Jason's Travels, Chapter 3

When I woke up I felt stiff, as if I had been in the same position for a while. My arm hung over the side of my bed, almost touching the floor. What an insane dream I thought to myself with a yawn. But I don't really want to open my eyes...maybe I can get back to sleep... I turned on my side and tried to pull my blanket up to my chin, but ran into a spot of confusion when I realized there was no blanket to pull. Drowsily opening my eyes, I looked around with confusion. This was definitely not my bedroom.

First of all, it had pink wallpaper with little blue flowers on it, but the wallpaper was peeling in the corners. The bedspread had the same design. The bed itself was much softer than mine, as if it were made entirely of memory foam. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up, trying to get my bearings. The floor felt odd, as if it was harder than normal. I realized I had fallen asleep with my shoes on. When had that happened?

Before I had time to think through any of this, the whole room shook, bringing me to my knees. Earthquake? I wondered. That is, until the front wall of the room swung open to reveal Gina's smiling face. "You're awake!" she said in delight. Ah. Not a dream after all, then.

Now that the front of the house had been removed, it was much easier to see where I was. I was standing on the second floor of what quite obviously was Gina's dollhouse. The house itself was set on the floor of her room; I could see her bed, which I had originally fallen asleep on, towering above us. She must have moved me in here when she went to bed herself. I moved forward, but I tripped and started falling over the edge of the floor.

With a quick reaction, Gina caught me before I could hit the carpet below. "Are you okay?" she asked, holding me up to eye level.
"Yeah," I gasped, still in quite a bit of shock. "I'm fine. Thanks." She looked at me in surprise, and I realized that I hadn't ever spoken to them before. I hoped that I hadn't opened a can of worms with that one.

"Mommy!" Gina shrieked, jumping to her feet and carrying me out of the room. I tried not to get jostled out of her hands as she ran down the stairs.

"What is it, sweetie?" her mother asked. She was sitting on the couch in the living room reading a magazine. When she saw me in Gina's hands she smiled. "Oh, is he awake now?"

Gina nodded and added, "But that's not the only thing! He can talk!" As she said this she set me down on the coffee table and sat next to her mother.

The older woman looked at me skeptically. "Are you sure, Gina? You may have just been imagining things."

The little girl shook her head obstinately. "No, I heard him!" She looked at me with eager eyes. "Say something!"

"What should I say?" I replied. Anyone normal sized would have thought I was shouting, but I was just trying to speak more at their volume. As loud as they talked to each other, if I talked normally they probably wouldn't have been able to hear me.

Her mother gasped and looked at me with newfound astonishment. "How incredible," she murmured. "Gina, go get your father. He's outside working again." Gina nodded and ran out the front door, leaving me in the care of her mother. She returned with the man who had found me, dragging him inside by the hand.

"Come look, Daddy! He can talk. Mommy heard it too." All three of them sat down and looked at me, two with excitement and one with expectation.

"Hello," I said, feeling more than a bit awkward with all of their eyes on me. "I'm Jason, nice to meet you." I paused, but they obviously expected me to keep talking, so I continued, "Um, thanks for not running me over with your lawnmower. Really appreciate that."

The man stared at me with the same look that his wife had used. "Astounding!" he exclaimed, breaking into a smile. "Absolutely brilliant."

"Does this mean we can keep him, Daddy?" Gina asked with excitement.

He hugged her. "Of course it does! Gina, can I trust you to take care of him? He'll be your responsibility." His daughter nodded with bright, happy eyes. "Alright, I'm leaving him to you. I'll be outside." He got up and went back out the front door, muttering "Astounding!" to himself again as he left.

Gina's mother stood up again and headed towards the kitchen. "Bring him to the kitchen table and I'll get you two some breakfast." Gina picked me up and then dropped me onto the kitchen table, taking a seat in front of me. Her mom brought her a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. "I'll get him a plate in a second," she promised.

"That's okay, he can just eat off my plate," Gina offered. She looked at me expectantly. "Right?" I nodded; I didn't mind how I ate, as long as I did get to eat something. The eggs seemed too hot to touch, so I started with the toast. I winced as my bruised jaw ached, sending pain up through my jawbone and to my black eye. After everything that happened I had almost forgotten about my injuries.
Gina looked at me with worry. "Are you hurt?" She tilted my face up with a gentle finger under my chin, and looked at me with concern. "You have a bruise, did you get that when you fell?"

"No, I had that before," I said, flushing with embarrassment and turning my face away from her. The last thing I wanted was a seven year old inquiring into my personal life and giving me pity. Especially one whose dollhouse I would probably be sleeping in for a while yet.

"What's wrong?" the mother asked, coming over to look as well. "Oh dear, I didn't notice that he had a black eye yesterday. Did he just get that?"

"No, he said he's had it for a while," Gina replied, faithfully repeating my words.

Her mother shook her head. "That poor thing. What with your father almost running him over with the lawnmower yesterday, it would seem he's had a rough couple of days."

You can say that again I thought to myself. My life just seemed to be getting worse and worse. Then again, these people had only treated me with kindness, a reaction the type of which I had only ever received from Cali and her mom.

When we were both finished eating Gina took the plate to the sink. After being excused by her mother she ran upstairs with me again. Taking a seat on her bed, she attempted to pull my shirt over my head.

"Hey!" I protested, struggling to keep my shirt on. "What are you doing?"

The young girl frowned, and looked at me with confusion. "I'm going to get you dressed for the day."

I was speechless for a moment as I pondered this new information. Yes, I had slept in a dollhouse the last night, but that didn't mean I was ready to be a plaything quite yet. "Uh, Gina, I'm okay with the clothes I have on right now," I told her.

"But they're dirty," she replied.

I looked down at my outfit. It wasn't necessarily spotless, but I was wearing some of the cleaner clothes I owned. "I think they're all right," I said.

She shook her head at me. "No, silly. Those are the clothes you had on yesterday." Leaving me on the bed she stood up and started rummaging in a drawer. When she came back she had clothing my size in her hand. She dropped the articles of clothing on the bed next to me, and I went to inspect them. They consisted of a white t-shirt and pants that looked like jeans, but were made of the same material as the shirt. Basically, it was close to what I was already wearing, except the cloth was a bit thicker and coarser.

"Can I dress you?" Gina asked, looking at me with beseeching eyes. "Please?"

I sighed, resigning myself to the fact that like it or not she was going to have her way. After all, what could I really do about it? And nobody was around to see my indignity... "Alright," I agreed, and she smiled in delight. "But I'll undress myself, okay?" She nodded, so I sat down and started untying my sneakers.

Once I had stripped down to my boxers, Gina started to dress me in the clothes she had chosen. She was really gentle, but I still would rather have gotten dressed myself. It felt absurd to be handled in such a way, but I supposed I would have to get used to it soon enough. Part of me wanted to never get used to it; that side of me protested my weakness on account of trying to escape, to go back home. Of course, without any idea of how I came to be there in the first place, it was impractical to consider making an escape.

After dressing me, Gina put me back in the bedroom of the dollhouse that I had woken up in. She handed me my old clothes and my shoes, and then shut the front of the house once more. I could hear her moving about outside, so I assumed that she was getting dressed as well. Picking up my dirty clothes, I put them on the bottom of a plastic wardrobe that stood in the corner of the room. I then put my socks and shoes back on and sat on the bed, waiting for Gina to finish up.

Most of the days I spent there progressed in a similar manner. In the morning I would wake up in my new bedroom, and then go down and eat breakfast with Gina. She would dress me in something new, or in my old clothes if she had washed them in the sink recently. I would spend the day with her, playing or talking, and eating all our meals together. If she was out with friends I was left to my own devices, stuck in the closed-up dollhouse until she came back. Then, when nighttime came around I would go to my room once more, trying to make the bed feel like anything but a piece of play furniture.

It was a boring, and at times undignified, lifestyle. But soon I was about to wish for a little less excitement. Apparently rumors about the strange thing that had been found by the Dunstans had been floating around the neighborhood for some time. Eventually curiosity got the better of one such neighbor, and he had to come and take a look himself.

Gina and I had been sitting and talking on the floor of her room when he arrived. "Gina!" we heard her mother call up the stairs. "Come down and say hello!"

"I'll be right back," the little girl promised me. She stood up and left, closing the door behind her. I stood up myself and walked over to an air vent next to the wall. A few days ago when exploring I had found that sound from the living room could often be heard clearly from that vent.

"Hey, Tom, good to see you." That was the voice of Gina's father. "Gina, you remember Tom, don't you? He was at our neighborhood cookout last year."

"Oh, don't pressure the girl, Neil." This voice was unfamiliar, the voice of Tom. "It's alright Gina, you don't have to remember me. Man, you sure have grown!"

"Thank you." I could hardly hear Gina's reply she was being so quiet.

"Hey, so uh, you probably figured out why I came?"

Gina's father laughed. "Of course, I wondered how long it would take for somebody to come see for themselves. If it were me I would have been here days ago!"

"Gina." This was the firm voice of Gina's mother. "Go get it so we can show Tom." I could hear Gina's feet thumping up the stairs, and realized with a start that the interesting thing they were talking about was me. I hurried away from the vent and sat down where I had been resting before. When Gina came in I was right where she had left me.

"Come on," she said, picking me up in her gentle hands. "There's somebody that wants to see you." She took me downstairs to the living room, where her father and Tom were sitting on the couch. Thus, it was no surprise when she set me down on the coffee table.
The visitor leaned forward to get a better look at me. "Amazing," he whispered. With a gentle breath he blew the hair away from my face, making me close my eyes. When I opened them again I couldn't help but laugh inside. To see me better he had put on a pair of glasses, and from my angle they made his eyes look twice as big. I didn't dare laugh out loud, though, because he might have been offended.

Tom leaned back and tucked his glasses away again. "I would never have thought it possible," he said, glancing at me once more. "Hey, so there's an idea I'd like to discuss with you." He and Neil, Gina's father, stood up and went to go talk in the kitchen.

My paranoid side got the better of me when they left, and I was afraid that they were talking about me. I couldn't hear a word they were saying, but they often looked over in my direction. Once again, however, there was nothing I could possibly do; so I let Gina take me back up to her room and leave me there. It turned out that my fears were not so unfounded after all.

That night Gina came up to her bedroom with red eyes, and when I asked her what was wrong she started crying. It turns out she had gotten her mother to tell her some of what the men had been talking about, and it didn't seem to bode well for me. "They're going to try and make money off of you," she said, hugging me to her chest and crying on me, as if I were her favorite stuffed animal. I didn't mind getting wet, but the words she uttered had chilled me to the core. Making money off of me was just what my dad had been doing for years; but somehow I doubted that they had a factory position in mind.

"How are they going to do that?" I asked, but my voice came out all muffled through her shirt. Once she stopped squeezing me I tried again.

Gina sniffed, her eyes still a little teary. "They want to show you to people. There's a farmer's market that comes every Saturday and they want to bring you and charge people to see you."

"Well, that's okay, Gina," I said, shaking out my salt watery hair. "Why are you crying so much? It's just one day."

"Yeah, but what if people are mean? What if they hurt you?"

I paled at the suggestion of pain, but put on a brave face for her. "Then it won't be the first time and it won't be the last. C'mon Gina, it'll be fine. I'll get to go outside with you for once."

She sniffed, but smiled at me. "You sure?"

I smiled back. "Positive." Unless someone breaks my leg or something. What would we do then?  But that fear I wasn't going to voice out loud. I was hesitant to go somewhere where there would be more danger, as this world was dangerous for me as it was. However, I wasn't going to let Gina know that, and I wasn't going to risk not being able to go outside for once.

I would later regret that resolution. I never have good luck, do I?