“You know the procedure,” Jake said. “We have to start with these.”
“But you do think it would work, right, Jake? Like if you tried to shrink… oh, I don’t know… a mouse. It would actually shrink?” Julie asked.
“Of course it would.” Jake smirked. Though he was technically and studiously minded, he wasn’t above a lapse of ego. Plus, he also happened to know he was right.
“I see,” Julie replied. Her eyes were locked to the size-changing pistol, which Jake laid on the table. “It looks like it’s not powered up yet.”
“Oh, it is. We’ll just have to click off the safety measure right there,” Jake said, then stepped away from the desk. “I’ll go gather up our subjects and we’ll move into the testing area to see what happens. But I have a good feeling about this.”
“So do I,” Julie murmured, winking again at her young boss. She twiddled her thumbs and gently nibbled the corner of her lip, looking him up and down from scalp to shoe. “So do I.”
Jake made his way across the room and rooted through the drawers for the wooden cubes. Once he’d found them and turned around to face Julie again, though, he was a little surprised to notice she was not only holding the shrinking device now, but pointing it aloft, with her finger hovering dangerously over the trigger.
“Great. I’ve got the subjects. Can you bring it with you, and we’ll start the testing in the other room?” Jake said. He added as kindly as possible: “Just be careful where you aim that thing.”
“Actually, I thought maybe we could start the testing in this room instead!” Julie said.
Jake frowned. Never had his lab assistant ever defied a single instruction he gave. It took him aback. Was he understanding her right?
“Oh… well, I don’t think that’s such a good idea, since this is just our general workspace,” Jake said. “We wouldn’t want the device to strike something it wasn’t meant to.”
“No, we wouldn’t.” There was something off about Julie’s voice; it was firm, self-assured, yet just as charming as ever. Still, it was clear she’d made up her mind. “I think we’re going to run the first test right here, Jake. I’ve been waiting so long for this. I don’t think I can wait any more.”
“W-What do you mean?”
“I’ll show you, little guy.”
“Little guy? What are you-”
Jake’s objection was interrupted when Julie’s finger clenched the trigger. The barrel glowed. Just as he’d explained, the energy transfer took place in a split second, far too fast for him to think of dodging away. Blinding light flared in his vision, and he felt an electric tingle rippling through his bones. Jake blinked. By the time he’d reopened his eyes, the process was already complete.
He seized up, and couldn’t help but unleash a pathetic screech of horror. His laboratory, already grand in scale when he was at his regular size, was now a behemoth cavern that seemingly stretched in infinite directions. The place was so huge that Jake was made st, and collapsed on his rear end, for he knew the lab itself hadn’t grown. He had merely shrunk, and judging by the incredible scale of everything around him, from dust bunnies like tumbleweeds to chair legs like Olympian pillars, he and his clothes had reduced down to a very significant degree. If Jake had to guess, based on his proportions compared to the nearest towering obelisk of lab equipment, he was less than an inch tall.
That guess was confirmed when he finally affixed his attention on Julie, and after he did, he doubted he could ever turn his focus anywhere else again. The girl was utterly titanic. Even from across the room, she was a truly magnificent leviathan, spiraling so high up that even the toe of her shoe was taller than her paltry boss. She grinned with overwhelming, triumphant glee. When she spread her lips wide to laugh, the lilting boom of it rattled the very walls of the lab, and certainly made Jake’s body tremble.
But that was nothing compared to the reverberations inflicted when Julie began to walk toward her shrunken employer. Each time her black shoes, the size of battleship vessels, made berth on the tiled floor, a seismic quake extended across the room, causing Jake to quiver. Though the girl was relatively short from a regular perspective, probably not much more than five feet tall, she was a staggering monolith of a woman when she finally stopped walking just a few inches away from where Jake laid. By craning his neck, the young man just managed to see up the thick spires of her tanned bare legs, over the billowing crest of her lab coat, past the hillocks of her peeking cleavage, through her lengthy blonde mane, and at last to her gigantic adorable face at the top, staring down at him with a ravenous kind of curiosity that Jake was only used to seeing when Julie was chewing on gummy bears.
“I can’t believe it. It worked. It worked!” Julie cheered. She pumped her fists, but refrained from stamping her feet, probably to avoid smearing her boss. “Sorry, Jake. I don’t mean to insult you. I mean, I do believe it worked, since you designed it, and you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. But this is really exciting for me. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long, practically since I heard about you and all the amazing things you were creating. And even more after I actually met you.”
Jake was so overcome with emotions: confusion, rage, frustration, fear, and downright awe of Julie’s gargantuan body, that he could scarcely respond, let alone process everything she was saying. He simply lay still at the altar of her humongous feet with his jaw hanging open.
“Oh, right. I guess I should say sorry again for moving along so fast. There’s just so much I want to say to you, before I… well, I’m getting ahead here. I really should just explain myself,” Julie politely rambled, at last taking a deep breath. “First, let’s get a closer look at you. I’m sure it must be a little frightening to be down there, looking up at your big giant lab partner, wondering if she’s going to accidentally smoosh you with my shoe. You don’t have to worry about that, little guy, I swear. Now come here.”
The shrunken man didn’t start to comprehend what Julie meant until she was already stooping down to collect him. By then, it was too late to run. Her soft creased palm lowered like a UFO ship, her peachy fingers unfurling and reaching out. The shadow of her hand shrouded the mewling little scientist, then caged him among her digits as she gingerly pinched him between her thumb and forefinger, and pressed him snugly against the pillowy landing of her palm. Once he was closed inside her enormous fist, Julie stood back up, then took several long steps back to the table and sat down, though she kept her little capture safely cupped in her palms, with her fingers arched up to act as fencing and prevent Jake from falling or escaping.
“Wow, just look at you! Do you see how small you are now?” Julie gushed, obviously viewing this as good news. Her beautiful face looked like it was projected on a jumbo-tron from this close up; Jake could see every minute detail in her face, from the lines of her dimples to the velvet intricacy of her eyelashes. Each time she exhaled through her nostrils, warm air fogged in her palms, blustering Jake’s lab coat.
“Y-Yes…” he gulped. The little man was just barely fending off full-on panic. How could she do this to him? What did she want with him? Most importantly, when was she going to regrow him? Jake desperately needed answers to all these questions, but found he was too weak in the presence of this blonde demigoddess-sized girl to speak up, with his fate literally resting in her hands.
“I’m sure this is all a big shock to you, and you must be wondering why it happened?” Julie said, as though reading his mind. “Well, the answer is very simple, Jake: I’m going to swallow you. I’ve been planning on this for a very long time. You see, it… makes me excited, thinking about being able to eat a tiny man like you. It’s something I’ve wanted ever since I was a little girl. It’s my biggest dream. And now… because you’re such a genius, and you made something that can actually turn people into miniature little snacks… that dream can finally come true. So, I made you one one-hundredth of your old size, which I think is just under three-quarters of an inch. Really, I can’t thank you enough, Jake. I just hope you can forgive me, because in order for my dream to feel as real as possible, I’ve got to put you in my mouth and eat you. I won’t chew you, I promise, so it won’t hurt. You’ll just sort of… cease to be, once you’ve gone all the way down my throat and into my stomach. And I believe, if you really think about it, you might even like it, too.”
Julie finished her confident speech. Again, Jake frowned, and stood up in her hand, backing away from her face, but was blocked by the thick pad of her thumb.
“Ha-ha, okay, okay. This was… interesting, Julie. I get it now. This is all a prank. You wanted me to realize that my device was ready to test on animals already, without the preliminary experiments. And you decided to have some fun by making me think you want to eat me. I have to say, it worked. You had me going for a second there. But maybe you should make me big again, okay?”
Julie didn’t respond or even crack a smile. She didn’t have to. Instead she stared Jake down with such seriousness, that the young man was at last forced to realize simply by staring into the dark wells of her eyes this wasn’t some elaborate practical joke. She hadn’t just shrunken him for a laugh, or to prove that his device was capable of shrinking both inorganic and organic material. Julie had, in fact, shrunken her boss using his own size-altering device, with the express intention of consuming him like one of her gummy bears which, come to think of it, was now the exact same size as Jake himself.
“N-No… no…” Jake mumbled, as the truth sunk in. His skin crawled. “No, Julie. W-Wait a second, please, you… you can’t actually mean you’re g-going to… to…”
“I’m sorry. Really I am. I know it’s a lot to take in. But this is something I have to do, for myself, at least once, to know what it feels like. I’ve thought about it every single hour of single day that we’ve worked together, wondering if it’s the right thing to do, and now that my chance is finally here, I know what I have to do,” Julie continued. Her voice was genuinely soothing, and even tainted with remorse. “I have to swallow you, Jake.”
“This is insane. You can’t just eat a person because you want to! What about… my work, my research, my LIFE! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“It does mean something to me. I’ll always be grateful for your brilliant mind giving me the chance to do this,” Julie said. “Thank you, Jake, from the bottom of my heart. Believe me, I’ll never forget you once you’re gone. And… seeing how this is a new idea for you, it seems only fair that I help ease you into it. I’m not just going to swallow you right this second, if that’s what you’re worried about, although I WANT to eat you now so badly. No, first, I’m going to help get you ready, in whatever ways I can. I think you’ll have… fun with it, and maybe by the end, you’ll agree with me that this is the right thing to do. You’ll want me to swallow you, which would make this even better for me!”
Jake couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Not only was his lab partner and friend about to end his life by gulping him down for sustenance, but she had the gall to ask that he enjoy it, too! It was like being in a surreal nightmare, only one he couldn’t wake up from. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.
“First things first,” Julie said, when Jake didn’t reply again. She winked, and lapped her tongue at the corner of her lip. “Let’s get you more comfortable. Because, be honest, these lab coats aren’t the most comfortable things to wear. In fact, like I told you earlier… I always find the most comfortable “thing” to wear is… nothing! Let me show you.”