Chapter 5:

Mere hours after my epic clash with Jackie, I was on a bus to Boston. There was nothing like a road trip to be alone with your thoughts.

My phone call with my mother was awkward, as expected. I was comfortable enough to tell her that I was shrinking, mostly because I wanted to prepare her for what she would see. A dead silence echoed through the line after I told her.

“You believe me, right?” I asked.

“Yes, of course! It’s just—crazy! When did this start? How did it happen? Have you seen any doctors? You need to come home!”

Her rapid-fire questioning made me smile. I found myself getting a whole lot more nostalgic these days. Whenever I had a problem, my mother always launched into a series of whos, whats, whys, wheres, and hows, followed by a forceful declarative statement. And when she was especially ticked off, expletives were used.

“Two steps ahead of you. I’m on my way to Boston already. I hate to spring this on you so suddenly, but I need you to—”

“I’ll pick you up, Desmond. Just text me when you’re getting close.”

“Ok, I will. But, please. Come alone. I can’t deal with Amanda yet. I need to…prepare myself.”

“Ok, honey. Whatever you need. I can’t wait to see you.”

“Me too. I’m scared this isn’t gonna stop, Mom. I mean, what if it literally never stops? My life would be over…”

My mother was incredibly good at boosting my morale, and it needed a serious boost right about now.

“Desmond. Listen to me. That’s not going to happen. I won’t let it. When you get back, we will see every doctor there is, and we will get to the bottom of what’s going on with you. There has to be an explanation for what’s happening to you. Hang in there, you’ll be home soon.”

‘Hanging in there’ for a seven-hour bus ride was harder than expected. Especially because I had the window seat next to a humungous woman. My perception of people’s sizes may have been warped due to my small size, but this woman was gigantic by normal standards.

She looked to be about five and a half feet tall, but that wasn’t what was big about her.

It was her ass. Her left butt cheek nearly filled her entire seat, which left the right cheek no choice but to encroach on my side. Half of my side vanished under her ass, leaving me to be squished up against the wall of the bus. If I were able to move at all, I would’ve stood up to look around the bus for open seats. I was stuck. At least her purple yoga pants felt nice on me.

After my phone call with my mother had ended, she struck up a conversation.

“I don’t mean to be nosy, but I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Are you really shrinking?”

As I shifted in my seat to look at her, her ass gradually expanded to its full width. Whatever small indent I had made in her ass cheek before, it spilled over to fill the difference. This smooshed me even harder against the wall of the bus.

“Yes, I am,” I said simply, “And is there any way you could possibly move over a bit?”

She moved over as much as she could, her ass now impeding the aisle. It was still grazing against me, that was unavoidable. But I was grateful, nonetheless.

She apologized for making me uncomfortable, saying she’d been a “big girl” all her life. The crazy thing was that she wasn’t necessarily fat. In fact, she was proportioned quite well. She was herculean.

Comparing myself to her was a recipe for sexual mania. Looking down at our legs, mine dangled several inches from the ground and hers did not. But that wasn’t the noteworthy comparison. The girth of her ankle was that of my thigh, and perhaps it was even thicker. I was certain that six of my legs could fit inside just one of hers. Her ass was so wide that if she were to sit on me lying flat, 90% of my body would be flattened under her. The totality of her butt rose up all the way up to my midsection.

I couldn’t even fathom how this girl existed. She probably needed to take in triple the number of calories I took in daily.

Amid my obsession with her very existence, she introduced herself as Audrey. After I told her my name, I noticed she was wearing a George Washington University sweatshirt.

I pointed at her sweatshirt, “Do you go there?”

“I do,” she said.

“Let me guess: senior?”

She laughed, causing her ass to jiggle violently. My proximity to her ass allowed me to feel every single jiggle. And every single jiggle was a seismic event to me.

“I’m actually a freshman!” she said.

“Me too. I’m over at Georgetown.”

“Do you like it there?” she asked.

“Well, it’s hard to say. Ever since I got there a week ago, my life has spiraled out of control.”

“With the whole shrinking thing?”

“Yeah, pretty much. That’s why I’m headed back home. Why are you going home?” I asked.

She sighed a big sigh, pushing her ass further down into the seat, which in turn, drove me closer to the window.

“It’s a sad story,” she trailed off.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t feel comfortable,” I said.

“No, it’s ok. It’s…my dad. He died yesterday.”

For a moment I hesitated, not knowing whether I should comfort her yet. I put my hand on her thick forearm and caressed it gently.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

“I’m not even sure what I’m going through,” she said, wiping her eyes, “My mom told me yesterday morning over the phone. When I heard the words ‘I have very bad news’, I knew. He’s been sick for years. He smoked all his life, drank and ate like crap. That’s what you get when you don’t take care of yourself.”

A bit taken aback that she was blaming her father for his own death, I stumbled on what to say next.

“I’m sorry, Audrey,” is all I came up with.

“I just wish that I go back in time to show him what would happen if he kept on doing the things he was doing.”

This gave me perspective. For the last week, I was convinced that I was the only one in the world with serious problems. Talking to Audrey opened me up to the struggles of others and allowed me to see my problems honestly, without the haze of frivolous emotion clouding my judgment.

Of course, I didn’t take pleasure in seeing Audrey like this. I wouldn’t wish that kind of grief on anyone. Her grief served a very specific purpose for me though. It grounded me.

I decided to change the subject to something else because I really didn’t know what to say anymore.

“I wish I could go back in time too,” I said.

“How far back would you go?” she asked.

“Just far enough to tell myself not to go to Georgetown.”

“Why not? Do you just associate it with the shrinking now?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s part of it, but there’s something on that campus that’s causing me to shrink. I have no idea what it is, but it’s done major damage already. I used to be five feet tall. I’m 4’7” now.”

“Jeez! How many inches is that? One, two, three,” she started counting.

I found it cute that she had to count. By now, the number was burned into my brain forever.

“Five…”

“Five? I didn’t think it was possible to get that much shorter unless you had like major scoliosis or something.”

I chuckled at her beautiful ignorance, “I can assure you; I have wonderful posture. That’s not it. I wish it was, because then it could be fixed. No one knows how to fix me.”

“It seems that there isn’t an easy fix to either of our problems,” she said.

“If only.”

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. I stared out the window, watching the trees that dotted the highway whiz by. When I got a little queasy, I focused my eyes back into the bus.

She broke the silence by asking, “Be honest with me. Am I crushing you right now?”

Well, if she wanted me to be honest, that’s exactly what I would be. Affable honesty was the kind I opted for.

“A little, yes.”

“I feel like I’m ruining your ride,” she said.

“No, no. You’ve been great to talk to. Don’t worry about it, ok? I’ll be alright.”

“Why don’t you sit on me, that way you and I both have more room.”

In the past week alone, I’d sat in the laps of two different women: my mother and Jackie. I wasn’t about to make it a third.

“No thanks, Audrey. I’m comfortable.”

She had an expression of pouty disappointment, but she dropped the subject of me sitting on her lap, nonetheless. As the ride wore on though, I started noticing that she was slowly creeping back towards me, squishing me more and more as she moved.

I felt guilty speaking up because I was afraid to come across like a dick. I told myself that she would soon notice and give me some space.

A half an hour passed without her noticing a thing. Then, someone from the front of the bus came through the aisle. That spelled my end.

To give the person enough room to pass through the aisle, Audrey scooched all the way in my direction, absolutely flattening me against the window. The entire lower half of my body was squashed by only the side of her butt cheek. I tried to wriggle my way out without having to get her attention, but it was no use.

“Aud-dr-rey,” I croaked.

“Yeah? Oh my god, Desmond! I’m so sorry! Are you alright?”

She immediately shifted her ass back into the aisle, and I gasped for air. When I caught my breath, she took a look at me.

“God, your face is red. Were you up against the window for that for long?”

“No, not at all,” I said weakly.

My dick was at full mast and threatening to burst. Having her butt mush all over my body was painful, but it was still a girl’s butt. And it wasn’t just any girl’s butt. It was Audrey’s butt, a national treasure as far as I was concerned.

“Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

She got up and stood in the aisle. Her ass was so damn big that I couldn’t help but graze by it as I went through to the back of the bus.

I trotted forward with my hands in my pockets to hide my boner. As soon as I locked the door to the bathroom, I let my pants fall down, and I went to town on my cock. I stroked relentlessly and rapidly until ropes and ropes of semen exploded out of me. I felt the familiar light headed feeling, but I ignored it.

Not wanting to be gone for too long, I made sure to clean up a bit and wash my hands.

When I got back, Audrey was sitting. I stood there for a second, waiting for her to get up. She knew I was there, yet she didn’t budge.

“Hey Audrey, could you get up?”

“I know you’re not gonna like this, but I want you to sit on my lap, ok? What if I fall asleep? I will crush you.

“No, you won’t, I’ll just—”

“You’ll just what?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Exactly. Come sit on my lap. I don’t want to be worried about you for the rest of the trip.”

She said it like I was crazy for not wanting to sit on a woman’s lap on a public bus. The way she flipped back around on me was brilliant. Either I opted for pride and risked getting crushed. Or I simply sat on her lap, which would probably be more comfortable anyway.

But really, the decision wasn’t really mine to make, because she snatched me right up before I could say a word and plopped me right onto her lap.

Now, my head was level with her head, when before it was level with her shoulders. I leaned to the right on her chest. Our faces were close, and now I could see her for what she really was. Not a monstrous, body-crushing ass, but a beautiful woman.

She had the most exquisite light brown eyes. I was convinced they could illuminate a pitch-black room. She had long and wavy hair similar color to her eyes but slightly blonder. Her full red lips were pursed, holding back a laugh no doubt. It was a funny sight to see: a tiny man on your lap. Funny wasn’t the word that came to my mind, it was more embarrassing than anything else.

But then I thought, I don’t know a single person on this bus. What do I have to be embarrassed about?

And from then on, I treated it like a normal thing. I was sitting on Audrey’s lap, so what?

I also realized that even if I was at my full height, Audrey still would’ve crushed me with her ass. She also probably would’ve insisted that I sit on her lap. This made me feel a bit better about it because it was an unavoidable outcome.

“Is this so bad? Admit it, I’m pretty comfortable, aren’t I?” she asked.

She wasn’t lying one bit. She was comfortable. Her lap was almost twice as wide as my whole body, giving me a lot of room to stretch out. It felt like being on recliner.

“You’re pretty damn comfortable,” I said.

“And now, I won’t crush you. It’s a win win!”

“I’d say so.”

“So... I still have some unanswered questions about shrinking...”

“How did I know you were gonna ask about that?”

“Could you blame me? It’s fascinating!”

“I wish I could look at it like that,” I said.

Without skipping a beat, she asked, “So do you just constantly shrink, or do you feel it start to happen? And what does it feel like?”

“I pass out, then I wake up smaller than I was before. Since all the shrinking happens when I’m unconscious, I don’t know what it feels like.”

“Wow that must be scary. Do people treat you like a child now that you’re so much smaller?”

“I mean, I am sitting on your lap right now, so I’m inclined to say yes.”

We both laughed. She laughed harder this time, causing her whole body to jiggle, which in turn, bounced me up and down relentlessly. It was almost like jumping on a water bed.

I decided to ask the next question, “So be real with me. If you didn’t know I was an 18-year-old with a shrinking disease, how old would you say I was?”

“I’m gonna say—hmmm, let me think about it—yeah, I’m gonna have to go with 11 or 12. You look like an 11 or 12-year-old boy.”

“Really? I thought I was at least in the realm of 13 or 14.”

“Desmond, to be honest, I was being generous by saying you look 11 or 12. I have a nine-year-old cousin who’s about your height.”

“Crap, I’ve really gotten that small, huh?”

“You said you were five feet to begin with, right? The good thing is that you’re used to being short.”

“Yeah, sure, but I’m definitely not used to being so small that everyone is able to walk all over me. Before, I felt like I could physically defend myself if I needed to. Now, I can’t defend myself against anyone. Do you know how scary that is?”

“Yeah, most girls do. But I would never presume to know how scary it is to be way smaller than everyone else around. It must be really hard.”

“That’s part of the reason I’m going home. I need to be away from all the giants who roam around campus. It’s intimidating just walking around them, trying not to get hit.”

“Oh, come here! You’re gonna make me cry!”

She turned me around with ease and pulled me in for a crushing embrace. In the midst of her wonderful hug, the nausea returned. I knew what was coming.

“Oh no,” I said as my voice trailed off, “It’s happening again—”

Audrey let go of me, and I heard her say something. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make any of it out before I fell unconscious.

…

I awoke in the same place. Still in Audrey’s lap, and still on the bus. Knowing where I was was about the only relief I got in this situation. But now, I was undoubtedly smaller.

Still groggy, I asked Audrey, “How long was I out?”

“About 30 minutes.”

“Did I get smaller?”

It was a stupid question. I knew I was smaller. My shirt’s sleeves originally ended before my elbow, now they went passed it. The waist on my pants was about four or five inches too wide now. Even my shoes were too big now.

Audrey paused, took a deep breath and finally said, “Yeah, you did.”

“Was it...a lot?”

“Desmond, I watched you shrink. It was the most…unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen in my life. What I was seeing, it should’ve been on a TV screen. It looked like special effects. You just…gradually got smaller and smaller and smaller.”

“How much smaller?”

There was another labored sigh, “It had to be at least five inches.”

I didn’t even have the strength to get outraged anymore. The anger I once had, crystallized into a hot ball of sadness. I fell into Audrey’s chest and bawled uncontrollably until my eyes were dry. I wet her shirt with my tears, and she continually patted me on the back. She even snapped at a few people looking at the craziness that was going on, telling them to mind their own business.

I blubbered incoherent thoughts about how I was never going to grow again and how I was going to shrink down to nothing.

Every time, she said, “That’s not gonna happen.”

But how did she know? She didn’t. I was going off of what I knew. Now the shrinking was speeding up, and if I had hopes of ever returning to normal, I had to figure out the cause immediately.

Unlike the other times I’d passed out, I remained woozy for a really long time. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness.

When we finally got to Boston, Audrey tapped me until I woke up.

“Hey buddy, we’re here,” she said.

I looked down and found a shoelace tied around my waist to keep my pants from falling down. It must’ve been from one of Audrey’s shoes, but I was too exhausted to ask about anything.

“Come on, let’s get you off this bus,” she said.

I was in her lap already, so she just lifted me. She gently laid me over her shoulder, and I got to see the horrified looks of people behind us. I guess seeing a man shrink over the course of a bus ride wasn’t something people saw every day.

When we got off the bus, it was dark. I had no idea what time it was, but I knew it was late.

Audrey pulled out all of my luggage from underneath the bus. My two suitcases were quite near me in height. I savored the moment because right now I was taller than my suitcases. There was no guarantee it would remain that way.

“Is your mom picking you up?” she asked me.

“Yes I am.”

There she was in the flesh: my mother.

“MOM!” I screamed.

I ran toward her and jumped into her waiting embrace. My arms weren’t even long enough to wrap around the whole of her body. She held me with my feet off the ground.

When she finally put me down and got a good look at me, her worry was apparent.

“I shrank again on the bus, Mom. Luckily, Audrey was here to help me out.”

“Audrey, I can’t thank you enough for looking after my son. He’s so fragile now. He could get hurt so easily.”

“Thank you, Mrs.?”

“Call me Emily.”

They shook hands with me standing in the middle of them, almost forgetting I was even there. This was a new kind of small I had reached. I was at a size where I could be disregarded and left out of conversations. Mom and Audrey talked for two straight minutes and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

If even my own mother was leaving me out of conversations, who in the world was going to take me seriously ever again?

In Mom and Audrey’s long conversation, they finally got to the subject of where everyone was headed, and it turned out that Audrey lived in Gloucester just like us.

“I’ll give you a ride,” Mom said, “The front seat is open, Desmond will be sitting in the back.”

Audrey declined because she said her mom was picking her up. But she went over to me and gave me her number, so we could stay in touch.

“Text me,” was all she said, before walking over to her mother.

Mom led me to our mini-van, and to my dismay, she opened the backseat to reveal a car seat.

I stood outside the car, “There’s no way I’m sitting in that thing.”

Mom kneeled and she was ever so slightly taller than me. “Desmond, we need to be safe. It’s recommended to have car seat for someone your size.”

“Well, I’m not a child. I won’t sit in it.”

“Yes, you will, and if you don’t go willingly, I will strap you in so tight you won’t be able to move. Do as I say, and things will be easier.”

I started crying again. Mom gestured me to come over to her, and she hugged me just like Audrey did before.

“I know you feel like you’re losing a bit of your manhood by sitting in that car seat, but trust me, it’s not the end of the world. When we get you back to normal, you’ll never need to use the seat again.”

“But I don’t wanna sit in it,” I said in between deep sobs.

She was done listening to me whine and complain. Mom lifted me into the car seat, and as I sniffled and cried, she snapped me into place. I could barely move.

We stopped off at an Olive Garden on our way home. At first, I didn’t think I was hungry, but the breadsticks enticed me.

I had calmed down by this point and wasn’t in tears, so Mom and I finally got to talk. My shrinking was the first thing we discussed.

She acted strong and unwavering in her support for me, but I could see the panic in her eyes. She, like me, had no idea what was going on. And like me, it scared her to death.

“I feel incredibly pathetic that I was only at school a week before I had to come home,” I said to her.

“Honey, this isn’t your fault. Don’t feel pathetic. Boys need their mommas sometimes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

When our food came out, she asked about Audrey.

“Well, she seemed like a nice girl, didn’t she?” she asked as she put a forkful of chicken parmesan in her mouth.

“Yeah, she was something else,” I said.

“You know what I think?”

I knew where she was going with this, and I wasn’t keen on it.

“I think you should give her a call in the next day or two. Set something up,” she said.

“How’d I know you were gonna say that?”

“Why not? She was a polite, well-natured girl. She told me how you sat in her lap the whole bus ride. She likes you, honey. It’s obvious.”

“It’s...a little more complicated than that.”

“How so?”

“Um, I don’t know.”

Generally, playing dumb with my mother was a fool’s errand. She would eventually find out what she wanted to find out. In this case, all she had to do was wear me down with a ceaseless barrage of questions. 

“You don’t like her?”

“No,” I said.

“So, you do like her?”

“No, yes—ugghh, I don’t know!”

“Oh, I see, there’s a girl at school that you like.”

“Not exactly.”

She gave me a weird look, “You’re being very cryptic. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

“I actually broke up with a girl today. In Starbucks.”

She looked flabbergasted that I got a girlfriend and dumped her in the same week. But I told her everything, minus the sexy parts.

“Desmond, from what you told me, this girl seems really possessive. Are you sure she knows it’s over?”

“Yeah, I mean, she told me to get out. What else could that possibly mean?”

“That doesn’t sound definitive. For all you know, she thinks you guys are just going through a rough patch, and when tensions cool, things will be back to normal.”

“What exactly are you saying?” I asked.

“I’m saying if you don’t want to be her boyfriend, tell her that. Don’t just assume that you’re broken up because she yelled at you.”

She was right. It wasn’t definitive. There was a real possibility that Jackie still thought they were girlfriend and boyfriend. Now the ball was in his court again. It was his choice.

In the middle of our conversation, our waitress came over to check on us. We assured her everything was fine.

“Hey little guy,” the waitress leaned down to me, “Do you want some crayons to draw on the placemat?”

I wondered how old she thought I was. I didn’t have the strength to tell her I was a man, and that I didn’t want crayons. As my mom was about to interject, the waitress said, “I’ll just leave ‘em here in case you want ‘em.”

I hung my head in despair. It was the little interactions like these that killed me. I was an adult trapped in a kid’s body.

When I saw that Mom was finished with her dinner, I asked her to get the check. After a long day of travelling, all I wanted to do was sleep in my own bed.

“You barely touched your food,” she said.

“I’m full.”

“Desmond, honey, you need to eat. You are so skinny already.”

“I can’t eat anymore. I’m serious.”

“Well, I’m serious about you needing to eat more. Finish at least half of what’s on your plate.”

I silently protested with my eyes. She shook her head and pointed at my fork. There was no mercy from Mom. She was going to force me to eat one way or another.

Of course, I got the richest meal ever: ravioli. I had eaten just one.

“Eat the other two, then we can leave,” Mom said.

I slowly cut them in little pieces to give my stomach more time to digest. She noticed I that I was stalling pretty quickly though.

“Stop playing with your food and eat it. I don’t want to be here all night. You have a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning.”

Yay! Something to look forward to, I thought.

I stabbed the first little piece of ravioli with my fork and put it in my mouth. The act of swallowing took effort. It was like my stomach was actively trying to force my food back up. That was how full I was from eating one ravioli and a breadstick.

The next few bites went the same way, and two more bites after that I gave up.

“Mom, I’m being real with you. I can’t eat another bite. I will throw up.”

“Ok, ok,” she relented, “Let’s get the check.”

On the way home, Mom asked me more about Jackie. She wanted to know what she was like beyond her extraordinary height.

I told her she was a spontaneous and caring person. I told her how she loved to pick me up and carry me around. I told her about how she called me “college boy” the first time we met. I told her about her dreams of being a reporter on Capitol Hill.

“If I had to describe her in one word, it would be ‘ambitious’.”

Mom listened to me fawn over Jackie for the next five minutes. And when I was finally done, she looked at me through the rearview mirror, and said, “Honey, you obviously still like her. All the things you told me, tell her. Tell her exactly how you feel.”

“But Mom, what does it say about us that we got into a fight before we’ve even had our first date?”

“Most couples don’t go through what you and Jackie are going through. Did she run away at the first sign of trouble? No. She stuck around and even offered you a place to stay. It sounds like she cares a lot about you.”

“Should I have accepted her offer?”

Bluntly, she said no.

“Desmond, you’re still my boy. And as much as Jackie thinks she cares about you, I care 100 times more. You two just met, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable with you staying with her. You made the right choice.”

In my heart, I knew that Mom was right, but it didn’t feel right. Jackie put herself out there. She showed me that she was vulnerable. And what did I do? I crushed her heart into a paste. A girl as special as her didn’t deserve that sort of treatment.

Mom tucked me in that night and laid awake thinking about what could’ve been. I could’ve been sleeping in Jackie’s bed at this very moment. I could’ve been gazing into her perfect ocean blue eyes. I could’ve been nuzzled up to her, taking in her wonderful, sweet smell of her body. Jackie dominated both in my head and in real life. Yet still, I couldn’t get enough of her.

My slumber ended in a blink, and I awoke to my sister Amanda hovering over me. I groaned.

“Did ya miss me?” she smirked.

I rose up in my bed to appear as tall as possible, “Yes, with all my heart, dear sister.”

“Being a smartass to me doesn’t change the facts lil’ bro. Stand up,” she said.

“Where’s mom?”

“At work. Now stand up.”

“At work? It’s Sunday? And I need her to take me to the doctor.”

“Oh my god, you really do need an explanation for every little thing, don’t you?”

She proceeded to shove a sticky note in my face, commanding me to read it. It was Mom’s handwriting.

Amanda,

I had to go into the office today to fix something an idiot intern screwed up. That leaves you and Desmond home alone. I need you to take Desmond to his doctor’s appointment at 9. Under normal circumstances, I would let him go alone, but he can’t drive.

After the doctor, take him to the mall to buy clothes. Get clothes that fit him now, and clothes that are too small in case he shrinks any more. I left my credit card on the counter.

If I hear that you two fought, there will be consequences.

Love you,

MOM

I specifically told Mom I wasn’t ready to deal with Amanda, yet she left me home alone with her. I dreaded the day that was to come.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked, “Can’t he take me?”

“Away on business. Why do you hate me so much, Dessy poo? All I’ve ever done is be a kind sister to you.”

I didn’t have to say anything. She cracked up in seconds, unable to keep a straight face.

“The look on your face when I said that,” she said in between uproarious laughter, “Priceless!”

“Why? Why do you do this to me? Huh? Why can’t you just let me live in peace?”

“That, my dear brother, would be a total drag! Now stand the hell up already! I want to see the new Desmond next to me.”

“Can you at least let me wash up first? I got in late last night, and I feel gross.”

“Fine, stall the inevitable all you like. But your big sister looms large,” she said as she walked toward my bedroom door.

I was fuming. She had some nerve to call herself that.

“You are not…my…big sister.”

“In all the ways that matter, yes. I am.”

She left the room with the last word, which pissed me off to no end. I checked my clock. It read 7:30.

“Why did she have to get me up so early?” I muttered.

Mine and Amanda’s room were upstairs, while the master bedroom was downstairs. I used the upstairs bathroom mostly, which had a tall medicine cabinet. Even when I was normal sized, I had trouble reaching things in it. So, when I came in to find that the step stool that had always been there had mysteriously vanished, I was quite distressed.

I thought about screaming at the obvious culprit to return the stool, but why would she? She’d taken it in the first place, and she’d done it to get a rise out of me. I wasn’t going to take the bait.

Luckily, I was still tall enough on my tippy toes to open the medicine cabinet. The only problem was that there were three toothbrushes. Mine was gone.

“Amanda!”

She got the reaction she wanted.

“Yes, little one?” she called back.

“If you don’t bring back my toothbrush, I’m gonna use yours!”

“Go right ahead! I have tons of spares!”

She had a retort for everything. I was so proud of myself coming up with the idea to threaten to use her toothbrush. My pride was destroyed seconds later.

I ended up using Amanda’s toothbrush. It wouldn’t kill me, but I did want to kill her for making me do it.

I rooted through my closet to find something suitable to wear. Anything that didn’t hang off me like a sheet would do just fine.

I was even having trouble with my underwear. Every single pair I owned was simply too loose to stay around my waist. I was fucked.

Then I heard my sisters booming footsteps coming up the stairs. She was deliberately going slow, just to taunt me.

Surprisingly, she had the courtesy to knock on my before coming in.

“Hey, are you ready in there yet?”

“No.”

“Can I come in?”

“No! Don’t come in!”

And she walked in regardless. My hands darted down to cover my privates.

“What did I just say?!”

“I could’ve sworn I heard ‘come in’.”

She intentionally misheard.

“Are you having trouble finding clothes that fit?” she asked.

“Yeah, not a damn thing in my closet fits anymore.”

“Here try this.”

She threw over a pair of panties. Her panties.

“What the hell are you smoking, Amanda?”

“Put them on.”

“They’re not going to fit!”

“Oh yes they will. Put them on.”

I grumbled, “Fine, if you insist.”

I took the panties and held them up so they covered my dick and balls. As I expected, they didn’t fit.

“I told you they wouldn’t fit.”

I was bragging to my sister about how her panties didn’t fit on me. I really had hit rock bottom, or so I thought.

“Here, let me help you. You obviously don’t know how to put on a pair of panties.”

She sauntered over to me, and I watched her rise in height as she got closer. She put her hands on her hips and beamed with smug amusement. She was reveling in her new position of authority over me.

There was no person in the world I was more terrified of than Amanda. Jackie was a whole foot taller than her but couldn’t rival her intensity. Even Vicky, who was a domineering person, had boundaries with me. For Amanda, no such boundary existed. Everything was fair game, and I just had to take it.

Now that I was only as tall her developing breasts, I had a lot more to worry about.

“I could stand here all day and watch you cower in my presence, but unfortunately we have an appointment. So, I guess your sister Amanda is gonna have to dress you. Give me the panties.”

I did as she said. She stretched out the waist band quite a bit.

“Why are you stretching it out? That’s only gonna make it worse!” I protested.

She said nothing and made me to slip them on again. I held them up and all of a sudden, she grabbed both sides of the waist band, and yanked them up.

I yelped in pain. She was literally giving me a wedgie. When my feet left the ground, she let go of the panties, and the waist band snapped back right onto my shoulders. I yelped again as I fell down to my sister’s feet.

“See, they fit perfectly!”

“Amanda, these panties are crushing my balls. It hurts!”

“Well, if you see an alternative, you’re free to do it your own way.”

I had no other option. It was either this or no underwear.

“That’s what I thought,” she said in response to my silence.

Still disoriented from by throbbing balls, my sister rooted through my closet looking for things while I remained on the ground. She threw a pair of jeans at me, a belt and a shirt.

I managed to get all the clothes on. I had to roll my jeans up four or five inches, and my shirt hung at my knees. At least I was adequately clothed. I even found an old pair of shoes from my childhood that kind of fit me. Embarrassingly, they were a bit big.

I followed Amanda downstairs, and I clung to the banister. The last thing I needed was to fall down the stairs tripping over my sagging clothes.

Our family had three cars: Mom’s Toyota mini-van, Dad’s Audi convertible, and my Toyota Camry. We had money, but we weren’t fabulously rich or anything. I knew my parents would’ve struggled to pay for college for both Amanda and I, so I busted my ass in high school getting perfect grades. It paid off, and now I was at Georgetown with several scholarships. Of course, the pressure was on to maintain an amazing GPA, and the pressure doubled when I started shrinking.

The only car in the garage was mine. I loved my car to death like every young man loves his first car. My parents gave it to me for my 16th birthday, right after I passed my permit test. But seeing my car only saddened me because it wasn’t really mine anymore. It was Amanda’s.

Then I saw the car seat in the back, reopening the dam of embarrassment.

“Mom told me you gave her a hard time getting in the car seat. I’m sure it won’t be a problem anymore,” Amanda said.

I silently climbed into my new spot. Just two weeks earlier, I drove this car anywhere I wanted to. Now I was confined to the back; I was merely a passenger. And I had absolutely no recourse. If I disobeyed my sister, she wouldn’t hesitate in putting me in my place. My ego was already wounded, my body didn’t need to be as well.

My doctor’s appointment was just as fruitless as I had predicted. They took countless blood tests and asked me a million questions about my daily habits, just as Pauline had.

When Doctor Ortega called Amanda and I into her office, we sat down and listened to her suggestions. She told me to eat as much as I could to counter the weight loss. She also told me to come back for a 48-hour observation if I shrunk down to three and a half feet, the point when the frailty of my bones would present an existential risk to me.

Amanda callously asked, “Is my lil’ bro gonna keep shrinking?”

“We don’t know. We need to analyze his blood samples, and if we find any irregularities, we will let you know immediately.”

“Thanks, doctor,” I said, “But I have a feeling this isn’t going to stop.”

Amanda laughed, “Me too!”

“Shut the hell up!” I said.

When our shouting match ceased, Dr. Ortega told me not to worry. She said things would “resolve themselves”. In other words, she had no idea.

As Amanda and I walked to the car from the doctor’s office, she began taunting me.

“Things aren’t looking so good for you, little guy. You might just stay little forever. Wouldn’t that be something.”

Normally, I wouldn’t let that stand, but I had no response. Probably because she was right! The way things were currently going, I was likely to never be the same again.

Before we got in the car, Amanda kneeled down and put her face frighteningly close to mine. As much as I hated Amanda, she was a strikingly beautiful woman. She had high cheekbones and cute little button nose. Her eyes were an intense green, the type of green that you would immediately upon seeing her for the first time. She was fair-skinned, with long brown hair that flowed like a river.

Her beauty was twisted by the mean scowl she wore on her face. Her eyes were narrowed, and her brows were furrowed. Whatever was coming next wasn’t good.

“I know you’re going through a hard time in your life right now, but that doesn’t excuse nasty behavior toward me, your big sister.”

I cringed when she said she was my big sister yet again, and she took notice.

“You better get used to me saying that because I will always, and forever be your big sister. Even if you grow back to your normal height, I will be the big sister. You shrinking only makes it more obvious.”

“What do you want, Amanda?”

“What I want is respect. In your pretend fantasy land, all I do is torment you. Ask yourself, who got your ass out of bed this morning? Who helped you get dressed? Who drove you to the doctor? Who’s about to take you clothes shopping?”

I stood there mute, believing her questions to be rhetorical. When her angry look persisted, I realized that she actually wanted me to say it.

“You.”

“That’s right! Me, your big sister. Driving you all around the world because your widdle Mommy isn’t around. I could be hanging out with my friends right now, but instead I’m helping you get what you need. Get some god damn gratitude!”

I was stunned. She was trying to portray herself as a paragon of selflessness when it was the exact opposite. She took pleasure in belittling me. She loved that I was getting smaller. It was her wildest fantasy come true: total and utter dominion over me.

“Amanda, I appreciate you helping me, I do. But every second I’m with you, you find a new way to torment me. So yeah, that’s pretty much all you do.”

“Yeah, god forbid I have a little fun teasing my sad sack of a brother.”

“You call it teasing, I call it my sister sticking a knife in my back and twisting it.”

She grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and lifted me as she stood up from her knees. I flailed around, desperately trying to escape her tight grip on me.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You show no respect. Do you really think you can talk to me the way you just did? When we get home, I’m gonna teach you that your words have consequences.”

She opened the car door with her free hand and shoved me inside. And we were off to the mall.

Inside, we walked hand-in-hand, and she ended up dragging me half the time because I couldn’t keep up with her enormous strides. This gave me very intimate view of her muscly legs. They bulged and subsided with each and every flex she made. They glistened under the harsh fluorescent lighting. I had been in close quarters with my sister’s legs before (usually when she scissored me half to death), but at my new size, her legs frightened me in a whole new way. Those behemoths could snap me in two without oozing a bit of sweat. What Amanda said prior about my words having consequences took on a whole new meaning now. 

The first store we went to was “The Children’s Place”. How far I’d fallen.

Amanda walked right up to a free saleswoman and introduced herself and me.

“Tell Amy how old you are,” she said.

“Eighteen,” I said.

I realized my mistake as soon as the words left my lips. Amanda perfectly primed me to say that. She knew lying wasn’t in my nature, and now my whole humiliating shrinking story would be dragged out into the light.

Of course, Amy didn’t believe me. But when Amanda forced me to show my university ID, she realized I was telling the truth.

“Little Desmond has shrunk since he’s been to college. Isn’t that terrible?

“Yes, yes, awful,” Amy replied.

“We need some clothes that actually fit him ASAP,” Amanda said.

“Ok, I’ll lay out some pieces that’ll be mature enough for an eighteen-year-old to wear.”

“Yes, and we’ll need some clothes that won’t fit right now but may fit the next time he shrinks.”

“Of course! I’ll be back with a selection.”

When she left, Amanda bent down to talk to me.

“Oh my god, did you see her face when you said you were eighteen? And then her face when I told her you were shrinking? Her jaw hit the floor!”

Amy returned in about five minutes with loads of different options. Every single item was extra small.

“Extra small?” I moped as I rifled through each and every one of the tags, hoping I’d find a medium in the pile.

“Are you surprised or something?” Amanda asked all giggly.

My sister graciously allowed me to pick the clothes for my current size. The deal she struck with me though, stipulated that she got to pick all the clothes I would wear when I shrunk further. If I had a choice in the matter, she wouldn’t be picking anything for me to wear.

As I tried on my clothes in the dressing room, I worried about what she would pick for me. If you spent one second inside that store, you would see roughly twenty different children’s cartoon characters. Whatever she picked; I would be wearing at some point. I hoped she was feeling understanding.

I stepped out of the dressing room, heaps of shirts and pants and socks in hand, to look for Amanda. I wanted to pay for everything and leave as quickly as possible.

I looked all around the store for my sister, but she was nowhere to be found. She was completely gone. The feeling I should’ve been feeling was relief, but no, I was on the verge of a panic attack.

I frantically checked the store another time, and once more, I didn’t see her.

A million thoughts raced through my head. Things like ‘what if she left me here?’ or ‘I have no way to pay for any of this stuff’.

Right as I was about to go up to one of the clerks and ask where my sister went, she appeared in the store. She was eating a hotdog.

“Where the hell were you?!” I snapped at her.

“Whoa, watch the tone with me, mister!”

“I-I had n-no idea where you were. Why would you do that to me?”

I was on the verge of tears, and a despicable grin formed on her face. She knew what was going on. And she was going to milk it for all it was worth.

“Did you miss your big sister, widdle guy? Were you scared? Were you scared some mean-old lady was gonna snatch you up?”

The moment I ever showed weakness in front of Amanda, she capitalized on it. I was losing control of my sense of who I was. Was I even worthy of being called a ‘man’? With every inch I lost, was I edging towards becoming a childlike version of myself?

She was beating whatever small amount of courage still remained in me. And she was doing it intentionally, so I could become putty in her hands.

I managed to choke down the tears, and I asked in the nicest tone I could muster, “Please Amanda, can we pay for my clothes and leave?”

“Fine,” she said, “Just stay close to me from now on, so we don’t have another little outburst.”

I took her words quite literally. I leaned on her as she paid for the clothes. I briefly wondered about what clothes she might’ve picked out for me, but it was a fleeting thought. I was just happy that I wasn’t all alone in a huge mall.

We went to several more stores to get clothes for me. The last store we went to was a woman’s clothes store. When I asked what we were doing there, my sister snapped at me.

“Do you think everything is about you? I deserve a reward for my hard work today.”

When she wasn’t looking, I rolled my eyes.

Just like she said before, I stayed close to her. She veered off into the shoe aisle, grabbed two pairs of high heeled shoes, and placed them on the ground in front of me.

“Put them on for me,” she said.

“Are you kidding?”

Her intense stare suggested that no, she wasn’t kidding in the slightest. First, she commanded me to put the blue satin heels she’d picked out. I fumbled a bit, never having put on a pair of high heels myself, so she angrily coached me on what to do.

When I was finally done putting them on, she shot up and took a look at herself in the mirror, taking several struts to and fro.

“I like these, but they’re only 3 inches. I want something taller. Let’s try the 6-inch ones.”

I feared she would say that. The 6-inch heels were black suede, and they went with almost anything, which was probably why she wanted them; so she could wear them all the time.

She stood up this time with more gravitas. After a few moments, a look of abject satisfaction washed over her face. She was sold.

“Come here, lil’ bro. I want you to see this.”

I walked over hesitantly, but I did so, nonetheless. She wasn’t playing around with me anymore. If I disregarded direct orders from her, things would get ugly. I stood next to her, as she so desired, and what I saw in the mirror humbled me like nothing else.

My sister dwarfed me. My shoulders were lower than her hips. My hips came up to her knees. My eyeline was below her belly button. The level of difference was downright cartoonish.

I could accept Jackie or Maggie or Mom or Pauline or any other girl towering over me like this but seeing my sister this much taller than me was different. We were brother and sister, only two years apart, and I was stuck at the size of little boy and she had blossomed into a beautiful, leggy woman.

I asked, ‘why did she deserve this?’ Why did she deserve this height, this strength, this unimaginable swagger about her? And why did I deserve to be her servant, waddling at her feet, ready at her beck and call?

And seeing this sight in the mirror, truly gazing upon the massive difference between us, was devastating. Of course, she looked huge in person, but in the mirror, I saw us together as if I were an onlooker. I looked like a child, and she, at 16, was fit for magazine covers.

“Do you see this lil’ bro? Isn’t this amazing?” she asked me as she mushed me up against her rock-hard legs.

“It’s pretty amazing,” I said flatly and with eyes wide with terror.

“I think I’m gonna buy them. Just for you.”

“Thanks.”

When we finally got home, I was overjoyed to see my mom’s car in the driveway. My alone time with my sister was over. Even though it was only half a day, it had felt like a brutish eternity.

We walked in the door and Mom immediately hugged the two of us. Really, she was only hugging Amanda, as I was pinned between their immensely long legs. She sat on the ground to address me.

“Did you get a lot of clothes?” Mom asked.

“Yeah.”

Amanda, who was standing behind Mom silently mouthed, ‘Mention me!’

“And, Amanda was a huge help.”

“No fighting between you two, right?”

“Of course not, Mom!” she chimed in.

“Good,” Mom stood back up, only to notice how tall her daughter was.

“Good god, you’re taller than me in those things!” she marveled.

“I know I shouldn’t have bought them, but I happened to see them in the window, I swear I’ll pay you back!”

I hated her. She was such a sweet talker, and Mom was none the wiser. It always baffled me to see my mother be blind to how much of a bullshitter her own daughter was.

“There’s no need. Keep them. You look stunning in them. Doesn’t she Desmond?”

Why did she have to ask me?

“Yes. Stunning,” was all I could muster.

“Mom, we can catch up later,” Amanda started, “But for right now, I need to show Desmond some of the clothes I bought that he didn’t see. While he was busy trying on clothes that fit him now, I got smaller clothes, just like you asked.”

“Thanks, Amanda. Dinner’ll be ready in about an hour, I’ll holler up.”

And just like that, my sister masterfully dragged me back into her company. She carried the bags of clothes up the stairs and threw the ones that fit now on my bed. The clothes that didn’t fit she laid out on the floor. Let’s just say, I wasn’t a happy camper.

There were several clothing items that were normal, but the smaller the items got, the more babyish they were. There were action heroes depicted on some of the shirts. One shirt featured Mickey Mouse. Another had Tweety the Bird. She even got me a baby’s onesie! She was fully convinced that I was going to shrink down to the size of a newborn baby.

“So, what do you think?” she asked in a singsong manner.

“Am I allowed to say what I think?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

That meant no, I wasn’t allowed to express my true feelings.

“I’m just glad to have clothes.”

“Good answer! You’ve really shaped up since we had that talk outside the doctor’s office. However, I did say there would be consequences for your words.”

My heartrate quickened. Goosebumps rose on my skin. ‘Consequences’ in Amanda’s world meant a world of hurt for me.

“But Amanda, I’ve been nothing but obedient. Please, I thought we were past this.”

“I would be setting a shitty example if I let you disrespect me without any punishment lil’ bro. I think even you could see the logic there.”

She was a master at justifying anything she did, no matter how cruel. In the moment, I had no intelligent response. I was off my game, especially after seeing how miniscule I was compared to her.

“What should I do with you? Maybe I’ll make you clean my room, or maybe I’ll just sit on you like old times. Oh! I know! How about I spank you?! I’ve never done that before, and you’re the perfect size for it!

“Please don’t spank me! I’ll clean your room, I’ll let you sit on me!”

“Like you have a choice,” she laughed, “I’m gonna make you do all three, lil’ bro. The spanking comes first though.”

I sprinted toward my door, and three quarters of the way there, her stilettoed foot came out of nowhere and tripped me. I hit the ground right on my chin, causing me to accidently bite down on my tongue.

“Owwww!” I screamed in pain.

She picked me up like a rag doll and flung me onto the bed. My head was down in the covers, dwelling on the stabbing pain in my mouth. As I directed my eyes up again, my sister’s butt filled my vision.

I screamed something unintelligible and crawled away as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, my sister’s ass won the race, and she sat right on me. The impact was devastating. If not for my soft bed, I would’ve definitely broken some bones. 

“Too slow, lil’ bro. Get ready for this!”

She grinded her ass down into me, increasing the pressure on my body two-fold. I had acclimated myself to my sister’s huge ass when I was five feet tall, but now that I was almost a foot shorter and a whole lot weaker, the pain I felt was so much worse.

I had to wait for her to get bored to finally get mercy from her ass. She started flexing her glutes too, which almost made me pass out.

She must’ve looked behind her to see my eyes fluttering, nearing a blackout.

“Don’t pass out, weakling, we’ve barely even started.”

Finally, she lifted her ass and pulled me out from under her. She laid me belly first over her legs. Without warning, she whacked my ass. The screams from my mouth were muffled by her other hand. I was too feeble to even move, let alone resist.

“That was about 25% of my strength, lil’ bro. Hope that wasn’t too painful, ‘cause it’s only getting worse from here!”

She ripped my pants and underwear off and threw them to the other side of the room. With my pesky little clothes out of her way, she slapped my bare ass with a sickening amount of force. The pain flared up through every part of my body. The stinging didn’t subside either, it just lingered.

I was quietly sobbing as I looked down at the floor, nervously anticipating her next blow.

This process could’ve repeated five or ten or twenty times. I really had no idea. I lost track after the third spank.

Eventually, she stopped though. She straightened her legs suddenly, causing me to tumble down her legs as if they were a slide. It was amazing how long they were to me.

I laid on the ground a defeated man. She stood over me, completely blocking the light coming from the ceiling.

“I think you’ve learned your lesson. You won’t think to disrespect me again. I’m going out with my friends now. I expect my room to be spotless when I get back. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” I weakly whispered.

She was looking off in the distance. The gears were turning in her head. She wasn’t quite done with me. I silently hoped that she would just fucking leave.

“Actually, you know what? I want to do something before I go. Get up.”

And my hopes were dashed against the rocks.

It took all my strength to get myself up. I must’ve been moving too slow for her liking because she yanked me up by the arm and dragged me out of the room.

She took me over to the height chart we had had since we were kids. The red markings were mine; the blue were hers.

“Come on, I want to see how short you really are. Stand up against it,” she said.

I stood with back to the wall, feet flat, but stretching upwards as much as my little body could. It didn’t do much.

Amanda came closer and the look of absolute vindication in her eyes made the hair on my neck stand straight up.

“This is fucking unbelievable! You’re 4’2”! Stay there, I’m gonna run and grab a new marker!”

The amount of joy she was taking in this was unsettling. All giddy, she came back seconds later with a pink magic marker and marked my new height along with the date.

“Look at this, dude! You are the same height I was when I was 7! Little 7-year-old me would probably be able to kick your ass!”

I hung my head in total humiliation. She was so good at making me feel like the smallest person in the world.

“Give me your phone,” she said.

“What? Why?”

She kneeled, “Do we need some more discipline?”

I handed over my phone without thinking another rebellious thought. Whatever she planned to do with my phone couldn’t be worse than another spanking.

She backed up and held the phone up to take a picture of me. I wondered why she couldn’t just do this with her own phone, but I didn’t dare voice my concern.

Then she moved back to where she was before and got a close up.

“Send me these two photos. And if I find out you deleted these pictures, I will smash your face in. I want you to remember this. See ya later, loser. I’m going out.”

She dropped my phone to the ground, not caring if it broke. I rushed down to pick it up. Luckily, it was in perfect condition, but then I saw a snapchat notification from Jackie.

Shit! It’s from 3 hours ago! She’s gonna think I’m ignoring her!

I opened it immediately upon seeing it, and what I saw was a picture of her face with her eyes cropped out. My eyes were drawn to her ample cleavage dressed in frilly black lingerie. I wondered if she was wearing her extra sexy clothes just for me.

All she wrote was, “Kiss and make up?”

I frantically typed, “Absolutely…”