Naturally, I didn’t have dinner with my family that night. My sickness was enough of an excuse. That and the terrible affliction of Quinn. I came to some alarming thoughts before I fell asleep in an overdose of lust. At a grand temple by the beach. Serving her feet, making my way up her legs planting soft touches on her golden sun-kissed thighs. Her giant nude body laid on its side, an arm draped coquettishly over the range of her hips, a tug on my neck and the tinkle of chain as she pulls me into her warm and massive embrace.

In the morning, I drowsily scrolled the reddit app on my phone. I stumbled across a post that was discussing the etymology of the word masochism, for reasons unknown it piqued my interest. I’ll try to keep this brief for those uninformed. The word derives itself from the Austrian writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, coined by another contemporary of his as the term that refers to one getting off on getting put down, a described ‘psychosexual’ disorder that requires one to experience pain and/or humiliation to achieve erotic release. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name. It must’ve been so embarrassing. Regardless, it was coined for reason, Masoch wrote at length about the satisfaction he gained from being put in his place by domineering women, specifically and especially those already in a positions of power, baronesses, queens, ladies of the land. His most notable work is the 1870 novella Venus in Furs which heavily delves into themes of female domination and sadomasochism with characters heavily inspired from Masoch’s own life and self-indulgent description of beautifully cruel women, lounging in royal furs. When I realised that it was essentially erotica from the 19th century, I became even more curious. I found a free copy on Project Gutenberg and read it for a few hours.

I didn’t finish it because my attention span is dull and rotted away by the internet, but it got me thinking. Mostly a vision of a regal woman, of course my mind inserted Quinn, lounged in an armchair before an ornate fireplace, her reflection illumed by crackling red flames, dancing over her stony expression and from time to time over her feet when she sought to warm them, the rest of her statuesque body bundled in a large brown fur, large enough to cover me entirely and catch me like a net. She’d have her chin lazily draped in her palm, some strands of ghostly white hair fallen beside her gracious face, regarding me with an air similar to how one might view a household pet. A silent challenge when we make eyes, her daring my faith but I’m unwavering in the belief that I’m beneath her. That’s why I’m knelt beside her, and if I’m lucky, she’ll let me lay my head in her lap so I sink into that deliciously soft blanket of fur warmed by her covered thighs, and her hand might come and scratch behind my ear and I’d nuzzle myself further into that furry world, letting the material play about my face and nose and feeling the magnificence of such a woman as I envelop myself in her, pressed to her legs as they curl off the armchair.

A day passed where I didn’t see Quinn and I stayed bunkered down in my room. I was so naïve. I thought I’d be able to separate these fantasies from reality. But I let them simmer and now my thoughts were thoroughly marinated.

I’d only snuck out twice in the dead of the night to pee, but as the next day wore on, I felt brave enough to venture out and by the time I left my room it was 1pm. If I ran into Quinn I’d act natural. I wouldn’t imagine her as a queen who has me chained to a leash or anything totally ridiculous like that. We’d chat about her day and everything would be normal, then I’d tell her that we need to talk about the other day and I’d tell her that what happened can never happen again and she needs to respect that. Even though I was the one caught staring. She said I was acting weird but she was also acting weird. Things had been awkward between us.

I stood by the sink looking out the window to the yard thinking about what I’d say to Quinn, and then I saw her open the front gate and my heart skipped a beat. She wore grey activewear and her hair was tied in a slick ponytail. I could tell from how flushed her face was and the sweat drenched underneath her boobs that she’d just returned from a run. It was a hot day out. She saw me looking through the window so I waved but she didn’t wave back. I clenched the edge of the sink and waited, my train of thought totally derailed. I was doing the dishes. That’s what I was doing.

The front door swung open and I heard Quinn’s heavy footsteps enter the foyer as she kicked off her shoes and walked into the kitchen, her socks slapping on the floorboards. I went to say hello and saw she had Airpods in.

She didn’t even look at me.

Quinn went straight by me, her shoulder soared above and left a great wake of BO in its stead. She opened the fridge blocking most of her from view except the crown of her head and her huge arm that rested along the side of the fridge door, she drummed her fingers on top.

I realised I’d been holding my breath the entire time and let out a deep sigh. I grabbed a plate stained with tomato sauce and a sponge, continuing to watch Quinn out of the corner of my eye, darting back to my duty when she shut the fridge. She held Tupperware with leftover pasta and the water jug which she placed on the marble island. Her ass looked incredibly tight in her grey spandex, both cheeks wobbled with her movement. Off she went to put the pasta in the microwave and it beeped and began to hum nicely, the whole time tinny music blasted from her earphones. I felt her footsteps thud around the kitchen until they settled somewhere behind, the splash of pouring water and some greedy gulping, then a slight grunt as I assumed she sat herself on the counter right behind me.

I tried my best to focus on the dishes, I cleaned another plate and some glasses and two forks and a knife. The microwave hummed and Quinn started to hum too along with her music.

“Red wine supernooova.” She sung it quietly to herself.

There was a palpable tension in the air, she was clearly ignoring me on purpose and it threw my whole plan off. I was expecting the usual bubbly Quinn to greet me and then I’d lead us into a hard but necessary conversation but perhaps I’d failed to acknowledge how the other night might’ve affected her too. Obviously it had, we hadn’t spoken to each other since. Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe I was self-absorbed.

I opened the dishwasher and started to load the rinsed plates and cutlery inside. When I finished and turned around, Quinn was swinging her legs off the counter, still humming and very nearly touching the floor thanks to the incredible length of her legs, she scrolled on her phone until she wasn’t and for the first time since the incident we made eyes.

“Hi,” I said and waved sheepishly.

The music paused and she regarded me for a moment. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said.

“Yeah, well.” I could only shrug in response. “Sorry.”

“Why are you so scared of me?”

“I’m not scared of you Quinn.”

“Ah huh.” She looked back at her phone.

“What?”

“You’re such a liar.”

“I’m literally not.” I only needed to address the elephant in the room but she was right. She was being too direct and I was too scared.

The microwave beeped to signal it was done and Quinn hopped off the counter, leaving a wide sweaty stain from her butt. There wasn’t heaps of space between the sink and the island so when she hopped off, she towered above me in that close proximity and my head was level with her hulking chest constrained by her sports bra and I was swimming in the post-run funk that suffused itself in the damp grey spandex beneath the swell of her boobs, and deep down I knew that they were slightly higher than I was used to and the threat of SIVID which I’d tried so hard to ignore came crashing down on me. She loomed over me for a second as if to confirm to herself that she was right and that I was scared of her. Satisfied with the way I was staring up at her, wide-eyed and nervous, she went to retrieve her freshly warmed pasta.

“If you have something you want to say to me, you should go ahead and say it,” she said, shutting the microwave door.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Really?” She walked right up to me, taller with each step closer until she was stationed before me again, the smell of her sweat mixing with the rich red pasta sauce, creating a dizzying effect. “Because it really seems like you do.”

I just shook my head.

“Whatever bro,” she said and left me to go eat in her room.

I was standing there reeling from that conversation, she was obviously onto me. In fact, she seemed quite mad with me which I thought was a little unfair. She was the one who pressed her thigh into me. It was playful sure, but it’s not something you would do with your sibling, especially as adults, right? Or was I wrong to take casual playfighting as something more. I opened the fridge and grabbed my own bit of left over pasta and as I put it in the microwave, I came to the conclusion that I was being delusional and perverted.

I didn’t want to ruin my relationship with Quinn, truly, I loved spending time with her, our interests aligned in everything and we could talk for hours about the things we liked, or find something to talk about when there was nothing else to say, there was one holiday where we got really into playing this alphabet animal game where you have to name as many animals that start with the same letter as you can and we got so good at it that it would take us three hours to get from A-Z, and she was funny too and I’d always thought her mind worked in such interesting ways and I respected her tenacity and ambition greatly and I simply felt like I knew her so well, and so while I deeply loved the essence of who Quinn was as a person, to see her grown up and blown in proportion to such an extent was overwhelming, yes she was taller than me in the past but we were also innocent children, and so now that she was a grown woman, filled out all over with a powerful but feminine grace to her curves, I cannot overstate how much of an impact her physical presence had on me. She was not only tall; she was absolutely enormous. After we’d measured ourselves I found myself comparing her height to many other famous athletes, she was almost the same height as Lebron James for god sake, and she was taller than Kobe, Jordan, and only a few inches shy of Shaq, it really put things into perspective. I truly felt that every time I’d interacted with her since I got back, having to crane my neck to talk to her, making me feel like a child again. And I was getting shorter wasn’t I, there was no point in denying it now. Everything about her was so much larger when compared to me and my sick brain wouldn’t stop thinking about how easily she could toss me around and a part of me wondered if maybe she’d been thinking the same thing. It was these conflicting thoughts making our time together torturous and it was like we couldn’t communicate like we used to, like we were strangers all of a sudden. I didn’t know how to handle it at all. There was no one I could ask for help. This was between me and Quinn and us alone. What would our parents think if they ever found out?

I retired to my room shortly after with warm pasta and distracted myself with some YouTube at my desk. I spent the afternoon sorting out my books for the upcoming semester and preparing my notes for lectures. It was going to be a brutal semester with lots of anatomy and sports theory. It was monotonous enough that when paired with some Oncle Jazz it helped me clear my thoughts of Quinn and our dangerous predicament. I was once again choosing to ignore the prospect of having SIVID, even though it seemed highly and incredibly likely that I had it.

The night rolled around and soon there was a knock on my door and dad’s voice on the other side telling me dinner was ready. It’d been long enough that my sickness was no longer a reason to avoid dinner and I was barely even sick anymore, at least in the traditional sense of the word, so down I went. I greeted Helen and sat across from Quinn like usual, dad to my side. We were having pork roast and I filled my plate with two slices of pork and some potatoes and then Quinn practically tripled the amount I had on her plate and poured gravy over that hill of food. Helen and dad were talking about work while Quinn and I silently ate, not once giving each other a moment of attention. Our parents would do this sometimes where they would talk and talk about whatever boring things they were stressed about and no one else could get a word in. It was welcome now though as I tried to hurry through my dinner, Quinn was too, and at a quick glance, she made much shorter work of her food. At one point I caught her staring at me, but we both quickly looked down at our plates.

We were almost done when Helen said, “You two are being awfully quiet.”

“Had a long day.” Quinn smiled at her, wiping some gravy from her chin. “I went for a mountain run this morning.”

Helen nodded, satisfied with the answer and looked to me. “And what about you Bailey?” She liked to make sure we weren’t being lazy.

“Not much, I’ve been recovering. Getting ready for Uni and all that.”

“Right, that’s good.” It seemed like Helen was going to say more but then Quinn spoke up.

“So you do physio right?”

“Yeah…” I said, unsure why she was asking.

“You must be pretty good at massages then.”

She was challenging me; I could see it in her eyes. “I’m alright.”

“I just wonder how good of a massage you’d be able to give with such small hands.”

“Well it’s more about the techniques you use and the pressure you put in but I wouldn’t expect you to get it.”

She snorted at that. “But what if you were so small I couldn’t even feel it?”

“What on earth are you talking about Quinn,” said Helen.

“Haven’t you guys seen the news?” She said to our parents. “SIVID? Hello? Bailey clearly has it.”

I couldn’t believe she was airing me out like this. My cheeks went red and I didn’t look to my left to see what dad or Helen thought of that. I was shorter and there was no doubt about it, and it really did beg the question. How did dad or Helen not realise?

“Really son?” Dad grabbed my shoulder.

“I thought that was all a load of crap,” said Helen.

“It was on the news mum.”

“And the last time I watched the news that Greens idiot was saying we need rental caps.”

“It’s obviously real, look at him,” Quinn said.

“I mean, really? Is Bailey really getting shorter?”

“I’m not,” I interjected.

“You literally are!” Quinn rose from her seat a little, pointing an accusatory finger. “Get up.”

I tried to protest but she cut me off.

“No, shut up, stand up. You too David.”

Neither dad or I had much of a say and our chairs screeched back as we stood. For most of my adult life I had been the same height or slightly taller than my dad but there was no denying it now as I was clearly shorter than him. Not by a long shot but to a noticeable degree. He looked at me with narrow eyes and a slight frown, creasing his wrinkles. “That’s no good,” he said.

“See!” Quinn practically shouted. “Bailey used to be taller than David. I swear it.”

“I just can’t believe it,” Helen said and then she too rose from the table and like Quinn her presence was an alarmingly large one. She rose over my dad’s shoulder and pulled him away so she could get a good look at me, crossing her arms as she looked over her sharp nose, her bust was right in my face and her nipples showed through her blouse. “Gee. He does look especially short doesn’t he?”

I felt incredibly embarrassed being analysed like this and being talked about like I wasn’t even there, and the reality of it started to sink in. It was like when I’d first met Helen as a twelve-year-old, shyly standing by my father unable to look her in the eye. “They said they’re looking for a cure.”

“I read an article yesterday that said some cases have started to report losses of three to four feet,” said Quinn.

“Well it doesn’t seem like he’s lost that much of his height,” Helen said.

I looked desperately at Quinn and she was seated at the table with her arms crossed and where I expected a smug expression was actually one of worry.

Helen’s finger curled beneath her nose as she thought about something. She clicked her tongue. “Though I have some news you might not like to hear. Suppose now is as good a time as any.”

“I was thinking the same thing hon,” dad said, he touched her back. “Let’s sit down, hey?”

“And what’s this?” I said. I was very confused and feeling very overwhelmed and flustered.

We all took our seats back at the table, the overhead lights illumed above us sharp and orange like an interrogation room. Or at least it felt that way to me. “It’s unfortunate timing if anything,” Helen said.

“What’s this bad news?”

Dad took a long breath. “Well. You see son, we were planning on telling you soon, but, uh, your mother and I were planning on moving to Oman for a few months, or at least until all these lockdowns start to ease up.”

“Oman!?” I said.

“And I can appreciate that’s a big change, and well, especially with this.” He gestured to me vaguely implying my condition. “But it’s something we’ve been planning for a while, even before you moved back home, you know the lockdowns have made work a bit of a nightmare, all the extra planning and precautions have taken a bit of a toll. So we’re moving online. But uh, you’re welcome to come with us,” he looked to Helen like he was looking for permission and continued, “but, I’m not sure if it’d be the best place for you to experience you’re uh, how do I put this, reduction. I’m sure you understand, right son?”

“I don’t really but go on.”

“Well, think of it like this, you and Quinn can have the house to yourselves for however long you want, you know as long as you keep it in good nick, it might even be fun, you’re both adults now. It’ll give you a taste of owning a property. Give you something to work towards, huh lazybones?” He clapped me gently on the back with a laugh.

I didn’t care about owning property. I hate the fact that people like my dad and Helen viewed property as a commodity not a necessity. I was beginning to boil with rage at his words and the way they didn’t seem to care in the slightest about my situation.

“And Oman is such a gorgeous country, the people, the food, ah,” Helen said, placing her elbows on the table with her hands clasped together.  “The place we have there overlooks the coastline and it’s just to die for.”

I looked to Quinn and she was still sitting with her arms crossed, her lips pursed and jaw clenched.

“Well it’s not the end of the world is it,” Helen said, looking between me and Quinn. “Besides you don’t seem so sick anymore Bailey, you might’ve already lost all there is to lose.”

“Tell him when you’re leaving,” Quinn said.

“In about a week’s time,” said dad.

In a week’s time it would be the 9th of March and Helen and dad would be gone before my birthday on the 12th. I’m not a big birthday guy, I don’t need a huge celebration and prefer to keep it intimate but combined with their total lapse of memory regarding it and their lackadaisical attitude pertaining to me and how their supposed holiday had apparently surpassed any concern for my wellbeing and combined with the revelation that I would be alone with Quinn in our house, not all bad in the scheme of things but with the current situation and all these things together it brewed in the cauldron of my stomach and made me sick.

I excused myself unable to take much more of this humiliating conversation and Helen made a big deal of it like I was being unreasonable and spitting the dummy at the two of them but thankfully my dad told her to stop and I walked upstairs in silence. The rest of them broke into hushed discussion when I was out of earshot, though from what I could tell it was mostly Helen and Quinn arguing back and forth. Any other time I might stay and eavesdrop but I wanted to forget about it all and retreated to my room and got as far under the covers as possible.

*

It was late and I wasn’t able to sleep. I sat in bed with my bedside lamp on reading Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God. Some light-hearted bedtime reading. The scene followed Lester Ballard in a dump yard as he met the incestuous bunch that ran the place and it made me feel a little gross but grossly intrigued may be a better way to put it.

There was a knock on my door and it startled me. I heard Quinn’s voice on the other side, she spoke softly, caring and like warm honey as opposed to her usually boisterous voice.

“Can we talk?” she said.

“I’m sorry but I’m not really in the mood.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please I need some space.”

“Well can I just say something then. You don’t have to say anything.”

I didn’t respond but I put my book down.

“Ummm. Okay, well,” she began. “I just, I can’t sleep because it feels like you kind of hate me right now and I’m sorry if it’s because of the way I was acting but I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me.” She sighed. “Mum and dad told me about their trip the other night and it just made me so mad y’know, like especially cause I was thinking about how you might have SIVID, which like, I don’t care if you do, and I don’t want you to get in your head about it. But like, I’m on your side Bailey, I think it’s bullshit the way they’re acting like it’s not a big deal, I mean I know I kind of brushed it off at first but the more I think about it the more worried I get, and my god I can’t believe they’re leaving before your birthday. Like genuinely, more and more I’m realising how much they barely pay attention to me and all of my achievements feel like the only time they’ll ever look at me like I’ve done anything, well I mean it’s mostly mum, your dad is supportive but he’s so like, non-existent, he is opinion is whatever hers is, what’s that Fontaine’s lyric? Never take your two cents from someone else. But with this fuckin’ lavish oo la la Oman thing and how they literally forgot your birthday, and that’s the thing! Like then I asked mum if she knew when my birthday was and she thought it was in fucking August. It’s all a load of shit man, they’re so absorbed in each other and the older they get the worse they get.”   

By this point I had moved to sit on the edge of my bed, only a pace or two away from my door, listening intently to what she had to say. I heard her lean back against the door.

“It’s just I’ve been feeling further apart from all my friends and the last two years have been really lonely and I’ve really missed you okay? And, I really want you to know that no matter what happens I’ll take care of you, okay? Even if, y’know, this SIVID thing goes the whole way and I have to carry you around in my pocket or something or like, cut up all your food into tiny pieces, but no matter what, I will keep you safe, I promise you that. I don’t want you to be afraid of me, I care about you so much and it’s been killing me that it’s felt like there’s some wall between us. At the end of the day, Mum and dad might not care so much about us but we can make up for that, right?”

I was on the verge of tears it felt like, my voice caught in my throat. There were too many things trying to come out all at once.

Quinn sighed again. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.” She stood up and the door breathed in the frame as her weight no longer rested on it. “Night Bailey, love you.”

Her footsteps receded down the hall and I was filled with this urge to yank it open and chase after her and embrace her and tell her I loved her too. I wanted to kiss her. God I wanted to kiss her. But I was frozen stuck in my complicated feelings.