Scott’s whole body tensed as his mother’s tremendous thumb stroked his back, applying just enough pressure to shake him from his daze.

                “Did you hear me?” she repeated softly as she slid her finger back up her son’s torso and rested it against his thin shoulders.

                Her booming yet still somehow controlled words reverberated uncomfortably in the eardrums of his one-inch tall body, and he tried not to show it, though he was certain her skin was sensitive enough to feel his shoulders trembling.

                “No need to be nervous, sweetie,” she explained.  “I just want us all to be on the same page with how things will work around here from now on.  You, me, Maggie, and Kyle.”  Slowly, keeping her hand as steady as possible to spare Scott the turbulence, Judy took a seat on her bed just behind the pair of them and crossed her right leg over her left to get comfortable.  “I know you heard loud and clear what the court says for you, but we’re going to have some extra rules around here.”

                Scott wasn’t even surprised enough to feel deflated in the slightest.  He could’ve expected nothing less.  Maybe this was where she would get him with whatever it was he knew she had to be planning.  Frankly, he preferred she just got it over with so he could have some relief from the gnawing suspense.

                “We haven’t really had time to put your room back together since you got back from the university, but I don’t think it would matter much, since you can’t really reach the top of the bed on your own anyway.  So, Kyle’s putting together a little doll bed for you that we’ll set on the couch in the living room.  Okay?”

                “Okay.”

                “Let’s see, what else?” Judy tittered.  “Now, because we can’t really be watching out for you every minute of every day, most of the time I’m going to keep you at twelve inches tall.”

                Scott was actually pleasantly surprised with this decree.  Being his maximum height of one foot for the majority of this house arrest was going to make things considerably easier.

                Of course, he assumed she was just trying to butter him up with a positive point before she decided to drop a bomb.  He just knew she had to have one waiting.

                “Really?” he asked timidly.

                “Well, you know, if I have some shopping to do and feel you need to be supervised, I may shrink you again so you’ll be a little more portable,” she mused, patting her fingers gingerly over the puffed pocket of her robe.  “But yes, twelve inches, as long as you can handle the responsibility.”

                “Um, responsibility?” Scott repeated.

                “Of course,” she said, smirking.  “I’d expect nothing less from any my children, even if you’re not up to my knee.  Or my thumb, in this case.”  Judy made no attempt to hide her pitiful chuckling.  “Of course, it’ll be a little different than it was when you were living here.  This isn’t supposed to be a vacation, after all.”

                Apparently Judy had considered Scott’s frequent stints inside her pumps back in high school to be a vacation.  Once again, he lacked the gumption to feel surprised.

                “Oh?”

                “Nope.  Like I said, you can be twelve inches tall, but only as long as you do what you’re told.  Remember what this stay is taking the place of.  You need to listen to what you’re asked to do and do it.  Not just from me, of course.  From your brother and sister too, since they have to help me keep track of you with the PMRD.”

                Scott flinched a little at the thought of this, but strictly speaking, it still wasn’t anything he wasn’t expecting.

                “Is that where you’ve been?” Scott asked finally.  “Setting up the thing for them?”

                “Yes,” Judy said with a nod.  “I just wanted to make sure they’re ready to go for your stay back home.”

                As far as Scott knew, Kyle was far too ambivalent to even think up a reason to use the PMRD. 

                Maggie was another matter.

                “Mom, you know, um… Maggie…”

                “Yes?  What about her?”

                “You know how she… um… her, I mean, her… her… the way she… plays.”

                “Ohhh, I see,” Judy whispered affectionately.  “She does like spending time with you at this size, doesn’t she?”

                “I guess so.”

                “Well, you do need to stay as healthy as we can keep you, and like I said, we’re not here to punish you every minute of every day.  Only when you misbehave.  And she knows that.  So, she just gets to use it when you refuse a reasonable request.”

                “Reasonable… request?”

                Judy rolled her eyes playfully and waggled her fingers above Scott’s head without really thinking about it, simultaneously vibrating his rear end with the motion of her palm’s landscape.  “Oh, Scott, sweetie, it’s too early in the day for you to be playing ignorance.  We’ve had a very successful discipline system in this house for the past, what, 8 years?  I think you know what I mean.”

                “For instance?” Scott asked slowly, trying not to sound so clueless that he was belittled again.  It seemed vital to get these kinds of examples hardwired into his mind.

                “Oh, all right.  Maybe if the floor’s dirty, we’ll have you run a rag over it.  Maybe my nails are chipping a little, so I have you paint them while I’m getting some work done.  Or if your sister comes back from soccer, you might give her a little foot massage.  That sort of thing.  Nothing you can’t handle.  Deal?”

                Scott knew his agreement with such a deal was not really necessary for its implementation, but he was actually surprised to hear this.  These things were by no means ideal but surely among the milder activities he had been forced to engage in while shrunken before.  Sure, Maggie’s definition of a “reasonable request” was almost certainly going to entail something unreasonable and probably incredibly irritating or even embarrassing for Scott, but at least there was some kind of line in place. 

                Obviously, Judy still was holding out on her more shattering decree.  It was there, somewhere.  The catch.  It had to be.

                “And that’s about it, really.  As your warden, welcome to the Stevens Penitentiary,” Judy said with a gleeful giggle before correcting herself a frowning.  “Only kidding, honey, this is your home, where you belong, not a prison.”

                Somehow, deep inside himself, Scott knew his mother’s joke was a little closer to the truth than either of them was willing to admit.

                “Don’t look so worried, Scott,” Judy reassured him.  “I said you’ll only have to go below twelve inches if you refuse a reasonable request.”

                “So can you make me…” Scott gulped, daring himself to keep steady eye contact with the billboard countenance of his mother above, suddenly and uncomfortably reminded of some of the ad campaigns he had seen of her wildly grinning face for her growing political career.  “…you know, a little bigger now?”

                “Well, maybe not just yet,” the titanic matriarch wheedled, biting the corner of her plump lip playfully.  Scott watched his mother’s eyes break contact with his own and steadily trace down her thighs and calves, all the way down to her freshly showered feet, which she arched majestically in tandem with her writhing toes.  “I’ve got a few… reasonable requests to make of you first, sweetie.”