Tom knew he was right, but that didn’t make it any less crazy.

He needed to share what he’d learned with Lily, but he was worried that she wouldn’t be receptive. He knew full well that he’d been getting on her nerves, and ever since the doctor’s office, he’d been trying to make a better effort to at least fake like everything was fine. In reality, he was spending more time than ever trying to figure out what was going on, but when they were together, he did his best to push it out of his mind and focus on his wife.

Thankfully, focusing on his wife had never been easier. She still had that strange, extra spark to her, some ineffable quality that could turn him on from something as small as a smile from across the room. All he ever really wanted to do was take her to bed and keep her there, and he was grateful that she still felt the same way, despite her recent frustration with him.

The discovery he’d made would, unfortunately, put an end to that. He was already feeling a bit depressed about it, and wished he could just… ignore the problem, and keep on enjoying things as they were. But he couldn’t. And he needed to have a very serious, very strange conversation with his wife.

He decided he’d collected enough evidence to convince her of his theory about three weeks after their trip to the doctor. That Saturday, he entered the living room to find her watching TV on the couch.

“Lily, um… can we talk?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

He took in a breath and shut the TV off. Concern gradually crept into her face as he silently took a seat next to her.

“Tom… what’s wrong?”

“Sorry, I’m just… figuring out the best way to say this.”

Lily leaned toward him, putting an arm behind his back. “Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me anything.” 

Tom took a deep breath, nodding. “I… I need to show you something, and before I do, I’d just like to ask you to keep an open mind. I know how this is gonna sound.” Lily furrowed her brow and tilted her head to one side as Tom took out his phone.

“I’ve been… measuring myself, every day since we went to the doctor. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, and that back problems couldn’t really explain it. Especially when I haven’t been in any kind of pain.” He navigated to the photo gallery and opened up a folder he’d set up. “Do me a favor, and scroll through these. It’s easier to see if you scroll faster.”

Lily took his phone, looking back at him with a raised eyebrow. The first photo was a picture of Tom, zoomed in so only the top half of his face was visible. There was a height chart behind him, the marks easy to see due to the zoom. Tom’s head was more or less even with the 73” mark.

“Where did you take these?” Lily asked.

“The attic. I didn’t want to bother you about this until I knew more.”

Lily stared at him for a moment before she looked down at the phone and scrolled. The next photo in the album looked exactly like the first one. She scrolled again, and again it seemed identical. She looked back at Tom.

“Like I said, It’s easier to see if you go faster.” Lily continued to stare at him for a moment before turning back to the phone.

She returned to the first picture and started flipping through them again, more quickly this time. Tom studied her face as recognition and then confusion slowly set in: as the photos advanced, the top of Tom’s head gradually drifted downward.

“It… you could’ve just gotten the angle a little off.”

“No I couldn’t. I used one of your old tripods.” Lily was a wedding photographer; their garage was full of old cameras and other equipment. “But don’t take my word for it, keep scrolling.”

As she advanced through the photos, the ¾” mark appeared above Tom, and then the ½” mark.. The final photo in the album showed him standing at exactly 72”.

“That last one’s from this morning. The doctor was concerned that I’d lost two inches in less than a year, but now I’ve lost another inch in less than a month.”

Lily was quiet for a moment, processing the information. “Um… Have, have you been doing those back exercises?”

Tom sighed as he took back his phone. “It’s not my back, Lily. I… If I had just been getting a little shorter, then… well, I’ll be honest, you’re probably right that I might take a bit of a hit to my pride over that. But the reason I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this is because everything has felt… weird. I don’t think it’s just a matter of height; I’ve been dropping weight just as quickly. Let me ask you: do I look like I’ve lost 30 pounds? Because I have.”

Lily looked him up and down. “Uh… I mean. You do look a little slimmer, actually. But… no. Not thirty pounds slimmer.”

“If I was only getting shorter, that wouldn’t explain the weight loss. I think I’m getting…” he trailed off. He knew he was right, but that didn’t make it any less crazy. “I think I’m getting smaller.”

Lily didn’t respond, and Tom couldn’t blame her—what do you say to something like that? They sat there in silence for a minute or two, before Tom decided to rip the next band-aid off.

“Have you measured yourself at all in the past three weeks, Lily?”

“What?”

“Have you measured yourself? I mean, we found out at the doctor that your height had changed too. Exactly as much as mine had, just in the opposite direction.” Tom studied her face, a mix of skepticism, sympathy, and… something else.

“Tom… we both agreed, that was just a coincidence.”

“So, come up to the attic with me and prove that it was just a coincidence. If you haven’t grown anymore, or if you’re not exactly one inch taller, then I’ll drop it.”

Lily exhaled through her nose, watching him as he stood up and turned to offer her his hand. She rose to her feet, and her eyes widened as she looked up at him.

Tom had been avoiding this for weeks. He didn’t want to stand right next to her like this, to see how their heights compared now. He knew that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to hide his worry from her.

Lily used to barely come up to his chest. Now, she nearly came up to his shoulders. For the first time, he saw the same look of disorientation on her face that he’d been feeling for two months. He struggled to find much relief in that.

Tom swallowed, his mouth dry. “Let’s um. Let’s go get you measured.” May as well make it official.

The attic was small, the space almost entirely taken up by boxes of Christmas decorations and old clothes. Tom had nailed the height chart to an exposed beam, and set up a tripod that could hold his phone a few feet away from it. Lily hadn’t said a word as she followed him upstairs, and now approached the chart with trepidation, as though it might jump out and bite her. She slowly turned around and put her back to the chart, standing up straight as she looked to her husband. Tom swallowed again and nodded. It was exactly what he thought.

“Lily… You’re five feet tall.”

A single laugh of surprise came out of Lily’s mouth before she covered it with her hand. Tom couldn’t quite read her eyes. Surely she wasn’t… happy about this, right? No, no, he misinterpreted. She was just in shock.

“Why?... Why is this happening?” she asked. Tom winced; this next part was going to be an even harder sell.

“The ‘why,’ I can’t tell you, but I think I know the ‘how.’” He took his phone out again and leaned in next to her.

“Look at these photos again. I’ve got twenty of them here, one a day. I get a little bit…” he trailed off, not yet used to the sentence he was trying to say. “I get a little bit shorter in all of them, except for five.” He demonstrated by flipping back and forth between two photos that were, in fact, identical.

“I spent a long time trying to figure out what was different about these five days. After it happened the first time, I started keeping a log of everything I did, to see if I could catch something out of the ordinary.” He paused here, still barely believing what he was about to say.

“...Well?” Lily finally prompted. “Did you find anything?”

“Lily…” Tom heaved a big sigh. “These are the only five days that we didn’t have sex.”

“What?”

“I know. I know! Even with… everything else, it sounds ridiculous. But it’s the only common thread I can find. When we sleep together, I end up just a hair shorter. And, I assume, you end up a hair taller.”

“Tom, no, that… There has to be a different explanation. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Tom looked at her sympathetically, having initially reacted the exact same way himself. He swiped through the album to pull up a few particular photos from the set.

“It’s a little hard to tell, but if you look closely at this one, I actually shrank a little more than average. In this one, too. And this one, and this one. These were all taken on Sunday or Monday morning. What tends to happen on the weekends, Lily?”

Lily put a hand to her forehead. “...We have sex more often. At night and in the morning. And sometimes in the afternoon, too.” He nodded, and then navigated to a different picture.

“Except for… this Sunday morning here, which was one of the days where there wasn’t any change. Because you got up early on Saturday to take pictures for that wedding.”

Tom could see the gears turning in Lily’s head. “I was gone all day, and was too tired when I got home to do anything…”

“I can’t explain it, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. Well, as much as any of this makes sense.”

Lily took a few meandering steps in the direction of the ladder down to their bedroom.

“Okay…” she muttered. “What do we do now?”

“I’m going to call the doctor’s office and schedule another appointment. If we go in and show her all of this, then maybe she’ll have some ideas. Until then… we have to stop sleeping together.”

“Wait, what?”

“I know, Lily. Trust me, I’m not happy about it either, but I just think—” Lily interrupted him by jumping up to kiss him. He instinctively moved to catch her, the way he had thousands of times in the past, but his grip slipped and the kiss quickly broke off as she fell back to the floor, her face filled with disappointment and confusion.

She’d been heavier than he expected her to be.

“I love you so much, Lily,” Tom said after a moment, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I love being with you, and I love… being with you. I don’t want to be up here having this conversation. I want… I mean to be honest, I want to be tearing your clothes off right now.” Lily laughed, and Tom smiled sadly at her. “But until we know more about what’s going on, I don’t think it’s safe.”

The disappointment on Lily’s face was gradually tempered by understanding. “Yeah. Okay. I get it.” Tom hugged her, and even this small gesture of affection felt odd now that he was analyzing it. This wasn’t what it felt like to hug his wife. She was still small, but she felt so much bigger in his arms than she used to. The process had been so gradual that it was easy to ignore on a day-to-day basis, but now that he was focusing on it, it was impossible to miss.

He also realized that just standing there, silently holding her, breathing in the scent of her shampoo (her head was so much closer to his nose than it used to be)... It was starting to turn him on.

“What if…” Lily said, her voice partially muffled by his chest. “What if we fooled around just one more time first?”

“Lily…”

“We’ll stop after that! But… we have no idea how long this could last. I understand that we need to be careful until we can learn more, but that means it could be months, or years, before we can… be together, again. If I’d known this morning was the last chance I’d get with you, I would’ve savored it more!” Tom tried to respond, but she kept going, her voice tinged with a hint of anger. “You already knew about this, so you did get a chance to prepare! It’s not fair to deny me the same opportunity!”

“I… you’re right, I’m sorry, it’s not fair, but Lily—”

“It took more than 15 times for you to lose an inch. One more couldn’t really hurt anything, could it?”

Tom looked down at her, face full of trepidation. This seemed like a bad idea. Plus… Having sex even once more would mean he’d officially be less than six feet tall. He hated to admit it, but that thought bothered him.

“Please, Tom? Just one more time. We’ll make it good enough that it’ll last us until… Well, we’ll make it good enough to last us.”

He hesitated for another moment. But then, against his better judgment, he crouched slightly to get his arms around her waist. He lifted her up, this time adjusting for her increased weight, and she locked her mouth to his. She wrapped her legs around him, and he closed his eyes as he tried not to think about how much easier that was for her now.

* * *

Lily had a proposal.

“Make it good enough to last us.” Good one.

To be blunt, the past week had sucked. Intellectually, she agreed with Tom that putting their sex life on hiatus was the safest move. But now that she couldn’t have him, she wanted him even more, and she had already wanted him a lot. She tried seeing to her needs herself, but masturbating barely did anything to curb her thirst for her husband. She wanted—needed—Tom. She needed to feel his arms around her, needed to be sandwiched between the mattress and his big, thick body. She needed him to hold her down and fuck her... And he couldn’t.

She was a wreck, and it had only been a week.

She’d tried, a couple mornings after their discussion, to gently suggest that it might not be so bad if they slept together one more time. Tom immediately shut her down, snapping at her much more fiercely than she’d ever heard him before. She was surprised, and even a little hurt, but as she watched him practically leap out of bed and start getting dressed, making a point to never look at her, she realized why he’d reacted that way: he was just as wound-up as she was, and if he so much as entertained the thought of having sex, he’d immediately cave.

The energy in the house was awful. The two of them made a point to spend as little time together as possible, knowing full well that they couldn’t rely on their self-control. Conversations were short and terse. Tom at least got to go to work and get away from things for a while. Lily would’ve loved the same opportunity, but of course she had no gigs booked for the week, and no last-minute emergency requests were showing up on Facebook. So during the day, she’d try to read or watch TV or clean or do anything to distract or mentally prepare herself for the evening, and every night it was completely in vain; she practically had to lock herself in the bathroom to keep from pouncing on Tom the second he walked through the front door.

Tonight, they were sitting at the kitchen table, awkwardly eating spaghetti, both trying to eat fast and get away from each other.

Tom seemed unable to handle the silence. “I think… whatever’s happening to us, it’s affecting our sex drives.”

“Yeah no shit,” Lily snapped back, immediately regretting her tone. “Sorry. I’m just… on edge.”

Tom stared down at his plate. “It’s fine, I know. I am too.” 

“What did the doctor say?”

“She’s booked solid. Can’t see us for another three weeks.”

“God dammit.” Lily grabbed the parmesan cheese. “I mean, whatever. It’s not like she’s gonna be able to help us anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“C’mon, Tom.” Lily let out a short, rueful laugh. “Does anything about this situation seem medical to you? It’s been a while since health class, but I don’t think they ever went over this kind of thing.”

“Well, okay, what then?”

“I don’t know! It’s like… magic. One of us pissed off a witch or something.”

“Lily, be serious.”

“I am being serious!” She dropped her fork and leaned forward. “What about this situation doesn’t seem like some kind of stupid magic curse, Tom? Right now, I am so goddamn horny that I want to throw our food on the floor and fuck you right here on the table.” She started breathing heavier, and fought to erase the mental image from her mind. “But I can’t do that, because for some reason, it’ll make you shrink, and make me…” She swallowed. “Bigger.”

That was the other thing.

At first, Lily had been over the moon that she really had grown another inch. But after a day or two, the novelty wore off; after all, 5’0” was still pretty small. She probably could’ve been content with it… except she knew for a fact that there was a way for her to keep growing. It just meant… Tom would have to…

Every time she reached this point in her thoughts, she desperately tried to stop. Tom was scared of what was happening to him. She’d be scared too, in his position. And, sure, he was still a foot taller than her, and sure, that meant he still had plenty of height that he could afford to lose… but that wasn’t her call to make! It wasn’t right to feel jealous or bitter about it.

And as nice as that sentiment was, it didn’t reflect her true feelings at all.

Which brought Lily to her proposal. It was something she’d been thinking about for a day or two now, and in the heat of this conversation, she found herself suddenly blurting it out.

“Tom, I want to be taller.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’m sick and tired of being a tiny little waif. I’m tired of people looking down on me, I’m tired of feeling unsafe anytime I’m alone in public, I’m tired of all of it. Even you throw me around like a ragdoll.”

“...I thought you liked it when I did that.”

“I… I do! But… I don’t know. I don’t know! Maybe, after seven years, a change of pace sounds nice! I probably wouldn’t have ever thought about it on my own, but now that I know that it’s possible to get taller, I… I want it. I want it so bad, Tom.” There was a mania in her voice, and she tried her best to rein it in. 

“Between that and the sex, I’m fighting a war on two fronts over here. And I can’t keep doing it!”

Even that wasn’t the entire truth. There was only one front in this war. If she thought too long about her height, and the possibility of increasing it, those thoughts inevitably intermingled with the inferno of lust burning away inside of her. And for some reason, thinking about Tom getting smaller, shrinking a little bit day by day… It was like pouring gasoline on the fire. Even before they’d stopped having sex, it had been everything she could do to control herself when he’d first shown her those photos. That album was what she’d look at when she was alone, desperately fingering herself to try and get some relief. The truth was… She didn’t need him to hold her down and have his way with her. She needed the exact opposite. 

But she wasn’t about to tell him that.

Tom’s shoulders slumped as he smiled sadly at his wife. “Lily… I’m sorry. I can’t. I wish I could, but…” he trailed off.

Lily got up from her chair and moved to her usual seat, right next to his. She was worried he’d try to leave, but he stayed right where he was. She took his hand, exercising every ounce of self-discipline she had to sit still and hold it gently.

“Tom… being this small sucks. I’ve had to deal with it my entire life, and… and I didn’t even realize just how much I hated it until I started growing. But now… I need this. I need it, Tom.” He started to reply, but she kept going. “Just listen! Just… listen. We’re both miserable. We can’t keep going on this way. It’s only been six days and I already feel like I’m going to pop. The doctor won’t see us for another three weeks, and she probably can’t help us when she does. So, here’s my idea. 

“Let’s just… get it out of our systems. Let’s have as much sex as we can make time for. We’ll smoke the whole pack! Do it so much that we’re sick of it! And when we’re the same height—” Tom’s jaw dropped, but Lily pressed on. “When we’re the same height, we’ll call it quits. Permanently… unless we can figure out how to stop this from happening.” In truth, that didn’t sound like nearly enough for her… but it seemed like a reasonable compromise.

“Lily, I love you, but… that’s… we can’t.”

“It won’t be that bad! You’re six foot, I’m five foot, so we’ll meet in the middle at five-six! Okay, that’s… a little short for a guy, but not that much!” Lily gave a small, desperate smile that Tom didn’t return. “We’ll be equals! That’s what couples are supposed to be, right? Equals? That’s just… that’s just fair, isn’t it?”

“Fair?”

Lily squeezed his hand tighter. “Tom. I love you. You are the best husband I could ever hope for. I haven’t ever really asked you for much, mostly because I’ve never had to. I’m asking for this. I understand that it’s a big sacrifice on your part, but it’s a sacrifice that your wife is asking you to make.”

Tom was silent for a long, tense moment. Lily nervously brushed her thumb back and forth across the back of his hand, staring at him in anticipation.

After a long, long time, he finally replied, “Okay.”

“Great.” Lily threw their food on the floor and fucked him right there on the table.