The morning started, as most did for Abdias, with an involuntary anatomical protest. The insistent, tinny shriek of his alarm clock, placed strategically far across his cramped studio apartment, triggered a nervous spasm in his right arm.
Instead of the usual, lazy swat, the limb shot out with the velocity of a harpoon, traversing the entire length of the room. It didn't just silence the clock; the force of the impact launched the cheap plastic device into the ceiling fan, where it ricocheted with a sad, defeated thwack before landing in a basket of drying socks.
"Oh, for the love of ligaments," Abdias muttered, hauling his arm back.
It returned like a pale, deflated noodle, coiling itself around his torso before snapping back into its normal, fleshy shape. He rubbed the shoulder joint, which always felt vaguely used after an uncontrolled hyper-extension.
Abdias Darrington was twenty-three, perpetually broke, and genetically gifted with the unique, utterly impractical ability to manipulate his own bodily mass and dimensions. He could stretch, compress, twist, and flatten himself into shapes that would make a pretzel blush. Unfortunately, his control was less like professional sculpting and more like trying to guide a garden hose during a fire. Emotional stress, sudden noise, or even an unexpectedly strong cup of coffee could send an appendage spiraling off toward the horizon.
Rent was due in three days. He had applied everywhere: data entry, dog walking, even professional mannequin modeling (a job he was ironically rejected from for being 'too fluid').
Today, however, he had an interview that seemed almost tailored to his skills, minus the "freakishly mutable body" part: Junior Intern at The Gilded Relic, Port Ricket's most exclusive and ridiculously overpriced antique restoration shop.
Dressing was a challenge. A sudden anxiety flicker over the state of his application caused his neck to lengthen slightly, necessitating a quick compression before his tie became a scarf wrapped around his sternum.
He made it out the door and onto the bus, where he immediately encountered the first social hurdle of the day. The bus was packed. Abdias, dreading the typical elbow battle, decided to compress. He squeezed his shoulders inward, flattening his chest, and drew his legs up, folding himself neatly into a space about the size of a large picnic hamper. It was manageable, but visibility was low, and a middle-aged woman mistook his head (protruding slightly from his compressed torso) for a misplaced handbag.
"Excuse me, Madam," he squeaked, "I am not leather."
She shrieked and abandoned her seat. Abdias promptly unfolded, apologizing profusely to the now-staring passengers.
The Gilded Relic was an edifice of polished wood, hushed tones, and implied wealth. Upon entering, Abdias felt his anxiety levels spike, causing his earlobes to involuntarily droop to chin height. He quickly tucked them back up as Madame Elara, the proprietor, emerged from the back room.
Madame Elara was formidable. She wore a tailored velvet suit, her salt-and-pepper hair pinned into a severe chignon, and her eyes held the weary skepticism of a woman who had seen too many clumsy people shatter too many priceless objects.
The interview was excruciatingly formal. Abdias sat rigidly, trying to remember not to gesticulate. He was doing well until Madame Elara asked, "And Mr. Darrington, do you have any… nervous habits we should be aware of?"
He panicked. A wave of compression hit his legs, shortening them until his knees practically touched his sternum. He looked like a normal man sitting on a very tall invisible stool.
"N-no, Madame," he stammered, his voice unnaturally high. "Just a slight… lower body rigidity issue."
To Abdias's absolute shock, Madame Maria hired him. "We need someone who can work in extremely confined spaces, especially accessing the backs of large display cases," she explained, squinting at his now-normal-again legs. "You appear… adaptable."
He started immediately. His first official task was simple: dust the shelf above the main counter, where a rather garish, late-Victorian ceramic cat sat leering.
He approached the shelf, rag in hand. He could easily reach it with a chair, but Madame Maria had specifically told him the chairs were forbidden on the polished marble floor.
"Use your height, Mr. Darrington. Stretch a little," she commanded, folding her arms.
Abdias took a deep breath. Controlled stretch. Precision. Only the spine, only the arms.
He focused, pushing the energy upward. His torso elongated gracefully, his normal five-foot-ten frame becoming six feet, then seven. His arms followed, becoming taut and long, allowing him to easily reach the dust cat. Success!
Then, the doorbell chimed, a sudden, jarring DING-DONG.
The noise hit Abdias's nervous system like a tuning fork hitting a gong. The carefully managed stretch fractured. Instead of maintaining spinal elongation, his right wrist snapped forward, stretching independently from the rest of his arm and expanding in diameter until his hand was the size of a catcher's mitt.
The giant, clumsy hand caught the ceramic cat, but its sheer size meant it accidentally slapped the cat against the shelf. The cat didn't break, but the force of the slap sent the cat flying backward—right toward the prized item on the shelf below: a delicate, hand-painted Venetian glass music box called the Aria of the Gondolier.
"No!" Madame Maria shrieked, her severity temporarily abandoned in favor of pure terror.
Abdias knew he couldn't compress fast enough to catch the cat before it took out the music box. He had to use the power in opposition.
He slammed his left hand flat against the counter, then focused all his elastic energy into his palm. His hand flattened, thinning until it was transparent, then rapidly extended upwards, becoming a shimmering, taut membrane—a human trampoline.
The ceramic cat hit the hand-membrane with a soft boing, was redirected over the music box, and landed safely—if slightly indignantly—upon a cushion-filled display cabinet devoted to ancient slippers.
Abdias's membrane hand snapped back, leaving him dizzy and exhausted.
Madame Maria stared, her mouth making an O shape that rivaled the aperture of the music box.
"It was… controlled chaos, Madame," Abdias whispered, weakly.
She blinked twice. "Mr. Darrington, you have demonstrated a unique aptitude for defensive elasticity. You are on probation. And for the love of history, please keep those extensions localized."
Abdias spent the next two weeks attempting what he dubbed "Anatomical Zen." He realized his lack of control stemmed from physical and mental tension. He needed to be fluid, calm, and pliable.
He tried yoga. This went poorly. During the downward dog, he relaxed too much, and his body puddle-like spread across the floor, his limbs becoming indistinguishable from a melted marshmallow. He spent twenty minutes trying to rein his bones back into the right configuration.
He tried meditation. While sitting cross-legged, attempting to focus on his breathing, a sudden thought—Did I remember to pay the electric bill?—caused his entire torso to spin like a pinwheel for three terrifying seconds, ending with him collapsing into the recycling bin.
His job at the Gilded Relic, meanwhile, presented a continuous series of low-grade disasters.
One afternoon, tasked with cleaning a narrow gap between two colossal oak wardrobes, he decided compression was the way to go. He exhaled sharply, folding his rib cage and retracting his limbs, flattening himself into a shape akin to a human envelope. He slid effortlessly into the gap.
The problem arose when he tried to unfurl. He got a sudden leg cramp. The cramp triggered an involuntary expansion of his knees. He became wedged, his body a tight, rubbery plug between two tons of ancient English carpentry.
"Madame Maria!" he called, his voice muffled.
"Are you stuck, Mr. Darrington?" she asked, sounding utterly unsurprised.
"I am anatomically incarcerated! My knees have swelled!"
It took thirty minutes, a lot of specialized lubricating oil, and Madame Maria gently poking him with a brass-tipped cane to coax his body back to normal. When he popped out, he was covered in cobwebs and smelling faintly of cedar.l
"The key, Mr. Darrington," she sighed later, watching him attempt to lift a heavy crate by stretching just his fingers into strong, slender hooks, "is intention. You react. You must intend."
The advice stuck with him. Intention. Not panic, not reaction. Will.
The annual Antiquarian Gala was the Gilded Relic's biggest night. The shop was filled with society's elite, all sipping champagne and pretending they understood the significance of a seventeenth-century snuffbox.
The centerpiece of the exhibit, perched precariously upon a glass pedestal in the center of the room, was the Chronometer of Whimsy. It was a marvel of delicate engineering, a clock made almost entirely of spun sugar glass, sapphire, and tiny, intricate clockwork figurines. It was valued at "enough to buy Abdias's apartment building and convert it into a pigeon coop."
Abdias, dressed in an ill-fitting, borrowed suit, was assigned to the 'Perimeter Patrol,' essentially being told to stand perfectly still and look dignified. This was perhaps the most challenging task yet.
He was momentarily holding his breath, trying to prevent his eyebrows from autonomously stretching into antennae, when disaster struck.
A wealthy patron—a man whose face was dominated by a ridiculously full mustache—became overly enthusiastic while describing the Chronometer to his wife. He gesticulated wildly, swinging his arm backward, and his diamond-encrusted cufflink caught the edge of the pedestal's linen cover.
The linen zipped off the pedestal, catching the base of the delicate glass Chronometer.
The priceless clock tilted, slipped, and began a slow, inevitable descent toward the polished marble floor.
Time seemed to flatten, just like Abdias often did. The gasp of the crowd was a unified, high-pitched horror movie noise. Madame Elara, across the room, looked on the verge of spontaneous combustion.
Abdias intended. He didn't panic. He focused on the gap. The distance was about ten feet away.
He didn't trust his hands. They were clumsy, reactive. He needed something soft, something wide, something that could absorb impact without shattering the fragile glass.
He executed a full-body intention: the Amoebic Catch.
Instead of stretching his arms, Abdias focused on his torso and chest cavity. With a sound like a wet suction cup being pulled from the floor, his entire upper body elongated and flattened, snapping forward like a living manta ray, becoming a massive, circular, thin rubber sheet.
The rubbery disc of Abdias's torso traveled across the ten feet of space with impossible speed, reaching the Chronometer just as it hit the three-foot mark.
The Chronometer of Whimsy landed perfectly in the center of the fleshy, pale disc.
But the force of the stop, even cushioned, caused the clockwork inside to whir violently. A small, sapphire figurine within the clock's dome began spinning wildly.
Abdias realized he had successfully caught it, but now he was ten feet away, upside down, and flattened into a human serving tray holding a priceless antiquity. The guests were looking down at him.
He couldn't just snap back—the jarring movement would surely break the clock.
"Mr. Darrington," Madame Maria's voice was dangerously low, "Do not move."
"I can't, Madame," his voice echoed slightly from his flattened chest. "I have achieved optimal structural rigidity, but I cannot reverse without risking the Whimsy's integrity."
He needed to get the clock back onto the pedestal without moving his torso. He needed precision. He needed fingers.
He focused again, channeling energy into the edges of his flattened form. Slowly, miraculously, two slender, foot-long fingers extruded from the side of his flattened rubber body. These fingers, delicate and rubbery, gently grasped the edge of the Chronometer.
Then came the transfer. Using only the momentum of the elastic rebound, the two specialized fingers lifted the clock and swung the Chronometer of Whimsy back up, placing it gingerly, perfectly, back onto the pedestal.
The crowd erupted—not in horror, but in bewildered, stunned applause.
As the clock settled, Abdias allowed his torso to reverse its elasticity. He snapped back across the room, folding back into his suit with the sound of a deflating balloon. He adjusted his tie, panting slightly.
The wealthy patron with the mustache stared at Abdias. "My word," the man stammered, pulling off his cufflink, "Do you usually have to flatten yourself into a human tablecloth to save the inventory?"
"Only when necessary, sir," Abdias replied, trying to regain his dignit.
The next morning, Abdias was fully prepared for Madame Maria to fire him, perhaps with a restraining order banning him from entering any building containing sharp or fragile objects.
He found her in her office, sipping tea with an unnerving calm.
"Mr. Darrington," she began, adjusting her severe spectacles. "Yesterday was… eventful."
"I apologize for the excessive pliability, Madame. I am still working on the localized management."
"Localized management?" she scoffed. "Mr. Darrington, you became a pancake to save ten million dollars worth of glass. I believe your control is increasing, though perhaps your methods are… dramatic."
She slid an envelope across the desk. It was his pay, plus a considerable bonus.
"You are not fired, Mr. Darrington. In fact, I am promoting you."
Abdias blinked. "To what, precisely? Human shelf?"
"To Chief Logistics and Retrieval Specialist," she announced. "We have always struggled with inventory retrieval from high, narrow, or structurally unsound locations. You, sir, are perfect."
Abdias grinned. For the first time, his powers felt like an asset, not a liability.
"Now, your first assignment," Madame Maria said, pointing to a small, sealed bottle on the windowsill. "A 19th-century ship in a bottle. We need the original plans retrieved from the cork. The cork is stuck. A normal person would smash the glass."
Abdias nodded, feeling a thrill of excitement. He approached the bottle. He focused, allowing his right index finger to thin and elongate, tapering into a flexible, wire-like probe. It slid easily past the cork, spiraling down toward the tiny, rolled parchment inside.
The task required absolute stillness and concentration. His finger delicately hooked the scroll.
Just as he began reeling it in, Madame Maria cleared her throat loudly.
CRACK!
The sudden noise startled Abdias. His elastic finger, now panicked, expanded violently inside the tiny bottle. Not enough to shatter the glass, thankfully, but enough to turn the perfectly coiled parchment into a wad of useless paper pulp. His finger retreated immediately, recoiling back into his hand, leaving the wad stuck inside.
Madame Maria sighed, taking a long sip of her tea. "Perhaps," she murmured, "we should start with the larger bottles."
Abdias slumped slightly, his shoulders relaxing, which caused his ears to droop again.
"Still?" he muttered, pulling his ears back up.
"Still, Mr. Darrington," Madame Maria confirmed, her voice laced with weary affection. "But at least you're finally earning your chaos."