The Boy in the Pantry (1/4)

**I would personally recommend hitting the little paragraph symbol up on the top right, it makes it a little easier on the eyes.**


“Eeyowch!” Ezekiel quickly clamped his hand over his mouth, glancing around the room. Thankfully, no one in the house was close enough to hear him. When he was sure he wasn’t going to make any more unwanted outbursts, he slowly lowered his hand and took a deep breath, sitting down and tenderly upending his foot. A large sliver of bloody wood stuck out of the flesh, longer than his index finger. He winced as he gingerly removed the shard from his foot, a small trickle of red flowing from the wound. He tossed the spike under the couch with an irritated look on his face.

Great, he thought. Way to go, slick. He cursed himself for his carelessness as he gently massaged the aching flesh around the wound. He wiped his foot clean with his tattered shirt, gently applying pressure to the minor, yet painful, injury. All the while, he kept a careful eye on the doorways of the room, watching for the inhabitants of the home. He wouldn’t know what they would do if they found him, but he was sure that it wouldn’t be good. He tried not to think about it.

Once the bleeding had stopped, he carefully eased his weight onto the wounded leg. He could still run if he had to, but he would do best to avoid any strenuous activity until it healed. Reopening the wound would leave a trail of blood wherever he went; an event that he would prefer to avoid. Staying alert, he began to quietly continue towards his destination: the pantry at the other end of the room. To the inhabitants of the house, the door to the pantry would only be a few steps away; to Ezekiel, the distance seemed closer to the size of a football field.

Ezekiel had plenty of time to think as he slowly made his way across the monstrous room. The couch would be normal-sized to the owners appeared to be the size of a small house, the space underneath large enough for Ezekiel to walk upright as he made his way to the food storage. He had survived in this foreign world undetected for the past three weeks… Or was it four? The days seemed to blend together. Before then… Well, Ezekiel still wasn’t sure what the hell had happened.

---

It was an ordinary Friday afternoon. Ezekiel had just gotten home from high school, and he was studying in his room, preparing for his upcoming finals. His aunt was rarely home, always busy with work, but Ezekiel didn’t mind. The responsibility of caring for Ezekiel was thrust upon her when his parents passed away while he was very young, and she was his only living relative. Despite having no children of her own, she was always kind to Ezekiel, and he had grown to think of her as his actual mother.

Since his aunt usually stayed at her office until pretty late in the evening, Ezekiel was responsible for himself for most of the time. He knew he had to study for his math final that was coming up pretty soon, but he decided that he would rather take advantage of the daylight while the sun was still up. He packed himself a sandwich and a bottle of water and went for a walk in the forest that surrounded his home. His aunt lived in the middle of nowhere, her home several miles away from the city where she worked. He suspected that she probably chose the home because of its separation from the rest of the world, since she already spent most of her day surrounded by other people.

Ezekiel loved it. He thought the home had a quaint feel to it, like a cottage in the middle of the woods. And while it certainly wasn’t isolated, he enjoyed being able to go outside and breathe clean air. He spent a lot of his free time exploring the forest alone, since he hadn’t made many friends at his new high school. Almost everyone there had already ‘buddied up’ into their own little groups, and Ezekiel had joined halfway through his senior year. He only had a few more weeks of school left, so he didn’t mind being on his own for a little while. He still kept in contact with plenty of his old friends, and they would talk online until the long hours of the night, or until his aunt came in and told him to get his hind in bed. He was content with these long-distance friendships, at least until he went to college. That was another big thing on his mind. Ezekiel had happily been accepted to the first college on his list, to which he had applied ‘Undeclared.’ The boy had no idea what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and he felt like he only had a few more years to think about it. That, along with the stress from finals, was enough to put anyone on edge, but the forest around the home provided the solace he needed to get through the weeks.

He had been walking along a familiar path through the trees, munching on his sandwich as he walked, when he noticed something was off. He stopped on the trail and glanced around, wondering what had set him off. He heard the soft rustling of the wind through the trees, the leaves rustling against each other, his own steady breathing… And nothing else. He frowned. Where were the birds, the insects? The life in the forest always made a constant symphony of chirps and buzzes, but today, the forest lay eerily silent, with nothing but the trees, the blowing wind and… something else.
Ezekiel concentrated as he tried to put a name to the sound. A low humming permeated the air around him, unlike any insect he had heard. It wavered on the low edge of his register, barely within his earshot. As he listened, the sound began to grow louder. He looked around for the source of the noise, but the sound seemed to be coming from every direction. The thrumming sound continued to amplify in volume, seeming to shake the very air around him until it became a deafening roar. Ezekiel remembered clamping his hands over his ears, trying to shut out the sound, but the noise seemed to pierce through his body and shake him to his very core. He remembered falling to his knees in pain as the sound hammered against his eardrums, his hands shaking uncontrollably against his humming skull. The last thing he remembered was screaming soundlessly as a brilliant flash of light obscured his vision.

When he regained consciousness, Ezekiel opened his eyes to find that the blue sky had been replaced by a white ceiling, and that the trees around him had all vanished. A throbbing pain pulsated through his head with every heartbeat, and his headache only worsened when he sat up. He groaned as a whole new set of pains from his back joined in with his headache. He massaged his temples as he tried to get his bearings. A quick glance around told him that he was in an unfamiliar building of staggering size. He was sitting in the middle of an enormous hallway, hundreds of feet long, and that the ceiling seemed to scrape the sky. He flexed his shoulders trying to loosen them, when he realized he still had his backpack on. Remembering that he brought his cellphone with him, Ezekiel flipped the pack off and started rustling through its pockets before finding the device. He pressed the power button, but the screen stayed black. Battery’s dead, he thought, sighing.

As he zipped his pack back up, he tried to remember how he had gotten inside the unfamiliar building, when sound of loud, thumping of footsteps began walking in his direction. The boy stood up to greet whoever was approaching, but his instincts began told him something was off about the whole scenario. On edge, he listened as the footsteps grew louder, strong enough to shake the hardwood floor that he stood on. Whatever was walking towards him, it was huge, way bigger than he was. Unsure of what to do, Ezekiel watched as the owner of the footsteps walked around the corner and down the hallway towards him. Ezekiel gasped as he watched an enormous, gold-scaled dragon walk into the hallway. Its four clawed feet thumping against the wood floorboards as it turned and walked towards the shocked boy, who was still gaping at the creature before him. The dragon was easily a hundred feet long and more than fifty feet tall, and each of its claws were almost as long as Ezekiel was tall. It had a long, powerful tail that swayed in rhythm with its steps, as if helping to keep it balanced. Two enormous wings sat folded neatly atop its back, the webbing slightly lighter than the shimmering scales that clad the magnificent beast. If the dragon wanted to, it could easily hold Ezekiel in the palm of one of its clawed hands. The colossal reptile moved down the hallway with a powerful grace, crossing the distance in several long strides that would have taken the boy minutes to traverse. Ezekiel remained frozen as the creature reached him, one of its huge claws mere feet away from his body, close enough that the he could observe the individual grains in its iridescent scales; then the clawed foot rose up and moved away from him as the dragon stepped past him, continuing down the hallway with its tail swishing rhythmically behind it.

The whole event couldn’t have lasted for more than a few seconds. As soon as it rounded the corner into the next room, Ezekiel gasped for breath. He hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath since the creature came into view, but his lungs were screaming for attention. The dragon acted as though he hadn’t existed, so Ezekiel assumed that it hadn’t seen him. While trying to calm his hammering heart, the human thought about a few things. The dragon acted like it hadn’t seen him, which probably meant that it didn’t know he existed at all. This mean that whatever had brought him here, it probably wasn’t the dragon. The hallway was sized proportionally to the dragon, so Ezekiel assumed that the dragon lived here. Which likely means, Ezekiel concluded glumly, that I am intruding, and I still have no idea how I got here. He figured that the wisest option would be to avoid being detected at all and to have a look around; maybe he could find an exit and slip out before the dragon even noticed. As intrigued as he was about a real, live dragon living inside what appeared to be a giant house, Ezekiel wasn’t sure how a dragon might treat unwanted visitors, and the human cared more about his own safety than indulging his curiosity. He scurried to the nearest wall and slinked down the oversized hallway towards the room the dragon had just left.

After a few minutes of silent travel, Ezekiel turned the corner to see a large living room, complete with several couches, chairs, lamps, and a television. Ezekiel was comforted by the familiar sight of technology, even if the television screen was a hundred times his size. Several closed doors were connected to the room, along with a small reception area in front of a pair of slightly larger double-doors. Figuring that was the entrance to the house, Ezekiel began to silently trek across the room, staying close to the wall as he did so. He was almost halfway to the doors when he heard the sound of several voices coming from outside, joined with the sound of jingling keys. Ezekiel panicked, searching for a hiding place; he had already gotten lucky out in the open with the dragon, and he didn’t want to press his luck. He spied a small crack in the lining of the bottom of the wall located several feet in front of him, and he dashed to it just as the door was opening. He had only just wiggled his body through the hole when several stomping feet rushed past him, followed by a concerned voice.

“Dinner’s at six, okay? And no running down the halls!” A mature, feminine voice called out, followed by several distant replies that sounded vaguely affirmative. From his little hole in the wall, Ezekiel had a decent view of the living room while staying completely out-of-sight. He watched as a pair of reptilian legs walked past his hiding place. Ezekiel frowned. Only a pair? The first dragon was a quadruped. He risked a little peek out of the crack to take a look at the creature walking across the living room to one of the doors.

The reptile was definitely a dragon, but it was substantially smaller than the gold dragon. It stood on two clawed feet and walked upright, its stature vaguely human with a serpentine tail curling up just before it reached the floor. Ezekiel guessed the smaller dragon stood somewhere around forty feet tall, and it was clad in light turquoise scales and had two small wings that were folded comfortably behind its back. Atop its head were two small horns, or at least, small proportionally to its body; the horns were probably longer than Ezekiel was tall. It carried several plastic bags in its clawed hands, opening to a door directly across from Ezekiel to reveal a large pantry. While the smaller reptile began to unload the contents of the bags into various shelves, a large blue-scaled dragon, just as big as the gold dragon from earlier, stepped into view.

“Thanks for helping, honey.” the larger dragon spoke with the same voice from earlier.

“No problem, Mom,” the smaller dragon responded with a higher feminine voice as she finished unloading the bags. She turned to the larger dragon, who gave her a loving peck on her forehead. Ezekiel was struck by how much larger the mother dragon was from her daughter; the larger dragon was more than ten times her size.

“How was school?” The mother asked, stepping past her daughter into the pantry and glancing amongst the shelves. As she did, Ezekiel began to watch in wonder as the large dragon’s eyes flashed a dazzling blue for a moment, and several cans and boxes began floating off the shelves.

“Meh, you know. Studying for finals and all that,” the young dragon responded, completely unperturbed as several more food items levitated past her head as her mother stepped out of the pantry.

“Well, do you have anything exciting planned for the summer?” The mother asked as she led the floating foodstuffs towards another closed doorway, not breaking stride as the door swung open with another brief flash of light from her eyes.

Her daughter shrugged. “I dunno. Probably hang out with friends, or whatever,” she replied vaguely as she followed her mother into what Ezekiel assumed was the kitchen. The human waited for the door to close behind them before slipping out of his hiding place in the wall. He glanced at the direction they had originally entered and smiled; one of the double doors was barely open, letting in a thin ray of sunshine from outside. He made a mad dash for the door, which slowed to a steady jog once he realized how far his destination was. After two nerve-wracking minutes, Ezekiel reached the open door without any other distractions. As he took his first long awaited step out the door and towards freedom, he froze, a cold feeling clutching the pit of his stomach.

The view of the outside world seemed completely normal at first glance. He stood on a brick porch that had steps down to a brick pathway that cut through a well-tended lawn, providing an open view into the neighborhood. The pathway led up to the sidewalk, which led up and down the street running perpendicular to the porch. The street, which stretched as far as Ezekiel could see in either direction, was lined with houses of various makes and models, each having some unique style without particularly grabbing one’s attention.

The world outside looked totally ordinary, except everything that Ezekiel could lay his eyes on was huge. It would have taken Ezekiel minutes of running and climbing to reach the street, and several more to reach the other side. Just one of the houses was staggering enough, but an entire street was almost too much for the human to comprehend. But the sight that disturbed him the most was the lawn. From the inexplicably large houses to the enormous dragons dragons stomping around, the lawn, as large as a football field, grabbed the human’s eyes first and froze him in his shoes. Each individual blade of grass was about as thick as his wrist. The ferns that decorated some of the other porches were tall enough for him to climb. The few sparse trees that decorated the rural neighborhood were several hundred feet tall, taller than any building the boy had ever seen.

A chill ran down the immobile human’s spine. Until that moment, he had been thinking that everything around him was obscenely large; he now realized that he was the one that was small. Even the plants were correctly scaled to the world around him, while he seemed to be the only object out of place. He stared, dead-eyed, at the grass in front of him, trying to comprehend his situation.  A slight breeze picked up, cutting past him and into house behind him. He slowly stepped back into the warmth of the house he had been so desperate to escape from a moment earlier. Turning, we numbly walked back into the living room, past the chairs and couches that towered over him, giving little regard anything. He absent-mindedly found himself back in the crack in the wall, curling up into a ball on the cold, dusty floor. All the while, a single question ran through his head as he stared into the darkness, waiting for his nightmare to end.

Where the hell am I?

---

Ezekiel sighed. It all seemed so long ago. He had awoken the next morning to find that it wasn’t a dream, and he was still in an enormous house in an unfamiliar world. He figured that it would be safer staying where he was rather than try to move around, so for almost a month, the boy made his home in the small crack in the wall, surviving on nothing but the contents of his backpack and his wits. He filled his reusable water bottle from a dripping pipe in the wall, and snuck off to the pantry whenever he needed food. He had always remained silent and unseen, observing the residents of the household with a mixture of fear and awe.

As he slinked across the room, he could hear the distant voices of two of the dragons echoing from elsewhere in the house. Ezekiel made a mental note of which direction the dragons were coming from as he approached the door, taking care to keep pressure off of his wounded foot. He reached the closed door to the pantry without problems, lying flat against the floor as he shimmied himself under the crack in the doorway. Once inside, he glanced around at the canned foods on his level.

The pantry was anything but organized; aside from keeping cans on the bottom level, every category of item was placed in random locations, and each time Ezekiel visited, it seemed like they had rearranged themselves. He hefted himself onto a can just shorter than him, climbing a small stack of cans with practiced efficiency. Thankfully, a side-effect to his small size allowed him to jump much higher than he ever could, and fall longer distances without becoming injured. Ezekiel figured it probably had something to do with gravity affecting smaller objects less strongly, but he wasn’t entirely sure of the science behind it.

Once he was high enough to reach the shelf above him, he pulled himself onto the second level and glanced around. He saw several tins, a few random condiment dispensers, and a couple brightly colored cereal boxes. He slipped his hunting knife out of his pocket and unsheathed it, walking over to the nearest box. He had originally kept the small knife in his backpack in case of an emergency; he had never expected to ever actually need it. As he he had just finished cutting a small flap through the back of the thick cardboard box when he noticed that he could no longer hear the voices down the hall. His heart quickened as he heard footsteps approaching the living room, and he immediately stopped what he was doing and crouched down, listening carefully. He hoped that the steps would continue down the hall, but he scowled as he heard the familiar hum of the television being switched on.

Fantastic, he thought sarcastically. He might be able to sneak past the distracted dragon, but he would rather not take the risk if he didn’t have to. He continued to quietly make a small incision in the bottom of the plastic bag inside the cereal box, containing what looked like oversized donuts. Ezekiel smiled; they looked just like Cheerios, except that he could fit his head through the holes in the cereal pieces. The cut in the back was just large enough for him to slide out one of the wheat circles at a time, so he carefully removed two of them and closed the flap he made in the box. He grinned at his handiwork; the flap blended in seamlessly with the rest of the colored cardboard, and he doubted that anyone would notice a difference. The television was still playing in the room beyond, so Ezekiel decided to wait it out. He had survived this long by being overly cautious; why try to change a working system? He began to cut small chunks out of the enormous Cheerio, listening to the muted sounds of the television through the doorway. It sounded like the dragon was watching some sort of documentary, something about the ocean. He continued eating until he heard a voice shout something from elsewhere in the house. Ezekiel didn’t catch it, but it sounded like a question.

“It’s a show about the ocean and stuff, you wanna watch it with me?” The occupant in the living room answered.

Ezekiel heard a muffled response from elsewhere, followed by another pair of footsteps. The boy groaned inwardly; if they were watching something together, they could be in there for hours. Unable to do anything about his situation, he leaned comfortably against the box and continued eating, half-listening to the program playing in the other room. He was halfway through a long stretch when the sound of the doorknob turning froze the blood in his veins. He heard the distinct sound of the door swinging open, letting in the unmuffled sounds of the television flood into the previously silent pantry. Only one thought pierced through his mind as he struggled not to hyperventilate: There is a dragon in the pantry.