Tim stared blankly into space, wondering why the universe had chosen to fuck his life in particular. He flipped through his mental scrapbook of regrets and sins he’d accrued over the years, searching for a cause for this cosmic punishment. There was that time in third grade he stole a box of crayons from that little nosepicker Joey Eckhardt, but crayon theft didn’t seem to warrant divine retribution of this scale. He cut a woman off in traffic last week, and unless she put a gypsy curse on him he couldn’t see how that might be related to his current predicament. Maybe it was all random, as though the hand of God played eenie-meenie-minie-moe with seven billion people until the finger of wrath pointed squarely at him.

“Ow!” he shouted, feeling a finger jab his ribcage. He cast an irritated glance at the culprit in the chair next to him, but upon meeting her gorgeous face he lost the will to remain angry. Emily always melted Tim’s ire just as quickly as she raised it, and once again he found himself helplessly lost in her adorable walnut eyes.

“Nervous?” Emily said, sporting her typical devil-may-care smile.

“No I’m not nervous. I’m pissed. I feel like a goddamn child,” Tim muttered, picking at his oversized t-shirt. “This is beyond ridiculous.”

“Good, I’m not nervous either,” Emily said, leaning back in the waiting room chair. “Maybe it’ll be fun!” She thought everything was fun.

“You know what sounds fun right now? Being a normal-sized human being again,” he mumbled, crossing his arms defensively.

She leaned over and planted a kiss on her lover’s forehead, but couldn’t resist a chuckle as she suddenly felt like a mom kissing her little boy. “I think you’re cute at this size,” she whispered into his ear. “Maybe if you’re a good boy when we get home I’ll make you feel a lot better...”

Tim grew stiff thinking of the possibilities - at least one part of him was growing at that moment. He and Emily were polar opposites, and while he liked life to be simple and predictable, she was a free spirit who could find joy in chaos. There would be no shortage of chaos in their lives now.

A woman emerged from a nearby doorway and immediately approached the couple.

“Hi there. I’m Doctor Jennifer Hughes. And you must be Tim and Emily,” she said, extending her hand.

“How could you tell?” Emily joked, rising to her feet and shaking Dr. Hughes’ significantly larger hand. Emily marveled at the woman who was nearly a foot taller than her.

Tim stood as well, and found himself at eye level with the woman’s blouse. His face turned red as he met cleavage where he expected to a face to be. Even at his normal height she may have stood over him, especially in her high heels. All her features were long and slender, with the subtle suggestions of a strict exercize routine keeping her arms and legs fit and pleasing to the eye. Her long black hair draped attractively over her shoulders, and her matching black-rimmed glasses gave her an authoritative quality. She certainly felt authoritative as she towered over the shrunken Tim.

“There were clues,” Hughes said, smiling warmly at her small patients. “This waiting room is a bit stuffy, don’t you think? Let’s take this down to my office.”

Moments later Dr. Hughes reclined in her chair, doing her best to present a calm and relaxed demeanor to her new patients, despite the circumstances. 

“Emily. Tim. I know how stressful this is for you, but I’m going to be with you every step of the way, and we’re going to get you through this,” she said in the most comforting tones she could muster. “We’ve got some difficult times ahead of us, but you’ll both push through it, and I’m making myself personally available for anything you need. Now. Down to business. You know the saying - I have some good news and some bad news.”

“Bad.” “Good!” Tim and Emily blurted out their votes simultaneously, but as usual, Emily prevailed.

“Good news first,” she repeated, patting her boyfriend on his knee. Tim assented, finding no point in arguing about it.

Hughes smiled softly at the couple and took a deep breath. “The good news,” she began, “is that you’re not the first to go through something like this. In fact, as many as 120 people have been exposed to shrinking gasses, some in controlled settings, but most in industrial accidents like yours, and almost all of them recovered. These types of workplace accidents are serious matters, but all the shrunken people had very resilient bodies, so the slightest gust of wind won’t kill you. I’m not trying to minimize the seriousness of this incident. But it isn’t fatal. You’re not going to die. And while the next few months will be very difficult, your odds of a full recovery are very good. Furthermore, I have a lot of experience with these cases. In fact, my dissertation was on human shrinking, back when that type of experimentation was legal. You’re not the first shrunken people I’ve been responsible for.”

“That’s really great to hear, doctor,” Emily said, more to reassure Tim than herself.

“You can call me Jenn.” Hughes leaned forward, and Tim instinctually leaned backward, like a small animal suddenly threatened by a large predator. “Sorry Tim,” she said, realizing how intimidating her size must have been. “It’s not uncommon to experience some anxiety around normal-sized people. But trust me, you’re safe. I don’t bite.” 

“Super. But I think we’re forgetting the bad news,” he muttered.

“Tim, I want to be direct with you,” Dr. Hughes said, “while Emily’s exposure was modest, you spent more time around the leaking tank and had considerably more exposure. This has several consequences for your prognosis, notably in terms of rate of reduction, amount of reduction, and duration. From the blood samples we took, I think we can expect Emily to bottom out at a foot tall, but in all likelihood you may find yourself under an inch. And as we already see, you’re well ahead of her in shrinking, and will likely trail well behind her in recovery.”

“Fuck,” Tim swore under his breath. Emily patted his shoulder, but Tim nudged her hand away. “Whatever,” Tim scoffed. “I gotta right to be mad. This is bullshit. My fucking shoes are too big to wear now. What am I supposed to wear in a week? Baby booties?”

“We’ll spare you the indignity of wearing kid clothes, Tim,” Hughes continued. “But we’ll need to find a solution to that problem, because while Emily will be reduced for... Maybe three months, I think we’re looking at double that timeline for you.”

“Jesus Christ!” Tim fumed, and Emily’s gentle hand returned to his shoulder. 

“You do have a right to be mad, Tim. This will be a very vulnerable time for you both,” Hughes pressed on, “Fortunately, your employer is paying for your medical expenses in full, and they’ve agreed to cover the costs of caretaking as well.”

“Caretaking...” Tim mulled the word for a moment. “Oh God, they’re gonna hire some fat nurse to wipe my tiny ass with a Q-Tip...”

“Hardly!” Dr. Hughes laughed. “In fact I have a great candidate I think you both will like, but of course you can decide for yourselves during the interview.”

“I’d like to meet her,” cheered Emily.

Tim rolled his eyes, bemused by Emily’s boundless enthusiasm. Like this nightmare was going to be fun. But as he caught a glimpe of Emily’s exquisite toes exposed from her oversized flipflops, he thought of a couple ways being tiny could be enjoyable. Maybe the caretaker will have nice feet too, he surmised, picturing some buxom blonde Swedish nurse, with Tim servicing her and Emily’s feet for the next six months. Could be fun indeed.

“Him, actually,” Hughes said, fumbling for the intercom button on her phone. “Martha, can you send in our candidate? My patients would love to meet him.”

“Right away,” the secretary buzzed back.

Tim frowned. Fun’s over. Emily, on the other hand, rocked back and forth in her chair with her typical irrepressible positivity. He recalled the time she pressured him into skydiving, him hating every second of the freefall descent back to Earth, wondering during the plummet why she had chosen to stay with him instead of pairing up with a fellow free spirit. Maybe opposites attract. More likely Emily just enjoyed pushing a boring man way out of his comfort zone and watching him squirm.

The trio sat in silence for several moments. Hughes broke the tension while they waited with comforting comments. “He’s very, very professional. Physical therapist. Young guy, about your age, late twenties early thirties. Not married, no kids, so he can devote his full time to you two. Great personality. I think you’ll all get along great. He-”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Hughes said.

The candidate entered. Tim wanted to disappear into his own shirt, but Emily was beaming. The man was huge, probably 6’5”, and built like a bomb shelter. Tim did his best to suppress a scoff at the man’s chiseled features, his broad shoulders, his obnoxiously square jaw, his dusty blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. He looked like a soldier from German war propaganda. Tim didn’t even have to imagine what it felt like to be tiny in this man’s presence - he already was.

“Jacob!” Emily shouted, jumping out of her chair and running to greet him. She lunged into his chest and the two hugged, making her look tiny already against his massive arms. “Oh my God! I haven’t seen you since college. How’ve you been?”

“Life is good, Em,” he said, smiling and gazing just a little too deeply into Emily’s eyes, by Tim’s estimation. “Sorry we lost touch for so long. Been meaning to call you for a while actually. Then the other day I heard what happened to you and-”

“You rushed to take care of us! Aw I’m so glad!” Emily was a serial hugger, and Tim’s blood pressure rose as she embraced Jacob once again. “You’re gonna be great. I know we’ll be in great hands.” Emily almost looked like a doll standing next to this thug; she was a full foot shorter than him and her slim features were dwarfed by his thickly-muscled body. She turned to her boyfriend. “Tim, this is my friend Jacob, from-”

“From college, yeah,” he muttered, weighing how badly an objection would go over. The last thing he wanted was some gargantuan muscle-headed brute manhandling his future wife. Then he remembered that at a few inches tall, he too would be manhandled. 

“Yeah! I told you about him! He’s the guy - ohmygod, so funny - remember the lifeguard I told you about?” Emily said, patting the giant on a bicep bigger than her waist. “He did CPR on a drowning woman! And it turned out she was faking it! That was Jacob!”

“Jacob was a fake drowning woman?” Tim said, playing dumb.

“Oldest trick in the book,” Jacob joked, just rolling with it. He lumbered toward Tim, and the smaller man slowly recoiled once again, instinctively feeling like prey against a towering predator. They shook hands, and Tim’s tiny palm disappeared into Jacob’s. Tim was four feet tall, but he felt more like a millimeter. This was going to be a long, long six months.

Emily drove home, practically bouncing out of the driver’s seat with enthusiasm. She gabbed relentlessly about her old college friend, about all the women she saw him tear through like tissue paper - and possibly some men too, if Tim was reading between the lines correctly. 

“He really likes you, I can tell,” Emily said. Tim shuddered at what being “liked” by an amorous, possibly bi-curious giant might mean. Emily saw her boyfriend tense out of the corner of her eye, and sighed. “Oh stop,” she said. “You’re such a puritan sometimes, Timbo.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Life is giving you like a big gift,” she said. Oh God, Tim thought, she’s philosophizing again. “How many times will you get to try something so totally new, something that almost no one has ever had? And you’re just gonna squander it by being mad because it didn’t fit into your neat little plan. Embrace the free spirit, sugar. The music changes and you just gotta keep dancing to the new beat.”

Tim squinted, struggling to follow. “You’re saying I should be happy about being a midget under you and Meatloaf back there?”

She sighed again, paused, but then that devilish smile returned. “Remember that time... You protested, kicking and screaming, because you thought it was weird and perverted, but eventually you let me sit on your face and you fucking loved it?”

“Well. Yeah. You were right about that. I’ll admit you were right but-”

“How about I sit on you tonight? See how you like suffocating under my giant ass. I’ll even wear those gray shorts you like.”

Tim grew stiff again. 

“Or how about when you’re an inch tall and I’m still way bigger than you,” she continued. “Wanna feel flattened under my butt and tell me you don’t like it?”

She was right. Emily's butt was perfect; round, firm, and perfectly filled out a pair of shorts. He wanted to die under that ass, just suffocating under the all-encompassing flesh of her glutes. He hesitated to admit the truth. “Well. Okay. Yes. Yeah I’d like that.”

Emily grinned wider. There was no end to her creative impulses to experiment in bed, and Tim suspected she’d already tried everything - and everyone - long before they’d met. She just kept going. “Remember when I made you my foot bitch while I ignored you and texted my friends?”

She was right again. Nothing turned him on more than when Emily ignored him, or talked down to him, or made him feel disposable. He didn't know where she picked up that trick but was forced to admit it was a damn good one. “Okay okay, yes. That was oddly very satisfying. Something to look forward to when I’m small. I get it.”

She sat silent for several moments, knowing she’d already won. Emily always won.

The grin returned with a vengeance. “Jacob always had nice feet...” Emily insinuated.

“Fuck off!” Tim said, laughing like he wasn’t annoyed.

“Ever been in a threesome with two giants?” 

“Don’t you even!”

Emily cackled. “Relax! I was only kidding.” She paused again, tried her best to look serious, but couldn’t suppress a chuckle at some unspoken joke. “Let’s just get home so I can crush you.”

“Deal.”