“I’m pretty sure this is technically a hostage situation right now,” Allen commented calmly.  He continued lying on his bed at eight inches tall with his adoptive older sister Roxy sitting cross-legged in front of him and leaning so far over him that her torso filled most of his plain of vision, her dark brown hair hanging down like a silky canopy over his head.

            “It can’t be a hostage situation if you like it, and I’ve shrunk you enough times in your life that I’m almost positive you don’t hate it,” she retorted.

            “Well, that’s a comforting assessment.  “I don’t hate it.”  Any jury impartial or otherwise would let it slide and make it official legislation.”

            “Stop using big words, you little nerd.  You’re not in school right now; nobody’s impressed,” Roxy complained, sticking out her lower lip out for dramatic effect and prodding her brother in the chest with a massive pointer finger.

            “I could be a big nerd instead of a little nerd if you grew me back to normal,” Allen said hopefully, holding up his hands in front of his torso defensively to stop the poking.

            “Not yet, I said.  We’re having some fun first before I go back to campus on Sunday,” Roxy reminded him, pressing down on his little hands with her pointer finger and eventually letting up once satisfied with his level of effort.

            “You can’t have this kind of fun with your big ol’ college friends?”

            “No,” groaned Roxy, rolling her eyes.  “You know how it is.  It’d be way too complicated to try to explain this to someone who didn’t already know about witchcraft.”

            “There aren’t any at your school?”

            “Oh, there’s a couple.  I asked a guy I know from a warlock clan out west if he’d let me shrink him.”

            “Did you really?” snickered Allen, burying his faces in his hands with amusement.

            “Yeah!  Don’t make fun of me…” Roxy said in a huff.  “It was worth a try, anyway.  He just looked at me like I was crazy and told me to leave him alone.”

            “You sure it wasn’t the punk girl get-up that did it?”

            “Hey, this look is in right now!” defended Roxy, gazing down at her t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of her favorite band, Kranktrap, and at her faded jeans, which were commercially shredded in the knees to denim confetti.  “It doesn’t matter anyway.  I don’t think any of the others will let me do it either.  You’re my only one.”

            “Given that you just kind of walk in and shrink me whenever you feel like it, I’d say “letting” you is maybe a little bit of a stretch,” Allen said.

            “Shut up.  I take your inability to stop me as consent, okay?”

            “That is… literally… why this is a hostage situation.”

            “Oh, stop it with your fancy complaining.  I’m just keeping you like this until we’ve hung out for a while, and then I’ll make you boring sized again, if you insist.”

            “That’s kind of important, though.  I need to be boring sized, as you put it, to get all my homework done so I can go to college, too.”

            “Again, shut up.  You’ve already got like eight scholarships to places, and you know it.  Screw your homework,” Roxy decreed to her shrunken subject, crossing her arms again.  “By the way, where the hell are mom and dad?”

            “Gone for a few days, at least.  Said they had to go help take a curse off a guy who turned into a minotaur-hybrid-thing in New Zealand.”

            “Bummer for New Zealand,” Roxy said simply, leaning in closer and closer to her eight-inch-tall adopted brother.  “And bummer for you, too.”

            “Why’s that?” Allen asked, wincing involuntarily as the warm, spearmint gum haze of Roxy’s breath wafted stickily over him.

            “Cuz it sounds like we’ve got the whole weekend to ourselves,” Roxy giggled, licking creepily along the length of her lips for effect.  “Nobody to save you now.”

            “Do you ever stop and take a second to realize how exactly like a hostage-taker you sound?” Allen peeped.  “Besides, I could just call them and tell them you shrunk me as a hostage.”

            “Well, first of all, no you wouldn’t, because you’re having fun right now,” Roxy commented truthfully.  “And second of all, I could very easily stop you from getting near a phone or the call stone now that you’re fun sized.”

            “Oh, so that’s what the opposite of normal… I mean, boring sized is?”

            “Now you’re getting it,” Roxy chuckled, winking at her brother.  “Plus it weirds me out that you’re taller than me now whenever you’re boring sized.”

            “I do have you beat there.”

            “Yeah, well, as long as mom and dad aren’t here, you are not bigger than me.  You are as big as my shoe.  Clear?” Roxy demanded through playfully gritted teeth, before hushing her tone dramatically.  “And probably smaller than that, too, depending on how I feel later.”

            “How you feel, huh?  This is awfully one-sided, if you ask me,” Allen admitted.  “Am I just your puppet, then?”

            “Don’t sell yourself short.  Like I said, nobody else will let me play with them tiny.”

            “That’s because everybody else you could ask can stop you…”

            “Look, you little wuss, you are just begging to have my foot pinning your weak little self down again.  Isn’t that something you want to avoid?” Roxy asked.

            “Yeah, probably,” Allen said wryly.  “I think I’ve had my fill of your foot already today, after that little greeting you gave me.”

            “I was just saying hello, Mr. Whiner,” Roxy taunted.

            “Maybe, but considering I was asleep and woke up to find a foot as big as me laying on top of me, I’d call that overdoing it slightly.”

            “Okay, that’s it!” Roxy bellowed jokingly, her hand shooting forward.  Her fingers wrapped around Allen’s waist and plucked him from the bed like a ragdoll, allowing his legs to dangle a few inches above her thighs as she examined him face-to-face.  “I’m getting sooo bored of you being a crybaby.  So I’m gonna put you down to run.  Then I’m counting to fifty, I’m gonna come find you, and when I do, you’ll be sorry.”

            “I figured I was already at that stage,” Allen insisted, resting his little forearms on his sister’s long fingers as they wound themselves tightly around his abdomen.

            “Counting!” barked Roxy, releasing her fingers from around her brother’s body, allowing him to plop into her lap in a heap.  “One.  Two.  Three.  Four.”

            “No fair, you didn’t even give me a head start,” Allen complained as he clambered across his sister’s crossed calves and proceeded to crawl over the edge of the bed sheet to the carpet, before dashing toward the door to find a hiding place.

            “Sucks to suck!” she sang.  “Five.  Six.  Seven.  Eight.  Nine.  Ten…”