THE LAND OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE

by Wolverine

“The Land of the Little People” is Levelhempstead-on-sea’s biggest tourist attraction bar one, the one being the beach. People come to the place because it’s a seaside resort, to swim, to laze on the beach getting a tan, to show off their bikinis or to get their hands inside one, to eat ice-cream when it isn’t raining, to play the gaming machines, to exercise the dogs and the kids, but there’s masses of places like that. There’s only one Land of the Little People. Well, there’s other model villages with dinky little people, but not like ours, not in Britain anyway. People who come for the sun, sand, sex and shit get looked at funny by their friends if they say they’ve been to Levelhempstead-on-sea and not seen the most famous attraction. Some people come specially to see it, mostly foreign tourists. I don’t mean they come all the way from Japan or Germany or New York just to see the little people, though one or two do. They’re in southern England and they must see the little people like they must see the Canterbury or Oxford or the Houses of Parliament or Fuckingham Palace. Fucking dumb cunts.

Mind you, I can see the attraction, sort of. It is special. It’s bigger than most other miniature villages for a start, and then the little people themselves are so realistic. Most of them are stuck to something solid because we were losing quite a few to people who stuffed them in their pockets or bags, but we let people handle a few and they all say,

“Gosh, how DETAILED! Look, he’s got a tiny little birthmark on his wrist! And that UNIFORM! Those tiny buttons are REAL!” or that kind of crap. And they’re right for once – the detail is incredible. Same with some of the other things in the village. If you look very carefully you can see things about the buildings that aren’t quite right, just in the very small detail, and like none of the paving stones are sticking up to trip old biddies or muckily patched up with tarmac like in a real place, but there’s cars where you can see whether the horn is in the middle of the steering-wheel or on a stick. There’s cycles you can actually wheel and miniature tennis balls you can actually bounce unless they’re stuck to the ground too.

And we keep adding to it! There are a few people who come back year after year and they become experts in spotting what’s new:

“Oh, LOOK, darling, they’ve added a tennis court and two girls playing tennis!” they go, as if they might have been playing fucking chess or Grand Theft Auto.

Apparently the figures and the other stuff all come from a small firm in Slovakia (I think it’s Slovakia and not Slovenia). That’s the official line. I know different.

There aren’t many of us: Mr Van Vliet, of course, the owner; his old witch of a wife; his grand-daughter Hettie who works as a guide at the place – and me. So I’m the only one who isn’t family.

I wrote all that just four months ago for some Yank website, just changing one or two things. The world seemed a pretty steady place then, and I knew something very few other people knew, like what I was writing for this website, in among all the elves and fairies and superheroes and magicians and werewolves, was true. Only nobody would believe it.

Four months later a whole fucking lot has changed – like I’d have to put all that crap in the past. Was. Came. Was. Kept.

When I started work at the place I didn’t know. In fact I thought it would be the most fucking boring job on earth except being on fucking benefits and except that the Hettie bird was seventeen, just out of school and maybe needed teaching a few things. Turned out I was below her level, for her anyway, stuck up little blonde bitch. Also a few of the tourists were girls with nice tits and arses. It was one of those that got me into the secret. My job was to make all sort of minor repairs, to watch out for people trying to steal something and to move stuff when Mr Van Vliet wanted it moved, like the police car from outside the pub to in the high street, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds because it probably meant using the stuff that dissolved the glue and then gluing the thing into its new position. Well, there were these two foreign cunts of about eighteen, speaking some language I didn’t understand, walking round taking loads of photos and waving their class arses in the air, one in tight pink shorts and the other in tight blue long trousers, and I started following them, stalking like.

They didn’t notice me. They were sort of quite dark but not, like, dark dark, so maybe they were jabbering in Spanish or Italian or Turkish or something. I got a bit closer to them as Pink Shorts was bending to get a good look at the bit with the baker’s and newsagent’s.

“Dave – you’re following those girls!” said Mrs Van Vliet softly. Shit, I hadn’t seen her. She must have come out of the toilets, the real ones. Shit, I was in real shit.

“No, Mrs Van Vliet, you’re wrong. I’m just going the same way they are,” I said. She really did look like a witch with those wrinkles and those eyes, and sort of lean and bony.

“Don’t lie to me, Dave, it’s unwise,” she said. “You’re following these girls. Very natural, right, even. Just don’t lie to me.”

“Yes, Mrs Van Vliet – I was following them. They’re OK, aren’t they?”

“Very OK. They’ve come here on their own,” she said silkily, like whispering. “Would you like us to add them to the collection?” I couldn’t understand what she meant at first. What collection? The only collection was…fucking hell. She was definitely mad. Humour her.

“Sounds like a good idea, Mrs Van Vliet.” She smiled, not something I’d seen often.

“If you’re to become one of us, we’d better use first names. Call me Marlene.”

“Yes, Mrs…Marlene.”

“Now we really had better get a move on or those two silly little Italian girls could vanish. Now the toilets are quite a good place to take them, but if they don’t go to have a wee soon we’ll have to spring the ticket numbers trick.” She was walking surprisingly fast. I’m quite short, so have short legs, and it wasn’t easy keeping up. After a few minutes, in which I began to be able to concentrate on the foreign girls’ arses again, Mrs Van Vliet – Marlene – spoke again.

“We don’t want to follow them round all day till they need to piss. The ticket trick it is. HELLO! Two young ladies! Yes, hello!” The two girls stopped and turned round. Nice faces, nice tits, even a bit of a camel toe in the pink shorts.

“Yes, please?” they said. Marlene gave them some stuff about a prize for one in ten of the ticketholders and asked to see their tickets.

“Oh, excellent! Congratulations!” she said to Blue Trousers. I’d never heard her being so smarmy-nice.

“I have won?” asked Blue Trousers.

“You have indeed!” Pink Shorts hugged her friend, showing me that fantastic arse in close-up and arse-cheeks shifting around.

“Now can I see yours?” Marlene asked her. “Well, WELL! You too! What a coincidence!” The girls hugged one another again. How about including me, ladies? Ignore the lump in my trousers, it’s a congenial deformation.

“What’s the prize?” asked Blue Shorts.

“Some one-off copies of some of the figures for you to keep, plus a voucher for £20 valid at several of Levelhempstead’s shops. That’s each, of course. Would you like to come and collect now?” They would. It was just starting to occur to me that Marlene was doing this so cleverly, she might not be mad after all. Was she planning to kidnap these two cunts? If she was, I wanted in on it. She led them through the visitor centre to the office. I managed to walk behind them. I reckoned Pink Shorts just had it by the skin of her cunt over Blue Trousers in the arse department.

We were all four in the office.

“Could you just close the door, David?” the old witch Marlene asks. It is closed. I’m about to say so and then I don’t. She’s taken a weird thing out of a cardboard box. It looks like an old-fashioned camera, one of those on a tripod, only there’s no tripod. The end is pointing at the two girls. She presses something and it makes a whirring noise. It’s like a sort of balloon of light comes out and spreads. Marlene’s fiddling with some controls and the light gets smaller again. It’s all round the two Italian cunts. They look a bit puzzled, but maybe they think she’s taking a photo. The light sort of ripples. THE TWO FOREIGN CUNTS ARE GETTING SMALLER! They look scared but it seems they can’t move. They go on getting smaller till they’re the size of our figures. Marlene switches the thing off and the light’s gone. She picks up the two figures, complete with tiny backpack on Blue Trousers, tiny shoulder-bag on Pink Shorts and tiny clothes. It’s like there’s a big light in my head too. If you looked in that tiny shoulder-bag I bet you’d find a tiny Italian passport and British banknotes.

I think of something.

“Shit! I wanted to…” I realised I was speaking to Mrs Van Vliet. “I wanted to, you know, do them.” She smiled.

“My dear boy – you still can, but do please wash them afterwards.” I picked up Pink Shorts, like I didn’t know how she’d feel – hard. “I’ll leave you to it, then, David. When you’ve finished, find them bases and put them in the square as tourists,” she said.

I’m a model employee. I do what I’m told. I did wash them afterwards. Then I got thinking. All that stuff about all the wonderful detail on the figures, how the clothes were just right, wasn’t that postman’s bicycle with real spokes just incredible, all that shit…there was a reason. They’d all been got the same way these two were. Every fucking one of them! I knew the Land of the Little People had been around a long time, at least twenty years. Some of the figures were like in clothes that were a bit out of date, there was a shop sign with prices you wouldn’t believe. The Van Vliets had been doing this for fucking ages! Evil! And getting away with it!

Then I had another thought. Would I be the next?

The tourists are just about all gone and we’re almost ready to pack up when Hettie comes over to me. I’d been eyeing her for yonks, but not with much hope. Like she looked at me and looked right through me. Neat little bit too, real blonde, turned-up nose, quite short, nice tits but not huge like. Nice smile, but not for me. Not till now.

“Hi, Dave! Dad wants a word with you in the office when you’re free,” she says. Well, could be good, could be very, very bad. I look into her face like maybe I can see there if she knows what her old man has in mind. She smiles.

“He’s very pleased with you, Dave,” she says, almost like a come-on, but for once I’m not into that game, not for a while. I think let’s get it over, for good or bad. I go straight to the office.

“Come in, David,” says old Van Vliet. He’s sitting down, glasses on the end of his nose, striped tie pushed out by his belly, smiling. Eyes twinkling. I still don’t know. Could mean either thing. “I understand you’re one of us now.”

“Sorry?”

“You helped collect two new figures. I’ve had my eye on you for a while, young man. I’m offering you an 80% pay rise and a much more interesting role.”

“Um…fantastic, Mr Van Vliet. What is it?”

“You’ll continue with some of your existing duties, but Marlene and I aren’t young any more. We need to collect from a wide area, or even the most stupid plods will become suspicious. I want you to become our new collector.” Sounded like I wasn’t going to be added to the collection, which was good. Being a collector sounded good too.

“You can drive, which is good, but that ancient car may not last much longer. I’ll give you £500 to help get a better one. You’ll need some training, of course, so we’ll show you how to operate the transformer and we’ll take you out to observe while we collect two or three new figures,” he said.

“I’ve got a question,” I said.

“Yes?”

“If you’re collecting new figures all the time, and the place seems pretty full to me already with the things, are you chucking out old ones?” He chuckled.

“Good question! Not chucking out, my young friend. We sell them. There is a whole second village in the U.S.A., in Nevada, a kind of theme park of pretty England, full of things that are not quite right, of course, things from different periods for example, but the figures are real and from us. It’s a theme park of rejects! Then there are several private collectors. One thing we never do, though, is sell them to the ordinary tourists, because one of them might get too curious and put one under the microscope. Now – there is a little rearranging to do by the stream and the café.”

From then on whenever I saw these fucking stupid tourists gawking at the figures, I was laughing. I hardly noticed the Hettie bit wasn’t looking through me any more. I was someone. It was nearly two weeks, though, before Mrs Van Vliet told me she was going out collecting the next day and I’d be coming with her.

I thought it’d be somewhere local, but she drove us in this Transit all the way from Sussex to Wales. Demon driver she was, too. I saw these signs that we were in Wales and signs to Abergavenny. Now she was driving slowly between hills and woods and looking whenever she saw people. We came to a picnic place by the roadside. She pulled in. There was this family eating stuff round a big wooden table and talking foreign – two sexy girls in shorts, maybe my age or a year or two younger, still teens probably, one younger girl but she had tits, one kid brother of about sixteen maybe, a big blond man and a plain woman, sort of plump and bouncy. Their big car was just off the road with foreign plates.

“Hmm…Norwegian. We haven’t got any of those,” the Witch says. The people smile at us and we smile back. We get to another table. I unpack the machine from this big bag and point it at the family. The younger girl and the boy have seen it and are looking curious. I do my bit, looking round to check there’s nothing else on the road apart from squashed rabbits. Mrs Van Vliet presses the control. The wavering light spreads round all this fucking family and they look like they’re frozen, but then the younger girl makes a move like trying to get away, but she just bounces back. They shrivel till there are six little figures around a dinky little doll’s house bench and table. I shovel them up into the smaller bag with the bench and their food and we get back in the Transit. The council or whoever it is will do their heads trying to work out who stole the bench and table, and the cops will be looking all over for the Norwegians who abandoned their car and vanished. Laugh.

About five miles on we passed a jogger. Fair hair with her hair coming out of a tight band like a horse’s tail and bouncing along on her back as she jogged, fantastic arse in tight blue shorts wobbling about, class legs all brown and smooth. I see the Witch look at her and a little smile. Half a mile on most way up a steep hill there’s a farm track on our side of the road and we pull off. We wait for the jogger cunt and along she comes. From that angle I can see her tits bobbling in her white top, quite big ones, and her face frowning with concentration as she keeps going up the hill. The Witch opens the door and points the machine. The stupid fucking jogger smiles. She thinks this old lady’s taking a photo with her ancient camera. I can see a neat camel toe now. Pity you won’t be able to see that soon without a magnifying glass. The machine goes on. The jogger’s still jogging, but slowed down and she’s not moving forward at all, like running on the spot. She gets smaller and smaller. Almost done now. A builder’s van comes up the hill quite fast, must have his foot right down on the pedal. Splat. Squashed miniature jogger on the road. Shit. Still, she looked fucking funny.

“Never mind, Dave, joggers are two a penny,” says the Witch.

She drove us back east, but not by motorway and she made e few diversions into villages and the like. I got the idea. She was prospecting for another catch.

We’d just gone through this picture postcard fucking village somewhere in the fucking Cotswolds when we saw a thing on a pushbike ahead of us. Got a bit closer and saw it was a woman with a big arse in dark blue trousers. Next moment I realised it was a cop. The Witch passed her real slow so we could get a good look. Girls on bikes always show off their arses great and she was no exception. Anyway she had a big fat arse already, working away on the seat. Pretty face, though, sort of girl next door becomes famous actress. The Witch says nothing but I can read her mind sort of.  A couple of miles on there’s a lay-by with trees behind and she pulls in, fiddles with something, opens the door window and chucks her wallet out on the ground. We leave the window open but the door closed and hide in the trees with the machine. Course, we don’t know for sure if the fatarsed pig has turned off down some track to see a farmer about fucking his sheep. That’s real suspense. It’d be a real shame if we lost her.

Then she came in sight. Made my cock nearly burst my jeans. I reckon the Witch was turned on too.

“Here, Dave,” she says, “you’ve been shown the controls and you’ve seen how it’s done for real. Take her. Your first one.” I was that fucking excited. Honoured. Maybe a bit scared too if somehow I fucked it up.

The nice little piggy saw the van with its window open and slowed. She saw the wallet and stopped. She wheeled her bike towards it. We slipped out of the trees behind her. I got the machine ready. That fucking arse – what a catch! She put the bike down and bent to pick up the wallet. NOW!

The golden light was around her and it was like she was trying to pick up the wallet and straighten up but it was stuck to the ground. I thought it would be funny to take her bike as well so I pulled the light out a bit to take it in. She was shrinking. So was the bike. The machine switched itself off. We walked out to pick up the miniature bent-over policewoman and her miniature bike and the very miniature wallet. A car went by. He just saw two people walking towards their parked van.

I picked up my capture and had a good long look at her. It was like magic – my very first one. A minute ago she was waddling around, a full-sized pig cunt, thinking, talking, planning holidays, chasing villains, telling kids off, farting, fucking, the lot. Now she was a toy with its arse permanently stuck out. All because of me (and the machine). I call that power. And magic. I felt her arse and I could actually feel the VPL and the tiny little arsecrack. I looked very closely in her face and saw fear. Shit, that was good.

Mrs Van Vliet, Marlene, was smiling.

“I remember my first. I was just like that. Well done. Your timing was just right and it was a nice touch picking up her bike. Drop her in the bag and we’ll be off home.”

“Will you need new cards and that?” I asked her. She looked puzzled and then explained she’d taken everything out of her wallet except £10.

So now Miss Piggy was picking up a dropped wallet in the Land of Little People near where a family of tourists were having a picnic. She got a lot of attention too, for her uniformed arse sticking up. I saw this old guy feeling it and a couple of old cows cackling at it, saying how big it was. Only I knew it had been a whole lot bigger.

Hettie was away for a few days “visiting friends”, but when she came back she sidled up to me.

“A little bird tells me you did a policewoman,” she says.

“A little bird can come with me and see her,” I answered.

“I’m not a little bird,” she says, pretending to be cross.

“No, that’s true. You’ve got no wings, no feathers and a pair of tits. Birds don’t have tits because they don’t have babies, they lay eggs,” I say. Soon as I’ve said it I wonder if she’ll point out that tits are birds – the sort of tits that come to bird tables and peck at peanuts. Never seen tits like hers pecking at peanuts. But she doesn’t – she just says,

“OK, show me.” So I show her. She looks at Miss Piggy a long time. She turns and looks at me. “Look at her big bum! And you got her just when she was bending right over! Evil!” she says. Now this is the point I could ask her out, only somehow that would seem naff, or pull her against me and get my tongue past hers, only she is the boss’s grand-daughter and I’m not quite sure of my ground. So I just say,

“Thanks,” and it sounds stupid. She follows me, though, and when we get round the corner of the store-room she says,

“Dave?” and I know by her tone she’s not just going to ask if I know a good second-hand motorbike shop or if she can borrow my mobile phone for a moment. It’s something special.

“Yeah?”

“Could you do something for me?”

“Depends what it is.” Fucking romantic way with words I have.

“This is REALLY NAUGHTY, but…” she gives me a big sidelong smile like saying she shouldn’t be asking me thins, but if she smiles enough and does other things maybe I’ll say yes. “There’s someone I want transformed. Turned into one of the figures.”

“Who?”

“Miss Chetwynd, my English teacher. Was. I’m not at school now. She’s a bitch. Got me in trouble for giving that stupid Paki Yasmin a going over in the car park. Lectured me on stuff till I wanted to throw up over her big wobbly tits. Stupid prissy cow.” This was awkward. Mr and Mrs Van Vliet had explained to me that they wanted me to go out collecting on my own, that they had great confidence in me and all that shit, but I should avoid collecting from the immediate area except in exceptional circumstances. Were these really exceptional circumstances? Hettie saw I wasn’t sure. She rubbed her hard little tits against me. “If you do it, Dave, I’ll be VERY nice to you,” she said. “Here’s my mobile number.”

OK, it was exceptional circumstances.

Hettie didn’t know where this teacher cow lived, but she still worked at Cliffhead College. She gave me a pretty good description. She also told me Miss Chetwynd drove to and from school, but most Thursdays she left late after the Drama Club meetings. That sounded like a good opportunity.

I found a place I could park with a view of the school entrance nearest to the car-park. That Thursday I stuck around, but I couldn’t see the little yellow car Hettie had described and I didn’t see any mid-twenties brown-haired white woman with big tits and arse in either cream or fawn trousers or a tartan skirt. A tart and skirt – that was what I was waiting for. Good, you reckon?

Next Thursday I was there again. So was the yellow car. I saw one big-titted bird come out, but she looked maybe thirty and was dressed in green and grey. She went to a grey car. Then nothing for ten minutes. The kids had left. Then this fantastic bird, long brown hair, big wide tits, wide hips in cream trousers that were pretty tight, came out, chatting to a smallish girl and an older boy and smiling. I got out of the van with my bag and walked pretty quickly towards the yellow car. The two kids had gone off in another direction. I didn’t want her to get to the car much ahead of me or I’d lose her. Luckily she had a load of books to shove in the boot and she had to unlock the boot first.

“Hello! Are you a teacher here? Simon Pearson, West Sussex Free News,” I said. “We’re taking photos for a feature on the school. I suppose the Head Teacher mentioned it?” She looked a bit flustered, but she smiled and shook my hand. She had eyes I suppose you’d call hazel. Nice.

“Hi! Jane Chetwynd. No, he didn’t, not that I heard. So do you want one now?” Yes, I did. I took out the machine.

“You won’t have seen a camera like this before!” I said, like it was a bit of a joke. No, she hadn’t. She arranged her hair. As I caught her in the light she was smiling. She was still smiling when she was garden gnome size. There was just room in the bag for her along with the machine. Her arse was just like Hettie described it, only sexier. Nice to get one still smiling. Evil.

I shoved her in the back of the van and called Hettie.

“Oh, Dave, you GENIUS! You HERO! You’ve really got the bitch! I can’t wait to see her. Can you make the Old Dixie Bar?” I could.

She was already in the bar when I turned up and had just told a guy to fuck off. She was wearing skintight leather trousers and no bra.

“DAVE!” She threw her arms around me, so I could feel she had no bra on, and kissed me. Bit awkward, ‘cause I wasn’t ready.

“Have you got her here? Can I see her? Now?” she goes on. I did have her there in my bag. I thought, well, why not? I brought out the new miniature figure and showed her. She just about creamed in her leather, with

“Oh, shit, fantastic! Evil! Wow! Cool!”, feeling her all over, and cooing “You’re MINE now, you prissy, self-righteous bitch! Serve you right, Paki-lover! Fucking glorious!” She was attracting attention. I didn’t mind about people seeing this figure – after all, some of them knew where I worked – but this personal stuff could make someone supicious. So I shut her up. I kissed her.

That night, after we’d fucked, I asked her,

“Mr and Mrs Van Vliet are your grandparents, right? They’ve got you in to work in the family business. So what about your parents?” She gave me a funny look, half affectionate and half “I know something you don’t!”

“Show you tomorrow!” she said.

So she did. Outside the village greengrocer’s in the Land of the Little People there was a miniature couple looking at the display – a slim blonde woman and a big bald guy. I’d seen them many times before, but they were nothing special.

“There they are!” she said. “They didn’t want me to work here! They said something bad was going on here! But grandpa sorted them.”

There was this enormous fucking business about poor Miss Chetwynd disappearing. Her car was found open like someone had grabbed her when she was just about to get in it. Some books were spilt on the ground. There were reports that a white van had been parked nearby for a long time, but how many white vans are there? Still, Mr Van Vliet said to me the time had come for me to buy a new car like he said and use it for the job. He had a go at me about taking this fucking teacher from the nearest secondary school, so I told him why I did it. He sort of sighed and left it.

“David, I’ve spent far too long looking for another suitable jogger,” Mrs Van Vliet said soon after I’d got my new wheels. “Go out and see if you can find one, there’s a good boy – only don’t take one anywhere near here. Get as far as Surrey or Dorset at least.”

“Can I take Hettie? She’s mad keen to see one done.” I says. She doesn’t look surprised at all. She knows about Hettie and me. She OKs it and Hettie’s creaming herself.

First day we planned to go out it pissed down. Not jogger weather. The next possible day started bright and cold. We went for it. It was a long drive, because I was doing what I was told. Hettie looked like a guided missile the whole way and hardly talked. We were in hills south of Oxford when I thought we could look down some minor roads. No go for a while, then a tall guy with a baseball cap. I drove past him but Hettie stared at him as we passed and said,

“I want him! Dave, please!” I was almost jealous. We pulled in where there was a bit of a verge and I set the machine up. He came running along, but he wasn’t close enough yet. When I was just about to set it going, he stopped running and instead marched forward.

“What do you think you’re doing? Look at your tyre tracks on the grass. And are you pho…” The sound faded away and he was trapped. He looked angry until he was a bit small to tell the expression unless you picked him up. Just as we were about to do that, a car came by, but they pulled out to avoid my car and so they didn’t splat chummie. I gave him to Hettie and she stroked him. Then she giggled.

“Ohmigod, Dave, I can feel his cock! It’s big for a midget! Cool!” We shoved him in the boot and drove on. We were just coming into some big village when we saw them – two things in pure white, slim but you could see they were girls by just a bit of tit bobbling even from a distance, by the way they broadened out around the hips and by the long black hair on one of them. The other had her hair short but you could see even from that distance that their skin was brown and they were Pakis or Italians or something. I stopped the car. Hettie was looking at them like she wanted to eat them, but I wasn’t sure. I could see a woman with a dog and a kid on a bike already and there were a couple of outlying houses, so anyone looking out of the window could see what happened. It was risky.

“Too risky here, Hettie. They’re heading out of the village, so we can turn around when they’ve gone by and follow them,” I said. They got closer. They were fantastic. So alike, they were sisters for sure, probably twins. You couldn’t have told them apart at all except that one had short hair and a kind of yellow bracelet, and the other had long hair and a blue bracelet. They were Pakis for sure, or Indians, whatever. Slim, pretty, great big brown eyes, unbelievable long legs all the way up to their cunts, neat tits sort of medium-big. Then just before they got to us they turned right down a track alongside a mesh fence and some kind of sports ground. That did mean we could see their arses – not that big but sticking out plenty, round, firm and two nice little cracks showing in their tight white shorts as their cheeks rolled around and fought eachn other – but it also meant we were losing them.

“FUCK! QUICK, Dave!” Hettie hissed. Believe me, I wanted to – but I said,

“Still too dangerous. That kid on the bike’s right close to us and there’s someone coming down the track towards us. No – there’s that little side-turning just back there. We’ll go down that and maybe that track joins it.” It was a bit of a long shot but it was the same direction.

Hettie wasn’t happy, but I was in charge. I took my time turning the car and went slowly down the side turning. It helped that some guy came the other way and I had to back to where there was room for him to pass. Hettie was just about exploding, but I wanted to be slow. If those brown cunts were coming out on to this lane, I wanted to be behind them so they couldn’t see the same car they’d just passed and get suspicious.

The car crawled round a corner and, fucking hell, there they were. Two perfect white arses and four long brown legs. I heard Hettie draw in her breath. I drove on just a bit and stopped. Hettie handed me the machine and I got them, easy as shooting fucking rabbits. They froze in mid-stride and turned into dinky little figures, each with only one foot on the ground. We picked them up and shoved them in the back and that was it – a good day’s work. Hettie insisted we took them out later and she fingered them all the way back.

So we’d got three joggers for the village like we wanted. I didn’t realise how massive it would be in the news. Three joggers disappear in one day in some area! But the police seemed to think somehow the guy had done the two girls, who were twins, and just about to go to university and the daughters of two doctors. Their stupid big-eyed faces were all over Yahoo news even – for a week.

After that the Van Vliet’s wanted us to lie low for a while. That left me a bit bored and I started looking more closely at the machine. The Van Vliets had shown me the basics, but there were controls they hadn’t explained. OK, makes sense in case this techy kid tries to take it apart, but some of it was like obvious. There was a dial with big figures and it had said -6 ever since I’d seen it. What happened if you changed the setting? There was a knob which looked like it was for doing that, but I hadn’t dared touch it. Then I thought well, maybe I could just test it on a plant or a football or an old shoe or something. After all, if I could make it go from minus four to something else, I must be able to put it back before anyone knew.

So I chose this cactus in a pot, prickly pear kind of thing. Old Van Vliet likes cacti (he taught me it wasn’t “cactuses”) and kept a lot of them around the place. I took it out the back when no tourists were around and I pushed at the knob. It was real stiff like no-one had moved it for ages. I pushed hard and it moved. It said -6. That wasn’t much good. I pushed it the other way and now it moved a bit better, but still stiff. It clicked through number after number until it stuck and I couldn’t move it any more. It said +20. I can tell you I was nervous, but I couldn’t face myself if I went back now. So I pushed the button and got the golden light round the cactus and its pot. It grew. Shit, it grew. Luckily there was nothing in its way. When it had finished +10 looked pretty much right. It towered over me. I was just pushing the dial back to 0 when something fucking big landed right by me. It was a 20 times magnified spider. I screamed and ran.

Then – tell me I’m a hero – I turned around. I had to make it little again. The spider hadn’t chased me. Maybe I was a bit too big to eat still. But it had scuttled off in the other direction fucking fast so I couldn’t get it in the light. So all I could do was bring the cactus back to normal size. I got the dial on 0 and tried. It stayed as big as before. Idiot – 0 meant no change from what it was now, not back to what it was before. I shoved the knob until I got it to -20 and tried again. One nice little cactus in a little pot. I was just putting it back where it had been when I heard this scream.

Well, I pretended it was nothing to do with me, but when a giant spider turns up in a small town, something’s going to happen. Found out later it got a dog. At the time I stayed well clear, just heard the sirens. Armed police got it. Hard on the spider, really.

It was next day when Hettie told me her grand-dad wanted to see me. Bad news, but to be honest, not a surprise. He wasn’t a fool. Someone had made a giant spider, and you could bet if it wasn’t Hettie it was me. And I wasn’t going to say it was Hettie. Not quite, anyway.

I knocked on the door. There was no reply. I knocked again.

“Come in!” he said. It sounded bad. He was sitting at his desk, the machine beside him. He didn’t ask me to sit down – in fact he motioned me to stop some way from his desk.

“Well, David?” he said. “Did you misuse the machine?” Play stupid.

“Sir?”

“Did you misuse the machine? Someone created a giant spider. It wasn’t me or my good wife. Henrietta assures me it wasn’t her – so either it was you, or she’s lying.” He looked me in the eye. I wasn’t going to blame Hettie.

“It was me, sir. I dropped it and it must have changed something. Then I was frightened and I thought I’d better check it still worked.” That might just do.

“Impossible. The settings can only be changed by considerable force – and not just one but two settings were changed. I do not take kindly to staff who lie to me, David.” This was getting very bad. I was scared. He bent down a bit to line up the machine. NO! But I was too scared and confused to jump him. There was one hell of a hammering on the door. Weird, because it wasn’t locked. Then I heard it open and someone run in – someone light-footed. I glanced round. It was Hettie.

“Daddy, don’t do it!” she yelled. “It was me!”

“What?” I says.

“I see,” says Mr Van Vliet. “Are you prepared to disobey me to try to save this person, Hettie?”

“Yes!” she said. He sighed.

“Perhaps I was a little intemperate. Now, David, if you’re to continue here – full-size – there are certain things you must understand.”

“Yes, Mr Van Vliet.”

“Never change the settings without my permission or my wife’s.”

“Yes, Mr Van Vliet.”

“Sit down – you too, Henrietta. You’ve gained knowledge you were not supposed to have, but if I’m not to dispose of you, you’ll have to be given the full picture. The magnifier settings you’ve seen. You no doubt did not understand the other setting.”

“I don’t even know what you mean by that, Mr Van Vliet. I didn’t see any other setting. Honest.” He looked long and hard at me.

“You may be telling the truth. It’s not a dial but just a knob with two positions. It should ALWAYS be on “FRY” – otherwise you have a very small or very large life-form which still has a fully-functioning brain. Small people have small brains, of course, but they could still be a nuisance. Our current collection don’t move because they’ve got no brains.”

“You mean they’re still ALIVE?” He scratched his head.

“That may be slight exaggeration – but they’re not entirely dead. And before you ask – it is possible to restore them to their original size, but no loss of brain function would be reversed.”

“Grand-dad, there’s some of that I never knew! Most of it, in fact!” Hettie complained. He reminded her that she was very young and he had big responsibilities. Anyway, I promised never to change the settings again without his permission and I didn’t get miniaturised and I did get to fuck Hettie again.

It did occur to me that I could miniaturise old Van Vliet and even his wife, but I didn’t reckon I’d be ready to run the business and I didn’t think Hettie would like it.

A couple of months later old Van Vliet called me in again.

“We’ve lost a traffic warden,” he said. “Someone had kicked into her and loosened her base – you reported it, remember? She disappeared overnight. I suspect a squirrel. It could gnaw on her, you know, the figures may be hard but they’re still nutricious.” He coughed. “My good wife has pointed out to me that in some place in Germany they have a great festival of beer and music with many majorettes. We could do with a few of those. Can you go and get me some? You can take a fat man in lederhosen too, if you like, but not too many or they’d look strange in an English village.”

Well, yes, I could, and he agreed Hettie could come too. The machine was a bit of a problem, but I told the security guy at the border it was an antique camera. We had to take the car over and not fly because we’d need the space coming back if you get me.

Hettie had gone to town on this one. It was summer and she was wearing bright blue hotpants and cowboy boots. Turned out that was a good way of merging in with the locals. We booked into a hotel (something new for me) and had a good fuck and then looked around.      Problem was, I kept seeing birds with nice tits or arses and Hettie kept elbowing me, so I got a mass of bruises. We got talking to some guys who spoke English and found out a few things about the majorettes. We said we were majorette groupies and we’d been to the U.S. and Canada and Holland and Ireland and that, so now we were here. We wanted to go back with photos, autographs, maybe one or two other things. We actually found out where a minivan-load of them would be arriving early the next morning.

When we got to the square in the car it was very early, still fucking cold for summer when we got out, and there were people putting up some stalls and stuff but they were pretty busy. It was Hettie spotted the white van. I drove over. There were several leggy Krauts already getting out, but they were hanging around in a close group, chatting and laughing. I handed the machine to Hettie.

“Your first,” I said. She gave me this look that made me feel great, but she said nothing. I checked if anyone was paying attention, but only the majorette cunts were. They thought they were being photographed. Some of them smiled and one of them even struck a sort of sexy pose, doing her hair. Hettie got them just like that, the fucking van and all, with a red-faced driver and an older woman as well. Only they got smaller and smaller till they were less than half the standard size.  We loaded the lot into our car. A guy came past and looked at us, but he looked only a bit interested. He thought the little figures were for some display. Well, they were.

Then I asked Hettie what the fuck she was doing, changing the controls again.

“I thought they’d be easier to carry and they’d look less suspicious if the car got searched,” she said. “I can change them to the usual size before Gramps sees them.” Well, she was their grand-daughter, just so long as she didn’t say it was all my idea. The dinky little Kraut who’d been posing for us looked just great. Hettie thought so too and we both stroked and pinched her. We picked off a fat old guy in shorts and a funny hat, complete with a beer, and a really cool couple of cyclists (lovely arse in short shorts on the girl) and fucked off back to where the natives didn’t speak funny.

We got away with the size change. We changed the settings back and made them the right Land of Little People size and old Van Vliet and his witch never knew. I suppose. Mrs Van Vliet did take me aside, though, and asked me how I got on with Hettie. Well, I could have said, “She’s a real tight fuck”, and I had a pretty good idea she knew we were fucking, but I just said we got on great.

“I thought so,” she said. Then she said something which knocked me back:

“You’re the next generation, you two.” Was I meant to marry Hettie and carry on the business? Could be worse. Anyway, it made it less likely I’d be miniaturised. I didn’t tell Hettie what she’d said.

We did most of our business during the summer, obviously, and from October to mid March we were only open at weekends. The Van Vliets also owned a couple of burger bars and a wine bar, and when we weren’t busy Hettie and I helped out with those. I was on one of the burger bars when this classy Paki cunt came up.

“Hi!” she says. “I hear you work at the Land of Little People.” She sticks out her hand and holds it there like she’s expecting me to plonk my cock in her long fingers. I don’t. I don’t shake it either.

“Yeah,” I say. She looks hurt.

“I’m only trying to be friendly,” she says. Yeah, and I’m the fucking Duke of Edinburgh.

“Yeah?” I say.

“Look – I wonder if you could help me…” Yeah. Go round the back, pull down your panties, darling, and I’ll help you all right. “My name is Yasmin Hussein. It’s about a former teacher of mine, a Miss Chetwynd.” That gave me a real shock. I hoped I hadn’t shown it. Maybe it helped I was putting some stuff in a box and not eyeballing her at that moment.

“Right. OK – how can I help?”

“You must know Miss Chetwynd disappeared. It was big news down here.”

“Oh, yeah. I do remember. I suppose she fell off the cliffs or something. SO why are you being a detective?” She smiled at me like she was sure she was getting somewhere now with me.

“She was SO nice and helpful to me, especially when these awful girls bullied me. So when she disappeared I was DEVASTATED. The police didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, so I felt it was my responsibility to try to find out myself what had happened to her and if there was any way of helping her, to do it. And then I was walking in The Land of the Little People, just to clear my mind, and I saw her.”

“Cool! Did you speak to her?”

“I couldn’t. She was one of the little figures.”

“The WHAT?” I knew just what she meant. I wasn’t even trying to fool her. I was just completely mind-fucked. But she wasn’t a mind-reader. She looked pleading, embarrassed.

“Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but…”

“Get on with your work, you lazy little worm. You can chat her up later.” Old Howell wanted me slaving again and I had to go along with it. But the Paki bird still managed to get my phone number and she rang soon after I’d finished work.

“Dave,” she said, “It’s Yasmin. Remember? I spoke to you at the burger place. Sorry I got you in trouble.” I was all big brave man and understanding and next thing she’d proposed meeting next day in my lunch-time on the esplanade by the Revenue Cutter Café. I made a call myself. I was going to be there all right. So was Hettie. With some equipment.

I was there just ahead of time. The Yasmin cunt came hurrying five minutes later, smiling from a distance and giving a little wave of her hand like the fucking Queen. She apologised for being late! Her parents had kept her, discussing her medical career!

“So you’ve got something to tell me about that creepy place, Dave, have you?” she says. I look nervous.

“Can we go down on the beach? Right here, someone could be watching us and maybe even our words could be recorded,” I say. She swallows it.

It’s dark, but we go down the steps to the beach. I’m trusting Hettie is there. I stop.

“So what is it, Dave? I can tell you’re nervous. It’s very brave of you to do this. I’m really grateful,” this Paki cunt burbles.

“See over there?” I say, stepping away from her. She tries to see what I’m pointing out – pretty hard as it’s just sea and night sky, not even fucking stars because it’s cloudy. It’s dark, like I say, but suddenly there’s light and it’s all around the Paki cunt. She’s staring at ME! She knows she’s been betrayed. That’s her last thought. Magic! Fucking cool! Hettie steps forward, hands me the machine and picks up the capture, kissing her on her neat little mini-jeaned arse.

“Got the bitch!” she says. We fuck right there on the beach with Yasmin for company.

We put her next to her favourite teacher.

But the disappearance of Yasmin Hussein was massive news. One teenage Paki. Still, not much happens in Levelhempstead except for our set-up.

Mr Van Vliet came after me soon after the news broke. He wanted to see Hettie, fast. Obviously he knew she’d kicked this Yasmin cunt around a bit at school, so she was suspect number one. I told Hettie.

“Fuck!” she said. “What…no, I know. Dave – are you with me? Are we real friends?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the machine right now?”

“Where it’s kept usually – in the office.”

“See you there!” she yelled, and ran like fuck. I walked behind Mr Van Vliet, keeping an eye on him, ready to delay him somehow if it looked like Hettie wouldn’t get there first. I needn’t have worried. I slowed down. When I got to the office, Hettie was there with the machine and a nice little miniature figure of her grand-dad. Hettie held him up to the light.

“I think he’d have wanted to go like that,” she said. I couldn’t find a fucking thing to say. I’d sort of half suspected it but still – her own grand-dad and the guy who employed both of us!

The door opened. Mrs Van Vliet stood looking at us – and looking at the figure of her husband.

“Shit!” said Hettie after a few seconds of silence, and reached for the machine.

“Hold it!” I said. I quite liked the old witch.

“Dave’s got plenty of sense,” the old witch said. “There’s no need to do anything to me. Geoffrey was getting just a little stuck in his ways. It is the right way for him to go. It’s time for a new management team.”

“Who?” asked Hettie.

“You. Dave. Me.”

Turned out she had ideas for changing the place. The numbers of visitors were falling off just a bit – not much, but she saw it as the start of a trend. We saw taking new captures as exciting because we saw them as real people first, but for the punters, they were just more little models. The machine would make a number of sizes. We needed to still keep most of the place the same, with lots of little people, little cars, houses and that, but we needed something extra.

“What?” I asked.

“A few big people,” she said. She went on to say that it would really draw in a new crowd if we could have a giant female figure or two at the entrance and another inside people could pay extra to play with. We’d only need two or three and she thought that policewoman and one of our majorettes would be brilliant, plus maybe a second majorette if we needed a third.

“How about Yasmin?” Hettie asked.

“Not safe because people are still looking for her, and in enlarged version it would be much more likely the penny would drop,” she replied. “Maybe in a year or so’s time.” The Witch asked us to bring the policewoman and two of the Kraut majorettes, and naturally we did that. Then the Witch surprised us again.

“They’d be more of a draw with fewer clothes on, especially the nice little piggy,” she mused.

“But how are you going to do that?” I objected. “They’re quite hard and you can’t get the clothes and stuff off.” She smiled, sort of mysterious.

“The bigger versions are softer, though the clothes are still melded to the flesh,” she replied, “but everything the machine does is reversible except the brain damage. I can make them like they were only very, very stupid. We can take a few things off them and then make them giants. Easy.” So they’d still been keeping secrets from us about the machine.

The Witch set a blonde majorette on the floor and aimed the machine. In the light, the Kraut piece grew until she was normal size. Then a small light flashed on the machine and there was a whirring sound. The light disappeared from round the majorette. She stood there, her tits rising and falling. She was breathing! The Witch unbuttoned a couple of buttons on her top so a bit of her tits was showing. Then she took a pair of big scissors to her dinky little white skirt so it ended hardly more than halfway down her arse. Laugh! She looked great. She didn’t move while all this was happening, except that her eyes moved very slowly, trying to follow the hands and scissors. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but nothing came out. Hettie came up close to me like she was frightened and excited. The Witch stopped cutting, looked the majorette up and down, patted her bulging white panties and asked us to carry her outside.

She felt just like a real, live girl – warm and breathing, with soft bits and hard bits. She didn’t struggle when we picked her up, though. We put her down on her feet, legs well apart, and she stood but didn’t move. The Witch got the machine on her again. She grew – and grew. She was fucking enormous. I was standing between her legs and if I reached up I could just touch her cunt which was showing as a fucking big crease in her white panties.

We picked her up between us and lugged her to the entrance. She was smiling – like she was when we took her – so she looked good for welcoming people. Her cunt looked welcoming too.

Then we done the policewoman. Only this time the Witch had an extra idea. When we’d got her back to normal size, she undid her nice white blouse and put her stick in her hand. The piggie was already bending, but the Witch got Hettie and me to bend her even more so she was looking through her own legs, her arse just asking for it. She was quite hard to bend that far, like she was resisting a bit, but not enough to stop us. Then we took her outside and the Witch made her a supersize fucking porker. The second majorette we set up touching her toes, legs wide apart and her short skirt still on but her panties round one ankle. That one was for the private punters. There was a chair for them to climb up on.

Next day the fucking filth came for me. Someone had seen the Paki cunt talking with me in the burger bar. I said, yeah, she seemed to be coming on to me but I didn’t fancy her, know what I mean? That was it! They hadn’t any idea we’d met again. I said she seemed to be hanging around trying to get off with someone. They thanked me and asked me if I remembered any of the other customers. I remembered two or three for them. The fuckheads left.

The local paper made our new look its front page story, ahead of “Dangerous Dog Bites Well-known Local Councillor”. We got on local TV news. The local vicar and some woman preacher, Baptist I think, condemned us. The number of visitors, off-peak, went up. There were more men and fewer kids. Kids pay half-price anyway.

The extras indoors option turned out a real money-spinner. Mind you, it was a bit kinky. I mean, her cunt was so big it couldn’t be tight even round a Black Yank heavyweight boxer. After a bit we changed them round and the piggie girl got to be the inside attraction. Business was looking up. We were in the national news, stuff on YouTube and that. But the Witch was having second thoughts.

“Successful businesses fail through their own success,” she said. Sounded crap to me, but I soon found out what she meant.

One day I was cleaning some kid’s piss off the teacher when the Witch tapped me on the shoulder.

“Dave, go and find out who that woman talking with Hettie is,” she said. “It seems a long conversation.”

I walked over. A woman with long, brown hair – maybe late twenties, good looker but slim, accent maybe Australian – is talking with Hettie, asking her a lot of questions. Hettie’s on the defensive but doing the best she can.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

“Hi! Suzy MacInnes, I’m a freelance journalist. And you are?”

“Dave Short. I work here.”

“Great! Maybe you can help me. I’m really interested in these figures. Do you order them to any specifications?”

“Yeah, like teen blonde in bikini.” I hoped to tease her a bit, but she didn’t seem fazed.

“No more specific than that?”

“Maybe like blue eyes, tall, big tits.”

“Does the maker use models?”

“How do I know? He might shag Kate Moss for all I know.” I was starting to get to her. She was getting annoyed.

“Very funny. When he makes one of these figures, does he base it on anyone in particular?”

“Dunno. His girlfriend, maybe. Dunno.”

“Would you like to compare these two photos?” One photo showed a smiling cop girl. The other was obviously the same bit of tail, but not smiling this time. It looked familiar. I realised why. It was our giant piggy from the entrance, the one I’d taken in the Cotswolds. “Would you agree they look the same?” she asks.

“No. One’s smiling and the other one isn’t.” She was looking really pissed off now.

“How can you explain that your figure there looks exactly like a missing policewoman?” she demanded. “What have you done to um.” The “um” was because Hettie had just hit her on the back of the head with a bottle of lemonade. I looked round quickly, There were two or three tourists in sight, but none looking at us. There was a kind of shopping trolley type thing we used for carting stuff around just standing nearby, so I shoved the journalist cunt in the bottom of that, put a couple of bags of rubbish on top of her and we wheeled her over to the office.

The Witch was waiting for us.

“She was asking a lot of questions about the piggie girl,” I said. “Like she knew the one we’d got was the same as the missing one.”

“Interesting!” she said, and searched the journalist’s pockets and stuff. She was a journalist all right. And she had photos not only of the pig but of the Yasmin piece and her fucking teacher too.

“She knows too much,” says Hettie.

“Not for long,” says the Witch, and miniaturised her – the journalist, I mean. Then she said something weird.

“Even with this stupid girl dealt with, the game is getting more dangerous. It’s time.”

“Time for what?” I asked.

“You’ll see – when we close down tonight.”

So naturally I was curious. We closed down. The Witch told Hettie and me to get around spacing out all the figures. When we’d finished she came out with the machine and another smaller machine like a radio, something I hadn’t seen before.

She must have put the machine on a wide setting. A whole load of miniature figures began to grow. They kept on growing till they were giants. I think she’d put the machine on the maximum, 20 times. The giants were pressing into one another but when that happened, they took a few steps. I was shitless. I took a few steps too – back. The Witch was still making more of them grow. The ones who were giants already started marching. Hettie and I held one another close. We couldn’t run fast enough – but the giants all carefully stepped round us. The perimeter wall crumbled. They were out on the road. A police car came up, sirens screaming. A giant pretty girl stepped on it and squashed it flat.

This wasn’t looking good. It was cool, OK, but sooner or later someone was going to use bomber planes or heavy artillery. The giants couldn’t win. In the meantime we heard the crunch as one of them kicked in the library and then another one sat on the HSBC Bank building and it just collapsed like a cardboard box. A police helicopter came over. One of the majorettes just reached up and caught it, looked at it and crushed it. The Witch was laughing, not normal but like in a horror film.

Then everything changed. It was the teacher, Jane Chetwynd, her giant, anyway. She was marching forward and then she turned aside and scooped up the Witch. She held her up like looking at her, curious like. The machines dropped to the ground. Hettie did something so brave I couldn’t believe it. She ran forward and picked up the big machine. She scooted back to me and pointed it at the teacher and the witch. That golden light went all round them and they shrivelled bit by bit till the teacher was a miniature figure again and the witch was so small you could hardly see her.

I grabbed the smaller machine and turned it off – or at least, I hoped that was what I was doing. The giants all stopped in their tracks, except one who was just sitting on the three-storey car park. She was off-balance and just kept going down till her arse hit the concrete and metal and the whole thing collapsed.

“Let’s go!” said Hettie. We ran. For some reason I picked up the teacher. We could hear a whole lot more sirens and helicopters but the police and soldiers weren’t interested in us.

Look, there’s one thing called panic and there’s another thing called running like shit. This was running like shit. We ran to my car and got the fuck out of the place. We passed several police cars and a couple of army jeeps, but they weren’t taking any notice of normal-sized people getting out of Levelhempstead. There were plenty of others.

We were ten miles out of town when I realised we weren’t going anywhere in particular. I pointed that out.

“I was wondering whether you’d got your own ideas,” Hettie replied. “As you haven’t, I suggest a friend of mine. We were at school but she’s in Peterborough now. Her brother runs some kind of security firm and I somehow think he might help us.”

She was right, too. Marcus was very interested. He took us in and we watched all the stuff on TV and on the net. One report said,

“The incident seems to have started at the miniature village ‘The Land of Little People’. The co-owners of the business, Mr and Mrs Van Vliet, and two of their employees, their grand-daughter and a local man, are missing believed dead.” That suited us fine.

What’s more, we still had the machines. Marcus was full of ideas for how we could make money out of them. Some government in central Asia was interested, the Minister for Prisons and Correction I think. There was just one problem. We’d kept the miniature Marlene Van Vliet on a shelf in our room as an ornament like. But one day she disappeared and we couldn’t find her. We just had to hope a cat or a rat got her if she went outside – because if she was still around, she’d be trouble.