Paul sweated profusely as all eyes in the room fell to his older sister. Tory had never looked taller or more triumphant, even though she was currently the right handheld size to occupy this imaginary abode. While she pursed her lips and searched for the most venomous possible response, the boy found himself locked in a stare-down with Tory, where all the rest of the world fell away, and it was just the miniature cross-dressing boy and his mighty sibling. Via telepathic link, it seemed, Tory had given her brother a window into her world. Though no words were exchanged aloud yet, he could sense the promise of scorching degradations to come. Perhaps worse than concrete threats which included regularly shrinking and stripping him in the future, though, Paul saw something else: hunger. A rawness in Tory’s subconscious he could only truly know if she chose to let him see, as she had now. And what he saw was the indisputable truth that his big sister’s desires intertwined terribly with his own. She longed to make him a pretty-in-pink plaything just as fiercely as he longed to be one, and not just for the power trip, but for a much more horrifying reason altogether.
It got her off.
Paralyzed, Mary-Ann wallowed in existential dread and lust. What had he, and they, become?
“What do I think?” Tory chuckled with majestic sovereignty. “Well-”
Before another word could escape her soft lips, a flash of light preceded an elongated split-second of surprise carnage. All three Harris ladies expanded in the blink of an eye from their previous Barbie-stature back to full lumbering height again, which resulted in the flimsy plastic house exploding apart. Limbs and torsos blasted through the roof. Toy furniture sprayed across the bedroom, and the gigantic mother and daughters lay on the carpet surrounding the ruins of the house. In the epicenter between their six gargantuan shoes was Paul.
The recurring dream was coming true all at once. He also couldn’t help but be reminded of a certain scene from a certain childhood cartoon movie, but unlike a certain British bow-haired wanderer, his family growing inside the house did not in fact translate into wearing the house, but rather shredding it like confetti.
“Whoopsie-daisy…” Tory giggled, dusting herself off. Her once-again prodigious sneakers kicked aside hunks of house like used tissue.
“Oh, no!” Zoey squealed. She buried her face in her hands to hold back embarrassed tears, though they still leaked between her fingers. “I practiced that spell every day! You saw me! I had it, and… and…”
“Don’t worry, darling. Nobody is perfect the first time. You’ll get it right, in time,” Scarlet said. She sat up and wrapped her younger daughter into a soothing embrace, more nurturing than she’d ever been to her four-inch middle child. In her haste to tend to Zoey, Scarlet’s heel spike bluntly shoved Paul’s little body aside. “No harm, no foul. Nothing is broken that can’t be repaired.”
“-but as I was saying…” Tory interrupted, and the moment she started speaking, Paul knew the ending, even though he couldn’t comprehend it. It was plain as the conniving look on her beautiful, diabolical countenance. She cleared her throat, just to milk the moment, then reached around and scooped up a handful of broken dollhouse pieces in each fist. The longer she rambled, the more musical her timbre became, until she was practically singing: “I don’t know about the rest of you, but this place is way too much of a mess to be considered clean. Therefore, Mary-Ann, I’m afraid I have no choice but to declare that you have FAILED in the very simple task we gave you to prove that you’re not just a doll-boy. Failed, failed, failed!”
Bewildered as he was helpless, Paul scrambled up, looking between the monolithic upturned shoes and up to baleful faces of his titanic family members. Surely this was a cruel joke of some kind? The final capper on a hellishly demeaning and viscerally arousing week? There was no WAY any logical person could judge Zoey’s own immature ineptitude with her spells as a failing on his part, after all he’d done to meet their insane demands? Right?
Right?
Scarlet studied her son with a matronly sternness, and for a fleeting instant, Paul believed she would see reason and override her domineering daughter. Just as quickly as that hope formed, though, it was dashed when the woman shrugged her shoulders.
“Yes, dear. I’m afraid I have to agree. While it may not have been entirely Paul’s fault, I think we all know a clean house in a week’s time was the agreed-upon condition, and this is anything but a clean,” Scarlet admonished. The boy couldn’t believe his ears. “Therefore, it only makes sense to make little Paul’s shrunken state a permanent-”
“NO!” Paul screamed.
“YES!” the sisters bellowed.
“-permanent consequence. You needn’t worry, though, sweetie. Your home will be repaired soon enough, and then you’ll have plenty of time to think on and grow from your mistakes. Not physically grow, of course, but certainly developmentally. And maybe, as a special consolation treat, we’ll loosen up that adorable uniform by just a few stitches.”
The dark new reality of lifelong “playtime” overshadowed Paul’s consciousness, and he fainted flat on his back. Through the blur, he sensed his family closing in to simultaneously tease and congratulate him on the ruling. Scarlet waved her enchanted hands to rebuild the dollhouse good as new; Zoey cheered and stomped her feet with delight at the realization that those promised playdates with her brother would now integrate him as the doll itself; and Tory, with her greedy fingers snaking around him, commenced actualizing those filthy desires she revealed to her brother-come-slave from within.
A dollhouse could never be a home, but to Mary-Ann, it seemed this one had become his.