Dan opened his eyes. He must have dozed, but instead of waking out of his nightmare, he found himself still locked in his terrible dream.
Sunlight streaming through vast cathedral-sized windows in the room looked pale and dim, which led the tiny man to guess that he had been asleep much longer than he had expected. His struggles to free himself from the enormous block of fudge had left him thoroughly exhausted, but he woke with renewed energy and determination.
“I can do this,” he said. “I can do this if I just…”
His words choked off. His spouse and youngest son reappeared.
“You can give out a few treats, and then I will take you trick-or-treating,” Pat, still dressed in a shabby devil costume, told Adam.
“Pat,” Dan screeched until his throat ached with rawness. “Help me! Please! Down here! In the bowl. Please, find me!”
An enthusiastic rapping at the front door nearly deafened the tiny man, who found the deep bowl an echo chamber for amplifying every intensely loud and even painful sound.
“Get ready,” Pat told Adam.
"No!" Dan screamed in as loud a voice as he could manage, but it was like a whisper in a hurricane as the front door opened to the excited squeals of the group of rowdy children at the door. "Dammit, keep me away from the grubby hands of those little brats!"
A hurricane blast of October wind caused the colorful plastic wrapping to flutter around him, obscuring his view until the door closed and conditions became calmer in the bowl.
Adam, a tyke of only six years, loomed over the bowl, excited at his parent's trust that he could count out the required treats and distribute them.
Skull-piercing cries of “trick-or-treat” felt loud enough to cause aneurysms in Dan’s overtaxed brain.
Dan saw Adam's hand reach into the bowl, removing two of the adjacent bars of fudge. He heard the loud plop as Adam dropped the homemade treats into awaiting containers before swinging his hand back over the bowl.
"God, no!" Dan screamed. If he was dropped into some kid's waiting treat bag, he would never regain his normal size. He would be lost, a man the size of a grain of rice, in a huge, inhospitable world. "Fuck! Why can't anyone hear me?"
Adam grabbed two more bars of fudge before he satisfied the waiting cluster of trick-or-treaters crowded around the front door. Dan, spared, sighed in relief, but with the diminished supply in the bowl, he knew it was a matter of time until his luck ran out.
"I've got to get out of this mess," he cried. He saw the blurred red form of his devil-attired spouse walk past the bowl.