Chapter 1

The new car smell made sleeping near impossible for Jake. The clothes Innomed had provided him were scratchy, which was strange, now that he was normal sized again he had been looking forward to clothing being less irritating, but it seemed Innomed only made one kind of outfit for their subjects; uncomfortable, no matter the size. He sighed and made awkward eye contact with his driver in the rear view mirror for what must have been the hundredth time that day. They were going on five hours on the road at this point. He smirked, amusing himself with his jaded thoughts, if a guy the size of an ant hadn’t warranted the company's private jet, there must be some serious freak shows in the vaults at the Innomed lab, super powers maybe? If so, they’d missed their window on popularity, when Jake had been admitted and placed in Innomed’s care, Marvel had just rolled out The Avengers, Jake had gone to see it in theaters four times, smash cut to now, his new phone, faster even than his old laptop had been was telling him no one gave a shit about superheroes these days, which was unfortunate since he himself made for a decent Ant-Man rip off when he wasn’t hopped up on his hormonal cocktail. 

A sharp turn caused his elbow to slip from the rear seat window ledge, spilling thoughts from his head as he realized they’d just turned into a vaguely familiar neighborhood. The streets were lined on both sides by upper middle class homes, two stories, big yards, happy people walking their dogs and waving to their neighbors, and not one of them wearing a lab coat, that was something that would take getting used to. Ten years of his life had been spent as a lab rat, tiny and helpless, poked and prodded by men and women indifferent to how awkward and embarrassed he was by his size, somewhere around the three year mark he’d given up on the idea that they were interested in curing him, replicating his freak size change seemed a far more profitable venture for the biotech company after all, it had come as quite a shock when his Overseer, Dr. Chen had approached his “room” and told him that they had finally come up with a solution, a temporary one at least.

He was going home to his mother, his sisters! Finally! Much of his time in isolation had been spent imagining what they were like now, what they were doing with their lives? Skylar and Nicky had been children when he’d left, they’d be graduating high school and heading to college soon. He smiled, feeling old, he couldn’t wait to see them again, and thankfully, the wait was over.

Rubber tires crunched as they mounted the small cement curb outside Jake’s childhood home. The bearded driver glanced at him, wordlessly saying “This was it” and to get a move on. Jake made no argument, stepping outside and stretching his legs for a few seconds and reveling in the feeling of his joints and limbs popping. He leaned back into the car and grabbed a small tote bag that had been gifted to him. A second change of clothes, a toothbrush, his new phone, all his earthly belongings contained in one small parcel. Almost the moment the door was closed the silver sedan crunched away down the street, leaving Jake standing there.

“Thanks for the ride” he said to no one, turning and walking to a front door he hadn’t stepped through in nearly a decade. He raised a fist, hesitated, corrected his face, and knocked several times. He waited. Heard footsteps. The lock turned and the door swung open. 

“Can I help you?” A young blonde woman asked him, her hair the same sandy shade as his, her eyes the same blue. She sized him up, squinting at his face, seeing something that gave her pause.

He smiled. “Hey Sky.”

His little sister staggered slightly, and then her look of shock broke into an amused smile. “You’re looking tall,” she teased him, and then she stepped forward and they hugged.

“Guys!” Skylar shouted into the house, “Guess who I scraped off the bottom of my shoe!?” She snorted with laughter at her own joke, leading Jake into the kitchen, his face bright red as he recalled his final months at the house, the size of an ant and five giant women stomping around him all day. 

Four of those women were currently seated at the dining room table, phones out, clearly in the middle of chatting when he’d come back into their lives so suddenly. The oldest woman, a brunette, stood up and walked around the others who were still seated.

“Come here honey” she said, and Jake embraced his mother, Jenna, satisfied that once again he was taller than she was, taller than everyone else in the room. She kissed him on the cheek several times and searched his face with her thumbs, slowly finding the boy she’d raised behind the man whose face she now held in her kitchen. “They fixed you!”

“Sort of!” Jake agreed with a smile, prying his mothers hands away from his face, gently, turning as the other members of his family, some girls, some women, came to join them.

“Sort of? What? Are you wearing stilts or something?” Becca, Jake’s oldest sibling teased him as she came in for her hug.

“Or is there a little Jake riding in a big mechanical Jake suit?” Jada chimed in, right behind Becca, her hug was quick and violent, several hard slaps on his back, ever the tomboy, unchanged all these years later.

“Hey” was all Nicky managed to squeak at him, shy and the youngest among them, not quite strangers, but Jake had left her life before she’d hit double digits, so there was a lot of catching up to do there.

Jake’s face was red from all the teasing, but he was still happy to be home, he’d rather be teased 24/7 than spend another day in his plastic dollhouse at Innomed. “It’s great to see you guys, you’ve all…grown so much…” He trailed off, knowing he was only inviting more teasing from them.

“Not as much as you!” Jada fired off immediately, not one to waste an opportunity. She laughed, retaking her seat at the table, the others followed her example, aside from Jenna, who went to the kitchen to get her son something to drink. “Last I saw you, you were, what? Half an inch tall?” Jada continued, her eyes searching the ceiling as she tried to recall a distant memory.

“A quarter inch dear, and just so precious” His mother said as she noisily dug around in the ice box, sounding almost regretful that her son was once again his natural height.

“So precious” Becca said with a teasing smile, her hand covering Jake’s, patting it before she pulled away as the two brunette siblings shared another laugh. “You remember Jada? With Skylar?”

“Whaaaat?” Skylar whined, smiling, but unable to share in the memory. She leaned in, looking from one sister to the other. 

Jada nodded, leaning back in her chair, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “Ugh! Yes, god, we thought for sure Mom would kill us! We had been looking everywhere for him, and we found him-!”

“On the bottom of your foot!” Becca finished, unable to hold back the big reveal. Both sisters laughed again. “You were too young to remember I guess!” Becca added between laughs as Skylar smiled sheepishly.

Skylar sat back in her chair, shrugging with a small smile, “Well! He was probably in my way! I was like, ten? Eleven? What was I supposed to do?” She locked eyes with her red faced brother and gave a non committal shrug of her shoulders.

“He was, to be fair! Always out in the open!” Jenna said from over Jake’s shoulder as she leaned forward and set his glass of ice water in front of him, stealing another kiss on the cheek. “Honestly honey, I hope you learned to stay out from under people’s feet at that lab after all this time?” She asked as she sat down and joined the family at the table, Jada and Becca still coming down from their laughter fit.

Jake felt his throat constrict a bit as memories came flooding back to him, of his time at Innomed, and Dr. Chen and her assistants. He quickly gulped down some cold water and nodded as he wiped his chin dry.

“Did they make you run a maze? With a block of cheese in the center?” Skylar asked him, grinning.

“Seriously though, what was it like? Mom told us we weren’t allowed contact so we’ve all been wondering? What did they do with you? How did they fix you? Was it, I dunno, nice?” Becca asked him in rapid fire.

“It was…okay.” Jake said in a non committal tone. “I mean, by the time I got there they had everything pretty much set up, a little room for me to live in, a bed that fit me, a bathroom with running water, my meals were as close to appropriate size as their catering could manage I think, I mean, you could tell it was made from full sized ingredients but they did alright.” Jake said, all true, it could have been much worse.

“No maze?” Jada asked.

“No maze,” Jake replied, “They took my blood with a special needle, took my measurements almost every day, some endurance tests, weighed me, I went to school, got the equivalent of a G.E.D. Pretty normal stuff, nothing...nothing weird…”. His eyes fell to the table for a moment as he once again suppressed certain thoughts and images that sprang to his mind. He cleared his throat and looked up to find they were all staring at him.

“And the cure?” His mother asked, “How did they fix you?”

“Well, again, not a scientist myself here, but from what they explained, they sort of….jump started my growth, with a sort of hormonal ‘cocktail’. Growth hormones, sex hormones, thyroid, that sort of thing, thought it wasn’t working for a while and then, one day I woke up in the worst pain of my life, felt like I was in one of those old-timey medieval torture devices? The ones that stretch you? I was seeing stars, but, when I came to finally, I was naked and on the floor of my room, the actual room my tiny room was in I mean, and the doctors were all there, shining flashlights in my eyes, checking my pulse, that sorta thing.” He shrugged and sipped at his water.

“Damn, it only took ‘em ten years, huh?” Jada supplied, getting up to get herself something from the kitchen, her bare feet slapping and peeling from the cold tile floor. Jake sipped again automatically and gave no response, he was just happy to be back.

“No side effects?” His mother asked him, concerned.

“Well, I mean, we don’t know for sure yet, they’re worried that the size change might not be permanent, you know?” He cleared his throat, remembering the way Dr. Chen had put it. “I got a massive dose of hormones, the most my body can take at one time, but it’s not even close to the amount my body would have naturally produced over the years so…” he trailed off, lacking the expertise to finalize the explanation adequately. “Oh!”

Jake twisted in his chair, searching his pocket for the small laminate card he’d been given. “That’s in case of an emergency” He said pointedly, handing the card to his mother for safe keeping. 

Jenna took the card, recognition on her face as she read the name. “Ah, Dr. Chen, she was nice, she called every so often from a private number to keep me informed.” Jenna got up and put the card in her purse, her flip flops slapping noisily on the tile as she walked behind Jake. 

He went to sip his water and found it empty this time, he jangled the ice in the glass, fidgeting uncomfortably.

“You okay sweetie?” His mother asked him, her hand suddenly on his shoulder.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, just tired I guess” Jake said, stretching. It wasn’t untrue, the sun was on its way down, the fading orange glow cast the kitchen in a warm light. It had been a long drive here, a long day in general.

“You can ask the questions tomorrow, you need an early night I think,” Jenna said softly, ushering Jake up and out of his chair. He didn’t protest.

“Girls, say goodnight to your brother,” Jenna chided her daughters, who at some point had all gone to their phones. They each offered some form of “goodnight”, which was good enough for Jenna as she led Jake upstairs to his old room.

“We got it cleared away, slightly, but, your room has been a sort of storage room for awhile now” Jenna told her son apologetically.

“That’s okay mom, all I really want is my old bed, I don’t care if you guys have some stuff in there” Jake said, following as his mother opened the door. “Anything interesting?”

“Just shoes, mostly, you know how girls can be, entire closets dedicated to them, and none of us wanna throw away a single pair,” She giggled, seeing the shock on her sons face as she revealed mountains of shoe boxes, piles of shoes, shelves and hanging plastic racks filled to the brim with any and all manner of female footwear.

“Oh! ….cool…” Jake mumbled.

“Just move them if you need to, honestly we should throw half of these out!” Jenna said again in an apologetic tone. “Do you need anything else, you got your bag?”

Jake held the bag up for his mother to see, giving it a small shake.

“Okay, sweet dreams honey,” her hands found the sides of his head, and she bent him forward to kiss his forehead loudly. “Mmmmwah!”

“Night mom,” Jake said, a little embarrassed, but pleased at the show of affection all the same. His mother left and he sat on his bed, emptying his tote bag’s contents and organizing them in under a minute. That hadn’t distracted him for long. His eyes began to wander the room. So. Many. Shoes.

He kicked his own shoes off and set the sneakers halfway under the bed, his fingers brushing a pair of old, well-worn, leather work flats, likely belonging to his mother. The insole was black where his mother’s bare foot had rested in it, her heel, arch, ball, and all five toes had a mark to show exactly how her foot settled into the shoe. He glanced at the door.

No.

He quickly shoved himself backward into bed, laying on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling, feeling guilty for even having considered the notion of doing that. Sleep. He needed sleep, he needed to get his head right.

Jake didn’t remember his eyes closing, the next thing he was aware of, he was back at Innomed, not in his plastic room, but on a desk, a laptop was plugged in nearby, its vent blowing warm air as a fan inside worked to keep the CPU cool. The clack of a keyboard being typed on cut across the silence…

“Ms. Park gave you top marks for your essay on Monday,” Dr. Chen’s velvety voice said. She stared straight ahead, the bright computer screen reflected in her glasses as she chewed her rosy red lower lip. The mature Asian woman looked both simultaneously twenty one and forty five, in only the way that someone with genes from that continent could. “You believe Truman's decision was justified?” she asked him, turning to stare down at the ant sized boy standing on her desk.

Jake shuffled awkwardly. “Well…” he began, without knowing what he would say next.

She chuckled. “I’m Vietnamese, not Japanese, Jacob,” she smiled, a small, thin smile, not quite warm and comforting, more a smile of amusement.

He felt his back get goosebumps as she used his full name, blushing as she pointed out how silly he was being. “I mean, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted that responsibility, the idea was to save lives, in the end, right?” Jake sounded hopeful, as though he weren’t sure even he believed his own words.

Dr. Chen said nothing, but continued to smile as she returned to her keyboard and added a few more lines to her weekly report.

Jake searched the room awkwardly for something else to look at. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and, as far as he could tell, almost no one was working today. He’d seen a male researcher of some kind wander past his room earlier that morning, but until midday when Dr. Chen had arrived, Jake wondered if he’d have any human contact until the beginning of the next week.

“No plans for the holiday?” Jake asked, making conversation.

Dr. Chen finished typing before she answered. “My sister is cooking tomorrow, and we’re going out before that. We do a spa day every year, we don’t really go in for the big turkey-ham-stuffing meal that most people do.”

“Oh! A spa day? That’ll be nice, right?” Jake said, latching to anything he could to keep the awkward silence at bay.

“Should be, I can’t wait, I’m waaaay overdue for a pedicure,” Dr. Chen mumbled, scooting back from the desk and leaning down. Her hands went out of sight, but from the motion Jake guessed she had reminded herself how sore her feet were, and decided they needed a quick rub.

“Aw c’mon, I’m sure they’re fine?” Jake said, not really meaning it, again, just wanting the conversation to continue. Dr. Chen surely knew her own body better than he did, hell, she knew his body better than he did.

Dr. Chen sighed, “I wish, dear, I can’t remember the last time I had my feet pampered, ugh…” She reached up and removed the glasses from her nose, flipping them up so they rested in her long hair, which she quickly tied into a dark, short ponytail with a scrunchy she’d had on her wrist. Her chair suddenly scraped loudly against the floor as she scooted further away, and, before Jake could recover from his ears ringing, a pair of matured female feet were suddenly resting on the desk.

Jake stood there, transfixed. All the tiny details were laid bare for someone with his vantage point. He could see the red areas where her shoes pressed and rubbed her feet uncomfortably. Her heels were a bit cracked, the splits in her calloused skin made more evident as her meaty heels squashed and flattened against the countertop. She flexed her toes, and Jake heard them audibly pop, watching as the vast landscapes of her soles shifted and changed like sand dunes, her skin was similar in color, though, these sand dunes were shiny with a thin sheen of foot sweat. The rolling hills were occasionally dotted with imperfections. A speck of dirt here, a hair twisting and curling there, a smudge of gray/black grime of who knew what smeared every so often. As she scrunched her toes, Jake could indeed see the dark red polish chipping as he briefly got a view of all ten of her toes, before her feet settled again, the wrinkled landscape relaxing slightly. And then a wave of smell and moist, sour warmth washed across the desk top, like morning fog rolling through a small countryside town. Jake’s eyes watered, his chest stung with each breath, the air was suddenly thick and wet and warm, his body struggling to sift oxygen from the pungent fumes wafting from Dr. Chen’s feet. His head swam as though he’d stood up too quickly, and he stumbled as the vinegar smell of his overseer’s pungent, overworked feet rolled over him. He was completely crippled, frozen, standing there like a deer caught in headlights as Dr. Chen continued to scrunch her toes, seemingly unaware of her powerfully pungent peds and the effect they were having on her tiny charge. 

“God…” Dr. Chen said with a frustrated and tired sigh of relief, rubbing her eyes vigorously and leaning back in her chair, keeping them shut tight. Was she really intending to nap? Jake stood there, framed between her feet, unable to look away, yet, at the same time he found her feet unbearable to look upon at the same time. Human beings weren’t meant to look like this, to be seen in this light. He had a vantage point unlike any other human in existence, could see details and imperfections no one else could. It was horrifyingly revolting and enticing all at once, like watching a building collapse, or a natural disaster unfold.

He hadn’t realized it, but his heart was pounding. He felt weak, his knees were shaky, his arms trembling slightly. His throat was dry. He fidgeted, had his pants always been so constricting? He tugged at the front of his crotch, readjusting the fabric to ease his irritation, this was…unexpected, was this a natural reaction? Maybe the sudden intimidating presence was affecting blood flow, what else could explain the sudden “swelling” down there? Dr. Chen’s eyes were still closed, her breathing was slow and steady, she was seemingly fast asleep after a long day of data entry and lab tests. Jake felt it suddenly, like a hook behind his navel, something pulling him forward, urging him to approach Dr. Chen, to approach her resting feet, despite the heat, and the smell coming off of them. He’d read about something long ago that suddenly sprang to mind, “The call of the sea”, something sailors used to describe the allure of the ocean, even though it was so dangerous and unpredictable. He took a slow, deliberate, and hesitant step forward… 

…and awoke in a cold sweat, panting. He propped himself up on his elbows, wiping his face dry with his hand, he felt clammy. Jesus. That was no mere dream, that was a memory, a detailed and accurate one. As though mimicking the dream, he shifted uncomfortably and readjusted his crotch, ultimately deciding he didn’t need to be fully dressed if he was going to bed anyway.

The sun was down now as he stood and stripped down to his boxers and T-shirt, getting back into bed, he reached for his phone to check the time, accidentally knocking it to the floor. When he leaned over the edge of the bed to retrieve it, the screen’s light illuminated that same pair of well-worn work flats belonging to his mother. Jake stayed still there for a moment, just thinking. Another glance at the door.

He reached down, retrieving his phone, and the pair of flats as well, hooking his fingers in the heels and beginning to raise them from the floor. He stopped again, feeling gravity tug at the flats as their heels balanced delicately on the tips of his index and middle fingers. He allowed gravity to take them back to the floor. The shoes hit the ground with a muffled thud, and with a lazy swat Jake sent them sliding beneath the bed.

He rolled back into bed, feeling like a worm, an insect, less than human for even considering going through with that, those shoes belonged to his mother. His old size was what he deserved, honestly, maybe the universe had intended it on purpose, as though it knew what a degenerate he would become. Sleep didn’t come easy after that, but eventually Jake was able to drift off a second time, Dr. Chen didn’t make a return visit to his dreams, instead, he floated weightless and sightless in the void, until he woke the next day.