The agony of having every bone in my body simultaneously crushed was overwhelming.

Every nerve ending caught fire then quickly ramped through every intensity of flame; yellow, orange, blue, and finally searing white. After moments that felt like eternity the pain began to lessen. My body seemingly met its lifetime quota for suffering in the space of a few seconds and the flood of sensation slowed to a drizzle. The aftermath was an out-of-body experience: I was aware of the pain, but it had morphed from a mind-shattering ball of agony into a deep, steady ache.

The outer curve of Heather’s ass cheek pinned my head to the carpet while the other cheek crushed into my thighs. From shoulders to pelvis my bones were like putty beneath her- squashed nearly flat by the enormous pressure her body exerted. It took a few seconds to realize I couldn’t breathe and another few to figure out that my lungs were flat as pancakes beneath her ass. I tried to speak and the attempt resulted in a pitiful, animal whine. Heather twisted, presumably so she could look down at whatever part of me wasn’t buried under her ass. “Oh don’t be so dramatic. You’re not going to die.” she said, annoyed. Another whine was all I could manage in reply, pain seemed to have fried my ability to speak. “Ugh, whatever.” Heather said. “I don’t even remember why I was punishing you anyway.”

And just like that she stood up. Gradually I became aware of sensations other than pain: cool air on my skin, itchy carpet on my back, and the rapid beating of my heart. Heather was staring down at me. “That was kind of neat,” she said.  “Your body is like… memory foam or something.”

It was as though she had no idea of the suffering she had just caused. I wanted to explain it but I was still struggling to breathe. Finally my voice returned, “Please... never  again... I’ll do anything. Please, I’m begging you.” The words tumbled out in a breathless rush.

Heather blinked then shrugged. “Now you know what will happen if you piss me off, kay?” Her casual tone sent a shiver down my spine. What had I done to make her angry? All I’d said was thank you and she had flipped out like some kind of psychopath. Of course who other than psychopath would imprison and shrink someone’s life away? Heather continued, “You’ll stay strong for a little while, but then you’ll need more…” A bead of milk formed on her nipple and she caught it with her finger-tip. Heather smiled and said, “So be a good boy, Mikey.”

I would have traded the world to avoid suffering through that again. “Yes,” I said, nearly in tears. “Anything- I’m sorry. I‘ll be good. I swear,” I sounded pathetic. I wasn’t even sure what I was apologizing for but what else could I do? Heather’s power was absolute, without her milk I wasn’t strong enough to walk and if I didn’t obey… The thought alone was enough to make me shudder.

“Good,” Heather said. She appeared thoughtful for a long moment before sighing. “I guess I should show some restraint? I mean part of me wants to gobble you up right away but another part wants to, like, savor it. You know?”

“... Yes?” I said uncertainly, trembling.

Heather tapped her foot. “If I used you up I *could* find a new toy...” All the color drained from my face and Heather laughed at my horrified expression. “I’m just teasing! God you should have seen the look on your face though,” Heather’s massive body shook with uncontrollable giggles. “You’re so fun to mess with, Mikey.”

I laid speechless while Heather began struggling into the now obviously undersized red dress. Except the longer she fiddled with it the better the dress seemed to fit; was reality really warping this quickly now? My clothes had taken a week. Was Heather doing something? On closer inspection it certainly didn’t seem that way. Magic was strange, I decided.

Finally poured back into her slinky red dress Heather moved to leave, stopping at the door to say, “I had a really good time, Mikey. We’ll do this again soon!”

The door closed and her heavy footsteps faded down the hall. I curled up cold and naked on the floor, and cried.

***

A new normal began to creep into my daily routine.

Heather would stop by in the morning, allowing a few sips of strength-giving milk to carry me through the day. The first few hours I felt healthy and strong. By evening I felt noticeably drained and by morning I would wake as helpless and weak as a toddler. Then the cycle would repeat.

School life changed as well. At 3’ 11” tall I was officially a dwarf and treated as such. It wasn’t that people were mean to me, but they were especially careful or considerate- as though I had a terminal disease or some horrible disability. The attention made me uncomfortable, though not as uncomfortable as accepting the help I now required. Reaching high shelves was out of the question and even with the strength Heather lent me simply carrying my books around winded me. I was certain she could have given me more but she seemed to delight in doling out just enough to keep me functional. I struggled with the changes.

Meanwhile the school was undergoing its own changes. Heather received approval for her sorority and took over the photography building. She even managed to make a deal with Mr. French so that the room would belong to the sorority when not being used for lectures. The creepy building also received a serious make-over courtesy of a swarm of pledges and contractors. Day and night they could be seen carrying furniture and materials in and out. The results were startling, a transformation from dingy relic to posh mansion. No expense was spared in making the place fit for a queen. And there was little doubt as to who ruled.

My days were a constant physical struggle but at night my trials were entirely mental. Dreams continued to haunt me, always the same yet different in the smallest details. I became obsessed with the identity of the girl on the swing. I never saw her face in its entirety, she always turned away at the last moment or her features were lost in shadows. I remembered the song though, or at least most of it.

______ ______, light as a feather

What goes up, stays there forever.

The children sang it over and over while they pushed the girl higher and higher. In the rest of the nightmares I was being chased, relentlessly pursued by something vast, powerful, and malignant. I began to yearn for the dreams of the girl simply to avoid waking up screaming in the middle of the night. By the end of the week I was exhausted in body and mind and beginning to feel that even if Heather didn’t steal the former- I was losing the latter.

When my phone rang on Friday, the grand opening for Heather’s sorority, I almost didn’t pick up. “What?” I answered tersely.

An awkward pause was followed by Crystal’s voice, “Mike? Is everything okay?” She sounded concerned, but I was in a foul mood.

“What do you want?” I replied.

“Mike, I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“Do you? Do you really Crystal?” Pent up rage and frustration boiled out of me, “Because as far as I can tell you aren’t being drained into oblivion. You don’t have a psychopath systematically destroying your life. You don’t require assistance to get out of bed in the morning.”

“Actually I do,” Crystal said.

“Do what?”

“I need help getting out of bed in the morning. You never thought maybe I walked weirdly and moved strangely?” Thinking back I had noticed Crystal’s movements being a bit mechanical... Crystal continued, “It’s a spell, Mike. I’m not strong enough to move without the aid of magic.”

“You’re drinking her milk too?” I blurted out.

“Huh? Oh god, don’t tell me she-” Crystal stopped abruptly. “No, it’s not that. Mike…” Crystal’s tone softened. “I’m sorry, I really am. Maybe if you’d tried sooner with her or she had with you… I don’t know.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, baffled and irritated. “Tried what sooner?”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, Mike. I promised I wouldn’t talk about it. It’s the sort of promise you can’t break.”

I’d had enough of Crystal’s cryptic bullshit. “Really? Is that why you called Crystal? To tell me you couldn’t talk? Or is it because you wanted to hear from who has it worse than you do?”

“It isn’t like that,” Crystal said defensively.

“What is it like?”

“Heather,” Crystal paused. The silence dragged on. I went to check if the call had been dropped when she finally continued, “Heather isn’t what you think. She’s not a bad person.”

Was Crystal out of her mind? Heather was the definition of a bad person. “Right,” I said facetiously.

“You don’t understand!” Crystal insisted emphatically.

“What is there to understand? You just said a self-centered, conceited, sociopathic, vitality vampire is not bad person. That sounds completely fucking reasonable.”

“Self-centered and conceited mean the same thing,” Crystal said.

“THAT ISN’T THE FUCKING POINT!” I shouted into the phone.

Crystal drew an audible, calming breath. “I’ll tell you how she was before.”

“Before what?” I spat.

“Before we cast a spell that turned her into a- what did you call it? Vitality vampire,” Crystal said resignedly.

I stopped pacing around my room and said, “I’m listening.”

“I was always a bit scrawny. Heather and I were friends since elementary school. We both liked a lot of the same things and we had a lot in common. The difference was my mother was a witch. In middle school I met with a friend of my mother’s- at least I thought she was a friend at the time. Her name was Lillian Prentice.” Crystal's voice trembled when she spoke Lillian’s name, like she had just spoken ‘betelgeuse’ for the third time and expected Lillian to come leaping out of a wall. She now had my full attention. Crystal continued her story, “She somehow knew how unhappy I was with my size and offered to teach me a spell to fix it.”

“Wait a second, didn’t you say she was part of some cursed, feared house? Bogeymen of magic and all that crap? Why would you even talk to her?” I interjected.

“I didn’t know that then. I was a child, Mike.” Heather replied defensively. “Anyway she taught me a spell but it required two people. So I recruited Heather to help me. The spell was supposed to help both of us but instead it summoned…” Crystal’s voice caught, whatever had happened had left scars. “Something terrible.”

“Worse than Lillian?” I asked and got no response. “Crystal?”

“I-I-I...i-it was..” Crystal suddenly began to sob, wrenching cries that tugged at my heart.

Anger drained out of me. “It’s okay Crystal, you don’t have talk about it.”

“No.” Crystal said stoically. “I-... give me a minute.” It was a while before she regained her composure. Finally she went on, “It forced us to choose. It would make one of us stronger by sacrificing the other. It was horrible, but it was my fault. I was the one that got Heather into it. It wasn’t right to make her pay for my mistakes. So she got the gifts and I got the curse. The irony was that if I had waited a few years I think I really would have blossomed. The curse took the small amount of strength I had- and it also gave to Heather what should have gone to me. That’s why Heather became so tall and voluptuous, she had the full puberty of two people.” Crystal’s voice grew heavy and she said, “All of this is my fault.”

I tamped down my sympathy for Crystal in favor of getting answers. “That still doesn’t explain how Heather learned blood magic. Or why she is crazy enough to actually use it.”

“I don’t know how she learned the spell she cast on you but the ritual her and I used did something to her. It changed her. The first year I could barely tell the difference, it was mostly little things. Like she would see bug and and grind her heel into it and smile and it was… I dunno, creepy. Mostly it was the way she treated people. People change when they get popular but with Heather it was like Jekyll and Hyde. She was such a sweet kid but you saw how she was in high school.”   

“Yeah,” I said hollowly. I wanted to blame Crystal, I really did. It would have felt so good to lash out at an easy target, but what was the point? Crystal had paid heavily for her sins- and she had made them so young. What was my excuse? I went after Heather when I was more than old enough to know what kind of person she was. Blaming Crystal wasn’t any better than blaming Heather. Crystal had only wanted a better life for herself and her friend. If becoming small had taught me one thing it was envy for those bigger than myself. It wasn't hard two little girls desperate to grow up...

A thought occurred to me, “You said Heather and you had a lot in common before the spell?”

“Yeah, we were practically twins,” Crystal replied.

Everything fell into place. The phone slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor. Crystal’s distant voice repeated my name.

I was lost in a dream. The girl on the swing rose higher and higher. I had to catch her. She was relying on me. I’d helped her before. She needed help again. But I couldn’t, I was too late. She flew through the air- weightless. Then she was falling. Bones snapping, screams. The words to the children’s song echoed:

Heather Heather, light as a feather

What goes up, stays there forever.

Not a dream, a memory.