Meanwhile...
Norton walks into the Arcade and looks around and just thinks to himself, "Another stupid arcade. Just what this mall does not need."
Bored, he begins to wander. At the age of thirty two, Norton has taken a bitter look upon the word and decided life in general just plain sucks. At the top of his list of things to hate are his living conditions - a crappy apartment - and his job, which includes an ungrateful boss named Mr. Jerimiah.
Wandering the arcade, not really liking all the lights and noises, he wondered what people saw in all of this. After a bit, a security guard approaches him and tells him, "Sir, if you're not going to use any of the equipment in here, then I'm afraid I'm going half to ask you to leave." and begins to lead him out of the arcade and into the rest of the mall.
Norton shrugs the guard off and tells him, "I was just about to try something in here," and proceeds to walk toward the claw machines.
Taking two quarters from his pants pocket and looking at the security guard, Norton smiles and then places the quarters into the machine. The guard just shakes his head and walks off. Looking into the machine, Norton wonders if there is anything worth getting inside.
After a minute, he moves the claw. Seeing nothing really worthwhile, Norton drops the claw into the middle of the prizes, not really hoping for anything, and watches as it catches on a prize. Not sure what he's seeing, Norton watches as the claw drags the prize over and then drops into the prize slot.
Reaching in, Norton withdraws what he thinks is nothing more then a piece of cardboard with strings attached to the edges and a picture of a Cardinal printed on the front and back. Tapped to the bottom of what he thinks is the front is a folded up note. Pulling it off, being careful not to rip anything, he opens it up and begins to reads what's printed on it.
What Norton reads is simply, 'Turn me one way and I'll push you back. Turn me the other and I'll turn you forward. Be warned: I only go forward a certain way and back a certain way as well. To far, and I'll need the amount of time that you went back to recharge'.
"It's a riddle," Norton thinks as he looks at the Cardinal.
Not one for riddles, he begins to make his way out of the arcade and then out of the mall. Outside, he heads toward a movie store and rents his favorite DvD and begins to head for home.
Home, he is once again drawn toward his prize, despite the fact that he hates riddles. Curious about something, he places the DvD under his arm and holding a string in each arm, he begins to spin the piece of cardboard in the center.
What he sees is amazing as the Cardinal appears to be at first inside a cage and the literally the cage disappears and the Cardinal is flying free. And as Norton turns it, he's compelled to turn it even faster, which he does. And the faster he turns it, the faster the bird flies, as well as changes.
Before his eyes, the bird begins to regress backward in age and within moments, it's nothing more then a chick in it's mother's nest. Suddenly overcome with dizziness, Norton sits down hard on the floor, drops both the DvD and the prize, lies down and falls asleep.
In front of him, the prize begins to glow. As the glow grows, it covers Norton, but nothing else the moment is reaches the DvD. As the glow continues, Norton begins to change. As Norton changes, so does the prize and withing moments, the prize has gone from being a picture of a Cardinal to being a ceramic tiger cub; white in colour with black strips over it's hide. As this happened, Norton slept on, unaware of the changes happening to him, but not to the rest of his world.
-----
Slowly Norton swam back to consciousness. Looking around, he noted that one, he'd fallen asleep on the floor and two it was apparently a new day, as the sun was clearly shining through the living room window.
Stretching and yawning, he stood with some difficultly and seeing the ceramic tiger, asked himself, "Where'd that come from," as rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
Picking up the tiger, he stuffed it in his pocket and began to make his way toward the bathroom, wanting desperately to empty his bladder. Outside the bathroom, he had to actually reach up to grasp the bathroom door and opening it, Norton suddenly realized that everything seemed so much bigger.
Uncertain of what was going on, he entered the bathroom, turned on the light with some difficultly and closed the door. It was only when he moved toward the toilet, that he stopped when he saw how much bigger it was. Scared, but starting to put things together, he instead began to climb up onto the sink and peer into the mirror. And what he saw there, nearly made him topple back off the sink.
Looking back was his reflection, only it was the reflection of when he was six. He knew is was because he had long brown hair that fell down past his shoulders. The only noticeable difference was that he still had both ears pierced; something he'd done when he was nineteen. "What the hell is going on here," he asked himself, looking down.
Seeing that he was indeed a six year old boy again, Norton's first thought was to run and call his mother. But there was one flaw with that and it was that he hadn't spoken to his mother since he was eighteen. "But why," Norton asked himself as he slid off the sink and down onto the floor. The only reason he could think of was that it had to do with his mother's religion, Baptist, and something in his childhood; possibly connected to why he wore his hair long until he started school.
Suddenly the pressure on his bladder reminded him on why he'd come in here and with some troubles, he sat down on the toilet and did his business. Afterward, he washed his hands and let himself out of the bathroom. A quick look around the living room and kitchen told that it was only him that had changed and nothing else.
Norton was still in his apartment, which was the same, and all his stuff was still present. Wandering into the bedroom, he found his bed and the posters he'd tacked up on the wall. Looking around, he spotted the mirrors that hung on the closet door and it was then that he could fully see how he looked.
And the one thing that caught his attention was that his clothes had also changed and now resembled that of a six year old childe's. Opening the closet, he saw his normal wardrobe hanging there, but when he opened his dresser, he instead found clothes that where more suited for his age. Looking back into the mirror, taking in his height of three foot five, Norton asked himself, "Now what," unsure if he could live like this or if he should try and find a way back to the arcade, which he was thinking had something to do with all that had happened to him.