- Text Size +
Story Notes:

This is my first story, and I have a more limited idea of where I'm going to take it, but if people like it then I may expand it beyond those constraints. The first chapter is just the set-up and won't have any fun action yet, as I realized how easy it is to write 1000+ words without even really getting into the thick of things! Feedback appreciated.

Author's Chapter Notes:

Tom Andrews, a rising star with a bright future, finds himself in a difficult situation after a tough break-up and an unexpected act of revenge.

Tom let out a heavy, extended sigh as he gazed at the mountains of paperwork cluttering his desk. Friday night, and everyone else had already left the office, yet he was still here. As frustrated as he was by the absurd amount of catching-up he now had to do, on some level, he knew it was more or less his fault. He had spent the last week essentially secluded in his office each day, furiously working to make up for how much he had slacked off in the past few months. He was stressed beyond belief, and not just because of his job.

 

A week earlier, Tom’s already confusing world had been turned even further upside-down when, during a heated argument with his now ex-girlfriend Sarah, he had found himself suddenly fed-up and stormed out of her apartment, vowing never to see her again. It seemed sudden at the time, but looking back on it with a bit of post-relationship clarity, it was starting to make a good deal more sense.

 

They were both high-powered, eminently successful people, he a rising lawyer in a prestigious downtown firm, and she an account executive at a major marketing agency. He had loved her intelligence, her assertiveness, her go-getter attitude since they had first started dating, but as time passed and their responsibilities at their respective jobs increased, they began to get fewer and fewer opportunities to see each other. Tom had understood that it was just the way careers went sometimes, and though it was frustrating, he was committed to trying to keep things work, even if on a more casual level, at least until things cleared up and they could find more time for each other.

 

Sarah’s reaction hadn’t been quite the same, and it seemed that she was adapting to the changes in a much less cooperative manner than he had. When they did get to see each other, perhaps due to her unfortunate reaction to her own stresses, she was more curt, less affectionate, and frankly, much more domineering. She focused on sex to the exclusion of almost everything else, ringing him up for late night booty calls and then asking him to leave, and shedding many of the qualities that had led Tom to fall in love with her.

 

After several months of this steadily deteriorating state of affairs, something had snapped in Tom the previous weekend, and during a fight with her over the possibility of moving into her place, which she seemed unwilling to discuss calmly or rationally, he decided he’d had enough and left her apartment in a rage. They hadn’t spoken since, despite several angry texts and voicemails she’d left on his phone promising to make him sorry. He felt bad for her, as he knew the effects that job stress could have on someone (he was feeling them himself as well), but he simply couldn’t remain in an unhealthy relationship like that any longer.

 

Hence Tom’s quiet resignation to his current situation. He’d been so absorbed in the terrible frustration of the past several months of his imploding affair with his girlfriend that he’d let himself slip further and further behind on his work at the office. He knew it was stupid, and so the past week he had retreated from the world as he recovered from his break-up and decided to focus on getting himself back up to speed. So here he was, completely alone at work on a Friday night, ignoring the calls from all his friends urging him to come out to the bars with them to blow off steam and get over Sarah. Or so he thought.

 

A sudden knock on the door startled him as he sat deep in concentration staring at a particularly complicated contract on his desk.

 

“Mr. Andrews? Are you still in there?” came a sweet, feminine voice. It was his assistant Rosa, who he was sure would have gone home by now.

 

“Yes Rosa, come in.” She opened the door gingerly and strolled gracefully toward his desk. Tom was a genuinely good guy, not the type to take advantage of or be a clichéd sexist pig toward anyone who he worked with, but he couldn’t help taking in a good view of her as a bit of stress relief after not interacting with anyone for several hours. Rosa was a young, bronze-skinned Latina girl in her early twenties with flowing dark hair, deep chocolate brown eyes, and a smile that somehow managed to steal attention away from her lusciously full lips. She had been blessed with a body that had curves in all the right places, and it honestly blew his mind that she had been single as long as she had, as he’d learned from asking her from time to time about whether she was leaving for dates on any given night. If he hadn’t been with Sarah for so long, or had he been one of the more unscrupulous partners who didn’t give a second thought to cheating on their wives, he might have considered asking her out. With his mind so caught up in confusion over his ex-girlfriend, however, it wasn’t really at the top of his list of concerns.

 

“What are you still doing here? It’s 8 o’clock. You know you don’t have to stay late just because I do.”

 

“I know that Mr. Andrews. I just figured I’d catch up on some work as well, I don’t have anything to do tonight. And I felt bad knowing you’d be here all alone.”

 

“Aw, that’s sweet, thank you. But you don’t need to worry about me. You should be out having fun, hitting the clubs with your friends. It’s Friday night!”

 

“I could say the same for you. You can’t shut yourself up in here every night just because you’re upset about your girlfriend! You have to move on from bad situations like these!” She explained to him, her beautiful face brimming with sympathy. Something about her warmth and concern was suddenly especially comforting to him. He let out another sigh.

 

“Eh, I suppose you’re right. I’m just trying to go at my own pace, and start to readjust to living a normal life again. But burying myself in paperwork certainly isn’t going to help me relax. I guess I’ll call it a night. Can I walk you out?” he asked.

 

Her eyes lit up, “Of course! I’ll get my things.” Then suddenly, she remembered the reason she’d come in in the first place, and brought a small package out from behind her back, “Oh! I almost forgot. This was dropped off earlier in the day but I forgot to give it to you after lunch.” She handed it across the desk to Tom.

 

He looked the package over: it was a small, nondescript box wrapped in brown paper, addressed to him but without any return address. Hmm, someone must have hand delivered it, he thought. Strange.

 

“Thank you Rosa. Lemme just check this out and then get the rest of my paperwork organized and I’ll join you.”

 

“Alright!” She nearly skipped out of the room, but that fact escaped Tom as he was fixated on the strange package he’d received. He started to clean up a few things on his desk, but his curiosity got the better of him and he decided to open the box up. The paper and tape covering it were a bit of a hassle to get through, but he finally did away with them and found just another non-descript plastic container. Now even more puzzled, he opened the box and---

 

AGGH!

 

Suddenly he was hacking and coughing heavily. What had just happened? Did something just get sprayed in his face? Was he just pepper sprayed or something? He had no idea, but his vision was starting to clear, and as he groped around foolishly, he realized he’d dropped the box on the floor. He found it by his desk and picked it up, noticing a small mechanism with a bottle and a nozzle in it. Is that was had just sprayed him? Next to it, there also seemed to be a folded up note. He pulled it out of the box and unfolded it before reading it worriedly. As he skimmed the note over, his eyes began to widen.

 

Hello Thomas. I’m not sure whether or not you’ll be able to read this note, my friend wasn’t really able to guarantee me how quickly the solution would work. But I hope you can, because I’d love to see the look on your face as you realize what’s about to happen. I have a friend I made through on of our marketing contracts with a pharmaceutical company. She and I have spent the last few weeks talking about man troubles, and how frustrating an unappreciative man can really be. And when you had the unbelievable nerve to walk out the door on a girl like me…well let’s just say she was more than willing to help me take my desire to get revenge on you to a level I never would have dreamed of. She gave me a sample of a compound her company has been testing. A very secret compound, it probably won’t be on the market for years. I won’t bore you with the scientific details, but to put it simply, it’s a shrinking serum. Yes, you read that right. It’s a chemical that shrinks things down, makes them smaller, whatever you want to call it. It’s going to cut you down to size Tom, and make you feel as tiny as you deserve to be. I know you won’t believe this while you’re reading it, but don’t worry, you’ll feel the effects soon enough. And no, there isn’t a reversal serum. Maybe there will be in, oh, 10 years or so. But I wouldn’t really expect you to last quite that long at your new stature. Enjoy your probably very short new life!”

 

Tom was suddenly terrified. There was no name signed with the note, but he couldn’t really think of anyone other than one person who could have written it. This didn’t make any sense. It had to be impossible, but then why would Sarah do something so crazy. Could she actually be insane? He didn’t have much time to ponder the details of the situation, because suddenly he was starting to feel his chest burn. He let out an agonizing cry as his world started to spin and he stumbled backwards before slumping back in his chair. He just didn’t understand…his last thought before he blacked out was simply, what was going on?

 

You must login (register) to review.