Ned Cooke kept his hands firmly wrapped around Ginger's leash, even though the happy corgi had long ago stopped pulling during walks, Ned constantly worried that she would start testing her limits once again. Not because she was poorly trained, but because there was little Ned could do to stop her at that point.

At twenty-one inches tall, Ned Cooke looked absurd next to the small dog. The tiny corgi looked like a horse walking next to him, and the trotting like walk of her breed did little to dispel the illusion.

When he had first been diagnosed following a two-inch shrinking episode nine months earlier, Ned had been terrified that he would end up a meal for their little pet. Which, at least according to various horror stories posted on Reddit and local news websites, would have been likely if she was a cat or strangely a toy breed. Corgis were deemed shrunken friendly alongside a number of other working breeds, with the only warning being that they might try to herd shrunken people in the same way they tried to herd basically anything. Big dogs would slurp you up on accident while cats and toy poodles would ravage you. Still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Ned's wife constantly worried that something would happen to him while out on Ginger's walks.

It was hard to stand up to his wife now, who at 5'1'' cut a far more fearsome figure to him than she ever had before. Before his first shrinking episode, Ned had been six feet tall and Joanne had been his pint sized wife who even when wearing heels couldn't come close to his height. Over the better part of the year though, he had watched her rise higher and higher above him, until now she was more than twice his size. Sharing a bed with her had gone from completely normal to a truly frightening experience, with every toss and turn of her oversized body threatening to crush or suffocate him.

Ned kept thinking of suggesting they sleep in separate rooms, but he didn't want to start another fight he knew he couldn't win. Keeping things as normal as they could was the goal in their house, at least until Jeremy went away to college next year. His only solace was that according to the doctors his insurance begrudgingly covered, twenty-one inches was his new normal. Six feet to just under two was as dramatic a decrease as most people saw, and the fact that it had happened over such a long period of time in small spurts was supposedly a good sign.

There wouldn't need to be any more adjustments or changes to their lifestyle.

Which was part of why he had insisted on taking Ginger out for her daily walks. Joanne frequently joined them for the evening walk, which was difficult because it was almost impossible for him to keep pace with her practically gargantuan strides, but she had conceded to let him do the morning and afternoon walks alone. It was the only time he felt like a normal and functioning person since everything started.

Work had been as accommodating as they could, which was mostly because they feared a law suit more than any sense of compassion. Working in IT, shrinking had almost been helpful at first. It made it easier to squeeze beneath desks and fiddle with uncooperative hardware. Then he kept shrinking and shrinking, and it was an embarrassment for both him and the rest of the staff to have him in the office. The young receptionists and assistants would chuckle quietly as he passed, and more than a few had offered to give him a boost up to their keyboards. Now he worked from home, joined in on conference calls, and did everything he could, but it was becoming clearer and clearer they weren't expecting him to do anything important anymore. Fifteen years with the company and he essentially had squat to show for it.

All he had left was Ginger and the quiet of their neighborhood on an early fall day.

It was still practically summer as far as he was concerned, the sun still high in the sky, the weather still warm, and Ginger panting beside him, her tongue lolling about. The only problem was that his sweat was starting to soak through the tiny, and in his opinion overpriced, clothes he wore. Otherwise though, all the kids were still at school, which cut down on any chances of harassment, and the suburban streets rarely saw anyone else out in the middle of the day. The occasional housewife would eyeball him from her garden or front window, but they were always pitying glances rather than predatory ones.

He had read stories, so many stories, about the horrible things giant people supposedly did to people who had shrunk. One tiny person claimed to post while their enormous college aged captor was in class, detailing their harsh existence under the rule of an enormous fraternity titan. Someone claimed the blog was a hoax, but there were countless others who reported being bullied by friends, coworkers, and even family. Women literally imprisoned by abusive boyfriends, husbands turned into little more than pets while their wives ran around with anyone they could find, and people who literally disappeared one day after a severe shrink.

Ned sighed, and patted the relatively horse-sized corgi next to him, “You wouldn't let that happen, would you, Ginger?”

The dog paused, and turned to look at him. Her huge doggy head turning to the side before she let out an excited bark and returned to trotting down the sidewalk. With a shake of his head, Ned muttered, “For a breed that's supposed to be smart, you're pretty dumb aren't you, Ginger?”

The dog let out another happy yip and they continued on their way.

Ned looked up at the gargantuan houses and perfectly manicured lawns that lined the street. The area they were passing through was a new, slightly ritzier development. The tiny man chuckled, reminding himself that they weren't really new, they had only been built a few years after his neighborhood. They still looked nicer though, no doubt because of how much money the occupants threw into maintaining and renovating the sprawling McMansions. He had found them garish when they had been first built, and now that they stood like enormous block-sized skyscrapers, Ned didn't find them any better.

Mopping his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand, Ned let out a low whistle as he passed by another obnoxious house, wishing its automated sprinklers would turn on to give him some relief from the heat. Smacking his dry lips together, he began to think about cutting the walk short. Next to him Ginger wasn't panting but her tongue was still hanging out, waggling in the wind.

“And people say global warming's a hoax, eh, Ginger?” He laughed as he shook his head, consulting the map of the neighborhood in his head. The dog gave him a quizzical, almost concerned, look, as he decided they'd turn down Holstein and follow it all the way back home to Chestnut.

They had barely cleared another enormous yard before Ned found he was getting lightheaded, and the world around him was growing fuzzier, almost spinning. “Oh, no, no,” he muttered finally recognizing the symptoms as his strides went from purposeful to stumbling in a few steps.

“Ginger, Ginger,” he tugged on the leash hard, and the dog yelped before turning to him, confused and scared. “Go, get,” Ned slapped the dog's flank as hard as he could, his limbs turning to lead and growing weaker with each passing second. The tiny herding dog started barking loudly, and running around him in a panic as he dropped the leash. “Help,” he finally managed as he fell face first into the cement of the sidewalk, the world going completely dark around him.

Ned coughed as he came to, his head pounding and his muscles screaming in pain.

The first thought that entered his head as he tried to right himself was that his doctor was apparently wrong. The next thing he noticed was the fact that he was naked. Grabbing at the ground around him in a panic, his vision slowly clearing and becoming more focused, Ned found it completely empty. “God damn it, Ginger,” he muttered to himself as he realized the dog had picked up his clothes in an attempt to carry him home.

Jeremy or Joanne would no doubt find her on the porch, dutifully and proudly sitting next to a pile of empty clothes. Standing up and staring at the sky, he realized that it was later than he expected. It was still light out but the sun was no longer directly above him and night would arrive sooner rather than later. Cursing to himself, he turned to find his shoes were several relative feet away, and that's when the size of everything else hit him.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he said as he saw the neatly manicured lawn rising up to his waist, and the closest suburban mansion looming like some vast alien structure on the horizon. Ned realized that his doctor's predictions had not only been wrong, they were spectacularly wrong. He had shrunk down to four inches tall, five at best.

Grabbing his now hilariously oversized shoes, he found that they were almost as big as he was. Not wanting to lose them, Ned held them close to his chest and started waddling toward the nearest house. His arms quickly began to ache, and deciding it would be better to leave a clue for Joanne when she inevitably came looking for him, Ned dropped them at the start of the immense driveway he turned onto.

The still sizzling blacktop seemed to stretch for miles as he slowly walked down it. Ned kept staring out across it, trying to imagine the vast beings that could cross it in a few quick steps, or worse the enormous cars that they would drive around in. The fact that the driveway was entirely empty didn't make him feel much better, but it was better to go with the closest house than to try and venture to one with cars in it. If he did that, he might end up lost forever or worse snatched by some bird or cat that was out on the hunt.

All he would need to do was wait by the door, and get the owner's attention when they arrived home. He would probably have to scream and wave his arms like mad, but it wasn't impossible. Four inches wasn't big but it was certainly big enough to still save himself. Or, more accurately, get the attention of a giant who could call his wife to come pick him up.

The embarrassing reality of how he would get home made Ned slow down.

He would have to beg someone to call his wife to come and literally pick him up. The tiny man cringed as he imagined how exactly Joanne would get him home, or what his formerly short wife would look like to him now. Would she just toss him in her purse or the pocket of her pants? What would she say to whatever giant happened to take pity on him?

Ned frowned as he imagined the thundering lecture the rich owner of the house would give him for walking around in public when he was infected. As if it was his fault that any of this had happened to him. Kicking a nearby pebble with his foot, Ned instantly regretted the decision as pain throbbed up his leg. The rock, which he doubted a normal sized person would even notice, had barely moved an inch.

A relative inch, he reminded himself as he started trekking down a neatly decorated path toward the massive doorway of the house.

Halfway down the path, and day had given way to twilight. Ned could feel a chill run down his spine as the sun started to fade behind the horizon and with it, the warmth of the bright sunny day. A few steps later, and he began to feel the strangest sensation in the ground.

Ned started to feel himself swaying as he walked, and the sensation continued when he stood still. The carefully arranged brick beneath his feet felt like it was vibrating, and as he cocked his head in surprise, the tiny man heard what sounded like a distant peal of thunder. This was quickly followed by another, and another. His whole world was starting to shake as he found himself completely engulfed in darkness.

Whirling about, terror gripped Ned's heart as he watched bright white sneakers as big as cars crash down onto the ground. Lifting his head, he realized the tan pillars rising out of them were legs, and he could barely process the young woman's skimpy athletic shorts or the house sized gym bag she carried before she was completely on top of him. He fell to the ground instantly as her foot landed a few feet to his right, and he rolled away from the Adidas logo bearing monstrosity.

As it passed him by, Ned noticed the rust colored stains along the sole and he felt his pulse quicken with fear. Had this girl crushed someone beneath her almighty tread? It was only as he watched air puff up from the bricks she walked on that he realized the stains had a perfectly logical explanation. Especially since the local school district's tracks were all red clay, and it had wreaked havoc on plenty of white shoe wearing members of the community, his wife included.

It was only as the rumbling passed him by and he could stand again that Ned finally realized his chance for salvation was rapidly disappearing.

“Wait!” He screamed at the top of his lungs as he chased after the enormous young woman.

Gazing up her gigantic backside, he found it impossible to ignore the way her powerful leg muscles flexed with every movement, or the outline of her shapely buttocks in her tight black shorts. The gray t-shirt above the shorts was tinged with sweat, as was the long blonde hair that fell down her back in waves.

Pausing to dig her keys from one of the three bags the girl lugged around with her, Ned closed the gap between them. Dashing between her enormous feet, Ned was forced to dive forward, her left foot rising onto the ball as she balanced her purse on her knee and then let it drop as she finally located her house keys.

Standing directly in front of her, Ned started jumping up and down wildly, screaming his head off in an attempt to get the impossibly large girl to notice him. High above his head, he watched as she shoved a key deep into the lock, and turned it, the sound of tumblers moving like an avalanche to him far below.

“Please! I'm down here!” He shouted again, his voice cracking from desperation.

It was only because she turned to return the keys to her bag that her light brown eyes finally noticed him, ranting and raving on the ground below like a mad man. The huge eyes went wide, and her bright pink lips opened in surprise as she tried to make sense of the tiny man at her feet.

“Please! I shrunk! You have to help me!”

As he stared up into the girl's huge face, he realized that she had to be seventeen, eighteen at the oldest, probably one of his son's classmates. The idea of being at the mercy of a teenage girl made him uncomfortable, but anyone would be able to plainly see that he needed help at his size.

He watched as the girl's huge hand went back into her purse and then it came out with a monolithic phone. His eyes went wide as he watched her fiddle with the screen for several agonizingly long seconds. What the girl probably thought was a quiet snicker filled Ned's ears before it was overpowered by the loud digital click of her phone's camera app, the flash blinding him half a second later.

When his vision started to clear, Ned found himself reeling back from an enormous hand.

The huge digits collapsed around him in an instant, and he was pulled with terrifying speed up into the air. His vision spun, his ears popped, and his tiny stomach threatened to revolt as hot bubblegum-scented air overwhelmed his senses. When the world stopped spinning, Ned found himself eye-to-lips with the titanic teen.

“Wow,” her voice roared like a hurricane in his ears, “You are really really small.”