It took a while until they set everything up in Val’s room. They gathered around the device with a bunch of stuff they planned on shrinking.

“Let’s start with her favourite teddy-bear. His name is Roger as far as I remember”, Josh suggested. The others agreed and Vince took the teddy-bear from Josh. He placed it in front of the device and bent the antenna into its direction.

“How small should we make that bear?” Vince asked.

“As small as possible.” Darren said.

“That would be two inches I think.” Vince answered and began playing around on the buttons and wheels on the device. Then he pressed the big red button in the middle and pushed the antenna into the bear which started glowing greenly and slowly began to shrink. It didn’t look as the boys expected it. It wasn’t spectacular at all. It was a fairly slow process and so it took nearly twenty-minutes until the bear had shrunken down to the planned three inches.

“Wow that takes like forever Vince… Can’t you somehow accelerate the process for the next thingy we shrink?” Jared asked impatiently.

“Well here is this one wheel where it says “Velocity Control” but it is already turned quite far and there is a red line indicating that turning it further could be dangerous”, Vince stated.

“Oh c’mon I’m sure a little bit more isn’t that risky right?” Jared answered.

Vince sighed and turned the wheel a little bit further and a red light started blinking on the device.

The next thing they wanted to shrink was Valery’s diary which they found beneath her bed. Vince pushed the antenna into the book and pressed the button. This time the device released a little shockwave and made some unhealthy noises but the shrinking process went noticeably faster.

“Oh yeah now it works as it should”, Jared said enthusiastically. The process took only five minutes this time and now they started shrinking one object after the other always turning the velocity a little higher with each object. The device vibrated heavily and turned pretty hot but no one cared. They all were obsessed with shrinking Valery’s stuff.

“Vince let’s check out whether we can turn stuff back to normal size just to be sure whether we can fix things or not”, Steven suggested and they all agreed.

“I don’t really know how to do it but I think it’s this EQZ button on the right”, Vince said pushing the antenna into a shrunken plush toy elephant and pressed the button. An ear-piercing high-pitched noise came from the now heavily vibrating and even smoking device. The boys screamed in agony for the noise was unbearable and then the device released another shockwave kicking them off their feet. They looked at each other realising that they had all started to glow greenly as well as all the stuff they had shrunken.

Josh had a very bad feeling about it but he couldn’t move at all and even speaking seemed impossible. The noise had stopped but his ears still hurt as hell and he felt hellishly lightheaded. He looked at Vince who was obviously getting smaller but before he could even panic, Josh passed out.

Josh woke up from a rumbling and vibrations in the floor. He still felt dizzy and his body felt like he had run a marathon. It took a while for him to remember what happened but then he immediately got up and checked his surroundings.

“Holy shit… I’m shrunken” he exclaimed. He was located next to his sister’s wardrobe and as he compared his size to the furniture, he guessed that he had been reduced to two inches. He tried not to panic and to focus on being happy that he had survived this after all. He spotted something moving maybe half a mile away on what Josh supposed was Val’s carpet. He remembered that Vince had stood there. Josh climbed onto the fluffy carpet and began crawling through the pink jungle towards Vince.

“Josh is that you?” he heard Vince’s voice calling out. His voice was loud… louder than usual but still it was calming to hear him.

“Yes Vince it’s me” Josh responded while continuing to fight his way over the carpet. The closer he got to Vince the more Josh began wondering how he could have spotted him on the carpet at all. But when he stood in front of him he noticed why that had been the case. Vince was easily thrice as tall as Josh so maybe about six inches.

“Holy shit Josh… It reduced you to only two inches? Well doesn’t really matter anyway I guess”, Vince stated as he saw Josh.

“Vince where is the device and where are the others? We desperately need to fix us before Val arrives!” Josh exclaimed.

“I think it’s too late for that Josh… Didn’t you hear the rumbling a few minutes ago? Someone has come home. I don’t know where the others are. I awoke like half an hour ago and I guess I’ve been asleep for quite a while. The device is…”Vince explained and made a step leftwards. Josh couldn’t believe what he saw. The device, or what was left of it, was as big he was. It was a big dump of molten plastic and metal.

“No… This can’t be happening. Fuck! What are we supposed to do now Vince? What happened in the first place?” Josh yelled agitatedly.

“Well by now I figured that EQZ stands for Equalize… And as the device kind of overheated as I pressed that button, it has shrunken us and returned most of the stuff we shrunk before back to normal size… Well kind of….” Vince continued explaining and pointed at a teddy-bear lying next to Val’s bed. It was as tall as the bed.

“Wait is that Roger?” Josh asked and Vince nodded.

“And it gets worse Josh… Look at your phone”

Josh got out his phone realising that it was off and wouldn’t let itself get turned on again…

“Electronics do not seem to work at this size at all…”

A rumbling interrupted their conversation as something seemed to draw closer. Josh knew it was his sister coming up the stairs to her room.

“Fuck… Vince, take me pickaback and let’s hide beneath her bed. We have to find the others as well….” Josh demanded.

“Don’t you think we should try to get your sisters attention?” Vince asked while raising Josh onto his shoulders.

“Not before we aren’t sure that there isn’t any way to fix this without having to admit that we stole from your father and screwed with Val’s stuff. She’d be so pissed.” Josh answered as Vince was running with him beneath the bed. They arrived just in time as the door on the opposite side of the room opened and a giantess entered.

“Holy mother of god… Your sister is freaking huge” Vince stated with open mouth. She wore her hot pants showing off her now insanely long tanned legs, a red shirt with the logo of the shoe-store she was working in and a pretty provocative V-cleavage. Her long light-brown hair fell over her shoulders framing her, from an objective perspective, beautiful face. Her feet, covered with her thick white tennis-socks, caused the floor to vibrate with each of her steps as she walked further into the room.

“What the hell? Has someone been in my room and searched my stuff? JOSH ARE YOU HOME? What the fuck where is Roger and who put this taller version of it here? JOOOOSH SERIOUSLY IF YOU’RE HOME GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!” she yelled.

Her voice boomed through the room. Josh and Vince had to press their hands onto their ears for their drumheads were about to burst.

“Oh shit she’s already pissed…” Josh stated and gave Vince a frightened look.

“I don’t want to mess with her in that mood especially not when she’s a few hundred times bigger than me…” He continued.

Vince nodded and had to smile as he watched that giant beauty walk around her room tidying up the mess the boys had caused. She picked up the teddy-bear and looked at it closely.

“Hey Josh look at the bear’s back”, Vince exclaimed and Josh looked. There was something on its back and it was slightly moving. It looked like Darren or Jared desperately holding onto the bear’s hair.

“Shit its Jared. I hope he doesn’t fall…. Look how far she is holding him over the ground”, Josh stated nervously.

“Well maybe Josh broke my old Roger and replaced him with a bigger bear as an apology. He looks like Roger just bigger… More to cuddle…” Val’s voice boomed through the room again and she threw the teddy onto her bed.

“Fuck!” Josh and Vince yelled in unison as they saw the teddy fly out of their vision with Jared still stuck to it.

“But I’ll teach him a lesson searching my stuff when I’m not home. What was he looking for anyway?” Val mumbled and sat down on her bed.

The impact of her weight crashing onto the bed sounded like an explosion to Josh and Vince as they were still beneath the bed. The creaking of the duckboard sounded like baulks cracking in a house. Right now they just hoped that Jared was okay. Valery’s huge feet dangled around in front of the two each of them by far bigger than Josh or even Vince. Her long legs looked like redwood trunks growing into the horizon. Josh and Vince began to realise that this could turn out to become a dangerous adventure.