For a few instants, Paul and Tory faced off silently, basking in the shared horridness. The golden-tanned girl with her dark chocolate hair and twinkling eyes, dressed in her “new” red dress, had never looked more victorious in her little brother’s eyes than now. The elder sibling nibbled the corner of her lip, shook her head, and allowed her grin widen to delighted proportions. Her sneaker resumed tapping on the floor, until Paul’s racing pulse synced with her beat.

            Meanwhile, the boy himself felt his throat go dry. He instinctively sunk to his knees, at least hoping to conceal his dress-tent before it was noticed; at this point, damage control was his only hope. Folding his hands in his lap, he couldn’t help but start internally miming prayers of mercy. Not that he expected anything but the direst scenario to play out here.

            At last, stroking a finger on her chin, Tory sang out: “Oh, Mom! I didn’t find your pocketbook yet, but I did find something else you might want to get a look at. Zoey better come, too!”

            With nowhere to go, Paul remained crouched in the middle of the bedroom floor, while Tory blocked the doorway just in case he got the idea to flee. It would’ve been impossible to do so, anyway. His powerful sorceress sister would have any number of methods at her disposal for keeping him right where he was, on display for Scarlet and Zoey. Their distinct footsteps followed soon after: Scarlet’s thick-heeled clog pumps, and Zoey’s soft-padding ballet flats.

            Abruptly, there were three Harris women crowded in the doorframe, and Paul’s embarrassment accordingly tripled. He felt his cheeks burning red-hot with shame, and making matters worse, he could tell his erection had not yet wilted in the slightest. As it turned out, his rapid drop to his knees had buried his dick under a heap of lovely, sweet-scented, velvet-kissed petticoats, which was maintaining him at the height of arousal without any motion.

            “Wow!” Zoey gasped, pointing and laughing at her older brother, though not with utter malice. “Looks like Paul was playing dress-up without us, huh? You look like you’re ready to go to the royal ball!”

            “Now, Tory,” Scarlet scolded instantly, wagging a finger at her daughter. The woman planted a hand back on her maternal hip and shook her head. “What have I told you about playing tricks on your brother? It’s not like he can defend himself, you know. You really ought to find more constructive ways to relate to poor Paul.”

            “I know, Mom. I didn’t do this.”

            “What?”

            “You heard me,” Tory said, a giggle punctuating her remark. She took a few steps into the room, now looking down on her cowering brother. “This isn’t a spell. He just put it on. By himself. While we were gone. He was trying to get it off when I walked in.”

            Still disbelieving, Scarlet followed her eldest child into the room. She waved a hand over Paul’s head, and even touched his scalp, during which there was a brief spark emanating from her fingers; the boy had a feeling she was feeling out for the presence of any enchantment, and by the look of alarm and disgusting rapidly contorting her face, she had found Tory’s statement to be true. There was no magic.

            “Oh… my… word…” Scarlet gawked. Her jaw hung open, and her hand trembled as she let go of her son’s head. Taking several steps back, she staggered onto the edge of the mattress for support. The mother was going pale, and clutched her cheek in shock. Tory, more vindicated than ever, crossed her arms again and glowered at Paul from her imagined ivory tower. And Zoey simply laughed until tears formed in her eyes, while twirling a finger through her dark ponytail.

            Clearing his throat, Paul tried to form the words of a defense, but came up empty. He doubted there was any useful rhetoric he could summon now anyway, as he bowed on the floor, clearly nude save for his own older sister’s way-too-tight dress, while his family members encircled him above. Even Zoey, significantly shorter than Paul when they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, looked especially imposing when she stood beside him now, and not just from the perspective shift of crouching: there was something taking place in the room right now, beyond the tangible, and Paul seriously doubted it was anything but bad for him.

            “Well, this is going to make things kinda awkward from now on, isn’t it?” Tory commented. She approached her brother with her hands tucked behind her back like a discerning headmistress, then hunched over to regard him closer. “What are we supposed to do, Mom?”

            “I’m thinking, dear,” Scarlet murmured, her hand over her heart. The shock of her son’s fancies was clearly taking a toll.

            “Maybe we should put on our nice dresses, too, and then have a fashion show!” Zoey suggested. Picking up a comb from the bedside table, she started lovingly scraping the plastic teeth through Paul’s hair.

            “Seeing as it’s my dress he put on without permission, I think I should get at least some say in what happens,” Tory said innocently. She waggled her fingers in front of Paul’s face, and produced a few multicolored sparks; he flinched, earning a snort of laughter from his older sister, but no spell was enacted yet. At least that he could see.

            “I can’t disagree,” Scarlet sighed, kneading her forehead. “Be gentle with him, dear. He’s still your brother. But I see no reason why you shouldn’t get to have some input on his punishment. Go on.”

            Paul jolted. He was expecting repercussions, of course: likely a grounding, just to start, not to mention a lifetime of embarrassment as long as he lived under the same roof with these women who now knew his worst secret. But the fact that his mother was apparently handing the jurisdiction over to his sister, the far-more talented sorceress between his siblings and also a fiendishly clever tactician, made the boy’s blood chill. If there was one thing Tory loved, it was toying with her mortal brother. What would it be this time? Maybe she’d curse him with the inability to speak for the entire weekend, or turn all his belongings into beetles, or simply make all his food taste like soap. Paul could only imagine.

            “Don’t mind if I do, Mom! I already have the perfect solution, so don’t worry,” Tory reassured. A hungry glow seemed to emanate from her eyes, or maybe it was simply the build-up toward a more powerful spell. Whatever the case, Paul remained helplessly hunched on the floor, getting his hair combed by a humming little sister, while his elder sibling muttered beneath her breath and waved her fingers in balletic fashion. A few seconds after she finished, Paul felt no differences: no missing teeth, no ants crawling out of his ears. Then it happened.

            The diminishment took place slowly enough that there was no questioning what consequence Tory had selected. Paul knew. Waving goodbye with her that same smug smirk, Tory watched her brother sink down and down, multiple inches at a time, as though he was a melting ice sculpture. Zoey, surprised, was forced to withdraw the comb when her brother’s head became too small to adequately groom. Both sisters squatted on the ground, puffing out their skirts around their stockinged legs to make room, and witnessed Paul leveling out to a paltry eight inches tall. Given his attire, which shrunk along with him, the mental comparison to a Barbie doll made by everyone in the room wasn’t far off.

            “I think this’ll help the message stick, don’t you, Z?” Tory questioned. “If you wanna dress yourself up like a pretty doll, Paul, get ready to be one. Hey, that rhymes!”

            “Yeah!” the younger sister blurted. She clapped her hands. “He’s almost the perfect size.”

            Paul shivered as he staggered to his feet between the two towering bodies hunched on either side of him. Even with the girls on their knees, their brother scarcely reached the height of their waists. They were like a pair of great, moving marble statues draped in brilliant living fabrics which wrinkled and fluffed and wafted delicious fruity-detergent air. Upon standing up straight and feeling the insistent bulge still pushing up the petticoats between his legs, though, Paul dropped back to a seated position just as fast. For God sake, why wasn’t he going down?

            “This is the best idea, Tory! You’re so good at your spells,” Zoey gushed. “This is so much better than his regular big size.”

            “Yeah, yeah, you little suck-up,” Tory laughed, but she smiled with pride all the same. Cocking her head, she made a mocking duck face at her tiny brother. “Or I guess maybe he’s more of the “little” something, but I don’t think it’s a suck-up.”

            “I think it’s a doll!” Zoey squealed.

            Feeling more helpless than ever, the boy flinched as he felt fingers the size of tree trunks curling around his ribs, and a warm palm flush with his back. Zoey closed her hand as far around him as she could, not quite sealing him into a tight fist given his doll size, but more than caged enough to contain him, even if her hand only fit over his torso. Despite the girl’s youth and the delicacy of her fingers, Paul could feel the subtle musculature of her digits binding him against her firm palm.     When she lifted him, it was with no effort, which seemed to surprise Zoey as much as Paul, because she jerked him upward with the speed of a slingshot roller coaster.

            “Woah! He’s so light,” Zoey commented.

            “Well, duh. He’s the size of your plastic kiddie things.”

            “Hi there, Paul,” Zoey cooed, effecting a maternal lullaby voice one, like a child might use to soothe a baby doll. She held her dress-clad brother up to her face, and grinned ear-to-ear as she continued gently combing his hair a tuft at a time with her fingernail. “How ya feeling? Nice and pretty, maybe?”

            “Uh…” the boy muttered. He couldn’t tell if the question was hypothetical, or if he’d have a good answer. All he knew for sure was that he was hopelessly bound in this sea-green garment like a gimp body suit, and that his goddamn boner still hadn’t gone down, even with his own giant sister’s pinky finger wrapped just over his stomach, a hair’s breadth from the nub thankfully concealed under the hanging train of the dress.

            “Oh, I’m sure he feels very pretty. It’s my dress, after all,” Tory interjected, scooting on the carpet to sit beside her youngest sibling and admire their newfound toy. She snatched the hem of the tiny dress between her thumb and forefinger, giving it a tug. “You’re lucky I can magically fix this, since you probably stretched out the seams, you little weirdo.”