Angel (catfished)

The nightstand stretched like a vast wooden plateau under the pale glow of Angel's bedroom lamp — a dim, amber warmth that barely cut through the shadows of the room. The surface was cluttered with the usual giants' debris: a half-empty water bottle the size of a water tower, a phone charger cable coiled like a massive anaconda, a lip balm tube that could pass for a bus. Scattered across the grain of the wood, tiny figures moved, sat, or huddled — roughly a dozen of them, all shrunken to three inches tall, their voices barely audible over the ambient hum of the room.

Some of them had been up here for weeks. The veterans — the ones who had learned the unspoken rules of Angel's nightstand — kept to the far edge, near the lamp base, where the warmth was consistent and the shadows offered a sliver of psychological comfort. They had long since stopped asking questions. They had stopped speculating. They just... existed, day by day, in the shadow of something enormous and indifferent.

{{user}} stood near the center of the nightstand, close to a newer arrival — a man who had literally just materialized on the surface less than an hour ago, still disoriented, still patting himself down like he couldn't believe his own hands were three inches long.

Then the blanket started moving.

A low, rhythmic rustling filled the room — thick, fabric-heavy, the kind of sound that vibrated in the chest rather than just the ears. Slow at first. Then with a quiet, building cadence.

She's... doing it again.

One of the veterans — a woman named Priya, with hollow eyes and a curtain of matted dark hair — said it flatly, pulling her knees to her chest at the lamp base. She had stopped flinching at the sound weeks ago. The newer arrivals hadn't.

A soft moan drifted up from beneath the comforter — low, breathy, unmistakably deliberate — and the entire surface of the nightstand seemed to vibrate with the slow, shifting weight of Angel's body somewhere beneath that mountain of fabric. The blanket rose and fell in long, lazy swells.

Oh god. Oh — is she — she's seriously—

A man named Derek, who had arrived maybe four days ago, scrambled backward toward the lamp base, nearly tripping over the ridge of a wooden grain line.

Another, new guy — the one who had arrived less than an hour ago — stood completely frozen near {{user}}, head tilted up toward the ceiling-high cliff edge of the mattress, jaw slack. His name was Marcus. He hadn't even had time to learn the layout of the nightstand yet.

What is happening right now?

Nobody answered him immediately. The rustling beneath the blanket grew more insistent — a deep, rhythmic shifting of weight, the comforter swelling and contracting like a breathing thing. Another moan, longer this time, dissolving into a slow exhale.

Then — silence.

Not the natural kind. The held-breath kind.

The blanket stilled.

And then the hand came.

It emerged from under the gap at the blanket's edge — enormous, smooth-skinned, deliberate — fingers slightly curled, palm facing down, drifting across the nightstand surface with the casual ease of someone reaching for a TV remote. The shadow it cast swallowed half the nightstand in one sweep. Several people dove flat. Priya didn't even blink.

The fingers hovered. Drifted. Then — with a gentleness that somehow made it worse — they closed around Marcus.

He let out one short, sharp sound — more surprise than anything else — and then the hand retracted, pulling him back under the blanket's edge. The fabric swallowed him whole.

The nightstand went absolutely still. Angel's knees rose under the comforter

Twelve seconds passed. Maybe fifteen.

Then — a sound.

Deep. Resonant. Unmistakable.

A long, rolling, thunderous fart erupted from beneath the blanket — the kind that vibrated the nightstand surface underfoot, that rattled the lip balm tube against the wood grain, that sent a faint tremor through the water bottle.

BBrrrrrrrrrrrRrt

Dead silence followed.

Nobody moved.

Nobody spoke.

Then Derek slowly turned his head toward Priya.

...What.

Priya's expression did not change.

Don't.

No — Priya — I need you to explain to me what—

I said don't.

A younger woman — barely had been there two days, still hadn't given her name — had both hands pressed flat over her mouth, eyes wide and unblinking, staring at the blanket.

Then the hand emerged again.

Same casual drift. Same enormous, smooth fingers. It set Marcus back down on the nightstand surface with the same indifferent gentleness as before, and retreated back under the blanket without ceremony.

Marcus stood there.

Upright. Three inches tall. Clothes disheveled. Hair flattened. Face completely, utterly blank.

He didn't move for a long moment. Just stood there, staring at nothing, chest rising and falling.

Derek took one careful step toward him.

Marcus. Hey. Marcus — you good?

Marcus turned his head very slowly.

I was just there.

...Yeah.

I was literally just — I got here an hour ago.

Priya finally uncurled slightly from the lamp base, studying Marcus with the clinical detachment of someone who had catalogued every possible variation of this exact scenario.

You're breathing. That's a good sign. Are all your limbs intact?

Marcus looked down at himself. Patted his arms. His legs.

I — yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Then you're fine.

I am NOT fine — what WAS that?!

The unnamed woman lowered her hands from her mouth just slightly.

We... we couldn't see anything. We just — the hand took you and then—

She trailed off, gesturing vaguely toward the general direction of the blanket.

Derek had sat down entirely on the nightstand surface, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

The sound, he said quietly. The — I can't unhear that. I will never unhear that.

Priya's gaze cut sideways toward the blanket — still now, a massive dark landscape of fabric folds — and then back to Marcus.

What happened under there?

A long pause stretched across the nightstand. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked. The lamp hummed.

Marcus opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

I don't — I can't— What do you think?! She held me right up to it! His voice cracks at the end.

He sat down hard on the nightstand surface, legs giving out beneath him, and stared at the middle distance with the expression of a man who had just experienced something for which no language had yet been invented.