When I woke up the next morning, everything had changed. I was lying underneath a huge blanket of thick, heavy cloth and my bedclothes were now much larger than I was. My bed itself was massive, at least four times my length. Mom’s shrinking formula had actually worked! I crawled out of my now-way-too-big clothing and tried to wrap the bulky blanket around my naked body. I was starting to feel very cold, but since I had nothing to wear, I had no idea what to do next. The floor was nine feet down from where I sat (as seen from my perspective, of course). I wondered if I should go and look for something I could use as clothing or sit here and wait for my mother to arrive. I decided to wait.

It wasn’t long before my mom knocked on my door and entered the room. I peered out from underneath my bedclothes and watched her advance towards the bed. She was wearing a fashionable coat and long skirt and looked lovely as always, but she was a giantess to me now, over twenty-five feet tall from my point-of-view, and I actually felt a little afraid of her. When she saw me, she hurried over and sat down on my bed, right next to me. I suddenly felt very small and frightened, looking up at her and how much bigger she was than me.

“Good morning, Ben!” she said, looking perfectly calm and composed. “Looks like the shrinking potion worked after all, didn’t it? How are you feeling, sweetie? Are you in any pain?”

I drew the bed sheets closer around me, uncomfortably aware that I was wearing nothing underneath them. Mom just kept on smiling down on me and gradually I began to feel more relaxed. She didn’t seem concerned at all, so why should I be? I tried to put on a happy face.

“Uh…I feel fine, I guess,” I said. “Just a little cold, that’s all. I don’t have any clothes that fit me now.”

My embarrassment must’ve been pretty obvious for my mother to see. It really felt like I’d been turned into a little child again. Mom laid her huge hand on my back and drew me closer to her.

“Yes, that is a big problem, one I honestly should have prepared for,” she said. “Hmm, I don’t think I have anything for you to wear right now, but I’ll make a plan later today. Until then, I believe I’ve got a temporary solution.”

She removed the knitted scarf she was wearing around her neck and began to wrap it around my body. The fabric was soft and quite comfortable, even if it wasn’t very practical to wear. When she was done, my whole body was completely wrapped up in the scarf and only my head, shoulders and arms were still free. I felt even more helpless than before, being now unable to move my legs or get around on my own. Mom didn’t seem to be concerned, though. She picked me up easily and without any effort, wrapping her hands around my waist, and gave me a giant-sized hug. Then she lay me gently down in her lap. I was in awe of her great size and strength, even though I knew it was really I who was much smaller now. She looked down at me lovingly.

“My dear little Ben,” she said. “This is going to take some getting used to for both of us, isn’t it? But you needn’t be afraid of anything, dear. I am here to look after you and to make sure everything goes smoothly. If there’s ever anything you’re worried about or don’t like, you can tell me, and I’ll bring you back to normal at once, understand?”

“I understand,” I said, my voice sounding faint and quavering to my own ears. It was such an awkward position for me to be in and I wondered if I would ever get used to it. “Everything’s just so big and…and scary now. You won’t let anything hurt me, right, Mom?”

“No, never! I can promise you that…my brave little man. Just relax and enjoy the whole experience, and let me take care of all the details, okay? Now, how about heading downstairs and getting some breakfast?”

“That sounds great, Mom. I’m really starving right now!”

“I can imagine! But first, would you mind if I took you into my little office downstairs and took some measurements? I’d like to know exactly how small my formula has made you. It won’t take long, I promise.”

“Uh…okay,” I replied. “I guess that’ll be fine…and I’d also like to know how small I am now. By the way, where’s Emily?”

“Huh? Oh, she’s downstairs somewhere, waiting to see you. She can barely contain her excitement, but I told her to wait while I went up to your room and made sure you were okay. She actually seems kinda happy that she’ll be having a little brother now instead of a big one! Okay then, shall we go?”

“Yeah…but…how am I going to get downstairs? I can’t move my legs while wrapped up like this, and I don’t want to walk around naked!”

“It’s all right, don’t worry! I’ll simply carry you, that’s all. You’ll have to get used to being carried around a lot, by the way. You’re still big enough at the moment to walk around on your own if you want to, but remember, the experiment has only just begun and I plan on shrinking you a lot smaller still in the days to come. But for now, I’ll simply carry you around myself, at least until I’ve found some sort of clothing for you to wear.”

She hugged me firmly against her chest with her right arm as if I were a tiny little infant. I tried to hold on to her huge chest with my puny arms, while sitting on her forearm. She stood up and began to walk. I was now being carried at least eighteen feet above the ground, but I felt safe in Mom’s arms. She headed out of the enormous bedroom and down the stairs to the study room/office where she did some of her work at home. While I was being carried like a baby, I looked around me at everything with a new sense of perspective. I was actually beginning to enjoy this unusual feeling of being small and having a vast, unfamiliar world around me to explore. Having a giant-sized mom was pretty cool as well. Once we reached the study, Mom set me down on the edge of her desk. She then fetched some measuring equipment – a tape measure, a pair of callipers and a scientific scale that could weigh objects with great accuracy.

“Okay, let’s get started,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take the scarf off for me, Ben. I know it must be awkward for you, but I am your mother, and you know that I only want to help you and make sure you’re okay. I’ll try and be as quick as possible with the measuring, but I want to be thorough as well.”

“Yeah, okay,” I mumbled. “Let’s just get this over with.”

I began to clumsily remove Mom’s scarf from my shrunken body. I had never really felt self-conscious before, but, then again, I had always been a six foot-tall, athletic, muscular guy, without any issues regarding how I felt about my own body. I suppose I was still an athletic, muscular guy, but I definitely wasn’t six feet tall anymore. I lay down flat on the giant desk so that Mom could measure my length, while awkwardly trying to cover my nether regions with my hands. To be honest, the cold bothered me more than the fact that I was naked in front of my mom. Noticing how uncomfortable I was, she measured me quickly, then used the callipers to measure my shoulder width, waist, arm thickness and several other minor measurements. When she was done, I quickly sat up and grabbed her scarf, hastily wrapping it around my midriff.

“Hmm, this is interesting,” Mom said, entering the newly gathered data into her computer. “Looks like you’re only sixteen inches tall now, Ben. The potion reduced your size a little bit more than I was expecting it to. Now, let’s find out how much you weigh.”

“Uh…Mom, can I be alone for this?” I asked her sheepishly. “I mean, I know you’re just here to help and all, but…this really is very embarrassing for me. I’ll climb onto the scale and weigh myself, and then I’ll tell you, but I’d like to be alone if that’s okay.”

My mom understood my plight and didn’t argue. She left the room for a bit while I stripped and climbed onto the scale. I only weighed about two pounds and two ounces now – less than a third the weight of a new-born baby! When I told Mom, she didn’t seem surprised at all.

“Well, it’s just basic maths that your mass would decrease by a greater factor than your height, so this makes perfect sense,” she said. “In fact, your lower mass ratio compared to your height might even make life easier for you. You won’t hurt yourself as much when you fall, for instance, as a full-sized person would…though I wouldn’t go jumping off any tall buildings – or furniture – yet if I were you. Remember, this is still a completely novel experiment we’re conducting here. You are the first person in history to have been miniaturized in any way, and we don’t know how your body will react to everything around you yet.”

The momentousness of the situation was becoming clear to me.

“Wow…I guess I never really thought about it like that,” I said. “This…this is actually pretty cool, Mom! Being tiny, I mean. Just…please promise me you’ll find me some clothes soon, okay? What if someone else sees me like this?”

Mom laughed and promised me again that she’d come up with a solution to my clothing problem soon.

“Speaking of someone else, I’m sure your little sister is dying to meet you,” she reminded me. “Come on, let’s get some breakfast for you, and you can show Emily that you’re still perfectly okay. She’s been worried all morning.”

After swaddling me up tightly in her scarf again, my mom took me up in her mighty arms and held me close to her body, then began heading to the kitchen. My new life had begun and I wondered how things would be from now on.