At the back of the apartment there was a sunlit communal yard, and from mere inches off the ground, it extended out in every direction like an emerald ocean. The weekly gardener had been by and the grass was razored, the texture bristled against my bare feet and ankles as I paced, waiting for the personal trainer to arrive, checking the time on my phone, which was lying on the grass.

The other tenants were out during the day, the yard was normally empty until way after dark when those anomalous, 2AM conversations on deck chairs stirred up outside my window.

My phone buzzed with a text. Before I could read it, there was a rattling sound.

“HEY! YO!” a young woman called. “IS THIS THE RIGHT PLACE? I CAN’T GET IN!”

The rattling sound came again. It was coming from the barred fence running around the yard, and the gate was locked from the inside. I couldn’t open it, she couldn’t open it. D’oh. Terrible start.

You had to be buzzed into the front gate to get into the back. I couldn’t buzz her in; I was too small. I’d have to call Raf to come around, but he’d need time to drive over. Or, I could try getting the attention of one of the other residents – if anyone was home. Then I had another idea.

I jogged over the lawn to the barred gate, easily slipping through the bars to the other side, where the woman was standing. She was a pair of white, boulder-sized sneakers standing either side of me.

She must have been looking down at me, her sharp, but cheerful voice descended as if from the clouds:

“WOW. I LOVE A CHALLENGE. BUT YOU, ARE A PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY.”

I craned my neck as, at the same time, she crouched down. Her visage, backlit by the bright sky, seemed to hover down over me like a landing spacecraft. She was a young, striking woman with a sunkissed tan and gold hair in a messy ponytail, a couple of tresses wound up in a thin braid. She wore a black tracksuit and pair of fingerless gloves on her hands. I could imagine her sunbathing on a beach, or riding a surfboard, wavy straw-colored hair streaming behind. A small duffel hung off one sunny shoulder.

Her eyes stared down with unsuppressed shock, before, unable to help herself, she beamed at me. My body relaxed, as usual when confronted with a stranger’s bald, curious gaze, mitigated by a friendly gesture. And she was bathing me in unabashed friendliness.

“SO YOU’RE JERRY,” she said.

I held her gaze even though my neck muscles were twinging.

“That’s correct.”

To give my neck a rest I lowered my head, only to be met by the sight of the tight crotch of her athletic pants, pulling between her slightly parted, muscular thighs.

She rubbed her hands on her knees with enthusiasm.

“CAN YOU GIVE ME A SHAKE, LITTLE DUDE?”

She offered the broad, slightly tanned expanse of her palm, with her first few fingers and thumb poised to grasp my own, even doing a quick, casual ‘come hither’ gesture with her first two fingers.

“PUT ‘ER THERE!”

I placed my palm onto the pads of her first two fingertips, before her thumb lowered, squashing my palm slightly between as she – a little too enthusiastically –experimented with how much pressure to apply as she shook my hand.

“WHAT A WEE MITT!” she breathed.

Unable to withdraw my hand, my eyes were drawn up near her bare shoulder, which extended down into a toned bicep.

Her gaze, likewise, appeared to have been temporarily snagged by the pint-size flex of my bicep, which was flexing quite a bit more than hers as it struggled to defend against getting whipped up and down in the handshake.

She cast a puzzled look at the gate, following its perimeter with her eyes.

“STOP ME IF I’M POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS," she said, "BUT WE’RE OUT HERE, AND WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THERE.”

She nodded her head towards the back yard of the apartment complex, where I'd just sprinted from.

“Lift me up,” I instructed. “I’ll open it.”

“YOU WANT ME TO—?” Her fingerless-gloved hands opened before me, cupping instinctively.

“Yeah,” I said, and before she could react, stepped over and climbed into them.

“YOU BALLSY LITTLE OPERATOR,” she drawled. “COULDN’T EVEN WAIT TWO MINUTES TO PLANT YOUR BUTT ON MY HAND.”

Me ballsy? I thought. She was the one making sly remarks. She could give Jennifer a run for her money.

The bars of the gate were running past as I was lifted while the trainer stood to full height.

Once her hands stopped, I stood on the leathery padding of the gloves, getting my balance, then turning to look into her inquiring face.

“You need to hold me upside down,” I said.

She appraised me flatly with her intense gaze.

“OKAY, EITHER THIS IS GOING TO WORK OR YOU HAVE A STRANGE SENSE OF HUMOR.”

I dropped into a sitting position on her hand as her fingers curled around my ankles.

“I JUST LIFT…?”

“Yeah.”

The black leathery surface of her palm disappeared in stages; my legs rose up over my head as the rest of my body followed, the world re-oriented the other way until I was looking down at my hands draping just above the glove palm.

“—AND…?”

“Put me over the gate; there—” I pointed out the direction and next second I was heading that way, rising up over the top of the gate and swooping towards the lock mechanism. While dangling from my legs, my arms worked the lock mechanism, until it clicked. While I held it open, the woman pushed the door in, stepping into the yard. Then I was moving through the air until I found myself dangling right in front of the woman’s face, her broad smile lighting up my immediate view.

“NOW I SEE WHY YOU NEED ME,” the disarming smile said. “YOU HAVE TO PLAY MISSION IMPOSSIBLE TO GET INSIDE YOUR YARD.”

She dropped her duffel bag onto the lawn with a plonk that jolted through my body. It was getting warm, so she put me down on the lawn while she unzipped her track jacket and put it to the side, underneath a black spandex crop top which left her stomach bare, exhibiting the faint shadows and bumps of an emerging six pack of abdominal muscles. My eyes were stuck on her abdominals for a moment. I had a six pack, too, but having never seen one on a girl, it was something of a novelty.

Suddenly, the white boulders came thumping over to me again, and stopping in front of me, she stood with her hands on her hips, admiring me a second, leaning down slightly.

“I’M LARISSA. KNOW WHY I’M HERE?”

“You’re my workout trainer?”

She nodded.

“WE’RE A TEAM NOW. IT’S MY JOB TO PUSH YOU TO WORK HARDER, AND IT’S YOUR JOB TO WORK WITH ME. SOUND SIMPLE?”

“I believe so.”

“YOU BELIEVE SO?” She straightened, putting a hand on her hip. “CAN YOU SOUND A LITTLE MORE ENERGIZED FOR ME?”

I rolled my shoulders awkwardly.

“Uh, looking high-spiritedly forwards to it.”

She quirked an eyebrow.

“GREAT TO HEAR. BUT I KNEW YOU’D SAY THAT. OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. BECAUSE YOU ALREADY KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND THE GYM,” she nodded down at my chest, indicating my bulked-up shape. “AND THAT WORKS FOR ME; IT MAKES MY JOB EASIER.”

I took the compliment without saying anything. In actuality, I rarely so much as touched a dumbbell anymore because—

“Everything I pick up gives me a workout,” I shrugged.

She raised her eyebrows as if impressed.

“OBVIOUSLY. YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE IN PRETTY GOOD SHAPE, ANYWAY. BUT LOOKS CAN LIE. SKINNY DOESN’T MEAN HEALTHY, AND JACKED DOESN’T MEAN FIT.” She paused. “BUT SHORT DOESN’T MEAN WEAK, EITHER.” She nodded down at me. “GO AHEAD AND PROVE ME RIGHT.”

Casting her eyes around the yard, she strode under the lavender canopy of a Jacaranda to evade the sun’s glare, threw down a black foam mat, then turned and noticed me racing along after her. She stood still, clasping her hands behind her back and admired me, and finally, could not hold in her amusement any longer.

“HEY,” she said, giggling at the sight of me leaping over the grass to catch up, “TRAINING FOR A MARATHON? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Hopping onto the foam mat, I slowed, my footsteps making tiny tapping noises over the rubber. Confused, I said:

“I was following you.”

“DON’T OVER-EXTEND YOURSELF TOO FAST. YOU’RE JUST A TEENY LITTLE GUY AND WE’VE GOT A VERY NOT TEENY LITTLE PROGRAM TO RUN THROUGH.”

As she waited patiently, I hesitantly came up to her shoes, wondering how close I should get. In the background, traffic hummed along the highways leading into the metropolitan hub.

Some feet away (on my scale) an abandoned and dirt scuffed baseball sat on the grass, and bigger than a beach ball to me. Larissa was staring at it when I looked up at her, then her eyes passed over me, making an unavoidable size comparison. The ball was even taller than I was.

“YOURS?”

“No.”

“DIDN’T THINK SO.”

She gave it a small punt with the toe of her sneaker, I watched, enthralled, at the sight of the angular white boulder of her sneaker swinging and colliding with the white boulder of the ball, sending it hurtling away across the lawn. This caused a pigeon to rustle in the branches above, giving itself away amidst clumps of purple foliage. My muscles tensed, Larissa barely looked. A guard dog barked from another property two lots down. My muscles tensed again; and I checked the fence gate was shut, even though it swung shut and latched automatically.

Something was slid out of the duffel bag; a square glass plate with rubber pads, like a giant hoverboard, which was placed on the grass.

“WEIGH-IN TIME,” she announced. “UP!”

I hefted myself up the edge of the scale, my tiny feet made a small ‘plink’ noise as they tapped over the glass, which elicited laughter from above.

I stood still on the scale in the trainer’s immense shadow as she crouched over me to read the scale. Her toned bronze thighs fenced in at me, blocking everything.

By pound, my weight came up less than a pound.

“MY SCALE JUST CAUGHT YOU,” she remarked in earnest, her light eyes wide. “BUT ANY LIGHTER AND YOU’D CEASE TO EXIST.”

A different contraption was withdrawn from the bag, looking like a giant pair of tweezers. Callipers, she explained, for measuring body fat percentage.

The prongs snapped in front of my face and I recoiled. They looked like they could’ve snapped up my head and plucked me like an eyebrow.

“NOPE! TOO BIG,” she decided. “I’M GOING TO DO THIS MANUALLY.”

The callipers disappeared into the bag and I watched her shins stiffen and flex as she rounded down on me again.

“NOW, GENTLY, I’M JUST GONNA ZOOM IN UNDER HERE—” she murmured, as her hand launched at me, one finger delicately scratching at the hem of my top, rolling it up to reveal my stomach. Her eyes caught on the middle of my abdomen, where the fading scar was.

“WHOA, DID YOU RUN INTO A SHARPENED PENCIL? WHAT HAPPENED?”

A blush was creeping into my cheeks as I stuttered for words.

“Uh…big operation.”

The nail tip was now tracing up and down the scarline with soft strokes, and the ticklish sensation on the old but still tender wound site made my junk twitch. The slim-fitting athletic shorts I was wearing already made my bulge project, thickly and unavoidably, from the fork of my legs, like I was smuggling contraband in my pants.

Her nail tips were neatly trying to capture a roll of belly flesh between them, and I shuffled uncomfortably in place on the scale, as the plucking motions sent little nips and prickles all over my torso. Then her broad fingerpads were rolling in circles around my stomach to gauge fat deposits. The pressure followed a continually moving target that explored closer and closer to my pelvis as it methodically went down from my bottom ribs. I sucked in my breath as the edge of the thumb accidentally gave my bulge a soft swipe, before drifting upwards again. Then, the forefinger and thumb spread on either side of my waist and my middle was caught in between and squeezed experimentally as if I was plush toy. The pincer created by her fingertips felt like two strong magnets trying to touch each other through the medium of my stomach.

After, I stretched and did a warm up, jogging over the lawn while the giantess trainer casually sauntered beside me, every footfall jolting through my bones. After a couple of other exercises, she paused, kneeling beside her bag and sweeping an hand inside.

“MY LIGHTEST DUMBELL WOULD PIN YOU LIKE A PAPERWEIGHT,” she said lightly. “BACK TO THE MANUAL APPROACH.”

I lay on my back on the ground while her flattened palm dropped over me like a ceiling. She instructed me to raise my arms until my palms pressed up against her substantially larger one, pushing against it to ‘lift’ it until my arms were straight. Several reps later, the activity switched so that I was crouching, and ‘lifted’ her palm over my head until I was standing with my arms straight up.

“OKAY, HERO,” Larissa exclaimed, getting my attention back to her. “LET’S FINISH UP WITH SOME INTENSIVE STRETCHES SO I CAN SEE YOUR FLEXIBILITY IN ACTION.”

She instructed me to get down. The razored pelt of grass itched my back as I lay face up. Her enormous figure entered my viewline like a passing cloud, shadowing over the sky, expanding in frame as she crouched over me until there was nowhere else to look but up at her face.

The thin braid fell down her shoulder and she brushed it back behind her ear. Pinching each of my ankles, my legs were straightened, then carefully rotated.

Her smooth touch guided my leg to lift straight up while she braced her thumb against the underside of my thigh. The tip of her thumb accidentally squirmed in between my thighs and brushed my sack from behind, lifting it. I fought not to react. For an instant, it was balanced there, before the thumb shifted away, getting a better position under my thigh. Then my leg was lowered again, and my other leg was guided into repeating the stretch, and the thumb tip once again touched to my balls.

With the growing discomfort of entrapment, I felt two of her fingers curve around my side to my front, where they began to probe my lower belly, tracing the muscles, naming the muscles as she went. Then she paused.

“YOU’RE BUILT LIKE A PINT-SIZED BELGIAN STALLION. “ She tapped my ribcage with a fingernail. “I THINK I COULD LOCATE EVERY MUSCLE ON THE HUMAN BODY JUST DOING LAPS OF YOU WITH MY FINGER!”

The firm pressure of her touch began to sweep across my stomach, below my navel, before identifying what it was looking for.

“THESE BANDS ON YOUR HIPS ARE YOUR OBLIQUES. GUYS CONSTANTLY TELL ME THEY WANT A SIX PACK TO ATTRACT THE GIRLS. BUT LADIES LOVE OBLIQUES. MAYBE ‘CAUSE THEY POINT DOWN THE PEVLIS. GO FIGURE.”

Her nails were stealthily tracing each of my ‘obliques’ and it was tickling a little. At the lowest part of each oblique, the sensation crawled alarmingly close to my groin, and my penis was beginning to stir. I shifted my weight back and forth, scrunching my toes, my muscles stiffening against her touch.

“DOESN’T LOOK LIKE YOU NEED MY HELP WITH THESE ANYWAY.” Her fingers travelled back up my body, now running back and forth along my shoulder blades, down along my sides to my outer hips, and back up again.

Suddenly, she exclaimed:

“YOU’VE GOT A REAL LITTLE HORSE’S BARREL GOING ON.”

One of her fingers delivered a playful smack to my belly. Trying to push my discomfort down, I gave her a quizzical look.

“Is that good or bad?”

“I MEAN, YOUR RIBS AND ABDOMEN FEEL SURPRISINGLY RUGGED.” As she said this, she subjected my middle to a quick series of firm, experimental squeezes, as if testing the flexibility of my ribcage. “KINDA LIKE A TINY LITTLE HORSE. YOU LIKE HORSES?”

“Can’t say I do.” I was thinking of how big their teeth were, and how a single hoof could stomp me down into a human postage stamp.

“I LOVE ‘EM. YOU CAN’T KEEP ME OFF THEM.” She chuckled. “DON’T MIND ME THOUGH—”

Her fingers continued down my abdomen and down one thigh, which was shortly gripped between two fingerpads and given a gentle squeeze. My breath caught at the proximity of her fingertips to my groin. I tried not to move a muscle.

“THIS IS YOUR SARTORIUS MUSCLE IN HERE, IT RUNS DOWN YOUR THIGH. IF YOU GET KNEE PAIN, THIS MAY BE THE CULPRIT, PARTICULARLY IF YOU HOLD A SITTING POSITION A LOT, BUT IF IT’S A PROBLEM I CAN TEACH YOU SOME STRETCHES TO PREVENT STRAIN.”

Her fingers attempted to sweep back up to my tummy, but misjudged the precise positioning and next thing I knew, the pad of a finger was rooting around my lower – lower – belly for more bands of muscle to identify, but accidentally captured and made an inquisitive investigation of my thickened shaft before she realized what it was and drew her hand back.

“WHOOPS,” she said, “GAVE YOUR LOVE MUSCLE A LITTLE POKE THERE, DIDN’T I?” She grinned. “WELL, IT FELT LIKE IT GAVE MY FINGER A LITTLE POKE BACK! SORRY, BUD, MY BAD!”

She ruffled my hair in a good-natured, ‘no harm done’ kind of way. When my eyes dropped from her face and I failed to respond, she went on.

“AW, NO NEED TO GET ALL CUTE ABOUT IT,” she went on breezily. “IT’S NOT THE FIRST TIME A CLIENT HAS GOTTEN A LITTLE EXCITED DURING A WORKOUT. IT HAPPENS.” She shrugged, flashing me a small, but unselfconscious smile that didn’t exactly help my groin to deflate.

She got to her feet, hauled the duffel over her shoulder and I trailed her across the yard. Pausing at the gate, her towering legs bent in a crouch.

"SO YOU KNOW RAF? WE USED TO DATE."

"He takes me place to place."

"A MODERN DAY KNIGHT. OR KINDA LIKE YOUR HORSE, GIVING YOU LITTLE RIDES. THAT'S GOTTA BE FUN."

"Guess you could put it like that."

"LAZY, THOUGH," she threw me an easy grin, "MAKING HIM DO ALL THE WORK. NO WONDER YOU NEED ME."

I scoffed, even I was charmed by her blasé attitude.

“SEE YOU NEXT WEEK,” she said. She seemed inclined to make contact with me somehow – an upper arm slap, or a shoulder squeeze – but unable to do that, her fingers shaded me and the undersides of her extended fingers rubbed back and forth against the top of my head.

“IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS BEFORE THEN, HIT UP MY NUMBER. OR EMAIL. YOU’VE GOT 24 HOUR ACCESS TO ME, CHAMP.” She gave me a wink that was unabashedly flirty. Then she surveyed my apartment complex, and looking back at me, cocked an eyebrow.

“IS THIS THE PART WHERE I LOWER YOU THROUGH YOUR BEDROOM CEILING ON THE END OF A CABLE?”

“I’ll take it from here.”

“BYE, JERRY.”

“Bye Larissa.”

Phone call from vet, medical procedure

Later on I received a call from the vet.

“There’s a trial running for a new treatment,” she said, “and it might stimulate your system to go from teeny little to big.”

My spine went straight up off the mattress and I stared at the phone laying on my legs.

“You mean it might increase my height?”

“I’ve never had a patient with your condition before. But with your superb health, I’d make a case that you’re a perfect candidate to give it a try.”

“What does it involve?”

“You need to scurry in here so I can give you a little feel over. If everything checks out, I can start stuffing you with pills per regime. It could be a big adjustment for a petite little thing like you...”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Whatever’s involved, I don’t care.”

“Had a feeling you’d be keen, you feisty little go-getter. But we have to watch your physical exertion.”

“I’m seeing a fitness trainer,” I answered, eager to dispel any concern.

“That’s good,” she said this in a strained way, “but this therapy is going to make your body work hard. I don’t want you to come wheeling into my office needing me to rub your tiny heart back to life. And I know you don’t want that either, Mister Cupcake, as much as you love coming in to see me!” 

I made an appointment to see her next time I was home. After the phone call, my attention was suspended, dazed over the prospect of possibly being big again. Keyed up, nerves jittering, I ran myself a bath to wash off the grime from the earlier physical workout, and try to relax my racing thoughts.

Later, I considered calling Jen and telling her about the vet’s news; she would need to know eventually, she would be the one driving me to the vet clinic. But something – a tight feeling in my chest – held me back. I tried to tell myself it was the desire to keep it a nice surprise. But I didn’t really believe that.