The last crack of fading daylight still peeked between the trees on the sidewalk trek back to Scott’s front door. Ella had him back across the threshold, as promised, in under two hours. One hour and fifty-four minutes, to be exact, which ordinarily would’ve made him nervous to test his judicial leash so blatantly.

            However, after the bittersweet news of Ella’s scholarship abroad, followed by the crushing realization that he would have to convince her to go if their relationship was to stay intact for the foreseeable future, Scott doubted much else could touch him these evening. And that included whatever kind of punishment his mother would inevitably cook up if he’d been more than four picoseconds late past the court-mandated curfew.

            No one was present when Ella returned Scott to the Stevens foyer, but the spare key under a stone urn allowed them to make the time even without a greeting. The young man was glad for this, as it allowed for a much more passionate farewell between him and his comparatively gigantic lady. Their make-out lasted for a solid fourteen additional minutes neither had expected to have, but eventually the time came to part regardless of solitude.

            “We’ll get one more in,” she swore as she deposited the six-inch loner on the living room couch. “Before I go, I’ll see you one more time. Even if we have to sneak around in your room like we used to.”

            “How about two more?” Scott smirked, wiping layers of Ella’s saliva off his chin.

            “How about three?”

            A last kiss and a serious promise to try for at least two visits later, and Scott had to watch Ella abandon him in his house once again, perhaps for the last time in a long time.

            It was only a year apart, he told himself. A little more than a year. That was all. What was that? Sixteen months? Sixty-eight weeks? Four-hundred-seventy-six days?  Eleven-thousand-four-hundred-twenty-four hours?

            Scott was already knocking his head against the wall. It felt like an eternity and she’d only just shut the front door.

            Sunken blearily into the couch cushions, he had only just propped his chin up against a pillow and unconsciously wondered where his keepers had gone when he heard the garage side door creaking open.

            “Helloooo!” Maggie called out as she entered the kitchen beyond. The clomping of her hard-soled sandals was followed by a second pair of feet that rang even louder in Scott’s ears. Which was strange, because as he listened to his sister and the unseen individual walking past the room, he could hear the telltale rubber slap of flip-flops against bare soles. The person wore soft shoes but still landed with greater impact, not the more ponderous footfalls of a heavier person, but simply one who intentionally placed their shoes back on the earth with impressive force. A trait his sister once prided herself on, but had mercifully softened over the past months.

            Scott actually opened his mouth instinctively to respond to the bellowed greeting, but quickly shut his lips again. Something told him it was best to go incognito in this moment.

            At least, that would’ve been the theory if he didn’t suddenly look up to see his sister’s grinning face looming above the back of the couch.

            “Hey, Scott,” Maggie smarmed. Her fingers appeared over the back of the cushions, waggling in a slow wave.

            “Hey, Mags,” he sighed.

            “C’mere a second,” she requested, though her palm was already open and en route to her six-inch brother below. “I want you to meet somebody.”

            “Okay,” he mumbled as his sister’s fingers curled around his sides. With a start, he realized his hair was probably still a little greasy with residue from Ella’s pulsating vulva. However, Maggie already had his arms pinned to his sides by her softly clenched digits. There would be no combing it out now.

            “Scott, this is Bailey,” she said, hoisting the boy up off the couch and propping him against her opposite palm. Her fingers remained closed around his sides, her curved pinky finger slumped awkwardly against his thighs and crotch. “Bailey, this is my big-”

            “-don’t you mean little brother?” the stranger interrupted.

            Scott stewed. Boy, wasn’t that one getting more original with every fucking repetition he had to hear of it?

            “Yeah you’re right, I guess little brother now,” Maggie said.

            “He looks even smaller than in the pictures you showed me,” the stranger replied, a casual smirk creased into her lips. The girl appeared to be roughly Maggie’s age, though she had maybe an inch and a half advantage in height over Scott’s sister, as most did at least. Wavy dark-chocolate hair hung loosely by her shoulders, framing a pale porcelain face punctuated by pinched lips, which Scott imagined she’d learned by seeing a few too many lingerie ads. Her raven eyes hardly bothered to cast down at the kindly imprisoned twenty-two-year-old, instead remained trained to the other normal-sized human being in the room.

            “This is nothing,” Maggie giggled, her fingers rumbling around Scott’s chest. “You should see him when he’s an inch. It’s adorable.”

            “Can you do that now?” Bailey asked, her eyes widening. “Can you shrink him?”

            “Um, I’m not sure where Mom put the PMRD. It’s usually in her room, but…”

            “Can you go see if it’s there?” Bailey requested. Her arms, which had previously hung at her sides, arched up suddenly with her hands outstretched. Her thumb and forefinger paused an inch away in midair, causing Scott to flinch in his sister’s hands. “I want to see him this big.”

            This too was somewhat inexplicable. He’d met many a new pair of hands in his life, after all, many of which also were curious enough to want him in their clutches. Still, he couldn’t help but recoil at the sight of those pearly fingers clawed out for him.

            The way her fingernails flinted with almost the same kind of luster as her greedy dark eyes, as though she was able to see him through the tips of her fingers, made Scott’s skin crawl.

            “Sure!” Maggie said brightly.

            “I can hold him while you’re gone,” Bailey said. Her smile widened as she cupped her hand expectantly below her friend’s fist.

            “Oh,” the girl replied, glancing down to Scott at last. She pried her thumb against the shrunken incarcerate’s cheek. “Whatcha think, little boy?”

            Puzzled, Scott struggled against the strength of his little sister’s thumb to look up. He could see in her face the question was genuine. Since when did Maggie give a shit what he wanted in these kinds of situations?

            “I’m good here,” he replied

            “Ooh, sorry, Bailey,” Maggie giggled. “He can be a little shy sometimes, and he likes his big sissy.”

            “I’ll bet he does,” Bailey said coolly, her gaze flashing accusingly to Scott as her hands returned to her sides.

            Shrugging off all this usual talk that treated him more like a helpless floundering toddler, Scott lolled his head back against his sister’s tightly cradling fingers. At least he wasn’t in the newbie’s grasp. The jovial pounding of footsteps picked up again below as the pair of seventeen-year-olds made their way toward the stairs with their intended target in tow.

            “Did Coach say who she’s putting in first for scrimmage this weekend?” Maggie asked. Her fingers worked their way around her brother’s body, twiddling his limbs between her fingertips absentmindedly.

            “Yeah. And she’s benching me for first round,” Bailey groaned. “The bitch. I told her I was sorry for the thing.”

            So that was the connection. Another soccer player in Maggie’s league. Scott frowned, wondering why he hadn’t heard of her before.

            Then it occurred to the young man that he probably would have met this girl before, if not for the abrupt and silent changes made in the past year by his sister. He’d managed to meet most if not all of her teammates at the numerous games he’d attended in the prior season, usually while he was being gloomily peeled away from his sister’s swollen bare sole after a good three or four sprints up the pitch.

            Thus, he’d come to know most of her friends as the blurry-lined teenage leviathans that towered above somewhere in his periphery, many of them grinning at the sight of adorable little Maggie Stevens shoving her drunken criminal of a brother back into the sweaty hell of her socks. Those that didn’t were the rare and angelic exceptions, like the soft-spoken Libby, or that other forward living with her own Shrink Act incarcerate, shockingly enough.

            Everyone else was just an accessory to his sister’s former bratty queendom. In her bizarre set of new mercies, though, Maggie had since ceased taking him to soccer games, which was a blessing Scott did not count lightly.

            “Mom usually keeps the shrinker on top of her dresser when nobody’s using it,” Maggie said as she peeked into Judy’s master bedroom. The silver container gleamed in its usual spot. “I just see the case, though. The PMRD’s not in it.”

            “Can we look for it?” Bailey questioned impatiently. Her eyes fell hungrily to Scott again, still trapped in his sister’s fingers.

            “I guess,” Maggie said. “It could be anywhere around here, though. Sometimes Mom just takes it with her in her purse while she’s gone, too.”

            “But I wanna see if he’ll do any of the stuff you’ve said before.”

            “What? You mean like the-”

            “When we were at drills that one Saturday on the cross country track, and you said that you wanted to know what it felt like when he-”

            “Oh!” Maggie spat, a string of rapidfire snickers following. Her hands vibrated around Scott’s body again. “That was a joke, Bailey. That would be… ha-ha, wow.”

            Scott swallowed hard as his sister’s thumb crested beneath his chin and laid itself against his neck. Her digits had slowly become looser around his body while she’d toyed with him on the way up the stairs, and he now was essentially using her pinky finger as a banana seat, which was not ideal for the young man.

            Probably still more ideal than whatever concept Bailey was reminding her of, though. His stomach couldn’t help but churn with the imagination of it. Especially considering in times past, Maggie was completely comfortable putting his naked body into her mouth and sucking on him, yet this mystery suggestion was something with which she wasn’t comfortable.

            Fantastic.

            “Well, okay, then,” Bailey grumbled, clearly still convinced of the idea’s validity. She thumbed at her lower lip, nibbling at it as she studied Scott with deepening pupils. “I still want to see what he feels like under my toes, though.”