The microfiber towel was composed of soft strands, and as I rolled around on it to dry myself, the strands waved around me like fluffy bulbs of blue coral.

The bell at the front door chimed.

“Who’s that?” I said, jumping to my feet and looking around.

“OH, I HAVE TO GET IT,” Jennifer said, shifting her seat back away from the kitchen table. “DON’T MOVE, I’LL JUST BE A MINUTE.”

“Do you know who it is? What’s going on?”

“YOU’RE GETTING A CHECK-UP, BUB.”

“What?” I said, my mouth drying up. “Since when?”

“SINCE, LIKE, PRETTY MUCH RIGHT NOW.”

“By who?” my voice jumped up a pitch, “—a doctor?”

But she’d already dashed out of the room.

Then came the sound of the front door opening and an upbeat, young female’s voice chattering in greeting.

The voice hit me like a slap. My heart seemed to drop right out of my chest and plummet deep at the bottom of my stomach. I recognized the voice. I didn’t know her name, but I would have recognized the voice anywhere.

Jennifer returned, followed by a young woman wearing turquoise medical scrubs. She might have been considered cute – in an alternate reality where I was normal sized and still single, I might have even flirted with her. The notion made me cold.

It was the local veterinarian.

A backpack swung from the young woman’s shoulders, which she rested on the floor, while Jennifer showed her over to the kitchen table, where I was standing, watching them, my face going white and clammy.

"No – not again!" I screamed, putting my hands on my head and raking my fingers through my gel-slicked hair. "How could you—? Without telling me?! You can't do this!"

If my voice went up any higher in pitch it would cause dogs to stop and obey.

Whether or not Jennifer caught all that, she appeared to notice me jumping up and down and waving my fists. She briskly walked up against the edge of the table, her vast palm coming to rest upon the surface, her shadow falling over me everywhere as she leaned against the table, and turned to face the vet again. She said:

“JERRY’S ALL READY FOR YOU AND PATIENTLY WAITING JUST OVER HERE.”

As she said this, her index finger rose up, before bringing the nail down in a couple of sharp gunshot taps against the wood grain.

The vet’s form approached the table; her head dipping towards me as she bent over to take a better look. Her jaw dropped open as her eyes reduced to squinting in order to focus on me.

“HI THERE!” She said, and her bright chirping voice slapped my eardrums. “REMEMBER ME?  LAST TIME I SAW YOU, YOU WERE DRESSED UP LIKE A LITTLE SUPERMAN,” This caused her lips to break out with an entertained smile. “LET ME GUESS, YOU’RE ANT-MAN THIS TIME!”

Her teeth shone like castle battlements shifting up and down as she spoke. Between them, glimpses of a sizeable pale green, gooey lump. With a nauseous lurch I realized it was a big, folded-over hunk of chewing gum kept squashed up somewhere between the beefy red muscle of her tongue and the inside of her molars.

The wad of gum was the size of a golf cart to me, and between utterances, the white blocks of teeth masticated the gum which would not stay still: folding, squishing, stretching long and snapping again, and being probed by the tongue to keep in place. The view was intimidating, but she didn’t notice; chewing away with mechanical indifference while her attention was captivated by me.

Her open mouth was paddling me with a constant hot wind of spearmint that drizzled down on my head and ran down my face in clammy beads. There was no way I would never find mint cool and refreshing ever again.

Every time the lips parted and the gum appeared my nerves tightened. Apart from the slippery tongue, nothing kept the gum tethered in her mouth. If the wad escaped it would bury me alive and spell my end in an instant. Neither of the women would have any hope of extracting me again, as any attempt to shift the gum would probably only cause it to further absorb me into a tenaciously sticky, squishy, mint-infused ball.

Not taking her eyes off me, she said aside to Jennifer:

“INCREDIBLE! THERE’S SO LITTLE OF HIM – A SPRINKLE!” The pink, wet ridges of her lips pouted and cooed and grinned at me: “BUT YOU ARE JUST THE CUTEST LITTLE SPRINKLE! YES YOU ARE, AREN’T YOU! I JUST WANNA POP YOU ON A CUPCAKE AND LICK YOU ALL UP!”

Hey, watch it, lady! I thought, my heart palpitating with panic. Don’t go giving Jennifer any ideas…!

Alright, enough of this. Enough of the building block teeth snapping up and down, enough of the garden hose spray of saliva droplets, enough of the giant green pile of gum like melted, deformed rubber. I had fought my way through the shaggy blue microfiber and my legs were now pumping over the wooden tabletop.

“UH OH, WE GOT A RUNNER!” the vet smirked, without a hint of worry.

Five strides along, a set of tree trunks came crashing down to block my path, each tipped with long shiny plates. I spun and went the other way. An instant later, the same thing happened; a thumping collapse of long slender timber. Anywhere I turned, Jennifer’s fingers dropped down in front of my path. Meanwhile, the fingers on my other side were sliding inwards towards me. Dizzy, hemmed by the giant fingers closing in, I fell onto my butt; my legs shaking too much now to keep running.

“NO WE DON’T,” Jennifer answered flatly.

The vet had turned her back, now busying herself with something. She reappeared by the table edge carrying a device in front of her chest.

I stared at it, half fascinated, half terrified. It was like the frame or floor plan of a two-storey building, without walls or a roof. The lower floor was white and the upper floor black, holding a giant telescope like out of a big observatory.

It was a microscope.

The vet placed it on a clear space of the kitchen table, the impact jolting through my body.

Now, Jennifer brought her hands away, shifting to let the vet in, and a glass panel came down from the sky, coming into position on the tabletop next to me.

“GOING TO NEED YOU TO HOP ON, LITTLE CRICKET,” the vet instructed.

Anxious and bewildered, I didn’t move.

“DO WHAT SHE SAYS,” Jennifer said in a low voice, “AND WE CAN GET THIS OVER WITH.”

If I didn’t obey, sooner or later she was going to resort to using the ‘finger glue’ to transport me bodily onto the glass panel.

Breath coming out in deep huffs, I stepped up onto the thin glass sheet. As soon as my foot came down on the smooth glass, it skidded out from under me – my bare feet were still a little slick from the wash. My shoulder came down and crashed into the glass, the rest of me sliding along after it.

Jennifer made a small hiss of pity.

“JERRY, NO FOOLING AROUND.”

She thought I was trying to stall.

The vet was similarly unfazed, possibly thinking – like a tiny animal – I was incapable of shame.

Pathetically making the final crawl into the middle of the pane, I stopped and rested there in a sitting position.

The vet’s hand, now covered in a blue surgical glove, dropped from the sky, thumb and finger pincering around the edges of the glass, awash in the smell of rubber, delicately capturing it between fingernails, before I found myself lifting into the air, as if riding a glass-bottomed elevator.

I was zooming towards the two-storey ‘observatory’ before the glass came down on the black upper storey, sliding me up beneath a set of three steel revolving lenses, like cannon turrets, with me positioned in the firing line of the central one.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, I thought. The vet would look at me and that was it. No contact.

“NEED YOU TO BE AN OBEDIENT LITTLE PUPPY DOG AND ROLL ONTO YOUR BACK FOR ME,” the vet said to me.

I got down, tipping my head and shoulders back. The cold panel against my back made my skin crawl. Gritting my teeth, I placed my hands over my groin and stared up at the circular lens directly above my head. Reassuringly, I couldn’t see anything staring back at me through the lens, but I assumed the vet could see me. I felt a little like I was lying in an MRI machine, but without the enclosing walls.

 “GOT TO PULL THE MAGNIFICATION RIGHT UP,” the vet muttered to herself. Her voice was interspersed by the sounds of the wad of gum squishing and smacking between her teeth.

She fiddled with the dials on the side before looking back into the eyepiece.

“I SEE IT NOW,” she exclaimed. “TURNS OUT THAT FUZZY HEAD HAS A PRETTY LITTLE FACE ON IT! CAN THE WEENSY LITTLE FELLA LOOK UP AT ME AND GIVE ME A GREAT BIG SMILE?”

I didn’t smile.

“CAN I TAKE A LOOK?”

It was Jennifer.

Her interest had been piqued by the vet’s remark. Something was creeping into her voice, curiosity, but also a kind of shy longing that took me off guard.

“ALL YOURS,” the vet said, stepping away.

Then the vet’s shifting shadow was replaced by Jennifer’s as she stepped into place, and bowed her head to look through the eyepiece.

She let out a laugh. Not a deprecating laugh but a laugh of candid delight. That, too, caught me off guard, like a little twisting feeling in my heart.

“JERRY, I SEE YOU! I SEE YOUR FACE!..” She added with astonishment, “…AND YOUR NIPPLES…AND YOUR FINGERNAILS…AND YOUR BELLYBUTTON—”

The microscope body was blocking my view of her upper body, but it sounded like she couldn’t keep the grin off her face.

Then she abruptly stopped. It made me wonder if she was looking at my junk, or trying to, since it was covered by my hands. But she didn’t mention that. Instead, she said, in a startled voice:

“OH MY GOSH, WHEN DID YOU GET SO JACKED? YOU LOOK LIKE A FREAKIN’ BODYBUILDER!”

She didn’t sound excited anymore, or even impressed. She sounded a little perturbed.

I scoffed.

“No, I don’t.”

Sure, the miniaturizations always enhanced my physique as a side-effect, but as far as I was concerned, I looked the same as ever, more or less (literally much, much less). And even if I did pack a little more muscle since being shrunk again, so what? If anyone needed the extra bodily size and substance, it was me.

If she’d heard me, she didn’t say anything. She looked up from the eyepiece, and the vet took her cue to take over again, settling in front of the microscope and bending her head to stare through the eyepiece. She murmured matter-of-factly:

“ALRIGHT, I’M GONNA HAVE MYSELF A LITTLE POKE AROUND AND SEE WHAT WE’RE WORKING WITH, HERE.”

I stiffened all over and stared up at the lens in alarm. My extremities were drawing in towards my core, while my junk was kept protected beneath my hands, and behind my drawn up knees.

Movement flashed from the side. Something was snaking through the air towards me, angling beneath the steel magnifying lenses.

It was a long pole, one end had a feathery fine tip, the other end stopped in a tapered, round, blunted nub, like an eraser. The feather tip was pointed at me, swiftly getting closer.

The sight made my blood chill. I thought it was just look, no touch.

The soles of my feet were pushing against the glass, sliding my back along, trying to propel myself away from the oncoming javelin.

"NOW, DON'T YOU WIGGLE AROUND DOWN THERE, LITTLE WORM," the vet cautioned, "OR I'M GOING TO HAVE TO STICK YOU IN PLACE WITH SOME POSTER TACK."

I went still. Breathlessly still.

The blunt rounded tip began to probe my body keenly, starting with my arms and legs. With controlled, surgical precision, it manipulated my arms, pushing them out away from my body, sliding them along the glass. Worried resistance would tear my muscles, I didn't fight it.

With the same motions, the tip pushed at my legs, compelling them flat against the glass plate, and then separating them until I was lying spread-eagled, with my junk exposed.

The pole withdraw briefly to rotate, and then the feather tip came in, and – making use of its ultra-delicacy – began to manipulate my arms and legs, sliding them back and forth against the glass, pushing my arms to bend at the elbow and shoulder, and then stretch them out again, like I was some device and she was trying to figure out how I worked.

Likewise, the tip did this to my legs, folding them up at the knee, and poking my thighs back and forth to test the motion of my pelvic joints.

The insistent probing compelled my muscles to slacken, and only applying enough force to convince me that she understood my anatomy better than I did.

My toes scrunched as the tip swooped past my junk several times during trips between my arms and legs.

The nub gradually moved inwards to my torso. The massive end of the probe was brought down against my chest, weighing against my pectorals, bending my ribcage inwards, and tapping sensitively around my ribs.

The feathery-ended tip slipped beneath one of my armpits, exposed because my arms were stretched out on either side, and then ran down my side and started to palpate around my belly. My bulging muscles dimpled and flexed against the pressure as the probe tip burrowed against my abdomen like it was trying to push my liver out through my mouth. I couldn't speak; the probing was practically winding me.

Then, running lower to stop at my pelvis, the feather tip brushed my nutsack and then ran down my shaft. My breath sucked in tight. The tip now seemed to be trying to scoop up my junk and balance it to allow it to be seen better. The soft, somewhat prickly sensation this caused made my penis rapidly swell, and my balls grow tight.

The vet made a low whistleas she used the probe to lift my shaft up and angle it around to see it from all sides.

“TAKE A LOOK AT THAT THICK CLUB ON THE END," she muttered aloud,  clinically absorbed in her examination, "YOU COULD HIT A GOLF BALL WITH IT!”

Then it began pushing and poking at my member, trying to sweep it aside to better view my balls, but my erect member was so thick and obstructive, and kept slipping out of the grasp of the prong and springing back up into erect position again. So the probe tried a different tactic, coming in from below to sweep the member up and back towards my stomach, and pull my balls up into view. But a couple of times, my member slipped and dropped down, rebounding against the wand. Every time this happened, a sharp sensitive tap ran through my shaft with the impact. The wand then attempted a flicking motion, trying to flip my shaft up, but this only caused my weighty glans to reverse and come flipping down again, smacking into the wand, which responded by batting it back up. And so on.

Suddenly my penis was being batted up and down, and each impact was like a strike against my funny bone, shooting stomach-curling pangs up into my pelvis. Grunts escaped my throat as I pushed and kicked at the offending wand as it swung again and again, jerking my rod up and down.

“I’M TRYING TO GET A GOOD LOOK AT HIS TESTICLES,” the vet observed aloud, “BUT THE LITTLE GLANS IS SO THICK IT’S BEHAVING LIKE A PADDLE BALL,” she sounded almost morbidly fascinated, “IT’S SUSTAININING ITS OWN BOUNCE ON THE END OF MY PROBE.”

The vet rotated the probe to the blunt end and finally managed to get beneath my member, where the tip began rolling my balls around. My stomach started to shrivel up; if she wasn't careful, the probe could effortlessly punch my whole gear flat.

Hyper aware of the probe end bulging around my nuts, I began to get light-headed, and without choice, tried to force my body to relax, to slow and deepen my breathing. The panicked feeling didn’t pass until the probe finally moved its examination back up and divert its attention to my shaft again, probe head poking my swollen tip back and forth with idly curiosity.

Her shadow shifted as she seemed to straighten and refer to Jennifer:

"THAT LITTLE RED SUCKER'S UP AND DOWN SO OFTEN I'M A LITTLE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PRESSURE IT'S PUTTING ON HIS URETHRA. DOES HE HAVE ANY TROUBLE PEEING?"

Jen answered in the negative. Unsatisfied, the vet began adjusting the microscope dails.

“I'M GOING TO PUT THIS MAGNIFIER TO THE TEST,” came her amped up voice, “SEE IF WE CAN GET OUTSELVES A SIGHTING OF THE SNAKE’S EYE.”

“Jennifer – do something!” I spluttered. “Put a stop to this, right now!”

No one heard me.

Suddenly, the probe had swept under my shaft and tipped it up in the direction of the dim glass circle of the objective lens staring down at me, which I knew the vet was staring through, even though I couldn’t see her.

“AND WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT?” she muttered in a small gloating kind of way, “I HAVE IT RIGHT THERE,  WINKING AT ME…UH OH,” she exclaimed suddenly, “WE'VE GOT SOME SPILLAGE COMING ON…”

Even trying to clench my muscles and mentally distract myself, the beginnings of pre-cum was already trickling out from my tormented cock head. My body ached as it coursed with hot blood on rapid transit to my groin.

"I SEE YOU POINTING AT ME!" the vet said aside to me. "WAS I TICKLING YOU? IS THAT WHY YOU'RE POINTING AT ME?" 

Unhelpfully, the probe returned to keenly poke around my ballsack, as if trying to investigate the volume I had backed up. My balls tightened in agony.

"OOH," the vet winced under her breath, "THAT JUICY LITTLE PEPPER IS SO FAT WITH BLOOD IF I GAVE IT A PINCH AT THE BASE I THINK HE'D PASS OUT."

The end of the probe circled the base of my puffed up shaft, and I flinched, for an instant worried she really was going to try and pin it down.

The gum squelched as she went quiet, lending an stomach-turning soundtrack to my erection, and then her resounding voice deepened into an inquiring murmur:

"AND…WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT…BA-DUM…BA-DUM…BA-DUM—” she made a sound mimicking my rapid heartbeat, eeriely matching its timing, “—I DON’T EVEN NEED A STETHOSCOPE, I’M JUST GONNA GO RIGHT AHEAD AND COUNT YOUR PULSE STRAIGHT OFF THOSE FLICKERING LITTLE VEINS!" 

Behind the vet, Jennifer was making some restrained huffing sounds that sounded a lot like someone trying valiantly not to laugh, and had turned away to compose herself.

Meanwhile, the vet was going on with unwavering levity:

“OKEY DOKE, WELL, HE MIGHT BE TEENSIER THAN A RASPBERRY,” she turned away from the microscope to face Jennifer, putting her hands on her hips, “BUT OTHERWISE I’D SAY HE LOOKS PRETTY HEALTHY. THAT LITTLE OX HEART’S WORKING ITS HARDEST TO KEEP HIS SHINY RED TORPEDO AFLOAT. I’D SAY YOU COULD SLIP THE LITTLE FELLA IN A BATTERY SLOT AND POWER A WRISTWATCH!”

“HE'S VIRTUALLY INDESTRUCTIBLE,” Jennifer agreed. “BUT HE’S SO TINY AND HARD TO SEE, I NEEDED A SECOND OPINION.”

From where I was, lying on the glass slide beneath the lens, I could see the two great extensions of their torsos walling in my horizon. My head inclined back against the glass pane, my eyes closed, enjoying a measure of relief and rest now that the examination was over. Undisturbed for the time being, my penis was starting to go flaccid again.

“NOW, YOU HAD A QUESTION FOR ME?” the vet casually added.

Jen answered:

“ONLY...IF HIS MINIATURIZATION AFFECTED HIS SPERM COUNT.”

The vet seemed to consider this for a moment, then said more seriously:

“I DON’T WANT TO THROW YOU A CURVE BALL, BUT IT DEPENDS WHETHER HE WAS EXPOSED TO RADIATION.”

Jennifer gave a small sigh:

“LET ME ASK HIM—”

A shadow passed overhead as the titanic mass of Jennifer’s upper form rematerialized before the microscope. I stared up at the lens fixed in place over me, imagining that she was peering through the other side. My arms rested loosely on either side of my torso, leaving my still semi-swollen groin bare. It seemed a little late to be trying to cover it anymore.

“JERRY...” she began. Her voice didn’t seem to come from her so much as it throbbed the air everywhere at once. She seemed to struggle to word the question, before simply saying “...YOU HEARD THE VET. THE MACHINE WASN’T RADIOACTIVE, RIGHT?”

I gave my head a big shake. Before first using the machine, Remy had warned me the only side-effect was that I'd lose some height. Well, he hadn't been lying about that. But as far as either of us knew, there were no other side-effects which hadn't already presented.

She uttered a groan of relief, audible only to me, and there was a sense of the sun emerging from behind a passing cloud as she moved away from the microscope again, letting in the ceiling light once more.

“NO,” she answered, now sounding more relaxed.

“NORMALLY WE’D TAKE A SEMEN COLLECTION,” the vet explained. “BUT – OOH – WHAT A TRICKY LITTLE CONUNDRUM. HOW DO WE TAKE A DROP OF THOSE TESTE TADPOLES? OUR LAB GEAR GOES AS TINY AS HIS GEAR."

She deliberated for a long moment, then said:

“LET ME MAKE SOME INQUIRIES AND I’LL TRY TO GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT.”

“THANK YOU. IT MEANS A LOT TO ME – AND, I’M SURE, JERRY.”

“GLAD TO HELP.”

A giant thumb swatted down onto the corner of the glass pane and then the underside of the microscope was shifting sideways.as the pane was being slid out, with me lying on it. Then I was moving through space before coming down to rest upon the kitchen table again.  

The vet gave me a big grin.

“YOU’RE A FREE MAN AGAIN, MR SPRINKLE,” she said, lodging the gum into her cheek so she could flash me a big, terrifying parting smile. “NOW DON’T GO GETTING YOURSELF WHISKED AWAY BY THE FEATHERDUSTER!”

She gave me a wink with a swat of lashes which – ironically – were big enough themselves to ‘whisk’ me away if they’d made contact.

Trying to suppress a shiver, I got up and stepped off the pane, which was then lifted back into the air, before the vet hefted the great microscope off the table and put it into the backpack, which she then slung over her shoulders. Saying goodbye to me, she left the kitchen area, as Jennifer saw her to the door.

Their voices carried on talking for an extended moment on the doorstep. In fact, the front door closed as they carried the conversation onto the front porch; their voices turning into muted murmurs. Meanwhile, I stayed on the kitchen table, pacing briskly, trying to get the blood flow to return to my arms and legs, trying not to think too hard about what they were talking about.