Jacob observed through his glass prison – that gave him a somewhat hazy view – at two females cracking jokes in the distance. Friends of Reign, his 16-year-old daughter. He glanced at them in a disapproving manner when he saw how shamelessly short those skirts were they wore, exposing their thighs almost to their butts.
His teeth sanded over each other when one of the girls – in a drunken stupor – stumbled against his Harley Davidson, toppling it over. The girls shrieked, laughed a bit, and bluntly continued their banter, obviously indifferent about Jacob's bike collecting clearly visible scratches in its paint layer from the fall.
Fuckin sluts. Jacob grumbled.
He was so pumped to rush up to them, knock their empty heads against each other and scold them out of his backyard. He would also be more than happy to deal with their dads if they were eager to seek redress for his behavior towards their daughters.
He would show them. ALL of them. Definitely… In former times that is, when he was an intimidating presence still.
Unfortunately, he no longer had this kind of authority anymore. He was a joke now, even for these two brats. He was roughly 2 inches tall. They would probably laugh at him if he walked up to them, assuming he could climb out of his glass prison filled with whiskey and coke. Or play with him even.
As his legs paddled leisurely in a sticky substance of whisky and coke, Jacob noticed that the jeans wrapped around his neck needed more air. It was a trick he learned during his time in the navy. While floating in deep water without anything to hold on to, just remove your pants, tie the trouser legs to each other, slam them in the water with a wide motion to capture air, and, tada, you have an improvised lifejacket.
The only thing was that denim wasn't exactly airtight, so you had to fill it with new air from time to time. Jacob filled his lungs with a big breath of air, dipped his head underwater, and blew boiling bubbles through his lips, pumping his life jacket up. Despite his precaution of keeping his eyes shut, a few drops of beverage – mingled with alcohol – were able to seep into his eyes, making them sting. He tried in vain to rub it clean, a thing he had done too many times before. He already had some surface irritation, but he was afraid it might end up with something more severe, like a corneal abrasion.
A shadow engulfed Jacob, and his whole glass prison went airborne. Two enormous eyes peeped at him above the massive hand that held his glass prison and shone their glee upon him before churning into a look of curiosity when they noticed the jeans around his neck.
Reign…
"I was hoping you would have drowned by now, dad, but you're clearly more inventive than is good for you."
"Why don't you finish me off right now and be done with it then?!" Jacob screamed up at his powerful daughter, holding all of his strings.
"Ha! And grant you the easy way out? I don't think so."
Jacob gave a yelp when his glass prison tilted. He used all of his pitiful might to swim away when Reign placed her lips against the glass's edge to take a nice, long swig. Jacob swam with strong strokes, but Reign's suction power was too great. Her upper lip came closer and when he was pretty confident that Reign would swallow him, the glass was placed back on the table. It relieved Jacob to see that he was able to stand now. The mix of whisky and coke came only up to his middle now. He craned his neck to look up and saw Reign's massive torso as she wiped her mouth clean with the back of her hand. A gargantuan lipstick stain was plastered on the glass. His Goddess daughter smiled down upon him. Her hand shot out and the ring on her finger clanged painfully hard against the glass – piercing daggers through his eardrums.
6 months ago.
Jacob slammed the clamping front door close with a grunt, removed his shoes and clattered them in some corner of the hallway. Another grueling workweek is done. Jacob was tired and angry, even angrier than usual. All of his colleagues were a pain in the ass and his boss seemed to do everything within his power to make Jacob's life even more miserable than it already was.
He needed his lazy chair and a frosty cold bottle of booze. And dinner, a huge plate of pasta would be great, topped with grated parmesan cheese. It was Friday, so Meril would definitely make pasta. Oh, and rest, he needed rest and silence. No nagging and whining and bellyaching from anyone.
"Daddyyyyy!" Riley, Jacob's youngest daughter – a 10-year-old squirt – ran up to him like a frolicking lamb with her arms wide open.
Jacob deftly evaded her. "Not now, sweety. Daddy is tired and hungry."
"You're no fun at all!" Riley fumed while stomping her foot on the floor.
Jacob walked up to the kitchen, following the smell of freshly cooked dinner.
"Hey, you!" The face of Meril, Jacob's wife, lit up when he entered the kitchen. "How was work?" She walked up to him for a kiss.
Jacob swooshed past her without answering her affection and removed the lid of a pan sizzling there on the stove.
"What is this?!" Jacob gave his wife a look you gave after your boss offered you a wretched bunch of flowers while a big fat raise was promised.
"It's beef stew, darling. I worked on it for hours," Meril said.
"It looks like something that's been barfed up by Gordon Ramsey during a cheap gypsy wedding! Where is my pasta? It's Friday!"
Jacob's hand quickly blocked the oven mitts tossed at him by an angry Meril.
"Hey! Where are you going? Where is my pasta?!" he called after his wife, who made haste to leave. "I PAY THE RENT AROUND HERE!" he bellowed while slamming his chest like a wrought-up gorilla.
His head jerked to the side when a burst of pitching laughter caught his attention. It came from outside in the backyard. Sliding the curtain aside, Jacob peeked through the window and glanced with deep disdain at Reign phoning on a lounger in her bikini at the edge of the inflatable pool as she blabbered with a street market voice.
"Did she tell you that?! Noooo, please tell me she didn't! That girl is so bla bla bla-"
-SNATCH!-
There went Reign's phone, stripped from her by Jacob's hand.
"Hey!" Reign screeched. Her hand shaded her eyes from the beaming sun as she looked up at the imposing figure of her father. The voice of Reign's friend still blabbered through the phone's speaker.
"Reign's busy," Jacob's heavy voice said softly before hanging up.
"What was that for?" Reign asked.
"Move your lazy butt and get me a beer." Jacob waved his hand like he was ordering a servant.
"But – "
"NOW!" Jacob bellowed in Reign's face.
Reign hastily leaped up and scurried off like a jumpy squirrel.
The lounger creaked and groaned under Jacob's weight as he plunged his fat butt into it. He glanced at the orange hue of the setting sun above a line of trees and contemplated his life. What on earth did he do to earn such a miserable life like this? What did he have? An underpaid job as a forklift driver at some lousy company while working for a Gestapo boss, a wife who doesn't understand what he needs, a little squirt of a daughter who shouts all the time, and to top it all, a teenage daughter whose only concern it is to look pretty at any time of the day. His head just couldn't grasp it.
"Here," An ice-cold bottle of beer obscured Jacob's view. He looked up at Reign's sullen face, gave a curt appreciative nod and grabbed the beer.
"Can I have my phone back now?" Reign asked as she held up her hand.
Jacob took a long refreshing swig and burped loudly. He placed his hand on his stomach. "I'm still hungry. Be a darling and fetch me some of your mother's stew, huh?"
Reign groaned and stormed off. She came back with a plate full of steaming beef stew a minute later. Jacob eagerly reached his hands out but looked puzzled when Reign held the plate out of his reach.
"First, my phone," she said.
Jacob sighed. "Demanding twit." He fished the phone out of his breast pocket and handed it over to Reign, who, in her turn, handed over Jacob's dinner. Then she removed herself from the backyard to leave Jacob alone. As he relished in his beer and dinner and the setting sun, he suddenly slammed his hand on his forearm when a mosquito landed there and bit him. Jacob wasn't aware that this ordinary-looking mosquito carried with her a minute amount of synthesized chemicals after it had bitten a laboratory primate in a nearby secret facility. In the upcoming hours, its compound will mingle with Jacob's blood and eventually find its way to the core of Jacob's adult stem cells, where it will establish some significant fundamental changes that will forever change his life.
With his back, Jacob positioned himself quietly against an empty wall in the walk-in wardrobe, ensuring not to disturb his sleeping wife.
He glanced at his feet, ensuring they were firmly placed against the wall, and stood up straight. He resisted the temptation to lift his feet slightly up to heighten his posture.
No need for that now. It's truth what he needed; how painful it may be. And so, Jacob pulled a pencil from his pocket, placed his head against the wall with a straight neck, and drew a small line above his head.
After a deep sigh, Jacob stepped away from the wall and turned around. Three grey lines is what he saw on the white wall; all three marked on a different day.
The first one he began drawing when he noticed that his big belly started feeling the cold touch of the sink while brushing his teeth.
However, more oddities were going on that he couldn't ignore.
He felt like his feet were swimming in his shoes, and his favorite jacket, which he had worn for years, now seemed too big for him. The sleeves devoured his hands, and the shoulders sat loose and wrinkled.
He did his best to ignore it – told himself that he saw things.
But when his belly began to touch the sink, a thing that had never happened in all these years while living in this house, he was compelled to recognize that something was seriously wrong here. A sink doesn't suddenly grow in size overnight.
Then Jacob drew his first line when the whole house was asleep. In the late evening, he sneaked into the walk-in wardrobe, chose a wall his wife's eyes were unlikely to notice when she dove in to grab some garments for herself, and drew a line above his head to measure his length.
Jacob used that first line as his zero point and took it to himself to draw a new line every evening. The gap between the first and second lines was more than a centimeter, an observation that worried Jacob seriously.
Now it was time to look at the third line, drawn on the third day since he started measuring his height.
A deep grumbling ‘fuck!' escaped from his lips before he knew it as he saw that the gap between the second and his third line was even wider than the other.
His glance fell on a little straw basket containing winter gear, like scarfs, gloves and hats.
Jacob grabbed one of his gloves and placed his hand upon it as a measurement.
Jacob had struggled for years to find well-fitting gloves for his meaty, shovel hands.
However, there was no need to try to fit them on. Jacob could see at one glance that his hands would never be able to fill the space provided by his gloves.
His eyes fell upon his wife's gloves. A woman's gloves they were, meant to provide space for fine, delicate hands with slender fingers.
Jacob opened his palm and placed it upon his wife's gloves—a perfect fit, so it seemed. Jacob donned the glove of his wife and gaped with incredulity as his once imposing hands were now almost small enough to fill the space provided by his wife's glove and make it fit comfortably. He balled his hand into a fist and slammed hard against the door, not caring if he would wake anyone.
A soft knock was heard on the door a few moments later, jolting Jacob from his trance. "Jacob? Are you in there?" Jacob's wife asked. "Jacob?" she opened the door to the walk-in wardrobe. "What on earth are you doing here in the wardrobe at this time of the night?" Meril's eyes flashed a puzzled look when they zeroed in on Jacob's hand. "…with my pink glove on?"
Jacob yanked off the glove and hurled it into the basket. "Get to bed, woman! It's late!" he roared, shoving past her.
"You do not have to tell me!" Meril replied as she stepped aside, careful not to be bulldozed over by her burly husband crashing out of the wardrobe. "Hey! Where are you going?"
"Where do you think?!" Jacob snapped over his shoulder as he lunged towards the bathroom adjacent to their bedroom. "Taking a pee and getting back to bed. I have to get up at 6 am."
As the door slammed shut behind him, Meril stood alone in the dark room, her mind racing with questions and suspicions.
Jacob took a long pee, flushed the toilet in the bathroom adjacent to their bedroom and slumped down upon their creaking bed while pulling the blanket over his head so that only his beady eyes and nose were visible.
He grumbled under his breath when he felt his wife's arm slithering around his belly as she snuggled behind him. He pushed his face deeper into his pillow when his wife climbed over him in an attempt to kiss him.
"Goddamn it, Jacob! You're acting weird!" Meril sat up in bed and crossed her arms, frowning deeply. "And I mean weirder than usual! I have no idea what's going on in that head of yours, and you're probably aren't going to tell me either, but for the love of god, could you please –"
"I'm shrinking," Jacob mumbled from beneath his blanket, his voice sounding meek.
Meril stared at the bulged blanket containing her husband. "What?"
Jacob shot up, eyeing his wife with annoyance. "I'm shrinking, for god's sake! Are you deaf, woman?"
"I heard what you said!" Meril retorted, anger and confusion clouding her features. "It just doesn't make any sense to me."
"Neither does this." Jacob held out his hand with an open palm.
Meril looked at her husband's hand, puzzled.
"Place your hand on top of mine," Jacob prodded.
"What for?"
"Just do it!" Jacob said.
Meril rolled her eyes and did what she was told. Disbelief spread across her face, chasing away the annoyance she was feeling a second ago when she noticed that her husband's usual imposing hands were now almost the same size as hers.
Meril beheld Jacob's eyes with incredulity. "What the hell is going on here?"
"I'm shrinking, Meril! That's what going on!" Jacob cried out in anguish.
"My shoes prove it, my jacket, the marked lines in the wardrobe, your gloves, and now those goddamn petite hands of yours do so too!"
"But how? How can this be happening, Jacob?" Meril demanded.
Jacob snorted. "You ask me, woman?!" he snarled.
"Stop calling me 'woman,' for Christ's sake!" Meril snapped back, her temper starting to flare. "I have a name and am your wife!"
"Do not make this about you, Meril! I'm the one who's suffering from this inexplicable… disease, or condition, or infection, or whatever the fuck doctors are calling it!" He spat out the last words like they were poison.
"I doubt any doctor has ever seen something like this," Meril replied.
"Whatever, I still have it and want to get rid of it," Jacob said. "What's that?" his eyes zeroed in on the door leading to the hallway, where he thought he could hear a faint yet persistent whispering. He leaped up from the bed, surged towards the door and swung it open.
Riley and Reign yelped and stumbled forward, rolling into their parent's bedroom and draping over each other.
"What have you heard?!" Jacob roared, rage boiling in his veins as he looked down upon his flabbergasted daughters sprawled out on the floor. Riley dressed in her pink pajamas and Reign in a loose-fitting grey shirt that could barely cover the luscious cheeks of her ass.
"Nothing," Reign quickly said.
"Are you actually shrinking, dad?" Riley spilled out, granting her a knowing glance from Reign, which left no doubt that the latter wasn't happy with her kid sister's confession.
"OUT!" Jacob bellowed, his voice thundering from within the walls like an enraged monster. His arm was outstretched, and a quivering finger pointed menacingly down the hallway.
Jacob did not need to tell Riley and Reign twice. Both girls scrambled back on their feet and ran in fright as they vanished into the hallway's darkness, the sound of their tripling feet gradually fainting in the distance.
"Reign?" Riley said as she was about to enter her bedroom. Reign swiveled around and looked upon her little sister quizzically. "Do you think it's true? You know... what we heard just now."
Reign shrugged. "Beats me. It'd be amazing if it were, though."
Riley's eyes lit up with joy. "Could it be possible that Dad eventually became the same size as me? He and I could play so many games together! It would be so much fun!"
Reign snorted. "That brute can shrink a lot smaller if you ask me. I wouldn't mind if he shrank so small that I could hold him in my hand." Reign curled her fingers together, forming a fist, picturing her father trapped inside. "Oh, the things I would do to him…."
"You would not hurt him now, would you, Reign?" Riley peered wordily at her big sister's sinister gloat. "That would be really mean."
Reign scoffed. "Look at this." Baring her arm, she showed a mark on the underside of her left arm that was branded with an old scar of some wound. "On my 13th birthday, Dad pushed out a burning cigarette on my arm for wearing too revealing clothing. I screamed like a pig, and mom did nothing but finish my birthday cake. And here, behold this notch in my right earlobe. A present from Dad when I came home smiling as a little sprout with my very first earring. That bunk utterly ripped it out of my ear, tearing the skin open. And again, all that mom did was continue to dust the house like an overzealous maid."
Riley gasped, placing her hand against her mouth. "Oh my God, Reign. I didn't know…."
"And that's merely the tip of the iceberg." Reign lowered her eyes.
"He never did something like that to me," Riley said.
"I know. So you see, I'm not the one who is mean here, Riley. But I can be if it's justified. Especially if the opportunity presents itself." A menacing glint flashed in Reign's eyes as she contemplated the possibility of revenge before shaking her head and letting out a deep sigh. "But who am I fooling here? Come, give me a hug. Time to go to bed."