Three

"The safest road to hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

--Clive Staples Lewis, British Theologan (1898-1963)

It was three days before Tom grew back to normal.

Of course Tom grew back to normal. It would be ridiculous to think he wouldn't. He could do so at any time. And while he didn't really want to do it -- he wanted to simply die, to have God switch off his life like a light switch -- eventually he realized he would have to. Just to get situated.

He wasn't going back to his life, mind you. He didn't think Rose was bluffing, and even if she was, he had no intention of calling said bluff. The life that he'd led was over. He could never go home.

But that didn't mean that there wasn't a future for him. There was. He had the stone. Yes, his first experiment with it had gone disastrously wrong. Yes, he'd destroyed his relationship with Rose, his life, everything.

He had the stone, though. He had more than one fantasy. He could use it to live them out. If his life was over, he might as well enjoy the half-life he had left.

Besides, over the three days he spent hiding in the bushes of the suburban cul-de-sac, he had the opportunity to see a few women who reminded him of why he had been fascinated by shrinking.

There was the late-twenties MILF who stayed home with her young kids. They'd almost found him twice while they played outside. The second time, he'd managed to work his way underneath the chair where the monolithic mother sat; her bare legs were magnificent, her bare feet awesome.

There was the pair of teenage sisters who went out tanning in their backyard one afternoon each wearing skimpy swimsuits. The older one was in her late teens, maybe a senior or college freshman. He felt okay about ogling her. The younger one...well, he'd ogled her anyhow. He'd done so from a distance, at the base of their fence, but even at a fair distance they were mammoth, and he tore himself away from them with difficulty.

There was the slightly older mother who was gardening, and damn near found him as she pulled weeds. From the shadow of a variegated hosta, he'd watched the tremendous woman, still radiant despite being in her late thirties or early forties. As she bend over, her breasts swelled and dangled above him. He found his throat was dry as he looked at them; he wondered what it would be like to be in her bra.

So on the third day, he snuck into the older mom's house. Not to get into her bra; he had bigger plans. Her husband departed, her kids departed, she departed, and he was alone in the house.

He worked quickly. He grew himself to normal, and dove into the shower, scrubbing quickly. They would be working, he knew. The kids would be in school. Still, he showered for less than three minutes. Then he rushed into the master bedroom, and grabbed shorts, a shirt, and a pair of underwear; there was no time to debate the niceties of wearing another guy's clothes. He wanted to be at least somewhat presentable.

He grabbed his wallet, the stone, and his keys, and jammed them into the pockets the shorts were a bit loose, so he cinched them with a belt. He then purposefully strode out of the house, and began to run, quickly, down the street.

He didn't care where he was going, not at the moment. Absently, he kneeled down by a storm drain, and tossed his shirt and pants and cell phone into it. He would get rid of his wallet soon enough.

But for now, he had some purchases to make.

He walked on for a good half hour before he got to a main road; he walked along it for another hour before he found what he was looking for -- a big box store.

He walked out with three new outfits, some underwear, a pair of shoes, a backpack, and all the cash he could grab from the ATM. He called a cab from a pay phone, and took it to the nearest hotel. He needed time to think, time to plan the next move.

He played through old fantasies as he looked at the white stone. (Was it tinged yellow? He couldn't tell for sure. Maybe.) He'd ordered a big meal from room service and wolfed it down, and he was perusing a map of the moderately-large suburb he'd been deposited in.

There was a community college not too far from here; he could go peruse the ladies there. He could wander over to a gym near the hotel, and he could hang out in the locker room. He could go to the office park across the street, look for some hotties at work, dressed to the nines. He could go to the high school....

No, he stopped that one before it fully materialized. That was an old fantasy, one that dated back to his time in high school. He was too old for it now.

Instead, he kept looking over the map, and then he saw it. His target. It was obvious. It was perfect.

He didn't go right there. He'd sleep. Eat. Get ready. And then he'd go. And it would be awesome.

*  *  *

Brent was aware of Tom's travels, in a distant sort of way. Since he'd turned his friend to a bad path, Satan had been almost friendly. Indeed, the next day, a very hot blonde had damn near thrown herself at Brent; he knew damn well that it was a payoff. A bonus for a job well done.

Rose had called Brent the day after she'd dumped Tom, agitated and angry. She said that Tom had been rude to her, but she also said she worried she'd been too hard on him. Not that she hadn't had reason to, mind you. She was right to be angry. But was what she'd done just as bad? She didn't know, and since she didn't say what she'd done, at least not to Brent, he couldn't tell her whether dumping a shrunken guy outside in a suburb was better or worse than raping someone. He was glad, actually; he wasn't totally sure, himself.

He calmed her as best he could, but she was shifting through her thoughts and emotions quickly. Brent told her to calm down, get a drink, told her she was right to be mad at Tom if he'd been a jerk, and that she shouldn't worry about him. But no, he admitted, Brent hadn't head anything from Tom.

Rose had hung up with Brent, and had cried harder. Tom was a rapist. But the outdoors had beasts that could kill a shrunken man, and she had no way of knowing that Tom was in no actual danger.

She felt that she'd sentenced him to death for his crime. Maybe he deserved it, in a karmic justice sort of way. But she did not have the temperament of an executioner.

She thought about searching for him, but how? He was so small, and he could be anywhere. And what if she found him dead? What if she found him maimed?

Perhaps if she'd told someone exactly what she'd done, they could have helped her. Talked her through it. Helped her find him. Something.

But she had done more than defend herself. She'd as good as killed him. She couldn't admit that to anyone. Not just because of the legal concerns, but because she saw herself as a monster. Tom had raped her, yes. But she had killed him.

And she couldn't bear it.

Two days later, as Tom was planning his next adventure, Rose took the bottle of sleeping pills her doctor had prescribed her.

She would never wake up.

*  *  *

Tom woke up refreshed and ready. His destination was within walking distance, and what's more, he had realized it was a Saturday. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

If you had not spent your life imagining places to be shrunk around giant women, you might think Tom's destination was something less than extraordinary. It was a typical suburban mall, nothing to write home about. It had the usual mix of department stores and boutiques and restaurants and such. Nothing particularly interesting about it.

Tom whistled tunelessly as he entered the mall, hummed as he looked over the directory. So many choices, he thought to himself as he looked them over. Should he go to the upscale department store, hide out in petites? Or should he go to one of the boutiques that targeted the girls in their teens and twenties? Or should he do something completely off-beat, like hide out in the food court, or the movie theater?

He settled on the mid-priced department store nearest to him. He'd be able to blend in better. If he went into the lingerie store he'd considered, he'd stick out like a sore thumb. He'd have to shrink outside and traverse the whole store, risking -- well, not death -- but getting stepped on, or found by someone he didn't find appealing.

No, the department store was perfect. Absolutely perfect. He went in, and cased it quickly; men's clothing was on the same floor as women's, petites, and juniors, and he quickly located the dressing room. He looked around, and seeing that the coast was clear, he got a few racks of clothing into the petites section. He kneeled down as if to tie his shoe, grabbed the stone, and asked for two inches tall.

Instantly, he was insignificant, though not as insignificant as he planned to get. He hid under a rack of blouses, and making sure that the coast was clear, ran to the rack of slacks. This rack was soon shaking, as an immense woman pushed trousers back and forth, looking for a pair that would fit.

He looked up her long leg, and realized that she was shopping in the petites section; he found this amusing, as he gazed at the point where her leg disappeared into a pleated skirt.

For half a second, he thought about targeting her, but she soon took off for points distant, and the lane was clear between him and the dressing room.

He took off at full speed, and rushed into the first room, which he could see was unoccupied. He would have to time this well; he didn't want to hide on the floor. So he quickly grasped the stone, and asked for full size. As soon as he was, he sat on the bench, and envisioned himself one-sixth of an inch tall.

He backed away from the edge of the precipice, which now was more than a thousand feet off the ground, and walked toward the nearly-infinite mirror on the wall. He would wait for the perfect girl. And he'd go with her.

This time, she wouldn't know what he was doing to her. He could explore to his heart's content.