Tom Baker groggily opened his eyes, staring blearily around in the darkness of his room, and groaned to realize that most of his body still easily fit on his pillow.  The rest of the bed comically dwarfed him, like he was a puppet that had appeared for humorous effect in some late night sketch.

            He still hadn’t regrown yet, even after eight hours of sleep.  Not that he was expecting to have regained his full stature, given just how low he’d shrunk the previous evening, but he’d hoped to be a little larger than doll scale by now.  As he clambered off the plush surface and stretched his limbs in all directions, it occurred to him that he was still probably just over a foot in height.  If that.  Better than what was often the case, since he could more or less manage things for himself, but nevertheless, it wasn’t a good starting point for his day.  Reaching the end of his bed, he slid down the ladder that rested there for just such occasions as this.

            Things had been going reasonably successfully.  For at least the past month, he’d been able to rise from his bed at very nearly his full height of five-foot-seven, which already was a little disappointing as many of his friends continued to feel lingering puberty’s growing pains.  Still, there was something secure about looking out at the world on its level, rather than up at it.

            Then something would come up, as it inevitably did.  A question usually, sometimes serious, sometimes a joke, or sometimes just a provocation to watch him squirm.  That was all it took.  And then the answer would come from him instinctively, like vomit spewed because of an overzealous gag reflex.  Occasionally it was under his control, and at other times it just burst forth like some alternate consciousness.

            A lie, or at least a perversion of the truth, which Tom understood as distinctly different things.

            The psychologist had once called him “a compulsive liar,” and considering the state of the world he happened to live in, where even the tiniest of white lies was enough to cost a person a few inches in stature, many others preferred other names for him like “unholy sinner.”  Certainly he was treated as such by many, even if they didn’t quite use this term in casual conversation.

            No, most preferred terms like “Little Tommy” or “shrinkbait” instead once he was small enough for them to torment.  Given the nature of his vocal crimes, especially considering how low he so frequently was reduced to, anyone with even the loosest moral compass knew he deserved any punishment dealt out by the normal-sized guardians of truth.

            Tom pinched the comfy and reliable fabric of his TruPlex shirt: the truest saving grace of his young life.  The clothing line had been developed as a deterrent against uncomfortable events in school or professional situations where repeated lying might result in an individual being reduced to a few inches in height.  Its fabric was designed to recognize the biological signs of a lie in its owner and subsequently become denser if need be to exactly match the calibrated size.  TruPlex had been started to ensure people weren’t left naked in front of total strangers in addition to being shrunken down to such helpless proportions, which was already enough of a strain on the person’s dignity as it was.  The name itself was somewhat ironic.  And thankfully, Tom received a healthy discount on all his outfits thanks to his father’s management position in the neighboring city’s branch that required him to spend nine months of his year out of the house, which was just as well, because the man’s dedication to a clothing line designed for liars did not preclude his distaste of the actual customers.

            Tom’s mother was already in the kitchen making breakfast, but hearing her second-youngest child’s tiny feet padding across the floor as he made his way downstairs, she turned to face him, looming above with palpable disappointment: a matronly sentinel with a billowing pink bath robe hugging curvy hips that she sported courtesy of four consecutive pregnancies in earlier life.  He came to a stop and leaned against the pantry door, gazing up at her with his most innocent expression in a vain attempt to counter the highly incriminating stature he held.

            “Well, honey,” Linda Baker sighed as she gazed down at her diminutive son with her manicured hands placed firmly on her sides.  She shook her head, somewhat out of pity with just a tiny glint of condescension in her quicksilver-blue eyes.  “Did we learn a little lesson this time?”

            “Yes.  Yes,” he mumbled awkwardly without thinking, and immediately he felt himself lose at least another three inches, causing his vision of the kitchen to swell even more and his titaness of a parent to become even more enormous.  Both knew full-well there was no way in hell this would be the final time Tom would experience a reduction.  It was a loaded question, really.

            Linda rolled her eyes and bit the corner of her lip as she watched her child dwindle down to nine inches before her and crossed her arms in disappointment.  “It just never gets through to you, does it?” she drawled sadly.

            “Maybe,” he answered neutrally, twiddling his thumbs in embarrassment.

            “Oh well.  We’ll talk more about that later, I suppose,” she said, and turned back toward the counter and swirled a spoon around a pot as steam billowed from its contents.  “I made oatmeal.  Smells good, hmm?”

            “Yes.  G-Great, actually,” he grunted, having been holding back a cough at its slightly burnt scent, and closed his eyes in resigned preparation as this especially exaggerated lie stole another six inches from him, until he stood at just three on the floor, looking particularly pathetic.

            His mother exhaled heavily and took several steps closer to the tiny teen, allowing him to feel every thunderous thump of her fuzzy house slippers as they landed for each step, until she stood close enough that he could’ve reached out and touched the bus-sized footwear.

            Or it could’ve lifted up and pinned him beneath its muggy mass.

            “Look what you’ve gone and done,” Linda sighed, not bothering to hide her bitterness.  She lifted a glass bowl from the counter high above, holding it aloft so that Tom had to crane his neck up to make it out.  “I made this for you, you know, but look at yourself now.  There’s no way you could use a spoon.”

            “Yeah,” he wearily admitted.  “Sorry.”

            “I guess we’ll just have to come up with some alternative method for you,” she stated, brushing her silky dark locks off her forehead, and batted her eyelashes a few times.  Steadily, she shifted her weight so that she could slip her right foot out of the house slipper.  The white-painted toes wriggled in the open air before she set her appendage down with a fleshy slap on the floor.

            “Well?” she said expectantly.  Pointing her toe, she nudged the edge of the slipper against the floor, rotating it so that its shadowy opening faced her trinket-sized son. “Go on.  Get inside.  Breakfast is served.”