Symon Cantillo awoke one morning from troubled sleep to find he was small. Smaller than a bird, smaller than a mouse, even smaller than a children's doll. Smaller than the stones, the grass, and the flowers in the garden. Symon had inexplicably and inconceivably become the size of a bug.

At first, he woke up to the sound of the wind blowing through the grass and trees, and the summer cicadas beginning their daily song. He felt the cool breeze on his skin trying to carefully nudge him awake, but he fought it just for a few more minutes of rest. That's when he was hit with what felt like a bucket of ice cold water being dumped on his head, jolting him to consciousness. He choked and coughed as he opened his eyes sleepily. He found himself lying on the ground in the dirt, and he rubbed at his still bleary eyes. How strange… was his first thought. How did I end up outside?

He was indeed outside, away from the warm comforts of his bed and cotton sheets, surrounded by blurry green shapes that slowly took form as his eyes adjusted. They were blades of grass as tall as trees, and as for the trees themselves; they were bigger than the tallest skyscrapers. Everything was much larger than they were supposed to be, and Symon quickly felt his head spinning from the vertigo. He looked above him to see a large mushroom shading his body like an oversized beach umbrella. A droplet of dew was forming just over his head. That surely was what rudely woke him just now. 

 "I must've gone mad." Symon thought to himself. "Everything's so big… or have I just become very small? Impossible.”

Symon tried to process his situation. He was most certainly in his own bed last he remembered. In fact, he had work in the morning he was meant to wake up early for. He was a salesman, and he needed to be ready for the 8:00 train so he could travel down south to Linabo. It was a very important business trip he couldn’t afford to miss. Though now, the sun stood high overhead, it had to have been at least late morning, noon at the latest. Even if he got up, it was far too late into the morning, his scheduled train was probably long gone by now. He thought that surely this was just a dream, and thought about going back to sleep and hopefully waking up back in his bed, safe at home, but the dewdrop above him snapped him back back to reality with another splash of cool water. 

Symon shivered on the ground, wondering where his nightgown had gone. He looked down at his naked body and gasped at the sight. Instead of the dark, oaky brown complexion he was used to seeing every time he looked down at his own body, suddenly his skin was a slate gray color; shiny and smooth like onyx stones, with stripes of vivid greens and reds that banded around his hands and midsection like strange tattoos. He lifted a hand, Lime green colored them like skin tight gloves. His hands were strange. His fingers were sharp, tapering into tough claws of keratin at the tips, and he was missing a finger on each hand. Not that they had been severed, rather, as if they had never existed at all. Running his other fingers across his hand and wrist, he felt the distinct creases where the body parts connected, like a ball jointed doll. The rest of his body was the same story. The lime green covered his neck and chest but stopped just at the edge of a seam that framed his rib cage around his stomach, a bright red band wrapped around him like a belt, and his legs. Dear god, his legs. His feet now dyed a pale turquoise ended not in human toes, but two distinct tarsal claws. 

He also caught a glimpse of something new. Two passengers on his body that didn’t exist before. A second pair of arms, distinctly thinner and dangling limply at his sides. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but most assuredly there they were; attached to him as if they’d been there since birth. The arms were a bit numb, filled with that tingling sensation that always came from pinching a nerve. It was a strange sensation, feeling sensations in a part of you that never existed before, and the numbness must have been his nerves trying to process this. As much as the additional limbs filled him with a sense of dread, his curiosity led him to at least try to move these extra parts. With some concentration, he could get his red dipped fingers on one of the hands to twitch, but both arms were much too weak and numb to be of any use to him right now.

"What’s happened to me?" He thought, trying to remember how in the world he could have gotten himself in such bizarre circumstances. Try as he might though, the last thing he could honestly remember with true clarity was going to bed the night before, very much still a human man, as he had been since he was born. Everything else was quite fuzzy. If some force had transformed his body, surely he’d have some recollection of it, but trying to pull memories from that haze was fruitless, and left him with a headache.

Eventually he decided it did him no good to lie around on the ground, and he attempted to lift himself up. A sharp stinging in his back sent him tumbling back to the ground. 

What now?! He thought. 

He reached an arm around to check and instead of finding the source of his pain, his hands grasped something thin and paper-like. Trying to pull at it sent a shock of pain down his spine. He’d have to look at it later.

He looked around him and eventually spotted a sturdy stick just within his reach. It was long enough for him to slowly prop himself up on it like a cane. His legs wobbled from an unexpected weight on his rear. He felt around for it and was startled to find a plump tail formed at the end of his spine, round and segmented like the rear of an insect. 

"This will sound ludicrous but…" he thought to himself. "Is it possible I have become sort of… insect?" Indeed, this body was alien to him, but he had no time to dwell on that. He had to figure out where he was, and what was going on. For all he knew, he could be experiencing some elaborate hallucination. 

Probably the stress. He mused. Long nights without sleep, hours of traveling, and the fatigue of talking to customers all day have finally caught up with me, and I’m having some sort of mental breakdown.

It did him no good to sit around dazed and confused though. If he could figure out where he was, perhaps he’d find some answers. He limped across the ground as he navigated through the jungle of grass blades and flowers. It was almost impossible to get a grasp of where he was from down here. Anything too far away became a blur, and the foliage was too dense to see ahead much. He was farsighted woefully missing his glasses. Normally they would be sitting patiently on the night stand for him in the morning. Maybe they still were, but he had no way of retrieving them now. He’d have to blindly go forward until he found something of note. He was hyper vigilant of any sounds. The wind blew the grass around and made him paranoid. At this size, the chirping of birds and croaking of frogs were no longer a soothing sound of nature, but a warning of predators that would eat him without hesitation. 

He yelped at the sound of skittering near him, and he gripped the stick tightly frantically watching the grass around him. Out of the swaying blade soon came a massive ant scuttling out into the open. At this scale it was almost the size of a dog. Symon lifted the stick like a weapon, his legs trembling, but the ant seemed uninterested in him. It simply watched him for a moment and wiggled its antenna before crossing to the other side of the grass. Symon let out a shaky sigh of relief as he collapsed back onto his makeshift cane. He was lucky it was just an ant. He still feared what other insects lurked just out of sight in the grass. 

He kept walking forward, the pain in his back making it difficult to focus. He stepped into something cold and wet, only to look down to find a small puddle on the ground. Symon knelt down into the puddle; an opportune time to get a look at his face, only to see a horrifying visage staring him back. 

Large bug-eyed orbs of ruby red started back at him, and his jaw formed visible seams from corners of his mouth to the edge of his jaw. His long hair, once a nice black color, had turned teal like the stripes on his body, and it was a mess. He anxiously picked the dirt and debris out of it. As he did he noticed his antennae. He reached out to touch them out of curiosity, which caused a sensitive tingle down his spine.

He stared at his reflection, dismayed and sick to his stomach. "I’ve become a monster” He finally spoke aloud, with a shaky, weak voice. It croaked painfully against a dry, sore throat which made him realize how thirsty he was.

He contemplated the puddle of water for a moment and considered his circumstances. He had no idea where he was, or if he’d find another source of water there. Would he die before he made it to clean water? The temptation was high, for sure. He thought; It's clear enough, even if it’s not the cleanest, it would be better than nothing.

He brought his hands in a cupping motion, as anyone trying to pull water in their hands would, but instead the surface of the water squashed downwards like a gelatin. It took a bit of force to break the surface tension, and when he did, he was able to pull up a perfect, round droplet of water. At this size, water could hold this shape effortlessly, seemingly defying gravity. It was able to sit in his hands in this large, jiggly ball effortlessly. He brought the droplet delicately towards his lips and took a sip.

Big mistake. 

The water was nasty, tasting like mud. Symon spat it out quickly and entered a coughing fit, desperate to get that taste out of his mouth. If he was going to survive in this tiny world, it was certainly not going to be through drinking puddle water. He wiped his face of the dirty liquid and took a moment to breathe. In that silence, he thought he heard something. Past the wind, the birds and the insects, he swore he could hear a babbling stream to the south of him. Surely with moving water he’d find cleaner water. It was worth a shot. 

Movement was slower than he would have liked. He was weak and sore and in no shape to be trekking through a giant forest. The ground was uneven with loose soil and dirt clods everywhere. He took pause when the grass began to sway more intensely, and with purpose. Only a few blades at a time, but moving through the field of grass. It was something big, and it was getting closer.

From the dark of the grass, a large figure emerged. A huntsman spider, large and terrifying enough on its own, but no it was practically the size of a bear compared to the shrunken man. Its beady eyes locked in on Symon and its pedipalps quivered, deciding this strange insect was going to be its next meal. Symon was in a bad spot. Unlike other spiders who lie in wait for prey to come to them, this huntsman was the type to actively chase down its prey, and it could sense he was weak and didn't stand a chance. He couldn't contain a fearful whimper as he slowly lifted his makeshift cane like a spear and stood without making any sudden movements. It was useless, as the spider lunged at him anyway. 

Symon screamed and javelined his stick at the spider, but the projectile barely scratched its hard exoskeleton. Symon turned on his heels fled deeper into the grass, the adrenaline keeping him on his feet for just a little longer despite tripping and stumbling over the large pebbles and twigs. The spider was giving chase, and it was fast. Too fast. Symon would never be able to outrun it in his condition.

Desperate to get away, Symon felt the ground suddenly give way beneath him and before he knew it he was tumbling down a trench in the dirt. The trip down was painful and left him bruised and unable to stand. He tried to catch his breath when he saw the spider looming over the cliff's edge. He was trapped.

He picked up any small stones he could fumble for and tossed them at the spider to try to deter it, unfortunately, he was never all that great at sports, and missed most of his shots; the stones pathetically falling short for their goal and bouncing against the wall of the trench. He was now officially out of options. He curled into a ball in that tiny trench, accepting his fate and simply hoping that having his insides melted by the spider’s venom won’t be too painful. He closed his eyes and embraced death, but no bite the spider's fangs came. He heard a sickening wet crunch that should have been of the beast digging into his flesh, but he felt nothing.

Instead, upon opening his eyes, he saw a large stone fishhook skewered into the spider's cephalothorax. The hook pierced through the spider's flesh as it wriggled for freedom, only for the hook to get lodged deeper. Then as fast as it had come down, the hook was ripped out, tearing the spider's head in half in an expulsion of clear fluid and spider guts onto the ground. Symon let out a yelp and covered his mouth so as to not audibly retch. It had happened so quickly that Symon had barely processed that it was another person, or entity, that had killed the spider. Standing over it was another strange insect person not all that different to him. His skin was blue with black stripes and he had white hair tied into a ponytail. His wings and tail shape suggested he was similar to a common blue damselfly. 

The boy wrapped the hook around his waist; a foul the gooey blood from the arachnid dripping from it, then looked at the trembling gentleman in the hole.

"Hey there, are you okay?" The boy asked him. His voice was strange. He spoke in a crude language of clicks and squeaks and screeches, yet Symon was able to understand it as if it was his first language. 

"Y-yes I'm-" He quickly stopped himself. The very same squawking came out of him completely unintentionally. It was as if his brain was automatically filtering what he wanted to say into this strange language. It took some effort to get used to. "I… I'm… I'm trying.. to… too.. f-find uh.. find…" the words could only come out clumsy and slurred.

"You don't have to talk. Just hold tight." The boy said before clambering down into the trench with Symon. He looked over his body. "You're hurt. Hold still." He pulled a satchel off his shoulder that was made from a worn brown fabric. He rummaged through it, eventually pulling out a cloth scrap and a leather canteen. He poured some water out onto the cloth and handed the rest to Symon.

"Drink," The boy demanded as he started washing the mud and blood off of Symon's wounds. Symon was more than happy to have something to drink and quickly gulped down the clean water. Compared to everything else it was the most satisfying water in the world. 

"What's your name?" The boy asked.  

“S-symon…” He managed to choke out his name.