“What are you d… hey!” Scott yelped as he felt himself lifted easily off the chair cushion by his arm.  Lifting her brother’s squirming body up to about the level of her face, Maggie smirked with delight to have Scott dangling so helplessly, even at his maximum height of twelve inches.

                “You didn’t do what I told you, and you know what Mom said.  She said she told you the rules.”

                “Maggie, you’re… my arm…” Scott winced, feeling as if his shoulder was threatening to pop out of its socket at the angle the treacherous teen was handling him like a ragdoll.

                “Yeah, well, it’s not my fault you’re hard to hold when you’re this big.  I don’t even like you this big.  Believe me, you’ll be a lot easier for me to handle in a minute.”

                “Maggie, stop it.”

                “Nuh-uh, Mr. Criminal,” Maggie retorted childishly as she sauntered toward the kitchen.  She tucked her brother roughly under her arm like a football while still gripping him tightly around his arm and hugged him powerfully against her hip, steadily tugging him higher into the crevice of her armpit to make sure he didn’t slip.  Frantically, Scott kicked his legs out at his sister’s chest and shoulders, but made zero progress in altering the situation.

                The ominous silver case was snapped open on the kitchen countertop and the PMRD settings correctly adjusted.  Scott was positive she must’ve woken up early and been practicing operating it in preparation for this moment.

                He was plopped unceremoniously onto the edge of the counter, face-to-chest with Maggie, who had no intention of letting go of his arm as she scooped the device up in her other hand and aimed it without hesitation directly at his face like a shotgun.

                Seeing the ravenous gleam in his sister’s eyes as she pinned him under the device’s barrel, and the uncontrollably gleeful grin crossing her lips as she pulled the trigger with a girly giggle, Scott could sense in every fiber of her being that she had indeed been waiting years for his moment to arrive.

                He had been reduced in size innumerable times over his ruthlessly troubled teenage years, to the point that most of the humiliation had been molded into one stinging memory, but this was different.  The feeling of his kid sister’s fist growing larger and larger around his arm as he sank into his t-shirt and shorts, and the sight of her adorable grinning countenance becoming more overbearing and ominous, was somehow more hollowing to his very being than any barely-explained shrinkage his mother had afforded him before.

                Her enormous hand was the perfect and most terrifying gauge of his progress.  Her fist, which already engulfed his arm, was becoming more like a steel claw, clamped around his torso.  He felt her fingers seemingly expanding outward on his skin, until each of was the size of his arm and finally, as she released him gently into the billowing folds of his shirt, he himself was the size of one of her fingers.

                As he disappeared into the pile of clothes, Scott felt the familiar urge to dart in the other direction, but it was quickly replaced by the memory of his current predicament, as well as the fact that he was now marooned on the kitchen countertop he stood upon.

                Surprisingly, Scott found his clothes to be comparatively smaller at the end of the shrinking than he was expecting.  Evidently Maggie had gone easy on him and resisted the urge to reduce him to his minimum size of one inch.  However, there wasn’t long to contemplate this odd act of mercy as the teen’s massive fingers were digging greedily into the folds of the fabric, wrapping themselves around Scott’s bare leg and fishing him out the top.

                Scott, painfully nude, was dangled by his left foot upside down as he was drawn out of the folds of the now grossly oversized clothes and held a matter of inches away from the end of Maggie’s nose.

                Even though she had him turned away from her face as she dangled him, Scott could feel his sister’s eyes studying his every inch hungrily, no longer as a sibling, but as a science experiment in which she controlled every variable. 

                Uncomfortably, he felt the tip of one of her fingers brush up against his bare butt cheeks, but it was quickly retracted, followed by the inevitable mischievous chuckling that rumbled horribly in his eardrums, as though she’d dared herself to touch him.

                “So much better,” Maggie declared, satisfied, as she finally lowered Scott down into her cupped palm, just as the blood had thoroughly rushed to Scott’s brain.

                He was aware of the awkward feeling of his butt once again pressed against the soft center of the titanic teen’s hand, but as he clutched his temple in his fingers, he didn’t have the attitude or energy to care.

                “Now I can hold you the right way,” she murmured, her fingers coiling up like fleshy claws around Scott.  “Little baby brother.”

                Though he was dizzy, he could feel the rapid bumping through the skin of his sister’s hand as she marched victoriously through the house and toward the stairs, obviously heading toward her bedroom, where she could have some private conversation time with him.  Figured.

                Her fingers squeezed around him, compressing him against her cushy palm as she bounded up the steps two at a time.  The slam of Maggie’s bedroom door behind her and her enthusiastic bouncing flop onto her bed nearly rocketed Scott out of his feminine captor’s grip, but her fingers instantly caged around again him as she did so, instead causing him to thrash roughly around in her grip.

                “Well,” Maggie began happily as Scott carefully returned to a seated position in his sister’s hand, though he couldn’t bring himself to look into her eyes.  “Do we understand each other now?”
                “Yep,” Scott gulped with a grim nod, knowing by this point that it was far better for him to just go along with the situation than drag it out into more opportunities for foot wrestling.

                Maggie flinched, clearly looking forward to disciplining a “no,” but instead shrugged and bit her lip playfully, obviously deep in thought on new ways to relish this ultimate moment of power.

                “That’s… good,” Maggie answered, frowning with something bordering on distrust.  “Mom told me the rules.  I know how it works now.  You be nice and do what I say, and I’m nice to you.”

                “You’re gonna be nice, hmm?” Scott answered, still looking down intently.  As he glanced around the restrictive landscape of his sister’s hand, he estimated he was around three inches tall.

                Considering Maggie’s usual tastes, it was a pleasantly conservative height.

                “Hey.  Eyes on me when you talk,” Maggie demanded with a snap of her fingers, sounding just a little too happy at finding something to complain about.  She tapped two fingers against her cheeks just under each eye, as though reminding him where they were.  “It’s the polite thing to do.”

                “Right,” Scott said, complying and looking uncomfortably up the fleshy bridge of Maggie’s arm that led toward her torso and her expectantly gleeful face framed by her gleaming blonde locks.  “So you’re gonna be nice if I’m nice.”
                “That’s right,” Maggie beamed, bringing a finger from her other hand down onto the top of Scott’s head, simulating petting in a way that mainly just negatively impacted the twenty-one-year-old’s already aching cranium as she aggressively bopped him on the head.  “Easy as cute little brother pie.”

                “And how, exactly, are you planning to… um… be nice?” Scott asked, still in the same dull tone, but wondering how Maggie, a girl for whom “nice” didn’t even belong in the English language, planned to treat him well in her own cruel logic.

                She certainly wasn’t off to a good start if his wake-up call was any indication.

                He had a feeling his mother, in laying down the rules, had at least accounted for legal safety by ensuring Maggie kept her crafty bitchiness to a sustained minimum, but also knew his sister could and would find a way around those parameters in almost record time.

                “Well, let’s start right now.  You do what I ask, and I’ll be nice by letting you make some choices by yourself,” she said.

                “Great.  And what would those be?” Scott asked, the sarcasm growing thick in his words.

                “Your clothes, for one thing.  Do you want some?”

                “Whatever,” Scott said with a shrug, in reality wanting them very badly, but knowing that displaying any enthusiasm for the idea would only prolong the amount of time Maggie spent teasing him with them for her own amusement.

                “Because a couple of my friends are coming over in a few hours, and, well… you might want to cover up for them.”

                Groaning, Scott knew Maggie had the upper hand in this round.  “Okay, fine.  Can I have some clothes, then?”

                “Hold on, Scott…”
                “I meant, can I have clothes please?” Scott corrected, wanting to skip the whole song and dance.

                Maggie giggled again, smiling cheekily.  “That actually wasn’t what I was going to say, but thanks anyway.  No, I was going to say, do you want to put it on, or should I?” 

                Plucking into a tiny pocket on the back of her shorts, Maggie produced a small pink princess gown made for a doll of roughly three inches tall, and suddenly Scott realized precisely why his sister had not shrunk him to the minimum size just to spite him.

                “Maggie, I, um…” Scott began, desperately mulling over how to play the situation, as his sister waited expressionless, the tiny dress pinched in her fingers, waiting for a reaction.

                “Yes, my little princess?” Maggie teased through an abruptly frosty expression, her eyes narrowed intently.  Having momentarily dropped the sugary-sweet act, she obviously wanted to make a statement.

                “Um, well, you said… you said I could choose, and… does that mean I can… not wear that?”

                Maggie nodded solemnly, setting the tiny doll dress beside her on the bed and instead tapping her finger thoughtfully against her chin.  “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?  You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”

                “Okay.  So, um… can I wear something else?”

                “Yes.”

                “Great.  Where is…”

                “Just wear what you already have on,” Maggie answered coldly again, shaking her head and silently daring him to defy her as her eyes ran disgustedly across the image of the cold and naked Scott.  “It goes perfectly with your personality.”