“I swear,
this is going to blow up as soon as we post it”, Mia said excitedly, while
insistingly shaking her friend’s shoulder, in a vain attempt to convince her of
the importance of her idea.
Abby was
all but enthusiastic at the idea of taking part in one of her friend’s TikToks.
An idea she found rather embarrassing, especially for a girl her age. “Look,
don’t you think this is way too silly? Teens do this kind of stuff”, she
replied, in a rather dull tone. She had been dragged to Mia’s bedroom almost an
hour prior, where her friend hoped they could film together some dumb challenge.
“Nonsense,
everyone can participate! Come on, this is the trend of the moment!” Mia continued,
eagerly grabbing her friend by the shoulders, and showing her some videos on
the screen of her brand-new iPhone. The short clips featured couples of people
dancing and making silly moves, when suddenly one of them was promptly hit by a
low-quality filter effect that made them smaller than the other person. From
there, all sort of stupid choreography happened.
The hashtag
#shrinkingchallenge was highlighted in the description of every clip. And there
were a ton of them.
Abby was
even less convinced now. “Wow, what brilliant and clever content”, she remarked
sarcastically, “I’m sure your excellent idea will stand out from this pile of cheap
entertainment…”.
“Of course
it will!” Mia promptly responded. “Because I
got the real thing”. As she proudly announced that, she rummaged inside a
drawer in the back of her room and took out a weird ray gun.
At that
point, even Abby was astonished, her eyes widened with surprise. “Is that…
real? A real --”
“A real
shrink ray? Maybe…” Mia interrupted her playfully, playing mysterious. “I have certain connections here and there that maybe
owned me a favor and got me one of these toys-- err… one of these highly
sophisticated devices only to be used for scientific purposes”, she proudly
declared.
“How does
it even work…?” Abby muttered, bringing a hand closer to the device in
curiosity. Mia immediately hid it behind her back. “Nuh-uh, you want to play
with it, you big science nerd? You first must do this TikTok with me, or I’ll
never let you touch it”.
Abby tried
to snatch it from Mia, but being considerably shorter than her, her attempt
failed miserably as Mia simply held the ray gun high above her head.
“Fine”, Abby
sighed, “I’ll do your stupid dance thing, and then you’ll let me do my
experiments with the ray”. Mia’s smile broadened: “I knew I could convince you!
Okay, watch a few of these, learn the moves and get ready. Oh, and of course…” Mia
added after a few seconds, “I am the
star. So, you’re the one getting shrunk in the video”. Abby was about to protest,
but Mia cut her short, annoyed: “And yes, shrinking people is completely safe
and reversible, and the device comes with a long list of security instructions
to avoid any incident. Don’t bother me with formalities, let’s just do this!”.
After just
a few minutes, Mia had placed her phone on a tripod, ready to film, and Abby,
despite herself, was rehearsing her moves.
“… And
we’re ready to shoot!” Mia announced excitedly as she ran at the side of her
friend, in front of the phone.
“Three…
two… one... Go!”.
Abby
frantically tried to mimic her friend’s moves while dancing on the silly music
of the trend. And after a few seconds, Mia took out the ray gun and
theatrically pointed it towards Abby, looking right on her eyes. She waited for
the drop in the song and then…
“Fire!”
Abby felt
weird, with a strange itch running across all her body. But she didn’t stop
dancing. And when she turned around, she was barely at waist height of her
friend.
She was
really shrinking.
Trying not
to panic, she continued to shakingly perform the moves. Until she turned again
and noticed she was below Mia’s knee.
And just
then, right at the end of the clip, Mia playfully kicked Abby’s reduced body
out of the frame and easily sent her rolling at the center of her bedroom. She
enjoyed the last seconds of stage all for herself and the phone stopped
filming.
Mia ran to
retrieve her phone and see the result. Abby was laying on the ground watching
the ceiling. Her head was spinning, her breath was still short, as she looked
around, noticing how her friend’s room seemed to grow larger and larger by the
second.
“It’s… so
amazing! Simply amazing! It all looks so natural, so rhythmic, so real!” Mia announced,
as happy as she could ever be. She was walking back towards the other side of
the room, but at this point, when Abby got up, she saw the gigantic figure of
her friend absent-mindedly walking towards her, with eyes fixed on the screen
of her phone, uploading the clip.
The
diminishing Abby saw the massive, white, socked foot of her friend soaring in
the air in her direction. She lost track of how small she had become, but that
foot was bigger than her. Way bigger.
She looked
at the dusty, greyish bottom descending towards her and quickly dodged the
incoming impact by rolling to the side just in time. Mia’s massive soft foot
landed right beside her, as she was talking to herself about how great her
dance was.
Abby got up
again, frustrated, and delivered the strongest kick she could muster at Mia’s socked
toes, barely smaller than herself.
“Huh?” Mia
muttered finally looking down. “Oh yeah, right, you’re still shrunken”. She
kneeled down to get a better look at her diminutive friend. “Wait, are you
still shrinking?”.
The itch
and the spinning head had, in fact, never stopped for Abby. And she was
starting to worry, noticing how her body was still becoming smaller. She turned
to the giant face of her friend above. “Don’t just stand there and watch, do
something! Didn’t you say the device had safety features?!” she shouted.
Mia looked
at the ray gun in her hand. “Well, I said it had a lot of security
instructions, not that I have actually
read them… I didn’t think they would be that useful”. Abby heart sank, as a
feeling of dread and blind anger surged from within her. “What do you mean you
haven’t read them? YOU SHRUNK ME, and only now you’re telling me you
didn’t know what you were doing? And you can’t even stop it?! Mia you stupid,
idiotic bi--”
But her
words became inaudible to Mia, as she continued to shrink on the cold tile of
the bedroom. Abby kept shrinking, and she calculated she must have been smaller
than a centimeter. The sky above her shifted, the mountain-sized socked toes
disappeared beyond the horizon. She looked up to see the familiar face of her long-time
friend, now as big as a planet, looming above her.
“ABBY? ANY
BRIGHT IDEA ON HOW I CAN GROW YOU BACK TO NORMAL?”
The booming
voice of the giantess exploded in the air, Abby covered her ears and screamed.
The simple breath exhaled from Mia as she spoke was a true hurricane, blowing Abby
away as if she were dust.
“Whoops”, Mia
whispered, watching her minuscule friend fly away for a while before landing
again on the floor. She had to squint her eyes now to make out the tiny moving
dot that was the shrunken Abby. She followed her desperate movements for just a
few seconds, before losing track of her. She had become invisible to the naked
eye.
“Abby? Are
you still there…?” Mia tentatively asked to the floor.
Of course,
no answer.
“If only I
could pick her up…” she muttered to herself. Mia used her fingertips to scoop
up the surface of the tile. Then, she attentively looked at her skin, and under
her nails. Nothing more than a few grains of dust.
“I wonder
if at this stage there’s even a point in looking for…”
Her
thoughts were interrupted by multiple vibrations from her phone. She picked it
up and unlocked the screen: hundreds of likes in just a few minutes. Comments congratulating
her performance, but mostly, the realism of the shrinking effect. Mia’s heart
skipped a beat. She enthusiastically got up and walked away, scrolling through
all the notifications with a proud smile on her face…