The Upsidedown Trials of Tiny Alex

"You can't do this to me! You need to let me out of here!" Alex cried.

Danny smiled as he watched his former classmate cry and hurl insults at the ceiling. He got what he wanted, after all.

"We're going to have fun being together," Danny told him. "What can I say? It's a small world."

Danny was the jock in their high school - tall, muscular, with a pretty face that made the girls swoon. The guys liked him because he could make them laugh with his jokes, and the girls liked him for everything else. Everyone liked him, it seemed; everyone but Alex.

They were friends once, back in middle school. But when they entered high school, Danny changed. He grew more brash, more confident; he became popular, where before he was ignored by most of their classmates. And when Alex continued to be quiet and shy, Danny blamed him for his own shortcomings. When Alex didn't tell anyone about their friendship, it created a wedge between them; eventually, Danny pushed him away entirely until they became strangers on the same campus.

And so when his daughter asked if she could have a party at home while he was out with one of his girlfriends the next town over, Danny took the opportunity to settle scores - and get paid extra for it.

As an animal rights activist, she swore never to use animals for any reason - not even as pets or food or clothing or anything else - and said she was willing to pay handsomely if someone could provide her with a human specimen of some kind. Of course, Danny knew exactly who would fit that bill best: Alex himself. So he offered to take care of the rodent problem at her house for free (which would require him to go into every inch of it), only so that he could capture Alex and put him in a terrarium at her house as punishment for how much trouble he had caused him over the years - and how much better a life Danny had lived since then. Needless to say, Alex was horrified at being lumped in with rodents as well as being confined in such a small place for who knows how long.

"You can't do this!" Alex repeated, tears dripping down his face as he struggled against the glass walls of his terrarium. "My mom will call the police if you don't let me go! And my dad...he'll kill you if you don't let me go!"

"Yeah..." Danny laughed softly while holding up his phone and taking a picture of him in there shaking nervously like an animal caught in a trap. "That's what I'm counting on."