I lay on my back on the Queen bed in the master bedroom, lost in thought.

The disorientation was still coming down, and I found myself staring intensely at my open hand, trying to picture a reduced version of myself standing on it. Because that’s how small I had been before jolting; small enough to stand on the palm of my own current-sized hand. But the more I concentrated, the fuzzier and more abstract the image became, until it seemed totally incoherent. It felt like only moments ago I’d re-sized, but had been an hour.

A shadow seemed to shift over me, causing me to sit up. She was standing in the doorway.

“THERE YOU ARE,” she sighed, slumping gracefully against the doorframe, folding her arms. “TALK TO ME. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH YOU?”

I wrung my hands together, ultra conscious that her phone was lying on the bed nearby, and I had been just using it to coordinate something very secret and very important…

“I…I don’t know…”

Undergoing size alteration via Remy’s machine always seemed to affect my nervous system. The first time, giving me vertigo, the second time, a panic attack. I had neither of these reactions now, but my brain was still placing me in my newly sized surroundings, gauging the correct depth for everything. I kept reaching the end of surfaces and crossing the floor much quicker than I expected.  

“IT’S BEING ABLE TO SEE ME PROPERLY, ISN’T IT – ?” she said, sauntering slowly over to the bed with a lazy hip movement that got my eyes stuck half-way up her body. Her hips – her whole body – was perceptively smaller, but I could take it in with one sweeping look, and it didn’t look like geography anymore, but, suggestively, like a magnified woman’s body.

Her voice quickly pulled me back to reality.

“—IT’S A LITTLE…SHOCKING?”

“Yeah…I guess so…”

Maybe not ‘shocking’ so much as a huge relief that I could read her expression instantaneously and without intense scanning and concentration.

Now I fought to keep my eyes on her, and not on her phone lying on the mattress across from me, like so much crime scene evidence. Would she bother to scroll through the recent call list?

The mattress buckled beneath me slightly as she climbed onto the bed and slid down onto one side, drawing her knees in and flexibly curling herself around my much tinier body. Leaning on one arm, the other draped down and poked my shoulder, getting me to shift around in place until I was facing her.

The tip of a pinky finger nudged up under my chin to gently tip my head back.

But her phone was in my peripheral vision, right next to her. If one of those numbers called me back to confirm anything she would pick up. I couldn’t meet her eyes, but I forbid myself from looking at the phone, and my eyes ended up darting around with indecision.

The pinky nail tickled my throat to bring my attention back to her.

“CAN I HAVE MY MOMENT WITH YOU YET?”

I blinked.

“Er, what?”

“DO I GET TO KISS YOU NOW?”

She didn’t wait around for my answer. A hand wrapped around my torso, my butt lifted off the bed and suddenly my face was rushing up towards her lips, which were puckering in anticipation. I was pulled in so fast in fact that my face made a soft smack as it hit the moist bulging lips, and stuck fast by its passionate massaging suction.

Her throat crackled with a husky eruption of uninhibited bliss that made me rock hard in seconds.

Then, with another moan, her lips suddenly parted, moving past my ears, and there was a hard clasping feeling over the crown of my head and up under my jaw, and tightening until my head was immutably locked in place, as in a bear trap. Then her tongue came pounding out with such restless amore that it practically punched me in the head with its impact, then draped heavily over my face like a warm wet towel, before it began to apply firm, sweeping licks, starting from my chin up to the hairline above my brow. My features were squashed and pulled by the fierce ardour of its wet bumpy grinding, as her thick, rapid breath beat in my ears, keeping my face moist with saliva.

She was quickly getting carried away; the grip of her incisors was cutting close around my skull, straining my temples; the cartilage in my jaw grinding. Then it was too painful and I let out a cry.

The vice relaxed and withdrew from my head, while the rubber seal of giant lips slid away from the perimeter of my face, leaving me blinking through a veil of bubbly fluid which cooled rapidly in the air.

“YOU LIKED THAT, DIDN’T YOU?” she said in a low voice. She must have interpreted my noise as a cry of pleasure.

The pad of her pointer finger swirled over my stomach for a moment before trailing down to my erect member, playfully wagging the tip with repeated flicks of her finger, delighted at the robust bounce of my achingly swollen member.

Meanwhile, a second finger had probed out to tickle and play with my balls. There was a kind of numbness at my tailbone and beginning to reach up my spine through my butt.

“PRETTY EXCITED ABOUT YOUR NEW SIZE, HUH…?” she was murmuring, “…MAYBE I’M A LITTLE EXCITED ABOUT IT, MYSELF...”

One of her fingertips delicately slid under my glans, lifting my shaft so that she could leisurely inspect and stroke the head of my dick. Satisfied, she gave the throbbing tip a gentle squeeze between fingertips, and kept it in her grip while the tip of the ring finger. I desperately needed to ejaculate but couldn’t while her fingertips had my tip pinched shut.

She didn’t seem to want me to come. She was content just toying with me. She wanted me to beg her for it. But I had already begged her for something once today, and – trying to hang onto some shred of self-respect – once was my limit.

There was a giggle as she surveyed me, quietly delighting in my anguish.

“ARE YOU ANGRY AT ME? WHAT CAN I DO TO CURE THAT LITTLE FROWN?” One of her fingers brushed back and forth over my mouth as if trying to rub my expression off. “AWW, COME HERE. GIVE ME ANOTHER KISS…”

I was brought up against her lips a second time, while her fingertips kept the squeeze up on my glans, gently rolling it around.

I started to groan and protest.

The soft dragging pressure of the lips left my face, only for a fingerpad to replace them, squashing my mouth for an instant, muzzling my voice. My throat tightened and my voice died just, staring at the ivory razor of her fingernail pointing up, seemingly inches from my eyeballs.

“SHHH,” she said, seriously now, overtaken by another wave of steamy compulsion. “JUST LET ME MAKE IT ALL BETTER…”

Then her fingers were all over me raking my chest, massaging my pecs and abs. I was dazed, swimming in the thick cloud of her perfume, the heated currents of her breath, and the luscious warmth of her lips nuzzling my face. The more I struggled, the more enjoyment it elicited for her, as my body flexed in her grip, and my head mashed against her lips.

The pinch of her fingertips on my glans had now shifted to the base of the shaft, and began moving back down, tugging my dick with it, until it reached my tip, then repeated the motion, building me up unbearably until my overworked dick couldn’t take any more teasing.

There was a feeling of pressure racing out of my dick, and my brain and vision altogether imploded into a white nothingness, like a blizzard, erasing my consciousness for a timeless instant. When I came to, panting for breath, her lips were no longer around my face, they were hovering just above me, spilling torrents of warm air onto my damp hair. I found myself tilted up under her face, which was surveying me.

“YOU OKAY?” she said with some tentativeness. “LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE GOING TO HAVE A SEIZURE OR SOMETHING THERE FOR A SECOND...”

My heart, which had been racing in my temples, began to slow down again. I ran my hands over my face, massaging the weird tingling numbness out of my features, and brushing my damp hair back.

Seeing I was alert, the huge lips hovering over me began to smile.

“THAT LITTLE OX’S HEART’S STILL POUNDING AWAY,” she said, as a fingertip came over and tapped my chest.

Then her eyes grew soft.

“DON’T GO ANYWHERE. I’M SERIOUS. I MISSED YOU SO MUCH.”

The rounded underside of a thumb ran over my face, keeping the nail turned up as the soft pad traced my features, something she couldn’t do when I’d been smaller, if she could see my face at all. As the pad made its way over the ridge of my brow, I shut my eyes just before it swiped down in front of them. Then I felt myself being moved forward, but couldn’t open my eyes with the thumbpad covering them. It remained against my brow, keeping my eyes closed while the puckered masses of lips snuck in to stick a surprise kiss against the bottom half of my face.

This moment of tenderness was only fleeting. The pressure of lips and thumb disappeared, and when I looked up her eyes sparked with a sudden idea.

“LET’S CELEBRATE!”

“I think I’m gonna need a little time to process this—”

“I’M TAKING YOU OUT!”

“This just happened really fast, right now, and—”

“I’M GOING, YOU’RE COMING!”

Lowering my eyelids, I massaged my fingertips into my eye sockets.

“Why don’t we just both take a—”

“PLEASE!”

“I need to—”

“COME ON!”

“But—”

“COME ON!”

“I—”

But I was being lowered until my back pressed against her thighs, while she apprehended me with crafty determination.

Then, an array of nails was brandished and shaded over my body, poised. Unseen, there was a clamping feeling around my temples – her other hand had grasped my head and held it still, so I was unable to escape. The flying nails descended on me, now tickling me properly, without mercy, with the fullest intent of making me as uncomfortable as possible. A long nail tilted my head back so the others had access to my exposed neck, my arms were lifted, pulled away from my sides to expose my ribs and armpits. My legs were lifted to provide access to the vulnerable insides of my thighs.

“S-top!” I gasped, kicking and thrashing my arms. My ribs cramped in pain as I took quick rapid breaths. “Please!”

But it didn’t stop.

So I bent up, huddling to protect myself and my sensitive areas but the insistent force of her fingers opened me, smoothed me out again, forcing me stretched out, spread-eagled, and jabbing nails into my palms and my forehead to pin them to her thigh as the nails of her other hand gently poked and scrubbed at my flesh, giving my whole body a tender, aching workout.

“Okay!” I barked, as my stomach convulsed like I was going to vomit. “I’ll go out with you! Anything you want!” 

Satisfied I had been conquered, the hands ceased their torment.

She removed herself from the bed and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom entrance, shutting the door behind her. Next second the shower was blasting.

Her phone was still lying on the bed. She had barely even noticed it. Rolling over, I dragged myself across the mattress, reaching for it once more.

I had another phone call to make.

*

Le Bistro Rabelais was an elegant French restaurant with long white tablecloths, tall black chairs inside a stylishly French Restoration barn frame surrounded by big open windows to view the coastline of the Bay. Each table was topped with a tall lit candelabra and wine glasses. We were lucky to get a same day reservation; a function had been postponed and it freed some tables. It was designed to be a night hub: with no central lighting in the barn, just the candelabra for lights, it got a shadowy ‘candlelit’ romantic atmosphere once night fell, with the windows turning smoky blue.

This cut a little too close to the dusky glowing interior of Christine’s house for my liking – and the associated memory of being mosquito size – however, our table was not inside, but out on the patio overlooking the boardwalk that ran along below, pink sky overhead, and turquoise water backgrounding a line of date palms.

A waiter stopped by us to plant a water jug on our tabletop with a small clunk that ran through my tailbone, as I sat on one side of the table on a couple of folded up napkins for seat cushioning, with Jennifer sitting in the seat opposite.

“FIRST DATE?” the waiter said in a small professional voice as he looked between us.

Reasonable guess. My hair was styled – earlier, by Jen’s hair-foam covered fingertips – and I was wearing a midnight blue suit. Jennifer was wearing a black, figure-hugging dress with a half-length cascading skirt, and black and white stilettos. Her hair was down, lashes thickened, and lips glossed. She was achingly beautiful and the sight of her made my heart pound like we really were on a first date. I couldn’t stop staring at her: savouring that I could drink in her appearance as a singular recognizably (if giant) human woman, and not a sprawling, moving geographical terrain.

The waiter didn’t blink as his eyes passed over me. His assurance in the face of my startling stature suggested he recognized me from my previous TV appearance. But if he did, he didn’t say it.

“First date in a while,” I corrected, grateful for the lack of response, until –

“MR MOUSSEAU,” he said levelly, and quiet.

“That’s correct,” I replied, casting a self-conscious glance around at the other patrons at their tables, before trying to send the waiter a look that said, ‘not so loud; don’t ruin this for me.’

Taking in my expression without remark, his shrewdly narrowed eyes then glided over to Jennifer.

“AND YOU MUST BE MISS TOMLIN.”

“YES, THAT’S RIGHT…” she said slowly, staring at him in surprise. She wasn’t typically identified when someone recognized me in public, even though she’d had a cameo on the TV special.

Without more, the waiter gave us our menus and then, and with a millisecond’s hesitation, took my water and wine glasses back up.

“I WILL REPLACE THESE,” he said smoothly, leaving us.

Jen’s hand came reaching over to flip my menu open for me, and I began crawling over it on all fours, deliberating over the items, trying to picture size and portion. I didn’t want to fill up on so much food that I wouldn’t be able to speak. 

The waiter reappeared with the wines; one red and one sparkling, plus a miniature cheese platter, for me, being the resident cheese sampler. The one and only time I'd tried introducing Jen to cheese and wine tasting at home, she'd scoffed all my tiny, meticulously arranged cheese cubes down on a single skewer, in one bite, and washed it down with a single gulp of wine, and bringing the tasting to a swift end.

Right now my appetite was inconveniently absent, but I needed to keep my hands busy so they didn’t start to shake.

“OH, WE HAVEN’T ORDERED ANY DRINKS YET,” Jen indicated to the waiter.

The waiter confirmed the vintage order under my name: Zinfandel, and champagne. Jen scanned the labels before a look of candid bewilderment struck her. She then stared across the table at me.

"JERRY," she said in undertone, more confused than ever, "THAT'S TOP TIER."

"It’s taken care of. Try some."

She looked unsatisfied with my answer, but went quiet, letting the waiter pour her a glass. He also poured me a squirt of red in a shot glass shaped like a little goblet, a perfectly miniature version of Jen’s normal-sized one.

Pulling my arms around the glass, I began the task of turning it onto its edge, listing it enough to drink from without tipping it over. Suddenly the whole glass lifted out of my grasp, up into the air and stopping to hover over me.

She manipulated the miniature shot glass between her fingers with careless ease, tilting it up against my mouth, letting it gently drain down my throat while, at the same time, she took swills from her own glass.

Neurons firing, I tried to lose myself in the fumes for a moment, and clear my thoughts, but my brain kept rattling by the same few phrases, rehearsing them over in my head until I got flustered and lost the gist of what I meant, then started over again, only for the same thing to happen.

The wine warmed my insides, but when I pulled my head up from the glass, the briny sea air was chilling against my perspiring brow. I reached for and tore off a corner of my napkin, trying to wipe my face and neck without flagging attention or concern, but it wasn’t nearly as refreshing enough; what I really wanted to do was rip all my clothes off, run off the end of the pier and dive into the cool water to shock the nerves.

Jen’s voice was backgrounding my anxious thoughts; she was advising me that if you got up at 6am Saturday morning (which was tomorrow) for a jog along the boardwalk, they held a yoga class on one of the catamarans – apparently the listing waves made for a challenging but rewarding balancing activity – but if you were really lucky you might see someone botch a ‘tree pose’ and go toppling over into the water, and this, at least according to her, made the early wake ‘totally’ worth it. She didn’t like yoga.

I let her talk without remark, but apparently my silence went on for too long. Next thing I knew she was looking at me questioningly. I tried to meet her stare with nonchalance.

“I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG,” she concluded.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“YOU’RE SO RED AND YOU’RE SWEATING – DO YOU HAVE A FEVER?”

Her hand extended over my head like a canopy as her thumbpad dropped down to delicately press against one of my cheeks, and then shifted around my brow, feeling my temperature. As she did this, the inside of her thumbnail swept past my eyes. I blinked rapidly, trying not to flinch.

“I’m fine.” But my voice sounded tight, strained. My suit also felt too tight all of a sudden.

“THAT MACHINE MADE YOU SICK,” she surged on with guilty realization, “AND I DRAGGED YOU OUT HERE…”

“That’s over now. Really.”

“YOU’RE NOT NORMALLY THIS BAD AT LYING.”

“Just relax and enjoy the atmosphere,” I said, sliding a hand down the nape of my neck to get some cool air under my collar.

She turned her head away, resting it on her hand, but her brows were still drawn in thought.

“IS IT ME?” she said suddenly. “IS IT BECAUSE—”

“Not you,” I said. My sweating palms were now planted on my thighs, one thumb digging into the muscle a little too hard.

“WELL, WHAT THEN? THE VET CHECKING YOU OUT? GIVE ME SOME KIND OF SIGN I’M GETTING WARMER.”

The waiter appeared beside the table and lowered the plates of food: one normal size, and one miniature dish normally for cream but right now carrying my meal. They didn’t have cutlery small enough for me so I requested some little wooden toothpicks to skewer my food with. They seemed a little bothered by this, maybe embarrassed by their inability to provide me basic utensils, but I insisted.

Once the waiter had departed, I grabbed up a couple of the wooden toothpicks and began stabbing at my food, and tearing it off, happily stuffing my cheeks.

Pushing at her own meal with a fork, Jen went on:

“SO THEN—?”

“No talking. Eat.”

About halfway through my meal my pace began to slow. Across the table it looked like Jen was almost finished her meal. She paused.

“YOU KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH REMY?” she said, with a slight perplexed frown. “HE LOOKED PRETTY SICK OR SOMETHING,” her eyes flicked across the table at me “—DON’T YOU THINK?”

I couldn’t answer ‘time travel’ because that topic was now off limits, so I just shrugged and said:

“Homesick, maybe.”

“HE WENT BACK HOME?” she said with surprised interest. “I THOUGHT HE WAS FROM QUEBEC.”

“No.”

“OH, YOU THINK HE’S FROM FRANCE?”

“No. Even further.”

“HOW OLD IS HE, ANYWAY?”

“Older than I realized.”

“I HOPE WHEREVER HE IS, HE’S HAPPY HOW IT ALL TURNED OUT, ‘CAUSE I SURE AM.”

“Gotta be glad it didn’t go some other way,” I concluded aloud. “Like pulling someone else down into my world. They might not like it…”

She reached for her wine but, holding the glass in her palm, was still for a long time, long enough for me to notice and look up. She was staring into the glass, thinking.

Finally she said:

“I WOULD TAKE ONE NIGHT IN YOUR WORLD. I MEAN,” she bit her lip, peering past the wine, into my eyes with something more than curiosity, “IT CAN’T BE THAT BAD…”

“It’s not bad,” I decided aloud. “Just different.”

She was calm again, thoughtful. Then smiled.

“THIS IS A NICE FIT, THOUGH.”

“What is?”

“YOUR SIZE, YOU DOPE.”

Folding her arms over the table, she dipped her head to look me in the eye directly, as if she was about to let me in on a secret, and my gaze got caught by her long eyelashes, moving in time, up and down with their hypnotic fluttering motions:

“IN MY HAND. IN MY PUSSY. IN MY MOUTH. YOU’RE PERFECT.”

I had a horrible feeling the waiter was standing right behind me and recoiled, my head whipping around in horror, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight.

“Jesus, not so loud!”

She stretched back again in her seat, laughing under her breath, then took up her wine glass for another sip.

“Not sure that’s how I would have put it,” I mumbled, after my pulse had winded down a little.

She brought the glass back down to the table again.

“MAYBE IT WAS AN ACCIDENT WHEN IT HAPPENED THE FIRST TIME.” She gave her head a gentle shake: “I DON’T THINK OF IT AS AN ‘ACCIDENT’ ANYMORE.”

I chuckled grimly.

“It was just an accident.”

“OF COURSE. BUT…IT WAS LUCKY.” She shrugged in a self-evident kind of way, and then was silent for a moment. Then she reconsidered: “I’M LUCKY.”

Her eyes fixed on me again, now analytical.

“DON’T YOU THINK IT’S A LITTLE…” Her words pulled away.

“Yes…?” I grunted.

“PROVIDENTIAL.”

“What does that mean?”

“ARRANGED—”

“Not arranged,” I said quickly, ruffled. ‘Arranged’ made me think of arranged marriages – not a helpful image right now.

“NOT ARRANGED,” she corrected herself quickly. “WRONG WORD.” She gave a small sigh, then said more lightly: “…AND I’M ALL OUT OF WORDS. NEVER MIND.”

She looked up and out across the water, tugging one of the long dark-dyed whisker strands in front of her ear and idly twirling it between her fingertips. The strands were kept out of her ponytail so often that they formed their own separate tresses even when her hair was down, like now.

“ANYWAY,” she said, not looking at me and sounding unconcerned, “WHAT WOULD YOU CALL IT?”

“An accident.”

Her hand stopped halfway through the strand, before she let it drop from her fingers as her hand lowered to the table again. She made a small exasperated snort.

I folded my arms.

“Okay. A lucky accident.”