He looked across the courtroom to the prosecutor's desk, she was there, wearing a tight white blouse and navy business suit, immaculate as always from head to toes, pedicured and wearing intimidating black pumps. He watched his wife, Carol, make idle chat with her team of lawyers, smiling and laughing about some inaudible joke. They didn't all really need to be there of course, this was a process heavily biased in her favor, he would argue his case, but he was worried about his chances.

Five years ago they had met, she pursued him more than the other way around. A young 30-something executive at a bio-technology firm she had confidence and beauty that he couldn't resist, dark brown hair, tall with long legs, and he quickly fell deeply in love. They both knew that she was also way outside his league; he remembered one of their first dates where she picked him up in her Bentley from his second job at the fast-food place he worked, having showered and dressed in the staff shower there scrubbing the smell of grease from his hair. He sensed early on that she liked being the one in control of the relationship, even toying with him, but it would be a while before he understood just how deep that streak ran.

For a year she played with him, living their strange un-balanced relationship, booking tables at Michelin starred restaurants and asking him to take care of the thousand dollar check on his $7 an hour wage (some of these meals would take him months to pay off). He knew she liked toying with him in this way, but thought it was just all part of a test she wanted to put him through that underneath was helping build a real trust in a partner and relationship. There were more tender moments amongst these games too, they walked, watched movies, made love, and dated as normally as they could in their mismatched way.

And then things came to a head after about a year, when she proposed to him. A unique proposal indeed. She wanted them to marry, she told him; but she could not risk her primacy in settling down. Her job was important and she was guaranteed great things, she didn't want to get entangled in a marriage which could threaten that, she needed control, to be the one making decisions in the relationship. She was Queen Victoria, and she needed a Prince Albert, not a king that would threaten to sidetrack her career. As she explained her situation, it made more and more sense, and he saw things increasingly from her point of view, a marriage can dramatically change the dynamic for a professional woman, especially to someone with so significantly different a background to her. And so, she proposed a prenup. An agreement that would allow them to marry and be together, and provide for her to continue to act in a way that would be best for her career. The prenup excluded him from any of her possessions and wealth of course, but also included a most unusual requirement. He would undergo the relatively new process known as 'Reduction'. Heretofore mostly used on the criminal population serving life sentences to make inmates less dangerous and more controllable, Reduction was a quantum miracle that could perfectly reduce in size living matter. She was asking, as a prerequisite to marrying her, that he would be shrunk.

It wouldn't be significant she said, just a couple of feet, to make sure she could continue to live as the 'primary person' in their relationship, so that her ability to make decisions wouldn't be threatened in any way. And it made sense, through the haze of their already unbalanced partnership, and his adoration of her impressive success and her beauty, he could see that she needed the confidence that being physically larger could bring. And so in a haze of adoration, he agreed to the procedure. After all, she had brought so much to his life, and she had promised it would just be a foot or two.

Except, as he came round in the Reduction clinic, confused and remembering very little from the day before, looking up at the faces above him as they slowly came into focus, he realized something was very wrong indeed. The moon sized faces of the nurses looking down showed concern, they were saying something but his ears were still ringing loudly, but then, he saw her... looking down, with a shiver he looked back up, and had never seen a more predatory look in her perfectly mascaraed eyes, grinning down at him through lush red lipsticked lips barely able to contain her joy. The procedure had succeeded... but a 'technical error' in the paperwork had lead to his permanent reduction to the size of just one inch.

And so began four years of hell that would lead him to this courtroom today, she had brought these proceedings against him that could lead to the very erasure of any protection the law may provide a human being.