Three weeks had passed since my initial infection, and another two weeks since I had last had a shrinking episode. I was currently sitting at my computer doing some late night research, mom and Gwen were fast asleep. I just couldn't sleep that night, thoughts of what had happened earlier today still buzzed through my mind.

    I had gotten up the same as always to get on with my doctor's appointment, it was my mom's turn to take me this time, as she had some time before work that morning. Things were quiet between us she still hadn't wrapped her head around the fact that I was shrinking, hell I still hadn't wrapped my head around it.

    The doctor had given me the usual examination, took blood, checked my vitals, measured my height, and this part was actually surprising. I hadn't shrunk beyond five feet six inches, and this actually surprised the doctor, but I felt grateful. He checked, rechecked, double checked his recheck, but it all came back the same, the virus seemed to have become dormant.

    “Well, that's a relief, but then again, what will happen if, and when it reactivates?” I asked nervously.

    “It's hard to say, it could make you shrink ten fold, or it could make you shrink no faster then what it had when it was active, there is just no way to tell,” he replied.

    “So, are you any closer to a treatment?” I ask feeling my heart drop into my stomach.

    “No, I'm afraid not, we still can't even figure out how it's causing you to shrink to begin with,” he said.

    “Well, at least I have a reprieve,” I said with a small smile.

    “Not sure if it's a reprieve, or just the calm before the storm,” He said releasing me from his care.

    Knowing that I needed to take things into my own hands now. I started taking my own blood, and using a child's microscope to examine things as best I could. I began to look at my cells as they danced on the tray with the drop of my blood. I started to take notes on what I saw on a notepad, the problem was, is that it didn't look like anything out of the ordinary. Even my white blood cell count was within normal levels, was it possible that the virus had been eradicated from my body?

    I continued to monitor my body over the next few days after that, taking my blood, and testing it for infections, or signs of the virus. Yet each time I tested myself, or examined my blood it all came back negative, even residual traces of the virus didn't seem to exist inside of my body. Was it really a virus then? I thought to myself as I examined my blood sample yet again.

    Days went by, more tests, but still no results, maybe it really had run its course? I could only hope, as I really didn't want to lose any more height. The running had gotten easier, much, much easier than it had been when I first started. I was even starting to out run Gwen by quite a large margin, much to her annoyance since she could no longer be able to make fun of me anymore.

    I had gotten up bright and early on a cool Sunday morning, something had woken me up, but I was unsure what it was. Groggily I got out of bed, I stood up and stretched, I still felt like something was off, but I was unable to place a finger upon it. I went to the bathroom, did my normal routine, and get dressed to meet Gwen at the front door for our morning run.

    Everything seemed normal, Gwen is still shorter than I am, so I hadn't lost any height, or had I, and it was too minute to notice. I decided to measure myself after the run, but the feeling just wouldn't leave me. Sweat poured from my body as I ran beside Gwen, we were going farther then we normally would today, I think she wanted to try and see if she could outlast me this time since she was no longer able to out pace me.

    Eventually we came to a stop in a large grove of trees, it had been some time since I had been this far into the woods. When we were kids Gwen and I would come out here and play hide and seek, or tag, or something to the effect. Now it was a nostalgia trip, something to bring me back to a more innocent time in my life. Back to when my sister had pigtails, and would run around in pink dresses, or miss matched clothes, often polka dot shirts and striped pants.

    Now she stood before me at the cusp of womanhood, her pigtails traded in for a ponytail, her polka dot shirt, a dark blue sports bra that seemed to almost barely contain her heaving breasts. Her striped pants now traded in for a pair of dark blue skin tight shorts. I breathed heavily as I took a sip from a bottle of water I had brought with me.

    “S-So, what did you drag me all the way out here for?” I asked gasping for air.

    “I-I just thought it would be fun to visit our old haunt,” she replied with a grin.

    “Yeah, more like you wanted to see if you could run me out of gas first, but you forget, I know how to control my breathing so that I wouldn't gas out too soon,” I replied laughing as I took another drink.

    “Hey, it was fun while it lasted,” she said not losing her smile.

    “The real reason I brought you out here was because I didn't want mom to over hear, look are you still shrinking, or was that just something that you made up for attention?” she asked.

    “I don't know, as far as I can tell I was shrinking, or at least I lost an inch in height,” I said not sure where she was going with this.

    “Look, you've got mom in a ripe state, while she's not showing it, she's worried sick that you're going to end up dead,” said Gwen staring up at me with an almost glaring look.

    “Hey I'm a jokester I don't deny that, but I wouldn't do something like this, trust me, I wasn't thrilled to be in a hospital for three weeks, and then told that I was infected with a virus that would cause me to....” I stopped mid sentence as that feeling of something wrong was happening again.

    “Dave, you okay?” came Gwen's voice.

    “I-I think I'm.....” I say still kind of dazed.

    The next thing I knew I was being leaned up against a tree, sweat now rolled in large beads off of my skin. I could feel a warm hand pressed against my forehead.

    “Maybe we pushed it a little too far,” came my sister's voice almost echo like in my ears.

    “I-I'm fine,” I croaked, but she just ignored me and whenever I would attempt to stand up, she would force me to stay down.

    “Just sit there for a minute until whatever the hell is going on with you passes!” she said sternly.

    I sigh knowing that I can't move anyway, let alone fight my much more physically fit sister, at least at this current time.

    After about twenty minutes, or so the feeling finally subsided, and I was able to finally stand up. I knew it without Gwen saying a word, I could feel it without looking at her shocked face, I had indeed shrunk again, and while it wasn't significant, as I was still looking down at Gwen it was still noticeable this time around, the real question was, how much had I shrunk, and was the intensity only going to be worse?

    It was a lot slower getting back home, we had both decided that it was best to not aggravate my condition further, and we walked there. Mom had gone by the time we got there, though something told me that she wasn't going to be to too happy about Gwen missing morning classes. I quickly took some blood and examined it under the microscope while Gwen called the doctor for me. As I scanned the dyed blood I finally saw it, the virus, the source of all my problems.

    “Now the question is, what triggered it after so long?” I asked myself as I watched the virus attack the cells in the sample, only for the virus to get absorbed.

    “That's strange,” I say again to myself as I continue to watch the red blood cells absorb the virus.

    “What's strange?” came Gwen's voice from behind me.

    “This virus, I've finally found it, but it's not acting like any virus I've ever seen before it's being absorbed by the red blood cells, and yet it's not mutating them, other then the obvious. It's almost as if my body were manufacturing the virus itself,” I say to her finally looking up from the kid's microscope.

    “So, don't blood cells do that anyway? I mean the white ones do it, but I remember health class saying that viruses would mutate cells which is what causes us to get sick so doesn't the cell absorb the virus anyway?” She asked confused.

    “Normally yes, but it usually deforms the cell in some way to give a clue that there is a virus, this virus almost seems like the cells are breeding it, but the question is, what is triggering the virus? If it were stress from today, why didn't it flare up before when I first started running?” I both answering my sister and responding to what I was sure to be her next question.

    “See, there's the flaw though, you didn't really run that hard before today. Think about it, we eased you into it, we never actually did any hard running until today, and apparently that was foolish,” She said looking guilty.

    “Don't you dare blame yourself for this!” I shouted at her not really meaning to.

    “But it was my fault! I goaded you into running that fast!” she said with tears in her eyes.

    “It was my choice! I chose to run that hard, to keep up with you, to chase you to the grove, it was all on me, and now I suffered the consequences for my actions!” I said again.

    “But, but....” she started.

    “No buts! You keep blaming yourself and I'll kick yours,” I say now smiling at her as I walk over to her put my arms around her and pull her into a hug.

    “I'm alright it was an accident, you're not at fault, if the doctors don't figure it out, hopefully I will, and if not, well I'm sure you always wanted to be taller than me,” I say smiling down at her staring into her brown eyes.

    “Yeah, maybe I'll be able to use you as an armrest for a change!” she responded hugging me back.

    I spent the rest of the day on the phone with the doctor, I had told him everything that I had experienced, and even my findings. He seemed to share the same sentiments as Gwen, in that I had overexerted myself and this caused the virus to rear its ugly head and cause me to shrink down.

    “You were the one that told me to start running to begin with Doc,” I say almost laughing.

    “Yes, I told you to exercise, not to overexert yourself, keep that up, but try to keep yourself stress free, and do not overexert yourself,”

    “Okay Doc,” I say giving him a goodbye and hanging up the phone.

    After I hung up, I had Gwen measure me before she headed out to her midday classes, and I was rather relieved that it had only been three inches, but still that put me at only an inch taller than mom. I couldn't help, but wonder what that was going to look like, especially since I haven't literally seen her eye to eye since I was in my early teens.

    “Keep on shrinking!” shouted Gwen playfully before she left the house.

    “Very funny!” I shouted back at her.

    When the door closed I found myself once more alone in the house, to basically be bored out of my mind. The only upside to today was that it would be the last day for the preliminary hearings for the lawsuit, and prospects were still good that I was going to get a large settlement. Small comfort though if I ended up too small to actually spend it on anything, but then again it would be able to help mom out too, so I suppose a few lost inches for what was looking to possibly be hundreds of thousands, if not at least close to a couple million dollars in the settlement fee.

    Mom came home early today, and needless to say the reaction was priceless. Particularly when she started shouting at me about pushing myself so hard this morning. I was than enthralled in one of her lectures, I had heard these so much the last couple of days alone that I had pretty much learned to tune her out, but at the same time I knew she cared about me, so when she finished I just stood up and hugged her.

    “Hey look at it this way, I can't make fun of you for not being able to reach the top shelf of the fridge anymore,” I say chuckling this earned me a bop to the head.

    “Keep that shit up and you'll be riding around in my purse,” she said sternly.

    I just sighed knowing that there wouldn't be any point in trying to turn this into something comedic with her in this state. So I just stopped hugging her and went up to my room and started playing my Xbox again. I wasn't really sure what everyone was expecting from me, there wasn't any point in worrying about it, while I really didn't want to lose anymore height, I also wasn't looking to walk on eggshells about it either.

    After a while I got bored of my game and I got up and headed over to my computer and started doing some research on autoimmune diseases. While the virus wasn't a true autoimmune disease it gave me something to do besides dwelling on either my own emotions, or trying to deal with my family's feelings.

    I could eventually hear Gwen come home, her voice carried throughout the whole house as it always did whenever she shouted that she was home. I left out an audible groan as I heard her running up the stairs, what I had expected was for her to burst into my room and check on me to see if I had shrunk anymore, much like how mom had done all week. However she surprised me, instead she just went straight to her room, and really didn't bother me until dinner time, and that was only because I had fallen asleep.

    Though I wasn't sure what it was, but it almost looked as if Gwen was taller than I was now, but I hadn't felt the same strange feeling I had felt before. The problem is though I had been doing everything in my power to keep my mind distracted. I could also have shrunk when I was asleep, but I didn't have any nightmares, at least not any that I could remember anyway, so I shouldn't have been stressed out, or gotten my heart rate up.

    I followed her down the stairs and it wasn't until I got to the carpeted floor of the living room that I realized that the reason she looked so tall was because she was wearing platform heeled shoes! I couldn't help, but smirk now as I knew what she was trying to do, she wanted to pick on me, but very subtlety so that mom wouldn't notice, or rather so that she wouldn't think anything of it at any rate.

    “Very funny sis, but next time walk a little quieter,” I whisper in her ear.

    “I don't know what you're talking about, I just wanted to wear these things because they need broken in,” she responded with a mischievous grin on her beautiful face.

    “Just try to not fall flat on your face this time, I'd hate to have to climb over your unconscious body just to get to my doll house,” I say chuckling, and this earned me a punch in the arm, at least there was one person that was willing to keep my mind off things in this house.