Author's Note:  Nothing really to say except for Thank You to ~

~ Anne

~ Storyteller

~ Bookie – No!! Don't take my Jack away!!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Chapter 6  ~

Stress continued running, long after she had left the vicinity of David's house.  She stumbled and tripped in the grass and on the pebbles in her path, cursing her luck the entire way.  "Why did I have to drink that stuff in the rabbit's house?  Now I'm shorter than a blade of grass!" 

And she was.  As she stopped to take a breath, she leaned against a single blade of grass that was easily an inch or so taller than she.  "Darn, darn, double darn.  I can't bel-- Wait a second, what is that?"  Coming from an area a few feet from where she was standing was a whole mess of thick smoke.  "I thought I left that house and that fire behind me.  How the heck did it get in front of me?"

Stress stretched her legs for a second before jogging towards the place where the smoke was originating.  She slowed her jog to a trot when she saw that there wasn't a house in front of her.  Instead, sitting on a mushroom, was a small caterpillar with dark hair, wearing plaid pants and smoking a cigar.  A small caterpillar with dark hair, wearing plaid pants and smoking a cigar?  Since when do caterpillars wear clothes and smoke cigars?  Stress didn't know but she was going to find out!

"Excuse me sir, but who are you?"

The caterpillar looked her up and down and inhaled on his large cigar.  "Me name is Racetrack da caterpillah.  Who are you'se?"

"To be perfectly honest with you, Race - can I call you Race? - I don't right now." Stress confessed as she sat on acorn that lay at the foot of Race's mushroom.

"Well, lemme tell ya goily, if you'se don't know, I shoah as hell don't know."  Race took another puff on his cigar and exhaled an orange smoke ring.

Stress stared in marvel at his orange smoke ring before shaking his head.  "I knew who I was when I woke up this morning but I've been changed a few times since then."

"What da hell does dat mean?"

"It means exactly what I said.  Up until this morning, I've always been around the same size.  Now, look at me.  I've been so many different sizes in one day that I'm so confused."

"Oh."  Race took another puff on his cigar, this time blowing out three blue smoke rings, all intertwined.

"I hate change," she continued as she walked forward and put her fingers through the smoke rings, "and all there has been in this place is change, change, change.  If you were to change, into a butterfly, maybe, wouldn't you be all PMS-y?"

"No, don't t'ink so."

"Well, I know that I am.  I just want to be a fixed size, once and for all!"

Race looked down at Stress and blue green smoke into her face.  "What size do ya wanna be?"

Stress was taken aback by his question.  She had thought that he had stopped listening to her.  "I would like to be a little taller.  Three inches is such a horrid height to be."

At her words, Race's face lost it's green caterpillar tint as it burned red.  "I'se exactly t'ree inches high, goily an' I--"  All of a sudden there was a big puff of smoke, more than his cigar could ever allow, and Race was gone.  All that was left on the mushroom was a cigar butt.


"Race?  Racetrack?  Mr. Caterpillar?" Stress called as she looked around for him.

"Hey, goily," came a voice from high above her.

She looked up and smiled when she saw that Race had transformed into a plaid colored butterfly.  "How do you feel, Butterfly Race?  Do you like the change?"

Race ignored her and flapped one of his wings toward the mushroom that he had been sitting on.  "One side'll make ya tallah an' da uddah side'll make ya smallah."

"Huh?  What are you talking about Butterfly Race?  One side o' what?"

"Da mushroom, genius.  Ev'ryt'ing gots a poipose, even in Newsieland."  And with that, the Butterfly Race flapped his plaid wings and left Stress all by her lonesome.

"O.K., then.  In that case, I guess I better take some of this mushroom."  Stress walked over to one side of the mushroom and broke off a chunk.  Then she walked over to the other side and did the same thing.  "Of course it has to be mushrooms, though.  I hate mushrooms!"  She wrinkled her nose and took a tiny nibble from the mushroom in her left hand.

She waited a moment and let out a cheer when she slowly, but surely, grew to her normal height once more.  "I better hold on to these.  They might just be worth something when I get back home." she noted as she put the mushrooms in her pocket, being careful not to mix up the "taller" shrooms and the "smaller" shrooms.

Now that she was her normal size again she looked around.  She was no longer on the dirty street that she had arrived on when she had left the cramped room.  She was now standing in front of another house - this one a mansion.