Scott sat dumbfounded on his mother’s bedside table, still at an inch tall, having been removed from Judy’s mouth on his toothache-soothing duties.  Considering how much anticipatory preparation she’d put him through in conversation and practical training, the conclusion of the act was oddly nonchalant.

            After he’d spent about four minutes in the muggy pitch-black of his mother’s mouth, attending to her supposedly agonized molar with the medicinal balm, totally ignoring a few stray droplets of saliva that had dribbled from the roof of her mouth, he’d groggily become aware of light flooding back in over her teeth.  He noticed his mother’s fingers snatching him expertly from the slimy floor of her mouth and taking him back into the refreshing cool of her bedroom, where she deposited him back into her palm and walked him to the bathroom.

            Her fingernails had expertly worked to pry the suit from his one-inch form, leaving him somewhat cold and curled up in the center of her palm once she’d stripped him naked.  He’d hardly made a move as Judy set about dabbing some warm water and soap into his body to clean him off, then simply laid limp as he was placed next to a clean t-shirt and pants on the table.

            Despite her knowledge of her son’s incoherence at this moment, Judy still calmly explained that the process seemed even easier than she’d been expecting and that she was proud of him for complying with her requests after so little resistance.  He’d nodded, not wanting to soil the apparent success of the moment for himself, though he still couldn’t bring himself to look up at Judy, because he was almost certain he’d flinch at the sight of her lips moving, even if they weren’t opening wide to receive him again.

            “Like I said, honey, no big deal.  You’re a big boy now; I know you can handle a little nervousness.  And the best part?  We only have to do this every 24 hours for the next week.  I got the good stuff,” she informed him.  “It lasts longer.”

            “Uh-huh,” Scott mumbled so quietly it scarcely came out.

            “You look a little tired out.  I’ll give you a little while to yourself before I come back, okay?  I’ve got a couple errands to run, so I’ll be back later to put you back to twelve, and then I’ve got a couple things you can do in the garden for me.  You know, give you a chance to pick up some sun.  Deal?”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “You did a great job, honey.  Go ahead and change into your clothes, and I’ll be back for you,” Judy said.  Lightly kissing the tip of her index finger, the woman sensitively touched the pad of her digit to her son’s face such that the force of it didn’t even push the inch-tall young man back.  He still cringed at the touch, feeling the familiar gloss of moisture on her skin gracing his cheeks once again, particularly as her fingertip then traced down his neck and to his chest, spreading the gooey contact further.  “Just sit tight.”

            And sit tight he did, with his legs hugged to his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins, his chin resting on his knees.  Finally, Scott dove back into the comfort of his normal clothing as quickly as he could.  He knew he’d regret later having redressed himself when he had the chance, as he doubted Judy would take the extra three seconds required to grow his clothes along with him if they weren’t already adorning his body.  The warm feeling of the protective material hugging his skin was now melded into his mind in conjunction with the sensation of being immersed in the rapidly swelling heat and drenching drool, and he was not eager to have to clamber back inside the tight little suit.

            Scott folded his arms and leaned back against a small flower vase Judy kept next to her bed.  It figured that his mother would force him to spend his free time with nothing to do but sit in a confined area, just by virtue of purposefully leaving him at one inch right now rather than growing him back like she’d said she would later, but he at least appreciated the reprieve after what she’d just had him do.

            An inordinate amount of time passed at a snail’s pace in utter silence for Scott.  Eventually he heard the garage door opening and closing downstairs, indicating his siblings had returned home from school.  He shrugged, at least grateful that he wouldn’t be in Maggie’s immediate sights upon her return home, though he had a feeling he might ultimately be kept from his cleaning duties if Judy took much longer to return.  The sound of feet thumping up the stairs made this suspicion even easier to buy.

            It was then that the phone a few inches to the right of the vase began to ring.  Scott ignored it at first, knowing Judy would have quicker access to it.  He frowned and covered his ears to shield from the harsh tones, idly irritated that his mother had insisted on such an archaic practice of a landline, most of which had been all but abolished as a practice.  As usual, Judy’s preference for doing certain things the old fashioned way was a severe hindrance to Scott’s general comfort level.

            “Can someone get that?” echoed Judy’s voice through the house from somewhere downstairs.

            Out of annoyance at the ringing, Scott pulled himself to his feet and chanced a glance at the caller ID by stepping back closer to the edge of the bedside table and standing on his tiptoes.

            ELLA-STENSON

            Fuck.

            Knowing full-well how useless it was at his current height, Scott scrambled to pull himself atop the low-sitting base of the phone, nearly slipping over the oblong surface, and pressed his back into the receiver, trying with all his might to budge it from where it sat to receive the call.  He grunted, putting all his strength into it, but at a size smaller than a house key, it was a complete joke for him to attempt.

            It was all foolish and a hopeless waste.  Even if he had the height to roll the phone off the pad, Judy would take serious issue with his answering it, particularly given who was calling.  Judy liked Ella as much as Maggie did, but with her rules in place, there was no telling what kind of reaction she’d had, and after the “nicer” streak she’d been on recently, who knew what it would take to derail her?

            Yet he still had to try, for the sake of his emotional stability, or whatever remained of it.

            “I’LL GET IT!” sang out the voice of his sister from her bedroom a couple doors down.

            Double fuck.

            Sliding off the phone pad as quickly as he could, Scott noted with horror that the phone by Judy’s bed was the only landline on the second floor, meaning it had suddenly become a target.  Looking around frantically, and knowing he wouldn’t be able to get far to stay out of his sister’s line of sight, in a panic, Scott’s eyes caught on the wetsuit.  He stooped and quickly bundled it up into a ball, knowing that hiding it from Maggie’s curious eyes was his top priority at this moment, and dashed behind the flower vase just as the door to the bedroom swung open with a flamboyant slam and the blonde sixteen-year-old skipped into the room in one of her new green sundresses.

            Stowing the balled up inch-tall wetsuit at what he believed to be the most secure angle, given where his sister was about to be standing, Scott took a few steps back and held his breath just in time to make eye contact with the looming form of his ponytailed skyscraper sister far above, a chill running over his skin as the familiar grin spread over her lips.

            No matter how many times he was exposed to Maggie at his minimum height, it never failed to give him a positively nuclear burn in the pit of his stomach.  Surprisingly, when control was handed over, the girl usually made him around two to four inches so she could more safely wear him in a shoe without the risk of injury, though whenever she brought him all the way down, things didn’t tend to improve much anyway.

            It was useless to even move.  A flick of her pinky could knock him off the table.  Not that she would, given the swift end it would bring to their playtimes, but the mere fact that she didn’t even have to do anything to Scott at this height to give any semblance of crushed hope to him actually served to make it less entertaining for the girl.

            Her locked eyes refusing to break away from her brother as she scooped up the phone so easily in her right hand and brought it to her ear, Maggie’s face lit up again at the sound of Ella’s voice.

            “Hey again, Ella!  How’s it going?” she chimed happily.  “Same old, same old.  You?”

            Scott folded his hands in front of his stomach and kept his legs pressed together, too crestfallen to attempt any further motion.

            “That’s good… what?  Where’s Scott?” Maggie repeated, fighting back a giggle.  Leading with a thumb comparatively the size of a car, the teen quickly brought her hand down toward her miniscule sibling in a quick rush of air that nearly toppled Scott.  She nudged the young man in the chest with her finger, threatening to bowl him over, though he managed to stand his ground by quickly readjusting his stance.

            Maggie shook her head almost piteously, reminded with visible glee of how easy it was to push around the inch-high Scott, and pouted her lips.  Extending her pointer finger, then, she patted her brother on the top of his head with enough gentleness that she didn’t knock him down, but it was more than needed to knock him off balance again.  She tenderly stroked along his back a single time as he desperately tried to right himself, this time for more unsettling measure, before finally retracting her hand and placing it authoritatively on her hip with a clap.

            “He’s actually off… taking a break right now from work,” Maggie commented with ironic truthfulness.  “Talk to him?  Yeah, you could, probably.  No, I don’t think Mom cares.  Want me to go ask him?”

            Scott’s heart caught in his chest.

            Was she actually about to let him do it?

            “Let me just check,” Maggie said, removing the phone from her ear, and then her hand began lowering toward the desk.  Unbridled joy in his heart, Scott couldn’t help but tremble with excitement as he watched the descending mass of the train-sized phone descending toward him, gripped in his sister’s firm fingers.

            Her gargantuan hand stopped lowering when it was roughly a foot above the table, her arm parallel with the surface.

            “Maggie, please,” Scott gasped, his heart sinking and butterflies re-entering his stomach as he gazed helplessly up at the overhanging form of the phone, far too distant to speak clearly into it at his size.

            The girl just shrugged, nodding her head in the direction of the phone, indicating he was free to speak.

            “ELLA!” bellowed Scott.  “ELLA!”

            This repeated several times, with no response coming from the top of the phone, as the sound was clearly not carrying, or at least not coherently enough to be interpreted as a word by Scott’s girlfriend on the other end of the line.  Finally, with a shrug and a falsely defeated smirk, Maggie brought the phone back to her ear.

            “Hey, Ella.  Yeah, sorry about that.  I asked him if he had anything to say, but I guess he’d not feeling so up to it right now.”

            Scott’s fists clenched, burning white hot, as he seethed with newfound rage at his sister’s cruelty.  Despite his paltry understanding of her misguided and deep-seated grudges against him, this was going too far.  This was making it personal.

            She could put him on display on social media, let her friends toy with him, and make him black out while wearing him in a sock.  But right now, she was actively working to destroy one of the final relationships he truly cherished in his life, even for how dangerously shaky things were with Ella after his crime.

            He tightened his teeth together, forcing himself to keep his mouth shut and refrain from hurling every obscenity in his toolbox up at the towering four-hundred-foot-tall vision of his cheerful, athletic sibling casually screwing with his tiny life despite her monolithic stature.  No matter what, he couldn’t risk whatever invisible progress he might’ve potentially made in getting her off his case, and especially considering her more recent social developments, that was more vital than ever.

            If he could only get a chance at that phone, a real one, he knew he’d be willing to put up with just about anything the twisted teen could concoct, silently and without complaint, no matter how much it burned him up inside.

            “Yeah, I know.  Bummer,” Maggie commented after a pause of listening to Ella’s response.  “Maybe he’s just not in the mood to talk right now.  He might be too tired from work.”

            Scott pressed his palms together and actually found himself praying a little, though he wasn’t entirely sure who the recipient was.

            Ella knew full well the kinds of things he was put through under this roof at the hands of his mother and sister.  She knew more than anyone, in fact.  Though she seemed oddly capable of maintaining friendly relationships with Maggie and Judy whenever they all met, she had expressed her sympathies in times past to Scott whenever they’d go out together, partially just so he could escape the strain of his home life.  Many a time, he’d leaned his head against her shoulder with none too many degrees of shame, and croaked his way through some horrific account of what had taken place in someone’s titanic hands or articles of clothing.

            Ella would often just stroke his hair through all this, telling him it would be okay once they were in college and he could finally get away from it all.  There’d always been a certain awkward sore point between them since the first time Ella had witnessed Scott’s shrinking and placement into his mother’s shoe, and even tried it out herself at Judy’s behest.  She’d of course apologized numerous times in the time afterward, though not with the kind of deep groveling sorrow Scott had hoped, given the level of humiliation he had sunk to during the whole affair, and he knew that part of her had enjoyed it, even though she denied such a notion and insisted it was just to keep his mother as happy as possible during the shrunken disciplinary session.

            If only she could know for sure that he wasn’t allowed to use the phone, and that it was being dangled above him like a carrot just far enough out of reach.

            “Tell him what?” Maggie continued on the phone, shifting her weight to the other leg.  “You need to talk.  Tell him that.  Okay.  Okay, I will… what?  Tell him it needs to happen… soon.  Right, okay.  Bye, Ella!”

            Triple fuck.

            Despite what were hopefully suspicions on Ella’s part that Maggie was bending the truth in order to scam Scott out of a little simple happiness, he had swelling doubts that this knowledge would be enough for her.  The longer she was made to think about it all, and what he’d done, the less likely it would be that she’d pursue contact with him through the mad jumble of it all, because with a sickening twist, he knew that she no longer could fully disapprove of the things that happened to him here.  After all, who could put up with all this like she had for all this time?  It would drain just about anyone to put up with it for so long.  Even knowing the kind of life he was forced to lead under this roof, Ella might just fold under the emotional pressure and decide the pursuit wasn’t worth it anymore.

            Scott’s eyes welled with tears.  Deep down, he couldn’t blame her.

            Maggie’s grip descended fully back down to the base, hanging up the phone, as her fingers drummed lightly against the handset.