Puck Boomer spread his arms out so the deputy could shackle him. Puck was a repeat offender, and had received a life sentence for killing two men, in spite of the fact that it had been a case of self defense. Two men had pulled guns out, and threatened to kill everyone in a crowded room where Puck had been hanging out. Puck grabbed the gun from one of them, grabbed him and used his body as a shield, and shot the other suspect, while the other suspect shot back at Puck. Both men had died before the ambulance had arrived, and because Puck had been on parole for second degree robbery, the judge found him guilty of first degree murder, in spite of the police officers who testified that in their opinion, Puck had been a hero.

The events leading up to today could be traced back many years. Back in 2118, when Puck was a small boy, neutrino dissimilators had been invented. People could be successfully miniaturized, then re-enlarged without any harm to their physiology. For the next ten years, politicians lobbied to put a neutrino dissimilator in the hands of every school-kid in America, and in 2128, they succeeded. By 2136, the politicians had a different goal in mind regarding neutrino dissimilation: The Stature Statute.

The same year Puck was fighting his case in court was an election year. Congress and the senate both lobbied to get the Stature Statute passed through legislation. The law was simple; if you were serving a life term for a violent crime, you would be miniaturized and sold at an auction house. This would raise money to fight the deficit, and cut down on taxpayer money that would otherwise go to housing these inmates. Some politicians were completely against the Stature Statute, as were the families of inmates who were serving life sentences for violent crimes. The vote went to the people, and in 2136, the people voted in favor of the Stature Statute. And the eighth amendment, outlawing cruel and unusual punishment? It was repealed.

When Puck's shackles were secured, he was handed a brown paper sack containing his lunch, and led to a room where he sat on a plastic bench with about a dozen other convicts. Everyone was shackled around their waist, with their left and right hands cuffed to the chain surrounding their waists. They had just enough give to reach their hands to their mouths, so they could consume their lunches.

When all fifteen of them were there, the door was locked and a television screen came on. It was a cartoon used to explain neutrino dissimilation theory to the convicts. A cartoon professor was asked by a talking seal how shrinking was accomplished. The cartoon professor pointed to a black board that had cartoon atoms with orbiting electrons swirling around them. One of the atoms expanded until it filled the entire screen, and the professor explained that the protons, neutrons, and electrons were composed of quarks which were held together by gluon particles.

"But how do they shrink, professor?" the talking cartoon seal asked.

By now, each blue quark and red gluon particle were clearly labeled on the blackboard, and the professor introduced a new particle: "This is a neutrino! It's the smallest particle of matter known to man!"

"How small is a neutrino?" the talking seal asked.

"Small enough that it would take one billion neutrinos to compose a single proton particle!" the professor answered.

The neutrino particles on the screen were white-colored specks. The professor continued: "Neutrino dissimilation occurs when we excite the matter composing the outer layers of the quark and gluon particles, causing them to discharge matter in the form of neutrino particles!"

At this point, the protons, neutrons and electrons of an oxygen atom began to decrease in size as the tiny neutrino particles flew off. "Neutrinos are so small," the professor continued, "that if one passed through the earth, it would travel straight out the other side without bumping into a single atom on the way through! When a person is miniaturized, neutrinos fly out in all directions, never to be recovered!"

Puck was getting annoyed that his fate was being explained to him by a couple of "cute" cartoon characters. Some of the other guys were ignorant felons, but Puck had gone to college and understood neutrino dissimilation theory. As the professor explained how the relative distance between the atoms remains constant due to the diminishing force of the charge of the shrinking electrons, some of the other convicts were confused. It appeared that the talking seal in the cartoon understood instantly, but awareness didn't come easily to some of the others, and when the lights came back on, Puck took the time to explain the electron aspect of the theory to a couple of the other convicts.

Randy was an old-school convict who had started to go to Youth Authority at a young age, and knew next to nothing about math and science. Puck tried to explain the theory to him, but failed to make him understand. It was very important to Randy to understand the technical aspects of what was about to occur to him and the others. Puck got an orange out of his lunch, and retrieved another orange from another convict. Holding the two oranges about ten oranges apart, he tried again to explain the theory.

"Imagine these two oranges are two atoms, about ten atoms apart from each other. If they were to be shrunk to the size of marbles, they would need to be closer together, to stay ten atoms apart. Now let me tell you about electrons! They all have a negative charge, and they can't get close to each other, because that would be like putting two north ends of a magnet together. They would repel each other!"

One of the other convicts spoke up, "I used to play with magnets when I was a kid! If you put them a certain way, they push away from each other!"

"That's right!" Puck answered. "So if the electrons are shrinking at the same rate as the nucleus of the atom, then the strength of the charge will diminish! This would push the miniaturized atoms closer together, so they maintain the same proportionate distance apart from each other as they do at normal size!"

"Well, why didn't you just explain it that way to begin with?" Randy said. 

Another convict commented, "It probably takes a lot of computer memory to control the positions of all those atoms!"

"Computers aren't even involved!" Puck replied. "You're thinking of teleportation, where the position of every proton, neutron, and electron are stored in the computer's memory. With neutrino dissimilation, it's a chain reaction! The neutrino dissimilation process isn't controlled or monitored by a computer! The only reason a computer is involved is to control the application of string theory, to surround the miniaturized person's body with a dimensional brane, to protect the miniaturized electrons from interaction with normal-sized electrons!!"

"What about air?" Randy asked. "How can we breathe normal-sized air molecules?"

"The dimensional brane that surrounds our bodies shrinks normal-sized air molecules so we can breathe, and when we expel carbon-dioxide, it returns to normal size when it passes outside of the dimensional brane!" said Puck. "The only thing we need is food and water to be shrunk down to our proportionate size!"

A deputy came in and swiped a card that opened up a sliding automated door. He led them into the next room, where there was a large vehicle with an open gull-wing door in the side. This is the vehicle that they would be inside of during the miniaturization process, and the vehicle would shrink with them, making it easier for them to be moved to the auction house where they would be sold.

In less than a minute it was over. The vehicle was shrunk down from about thirty-six feet in length down to about eighteen inches in length. None of the convicts felt any physical sensation during the miniaturization process, which was instantaneous. None of the convicts could be certain exactly how tall they now stood, but Puck guessed they averaged an inch and a half to two inches tall, max.

A female deputy walked into the chamber to retrieve the vehicle for transport. Her black leather boots sounded very loud to Puck and the others. Less than a minute later, they were secured in a shelf in a sheriff's van, and driven to the auction house, which was about ten miles away. The interior of the vehicle Puck and the others were inside of was air-conditioned, so they were comfortable on their journey.

It was difficult to see out the windows, so after a minute or so of jostling, they didn't realize they had reached their destination at the auction house. The gull-wing door opened vertically, and some kind of smoke began to emerge from the air-conditioning vents, obviously to prevent stragglers from hiding inside the vehicle. Puck emerged with the others, and found himself standing on a table in front of a seated audience.

"They're huge!" Randy told Puck. Indeed, the audience looked bigger than a group of people from Brobdingnag should've looked. Gulliver was on a scale of one to twelve in comparison to the Brobdingnagians, so to them, he would've appeared to stand six inches tall by their standard of measurement, assuming he was six feet tall back in England. These people were at least on a scale of thirty-six to one compared to Puck and the others.

Puck looked around, and saw six other vehicles like the one he had arrived in. All together, there were about a total of ninety convicts for sale on the auction table. A female deputy removed the vehicles, after counting to make sure all the miniaturized convicts were accounted for.

Randy got close to Puck's ear, and whispered: "They shrunk us down this small so we'd be easier to swallow! That was one of the finer details about the Stature Statute, once they buy us, they can pretty much do anything they want to us!"

Puck knew what Randy was saying was probably true. Nobody wanted six-inch-tall convicts running around, what with all of the hand-held neutrino dissimilators nearly everyone had these days. The corrections department wanted to make sure the miniaturized convicts would be easy to control.

For the next hour, the female deputy conducted the auction, and over seventy convicts were sold off. Puck noticed several different women he would enjoy being purchased by, if he had the choice, but he had no choice. One of the young women, a college sorority girl, bid on Puck when it was his turn. Puck was amazed at the kind of money that his miniaturized comrades had been sold for, and realized that this auction was for people of privilege, and no one else.

One of the affluent members of the audience was a 13-year-old girl with short brown hair and gray eyes, and because children weren't allowed to make a purchase, her father was doing it for her. It was obvious by her shouting that the father would immediately turn over any purchase he made to his daughter.

"Daddy, don't let everyone else buy all the cute ones! I only want to swallow the cute ones! Oh, daddy, get that one!" and she pointed at Puck. The college girl also seemed intent on buying Puck, and a bidding war erupted. The thirteen-year-old girl looked at Puck, and addressed him personally: "For all this trouble, if I do get a hold of you, I'll send you crashing to the depths of my belly!"

Puck sincerely hoped the college girl had the money to outbid the father of the evil thirteen-year-old.

The young hazel-eyed blonde who bid on him won, and Puck was led to a conveyor belt apparatus that to him seemed like an escalator, and rode it down to another table below the stage, where the college girl could acquire him. Cardboard boxes were provided free of charge to the buyers, and the college girl grabbed one and held it so the top of the box was flush with the edge of the table Puck was standing on, and she ushered him to jump in, He did, and found that his decreased mass allowed him to jump farther than he could have at normal size.

Before Puck jumped in, he turned and saw the father of the thirteen-year-old who tried to acquire him pick up Randy and put him in a cardboard box for his daughter.

"How long will these captives last?" the father asked the girl.

"Daddy," the girl replied, "I promise to make these ones last longer than five minutes before I swallow them!" and with that, she licked her lips and took the cardboard box with Randy inside. Puck felt sorry for Randy, but was more relieved to know he had been purchased by what appeared to be a non-violent young college student. That changed as soon as they got to her hover-car.

Puck was in the box with at least a dozen other captives, and the young woman set the box in the passenger seat, and introduced herself.

"I'm Laetitia! I'm a sophomore at a University, and I'm in a sorority. As you can probably guess, the things sorority girls do means you guys probably won't live long!"

She allowed that to sink in for a few moments, before continuing.

"We're going to use you guys in a contest tonight! We're going to be blindfolded, and we're going to see which girl can swallow the most convicts hanging from candyvines that are tied to the ceiling!"

Puck immediately spoke up, trying to explain that he was railroaded by a crooked district attorney, but all of the other miniaturized convicts started yelling at the same time, and his words were drowned out.

"Silence!" Laetitia commanded. The convicts obeyed. "Whenever I give you pathetic worms an order, I expect to be obeyed. If any of you ever dare to defy me, I'll say screw the contest tonight, and swallow you where you stand! Got it?"

Everyone murmured their assent. Laetitia drove her hovercar at about a ten meter elevation through the hills between Kern county and San Luis Obispo, then proceeded to drive recklessly through the city streets of San Luis Obispo on her way to the sorority house near Cal Poly university. Nobody had bothered to try to escape, because they feared Laetitia's wrath. Puck hoped in the near future he could convince her he didn't deserve to die, so he kept quiet.

Laetitia grabbed the box of captives violently, and carried it into the house. About half a dozen girls gathered around a table as Laetitia dumped out the box onto the surface of the table. Counting Puck, there were fifteen captives.

"Maybe Missi should get the lion's share of the captives," a cute brunette wearing a ponytail said to Laetitia. "After all, without her father's money, we never could've bought all of these captives for the party tonight!"

Missi was a long-haired blonde. She said, "There's plenty more money where that came from! I say we all share the captives, and use them for the contest tonight!"

The other girls agreed, and thanked Missi for her generosity. 

One of the girls with long blonde hair woven into twin braids said, "I spent the whole morning hanging the hooks on the ceiling! There's twenty hooks!"

"That's great, Heidi!" Laetitia replied. "Did anyone remember to get the candyvines to tie them up with?"

A girl who was shorter and stouter than the others grabbed a brown paper sack from a shelf and dumped out a dozen containers of candyvines. It was a type of licorice which was resilient enough to be tied into knots. Puck and his comrades walked over to the candyvine boxes.

"This doesn't look good!" Puck said to a convict.

"Maybe we'll get eaten by a cute one!" the convict replied.

One by one, the girls picked up the captives. When it was Puck's turn, Laetitia picked him up, and he said, "I killed in self defense! I shouldn't have to die like this!"

"Girls," Laetitia said to the others, "this guy says he got a bum rap."

"That's what they all say!" a cute red-head with long hair replied. "Just tell him your belly will be his tomb, and he'll shut up!"

"Nikki, I'm serious! This guy might be innocent! What should I do?"

Nikki, the redhead, replied: "I think that should be up to Missi. She paid for them, so if it's all right with her, then I think it's okay for you to let one of them live. But just that one, nobody else!"

"Missi?" Laetitia asked. "Is it okay if I let this one live and take him home with me?"

"Sure!" Missi said. "They're a dime a dozen, as far as I'm concerned. But I think that if you're taking that one, you should let the other girls swallow the rest of them, because there aren't enough of them to go around as it is, and it wouldn't be fair for you to get two of them!"

"Okay!" Laetitia replied. "Thanks, Missi!" Laetitia found a small jar in the kitchen, and dropped Puck inside, then placed the jar on the table, where Puck had a view of the other captives hanging from candyvines from the ceiling. The jar was made exclusively for long-term containment of a miniaturized captive. It had a miniaturized water tank bolted to the side, and a toilet for a captive to easily use. It also had an air pump to pull air in from outside the jar, and to pump carbon-dioxide from inside the jar to outside the jar. Before too long, the celebration started, and after each girl took several shots of tequila, one girl was blindfolded, and tried to catch a captive with her tongue and bite him off of the candyvine.

Some of the captives hung farther down than the others, which was convenient for the first girl, because she was really short. In spite of that, she made quick work of one of the captives, biting completely around him, then moments later, swallowing him utterly.

Each girl took her turn, and Puck's heart raced as he thought that there was no way any of these college girls would give up her entertainment by releasing any of the captives. Puck was free, but the others were doomed. One by one Puck watched, until he grew indifferent; it wasn't his fate to be swallowed, so why should he care? If he could help them, he would, but he couldn't, so why be concerned?

At the end of the festivities, Laetitia took Puck's jar with Puck inside, and got in her car and put the jar in a cupholder on the dashboard. When she arrived home, she put Puck's jar on her dresser in her bedroom. She fed Puck, gave him a thimble to use as a toilet, and another thimble filled with water for drinking. On her way out the door, she said she had a meeting with the sorority because it was Saturday, and that she was late. She left her bedroom door open as she left.

Laetitia had a fifteen-year-old sister named Lisa who lived in the same house, because Laetitia still lived with her parents. The curious teenager entered her older sister's room, and spotted Puck inside his jar. With the lid tightly screwed onto the top of the jar, Puck was helpless as the titanic teen lifted the jar in one hand and observed him.

"Cool!" the girl said, "Laetitia got a captive! I'm sure she won't mind if I swallow this one!"

With that, the girl carried the jar with Puck inside and left Laetitia's bedroom. Puck heard what she said, and banged on the interior wall of his glass prison, and shouted up to the mighty maiden: "Hey! Laetitia said she's going to let me live! You can't do this to me!"

The teen either didn't hear Puck, or completely ignored him. Twenty minutes later, the girl was at her friend's house, with Puck's jar nearby on a coffee table. The other girl had a twelve-pack her brother had left, and her parents were out of town for the weekend. Puck's captor pounded three cans of beer before bringing him into the conversation.

"I've always wanted to swallow a captive, I'm sure my sister wouldn't mind."

The other girl laughed. "Lisa, What if she makes you pay her back for swallowing her new toy?"

"I think it's worth it!" she said, reaching for the jar. She unscrewed the jar, and dumped Puck out into her hand, ignoring the two thimbles that dropped to the carpet.

"You can't do this to me!" Puck pleaded, "Your sister spared my life because I was wrongfully imprisoned!"

"Shut-up, slave!" the girl said loudly. "My belly will be your grave!"

As if that was the signal, the girl tossed Puck into her mouth and sealed her lips. After several moments, she managed to swallow him, and high-fived her friend. In the depths of the teen's stomach, Puck struggled to hold his breath. There was a small pocket of air, but if he didn't conserve his oxygen, he would suffocate.

Then beer began funneling down into the stomach, drenching Puck even further. From the amount of beer that was raining down, Puck estimated that the cruel teen must be trying to pound an entire can of beer as fast as she could.

"I think I'm going to puke!" Puck's captor said to her friend, and ran into the bathroom. After stopping up the sink, she let loose and a stream of vomit rushed from her mouth into the sink. With the second volley of puke, Puck was released from his murky prison. The girl rinsed him off when she was done throwing up.

"It's providence that you survived," she said. "I think I'll let you live. But I command you to not say a word of this to my sister!"

When the girl collected the thimbles and replaced them in the jar with Puck inside, she screwed the lid on and returned home. When Laetitia got home, Puck didn't tell her of his little adventure. From that day on, Puck became good friends with Laetitia and her younger sister Lisa, and vowed to do all in his power to try to repeal the Stature Statute. No matter how small he was, he planned on dedicating his life to making a difference in the world! 

The End