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Author's Chapter Notes:
Wherein Haley first uses the shrinking gun.

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Haley sat on her bed in, where else, her bedroom, hugging her knees. Her heels rested on the edge of the bed, with her toes and the balls of her feet hanging over. Her chin rested between her denim-clad knees, and she noticed, absent-mindedly, that her capris would need replacing soon, as small tears in the denim were getting a bit too large to be 'stylish.' She was a young girl, nearing her 17th birthday, and in her Junior year of high school, and though most considered her to be very pretty she had few friends.
      She was considered something of a stuck-up snob, but not because there was any truth to this, just because she was more interested in school than in making friends or pleasing people. She danced to the beat of her own drum, and though she didn't bother anyone, most people can't help but be bothered. She moved one of the strands of strawberry blonde hair out of her ocean blue eyes and glanced over to her nightstand.
      Her room was somewhat messy, a few socks and shoes spread out here and there on the hardwood floor, as well as misplaced change, a pair of jeans, a bra (C-cup, if you must know), but on the nightstand sat the shrinking gun, where she'd set it an hour earlier, after coming home from school.

   Haley's uncle, Max, was an odd one. Black sheep of the family, never married, a complete recluse. A full head of shaggy grey hair before he was even thirty. He was still family though, and when he passed away everything of his was divided up equally amongst his relatives. Being the youngest in her entire extended family, this meant Haley received a shoebox containing a few old fiction books, a cd player, and the shrinking gun which looked like nothing more than a toy.
   Haley knew better, though. When she was just a toddler, her uncle had shown her it during one of the brief and infrequent visits her father took her along on. He'd reduced a dresser to the size of a nickel, and then grew it again. For a long time after that, Haley wondered if she'd actually seen this magical event or imagined it, and she hadn't ever dared to talk about it. But when she got the gun in the box a few days ago, she wasted no time in trying it out.
   The simplistic device had a dial above the grip with many notches of various sizes around it. It had a trigger of course, and a slot where you loaded the single AAA battery it ran off of. Haley shrank her cat almost at once to the size of a gumball, and grew her back again.

    It hadn't really crossed her mind what she would do with Brandon once she shrunk him, in those hours before school this morning, when she had decided to. He had never really done her any harm, but he was never kind or nice to her. In a small way, she hated him, but she knew she had no good reason to. He'd never done a thing to her, and in a way his complete disinterest alone was enough to make her angry. But now, as he sat still on the hardwood floor beside her bed, staring up in fear (she assumed, she couldn't make out his face as he was only the size of an ant), she kind of regretted shrinking him.
   She'd been staring for more than twenty minutes now, and he hadn't tried to flee, or anything. Not even distance himself from her dirty socks, which she had pulled off and dropped on either side of him some time ago. Curling and uncurling her toes, she moved her feet off of the bed and kicked the socks away, placing each foot where a sock had been. Brandon jumped back, maybe thinking she'd step on him, and this made her giggle.
   Lifting her left foot, she placed it over him and continued to flex her toes until the bits of sock lint stuck between them began to fall around the microscopic boy. When she tired of this, she placed her foot down so that Brandon stood between her two biggest toes. The thought that she had probably worked up a rather unfriendly smell down there during the school day occured to her, and she wondered if it smelled even worse at his size. She wondered what he was thinking...if he was scared for his life, if he had been crying, or trying to yell up at her...

   "HALEY!! Dinner!" She glanced towards her partially closed bedroom door, and smiled as she reached down, ever so carefully pinching Brandon up. Grabbing the sneaker she'd worn that day, and all that weak, she dropped him inside, and set it back down under her bed.

   "Coming mom!!"
Chapter End Notes:
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