Jessica knew she was making a mistake.  She knew that she needed to let this all go, and that it simply wasn’t meant to be.  But looking down at the bottle of pills she had stolen from her workplace, she knew that if she had any chance at getting even the slightest hint of her dreams and desires, it all rested within these pills.

Standing outside her coworkers house, Jesicca poured four pills out into her palm.  They were apparently meant to remedy Type 1 Osteogenesis Imperfecta by increasing the density of the patient’s bone structure.  What they actually did was far more fantastical.  Instead of just causing the bones to compress, it caused the entire body to shrink.  The effects increased as more pills were taken, and could shrink you down from anywhere between 4 feet tall to as small as the naked eye could see.

Jessica’s hand trembled as she gripped the medicine in her hands.  If she took these now, there would be no going back.  She was never going to be able to return to her proper size if she took the pills and didn’t commit to the rest of her plan.  ‘No’, she thought to herself. ‘I can’t think like that.  This is something I have to do.’

She tossed the pills to the back of her throat and swallowed hard.  Her vision began to blur as she sweat profusely.  Her entire body felt like it was being crushed in a trash compactor as she lost a foot in height.  That’s when she started vomiting onto the ground.  She felt all the fluid drain from her body from every hole and pore as she dwindled to 2 feet, 1 foot, 6 inches, 2 inches, until finally she was a quarter of an inch in height.

She felt awful, but Jessica got back to her feet.  She was at the point of no return now.  The only path was forward.  Jessica slipped underneath the front door to Bradley’s home and let herself in.

Making her way along the monolithic hallway, she looked around at the pictures hung on the wall.  She saw pictures of her coworker Bradley.  His big, beaming smile sandwiched between his moustache and beard greeted her with each picture.  Some pictures showed more of his impressive musculature.  Some more of his flowing locks.  Some were even of him without his glasses on, letting her take in his expressive pupils lazing in a pool of lapis.

But this path was bittersweet, for flanking Bradley in almost every picture was Velvet.  She was a woman of almost otherworldly beauty.  Her long, toned legs, the muscular abs framed against her petite belly, her perfectly white teeth, and her hourglass figure just reminded Jessica of everything she would never be.  

The path was long for somebody her size, but she finally reached the doorway to the kitchen.  She briefly considered what she was about to do.  As terrible as it would be to be this small forever, and as bad as her punishment at work would be for stealing those pills, she could still walk away.  Every nerve in her body was screaming in pain, trying to divert her from her path of self-destruction.  But just as she turned to make the trek back from whence she came, her eyes settled on just one more picture.  

Bradley was dressed up to the tees in his nicest black suit, with a white undershirt.  In his hands, he cradled Velvet, as her long white dress dragged slightly against the ground.  They stood atop the steps to an old church building a few miles down the road.  But none of that was what stood out most to Jessica.  No, for her, the thing she could not draw herself away from was their eyes.  As the two stared at each other, the most striking aspect was the sheer amount of love packed into those gazes between them.  The excitement, the passion, the caring, the understanding, the connection, and the pure desire to stay by each other’s side communicated by that gaze drove Jessica over the edge.

She marched into the kitchen.  Spotting an apron that had been left to hang on it’s perch on the stove’s handle, she climbed upwards toward the countertop.  When she got to the top, she searched for something she knew had to be there.  And that’s when she saw a banana left in reach.  Every day during meal break, Bradley would bring a banana as part of his lunch, but today he had left it at home.  Knowing that Bradley would almost certainly eat it when he got home, she climbed on top to await his return.

She knew that she was no match for Velvet in any aspect, and that Bradley wouldn’t even consider cheating on his wife with anybody.  He was loyal to his friends and family, almost to a fault.  He would never even think about finding comfort in the arms of another woman.  It was one of his quirks that Jessica found so irresistible.  

So that was what brought her here with the shrinking pills.  If she couldn’t be together with him as a lover, she would use a different method to become one with Bradley forever.  She planned to let Bradley eat her with his banana, so that she could be turned into nutrients within his body, effectively making them inseparable.  Her life meant nothing without Bradley, so at least she could become part of his beautiful life.  So she sat and waited for Bradley to return.

Bradley got home after a bad day at work.  As head of security, he got an earful from the boss when some experimental medication went missing and the perp wasn’t caught on the cameras.  He’s been trying to use the footage he did have to make a timeline on where everybody was in the building when the medicine was stolen, but it could honestly be anybody at this point.  On top of that, his well-balanced, nutritional lunch had gone downhill when he realized he hadn’t packed any of the fruit he was supposed to have.  As a result, he was a bit peckish right now.  But he didn’t want to go overboard, because tonight was date night and he had someplace special picked out.

To make matters worse, Bradley saw an absolute mess on his porch.  It must have been the obnoxious college kids next door going on a bender again.  Bradley stepped over the puddle of unmentionable fluids and walked inside as his cell phone rang.  Recognizing the number, Bradley answered.

“Hey, honeybunch!”

“Hey boo, did you mean to leave a tupperware of chopped pineapple and a banana on the counter?”

“Ah, that was my bad.  They were for lunch, they just never made their way into my bag.”

“I put the pineapple back in the fridge, and the banana is right where you left it.”

“You’re the best, honeybunch!”

Jessica watched the doorway to the kitchen as Breadley lazily wandered inside.  Seeing the hulking giant of a man like this excited and frightened her at the same time.  Bradley made his way to the refrigerator and pulled out a tupperware full of pineapple.  

“I think you’ll like the place I picked out tonight.  It’s this new seafood place that opened up down the streets.  Jessica tried it the other day and said the shellfish was absolutely to die for!”

Bradley and Velvet had been married for five years now, and in that time, Bradley had developed a sense for when Velvet disapproved of something.

“Not in the mood for seafish?”

“You know I don’t like it when you talk to Jessica!”

“Aw, is my little snugamuffin jealous?  Don’t worry about her.  She’s always been a bit of a flirt as long as I’ve known her.  Trust me, there’s nothing going on between us.  I’m not interested in her, and she isn’t interested in me.”

Jessica was heartbroken when he said that.  She tried to scream that it wasn’t true and that she always loved him deeply, but the medicine had hardened her vocal chords, so she couldn’t let out even a whisper.  She continued to listen to Bradley’s side of their conversation as she watched him grab an odd assortment of items from around the kitchen.  He grabbed a bag of kale, a jug of milk, and the tupperware of pineapple from the fridge, a tray of ice cubes from the freezer, and honey from the pantry.  After several minutes of talking on the phone, Bradley and Velvet gave each other their ‘goodbye’s and ‘I love you’s and hung up.

Bradley had settled on preparing himself a smoothie to tide him over until Velvet got home.  He poured a few ice cubes into his blender, when he realized he was missing something.  Looking around, he finally spotted the banana.  It would have been unfortunate to have forgotten it again after all that.

Jessica saw the giant grab her and prepared for the moment she had waited so long for.  But Bradley didn’t eat the banana at all.  Instead, he pulled chunks of the banana away and tossed them into the blender.  Losing her balance, Jessica fell in too.

Jessica hit the hard, cold ice with a thud.  Looking down at the clear ice below her, she could see the sharp, menacing blades of the blender.  Jessica tried her best to get a footing and head to the side of the blender to bang on the glass and get Bradley’s attention, but the shifting, slippery ice cubes proved unstable footing for the tiny woman.  Jessica felt something sticky ooze down her back as honey was poured directly on top of the banana, and her by extension.  Next a rain of kale leaves canopied her and made it almost impossible to see the tiny woman in the blender.

At this junction, there was a real fear that Jessica would go unnoticed and be shredded painfully by the blenders blades.  But as she sat there feeling pineapple rain down above her, she considered that this may just be fate.  It would certainly be more painful than how she had anticipated dying, but the result would be the same.  She accepted her demise as her prison filled with milk.  As the blender started and she was sucked into the vortex to be blended into paste, she at least took comfort in the fact she would become one with the man she loved, even if he didn’t know she loved him and didn’t love her back.

When the smoothie was done, Bradley poured it into a glass and raised it to his lips.

*SSSPPPPTTTTHHHTTTTT*

Bradley coughed loudly as he checked the date on the milk jug.  It was, in fact, two weeks past expiration date.  “This day really couldn’t get much worse, could it?” he thought to himself.  Bradley poured the rest of the slop into the sink and got ready for date night with his wife.