She was never picked for the netball team at school.

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Hitting just under four foot six, she was the shortest girl in school.

​

The shortest girl in the

                                      whole

                                                   town.

​

Always going unnoticed, Olive felt like she was invisible- apart from the never-ending taunting and bullying from the other girls.

 

She wished she was tall.

 

If she were tall, all her problems would be fixed.

 

Obviously.

 

One day she had had enough. One of her teachers was adamant she was in the wrong class, so sent her back to year three. Embarrassed and forlorn, she cried all the way home, crying into her pillow, crying into her food, crying into the morning. Until she woke up and noticed that her shoes didn’t fit her anymore. They were too tight.

 

Confused, she thought she’d mistaken them for her, even littler, sisters shoes, but no. They were hers.

 

Her Mum, who heard her crying all night, said she could take the day off school.

 

They went into town and popped into the shoe shop. She’d gone up two sizes. How bizarre.

 

Your skirt’s a bit short Olive.

 

She hadn’t really noticed. But her Mum was right. So, they went to ASDA and bought her a new skirt, and a new shirt. The next day at school, she noticed that she could see her whole face in the mirror. Usually, she’d have to tiptoe to see it, but now her head was visible.

 

How was that possible?

 

The girls started to notice her, physically. But they thought it was weird. That she was some kind of witch.

 

The next day, her feet dangled off the end of her bed. The day after that, she hit her head on the bus roof when clambering to her seat.

 

After that, she was on the netball team.

 

After that, she was off the netball team; she kept tripping over her legs.

 

As the days passed, Olive’s body twisted and stretched beyond human proportions.

 

Her fingers elongated like large knobbly carrots; her limbs bent at odd angles. Her skin thinned, veins pressing against the surface like worms writhing in earth. She could feel her bones creaking below like the hull of a ship in a storm.

 

Doctors whispered in hushed voices, baffled and afraid. Her mother wept, unable to hold her anymore. At school, the students no longer laughed or mocked her, they simply stared, wide-eyed, as she loomed in the hallways, her head brushing against the ceiling, her fingers too large to grasp a pencil. She’d killed her guinea pig by accident after holding it in her huge, mammoth hands.

 

Then came the pain.

 

A deep, unbearable pressure in her skull.

 

She couldn’t sleep.

 

One night, as she lay curled in her bedroom, her legs hanging out the window, her spine pressed uncomfortably against the ceiling, she felt it.

 

The final shift.

 

A tearing sensation shot through her skull. Her vision blurred. Her thoughts expanded too fast, too wide. And then-

 

POP

​

A sickening wet explosion.

 

When her mother entered the room the next morning, all that remained was Olive’s impossibly long, twisted body… and the walls, splattered with the remnants of her brain, which, had outgrown her skull.

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By Lara Fullalove (2025)