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.Stopover in a little louder town	By : keithcompany Category: S through Z > The Twilight Zone Views: 2465 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight Zone or any characters or settings from the show. I make no profit from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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The food was plentiful, but Kate was a little uneasy. Inside the fridge were four roasted chickens. Each was exactly the same as the ones from the jail.
The only drink available was water from the tap. It was cool and refreshing, with a little more life in it that distilled water, but she imagined that even that would get boring after a while.
The rooms had only basic furnishings. A light in the center of each ceiling, a table with chairs in the kitchen, a sofa in the living room and a bed in each bedroom.
"No dressers?" Meg asked.
"Nothing to put in them," Bree pointed out. "Only have one uniform to each of us."
"Is there a laundry room?" Halle asked. They quickly searched, finding nothing in the basement except a pool table. The balls arranged in a triangle didn't separate and the cues were permanently mounted on the walls.
"It's like a stage set," Meg said. "Maybe we've been forcibly cast in a TV show. Do giants have TV?" They all paused for a second. Kate giggled when she realized that they were all waiting to see if Carl would answer. The giggling was a little intense, though.
"It's not a set," she said. "It's a doll house. A doll town. We're his hobby. Toys. Something to keep him entertained. He found something pretty on the shelf and said, 'I'll take a dozen, please.' And he wanted the color coordinated. Tiger Orange seems to be his favorite." She realized they were staring at her. That's when she realized she was shrieking. She took a deep breath and sat on the sofa.
"Can we go home?" Meg asked. "I mean, after he's…through with us?"
"This town looks like it was built in the Fifties," Bree pointed out. "He's probably been capturing people and bringing them here since then. And there aren't any stories of people being kept in a doll town by a giant… and coming back. So I'd say no. We're not getting out of here."
"Where is here?" Halle asked.
"He won't tell us."
"No, but…" She waved her hands a bit, searching for the words to explain what she was thinking. "Well, are we shrunk? Are we on some guy's table in his basement? Maybe we can get out, find a phone, call for help?"
"If we're not shrunk," Kate said softly, "then there's a 400 foot giant on Earth somewhere and no one's seen him. Or seen his castle on satellite."
"I don't wanna be shrunk…" Meg said slowly.
"But one way or another," Bree said, "I do want to still be on Earth."
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No one wanted to sleep alone just yet, so they ended up curled together on the sofa. Morning was when the windows burst with artificial sunlight. Breakfast was cold chicken and water.
After breakfast, the voice had them all meet in April, Donna and Fiona's garage. April didn't have to be moved far that way. Her cast seemed to still be sedating her. She was subdued but managing to track conversations.
Several folding chairs had appeared in the garage, along with a bigger recliner for April. Kate moved a seat surreptitiously and found that the folding chairs didn't actually fold up.
"Anyone know anything?" Leslie asked. "Anyone have a private conversation with the giant?"
"Carl," Kate said. "We can call him Carl." She brought everyone up to speed on her and Meg's conversation. They all discussed the speculation over the night. Most agreed that they were probably shrunk.
Fiona argued. She'd filled her bathtub and the surface tension seemed appropriate.
"Unless the water's shrunk, too," Halle said.
"Don't be silly," Donna said. "You can't shrink water."
"You can't shrink people, either," Fiona shouted.
"I certainly can't," Carl said. Everyone froze. Kate hoped they got used to Carl's presence. She thought that seeing the group flinch-stop was going to get old after a while.
"You mean….you're…" Bree started to say.
"Four hundred and twenty three of your feet tall," he said cheerfully. "But that's all I'm going to tell you about me. You can figure out a lot of the rest from that, anyway."
"Like, you're not from Earth," Kate said.
"Maybe. Now, you guys-"
"What are we?" Halle asked. "Slaves?"
"Pets?" Fiona asked.
"Toys?" Kate asked softly.
"Hmmm. Pets, probably, would be the closest. Something I acquired to keep me entertained. But capable of independent action and initiative."
"Well, we're not going to do it!" Lisa shouted. "So you might as well let us go. We're not cooperating with your sick entertainment.   Right, gang?" No one moved, to agree or disagree. "Guys?"
"Oh, don't worry," Carl said. "No one's going to get hurt for having an opinion. Now. You have food, water, shelter, and clothes. This is the minimum I feel I have to offer you."
"What? No TV? That's boring!" Meg said.
"Yep," he agreed. "If you want more, you're going to have to earn it. You don't have to be entertaining, but if you're not, you're going to be in those uniforms for a while."
"More?" Petra asked. "What more?"
"Oh, maybe some movies from the archive, a chance of clothes, some more interesting, varied food, new clothes. I don't know, what would you guys want?"
"Towels," Meg said. "There's no towel for the shower."
"And a shower curtain," Kate said.
"A change of panties," Jackie suggested.
"Leslie needs to keep her ankles warm," Bree muttered.
"Shut it, bitch!"
"Make me, whore!"
"Shut up, both of you!" Lisa shouted.
"Lisa, you are NOT in charge any more," Halle said.
"Doesn't matter," April said softly. "You guys fighting? That's just entertaining him." Everyone quieted.
"Sir?" Bobbi called. "What would we have to do to earn a change of clothes?"
"Screw that!" Lisa said. "Basic human decency requires that we have clean clothes."
"I'm not human," he said with a chuckle. The deep sound of his laugh made the girls' bones rattle. "But I can do laundry." A giant hand appeared at the front of the garage, palm up. "Anyone wants to toss me your clothes, I'll wash 'em."
"No!" Lisa shouted at the hand. "We don't strip for your amusement! We need clean clothes, now! And soap and shampoo to clean ourselves. And towels-"
"Nah," he said. The garage moved. The ground fell away and the girls' chairs tipped over. They clung to each other and to the studs in the unfinished walls. Outside, the garage flew over the town. Past the church, it aimed at a municipal swimming pool.
When it stopped suddenly, most of the girls rolled out and fell into the water.   A couple screamed and held on desperately, but were shaken loose in seconds.
A cup of powder the size of a barrel was lowered by a hand and dumped into the water. Carl set the garage down by the pool and started to stir it with his hands. Girls screamed and thrashed as the water churned and the detergent bubbled.
Kate was pretty sure she was knocked to the bottom at least twice. Finally, he lifted his hand, shook it twice and let them stagger to the edges of the pool.
"There you go. Bodies and hair soaped, clothes laundered. You can rinse off in the showers at the end, there. By the time you walk back to your houses from here, you should be dry, too." He picked up the garage again.
April's chair had not moved and she remained sitting in it. "I'm going to put the little wounded one here back where she belongs. You guys hurry home. Dinner'll be waiting." April waved dreamily as the garage was lifted away.
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A thumbtack the size of a telephone booth was stuck into one house when they got back. Right below Bree's window, it held a piece of paper that listed a number of amenities. And a price list.
"Two soap, shower cap, slippers, four changes of clothing, six changes of underwear," Jackie read. "It looks like a shopping list for going to summer camp."
"Individual items for individual efforts, or the whole kit available for a 12-girl cheer routine," Bobbi read.
"Eleven girls, just this once," April said from her chair. "He promised that I wouldn't get punished for… For trying to run away like I did. He said he feels bad about the fire escape falling on me."
"Not bad enough to let you go," Fiona said. She helped April up and into the house. The others milled about in the driveway, looking over at the list.
Lisa held up her arm and shook her sodden sleeve. "Any chance we can get an advance? I just don't feel…cheery in this."
"We could do it naked," Leslie said. "Maybe he'd pay double.
"Oh, no," Bobbi said. "I'm not doing the pyramid if Halle or Meg's udders are swinging over my head, unrestrained. I could get brain damage."
"Jealous," Halle said with a smile.
"I can fix brain damage," Carl said.
"Shut UP!" Lisa shouted. "Don't sneak up on people that way!"
"Okay. Okay, I'll go do my giant things. Take care of the castle, hide it from the satellites. You'll be officially alone for one hour." The light changed. Donna was the first to notice why.
"The sun!" Everyone looked. The face of the sun was replaced with the dial of a clock. A timer counting down from 60 minutes hung in the sky.
"Okaaayyy," Leslie said after a moment. "Well, first off, we definitely need someone in charge."
"No, we just need a coordinator," Petra said.
"No, we need a bulletin board." Everyone turned to stare a Jackie. "You know. Like, 'traveling to Boston for concert on such and such, need a rider, willing to split gas.' Right? Only now," she waved at the price sheet, "it's 'anyone interested in bed sheets, meet on the field at eight o'clock.' Then you work up a five or six person routine, or however many people show up."
"But we'd still need to schedule, so things don't overlap," Petra said.
"Or, we just all show up and we all do everything, and there's no problem," Lisa said.
"I don't know," Kate said. "I think the more variety, the more interested Carl will be. The more we can get out of him."
"Wait, are we seriously considering this?" Fiona asked. "Cheering on demand, to earn stuff we should have anyway?"
"What else are we going to do? Bobbi asked. "You wanna go swimming again?"
"No…"
In the end, they decided to play to Carl's plan, at least for now. If they ever gained any sort of leverage they could renegotiate from there. They also decided to go for variety.
"So," Kate said, thinking out loud, "there's one way to make a twelve-woman team, twelve ways to make a one-woman team, sixty six ways to make a two-woman team-"
"Kate," Bree said, tapping her on the shoulder. "We'll just go with the signup sheets."
"Oh. Uh, sure."
When the light changed, they told Carl that they would do the full routine that he'd kidnapped them during. But they wanted a day to prepare. Bobbi had suggested that watching them practice was probably as entertaining for him as the show would be. He seemed agreeable.
"Can we get the payment up front?" Lisa asked again. "This uniform is getting…Eyuck."
"I don't know," he said.
"You know we're good for it," Bree said. "You know where we live."
"Good point," he laughed. "Okay, I'll set the supplier to the basic living kit. You should be getting your things in a few minutes."
"Great!" Leslie said. "So, tonight we unpack and move in, tomorrow we practice, and tomorrow night, we blow your socks off."
"I can't wait," he said.
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Petra decided not to wait for anything as humiliating as performing tricks for their master. The track clothes that had appeared in her bedroom weren't ninja black, but they were a nice, nondescript gray. After the International Orange of the cheerleading costume, she felt almost invisible.
Night came and she slipped out of the back of their house. She hadn't warned anyone of her plan. Carl could obviously listen in on any conversation. She hated leaving the others to be punished for her misbehavior, but there was no way around it.
Maybe she could lead a rescue back. She didn't really buy that this whole town was on some guy's hobby shop bench. They'd never seen more than the arms. Maybe there wasn't anything BUT the arms.
She'd sooner believe that this was an abandoned movie set than that 400 foot tall men captured grown women as pets. And movie sets always had phones.
The alley behind the house led around a bunch of other houses, of a variety of designs. From her brief view of the city from the flying garage she figured that the church was at about the center. She moved through the backyards and abandoned lots, always away from the church.
After a block or so, she came to a railroad. She crouched next to a cord of firewood and looked it over. Dust was on the rails. Carl wasn't using his train set, evidently. Beyond the rails was a blank area leading up to walls. They looked like the soundproofing big cities put around freeways.
Petra glanced right and left, then scurried from her hiding place to the wall. It was about twelve feet tall. She hit it running and leapt upwards. She jammed her hand into one of the grooves and made a fist. It just barely held. She scampered a bit higher and wedged another fist. Two more and she grabbed the top.
A moment later she swung her leg over and sat for a second, scanning ahead. It was dark, much darker than the town was. Her mind didn't register any dangers, none as great as being on top of the wall like this, so she hopped off and down to the ground below.
This side was softer, warmer, rougher than what she'd seen of Pleasantville so far. She peered through the gloom. The ground wrinkled. Some sort of security system? Was it touch or weight sensitive? It curled up more. She ran, trying to get across the zone. A wall appeared ahead of her, made of the same material.
For a second, she was reminded of her Aunt Esti. Esti read fortunes. The wrinkles in the wall reminded her of a summer spent with her aunt learning palm reading. The wall had a life-line the size of- "Oh, crap!" she murmured.
Carl's hands closed over the tiny figure. She struggled, but it was like being trapped in a cave-in, with leather-covered rocks. There was a sensation of movement, great and fast. Then the hands opened up and she saw an eye.
A huge, huge eye looking in at her. "You going to behave?" he said. The playset must include a sound system, and sound proofing. His voice thundered like a god's, shaking every cell in her body. She covered her ears and screamed.
"Sorry," he whispered. "Forgot." It was still louder than the noise of a cheering crowd, but she'd survive. The sound at least. "Anyway," he went on, "you're very far off the floor right now. Will you behave?"
"Yes," she promised. He opened up the hands like a clamshell and she found herself kneeling on his palm. Very slowly, she crawled to the edge and looked down.
Christ, she'd never been this far up. She wasn't sure if the helicopter ride she'd taken got this high. She retreated. In the center of the palm, she sat and looked up.
There was just no way to process the face. It was too big, too much detail. There was an eye, a gentle brown one, looking down at her. And there was another eye near it. It took an act of will to see them as two eyes from the same creature.
The lips moved and teeth flashed and the skin rippled.   But she couldn't seem to connect any of it into any sort of expression. The eyebrows were just things that you used as landmarks to find the eyes. The nose was what kept the waves of lips from crashing into the eyes. He blinked, great sheets of flesh snapping across the eyes, a wet sliding audible to her as they went. She thought she'd piss herself.
"You know," he whispered, "I had a bet with myself. I really thought that Fiona would be the first one to try to escape. But I thought that she'd wait until April was out of the cast. Do you think that she'd have gone with you if it weren't for April?"
"I don't know," she said. "I was afraid to talk to anyone about this. No one knows I tried to run away, sir."
"Sure, sure," he said softly. "Not going to punish any of them as conspirators. But… There must be a penalty." Petra looked up in the eye and trembled.
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Morning came with an alarm. Bobbi rolled out of bed, reaching for the phone while Jackie pawed at the air for her radio. The two slowly realized that the music they heard was coming from outside.
The familiar circus theme sounded from the street in front of the occupied houses. Girls filtered out slowly.
In the center of the cul-de-sac, a wagon rested. It was a circus wagon, all gold and red, built as a cage on wheels. Inside the cage, a girl lay naked, curled up in a corner.
"Petra!" Bobbi cried, running down the sidewalk. The others soon joined her. Hands reached through the bars and touched her, squeezed her hand, stroked her face. She didn't react.
"Is she okay?" Bree asked.
"I don't know. Open the cage!" Lisa shouted. But no one could find a door.
Kate took a step back from the crowd, turned to the sky, and softly called for the giant. "Carl? Did you put Petra in the cage?"
"Yes. She tried to escape last night. That was very bad."
"Yes, she was naughty," Kate agreed. "Can we get her out of the cage."
"Oh, I don't care about naughty," Carl said. "Small as you guys are, though, the cleaning systems here would suck you right up. It'd be like a vacuum cleaner finding rice in the carpet. Whoooosh! Gone. It's dangerous for you guys to leave Pleasantville."
"Okay," Kate persisted, "but how long does she have to stay in the cage?"
"And why is she gone fetal?" Halle asked.
"She didn't want to give up her new clothes," Carl said. "So I had to take them off of her." Everyone shuddered, remembering that hand descending over April. It would be less like a boyfriend unwrapping you as a gift, and more like a sunflower seed being shelled. "So," he went on, "she's going to be caged until she learns her lesson."
"I think she's learned it," Leslie said. Petra wouldn't squeeze back where the other girl held her hand.
"Maybe. I'll leave it up to you guys."
"What does that mean?" Bobbi asked.
"Well, if you think she can be trusted again, you strip naked and put your clothes in the wagon." Little slots opened up in the carriage. "I picked a random number, between 1 and 10. When that many girls are naked, the cage will open."
"The hell!" Jackie shouted. "I'm not getting naked because she felt like doing something stupid."
"I'd consider that carefully," Fiona said, stepping up behind Jackie. "May be, we're going to have to vote on something stupid you're doing in the coming days."
"Guys?" Lisa said. "If we don't have Petra, we can't do the 11-woman routine."
"We can to a 10-person one, though, right?" Donna asked the sky.
"The deal was a 12-person routine," he replied. "I was being generous about April's accident. What Petra did was no accident."
"What if we can't do it?" Bobbi asked. "Not tomorrow, but maybe after April's all better?"
"I gave you an advance. If you don't earn it tomorrow, I'll have to repossess everything." His hand appeared and fell straight towards them. Girls screamed, many ran.
Lisa looked Carl right in the thumb and stood by the cage. As the hand paused over her, she stripped. When she was naked, she put the clothing in one of the twelve slots. It shut and there was the sound of a small bell ringing.
She turned and glared at the others. Fiona was removing her shirt as she stepped forward.
-----
Bobbi stepped out onto the porch. "She's still a little shocky," she told the rest of the squad. "Said something about steel covered in leather."
"The bastard!" Meg growled. "What did he DO to her?"
"She drank some water," Bobbi went on. "We got a few bits of chicken into her, she went to sleep. Jackie and I'll take turns staying with her tonight."
"Is Jackie okay?" Fiona asked, eyes on the ground.
"Yeah," Bobbi answered. "Once she got some more clothes on, she seems to have forgotten all about you stripping her."
"Good," Fiona replied.
"Wonder how Carl enjoyed that?" Donna asked.
"Well, we're supposed to be entertaining," Leslie said. "Are there points on the list for catfights?"
"Speaking of points," Lisa said. "We should be practicing the pyramid."
"Without Jackie or Petra?" Kate asked.
"We can bring April over here to sit with Petra," Lisa said. "Practice the pyramid by ourselves. Then tomorrow, Petra just does the dance-in-front part."
"Girl can certainly dance," Bree said with a nod.
"If she can sleep this off," Halle cautioned.
"It's the best we can do," Lisa said. "Come on, let's go get at least a couple of hours in. Then we all spread out and explore."
"What, be alone for a while?" Donna asked. "Or at least," and her eyes flicked up to the sky, "as alone as we can get?"
"That's an idea," Leslie said.
"Okay. Workout clothes!" Lisa said, clapping her hands. Kate turned to go, then paused. She turned back to point out that Lisa was taking charge again. The oldest girl on the squad was looking right at her as she turned.
Kate considered the naked blonde as she stood there. She remembered Lisa facing off…or thumbing off the giant, first to strip for Petra's sake. She gave a small nod. Lisa's eyes widened but after a second, she nodded back. Then they turned and walked away from each other.
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.Stopover in a little louder town