Euphoria filled Sarah as the plunger of the hypodermic needle smoothly depressed under her thumb. The needle had bit into his neck so cleanly and without resistance that for a split second Sarah had thought she'd missed, but her hand pushed the needle to it's base, and her thumb acted almost by instinct, pushing the very nearly clear liquid from the reservoir into his vein. It was the sight of that fluid, a shrinking serum derived from a type-neutral plasma suspension, steadily disappearing from the needle's reservoir that sparked the euphoria in Sarah. The feeling of the plunger pushing back against her thumb, his last, unaware, unconsciously desperate, and ultimately futile act of resistance to the actualization of Sarah's reality only served to build the euphoric feeling into physical pleasure that spread from the pad of her thumb and out through her body.
It lasted only a moment. A fraction of a second was all it took to force a few milliliters of priceless serum from the needle into his neck, and forever alter the world to suit Sarah's own perceptions. That moment felt like minutes to Sarah. Caught up in the bliss of realizing everything, juxtaposed with the dread of the needle missing, or even after she had buried it deep inside him, snapping, made it a brief, but ultimately sublime moment in her life that she would revisit in memory and dream over and over again. Sarah was almost disappointed when the plunger stopped.
As soon as the hypodermic needle had emptied, he clutched his neck and ducked away, fraught with shock and pain. He began to shout, to curse, to berate Sarah, but Sarah could see the panic and fear in his eyes. She knew that his fear, his heartbeat thundering through his veins with an ever-increasing pace, was spreading the serum through him. Sarah smiled, knowing that he was unconsciously accelerating his fate. He was unknowingly rushing into her possession, where Sarah knew he’d belonged all along. Sarah didn’t have to wait long as his fury was replaced with a sheen of sweat on his face, and a look of mixed nausea and confusion.
Even before Sarah had let the spent needle fall from her grasp, the process had already begun. She noticed his sleeves creeping up his wrist on the arm holding his neck, even as he fumbled his keys to the ground. In the clear light of the noon sun, there was nothing to obfuscate the effects of the serum from Sarah's delighted eyes. She'd witnessed the results on dozens of lab mice, seen the effects for herself, but to watch him diminish in size for her was another matter entirely.
The sight of his shrinking, his shirt billowing up around him, the waist of his pants briefly swallowing him from under then falling away entirely to the asphalt of the parking lot. In his fear and confusion, he stumbled over his clothing, pushed himself off of his own car, and fell between Sarah’s feet where she watched with rapt attention as he continued to dwindle before her. Crawling from the fabric of the clothes he’d never have the luxury of wearing again, Sarah almost squealed to see him small enough to slip through his shirt’s collar, now too small to bear any threads at all.
For the first time since her hand had pulled the needle from her purse, Sarah resolved to touch her prize. Sarah knelt down and simply held him in place with her fingertips. The small man, only a foot tall at most, could do nothing to shake even her fingertips from where she kept him pinned. It was miraculous to feel his squirms, but more so to feel him shrink under her fingertips, his resistance growing weaker and weaker to her with every passing moment.
The moment Sarah realized it was possible, she wrapped her fingers around his tiny body, picking him up from the ground and standing up. The tiny man’s face was washed with a horror only checked by his nausea and vertigo. Even before she had stood up, the human form in her hand had become small enough to only spread out over her hand. By the time she had stood up, he didn’t even cover the lines of her palm, but had at least appeared to have finally ceased shrinking.
Sarah slowly closed her fingers around him. The quick and labored breathing of his bare chest beneath her closing fingers. For a moment, Sarah savored the sight of him disappearing under her digits. The entirety of him vanished into her hand, no longer visible to Sarah or to any other soul alive behind her fingers.
Sarah felt him though. Through her fingertips, through her palm, her hand enveloped him in a way he’d never been enveloped before. Her hand was his existence, her skin and scent and body heat his everything. But Sarah knew it was her heartbeat that would be overwhelming him, overriding his senses as every beat of her heart coursed through her veins and became a dull, deep, steady thunder around him.
She never let him slip from her grip as she slid her hand back into her hoodie’s kangaroo pocket. As she spun on her heels and briskly walked back to her own car, where she’d waited for him to emerge from his apartment, Sarah clutched him in her fingers, lightly squeezing her prize, her pet, her toy, in a gleeful expression of the ownership she now held over him.
Sarah had finally made real his purpose, being hers.