Kitty felt a dozen eyes train upon her: after her drunken revelry, the customers of the restaurant were more than ready for any other amusements she might provide. She tossed back her frizzy mane with a casual laugh, attempting to drape her arm nonchalantly over the large shoulder bag stuffed with Terrence's clothes. Muttering about how she didn't need to impress anyone, she jogged in stilettos after the young woman with her stowaway.
Terrence clung in terror to the lip of a gigantic woman's boot. His naked body swung freely with every racing stride and every thunderous footfall. "This is a nightmare, this is a nightmare," he babbled. "Wake up, Terry!" He tried biting his cheek to startle himself from slumber, but he only succeeded in creating stabbing pain to deal with on top of everything else.
"Just wake the fuck up!" He tried looking at where they were headed, he and his giantess taxi, but the world was a sweeping, swooping blur. It was easier to study what was in front of him: an enormous, pale calf sheathed in wide-gapped fishnet stocking. Eyes wild, he began to reach for the leg as high and around as an old-growth redwood. His palm lay against soft, warm skin and one black rope of the stocking. "Incredible," he breathed. His gaze ran up the long leg above him, powerful thigh pulsing and relaxing with every stride. The woman's thigh disappeared within the shadows of a stiff, black leather skirt. Conceivably he could climb the thick strands of her stockings, but then what? Crawl inside some strange woman's skirt? Is that the appropriate behavior for someone about to be married?
Then again, nothing about this situation was appropriate or reasonable. And if it was a dream, why shouldn't he enjoy himself while he was here? Chuckling nervously, he grasped the black rope and reached up for another.
"Hey! Hey, you!" Kitty's voice echoed throughout the plaza, accompanied by the frenzied clatter of her fuck-me heels. "You, in the black skirt and boots!" The young woman failed to recognize she was being talked to and strode on. Kitty could see the tiny form of her ex-boyfriend beginning to scale her leg, pushing off the rim of her boot and lying against her knee. Cursing, Kitty paused to peel her shoes off, then doubled her running speed and caught the girl by her elbow. "Hey, excuse me!" she shouted, spinning her around.
The woman was visibly alarmed. She tugged an earbud out from under her long blonde hair. "What the hell do you want?" she said, jerking her arm free.
Kitty laughed ingratiatingly. "Look, I'm sorry to startle you. I just... there was an accident back there, and I think have something that belongs to me."
"I don't know what the fuck your problem is, lady." The woman glanced over Kitty's shoulder and turned away.
Infuriated, Kitty wrapped her fist in the woman's long hair and jerked back. The woman screamed, and heads of bystanders in the plaza sharply turned toward them. Kitty lunged at the woman's leg; the woman danced away defensively. "Get the fuck away from me!" she screamed. "What are you trying to do?"
Kitty looked around at the people staring at her. "Look, just hold on, there's something stuck to you." The woman looked down at her own leg. Kitty made another lunge, and then a hand wrapped firmly around her upper arm, hauling her back.
The maître d' of the Proud Vaults was a tall, imposing man, balding but with tastefully slicked hair around his solid skull. He glared imperiously down his nose at Kitty. "I beg your pardon." His tone was quiet, yet it bore into the core of her body. "Perhaps madam has forgotten the small matter of the bill of fare."
"Not now!" Kitty shrieked, attempting to pull her arm free. The maître d' had a grip of steel, however. The young woman behind her removed both earbuds, and a sparse circle of onlookers gawked without trying to hide their fascination. Looking around herself, Kitty softened. "Ah, yes, of course, my good man," she said breezily. "My wallet is just in here, if you'll allow me." She began to open her shoulder bag to dig out Terrence's cash, then looked up at the maître d' in mild horror: on top of pulling a dine-and-dash on a fancy restaurant, she was carrying a bag full of a man's clothes. She licked her lips and again begged for one moment, ransacking Terrence's shirt and pants blindly with one arm through a narrow aperture in the zipper. The whole world seemed to freeze in place, people staring, the woman eyeing her suspiciously, the maître d' presenting an imposing force, while she felt around for solid objects, until...
She yanked out a thick, brown leather wallet and held it aloft in victory. "Ah, here we are! Now, how much was that bill, my good man?" He cited a number in a respectful tone. Kitty gaped at him. "But we didn't even get the steaks! We just had the salads!"
"I regret to inform you," he said, with darkening tones, "that it is not the fault of the kitchen to accept your order in good faith, trusting that you will remain long enough to receive that which you've requested."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Oh, very well," she muttered, fishing out a couple large bills. "There you go, and choke on it." The maître d' had the good taste to simply fold the bills and palm them, excusing himself with a slight bow. Kitty looked back at the woman in the leather skirt, flipped her off, and marched out of the plaza.
The woman watched the crazy bitch stomp away, stiletto heels in one hand, her other arm wrapped around an overstuffed shoulder bag. She looked down at her leg, then back at the woman, and then she began to follow the woman.
* * *
After the muffled, rolling thunder of a car starting up and racing through the twists and turns of the city, a long, angry unzipping noise and blast of light let Terrence know the ride was over. He lay upon his own rumpled shirt and stared up at his ex-girlfriend.
Kitty towered over him, blocking out the ceiling light in a room he didn't recognize. She parked her fists on her hips. "You are in a lot of trouble, little man," she growled. "Do you know how much embarrassment you cost me? I mean, caused me. Fuck! You've got me so pissed off!" She threw up her hands and spun away, out of view.
Terrence's heart pounded in his chest. "This is a dream, this is a nightmare. Wake the fuck up, Terry." He looked around: he lay upon the collar of his rumpled white shirt. Overhead were the jagged steel edges of the zipper to Kitty's shoulder bag. Far overhead was a popcorn stucco ceiling and a frosted glass globe light fixture. None of this was familiar. If this was her place, it was wherever she ended up after dumping Pete the former Proud Vaults cook last year. He was torn between a mild curiosity to peek around and see what kind of place this was, and his burgeoning instinct to burrow under the clothes and hide from the crazed giantess.
For her part, Kitty was a maelstrom of emotions. That fucking maître d'! How dare he lay a hand on her! She should go back with that eye dropper and teach him a thing or two, now that she knew it worked. And there was that! Yay! It was a lot of money but the special order from Saghir Chemise absolutely, absolutely lived up to its reputation! She hadn't been sure that it would, it was just such a ludicrous claim, so she wasn't really ready for this. She bundled up armloads of dirty clothes and dumped them in a laundry basket by the basement stairs. She rarely had guests over, and when she did, they were friends from the bar and already trashed after a night of hard partying. They didn't care what her place looked like. But now that she had classy-ass Terrence Michalik in tow, suddenly she regarded her flat with a critical eye. She collected pizza boxes and stuffed them under the sink; she rounded up dirty, crusty plates and glasses and hustled them to the sink. Not for the first time, she wished this rat-hole apartment came with a dishwasher. She grinned: with the gift of Terrence's fat wallet, she could pay off the last two months of rent and start making demands of her shitty landlord.
Or, she thought happily, she could stop by his place with her little blue bottle. What an incredible investment this was! It was worth shirking all her bills and rent; it was already paying for itself!
Kitty stared at the large, lumpy bag on her couch. Inside was Terrence's clothes and a version of Terrence too small to wear them. A Terrence she had reclaimed and could keep for as long as she wanted. Smiling, she opened the cupboard beside her: there was an olive-green lazy Susan holding salt and pepper shakers, a bottle of vinegar, other condiments, but also a purple eye dropper bottle, the one with the growth potion. The Saghir Chemise sales rep was inflexible on this point, that there was no discount for only the shrinking potion: the bottles of Al'Qazr were a matched set and had to be sold together. "Without the purple formula," she'd warned in a thick Arabic inflection, "the shrinking effect is irreversible."
"Well, what in the world am I going to need you for?" she crooned at the innocuous purple bottle on the shelf. Still, she couldn't quite bring herself to toss it out. It had cost too much, for one thing. And if she were to ever get the blue formula on herself, she'd need the antidote. Pursing her lips, she closed the cupboard and returned to her messy living room. Terrence would just have to deal with her squalor, she figured, but then again... they wouldn't be spending much time in the living room, after all.
Smiling toothily, she opened the shoulder bag on her couch and drew a breath to welcome her former lover into his new home.
Except there was no tiny lover. There was just a pile of his clothes.
"What the fuck!?" Panicked, Kitty began tearing the clothes out of the bag until it was empty—completely empty. Her head snapped left and right, her frizzy mane bouncing furiously. "You little fucker! You're here somewhere, I know it! You can't get far!" Immediately she began tearing the cushions off her couch, knocking over a glass of water on her coffee table. "Shit!" She glared at it and stormed out to get some paper towels.
Terrence watched her high heels stab the carpet farther and farther away until they disappeared. He had precious seconds to run out from under the couch to a better hiding place. But where?
And outside, a yellow sports car paused across the street. The woman in the leather skirt checked the plates of the car in the driveway with the number she'd written down when Kitty tore out of the parking ramp. She noted the house address before slowly pulling away and heading home, as it was nearly time to start her shift at the bar.
Something especially strange was going on, starting with the shrunken man she felt climbing her leg, and Shelia Fox was going to find out exactly what it was.