An alarm blared just long enough to wake me from my sleep, but I pressed my eyelids back together.  With nothing to distract me and no pressing obligations the nine minutes of peace and quiet between alarms was the clearest my mind got throughout the day.  Normally my mind would drift, and I would be able to look at things from a perspective I could not manage when it needed to be solved.  Today, however, I could not shake a nightmare so bizarre it made me want to start a dream journal.  Why in a thousand years would I dream about shrinking by the redhead in my classical art class I had been crushing on?

I breathed in deep to savor the morning air and nearly coughed.  Rather than the neutral processed air that usually filled my dorm, the strong scent of bare skin filled my nostrils.  My eyes shot open, and I realized that this was not my dorm at all.  Nothing about this room was familiar, down to the light blue sheets that stretched hundreds of feet above and below me, with a sharp drop to the white carpet below.  The ground around me slanted sharply downward.  Something massive must have been right behind me, warping the very earth.

A low moan roared from above me, causing me to cringe as vibrations permeated my body.  I looked up and gasped at the terrifyingly large body of the girl I had been crushing on.  My back was against her kneecap, and the golden skin of her thigh slanted sharply away from me.  She slept face-down, leaving me with what looked like an oblong white marble building with a bit of her flat tummy peeking out the bottom until her splayed-out arms.  Her long red hair fell in a messy mop down her back while her sun-kissed face pressed into the pillow.

When she had asked me to stop by in the evening I leapt at the opportunity.  She and her friends were planning a chill night in, she said, just a bit of drinking and then some hanging out.  It did not take a master codebreaker to decipher what that meant, and I had imagined “hanging out” with her almost nightly since the semester began.  I didn’t even mind that my go-to wingman bailed on me at the last minute because he heard some crazy stories about Gamma girls and urged me not to go either.  No right-thinking person would take the statement that no man had ever returned from their parties alive literally: they obviously meant no one returned the same.

The night started pleasant enough.  She introduced me to two of her sorority sisters, some of her closest friends she said, all of which seemed rather impressed she had gotten me to come over – I would have figured it the other way around.  They weren’t all just out of my league: we weren’t even playing the same sport.  I didn’t think she had even noticed me before until she addressed me by name and told me to visit.

Something was unusual about these women, but I could not put my finger on it.  They seemed like fairly typical rich college girls: pretty, fashionable, a little catty to each other.  It took a few minutes to register, but it finally clicked when Jackie, a slender woman with hot pink hair, stared down at me with hungry teal eyes and asked if she could pick me up: all of them towered over me, and not by just a little.  The shortest was still over a head taller than me.  My friend was going to kick himself when I told him about this tomorrow.

As she had promised the night started with a big of beer pong, which I figured was window dressing for asking me over so it wouldn’t seem as though she just wanted to bang.  We divided into teams, me with my date and Jackie partnering with a blond behemoth named Helen.  They boasted about how they were going to absolutely crush me, and said I should just beg for them to spare me now.  I retorted that they shouldn’t speak too soon, I had been known to run the table in the past and might just surprise them.

After stepping up to the table, I got the distinct feeling I was about to eat my words.  It must have been specially made for them.  Standing next to it gave me flashbacks to my first few meals without a booster seat.  The damn thing came up to my chin, and I couldn’t even see over the cups.  I looked up at my date with an uncertain expression, and she simply raised her eyebrows back.  Nothing could be done.

Jackie and Helen took turns cracking jokes about my height.  This was nothing new for me, I had been hearing them since about third grade, but I had to give them credit for being creative.  Some of them were almost insulting.

“Do you want to stand on the table so you can actually see, little guy?”

“You know, this would be way more interesting if we tossed him into the cups.”

“We don’t mind if you use both hands, I know those pong balls can be pretty heavy for someone as small as you.”

“Come on, let him finish his drink first.  You don’t want to grab it by accident and swallow him with the beer, do you?”

“For just a few bucks a month I’ll let you rent this cup after I finish it, you’ll find that it’s pretty spacious.”

“Hey, watch your step!  Your partner’s still over there I think.  Have you heard a crunch, Helen?”

“No, but I’m not even sure we would from someone as tiny as him.”

“After I make this shot you can climb inside my purse instead of under the table, it’ll be safer.”

Even my own partner got in on it.  “I can see over the table, so I’ll spot for you.”

“You need help finishing my sip down there, shorty?”

“Grab on, I’m going for a trick shot!”

“Do you mind if I hold him inside a cup and let him drop it so that he gets at least one?”

I would be lying if I said they didn’t get inside my head.  By the end of the first game it actually felt like I was as small as they were insinuating.  Oddly enough, after the second game it seemed as though I was looking up at the table, but that must have been my own self-consciousness getting to me.

My partner was good, but I was useless.  Even hitting the cups was an accomplishment.  Jackie graciously “decided” not to stuff me in her purse, saying that simply crushing me was satisfaction enough, and watching me struggle to pick up the ball was one of the funniest things she had ever seen.  Apparently trash talk did not stop then the game ended.

When they decided they had beaten us enough they headed upstairs, winking before they turned and ran up the staircase three at a time.  When their feet stopped pounding on the steps and we heard their doors close, my date turned to me and placed a hand on my shoulder.  She ran it down my arm and a chill ran up my spine from her fingertip lightly caressing my skin until her hand engulfed mine with its long, strangely delicate fingers.  Playfully she pulled me over to the couch and I did my best to hide my excitement when I sat down beside her.

We both feigned interest in small talk, but her body language was practically screaming at me through a megaphone.  She practically sat sideways to face me, with her long, shapely legs extended lazily off the couch, and leaned playfully against a hand resting on top of the couch.  The smile never left her face even though I made progressively worse jokes to test her reaction, and her free hand kept finding reasons to brush against my shoulder.  Even though she looked down rather sharply at me she was like putty in my hands.

Eventually there was an awkward pause where we simply stared into each other’s eyes, and I decided that was the time to make my move.  Confidently I reached over and placed a hand on her bare thigh, then then slid it until it pushed her skirt all the way up.  Her smile practically begged me to go further, so I pushed myself up so that I straddled her and slid a hand behind her waist.  She gently placed her hands on my shoulders and I savored the moment, glad to be eye to chin for once instead of eye to shoulder.

“What’re you waiting for?” she asked seductively, and I needed no further encouragement.  I leaned in and brushed my lips against hers then pulled back, giving her a small taste, and her smile positively beamed back at me.  Wanting to build the heat I tried to lean in and kiss her neck, but was stopped cold by her hands pressing back against me.  Confused I tried again, only for her to push back even more forcefully.  Maybe I was coming on too strongly, so I looked to her for guidance and found that she was staring down at me even more broadly than before.

A moment passed, and I was looking up at her chin.  At first I thought it was a trick of the light, or the beers from earlier affecting me more than I expected, but after a few more seconds I was looking up at her collar bone.  I tried to scoot off so I could gather my bearings, but a hand quickly wrapped around the small of my back, holding me close to her.  “Don’t you want to be close to me?” she asked as her breasts partially eclipsed her face.  My jaw dropped, and I silently looked up at her, watching her slowly grow.  “You don’t want to be down there, anyway.”  Her voice had gotten decidedly huskier, and I could no longer see beyond her breasts.  “We have a strict kill on sight rule for bugs in this house.”

I wanted to protest.  “I’m not a bug, I’m a person!” I tried to reply, but all that came out was a small gurgle when the breath caught in my throat.  She continued growing and soon dominated my view, and with the hand behind me it felt like I was leaning against a wall.  Unbelievably she kept getting bigger, and even standing on her horizontal thigh I did not reach the waistband of her skirt. 

Finally, her size stabilized – rather, mine did, since I had obviously been dramatically shrunk.  She leaned forward just enough to see me, and I saw the mirth dancing in her blue eyes.  It was like she had never been so overjoyed.  “To think, you were excited about getting a hand up my skirt,” she joked, her voice a low, thundering boom now.  “Now you can just walk into it!”

This might have been what she thought of as flirting, but I didn’t see the appeal.  I tried backing away from her, but with a single finger she held me firmly in place.  Desperately I looked up at her, but if anything her smile grew.  She was not going to let me get out of this one.

Deciding to make the best of a bad situation, I started walking up her thigh, but after a step her hand closed in, trapping me in her fist.  “Sorry, I don’t let bugs get to third base,” she rumbled, and the world turned sideways.  I fought to remain conscious against the g-forces, but it was a losing battle.  After a hard acceleration in the opposite direction I passed out for the rest of the night.