SHE'S A BIG GIRL NOW



How would I describe Debra? Kind of like a tanned Olivia D'Abo lookalike with Phoebe Cates' sloping hairstyle from "Drop Dead Fred." Light brown hair, thin, nice figure when she doesn't hide it under baggy clothes. So now you've got a mental picture. As for what she's like... Debra has two character traits that have always struck me pretty strongly: something of a domineering personality, and something of a height hangup. Whenever she and I have gone out, or gotten together to play music or watch videos, Debra's always needed to be the one in charge of the situation, giving me directions someplace when I already know the way, inviting me to sit down and make myself comfortable when it's my home and she's the guest. Debra's always kind of played a game with me, flirting with me, then pulling back if I make any response, and she's even tried a time or two to test out her pet psych theories by putting me in weird situations or playing tricks, to see what I'd do. As for the height thing--"I'm five-foot-eight. That bugs a lot of guys, that I'm so tall. It makes them look like shrimps." Or if I mention another girl's name--"Oh, yeah. She's pretty tall, isn't she?" "Me and the girls I work with, we're all really tall." I think maybe it's self-defense for Debra, when she feels like a guy is getting the upper hand. "Hm. I'm taller than you, aren't I, Bill?" I stand up--I'm about five-eleven and she has to look up to say "Hunh--how about that? I thought you were a lot shorter." Which I guess makes Debra feel kind of threatened--I don't take to being bossed around well, I've made her look silly in front of other people more than once--and I've got a few inches height on her. Imagine if Debra decided I needed to be put in my place, and cooked up a nasty little surprise... and little is not a word I use lightly here.

Debra had been promising for awhile to bring over a special brand of incense that she said I'd like. She hadn't done it and she hadn't done it, so I started bugging her about it whenever we talked. At first Debra was kind of annoyed that I kept bringing it up, but then one night she got really sweet-sounding when I asked where the incense was. "Incense, huh? I'll bring some over tonight after I get off work and change--you're gonna be home, right?" If Debra wanted to come over? I could be home.

Debra knocked on my door about quarter to eight--a little sooner than I'd hoped, because I was still tidying up. Piles of papers, dishes, books, and open-reel tapes littered the floor. It looked like an obstacle course for Tom Thumb or something. Oh well. I opened the door and the first thing I noticed was Debra's new pair of white high-heeled boots. "Like 'em? I got 'em especially for nights like this." Which I thought was kind of strange--they definitely weren't the practical thing to wear. She came in, carrying her purse with a little pouch just sticking out of it, and a box about a foot square covered by a cloth.

I asked Debra what was in the box--something for her cat? "Oh, I'll show it to you later. Right now I want to get warm, and then light the incense," she said, shivering as I closed the door--more than she should've been, I thought, since it wasn't very cold out. She set the pouch on my dresser, next to the incense boat, then took off her coat. No wonder Debra was cold--her outfit was kind of skimpy, and pretty tight. Like what a girl wears when she wants to get a guy turned on. These last couple years I've known her, she's never dressed like that for me. We've always been "just friends." So I didn't know what to think.

Debra was wearing one of those light red semi-blouses that terminates well above the waistline, showing a good deal of bare midriff, and a pair of medium blue short-shorts that showed a generous amount of her long, slender legs. The boots and Debra's stance in them completed the effect--she may have felt cold, but I thought she looked pretty hot. "Don't get so hyped up, Bill--I'm not trying to seduce you, you know." If she dressed up like that to come over to my house? I had to wonder.

I went and got some drinks and snacks for us from the kitchen, while Debra strutted around in front of the heater, warming up. After I came back, she stepped into my bathroom, took a towel from my rack and stuffed it into the crack under my inside door. "I don't want the smell of the incense to get out--uh, you know, somebody else might not like it." OK, I thought. "Want another cookie?" I asked, holding out the plate.

"In a minute," Debra said. "Let's light up the incense." Her side brushed against mine as she stepped over to the incense boat--I pretended not to notice. Debra took a lighter out of her purse and put one of the sticks from the pouch into the boat, lighting and blowing on it in a way that almost made me drop the plate of cookies. "There we go!" she said, waving at the air with one hand and gesturing to me with the other. "Come take a nice big whiff of this stuff." I put the plate down and stepped over beside her. The incense was pretty smoky and smelled a little sour, I thought, but... I took a deep sniff.

"There you go!" Debra smiled, waving more smoke in my direction. "Now again." I didn't want to disappoint her... even if it wasn't the best incense I'd ever smelled. I breathed in again. "That's the way," she said, taking a sniff herself. "Isn't this stuff nice?" The whole room was starting to look a little hazy and my head was feeling kind of funny, but I nodded. "Yeah, it's kind of different." Debra slipped her arms around me for a hug--her body underneath the outfit felt good to me, if a little broader than usual. "By the way, Bill, did you ever see a movie called The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad?" Debra's eyes gazed into mine, looking downward more than I would have expected, even if she was wearing high-heeled boots and I was barefoot. I'd seen the movie when I was a kid, but I really didn't remember what it was about.

"Well, in this movie, Sinbad is supposed to marry a princess, but this magician puts a special candle in her room that smokes it all up, and when she breathes in the smoke, it makes her shrink down to the size of a doll, 'cause the magician wanted to get back at her and Sinbad for getting in his way." When she breathes in the smoke... I stepped back. Debra was really beginning to look tall to me now, and not just because of the boots. I could've sworn she was growing larger before my very eyes.

But I knew nothing was happening to her, other than she was putting her hands on her hips and starting to laugh. I had a sign on the wall that was just about even with Debra's shoulder, and it stayed that way even as my eyes became level with her adam's apple, then her collarbone, and then her bust. Debra looked like an Amazon now, and she was looking more and more like a giant every second. But it wasn't her, it's because I was--

"--Shrinking!" Debra nodded patronizingly, taking the stick of incense and blowing it right into my face, bending her knees a little as she did. "Not your typical batch of incense, huh?" I'll say. But why was I getting smaller and smaller and nothing was happening to her?

"Stupid!" she swatted at me like I was somebody's obnoxious little brother, reading the question in my eyes. "The stuff only works on guys." And work it did--when I stepped up close to Debra I discovered I was staring her right in the top button of her short-shorts. I wished she weren't wearing such an eye-grabbing outfit--even at twice my height Debra still made me excited and that seemed to make me shrink even faster. Right now I would have had to stand tiptoe just to kiss her hand as it hung by her side. I tried to duck away from the smoke Debra was still blowing in my direction. "That's it,coward--run away! But it's not gonna help!" I didn't care. I just wanted to get away from it--and her, features looking bigger and bigger.

"A friend of mine made this stuff," Debra said to no-one in particular. "She was taking chemistry at the college and she got sick of her boyfriend always making short jokes." I was over by the heater now, the air hot and the current almost knocking me down, but it was clearing the smoke away. I was still getting smaller by the second though. "He found out what it was like to be shorter than anybody. She and him broke up, but I'll bet he never forgets that lesson," she laughed like somebody who's seen a good prank pulled. "Me, I like to see people get what they deserve. You keep acting too big for your britches--" I noticed my clothes still fit, and I wondered if it was because they were all-natural cloth and I was sweating into them--"so I decided I'd make a little size adjustment for you."

My head was starting to clear--my back had been turned to Debra for a few minutes now, and I wasn't in any hurry to turn around. "Besides," she laughed, "I like to be tall. Really tall. And if you ever felt like a shrimp around a girl before, just wait until you get a load of me now!" That did it--I had to turn around and take a look. No matter how huge Debra had become. My head was clear now, and I was sure I wouldn't get any smaller--I'd stayed the same size for awhile. Slowly I stepped around to look at Debra...

I had to tilt my head way back to see all of her at once. I knew Debra was only about four feet away, but it looked like fifty feet away--and she looked about the size of a six-story building! She was still well-proportioned, but how big the proportions! My head didn't even come up to the top of Debra's high-heeled boots, and her feet were large enough to almost cover me if I'd been lying down--and she could've easily crushed me under them if she'd wanted to. Debra's kneecaps were as big around as manhole covers-- and well out of my reach. And if I'd stood on Debra's instep, I still couldn't have put my arms around one of her huge shins--they were just too wide.

"Want a closer look, little guy?" Debra teased as she squatted down, her knee almost flattening me in the process. Her thigh looked about twenty feet long and I could just about have walked through the fly of her short-shorts. Debra's bare midriff was as far across as a garage door and as she bent forward to inspect my tiny form as I did her gargantuan one, I gazed at her huge face, still pretty but now pretty giant-sized as well, with cheeks big as basketballs and a mouth as wide as my shoulders, and I figured Debra could probably scoop me up in one hand and swallow me whole. Scoop me up in one hand--

"--Missed!" Debra snapped as her hand scratched at empty air--I had ducked just in time. She snatched at me again and I got away by actually running under her crotch and out, forcing Debra to whirl around. "You little--! Well, sometimes it's not easy to catch a man. Especially when they're small fry like you!"

Debra lunged for me and her fingernail just brushed my back as I ran, feeling almost like the end of a shovel. I dodged back and forth between piles of papers and dishes, some of which Debra was knocking over as she crawled around on the floor, trying to catch me. Where could I hide? Not under the bed--it was all dust and I'd have been sneezing my head off in a minute, and anyway Debra was thin enough she'd probably be able to just slip under it and grab me. I couldn't crawl under a door--the outside one had a seal and the inside one still had the towel stuffed under it. Maybe Debra anticipated that idea. But I knew if I didn't pick a place to hide soon, I was gonna get...

Caught. The closet door was shut and before I could budge it enough to get through, Debra dropped her hands on either side of me, fingers spread wide, and scooped me up like she was making a snowball with me in it. Debra was trying to be careful, but her fingers still pinched me a little as she stood up, carrying me over to the cloth-covered thingamajig she'd brought with her. She pulled away the cloth to reveal--a mouse cage, complete with exercise wheel. My new home. Debra didn't put me in the cage right away--first she had some fun taking one of the open-reel tapes from the floor and tying me up with it--"All wrapped up in your music--ha, ha, ha!"--then dangling and swinging me around like a yo-yo. "Wanna see me do Around The World?" She finished up by giving me a grand tour of her Brobdingnagian body in that skimpy outfit--sitting down on the edge of the bed, setting my feet on the floor for a second, then slowly lifting me from her ankles up to her knees, along her thighs, nuzzling my face in her navel as wide as a pail for an instant--from my vantage point I could have looked up and seen a lot behind the front of her blouse as it flopped forward, but I wasn't in the mood--and finally inch by inch up to her face, where she just held me in her hand, looking me over small and helpless for a moment or two, intoning "I guess I'm really too much woman for you to handle now, huh?" before giving me a kiss that took in most of my chest, and then opening the door of the cage with her other hand and dropping me in.

"There we go--safe and sound," Debra sing-songed like she was talking to a four-year-old. She picked up the cage from the floor, making me lose my balance, then set it on the steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. "Let's see--should I make you learn some tricks? Oh, I know--you can try out the exercise wheel for awhile. You do need to lose a few pounds, you know," Debra said as she snapped her finger at my stomach through the bars of the cage. "Or that would be a few ounces now, wouldn't it? Oh, well. Get to it!" Debra started poking at me with a pencil big as a lamp-post.

What could I do? I climbed into the exercise wheel, which I couldn't really stand up in, but I could almost crawl fast enough to make it spin, when my feet weren't getting caught between the spokes. "Hm," Debra said. "I did always figure I'd make you crawl one of these days. But I didn't think it'd be like this." My stumbling around in the exercise wheel amused her for a couple minutes, then the phone rang. Great, I thought. They won't know who she is, and maybe somebody'll come by to see if anything's wrong. But Debra didn't look worried--she just picked up the phone like nothing unusual was going on.

"Hello? --Oh, he's busy running around right now," she said as she poked at me again with the pencil to keep me moving, big smirk on her face. "Yeah, I can get after it pretty soon--I've just got this little bill to take care of first,"

Debra chuckled. I was tempted to yell "Help!" or something, but I figured it'd be useless. The way Debra was speaking, it was somebody we both knew who wouldn't think anything was wrong--and anyway Debra could deal with me a lot more quickly than any help could arrive. She said goodbye and hung up, then turned her attention back to me. "Boy, that was close, huh? --OK, enough exercising." She jammed the wheel with her pencil and the jolt made me tumble out. Debra just laughed. "Clumsy!"

As I was getting to my feet Debra turned away and started rummaging through the top drawer of my nightstand--without asking permission first. "Do you have a ruler in here? --There we are!" She pulled one out and came back to the cage. "OK, stand up tall. Stand up small, I mean," she giggled as she dropped the ruler through the top of the cage. I walked over and leaned up against it, stretching myself as far as I could.

Debra slid a finger down the flat side of the ruler until it bumped the top of my head, then bent her fingernail in and pulled the ruler away. "Hm--just over seven inches tall now. I'll bet that's quite a comedown for you, huh?" she laughed. "Well, just remember who's ten times your size now, and don't give me any backtalk--or you'll really be sorry. I'm tempted to measure that--" Debra poked the ruler around my beltline--" but there probably wasn't that much there in the first place," she said with a nasty grin. Now I really felt brought down. Which I expect was Debra's idea when she said it.

Afterwards came an hour or two of Debra making me do exercises, like lifting or carrying little things she dropped through the cage door--roll of Scotch tape, her change-purse, medicine bottles--all the while asking me weird questions, sometimes spaced, sometimes a mile a minute. She said she was checking for signs of "diminished mental capacity following physical size reduction," and also wanted to see what my psychological reactions were to suddenly becoming doll-sized, which Debra would emphasize now and again by leaning into the cage and blowing at me through a straw, to see if she could knock me down, or poking at me with it if she didn't like the way I performed a task or answered a question. All the time she took notes for herself--in my notebook. No doubt about it--Debra had found a great way to play armchair psychologist. And I got to be her guinea pig. Later Debra reached into the cage and pulled me out, cupping me in one hand as she held me close to her huge face. "You know, I'm thinking about keeping you like this. You're a lot less trouble to me small, and you're almost fun to have around." I tried not to groan. "Normally the shrinking stuff'll wear off in a few hours, and you'll grow back to normal--if anybody can call you normal!--but I've got this other stuff that all I gotta do is put in some water and make you drink it, or squirt it on you--" Debra poked me in the stomach with a finger--"and you'll be this way for good. Sound like fun?" Believe me, it didn't.

"Then I can keep you as a pet," Debra laughed, messing up my hair with her fingernail. "You can live in your little cage and keep me entertained. I could do my experiments on you, and you could help me look for lost earrings around the house and stuff. I wouldn't have to move furniture or anything--I could just put you on the floor and let you run under it. Hmm..." Debra thought for a moment. "That's if you don't give me any trouble. If you do, there's always this--" she stomped on the floor with her high-heeled boot. "No more you. Or I could put you in a room with my cat and let her have some fun catching you." Debra stepped over to the dresser with the incense boat, still carrying me in her hand, then picked up another stick of her incense and waggled it in front of my face. "Or--we've never tried a second dose of incense on any guys. Maybe you'll be the first. You might wind up an inch high, or you might just keep on getting smaller and smaller until--" Debra shrugged her shoulders, and I thought I heard a pounding noise. "So you better not give me any problems." Debra tilted a leg forward, then dropped me on her bare thigh and I slid down, over her knee and down her shin to her ankle, which she flipped up suddenly and I sailed up like a hackey-ball until she caught me in her hands. Debra laughed, and I heard the pounding noise again. "That sounds like a good idea, keeping you small. I'll just get that stuff..." Debra started digging through her purse on the dresser with one hand, while I squirmed and struggled to get loose from her other hand. I heard the pounding noise a third time.

"Bill? Bill? Hey, come on--it's Debra! Are you home?!" I sat bolt upright in bed--normal-sized, but almost tied up in the blanket covering me. Debra beat on the door again. I scrambled out from under the blanket--luckily I'd thrown some clothes on before I decided to take a nap while I waited for Debra to come over. Finally I opened the door. "Well, it's about time!" she chuckled. "Were you sleeping?"

"Yeah. You wouldn't believe this dream I was having."

Debra came in. Under her coat she was dressed pretty normally--blouse, scarf, longish skirt--but her high-heeled boots looked a little out of place. She sat down. "Oh, hey--remember that incense I was telling you about? I brought you some--"

"I've got a great idea," I said, reaching for her coat and mine. "Let's go out for dinner. My treat."

(c)1992, 1996 Zephyr Ltd. All rights reserved.