While she struggled to hoist him higher, the youngest Harris sister left her shrunken brother to flail in the lower folds of her dress. Paul’s squirming did nothing to wrestle him out from between the girl’s slender legs or her poofy multicolored duds. If anything, her flapping hands only served to kick up her frosted petticoats higher, getting them tangled around her brother’s head. The boy heard Tory’s laughter beyond, crisscrossing with Zoey’s oblivious humming. At last the girl succeeded, with one hand clutching Paul’s back and the other cradling his dress-clad buttocks, like he was a toddler who’d long-outgrown being held by his mother, but carried on in this fashion anyway.
“That’s much better, isn’t it, Paul? It’s still better when we can just pick you up with one hand, but this nice, too,” Zoe commented. Likely not grasping the consequences, her hand squeezed his tiny rear end tighter.
Resigned to this final ritual humiliation, Paul went rigid in his little sister’s arms as the troops marched into the adjoining room. Zoey’s warm, sticky morning breath huffed regularly on his neck. While she was in charge of cuddling and incarcerating her brother against her torso, Tory and Scarlet went over every surface with a fine-toothed comb. No detail or corner was spared their scrutiny. Yet, so far, neither of them screeched to show off a stray microbe of dust; Paul knew they’d found nothing, because it was a surefire bet they would let him know the very instant he’d lost the punishment-game.
“Guess what, Mary-Ann?” Zoey whispered into Paul’s ear. She bobbed him like a fussy infant, even patting his head down until he forcibly used her shoulder as a pillow.
“What?” he relented.
“I did this.” As she spoke, she walked them in front of a floor-length toy mirror, granting her brother a view of himself. His sister’s lovely fair tresses cascaded around Paul’s own head, until it created a near-optical illusion that he, too, possessed long hair, which the boy had to imagine merely completed the ensemble rather than made him look worse.
“What do you mean?”
“I shrunk us, all on my own!” Zoey proudly declared. “I’ve been practicing this whole week, cuz Mom said I could be the one to make us all small enough to check how good of a maid you were. And I did it perfect, on the first try!”
“Wow,” Paul said.
“That’s all you have to say?” She sounded crest-fallen.
Paul gulped. It was hard to generate full-blown enthusiasm, seeing how his fate still very much hung in the balance at this moment. Then again, Zoey was the closest thing he had to an ally in this house. He needed to keep her. Not to mention, if the girl really was improving at her magic, showing her some kindness might provide future insurance against magic pranks.
“Sorry,” he coughed. “I mean, that’s really great, Zoey! I’m super-impressed.”
“Thanks,” she bashfully cooed. Blushing three shades pinker, she puckered her lips and planted a quick, sloppy smooch on her brother’s cheek.
When Scarlet and Tory begrudgingly agreed the room was clean, they moved on to the next. Paul held his breath until this location, too, received approval. One at a time, they inspected the dollhouse quadrants for up to fifteen minutes apiece. The shrunken boy couldn’t help but feel like he was playing Russian roulette and every room was a new click of the barrel. Yet his tireless focus had seemingly paid off; when they reached the final room, specifically the bedroom where he’d suffered through so many vivid wet-nightmares, Paul was getting dangerously close to hoping that he’d succeeded. Despite his diminutive body and general powerlessness, despite his elder sister’s magical cheats, and despite the impairments of public shaming and all his fetishes becoming tortures, he just might win.
Might.
“I think we’ve seen all we need to see,” Scarlet announced. Her voice was measured and fair, even though her tone concealed a hint of what Paul heard as disappointment. “Zoey, dear, please put your little brother down, so we can make a proper final ruling.”
Reluctantly, the smallest of the doll-sized giants trundled to the toy bed. There, she slumped her brother onto its surface. Paul hunched to a humble fetal position as his family encircled the mattress: one sister on each side, and his mother standing at the foot of the ped, overlooking the whole affair like a high court judge. Feeling as though he was trapped somewhere between those familiar haunting cross-dressing dreams and the ultimate decision of his mortal life, Paul smoothed down the wrinkles of his taut uniform. The fabric was tighter than ever, tight enough to turn his face red, and only coiling closer as Tory waggled her sparkling fingers. When she had finished the spell, the girly adornment was skin-smooth, making Paul feel even more naked in the sight of his giant family than when the clothes were literally ripped from his back. His hard-on proudly stuck up the skirt, but no one mentioned it; they’d broken down so many of Paul’s former barriers, he realized, there was no need to openly acknowledge his disgrace now. Still, he caught their snickers.
“Since this decision involves the whole family, I think it’s only fair that each of us gets a vote on the job little Paul has done here. It must be unanimous, so I expect us all to judge ethically, not just based on what we want,” Scarlet said. She leaned over the bedposts, as did the sisters, until the boy felt their looming presence crowding him almost as claustrophobically as the constricting French maid uniform. “First, Zoey. What do you think, sweetie?”
“Oh, it’s definitely-” the girl gleefully chanted, obviously about to render a positive vote, when she stopped herself. Nibbling her lip, Zoey shifted weight on her heels, then smiled deviously. “Mary-Ann, if we make you big again, will you play dolls with me sometimes? We don’t have to shrink you if you don’t want to, but would you still play with me? At least once a week?”
The boy blanched. What a sad paradox. Zoey wasn’t even young enough to want to play dolls at all before this wretched week started. This eleventh-hour bargaining for approval seemed to violate the fair rules his mother demanded. Of course, neither Scarlet nor Tory spoke; this wasn’t a democracy, Paul remembered, it was a house run by fun-loving and self-serving sorceresses. This was no time to call foul.
“Yeah!” he gasped. “Y-Yeah, of course.”
“Cool,” Zoey nodded. “Then I vote that he did it!”
“Lovely,” Scarlet said. Her kind smile gave Paul hope she, too, was prepared to end his sentence. She opened her mouth to speak, but like Zoey, halted herself. A slyer curl infected her once-sweet grin. “Paul, dear, seeing how wonderful a job you’ve done keeping this place clean, I don’t suppose it would be unreasonable to expect you to show a bit more… responsibility around the non-dollhouse from now on? Say, keeping it as beautifully spotless as your sister’s playhouse, all on your own, just once a week? Don’t worry. I won’t make you wear the uniform, unless it’s truly what you want.”
Tory and Zoey broke into giggles, while Paul stewed harder. This deal was getting worse all the time. Hours of extra weekly chores, plus required regular playdates with his fawning little sister? Not only was he being squeezed in the dress, but in the negotiations, too. Again, though, he came to the conclusion that any outcome was better than becoming a semi-permanent dollhouse fixture. Sighing, he nodded grimly.
“Oh, that’s fantastic. You may not have inherited the magic, but you’re not completely hopeless, Paul, honey, no matter what the rest of the family says!” Scarlet crooned, which evidently was meant to sound like a compliment, even though Paul only felt lower. She cupped her hands together and blew him a kiss. “Then it’s a yes-vote from me as well. And, finally… Tory? What do you have to say?”