Jonathan Turner was a wealthy business man. He had a wife and kids, and overall he was doing well for himself. Alex Thompson was a single guy, living alone with his two cats, not really going anywhere in his life. Erik Talejo was a down-on-his-luck, homeless guy living on the streets of a town, trying to get by in life. These three men were very different people, but the three of them all had one thing in common.
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Jonathan entered his home after a long day of work. He greeted his wife, Irene, with a lovely kiss. Jonathan was a relatively tall person, at the very least he stood noticeably taller than his wife. When he came home today, however, he and his wife noticed that the difference between them wasn't as noticeable. The only thing they said about it were offhand comments, though. Maybe it was just their imagination? Regardless, it didn't seem important. Afterwards, Jonathan headed to the bedroom to change out of his work clothes, and into a more leisurely outfit. He barely made it a few feet into the room when it happened.
--
Alex walked out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. It was his day off and he planned on not leaving the house at all. That was how he liked to spend most days, but he had to make money somehow and that required him to leave his house to go to work several days a week. Today was not one of those days. Alex didn't measure his height everyday, because why in the world would he. If he did do that, however, he would have noticed something strange. Not that he would have done anything about it, though. Regardless, it was time to feed his cats! He grabbed the bag food, the sound of which caused the cats to instantly come running towards him. He took up a scoop of the food and began to pour it into their bowls, and that was when it happened.
--
Erik sat against a brick wall on the outside of a building. People walked by and he asked them if they had any change to spare. He got a quarter here and there, and occasionally someone would give him a dollar, but for the most part, people walked by as if he wasn't even there. It was kind of humiliating for him, to be a grown man, and have other human beings walk by as if he were a piece of dirt. But it was his life, and at least he was still alive, and had his health, for now. Erik had also gotten a few centimeters smaller, but the poor guy never had a chance to even notice. Soon, nature called and Erik got up to take a leak real quick, but he had only managed a couple steps when it happened.
----
Jonathan Turner, Alex Thompson, and Erik Talejo were all very different people, but they had one thing in common: They were all infected with SHIV, which stands for the Shrinking Human Idiopathic Virus.
--
Jonathan Turner looked at his surroundings. It was like an alien landscape, but everything still felt...familiar somehow. He took a second to think about what occurred. He had just spoken with his wife, and then went to the bedroom, but didn't get far into it. That was as far as Jonathan knew. He took two steps into the bedroom, and the very next thing he remembers is seeing the alien landscape around him. Then he started to look at the landscape more closely. He noticed a gigantic wooden building far off in front of him. From the far distance, he could tell it looked suspiciously like the same chest he and his wife had sitting at the foot of their bed. And the ground, it was very fibrous and made out of giant strands, and it was a beige color, almost identical to the carpet in their bedroom. And then he looked around more, and as much as he wanted to deny it, as much as his mind told him it couldn't be true, Jonathan figured it out. He was still in his bedroom.
Jonathan let out a monstrous scream but not a soul in the world heard it. Jonathan pinched himself to make sure it wasn't a dream. It wasn't. He had no idea why, he had no idea how, but he had shrunk. And not just shrunk a little bit, no, he shrunk a lot. It was impossible for him to measure himself at this height, nor did he actually want to know his size, but it was miniscule. On the plus side, his clothes had shrunk with him. It was a bit odd that they did, but with everything else going on, Jonathan didn't question it at all. He had attempted to walk through the fibrous carpet strands bigger than him, but it didn't work very well. That was when he heard a loud shout coming from outside of the room. It sounded like his name.
He heard the call again and turned around to face the gigantic door frame. The pathway itself was scary, but that was nothing compared to the massive figure that appeared in it a second later. Jonathan looked in complete awe. In the doorway was his wife, but she was not the same as he remembered her. She was titanic, or rather, she was still her normal height, and it was Jon who was now small. Regardless, the figure standing in the doorway didn't look human to Jonathan. He knew it was his wife, but there was something so monstrous about it. About how big she was. He barely had a second to contemplate anything as she took a single step and the sole of her bare foot encompassed the entire sky for Jonathan.
In an instant the soft, warm flesh of his wife's sole smashed down upon him. The entire reason Jonathan wasn't obliterated outright was because the plush carpet provided just enough cushion to soften the blow. Just soften it, though. Jonathan did his best to let out a blood-curdling scream as a metric ton of force pressed down on him. He felt his bones creak beneath the pressure, as if he were about to explode. All light was extinguished and the only thing Jonathan was left with was the scent of lotion his wife used, and the taste of blood starting to pool in his mouth. The impact broke his nose instantly, his teeth were shattered, and nothing else was faring much better. But it wasn't over. His wife, Irene, had a habit of digging her toes into the carpet. The blackness above Jonathan left as he caught sight of his monolithic wife standing above him. It was hard to see through the black eyes, but he knew it was her. He couldn't even move a muscle before her big toe dug itself into the carpet right where Jonathan was. She had recently gotten a pedicure and her toenails were clean, pristine, and sharp. In an instant the toenail sliced right through Jonathan and eviscerated him. Blood and guts spilled out onto the plush carpet and onto Irene's nails, but it was much too small to be seen. He died after that impact.
Nobody heard from Jonathan again. Nobody knew what had happened. Irene called the police, did everything she could think of to find out what happened, but for a while, there was no answer. Once she learned about it, she assumed that was what happened. She told herself, and her kids, that it must have been a bug, or some other creature that had gotten him. She never knew it was actually she herself who ended his life.
--
Giant structures encircled Alex Thompson, leaving him trapped between them, with nowhere to run. He hardly noticed them, though. There was a much bigger threat looming above him. Two, actually. Even from his new found point of view, he knew exactly what he was looking at. Towering above him were his cats. He could see the strands of fur coming off. He had no idea what happened, or why, but it was obvious that he had gotten smaller, a lot smaller. His mind didn't want to believe it, because shrinking wasn't real, at least not in the sense that just happened to him. But there was no mistaking what he was looking at.
His eyes were so fixated on the giant creatures above him he never really took note of the objects that surrounded him. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. He was simply too small to do anything about it. Before he knew it, his cat had look down upon him, well, not him, but the pieces of food he was surrounded by. The last thing Alex ever saw was his cat reaching down to eat the pieces that had dropped to the floor. He fortunately died almost immediately, and didn't have to suffer being chewed and digested.
It was a while before anything found out Alex was missing. His work only questioned why he never showed up, but it wasn't until he failed to pay his rent that his landlord went into his house herself. Thankfully the cats were still alive, though they weren't fairing that well. While his disappearance at first seemed a mystery, once the news came out, it was a pretty open-and-shut case that Alex had gotten killed by his cats. They were given to a local shelter.
--
Erik Talejo saw the giant hills and bumps on the concrete surface he was on, and simply sat there confused. He had no idea what he was looking at. He looked up towards the sky and it seemed as normal as ever. Just a standard light blue sky, with a few clouds rolling by. But the ground was just completely different. And then a rumbling was starting. Every second a shake would occur beneath his feet, and it got more and more pronounced every time. He looked around to identify the source, and once he turned around he found it. He didn't have to worry about finding a place to take a piss anymore.
In the distance Erik saw a woman, but there was something different about her. She was huge! Her name was Rebecca Samly, and she was simply out for her morning run. Erik saw her running and realized the tremors he was feeling was this woman stepping down as she ran. Not only was every step she taking making a bigger shake, it was making her appear larger, or more correctly, it was her getting closer.
Erik did the only thing his mind could think do to in such an impossible situation and he began waving his arms above his head in an attempt to get the woman to see him and stop her footfalls. Needless to say, she never saw the puny man. Her footsteps drew closer and closer and before long Erik found himself falling over to the concrete sidewalk, unable to support himself from the force. The rough and ragged bumps of the sidewalk cut into his skin, but he was too afraid of the titanic woman to notice or care. He could hear the loud smack of rubber hitting concrete with every step she took. Erik couldn't tell if he was trembling from the force, or because he was that afraid of this woman. Most likely both.
Erik was on his stomach now, facing the woman within a few feet of him. She was simply moving way to fast. It was mindblowing to see such a massive figure moving that fast. She was traversing what appeared to be hundreds of miles for Erik in seconds. In Erik's mind, it was hard to consider such a creature human at that point. No human could move that fast. The reality was, though, that she was human. Nothing had changed about her. It was Erik who was now less than human.
The last thing Erik saw was the sole of her running shoe crashing down upon him as she took a step. In his last seconds he could see pieces of dirt and rocks stuck to the sole and between the treads. It was Erik who was no longer human, he was simply dirt. Her shoe crashed down onto the sidewalk and Erik's body was crushed and exploded upon impact. His blood coated the sole of her shoe where he was smashed, but to the humans it would look like nothing more then a speck of dirt. Rebecca kept going on with her run, she would never know that she mercilessly killed somebody that day.
As for Erik, nobody ever heard from him again. To be honest, nobody really even noticed he was gone. He had been a faceless man living on the streets of a busy town. He was already a nobody to most people anyway. Once the news broke out, a handful of peopled noticed there were less homeless people on the streets, but not many gave it a thought beyond that.
--
Not only were all three of them were infected with SHIV, they were some of the first people to contract the virus. Their chances of surviving it were virtually zero percent. They were one of the first people to get it, but they definitely were not the last.