“C’mon, Mom.  Can’t I please have them both?  I’ve been working super hard in school lately, and I’ve been doing all my chores now and all that stuff,” Sherry wheedled, taking a step closer to her mother and tapping her foot anxiously against the colored tile.  The teen’s warm fists grew clammier as they remained coiled around the nearly nude bodies of her five-inch-tall potential pets.  “Pleeeeease?”

            “Honey, you don’t have to remind me about what you’ve done recently, your dad and I are very proud of you, but these… these things-” her mother continued.

            “Shrinkers, Mom.  They’re alive, you know.  They’re not things,” Sherry interrupted to correct, much to the surprise of Glenn and Wanda, who stole another glance of hesitant joy at one another.  This was a recognition, at least in part, neither had experienced in years, since they’d begun to shrink back in their teenage years, when they were just a matter of months older than this girl was now.

            “Mhmm, honey.  The thing is, though, that they’re… a couple of the more expensive ones in the store, see?  $99.99 apiece.  That’s… quite a bit for a couple of shrinkers,” the woman complained, tapping a finger on the plastic price tag that hung above the glass cage.  “Now, if you wanted two of the cheaper ones, we could talk about that.  Did you see at the front?  There were some that were only $49.99.  They were younger, too, so they’d last you longer.”

            “You mean the ones in the cages by the window?” Sherry snorted, wrinkling her freckle-dotted button nose in disgust.

            “Yes.  Something wrong with them?” her mother pressed, adjusting the rim of her glasses again.

            “Um, yeah!  They were all just screaming and running around their cages and making noise.  Imagine if they did that once I had them in my room.  I’d never get any sleep.  No, they were all just little monsters, not like these two,” Sherry continued.

            Glenn immediately knew what the girl was referring to.  As the shrinker gene took hold sometime during the teenage years for about 95% of cases, many of the newcomers to ShrinkSmart were in this age range, and as they were recently reduced in size, hadn’t taken kindly to being sold off by their former families to be marketed as pets.  It was always a sad thing to see a fresh batch of adolescent arrivals, even for those who’d been locked up in cages for a long time.  The manager wasted little time in snuffing rebellion out of even the youngest dissenters by depriving them of clothes, water, and sleep to teach a lesson.  Glenn and Wanda had the benefit of growing up on a farm until a year before, where they’d learned one of the most vital skills a shrinker could possess: silence.

            It made him feel guilty to imagine all those teenage shrinkers at the front of the store who didn’t realize how impossible they were making it for themselves to find a good owner by throwing tantrums like that, and how increasingly probable it was that they’d eventually move on to a location with significantly hornier clientele, or even a medical testing facility, but it was every shrinker for him or herself in this world, and both Glenn and Wanda were well-aware of that.

            “They do seem well-mannered, I suppose,” the mother relented with a drawl, then shook her head again.  “But I still don’t think we can do it.”

            Glenn gave Wanda another glance, tilting his head at an angle and nudging his right elbow so subtly only his mate picked it up.  She blinked as a form of nodding, understanding the signal, and both wrapped their arms in an embrace around Sherry’s thumbs.  It was now or never to make the sale.

            “Oh my goooosh…” the enamored teen cried, and her eyes actually seemed to have welled with tears of joy as she trembled with glee at the sight of the two shrinkers obediently hugging her fingers with all of their strength.  “Mom, look!”

            “Oh, for Pete’s sake…” the woman chuckled, rolling her eyes, then groaned with playful defeat.  “So are you gonna throw in some of your allowance money toward them, then?”

            Glenn couldn’t help but feel a little wave of goose bumps roll over his skin, and knew Wanda must’ve been experiencing something similar.

            Had they succeeded?

            “Yes!  Yes, I will!  However much you need,” Sherry vowed excitedly to her mother, spitting out the words in rapid-fire once she realized she was on the verge of getting what she wanted.  “Every dollar I have!”

            “Mhmm, I’m sure,” the woman answered sarcastically, and crossed her arms.  “Seriously, honey, we better see those grades stay right where they are if we’re gonna do this, okay?”

            “They will, Mom, they will!  Call Dad if you want and tell him they will.”

            “I’ll take your word for it, honey.  Just remember, though: if I trip over one of them out of their cages, on the run in my house, well…” she said, and then, lifting her right foot off the ground clad in a black clog, stomped onto the tile with a threatening clack, twisting her heel against the ground.

            “Mom!” Sherry gasped in horror, and both Glenn and Wanda were reassured that the woman was not joking in the least.

            “Just kidding, honey.  That would only make a bigger mess.  Now, I’ll go ahead and find the manager again to see if there’s anything we have to go over, and then we can go ring them up, okay?” she said with a loving pat on her daughter’s shoulder, and then sauntered off out of the long aisle again, leaving Sherry alone with the shrinkers again.

            “Thanks so much, Mom!” Sherry called after her, and then brought her gentle fists back to eye level to more closely examine her two new pets.

            “Hi there, cuties,” she said, her voice lowered to a throaty whisper, and she brandished the pair close enough to her chin that they could feel her warm breath, scented of a sticky cinnamon gum, wafting in steamy clouds on every exhalation.  “You’re gonna be mine now.”

            Glenn and Wanda both coughed as they adjusted to the stinging scent of the girl’s spicy breath, but quickly recovered and put smiles on their tiny faces, even nodding their heads to add confirmation of their contentedness with this fact.

            “Does that make you happy?” Sherry questioned quietly.  The pair shook their heads “yes” more emphatically this time, causing the teen to beam even brighter.  She even let out a few bursts of girlish giggles that released larger puffs of the cinnamon cloud.

            “I’m so glad.  Trust me, you guys are gonna like being my pets so much.  I… might have to save up for a little while again before I can get you that big cage like I said, since I kinda have to give Mom my money just to buy both of you, but once I do, it’s gonna be so great,” Sherry explained breathlessly, clearly full of grandiose plans to make life for her charges into a mini lifelong resort.  Her rosy-tinted locks bounced against her shoulders as she rambled.

            All Glenn and Wanda could do was nod continuously.  Anything to keep this ideal situation alive and at peak positivity.

            “So, do you two really love each other?” Sherry pressed with sudden seriousness.  The pair paused, surprised by this question, then truthfully nodded again.

            “Can you show me?” the girl pleaded hopefully, moving her fists closer together and unraveling her curled fingers enough that the pair could lean their faces in to one another.  Without any hesitation, Glenn and Wanda locked lips, hardly having to put on any kind of show, so happy were they to have not only managed to stay together, but to have had the good fortune to go to an owner who, it seemed, would treat them humanely and even with a dash of love.

            They smooched for a solid ten seconds, and particularly near the end, they could feel Sherry’s hands shaking with excitement again.  Once they pulled away, and the girl’s fingers wrapped themselves back around her new pets again, they were treated to the single most adoring coo their ears had ever experienced.

            “Oh Gooood you guys are so adorable and perfect,” Sherry sighed.  The teen’s gargantuan fingers set about caressing the backs of Glenn and Wanda’s heads again, kneading at their shoulders with loving aggression that they once again couldn’t help but appreciate.  She brought the pair closer to her lips again, planting tiny, delicate pecks with her plush lips into their hair.

            “Honey, are you ready?  She says all the info we need is up at the register, so if you want to just carry those two and follow the lady to the front, we can get going,” Sherry’s mom called out from the end of the aisle, having retrieved the shrinkers’ tormenter, who looked beyond pleased to have succeeded in making the sale.

            “Okay, Mom!” Sherry gleefully answered, then lowered her voice down to an inaudible rumble of anticipation.  “I just can’t wait to watch you guys make a baby shrinker for me,” the girl whispered under her breath into the ears of her pets before darting off after her mother and the manager, keeping the pair gripped at chest level.

            And that was when Glenn, despite his continued gratitude to be remaining in safety with his beloved, was forced by this final nonchalant comment of the wide-eyed and innocent possessor of his very existence to peer into the potential challenges of the future.  Instantly he felt another sickening churning in his innards, and even as Sherry’s thumb set about caressing his weary body again with such adoring tenderness, he knew that this particular feeling wouldn’t be fading anytime soon.