Claire pulled the chair out from under the small round table, its dull metal legs screaming against the textured floor of the relatively empty corner coffee shop. She could see in her peripherals that she’d turned several heads. She didn’t care. Claire set her hibiscus refresher down, removed her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans, and she took a seat opposite an empty chair. She sat right next to the giant window facing her city’s beautiful park. Claire always sat there, to the extent that she would firmly ask other patrons to find a new seat if they were in her spot.
She allowed the sweet, subtle liquid to surround her tongue and cool her throat
Out of the corner of one of her bright, blue eyes, she caught some interesting movement. It was him. He looked around for a few moments, scanning the busy crowd of people. They all moved with such purpose, places to go and people to see. He was looking for her, and nothing about it was subtle. The corners of her lips slightly rose.
He came. He actually came.
Was she really surprised though? Why wouldn’t he show up?
Claire remained seated, watching the nervous boy on the bench outside. She had a few sips left of her hibiscus and she was in no hurry to get through it. The nervous boy had all of Claire’s attention now as he pulled his phone from his pocket. A notification banner appeared at the top of Claire’s phone screen. It showed a new message from an unsaved number:
“Hey, it's Tom. I’m at the bench.”
Claire swiped up on the notification, dismissing it, and resumed her internet browsing. A minute or two later, she saw another annoying banner.
“Are you on your way?”
Claire rolled her eyes, looking out the window again to see Tom still sitting there. There was way too much common commotion on the street and sidewalk separating them for Tom to notice Claire. However, they were close enough that Claire could make him out just fine. His brown, straight hair was unruly but resembled close enough a stylish look, even if by accident. He was mildly handsome but hopelessly nervous around women. Some women found that kind of thing cute. Claire found it unattractive and annoying.
The 22-year old dirty blonde sat at the window calm yet engaged, occasionally looking up at Tom. Still he sat waiting for her, bouncing a nervous leg and eyeing each person that appeared in his peripherals as if they might have been her. She was in no particular hurry so she decided to toy with him. Claire decided she would leave him dangling until he’d given up hope and only once he’d given up, standing to go home alone that she would take this to the next step.
That never happened. Ironically enough, after another 10 minutes, Claire was the one who lost her patience. She dialed his number and she let out a giggle, watching him practically rip his jeans pocket open to get to his phone.
“Hello? Claire?” Tom said with zero cool in his voice.
“Do you know where the purple basketball courts are?” Claire said abruptly, slinging her purse over her shoulder.
“Umm..yeah, I think so.” Tom replied.
Claire said, “Okay, my house is across from them. The only one without Halloween decorations.”
“I thought we were meeting at that coffee shop first.” Tom said, trying to conceal his frustration and annoyance in the way horny boys do when they get frustrated and annoyed.” I was gonna buy you a--”
“--nope.” Claire interrupted coldly but bubbly, ready to leave but turning one last time to see his face. She smirked, watching him bite his lip and look up at the sky silently.
“That’s like 15 blocks away, right?” Tom sighed.
“From where?” Claire asked.
“...the coffee shop.” Tom said, his frustration showing through a little more in his voice.
“I dunno. If you’re not coming anymore then I’ll--” Claire smiled as he frantically interrupted her.
“--no, no! I umm..I must have misunderstood, sorry! I’ll start walking over there now.” Tom said, already up and walking toward Claire’s house.
“Okay bye.” Claire hung up the call and stuffed her phone deep into her purse. Luckily, the exit to the coffee shop was on the other side so Tom didn’t see Claire getting into her car to drive home. She drove right by the teenager, bundled up and walking to her apartment. He clearly wasn’t dressed for the cold.
‘That’s alright..’ she thought with a smile, ‘he’ll have an overabundance of body heat soon enough.’
The only thing that would have made things funnier is if she could have splashed up and doused him in some dirty, freezing street water but alas, it hadn’t rained that day. You can’t always get what you want.
By the time Claire heard a quiet knock at her front door, she was already settled on her sofa, having had plenty of time to set everything up. She’d already popped in the DVD she ordered off Amazon a few days prior. The Lord of the Rings menu popped up and she was ready to hurl. Claire always thought it was a stupid movie enjoyed by simple people, but she didn’t single Lord of the Rings out in any particular way. She applied the same mentality to all the cult followings: Game of Thrones, Marvel, Star Wars…all movies, really. Video games too. They were all just huge wastes of time…distractions from what mattered. Tonight would be different though. Dumbledore, Golum, and their stupid ring were actually going to help Claire accomplish her goal tonight.
She gave herself a look over before getting the door. Claire had pulled her chin length dirty blonde hair up into a messy but cute bun, and her face was clean of any makeup. There was nothing new about that last part. She hardly ever wore makeup. She wore a comfy black v neck t-shirt and a pair of pink and purple flannel pajamas. Claire had changed for bed, not expecting to stay up much longer afterwards. The only things she still wore from their first semi-encounter at the coffee shop were her panties and her socks. She’d ditched the bra, partially for comfort and partially to further distract the horny boy. She took a moment to rub her B-cup breasts, urging her nipples to harden and protrude against her soft black shirt. It almost wasn’t even fair at this point.
She almost laughed seeing the way his eyes lit up when she opened the door.
“Hey, what took you so long?” Claire said with a smile.
“Sorry…” Tom said out of breath, his toned cheeks bright red. Cloudy, white smoke billowed out from his contrastingly warm mouth, accompanying his feeble apology.
“Well...are you gonna come in?” Claire asked in some combination of playful and mocking, opening the door wider and guiding him in. His coat was freezing cold to the touch. The sneaky 22-year old took one final look outside to see if anyone was watching her guest enter. Satisfied to see that they had no one’s attention, the dirty blonde shut the door and locked the dead bolt.
She turned around and caught Tom’s eyes down at her waist. Claire didn’t have very large breasts or a very notable ass, but she prided herself on her toned stomach and sexy lower back. She liked showing it off, even in sleepwear. He nervously brought his gaze up way too high, up in the ceiling, to compensate.
This was getting a little ridiculous.
‘I’m hot’ Claire conceded within her mind as she grabbed his wrist and guided him to the sofa she’d been warming. ‘But I’m not THAT hot.’
His eyes were darting around the small apartment. He spotted her dining room table and the microscope, stationed near one of the chairs.
“Oh, cool microscope…any cool samples?” Tom asked innocently.
Claire chucked as they sat down on her sofa. “Oh not yet, but I’ll be looking at one later tonight.”
She saw him swallow hard and dryly, his Adam's apple bobbing. She could have offered him a drink, but she didn’t.
“What are you so nervous about?” Claire asked, turning her shoulders to face him and pressing her back against the sofa’s armrest.
“Oh…….You can tell, huh?” Tom said, looking at his feet then back up at her with a raised eyebrow.
Wow, that was cute...almost slick.
“Well, yeah...I mean look at you.” Claire said, extending her legs out. She lifted her sock clad feet and set them down on his lap. When she uncrossed her legs, a pink 3-inch ruler fell from her pajama pants pocket. He spotted it hitting the couch cushion, but obviously wouldn't have thought anything of it. She tucked it back into her pocket.
“You’re shaking.” Claire grinned.
His eyes widened for a moment as her bright white socks relaxed in his lap. His eyes wandered further up to where her thickening thighs met. Claire broke the silence, sliding her feet off his lap, feeling with her toes, for a second, the stiffness controlling his brain and motor. She bounced up on the sofa, sliding her feet under her thighs, sitting indian style on the cushion.
“Okay, so let’s get to it...why are we here.” Claire said. Tom was waiting for her to speak but Claire just stared, basking in the uncomfortable silence.
“Ummm…” Tom made a noise, filling the silence as he thought of what to say, “You said that you would teach me….umm…err…help me get closer to Jeong-Suk.”
“Yup!” Claire said cheerfully. “Because you CLEARLY need help...but that’s okay. Not all boys know what they’re doing..especially when they’re teenagers so don’t worry.”
Claire stood up and circled the couch, resting her small hands on his broad shoulders and started kneading. He was wearing cologne. Way too much.
“I’ve known Jeong-Suk since elementary school and I can tell that you’re absolutely, 100% her type.”
Tom sighed, enjoying the massage, but then quizzically replied, “Isn’t Jeong-Suk an exchange student from South Korea?”
Claire didn’t stop massaging, and she barely let a moment of silence slip before replying, “Yeah, my parents know her parents and we used to visit there all the time. We would even stay with them and they’d stay with us.”
Tom seemed satisfied with the answer. He sank further into the comfy sofa, appearing to get smaller. Claire smiled at the foreshadowing. It was time. This would be perfect. He was such a sweet boy. He was smart, he was polite. He had his whole life ahead of him. He was perfect.
Claire leaned down and felt her thick blonde hair brush his. She whispered into his ear,
“When I come back..” She gave him a big, soft kiss on his smooth, hairless cheek and giggled quietly as he shivered, “We’ll start with Lesson 1.” Claire pressed play on the dumb movie and left the living room.
Much earlier that morning, at around 4:30 AM, Claire had already started her day. She sat atop her bed and pulled on her sunny yellow panties, a pair of pristine white ankle socks, and then jeans and a cute top. Her look was aesthetic and well-put together, but her hygienic appearance did not match the state of her bedroom. Clothing was frenetically strewn atop her unmade bed, on her dresser, and all over her floor. Several collapsible tables were set up in various corners of the room. All but one light bulb in her ceiling fan was blown, but it didn’t matter because she never turned it on. The rest of the room was bathed in amber, long-wavelength light from sources stationed atop the collapsible tables. Someone who stumbled across the setup might have thought she was running a meth lab.
Claire approached the station closest to her bed. It was a titration station equipped with a conical flask. As of that morning, the conical flask had been filled a quarter of the way with a pale blue titrand, its composition described in her very detailed lab journal. Positioned above the conical flask was her favorite burette. It was filled with a very special reagent, the 47th titrant she’d developed, to be precise. It was a long process but she was finally here. She put the time in, she triple-checked her work, and it was going to work this time, she just knew it. Instead of its previous pale blue, the titrand in the conical flask was now a bright, vivid pink...which was a very promising sign.
She quickly put on some gloves and very carefully poured the hot pink titrand into a neighboring beaker. The beaker had a strip of tape applied with “#159” written in sharpie marker and contained about a cup of clear solvent. She held her breath as several droplets of the titrand hit the clear liquid. Claire smiled silently as the clear liquid began bubbling, cycling through several different bright colors before finally calming and settling on a pale pink. It worked.
Claire carefully opened the baggie and poured the several grains into the pale pink concoction
She uncapped a disposable syringe and carefully plunged the tip into the thick liquid. With rocksteady fingers, she pulled back the plunger and watched the chamber turn pale pink.
The walk back out to her living room was only a dozen or so steps, but it felt like forever. Claire rounded the corner and there Tom was, obliviously watching the movie, waiting so patiently for her.
‘He’ll be doing a fair bit more waiting…’ Claire thought as she softened her steps, ‘...until I can arrange things with Jeong-Suk.”
She was within arms reach. Claire could have stuck the needle in right now, but she decided to savor the moment. On the screen was Dumbledore, riding in a cart with some long-haired midget.
‘What did people see in this crap?’
The dirty blonde leaned down and nuzzled his neck with her nose, enjoying his jump of surprise. If only he knew how surprising things were about to get.
“Are you ready for Lesson 1?” Claire purred into his ear.
He was breathing so heavily. Tom nodded his head yes.
“Good…Lesson 1 is gonna be a game…a game between you and me.” Claire said soothingly as she rubbed the nape of his neck using her left hand.
“..and the game is….” Claire raised her right hand and repositioned her right thumb over the plunger, ready to discharge.
“...Hide and seek.”
He didn’t jolt. He didn’t yell…well, at least not at first. He didn’t jerk. Claire was far too quick and precise. He just gasped. The tip of the needle sank into his neck and the devious, grinning young woman quickly forced the plunger down, emptying the pale pink liquid into the teenage boy’s body. After successfully injecting Tom, Claire expected all of her mental facilities to switch to hope…hoping that the process would work before he could respond. Sure, Tom was frail and nerdy, but he towered over the 22-year old blonde. Claire was only 5’3” and 112 lbs! It really wouldn’t have taken a lot for Tom to overpower her and it was certainly more probable that he could have gotten away if he just ran.
Luck often favors the prepared, and luckily for Claire, neither of those things happened. Claire didn’t have to worry long about when the shrinking process would start, and she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about Tom’s capability of overpowering her.
Tom had barely enough time to turn his head and make eye contact with Claire before she watched his face disappear into the collar of his shirt. His arms were sucked up into the sleeves so fast she heard a distinct whooshing sound. The tight jeans covering his legs deflated quickly and his shoes thumped against Claire’s carpet.
“Well…” Claire said with a chuckle as she set the syringe down on the end table. She stopped the movie and circled the couch.
“You seem like a pretty good hider, but I’ll bet I can find you.”
Claire carefully lifted his t-shirt and gently shook it over her empty coffee table. The shirt smelled way too strongly of cologne, and she tossed it to the corner of the living room. Her short, nimble fingers sifted through the crumpled jeans, and then she felt it. A tiny little lump no larger than a pen cap.
“Found ya!” Claire shouted playfully, feeling the little pen cap wriggle and squirm as her fingertips navigated the denim, snaking through the cloth barrier’s twists and turns to find its prey. Finally, the bare, sensitive skin of her fingertips contacted the miniscule teenager. He was nice and warm. She pinched him gently, his miniscule form no match for the strength of her digits and she raised him to her big blue eyes.
“God, you are adorably pathetic.” Claire said, studying the small figure between her thick fingertips. She was swooning and bringing her nose close enough to graze the trembling naked boy’s body. The excited blonde leaned back and looked up toward the ceiling, ignoring Tom for a moment.
“Or would it be pathetically adorable?” Claire pondered, rubbing her chin with her free hand.
“Hmm…who cares?” She said dismissively.
“Okay, so do you wanna know what's going on? …because I can hear you squeaking a whole bunch and I’m guessing you probably have a question or two.” she said with a smile and chuckle.
Claire took out the pink 3-inch ruler from the pocket of her pajamas and held it up against the shrunken boy between her fingers. She closed one eye and bit her lower lip, wanting to be as accurate as possible. He measured in at 3/8ths of an inch.
“So here’s the deal. Contrary to how things seem right now, you’re actually a pretty BIG deal.” Claire said, laughing at her joke as she set him down on her wide, expansive palm and took a seat where he’d been sitting, but not before carelessly pushing his unworn clothing onto the floor.
“You, my sweet little pioneer, have just become the very first person to shrink…and do you wanna know the best part? …besides the fact that I’m the first person to ever shrink someone, of course!” Claire said, trying to conceal her excitement. She didn’t wait for him to answer, let alone bring him close enough to her face to be heard clearly.
“The best part is…you’re not even close to being done!” Claire erupted jovially. “Nope! You’re going to get SOOOO much smaller! You see, I couldn’t just bring you down to your final size right then and there; I’d never have been able to find you on my couch. You would have probably fallen in between the cushions or maybe even blown away from the breeze of the ceiling fan, and then it’d be bye bye forever, you know?”
Claire had said enough so far. She wanted to know how little Tom was taking the news. She brought him up close to her face, carefully pushing her dirty blonde hair out of the way of her ear. As her hand got closer to her ear, the sound of unresolvable squeaking started to take on some distinguishable syllables.
“--do this to me? Why? I didn’t agree to this!” Tom squeaked.
“Good god, you sound like a little baby chipmunk…no, a little baby chipmunk who just inhaled a bunch of helium.” Claire said, giggling.
“Why did you do this?” Tom wailed.
Claire spoke out loud without lowering him from her ear. “Umm, you told me that you wanted to get closer to Jeong-Suk.”
“How is this supposed to help?!” the scared boy asked.
“Well, it's not clear yet…I get it, and honestly I wouldn’t expect someone as small as you are to see the big picture, but don’t worry it will all make sense eventually.” Claire replied.
“Please grow me back! This is terrifying; I won’t tell anyone I promise! Just do what…”
The high-pitched voice slowly lost resolution as she lowered him from her ear and fixed her pretty, crystal blue eyes back on him.
“Okay, so we really should hurry before I lose you. Let’s not waste any more time.”
Claire gently placed her free hand over top of the one holding Tom, encasing him in what must have looked like an enormous hollow sphere of fragrant flesh and bone. She’d eaten half of a cinnamon muffin at the coffee shop so she figured her hand probably still smelled good. She took a seat at her dining room table where the microscope was set up and placed him in an empty matchbox.
“Okay, wait right here. I’ll be back in a sec.” Claire said.
She walked quickly. Not because she was afraid of him getting away; there was no way the helpless little thing could climb over those giant matchbox walls. She walked quickly because she was beyond excited. Entering her bedroom again, she grabbed the small pipette filled with that familiar pink liquid and squeezed it out into a small beaker. Claire grabbed a small brown, sealed paper baggie from her nightstand. It had an off-center white sticky-label affixed to it with a bunch of chinese writing on it. She carefully ripped it open and inside were several dozen even smaller plastic baggies. Each one seemed to contain several grains of sand. The one that Claire picked out had sharpie writing on the plastic side. It simply read:
N198274
Claire opened the baggie and dumped its contents into the pale pink mixture, being very thorough about tapping the bottom of the baggie to make sure everything was out. She used a glass stirrer to make sure everything was properly distributed before sucking the solution back up into the pipette. She took a deep breath and made her way back to the living room.
He was right where she’d left him, he was waiting…standing but hunched over..naked and vulnerable, static and watching.
Claire readied a clear microscope slide just small enough to fit in the matchbox next to Tom.
“Okay, climb on up.” Claire said, her eyes already down on her journal as she jotted down a few notes. She looked back down at him, expecting to see him on the slide but there he stood next to it…either paralyzed by fear or defiance. It didn’t matter which; she’d handle either of them the same.
“Do you want to find out how durable you are at this size?” she said, leaning down, pursing her thick lips and blowing a short but powerful breath at him, knocking him to his feet.
“My calculations say you’re pretty durable..but do you REALLY want to find out how much?” She smiled and scrunched up her eyes as she said ‘REALLY’ and then her smile disappeared, and she swore the lights seemed to dim with her change in tone.
“Climb. The fuck. Up. On the slide..” Claire growled.
Tom didn’t hesitate this time. The barely-inch tall boy obediently got up on the center of the glass slide and stared up at her.
Claire’s disposition softened.
“I get that you’re kinda freaking out now…I should probably explain a little bit about what's happening next.” Claire said nonchalantly.
“...but I’m not gonna!” she chirped with a big mischievous grin. “At least not right now, anyway…but don’t worry, it will all make sense soon! I’ve got a vested interest in your understanding because…well…it's fun for me!”
“So…on to the schedule…” Claire grabbed her journal and leafed through several pages, tracing her index finger over her neat handwriting.
“You’re gonna stay little like this for…hmmm...1 month. Yeah…I think that's a good place to start since that’s right around when the chances for successful regrowth start to diminish. Up until the 1st month, the chances of my regrowth methods being successful is practically 100%, but it starts to drop slowly after that. By the end of the third month, it drops to a 96.5% chance of working and a 3.5% chance of you…well…I’m not exactly sure what happens, to be honest. According to the math, there will be a 3.5% chance that your body will react to the regrowth by…like…hmm…what's the easiest way to explain it to you…it's like basically adapting to the process and becoming resistant to it, making you permanently little like you are now. Wouldn’t matter how many times I tried it, it would never,ever work.”
The blonde looked up at the ceiling and mumbled quietly and then returned her attention to the tiny and helpless Tom, “That’s not to say you couldn’t get smaller though…you could theoretically get smaller, I think…but definitely no bigger, that part I’m sure of. Anyway…it gets even worse if we wait longer. After another 3 months, the success chance drops to 82.16%. After a year, the percentage shoots down to around 48%. If my math is correct, and it is, the probability function asymptotically approaches 0. By the 2nd year…”
Claire picked up her phone and squinted at her phone screen.
“...you’d have around a 17.7% chance of the regrowth working. It keeps getting worse after that. I would consider the shrinking to essentially be permanent at that point, or maybe a bit after that; it's hard to draw a line somewhere…but at that point it's really an argument of semantics. Ya know…it’s that goofy area where physics gets so weird you have to bring philosophy into the picture.”
She pressed a few buttons on her phone screen and then turned it to face Tom.
“Here, I even graphed it out so you can see what it looks like. Cool, huh? The first vertical black line there is the 30-day mark when the percentage starts slowly dropping. The vertical purple line is the 90-day mark with a 96.51% success probability, so on and so forth, yada yada yada…”
Claire made another quick note in her journal before returning her focus to the terrified boy. She raised the pipette up to the slide where Tom was standing, and he responded in the only way he felt he could: by cowering.
“So yeah…anyway…1 month: that’s my promise…my guarantee…so don’t worry! You’ll be in good hands.”
“…well..good boob, I guess.”, she said under her breath with a chuckle.
Claire promptly squeezed the contents of the small pipette, completely dousing little Tom in the pale pink liquid. He raised his hands stupidly as if he could protect himself from it, but it was already working its magic. Claire squatted down, resting her chin on the backs of her hands and bringing her face level with little Tom as he got increasingly smaller. Claire watched all of it with bright, optimistic blue eyes, waiting for the moment when he’d shrink beyond the physical resolve of her naked eye. He was less than an 1/8th of an inch. 1/16th. Still going…still going.
“Come on, keep going! YES!” Claire said encouragingly, watching him dwindle away further and further. She actually had to hold her hand over her mouth as she spoke lest the miniscule boy be blown away under the oppressive influence of her minty breath. He indeed kept going. He was barely the size of an ink dot now.
“Uh oh…” Claire frowned, leaning in closer to look.
She continued watching him…and that was the problem. Seconds had passed. And then finally a full minute…and she was still watching him.
“What gives? I can still see you!” Claire said, disappointment dripping from her voice.
She had to put on her glasses and squint like hell, but she could still see the fuzzy looking dot in the center of the slide.
“You’re supposed to be microscopic, you little goof!” the frustrated blonde exclaimed, stamping her sock clad foot. She didn’t cover her mouth that time; consequently, fully under the influence of the hurricane that was Claire’s last breath escaping her lungs, little Tom flew–to him–what must have been hundreds of feet away from the glass slide and into the side of the matchbox.
“You’re useless now…I can’t put you in like this...” Claire’s upper lip curled in disgust as she peered down at him, pulling out one of the table’s chairs and heavily sitting down.
Was this her fault? The trial and error process with the titration had consumed so much of her focus that she had not even considered that the catalyst might not yield a prosperous accelerant to the shrinking process. No, it couldn’t have been her fault. Maybe it was him…yes! He was the variable! He was the problem. Leave it to Tom to ruin everything. She felt the urge to get back at him.
She considered how she would get rid of him. The thoughtful blonde pondered out loud, bouncing the ideas off her walls to see what sounded best. Sure, she could just throw him away in the garbage. Claire could rinse out the matchbox in the sink and let him find his way down the garbage disposal. That’d be super simple. She could drop him outside on her front step and, in a fun way, give him a sporting chance…adopted by Mother Nature. A kiss for luck and he’d be on his way!
There were some awfully noisy, awfully annoying sorority girls that lived above her. Maybe Tom would stare up at the bottoms of their uggs as they obliviously stumble in from the bar later that night to fuck whatever collar-popping toolbag they brought home. It didn’t matter how impervious he now was to pressure and compression, there was no way he’d be surviving the bottom of one of those bimbos’ boots..especially the chubby one! And that's all assuming the naked speck didn’t freeze to death on her front step first, which was definitely possible. He was well suited for where he was going, but he definitely wasn’t immortal…he was, as she put it in her journal, ‘still fragile as fuck’.
She rubbed her chin, staring down at him thoughtfully. She could turn the matchbox upside-down over the toilet…that’d be really easy. She could even use it first before flushing. What would be even funnier would be going to the women’s room of the local university and dropping him into one of the public toilets and waving goodbye. There really were a whole lot of options.
Claire was very tempted to wash her hands of this and start over fresh…find some other hopelessly awkward boy to shrink, but this one was so close to being perfect. And plus, who's to say that the solution would work again even this well? What if the variability of the recipient in this case actually aided in the shrinking? It's possible that it wouldn’t work at all on someone else…anything was possible, of course. She needed the night to think about it…to think about what she would do with him.
Claire removed one of her pristine white socks and carefully fed the small matchbox into its mouth. She positioned it all the way into the toe section and scrunched up the mouth so as to make sure he wouldn’t somehow escape, either accidentally or on purpose…it also served the valuable purpose of being extremely funny that he’d be surrounded by the smell of her foot for the whole night.
The blonde propped her bare foot atop her other socked foot on the couch and switched the input from the DVD player to YouTube. Her feed recommended a physics video from Eugene Khutoryansky called “Fourier Transform, Fourier Series, and frequency spectrum”. She excitedly hit play. After its conclusion, Claire acted as if she were all alone, brushing her teeth and turning off the lights before going to bed.
The 22-year old blonde woke up fully rested and rejuvenated. While still in her underwear, she tended to the running experiments in her bedroom. It wasn’t a smart thing to do without PPE, but she was incredibly careful. She’d really needed the time to think and reflect on her current experiment and she was glad she took it. Grabbing an apple from her fruit dish, Claire sat down at her table. She smirked at the pristine white sock resting motionless atop her dining room table, its belly bulging rectangularly with the matchbox inside. It was just as she’d left it over 7 hours ago.
The inside of the sock still felt slightly warm. Claire wondered if the remnants of her foot’s bodyheat had remained there with Tom for the night. He should consider himself lucky if it did! Speaking of luck, she pulled the box out of her sock and held it up to her face, peering down playfully at little Tom, curled up in a ball staring up.
“Good news. I’ve decided that even though you’re way bigger than I planned on making you, I’m still gonna go forward with the experiment. Congratulations, I’m not getting rid of you!”
Claire set Tom’s box down next to an incredibly small glass enclosure. It was only slightly larger than Tom,and next to it was a small eyedropper atop a napkin. It was filled with the same pale pink liquid. It didn’t take much to fill the small glass enclosure…maybe 2 to 3 drops.
“Some more good news…you can breathe underwater now. That's gonna come in handy over the next few days while you’re waiting as I finish setting everything up. And it’ll definitely come in handy over the next month!”
Claire unceremoniously dumped Tom into the tiny glass enclosure and capped it, leaving him completely submerged in the pale pink liquid. She held it close to her face to look at him and burst out laughing, tapping gently on the glass.
“Hey, fishy! Hang tight for a while in there, okay?”
~