For my 3 inch self in the apartment, trudging through dirty carpet and climbing up tiny ladders to get to higher places really worked up a sweat. Getting dirty after a long day out was one thing, but when I was small, it was even easier for me to get covered with dirt and dust.

“Whoa, wait, Ali-”

Stomp!

Occasionally getting knocked down and smothered by either Lori’s or Alice’s feet while I was going around the carpet also stained my clothes and body with sock lint and foot sweat. I was so slow going from the shrinking platform to my dollhouse that Alice had gone back to her room to put her stuff down and then gone to the bathroom before I got to Lori’s room. When she walked out of the bathroom, I was in the hallway right along her path so I got stepped on immediately.

“Mggfff!”

“Huh…? …. Remy? Sorry, I didn’t see you there…” At this point, Alice had accidentally stepped on me so many times now that she was getting too used to peeling me off her sock. I wished she hadn’t scrunched her toes when she raised her foot because my arm was caught between them, causing me to dangle in the air for a second before I fell off.

“It’s my bad. I should’ve stayed closer to the wall.”

“Yeah, you really should have…” Alice was capable of telling me bluntly now because of how often it had happened. Today, though, she had one other thing to say. “Eww… You kind of stink, Remy. You’re all sticky too…”

“That’s kind of your fault isn’t it?”

“... Was I that sweaty? Sorry…. I biked home today so I guess I sweated a lot,” my cousin apologized. “But maybe you should take a bath…”

“Yeah, I really need one now.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask, Remy…. How HAVE you been bathing?” Alice knelt down with her hand on her cheek. I had to back up because she had gotten so close that her crotch was directly above me. The sweat dripping from her thighs hit the carpet a few feet away from me with a heavy thud. I stumbled as she looked down at me with curiosity. “You can’t use the bathroom at your size, right…? Actually, what about the toilet?”

“Wow, that sure is a question to ask a guy,” It surprised me how long it had taken for Alice to ask this question. She was right that I couldn’t use the regular sized restroom on my own. Normally, I would’ve answered her directly, but it honestly felt embarrassing to have to explain it.

“What do you mean, Remy…?” Alice tilted her head, confused. She didn’t seem to realize she was asking something so personal.

Click! Yawn!

“What the heck? You guys are back already?” Lori opened the door to her room, having heard Alice’s question as we talked in the hallway. From the disheveled jacket that hung off her shoulders, her messy hair, and the dried drool on her chin, she had just woken up from a nap. “I was having a nice nap too.”

“Hey, Sis.” I was caught off guard by my sister’s sudden appearance because she normally came home at 4 pm on these days. She must have been allowed to leave early.

She looked down at the floor where I was and scanned my entire body with her sharp gaze. She was checking on how I was. Upon noticing my state, she crossed her arms. “Sheesh. You really look nasty, Remy. Should I get some water warmed up for you?”

“Much appreciated, Sis,” I was grateful how quick my sister was on the uptake as she stepped into the hallway. She made sure not to step on me as she walked over me. I didn’t continue looking at her as she headed off to the kitchen and instead turned to Alice who was still looking at Lori curiously. If she was looking with such interest, it would probably be easier to just satisfy her. “You wanted to see my bath, Alice? Let’s head over to my dollhouse then.”

“... Eh? Is it okay for me to see?” Alice asked. Her eyes were sparkling. There was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to see so her question was only a formality. In fact, she was already headed into Lori’s room before I had a chance to answer or move.

“Hey, at least wait for me.”

Of course, Alice didn’t. She was interested in my dollhouse because she hadn’t ever gotten a proper look at the inside of it since moving in. Lori always kept it under her desk facing the wall for my privacy’s sake. As Alice didn’t want to intrude on Lori’s private room, she never went inside unless invited. This was the first chance in a long while that our cousin had to see my dollhouse.

As we still hadn’t been able to get a different dollhouse that was closer to my 1:24 scale, it was still the same 1:6 scale dollhouse. Lori and I had managed to shrink down an air mattress, a foldable desk, and a chair so I had something my scale to use, but they certainly must have looked tiny when compared to the plastic toys four times bigger than them.

When I finally reached Lori’s room, I saw that Alice had pulled the entire building out from beneath my sister’s desk and was messing with everything inside with interest. Privacy was something Lori gave me because we were siblings, but because it was only a dollhouse, the ‘bedroom’ was no more than a toy for my cousin to take a look at.

“Oh wow… This stuff looks so out of place…,” Alice was kneeling down and holding my shrunken table on one hand.

“That’s because it’s not the right type of doll house,” I wanted to respond to Alice, but Lori stepped past me, already finishing getting the water before I could get to the dollhouse. She spoke up and explained things instead to our cousin as she put something down on her work desk. “A smaller one that fits Remy isn’t sold around here, and we haven’t had much luck getting a proper one online. Right, Remy?”

My sister turned to me. It wasn’t that she couldn’t answer her own question herself. She was directing Alice’s attention in my direction too so she knew where I was on the floor. “Yeah. There were a couple that looked good but were super expensive, and the ones that were cheap were out of stock.”

“And while I’m good with tech, Aunt Shelly’s machine has a fixed size it shrinks things to so we can’t just shrink this one to Remy’s scale,” Lori sighed. “And don’t get me started on DIY…”

Our options for different dollhouses had been exhausted, so we just kept using the improperly sized one as it was. It wasn’t too much of a hassle at least. All I really needed was a bed and a desk to work on for my bedroom. Even if everything I needed looked baby-sized in comparison to the rest of the doll furniture, that was mostly enough. The problem was the bathroom.

“What… is this thing, Lori?” Alice asked, seeing a paper plate underneath the dollhouse bathroom.

“Oh that’s… You might not want to touch that, Alice… That’s Remy’s plumbing system.”

“Plumbing…?! Gross…!”

It was a bit hilarious to watch the gigantic Alice pull away from the dollhouse before she touched the plate. That was right. Lori had poked a hole through the dollhouse toilet so that it would lead to the plate which she’d throw out every day. I tried to not use the toilet at home whenever possible, but that was our only solution for the moment. Without running water, it felt more like an outhouse.

When I walked up to the opened dollhouse and got to the bathroom, Alice realized something else.

“... Actually, Remy, you’re way too small for this bathroom, aren’t you? Wouldn’t you fall in there?”

“Let’s not think about that.” Because I was 1/24th my size, the 1/6th scale toilet was actually taller than me. Lori actually had to put a few different sized erasers next to it to create steps for me to head up to it. The plastic sink also needed steps too because I wasn’t even half its height. I was actually able to use this sometimes because Lori dripped a bit of water into the drainless toy sink. I definitely wanted to wash my face, so I climbed up the erasers to splash the water on my face.

“Hehe… ” a giggle escaped Alice’s lips as she watched me. “This looks really funny… Lori, are there any dolls?”

“Yeah?” Lori was confused as to why Alice would ask that as she kept messing with the water at her desk. “I think they’re in one of the boxes behind you. There were two I think, but I never took the other out of the packaging.”

“Why do you need a dol-”

Wham!

When Alice had turned around while on all fours, her socked foot bumped into the dollhouse. The entire building was pushed back an inch which was 2 feet on my scale. Knocked off balance, I fell forward off the eraser steps and stumbled until I landed on my cousin’s socked toes.

“Urgh… That was a sho- Oh hell no. I’m not staying here,” I was smart enough to shove myself off of Alice’s foot before she turned around and her foot took me along with it. I did it just in time as Alice spun around with a Barbie doll in hand. “Phew, made it.”

“I got it…,” Alice said as she held the 1/6 scale doll in her hand. Standing it next to me, I saw that I was only knee high to the plastic doll. “Oh wow… Remy, you’re like a baby to Barbie.”

I didn’t appreciate how accurate the comparison was. The dollhouse playset had a beach house theme to it, so Barbie was in a tye-dye one piece that really showed off how long her legs were. I knew I was so small that I couldn’t reach the dollhouse door knobs, but seeing the long peach legs of the plastic doll loom over me was a bit humiliating. It was even worse as Alice tried to move the doll to make it look like she was following me as I backed away to the bedroom part of the dollhouse.

“Well shoot, now I really feel like a kid,” I realized my mistake when I saw how my furniture compared to the doll, especially when Alice tried to seat the doll on my mattress. The air bed was more like a chair cushion to the Barbie, and my desk and chair were more suitable for infants from this perspective.

“Ehehe… This brings back memories…” I heard Alice say. “I think Mom threw out my dolls when I was six… She said I was too old for them and then signed me up for piano and violin lessons…”

When she was six? That was way too soon. I understood that Aunt Shelly wanted Alice to study more, but she should’ve at least let our cousin have more of a childhood. Even so, I didn’t appreciate the idea of Alice re-embracing her childhood when I was one of the dolls. 

“Mgff! Hey, Alice- Mgrk!” Alice’s left hand grabbed me the same way she was holding the larger Barbie doll in her right hand. My cousin had bent the doll’s adjustable limbs so that they were capable of cradling me in them when she plopped me onto them. While not as high up as whenever she or Lori plucked me up off the ground, it was still a sizable drop from the 4x taller doll’s arms. “S-Seriously?”

“You really do fit… Cute…” Alice mumbled. 

“Um… Alice… That’s my brother, remember?” Lori was just as stunned as I was at how Alice was behaving but she thankfully spoke up for me.

“Huh?” Alice blinked. It took a moment before she realized and her face turned red. “... A-Ah!”

“Uwoah!”

Alice tilted the doll and pulled it towards her to separate me from it, causing me to fall out of its arms. I didn’t fall out immediately so I ended up outside of the dollhouse rather than inside… right between on top of her right foot.

“Uwoof!” the ground below me shifted, as Alice pulled her foot away. I fell onto the floor where her sweat had absorbed into the carpet.

“My bad, Remy… You were just so much like a toy that I…” Alice apologized. Having stood up, she stepped away from the dollhouse.

“Blech! It’s… fine,” I slowly picked myself up. After washing my face, it was stained by sweat and carpet/sock lint again. “A dollhouse is meant to be played with after all.”

“...Eh? Then I can play with you again…?” To my surprise, Alice took my reassurance as a chance to ask.

“Alice?” My sister was just as shocked as I was. “That’s his home right now, but Remy’s not actually a doll.”

“A-Ah…” Alice realized Lori was right. “Sorry… I guess I forgot about that…”

“...” I stayed silent. Alice forgot? She sounded more disappointed than apologetic. I was her cousin, wasn’t I? 

Lori realized as well. There was an awkward silence between the three of us because neither Lori nor I could think of a way to call Alice out in such a strange situation. 

I decided to change the subject instead. “In any case, is my bath ready yet, Sis? I feel so gross after everything.”

“Huh?” My sister’s memory was jogged by my question. Even she had forgotten what she had gone out into the kitchen to prepare for me. “Oh right. I hope it hasn’t cooled down.”

“I’m fine if it’s warm. Better than being boiled alive.”

“Huh? Warm?” Alice looked up, trying to understand our suddenly changed conversation. “O-Oh. I forgot about the bath.”

That was right. Before she had gotten distracted by my dollhouse, Alice and I had been talking about a bath.

My sister grabbed the bowl of microwaved water off of her desk and carefully slipped it onto the floor of the dollhouse bathroom. She then put down a small sauce dish that had four different things squeezed out onto it including shampoo and bodywash.

“Yeah. Since you wanted to know. This is how I’ve been bathing most of these days,” I told her as I headed over to the shrunken laundry basket in the room that had my clean clothes. I could still see steam coming out of the bowl, so I was relieved that it was still hot. “Water feels weird at this size, but it works still at least.”

“Oh… I guess that makes sense… I honestly thought Lori would have to wash you in the sink…,” Alice was surprised, but she was interested in the bowl of water. I was a bit irked when I saw her bend down to slip the doll into the bowl as well so that it looked like the barbie doll was taking a dip in a hot tub.

“That’d be a pain for both of us,” Lori shook her head. “We may be siblings, but I don’t want to see my brother naked.” 

“Yeah, I’d rather not be washed like a plate either,” I talked back to my sister as I took off my gross shirt.

“Whoa, hey, do that when we’re not looking, will you?” Lori saw me start stripping and put herself between the dollhouse and Alice.

“Huh…? What’s Remy doing…?” Alice tried to peak past my sister, curious why Lori had suddenly decided to block her. 

“Taking his clothes off for a bath, of course,” Lori answered.

“He is…?” She stepped back and reflexively covered her face, but she was still peaking through her fingers. “Lori, I can’t see…”

“Alice?” My sister was surprised at our cousin’s persistence in still looking. Still, she knew what she had to do if I was actually going to be taking a bath. She started shoving our cousin out of the room. “Come on, girl. Let’s give Remy some privacy, alright?”

“... Huh? O-Oh, alright,” Alice still had to be pushed out despite being told. Had she not realized she was trying to peek on a guy?

As the door to Lori’s room shut, I finally felt safe enough to actually start taking off my pants. After being stepped on and treated like a toy, Alice had felt bad and apologized for what she had done when she realized her mistake. However, when I started changing, she actually tried to look. Her curiosity had overcome her nervousness, although how much nervousness when I was small was probably as little as I was. 

The Alice from when she first moved in would have never done such a thing. It was clear that she was changing while she was living with us. Getting used to living away from her mom was one thing, but Alice was definitely getting too used to me being tiny. Sadly, she was not getting used to me in a good way.

The Amazonian Barbie doll I was joining in the bath told me just how Alice saw me.

“Alice… Just what are we going to do with you…”