Paul burned hot with shame, fully aware that his family could see his naked body being squeezed out the bottom of the dress like a toothpaste tube, while he was lost in the sea of aquamarine fabrics. He even heard a couple of giggles from all three parties, though he couldn’t be sure if it was due to Zoey’s particularly loving yet rough technique, or the amusing sight of his embarrassed form being forcibly unveiled. Likely both.
He emerged again, with the dress peeled away, leaving him nude in Zoey’s hand. Tory already had the maid’s uniform held up and, God help him, Paul was actually eager to get inside it because, he told himself, he really wanted to cover up again so he’d no longer have to feel the wide-eyed gazes of his bemused family members scoping his delicates. It definitely wasn’t because he was curious to know what it would feel like on his body, just like he’d wanted to know how Tory’s formal dress felt. Definitely.
“Let’s get him all gussied up,” Tory said. “Help me out, Z.”
The sisters worked together with the kind of concerted teamwork usually foreign to their familial bickering. It seemed to Paul that the ritual humiliation of their shrunken brother was truly bringing them together. While Zoey held the naked dollman still, Tory expertly slid the maid uniform down around him, guiding his tiny arms through the puffed shoulder pads via her slender fingertips and patting the aproned skirt down around his thighs. Despite the churning in his stomach, Paul was infinitely grateful his member managed to stay down. Hyper-shame evidently trumped the naughty high.
With the uniform on, all that remained was the cherry on top, which Tory ensured to retrieve from the box: the lacy white bonneted headpiece. Paul wriggled in avoidance, if only to preserve an iota of dignity, though it was pointless, and all four of the family members knew it. Soon he was garbed from head-to-toe in the uniform of his new profession. With some hesitancy, Zoey set her toy down in the plastic-floored bedroom of the dollhouse. Staggering, Paul was momentarily tricked by the optical illusion of the immaculately detailed model room into thinking things were back to normal. Then he looked out to the opened fourth wall, where his gigantic family now crowded around to gawk at him like a zoo animal, and the illusion was shattered.
“Starting now, dear. One week to keep that space perfect,” Scarlet said, and even flashed a glance to the clock on the wall. “Do try to keep track of the dust better than you keep track of where your family is whenever you’re struck with the urge to dress up like a little girl.”
“Little girl,” Zoey giggled.
“And you’re not just going to be keeping the house clean,” Tory added quickly. Her index finger pointed firmly at Paul, prodding him in the chest and pinning him against the plastic dresser. “If you’re going to be our doll maid, you’re going to act like one, too. Like with manners and being polite and all that. C’mon, let’s see it now. Curtsy for us.”
Shaking, Paul stepped away from the dresser and back toward the precipice of the opened room. He took hold of the skirt in his fingers, quaking all the while, and bowed his knees slightly. Was this how to do it? He’d spent enough time prancing in front of a mirror wearing Tory’s clothes that it seemed like he ought to know, but in this moment of stage fright, he couldn’t quite place it.
“Almost!” Zoey commented. Her thumb appeared over Paul’s head and gave him a hard shove down, pushing him into a truer curtsy. “That’s how! We wanna see you do that every time we come see you in your pretty house and in your pretty dress, Paul!”
“Paul,” Tory repeated, chewing the word over, then pinched her lips like she’d sucked a lime. “No, I don’t think that fits now. I mean, he is our little French maid. He likes girl clothes. I think a girl’s name would fit him better.”
“But what might it be?” Scarlet asked with a sly smile, at last seeming to get in on the fun of the family activity. “Catherine? Deidre? Minx?”
“Mary-Ann,” Zoey said quietly. Her fingers clasped together over her chest, seething with hope. “I think his dolly name is Mary-Ann.”
“I like,” said Tory.
“Perfect choice yet again, dear!” Scarlet said. “What do you say, girls? I found my pocketbook down in the kitchen just before you called us up, dear. Maybe some lunch and then shopping would do us some good, after all the… excitement. And I’m sure Paul needs some time to think about what he’s done.”
“Yes, please!” Zoey wheedled. She rumpled the hem of her purple dress again. “I really want a new color!”
“Just one more thing, Paul,” Tory said as the family stood up, leaving the bedazzled boy to his new disgraceful purpose. While Scarlet and Zoey departed, the elder sister remained in the room, towering like a fifty-foot-woman over the humble dollhouse and its quivering occupant. “We wouldn’t want your job to get too easy, would we? A house that small? You might just get bored in a week. So let’s keep things interesting, shall we?”
Tory waved her fingers, and in another sparkling flash, Paul felt himself and his maid uniform diminishing yet again. He dwindled, watching his perfectly scaled abode inflate all around, until it had become more of a funhouse rendition of Zoey’s toy. Now half his previous size, the four-inch boy was made to be the size of a small child within his little sister’s miniature model. Even in the confines of a dollhouse, he couldn’t feel anything but helplessly, pathetically, laughably small.
“That should just about do it. I’ll leave you to your chores, little Mary-Ann,” Tory said with satisfaction. For a minute, the young woman stood in the doorframe, letting her sibling drink in her relatively doubled size. She winked at her brother, then cupped both hands around her lips. “By the way, in case your brain is too puny now to figure it out: Mom never leaves her pocketbook anywhere. Golly… I wonder if someone else did this time, just so we’d come back home when somebody wasn’t ready? Hmmmm!”
Dumbstruck at this final haunting revelation, Paul watched his giant sibling snap her fingers, causing the twin halves of the doll-mansion to swing shut, sealing him inside the stale darkness of the plastic domestic prison. Then, with a swishing pivot on her heel which flourished her searing-crimson skirt and cloudy petticoats, Tory exited the room. Her victim listened to her sneakers padding all along the hallway and tramping down the stairs after the family.
Paul bustled around his plastic prison. He’d been alone for hours now, locked away inside Zoey’s dollhouse, and was too frightened to try anything except what he was ordered to do. There was a front door, but he didn’t dare escape.
It was enough trouble trying to keep the place clean when he was shrunken to the size of a small child, even measured against a toy model, but after finding some spare doll clothes in the bedroom to use as dusting rags, he at least had a start. Though the lighting was poor, every room contained a wide four-paned window opening, so Paul could make out objects enough to know where he should be concentrating. He stood on his tip-toes just to reach the tops of the little doll dressers and countertops. Aside from his current attire, it was a bizarre flashback to actually being a small child and trying to reach high-up places.
Putting aside the humiliation of earlier, and general fretting at his sister Tory’s diabolical ploy, he busied himself with scrubbing and scouring. It wasn’t even clear if Paul was doing the job correctly. The dollhouse was indeed caked with dust after years in storage, and gradually it was uncovered thanks to his efforts, but there was no telling if all his labors would come to naught anyway. Given the compromising circumstances he was discovered in, and literally discovered in his sister’s gown, he couldn’t say whether his family intended to honor the agreement, or if they simply wanted another excuse to laugh at the four-inch boy in his French maid uniform playing the part.
Paul had just finished intricately dusting the tenth of the dozen rooms in the dollhouse, when he heard the distant opening and closing of an enormous door, followed by a trio of earth-rumbling footsteps. Though he was separated from his giant family by an entire story, the plastic floors of the dollhouse still vibrated softly. Collecting himself, Paul froze in the tiny kitchen. He watched the miniature plastic plates slide and tumble off the edge of the table as the footfalls grew more thunderous and ever-closer. The light coming in through the window shifted, darkening for an instant, and then changed colors to a distinct cherry-red tint.
Booming murmurs were stifled outside. The whole dollhouse shuddered again as a pair of graceful, lithe yet comparatively gigantic bodies stooped down around the elaborate plaything. Paul crept toward the light, his heart in his throat, then staggered back in surprise when a colossal, sparkling chocolate-brown eye curtained with lengthy eyelashes appeared in the window. Two sets of delighted laughter quaked the walls.
With a snap of Tory’s fingers, the dollhouse was split back down the middle on its hinge, and settled into “play” mode. Both sisters were seated daintily on folded legs, with their puffed skirts tucked neatly under, their hands clasped prayerfully in their laps. Tory still wore the same magically enhanced red dress, accessorized with the same secretive grin. Meanwhile, Zoey had evidently gotten what she wanted, and now wore a bright yellow number the hue of sherbet and cream. The youngest jittered, obviously holding back an excited outburst.
“Well?” Tory snapped. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”