I saw her first one night while working at the theater. She was a lighting technician, and I was a performer, and one night before a show our paths just happened to cross. As soon as she entered my gaze time seemed to stand still. Her gray-blue eyes seemed to sparkle, even in the darkness of the dim house lights, her smile burned itself into my memory and heart, her curly, dark blond hair was pulled back and tied up into a bun. She wore glasses, a black shirt with a skull on it, tight jeans, and had her nose pierced. And for that brief moment I believed in angels. Little did I realize, at that moment, that this was the start of an amazing adventure that would change my life forever.

                My name is James, and I am a 35 year old, 6’2 tall performer. Well, I was 6’2. But that seems so long ago. I couldn’t tell you what my actual size is anymore, as it seems to change too often for me to lock it down.  And, I was a performer, but that too has since changed.  Now? Now I couldn’t begin to list all the things that I am. I am whatever she wants me to be. I am whatever she needs me to be. But, I am happy. I am also, it seems, getting ahead of myself, so instead I shall tell you where it all began. Where it all began after I met Laurie.

                After I first met her that fateful night, we had many random encounters. We would bump into each other during rehearsals, back stage before and after shows. It started out slow, but soon a friendship began to grow, and it started with helping her put up shelving in her office one night after rehearsals. We laughed together, and joked about the most random things. She was 30, looked to be in her early 20s, and had a personality that just clicked perfectly with mine. Our tastes in music and shows were the same, we both enjoyed odd and creepy things. Her office was decorated with dead flowers, gothic art, bugs in jars; she liked to collect dead bugs she found and display them. This, for some reason, stuck in the back of my mind.

                Our friendship grew to the point where we would spend a lot of time together in that theater, having conversations while she worked on props, worked on lighting and sounds, prepared for upcoming shows, and just went about her day. And every day her style was usually the same: tight jeans that perfectly hugged her curves, and cute shirt, usually of a gothic style, and combat boots.

                It would surprise no one to hear that I had quickly developed a crush on her, and despite normally being an out-going, humorous, and confidant man, around her I was a shy an awkward mess. The more we got to talking, the more shy and nervous I had become, and it got to the point where I had to ask her out. If she said yes, then, well, fantastic! If, however, she said no, then at least I would know and could stop being so nervous around her. And so, I worked up the courage. I went out and got her flowers for her office, and, because I knew how nervous I would be, I wrote her a cute note instead of asking in person. One day in her office, while her back was turned, I placed the flowers and note on her desk, and quickly excused myself.

                And maybe that’s where I went wrong. Maybe I should have asked her in person instead of in a note. Maybe it really just wasn’t meant to be. Either way, she rejected me rather kindly, which was ok. Our friendship would continue, and I could stop being so nervous around her. And so, at the end of the day, I went home, back to my life, back to my odd collection of antiques that I had obtained during my life.

                As I began to dig through my collections, sorting through a box of odds and ends I got from the oddities market the week before, my phone buzzed. I’m not a very social person and so wasn’t expecting a message from anyone. Tiredly, I grabbed the phone and checked my texts.

Laurie: “I’m sorry”

Me: “Sorry for what?”

Laurie: “I’m just not looking to date anyone at the moment. I’m focusing on me right now”

Me: “That’s completely fine. I’m not upset at all. Like I said, I still love being your friend! See you next weekend at work?”

Laurie: “Of course!”

                I tossed the phone back on my bed and began to dig through the box of oddities again. I liked to collect different weird objects: skulls, bones, antique items, sideshow gaffs. Stuff, typically, you could only find at out of the way stores, or oddity markets that come through the area once a year. Inside the box was a collection of random items that didn’t really stand out. A few bird and cat skulls, a couple old books, a Ouija board.  I dug a little deeper, toward the bottom of the box to see what was at the bottom.

                “OW!” Something pricked my finger and I quickly pulled my hand out of the box. Looking down, I saw a few drops of blood dripping off my finger. “What the hell?” I quickly, but carefully, pulled everything from the box to find the offending object that sought blood.

                “You little bitch,” I mumbled to myself as I pulled out a piece of broken glass and turned it over in my hand. A couple drops of blood has fallen onto the glass and streaked down, dripping into the box. I tossed the glass in a nearby trash can, and was about to close the box when I noticed a dim, green glowing light. Upon further inspection, I found a green gem, glowing softly, with a single drop of blood on its face, and hanging from an old leather cord. Attached to the cord was a piece of paper, stained brown with time, and some old writing written across it.

“Weary stranger, please take heed

To activate, you must bleed

Worry not, to do the deed

A single drop is all you need”

                I removed the label from the necklace and turned the glowing gem over in my hand, examining it closer. As I studied it, my blood seemed to seep into the gem, and the glowing stopped. But maybe “stopped” isn’t the right word. It was almost as though the glow turned into a tangible feeling, a warm tingle that crept from the gem and into my hand. The warmth, the tingling, spread throughout my entire body. It breathed through me. I couldn’t quite explain it but, whatever this gem was, I felt like it was now a part of me, like it was attached, imprinted, on me. I slipped the leather cord around my neck, my fingers playing over the gem. We were part of each other. Little did I know just how true this would be.

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                It  had been almost a week since I found the gem, and I hadn’t taken it off since. It felt right around my neck, near my heart. I couldn’t explain it, exactly, but it just felt right. Had I known, at the time, why it felt right, would I have taken it off? Probably not. Had I known what it was capable of I would have experimented sooner. During the week I had noticed small things, small changes, but they didn’t really register as anything weird at the time.

                I had been on a diet, and so I was eating right and exercising. Be it to distract myself from the rejection, or to make myself feel better about myself, I had been more focused on losing weight, and thus, I noticed a change. I was focusing on losing 5-10 pounds this month, and noticed that by the end of the week I had dropped 10 pounds. “Must have been my dedication,” I told myself. I also noticed my knees, which had been bothering me for the past year, no longer hurt. Again, this I just attributed to losing weight, and dedication to exercise.

                If only I had known.

                It was Friday night, and I was sitting at home browsing the web. I did the usual rounds, different giantess websites. Different transformation websites. It was something that always got my interest. I was a tall man, at the time, and to see the world differently, to be towered over instead of towering over people, to be helpless and at the mercy of another instead of being the protector, it’s a thought that made something inside me just light up and tingle.

                And so I laid in bed, thinking about what it would be like. Thinking about being tiny, seeing the world from a new perspective. That is when it all really started. I felt the familiar warm tingle, and noticed the gem began to glow once more. These two distractions, well, they distracted me from what I really should have noticed: my clothes, and everything around me, were slowly getting bigger. It wasn’t until I had lost, what I could only guess was a couple feet, before I realized this and began to panic.

                “What? Wha-No! NO!” I screamed to myself, flailing in my now baggy clothes. As quickly as I said it, the glowing, the tingling, and the shrinking stopped. I laid in the bed, dazed, sweating, confused. My clothes comically covered me like a child wearing his father’s suit. I couldn’t think clearly, and the only thought in my mind, the only words to escape my lips were simply “I need to figure out how to grow again.”

                Like magic, probably because it was magic, the gem once more began to glow, the tingle spread through my body, and, for lack of a better word, I began to reinflate, into my clothes, into my original size. And then, once more, it all stopped when I was my original height. I stood up, ripped off the necklace, and tossed it on my bed.

                “What the FUCK?!” I yelled, looking at the necklace. Could it be? Could the necklace have been the culprit? No. No, obviously it had been some hallucination brought on by stress and exhaustion. But still, I had to test it. Right? I thought to myself, again, about being tiny. About the room, about everything, towering over me. I closed my eyes and waited.

                Nothing.

                Nothing? I tried again, concentrating harder, staring intently at the necklace on the bed. Still nothing. “You’re an idiot,” I said to myself, shaking my head. “An idiot that needs to lay off the tequila.” I reached forward for the necklace, to move it off my bed. The instant my hand touched it it began to glow, the tingling rushed through my body, and I could feel myself getting smaller. Instinctively, I let go and the effects stopped, the gem dark.

                “Touch,” I mumbled. “I have to be touching it.” While concentrating on my original size, I grabbed the gem. This time it was much quicker, almost instantly my size had been fully restored. So, I have to touch it, and the harder I concentrate the quicker it happens. This would be something fun to explore. I looked at the clock. 3am. Fun to explore, but not tonight. Now why I did what I did next, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was my deep, and weird, desires. Maybe it’s because I trusted her. But, before bed I grabbed my phone and texted Laurie.

Me: “So, I have something weird to show you. See you tomorrow.”

                I set my alarm, got changed for bed, set the necklace on the table, just to be safe, and quickly passed out wondering how, or what, I’m going to tell Laurie tomorrow.