It took Lennard quite some discipline to keep looking at his plate while eating, despite his mother's stern warning to his humongous fraternal twin sitting right behind him to quit her badgering. Her ceaseless sniggering behind his back made him feel quite jittery nonetheless. She kept scratching her nails over the table just to irritate him. It was soft enough so that Lennard's Mom would not hear it but loud enough to make him stark raving mad.

It still felt surreal for Lennard to do breakfast like this with his family. The female members of his household sat at their usual spots at the table. Two chairs were empty. Lennard and his Dad sat on the table. It was the only way for Lennard to join this family occasion since he was merely 2 inches tall. He sat there on a tiny stool matching his height, at a tiny table matching his height, eating from a tiny plate while using tiny cutlery matching his tiny hands and mouth.

Looking about, Lennard had to crane his neck deep to look up into the eyes of his youngest sister, Miley. A 12-years-old happy-go-lucky kind of girl, with a thin sparky edge of fire encompassing her personality, sitting on the right side of him. Miley looked like some Greek child-Goddess as her torso loomed over him from his minuscule perspective than the little runt whose hair Lennard used to mess up while holding her in a headlock for fun.

Lennard saw her fumbling her fingers on a fringe of frizzy nutmeg hair while staring absent-mindedly at her bowl of cereal. Lennard felt caught when her twinkling sky-blue eyes shot in Lennard's direction like she was sensing that someone was observing her.

She stuck her tongue out and grinned at him when she noticed him staring up at her. He gave a sheepish grin in return.

"Mom?" Miley said in her most winsome voice.

"Yes, dear," his mother replied, while not looking up from her plate with toast paved with slices of mozzarella and pieces of hard-boiled egg.

"Can I like… you know… skip school today. I'm so anxious to get infected with all those germs whirling about there."

Lennard's Mom chuckled faintly, looking at her youngest daughter with grass-green wearisome eyes and dark circles hanging under them from the fever she was suffering at the moment. "Don't be so ridiculous, sweety."

"I'm not kidding here, Mom! I saw Miss Zaghabi take some painkillers yesterday while rubbing her forehead like she wanted to make it gleam like a polished bowling ball. I bet she has DeFa. And do not get me started on Leila! The girl was snoring like a skunk in hibernation during class!"

"Skunks do not hibernate, you numbnut!" Julie snapped, Lennard's fraternal twin sister, whose voice boomed like a cinema speaker as her torso loomed mountainous high while sitting behind him. "And besides. Mom and I are feverish, so you will most likely be safer at school than staying here."

Lennard always hated it when his sisters quibbled at the table with each other. The raised voices of his giant sisters stung quite painfully on his delicate tiny eardrums. Lennard stopped complaining about it. He had, though, in the past. His mother was pretty shocked when she realized what impact their booming voices had on a shrunken being of two inches tall. She acted firm and consistent in the house when one of Lennard's sisters dared to raise their voices when one of the household's shrunken members was in the vicinity. They got reprimanded by their mother before their youthful voices were able to reach screaming volumes, pitching within the household's walls. Unfortunately, did this not last for long. For it was with regularity that Lennard's Mom was entangled in a heated discussion with one of her daughter's and she lacked the discipline to keep her voice low and started shouting also.

Lennard merely accepted it. His main tactic now was to just curl himself up, with his knees pulled up, and stuffing fingers in his ears until the racket was over.

"Moooom! Julie is swearing again!" Miley whined.

Milena, Lennard's dark-haired older sister, scoffed while shaking her head.

She was a 16-year-old youth whose apparent endeavor seemed to end up first place in the school's slut-competition based on how she dresses.

Lennard's Dad – and especially his forceful voice – proved moderately successful while reining Milena in. But not anymore, not after being shrunk down to a laughable proportion. Now all Lennard's minuscule Dad could do was grit his teeth as he saw his godlike teen daughter sauntering off like he did not exist with a piece of cloth clasped around her hips that was barely able to conceal her butt.

"The hell do you care anyway? You're immune for godsakes!" The raven beauty said with a slight tone of envy in her voice.

"Am not! I've not even been infected!" Miley said.

"That's not what the test result said. Mom made you test like three times after that outbreak in your gymnastic class. They were all positive."

"But I did not have any signs of illness!"

"That's the whole point of being immune!" Julie whipped, swinging her fiery red hair in a dashing manner as she shot a glance at her younger sister. "… doofus," she added after a few seconds.

"Mooooom!" Miley whined.

"Girls!" Lennard's Mom finally decided to mingle in. "Voices! Please! Mind your brother and Dad."

Life had taken a drastic turn in the Cotter household since two of its members had lost a significant portion of their body's size after being infected by detrectantes fatum, colloquially known as the DeFa-04 virus, a few weeks ago. After the pathogenic organism infiltrates a host to infect its cells, the incubation times range from 8 days to 15. During that time, most people get symptoms that vary from feeling feverish to a throbbing headache and, in rare cases, the need to sleep almost constantly during the day. These symptoms stay present for about two weeks before the infected gains his former health back. After that came the most anxious phase. About 82% of the feminine infected suffered from a sudden loss of body size between 18 to 24 days after the appearance of its first symptoms. However, a small portion proved to be either immune to the first symptoms or the shrinking part, or both.

The most striking thing was that nearly all females who showed immunity to the virus were either teenage girls or young women.

The shrinking ussualy happened during the night, whereby an infected suddenly woke up – lying buried and naked beneath her own clothes and blanket – at an alarming height of roughly 2 inches tall. In many cases, it did not end there – at least, for many females shrunk down even further in the upcoming weeks. Not ending before dwindling down to the pathetic size of about 1 millimeter tall.

However, the gentlemen were really snake bitten, for up until now, they ALL fell prey to the shrinking part of the virus after being infected – and with the worst-case scenario as outcome nonetheless in the majority of the cases – leaving them at a wretched size whereby grains of sand appeared almost like boulders to them.

The ramifications on civil society were disastrous, but so was the intimacy of home life for many.

Lennard took a deep sigh as he took a gander at his Dad.

There he saw him, slumped on his knees while nibbling on a crumb of bread like a pitiful rodent his mother had placed for him. The thing was almost bigger than himself. Lennard could only hope that fate would spare him and that he remained 2 inches tall instead of dwindling down to speck level like his Dad.

It was only recently that his Dad called the shots in this household. Every family member looked up at him with great respect and listened when his deep voice started speaking. Lennard could clearly recall his Dad's grinding drill sergeant's voice rattling the walls within the house as he reprimanded Milena for the umpteenth time for her brash behavior.

What an impressive appearance the man was in this household. And look at him now…

Cloaked under the shadow of his mother's hand resting upon the table. Even his mother's pinky was like the size of an oil tanker to his Dad. He bore no rule or whatsoever over nobody. The only ones on whom he could impose his authority were perhaps the barely seeable small life prowling about in the house.

Lennard saw movement in the right corner of his eyes. A tiny spider was crawling towards his Dad. The beast was a big rat compared to Lennard but could devour his Dad with ease.

Lennard leaped up from his chair, ready to make a move. Then he tumbled down on his ass when Miley's tree trunk index-finger emerged out of nowhere from the sky, crashing down on the table, squashing the spider right before it was able to reach Lennard's Dad.

"Gotcha!" Lennard looked up with awe as he saw Greek Goddess Miley rubbing her finger clean on her dress. She lowered her face. Her eyes hovered above the table's edge like two peering moons. "Don't worry, Dad! I'll protect you!" she blew her father a kiss.

"Watch it, Miley! You're scaring him." Julie said as they all watched the microscopic speck – that was their father – moving away from Miley's countenance towards their mother's hand.

Lennard's crumb-sized Dad was hidden from sight when his Mom placed a cupped hand on top of him like a protective dome.

"Oh, by the way, Milena, I saw a letter coming in for you this morning. I left it on the cupboard," Miley said as she continued her breakfast.

"A letter? From whom?" Milena stood up from the table to make her way to the cupboard.

Lennard's Mom cocked an eyebrow as she watched her daughter standing up to grab the envelope.

It was always a spectacle to Lennard when one of his family members stood up, rising to their full height. It made them look even more intimidating to him. He could only imagine how frightful such a spectacle would have to be to his Dad. They both lived in a house of Goddesses now.

The table trembled beneath little Lennard when Milena returned to the table while tearing the envelop open. Lennard could not help but admire the girl's firm thighs soaring above the table like two indestructible pillars beneath a pair of loose-fitting denim shorts.

They looked so powerful to him. Milena had always been quite tall, surpassing most boys in her class. Undoubtedly the result from their father's genes. But now, seeing it from his despicable perspective, these feminine legs, while appearing so soft and smooth, looked like they were able to subjugate whole armies even with their might.

"What is it?" Lennard's mother asked.

A broad smile crept upon Milena's pretty face. "It's from Small Corp. I'm selected to participate in some pilot."

"Pilot? Are you going to fly?" Miley said.

Julie scoffed, shaking her head.

"What does it involve?" Lennard's Mom asked.

"The government is searching for ways to deal with the unending stream of microscopic people joining the society. They want to house them in a more humane way than keeping them stuffed in laboratory-like environments with white walls, white coats, and blindingly fluorescent lights."

"Meaning?" Lennard's Mom said.

Milena's eyes found the letter again. "They are looking for caretakers, Mom." she twinkled. "Every qualified participant of the pilot gains the responsibility for nearly half a million shrunken souls housed in a tailor-made settlement!"

Upon hearing those words, Lennard saw an evocative scene playing in his head of an infinitesimal city inhabited by likewise small people who were compelled to deeply crane their little necks to look up at their new owner smiling down upon them from the skies – a gleeful young brat, who isn't even able to run a household by herself if she was forced to do so.

How can the government act so irresponsible by placing the fate of real-life people in the hands of a 16-year-old girl?

"Okay, so Milena gets to have her own town full of shrinkees while I am forced to attend school? It's not fair!" Miley clenched her fists on the table – which was a frightful sight for little Lennard – while looking at her Mom.

"The letter mentioned qualified participants," Julie said. "It means you have to do something before being able to participate, right?"

Milena nodded. "It says here that I have to undergo a thorough psychological assessment to see if I'm mentally stable enough."

"Haaa!" Julie shouted out, which ignited a withering glare from Milena.

"What, Haaa?! The fuck do you mean with Haaa?!" Milena placed her hands on her hips while looking at her sister.

"It means exactly what you think it means," Julie looked at her older sister with a sardonic grin.

"Okay, stop it, you two!" Lennard's Mom cut her daughters off. She looked at Milena. "Do you really want to go through with all of this, dear? It's a major responsibility to be having next to school."

"To hell with school! I get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to come into the possession of a city full of shrunken grown-ups who have to serve my whims, and you want me to pass that up?"

"You still have to pass that test, though," Julie reminded her sister.

Milena gave Julie a wry smile. "Oh, I will. You rest assured of that."

Miley leaped up. "So hey! If Milena gets a microscopic city, it means that Dad can live there too, right?"

Lennard saw his Mom placing her other hand over the hand that was already cupped like a dome over his speck-sized Dad. "Your father isn't going to stay anywhere but with me."

Milena's eyes narrowed to thin slits as she looked at her ginger sister. "Perhaps Julie will feel the need to move into my Queendom as one of my subjects once her body dwindles down to nothingness. I mean, after all, she does feel feverish, don't you, Julie?"

Julie chuckled. "Don't get your hopes up. Trust me, I won't shrink. I find it more likely that you will shrink. You were a total train wreck just two weeks ago."

"Not a chance. Today is the 24th day, so I think I'm pretty safe. But there is something I do wonder, though."

"And what is that?" Julie said, eyeing her big sister with annoyance.

"Will those peas you call boobs also shrink when your body starts to dwindle down? I mean, they are already barely seeable as they are. What will remain of them in the end?"

Julie jumped up from her chair, making the table scrape violently. It made Lennard fall roughly from his tiny chair.

"You take that back right now!" Julie breezed.

"Make me," Milena said, crossing her arms.

"ENOUGH!" Lennard's Mom slammed her fist on the table.

"Dad!" Miley said while looking at her mother's hand.

The eyes of Lennard's Mom stretched wide open as she looked at the table. She gave a sigh of relief. Because right next to her tensed fist, she was able to discern a moving crumb-sized speck. She had nearly crushed her own husband in a flash of anger.

"What's he doing?" Miley frowned. She bent down to get a closer look at her father. She saw him running up to her mother's fist – which loomed over him like multiple nuclear powerplants – and started bowing down.

"He's worshiping her," Milena said as she beamed down upon the minuscule spectacle playing at the table. "Its adoration syndrome. We've learned about it at school. When shrinking down, it becomes harder for the individual concerned to keep seeing normal-sized ones as mere humans. The tinier the person gets, the more difficult it is for him to keep his wits. It pulls him towards a more subordinate pattern of thinking about the giants that loom above him. Until the pull is strong enough that he snaps, and he starts irrevocably perceiving them as Gods. Seems like Mom's outburst made Dad snap."

"Meaning?" Miley asked.

Julie sighed impatiently. "It means that Dad sees Mom as a Goddess now!"

"A Goddess?" Miley peered at her microscopic Dad, still bowing there like crazy before his wife's fist.

"Yup," Milena said. "His whole life revolves around pleasing her now. He will do anything for her."

"I want to be worshiped too!" Miley whined. "Bow before me too, Daddy! Pleeeease!"

"Okay, that's enough, ladies," Lennard's Mom placed her hand over their Dad again. "Miley, be a dear and clear the table. Julie, take your brother with you. He needs to be washed. And Milena, this way, please. I want to have a little chat."

Lenard was cast in shadow as all four Goddesses stood up around him, screeching the chairs. Miley's mansion-sized hand started to snatch away things from the table. Milena rolled her eyes before reluctantly following their mother to the living room, and Julie's mischievous face churned into a playful smile before reaching her hand out towards her brother. Lenard ran off like he always did before being picked up by a sniggering Julie and stuffed in her back pocket.