After Shirley had finished rinsing Anna clean she unceremoniously dumped the shrunken woman on a dish towel next to the sink and had folded it over her, rolling her around roughly and patting it down on top of her. She then carried her miniature sister back to her bedroom and dropped her into a small, decorative glass bowl on the dresser that was filled half filled with polished stones. Without a word she turned and strolled out, leaving Anna naked, cold, and alone. She immediately willed her sore and aching body to stand and carefully traverse the uneven boulders beneath her. When she got to the curved glass wall of the bowl she quickly realized she had no hope of climbing out.
The hopelessness of her situation hardly even phased her. At this point she had endured so much, and after only a few hours of having been shrunken, that another disappointment was only a drop in the bucket. Besides, she thought, even if she escaped the bowl, she'd have to find a way down to the carpet from the top of the dresser. And should she even reach the carpet floor, she had nowhere to go. She could hide but Shirley would search high and low for her, and if she wasn't unintentionally squashed by a passing foot, there was no one to turn to.
As she sat alone in the glass prison, all she could do was think of her future, however short it might be. All of the things she would now never get to do. Travel the world. Meet a new love. Not to mention all of the milestones in Alice's life that would pass without her. A first kiss, first day of high school, sporting events, prom, and on and on. She couldn't find it within herself to stay mad at Alice. She was only 9, and couldn't really grasp the seriousness of the situation. If she acted badly, it was only because Anna failed her as a parent. The knowledge that she now was too tiny and pitiful to do a better job as a mother pained her.
In the distance she heard Shirley, and Anna, and the television, and other unidentifiable muffled sounds. It was agonizing to hear the evening carrying on without her. After a short while there was a pounding at the door and then she could make out the louder voices and giggles of other girls. She knew already that it would be Alice's two best friends, Grace and Amber. Listening intently to the happenings outside of her bowl and bedroom helped to pass the time. Aside from the occasional thudding of little feet (that were not so little to her, anymore) down the hall, and laughter, she heard another visitor at the door, and then bodies in the kitchen. The clatter of plates, the faintest smell of what must be pizza.
She could see her alarm clock on her nightstand, hundreds of feet away. It was 6:45, and her stomach hungered for the fresh, hot pizza that the others were enjoying so far away. Just before the clock reached 7:00 the heavier footsteps of Shirley grew louder and louder. In she came, as if she owned the place, a napkin in one hand, one of her greasy fingers in her mouth. When she finished licking it clean she wiped the saliva from her forefinger and reached down to pinch up Anna between it and her thumb. The tiny woman could still smell the garlic and tomato sauce.
Plopping her enormous rump down on the foot of the bed, Shirley deposited her miniature sister on her thigh and leaned back on one hand. Her stomach seemed to bulge just a little bit more than normal, now that it was stuffed full of pizza, breadsticks, and soda. With her other hand, Shirley gently rubbed her full belly right in front of Anna, sighing contentedly. A wet, high-pitched gurgle sounded from somewhere inside of the huge mountain of pudge as Shirley rubbed. Giggling at the sound, she gave her tummy a pat that conjured another, louder gurgle somewhere lower, and caused the thigh beneath Anna's feet to jiggle and almost knock her over.
“Hoo boy. What a meal. I can't remember the last time I ate a whole pizza. I think it was probably with you and a couple of my friends. Tina, and I think Mia. Remember that? We stayed up all night, the four of us, in the basement. Eating pizza, talking about boys...” Shirley smiled warmly down at Anna and for a split second the tiny woman thought that things were going to be alright, and that Shirley would help her.
“Even then you were a pathetic little twerp.” Shirley mused, dashing Anna's hopes to pieces.
“Our entire childhood you were always playing the victim. Constantly complaining. Crying up in your room, crying in the bathroom at school. It was embarrassing to be related to you. To have to force my friends to pretend to like you so mom and dad would get off my back. Look at you now. You've finally got a body to match your personality.” She said cruelly, poking Anna in the stomach with her finger and knocking her onto her back.
Anna tried to reply, to speak up in her defense, to convince her sister not to go through with all of this, but the much larger woman's finger was still pinned against her stomach, forcing her down and preventing Anna from getting enough air to do anything more than whimper.
“Grace and Amber are here, if you couldn't tell. I had a nice chat with Alice before we invited them over. Explained some things to her. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her I had found you. Ha! Like she had been caught redhanded breaking into a piggy bank.” Shirley relaxed her finger but kept it resting on Anna's body, the tip pressing gently against both of her petite breasts, even just the weight of the massive digit resting on top of her enough to pin her.
“I let her know some hard truths. That you were a tiny now, and that tinies weren't REALLY people, like her and me. How could they be? How could you possibly be considered equal to a normal person? You could die a thousand ways in a typical day if you were to try and go out and do any normal, average, every day errand. Instead you'll spend all of your time sitting around, having to be cared for, unable to do anything for yourself at all, a burden to all those around you. What do they get for their trouble? Your thanks. Your affection. Your crying and depressing, self-pitying woe-is-me sentiments as you mope about while everyone else tries to live a life worth living.” Shirley went on, bitterly growing more and more spiteful in her tone as she glared down at her puny sister, digging her finger into her chest, her nail pressing against her delicate throat.
“P-please...Shirley...sis...hurts...” Anna managed to whimper, pushing against the gigantic finger, her little legs kicking frantically. Whether or not Shirley heard the choking plea Anna couldn't say, but she did remove her finger from Anna's body, allowing her to sit up and rub at her throat.
“Well...I've made my point. It was easy to convince Alice that she should just keep you as a pet. It's 'the only thing that makes sense' I told her. Have some fun with you while her friends were over, and she still has the chance. You know, before you kick the bucket. She was actually very accepting of the fact you'd die off sooner rather than later. Sat on by someone. Stepped on. Accidentally smothered in a pocket, dropped by mistake. These things just happen. No use crying over spilled tinies.” Shirley said with a shrug and a sigh.
She then stood and scooped up Anna into her palm, walking to the door and calling for Alice. Anna could feel the tears welling up, but fought them back down. She wouldn't give Shirley the satisfaction of seeing them. And if she got to be with Alice, she could convince her daughter to help. To save her, to call someone. Or even one of her friends. Once they were away from Shirley, it would be simple. She was still Alice's mother.
From the living room, where it sounded like the girls were watching Frozen, came Alice. She had taken off her socks at some point, and snapped a couple of clips into her fair, brown hair. When her ocean blue eyes fell on the tiny creature in her aunt's palm, she smiled the excited smile Anna had seen so many times, whenever Alice received a gift or got her way.
“Thanks Aunt Shirley! You're the best Aunt ever.” Alice said quickly, grabbing Anna with her smaller, more limber hand, eager to return to her friends and the movie. She leaned in, wrapping her arms around Shirley, or at least partially around her, Anna struggling in Alice's fist as it swung around. Shirley hugged the little girl tightly and welcomed her.
“Just remember everything I said, okay? And don't let your mom talk you into doing something silly, like bothering the doctors or police with this. Nobody can grow her back. She'll have to accept this is the way things are now, and you gotta help her.” Shirley said firmly. Alice nodded.
“I know, I won't. We'll be having so much fun she won't even mind that she's my tiny pet now! Huh, mom?” Alice smiled mischievously, breaking from the hug and holding out her fist to peak at the miniaturized woman through her loosened fingers. Anna almost screamed for Alice to help, to run and get her away from Shirley, but she knew now wasn't the time to coax her daughter. Instead, she merely nodded, much to the approval of her giantess relatives. Shirley turned to go back into Anna's bedroom.
“I'll be busy sorting through your mom's things and figuring out what I want, so go on and take your friends up to your room. I'll be right down here if you need me.” Shirley said, waving her hand at Alice to dismiss her. Giddily, the 9 year old girl skipped down the hallway to her waiting playmates, little woman in hand.
“Hey! Let's go to my room, my aunt's got stuff to do down here and I wanna show you somethin' secret!” Alice excitedly said. Anna could only sit in the darkness of Alice's fist, waiting. Her empty stomach churned as Alice bounced up the stairs to her bedroom, hand bouncing off of her hip without a thought spared to the living thing carried along. One of the other girls called out that she'd bring the leftover pizza, the other saying she needed to use the bathroom and would be up in a minute.
Moments later, Anna found herself being tumbled out of her daughter's hand, on to the well-used turquoise carpet of her bedroom. Gathering her wits, she sat up and looked around. Alice's room was a mess, as usual, but it was obvious she had hastily tidied up for her slumber party. All of the dirty socks and clothes were piled up in the corner by the closet. And she could see that everything else, from undone homework to barbie dolls a dozen times taller than her, had been shoved beneath Alice's bed.
Standing wearily, she was thankful that the carpet in her daughter's room was so old. She would have had a difficult time pushing her way through a jungle of stiff tree-sized carpet fibers. Instead, the carpet in Alice's room was worn down, matted against the floor, faded in a dozen parts and stained in a dozen others. Many thousands of footsteps from a growing little girl had pounded the carpet down. There was a sudden, quaking THUD as something massive hit the ground just in front of her. Looking up she realized she was right in front of two giant denim-covered knees. Craning her head upwards, she saw that it wasn't Alice.
The 4th grader in front of her was Amber, a rambunctious young girl that had been in Alice's class since kindergarten. Her tightly curled, ginger hair came down just passed her chin, and her deep, energetic eyes glittered like emeralds with the fascinating creature standing before her. Her face, cheeks and nose dusted with freckles, was frozen in awe at the sight of her friend's tiny mom, mouth agape. Her hands slid along her legs as she leaned closer, now kneeling over the shrunken woman, hands planted on the carpet to either side.
“She's really real! And you get to keep her?” Amber asked, not once taking her eyes off Anna. The older woman began to feel uncomfortable, shielding her breasts and crotch from Amber's eyes, directly overhead.
“Yup! It's my mom. But she's like this now, so she's basically mine.” Alice said confidently. Amber reached suddenly for the miniaturized adult, and Anna flinched away. Before she touched her, though, she stopped and looked to Alice for approval.
“Go ahead! Pick her up, I don't mind.” Alice stretched her legs out on the floor, leaning her back against her bed as Amber grinned from ear to ear, snatching Anna from the floor and scooting back so she could sit on her butt cross-legged. Sitting in Amber's somewhat clammy hand, Anna found herself face to face with a giant pattern of some kind. It took her a moment to realize what the massive print on the young girl's shirt was. A cartoon bear lay on its side on the brown shirt, a few Japanese letters above the print of the bear, his smiling face slathered in honey, an empty pot at his feet. It was a familiar shirt, and Anna quickly realized why.
It was a gift that Amber had gotten for her birthday four months ago, from Alice. Anna had taken her daughter to the mall to pick out a present for her friend, and Alice had insisted on going to nearly every store. Finally Alice had picked out the shirt at a kiosk, though it was twice the price of any normal shirt. “A Japanese import, very stylish” the cashier had said. Anna hadn't been able to convince Alice to pick a cheaper gift, and instead received her promise that she'd do extra chores all that month. Of course, the rest of that month, and ever since, Alice had neglected to do any chores at all unless reminded and then asked repeatedly, and even then barely got them done. Somehow, Anna had wound up just doing almost all of the chores herself.
“She's so light! I feel like if I breathe too hard she'll go flying off.” Amber giggled, bouncing her hand lightly so that Anna would be jostled about her palm. She let her friend's mom roll around her palm a little before she began poking her back and forth with one tree-length finger. She grabbed the miniature woman by one leg and picked her up, swinging her lightly back and forth.
“Don't be TOO rough on her, though. Like...that's still my mom. I want her.” Alice said with disinterest, reaching for the leftover pizza box to fetch a slice. Amber set Anna down on the carpet before her knees and watched her, hand in chin. After a moment of silence, Amber reached down with a finger and brushed it against Anna's back, scooting her a few steps forward. She then resumed watching. When Anna continued to stand there, awkwardly, Amber furrowed her brow.
“Well? Walk around. Do stuff.” Amber said in an almost cooing voice, like one might talk to a puppy. There was a sudden gust of wind and a heavy thud as Alice tossed the pizza box to the ground, nearly knocking Anna over. But it the smell of the room-temperature, leftover pizza did remind her stomach that she was starving. So, with at least some temporary freedom, Anna began walking across the carpet towards the discarded box of leftovers.
Amber giggled as she watched the tiny woman carry on but didn't intervene or snatch her away. It wasn't until the shrunken woman had gotten halfway to the pizza box when disaster struck. There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, which Anna thought nothing of until the door swung open and in walked Grace. She was in the same class as Anna's daughter, but didn't come from a very good family. Her parents made little money, and paid little, if any, attention to their daughter.
She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt one size too large, with stripes in two shades of brown, and a pair of ratty jeans with mismatched green and yellow socks. Her dark brown hair was cut short, like a boy's, and her hazel eyes were of course not looking where she was stepping. Anna could do nothing but scream in fright as a massive 9 year old girl's foot, clad in a dirty lime-colored sock, big toe poking through one hole, another on the sole, descended from the sky. Amber shouted at Grace to stop, but it was too late. Anna cowered until the moment when Grace's toes crashed down on top of her like a bug.