Scott’s eyes widened with horror as he turned to face his mother Judy Stevens.

                This party was going down the tubes by the second.

                Judy was clad in a crisply cut business suit that showed off her matriarchal curves just enough, her glossy blonde hair done up professionally, her smooth legs given sheen in tight nylons, and her pursed lips plush with intimidating crimson coloring.  Her arms were crossed aggressively, and as always when she was in a bad mood with her eldest son, she was tapping the hard black heel of her shoe in rapid pace against the floor.

                “Scott,” she answered back curtly.

                “Listen, Mom,” Scott groaned, clutching his forehead in an attempt to steady his vision.  “You gotta listen.”

                “I’m listening.”

                “I…”

                “This is what I’m paying for?  I work hard to make sure you and your siblings have all the opportunities in the world to be successes, and what do you do with it?  You just waste it here, getting drunk, maybe doing drugs in the bathroom…”

                “I wasn’t doing drugs, Mom, ask anyone,” Scott mumbled.

                “Be quiet,” Judy snapped, rummaging through her purse. 

                “Mom, I’m… I’m ready for the… the test.  Tomorrow.  I can do it.  I’m fine.”

                Judy began to step closer, letting the clack of her heels ring out miraculously above the roar of the oblivious crowd.  She stopped just a few inches away from her son.  With the added height of her heels, Judy actually was able to look down about an inch into Scott’s fearful eyes.  She simply shook her head before raising a hand toward her son’s face and running her long, firm fingertips over his forehead.

                “You’re sweating, a lot.  How much did you drink?”

                “It’s just hot in here, Mom, relax.”

                “Don’t tell me to relax.”

                “I’m… I’m not… I’m…”

                “It’s all over your breath,” Judy sneered, wrinkling her nose in disgust as she continued glaring down at her son, who was slowly leaning further and further back against the bar.  “Does the disgrace of your own family mean nothing to you?”

                “Sure it does, it’s just…”

                “I’m making a bid for that senate seat later this month.  You do remember that, right?  I’m trying to do something good for this country by entering office, and all you can do is sit here and fill your body with cheap beer.”

                “Mom…”

                “I should’ve known.”

                “What?”

                “I should’ve known you couldn’t handle college.  And I should’ve known you couldn’t handle being independent for this long,” Judy sighed as she finished fishing through her purse and drew out a silver-plated device shaped similarly to a flashlight.

                “Wait… the… the…” Scott sputtered as, even in the dark, he knew all-too-well the shape of his mother’s favorite household tool: the portable matter reduction device. 

                Programmed to shrink any inorganic matter its ray came into contact with, as well as any organic matter identified by the device’s reticle as he or one of his siblings.  Usable only by his mother at any time she saw fit, and generally utilized as a punishment against her children, whom she often judged to be gravely misbehaving and in need of severe involuntary reduction in size to the point that they could’ve fit snugly into the warm palm of her hand.

                That was a feeling Scott knew all too well.

                “I’m not happy that this has become necessary, Scott,” his mother cooed apologetically as she began quickly tinkering with the settings on the device.  “But you’ve forced my hand.”

                “Mom, the… the PMRD is… you can’t use it on me n-n-now…”

                “What are you talking about, sweetie?  It’s still programmed to your DNA, just like always.  Of course I can use it on you.”

                “But I’m not a dependent anymore, I… I… You’re not the boss of me anymore, I mean, legally, you can’t…”

                “Scott.  Really, now.  Who’s the one with the law degree, and who’s the one still dripping beer down the front of his pants?”

                “Mom.  You... you’ve gotta be kidding me…”

                “I’m afraid not.  Believe me, I don’t want to have to do this.  I’d love it if you could just go off on your own and be responsible enough to handle that freedom, but I can see now very clearly that it’s simply not the case,” Judy sighed, pulling the trigger on the device and beaming the short green ray directly at her son’s neck.

                Instantly, the old nightmarish feeling of numbing chill flooded Scott’s skin and bones as he began to shrink immediately.

                “What do you m-m-mean?” Scott peeped as he watched his mother seemingly expand upward while he felt himself dwindle down, the top of his head already below Judy’s belly button.  His mother became like a well-dressed monolith, her features and strong stance imposing as ever.

                “What do I mean?” Judy began with a smile, tilting her head affectionately as she watched her son shrink toward the floor, his clothes becoming larger and baggier around his increasingly diminished body.  She placed a massive palm across the top of his head, easily dwarfing it, and began to calmly knead and ruffle her son’s hair like that of a young child, as though trying to offer comfort.

                She leaned down closer to him and continued whispering.  “What I mean, sweetie, is that you’re coming home.  Where you apparently belong.”

                “WHAT?”

                “With Mommy…”

                By now, Judy’s palm could’ve engulfed her son’s head like a tennis ball.  Rather than do this, though, she began sliding her fingers across his face and hair, disorienting him as he continued his journey towards the floor.

                “Mom, stop!”

                “Who’s the boss of who now, my little boy?”

                As the fully miniaturized Scott disappeared into the huge folds of his formerly usable clothes, he felt his mother’s thick, warm palm settle itself over the front of his body, with her fingers snaking around down his back and legs like smooth tentacles.  He squirmed for a moment, realizing he couldn’t breathe properly with his mom’s hand acting like a huge suction cup to his face.  Fighting seemed out of the question, but just as Scott let his arms hang at his side, his felt Judy’s grip squeezing on him.

                Tighter.  And tighter.

                Gasping now, Scott took to beating his fists against his mother’s fingers, which by now were all twice as thick as each of his legs, to understandably no avail.

                His air supply becoming less and less, Scott felt himself collapsing, almost as if drifting away, cradled on the hammering waves of sound generated by the party’s speaker system.

                Silence.

                The entire world came crashing back into being via Scott’s splitting eardrums and rattled bones all at once.  His frame suddenly convulsing, the impact struck the twenty-one-year-old’s body with massive force that blasted him backward against the surface behind him.

                Not his mother’s giant fingers, but a seat.  A car seat.  A normal-sized car seat.

                Trembling, his world still spinning in his head and trying to catch up with the present moment, Scott realized his hands were so tightly gripped around something that his knuckles had turned bone white, while his fingers were wrapped snugly enough that they’d actually gone numb around the steering wheel he had been holding.

                A car.  In a car.  A car.  His car?

                Definitely his car.  But something was different.  What?
                Scott groaned, coughing, pain in his temple increasing exponentially.  He cried out for a moment as the first burst of it hit him, mostly coming from his head, but also in his joints, which seemed to have taken the greatest brunt of the impact.

                Biting his lip and feeling his eyes flooding involuntarily with tears of pain and fear, Scott tried desperately to think.  To piece some of it together.  Had he blacked out after what was obviously dream of his mother, sister, and girlfriend?  He must have, and yet he somehow had managed to get himself back behind the wheel of his car and get moving.

                Blinking, he looked around out the window, which by now was fogged by smoke from the car’s hood.  Where was he?  He vaguely recognized the street as being about two miles away from the college.

                Fuck.  How long had he been going?

                The drinks.  It had to have been the drinks.

                Yet he’d had so little, how could it be?

                No time to think like that.  Get out.  Have to get out, he thought.  Have to move.

                Movement was a greater challenge than Scott was anticipating as he managed to slam the door open and stumble out onto the wet pavement.  He felt a piece of shattered glass slice along his finger as he righted himself, and winced as he steadied himself with one hand on his throbbing forehead.

                That was when he saw her.  Just about twenty feet from where he stood.

                An unknown woman, lying in the street, hands across her stomach and rubbing frantically back and forth.  From a combination of the moonlight and some dim neon store fronts, Scott could make out blood on her hands.

                Coughing, Scott began to limp forward, realizing his left leg was spotted with deep purple bruises, though apparently not broken.  He stopped just short of her, not wanting to startle her if she was in shock.

                “Miss?” he whispered quaveringly, unsure entirely of what to do.

                “M-M-M…” the woman whimpered, keeping her eyes closed, tears flowing down her cheeks.  Her elbows seemed to be bloody, as were the backs of her legs from the impact of hitting the street.

                It took Scott a full thirty seconds of standing blankly over her to realize he had hit her with his car right before crashing, himself.

                Never in his life had he felt so helpless, and he had had plenty of moments in his life to feel helpless before.  Nothing compared to this.

                “What is it?” Scott moaned painfully, rummaging through his pant pockets for his phone to call for help.  “What?”

                “M-M-M… My…”

                “Your what?”

                “My… My ba…” she cried, stopping short of finishing the word as she continued to rub her stomach, though Scott already knew what she was going to say as he realized the woman’s stomach was rounded in a way that could only mean one very distinct thing.  In the odd lighting, he hadn’t noticed it before, but now it was plain as day.

                As he heard the sound of sirens and the blue and red lights flashing far down the street on their way over, Scott realized his helplessness record had been beaten in the same minute-long span.