Small Chapter 8: Gloria

The alarm buzzed. Gloria woke in darkness. It was 4:30am, Monday morning. To Gloria Marie Ivory that only meant one thing. She needed coffee. She dragged herself out of bed and checked herself. Her body was itchy and her smell was, well distinct would be putting it politely. Coffee would need to wait for now. She started the shower and as the water warmed she undressed and relieved herself. She stepped into the water and let it run down her. It felt wonderful. Gloria felt up her body. She was still keeping it together rather well she thought. She gripped a lump of fat around her midsection. Or maybe not. She needed to start exercising, maybe take a yoga class or start jogging again. That would require waking up even earlier. She sighed.  Didn’t she get enough of a workout running around that damned hospital. Again the answer was apparently no. These were the burdens of being a single mom.  She resigned herself to at least work in some sit-ups before bed. Her hands went up past her waist and her burgeoning belly fat up to her chest. She gripped and lifted her considerable breasts. Were they starting to sag? She could add bench presses to that list as well as buying some new bras. A tingle surged through her as her finger grazed her left nipple, right where Izzellah had touched her the day before. It rose to full attention. She felt a quiver in her lower lip and bit down on it.

“Get yourself together.” she thought. It was inappropriate to have such thoughts about your daughter. Even if she hadn’t been touched like that in years. She’d tried dating after “him” but her daughters were still young then and any fleeting moments of intimacy she did get were...disappointing. Still that wasn’t an excuse to even consider her daughter as an option. Although. She did technically own Izzellah now. In the eyes of the law it wouldn’t be a problem at all, she’d just be enjoying her property. Izzellah seemed to have fun with it. It could be something to bring them closer. Really rekindle that special bond between mother and daughter. She squeezed her chest together and tried to remember how Izzellah felt squirming inside her cleavage, her tiny hands scrambling for freedom, her little fingers on her nip-.

BUZZ! BUZZ!!

Dammit! It was 4:59. Shower fantasy time was over. Time to go back to reality where she was a mother first before anything else. She dressed quickly and went downstairs to start breakfast.

They would eat healthy. Every morning Gloria took the time to hand prepare all her daughter’s meals for the week. While the milk simmered for a breakfast of oatmeal she busied her hands slicing an assortment of fruits and vegetables. Diced oranges, apple slices, tomatoes, cucumbers, pineapples and more were dropped into a blender. She started it and as the produce spun and mixed into a medley she procured a bin of organic steel cut oats and poured them into the boiling milk. She stirred it and added just a hint of sugar and cinnamon for taste. The heat was turned down as the oats binded with the milk. She would let it warm on very low heat until ready to be served. Finally she stopped the blender and poured the fresh smoothies into cups and refrigerated them.

Next was lunch and dinner. Gloria worked long hours and often wasn’t home in time to cook fresh meals for them necessitating this weekly ritual. She opened the freezer. There were some frozen prawns she could pan sear and put in a nice salad for Sabrina, that and some yogurt, maybe a nice hearty soup as well. She picked up a large white bowl half filled with ice cream and assorted candy toppings. Gloria rubbed her forehead. Is this what Sabrina chose to eat when she was home alone? The ice cream was for dessert after dinner. Gloria pinched the fledgling love handle she discovered this morning. She imagined her youngest daughter at three-hundred plus pounds and missing half her teeth. That girl wouldn’t eat anything healthy if it weren’t for her. She scooped the ice cream concoction into the sink to melt. At least Izzellah took better care of herself. Her oldest was so body conscious sometimes she wondered if anorexia had become a problem. Izzellah made a big to do about not eating her meals at all, yet they’d somehow disappeared by the end of the week. She’d appreciate a salad too, with...she checked the bottom cabinets, a protein bar would do and some-. She stopped herself. She didn’t have to cook for Izzellah anymore.

“Dammit.” she cursed to herself. She checked the fridge. Sure enough three cups of fruit and vegetable smoothie had been poured. Gloria grabbed a thermos from another cabinet. She would have the rest with her lunch. Next came the best part. She opened the bottom drawer of her kitchen counter. Inside was a plethora of different coffee beans. She was running low. Only  Blue Mountain, Hawaiian Kona, and Columbian. She chose the imported beans of her homeland, on her mother’s side. Ay! She would have to call her. Grandma Sofia did not know about her granddaughters new circumstances. She would be livid. That was a worry for another day and there was coffee to be made! She also claimed her personal electric grinder. Gloria did not consider herself a coffee aficionado but she did appreciate the craft enough to grind her own beans. She gave them a sniff. Such heavenly aroma. She would have it black today.

Sabrina surveyed her beverage with trepidation.

“Just try it!” Gloria demanded. “Your sister likes it.” Gloria pointed to her oldest who was nursing a minor portion in a Small Comforts cup the size of a bucket to her.

Sabrina sniffed the blended elixir. “This has vegetables in it!” How could she tell just from that?

“You won’t be able to taste them!” Gloria ensured. “The fruit masks them.”

Sabrina brought the cup to her mouth and took one exploratory sip, just barely allowing a drop to reach her tongue. “I don’t like it.” she said.

“You didn’t even-!” Gloria had to restrain herself. The frustration was rising. Sabrina was sometimes so much worse than Izzellah had ever been, but she was adamant not to have the same hostility between her and her youngest. “Just drink it, mija!”

“Why?!”

“Because I don’t want you go on insulin at fifteen or die in your forties!” Gloria could swear. Her sweetest daughter turned into a demon over the most petty reasons. Then in a surprising move her oldest came through. The sprite finished the remainder of her smoothie then went to gain her sister’s attention. She was lifted up and the two seemed to have some private conversation.

“Really?!” Sabrina chirped with excitement. Her eyes lit up and her mood completely changed. “Anything for you!” she said to her pocket person. She took the smoothie drink and downed it in one long chug. She wiped some residue of her mouth and let out a cute burp. “Actually that tasted alright.” she peeped.

Gloria was in mild shock. What just happened?

Gloria Ivory was an ER doctor at the Harmony Grove Medical Center. The hospital was criminally understaffed for its area as a result of not being part of the Winton regional empire. This meant that every member was valuable and that she worked long hours. She walked in through the back entrance and scrubbed in.

The emergency room was always full. By the very nature of the job Gloria was charged with treating patient after patient from the issues as minor as the common cold to bullet wounds and industrial accidents and everything in between. Lately there was a new trend developing. Shrink “accidents”.

Gloria hadn’t truly bought into the shrink effect until it happened to Izzellah. Sure she’d seen the occasional report on the news but she’d never experienced it until recently. The day her daughter shrunk she’d already seen her first tiny in real life. It’s what motivated her to test her family in the first place. And now? New incidents were being reported left and right. She’d seen a worried mother bring in her young son after he’d passed out in the middle of a soccer game. They thought it was exhaustion but he’d shrunk in her arms. There was another “accident” with a shrunken father who’d broken both his legs. It was fairly obvious he was being abused by his two children. It was part of her job now to offer asylum in these cases. That meant the hospital would provide care and temporary housing until the victim could be moved to a research institute if they volunteered themselves over. He refused. Harmony Grove was the only hospital to provide this in the entire tri-county area.

She headed down the hall to the room where her next patient was called in to wait for her.
“Mrs. Wanda Sandow?” She inspected the tall and pale woman sitting on the exam bed and checked her charts. “You’ve been complaining of painful stomach aches and vomiting.”

“Yes.” She replied.

“Standard question. Have you eaten anything strange in the last few days?” Gloria began her examination.

“N-no.”

“Foreign foods? Spicy foods? Been out of the country at all?” She started checking vitals. Eyes were normal. Her pulse was slightly elevated and her stomach was bloated.

“No.” Wanda repeated to all questions. She was jittery and seemed just a tad off. Gloria put her stethoscope to Wanda’s chest.

“Breath in please.” Gloria asked.

Wanda complied. Her breath was clear if slightly labored. Gloria placed it on the woman’s stomach and heard something. It was a small thumping sound. It grew louder and she felt something push.

“This may seem odd but have you had unprotected sex within the last few months?” Gloria inquired.

“Excuse me?” Wanda replied with indignation.

“No excuse me.” Gloria apologized. “It’s not good to make assumptions, but you definitely have something inside you. I can hear it.”

Wanda’s face went even paler. “Impossible!” she insisted.

“You assure me that you haven’t eaten or swallowed anything strange in the last few days, even by accident?”

“Yes. I positive.” Wanda insisted.

“Well than this is a mystery.” Gloria gripped her pager. “Clyde, I need an ultrasound in room fourteen please.”

“Ul-ultra sound?” Mrs. Sandow was visibly shivering now. “Why?”

“To rule out that you might be pregnant.”

“Pregnant! Dr. Ivory I assure you I’m not pregnant.”

“You and your?....Husband haven’t  engaged in sexual activity in the last three to six months?”

“Well no but I’ve taken precautions.” Wanda informed. Her face strained in discomfort.

“We will find out soon enough. Don’t worry.” She laid Wanda back onto the exam bed.

A heavyset black man wheeled in a cart with a monitor on it. He sat in a stool next to the bed and poured a clear cream onto the wand.

“Start at the lower abdomen, the uterus.” Gloria instructed.

“You know I’ve done this before.” Clyde pressed the wand against Wanda’s abdomen, and feedback travelled back via ultra high frequencies to the monitor. Nothing appeared. Clyde moved the wand back and forth to check different angles. Still nothing.

Gloria rubbed her chin. “Move up to more, to her stomach.”

Clyde grumbled in annoyance but complied. Again there was nothing. Gloria stared at the monitor with intensity. Was there something-?

“Ah!” Wanda spasmed lightly. There was movement in the black and white feedback of the monitor.

“What the hell?!” Clyde observed. “Is something moving in there?”

Both medical professionals focused on the screen. Clyde moved the wand over to attempt at a better image. Something with a vaguely familiar silhouette appeared. It couldn’t be could it?

“Clyde can I speak with you in the hallway?” Gloria tugged the nurse’s arm and dragged him out.

“Did you see that?!” she asked him.

“I saw something.” he said. “Something that I don’t get paid enough to worry about.”

“Clyde!” Gloria couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “I think that woman swallowed a person.”

Damien Sandow suffered from severe second and third degree burns all over his body from extended time treading in gastric acid. He laid on a small coughing pillow in the intensive care unit. Gloria dabbed at his epidermis with lidocaine using a cotton swab. The work was tedious and time consuming. It required a delicate hand and and special tools to treat and wrap his fragile body without further damaging it. Gloria had taken it upon herself to deliver treatment. Damien was her patient by proxy. Mrs. Sandow insisted it was an accident, that she didn’t even know he was in there, yet Mr. Sandow a man married for fifteen years and a father volunteered for the institute as soon as he’d gained consciousness. Wanda was hysterical. They were meant for each other, they were going to be together forever. Truly together. The hospital didn’t have the right to take away her property. She had to be escorted out of the hospital, but not before the threat of litigation. Mr. Sandow’s troubles might not be over quite yet. Asylum was a courtesy not a right. If Mrs. Sandow managed to find a lawyer before he officially became Institute property he’d very likely be delivered back to her.

Gloria monitored her patient. His vitals had normalized. Her mind drifted to dark thoughts. What if this had happened to her daughter? Would she notice if she’d swallowed her? Would it matter? Izzellah was just a much her property as Damian belonged to his wife. She flashed back to their encounter from yesterday.

She pinched herself. “No! Dammit!” she couldn’t start to think of her daughter that way. Izzellah Ivory was not a thing no matter what the law said. A law a foolish as it was shortsighted. The new species act also known as Deloris’ law was passed to keep and eighty year old blind woman named Deloris Brown from spending the rest of her life in prison for accidentally stepping on and killing a shrunken postal worker. The case had caught the attention of the nation and millions of Americans sympathized with the elderly woman. Experts had discovered in the autopsy enough genetic differences to classify shrink victims as a new species. A species without human rights. Thus her daughter and everyone like her became property and all America knew is that they’d kept an old lady out of jail. Gloria continued to leer at an unconscious Mr. Sandow. The man that was less than human, less than an animal. The tingle of tiny hands hadn’t left her skin. It tormented her. She could just take him. She had the ability to nurse him back to health at home. He would enjoy living with her more than the institute or a crazy woman that literally wanted to eat him. Would she even get in trouble for it? He wasn’t technically the hospital’s property or the institutes yet. The worst she would be charged with was petty theft. She could do it!

“I need a break.” Gloria said to herself. She left the room and Mr. Sandow to his rest. She couldn’t decide what was worse; still humoring incestous thoughts toward her daughter or literally stealing a woman’s husband at work. Ignacio might have been right about her. Mr. Sandow’s fate was now in the hands of time. Would the institute claim him before Wanda! Either way it would be done before the day was over.

The institute had won. During Gloria’s lunch break a man in a white lab coat had shown up to claim Mr. Sandow and two other volunteers from the hospital. Mrs. Sandow had reappeared just minutes after the final paperwork had been signed and they had all become property of the government. Mrs. Sandow still insisted she would have her day in court and she might even have a case but the institute had good lawyers. Either way it was no longer Gloria’s responsibility. She wasn’t sure the institute was a fate any better though. She’d heard rumors that they weren’t only searching for a cure but something else, perhaps it was the something that let a tiny man survive for three days in his wife’s stomach. No matter what eventually happened to Izzellah, Gloria was adamant she would never go there. She was better off as the family toy for life than a research subject. Sabrina would eventually move out on her own and maybe take Izzellah with her. That would be a good life right? Fun even. Or maybe Izzellah would stay behind and they could have some fun of their own.

Gloria slapped herself. Hard. “Stop it!” She needed it bad. She would have to find a way to get her own tiny, one that wasn’t her daughter, or even just go on a date. God why did she have to look so much like him!? Fuck that bastard for leaving her like this! Literally!

Gloria returned home at the reasonable hour of 10:30pm. Her girls were asleep and she needed to get to bed soon herself, but there was one thing nagging at her. She slipped into Sabrina’s room. She walked over to the nightstand where Izzellah usually rested. She wasn’t there.

“Mija, are you awake? Where are you.” She whispered. She heard a shuffling noise. Her youngest turned over in her sleep to the side. She could see Izzellah clutched to her chest snuggly. “Mija.”

“What?” Izzellah murmured. The tiny began to stir. She wiggled in her larger sister’s hand.

Gloria sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed. Ever the heavy sleeper Sabrina was not disturbed by this at all. “Mija, what are you doing there?”

Izzellah snorted to alertness. “What?” she asked the darkness. Gloria moved to try and pry her small daughter from the twelve year old’s grip.

“No.” Sabrina peeped and rolled over again. She cuddled Izzellah even closer. Dammit the girl was infuriating in her sleep too. Gloria walked around the bed to try again.

“Mom?” Izzellah turned to face her.

“Yes, mija. Can you get free?”

“Sure.” Izzellah slurred. She tapped the side of Sabrina’s index finger. It flexed and patted her head. She licked it next. It went to press against her chest and then the middle finger came awake. It started to rub at Izzellah’s abdomen. Gloria couldn’t believe what she was witnessing as Sabrina’s fingers responded to her teasing and awaken they began to explore and grope Izzellah’s tiny body. Sabrina’s mouth formed a perverted smile as a bead of drool ran down the side. Within a moment her hands were loosened and it only took another for Izzellah to escape it’s depraved grasp, and good lord she was naked!

“I just figured that one out today.” Izzellah boasted.

“Why are you naked, Mija?!” Gloria had to cover her mouth to stop the accidental shout.

“It’s what Sabrina wants.” she shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it. I don’t fight her on these things anymore.”

“Anymore?” Gloria noted. Izzellah was silent. “We need to talk, mija.”

Gloria sat in her room, on her bed, with her tiny and completely nude oldest daughter in her hand. This was immensely awkward for her but Izzellah didn’t seem fazed at all. The Izzellah she knew was extremely uptight and body conscious. How has that changed in less than a week.

“What did you want to talk about mom?” Izzellah asked while she rubbed her eyes.

“Are you okay, mija? Really okay?”

“I’m fine.” Izzellah informed but she didn’t make eye contact.

“Don’t lie, mija.” Gloria’s intuition told her a different story. Ever since she’d shrunk and especially in the last few days Izzellah had been...strange. She was oddly more respectful. That wasn’t right. “You can talk to me, mija.”

“What do you want me to say mom?” Izzellah looked up at her.

“Anything, mija.” Gloria prodded. “What did you mean by “anymore”?”

“I-...nothing.”

“Mija!”

“What?!” Izzellah snapped. “She’s in charge okay. You knew that when you gave me to her! She’s the human! I’m not! I do what she says!”

“She’s not hurting you is she!?”

The image of Sabrina’s foot was imprinted in Izzellah’s mind. “I don’t know. She’s been reading things. Teaching me things. Studying!”

“Mija, I don’t want you to be afraid of us.” Gloria rubbed her daughter’s head with her index finger.

“Well too late!” Izzellah crossed her arms. Her face was red.

“Do I need to talk with Sabrina?”

“No.” Izzellah denied. “She hasn’t done anything you wouldn’t do. That a human wouldn’t do. I’m...adjusting.”

“Adjusting?”

“To all of this!” Izzellah waved up and down her body then to all around her. “I hate all of this but that’s how it is now! “This won’t be the worst thing that happens to me in life.””

“I think you need a break tonight, Izzellah.” Gloria said. “You’ll sleep with in here tonight.”

“I don’t want to.” Izzellah denied. “Just give me back to Sabrina. She’ll freak out if I’m not there when she wakes up.”

“Too bad for her. I’ve already made my decision.” Gloria set Izzellah on her own pillow and gave her a silk handkerchief to wrap herself up in. “A mother has the right to spend time with her daughter.”

Izzellah was mute. They both knew she couldn’t do anything about this. Gloria had to admit she enjoyed having renewed power over her rebellious daughter. She turned and went to sleep herself. She would have words with Sabrina in the morning. Figure out what was actually  happening.