Chapter One: A Strange Day Has Found Her

The ocean front home in Matheson county on California’s central coast was immaculate. It had a large two car garage, and was one story spread over a large parcel of land. On the other side of the road in front of the home was a park that ended at a cliff, and the Pacific Ocean gleamed beneath it.

Heidi Hayes was a 13 year old junior high school student. Her parents were saying goodbye to her as they went away for their anniversary in Las Vegas for the weekend.

“I hope you’ll be okay by yourself this weekend,” said Violet Hayes, the girl’s 35 year old mother. “You’re 13 now, you should be old enough to take care of yourself.”

“I’m more than ready to be on my own, mom!”

Heidi’s parents hugged her and got in their new car and drove off. Heidi closed the door behind her, and got on her cell phone.

“Kelsie? My parents are gone for the weekend! I have the house to myself! We need to come up with a plan so I can become as popular as Nicki Nolan!”

Kelsie was at her home a few blocks away. “You’re one of the prettiest girls at our junior high school! I don’t understand why you’re not popular already.”

“I know!” Heidi replied.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

“Kelsie? Someone is at the door. I’ll call you back later.”

Heidi opened the door and saw a girl in a prom dress with a backpack on.

“I’m your grand daughter, I’m from the future! You have to let me in and talk to you, both of our lives depend on it!”

Heidi let the girl in and closed the door. They sat down on the couch in the living room. The girl in the prom dress grabbed a device that looked like a weapon out of her backpack, and set it on the couch.

“This is a neutrino dissimilator, it can shrink people and objects. Place your hand on the device!”

Heidi did as the girl urgently advised her to do, and the girl pushed a button in the gun.

“It is now locked onto your unique chromosome pattern! Now, only you can use this device!”

“What is this all about?” Heidi asked.

“Tonight, two men will try to break into you home. If you say ‘object’ the neutrino dissimilator will shrink any weapon in their hand if you press the trigger. I have the ratio set to one over seventy-two, that will reduce a six foot tall man down to an inch tall. There are other ratio settings, you can explore them after you’ve shrunken the intruders. If you say ‘person’ the ray gun will shrink the person and whatever they’re wearing. The assimilate setting will restore a shrunken person or object back to normal size. If you re-enlarge a shrunken person with a tinier shrunken person inside their stomach, they will both be restored to normal size and the bigger of the two shrunken people will have their guts ripped open!”

The girl pulled out something that looked like a small cage. It had plastic and metal walls that had rectangular holes in them. 

“This is a cage that works with force fields. As long as it is turned on, no shrunken people can escape from it. Here is the remote control for it.”

The girl turned it on, to show Heidi how it worked.

“Why are you dressed like you’re going to the prom?” Heidi asked.

“I didn’t want to risk coming back to this time dressed anachronistically. If people saw the styles of clothing people in my time wore, it would attract attention.”

“You said something about this saving both of us. What did you mean by that?”

“My coming back here is a pre-destination paradox. If I hadn’t given you that neutrino dissimilator to shrink the intruders, you would’ve been killed tonight, and I would’ve never been born!”

“That’s incredible!” Heidi replied. “But how did all of this come about? How did you gain the abilities to travel through time and have a shrink ray gun?”

“My mother married a guy who became president of the United States. Back during D-Day in World War Two, a time traveler gave some time machines and neutrino dissimilators to the United States government. Ever since then, the president and his family and the vice president and his family have all had shrink rays to protect themselves. I was sanctioned by the U.S. government to come back here when they found out about your situation.”

“My daughter will be First Lady?” Heidi asked.

“Yes!” said the future girl. “Oh, there’s one more thing! This has a neural stimulator built into it, if you press this button, it will stimulate the gag reflex in a person’s brain if they swallow a shrunken person. It will make them vomit them up!”

The girl got up and left. “Don’t forget anything I’ve told you!” 

Then she exited through the front door, and was gone.

Heidi locked all of the doors of her home, and stayed up watching late night television and drinking hot chocolate. She had money to order pizza, but was afraid of opening her door. She fell asleep just after midnight with the shrink ray pistol in her right hand, with the television still on.

Two intruders, a black man and a Latino, approached Heidi’s home by the stealth of night, about an hour and a half after midnight. The black guy went to the security system and looked at it.

“Dolliver, give me your switch blade for a second,” he said to the Latino. He clicked it and the blade popped vertically up, and he cut a wire leading from the security box to the power source inside the garage. The lights on the security box went out. He handed the switch blade back to Dolliver.

“How did you know how to do that?” the Latino asked.

“I used to work for this security company, this is the K-83372 model, it’s an older model. I couldn’t do this with the newer ones. Do you know who lives here?”

Dolliver looked at his black accomplice quizzically.

“Violet Hayes, the best defense attorney In Matheson county! She’s bound to have a safe or something in here!”

The two thugs climbed through a window. They headed toward the living room where Heidi was sleeping on the couch. Heidi, who was paranoid because of what the time traveler had told her, was jolted awake by noises in the house. She grabbed her neutrino dissimilator and said ‘object’ and pulled the trigger. The gun in the black guy’s hand shrunk down to a minuscule size.

“What happened to my gun?” the intruder asked. “Did you switch it with this toy version? How did you do that?”

The Latino pulled out a switch blade, and activated it. The blade popped up vertically. Heidi aimed and pulled the trigger, and the switchblade shrunk instantly. Heidi said ‘person’ then pulled the trigger once while aiming at the black intruder, and he was instantly reduced to about an inch tall. She aimed at the Latino and pulled the trigger, and he was also reduced down to an inch tall.

Heidi collected them and placed them in the cage and activated the force field. She set the cage in her bedroom. They were powerless to escape. The Latino backed up and ran forward at full speed into the force field, but was repelled back with a lot of force.

Heidi stood there and watched them within the cage. “I have a cat, but I want to swallow the two of you myself eventually! You’re living on borrowed time!”

To Be Continued!

Chapter Two: A Thundering 13-Year-Old!

Heidi went to bed, confidant that her shrunken captives could not escape. She woke up in the morning and checked on them.

“How does it feel knowing you’re going to end up in the belly of a thundering thirteen year old?” Heidi had a sinister grin on her face after asking them this.

“You could put us to work building a marble statue of you, to pay tribute to your beauty,” Rico suggested. He was the black captive. “You could save up and buy some Carrara marble!”

“She could just buy some plaster of Paris and make a rectangular block in one afternoon for a lot cheaper,” Dolliver, the Latino captive, suggested.

“You idiot!” Rico shouted at Dolliver. “I’m trying to buy us some time! It would take her longer to get a hold of high quality marble! When she’s done with us she plans on killing us!”

“I have some money,” Heidi said to the captives. “I can go buy some plaster like Dolliver suggested. In the meantime, I want the two of you to construct a toy city out of paper. I’ll leave you on the floor of my bedroom while I’m gone, but don’t try to escape. My cat is outside of my bedroom.”

Heidi picked up the two shrunken men and placed them on the bedroom floor. She got some paper supplies and set them down on the floor with them. She got dressed and left with her backpack. On the way to the hardware store, she called her friend Kelsie and told her to meet her there.

By the time she arrived at the hardware store, Kelsie was already there waiting in front of the store. As they walked around the store and Heidi put a sack of plaster of Paris in the cart, she explained what had happened to her.

“You’re going to need syrup of Ipecac,” said Kelsie. “It induces vomiting. If you swallow them, it will allow you to puke them back up.”

Heidi gave some cash to Kelsie, and instructed her to go to the pharmacy and buy some syrup of Ipecac, forgetting that the girl who gave her the neutrino dissimilator had told her that there is a neural stimulator that induces vomiting built into the device.

When the two girls returned to Heidi’s home, they set the sack of plaster in the garage and went straight to the bedroom. There were about six structures on the floor of the bedroom made of paper, the captives were still working on the toy city.

Heidi grabbed Rico and held him above her head as she stood there and watched him squirm between her thumb and index finger.

“You’re about to go on a journey to the belly of a mighty maiden!” Heidi giggled as she dropped Rico onto her tongue and sealed her lips around him. She tossed him to the back of her throat and swallowed him. She bent over and picked up Dolliver, and did the same thing. When they were both firmly within her belly, Heidi began laughing.

Inside of Heidi’s stomach, the diminutive duo were treading chyme, trying to conserve their air supply. They couldn’t hear what the two towering teens were discussing while they were trapped within Heidi’s muscular stomach walls.

“I’m going to let them live,” said Heidi to Kelsie, “but I’m not going to let them know that! I want them to think I’m going to swallow them and digest them some day! They did try to kill me last night, so it serves them right!”

Kelsie retrieved the syrup of Ipecac, and gave the bottle to Heidi, and said, “Just take a swig of this!”

Heidi unscrewed the cap and took a drink. About a minute later, she vomited into a large plastic bowl, and the two captives landed safely inside, covered in vomit. Kelsie went to the kitchen and got a glass of water and returned to Heidi’s bedroom. She poured water over each captive until they were clean, while Heidi held them aloft over the bowl.

“That’s just a small sample of my power, you pathetic insects!” said Heidi. “Know this, there will come a day when your journey to my belly will be a one way trip!”

Both Heidi and Kelsie began laughing, and Rico and Dolliver knew they were in a bad situation. Heidi assigned her captives to return to making the toy city out of paper while she and Kelsie work on the plaster block.

Inside the garage, Heidi poured the plaster powder into a large bucket and read the instructions on the bag. She poured in the appropriate amount of water, and began mixing the plaster. Meanwhile, Kelsie began constructing a rectangular box made of wood to pour the wet plaster into, to shape it into a rectangular solid shape. Kelsie knew where the hammer and nails were, and there was an ample supply of lumber within the garage. She nailed the box together within the span of time it took for Heidi to mix the plaster.

It took both girls working together to pour the plaster into the wooden box. Once it was ready to set, they returned to the bedroom. Rico and Dolliver had made a lot of progress on the toy city.

Heidi began crushing the toy city with her sneaker clad feet. She laughed as the structures easily gave way to her superior size and strength. When she was done, she sat down on the floor of her bedroom and took her shoes and socks off.

“Rub my feet, you pathetic slaves!” Heidi shouted at her captives. They got to work right away, trying to massage her feet while Heidi giggled and barked more commands at them. “Faster, you slave-toys! I’ve done a lot of walking today, and I need a foot massage.”

When the massage was concluded, Heidi put the captives back into their container that had force fields built in. Heidi and Kelsie left the room to go into the kitchen for refreshments. Rico and Dolliver tried to escape from the container. The remote control was leaning against a vertical side of a shelf, and their box was right next to it. Rico took off his shoes, and threw one at the remote control, trying to deactivate the force field. He missed on the first try, but made his shot in the second try, and the force field turned off.

The two shrunken men climbed through a rectangular opening and made their way down the shelf to a desk on a lower level. Just then, Heidi returned and grabbed them. She saw what had happened. She collected the shoes and set the two shrunken men inside the container, and reactivated the force field. She tossed Rico’s shoes back in with him. This time, she placed the remote control on the other end of her bedroom.

To Be Continued!

Chapter Three: Nefarious Nicki Nolan!

Kelsie and Heidi were sitting on the couch in the living room, debating about how to become popular. 

“Do you have Chad’s phone number?” Kelsie asked.

Heidi got up and went to her bedroom and retrieved her 7th grade yearbook, then returned to the living room. She flipped to the back of the yearbook.

“He signed my yearbook and left his phone number!” said Heidi.

“Call him and tell him about the shrink ray gun and your captives! Tell him to bring Nicki Nolan and her boyfriend Donnie over!”

Heidi dialed Chad’s phone number into her cell phone, and after the third ring, he answered.

“Chad? This is Heidi! Heidi Hayes!”

Heidi relayed to him the events of the previous night, and the technology she had acquired. After less than a minute, she hung up. 

“He’s coming over with Nicki and her boyfriend Don. I don’t think he completely believes what I told him, he sounded skeptical.”

“That’s completely understandable,” Kelsie replied. “I think someone would have to be crazy to accept what you said at face value, without having proof.”

“Let’s bake some brownies so we can serve them something to eat when they get here!”

The two girls got busy in the kitchen, and by the time the brownies came out of the oven, Chad and his two friends had arrived. Heidi let them in and Kelsie cut the brownies and served everyone.

Heidi went to her bedroom and got the cage with the built in force fields, and the neutrino dissimilator. She showed Chad and his two friends the captives.

“Are they real?” Nicki asked, as she reached out to grab one of them. She picked up Dolliver, and he stood on the palm of her hand, at an inch tall.

“They’re as real as a heart attack!” said Heidi. “They tried to kill me last night, so I shrunk them down to size. I’m never restoring them to normal size again!”

“I want to swallow him!” said Nicki. “That would make me feel like a conqueror!”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Heidi replied.

“Why not?” Nicki asked. “They tried to murder you and rob you, their lives don’t matter! It’s not like we’re talking about swallowing innocent people. I want to know what it’s like to have a shrunken man struggling around in my belly!”

“I said no,” Heidi replied, and as soon as she said that, Chad grabbed Heidi’s shrink ray from her.

“Go ahead a swallow him, Nicki! I’ve got the shrink ray device, so we make the rules!”

Nicki lifted Daniel Dolliver above her head and opened her mouth, then dropped him in. Dolliver looked down to see two semi circular rows of immaculate teeth, then her mouth closed around him and he was forced to the back of her throat by her tongue. 

Nicki swallowed him, and he glided down her esophagus and through the sphincter muscle and splashed down in her stomach. Gravity kept him from trying to force his way back up through the sphincter to her esophagus. Even if he could travel in that direction, his tiny body didn’t have the strength to overcome the power of the sphincter that divided her esophagus from her belly. The only means of escape would be for Nicki to vomit him up.

Nicki laughed as she lifted her shirt just slightly enough to see her belly.

“Come on, let’s take off,” said Chad. “We got what we came here for!”

The three of them left abruptly, and Heidi’s cat got out as they exited. By the time they found the cat and brought it inside the living room, Chad, Nicki and Donnie were long gone.

“I’m not sure how long that captive can survive in Nicki’s stomach!” said Heidi.

“You know the worst part?” Kelsie asked.

“What?” Heidi asked.

“They didn’t even finish the brownies I gave them!”

“We’ve got to get that shrink ray back!” said Heidi.

“Do you know where any of them live?” Kelsie asked.

“No!” Heidi replied. “We need to come up with a game plan!”

“I think you should just accept that you aren’t getting the shrink ray back,” said Kelsie, “and Dolliver is history! He’s probably going to get digested by Nicki’s stomach acid way before you can even reach them!”

“I’m not giving up!” said Heidi, as she looked through her yearbook. She found the number of a girl who knew Donnie and Nicki.

“This girl gave me her phone number, and she knows Nicki and Donnie, but I think her and Nicki fell out not too long ago. This girl dated Donnie before Nicki did, and they got into a disagreement over it because Nicki basically stole Donnie from her, or so she claims.”

“Maybe she will tell you where Nicki lives, if they don’t get along any more!” said Kelsie.

Within ten minutes, Heidi and Kelsie got out of an Uber in front of Nikki’s house and knocked on the door. Chad and Nicki were inside when the door opened. 

“How does this thing even work?” Chad asked Heidi, as they were invited inside.

“It’s locked to accept only my unique chromosome pattern!” said Heidi as she grabbed the device from Chad, set it in neural stimulator, and pointed it at Nicki’s head. Nicki vomited into the carpet a few moments later, and Dolliver plopped out and landed in the carpet. Heidi grabbed him and rinsed him off in the kitchen sink.

“You’re not going to hold this against us, are you, Heidi?” Chad asked.

“As long as you make me part of the popular crew at school in the fall!” said Heidi. “And Kelsie too!”

“You’ve got a deal!” said Chad. “We were thinking of inviting you to our group anyway, you’re one of the cutest girls at our school. Will you be my girlfriend, Heidi?”

“Sure!” Heidi replied, and Chad kissed her on the lips.

The End