Scott sat numbly on his mother’s knee like her personal hand puppet. That, at least, was how he felt whenever he was required to sit in these group therapy sessions in the searingly white-washed walls of the Adams R&R Clinic, with a lie of a smile stretched on his face and carefully scripted words coming from his mouth.

            Though, he supposed he had to be grateful his mother never thought to take “hand puppet” to its logical physical conclusion. Ouch.

            Only a matter of weeks had passed since his first review board meeting, but it already felt stretched into half an eternity.

            “We’ve got some new faces here today,” Val Richards announced obviously with a clap of her hands. Her curly brown locks bounced on her shoulders. The counselor gazed around the room at the circle of parents and guardians holding their shrunken charges: a circle which seemed to expand its circumference every passing week. “And we will be hearing from each of them, but first, I think it might be helpful to hear a little from some of our “veteran” group members, to give our newbies a feel for the lay of the land.”

            Scott tried not to budge at this announcement. He was pretty sure his mother could feel the goose bumps on his back, though, as her fingers coyly fingered the hem of his shirt, stroking the small of his back. Judy’s thick quadricep bulged beneath her son’s rear end.

            “I’m sure Scott would love to take a turn,” Judy volunteered. She wrapped her palms around her twelve-inch boy’s hips.

            “Thank you, Mrs. Stevens,” Val said cheerily, stopping herself short from calling the woman Councilwoman Stevens after a previous request the week before. “Anyone else?”

            “Me,” said Cassandra sheepishly, raising her hand so she could be seen despite her nine-inch size. Her voice was noticeably more docile than it had been the first day as she sat on her mother’s lap. She nervously twirled her fading red-dyed bangs around her miniscule thumb.

            “And Derrick, too. Right?” Mrs. Tate said, clearing her throat expectantly. She gazed down at the floor at her usual pair of white foam clogs. Her loudmouthed nineteen-year-old son was sandwiched beneath her pudgy bare foot and the shoe, as he so often was during these sessions. Clearly, she was making a probably-futile attempt to prove to the group that she wasn’t in possession of the least-well behaved shrunken dependent. But Scott already had his doubts.

            “Uh-huh,” the boy piped loudly from under his mother’s meaty toes. He coughed as his face was wedged back into the gritty flesh.

            “That should be just fine. We have three volunteers,” Val said. “Who’d like to go first?”

            “I can,” Cassandra said with greater confidence than before.

            Scott was grateful; he assumed Judy would’ve jumped in for him given another nanosecond of dead air.

            “Thank you, Cassandra,” Val said. “Why don’t you just tell our newcomers a bit about your experience here with the group and your R&R therapy at home? Specifically, what’s something you wish you could tell yourself back when you began?” She opened a hand, indicating toward the four newest individuals in the group: the guardians all sitting up ramrod-straight with rigid faces, their shrunken criminals all slouched depressively atop their knees and half-hiding their tiny faces.

            They would’ve been easy to pick out of a line-up of new and old shrinkies, even if Scott hadn’t been so experienced by now at spotting it.

            “Okay. Sure,” Cassandra said. She glanced upward at her mother’s quietly anticipatory expression above.

            The woman took to combing her daughter’s hair with her long fingernails while the seventeen-year-old car thief began to speak. Again, it looked more like the middle-aged woman was grooming a favorite doll rather than her child.

            “I had a hard time with this at first. I really did,” Cassandra explained. “Sometimes it’s hard to sleep, and then when I wake up, it takes a second to realize that he room around me didn’t get a ton bigger, I’m just… well, I’m not the same now. But it’ll get better for you. You just have to stay focused. That’s all.”

            Scott swallowed. That moment of waking realization Cassandra described was something he’d adapted to around age fourteen. And given how young he was when Judy first shrank him, he was something of a late bloomer. He watched the girl’s face, smiling without twitching. It was like looking at a different person, in everything from her demeanor to her hairstyle, from that first time she’d joined the group a couple weeks back. He couldn’t help but wonder what was happening at home besides hair-brushing to keep her in line.

            “Thank you, Cassandra. Derrick?” Val asked, looking innocently down at the floor in the direction of the entrapped teenager beneath his mother’s foot. “Would you like to say a few words next?”

            Mrs. Tate clutched both hands beneath her hefty lower leg and hoisted it up in the air as high as she comfortably could, the low-worn treads of her clog pointed out toward the center of the circle. At the crest of the shoe, from beneath her worming toes, Derrick clambered carefully up until he could look out over the group, his arms resting atop the rubbery upturned rim of the shoe, while his legs looped comfortably around the toe thong. The boy was comically dwarfed, half-undressed and prodding humbly from beneath his mother’s plump bare foot as she held it up for all to see.

            Scott didn’t turn around to look at his own parent’s face above him. Somehow, though, he could feel the aura of her proud smile. It was a display Judy approved of. He just hoped she didn’t get any ideas from this particular mother-son team.

            “Well, uh… you know. Here I am,” Derrick said casually, forcing a smile. In a previous life, he was clearly the class clown, but the laughs weren’t coming easily now from his audience. His mother’s toes grappled idly with the bottom half of his tiny body, pinning him in place. “I’m, uh, getting pretty used to seein’ the inside of people’s shoes, ya know?”

            Against all odds, a couple muted chuckles rang out from around the circle. Scott couldn’t be sure if they originated from shrunken incarcerates or appointed guardians, and neither was especially comforting.

            “But… but what I mean is, uh…” Derrick continued. He grunted as his mother’s big toe squeezed against his shoulder blades, compressing his chest into the foam of the shoe. “Maybe take me as one of those, uh… whatchamacallit? Cautionary tales. I’m a cautionary tale, kids.”

            Scott observed the four newest recruits to the group, who were watching all of this with horrified fascination he recognized well. From his best guess, the newbies were: a mother and college-age daughter, a father and teen son, a young woman probably in her early twenties holding a possible-sister who actually was her elder by a few years, and a well-manicured older woman holding a man in his mid-twenties. Maybe a mother? Of course, there was no way to be sure of any of that yet.

            “That’s a mature perspective to have, Derrick, and reflects well on your own progress, I think,” Val said, who always seemed to find the painfully positive in everything, even when reality wasn’t quite so sunny. “Do you have anything else to say?”

            “Um… oh, yeah. I do,” Derrick said. He was beginning to sink back into the shallow abyss clenched between his mother’s sweaty sole and the dirty clog. “Pro-tip: get good at meditating. Especially if whoever’s-in-charge-of-you figures out they’re into having you down there a lot.”

            Scott flinched sympathetically.

            “Okay, I think that’s enough, young man,” Mrs. Tate snapped. She abruptly let go of her leg, allowing her shoe to clomp back to the floor. Her son grunted, expelling air in a heavy heave. The abundance of cushy foot flesh and padded flip-flop were ironically his only saving graces for such a fall.

            “Meditating…” Val said, taking the baton of the conversation and running with it before awkwardness could settle in. “…is, indeed, a very useful technique for anyone who spends their R&R time in… potentially uncomfortable or claustrophobic environments.”

            Scott had to stifle a snort at this. That was one way to put it.

            His mother’s broad hand, now tucked fully beneath his shirt, was laid flush against his back. The goose bumps returned beneath her cool palm.

            “By that token, in future sessions, we absolutely will spend time practicing meditation and mindfulness with all our reduced group members,” Val explained. She clasped her hands together again with delight, suppressing a wry smile. “However, today is already pretty packed. We’ve got introductions, followed by an… educational opportunity, unique, even, to this group.”

            Scott crossed his arms, feeling mildly strained by the increased tightness of his shirt as Judy’s entire hand was being worn inside his shirt. However, just as stealthily as she’d put it inside, her fingers slid back out.

            “And Scott?” Val said pleasantly.

            “Yep,” he said, not skipping a beat. He waved to the new shrunken prisoners. “Hey, guys.”

            A mumbled greeting arose in unison from the four newcomers across the circle.

            “Um, well basically… if you don’t know me, I was… the first one,” Scott said. “The first Shrink Act kid.”

            There were a few nods of recognition from the parental figures who clearly were already aware of this, and a couple widened pupils from the tiny teens who obviously weren’t aware of this tidbit yet.

            “So I guess you could say I know my way around this kind of thing by now. But my mom is…” he continued. “…is really dedicated to me getting better and learning from my mistakes. So are my brother and sister. The sooner you can wrap your head around that in your own house, with your own… family, then the easier it gets. Just follow directions and think about what you’re doing. Trust me.”

            Val nodded and reclaimed control of the discussion. Scott gave a polite bow of his head to the group as he finished, tingling with an uncomfortable cocktail of regret and satisfaction with his ability to toe the line. Soon after, his mother’s fingers caressed their way back up his shirt again. He could feel her beaming at him from above.

            The introductions followed. Scott had been right about both the mother-daughter pair and the father-son pair. Though clearly embarrassed at their presence, both the boy and girl had each committed relatively minor crimes, and there was no ominous glint in the eyes of either normal-sized parent that Scott could detect which suggested they were coming around to the Gospel of Punishing Tiny Helpless Children.

            Which was encouraging to witness, certainly. He just had to hope Judy didn’t try to offer them any informational books or video content.

            Next was the youngest guardian in the room, a twenty-two-year-old girl who was supporting herself independently and was taking charge of her older cousin’s, rather than her sister’s as Scott had guessed, shrunken rehab. With no obvious guardians for the twenty-five-year-old serial shoplifter, the young woman had swooped in and saved her cousin from prison time on the condition that they attend these sessions.

            Finally came the older woman, the great aunt of the adult man she held in her polished fingertips, not a mother. Her smart pantsuit suggested she was at least two social classes above most of the people present in the room. Through a demonstration of the Shrink Act’s bizarre legal wiring, the twenty-six-year-old had been passed to his wealthy aunt after he’d engaged in some “creative” bookkeeping at work, and his parents had both resigned from any responsibility for his rehabilitation. Rather than go to jail, he’d chosen custody with his elder relative, whose dedication to civic progress provided her an interest in his personal improvement. From the look in his tiny eyes as the woman’s spindly fingers worked their way constantly around his body, though, Scott couldn’t help but guess the man was having second thoughts.

            “And now for that surprise educational opportunity I mentioned earlier,” Val said. She stood up, peeking through the window leading to the hallway of the clinic. “Ah, perfect timing. Looks like my colleague is coming right now.”

            Scott, even at his full twelve-inch height, couldn’t quite make out the figure of the approaching woman until she’d entered the room. He felt his mother’s leg muscles firming beneath him, as if she was preparing to stand up. Judy’s fingertips laid against his thigh.

            “Everyone, this is Olivia Blackwell,” Val said. “Along with her duties as a counselor, like myself, she spends her time here at the Clinic in our training facility. She specializes in honing and improving the rehabilitation techniques of our guardians and caretakers.”

            “Good morning, everyone,” Olivia said, grinning as she scanned the room around her. Silky, straightened hair framed a dimpled face, belying experience in the twilight years of her twenties. In one hand, she carried a lumpy black duffel bag. “Today, we’re going to be working to ensure everyone, especially our newcomers, have successful rehabilitation sessions with their reduced family members and friends. I’d like to start by going over the new R&R smart phone app, which allows you to schedule, train, track, and compare improvement sessions with others under the umbrella of the program, and we’re very excited about this newest tool by Techilogic. Then, the real learning will begin.”

            Scott raised an eyebrow. He’d heard of this woman. She was Maggie’s instructor for her summer internship. Over numerous dinnertimes in the past two weeks, he’d listened to his sister excitedly prattle on to their mother about the young professional’s grace and precision as a teacher of R&R therapy. And Maggie wasn’t easily impressed.

            “But of course, I won’t be working alone,” Olivia said. “Seeing as we’re in the presence of Shrink Act royalty, in a manner of speaking, and a major contributor to this entire program. Judy? Scott? Would you give me a hand, please?”