6. The Shrink Ray

The morning after

Tommy woke up slowly, light streaming through the windows. Autumn lay next to him, naked. She was still asleep and gave her a soft stroke from her chin, down her breasts, across her tummy, and he brushed against her pubic hair before pulling away.

            Her eyes fluttered open. “Hey,” she cooed. He pulled her on top of him. “That’s more like it…” She kissed him full on the lips, then pulled back and ran a finger on the side of his neck.

            “Oops,” she giggled. “I gave you a hicky.”

            “It was worth it,” he said, and kissed her again.

            The he realized.

            “Oh shit, it’s Saturday!”

            “So?”

            “My parents won’t know where I was. They’ll kill me! And where are your parents?”

            “They often get drunk at the bar and don’t come back until about 10.” She gestured to the clock. It was 8:23.

            Tommy leapt out of bed and grabbed his phone from his pants, which were strewn across the floor. There was a text from his mom. “Sleeping over at Simon’s?” it asked. “Yes” he typed back. “Be home soon.”

            He looked up. Autumn was staring at him, lying naked there without even the sheets to cover her beauty. “What’re you looking at?”

            “You’re cute,” she said, and licked her lips.

            He looked down. He was giving her full frontal nudity and a front row view of his boner.

            “Before you go,” she said, “can I have one last kiss.”

            He saw that he had new voicemail and a missed call from Simon. He looked back at the beautiful girl before him, the one he had just lost his virginity to. Fuck it.

            He tossed the phone onto his clothes, leapt back into bed, and they rolled over kissing as he ran his hands down her flanks.

An hour later

Autumn dropped him off at a local diner, one where Simon had told him to meet on the voicemail. She blew him a kiss as she drove away. “See you later!” she called. Tommy smiled and walked into the restaurant.

            He saw Simon sitting by himself in a corner booth, with a window view to the street outside.

            “Where the fuck have you been?” he asked Tommy as he sat down.

            “Good morning to you too,” Tommy said.

            “I haven’t been able to fuckin’ talk to you since Wednesday? What’s going on?”

            Tommy sighed. “I have a girlfriend.” Simon was a friend he could trust, he decided.

            “What?” Simon said, his eyes widening. “Who?”

            “Autumn.”

            “The new girl? Cat’s friend?”

            “Yeah. We first kissed at the In ‘N Out Burger, then kinda continued from there.”

            “And what about last night?”

            “Let’s just say that only one of us is a virgin,” he said, scratching the back of his head.

            “Great,” said Simon, “just great. I was working my ass off trying to solve this case, and you were getting fucking laid.”

            Tommy didn’t know what to say.

            “Side note: how is it, by the way?”

            “What?”

            “Sex, Tommy,” Simon said. “A geek like me has zero chance of losing it in high school, but just tell me. What’s it like?”

            Tommy sighed. “It’s worth the wait, trust me.”

            Simon shook his head. “We need to get back to business. There’s a killer on the loose.”

            “So what’d you want to talk to me about again?”

            “Oh, yeah. I think I have this thing solved.”

            “So who is it?” Tommy asked.

            “Story time,” he said, sitting back into his chair. “You wasted three days literally fucking around with some girl, so now I can tell what I spent fucking around with.”

            “Fair enough,” Tommy said.

            “Where to begin,” Simon said, scratching his chin. “Ah, yes… So I kept going back through the clues and realized that I had nothing really to back up who the killer was, based on my list of suspects. So I decided to go back to the very beginning of this case, before Lara and everything. What’s the one thing the killer has that’s been staring us in the face so long?”

            “The shrink ray.”

            “Exactly. I realized that it had to be the key to this mystery. So Professor Henderson was the last person we knew who had it, because Bobby gave the ray to him after the party incident. But then he disappeared and really, that’s how this all got started.”

            “So did you find out who killed him.”

            “Yes, Tommy. And they didn’t just kill him. They ate him.”

Yesterday afternoon

Greg the security guard was looking forward to the end of his shift and going home for the weekend, when the phone rang. “Sanderson College, front desk. Greg Bowman speaking. How may I help you?”

            “Hi Mr. Bowman, I’m Simon. I go to the local high school.”

            Great, a fucking kid. “It’s almost closing time, what do you want?”

            “I need to ask you a few questions about the disappearance of Professor Henderson.”

            He laughed. “A kid wants to investigate? Fire away. I was there on duty that night, what do you want?”

            “What was the Professor doing that night?”

            Greg leaned back into his chair. “Well…”

Two months earlier…

It had been just like any other night for Greg Bowman. He sat there watching the TV and eating some Pringles. Professor Henderson was the only person still left teaching at this hour, said he was staying after to do some experiments. There was the one girl in his internship class, he said, who was a real pain. Real pretty, but never following the rules. She always ate and chewed gum in class and it got on Henderson’s nerves. He was making her stay late as a form of detention.

            It must’ve been around 8:30, since this was a Thursday and Greg worked the late shift on those nights. The elevator door opened and a teenage girl with blond hair stepped out walking quickly towards past his desk.

            “Hey, stop!” he said.

            She turned and Greg felt bad for thinking how hot she was. But she was tempting him with those short shorts and a shirt that exposed part of her tummy.

            “Yes,” she said, as if nervous.

            “You’re the girl who Henderson was having stay after. Naughty thing, always eating in class and chewing gum. Where is Henderson, by the way?”

            “Oh, um, I think he’s still doing experiments back in his lab. He said I was done for the night.” She gave a laugh, clearly nervous, when her stomach suddenly gave a loud gurgle and she let out a big burp.

            “Excuse me,” she said, her cheeks flushing red.

            He eyed her gurgling belly. Damn, she’s hot.

            “Alright,” he said. “Take it easy. Is your stomach okay?”

            “Yeah, just something I ate.” She giggled and stormed out the door.

            I thought she wasn’t supposed to eat anything in that class, Greg thought to himself. Oh well, that’s Henderson’s problem, not mine.

            He never saw Henderson again.

Friday afternoon

“So that was it?” the Simon kid asked over the phone.

            “Yeah, that’s the only thing unusual.”

            “You never suspected her of anything.”

            “Nah,” said Greg. “She probably just snuck some snack food into the class, secretly ate it, and it made her all gassy.”

            “But she was the last one to see Henderson alive?”

            “I guess, yeah.”

            Simon paused. “Could I have her name please?”

            “Why? You want to date her? She sure is cute.”

            “Please, this is very important.”

            “Alright, whatever you say.”  Greg flipped back through the logbook to about two months ago. “Ah, here it is.”

            “What’s her name?”

            “Alexis.”

Present day

“So it was Lexi all along,” said Tommy, suddenly taking it in.

            “It makes sense,” said Simon. “She found Henderson using the shrink ray, someone he got shrunken down. She ate him in revenge for not letting her eat in class and staying so late and took the shrink ray with her.”

            “Then why’d she wait two months to start eating people again?” Tommy asked.

            “Don’t know. Maybe she just had to sum up the courage again,” said Simon. “I don’t know why she ate Lara, but you told me that Mrs. Watson went ape on her on Monday. Carl she probably killed because he knew too much. Kathy…well, that one’s pretty obvious. She punched her in the stomach, so she sent Kathy into her stomach.”

            Tommy shook his head. “Jesus, this was staring us in the face the whole time.”

            “She probably hasn’t eaten anyone for a little while because she knows that the cops are getting suspicious. But she could do it again, probably tonight, even.”

            “We’ve got to find her,” said Tommy. “Before she eats anyone else.”

That evening

Zack and Lexi were making out in his car. “I wanna have sex again,” said Lexi. Just then, her belly rumbled.

            “Sex or food?” he joked.

            “How about both,” she said, rubbing her belly. She giggled.

            “Alright, I’ll come by your place around 8,” he said as they pulled up in front of her apartment building. She kissed him on the lips then got of the car and shut the door behind her.

            As she walked, she looked down at her hungry, flat stomach. It made her think about how hungry she was the night she ate Henderson…

Two months ago…

Alexis groaned as her stomach let out a massive rumble. It felt as if she were going to digest herself. She hadn’t eaten anything for hours and her poor tummy ached with pain…

            She was doing some internship (which she referred to as the “internshit”) about physics and was working on a project that had something to do with space or something, but Lexi just said there every day thinking about her poor, grumbling tummy.

            At the party, she had been glad to have her belly stick out so much after she ate two pizzas because the full, aching feeling was better than her starving state right now. But the party was last weekend, and nobody wanted to talk about it because so many had gone missing.

            There was some paper in front of her about space-something and some word she couldn’t pronounce. She thought Henderson called it “astrophysics” or some big word. Her stomach rumbled again. “My poor belly,” she moaned, rubbing it.

            She looked at her watch. It was after 8 o’clock. “When the fuck can I leave!” she cried out to no one. Henderson was in his office and there was no one else around. Just then, a zap and scream came from the office.

            Getting up, Lexi walked over the office door and her life changed forever.

            Henderson was normally a tall man in glasses wearing a lab coat, but now he was a tiny man, perhaps about an inch high. She could barely hear him, so she had to lean close.

            “Lexi, thank God you can hear me! Listen, there’s something I need you to do!” he shouted.

            Her belly rumbled again. “I wanna go home. I need to eat something,” she complained. “Like, what even happened to you anyway?”

            “I accidentally shrunk myself with a shrink ray. I’ve been doing some experiments with it lately. All my paperwork is here and everything. I’ll explain it later, just please resize me!”

            Her stomach grumbled again. “I’m so hungry...,” she complained.

            “Lexi, listen to me! Resize me this instant and I won’t give you another detention!”

            There was an even bigger rumble. It hurt so much… “Shut up!” Alexis cried, snatching him in her and shoving him into her mouth. Suddenly, she stopped.

            And gulped in surprise.

            Lexi followed the lump down her throat and esophagus with her hand, looking down until she finally felt the Professor land into her eagerly awaiting stomach. She gave of soft burp, but was too shocked.

            “I…I…I ate him!” she realized as her stomach began to gurgle and digest her little snack. She pulled up more of her shirt to look at it. It felt so nice to have food in her stomach, but… “How do I get him out!” she cried.

            She tried to touch her uvula, but just couldn’t manage to do it. Not even to save Henderson, who was at the mercy of her tummy. Then she realized. He deserved it. That bastard never let me eat anything and forced me to stay let. He deserves to serve as my food.

            She burped again. It felt as if her stomach was making quick work of him, since it so desperately craved anything that could serve as sustenance.

            “I’ve got to get rid of the evidence,” she said to herself, taking all of his notes and the shrink ray and putting them in her purse.

            Then she left. As she walked down the hallway, she realized that if she kept it a secret, no one would ever know she ate the Professor. His remains would be digested in her belly and as long as she hid the research and the shrink ray, this would remain private.

            She almost smiled, except for the guilt she felt from eating another human being.

Present day

She watched as Zack walked off and was glad that she had learned to control her appetite. She had felt strange having swallowed Henderson, but she smiled and patted her belly knowing that she had the power now.

            And no one could stop her.

At the same time

Tommy and Simon got in Autumn’s car. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Who’s your friend, Tommy? He’s cute.”

            Simon did his best not to blush. “Um…”

            “This is Simon.”

            “We’ve gotta go, Tommy. How are we going to find Lexi?”

            “I’ve got an idea who her next target might be,” he said, calling Zack.

            “What’s going on?” Autumn asked again.

            “Hey Tommy,” Zack said on the phone. “Just doin’ some surfing in Malibu. What’s up?”

            “Which beach are you at?”

            “Sandy Park, why?”

            “I’ve got something to tell you. Is Lexi nearby?”

            “Uh, no I was going to take her out for dinner later. Why?”

            “Because she’ll be taking you to dinner. Trust me.”

            He ended the call. “Tommy, what’s going on!” Autumn thundered. He tried to ignore how cute she was even when she was mad.

            “Sandy Park beach. We’ve got to get there now.”

            “That’s in Malibu, why are we?”

            “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

            She looked back at Simon.

            “I barely believe it myself,” he said.

            Autumn sighed and returned her attention to the road.

Sandy Park, Malibu

Ten minutes later

They pulled up a few spots away from Zack’s car, which was a station wagon with a surf board on top.

            Zack was shirtless and in a bathing suit as he tried to get one of the boards down. Tommy was slightly annoyed by the way Autumn looked at him.

            The sun was starting to set again across the water, which Simon took in and sighed. “I love California,” he said.

            “What’s going on?” Zack asked.

            “Story of my life,” Autumn said, crossing her arms and giving Tommy a look.

            “It’s Lexi,” Tommy said. “She’s a killer.”

            Zack leaned against the car and laughed. “In bed she is. You lose your virginity yet, Tommy?”

            “Last night, as a matter of fact,” he said, glancing at Autumn.

            “Good for you. Finally manned up. You could never make the football team like me, but damn, you finally found a nice girl.” He turned to Autumn. “My girlfriend Lexi rejected him back in middle school, and last year and up until a little while ago, dated this crazy bitch named Kelsey. What ever happened to her, Tommy?”

            “Don’t know,” he said, getting irritated.

            “So what’s this killer business?” Zack asked.

            “She ate Lara, Mrs. Watson, Carl, and Kathy.”

            “Ate? As in chewed and swallowed?” he said, surprised.

            Autumn was starting to look at Tommy in a funny way. “What are you talking about?”

            “Look, I know this is going to sound crazy,” said Tommy. “But you’ve gotta believe me. Kelsey got her hands on some kind of shrink ray a while ago and ate a bunch of people at the party. She actually fed some other people to some of the guests, Lexi included. We later shrunk Kelsey down and Lexi accidentally swallowed her. Then we gave the shrink ray to a professor at a local university named Henderson, who Lexi had an internship with. She ate him, took the shrink ray for herself, and has now been using it to kill whoever she likes without leaving a trace.”

            Autumn stared in disbelief. Zack blinked.

            “The Rays Club isn’t about manta rays, it’s about shrink rays, and protecting the people of our school from them. It’s harder than it sounds.”

            “I’ll bet,” said Zack, turning to the ocean and the sun on horizon. He looked deep in thought, taking this new information in.

            “I know it’s a lot,” said Tommy, glancing at both Autumn and Zack. “But it’s the truth.”

            “No, actually…,” Zack began, “it makes a lot of sense now.”

            “Like what?” Simon asked.

            “Like how Lexi got this.” He pulled the shrink ray off the roof, where it had been hidden behind the surfboards, and aimed it at the three of them.

            There was a zap and they were all miniaturized in an instant.

TO BE CONTINUED