Tess to the rescue

Looking at the text message on her phone, Tess frowned. Making her way down through the wine cellar, she mumbled to herself, “Never more than fifty five, ever.” Crossing the room, she tested the handle for the shop door and smiled when it turned in her grasp.

She hesitated a moment, wondering what mischief or deviltry might lay on the other side, given how distant Tom had been acting during the break from school. Opening the door slowly, she peered inside the room, wrinkling her nose at the dust still lingering in the air.

 “Tom?” she said, not seeing her brother anywhere in the room.

When Tom has heard the door open, he wanted to leap for joy. Hearing her call for him, “Down here,” he replied, trying to yell loud enough to be heard by her.

“Tom?” she repeated into the hazy room.

“Here!” he shouted again, starting to worry maybe she wouldn’t hear him before she decided to quit the room.

“If you’re not down here, I swear there will be great vengeance and furious anger,” she warned, tone taking on an irritated edge, as she walked closer to the table, eyes scanning for any possible hiding places from which he might pounce unexpectedly.

Clambering over the terrain created by the heap of his gigantic clothing, he moved to the side of the table leg, waving his arms frantically from the floor and calling her name.

Seeing movement at the ground level startled Tess and made her squeak and take a step back. When paused to look at it, she quickly realized it was not a mouse or a spider, but a tiny figure on the ground, flailing its arms.

She frowned and leaned in closer, “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, bringing her hands to her mouth, eyes wide as she recognized the diminutive form of her brother.

He spread his hands, “I don’t know what happened,” he said, trying to make his voice loud.

Getting down onto her knees, she put her hands on her lap, “What did you do?’ she asked, utterly astonished to see her brother now was no taller than the smallest finger on either of her hands.

He shook his little head, looking up at her. “I was fiddling with that machine on the workbench. I thought it was defunct. It suddenly came to life and zapped me with some type of ray or something,” he explained, voice panicked.

Tess brought a hand to her face and tried to suppress a laugh.

“It’s not funny!” he said, expression serious.

“I’m sorry,” she said, failing at withholding her laugh.

“C’mon Tess, please,” he said, chagrinned. “How can you be laughing?”

Bout of mirth at an end, she shook her head, putting a determined expression on her face, “Okay tiny Tom, what would you have me do?” she asked, tone mock serious.

“Check out the machine, see if there is some way to reverse the process, a switch or something,” he said, pointing up toward the tabletop.

She stood up and looked at the machine, now dormant. “I’m not going to touch it, the last thing I want is to wind up on the floor beside you,” she replied crouching back down, giving him a quick shake of her head.

“Please,” he said, tone plaintive. ”Just look.”

She rolled her eyes and let out a sigh. Rising back up, she looked at the device, the loose assortment of wires and dials and buttons. Looking back down on him, she said, “I don’t know Tom. It looks like it’s fried or something. There’s nothing here telling what anything does.”

He raised his arms toward her, opening and closing his hands the way an infant wanting to be picked up might. Bending down, she picked him up in her left hand. “You’re so light, like a tiny little feather,” she said, turning her hand so now he was in the center of her palm. “And naked.”

Embarrassed, he moved his hands to cover himself.

She giggled, “At full size I can see why the girls at school think so highly of you,” poking at his side with her right index finger.

“Stop it,” he said, trying to fend her off, but being unsuccessful as she tickled him.

“Who’s the champion now?” she asked in a deep voice, reminiscent of their earlier childhood when he would use his superior strength to overcome and pin her and force her to call him the champion.

“I said stop!” he yelled, getting frustrated and angry.

“I’m just playing, little brother,” she said, emphasizing the word little as she withdrew her tormenting finger.

“Well it’s not funny,” he snapped, frowning.

“It’s not funny,” she repeated, parroting him.

He scowled.

“Don’t sulk,” she said, “It’s very unbecoming.”

“I’m not sulking,” he protested. “I’m just worried about what’s happening here and I don’t understand why you aren’t taking this seriously.”

“Fair enough,” she said, setting him down on the table near the machine. “I think it’s the impossibility of it all Tom, I know it’s not funny, well, sort of funny, but like a nervous kind of laugh because of the situation,” she offered.

He nodded, “I know, I laughed, screamed, and freaked out a little too,” he said.

“Okay, so what did you do to this thing?” she asked, looking at the machine.

“I looked at it and when I l moved it to read the side it just started making noise and flashing,” he answered.

“So other than that you didn’t touch any of the knobs or dials at all?” she asked, hands on hips, head tilted slightly to the left.

He let out a breath, “I looked at it, I moved it to read the side,” he said, walking around to the side and pointing at the writing on the side.

“Uh huh,” she said. “And poof, it shrunk you to this size,” she said, not bothering to conceal her incredulity.

“I swear,” he said. “All I did was lean it back and read, then when I set it down it started making noise and flashing. I moved a couple of dials and stuff and then it hit me with like a shockwave of some type and then I was like this.”

“Weird,” she said. “I still can’t believe how utterly tiny and small you are,” she added, finding the situation incomprehensible and difficult to reconcile with rational thought.

“You can’t believe it, how do you think I feel? It’s happening to me,” he said, emotion seeping into his voice as he tried to reign in his distress.

“You know you can’t tell mom and dad,” she said, slowly shaking her head from side to side.

“Why not?” he asked, puzzled as to why she thought he shouldn’t go to them for help.

“You’ll wind up in a cage at one of BioDyne’s research labs while they try and figure out what happened to you,” she replied. “Probably poked and prodded and eventually dissected.”

He frowned, considering. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said, feeling the situation was becoming more and more desperate.

She smiled. “I know, I’ll get in touch with grandfather, lay it out like a hypothetical situation, or wait, better yet, a school project and see what he ideas he might come up with,” she suggested, shrugging her shoulders.

He nodded, “That’s smart. I like that. If anybody can come up with something it would be grandfather. But what am I supposed to do until then, I can’t stay here like this,” he said frowning.

“That’s true. I’ll call the school from the house phone and pretend to be mother explaining your absence from school for medical reasons, while I can take you back with me and look after you until we get some ideas from grandfather,” she reasoned, reviewing the idea in her mind and finding the plan solid.

“Thank you Tess, I don’t know what I would do without you,” he said, genuinely grateful.

“You would probably would have died,” she said solemnly, “But don’t worry, big sister has things under control,” she said with a beaming smile on her lovely face.

He nodded. “What are you going to tell mom and dad about my sudden absence here?”

“I’ll tell them you jetted back to school with one of the other kids,” she offered.

He let out a sigh of relief.