Chapter 2 – A Reasonably Prudent Person
"Steve? Honey? I’m back. What do you want to eat?” Fuck, Steve thought to himself. She’s home. Despite knowing that the process was effectively irreversible, Steve had still entertained some faint hope that the shrinking would only have been temporary, and that maybe he would have been back to normal before Amy walked through the door. Accepting, for now at least, that this would be the status quo for the foreseeable future, he resolved to get Amy’s attention, somehow. He knew one of the first things she would do would be to get changed, but the dresser was on the other side of the room, and he had no means of scaling it. Plus, the bedroom lighting was dim compared to the rest of the house, and it was already dark outside. His best chance of notice would be through the bane of his existence on hungover mornings: those excessively bright bathroom lights.
“Steve?” he heard Amy call again. He stood up, and began a light jog toward the bathroom, immediately becoming winded. Jeez, Amy wasn’t kidding, I really have let myself go. Being so close to the floor, he could feel the thuds and vibrations from Amy’s footfalls resonating throughout the house. Though he heard her divert to the kitchen, he knew he realistically had only minutes before she came in. He tried to pick up the pace a bit, his thighs immediately cramping from underuse and dehydration. Fuck me, it’s hell getting old, though he knew the root cause was less age-related and more alcohol-induced. Gasping and doubled over, he had nearly made it to the threshold to the bathroom when he heard Amy enter the bedroom.
He knew he was small, but this was his first time seeing what normal height looks like from his vantage point. His petite wife, who normally (and adorably, he thought) had to stand on her tippy toes to kiss him on the lips, was a monolithic colossus. The sense of scale was overwhelming, immediately bringing to mind certain scenes from the Hollywood Godzilla reboot in 2014. The cute girl with the little button nose that he had easily and giddily carried into the bedroom on their wedding night was now a terrifying force of nature.
The gawking, of course, did him no favors in his effort to get to the bathroom, as he observed Amy approaching the nightstand to cap off the Blanton’s Gold bottle before heading across the room to her dresser to grab a pair of his shorts and a t-shirt. He always got a kick out of seeing her in his outsized clothes, reminiscent of when he would try on his dad’s suits in the mirror as a child. The dim reverberations he had felt as she walked around the house earlier now felt like tremors under his feet, threatening to upend him as she began to approach the bathroom. Suddenly, she glanced in his direction. He briefly entertained the hope that, against all odds, he had been spotted, but then he followed Amy’s gaze to the MicroMD remote prototype still laying on the floor.
As she bent down to pick it up, he saw his wife in a completely new light from a completely new angle. Her blond hair fell forward over her shoulders, framing her face and nearly brushing the floor. The shadow of the cleavage visible under her blouse was less arousing and more reminiscent of a bottomless canyon. Despite these observations, however, the thing that stood out to him the most was those emerald green eyes he had fallen head over heels for. He knew she would never hurt him willingly (except when I ask her to, he thought with a smirk), but from this angle, at this perspective, he could not help but feel that those beautiful eyes had taken on a predatory aspect.
This simple action of bending over to pick something up, a banal, routine occurrence that he had witnessed countless times, became a spectacle. He watched in rapt attention as she grabbed the remote, briefly inspected it, did that adorable shrug of the shoulders that she does, and placed it on the nightstand. Only when she pivoted and began to walk toward the bathroom once more did he realize what his transfixion may have cost him. She clearly had not seen him, and with his clothes tucked under her arm, she walked toward the bathroom. Those petite strides that she ordinarily needed two of to keep pace with one of his now seemed to cover miles with each step. He watched her socked left foot land somewhere in front of him before the right foot lifted in the air.
In that same inexplicable fashion that allows humans to catch a ball instinctively, his quick mental calculation resulted in an inescapable conclusion: she’s going to step right on me! It was all happening so quickly, barely any time to formulate an escape plan or dodge. As it so often does during crisis, however, time seemed to slow down as he watched Amy’s foot coming down overhead. He had enough time to register the weave on the socks, the discoloration on the ball of the foot and the heel from both chronic and recent use, the contours of her high arch and her cute toes pushing at the fabric, Amy’s foot radiating a slight, damp warmth and faint odor of sweat as it approached. He did the only thing he could in that moment and dropped down to the floor in a ball to cover his head. He felt the fabric of the sock come down on him first, for a fraction of a second, before the incalculable weight of Amy’s entire body pressed down, forcing him from the huddled position he had taken and flattening him against the wood floor.
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Amy felt the object under her toes, almost under the ball of her foot, give way as she stepped on it. She rolled her eyes, convinced she was now going to be washing the unmistakable scent of the brown marmorated stink bug from her clothing once again. Things are a god-damned menace, she thought to herself before lifting her foot up and bending down to scrutinize the critter.
That’s funny, she thought as her face approached the floor in inspection, it almost looks like it has the shape of…. But as she got closer and the creature came into focus, there was no mistaking it: IS THAT A PERSON??!!
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Steve knew that once Amy saw it was him that she had crushed, she would be inconsolable. He regretted the toll it would take on her conscience, the overwhelming logistical nightmare that would follow in sorting out his estate without a will, his ownership shares in the firm, the life insurance. His dear wife was about to be put through the mental and emotional wringer. And yet, some part of him was glad it was her. For all the strain he had put on their marriage in recent months, it could not be said that he died alone. He was with his wife right until the last moment, quite literally closer to her than he had ever been before.
He felt a distinct crunching sensation as the exoskeleton of the shrinking suit gave way beneath the weight of Amy’s foot. He would be ground instantaneously into an almost unrecognizable paste. Amy’s foot pressed him out of the ball position he had curled into protectively, flattening him face down against the floor. He felt the pressure on his shoulder blades, on his ribs and on his spine, feeling them bend to an excruciating limit before they would inevitably break. But just when he thought that moment was imminent, the pressure stopped building. He risked a glance upward, being able to see in the dim light filtering through Amy’s sock exactly where her foot had landed: with him under the arch of her toes, just in front of the ball of her foot. If her stride had been one inch longer, he would be dead already.
He had time enough to register the stale odor of Amy’s foot before she lifted it off him. Amy was fastidiously clean, maintaining a level of hygiene that bordered on neurotic. Even with that cleanliness, however, Amy was a human just like anyone else: put a socked foot in a shoe all day, and there will be an odor.
Whereas before he had felt that Amy’s gaze was intimidating, as her face closed distance to the ground, she took on an angelic mien to Steve. Maybe it was the light on the ceiling playing through the strands of her hair, maybe it was her beauty even in something mundane, but in that moment, she radiated divinity as a goddess. In reality, however, it was because his executioner had now become his savior.
He saw those emerald eyes grow closer and closer before they began to widen, shock clearly registering in her expression. At a loss, he smiled sheepishly upwards and shrugged.
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“STEVE??!! WHAT…THE…ACTUAL…FUCK??!!!” Amy cried out, perhaps at too high a volume for her greatly diminished spouse as he winced and covered his ears. After the advent of MicroMD, size changing was no longer as outlandish to conceive as it had been previously. Even still, it was widely understood amongst the public at large that reduction of organic matter was decades away. Amy quickly scooped up her husband, bringing him closer to her face as she walked carefully to the bed and sat down, feeling as though she might faint.
“Babe…” Steve began, before Amy cut him off. “Honey, I just….just give me a minute, please.” Amy’s mind chose to run wild with dire implications and scenarios. I almost killed him. Steve, my…husband. I almost crushed him like a bug. Tears began to well up in her eyes as she processed the enormity of the moment. The last thing he would’ve seen before dying painfully was the bottom of my dirty sock… Amy’s face took on a blank, vacant stare as it all began to set in. “Stay here,” she said, standing up once more and placing him gingerly down on the bed.
She walked calmly into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, feeling a panic attack coming up. She hadn’t had one of these since finals in her senior year of undergraduate college. She felt the gorge beginning to rise in the back of her throat and quickly ran to the toilet, flipping open the lid with no time to spare before depositing that protein shake she had consumed moments earlier into the bowl. After she was done heaving, she slumped down and leaned her back against the toilet, mind numb and body limp.
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Regret. That’s the first thing Steve felt. He saw the spectrum of emotions playing across his wife’s face, going from shock, to sadness, to sickness. He heard her vomiting in the bathroom, and instinctually he rose to his feet to go console her, before realizing it would take him ages to cross the room again, even if he could figure out how to get down from the bed.
Shame. That’s the second thing he felt. Shame in that he had given his wife this scare, but something more than that. Something less wholesome and more…insidious. He was ashamed because, despite the near-death experience and the human catastrophe playing out, he was aroused. At least somewhat aroused. As the panic over his impending death had waned, the dark recesses of his mind that had always secretly enacted this precise scenario began to take over.
It was a simple gesture, much like taking a step, that he knew his wife would not find arousing in the slightest. All she had done was pick him up. But at this size, the detail was incredible. He was able to take in the distinct lines in her palm and fingerprints as she reached for him, and the fingers closed over his body. He felt the faint warmth and clamminess emanating from her palm as it enveloped him and lifted him ever skyward. He caught the scent of her hand lotion, the one she kept in the glovebox of her car during the winters to apply immediately after leaving the office. She could crush me like a grape, he thought to himself. One squeeze and half of me is leaking out the bottom of her grip. Those dainty, soft little hands he had clasped at the altar when the minister had pronounced them husband and wife now could each easily engulf his entire body without any part of him being visible to the outside world.
That should’ve terrified him. Instead, the mere thought of it caused the blood to begin flowing to his loins, the beginnings of a stir within his boxer shorts. As she had picked him up, he had passed her perky B-cup breasts, still hanging as high and proud on her chest as the day he had met her. And that perfume. Nothing triggers memory like scent, and he was well familiar with Amy’s perfume of choice. He had smelled it every time she leaned over him at the office to grab papers, every time she had passed him by the copy machine. It was the scent of seduction, as far as his mind was concerned. A sweet floral aroma with a lingering wisp of lavender.
He knew he should’ve felt more concern for Amy’s wellbeing. He didn’t like his lower brain skewing his priorities this easily without his direction. But he couldn’t help it. He was hopelessly and helplessly attracted to his wife. Always had been. He didn’t have to ask himself the question of whether he was a bad person. He knew just trying on the suit in the mirror and risking this exact outcome was selfish beyond reckoning. He also knew that, for now at least, the suit would not be functional. It was damaged significantly, past the point of being operational. Even if it were still functional, there was no setting to reverse what had been done. Like it or not, he and Amy now had to make the best of this situation. The beginnings of a persuasive dialogue began to play through his head. An opening argument, one might call it.
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With tremendous effort of will, Amy placed her hand on the bathroom sink and lifted herself upward. She realized with faint amusement that, despite everything that had just transpired, she still had Steve’s shorts and t-shirt tucked under one arm. She slipped out of her work clothes and into his relaxation attire. These have always barely fit me, but they certainly won’t come close to fitting him right now.
She glanced at herself in the mirror, seeing the streaks of makeup under her eyes and realizing for the first time that she had been crying. As she moistened a cotton pad and dabbed under her eyes, she caught a whiff of her breath. The sickly sweetness of the protein shake lingered on her tongue and in the back of her nose, coupled with the unmistakable, universal scent of vomit. She grabbed her toothbrush and brushed her tongue off, following it up by swishing her mouth with mouthwash. As she spat the mouthwash into the sink and looked back up at herself, she let out a delirious chuckle. What am I doing, she thought, my husband is an inch tall on our mattress right now, and I’m worrying about this. Old habits, she mused.
Meeting her own gaze in the mirror and visibly gathering her will, she brushed her hair behind her shoulders and exited the bathroom. “Hun, I’m going to sit down now,” she announced as she approached the bed. It felt patently silly to narrate her every move, but after she had come within centimeters of ending her husband’s life, she wasn’t leaving anything up to chance anymore. Of course, now that she knew what to look for, she spotted Steve immediately on the bed, exactly where she had left him. She got a faint sense of amusement out of seeing that Steve barely occupied even a fraction of the indent her butt had left on their memory foam mattress. He wouldn’t even occupy a fraction of a single cheek. I suppose I’m now going to have to watch everywhere I sit too, in addition to watching my every step, she thought to herself.
She slowly walked toward the bed and sat down next to him, watching as the mere impact of her body on the mattress threatened to topple him over. She looked over at him. That boyish, dimple-laden smile that had captured her heart looked back at her. “You okay, Ames?” Steve asked. “No,” she responded with more than a little indignation, “I’m about the furthest thing from it right now. But let’s not worry about me at the moment.”
“You know,” Steve began, “you don’t have to announce your every move,” trying to make the situation sound just a little more normal. “The hell I don’t, Steve,” she answered angrily. “I could’ve killed you. WOULD have killed you, were it not for dumb luck. How the fuck is this even possible?” For the first time, she took notice of the weird outfit Steve was wearing, and her mind began to connect the dots. She had reviewed the same discovery from the MicroMD trial that her husband had. Hell, she had drafted the litigation hold notice herself. She knew MicroMD had been working on a prototype, a suit for humans…
“Stephen…you didn’t,” she stated with disbelief. “Didn’t what, baby?” he said. She could barely hear him at this size. “Don’t feign innocence. The suit. You took it. From their facility. That’s what you’re wearing, isn’t it? That’s how this happened?” she questioned. She saw the telltale flush beginning to flood his cheeks, the hallmark of her husband’s guilt when he was caught red-handed. “Babe, you have to understand. I wasn’t ever going to use it! It was just…the idea of it. At least, you know, until they…” He cut himself off before the idiotic iteration escaped his lips.
“Before they what, Steve?” Amy answered, her frustration rising. “Before they, you know,” he said shuffling his feet in place, “came up with a way…to, uh, reverse it…” he finished quietly.
“Steve, we’ve been together a long time. You’re a brilliant man. Truly brilliant. But for fuck’s sake, sometimes I could swear that, every now and then, your brain churns out one colossally moronic idea just to balance out all the great ones,” she said with a huff. “Do you know the risks? COULD you even POSSIBLY know the risks? Will this give you cancer? Are we going to go to prison? Is a rat going to run off with you in the middle of the night? How much thought, if any, did you ACTUALLY give this?” she asked angrily.
“We don’t have rats, sweety,” he said with that normally charming grin. “Don’t get cute with me. Stop deflecting. Do you have any idea how we’re going to fix this? Please, PLEASE, tell me that somewhere in that discovery we got from MicroMD you saw something about regrowing organic matter. Something that I missed,” she practically begged him.
“Well, not, ahem, as such…exactly,” he responded bashfully. “STEPHEN, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?” she cried, feeling the tears threatening to come out once again. “Baby, don’t worry. They figured out how to regrow the inorganic matter basically contemporaneous with how to reduce it. A fix for this can’t be that far off,” he responded.
“And HOW, exactly, are we supposed to ask for that fix without going to prison? Is MicroMD even still going to be in business? Play the tape through Steve, as you’re always so fond of saying. How and where does this end?” she asked with apparent desperation.
“Babe, don’t worry. We’ll figure this out. We don’t have to tell them how this happened. It could be a, uh, an ‘unintended side effect’ of one of their other products. Heck, we could just let the statute of limitations play out before coming clean, if we ever even HAVE TO come clean,” Steve reasoned.
This motherfucking, selfish, recalcitrant, idiot of a man, Amy thought. She felt the fear and frustration rapidly combining into a spectacular rage. But then she saw the look on his face. The clear remorse, his gaze downcast as he stared at his feet, averting her eyes. And as it had so many times before with Steve Clover, her heart softened a bit. “Steve, honey. I love you. You know that. And I won’t abandon you. We WILL figure this out, together. But…but…did you even think, for one second, what this could mean for me?” she asked in almost a whisper. “How my life will now be taking care of you, without you ever being able to take care of me in return? This has, potentially irrevocably, transformed our relationship from a partnership to one-sided dependency.”
“Baby, again, I never intended for this to actually happen. I would just try on the suit for the idea of it, and then take it off and put it away. It was an accident. I was walking out of the bathroom to um, get…something,” he trailed off. It was brief, but she knew him well, and she caught it. The quick dart of the eyes to the bottle sitting on the nightstand. “To get another fucking drink, you mean,” she said in weary exasperation.
“Well, um, yes. I’m not going to lie to you. But then I tripped with the remote in my hand and, next thing I knew, your foot was coming at me. Your toes are cute in those socks, by the way, especially from this perspective,” he said with that beguiling grin.
“Steve, you have got to be fucking kidding me. Don’t tell me you’re getting a literal rise,” she said while glancing briefly below his waist, “out of this.”
“Babe, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’ll find ways to help you around the house. Hell, I’ll find ways to help you at work. Bring me with you! It’ll be like having an earpiece in during the LSATs. I can give you all the answers!” he said with an enthusiasm that Amy found vaguely off-putting. “And besides, you know how bad I’ve always wanted to, um, do this…” he trailed off.
Amy’s gaze flattened, her eyes narrowing. This horny fucking bastard, she said. Their banter and rapport achieving some degree of normalcy over the past few minutes, Amy’s panic was quickly subsiding, leaving a draining emptiness in its wake.
“Steve, honey. I’m exhausted. I need to lie down. How can I do that while keeping you out of trouble?” she asked wearily. “Easy,” Steve responded with a grin, “just put me in your bra!” Amy groaned audibly. “Honey, can we please NOT do this? Please? I just need to rest,” she said with a clouded sadness in her eyes. That seemed to take the wind out of his sails a bit. He looked up at her, concern in his expression. “Okay honey. And, I know I haven’t said it yet, but…I’m sorry. Truly sorry. I never meant for this to happen, and you’re right: it’s not fair to you. I love you, and I hope you know I would never do this to you by choice,” he said genuinely.
He seemed legitimately repentant and contrite in that moment, and Amy’s heart softened a bit. “I know, honey, and I love you too. I just need…time. Time to process this. To come up with a plan,” she said earnestly.
“I understand, babe. Just put me on my pillow. I’ll stay put, you don’t need to worry about me,” he responded. “Steve, honey, worrying about you is basically ALL I can do right now,” she said with a rueful smile. She picked him up and moved him over to his pillow, subconsciously taking note of how he rolled to the bottom of the indent left by his own head mere hours ago, when his head was hundreds of times the size of his entire body right now.
Amy laid down on her back and closed her eyes, feeling the panic almost tangibly seeping out of her. Within minutes, she felt herself begin to doze, but not before a thought entered her head. She cracked one eye open to make sure Steve was still on his pillow. He was, laying on his back like she was, arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the ceiling fan.
“No funny business, mister,” she muttered. I wouldn’t put it past him to do some exploring while I rest, she thought.
“No funny business, ma’am,” he responded with a smile and mock salute. With that, Amy closed her eyes once more and felt sleep begin to claim her.
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“No funny business, ma’am,” Steve said while saluting his wife. He got a small dose of satisfaction out of seeing the glimmer of wry amusement on Amy’s face at his response. The armor weakens, he thought to himself. Laying on his back with his arms tucked behind his head, Steve watched the blades on the ceiling fan spin as he began to sober up a bit. There was a hypnotic quality to the fan’s rotation, but despite the weariness from his ordeal and from the alcohol leaving his system, he found sleep difficult. He was too….excited.
It's all possible now, he thought. All of it. Wonder what it would take to convince her to wear her tennis shoes tomorrow with me in them while she goes to the gym, he mused to himself not entirely rhetorically. He quickly shook himself out of it. Why don’t we start with convincing her to let me off the bed first.
He felt the bed underneath him moving slightly with the ebb and flow of Amy’s deep and even breaths. As he glanced over, a brief snort escaped her cute button nose. God she’s cute when she snores, he thought. Of course, she would always steadfastly deny that it ever happened. One time he had presented her with a recording he took overnight, and she accused him of framing her, he recalled with a laugh.
He heard the soft whoosh as her breath escaped her lips. Those lips, he thought, look more pillowy than, well, this pillow. He could see the faint gap, Amy sleeping with her mouth slightly open. How easy it would be to just slip inside those lips… No. Not only would she never forgive him or trust him again, he might actually kill her if she choked on him. My wife…can choke on my body. Like a meatball. That’s crazy, he thought. Just the mental image of him caught in her throat caused his member to rise to half-mast.
His eyes tracked downward, seeing the muscles move in Amy’s throat as she swallowed saliva, further fueling his arousal. But where his gaze ultimately settled was on her breasts. Rhythmically rising and falling in time with her breaths. Up, and down, up, and down. He could see the faint outline of her bra underneath his baggy t-shirt. It was so cute when she wore his stuff.
The allure of those breasts was proving quite difficult to ignore. His eyes flicked back up toward Amy’s face, taking close note of her eyes, seeing them move back and forth under the lids. REM sleep, he thought, she’s out cold. He rose to his feet, climbing quietly out of the indent his head had left in the pillow and sliding down to the mattress, approaching Amy’s body as her chest continued to rise and fall. Just a peek, he reasoned. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Steve reached the t-shirt and began to climb.