentary friendship, and right now it felt like it was his only friendship. When Danny was gone there would be nothing but him and the house and the nothingness inside of it.

“Hey, check this one out.” Danny said.

He was leaning over the morning paper from where he sat in the soap dish. Harry strode over to investigate and saw that he was reading a letter to the editor way in the back of the paper.

“It is all well and good that the zoo animals were saved, but what about the people? What about the mothers and the fathers and the little children of Tiny Town? Are their lives too unimportant to report on? I saw this mass casualty with my own eyes and had it happened to us giants it would be on every headline across the country.” Wrote one Sam Wilkins, age nineteen.

“Hm. I suppose there’s some hope for the youth of today after all.” Harry remarked.

He wondered if Sam and Susie were related.

With Marty’s arrival fast approaching, Harry had been channeling his energy into tidying up. He knew Marty wouldn't bother to step inside, but it helped to take his mind off of the fact that ever since the night of the fire it felt like his heart was slowly cracking, and he was afraid of what would come out when it broke for good.

Sadness, probably. Just sadness.

He ventured back to the sponge and bucket at the far side of the parlour where he had been dutifully scrubbing the baseboards.

“Hey. You gonna be all right by yourself?”

Danny’s words hit Harry like a bullet to the back. He froze and slowly turned around to look at him.

He didn’t know how to answer. Some part of him wanted to beg Danny to stay, just as he had begged Joe and Georgie and everyone else in his life. He dipped the sponge into the bucket and kept scrubbing.

“I’ll take care of myself. No need to worry.” He assured him.

Danny didn’t look convinced.

“You seem lonely. That’s not good for you, Harry.”

Harry kept on scrubbing.

“I think you should talk to Billy Hill.” Danny continued.

The baseboard was so clean Harry could see his own reflection in it. He kept working away at it all the same.

“I fear he may punch me again.” Harry said.

“Nah,” said Danny, “he’s a bit hot-headed but he’s a good guy. I think you two would have a lot to talk about.”

Harry narrowed his eyes.

“Like what?”

He turned his head and saw that Danny looked slightly uncomfortable at the question.

“Like fighting for someone you love, I guess.” Danny was tracing the tip of the hairpin along the coffee table as if to draw a pattern. “I’ve given up on love, but I still see it in other people. Joe, he looked really broken up when he saw you at that dance hall, y’know. I think…”

Danny’s grey eyes glinted as they met Harry’s.

“I think if he was that broken up over you, and you’re this broken up over him, maybe there’s something there worth saving.”

Harry’s heart sank as he turned his attention back to the bucket. He remembered what Lorraine had said about broken trust.

“Or maybe he won’t want anything to do with me.” Harry said.

“Maybe. If he doesn’t, you gotta respect that. Just… talk to Billy about it. Trust me. He’s been where you are.”

There was a knock at the door before Harry could respond.

“Oh boy, here we go. I’m off to the war room.” Danny said.

He limped to his feet, and although Harry had forgotten to straighten his fingers all the way out, Danny didn’t complain much when he stepped into them.

“Well, Mr. Smalls, it’s been a pleasure. Good luck with the lawsuit.” Harry said, in the steadiest voice he could muster.

“Good luck finding Joe.” Danny replied.

Harry pulled the door open. Marty was alone this time, and he handed Danny off to him much more smoothly than he had taken him in.

“Oh, and Harry – ”

Marty was about to bid him farewell and turn away, but Danny’s voice stopped him.

“Yes?”

Danny smiled and tipped his hat to him.

“Take care of yourself.” He said.

Then just as suddenly as Danny had arrived, he was gone again. Harry waved for a long time with the door open, as long as he could get away with while still appearing normal. Then when the cab rolled away he was forced to close the door. The moment he sat down on the couch, countless years' worth of loneliness crashed down onto him like the weight of the ocean.

All alone in the empty house he cried to himself freely as the day he was born, and as he wept three ghosts sat there with him. One was the ghost of his mother. The other was the ghost of Georgie. The third was the ghost of Joe Piccoli.

He didn’t know it then, but it would be a long time before he shared that house with anyone again.

True personhood was too much for Joe to ask for, but he longed for it all the same. He could not have true personhood and be with Herman at the same time - that much he was sure of. He would see this new place, he decided. If Herman found him there, then he found him, and Joe would tell him everything on his mind and then kindly bid him good day. If he didn't, that was no skin off of Joe's nose. He would be treated like a thing all the same no matter which giant had him.

If he stayed in the pet trade and was especially lucky, he might even find his brother.

It would be no easy journey, of course. Joe was absolutely parched and the July heat had turned the box into an oven. He writhed and stretched as seconds turned into minutes and then hours, unsure if he would even make it to his destination alive. He busied himself by chewing on the ribbon that had been tied around his mouth, and while he struggled to tear through it, he was able to stretch the fabric out enough that he could luckily breathe.

It was only a matter of time before Frankie caught on.

“Hey! What’re you doing in there? You better not be ruining that ribbon. I worked hard on that!” He warned him.

Joe didn’t listen. He kept working away as Frankie trudged on, putting one miserable foot in front of the other. As one hour became two he began to count the grains of dust on the road as they rolled past the air holes. It seemed as though Frankie had been walking forever.

Joe knew what a journey like this was like, and if there was one thing he could be thankful for, it was the fact that he wasn’t the one who had to walk it.

Herman was long gone by the time the ribbon was worn enough for Joe to be able to speak. He tried his best not to, but as time tiptoed on boredom eventually got the best of him. There were too many questions on Joe’s mind, and all of them involved Lorenzo in some form or another. All of them in their most distilled form were reducible to only one question: why?

Money, he knew. It all had to come down to money – but why that?

“How much do you get paid for this?” Joe asked.

When the question slipped from his mouth he braced himself for Frankie’s ire. It never came.

“Well, you’re going for three hundred, so normally I get somewhere around ninety-nine cents,” Frankie said, as if he were matter-of-factly discussing grocery prices, “but now that my boss is outta the picture, I guess I get the whole three hundred for myself.”

Frankie sounded rather proud of himself, but the number sounded low to Joe after his foray into Tiny Town.

“What do you need three hundred dollars for?”

Joe wrestled with the ribbon as he asked his next question. His back and shoulders hurt too much to allow him to contort himself very far, and whenever he tried the ribbon tightened around the base of his neck and threatened to strangle him.

“So I can buy a gun.” Said Frankie.

Joe was taken aback by the boy’s answer. He knew very little about guns, but he did understand that they were bad things that giants used to kill other things.

The sound of automobiles puttering by grew louder in the distance.

“What do you need a gun for? Why don’t you get some chocolate or some nice clothes?” Asked Joe.

Frankie, much to Joe’s surprise, only laughed at him in response.

“So I can rob a bank.” He said. “Then I’ll get more money, and that’s when I’ll get chocolate and clothes. You gotta think ahead.”

Joe grimaced as the ribbon tightened around his neck again. He had stretched his legs out which had only made it worse.

“Can’t you just find a real job? I’m sure there’s someone out there who’d wanna hire you. Someone nicer than that Lessard guy.” Joe said.

There had to be in Joe’s world. A giant had hired him of all people, after all. If there was hope for him, then surely there should be hope for Frankie. Then again, things hadn’t exactly ended well with the CPSO.

“You think I haven’t tried that!?” Frankie snapped. “Nobody wants to hire me. I’m not strong, I’m not smart, I’m not handsome, I got a shit name. I can barely read. What decent person is gonna wanna hire me?”

Joe’s mind wandered back to the tinies in the cages and he realized that if Frankie himself were ever sorted into one, he would likely end up in the very same Low Value cage he was putting other people in. It was like looking into a mirror in some strange way. Joe could hear the boy’s stomach growling from where he was sitting all the way in the box, and he could easily imagine someone like Frankie fitting in among the other starving youth at the watchmaker’s while an earless Lessard ran the entire outfit with an iron fist.

It was a disappointing revelation to come to. Joe had thought the giants to be more enlightened than that. How funny it was that the giants who so often referred to themselves exclusively as humans weren’t remotely human towards one another.

Frankie stopped short, pulling Joe out of his reflections.

 “We’re here now. Keep your mouth shut and don’t make my job any harder than it is.” He said.

A set of rickety wooden stairs came into view through the holes in the box and Frankie began a seemingly endless climb.

Joe couldn’t stay quiet. As much as he pitied the boy he couldn’t forgive Lorenzo. For all Joe’s suffering in life he had never once turned a weapon on other people or shoved them in cages or robbed someone of his brother. The more he thought about it the angrier he got. They had faced the same brand of suffering in life, so what gave Frankie any right to add to his share of it? Why should Joe get shoved into an oven-hot box and sold like a commodity just so Frankie could move up in the world?

Evil was a choice. Often it was one that people were driven to, and when they freely allowed themselves to be driven to it, it was the people like Joe’s family who suffered. Sensing that this was his last chance to ever say anything to Frankie, Joe straightened his shoulders and took the deepest breath he could muster.

“Frankie…” Joe began, “I know nothing I say is gonna stop you. I know you’re not gonna listen. I know you’re never gonna see me as a real person… but money or no money, we all get what we’re deserving of. Mark my words, god has a sick sense of humour, and one of these days he’s gonna get you for this.”

Frankie laughed the warning off as he stopped at a door with peeling paint marked 201.

"He’ll have to catch me first, won’t he?” Said Frankie.

Joe watched through the holes in the box as Frankie knocked on the door. It swung open to reveal the corner of a girl’s blue dress.

“Oh no, not you too! Where’s Sam?” Frankie demanded.

“Frankie!?” The girl at the door exclaimed in turn.

Joe swore he had heard her voice somewhere before, though it was muffled in the confines of the box and he couldn’t place it. He felt Frankie shudder more than usual, and the boy cleared his throat nervously.

“H-here’s your doll, ma’am! That’ll be three hundred dollars.” He said.

The girl was having none of it.

“Frankie, what are you doing here!? Is this another one of your scams!?” She shouted.

“This is a perfectly legitimate delivery on behalf of Walter’s business partner.” Frankie insisted, and Joe rolled his eyes as Frankie fumbled around in one of his pockets. “See this invoice? This is the address I was given! Now will it be cash or cheque?"

When the girl at the door drew back and slapped Frankie in the face the entire box jumped into the air. Fortunately for Joe Frankie scrambled to keep hold of it and succeeded.

“Get outta here you little weasel!” Joe watched as the girl stomped her foot and took off her shoe. “And quit following me around like a creep!”

Something outside of Joe’s frame of view stopped her from throwing it.

“Now now,” said a male voice sweet and smooth as caramel, “that’s no way to treat a service-person, is it? Right on time, too, I see.”

Joe squirmed as a set of strange hands reached out and grabbed the box from Frankie. The girl retreated behind this new giant and disappeared into the house in a huff.

“Thank you, young man.” The strange giant continued. “Here’s your payment, and a tip as well for your trouble. And have a bottle of lemonade while I’m at it, fresh from the ice box. You must be sweltering in that heat!”

For a moment the box turned to face Frankie, and Joe could see that he was standing humbly in the doorway with his hands behind his back.

“No, thank you, Walter!” He said.

All Joe could do was sneer in disgust as the boy who sold him reached out to accept a bottle of lemonade and a wad of cash. He was smiling like a cat that had just eaten a canary as he counted up his money and sipped on his drink.

That smile would be etched into Joe’s memory forever.

-

Joe soon lost count of how many hours he had spent in the box. The rest of the afternoon had been a flurry of cardboard and panic, and a number of people carrying on about someplace called London. If the London they were all going to was the London he had read about in passing in newspaper clippings, which to his knowledge was far across the sea, then Joe suspected he would be trapped for a considerably long time yet. As it was, the box he was in was packed onto the back of an automobile, strapped down to a number of other boxes, and the most Joe could do was watch the land roll past, taking him ever further away from the only house he had ever truly considered home.

Herman’s house, Joe reminded himself.

Then as evening fell a funny thing happened. The automobile stopped, the people got out, and Joe was taken by Walter, the strange giant with the caramel voice, into some grand castle of a home, the likes of which was far too big for him to take in through the box’s measly air holes.

This place must be London, he reasoned.

Joe squeezed his eyes shut when the box was set down on a wooden surface in what appeared to be a bedroom. He knew that soon he would meet his buyer and he was far from ready for it. He tried to push himself into a sitting position as the box rocked about in short bursts. The giant was trying to get into it and it was a challenge to stay vertical while tied up with the ribbon.

He tried to think of something to say. He didn’t know what he could say to the kind of person who would buy another human being. Joe doubted he would even be treated like a person by this giant, let alone given a warm-

“WELCOME HOME!” Walter cried as he tore the lid of the box all the way off. “So sorry you had to join us on moving day.” He added.

Joe’s eyes watered as they were suddenly bathed in light. He didn’t want to look up. He didn’t care to greet this person.

“…oh.” Walter laughed nervously. “Looks like they went a little overboard with the wrapping. Let me get that for you, dear boy.”

Although the giant had freed him from his bindings, he still took his sweet time standing up. His limbs felt heavy. The giant, at the very least, seemed to pick up on this, and he was quite good at feigning concern. Gradually Walter began to tilt the box over.

“Are you okay?” The man continued. “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Tea?”

Joe rubbed his head and finally looked his captor in the face. He stepped forward cautiously and moved with the box as it tilted. The open lid became an open side he could walk out of, but he decided to stay put where the cardboard met the desk for a moment longer and peer out of it instead.

The man towering over him was lean but round-faced, with cheery dark eyes and a smile that never seemed to leave him. His hair was gelled back firmly to his head and he reminded Joe a little of a comic strip character; everything about his mannerisms felt slightly exaggerated and slightly choreographed. He watched as the man pulled the ribbon away with a flourish and nervously tugged at the bow with his fingers while he bent over Joe to inspect him. Then his right hand wandered to the tag on the ribbon.

“Your name is Joe, then? Joe Piccoli?” Walter asked.

Joe gave him a curt nod.

“Yeah. You’re Walter, right?” He grunted, still rubbing at his tired eyes.

“You can just call me Walt.” The giant replied, and held up his hands as if to caution him. “Just Walt, I beg you, and before I say anything further I just want you to know one thing, Joe: my home is your home.”

Joe’s brow furrowed and he tilted his head to the side. When these words hit his ears it was a little bit like the laying of a curse. Herman had never once said such a thing to him. Herman had kept him up at night with renovations and fought with him over patients and split hairs with him over the title deed. Herman’s home had never been Joe’s home; Joe had simply existed in it.

“You mean that, sir?” He said.

“Walt my dear boy, and yes, yes, of course! It’s why I adopted you.”

Adopted. It was an interesting word to use to refer to a human being someone had paid money for. Walt continued.

“My niece is very sick, you see. She has sudden fits of seizures. My brother – her father – is in hospital and I have taken her in along with her mother. She’s new to this city, and adjusting… she needs a friend, Mr. Piccoli. Someone who can comfort her and brighten her day and sing to her at night. If it isn’t too much to ask of you, I chose you to be that friend. Do you think you could do that for her?”

Joe was hesitant to say yes. He remembered what Frankie had told him about the girl. Then again, if the girl at the door was the same girl as Walt’s niece, perhaps they could bond over their shared dislike of Frankie Van Assen.

Joe nodded.

“Yes, Walt. I could do that.”

“Excellent! Wonderful! I’ll tell the wait staff to help you freshen up and then I’ll see you again at dinner.” Walt said.

The man practically skipped out of the room, leaving Joe reeling as he tried to piece together what had just happened. Before he could string a single thought together an onslaught of giants that reminded him of Geoffrey back at Castle Hill descended upon him, inspecting his clothes and his hair and his face. Once again he had clothes thrown at him – nicer ones than what the snatchers had – and with a whirl he was primped and plucked by them into looking, what he thought, was the nicest he had ever looked.

When he finally got a glimpse of himself in the mirror, it was as though he had died and become a prince.

He could get used to this.

When all was said and done, one of the wait staff held out a little golden birdcage with an open door, and motioned for him to step inside.

Joe, who would always be caged no matter where he went or what he did, stepped into it without question. Then the servant pulled a blanket over top of it, and his surroundings went dark.

-

"How are you settling in, my darling?" Asked Walt to his niece over dinner.

"Oh, I'm all right uncle Walt. No need to worry about me." Said the girl with the flute-like voice.

It was driving Joe mad. Where had he heard it before?

"No seizures?"

"No, uncle Walt. No seizures."

Joe could hear the scraping of forks on plates outside of the blanketed cage. He rocked back and forth where he sat. He was going mad with hunger.

"Well, isn’t that good news? Now would be a good time to give you your gift, wouldn’t it?" Walter said.

“Gift…?” The girl replied.

The cage began to sway and Joe stumbled to his feet and struggled to stay upright against the motion. This was it. He would have to make a good impression on this girl, otherwise there was no telling where Walter would send him.

He flinched and his shoulders hunched up as he was once again bathed in burning light. When his eyes adjusted he was met with a long, lavish dinner table stocked with more foods than he had ever imagined could conceivably exist. Sitting at the largely empty table was an older woman with a hunched back to his right and a young lady with dark hair and dark eyes to his left.

When he saw her green evening dress he recognized her immediately and his face contorted in disgust. It was the girl he had seen dancing with Herman at Sunnyside. What did the likes of her want with him?

"This little fellow is named Joe Piccoli. He's here to watch over you while I'm not around. I'm sure you two will be the best of friends." Walter continued.

Joe watched the girl's face turn to utter shock. Her hand rose to cover her mouth in surprise.

"Joe Piccoli? From the doctor's office!?" She gasped.

Only when she said his name did Joe recognize who she was.

"Susie Wilkins!?" He exclaimed.

His own surprise mirrored hers. Susie had been the girl dancing with Herman? That made no sense, not after what she had told him over the phone.

"Oh, you two know each other? How delightful!" Walter chirped.

He handed the cage over to Susie, who was still utterly gobsmacked.

Joe could only focus on his own surprise for so long. When Susie opened the cage, one of Walt's servants handed him a tiny silver plate of food, complete with silverware. It had clearly been prepared by a giant, but it had been made with care, and when Joe took a bite it was the best thing he had ever tasted.

“That’s smoked ham.” Walter said to Joe, then turned to his wait staff. “Get the man some wine and a cigarette too, would you?”

Joe accepted the dainty silver goblet of wine happily from where he had perched in the cage doorway, but he heeded Danny’s warnings about cigarettes. He tucked the tiny one the servant offered him behind his ear instead.

"Uncle Walter, I... I don't think I can accept this." Susie said.

As Joe demolished his dinner he looked over to Walter and saw that the man was smiling expectantly.

"Why not, my dear?" He said, with a hint of dryness creeping into his voice.

"Joe lives with his friend Harry." Susie said. "Isn't that right, Joe? Don't you want to go live with Harry?"

Joe swallowed his last bite of smoked ham as his eyes flitted between Susie and Walter. He noted that Walter was peering at him over tented hands with intense focus. It was a look that made Joe more than a little nervous coming from a giant.

He thought back to Herman. To the bloodied hands he saw earlier. To everything that had gone wrong between them. Herman was the devil Joe knew, and Walter was the devil he didn't. What more could Joe do than play the odds and milk his stint in this lavish mansion for as long as possible?

"Oh, no Susie." He said. "I don't live with that guy any more. He put me in a jar and kicked me out of his house for trying to save my friend." Joe replied.

"But... but when the fire happened he was-"

"SUSIE. Be grateful to your uncle!" The old woman leaned over the table and snapped at her.

Though the discomfort on Susie's face was plain to see, she ran a hand through her hair and quickly corrected course.

"Yes, mother. I'll be more grateful. Thank you, uncle Walt. May I take him upstairs please?"

"Why certainly my dear!" Walter said.

As Susie carried the cage past Walter's place at the table, Joe could see that the man was absolutely beaming. She then led Joe down a maze of winding white halls with marble floors that seemed endless. It reminded Joe of Castle Hill, though it lacked the quirkiness of the place. There were no tiny walkways to be found, and certainly no bad taxidermy or statues of naked people. Instead, the house felt more like an art gallery: sterile and clean, with everything in sight primed and polished for display.

Susie carried Joe's cage into her room, which was still being unpacked, past a doorway with no door in it. From where she sat him on the desk Joe spied the biggest bed that he had ever seen, a bookshelf that was halfway stocked with strange giant literature, and a standing cage that housed a troupe of little white mice, one of which was running on a wheel. In the back near the window was another open doorway that appeared to lead to an ensuite bathroom. Thankfully for the both of them, this one still had a door.

As he studied his surroundings, Joe wondered where it was he was supposed to sleep.

Susie sat down at the desk and rested her head on her folded arms as she studied him.

"Joe, what are you really doing here?" She asked.

As Joe studied Susie in return, he realized how tired and sad she looked. She reminded him of the girls he had shared a cage with back at Lessard's.

Joe shrugged.

"I left." He said.

"But Harry’s looking for you! Don't you want to go back to him?"

He stepped out of the birdcage and onto the desk.

"If he’s looking then let him look, but I have no reason to go back." Joe said.

To his delight he happened upon some broken pencil leads and a blank piece of paper. He stopped down and soon he was absent-mindedly sketching away. As he spoke with Susie he drew out thumbnails of the image that had so plagued him in the cage.

"Joe, I know it might seem nicer here, but you don't know my mother and my uncle like I do. They trap you, Joe. If you don't leave here soon you never will!" Susie said.

Joe looked up at Susie with the sternest expression he could muster.

"Everybody traps me, Susie. That's the problem. If I went back to the doctor’s office, he would do the same thing. If I went to someone else, well, they'd find some way to trap me, too. It's all you giants ever do." He sighed.

Susie looked from Joe to the bathroom door.

"I heard my uncle Walt and my mother talking, you know. They were saying that if I have another seizure they'll take away the door to my bathroom."

Joe stopped sketching abruptly.

"I can't do anything here." She continued. "They won't let me talk on the phone. They won't let me send letters. They won’t let me leave the house. They're scared I'll run away and escape. I'm tired of living like that, aren't you, Joe?"

Joe's eyes sank down to the paper and his sketching started up again. Before him was an image of a burning building, mid-fall. Bodies flew out of it left and right, all of them screaming. He thought about those people every night as he went to sleep. How none of them had any other place to go either.

"There's no other way I know how to live, Susie. You'll have to find another way yourself." He said.

Susie lit up and sat up straight. She pushed her chair back and was about to stand up when a voice spoke to the both of them from the doorway.

"How are you two getting along?"

It was Uncle Walter, leaning in the doorframe with a cigarette. He didn't hesitate to walk in and inspect the room, and as he neared the bed Susie’s voice grew shrill and flustered. She raced to sit down on it.

"Oh, we're all right! Everything's all right! We're having a lot of fun together, aren't we Mr. Piccoli?"

Joe smiled up at Walter and nodded profusely. Some part of him worried that he may have overheard what Susie was saying, and as Walter squinted down at him a shiver ran up his spine.

"What's this?"

Walter gestured with his cigarette towards the drawing Joe had made.

Joe stood up, dropped the lead, and pushed his dirty hands into his pockets. He wasn't sure if drawing such a thing was something he was even allowed to do based on the way Susie had been talking.

"Oh, it--it's just a thumbnail sketch, Walt. That's all." He said, fearing the subject matter of the painting might offend the good giant.

He wished he had painted a landscape.

"Why Joe, this is..."

Joe looked at his shoes as Walter bent over him and examined the piece.

"... absolutely breathtaking. Your work ought to be in a gallery!"

Joe blinked and looked up at him.

"Really, Walt?"

He looked back down at the sketch to make sure that he and Walter were talking about the same artwork.

"Really! Why, if you keep producing work like this, I could make it happen! You have a gift, Mr. Piccoli. It would be a shame to squander it."

Joe was turning bright red with flattery and pride.

"I... well... maybe. I could make a few things if you want." He said.

"How lovely! Isn't that lovely, Susie?" Said Walter.

The giant turned to Susie, who was sitting rigidly on the bed with her hands in her lap and smiling, though not excitedly.

"He sings, he’s an artist, ah, how talented you are, Mr. Piccoli! How talented you are..." Walter gushed.

He turned back towards the doorway.

"Light's out, now, Susie." He said, and flicked the light switch off.

As suddenly as he had appeared, Walter left again, and Joe could hear Susie's sigh of relief from where she sat on the bed. Joe turned to her and looked on in curiosity as she pulled out something from beneath the mattress, then slipped into the bathroom.

"Isn't that something, Susie!?" He called to her from behind the door. "He says he's gonna put me in a gallery. I've never had a giant do that before!"

"Yeah..." Susie sounded more hesitant than she ever had before. "...I hope it goes well, Joe. I really do."

Soon Susie had emerged, dressed in an ill-fitting black suit and trousers. She had tucked her hair up under a hat and traded in her pointed heels for a flat pair of loafers. It reminded Joe a little bit of borrowing gear.

He followed along as she rearranged the pillows on her bed and tucked them in as if to resemble someone sleeping.

"Can you do me a favour, Joe? If anyone asks, I'm fast asleep, all right?" She said.

"O-okay." Joe replied.

Susie pushed the window open and pulled out the screen.

"Wait, where are you going?"  Asked Joe, and though he knew better he was still compelled to ask, "...you're not going to see Harry, are you?"

Susie clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound of her own laughter.

"No, absolutely not! Even if he weren't miles away I have better things to do than to see Harry." She said with scorn.

Joe crossed his arms.

"Oh yeah? Like what?" He asked.

"Like earning money." Said Susie. "I'm going to find a job so I can go live away from these people."

"Oh." Joe's arms fell to his sides. "You're going borrowing?"

"Yes, Joe. I'm going borrowing." She said.

Joe remembered what Walt had said earlier about how sick Susie was, and for a moment he was tempted to try and stop her. Something about this place bothered him too much for him to do so. He knew from experience that it was the nature of trapped things to fight to be free. Who would he be if he were to stop her? No better than Lessard, no doubt, or Frankie, or Romeo.

It didn't change the fact that Joe saw much less reason to escape than she did. His standard of living had been lowered too far. For the moment there were no dogs snapping at him, no fires, no jars, no blood-covered Herman. That, in his point of view, was something worth celebrating.

Before Joe could even wish her good luck, Susie Wilkins disappeared into the night.

He circled around to the front of the building. By the looks of its boarded up windows and door it may as well have been closed. The real entrance, Harry had been told, was around the back. For now he waited by the crack in the window where Danny had slipped in.

He didn’t have to wait long. Soon Danny limped out to greet him.

“The password is Romeo.” He said.

“Romeo? I wouldn’t have guessed that one.”

Harry reached out for Danny and put him in his pocket, then headed towards the back.

“You were right about that automobile. I found a miniature inside and let him out.”

“So if that machine’s here, then Frankie’s here.” Danny rambled. “All we gotta do it keep our eye on him and make sure he doesn’t slip away from us.”

Harry nodded. It sounded easy enough in theory.

Danny ducked into Harry’s front pocket when he knocked thrice on the back door, and a cock-eyed old man with a single tombstone of a tooth opened it and sized him up.

“Last week's winner?”

It was in this moment that Harry started to worry how well he would fit in at this fine establishment. He preferred the university library to the counter of a bar, and even back during his days as a soldier he only drank on special occasions.

Passchendaele had been one such occasion. He had been afforded two ounces of rum at dawn and two ounces at dusk, with extra awarded to anyone who went above the call of duty.

Harry had never earned an extra ounce.

“Romeo.” He said.

Wrapped in bandages and halfway drenched in lake water, Harry must have done a fine enough job of fitting in for the doorman ushered him through without question.

“Okay, find someplace to sit down where nobody will see you.” Danny said.

The first thing he was greeted with when he descended the stairs into the main bar was a wall of cigar smoke so thick that it made even his eyes water, which made excellent camouflage. With time he could discern the outlines of the tables and booths that dotted the room, and when the smoke finally cleared enough for him to see his hand in front of his face another fixture came into view. It was something hanging on the wall, a taxidermy mount of sorts.

As he drew closer and squinted he was able to piece together what it was. Initially he had expected it might be a moose or an elk or at the very least a white-tailed deer. When he neared it he realized that the thing lacked antlers completely, and finally he was able to see the thing for what it was: the head of a coyote, forever frozen in an ugly grimace with its tongue lolling out.

There were two leaderboards on either side of it, and Romeo’s name was at the top of the leftmost one. There were a number of Shakespearian names on there, mixed in with names like Thresher or Razor or Gunner. The rightmost one had names like Samson the Striker or Beat-down LeBrun. He was far too nervous to ask the bartender what either of them were for.

Framing all of this was a series of hockey sticks crossed into an X shape, which reminded Harry of what Lorraine had said about the fighting that was supposed to take place there.

He could only hope that it had been hyperbole. The bar was calm enough for now, and Harry ordered himself a beer of questionable brand and origin in the most casual fashion he could muster, then sat down at a table near what he could only hope was a well-positioned support beam. He could see that it was made of raw lumber, as was most of the wood that held up the building, and it obscured his seat from most of the other patrons quite nicely. The longer he sat there the more it sank in just how out of place he was. Harry had been to bars like these before, and every time he went something about them had made him want to crawl out of his skin.

“How’s that Mabel treatin’ ya?” Asked a voice from the corner to another patron.

“I think it’s about time I found a second wife.” The other fellow answered.

They were sitting at a poker table of five men in total at the back of the bar, and all of them, Harry could tell, were out of town farmers who were there on business. Harry knew the type and it gave him some insight into what about this place was so unsettling to him.

Inevitably, whenever Harry had walked into these kinds of places in days past, he had needed to perform. To compensate. To prove himself manly enough. Granted, it wasn’t terribly often that people questioned his manhood on account of his size, but there was one topic that never failed to get the other farm boys looking sideways at him, and that was the topic of women.

He watched as the eldest man at the table pulled out a wooden box full of poker chips and two decks of cards.

“Talk to Frankie, maybe you can buy yourself a tiny one.” The eldest man laughed.

Although Harry’s ears perked up at the name he still fought to keep himself from gagging at the sound of those words. He averted his eyes and…

“…I see him! Over by the wall!” He whispered to Danny.

Through the fog of cigar smoke a familiar figure emerged. It was Frankie Van Assen, slouched over with his hands buried in the pockets of his big, grey coat. On closer inspection Harry noted that the boy appeared outright feral, not only on account of his worn boots and his trousers that came up short at the ankle, but in mannerism as well. He was slinking around the perimeter with his head down low and his nose stuck out like an animal scoping out prey.

Carefully, and with no small amount of help from the strategically placed pillar, he reached into his pocket and set Danny on the table so he could see.

“Good eye.” Said Danny. “This kid’s a real handful. I saw him around the Sunnyside dance hall once throwing eggs at the dancers. He got real interested in that chandelier where the tinies like to dance, so if he’s snatching, it explains why.”

“What on Earth is he even doing here!? Someone ought to tell his mother.” Whispered Harry through bared teeth.

“Probably doesn’t have one.” Danny shrugged. “I’ve been trying to steer him straight, but the kid moves fast. I call him the Flying Dutchman for how fast he can run. Don’t let him catch sight of either of us, got it? We don’t wanna spook him.”

Harry nodded.

Soon it became clear what Frankie was on the hunt for. Slumped over the counter slept a patron who was the size of a Holstein heifer. Harry hunched over and kept his head down as he watched the boy creep past the sleeping man in a way that seemed almost innocuous to those who weren’t paying attention. Few people were, and Harry followed along in fascination as Frankie slid two fingers into the man’s back pocket and pulled out something small and rectangular that he couldn’t quite see.

The sleeping man snorted and shifted his head, and even Harry grew tense as the boy quickened his pace and strode across the room to the safety of the wall. Fate seemed to smile upon the boy, for the man kept snoring away. Harry watched Frankie’s eyes widen as he examined his prize – whatever he had snatched must have been something good.

“This kid lives to steal, huh?” Said Danny.

He could only hope that Frankie wouldn’t set his sights on Danny. Harry tried to cup a hand over him, only for Danny to push it away.

The boy’s kleptomania was sated for the moment, it seemed, for instead of creeping their way Frankie puffed himself up and made a beeline for the patriarch of the poker table. When Harry strained his ears he could vaguely pick up the sound of his voice, and he noted that Frankie Van Assen talked like a Canadian youth who was doing his best to convince everyone he was part of the Chicago Outfit.

The only person in the room who was remotely convinced of it was Frankie Van Assen.

“Hey pal. How much’ll this get me?” The boy asked.

The man with the chips, a solid fifty years the boy’s senior who was still dressed like a frontiersman forty years past, took one look at the two coins the boy held out and chuckled. Harry watched in real time as Frankie’s shoulders deflated along with his ego. The boy stood and shivered before the poker table for a moment, then his fingers twitched and his hand flew into his pocket.

“I’ll throw in this as well.” Frankie said, with a hint of reluctance, as he held up the card he had just pickpocketed. “It’s a Bert Corbeau rookie card. Toronto Saint Pats. This’s gotta be worth something, right?”

Harry’s jaw grew tense at the sight. There were some things that good Canadian citizens simply did not do, and stealing another man’s hockey card and trading it in for poker chips was one of them – even Harry knew that. He had to look away, and found himself hunching over in frustration.

He couldn’t help but look back when a chorus of laughter rang from the table.

“Was this from an old sweepstake or something?” Asked the keeper of the poker chips.

The man rose up, snatched the card from Frankie’s hand, and held it out of the boy’s reach when he fought to get it back.

“I remember that one. Shoulda bet the skates, they’d be worth way more than this piece of junk.”

Frankie skidded back as the older man effortlessly shoved him off. Harry couldn’t help but pity him. He looked like a newborn baby next to this table of middle-aged poker players. Each one of the older men sat about as though they were members of some high council of manhood as they appraised Frankie from head to toe.

Frankie’s voice had barely broken. He looked as though he were built out of toothpicks. Nonetheless he puffed himself back up again and said,

“Hey, you don’t know that! Could be worth a lot someday. Could be worth—twenty thousand, easy!”

“Aw, let him play.” Said a more merciful councilor. “Get him a beer, too. Kid’s gotta grow up someday.”

Frankie glowed as the guardian of the chips, with his stone-cold poker face, nodded at the boy, reached into the wooden box, and produced two white poker chips. In exchange he took the coins and the hockey card and put them into a metal tackle box that held the pot. Frankie walked forward and took a seat farthest right, and from the awe on his face he may as well have just become a newly-confirmed member of the Church of Masculinity.

Harry clenched his hands and resisted the urge to stand up and drag the boy straight out of the building.

“Can’t we do something about this? He’s way too young to be here.” He whispered to Danny.

The likes of Frankie was the exact thing Ontario’s prohibition laws had sought to prevent. How ironic it was that a decade on they had solved absolutely nothing. Danny, who was now lounging in the empty ash tray with his splinted leg stuck out, coolly observed the scene.

“Then he might not lead us to his boss. Do you really wanna take that chance?” He said.

Harry didn’t. Deep down he knew that this was the way of the world. He couldn’t save Joe and Frankie at the same time. Nonetheless, in his mind he was imagining himself in a better universe. One where he took the boy to a medical office and put a phone receiver in his hand and gave him an honest job and taught him to say please and thank you.

“Take off your coat, Van Asshole! Stay a while!” Said one of the men at the table.

“Can’t. I’m a cold mortal.” Frankie said. “I wear my long johns well into June.”

He was met with another round of snickers.

“And guys, it’s Van Assen. It’s a place in the Netherlands. It's Dutch." He explained to the table of indifferent men. “I get it, it’s funny as hell, everyone loves to say my name, but can we just accept for a minute that there’s languages other than English out there?”

“We’re in Canada, Frank. We speak English here.” Said another player in a tone one would use with a small child.

The boy’s poker face faltered at the sound of the name Frank. A smile lit up his face like a flash of lightning and then disappeared just as quickly.

“Yeah, well, my boss doesn’t. Not always.” Said Frankie. “He’s a pretty big guy, y’know. If you talk smack about the French people, he’ll cut off our liquor supply.”

 “Oh yeah? He’s that powerful eh?” Asked one of the men.

Harry’s attention was drawn to the ash tray by a scuttling sound. He looked down to see that Danny had hopped to his feet.

“Yeah! Lessard’s got everything. You want booze? You want guns? You want dogs? Tinies? He’s got it. He’s a scary guy. You don’t wanna mess with him.” Frankie insisted.

Frankie appeared to be doing well enough at the game all things considered. His stack of chips had quickly multiplied after the first round. When it was over, a hand the size of Frankie’s face reached out and handed him a pint. He swilled as much of it down as he could, then made a face, then drank some more and asked for another.

“Speaking of dogs, how’s Romeo? You think he’s gonna win another match?” Was the next question the chip-keeper had for Frankie.

“Romeo’s retiring.” The boy said bluntly.

Now Harry knew the meaning behind the leaderboard, and his heart sank into the pit of his stomach.

“Retiring!? You can’t retire a dog like that! You should do the honourable thing and fight him until the bitter end!”

“Oh, I’ll fight him ‘til the end, but he’s gotta sire puppies first.” Said Frankie, sounding uneasy.

“Give the puppies better names.” Another player advised him. “What kinda girly name is Romeo for a fighter?”

Frankie turned red and stared into his cards.

“Well, my dog beat up your dog so what’s it to ya’?”

Although Frankie was inhaling booze, Harry could see that he was stacking up chips all the same. As Harry watched it all unfold, all he could do was sit there and hate the bar and these men and what they were doing to this little boy and his dog.

“Dog fighter, huh? Makes sense. Where there’s dog fighting, there’s tiny fighting…” Danny said, much to Harry’s horror.

He was leaning against Harry’s beer bottle with a hand in his pocket, his good leg crossed over his splinted one. Harry could only admire the indifference with which Danny observed the scene as Frankie was handed a cigar. Every man at the table laughed when the boy took one puff of it and teared up.

Harry’s stomach was turning. He could only hope that Joe wasn’t in the care of Frankie’s boss. If this was how the boy who snatched him was living, he didn’t want to think about what they were doing to Joe.

“You should learn to fight too by the looks of ya’. What’s that on your head? You get a girlfriend or something?” Another player asked Frankie.

“What!? No! Some crazy bird at the park went and hit me. I wasn’t even doin’ nothin’.” Frankie replied, and Harry had no doubt in his mind that Frankie had indeed been doing something.

“Crazy isn’t always a bad thing, Frank.” Frankie clutched his cards to his chest when the man who kept the chips put an arm around him as though he were the wise old uncle the boy had never had. “What you wanna do is find a normal woman who can cook and clean for ya’…” He began as the men at the table all nodded in agreement. “That’s the gal you keep at home, makes your sandwiches and everything...”

Harry could tell from the sight of him that Frankie was feeling the same discomfort Harry had whenever the topic of women came up.

“Watch his hands.” Danny said.

Squinting, Harry could see that Frankie was slipping something out of his sleeve while the table was distracted by the patriarch’s soliloquy.

“…and then ya’ get a crazy girl on the side who can-”

The poker player was cut off my a loud banging sound in the background.

 “WHO TOOK MY LUCKY CARD, YA FOOKS!?”

The voice from the counter shook the room so badly it nearly felled the lumber that held the building up. Fitting, Harry thought, for the speaker looked every part a log driver. It was the fellow Frankie had pickpocketed earlier, who was now fumbling about in his pockets for his lost card.

The entire bar felt silent, then flinched as the man at the counter pounded on the table a second time.

“MY BERT CORBEAU ROOKIE CARD!? WHO TOOK IT EH? YA STUPID FOOK-HEADS!”

Every single pair of eyes migrated towards Frankie Van Assen, who had a different card hanging halfway out of his sleeve.

The patriarch’s poker face twisted into a look of disgust, and he snatched the boy by the arm, wrestled him from the table, and threw him straight at the log-driver.

“I reckon the culprit’s right here, bud! Looks like he’s cheatin’ our card game too for good measure.” He said.

The log-driver wasted no time in barging towards Frankie, who was tripping over his own coat in a frantic attempt to escape. The boy’s rumrunner façade swiftly evaporated as he cowered before his assailant and he slipped into a dialect best described as low Canadian, one that Harry had seen come out many a time during tense situations back in Manitoba.

“Easy there, buddy, easy! It’s all just a big misunderstanding-eh-there-bud? We all root for the same team here buddy, don’t we? We just got the same card Isweartogod-” He stammered.

Harry was sitting at the edge of his seat. The boy’s neck was thin as a chicken’s and the log-driver’s cinderblock of a hand was reaching right for it. Should the man snap it they would have no chance of getting to Joe. Harry felt his fingers curl around the neck of the bottle on the table and, without thinking, he launched it in the direction of the log-driver’s head, nearly sending Danny flying along with it. It bounced right off the back of the man’s skull and rolled across the uneven floor.

As the log-driver stopped in his tracks, from down on the table he heard Danny say,

“Oh, no. Nice going, doc! You had to blow our cover!”

The log-driver, stunned, slowly turned around to face them as the rest of the bar watched with bated breath. It was the least natural position Harry Avery had ever been in. His job back in the day had been to defuse Georgie’s fights, not start any of his own!

He knew he had to say something to distract the man from using Frankie as a punching bag, but he couldn’t think of what. He lacked a metaphorical dog in this very literal fight: his own province had no team, and he had only ever played hockey as a pastime – the esoteric ways of the average hockey fan were a mystery to him! Regardless, he did his best to make something up, and make it up quick.

He tried to act natural as electricity filled the air, and from his place halfway across the bar, with shoulders squared, in his native Manitoban twang he shouted,

“SAINT PATS ARE A BUNCHA LOSERS! GET A REAL TEAM LIKE THE MONTREAL MAROONS, BUDDY!”

It was the most incendiary thing he could think to say in a bar full of Torontonians, and every set of eyes locked onto him like the scopes of German snipers.

Every set of eyes except for one, of course. The nickname Danny had given Frankie had been an apt one, and the Flying Dutchman took this opportunity to snatch the tackle box of money and bolt, diving straight through his adversary’s legs and out the door to freedom. The other five men at the poker table scrambled after him, only for one of them to be taken out by a thrown shot glass that had been intended for either Harry or Frankie – Harry himself wasn’t sure.

That was when the log-driver accelerated towards him and took his first swing. Harry stumbled back out of his chair and the log-driver picked it up, then made a worthy attempt at bashing it over Harry’s head. Harry caught it and tried to wrestle it from him with all his strength. Meanwhile, in the background, the man from the poker table who had been downed by the shot glass got up, grabbed one of the hockey sticks from the wall, and ran off in search of revenge. He swung the stick at the nearest person he could find, who swung their own hockey stick back, and soon a hockey game truly was on the verge of breaking out. At bare minimum the scene was now a full-blown brawl.

Finally the log-driver’s grip loosened on the chair. Harry pulled on it as hard as he could, and when it flew backwards and hit a boarded window Harry was able to land a well-timed punch to the log-driver’s jaw. Harry looked down in search of Danny, and his heart nearly stopped when he couldn’t see him anywhere.

The log-driver took two more swings which Harry blocked and returned in good measure.

He dodged another punch to the face and shoved his opponent backwards, then looked back down to see that Danny was still there, much to his relief. He was laying all the way back with his arms folded over his head, propped up on the edge of the ash tray. Something about the look on Danny’s face perturbed him. It was as if the man were ogling him.

“Are you going to be any help at all here?” He asked Danny.

“I’d rather enjoy the view.” Danny replied.

Then a second shot glass exploded against the nearby pillar, and Harry could see that one of the stick-wielding patrons was now slap-shotting them around the room while the poor bartender cowered in the distance. Another patron returned fire. Through all the chaos and smoke Harry spotted a narrow path towards the door.

“Come on.” He said.

He grabbed Danny and ducked, then shoved the table over and dashed straight ahead with all the speed his adrenaline could afford him. The log-driver, who had put all his weight into his fists, whirled and toppled over when his punch failed to land, collided with the falling table, then fell right into the line of fire of a whiskey glass that struck him clean in the temples and finally brought the man down.

“Why would Lorraine go here!?” Harry huffed as he raced out the door.

“Free entertainment!” Said Danny from his front pocket.

Much to Harry’s relief, Frankie’s automobile was still there. The boy was begging it to start as the four remaining poker players from the bar surrounded it like a pack of baboons. Two of them were trying to climb straight into it.

“Come on! Come on! Come on!” Frankie sobbed through the window.

Before Harry could react there was a pop, a bang, and a plume of black smoke. Then, like a blessing from above, the engine started and the automobile whirled backwards, shaking the angry men off. Harry was right in its path and dashed away to safety.

“Get to the bike!” Danny ordered.

Harry obeyed and raced all the way over to the secluded spot where he had parked it out of fear of thieves - a choice he now regretted. He could see that he had company as he kicked off the bike, for it turned out that one of the poker players was in possession of a Model TT pickup truck. He was ferrying the other four in pursuit of Frankie, and one of those four passengers in turn was in possession of a shotgun.

“Stay behind those guys. You don’t wanna get in the line of fire.” Was Danny’s advice.

“Would you quit backseat driving?” Harry complained in response.

Harry tried his best to follow Danny’s advice nonetheless, and tires screeched as the vehicles zig-zagged through Danforth, then Cabbagetown and down Bloor. Harry couldn’t help but quickly overtake the pickup truck, and when they turned a series of tight corners he almost lost it in the darkness. Then one of the passengers in the truck kindly fired off a shotgun round from behind him, nearly taking Harry’s other ear off and frightening the sleeping congregation of the Ossington Avenue Baptist Church awake in the process.

He worried for Danny in his pocket in spite of the fact that he knew Danny would be telling him I-told-you-so if he could speak. He was clocking 65 miles an hour. He had only taken Joe up to 30 out of mercy.

He glanced behind him to see that the heavy truck had fallen far into the distance, and the passenger with the shotgun was discharging it rapidly into the air out of frustration. The shotgun rounds attracted the unwelcome sound of the police, who were approaching neither by foot, or by horse, or by car, but by motorcycle. The police bike’s head lamp was swiftly gaining on them, and Harry knew that if they cut him off they would have no chance of keeping up with Frankie.

Harry knew his motorcycles, and he knew that the Toronto PD was particular to Henderson bikes. They could hit 100 miles an hour at top speed and easily overtake his Hendee, but for one key detail: each police motorcycle was also equipped with a heavy sidecar.  As they neared the city limits, Harry knew they were also a stone’s throw away from the Henderson’s greatest weakness, and the bane of every motorcyclist in existence. That weakness was uneven ground.

Harry had a secret weapon. Born and raised on horseback in Fuck-it, Manitoba, he knew how to ride a dirt road better than he did a paved one. He took a gamble then turned down a narrow, unpaved side road, temporarily leaving Frankie. Then he slowed down and loosened his grip on the bars, then kissed the speed up to as much as he could get away with, noting when the bike started to squirrel. It was in that goldilocks zone that he was able to maintain some semblance of control over the bike, though his teeth did chatter so hard they nearly fell out of his head.

The police’s Henderson wasn’t so lucky. The weight of the side car combined with a healthy dose of gravel soon sent both officers flying into a ditch when they tried to replicate his turn.

Now he was faced with the question of how to get back to the main road. He could see the faintest outline of the Model T as it raced across the horizon with only a cornfield to separate them.

Harry slowed the bike to a stop.

“Danny?”

“What?”

“I’m about to make a very irresponsible decision as a motorcyclist, and if we die, I want you to know that I’m sorry.”

He turned the bike towards the cornfield and walked it inside. Corn was grown in rows that a motorbike could theoretically run through, and as the saying went it was supposed to be knee high by the fourth of July. The corn in this particular field was a little taller than that, but the path left by the harvester had formed a perfect track for him to follow.

Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he revved the engine and sped into the darkness. The leaves of the corn husks whipped across his face as the bike practically bounced along the uneven terrain. For a moment Harry couldn’t tell if the bike was even vertical - or running on solid ground for that matter - then he hit a steep slope and for a brief moment he became airborne before landing back on the main road again and swerving in Frankie’s direction. After the chaos of the field, riding on the regular dirt of the main road felt like a cake walk in comparison.

As Harry gained on the Model T he noted that the automobile was fishtailing as the boy, who was clearly unpleasantly buzzed from his time at the bar, made his best attempt to drive straight. Frankie had slowed down considerably since they had lost the truck, his nerves presumably at ease, and it wasn’t long before they passed through Downsview and, right when Harry had convinced himself the chase would never end, slowed to a halt at a farmhouse somewhere between Toronto and Woodbridge, on a lot surrounded by a thick section of forest. Exactly where on the map it was Harry could only guess.

He slowed the Hendee to a halt and watched the automobile snake in beside the building, then leaned his bike up against the nearest tree he could find. He dismounted slowly it and stood still for a moment as he waited for the feeling to return to his legs.

It was still dark out, though just barely. Danny was thrashing around in his front pocket and it wasn’t long before he climbed up for air.

“You should start charging tinies scraps for a ride like that, Henry. It’d be good business.” He gasped.

The miniature pulled on his crumpled hat and shook himself to his senses.

Beside the house, Frankie was doing the same thing. The boy sat in the car for a solid ten minutes before he was put together enough to stumble out. When he did, he promptly threw up and then lugged the tackle box out of the automobile. In the glow of the headlights, Harry watched as Frankie took the hockey card out of the box, kissed it once, twice, three times, then killed the engine and raced into the house, leaving the box full of money behind.

“So now what?” Harry asked the detective as he pulled him all the way out of his pocket.

Danny scratched his head. The frantic barking of a dog rang out in the background.

“We shouldn’t go in there guns blazing, especially if the place is full of fighting dogs. You heard what the kid said at the bar. If this Lessard guy is that dangerous, we don’t wanna get on his bad side.” Danny said.

“Then what do we do?” Harry whispered impatiently.

“We take out that automobile first.” Danny said.

Harry looked at him in confusion.

“That kid’s car trouble gave me an idea.” He continued. “If things go bad in there, we can slow ‘em down if we disable it completely.”

“Do you think it’ll get that bad?” Asked Harry.

“After what that kid was saying at the bar, it wouldn’t hurt to play it safe.” Danny argued.

Harry himself wasn’t so sure. The boy could just as well be lying and they could be wasting precious time in turn – if Joe was even in there at all.

“Do you know what a fuel line is?” Danny asked him.

Harry rolled his eyes.

“Yes, I know what a fuel line is.” Harry said.

“Do you know where to find one in a Model T?” Was Danny’s next question, and it gave Harry pause. “…no? Okay, I’ll show you.”

“And how am I supposed to see it in pitch darkness?”

“Guess you won’t, but I will. I always forget you giants can’t see in the dark. Now follow my lead...”

-

“Not like that. Not like that! NOT LIKE THA-oh, okay, you got it.”

Harry nearly took a face full of gasoline when the fuel came spilling out of the line. Danny had been perched on his forehead of all places and stepped over his left eyeball in order to dodge it. Harry wasn’t so lucky, and his right shoulder was doused in gasoline where he lay underneath the automobile. He dragged himself out from under it and sighed.

When he had left home that morning he hadn’t expected he would be going out for a rip, let alone sabotaging a snatcher’s car. The pain of the burns was still tormenting him all the while and some sad, self-pitying part of himself wanted to go home, take some morphine, and try again later. It was a luxury, he knew, to even be able to go home – a luxury Joe didn’t have – and the guilt of those thoughts spurred him forward just as they had during the war.

“Okay, genius, now what?” He whispered.

“We invoke Dennis Calloway and talk our way in.” Danny’s voice came from below the automobile’s front axle. “Are you any good at lying?”

Harry scooped him up and placed him back into his pocket.

“I guess we’ll find out.” He said.

Harry was good enough at lying to himself. That had to count for something.

With his burn wounds still throbbing he headed in the direction of the front door. He was still ten feet away from it when a dog started barking, and from that moment Harry knew there was no going back. He stopped nonetheless to collect himself. The door loomed before him all the while, like a gateway to some forbidden world.

He cleared his throat and knocked. He couldn’t tell from sound alone if there was a dog lunging for him on the other side of it or a full-blown wolf, but whatever it was he didn’t want to be in the way of its teeth. He tried not to think of how easily a creature like that could devour a miniature, and he could only hope that Lessard wasn’t as dangerous. Then the dog began to whimper and Harry could hear scratching sounds as someone behind the door pulled it back.

When the door swung open it wasn’t Lessard, but Frankie who answered. The boy had dark circles under his eyes, and he was holding a strange concoction that rivaled the stench of the gasoline on Harry’s shirt. Before Frankie could even open his mouth Harry asked,

“Is your boss home?”

He did his best to look menacing as he stepped past the threshold and pushed his way into the house. The bandages and the lake water and the corn leaves and the gasoline all worked their magic, for Frankie shied back at the sight of him. The dog sitting behind the boy was snarling at him all the while, and in the dim light Harry couldn’t make out what breed it was.

“I… uh… maybe.” Frankie answered.

He squinted.

“Wait. Have I seen you somewhere?”

It seemed that the boy hadn’t quite figured out that Harry had followed him there. He saw his opportunity and he took it.

“I’m a friend of Dennis Calloway’s. It’s an emergency.” Harry said quickly as he felt the tip of Danny’s hairpin dig into his chest. “The uh… the police are after me and I need to use his phone.”

Frankie took a swig of his concoction and forcefully swallowed it down. The boy seemed too tired to challenge Harry’s story, for all he said was,

“One sec. Romeo, guard.”

Frankie pointed the dog behind him to a box on a side table, then disappeared from the foyer into a pitch black hallway of the house. Frankie seemed to have excellent night vision of his own, Harry noted.

He let the door close behind him, and Romeo’s hackles rose as he did so. The dog seemed to be growling at a sound coming from inside the box. Out of morbid curiosity, Harry felt around for it and held it in his hands. He could feel something inside of it, something moving. Wishing he too had night vision, he strained his eyes to get a closer look and-

His eyes snapped shut when the hallway light flicked on and momentarily blinded him.

“Sir? What is the meaning of this?”

Quickly Harry placed the box back on the table without giving it a second look, then turned his attention to the hulking figure that filled the narrow hallway.

The man before him stood two inches taller than Harry’s six-foot-three and was about twice as wide. He looked more like a doctor or a politician than any sort of criminal, Harry noted from his fine clothes and shiny wristwatch, and Harry almost would have been fooled were it not for the fact that the man’s shirt sleeves were rolled up and crossed over his chest. There on his arms were a series of criss-crossing white scars, some as long as the man’s arms themselves.

Leashes, muzzles and wooden clubs all hung on hooks in the hallway behind him, and from the sight of it Harry knew exactly what sort of person he was dealing with. Nevertheless, Harry extended a hand and gave him a courteous smile. It was the hardest thing he had ever done.

“Mr. Lessard! I’ve heard so much about you.” He said.

When the man reached out to shake his hand, he nearly crushed it.

“I’m a friend of Dennis Calloway’s. I got into a spot of trouble with the police and I need to use your phone.” He repeated.

As Lessard titled his head back and looked down his nose as if to appraise him Harry could only hope that his story would sound convincing. He was covered in bandages and reeked of gasoline – that had to help sell the story. 

“And your name, sir?” Asked Lessard.

“I’m doctor-“ Harry began out of habit, then stopped himself. “Moore. Doctor Moore.”

Lessard’s eyebrows rose, though only by a small margin.

“A doctor? You are with the labs?”

Harry studied Lessard’s face as Frankie pushed past him and into a sunroom with an old sofa. There was no indication to Harry what the right answer was, though Danny was squirming so intensely he feared the snatcher might catch sight of it. He shrank back and said,

“Yes, sir. I uh… I had an accident at the lab. The police got there and-”

Danny’s pin dug into Harry again.

“Don’t overexplain!” He heard the detective scold him from his pocket.

Lessard's brow furrowed at the sound, and Harry feared for the sake of both his life and Danny's that Lessard hadn't heard him. Then a voice from the other room momentarily distracted the three of them.

“Aww, c’mon. Lemme sleep!”

It was Frankie. He was standing helplessly before the couch which was now occupied by Romeo. Harry could now see that the dog in question was a large and stout creature with docked ears and boxy jaws, all covered in scars. The dog tucked his wagging stump of a tail under his body and licked his lips when Frankie tried to move him, but still refused to budge.

“Hey!” Lessard snapped. “What have I been telling you? Don’t show weakness. Get a club and correct him.”

Harry grimaced and glanced at his shoes.

“I-Is there a phone I could borrow, Mr. Lessard?” He said.

“Yes, yes, come with me.” Lessard sighed.

Harry glanced back out of morbid curiosity as he left, and to his relief he saw that Frankie had sunk to the floor and curled up there instead of following his boss’s orders.

It really was as though Harry had been sucked into an alternate world. Lessard opened the door behind him and led him down a room filled with two rows of cages with all the coolness of a realtor showing a home. A cacophony of barking rose from inside each one, and as Lessard passed by through the narrow aisle that separated them Harry could see that every single dog inside every single cage growled at the snatcher and started snapping.

“Excuse the noise. These ones are not broken yet.”

Harry was shaking with anger. The only thing he wanted to see broken was the back of Mr. Lessard’s skull.

He followed Mr. Lessard down a leftward turn into a room so dark that Harry couldn’t be certain if he was going to reach a phone or end up dead in the man’s basement. Then Lessard pulled a string and turned on the light. This was another room of cages, most of them empty. At first glance Harry couldn’t see what was inside of them, but when he drew closer he froze in shock.

Down at the far end were two cages of tiny people. One cage to his left held a small crowd of them, most of whom were men, though in the middle a mother protectively clutched her son and dealt a blow to Harry’s heart. Another cage to his right held five young girls. The former and the latter were labeled Low Value and High Value, respectively. He had forgotten all about Lessard when he reached them, and to his disappointment he saw no sign of Joe.

“They are nice, aren’t they?” Said Mr. Lessard of the five caged girls Harry was looking at in a tone that absolutely sickened him. “Five hundred dollars each.”

“Five hundred?”

It was more than Harry’s mortgage payment. It was enough to pay for Harry’s entire house! Who on god’s green Earth, Harry wondered, was going to buy a miniature for five hundred dollars?

As Harry hunched over the cage he felt Danny tumble out of his pocket. He crouched right over top of him with panic written into every muscle of his face. Danny simply held a finger to his lips then limped behind the table leg.

The floor creaked as Lessard approached.

“The telephone is over here.” The snatcher said.

“…right.” Said Harry.

Lessard was looming over him suspiciously now, and Harry leapt up to meet him at eye level. Having no better idea of what to say, he landed on,

“Say, it’s awfully hot in here, isn’t it? You don’t mind if I just-”

Harry gave Lessard no time to answer. He slipped his jacket off and tossed it on the table, making sure one sleeve reached the floor when it landed. It obscured the table leg Danny was hiding behind nicely.

“-there.” Harry smiled.

Lessard was looking at Harry the same way the other men at the bar had looked at him whenever the topic of women came up.

“You mentioned you had a phone? Over here? Let’s go over here.” Harry stammered.

He led the bewildered criminal over to the candlestick phone in the side office.

“I’m very bad at technology, Mr. Lessard. Could you show me how to use this?”

“You are a doctor aren’t you? Can’t you figure it out?” Lessard glared at him.

“I-I’m afraid this must be one of those French models. The ones we use at the office are different.”

Lessard grumbled and picked up the receiver. As he did so Harry glanced over his shoulder and saw that the five girls in the High Value cage had formed a human ladder. One of them was messing with the hinge for some reason.

His attention was pulled away when Lessard shoved the receiver in his hand.

“Who are you calling?” He grunted.

”Um, before we get to that – ” he drew Lessard’s attention to the telephone directory “– does our lab have your updated address? I thought I did but then—”

Harry tried to keep his eyes off of the cage. With the help of the suit jacket Danny had joined the girls on the outside and he was using the hairpin as a lever to dismantle the hinge.

“—I had to get this one from Dennis.”

The sound of the pin hitting the floor rang through the room. Lessard moved to look, but Harry stood in his way with the telephone directory in hand.

"Is it this one, Mr. Lessard?"

“Yes, yes, it is the same address as always! Ostie! Would you just make the call and get out of here!?” Lessard roared.

Mr. Lessard stormed back towards the phone and threw the receiver into his hands.

“…of course.” Harry said.

A small amount of relief came over him when he turned his attention back to the other room and noted that the cage was now empty. Danny and the girls were nowhere to be seen.

“I just wanted to double check for our records…”

There was a clanking sound in the distance. Harry could only guess that it was the door on the Low Value cage swinging shut.

“What the hell…?” Lessard growled.  

Harry was already charged with adrenaline after the fight at the bar, and it became even worse when Lessard stomped out of the office and froze at the sight of the empty cages.

He turned to Harry with wild eyes.

“How did-”

That was the exact second Harry could keep his composure no longer. His fist collided with Lessard’s face in full force before the man could speak another word. The snatcher stumbled back into the table of cages and clutched his bleeding nose, then charged towards Harry, who landed a second and third punch. It was as if all the rage inside of Harry was being channeled through his hands. He couldn’t think coherently; his conscious mind was barely processing what he was doing as his farmhand fists kept wailing on Lessard, one strike after another, until Harry learned just how severely one man could beat another man.

When his fists were slick with blood, he stopped for a moment to appreciate just how badly he had mangled the snatcher’s face. Lessard shakily stumbled to his feet, showing Harry his palm with one bloody hand.

“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry demanded.

“I don’t know him.” Lessard said through blood and snot.

Harry threw against the empty cages again, only for Lessard to stumble to his feet this time and sprint into the hallway full of dog cages.

This gave Harry an idea.

Calmly he walked into the hallway and started unlatching every single dog cage, starting with the dog named Juliet, then Mercutio and Tybalt and Laurence, all the way down an entire list of dramatis personae and ending with the one named Rosaline.

The dogs pulled back their lips and bayed for blood as they chased the star-crossed snatcher through the house with deadly precision. Lessard flew into the foyer, then Harry watched him clamber for the doorknob and scream as one of the dogs got him by the legs. Then the whole house shook as Lessard threw the door open and fell down the front steps with the dogs hot on his heels.

A Shakespeare quote came to Harry’s mind in that moment:

“Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.”

The miniatures from the cages had assembled behind Harry’s feet, with Danny at the head. Harry turned around and looked at them. They looked up at him. He opened his mouth to speak and that’s when the entire crowd bolted away from him and never looked back.

“Where are they going? Is there something we can do?” He asked Danny.

Danny pulled out a cigarette.

“Harry, after what you giants did to those tinies, the best thing you can do is leave them alone.”

Harry nodded. He picked Danny up and carried him into the entryway. When he got there he could see that the dogs had run right past Frankie, who was wrestling Romeo back from the half-open door. He fumbled around in his right front pocket and swore as the dog barked at the commotion outside. The boy stood between Harry and the door, paper white with fear, and Romeo stepped in front of him at the sight of Harry and Danny.

“What.. what’re you guys…” Frankie gasped, and his eyes fell on Danny, who was calmly standing in Harry’s hands. “Randy!?” He said, presumably using a fake name of Danny's. “Oh no, not you…”

“Randy?” Harry murmured. “He doesn’t know you’re the guy from the movies?”

“You think this kid can afford a movie?” Danny replied.

He cleared his throat.

“Frank, look, you’re not in trouble. We’re just looking for our friend. His name’s Joe Piccoli.” Danny said.

“Joe P-Piccoli…?” Frankie echoed.

Frankie’s eyes darted back and forth from Harry and Danny back to the box.

“He’s… I mean I didn’t do anything.” The boy stammered. “The boss just said to-”

“Said what?” Danny pressed.

Frankie took two steps back in the direction of the door.

Romeo kept on snarling.

“Remember what I told you at Sunnyside about making good choices?” Danny continued. “We just need you to tell us where he went and-”

Frankie pointed a finger at the two of them before Danny could finish.

“GO GET ‘EM!” He cried, and darted to the box.

It was only now that Harry figured out what had been in that box. When Romeo leapt for him he had no choice but to run back into the room of empty cages while the Flying Dutchman sped out the front door. He slammed the door to the dogs’ room shut and Romeo collided with it and gnashed at the both of them.

Harry clutched Danny in his hand and heaved.

“See if there’s a back door.” Danny barked.

Harry scouted around and found a door opposite the one to the miniatures’ room labeled Fighters. In that room was a third set of cages, and Harry couldn't have been less surprised at what sort of miniatures were housed there.

They were some of the tallest and strongest miniatures Harry had ever seen, some taller than Danny. He could tell exactly which of them were the winners and which were the losers just by looking at their cages. The guys at the top lived in cushy cages with velvet curtains and satin pillows while the guys at the bottom sulked about and nursed broken noses and bruises.

The crowd of freed miniatures had already gotten there first.

“We’re leaving!?” Exclaimed one of the top fighters. “Why are we leaving!? I got a good thing goin' here!”

The rest of the miniatures didn’t seem to care. They were climbing the cages at lightning speed and unlatching each and every one. From the very top of the stack of cages they were able to reach the window sill and tear their way through the screen to freedom.

“They’re just going to run off into the wilderness like that?” He asked Danny.

“Yup. You can’t interfere with these things, Harry.” Danny said. “Half of them have been snatched before and know what they need to do to come back from it.”

“…huh.”

“We should follow their lead.” Danny added.

When the last of the miniatures was done piling out of the window it was Harry’s turn. He set Danny down, stepped back, then took an empty cage and bashed the entire window pane in with it. With the glass mostly gone he then ripped out the screen using the hole the miniatures had made as a start. He took Danny in one hand and carefully slid himself through the window with the rest of his limbs, nearly getting stuck at the widest point. Soon his shoes touched grass and he was back on the ground again at the rear of the house.

Sunlight peeked in over the trees as Harry raced to the side of the house, where he knew Frankie would be waiting. Sure enough the boy was already in the automobile, trying to make his daring escape. Just as the two had planned it fired up and then puttered to a halt again.

“This is it! Run and get him!” Danny shouted.

Harry ran at full speed towards Frankie, and Frankie leapt out of the other side of the automobile and ran full speed into the woods, then disappeared like a ghost. Harry followed suit, into brush that grew thicker and thicker until he could barely move.

Harry slowed his pace to a jog first and then to a trudge.

“So much for slowing him down.” He said.

“Then we’re just gonna have to track him!” Said Danny.

Cursing himself, Harry knew he had to do it. He had already gone to a bar, outrun the cops, and beaten a man half to death.  

What wouldn’t he do for Joe Piccoli?

There were three containers in the cage: one for raw oats, one for water, and one for something else. He hopped onto the water dish, which was nearest the cage corner, and shimmied over to the side where the hinge stuck out. From here he could see the rest of the room. In front of him, across the aisle from his own, sat the cage of low value miniatures. On a table to his right was the holding cage he had originally been in, and beyond that, lining the walls, were two rows of shelves with stacked empty jars. Past those Joe could get a glimpse of the back of Mr. Lessard’s head through a doorway as he sat in an open office with phone in hand. He looked busy, which gave Joe some hope.

To Joe's left on the adjacent wall was the door the snatchers had originally come in from. Even though it was tightly shut, Joe could hear the barking of the dogs crescendoing inside it. He could also hear a muffled voice along with it.

“Do you want a little extra, Juliet? You better eat it. The boss’ll kick my teeth in if he finds out...”

It was Frankie’s voice, feeding the dogs from what Joe could tell, and Joe’s eyes grew wide at his own good fortune. With both snatchers busy he decided now was a good time to make an escape. He stretched his arm out as far as it would go and wedged it through the tight spacing of the cage, not through the quarter-inch bar spaces which would have put his arm too far out of reach, but through the tiny gap that existed between the front face of the cage and the side. From there he was able to bend his arm into an L shape and grip the curved head of the pin. To Joe’s dismay it was firmly embedded in the hinge, and no amount of pulling helped to dislodge it. He put more and more force into his arm, until his hand ached and his muscles grew sore.

Joe was so busy focusing on the pin that he didn’t hear the clicking of claws on the floor nearby, and if the other miniatures saw what was coming after him social convention forbade them from warning him. By the time he heard a snarl and noticed something moving in the shadows it was already too late.

A big, furry head with fangs half the size of Joe’s body flew in his direction, whipping drool this way and that as they closed around the cage. Hot breath that reeked of rancid meat blasted Joe’s face and with all the instinct of a terrified prey animal he kicked himself away from the bars. He let out a scream as he fell from his perch, landing on his already aching back. His cage mates, who had already been huddled as far away from Joe as possible, screamed along with him and scrambled at the sight of the beast’s jaws.

Joe sat up, grateful to find that his right arm was still attached to his body. The dog, a white-furred, black hole of hunger and killing drive with docked ears and a coat that was more scar tissue than hair, wasn’t done with them yet. Its teeth had closed around the bars, and when the dog squeezed and finally let go Joe could see that it had left a dent in the metal. Then the dog started barking loud as a gunshot, a sound that rattled through his chest and turned his blood to ice. The animal drew back to lunge again.

Over the noise Joe could barely hear Mr. Lessard shout,

“Frankie! Do your job, you worthless piece of shit!”

Joe’s attention was pulled away when the dog flew towards the cage a second time, now on a perfect trajectory to make another dent in it. Joe did not want to know what would happen when the cage broke open, and luckily for him a hand reached out and grabbed the animal by the collar before he could find out. It was Frankie, and Joe remained completely stiff as the snatcher hauled the dog, which was over half his size, away from the cage with all the force he could muster.

“Heel! Heel! Romeo. Heel.” He ordered.

The dog stopped lunging, but it kept on barking and pulling, and it only quit when the snatcher reached into the right front pocket of his long coat. He produced a dog biscuit and tossed it overhand halfway across the room. Romeo followed it in hot pursuit.

Joe scuttled backwards as Frankie then turned his attention to the cage, his blue eyes wild with anger.

“Can’t you little idiots behave!? The boss hates noise, and if you try any funny business, he’s gonna start acting up.” Frankie jabbed a finger at Romeo, who was busy swallowing up the biscuit.

Joe had seen small horses the size of that dog, and even as it enjoyed its treat it kept growling non-stop in small bursts.

“If he starts acting up,” Frankie continued, “my boss will start acting up, and then I will start acting up, you understand? Do ya’?”

Frankie made a fist and pounded on the side of the cage. Joe clenched his teeth together as his heart beat shallowly in his chest.

“HUH!? DO YA’!?”

Every miniature inside of it nodded their head profusely. Finding their response satisfactory, Frankie sized each of them up and pulled something from his other front pocket.

It was a chocolate bar, which he unwrapped and broke a piece from. Faster than lightning the mother in the cage across from Joe clapped a hand over her son's mouth before he could make a sound.

“If any of you little shits wanna make it up to me, there’s a reward in it for ya’.” Frankie held up the chocolate and circled around the cages. “If anyone wants it, all you have to do is talk. Or sing, or dance. Do something special.”

Joe’s stomach was eating itself from the inside, but he wouldn’t dare volunteer. He could see from the looks on everyone’s faces that all the other miniatures were expecting him to. Their eyes all shifted towards him, and even Frankie took extra time waving it around Joe’s part of the cage.

“...any takers?” Frankie said after a solid minute of silence. “Look, it’s not poisoned.”

Joe watched with envy as the boy popped the piece of chocolate into his mouth.

"Last chance!" The boy announced, then he bit into the rest of the bar and savoured it in front of his starving captives the way Romeo had savoured its biscuit.

Joe squeezed his hands into fists at the sight, remembering the taste of pure chocolate and how badly he missed it.

“Still no'fing?" Frankie asked through the mouthful.

Joe bit his tongue until it bled and the room stayed quiet as a graveyard.

"...well if any of you change your mind, just ask.” Said Frankie.

Joe breathed a sigh of relief when his captor disappeared down the hallway to the left, back into the room with the dogs.

One dog remained ever present. Romeo kept its dark eyes fixed on the cages from where it sat by the doorway.

With the excitement over and the dogs fed the house became much quieter, to Mr. Lessard’s pleasure no doubt. The man had gone back to his phone calls, speaking Langue Belle, and when Joe rose up and listened in he could tell the snatcher was talking about him.

“Il est beau. En bonne santé. Marqué. Quelqu’un avait beaucoup d’affection pour lui.” Lessard said:

"He is handsome. In good health. Marked. Someone had a lot of affection for him."

The words hit Joe like a punch to the gut. He sank back down again and folded his arms over his knees.

"No, he doesn’t talk now, but maybe you could train him. Yes, sir, tell me when you’ve made up your mind, but think quickly. He won’t last long."

Lessard impatiently slapped the phone receiver onto the stick and hung up, causing Joe to flinch. He switched back to speaking Proper and spat,

“Damn circus people.”

Soon the boss was back on the line with someone else, still speaking Proper.

"Hello? Wilfred? It’s Julien. Your friends want a new dancer to replace mister Smalls, is that right? I have one here. He is... uuuuuuuh... nineteen years old." The Quebecer lied.

Julien Lessard went quiet for a moment.

“Kecé ça caliss!? He's too old!? What do you mean he's too old!?” He exclaimed.

Mr. Lessard hung up the receiver again.

“Ta-bar-nac!” He growled.

Wherever it was Joe ended up, it certainly wouldn’t be anywhere good. He found his footing and listened past the scratching of Mr. Lessard’s pencil and the whimpering of the dogs in the other room. He couldn’t hear Frankie anywhere, but Romeo was the much bigger threat, and he could see that the dog had settled into a spot in the corner with its head in its paws.

Maybe, Joe thought, if he got especially lucky, the beast would fall asleep and he would get another chance to escape.

-

Joe looked back up at the hinge, and his hands began to shake. He could see that the dent made by the dog had loosened the pin from it. This would save him hours of work, and if he moved quickly he might be able to pull it out.

He couldn’t tell if Romeo was awake or sleeping, but the dog was very still all the same. The rest of the morning had passed uneventfully and the boredom was already crushing. He envied his cage mates, who at least chattered wistfully among one another as they daydreamed of better places than this. Joe had no such luxury, so he threw all his energy into plotting his escape instead.

He began his slow climb to the top, keeping one eye fixed on Romeo all the while. He reached out once again with his arm in an L-shape and gripped the pin.

It would move. Not a lot, but it was better than nothing, he reasoned. Joe concentrated all his strength into his arm, braced his feet against the bars, and heaved upwards. The pin moved along at a glacial pace, but Joe kept on pushing. The work, he knew, would take hours, but he had plenty time to spare - or so he thought.

Just then, Romeo's eyes snapped open. A cacophony of barking erupted from the creature, but this time Joe anticipated it. He dropped down and fled into the farthest corner, curling into a ball and making himself as small as he possibly could as he braced himself for the jaws to strike.

A painful minute of enraged barking passed. Joe slowly lifted his head as he realized the dog wasn’t coming for him. It was barking at the door to the dog room, and Mr. Lessard, cursing it under his breath, got up and let it out. Romeo raced into the other room, and set off all the other dogs in the vicinity in the process. Joe hadn’t heard the knocking at the door on account of all the noise, so when the snatchers returned, accompanied by two giants in starchy white coats, it took him by surprise. Both Lessard and Frankie hovered in the background as the men in white perused their wares. Romeo, his job done, settled back into his spot in the corner.

One of the visitors was older and carried a briefcase. The light shone off the bald patch on the older giant’s head as he browsed through the cages and examined the miniatures through spectacles reminiscent of Mr. Dawson’s. Accompanying him was a much younger giant, a thin man with sharp shoulders and a short, square face, who scribbled on a notepad and asked a lot of questions of his superior.

“Is this really where we’re supposed to get them? Why are there so many dogs?” Said the bewildered assistant. “Is... is this place legal, sir?”

The older man in white held up his hand.

“Stay focused on the criteria, please.” He answered coldly.

Joe wasn’t certain, but he had a hunch who these men might be. He had heard of them, but never seen them in person: these were the lab giants, in all likelihood there to buy back the tinies Dawson had sold out from under them.

Joe waited in suspense as they took their sweet time sizing up every miniature in the room.

“We’re looking for specimens that are either very tall, very fat, or both.” Said the older lab giant to the one with the notepad. “Subjects with those characteristics have the most viable responses to the treatment.”

Joe, who was neither very tall nor very fat, had little to worry about. As the afternoon ticked away the snatchers stood about impatiently while the researchers took their time making their final choice. All the while they spouted babble about vestigial traits and surgical excisions and Banting and Best. Joe’s heart sank as they drew closer to the woman and her child.

“Professor? Will these ones work?” The younger giant with the notepad turned to the older giant.

The older giant leaned in and appraised his potential subjects.

“Take the boy." The professor decided. "We’ll need males only for consistent results.”

Joe’s entire body shook. He watched, sick to his stomach, as Frankie slipped on a pair of thick leather gloves and unlocked the cage door. His hands drew nearer and nearer to the mother and child, then clinically pried them apart. The snatcher didn't even flinch at having to do this, even as the mother and child made sounds of despair that Joe would hear for the rest of his life in his nightmares. Then, as simply as if he were a worm, or a caterpillar, or a cockroach, Frankie dropped the crying child into a jar. From the inside of that jar, without his mother by his side, the boy looked infinitesimally small.

“One hundred dollars, please.” Frankie said to the lab giants, and the young snatcher looked gobsmacked when the older lab giant handed him the money without question.

Joe realized he was gnawing on the cage bars in rage. He watched as the woman, still trapped in the cage, sank to the ground and lay there, not like a person, but a thing. A thing that had been broken. A noise escaped Joe on her behalf, one between a sob and a scream. It drew the attention of the lab giant with the notepad, and for a moment the two locked eyes.

Joe spat the bar out and looked at that giant with pure hatred. He wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t come to him. What could anyone say to it?

Joe watched the younger lab giant’s face shift uncomfortably at the expression on his own. He leaned in closer to Joe in fascination, as if for one gleaming moment he saw something almost like himself, then looked back at the older researcher holding the jar.

The little boy had not stopped crying for his mother.

“Um... professor?” The assistant turned back towards the low value cage. “I see a better subject. We haven’t tested his age group yet. Why don’t we start with an older cohort instead?”

The assistant pressed his finger on the cage bars.

Behind that finger, with a horrified look on his face, stood Gutters.

“The more data we have across age groups, the easier it will be to predict the outcomes...” The assistant trailed off.

Every miniature in the room watched in suspense as the professor pondered this suggestion.

“Very well. We’ll take that one instead.” The professor said.

Frankie quietly rolled his eyes as he turned the boy loose back into the cage and exchanged him for Gutters. The tiny child flew into his mother’s arms like a magnet and Joe’s limbs felt rubbery with relief at the sight. Finally, after hours of careful appraisal, the lab giants left the room with Gutters in tow.

Joe got one last look at him as he was being carried out. He sat quietly in the jar, as he sat quietly in most places. He didn’t even bother to look up at Joe, or at anyone for that matter. Joe had always thought that watching him get taken down a peg would be satisfying somehow, but in reality it wasn’t: it was just sad. Considering everything Gutters had faced at the circus, all the young assistant had done was trade one tragedy for another.

“One hundred dollars for a junk tiny like that!?” Frankie exclaimed as he counted up the money, and Joe bristled at the words junk tiny. “I can't believe they gave me the money. Those scientists must be nuts!”

“No amount is too high for Garrison.” Said Lessard. “We will get even more for that other male over there if we can get him to talk, and even more than that for the females.”

Joe could tell Lessard was referring to him, and he took a moment to appreciate how strange it sounded to hear someone refer to him in third person as a male. He watched as Lessard snatched the money out of Frankie’s hand and handed him back a meagre looking pair of coins.

“You named a good price. Well done.” Said the elder snatcher to the younger one.

Frankie glowed with pride, and Joe felt pure disgust at the sight.

Lessard disappeared into the depths of the house and Frankie whistled for Romeo. He threw the dog another biscuit.

“Romeo, guard.” He ordered the dog, then turned to his audience of sad miniatures as he pulled off the gloves. “I’m going out. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone or you’ll be dog meat.”

As Frankie got ready to leave, Joe was fully prepared to take his chances. It was hard for him to take his eyes off of that loose pin in the hinge. All the while he thought about Gutters. How quickly they could have pulled it out if they had just worked together. How, if they hadn’t been so arbitrarily divided, they could already have been running free by now.

He was distracted by rapping on the top of the cage.

“Fancy some chocolate, pretty boy?” Asked Frankie to poor, tormented Joe as the snatcher munched on the remains of the chocolate bar.

Joe didn’t make a peep. He shook his head no and then stared at the ground.

“...hm. That don’t look very secure.” Frankie said, and a bad feeling filled the pit of Joe’s stomach. “Damn thing’s gone loose again.”

Joe buried his forehead in his hands. He didn’t bother to look up when something hard repeatedly struck the side of the cage. He already knew it was the sound of a hammer tightening the loose pin up again.

“Why do you little shits always do this?” Frankie muttered.

With Joe good and trapped, the young snatcher disappeared into the hallway, leaving him with only Romeo for company.

-

As the hours passed and evening fell into night, Joe drifted into more uneasy bursts of sleep. Even now the watchful eyes of Romeo never left him, and there was nothing else to do but sit and think. Joe thought about the family he never got to have. He thought about Herman. He thought about Tiny Town. He thought about Gutters at the circus and Mutters in his place, and regretted not being nicer to him yesterday.

He thought about art, and god, and heaven, and hell. Joe, for so many years, had thought himself evil for his attraction to giants. Every other miniature in the room would agree. Yet as he looked across the room to the cage of low value miniatures, to the mother who was now doing her best to tell her little boy a bedtime story, he began to replay the events of the day and realized something about evil he never had before.

Evil was a side effect of choice, he decided. That was what his encounter with the young lab giant had taught him. Evil existed because the world welcomed it in, and it could be resisted on those rare occasions when the world consciously diverted it. Sometimes, as today, people were faced only with two evils. Sometimes the best anyone could do was choose the lesser one.

If Joe had his way, between Gutters and the boy, he would have sacrificed neither of them – but that wasn’t how evil worked. He thought of the choice he had been faced with during the Tiny Town fire, to run towards the giant or to run away, and wondered if he had made the right one.

All the while, Lessard’s words started replaying in his head.

Someone had a lot of affection for him.

As he sat in his cage, feeling thoroughly drained, a song clawed at his chest and escaped from his mouth, a song that made him ache for his family.

“S'io fo colpo di lancia,

Farò per vostro amore…”

His throat grew tight with sadness and he grabbed his temples, overcome with the weight of the misery of the world. Maybe misery was all there was to life, Joe thought. Maybe the only way to live in a world like this was to live out of spite. Maybe-

Joe was snapped out of his meditations by the sound of the last voice in the world he wanted to hear.

“You have a fine singing voice, my friend.” It said.

It was Mr. Lessard. He was standing in the doorway of the dogs' room with a candlestick in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other. He set both down on top of an empty cage and the flickering candlelight cast a sinister orange glow throughout the space, which was magnified and reflected through the glass that sat beside it.

Joe didn’t respond to him. Instead he tensed up his muscles as the giant’s footsteps grew closer. Sure enough, the giant unlocked the front of the cage and reached inside for him. The big man prodded Joe with enough force to knock him flat on his side, and Joe wished he still had O’Grady’s knife on hand so he could at least die fighting. As the meaty hand hovered over him, he noted the stopped Omega watch on its owner’s wrist with disgust.

“Come on you little shit! Do it again!” Lessard commanded .

Joe sat up straight, crossed his arms, and kept his mouth firmly shut.

Lessard looked from Joe to Romeo and smiled as shadows danced across his face, a sickening smile absent of all warmth and humanity. Then he swung the cage door wide open and said,

“GO GET IT!”

Before he had so much as spoken the first syllable the dog was in pursuit. Joe’s heart beat so hard it hurt his chest as the fangs flew in his face again, this time with no cage bars to stop them. The girls in the cage with him screamed and frantically climbed up the bars on the back of the cage. Joe tried to run too, but he didn’t know which direction to go in; Romeo’s scarred muzzle kept lunging for him this way and that with dizzying speed.

Above the snapping of the dog, all Joe could hear was the snatcher’s sadistic laughter. It sounded almost childlike with glee. Joe could see that Lessard was holding the dog back by the scruff of its neck. In all likelihood Joe was worth too much to the man for him to let the dog eat him, but nonetheless the sight of those fangs rattled him to his very core.

It was only when he was pressed firmly up against the back of the cage, shaking with fear, that Lessard wrestled the dog aside and ordered it to sit down.

“Get out of here.” He said to the dog as the cage door swung shut again, then turned his attention back to Joe. “He loves the taste of tinies, so you better sing for me, and you better sing well. Understand?”

Joe seethed at Lessard, and took a moment to appreciate just how much he despised this cruel man with his big dog and his revolting indifference towards living things with every fiber of his being. Nevertheless, he nodded and kept on singing.

“S'io moro alla battaglia,

Morrò per vostro amore.”

Mr. Lessard stroked his chin at the sound of it.

“So you do understand. You know English, then? Français? What are you?” Lessard demanded.

Joe wasn’t sure if he should label himself as Italian or Giardino or Casa or even Canadian for that matter, and his words caught in his throat. Lessard raised his hand and pointed it at Joe.

“Romeo...” He began.

“I speak!” Joe exclaimed. “I speak. I’ll say whatever you want, just please don’t hurt me.”

Mr. Lessard beamed at him.

Just then, the hallway door flew open and Frankie flopped onto the scene. He reeked of alcohol and proudly held up a little rectangular piece of paper in Lessard’s face.

“Bert Corbeau rookie card.” He hiccupped, and Joe didn’t even bother trying to parse what that meant.

Lessard didn’t, either. He shoved Frankie out of his face and then grabbed him by the collar and pulled his head towards the cage.

“He sings. He sings! I know who this one will go to. Well done, Frankie!” Mr. Lessard declared as he released him, and the boy glowed with pride once again.

“Oh, that’s good, eh? All right.” Said Frankie as he rubbed his eyes, then his face fell as some unknown realization sank into him.

Joe watched as Frankie tucked Mr. Corbeau into one of his pockets and straightened his sagging hat.

“...all right.” He sighed again, sounding more resigned this time.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lessard had raced to the phone. 

“Allô? Est le marchand d'art en ville? Ce matin!? Parfait! Dites-t-il que j’ai trouvé la poupée il recherchait. Moins cher que Lorraine...”

"Hello? Is the art dealer in town? This morning!? Perfect! Tell him I found the doll he was looking for. Less expensive than Lorraine..."

Adrenaline rushed through Joe at the mere mention of Lorraine. He would never forget the scar she had shown him.

“...mais je pense que la fille sera très heureuse.”

"...but I think the girl will be very happy."

The phone receiver fell for the third and final time, and with that Joe knew his fate had been sealed. Mr. Lessard scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it off to Frankie, who was slapping himself in the face and shaking himself awake.

“Wrap this one up. He is going to this address. Make sure he smells nice.” Said Mr. Lessard.

Joe could only hope that wrap up didn’t mean that he was actually going to be wrapped up.

Frankie grimaced at the sight of the note.

“Whoa-ho, that girl!? Yikes. I’ll do my best, boss.”

Joe watched as Frankie plucked the piece of paper from his boss’s fingers with his right hand. At the same time, his left hand slipped a cigar from Mr. Lessard’s waistcoat pocket and pushed it up the sleeve of his coat. Frankie then whirled around as if to distract Lessard and tucked the forbidden cigar into one of the many pockets of his own, then raced towards Joe as his boss lumbered obliviously back into the recesses of the house.

It was Frankie’s turn to tower over Joe. Before he so much as touched him, the snatcher grabbed the leather gloves and put them back on, dashing Joe’s hopes of biting him. After that he took a jar down from one of the shelves and drew closer to the cage. Joe braced himself and squeezed his eyes shut as Frankie lifted the heavy latch and nabbed him in one of the dusty old gloves, then tossed him into the waiting jar. He didn’t even bother to poke air holes in the lid before closing it. Instead, he simply turned around and walked Joe through the doorway filled with barking dogs, down a long hallway of cages, and as Frankie walked along Joe noticed that the snatcher was constantly shivering.

Somehow, being jarred by Herman had been scarier than being jarred by Frankie. At least when a snatcher did it, it didn't feel personal.

“You don’t know French, but I do." Said Frankie. "He said you're going to a special home for tinies and you can leave whenever you want. Isn’t that nice?”

It was a comforting lie that mentioned nothing about a girl or Joe being a toy, and he wondered how many of those Frankie had told throughout his lifetime. Perhaps the idea was to trick Joe into compliance, but regardless all Joe could do now was cower as the rows of miserable animals barked at full volume and flashed their teeth at him. Some lunged against the bars, some whimpered, some even wagged their tails. Though they would kill him in an instant, Joe still felt an odd kinship with the dogs.

An odd kinship with all but one of them, of course, and that dog was trailing right behind them.

Frankie turned a corner, into the relative quiet of a side room, and set the jar down at a table. This room was filled with boxes and rolls of paper. It also had a window, and through it Joe could see a thin strip of red on the horizon as sunrise approached. Joe waited impatiently as the boy took the stolen cigar out of his pocket, lit it, and kicked back in his chair. The desk jumped as his dirty boots hit the desktop, as did Joe and the jar along with it. Frankie slid off his hat, rubbed his forehead and through the glass Joe could hear him say to himself,

“I have the stupidest job.”

Joe, who was getting increasingly worried about running out of air, pressed his face against the glass and banged his fists on it. His view was soon obscured by thick cigar smoke, and the desk shook again as Frankie took his feet off the table and doubled over in a coughing fit.

“What do they put in these things?” He wheezed.

Considering Frankie was now running out of air along with him, Joe could only guess that the secret ingredient was justice. Frankie, meanwhile, slumped forward in his chair and coughed for a minute straight, then set the cigar aside in an overflowing ash tray. With tears in his eyes the young snatcher finally got to work.

When Frankie unscrewed the jar, Joe was picked up once again with all the care someone would show a toy solider. He shook along with Frankie’s shivering hand and his skin prickled as the giant held him in one hand with his limbs pressed against his body, then rubbed a wet rag over his face.

“You’re gonna hate me for this, but we gotta fix your face.” Said Frankie, as if Joe didn’t hate him already.

Joe shook the water out of his eyes, then opened them to see that Frankie’s other hand had curled around a small, circular container. He set Joe down on the table.

“Don’t try anything funny with him on guard.”

Frankie tilted his head over his shoulder in the direction of the doorway, where Romeo sat ever watchful.

“Hold still.” Ordered Frankie.

Joe had seen containers like the one Frankie was holding before. They were especially favoured by giant women, if the newspaper ads were anything to go by. Joe’s face contorted as Frankie’s quivering fingers opened it, took a small brush, and slapped a strange white powder over the bruises O’Grady had given him the other night.

“You get in a fight or something?” The snatcher asked dryly, though Joe was too busy gasping for air to answer him.

Noting his bloodied ear, Frankie added,

"Looks like you're freshly marked, too. You're in for a real treat! Wait 'til you experience hot water."

When the job was done Joe's first instinct was to rub at his face, but the snatcher anticipated this. The second he reached up to rub off the makeup, the boy jabbed him in the ribs, a sensation that was a bit like being hit with a leather sofa, and snapped,

“Don’t touch that!”

Joe settled for blinking the last of the powder out of his eyes instead. When they were clear he looked up to see that Frankie was studying him and tapping his chin as he tilted his head from side to side with a squint, as if appraising him.

“The rest of you should be all right if we can hide the blood.” Frankie said of Joe’s stained shirt and trousers, as though a miniature being covered in blood stains were a regular occurrence.

Joe watched as the snatcher rewarded himself with another puff of the cigar – it sent his voice up an entire octave.

“You’re a lucky guy, pretty boy.” He choked. “You’re going to Walter’s house, way outta town. That guy’s loaded.” He croaked between stifled coughs. “So you gotta look your best."

To Joe's dismay, Frankie sifted through an assortment of cartons and boxes and pulled out a tiny tailed coat that was close to Joe's size. He could only wonder how the snatchers had come across such a thing.

"Put this on."

As Frankie flicked the miniature jacket into his hands, Joe was stricken with the chilling thought that the clothes had been taken from previous victims, and it sickened him to even think about wearing it.

Romeo’s growling in the doorway gave him no choice but to do so.

“Yeah, that covers it up! You look sharp.” Said Frankie.

The snatcher went back to his rummaging. A sinking feeling came over Joe when Frankie pulled out a long, red ribbon.

Wrapping up really did mean wrapping up.

“Watch out for that niece of his, though. Real bearcat of a lady. She’s pure evil, and she’s got a mean right hook!” Frankie continued.

Joe jumped as a gift tag landed next to him on the table. The giant pulled out a felt-tip pen.

“What’s your name?” Asked Frankie.

Joe narrowed his eyes. He didn’t want the likes of Frankie to know it. Nevertheless, he said,

“Joe Piccoli.”

He had no idea where the conversation was about to go when Frankie went to scribble his name down and then stopped himself.

“How do you spe-oh!” Frankie raised his eyebrows. “Piccoli as in Punch-out Piccoli?”

Joe’s eyes narrowed in confusion. He didn't know why the boy was so intrigued all of a sudden. Had Frankie met another Piccoli?

“I dunno who that is…” Joe said, and although it went against his better judgment, he decided to name his family members on the slim chance the snatcher had seen them. “I had a brother named Lorenzo and a father named-“

“Lorenzo?" Frankie cut him off. "As in Larry Piccoli?”

Every single hair on the back of Joe’s neck stood on end.

 “...yeah, that was his nickname. I’m his brother-”

“Giuseppe. Right.” Frankie finished, and Joe blinked at him in disgusted amazement. “Yeah, that’s the guy! One of the hardest hitters who ever came through here.”

It had to be a mistake. Joe couldn’t imagine Larry throwing a punch; his brother was too uptight for that. Then again, Joe couldn’t imagine himself being a doll for a little girl, either.

“M-my brother!? You saw my brother!? Where is he?” He demanded. “Who’d you sell him to!?”

Joe raced all the way to the edge of the table, and Romeo, barking up a storm, leapt up and threatened to snap at him. Fear stopped Joe in his tracks and caused him to stumble back onto the table, holding perfectly still.

Frankie shrugged.

“Can’t tell you where he went. He fought for my boss a while ‘til another ring made a good offer on him. After that? Don’t really know, don’t really care. We don't keep tabs on our guys once they've left."

Frankie's words dug their way under Joe’s skin and refused to come out again. He couldn’t contain his emotions. Soon he leapt back up and paced around the table, absolutely distraught with his newfound knowledge. Romeo kept careful watch of him as a shiver ran down his spine at the thought of his brother ever encountering these people. Then, at a complete loss, he stopped and spoke to his shoes.

 “...you have any family, Frankie?”

“That's personal.” Was all Frankie said.

Joe’s fingers curled into fists. He wished with everything inside him that he were a giant. A respectable, responsible, older giant, the sort that people listened to. Perhaps, then, Frankie might take his next few words to heart.

“Well do ya' have to go ruining my family!? What about my brother, my dad, my mom? Guys like you take them away and we never see each other again! I haven’t seen my brother since I was a kid. I didn’t even know he’d been snatched. Hell, I thought he was dead!”

He pointed a finger at the indifferent youth.

“How can you live with yourself doing this to people!?”

Frankie took the cigar from his teeth and carelessly waved the hand that now held it.

“’cause that’s life.” He said. “I’m not that bad a guy. I go to church on Sundays like everyone else."

Joe had barely opened his mouth when Frankie doused him in a spray of cheap cologne.

"Sure, maybe there’s good guys like you who get thrown into the mix," Frankie continued, "but most of the guys I grab up are useless layabouts who don’t even care about their families. I take 'em here and if they have potential we make 'em into something or send 'em to good homes. I’m doing a public service in the grand scheme of things and at the end of the day, I gotta eat.”

Joe coughed through the thick aldehyde stench as he fought to get his voice back. A public service. How revolting!

“Good guys, bad guys, it doesn’t matter! None of them deserve this!” Joe sputtered though the cologne.

He had just opened his watering eyes when Frankie’s left hand knocked Joe clean over and pinned him down.

“Oh, shut your mouth! Can't you see we're doing you a favour?” Frankie said, trading the cigar in his right hand for the red ribbon.

Joe thrashed and fought as it was tied around one ankle, and then another. Soon the both of them were tied together. Frankie’s face contorted in frustration as Joe squirmed and made his upper limbs as hard to grab as possible.

“Rooooomeo!” The snatcher called and whistled.

The dog’s paws clicked along the floor, and with every step a little more life drained from Joe until he was lying completely still. The snatcher kept tying.

“Look on the bright side, you’re gonna make our clients really happy. You should be thankful you’re not going to the fights like your brother.” Frankie said.

The ribbon tied down Joe’s arms next, and finally gagged his mouth.

“Hell, you talk, you sing, they'll love you! You’ll have a nice cushy life, buddy. For an earless guy like you it’s the Ritz!”

Joe scowled a thousand-yard scowl, eyes full of venom, as Frankie tied the ribbon off with a perfect bow at the top of his head. Then the world turned upside down and spun as he was tossed into a cardboard box. Straightening himself up, he thankfully noted that it had air holes. He soon found that if he shifted his weight properly he could prop himself up against the side of the box and look through one of them like a window. Through it he saw that he was being taken back through the dog room, then he caught a glimpse of the room where the rest of the miniatures were being held and another doorway labeled Fighters. After that, Frankie turned into a cramped foyer and down a front hall where he placed the box onto a side table.

“I’ll be back in a sec. Wait here. He’s still guarding, by the way.”

A scarred muzzle came into view. Joe examined Romeo through the hole in the box, for with his limbs tied together it was all he could do. His muscles tightened as the dog's curious snout drew near and filled the box with the stench of its breath, and for a fleeting moment he looked the creature directly in the eyes, as if challenging it to swallow him. It could snatch the box from the table and make a feast out of him if it really wanted to. Impatiently Romeo started pacing back and forth in front of the table and whimpering, as if resisting the temptation, or perhaps taunting him. He passively admired the way its tongue lolled out of its scarred jaws. How it licked its chops and growled at the slightest thing. How it was the only dog in a farmhouse full of dogs that wasn’t locked in a cage. Something about Romeo reminded Joe of the earless son-of-a-bitch at the watchmaker’s.

As he sat there he felt proud of himself in some small way. He had not taken the chocolate. He had not spoken voluntarily. He had not turned against his fellow miniature or done any of the giants’ dirty work for them. Joe had not chosen evil that day. All he had done was live, and it was all he wanted to keep doing whenever he reached his next destination. Joe Piccoli had thought himself evil for more years of his life than he had thought himself good, and it was only when he had been marked as something evil that he finally accepted that evil was not part of his ontology, but one choice in a sprawling web of possible choices to be made.

If Joe had been in that young lab giant's shoes, he liked to think he would have left the building empty handed.

Joe had barely finished this thought when, seemingly for no reason at all, Romeo's jaws pulled back into a snarl. He squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for a coming bite, but instead Romeo's head flew back and the dog howled so loudly and barked so madly that he could feel the soundwaves vibrating through the box.

Then Romeo ran to the front door, and sure enough a loud knock rang through the house moments later. The floor creaked under oncoming footsteps and someone swore in the distance. Joe watched the pockets of Frankie’s coat pass by the box, and the dog whimpered and barked as the snatcher grabbed it by the collar and heaved it away. Then Joe heard the door creak as Frankie, looking visibly exhausted and holding a glass of some strange hair-of-the-dog concoction, swung it open.

“Is your boss home?” Asked a visitor outside the doorframe.

A large hand came into view, and Joe's eyes widened.

From the moment Joe woke up with a splitting headache, an aching neck, and a bleeding ear, he knew exactly where he was. The bars of the cage gave it away immediately, but even without those he would have been able to guess where he was from the faded wallpaper and the sagging doorway at the end of the room, one which led to a hallway full of barking dogs. Dog fighting and tiny snatching went hand in hand, Joe knew from experience, and this was undoubtedly a snatcher’s lair.

Joe looked around and saw that a small group of twenty other miniatures joined him in the cage, all of whom kept a healthy distance from him. Most of them were men, all of them were shaggy and bedraggled, and the moment Joe made eye contact with any single one of them they looked away and shuffled nervously at the sight of his missing ear.

He pressed a hand to it, then his sleeve, and a mix of emotions stormed inside of him. There was anger, sadness, betrayal, alienation, but notably absent from the mix was surprise. No, Joe had seen this coming from miles away, and now that it had happened, he had no better option but to take it in stride.

The man who sat in the far corner of the cage with his face hidden below a tent of greasy hair wouldn't be so kind to Joe as he was being to himself.

“Well, well, look at you.” Said the only tiny willing to talk to him. “Do I need to say I told you so?”

The raspy voice was barely audible over the sound of a horse fly batting at the bare lightbulb above them. Joe didn’t need to turn around to face it. He already knew who it was. He did so nevertheless out of courtesy.

“Gutters? What are you doing here?” He asked.

Now Joe was surprised. His head was tilted almost completely sideways, as much out of confusion as it was out of pain.

“Oh, y’know. Went out to have a good time the other night, only for some lousy, rotten sell-out to turn around and stab me in the back.” Gutters explained. “That’s life. You get used to it.”

Joe was utterly lost for words.

“The better question is what are you doing here?” Gutters continued, though Joe could tell from the evil twinkle in his eyes that the greasy bastard had already found him out ages ago.

This was supposed to be it. This was supposed to be the part where shame gripped him and squeezed every last ounce of life out of him until he was an empty husk. The part where he screamed, cried, threw up, and crawled through the desert repenting for good measure. Yet as he looked upon Gutters and all his smug satisfaction, Joe found, much to his own bewilderment, that he simply didn’t care what this man had to say about his life anymore.

Gutters could think whatever he wanted of Joe now. He had nothing left to lose. No amount of praise or derision would bring Joe’s ear back, and it wouldn't change the core of who Joe was.

Joe cleared his throat.

“Well, as you can see I’m finally ready to settle down.” Joe began. “I’m here on the hunt for a giant boyfriend who will lock me away in a gilded cage, with a pretty bow tied around my neck in exchange for my freedom after sacrificing my dignity at the altar of petdom!”

Joe’s voice was sickly-sweet with sarcasm, and he watched in delight as Gutters’ face twisted into a snarl. Shakily the old man rose to his feet with the aid of the bars.

“You know what I can’t stand in life?” He began, jabbing a pointed finger in Joe’s direction. “Guys like you. It’s guys like you who disrespect guys like me, the ones with real trauma. You walk around with your missing ears, sniffing the giants’ crotches, sucking up to them, and you don’t give a shit.” Gutters tossed his arms. “You don’t give a shit about the shit they do to us.”

“Like what?” Asked Joe, and he truly hoped that Gutters would answer – for years he had wondered what it was that Gutters was so hung up about.

Finally, Joe got his wish. He watched as Gutters slowly bent down and began to roll up his dusty, grey pant leg. Around his ankle was a circular scar, like the one Lorraine had. Rising up again, Gutters said,

“Y’know how I got the name Gutters, Joe? It’s what they called me in the circus. My dear borrower mother handed me over to them in exchange for a brick of chocolate.”

For a brief moment Gutters grew animated, and spread his arms wide as though he were a circus ringmaster introducing an act.

“Gutters is what they named me!” He cried. “GUTTERS! THE! CLOOOWN!” Gutters’ voice grew so loud it drew concerned looks from the other people in the cage.

When Gutters froze, the whole room froze with him. Then he went limp again.

“They told me to jump, I jumped." Gutters continued. "They told me to dance, I danced. They told me to sit still while they sprayed me down with a fire hose, and you get one guess what I did, Joe. I had no freedom. No agency. And now…” Joe drew back as Gutters shuffled in his direction. “Here you are. Romanticizing my suffering. Thinking it’s cute and fun and sexy.”

Gutters stopped. He tried once again to point a finger at Joe but it fell listlessly to his side.

“...’cause guys like you have no respect for guys like me. You haven’t been through real trauma.”

Joe gave Gutters a blank stare. It was as though they were living in two different universes. He was dangerously tempted to tell Gutters about his own trauma he had suffered at the hands of the giants, about his life without a father, about the torment of the watchmaker’s, about his own brush with the circus and the panel of doctors and Herman's betrayal and the jar. About how absolutely, how totally he had trusted a giant and how swiftly that giant had shattered it all to pieces. He could tell Gutters about the years of grappling with his sexuality, with society, with spirituality, about his mother’s misguided attempt to cure him or O’Grady’s misguided attempt to destroy him. He could assure Gutters that no matter what anyone tried, and no matter what anyone did, Joe simply could not change the indelible nature of his own ontology, in spite of the fact that it brought injury after injury upon himself.

Joe could say all that to Gutters, but he knew better than to do that now. Gutters’ mind, like Herman’s mind, was already made up. There was no way that Joe could justify himself in Gutters’ eyes, so he opted for a more diplomatic approach.

“You know what I don’t get about guys like you, Gutters?" He said, as Gutters' watery eyes bored into him. "You spend all this time and energy being angry at guys like me, and none of it being angry at the giants.” Joe scanned the cage as his watchsmith’s mind ticked away in search of an escape. “At the end of the day, you and me both ended up in the same damn place, and I bet if we worked together we could help each other out of it.” Gutters’ eyes followed Joe’s finger as it pointed to a hinge on the side of the cage that was agonizingly close to being reachable. “See that pin inside that hinge up there? You're a tall guy. I bet if you gave me a boost, I could pull it out. We don’t have to be stuck in here like this. We could escape and then never see each other again. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Gutters let out a wheezy cackle in reply.

“Don’t make me laugh. If I helped you out, then you would get to go free along with me. Why should you deserve that?”

Joe was just about to answer when the dogs went ballistic and a pair of shadows filled the doorway across the room.

"There's no time for me to explain. Either we get out now or we get out never!" Joe said.

Gutters shrugged and smiled.

"Then I guess it'll have to be never." He replied, and Joe could only pity how readily Gutters had sealed both their fates.

The shadows grew larger, and the weather-beaten house heaved under two sets of footsteps as the snatchers entered the room.

“Frankie, you stupid piece of shit!” Scolded the voice of an older man with an accent that reminded Joe of Usine. “I want women, or strong men I can send to the fights, not these useless drunks!”

“I’m sorry, sir! I-I’m sorry!” Said the much younger voice that accompanied him.

Joe pressed himself up against the bars to get a closer look, and in the dim light he could see the figure of an immense giant holding a much smaller one by the collar and shaking him.

“Did you not see that their little city burned down? Why are you still searching on the beach? Why not there?” Said the voice of the larger man with the accent.

“There were too many people there, sir.” The smaller giant, Frankie, replied.

Frankie backed up into the room and stepped to the side. In the light, Joe could see that he was barely an adult. He wore a large coat in spite of the warm weather and clutched a floppy hat as he trembled in the larger giant's presence. Joe felt as though he had seen this young giant somewhere before, but couldn't place where.

“They were loading them all up into a car.” Frankie continued.

“What kind of car?” The older giant interrogated.

“I-I don’t know, Mr. Lessard. I dunno the breeds of car... but! There was a whole team of snatchers working together. Guarded them real closely, too. See this?” The quivering young giant gestured to a shoeprint on his forehead. “I tried to grab some up, I really did, but one of ‘em attacked me.”

Mr. Lessard tugged Frankie by the collar again.

“Is that a girl’s shoeprint? Beaten by a girl? Bah! Pathetic!" Mr. Lessard barked.

Joe flinched as Mr. Lessard tossed Frankie aside like a rag doll. A team of snatchers swarming Tiny Town? Joe would have been damned one way or another whether O'Grady had gotten him or not, he figured.

Mr. Lessard released the boy and stomped into the light. The man was a hulking mass of a giant who downright dwarfed the farmhouse he was in. He wore a starch-white shirt and he was rubbing his face with one hand while his fingers on the other held a lit cigar and twirled it about in frustration.

"Frankie, Frankie, Frankie... Why do I keep you around at all!?” Said Lessard.

Frankie raced over to the cage of freshly snatched miniatures, and Joe’s fingers squeezed the bars tight in fear. The other miniatures that surrounded him scampered away in anticipation. All but two of them, that was: in the center of the cage, a mother clutched a little boy in her arms and shook in abject horror as the giant approached.

“Look here, I got one woman. And a kid, too. That’s worth something, isn’t it?” Frankie pleaded.

The floor shook as Mr. Lessard drew closer to the caged tinies. The mother held her son tight and tried to esape, but in a flash the massive giant threw open the cage door, snatched her up, and pried her son out of her arms. Lessard’s face didn’t move an inch as the woman let out a devastating scream and fought against him in desperation, clawing desperately in the direction of her little boy. He ignored the noise as though it were the sound of a passing car and carelessly tossed the child back into the cage like garbage, then he examined the woman thoroughly through a jeweler's loupe.

A long plume of cigar smoke billowed from Mr. Lessard's mouth as he began to laugh.

“Worth something!? Look at her, Frankie. She’s as big as a house! Crooked nose. Ugly face. She looks like she has a drinking problem.” He said.

Joe heard more dry laughter coming from behind him. To his disgust, he turned around to see that Gutters was laughing at the poor woman’s misfortune as well. Turning his attention back to Mr. Lessard, he watched in horror as the giant coldly deposited her into another cage to the right of the table Joe's cage was currently sitting on. He could just make out a sign above it that read Low Value. He squeezed his eyes shut as his heart ripped in two at the sound of the little boy crying for his mother.

“Oh, shut up.” Mr. Lessard snapped at the boy, and snatched him up next. “This one is worthless too. Put these little piggies to work instead! Maybe it will inspire them to lose weight, you know? Make them healthier.”

Frankie laughed nervously.

“Yeah. We could uh… sell them by the ounce or something!” The young giant suggested, his voice shaking and faltering.

Joe could see that Frankie, too, was shaking with fear.

Mr. Lessard dangled the tiny boy upside down for three painstaking seconds before tossing him into the Low Value cage along with his mother, who caught him and held him like the treasure that he was. As sad as it was to watch the two cling to each other and cry, Joe was relieved that they would at least get to be together a little while longer.

Then Mr. Lessard stepped towards the cage the rest of the miniatures were in, and Joe was knocked off his feet as the entire thing was lifted into the air.

“None of these will fetch us much money.” The older giant declared. “We need a pretty face. One we can sell easily.”

“Yes sir.” Frankie croaked.

A series of screams rose from the cage as Mr. Lessard turned the entire thing upside down and dumped its occupants into the opening of the one reserved for low value tinies. Joe clung to the bars with all his might and refused to let himself fall in easily. Having been awkward and homely during puberty, he had been put in that cage before, and he knew where it would lead him. He would go to the watchmaker’s, or the factories, to be used as cheap labour and then discarded when spent. He fully expected that this was where he would end up the second time around, but he refused to go out without a fight.

He was soon forced to let go when Mr. Lessard’s square hand struck the side of the cage with all the force of an incoming meteor. Joe’s heart dropped first and the rest of him followed as he jolted downwards, though when he landed he was not met with the sting of metal but the roughness of calloused human skin.

When he rolled over and sat up he was met with the eye of Mr. Lessard, magnified through the lens of the loupe, gazing down upon him the way a falcon would lock onto its prey. Everything about the man appeared threatening to Joe, from his rectangular face framed by greying sideburns to his stony features; it was the sort of face Joe saw reflected in statues of important historical giants, the sort those giants would consider austere or noble. Joe saw nothing of the sort in this man, this monster, who was looking at him no better than one would examine a piece of meat.

“...this one is good.” Mr. Lessard announced after what seemed like an eternity to Joe.

He could hear Frankie breathe a sigh of relief from all the way across the room.

“His face is a little beaten up, but he has good bone structure. He is insured, too.” Joe’s skin crawled as Mr. Lessard’s finger stroked the left side of his face, and he could sense that insured had something to do with his missing ear. “If he heals well, he could be worth a fortune to the right person.”

Joe’s stomach lurched as Mr. Lessard carried him over to a cage that sat on a table to the left, across the aisle from the cage the other miniatures had been put in. Before Mr. Lessard placed Joe inside – much more carefully than he had handled the other tinies – he was able to sneak a glimpse of the sign above it. High Value it read.

Turning around, Joe could see that he was accompanied by five young, beautiful women, all of whom were slim and pale-skinned and some of whom were frighteningly young. His skin prickled at the sight of them and he wondered why only tinies that looked a certain way were being labelled as high value when Mr. Lessard knew absolutely nothing else about them.

“If we are lucky he will breed. He would have beautiful children, no?” Said Mr. Lessard as he locked up the cages.

Breed. Joe was revolted at the thought. How could anyone want to do such a thing in a place like this? Even if there was a boy of proper age there who Joe wanted to be with, he could hardly imagine himself taking his clothes off in plain view of strangers!

“Now, Frankie, let’s get to the dogs. How is the training going?” With that, the snatchers turned and left, and the entire room of miniatures breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Joe looked across the aisle and studied the members of the low value cage, still perplexed at what esoteric quality it was that separated Joe from them. The woman Mr. Lessard had insulted was gorgeous by miniature standards, with beautiful freckled cheeks and a heavyset build that was sure to survive the winter. Her son, too, was delightfully plump and sturdy, clearly in good health for his age. He tried to imagine what they would look like in a happier setting, smiling and playing games.

As he sat there and despised the fact that any of them were being commodified at all, he contemplated the ugliness of the world he lived in. Scanning the hopeless faces that surrounded him, he found the way they were being appraised and sorted oddly reminiscent of Tiny Town. There was a shallowness that was buried deep in the human soul, Joe thought. It compelled people to reduce other people to things, and that, he hypothesized, was the source of all the cruelty in the world.

As the woman and her son wept together in fear, he thought about the way Mr. Lessard had justified his cruelty towards them. Right now they hardly looked inspired to lose weight; they just looked sad and scared. How often it was that cruelty, like poisoned chocolate, was couched in superficial goodwill and feigned concern. Perhaps that way it was easier for people to convince themselves that the victims of the torment were deserving of it.

Joe sank down and shuffled into the corner as the girls in the cage eyed him with wary suspicion. He began to draw on the dust at the bottom with his finger just as he had done when he had been trapped in the jar. He thought of that poor woman in the cage across from him, and O’Grady, and the fire. He thought of Dawson at the podium and Danny at the stake. He thought of Herman, and the moment the buildings came crashing down upon him. He wondered if Herman was even alive after that, and further still he wondered if it was a bad thing that he would be sad to learn the giant wasn't. He wondered if it was a worse thing still that, in spite of everything that had happened between them, he still missed Herman deeply.

It was there in the cold of the cage that a vision came to him of a painting so visceral, so compelling, so heinous, that any viewer who saw it would not be able to look away. Joe tuned out the sobbing of the other miniatures as he sketched a thumbnail into the dust and filled in the blanks with his imagination, going over every detail again and again until its perfect image was emblazoned into this mind.

As Joe sat alone in his corner he knew he had no choice but to survive this ordeal. He had to make it out alive so that he could paint this image and mirror all the evils of the world back at anyone who was willing to look at it. Then, maybe, others would see the same ugliness that Joe saw. Maybe some of them would have the power to do something about it.

If others could see the world the way Joe saw it, maybe they could help make it a better place. Though he knew it was a long shot, all he could do was try his best and hope that the rest of the world would do the same for him in return.

It was all he could ask for in life.

Bandages soaked in tannic acid had been Geoffrey’s rather outdated idea of first aid, which caused the affected areas to form a hard, black shell over top. As Harry examined himself he could see that the left side of his jawline had gone black in a crescent-moon shape that mercifully stopped just short of the corner of his eye.  The lower half of his left ear was now a withered mockery of what it had once been. The burn wounds continued down the side of his neck and onto his back – these had been the parts where the collapsed building had pressed most heavily to his skin – and he had been lucky, he thought, that the fire had started on the face of the building opposite the side that had struck him. This good fortune had bought him time. Had Billy arrived any later the flames would have eaten all the way through the wood and his clothes would have caught, leaving him in even worse condition than he was currently in.

The physical pain was difficult to bear, and soon he was hunting through his cabinet for some colloidal silver and some painkillers. The emotional damage was immeasurable and it had no treatment. His mind wandered back to the family in the punch bowl, the carnage, the sounds, the smell. The horror of it was too big for his body and his mind began to slow. It was as though he were attached to the present on a thin thread, and dwelling for too long on the events of the last two days threatened to sever it. He would float through the day, he told himself. He would do his best to be a real doctor, and a good one at that, even to the likes of Danny Smalls. Anything less and he would lose the war he had been fighting with himself for nearly ten years.

When an impatient knock at the door pulled him away from his painkillers before he could take a single dose he knew the moment of truth had arrived. He steeled his nerves, approached the front hallway, and prepared himself to be annoyed beyond measure the moment it opened. It turned out that he didn’t even need to lift a finger for Danny to deliver on that front. Harry’s hearing was magnified, as it so often was when his headaches came about, and he heard the visitors’ voices through the door clear as day.

“Uncle Marty, why can’t Danny stay with us?” He heard a young voice say from behind the door.

“Because he’s very sick and needs to be with a doctor.” Marty explained.

“He’s lying to you, kid. This guy’s not a real doctor!” There was the voice of Mr. Smalls, and Harry’s face contorted into a grimace at the sound of it.

“Danny-” Said Marty.

“He puts tinies in jars, Mikey. Keeps them as specimens. He doesn’t even have a licence!”

“Danny!” Marty’s scolding grew in intensity.

“He exploded your uncle’s motor car, too. That’s why we had to take a taxi.”

"Really?" The little boy chirped.

Harry’s fingers curled around the doorknob and squeezed it so tightly that, if said doorknob were Danny Smalls, he would have squeezed the little man to death. Then he breathed in deeply, just as he did whenever his father was coming over, then swung the door open with a flourish. He beamed at the smug little American ass-hat with all the fake zest he could muster.

“Mister Smalls! What a pleasure. You look… alive.” He said as he locked eyes with the tiny man standing in Marty’s palms.

It was the closest thing to a compliment Harry could pay him. Danny’s face was swollen and bruised, and his own fake smile matched Harry’s, he noted, though Danny’s was arguably faker. The miniature now sported not one, but two obnoxiously charming, microscopic gold teeth – a canine and first premolar, to be exact. Harry’s own teeth began to grind at the sight of them.

“…Harry.” Danny replied, barely maintaining his own feigned enthusiasm. “You’re looking awfully vertical yourself.”

“Are you a real doctor?” Interjected a young boy of about seven years old with a messy bird’s nest of blonde hair, who Harry pegged as Mikey.

Marty cleared his throat uncomfortably from where he stood at the center of it all, and extended his hands towards Harry as he lectured the boy.

“Now now, Mikey, doctor Avery here is a very competent professional. I’m sure Danny will be well taken care of.”

“Oh of course he will be, Mr. Hammerson.” Said Harry as the skeptical child monitored his every move.

He held out his right hand for Danny to step onto it and-

“Not like that!” Danny barked.

Harry’s smile soured and he added a second hand into the mix.

“NOT LIKE THAT!” Danny responded, and swatted Harry’s fingers with the hairpin when they drew close.

Mikey was giggling at his misfortune all the while.

“What’s the matter?” Asked Harry.

“Straighten out your fingers.” Danny ordered. “I can’t climb over things like Joe can. Hold them like you’re feeding a horse. You ever fed a horse? You know how to feed a horse, don’tcha?”

“I know how to do it! I could show you.” Mikey volunteered, which only added insult to injury.

Harry, who had been born in a remote hamlet in rural Manitoba, felt his right eyelid twitch at the mere question. The absurdity of it! Had Harry ever fed a horse? The horse named Diamond that pulled him and his siblings to the schoolhouse on a wagon every day? The family horse that Harry fed each morning? That horse?

He looked down his nose at the spoiled little movie star and through his bared teeth he growled,

“Yes, Mr. Smalls. I know how to feed a horse.”

Then he straightened his fingers out as flat as they could possibly go and simmered with frustration while Danny stroked his chin and evaluated them.

“Okay. Tilt your hands outward a little bit more and I’ll get on.” Danny said.

“Thank the Lord.” Said Marty.

There was no doubt in Harry’s mind that Marty was glad to be rid of Danny. He could tell from the dark circles under the poor man’s eyes that the little tyrant had been keeping him up at night. As Danny limped onto Harry’s hands, he could sense from the feeling of his gait alone that he shouldn’t even be on his feet.

“Hinterhaus ordered bedrest.” Said Marty, reading Harry’s look of growing dismay.

“So why isn’t he in bed?” Asked Harry.

Marty raised his eyebrows and gave Harry a look from over his spectacles that seemed to say, you know damn well why he isn’t in bed.

“Have fun.” Was Marty’s answer.

With that, the lawyer turned and left with Mikey in tow.

“Can I stay too?” The little boy pleaded. “Please? I wanna stay and play with Danny.”

“Later. Let the poor man rest!” Marty said, and as the two set off down the street Danny called after them.

“Annoy your uncle for me, will ya’? He hid those toy soldiers of yours in his desk at the office, by the way.”

That got an impish smile out of Mikey, who was no doubt learning well from his role model.

“Wait! Mr. Hammerson!” Harry stood helplessly in the doorway as the words escaped him.

He could feel Danny’s weight in his hands, his unsteady balance, his shaky right foot. He knew that Danny needed some form of monitoring from someone, but when the two stopped and looked back at him, it took everything in him not to say, please take him back, I’ve made a terrible mistake. His own sense of shame was the only thing stopping him from doing so.

“…I’m sorry I exploded your motor car.” Was what Harry said instead.

That, to Harry’s surprise, was met with hysterical laughter from Marty Hammerson.

“Don’t you worry about me, doctor. I’m sure to bag a landmark insurance case thanks to you.” He said, and kept laughing all the way down the street.

Lawyers, Harry noted, rivaled only miniatures in their eccentricity. He let the door sing shut behind him and looked down at Danny, whose displeasure matched his own. Noting that Danny preferred Harry’s right hand, he let his left hand fall to his side and although he saw it coming a mile off, he resisted the urge to flinch when Danny rapped his thumb with his walking stick and gave him more orders.

“Walk very slowly, now – ow! And don’t make any sudden movements.” Said Danny.

Harry, who was all too eager to put him down, chauffeured him to the parlour table as smoothly as he could manage and lowered him onto it.

“That’s good – that’s good.” Said his new backseat driver. “Don’t tilt your hand like that. Think of it like an elevator platform. There! Thank you.”

Danny hobbled off of Harry’s hand. As Harry knelt before the coffee table, he watched him turn and look up at him as if to study him.

Neither man said it, but it was obvious they were both thinking the same thing:

Now what?

Harry rose, licked his chapped lips, and tried to come up with a plan on the spot.

“I’m going to get you a bed.” He said.

“You don’t already have one?”

Harry scowled over his shoulder at Danny as he left.

“That’s just how we do things in Canada, I’m afraid. If you want luxury medical care, go back to Hollywood and pay a premium for it.”

To Harry’s immense satisfaction his words appeared to get a rise out of Danny. He watched in delight as the movie star’s face reddened and he raised a finger to protest.

“Hey, you listen here, Henry-” Danny began.

“Harry.”

“Whatever!”

Harry was long gone before Danny could utter another word of his rebuttal. In the upstairs bathroom he fetched the hand towel, which he had kept freshly laundered, and the soap dish, then took a moment to appreciate the wrongness of what he was about to do. He had been keeping the bed comfy and fresh for whenever Joe decided to join him in the bedroom again. To give it to Danny felt almost like a betrayal of sorts, much as Joe would have done the same thing.

When he returned to the parlour his eyes fell on a headline in the paper: RIVERDALE ZOO RESCUED FROM RUIN.

Danny had spotted the headline too and clicked his tongue indignantly at it.

“An entire town burns to the ground and everyone’s carrying on about the firefighters saving the zoo. Never mind that they were too late to save the people! Go figure.” He said.

As Danny tutted over the tabloid Harry took a moment to evaluate him in detail. His face was covered in bruises, and Harry could tell from the bandaging on his head that he had likely suffered a concussion. He wasn’t even using his right leg now, opting to put all his weight onto the hairpin instead. A tailored tan suit covered the rest of him, but Harry could only guess from the way that Danny was clutching his side that he had taken a share of abdominal damage as well.

By the time Harry set the soap dish onto the table all the pettiness had drained out of him. Jealousy or no jealousy, licence or no licence, healing the sick and injured was simply what he did.

“Could you sit down on this for me, Mr. Smalls?” He said, as though he were addressing any other patient.

Danny turned around, and his face twisted into a smirk at the sight of the soap dish.

“This your idea of a hospital bed?” He quipped.

Harry didn’t bother to tell him it had been his idea of a miniature’s bed. He could already guess how Danny would react.

“If you don’t like it I could always send you back to Marigold Acres.” He argued instead.

That managed to extract some degree of compliance out of Danny. Chagrinned, Harry’s patient hopped over to the soap dish and sat down on it with his bad leg sticking out, scowling at it as if in anticipation. He seemed to know what Harry was about to say next.

“That leg doesn’t look very good.”

Harry could faintly hear Danny breathe the words not this again through his new gold teeth. He glared up at Harry with all the hatred a Hollywood manly man could possibly harbour for a doctor trying to help him and said,

“Come on. Don’t we have bigger things to worry about? Don’t you wanna find out where Joe’s gone off to?”

Harry did want to do that as a matter of fact, and as Danny sat there and scowled at him Harry could only resent the fact he was stuck on babysitting duty instead.

“I do, and I plan to, but if you want to come with me you’ll need to be able to walk.” Harry said.

He ventured over to his black bag and pulled out a lens from his ophthalmoscope, then loomed over Danny as politely as he could as he examined him through it. With the gears in his swimming head finally starting to turn, he knelt down closer and extended a hand towards the injured leg, causing Danny to lurch back and reach for his hairpin as if to strike. Harry froze.

“I’m not going to touch it.” He assured his patient. “I just want to know what happened to it.”

“Torn ligament.” Danny admitted, and Harry grimaced at those words. “It was almost healed too, then it had to go and get worse on me.”

“And whose fault was that?” Harry sneered as Danny’s leg shook under the magnifier.

He couldn’t help but marvel at the details the lens was able to pick up. Now he could see every seam on Danny’s pant leg. 

“Hollywood’s when you get down to it.” Said Danny, as Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “The first time I tore it, they gave me two weeks to get better. After that, I had to get back to dancing.”

Harry winced at the words first time.

“And you listened to them?” He asked.

“Of course I did!” Said Danny. “I’d be out of a job if I didn’t. I’m no Charlie Chaplin. Tiny guys like me, we’re replaceable. A dime a dozen. We might fetch a pretty penny here and there if we have a nice face, but that’s all we’re good for.” Harry could see that Danny had gone rigid with anger through the lens. “They buy your face first and then they mold you into whatever they want you to be, and there’s plenty of faces just like mine in the world.”

Harry set the lens down as he listened. He was finding it harder and harder not to feel a little sorry for Danny.

“If the execs say you gotta dance, you dance for ‘em, and you do it all with a smile on your face.” Danny concluded.

Harry had no idea what to make of it. He had imagined Hollywood to be a magical place of fun and excess, not the nightmare Danny was describing.

“How long have you been doing this to yourself?” Harry’s voice was shaky with bewilderment.

“Since Taking the Cake, so a little over a year before I stopped.”

Harry found it unsurprising that Taking the Cake had been the culprit from what little he had seen of it. Now he wished he had paid closer attention at the movies.

“That was the one set in a kitchen, wasn’t it?” He said, hoping to rope Danny in to sharing one of his war stories, and Danny lit up.

“Yeah! You’ve seen it, huh? Didn’t know you were a fan of my stuff.” He laughed as Harry internally bristled. “It’s that part with the waffle iron, where my leg gets stuck in it and my pals are pulling me out. In one of the takes I really was stuck, and they nearly pulled my leg clean off by accident.” Danny scratched his head. “I think that was the one that made it to the final cut, come to think of it.”

Harry hadn’t been paying attention to that part of the film, but it would be sure to haunt him the next time he came across it. It was eerie to think that any director would be willing to show a real accident to an audience.

“It’d get worse, then it would get better, then it would get even worse than it had been.” Danny continued. “Then it almost healed, almost… and then the fire happened and undid all my progress.” Danny gestured unceremoniously to his injured leg. “And that’s my leg. Might as well cut the damn thing off at this point.”

“I don’t think we have to go that far…” Harry trailed off and scratched at his own bandages as he tried to think. “I could try splinting it if you’ll let me, or… help you splint it yourself.” He added, hoping it would entice the skeptical looking Danny to agree to it.

“I dunno, Doc… you’re kinda big. And unlicensed.” Danny tilted his head from side to side as he sized Harry up.

“I’ve treated Joe before.” Harry said. “And you saw that interview. You know the CPSO has a vendetta against miniatures in the office.”

Although Danny’s nose was wrinkled, Harry knew he had him when he said, “okay, just don’t tie it too tight.”

“I won’t.” Harry assured him. “Whatever you say goes.”

“That’s a new one.”

Harry couldn’t deny that there was a small sense of satisfaction that came from tending to Danny like a wounded bird. At the very least, the little rascal wouldn’t have any right to turn the children against him now, provided Harry splinted him properly.

Of course, this raised the question of how to splint him. Harry was hardly one to entertain guests, so he had no toothpicks available. Even if he did, he questioned how well such a thing would scale to Danny’s leg. He leaned in close once again with the lens in hand, his fingers creeping closer towards his guarded patient.

“I’m not going to touch you.” Harry repeated, though Danny reached for his hairpin all the same.

As he studied Danny he was fascinated by how differently built he was compared to Joe; tall and sturdy-looking as Danny was, he would have presumed Joe to be the dancer between them if he didn’t know any better.

“Hold on.” Harry said.

Taking mental inventory of all the bits and bobs lying about the house, Harry’s mind landed on the wire that held up his picture frames. It would be the right size and thickness to support Danny’s weight, but still bendable enough for Harry that, if he was lucky, he could form a makeshift brace out of it. The photograph of aunt Emily that hung in the hallway made a worthy sacrifice for his experiment. He took the portrait down and haphazardly cut the wire from the back to size with a pen knife. The shiny metal wire reminded him of the leg braces he encountered on polio patients, and he twisted each wire into a capital-B shape, hoping that he could run some gauze through each loop and curve them around the back of Danny’s calf and thigh to keep the leg from bending. He then left a small length of wire at the bottom that he bent to each side to sit underneath the foot.

It would take care of the leg well enough, Harry reasoned, but it wouldn’t do much for the pain. His mind wandered back to the salix bark that he had harvested on his outing with Joe. He set the kettle down to boil in the hopes some pain management might make Danny easier to work with. As he dug around for gauze to cut down to size, the pain from Harry’s own wounds threatened to wear his patience thin.

He returned to the parlour with his supplies in hand and his blood ran cold when he was met with an empty table.

“Danny!?”

Harry’s eyes darted from the couch, to the piano, to the staircase in search of any kind of movement. A million nightmare scenarios played out between his ears as he wondered what he would say to Marty and the Hills in the event of Danny’s untimely death. Yet he owed it to Joe to keep himself under control, and that was what Harry tried his best to do as he scanned the floor in search of the severely injured man who was about the size of his thumb, thankful that he didn’t own a cat. 

Then there was a rustling sound from the hallway behind him, and Harry turned around to see that Danny was making a bold, though no less pathetic attempt to climb onto the telephone stand from the cord on the phone as Joe often did.

“Danny, what are you doing?” He asked.

“I need your telephone directory.” Danny grunted.

“Why?”

“So I can cross-reference the names in it with the ones on Dawson’s list.” Danny explained as he threw all his upper body strength into heaving himself up the cord.

It didn’t get him very far. He made it half an inch and slid back down, only to start over again. From where he crouched over Danny Harry could see the wild look in the tiny man’s silver eyes, and he couldn’t even bring himself to resent him now. He could only feel sorry for him, for the both of them were truly stuck in the same boat.

After one final attempt, Danny relented.

“I know you’re gonna say no, but can you grab it for me?” He asked.

Harry savoured the way Danny lit up in surprise when he took it down for him. Then he sternly rolled it up and jabbed it in his direction.

“Only once I’ve splinted your leg.” Harry said.

Danny nodded reluctantly, and Harry held out his hands as flat as they would go and carried him back to the table.

“I’m surprised you don’t have walkways like the Hills do.” Said Danny. “Lifts, too. I bet Joe would love those. That way he could get around the whole house if he wanted to.”

“I’m sure he would…” Harry trailed off, stricken with guilt at the fact that he had never even thought to build any.

As he glanced about the parlour, he realized there were precious few places where a miniature could reach eye level, and Harry made note of it for later as he placed Danny back on the table and set the directory down along with him. That was when the kettle whistled to a boil and dealt Harry psychological harm in the process. He kept his eyes glued to Danny for as long as he could as he raced to shut the dreadful thing up. Remembering Billy’s ginger tea recipe, he adapted it accordingly and tossed in a coin-shaped slice of the bark. He could only hope that the end result wouldn’t turn Danny too green in the face. To his surprise, when he returned to the parlour he found that Danny was right where he had left him this time, though his eyes were still glued to the phone directory.

Harry sank down to his knees and looked from the wires and gauze to Danny.

“So.” He began. “How are we going to do this?”

“You’re the doctor.” Was Danny’s curt reply.

“Yes, and I’ve heard a thing or two about what you like to do to doctors.” Those words got Danny to crack a smile, oddly enough. “I have two wire splints here. You see them? I have some gauze as well. How would you like me to do this?”

Danny appeared puzzled at first, but as Harry’s cheeks began to redden he quickly got the message.

“Well, I’m not taking my pants off if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Relieved, Harry nodded and readied his splints.

“I’ll tie it on over your trousers then, though it won’t be as secure. I’ll have to pull it tight but not too tight. Let me know if it hurts or if your leg feels cold or tingly.”

“Whatever you say, Henry. Let’s just get this over with.” Danny sighed.

“That’s doctor Henry to you.” Harry beckoned Danny forward. “Sit down, and keep your leg as straight as you can…”

Deciding Danny’s trouser leg would provide reasonable padding, Harry took the thin ribbon of gauze and loosely threaded it through the loops in the wire splints, then began to tie the wires onto Danny’s leg. He worked slowly, gradually bending the microscopic loops to conform to the injured leg as he went, taking great care not to make the damage even worse as he did so. Danny, to Harry’s surprise, hardly protested. It wasn’t like treating Joe, who kept his teeth gritted and his eyes shut. Danny was all too used to the presence of giant fingers, to such an extent that he struck up conversation almost immediately.

“So… did you really put Joe in a jar?” Danny asked as casually as one would ask about the weather.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut and stopped tying.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’re a bad guy or anything. It’s just…” Danny’s tone became cloyingly tactful. “You know what you giants used to use jars to do to us, right? What you still use jars to do to us...?”

Harry ran a hand through his hair and returned his focus to his work as sweat gathered on his temples.

“I can hazard a guess.” Said Harry.

“So why’d you do it?”

That was the million-dollar question Harry couldn’t answer, and it cut through him like a knife.

“I lost my temper. I wasn’t thinking.” Was the most he could say of it.

As his large fingers kept on threading the gauze through the loops, he appreciated how delicate even Danny, the tallest and broadest miniature he had encountered yet, appeared in comparison. It was only now in hindsight that he appreciated how scary those hands must have been to poor Joe when he had reached out and snatched him.

“What else did Joe tell you?” Said Harry.

Danny snorted.

“Joe didn’t tell me about that. Billy did.”

“…oh.”

The splint was only halfway tied, and Harry feared that tying the rest of it would take an eternity. To rush the process would cause harm to Danny, so he gritted his teeth and kept working slowly and steadily.

“He didn’t tell me about it be mean.” Danny said. “Hell, Billy’s anger issues have anger issues.” The miniature laughed. “He just… y’know, he told me to be careful. That’s how he is.”

Harry could hardly fault Billy for doing such a thing. He would have done the same thing with Joe, he now realized.

“I wish I knew why I did it.” Harry said, more to himself than to Danny.

“Maybe that’s the wrong thing to be wondering about.” Danny suggested.

Harry furrowed his brow in response.

“Maybe – ” Danny grunted in what Harry thought was pain, and Harry withdrew his hands momentarily “ – what you need to sort out first, is why you don’t do that stuff ninety-nine percent of the time. I mean… look.” He gestured to Harry’s frozen hands. “You could mess my leg right up if you really wanted to, you could make sure I never walk again, but I can tell by the way you’re handling this you care too much to do that.”

Harry nodded, though that prickly, possessive part of himself bristled. Did Danny really think they were friends all of a sudden?

“May I keep going?” He asked.

“You may.” Danny said.

Jars. They were another thing that had been given little mention in On the Life and Death of the Miniature. Harry wished he had asked Joe about them when he had the chance, and about Saint Loretta, and everything Joe had experienced from his miniature worldview. The realization sank into Harry that he had fancied Joe on a superficial level for his art and his size, but not for the real nuance of his existence, yet it was the latter he missed the most now that he was gone.

“Joe mentioned a saint of his once. Saint Loretta. Do you know anything about her?” Asked Harry.

Harry pulled the threaded gauze tighter and monitored Danny’s face closely as he did so. The man was frustratingly hard to read. No matter what Harry did to him, he just kept on smiling.

“Never heard of her.” Danny replied.

With the gentle tying of a bow, the splint was complete.

"Now we just have to test it out." Said Harry. Noting that the hairpin had fallen several inches away from where Danny sat, he motioned to pick it up and move it closer to him. "I'm just going to..."

"Don't touch that!" Danny barked.

His voice rang out louder than Harry had ever heard it before. The giant stopped, and looked from Danny to the hairpin. Although he would have a dreadful time standing up without it, a look of genuine fear had crept into Danny's face for the first time since his arrival, and his one outstretched arm shook in alarm. Thoroughly confused, all Harry could do was draw back his hand yet again.

Danny rubbed his forehead and sighed.

"Look, I get that it's your house and I get that you're the doctor and everything, but could you do me a favour? If I don't ask you to do something for me, don't do it, all right?"

A frown spread over Harry's face and Danny crossed his arms in defiance.

"Why? So you can gallivant about when I'm not looking?" Harry protested. "You shouldn't be on your feet, even you know that, and you shouldn’t be stumbling around either. If I don't help you up then-"

"-then whatever happens to me is my choice, and you'll just have to respect that."

Much to Harry's consternation he could only watch as Danny scooted across the table towards the hairpin.

"Maybe Joe liked to be coddled like that, but I don't.” He said.

Coddled. The word struck a nerve with Harry. He hadn’t really coddled Joe, had he?

“You don't understand the damage that kinda stuff does to you. One minute some kind soul is helping you pick up your walking stick, and the next thing you know they start making up your own mind for you. Deciding what you get to eat, where you get to go, when you get to use the bathroom... all of it for your own good, of course." Harry watched as Danny took the hairpin in his hands and slowly pried himself off of the floor with it, hoisting himself onto his good leg first and then wedging his splinted leg underneath himself until he was able to put weight on it. "It's like a trap, Harry. It's a cage. It closes in on you and you never get out again. Before you know it, you're a person who's treated no better than a thing."

Danny exuded defiance as he stood on his splinted leg, and Harry's heart sank as he took in his words. He thought of all the times Joe had defied him like that. All the times Harry had thought himself justified in coming to his rescue. Something Joe said on the night of the argument weighed heavy on his conscience.

You're just like those other doctors. Making me prove shit to you. My honesty, my capabilities, my own fucking humanity, and no matter what I do it's never enough! You don't want it to be enough because your mind's already been made up!

Joe had been right: Harry's mind had been made up. He had made the mistake of thinking he knew what Joe really wanted, or what he really needed, or what he really thought. Now here he was, doing the very same thing to Danny.

"I... I'm sorry. I didn't realize..." He muttered.

Danny limped irritably around the tabletop as he tested out the splint.

"Don't apologize. I've heard a million apologies, Henry. Just do better. That's how I'll know I can trust you." Danny said, and stopping cold he added, "Now that that's over with, can you unroll this phone directory for me?"

-

The splint and the salix had done the trick to mollify Danny, at least for the moment. The man still refused to sleep, Harry noted, though he had slowed down considerably. By the time afternoon rolled around Danny was reclining in the soap dish with his leg elevated and using the hairpin to flip through the pages of the phone directory. With his own wounds still throbbing, Harry seized this golden opportunity to take a dose of morphine and lie down for a spell. As he walked past the ring in the upstairs bedroom, now reunited with the diamond that Harry had haphazardly set onto the shank, he thought back on what Danny had told him. What had it been, Harry wondered, that had made him lose his temper? What was it that didn’t make him lose his temper?

Obnoxious whistling filled his ears. Danny was all the way downstairs, but with Harry’s heightened senses the little bastard may as well have been sitting on his shoulder and whistling straight into his ear canal. He could feel his temper rising again, and his eyes wandered to the remains of the jar. He imagined himself with an intact one, lifting Danny up as he had Joe, telling the little man off with fire in his eyes. Something felt off about it. It wasn’t the sort of thing Harry could motivate himself to do at this point. Danny was still a person to Harry, too much of one to put into a jar like a caterpillar.

As the whistling pierced through Harry’s eardrums, he recognized the tune of the song. He could vaguely recall the lyrics.

“Life is a book that we study

Some of its leaves bring a sigh

There it was written, my buddy

That we must part, you and I…”

Harry’s mind wandered to the recent string of endings in his life. His father had rejected him, his licence had been suspended, and all the while the world had whispered into Harry's ear that Joe was something less than human whose judgment was not to be trusted. Harry had killed his entire relationship with Joe by believing it. When he thought about Billy Hill, a man whose anger issues allegedly had anger issues, who had effortlessly rejected those notions and won the trust of an entire town of tinies nonetheless, Harry felt only envy. He wondered how Billy had done it, and what deficiency in himself was keeping him from doing it.

It wasn’t fear alone that had driven him to trap Joe, he realized; the fear had been only one piece of the puzzle. Harry had put Joe in that jar because he had looked at him and seen a thing instead of a person; a lousy sneak-thief perhaps, a threat to the way the world ought to be most certainly, but not the friend that he was. Furious with himself, he took the broken ring and shoved it into his desk drawer, then eased himself down onto the bed.

It would take time and effort to repair things with Joe, if Harry could ever find him at all. For now, all he could do was languish about in a nauseous haze. His stomach turned at one very important thought: if he was to have any hope of regaining Joe's trust, he would have to start by winning Danny's. In the meantime he would carry forward as he always did whenever he was faced with loss. He would do so quietly, with an empty space carved out of his soul that would never heal again.