Nel Weber sunk into the seat of the city bus as it lurched back toward her neighborhood. She was already three inches shorter than when she’d first left for summer camp a month before, and in an eerie state of paralyzed peace idly contemplated the fact that her life was, for all intents and purposes, over.
It was inevitable, really, the longer she thought about it. Most shrinkers she’d known came from perfectly happy houses, yet within the blink of a couple months an ordinary person could go from studying for the SATs to studying the toe section of an odor-eaten slipper, awaiting to have dirtied socks stuffed in for cleaning duty. And those were the normal people, who treated their families well and endeavored to be useful members of society.
Nel could not quite put herself in that category. She’d spent half her adolescent life deceiving her parents into giving her presents, stealing her sister’s clothes and jewelry from the closet, calling her brother names, using her circle of “friends” solely to climb the social ladder, and making out with at least three different strangers at every party she attended.
The fact that she was a shrinker, it now seemed, was all but pre-ordained. Once the camp had discovered her condition, she was immediately dismissed on the bus, her family notified by phone of their incoming shrinker and new investment. That was all there was now. She didn’t like it one bit, and felt rotten to her core at the very thought of what might await her in the potentially limited future as a doll-sized organism at the disposal of her relatives. Yet there was still justice in it that she recognized, no matter how much it stung.
After all, it wasn’t that Nel couldn’t understand the desire to do the things she knew she was now damned to endure. In fact, comprehension of the need to impose will on shrinkers was something she was more in touch with than most people were to religion.
When her classmate Cara Collin’s older sister Cindy had started the shrinking process two years ago, she’d made it her business to become closer friends with the girl, purely to have as many chances as possible to visit the Collin house.
And God, it had been fun.
Cindy was one of the lucky ones: her final height was a comparatively optimal six inches, meaning she at least could rule out being eaten alive.
The girl’s reduction had taken nearly a year, and every stage of the process brought with it new joys for Nel to experience. Almost immediately, the Collins had disowned their daughter, merely allowing her to continue living with them purely for the eventual monetary benefits once she’d reached her final stature. This meant they couldn’t have given two shakes what Nel did while visiting, and she took full advantage of that privilege.
Cara herself had wasted no time exercising her rights governing her subhuman former older sibling, and Nel was there to witness it as often as she was able. Cara had certainly been waiting long enough, hoping for the opportunity to make herself the dominant child in the house. By the time Cindy had shrunk below five feet, Cara was able to overpower the poor girl physically, and often instigated surprise wrestling matches during meals, while watching TV, or even while Cindy was trying to catch some tortured sleep. These contests generally ended with Cindy pinned to the floor, beneath the seat of her younger sister’s rear end, and Cara’s legs wrapped around Cindy’s twig-like arms. The spoils of defeat generally involved Cindy experiencing a slurry of insults and laughter, as well as inevitable soreness from the brunt of her increasingly enormous sibling’s firm cheeks weighing her down like twin boulders.
The more time passed, the faster the matches ended, and as Cara’s strength advantage increased, she found it was possible to win just with a warm bare foot pressed authoritatively to the small of her usually-weeping sister’s back.
Eventually, a hand was enough. And finally a thumb, once Cindy had shrunken to six inches and cemented her lifelong place as the family’s pet. The frequency of the games slowed by this point, as it was less a wrestling match and more a cat toying with its dinner, but Cara still made sure to periodically flatten her diminutive sister to the carpet with a tap of her pinky toe, just to renew the fear and respect in her.
Nel’s game, however, had been much steadier and calculated, much like how she did everything in her life. After she was good enough friends with Cara, she invited herself over to the Collins home at least once a week, though of course her interest gravitated far more toward the diminishing member of the family than those of average height.
In contrast to Cara’s acts of aggression, Nel had painted herself as an ally in a cold and unfeeling world to the older girl, who was already well-beyond broken at the realization that she would soon be the full property of anyone who could pay enough. She’d greet Cindy as an equal with a cheerful hello and even a hug here and there: acts that Cara found odd, but managed to shrug off due to her general lack of care for what happened to Cindy now, good or bad.
Cindy, in turn, learned to look forward to Nel’s visits, and eventually yearn for them with great desperation. By the time she was the height of a toddler, the doomed shrinker would scurry to meet her younger sister’s friend at the door, all but throwing herself down at her feet. Nel, relishing every moment of it, would say hello and lift her up for a comforting embrace that Cindy obviously cherished deeply due to the cutting off of affection she’d experienced in the house.
The transition, then, was gradual but mapped out in Nel’s head down to every false smile. Cindy was required, of course, to serve in whatever ways her owners demanded, but her gratitude for Nel’s treatment made it so that she seemed to take actual pleasure in fetching snacks or tissues for her perceived guardian.
And that was exactly what Nel was looking for. After all, what fun would it be to have the girl doing her bidding without the full knowledge that it was now her highest order as a living thing?
She started off small, extending a pinky finger and jokingly requesting that Cindy kiss it. The shrinker had obliged immediately and instinctively asked if Nel needed anything else. By the time the girl had reached six inches in height, the hugs and smiles had stopped, and yet she was chewing the grimy underside of Nel’s toes every time she entered the house, not only without asking, but with a smile on her face and legitimate tears of relief in her tiny eyes.
A wowed Cara could only look on and demand once they were alone again to hear the secret, which Nel had proudly passed on to the girl, gratified to know her work could continue on throughout Cindy’s inhuman existence.
And now here Nel was, jettisoned via public transportation back to her own home, and a presumable lifetime of hell. Certainly blame couldn’t be placed on her family, nor could she begrudge them whatever they were thinking of now. Were she in their position, she’d already be cataloguing with a feverish fervor her plans for their entire descent down to the proper height for being her new toys. She’d put blood, sweat, and tears into making herself the entire world of her two younger siblings if either of them had started to shrink.
What she had done to Cindy would be child’s play: she’d have her brother and sister each cowering on their hands and knees, pleading to serve her body in whatever ways she saw fit, however menial or humiliating. They wouldn’t only lose their status as humans. Their very existences would be tools of Nel’s pleasure. Her hands, her feet, her hair, her ass, her mouth: their literal reasons for being. It all would’ve been fair game for their enslavement, and what was more, it would’ve been a slow and unrelenting process, until their minds were bent so far they’d be a single word from snapping.
These weren’t just speculations, either, but facts of an accepted future the girl had often fantasized about with two fingers buried between her legs as her siblings approached the age range where the shrinker gene might be revealed. Anything they did to her now was only to be expected, then.
Despite her fears of physical duress and monstrous abuse, though, Nel couldn’t quite muster feelings of self-pity or loathing. It wasn’t like she didn’t deserve some or most of what was coming to her. That wasn’t even a defeatist attitude, that was mathematical karma, and she knew it. But she’d be damned if she had to back out on herself before the transition was made.
Nearly every shrinker she knew had fallen into their genetic misfortunes with a mortifying lack of grace. There would be begging and pleading with the family to treat them well, even bowing and recognition of them as higher beings. There would be offerings of all possessions, which of course was an empty gesture since all shrinker property passed to their owners anyway. There would even be religious declarations: shrinkers vowing to treat their siblings, parents, friends, and neighbors as veritable gods for the rest of their lives, so long as they were treated civily.
Certain social scientists had even begun constructing studies that related the shrinker gene to the stages of dealing with grief and terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression. Obviously, most shrinkers just stopped at that fourth stage rather than moving on to “acceptance,” and Nel knew well that those that pretended to were bald-faced liars.
More than anything, though knew she would not – could not – be like those that came before. Her dignity might be stripped from her soon, as well as all her belongings and probably her clothes, but the dominant figure she was prior to it would not be tainted.
Nel Weber would be remembered as the baddest bitch anyone ever had the miraculous luck to know.
And no amount of slave labor or even, when she was honest with herself, torture would be able to take that away.
The bus screeched to a halt at the end of Nel’s block. She took a moment to rise, reflecting that this might well be her final trip away from home. Gathering her bag from the metal rack above the seats, she continued the reverie, noting that the items inside were about to be distributed amongst those who owned them now. Most of her clothes would probably go back to her younger sister Tammy, which she supposed wasn’t the worst thing, considering many of them had been taken from her sibling to begin with.
She trudged down the sidewalk, her knees beginning to wobble slightly, but she held firm. Her principles would go with her to the grave. Houses passed her like memories projected on a wall, appearing larger than life, like most things would soon seem. But she didn’t care. It wasn’t like any of them were much of anything to look at.
The walk up the steps to her own house felt dramatically lengthened, even though she’d only lost three inches so far. Every step weighed on her feet, straining her legs to lift higher and higher to match the stature of the ascending brick levels. Sighing one last time as a technically free young woman, she stabbed the doorbell with her thumb and stepped back, scraping her heels against the welcome mat.
The door swung open almost immediately, like her arrival was not only expected but timed accurately. Once Nel had a view of the foyer, she realized the whole family had gathered at the door: her father, mother, and two younger siblings, all huddled together with their arms wrapped around one another as though taking a family portrait. They each had the same cheesy grin plastered on to match.
“Welcome home, Nel,” her mother Susan said merrily, waving a beckoning hand to her nightmarishly rebellious daughter. “C’mon in. We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Hi,” the newly revealed shrinker said loudly, willing herself to provide volume.
“We’re so glad to see you,” Susan said to her daughter, smiling more sweetly than she ever had before. “We’ve been working pretty hard to get the house ready for you, after all.”
“Oh, you have, huh?” Nel commented with sarcastic interest. “Just for me?”
“Just for you,” her sister said, barely concealing a snarl.
The unity and accompanying smiles of her family were unnerving and creepy, to be sure, but she hadn’t come this far just to let pure intimidation get her down. She was going to handle this more gracefully than any shrinker in history.
Even if they could do anything they wanted to her: tease her, torment her, break her in half like a twig, or even commit a fraction of the horrors she would enact on any one of them if given the chance, they would not – would not – win.