“Are you sure you don’t want to come along with us, Paul, dear?” Scarlet Harris called up the stairs. She slung her purse over her shoulder and, peeking into the foyer wall mirror, gave her dark-auburn hair a shaping pat, then shimmied her broad hips just once for good measure.

            “Shouldn’t we get going?” Tory asked impatiently. She tapped her foot, her sneakers clapping loudly with the floor. The eldest daughter crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. Then, opening her palm, she snapped her fingers, and a pocket watch materialized in her hand. “I don’t think he’s coming, Mom. And look, it’s already noon!”

            “C’mon, Paul, we’re going out to lunch and then going shopping!” Zoey yelled, as if this would sweeten the pot. She pinched the hem of her purple skirts between her thumbs and index fingers, sticking out her tongue. “We’re going to buy me a new dress, cuz I hate the color on this one.”

            “I’m sure he’s dying to see that,” Tory groaned. “And if you were a little better at your spells, you could just change the color yourself. See?” In demonstration, Tory snapped her fingers again, and her own sky-blue dress transformed hues to a radiant neon-red.

            “No fair!” Zoey moaned.

            “Seriously, Mom. Let’s just leave him,” Tory said, snickering at her little sister’s reaction. “I’m sure he’s busy or something.”

            “I’m okay, go without me!” Paul answered back at last from behind his closed bedroom door.

            “All right, all right,” Scarlet shrugged. “It’s just a girls’ afternoon out, then. Let’s go! Oh, and Zoey? You may not be able to change the color yet on your dresses, but I’m sure you’re just wonderful at finding the perfect one!” Embracing both daughters as they skipped onto the patio, Scarlet waved her hand and caused the door to close on its own, leaving Paul alone in the house.

            The young man peeked out his bedroom window. He waited until the car had driven all the way down the block and turned the corner before making his move. Then, slipping casually out of his room, he tiptoed to Tory’s down the hall, with a book in hand. Pushing the door gently open, he threw the tome across the threshold, where it landed innocuously on the carpet. No magic trap after all. Seeing as he was the only member of the family without supernatural abilities, his security methods were limited.

            Now reassured that his sister hadn’t left one of her prank spells waiting to ensnare him, Paul himself entered, closed the door behind, and approached his sibling’s closet. Tory’s aroma was thick in the room as it was, like warm vanilla sugar and lavender washing fluid, egging Paul on toward the motherlode. He opened the closet, revealing Tory’s treasure trove of dresses and skirts, ranging from glittering formal elegance to springtime romp wear, and everything in between.

            Each elaborate outfit was bright and eye-catching, ranging across the rainbow with the brilliance of artificially colored candy shells. Some bore clean-white aprons, some were speckled with grass stains and mud cakes, others still dense with the scent of perfumes and fresh laundry, as Paul detected hanging in the room itself. All of them, of course, were intricately ruffled around the hem, with the snow-colored petticoats trickling out like melted ice cream constructed of lace and cloth. The boy ran his hands over the array of garments. He traced along the necklines, petting the silky hourglass shapes and poofy aprons, then indulged in more conspicuous locations by exploring beneath the skirt. The newer petticoats were soft and fluffy, like they were made of butterfly wings, while those weathered by usage and trips through the dryer were rougher, almost flaky, and especially pungent of earth and sour human flavors.

            Paul took a deep breath. They said they were going to lunch, then shopping, which could easily stretch into early evening. There was plenty of time. Which would he choose today? After stroking the options again, he eventually settled on a sea-green number with a tight corseted midsection, velvety petticoats, and a powerful floral wallop in the hand-stitched fibers.

            This was the winner.

            As usual, Paul took his time getting inside his sister’s dress. After stripping totally naked in the middle of the bedroom, he swam up through the fabric folds, at first unsure which way to go, and for a minute wrestled softly with the clothen whirlpool. That lovely smell was multiplied tenfold within. Eventually, his hands found the arm holes, which he tugged through until his shoulders were shielded in the pillowy pads, and after that, it was easy to find the neckline. When Paul released his grip on the train, the whole thing flopped down at once, the abdomen of the garment hugging his stomach tightly while all the rest flared out like a peacock.

            Paul looked himself over the mirror, smoothing out the wrinkles as he found them and adjusting the alignment until it sat perfectly on his frame. The constrictive quality of the dress was more intense than he expected from the tight cut, which was even more encouraging to his already-rising erection, though he didn’t really need the help. After staring at himself in the mirror for more than a few minutes, bathing in the lacy boa constrictor-style massage of the tubed fabric architecture, not to mention breathing in the flowery stench, Paul’s head was already fuzzy with arousal.

            Ever since the boy first got the courage to attempt this little activity while his family was out, he occasionally questioned his own motivation. Am I a cross-dresser, he sometimes bluntly asked himself? In the end, he came down on the side of “no,” not only because he was pretty sure he’d literally perish of embarrassment if seen like this by a single other soul, magic or otherwise. In addition, it occurred to him that he enjoyed the experience itself. There were a multitude of factors which got the gears turning: the fact that it was his own sister’s clothing, worn without her permission; the narrow, body-squeezing shape of it restricting him like a personal bondage suit; the skin-close proximity to a beautiful object he admired so greatly when partnered with the human form, and seeing how he wasn’t likely to convince any woman he knew to model it, his own body had to do.

            Of course, Paul acknowledged that he might well just be trying to protect his own withered ego, and for all he knew, he really was just a full-blown cross-dresser with a sexual predilection for garbing himself like a pretty lady. Who was to say, really?

            The boy cat-walked around the room. He pirouetted and pranced, always stalking past the mirror for a fleeting glance of himself. Every movement caused the silky prison of the dress to squeeze him from new angles: the pads pinching his shoulders, the corset dampening his breaths, and the fleecy petticoats caressing his junk with each step. It was all so tantalizing, bordering on painful where the dress was tightest, but by constantly moving and changing the pressure point locations, Paul was able to soothe the sore spots with almost instant pleasure. Of course, down below, he was feeling nothing but elation, and soon was at full mast; a tented shape prodded up from the flowing skirts of the aquamarine dress. Paul was just sitting down on the bed to finish himself off with the masturbatory aid of the under-skirt frills, when he heard a sound which struck greater terror into his heart than any he could recall in his life.

            The car tires rolling up the driveway.

            How long had they been gone, fifteen minutes? There had to be some mistake. Paul peeped out the window, kneeling to ensure he couldn’t be spied from below. His organs turned inside out at the sight of his three family members emerging from the vehicle and marching quickly toward the front stoop. Down below, he heard the door magically swing open without the need to fumble for keys: something which was a major convenience most times in a magic family, but in this moment, might be his death sentence.

            Panicked, Paul commenced wriggling out of the dress. Unfortunately, his usual time estimation also required plenty of space to remove the garment, especially when he chose a tighter one. And judging by his previous experience, this was the most form-fitting item in Tory’s closet. Already sweating anxiously, the boy was horrified to realize that he could scarcely slide his arms back up through the shoulder mounts, let alone squeeze his torso back down through the mid-section.

            Downstairs, he heard the clattering of shoes on the hardwood, a few giggles, and female voices rebounding.

            “Well, where could it have gone?” Scarlet asked, more than a little irritated. “I never take my pocketbook out of the purse, girls. You know that. Are you sure one of you didn’t take it out for something?”

            “No, Mom!” Zoey whined defensively.

            “I’m sure it’s around somewhere,” Tory said nonchalantly.

            “Let’s just split up,” Scarlet said. “The sooner we find it, the sooner we can get to lunch. Zoey, please check the living room. Tory, could you take the upstairs? Oh, and maybe Paul can help us. PAUL!”

            There were no other voices, but soon, the sound of Tory’s sneakers clomping up the stairs grew louder in her brother’s ears. Paul’s mania quintupled. He’d made no progress yet in escaping the dress. At this point, he was starting to reason that it would be less costly to rip his way out of the dress. Sure, Tory would probably be pissed, and likely put some enchantment on him to show her displeasure, but it would still be nothing compared to the hellfire of humiliation he would receive if he was caught red-handed, or really, red-bodied in the dress, naked beneath, and sporting a boner.

            Mentally cursing himself out for having allowed these circumstances to transpire, Paul made his best attempt to shred his way out of the dress. All he could get going were a few popped threads; this dress was made of tough stuff. He even considered leaping out the window and rolling down the roof, hopefully landing in the grass, if only he could escape.

            That option, unfortunately, vanished when the bedroom door magically swung open, and there stood Tory in the frame with her hands on her hips and a smug look of triumphant glee on her face.

For a few instants, Paul and Tory faced off silently, basking in the shared horridness. The golden-tanned girl with her dark chocolate hair and twinkling eyes, dressed in her “new” red dress, had never looked more victorious in her little brother’s eyes than now. The elder sibling nibbled the corner of her lip, shook her head, and allowed her grin widen to delighted proportions. Her sneaker resumed tapping on the floor, until Paul’s racing pulse synced with her beat.

            Meanwhile, the boy himself felt his throat go dry. He instinctively sunk to his knees, at least hoping to conceal his dress-tent before it was noticed; at this point, damage control was his only hope. Folding his hands in his lap, he couldn’t help but start internally miming prayers of mercy. Not that he expected anything but the direst scenario to play out here.

            At last, stroking a finger on her chin, Tory sang out: “Oh, Mom! I didn’t find your pocketbook yet, but I did find something else you might want to get a look at. Zoey better come, too!”

            With nowhere to go, Paul remained crouched in the middle of the bedroom floor, while Tory blocked the doorway just in case he got the idea to flee. It would’ve been impossible to do so, anyway. His powerful sorceress sister would have any number of methods at her disposal for keeping him right where he was, on display for Scarlet and Zoey. Their distinct footsteps followed soon after: Scarlet’s thick-heeled clog pumps, and Zoey’s soft-padding ballet flats.

            Abruptly, there were three Harris women crowded in the doorframe, and Paul’s embarrassment accordingly tripled. He felt his cheeks burning red-hot with shame, and making matters worse, he could tell his erection had not yet wilted in the slightest. As it turned out, his rapid drop to his knees had buried his dick under a heap of lovely, sweet-scented, velvet-kissed petticoats, which was maintaining him at the height of arousal without any motion.

            “Wow!” Zoey gasped, pointing and laughing at her older brother, though not with utter malice. “Looks like Paul was playing dress-up without us, huh? You look like you’re ready to go to the royal ball!”

            “Now, Tory,” Scarlet scolded instantly, wagging a finger at her daughter. The woman planted a hand back on her maternal hip and shook her head. “What have I told you about playing tricks on your brother? It’s not like he can defend himself, you know. You really ought to find more constructive ways to relate to poor Paul.”

            “I know, Mom. I didn’t do this.”

            “What?”

            “You heard me,” Tory said, a giggle punctuating her remark. She took a few steps into the room, now looking down on her cowering brother. “This isn’t a spell. He just put it on. By himself. While we were gone. He was trying to get it off when I walked in.”

            Still disbelieving, Scarlet followed her eldest child into the room. She waved a hand over Paul’s head, and even touched his scalp, during which there was a brief spark emanating from her fingers; the boy had a feeling she was feeling out for the presence of any enchantment, and by the look of alarm and disgusting rapidly contorting her face, she had found Tory’s statement to be true. There was no magic.

            “Oh… my… word…” Scarlet gawked. Her jaw hung open, and her hand trembled as she let go of her son’s head. Taking several steps back, she staggered onto the edge of the mattress for support. The mother was going pale, and clutched her cheek in shock. Tory, more vindicated than ever, crossed her arms again and glowered at Paul from her imagined ivory tower. And Zoey simply laughed until tears formed in her eyes, while twirling a finger through her dark ponytail.

            Clearing his throat, Paul tried to form the words of a defense, but came up empty. He doubted there was any useful rhetoric he could summon now anyway, as he bowed on the floor, clearly nude save for his own older sister’s way-too-tight dress, while his family members encircled him above. Even Zoey, significantly shorter than Paul when they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, looked especially imposing when she stood beside him now, and not just from the perspective shift of crouching: there was something taking place in the room right now, beyond the tangible, and Paul seriously doubted it was anything but bad for him.

            “Well, this is going to make things kinda awkward from now on, isn’t it?” Tory commented. She approached her brother with her hands tucked behind her back like a discerning headmistress, then hunched over to regard him closer. “What are we supposed to do, Mom?”

            “I’m thinking, dear,” Scarlet murmured, her hand over her heart. The shock of her son’s fancies was clearly taking a toll.

            “Maybe we should put on our nice dresses, too, and then have a fashion show!” Zoey suggested. Picking up a comb from the bedside table, she started lovingly scraping the plastic teeth through Paul’s hair.

            “Seeing as it’s my dress he put on without permission, I think I should get at least some say in what happens,” Tory said innocently. She waggled her fingers in front of Paul’s face, and produced a few multicolored sparks; he flinched, earning a snort of laughter from his older sister, but no spell was enacted yet. At least that he could see.

            “I can’t disagree,” Scarlet sighed, kneading her forehead. “Be gentle with him, dear. He’s still your brother. But I see no reason why you shouldn’t get to have some input on his punishment. Go on.”

            Paul jolted. He was expecting repercussions, of course: likely a grounding, just to start, not to mention a lifetime of embarrassment as long as he lived under the same roof with these women who now knew his worst secret. But the fact that his mother was apparently handing the jurisdiction over to his sister, the far-more talented sorceress between his siblings and also a fiendishly clever tactician, made the boy’s blood chill. If there was one thing Tory loved, it was toying with her mortal brother. What would it be this time? Maybe she’d curse him with the inability to speak for the entire weekend, or turn all his belongings into beetles, or simply make all his food taste like soap. Paul could only imagine.

            “Don’t mind if I do, Mom! I already have the perfect solution, so don’t worry,” Tory reassured. A hungry glow seemed to emanate from her eyes, or maybe it was simply the build-up toward a more powerful spell. Whatever the case, Paul remained helplessly hunched on the floor, getting his hair combed by a humming little sister, while his elder sibling muttered beneath her breath and waved her fingers in balletic fashion. A few seconds after she finished, Paul felt no differences: no missing teeth, no ants crawling out of his ears. Then it happened.

            The diminishment took place slowly enough that there was no questioning what consequence Tory had selected. Paul knew. Waving goodbye with her that same smug smirk, Tory watched her brother sink down and down, multiple inches at a time, as though he was a melting ice sculpture. Zoey, surprised, was forced to withdraw the comb when her brother’s head became too small to adequately groom. Both sisters squatted on the ground, puffing out their skirts around their stockinged legs to make room, and witnessed Paul leveling out to a paltry eight inches tall. Given his attire, which shrunk along with him, the mental comparison to a Barbie doll made by everyone in the room wasn’t far off.

            “I think this’ll help the message stick, don’t you, Z?” Tory questioned. “If you wanna dress yourself up like a pretty doll, Paul, get ready to be one. Hey, that rhymes!”

            “Yeah!” the younger sister blurted. She clapped her hands. “He’s almost the perfect size.”

            Paul shivered as he staggered to his feet between the two towering bodies hunched on either side of him. Even with the girls on their knees, their brother scarcely reached the height of their waists. They were like a pair of great, moving marble statues draped in brilliant living fabrics which wrinkled and fluffed and wafted delicious fruity-detergent air. Upon standing up straight and feeling the insistent bulge still pushing up the petticoats between his legs, though, Paul dropped back to a seated position just as fast. For God sake, why wasn’t he going down?

            “This is the best idea, Tory! You’re so good at your spells,” Zoey gushed. “This is so much better than his regular big size.”

            “Yeah, yeah, you little suck-up,” Tory laughed, but she smiled with pride all the same. Cocking her head, she made a mocking duck face at her tiny brother. “Or I guess maybe he’s more of the “little” something, but I don’t think it’s a suck-up.”

            “I think it’s a doll!” Zoey squealed.

            Feeling more helpless than ever, the boy flinched as he felt fingers the size of tree trunks curling around his ribs, and a warm palm flush with his back. Zoey closed her hand as far around him as she could, not quite sealing him into a tight fist given his doll size, but more than caged enough to contain him, even if her hand only fit over his torso. Despite the girl’s youth and the delicacy of her fingers, Paul could feel the subtle musculature of her digits binding him against her firm palm.     When she lifted him, it was with no effort, which seemed to surprise Zoey as much as Paul, because she jerked him upward with the speed of a slingshot roller coaster.

            “Woah! He’s so light,” Zoey commented.

            “Well, duh. He’s the size of your plastic kiddie things.”

            “Hi there, Paul,” Zoey cooed, effecting a maternal lullaby voice one, like a child might use to soothe a baby doll. She held her dress-clad brother up to her face, and grinned ear-to-ear as she continued gently combing his hair a tuft at a time with her fingernail. “How ya feeling? Nice and pretty, maybe?”

            “Uh…” the boy muttered. He couldn’t tell if the question was hypothetical, or if he’d have a good answer. All he knew for sure was that he was hopelessly bound in this sea-green garment like a gimp body suit, and that his goddamn boner still hadn’t gone down, even with his own giant sister’s pinky finger wrapped just over his stomach, a hair’s breadth from the nub thankfully concealed under the hanging train of the dress.

            “Oh, I’m sure he feels very pretty. It’s my dress, after all,” Tory interjected, scooting on the carpet to sit beside her youngest sibling and admire their newfound toy. She snatched the hem of the tiny dress between her thumb and forefinger, giving it a tug. “You’re lucky I can magically fix this, since you probably stretched out the seams, you little weirdo.”

Paul was overwhelmed, not just by the enormous, adorable billboard-scaled faces cheesing off at him, but also by the team of hands and fingers snaking over his body, with his younger sister’s clammy fist still clamped around his side, and his older sister’s elegant digits petting and primping the dress itself, as if they were getting him ready to attend that ball Zoey joked about.

            “Well, dear,” Scarlet said, drawing a deep breath, her hand over her heart. Apparently having recovered sufficiently, she leaned forward on the side of the bed, and nodded with approval at the sight of her daughters manhandling her cross-dressing son. “I think this is a fitting punishment, indeed. Very good choice, Tory.”

            “Thanks, Mom!”

            “So what’s gonna happen to him now?” Zoey asked with a ravenous smile and bright eyes. Her tongue batted thoughtfully at the corner of her lip. Judging by that wild expression, Paul was probably most afraid to hear his younger sister’s suggestions about what would become of him next. “Where are we gonna keep him?”

            “Yeah, I don’t think he’ll be tall enough to climb into his own bed anymore,” Tory snickered. “Or use a toilet. Or a sink. Or a shower. Or a doorknob. Or anything, actually.”

            “Tory got to contribute a good idea,” Scarlet said, looking to her youngest. “Why don’t you give it a try now, darling?”

            Of course.

            “Hmm…” Zoey murmured. She shifted her grip on her eight-inch brother, fastening her free hand in a fist around his leg, then slid the opposite appendage down to take hold of his other limb, until she was gripping the boy like an awkward pair of garden shears. Again, Paul was troubled by the dangerous proximity of his sister’s curled thumbs to his erection, but still the dress ironically managed to save him by poofing too large for his prick to be seen when ruffled up. “Hey… I just remembered… that old dollhouse, in my closet. I haven’t played with it in a super-long time, but it might be the perfect thing for…”

            Tory’s smile spread back into a devilish smirk. She giggled, and even patted her sister on the back, then snared eye contact with Paul. Her gaze held so much malicious promise, it made the boy cringe even more than having his younger sister’s colossal fingers within a twitch of brushing his puny boner.

            “Z, that’s the best idea you’ve ever come up with,” Tory congratulated. She stood up, careful to keep her cherry-red gown in modest array, though her petticoats briefly kicked up from the bottom in her haste to enact the plan. “C’mon, let’s get it out and set up for him!”

            “Okay!” Zoey, obviously almost as eager to have her older sister’s approval as she was to turn her brother into a personal doll, did the same with far less grace, and hopped to her feet. The sisters giddily scampered to the bedroom across the hall. Meanwhile, Paul was jostled roughly the entire way, as his little sister had seemingly forgotten about his fragility. Her fists tightened around his legs, and he bumped and bounced against the nearby warm wall of Zoey’s dress, where it met her waist and flowed out into a dizzying violet skirt. He could practically hear the gurgles in her stomach rising up and turning into anticipatory laughter.

            In Zoey’s bedroom, Tory was already busy casting objects aside in a mad rush to find Paul’s chosen destination. Parked against the back wall of the closet was the elaborate and likely expensive dollhouse Zoey used to play with as a young child. Tory waved her fingers, causing the massive plastic plaything to slide out into the center of the space. With two stories and a dozen rooms, complete with hinged walls for ease of accessing the fully-decorated interior, the place was in fact scaled perfectly to a doll of Paul’s new eight-inch size.

            “Wow, Paul. Would you look at all this. Aren’t you lucky?” Tory taunted.

            “I always kept it really nice!” Zoey announced. Both sisters seated themselves on the floor again in front of the opened dollhouse.

            Despite the trouble he was in, Paul couldn’t help but let some of the weight off his shoulders in relief. He’d been expecting to be turned into a tortoise when he was caught. Granted, he had been found red-handed in his sister’s dress, which was an emotional malady that wasn’t going to be healed any time soon, but there were worse fates, he decided, than what was seemingly coming. Humiliating, yes. Degrading, yes. But not painful or frightening. Maybe they’d just stick him in the dollhouse as a form of time-out, and he’d have an hour to settle himself mentally and sexually until he could come up with a good excuse for his whacky behavior?

            “Welcome to your new home. For now, anyway,” Tory declared. “Since you’re too small to be of any help around the regular-people house, you’ll just have to settle for keeping this one nice and spotless. In fact, that sounds like the best way to teach you a lesson.”

            Paul nodded hesitantly. He could do that.

            “We won’t let you get lonely in there, though, Paul,” Zoey added with a chuckle. She smoothed down his hair again, inadvertently craning her brother’s neck backward in the process from her enthusiasm. “You’ll get some playtime, too, and I have lots of doll dresses you can pick from, so you don’t have to keep using Tory’s!”

            Scarlet entered the room, standing behind her crouching daughters with her arms crossed and a look of stern disappointment on her face. This countenance was perhaps the most damning of the three, and made it impossible for Paul to look his parent in the face. He’d really screwed the pooch, harsh punishment or not.

            “You girls seem to have your brother’s disciplinary rewards well in-hand,” Scarlet said.

            “Literally,” Tory snickered.

            “I think it will be good practice for you to keep the inside of your sister’s dollhouse clean, my little dear,” Scarlet said, addressing her son now. “Perhaps once this is over, you’ll become a more productive member of the household.”

            “When it’s over?” Zoey repeated, obviously let down by this eventuality. Her fingers gave Paul’s legs another squeeze.

            “Well, we don’t want Paul to feel too hopeless, or he may begin to slack in his work, and then he’d no good to anybody. Still, a little hopelessness will do him wonders,” Scarlet said with uncommon coldness that made Paul shiver despite the warmth of his sister’s hands. “You know. For building character. And judging by the activities you occupy yourself with when we’re not in the house, Paul, I’d say you have quite a lot of character-building to do.”

            The family joined in raucous laughter, while Paul only withered in shame. Hanging his head, the shrunken boy was relieved to notice at that his erection had disappeared. Thank heavens for small blessings. Now all he had to do was keep a dollhouse clean while his family convinced themselves he was a deviant cross-dressing sissy. And really, he wasn’t necessarily sure he wasn’t.

            “I love it!” Tory said.

            “If he builds his character, he won’t start building himself bigger again, will he?” Zoey asked with some obvious anxiety. “Cuz I like him small a lot better.”

            “That settles it!” Scarlet proclaimed, a finger raised in the air. “A compromise. Paul, dear? You have one week to prove to us that you deserve to return to your former size. Seven days inside that house, when you will be expected to make yourself the world’s most efficient maid. At the end of that time, if the house is as beautiful as it could possibly be, then we’ll grow you back. Do you understand?”

            Gulping, Paul dared look up at the looming faces again. Seven days? Or what? “Yes, Mom.”

            “Hmmm… something’s not quite right yet,” Tory said, tapping her chin. “Oh! I know. Z, where are those other doll clothes?”

            Paul’s stomach revolved.

            Once the location was pointed out, the elder sister retrieved the box of lacy goods from the closet, and commenced rooting through the stack. From his double-fisted perch, Paul blanched at the sight of the toy wardrobe. Zoey wasn’t lying when she said she had a lot of options for him.

            “Let’s see, let’s see…” Tory hummed as she scooped through the swaths of delicate little garments. She flicked aside a cocktail dress, an astronaut suit, a bikini, and a Victorian gown, until at last her eyes lit up at something Paul couldn’t see from his vantage in Zoey’s hands. When Tory’s hand rose up from the box again, though, with her thumb and index pinched around the hem of her find, the whole room reacted appropriately. Which was to say that Scarlet and Zoey cheered and Paul’s heart sunk at the sight of a frilly black-and-white French maid’s uniform dangling from his older sister’s fingers.

            “Don’t just sit there, Z,” Tory muttered. She snapped her fingers, causing the stolen teal dress to inflate ever so slightly in size, until it was no longer tight as an iron lung, but more like floppy pajamas. “Get this dolly’s clothes off so we can make him a real maid!”

            Paul’s pulse raced, and his whole body went rigid, perhaps in pre-emptive defense, despite knowing the combined might of his panicked body would be no match for his eager little sister’s greedy fingers. He wanted to cry out in protest, maybe even plead with his younger sibling, who at this moment seemed the most compassionate of the three, but it was obvious his family’s mind was made up. To resist would just prolong the inevitable, and likely stack the stakes of his punishment even higher.

            Only too thrilled to comply with Tory’s command, Zoey kept one hand latched around Paul’s leg, while the other pinched the scruff of the dress. She plucked in a circle from shoulder to shoulder, as if pulling petals off a sunflower. Acting with surprising delicacy given their difference in scale, she worked the garment up the boy’s torso, forcing his arms up in the air. Then, with some finagling from under the train, she hiked the skirts up and bunched them around his upper body, momentarily drowning the boy in fluff while she slid the midsection up. Her molesting fingers touched and bopped on every square inch of his body in the effort to find necessary leverage to undress him.

Paul burned hot with shame, fully aware that his family could see his naked body being squeezed out the bottom of the dress like a toothpaste tube, while he was lost in the sea of aquamarine fabrics. He even heard a couple of giggles from all three parties, though he couldn’t be sure if it was due to Zoey’s particularly loving yet rough technique, or the amusing sight of his embarrassed form being forcibly unveiled. Likely both.

            He emerged again, with the dress peeled away, leaving him nude in Zoey’s hand. Tory already had the maid’s uniform held up and, God help him, Paul was actually eager to get inside it because, he told himself, he really wanted to cover up again so he’d no longer have to feel the wide-eyed gazes of his bemused family members scoping his delicates. It definitely wasn’t because he was curious to know what it would feel like on his body, just like he’d wanted to know how Tory’s formal dress felt. Definitely.

            “Let’s get him all gussied up,” Tory said. “Help me out, Z.”

            The sisters worked together with the kind of concerted teamwork usually foreign to their familial bickering. It seemed to Paul that the ritual humiliation of their shrunken brother was truly bringing them together. While Zoey held the naked dollman still, Tory expertly slid the maid uniform down around him, guiding his tiny arms through the puffed shoulder pads via her slender fingertips and patting the aproned skirt down around his thighs. Despite the churning in his stomach, Paul was infinitely grateful his member managed to stay down. Hyper-shame evidently trumped the naughty high.

            With the uniform on, all that remained was the cherry on top, which Tory ensured to retrieve from the box: the lacy white bonneted headpiece. Paul wriggled in avoidance, if only to preserve an iota of dignity, though it was pointless, and all four of the family members knew it. Soon he was garbed from head-to-toe in the uniform of his new profession. With some hesitancy, Zoey set her toy down in the plastic-floored bedroom of the dollhouse. Staggering, Paul was momentarily tricked by the optical illusion of the immaculately detailed model room into thinking things were back to normal. Then he looked out to the opened fourth wall, where his gigantic family now crowded around to gawk at him like a zoo animal, and the illusion was shattered.

            “Starting now, dear. One week to keep that space perfect,” Scarlet said, and even flashed a glance to the clock on the wall. “Do try to keep track of the dust better than you keep track of where your family is whenever you’re struck with the urge to dress up like a little girl.”

            “Little girl,” Zoey giggled.

            “And you’re not just going to be keeping the house clean,” Tory added quickly. Her index finger pointed firmly at Paul, prodding him in the chest and pinning him against the plastic dresser. “If you’re going to be our doll maid, you’re going to act like one, too. Like with manners and being polite and all that. C’mon, let’s see it now. Curtsy for us.”

            Shaking, Paul stepped away from the dresser and back toward the precipice of the opened room. He took hold of the skirt in his fingers, quaking all the while, and bowed his knees slightly. Was this how to do it? He’d spent enough time prancing in front of a mirror wearing Tory’s clothes that it seemed like he ought to know, but in this moment of stage fright, he couldn’t quite place it.

            “Almost!” Zoey commented. Her thumb appeared over Paul’s head and gave him a hard shove down, pushing him into a truer curtsy. “That’s how! We wanna see you do that every time we come see you in your pretty house and in your pretty dress, Paul!”

            “Paul,” Tory repeated, chewing the word over, then pinched her lips like she’d sucked a lime. “No, I don’t think that fits now. I mean, he is our little French maid. He likes girl clothes. I think a girl’s name would fit him better.”

            “But what might it be?” Scarlet asked with a sly smile, at last seeming to get in on the fun of the family activity. “Catherine? Deidre? Minx?”

            “Mary-Ann,” Zoey said quietly. Her fingers clasped together over her chest, seething with hope. “I think his dolly name is Mary-Ann.”

            “I like,” said Tory.

            “Perfect choice yet again, dear!” Scarlet said. “What do you say, girls? I found my pocketbook down in the kitchen just before you called us up, dear. Maybe some lunch and then shopping would do us some good, after all the… excitement. And I’m sure Paul needs some time to think about what he’s done.”

            “Yes, please!” Zoey wheedled. She rumpled the hem of her purple dress again. “I really want a new color!”

            “Just one more thing, Paul,” Tory said as the family stood up, leaving the bedazzled boy to his new disgraceful purpose. While Scarlet and Zoey departed, the elder sister remained in the room, towering like a fifty-foot-woman over the humble dollhouse and its quivering occupant. “We wouldn’t want your job to get too easy, would we? A house that small? You might just get bored in a week. So let’s keep things interesting, shall we?”

            Tory waved her fingers, and in another sparkling flash, Paul felt himself and his maid uniform diminishing yet again. He dwindled, watching his perfectly scaled abode inflate all around, until it had become more of a funhouse rendition of Zoey’s toy. Now half his previous size, the four-inch boy was made to be the size of a small child within his little sister’s miniature model. Even in the confines of a dollhouse, he couldn’t feel anything but helplessly, pathetically, laughably small.

            “That should just about do it. I’ll leave you to your chores, little Mary-Ann,” Tory said with satisfaction. For a minute, the young woman stood in the doorframe, letting her sibling drink in her relatively doubled size. She winked at her brother, then cupped both hands around her lips. “By the way, in case your brain is too puny now to figure it out: Mom never leaves her pocketbook anywhere. Golly… I wonder if someone else did this time, just so we’d come back home when somebody wasn’t ready? Hmmmm!”

            Dumbstruck at this final haunting revelation, Paul watched his giant sibling snap her fingers, causing the twin halves of the doll-mansion to swing shut, sealing him inside the stale darkness of the plastic domestic prison. Then, with a swishing pivot on her heel which flourished her searing-crimson skirt and cloudy petticoats, Tory exited the room. Her victim listened to her sneakers padding all along the hallway and tramping down the stairs after the family.

            Paul bustled around his plastic prison. He’d been alone for hours now, locked away inside Zoey’s dollhouse, and was too frightened to try anything except what he was ordered to do. There was a front door, but he didn’t dare escape.

            It was enough trouble trying to keep the place clean when he was shrunken to the size of a small child, even measured against a toy model, but after finding some spare doll clothes in the bedroom to use as dusting rags, he at least had a start. Though the lighting was poor, every room contained a wide four-paned window opening, so Paul could make out objects enough to know where he should be concentrating. He stood on his tip-toes just to reach the tops of the little doll dressers and countertops. Aside from his current attire, it was a bizarre flashback to actually being a small child and trying to reach high-up places.

            Putting aside the humiliation of earlier, and general fretting at his sister Tory’s diabolical ploy, he busied himself with scrubbing and scouring. It wasn’t even clear if Paul was doing the job correctly. The dollhouse was indeed caked with dust after years in storage, and gradually it was uncovered thanks to his efforts, but there was no telling if all his labors would come to naught anyway. Given the compromising circumstances he was discovered in, and literally discovered in his sister’s gown, he couldn’t say whether his family intended to honor the agreement, or if they simply wanted another excuse to laugh at the four-inch boy in his French maid uniform playing the part.

            Paul had just finished intricately dusting the tenth of the dozen rooms in the dollhouse, when he heard the distant opening and closing of an enormous door, followed by a trio of earth-rumbling footsteps. Though he was separated from his giant family by an entire story, the plastic floors of the dollhouse still vibrated softly. Collecting himself, Paul froze in the tiny kitchen. He watched the miniature plastic plates slide and tumble off the edge of the table as the footfalls grew more thunderous and ever-closer. The light coming in through the window shifted, darkening for an instant, and then changed colors to a distinct cherry-red tint.

            Booming murmurs were stifled outside. The whole dollhouse shuddered again as a pair of graceful, lithe yet comparatively gigantic bodies stooped down around the elaborate plaything. Paul crept toward the light, his heart in his throat, then staggered back in surprise when a colossal, sparkling chocolate-brown eye curtained with lengthy eyelashes appeared in the window. Two sets of delighted laughter quaked the walls.

            With a snap of Tory’s fingers, the dollhouse was split back down the middle on its hinge, and settled into “play” mode. Both sisters were seated daintily on folded legs, with their puffed skirts tucked neatly under, their hands clasped prayerfully in their laps. Tory still wore the same magically enhanced red dress, accessorized with the same secretive grin. Meanwhile, Zoey had evidently gotten what she wanted, and now wore a bright yellow number the hue of sherbet and cream. The youngest jittered, obviously holding back an excited outburst.

            “Well?” Tory snapped. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Heart racing at his elder sister’s question, Paul ducked down into the deepest curtsy he could muster. He sensed his sisters’ eyes drilling through him as he engaged in this particularly feminine gesture, and felt as though he was standing under a hot spotlight. When he looked up again, his younger sibling was twiddling with the hem of her dress.

            “Do you like it, Paul?” Zoey gushed. She flared the ends of the skirt out with her fingertips, careful not to lift them too high and let her petticoats come tumbling out. She swayed her hips, even while seated, and got the sunny fabric in motion. “Well, do you?”
            “You better answer her, Mary-Ann,” Tory seethed, though her smile wasn’t diminished. The young woman crossed her arms. “The hired help usually wants to stay on the mistress’s good side, you know.”

            Paul walked to the edge of the floor. Even while standing on the second story of the dollhouse, laid out before his sisters in their regal picnicking poses, he felt pathetically small. He wasn’t even standing at the height of the girls’ shoulders from up here, which meant Tory and Zoey still got to gleefully look down on him.

            “It looks nice, Zoey,” he mumbled.

            “Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Tory said.

            “It looks nice!”

            “Aww, thanks!” the girl laughed. She gave the skirt another draped twirl, then patted it down, until the lemony material was smoothed snug over the shape of her slender legs. An off-white corner of lacy petticoat peeked from the edge, which she tactfully shoved back under with her thumb. “I bet you’d like to wear it, too, huh?”
            Paul sighed. The sad part was that Zoey’s voice wasn’t even mocking or sarcastic; she was genuinely asking. Tory, of course, looked to be having the time of her life.

            “No, that’s okay,” Paul answered neutrally.

            “Really?” Zoey said, furrowing her brow. “I… thought you said you liked it?”

            “I do! It’s really pretty, and it looks great on you.”

            “But you don’t want to dress up in it?” The girl sounded hurt.

            Gulping, the boy in the maid uniform wrung his knuckles. He wasn’t expecting to be made to feel guilt over refusing to wear his sister’s clothes. But then again, he also wasn’t expecting to be turned into his family’s personal doll, either, so this was just icing on the cake.

            “I shouldn’t be dressing up in a girl’s clothes,” Paul said solemnly, and hung his head, too embarrassed to look his triumphant older sister or befuddled younger sister in the eye.

            “That’s not fair. You should be able to dress up however you want… Mary-Ann,” Zoey continued, her eyes practically glowing at the mention of the new name. Paul couldn’t help but note the irony of his sister’s generous acceptance of his quirk. Her open-mindedness was making this even worse.

            “Or however we want you to dress up,” Tory added. She reached a hand into the tiny kitchen, and cupped her palm around her four-inch brother’s back, but didn’t snatch him up; the shiver that ran through Paul’s frame was enough for her. Instead, she plucked her finger under his uniform’s apron, and flapped it up and down against the boy’s thighs. “I mean, no offense, but you’re living in a dollhouse now. Dolls have to get dressed up whenever their owners feel like it.”

            “Yeah, but don’t you want him to have fun, too?” Zoey questioned.

            “I don’t think we have to worry about that, Z,” Tory said. She winked at Paul again, ensuring Zoey couldn’t see. “Once we get going, he’ll realize he’s having fun, too.”

            Tory’s hand, still hovering at Paul’s back, closed at last. Her fingers lashed down over the front of the boy’s body, binding him into her fist, until only his head poked out the top. The elder sibling chuckled as she lifted Paul out of his habitat, while Zoey clapped her hands.

            “Wow, you really did shrink him a lot smaller!”

            “You bet I did,” Tory said. “We don’t want him to feel too at home in this dollhouse, after all. Plus, I always liked smaller toys better.”

            “Me, too,” Zoey agreed. Her finger recommenced combing over Paul’s hair, though there was much less of it to interact with, as the pad of her fingertip alone covered most of his scalp.

            “Oh, just look at you, Mary-Ann. You fit so perfectly in my hand. Way better than you fit in my dress.” To drive home the point, Tory’s fingers rippled briefly around Paul’s body, changing the pressure point every second from his legs to his chest. “It’s funny. When I keep my fist closed all the way, we can’t see what you’re wearing, and for just a second, we might forget what a goofy little twisted weirdo you are!”

            Paul blushed, but couldn’t help but grimly nod. There was no arguing with that. He wallowed, with the rapt attentions of both giant sisters drinking him in and crowding nearer to him, until he could feel the warmth of their breath and almost taste the mango smoothie backwash from their shopping trip.

            “But then I go and open my fingers again, and…” Tory drawled. She spread her digits wide, cradling her brother in her palm, and revealing his frocked black-and-white duds again. “…we remember exactly what you are, anyway.”

            “Looks like he did a good job cleaning up the rooms,” Zoey commented. She picked up tables and chairs in the various segments of the house between two fingers, brushing them aside with such comical ease, when it had taken Paul a great deal of effort shifting the furniture to reach every speck.

            “What about this?” Tory snickered. With her free hand, she wiped a finger along the dusty floor of one of the two rooms Paul hadn’t yet visited. She shook her head, and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I don’t know about this, Mary-Ann. I’m not very impressed so far. Do you really think you’re going to be able to keep this place clean for a whole week?”

            “It’s okay if you don’t, P… I mean, Mary-Ann!” Zoey squealed.

            Paul trembled, and noticed his sister’s grasp tightening abruptly. Suddenly he felt as enclosed as he did while forcing on the aquamarine corseted gown, but unlike the dress, Tory’s mammoth fingers would most certainly be the victor against his body shape. His lip quivered.

            “I t-think so,” he uttered. “I’ve been working the whole time you were gone, and I’ll… keep doing it, as long as it takes…”

            “Uh-huh. Sure you will,” Tory said, unconvinced. Her fingers rippled again. At any given moment, her curled digits were either squeezing the air from Paul’s lungs, or gently embracing him. The sensation was by turns painfully restrictive and soothingly gentle, much like the experience of trying on that damning teal gown. And again, Paul felt the telltale spreading of goosebumps, and the awakening of the pleasure centers in his brain, as his sister’s hand involuntarily simulated the unique thrill of putting on a tight dress.

            Oh, no.

            “What do you think you’re doing, Z?” Tory laughed. Startled, Paul craned his neck around at the dollhouse behind him.

            “Nothing!” Zoey, in plain sight, was furtively waving her glowing fingers over the rooms her brother had recently cleansed. After a few seconds, the previously-spotless floors and furniture were overcome with a grainy glazing of dust and grime.

            “I’m pretty sure that’s cheating!” Tory announced.

            “What? But… I just…”

            “Only kidding. I won’t tell if you won’t! Nice spellwork, by the way.”

            “Thanks!”

            Paul couldn’t believe it. That wasn’t part of the deal.

            Though, frankly, he’d have been content with his sister slapping mud pies and cow dung over the whole dollhouse for him to clean, if only it meant his goddamn pecker would stay down. But of course, he wasn’t that lucky, and he just happened to be turned on by the feeling of being in a dress that hugged his body just so. While the maid uniform was poofy, Tory’s grabby fingers were closing the distance with a powerful massage, and in no time, he had risen to half-mast. And while the petticoat folds would conceal him for a short time, there would be nothing to stop Paul’s older sister from discovering him whenever she next chose to coil him back in for a full-body squeeze.

            Which, given the unlucky streak the boy was on today, meant she did it immediately.

            Tory’s body language altered the instant after her finger stroked over the bump. Her gaze locked right to Paul, where before she’d been amusing herself with the sight of Zoey’s immature campaign to re-dirty the dollhouse. Though her fingers loosened again, allowing her brother to splay out in the bedding of her tan flesh, the look in her eye said it all. I’ve got you now, those pupils seemed to cackle.

            Paul felt like he was choking more than ever, and he didn’t even have a set of colossal feminine fingers clenched around his body anymore. As anticipated, his erection was now at full stand, and propping up the black skirt in a nub shape. Just for clarification, Tory lowered her ring finger down over her brother’s little body again, and intentionally grazed her soft digit along his miniature dress-tent. On the verge of blue balls now, after such a titillating morning, Paul visibly convulsed.

            “I think I’ve got a good idea, Z,” Tory said nonchalantly, never taking her dark and unblinking eyes off her guilty brother. She licked her lips. “Let’s have Mary-Ann put on a fashion show for us!”

            “Really?” the girl gasped. Having spread a thick layer of magical grit across the whole interior of the dollhouse by now, Zoey swiveled back around. Her neatly folded skirts came undone in the excitable shuffle, allowing her frilly underthings to spring forth up to the height of her stocking lip, but she didn’t seem to mind, even as her gauzy petticoats fluttered in can-can style. Her delicate fists impatiently pounded the carpet. “I’ll get the other clothes!”

            While his little sister fetched the box, Paul looked pleadingly into the uncaring countenance of his beaming elder sibling. Even when they played together as children, often at his expense thanks to Tory’s metaphysical talents, he couldn’t recall seeing a look of such delirious happiness on her face. For Tory, this was her birthday, Christmas, and the worst day of Paul’s life, all rolled into one glorious moment.

Tory’s fingers cinched back around him and resumed their previous activity of squeezing and caressing, just to ensure his boner was fresh for the upcoming public embarrassment. Paul was absolutely dizzy with lust for the feeling encompassing his beleaguered body, not to mention the fact that his manhood was managing to come alive, despite it being his own sister’s conscious fault. A few twitches of her dexterous fingers, and he was lost.

            Zoey returned, dress container in tow, and started digging.

            “Ooh, I definitely want to see him in this one. And this one. This one, too!” Practically every tiny garment Zoey laid hands on was selected and set beside the dollhouse. Tory turned her hand so the boy could get a glimpse of his upcoming stylish future. None of Zoey’s choices were the more neutral job-specific attires, like a chef, but instead an array of ball gowns, cocktail dresses, and flirty summer get-ups from across the rainbow spectrum.

            “This is going to be one heck of a fashion show,” Tory said.

            “Oh, wait… these are all too big,” Zoey observed, momentarily crestfallen. “They’re meant to fit the bigger dolls, like how you made him at first. In these, he’d just look like a cute little girl trying on his mommy’s favorite dresses…”

            “Don’t worry about that. I’ll make them all fit him just perfect.”

            “Really? Thanks, Tory!”

            There had never been such harmony between the often-warring sisters. Paul only wished this family peace didn’t have to come at the cost of his size, his dignity and, soon, his sexual privacy. If only their mother would call the girls away to dinner so he could have time to cool off and begin work on the new mess Zoey created for him.

            “What should he wear first?”

            “That’s a tough one. They all look so pretty,” Tory said. “Why doesn’t Mary-Ann choose for himself?”

            “Yeah! That’s a good idea. What do you think, dolly-boy?”

            Paul was hoisted in his sister’s fist over the options. There were at least a dozen, and Zoey was continuing to pull more from the box. If he was going to have to wear all of them eventually, then it didn’t matter what he chose. However, a gown with a broader train might help him conceal the crime between his legs. Tory already had him dead to rights, but maybe he could salvage Zoey’s opinion of him.

            “That one,” he selected glumly, nodding in the direction of the poofiest and most regal silver-blue garment.

            “Cinderella’s ball gown, from the Fairy Godmother! That’ll look so nice on you, Mary-Ann!” Zoey chirped. She scooped up the chosen item and separated the skirts with her fingers, providing a clear path for her brother to enter the fluffy tunnel which also inconveniently assured that Paul would have to squeeze his naked body along his little sister’s curious fingers in order to fit. “C’mon in!”

            “Not so fast. He can’t wear two dresses at the same time, after all,” Tory said. Her fist opened back up, dumping her brother kindly to the carpet, and Peter’s heart sunk. “Well, don’t just lay there, little doll. We can’t have a fashion show if you don’t put on some actual fashion. Take that thing off, now.”

            Paul was walled in by a canyon of his sister’s legs and dresses: one fiery red, one sunny yellow. Both of them scooted closer, ensuring he had nowhere to run. Zoey held up the Cinderella gown by the floor, ready for her older brother to wriggle inside as soon as he was nude; Tory simply crossed her arms again and waited for her literal handiwork to break her tiny sibling’s spirit.

            “Do it now, Mary-Ann, or Zoey will do it for you,” Tory threatened. The gleam in Zoey’s eye confirmed this.

            Realizing he was defeated, the four-inch boy started clambering out of the maid’s uniform, with no sign of calm from his manhood.

            “Oh, ho-ho-ho-HO!” Tory guffawed in obviously forced fashion, though the look of utter sniveling delight at this triumph was genuine. She laid on her stomach and rested her chin on her crossed arms, getting her tanned and fastidious face as close as possible to her humiliated little brother.

            “Woah… is that what I think it is?” Zoey murmured.

            Indeed it was, as Paul stood naked on the heap of discarded lace and cloth, sporting a blatant erection.

            The youngest sibling abandoned her toy box of garments and crawled nearer to Tory and Paul, hunching down near the boy as well for a closer look. Suddenly there were two enormous feminine countenances walling the shrunken horndog in, their bright lash-bedecked eyes practically boring through him. Turning in a circle, Paul found it utterly impossible to shield himself, as refusing to point his disastrous dick at the face of one giant sister only meant he had to aim at the other instead. With no good options, he resolved to awkwardly swivel in clumsy rotation, trying to hunch slightly to conceal the extent of his libido, but did a poor job of it.

            “Yep… sorry you have to see this, Zoey. Have they even covered this stuff in your school yet?” Tory mocked. “You know… the changes in your bodies crap?”

            “Yes, they have!” the girl defended, bobbing her stockinged foot off the ground and slamming it back to the carpet far behind. “I’m not a kid, you know.”

            “Just checking,” Zoey giggled. She cocked her head to the side and drummed her fingers on the floor, easily within reaching distance of her four-inch sibling-turned-maid. “Well, in case it wasn’t obvious to you, I’ll just point it out, so you don’t have to be embarrassed, Zoey: our tiny Mary-Ann has an erection.”

            “I can see THAT!” The girl was obviously getting more riled up over this playful infantilization by Tory, rather than Paul’s actual situation, but either way, the conversation was only making the boy feel lower. Which, unhelpfully, kept his hard-on up.

            “So why do you think that is?”

            “I don’t know! Maybe he just started thinking about some girl he likes,” Zoey said with a shrug. Admittedly, her casual acceptance of Paul’s disgusting physical reaction was unexpected, and a bit of a blessing. Still, he counted on Tory to ruin it quickly.

            “It’s possible, but given all the other… distractions… that Mary-Ann has to deal with right now, I’d think any normal person would keep their attention on what’s actually happening! You know, like the fact that I shrunk him into our doll-maid, and he has to wear dresses until we say he can’t?” Tory continued. Her voice was measured and almost caring, for Zoey’s sake, though it was obvious she was just gilding the lily, rather than speaking from the goodness of her heart. Paul was pretty sure she didn’t have that, anyway.

            “Okay, so…” Zoey drawled, clearly lost. Her miniature brother almost felt sorry for her, if it wasn’t for the fact that she was trying to deduce her way through her own sibling’s oddball sexuality. The evidence couldn’t be plainer. She was a sweet girl, but a bit of a ditz.

            “What do you think that means?” Tory pressed.

            “His little penis is confused?”

            “No!” Exhausted by the process, Tory shrugged, then reached out and gripped her younger sister by the shoulders. This created a secondary barrier for Paul, corralled by his elder sibling’s athletic limbs, while the girls’ curious faces hovered above. Their sleek brunette locks hung in canopies past their rosy cheeks. Paul was just relieved to be mostly ignored, and used more like some microscope slide than an actual person, though he had a sinking feeling that was about to change.

            “What?” Zoey blurted.

            “We found him trying on my dress, right?”  

            “Yeah, cuz he likes wearing them! And he looks so pretty in them, too!”

            “Whatever. The point is, Z, that a lot of boys don’t just do that without another reason. In Mary Ann’s case, it’s because he gets… into it. And now that we’re making him do it, he’s only getting more into it. Don’t you see now?”

            Zoey’s already-attentive eyes widened to dinner plate proportions. Her jaw hung limp to form a cartoonish O-shape expression. The look might have been adorable to Paul, if it wasn’t inspired by the most horrific-possible conversation topic of his fetish. After a few seconds of shock passed by, Zoey tilted her head down to once again observe her brother. Too embarrassed now to face the more innocent of his sisters, Paul had regretfully turned again to point his diminutive pecker at Tory.

            However, this wouldn’t last. He felt the younger giantess’s index finger snaking down his back, accidentally petting his naked body as collateral of trying to encourage him to turn. The contact of her silky-smooth skin against his own blushing frame sent the guiltiest shiver of his life down Paul’s spine. Then, to make matters worse, Zoey curled her finger around the front of his puny four-inch frame, brushing her padded fingertip right past his sensitive nethers and pressing on his thigh, until she had enough leverage to spin the boy right around to face her again, effectively pushing him along crotch-ward with her powerful trunk-like digit.

            Red as a beet and shriveling internally, Paul felt his titanic little sister’s scientifically amused gaze scanning him up and down. He didn’t think he could possibly feel more naked after being forced to strip off the French maid getup, but he’d officially discovered the way to do so now.

            “Wow,” Zoey uttered at last. Her lip quivered, like she wasn’t sure which way to turn the corners of her mouth, up or down. Ultimately she went with the kind of sheer elation that Paul didn’t imagine could have made her any more radiant than if she was a child learning of the real-life existence of fairies. “WOW!”

            “Okay, maybe get ahold of yourself,” Tory snorted.

            “You’re telling me you love wearing dresses this much?” Zoey balked. “Why didn’t you tell us SOONER?”

Zoey raised a hand, fingers outstretched, and let her palm float for a moment in front of her tiny older brother’s aroused body, until he could practically feel the clammy heat of her soft skin. The boy shuddered, compelled by shame to stay still. Her wrist quaked in reverence, as though about to touch something sacred. Instead, she lowered the thick stalk of her middle finger down against Paul’s chest, then proceeded to deliberately stroke him all the way from sternum to waist. When she reached his erection, the girl didn’t hesitate, and ran her giant finger right over it like a bouncy door stopper. The immature humor of it made her whole body shake, and Zoey proceeded to flick the bulge of her fingertip back and forth over the nub, though Paul twitched for an entirely different reason, which made him sick to his stomach.

            “I think that’s enough now,” Tory said, clearing her throat, and grabbed her sister’s wrist in her own fist, before Zoey had the chance to fondle their brother’s junk again. “Aren’t we forgetting something, Z?”

            “The fashion show,” Zoey breathed. “I did almost forget!”

            The joy of the game was renewed again with the newfound knowledge that Paul would derive sick pleasure from the girly affair. Refocusing, Zoey retracted her fingers away from her tiny sibling’s body, and pushed herself up on her haunches again. An instant later she resumed plucking out every doll garment Paul could wear, while Tory still glowered down at him, basking in the victory.

            The elder sister puckered her lips into a jesting duck face. Next, Tory’s finger hoisted up, but rather than engaging in the same creepily titillating contact as Zoey, simply curled her slender digit all the way around Paul’s neck, then balled her hand into a fist, which in turn lodged the boy into an awkward grapple with her knuckles. His grape-sized head prodded out the U-span between the girl’s thumb and forefinger. Predictably, his hard-on was displayed more prominently than ever as Paul was loosely spread-eagle over his sister’s fist like an organic knuckle-duster.  Then, ever so gently, the diabolical brunette lifted her hand off the floor, and carried her unfortunate oxygen-deprived brother over the amassing collection of frilly doll costumes.

            “C’mon, Mary Ann. Don’t get stage fright,” Tory encouraged, which earned a sporting snicker from Zoey, and a wheezing hack from Paul. She tightened her finger around his neck. “Pick an outfit so we can start the show.”

            Soundly defeated, Paul meekly pointed in the direction of a shimmering silver-blue ball gown with a bawdy dome of a train. His logic, impeded though it was by his sister’s choking finger, was that the puffy dress might help conceal his erection. Yes, the cat was already out of the bag; the best he could hope for now was diverting attention away from it.

            “I love it!” Zoey gushed. She swiftly scooped up the chosen garment. As her fingers gingerly primped the toy gown for use, she spoke to her brother in an educative tone: “This is Cinderella’s dress, Mary Ann. You know, like the one the fairy godmother gave her?”

            “Say, that’s perfect!” Tory said. At last she relented the strength of her forefinger around her powerless sibling, and let him fall into her waiting hand, where she collected him against a cage of her fingers. “Maybe that’s a good way to think of us, Mary Ann. As your fairy godmothers. We’re just here to grant your biggest wishes. And, um, judging by this thing…” For instructive emphasis, Tory nudged her thumbpad hard on Paul’s stiffy. “…your biggest wish EVER is to put this dress on right now and dance around in it for us.”

            Belittled, on the verge of tears, and aching with horniness, Paul crawled toward Zoey’s hand, which was waiting palm-up with the dress stretched out to fit. Casting one last glance to his sisters’ gleeful expressions, he entered the glimmering blue tunnel. The dress was still designed for more of a Barbie-sized toy, which made the thing feel more like a parachute Paul was struggling to wear, even in spite of Zoey’s probing fingers kneading him through the fabric. However, upon hearing the snap of Tory’s fingers, the dress cinched just small enough that Paul could manage walking in it, though it was still oversized for his frame, like a mother’s regal garment worn by a copy-cat little girl. There was no questioning whether this fitting was on purpose or not.

            “Now go be a princess, Mary Ann, but don’t forget…” Tory said as she magically conjured an elaborate doll-scaled runway stage. “…the spell wears off at midnight. Actually, wait, sorry. It wears off exactly when we say it does. Now, STRUT!”

            Paul scrambled up the steps of the stage. Hearing some fruity pop music droning through the speakers of Zoey’s CD player, and noticing the threateningly expectant eyes of his sisters, he started walking. It was trickier than it looked. And it already looked tricky.

            Doing his best to imitate a fashion show power-walk, Paul tripped several times on the generous hem of the Cinderella dress. He expected a scolding for this un-modelesque behavior, though Tory and Zoey were laughing too hard at the mistakes to further penalize. Reaching the end, he pivoted and strutted back down the catwalk, sashaying the broad cake-structure of the magic gown from hip to hip. Paul even timed his steps with the music, too afraid of being judged improper and forced to repeat it.

            With the first round done, Tory snapped her fingers and the dress grew baggy around Paul’s body, allowing him to hop out. No sooner had he done so, then Zoey already had the next number pre-selected: a poofy-sleeved German bar wench costume. There was no additional fanfare this time as Paul climbed into the next blanket of an outfit, then felt his sister’s magic hugging the thing around his body. That bubbly music reset, and they were off again.

            The fashion show went as well as Paul could expect. His giddy tormentors bopped eclectically between styles, from geisha robes to leather cowgirl, then back to a full assortment of animated princess dresses, which forced Paul into gauzy frocks from every shade of the pastel rainbow. He tried counting the outfits, hoping to spy an end to the onslaught, but he had to give this up, as it only made him more depressed when Zoey produced yet another favorite outfit from the box. It was also highly possible that Tory was generating new clothes from thin air and materializing them right in her little sister’s hands, for the sole purpose of extending his humiliation another few precious minutes.

            Yet throughout the exhibitionist torture and Twilight Zone-level weirdness, Paul caught himself savoring the feeling of the dresses cradling his body, just like always. Only now, the thrill of almost being discovered was squelched in favor of a harsh reality where both of his gigantic sisters were fully aware and drinking in his every plumed skirt, girlish stride, and swish of a miniature petticoat. Somehow, the sensuous high was even more potent than ever before.

            Even in loose-fitting dresses designed to make him look more ridiculous, and which failed to tightly entrap his manhood like he so guiltily craved, he was standing at the sexual precipice. Every step gently brushed his shrunken dick along the coarse fabric. This simple, split-second act served to remind Paul that he was not only in a dress, but a doll dress. That he was not only prancing about in his usual secretly effete fashion, but doing so for the enjoyment of an audience that should never have seen it. And most importantly, that he was not the only person in this room who knew he was aroused by this perverse series of deplorable games.

            On outfit number thirty-seven, a simple sky-blue dress with a white apron, Paul could no longer outrun his hunger. He took one step on the catwalk and came in the outfit.

            The sheer endorphin-fueled fury of the release staggered him to his knees, and he had to zip his lips tight to hold back a relieved moan. Doing his best to cross his ankles, to help fabricate the idea that maybe he’d just tripped on the dress, Paul lay flat on his face, still jittering in the aftermath of the single best orgasm he’d ever experienced. If only he hadn’t learned to walk so well in a dress, his sisters might have even believed he was just stumbling, rather than crippled by climax. But as it happened…

            “Whoooops. I guess you’re gonna have to throw that dress out, Z!” Tory loudly announced. She wrinkled her nose, and delicately yet purposefully reached out to her prone brother. Her thumb and index finger pinched the ample nape of the blue fabric behind his back, and she picked him up off the catwalk. Rising up, her hand held the boy aloft, over both sisters’ heads like a mobile.

            “Oh!” Zoey gasped. She squinted up at her shrunken sibling’s limp form dangling over, and reached up with a pinky finger, scraping the cushy pad of her digit across the distinct wet patch in the fabric. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
            “Don’t touch his jizz spot. Geez,” Tory gagged. She flicked her wrist back and forth, bouncing Paul on a nauseous orbit around her hand.

            “Well, I just wanted to be sure,” Zoey said, and smirked. “Guess your little penis wasn’t lying, huh, Mary Ann?”

            “Believe me, Z, that’s the only part of him that isn’t a pathetic fibber,” Tory declared. Still pinching her toy sibling by the dress, she snapped the fingers of her opposite hand, and in a flash, the dress tightened. Soon it was undersized, much like the trouble Paul got himself into upon falling for Tory’s bait earlier. Though there was no additional fabric for Tory to grip him by any longer, she was content using magic to float him above the carpet while the python-strength doll cloth went tauter than skin-tight to his body. Of course, his recovering erection was on full display again as Tory and Zoey crowded around to observe the suspended little cross-dressing lad stewing in the evidence of his worst-kept secret.

            “That really took a lot out of you, didn’t it?” Tory said aloud, though she didn’t seem to expect an answer. She rested her chin lazily on her upturned palm, then gave her finger a twirl, causing the hovering boy to spin around on his axis. He sputtered, unable to fight the motion. “Oops. Don’t get sick and puke, too. Actually, you might as well, since Z’s going to have to destroy that dress like a hazmat, anyway.”

            “But I like that one,” Zoey sighed. Ignoring her sister’s earlier warning, she casually grazed her fingertips around Paul’s spinning body, re-directing his trajectory, and furtively testing the dampness over his crotch again with a curious pinky. “I especially like it on P… I mean, Mary Ann! He looks really nice in it. Plus, it’s fitting, you know, cuz of which princess it’s for? Can’t we just use magic to wash out his goo?”

            “Trust me, sis, magic has its limits,” Tory laughed. “And no spell would make that thing any less gross for any other doll unlucky enough to wear it. So, maybe that’s just officially his forever.”

            “Even though he was supposed to wear his maid costume?”

            “Girls, dinner!” Scarlet called from downstairs.

Tory and Zoey looked to the doorway at the sound of their mother’s call, then to their floating brother, then finally to one another. And though the girls were often on different wavelengths in terms of crime and shrunken punishment, for a moment they found unison, and almost looked like the same person to Paul. Snapping out of it, Tory clapped her hands. Instantaneously, the tight-fit British teatime dress transformed back to the familiar black-and-white servant’s garb, though it was just as snug as the victim’s final fashion show ensemble, and most importantly, it retained the humiliating dark-stained stamp of Paul’s orgasm.

            The dollhouse walls wrapped back around Paul as he was let loose from the telekinetic spell, though still just as restricted by the Chinese finger trap-style fit of his uniform. However, the house was sealed before he could peep a complaint, and his muted struggles were overpowered easily by the sounds of the girls’ thumping footsteps carrying them away.

            For six long days, the boy-turned-maid toiled in his little sister’s toy prison. His time was split evenly between dusting the already-polished plastic contours of the house’s every square millimeter, and being forced into Tory and Zoey’s intimate doll playtime sessions. After enough time had passed, and Paul’s emotional and sexual senses had been suitably warped, he couldn’t even confidently say which half of his time he enjoyed less.

            True, he got to hide his shame in isolation when left to clean the house, but the hours ticked slowly by, and he always managed to find an extra dirt speck just after he thought the place was clear; Paul couldn’t help but guess one of his family members was subtly enchanting the house to never be fully spotless.

            Nevertheless, he wouldn’t be defeated. He had to show them he deserved to return to his full stature at the end of the week, even if things would never be the same with the familial power dynamic. Then again, Paul already lived in a house where his mother and sisters could, at will, bind him with all manner of spells out of pure amusement, so the dynamic had never been average to begin with.

            Then, whenever he heard the thumping of giant feet in the distance, and felt the great habitat creaking open again, Paul became Mary-Ann, for as long as his towering siblings felt like engaging with their helpless plaything. The girls, though both aged beyond traditional interest in childhood imagination games, gained a renewed enthusiasm for toying with dolls once they had a living, breathing prisoner in a too-tight French maid costume to torment.

            Fashion shows were just the beginning of the madness. Their creative scenes ranged from enacting domestic dramas to having the shrunken boy ride around in a motorized car to the mall. Despite the diversity of these activities, though, they all curiously managed to revolve around Mary-Ann trying on new and increasingly frilly dresses. Eventually, Tory and Zoey gave up on offering their brother the chance to change himself, as they had far too much fun undressing then redressing him, their grabby fingers fondling every nook of his humbled little body. And as humiliating as these acts were, they never failed to get a “rise” out of Paul, which in turn generated a storm of giggles and finger-pointing from his sisters, restarting the cycle.

            With twenty-four hours left, the whole family stood in a circle around the pitiful plastic mansion and informed Paul that he had until precisely eleven a.m. the next day to have the house show-ready. During the night before the seventh day, when the hammer of judgment would be handed down and his punishment concluded, Paul tossed fitfully in the doll bed. In times past, his dreams were merely disturbed by recollections of past magic pranks Tory pulled on him. Now that he was living out the most soul-burningly embarrassing one yet, though, his nightmares had since shifted to scenes which, ironically, weren’t much different from reality. These dreams often seemed designed to pull the rug out from under Paul.

            In them, he’d be his normal-sized self again, with all his secrets jammed back in Pandora’s Box, and living in serenity in his childhood home. Everything fine. Then, inevitably, the roof of the house would be ripped away by gigantic feminine fingers, and staring down into the rubbly remains of the home would be one of his sisters, sometimes Tory and sometimes Zoey, but regardless wearing the same victorious beam, and standing tall enough to turn their ordinary house into a puny doll’s paradise. Once the dream shifted this way, there was no escape. Paul could run, hiding in closets or under tables, but his sisters’ pretty eyes always tracked him down, and their fingers crashed inside to collect him.

            Depending on the dream-sister, their treatment of him would vary: Tory more precise and exacting with her slender finger placements, never inflicting harm, but also knowing just how to push his buttons in the worst way; and Zoey, being more excitable, awkwardly bundling him into her clammy fist. Then the nocturnal visions turned predictable. Held over the demolished house, Paul would be summarily stripped by his sisters’ tugging fingers, and dangled naked for all the world to see, until finally a new ensemble was produced in his sister’s opposite hand: a dress, sometimes gaudy formalwear and sometimes a simple apron-and-gown, but always something dripping with femininity. And try as he might to resist those powerful fingers stuffing him inside the clothes, or his sisters’ alluring and hypnotic teasing, Paul completed his journey to doll, and was carried over the miniature neighborhood by his magical leviathan sibling.

            Then, as the final nail in the coffin, he’d awaken back in Zoey’s dollhouse to find an incriminating wet patch soaked itchily into the black-and-white uniform. The morning of the seventh day was no different.

            Paul wasted little time fretting today, though, and forced himself into a single-minded frenzy. There was no room for error here. As he’d predicted, an almost certainly sorcery-produced layer of grime and dust had overtaken the interior of the dollhouse. However, Paul couldn’t be deterred. Practically entranced, the boy cleaned and swabbed his little heart out. Not a dust bunny escaped his sight. Sheer determination drove him to become probably one of the most efficient maids to have ever lived, if only one suited for a dollhouse instead of a human habitat.

            He worked without stopping, no longer hindered by the clumsiness of his too-tight uniform after days of practice, and put all his learned skills to use. Predictably, the rapid chafing motion inspired an erection, but he had no time to dwell on it. Not a single chair or plate was left unturned. Though the odds were stacked against him, Paul stretched to his limits and wiped up the last of the grit just as the clock struck 10:56.

            Panting and weary, the four-inch boy collapsed on the floor in the little kitchen. At 10:59, three pairs of colossal shoes were heard tramping up the staircase in the distance: confidently clopping high heels, rubber-bottomed sneakers, and toe-tapping ballet flats. Scarlet, Tory, and Zoey trounced into the bedroom. Squinting through the shadowed window, Paul could make them all out. His humongous family had apparently chosen to dress up for this momentous occasion, as they were all garbed in their Sunday best, complete with trailing pastel-hued dress drains, creamy petticoats, crisp white aprons, and stylish hairdos. Even though these were the same women who’d transformed him into his most twisted fantasy, he’d be lying to say they weren’t all radiant beauties.

            In a break from the week’s routine, though, there was no cranking open of the house hinges, followed by a rain of taunts and eager fingers pinching at his dress folds. Rather, Paul heard Zoey mumbling something with intense concentration, followed by a flash of light. Then, curiously, the tiny front door swung open, and in stepped the boy’s family, single-file. Though they still dwarfed him, the ladies had shrunk themselves down to approximate-Barbie height, which put their servant somewhere just below waist-height on his family, including petite Zoey. Of course, while he lay on the floor, the trio still looked very much like full giantesses as they stood overhead.

            “Good morning, dear!” Scarlet said, her hands clasped to swoon. Her high heel planted itself right beside Paul’s cranium, tap-tap-tapping away on the floor.

            “Looks like you’ve been busy, Mary-Ann,” Tory smarmed sarcastically, her arms crossed. Those worn-out sneakers of hers took a post somewhere between her brother’s spread-eagle legs, and tramped hard on the flowy maid skirt to pin him in place. The squeaky rubber toe came a hair’s breadth from ball-busting poor Paul.

            “It looks really clean in here. Good job!” Zoey exclaimed with her usual conviction, which Paul couldn’t help but appreciate, even though his little sister’s genuine desire for him to succeed was easily trumped by her own desire to make him into her toy.

            “We’ll just see about that,” Tory said suspiciously. The tall tan witch glanced furtively around the room. She snapped her fingers several times, causing plastic chairs and even delicate doll-silverware to rotate for dust inspection.

            “I have to admit. This kitchen doesn’t look half bad,” Scarlet said, which Paul chose to read as reticent approval. His heartbeat doubled in pace, even while he continued lying prone. Still, his mother was thorough, and chose to manually study the space with her own two hands, scrubbing her thumbs on every cranny to see if dust came up. None did, in the whole of the room.

            “Ugh. Yeah, I guess it looks okay,” Tory huffed. She nudged her sneaker into her brother’s thighs, causing him to clam instantly up at the threat of her rubber treads trampling his junk. The girl grinned. “C’mon, Mary-Ann. Get up. We want to see if you’ve made the rest of the house as pretty as you’ve made yourself.”

            “I’ll help you, P- I mean, Mary-Ann!” Zoey volunteered. She hunkered down, until the fluffy folds of her dress came swooping down over Paul’s head. For a moment, he drowned peacefully in the sweet-smelling rush of bristling gauze, until his little sister’s polished ballet flats flanked his head, and her still-expansive hands started grappling him like an oversized teddy bear. Though Paul was comparatively “larger” next to his family than he’d been in a week, he was still no match even for his littlest sibling. And she was persistent. Zoey at last scooped him off the ground.

            While she struggled to hoist him higher, the youngest Harris sister left her shrunken brother to flail in the lower folds of her dress. Paul’s squirming did nothing to wrestle him out from between the girl’s slender legs or her poofy multicolored duds. If anything, her flapping hands only served to kick up her frosted petticoats higher, getting them tangled around her brother’s head. The boy heard Tory’s laughter beyond, crisscrossing with Zoey’s oblivious humming. At last the girl succeeded, with one hand clutching Paul’s back and the other cradling his dress-clad buttocks, like he was a toddler who’d long-outgrown being held by his mother, but carried on in this fashion anyway.

            “That’s much better, isn’t it, Paul? It’s still better when we can just pick you up with one hand, but this nice, too,” Zoe commented. Likely not grasping the consequences, her hand squeezed his tiny rear end tighter.

            Resigned to this final ritual humiliation, Paul went rigid in his little sister’s arms as the troops marched into the adjoining room. Zoey’s warm, sticky morning breath huffed regularly on his neck. While she was in charge of cuddling and incarcerating her brother against her torso, Tory and Scarlet went over every surface with a fine-toothed comb. No detail or corner was spared their scrutiny. Yet, so far, neither of them screeched to show off a stray microbe of dust; Paul knew they’d found nothing, because it was a surefire bet they would let him know the very instant he’d lost the punishment-game.

            “Guess what, Mary-Ann?” Zoey whispered into Paul’s ear. She bobbed him like a fussy infant, even patting his head down until he forcibly used her shoulder as a pillow.

            “What?” he relented.

            “I did this.” As she spoke, she walked them in front of a floor-length toy mirror, granting her brother a view of himself. His sister’s lovely fair tresses cascaded around Paul’s own head, until it created a near-optical illusion that he, too, possessed long hair, which the boy had to imagine merely completed the ensemble rather than made him look worse.

            “What do you mean?”

            “I shrunk us, all on my own!” Zoey proudly declared. “I’ve been practicing this whole week, cuz Mom said I could be the one to make us all small enough to check how good of a maid you were. And I did it perfect, on the first try!”

            “Wow,” Paul said.

            “That’s all you have to say?” She sounded crest-fallen.

            Paul gulped. It was hard to generate full-blown enthusiasm, seeing how his fate still very much hung in the balance at this moment. Then again, Zoey was the closest thing he had to an ally in this house. He needed to keep her. Not to mention, if the girl really was improving at her magic, showing her some kindness might provide future insurance against magic pranks.

            “Sorry,” he coughed. “I mean, that’s really great, Zoey! I’m super-impressed.”

            “Thanks,” she bashfully cooed. Blushing three shades pinker, she puckered her lips and planted a quick, sloppy smooch on her brother’s cheek.

            When Scarlet and Tory begrudgingly agreed the room was clean, they moved on to the next. Paul held his breath until this location, too, received approval. One at a time, they inspected the dollhouse quadrants for up to fifteen minutes apiece. The shrunken boy couldn’t help but feel like he was playing Russian roulette and every room was a new click of the barrel. Yet his tireless focus had seemingly paid off; when they reached the final room, specifically the bedroom where he’d suffered through so many vivid wet-nightmares, Paul was getting dangerously close to hoping that he’d succeeded. Despite his diminutive body and general powerlessness, despite his elder sister’s magical cheats, and despite the impairments of public shaming and all his fetishes becoming tortures, he just might win.

            Might.

            “I think we’ve seen all we need to see,” Scarlet announced. Her voice was measured and fair, even though her tone concealed a hint of what Paul heard as disappointment. “Zoey, dear, please put your little brother down, so we can make a proper final ruling.”

            Reluctantly, the smallest of the doll-sized giants trundled to the toy bed. There, she slumped her brother onto its surface. Paul hunched to a humble fetal position as his family encircled the mattress: one sister on each side, and his mother standing at the foot of the ped, overlooking the whole affair like a high court judge. Feeling as though he was trapped somewhere between those familiar haunting cross-dressing dreams and the ultimate decision of his mortal life, Paul smoothed down the wrinkles of his taut uniform. The fabric was tighter than ever, tight enough to turn his face red, and only coiling closer as Tory waggled her sparkling fingers. When she had finished the spell, the girly adornment was skin-smooth, making Paul feel even more naked in the sight of his giant family than when the clothes were literally ripped from his back. His hard-on proudly stuck up the skirt, but no one mentioned it; they’d broken down so many of Paul’s former barriers, he realized, there was no need to openly acknowledge his disgrace now. Still, he caught their snickers.

            “Since this decision involves the whole family, I think it’s only fair that each of us gets a vote on the job little Paul has done here. It must be unanimous, so I expect us all to judge ethically, not just based on what we want,” Scarlet said. She leaned over the bedposts, as did the sisters, until the boy felt their looming presence crowding him almost as claustrophobically as the constricting French maid uniform. “First, Zoey. What do you think, sweetie?”

            “Oh, it’s definitely-” the girl gleefully chanted, obviously about to render a positive vote, when she stopped herself. Nibbling her lip, Zoey shifted weight on her heels, then smiled deviously. “Mary-Ann, if we make you big again, will you play dolls with me sometimes? We don’t have to shrink you if you don’t want to, but would you still play with me? At least once a week?”

            The boy blanched. What a sad paradox. Zoey wasn’t even young enough to want to play dolls at all before this wretched week started. This eleventh-hour bargaining for approval seemed to violate the fair rules his mother demanded. Of course, neither Scarlet nor Tory spoke; this wasn’t a democracy, Paul remembered, it was a house run by fun-loving and self-serving sorceresses. This was no time to call foul.

            “Yeah!” he gasped. “Y-Yeah, of course.”

            “Cool,” Zoey nodded. “Then I vote that he did it!”

            “Lovely,” Scarlet said. Her kind smile gave Paul hope she, too, was prepared to end his sentence. She opened her mouth to speak, but like Zoey, halted herself. A slyer curl infected her once-sweet grin. “Paul, dear, seeing how wonderful a job you’ve done keeping this place clean, I don’t suppose it would be unreasonable to expect you to show a bit more… responsibility around the non-dollhouse from now on? Say, keeping it as beautifully spotless as your sister’s playhouse, all on your own, just once a week? Don’t worry. I won’t make you wear the uniform, unless it’s truly what you want.”

            Tory and Zoey broke into giggles, while Paul stewed harder. This deal was getting worse all the time. Hours of extra weekly chores, plus required regular playdates with his fawning little sister? Not only was he being squeezed in the dress, but in the negotiations, too. Again, though, he came to the conclusion that any outcome was better than becoming a semi-permanent dollhouse fixture. Sighing, he nodded grimly.

            “Oh, that’s fantastic. You may not have inherited the magic, but you’re not completely hopeless, Paul, honey, no matter what the rest of the family says!” Scarlet crooned, which evidently was meant to sound like a compliment, even though Paul only felt lower. She cupped her hands together and blew him a kiss. “Then it’s a yes-vote from me as well. And, finally… Tory? What do you have to say?”

            Paul sweated profusely as all eyes in the room fell to his older sister. Tory had never looked taller or more triumphant, even though she was currently the right handheld size to occupy this imaginary abode. While she pursed her lips and searched for the most venomous possible response, the boy found himself locked in a stare-down with Tory, where all the rest of the world fell away, and it was just the miniature cross-dressing boy and his mighty sibling. Via telepathic link, it seemed, Tory had given her brother a window into her world. Though no words were exchanged aloud yet, he could sense the promise of scorching degradations to come. Perhaps worse than concrete threats which included regularly shrinking and stripping him in the future, though, Paul saw something else: hunger. A rawness in Tory’s subconscious he could only truly know if she chose to let him see, as she had now. And what he saw was the indisputable truth that his big sister’s desires intertwined terribly with his own. She longed to make him a pretty-in-pink plaything just as fiercely as he longed to be one, and not just for the power trip, but for a much more horrifying reason altogether.

            It got her off.

            Paralyzed, Mary-Ann wallowed in existential dread and lust. What had he, and they, become?

            “What do I think?” Tory chuckled with majestic sovereignty. “Well-”

            Before another word could escape her soft lips, a flash of light preceded an elongated split-second of surprise carnage. All three Harris ladies expanded in the blink of an eye from their previous Barbie-stature back to full lumbering height again, which resulted in the flimsy plastic house exploding apart. Limbs and torsos blasted through the roof. Toy furniture sprayed across the bedroom, and the gigantic mother and daughters lay on the carpet surrounding the ruins of the house. In the epicenter between their six gargantuan shoes was Paul.

            The recurring dream was coming true all at once. He also couldn’t help but be reminded of a certain scene from a certain childhood cartoon movie, but unlike a certain British bow-haired wanderer, his family growing inside the house did not in fact translate into wearing the house, but rather shredding it like confetti.

            “Whoopsie-daisy…” Tory giggled, dusting herself off. Her once-again prodigious sneakers kicked aside hunks of house like used tissue.

            “Oh, no!” Zoey squealed. She buried her face in her hands to hold back embarrassed tears, though they still leaked between her fingers. “I practiced that spell every day! You saw me! I had it, and… and…”

            “Don’t worry, darling. Nobody is perfect the first time. You’ll get it right, in time,” Scarlet said. She sat up and wrapped her younger daughter into a soothing embrace, more nurturing than she’d ever been to her four-inch middle child. In her haste to tend to Zoey, Scarlet’s heel spike bluntly shoved Paul’s little body aside. “No harm, no foul. Nothing is broken that can’t be repaired.”

            “-but as I was saying…” Tory interrupted, and the moment she started speaking, Paul knew the ending, even though he couldn’t comprehend it. It was plain as the conniving look on her beautiful, diabolical countenance. She cleared her throat, just to milk the moment, then reached around and scooped up a handful of broken dollhouse pieces in each fist. The longer she rambled, the more musical her timbre became, until she was practically singing: “I don’t know about the rest of you, but this place is way too much of a mess to be considered clean. Therefore, Mary-Ann, I’m afraid I have no choice but to declare that you have FAILED in the very simple task we gave you to prove that you’re not just a doll-boy. Failed, failed, failed!”

            Bewildered as he was helpless, Paul scrambled up, looking between the monolithic upturned shoes and up to baleful faces of his titanic family members. Surely this was a cruel joke of some kind? The final capper on a hellishly demeaning and viscerally arousing week? There was no WAY any logical person could judge Zoey’s own immature ineptitude with her spells as a failing on his part, after all he’d done to meet their insane demands? Right?

            Right?

            Scarlet studied her son with a matronly sternness, and for a fleeting instant, Paul believed she would see reason and override her domineering daughter. Just as quickly as that hope formed, though, it was dashed when the woman shrugged her shoulders.

            “Yes, dear. I’m afraid I have to agree. While it may not have been entirely Paul’s fault, I think we all know a clean house in a week’s time was the agreed-upon condition, and this is anything but a clean,” Scarlet admonished. The boy couldn’t believe his ears. “Therefore, it only makes sense to make little Paul’s shrunken state a permanent-”

            “NO!” Paul screamed.

            “YES!” the sisters bellowed.

            “-permanent consequence. You needn’t worry, though, sweetie. Your home will be repaired soon enough, and then you’ll have plenty of time to think on and grow from your mistakes. Not physically grow, of course, but certainly developmentally. And maybe, as a special consolation treat, we’ll loosen up that adorable uniform by just a few stitches.”

            The dark new reality of lifelong “playtime” overshadowed Paul’s consciousness, and he fainted flat on his back. Through the blur, he sensed his family closing in to simultaneously tease and congratulate him on the ruling. Scarlet waved her enchanted hands to rebuild the dollhouse good as new; Zoey cheered and stomped her feet with delight at the realization that those promised playdates with her brother would now integrate him as the doll itself; and Tory, with her greedy fingers snaking around him, commenced actualizing those filthy desires she revealed to her brother-come-slave from within.

            A dollhouse could never be a home, but to Mary-Ann, it seemed this one had become his.