Marcus found himself once again in a giant space filled only with pitch black. Another dream, it seemed. But unlike his previous one, he felt a mass beneath his feet this time, like he was standing on something. As his vision continued to focus, he realized that the darkness was actually night, and he could just barely make out the silhouettes of mountains in the distance. The dim light behind them continued to glow brighter and brighter, before a blinding light pierced the tip of the great cascades, causing Marcus to shutter his eyes momentarily in surprise before returning to look back on the distant brightness. It still blinded him to look directly at it, but it more clearly illuminated the world he was in, an orange field of wheat that he suddenly felt brushing against his skin as the wind softly rustled by. He realized too that the light in the distance was the sun, peeking back up into the world to signify a new day.
“Hello again, little one,” a great voice boomed from all around him, and he spun around to see Jessie standing hundreds of feet away in the distance, yet looming hundreds of feet in the air at the same time. Except he knew now that this great being wasn’t Jessie, at least not the Jessie he knew as his daughter. He recalled her saying last time that she was his guardian angel, or at least in this confusing, ethereal dream world she was. Just like last time, she still donned her extravagant, silky white mini dress, with beautiful, fluttering wings spread mightily on her back and a shimmering halo above her head. She stepped forward, easily covering dozens of feet in a single stride, and continued to make her way across the meadow towards him. As she came closer with every step, he realized just how large she really was, dwarfing his body far more than his daughter’s ever did back in the real world. Once more, she reached down and plucked him off the ground, setting his body down carefully within her soft, white palm. She smiled at him lovingly, her teeth shining almost as much as the ring around her head, and his heart seemed to melt just like whenever the Jessie back on Earth would smile at him the same way, the way that only a daughter can to a father. Or apparently, an angel can to a mortal.
But as she smiled, he noticed her face seem to change ever so slightly. She wasn’t moving, and yet her features began to become more defined, and he looked on confusingly as he wondered what was happening. Her hair seemed to grow more full and volumous, her lips grew more red and took on a more prominent shape, and her nose seemed to vaguely shift, although he couldn’t tell if it was growing or shrinking or something else. He noticed the edges of her jaw were becoming more defined, as her bone structure appeared to take on a more evident shape on her face. “You’re getting… older,” he said aloud, realizing what the changes materialized to be, and she nodded slowly and gently in response.
Marcus crawled forward on her hand so he could catch a better view of her chin, but in doing so he noticed the rest of Jessie’s body seemed to be changing as well. The dress she wore appeared to grow along with her body, as he watched the figure of his daughter’s bust grow outward, increasing more and more in size, past that of any of her classmates. Further down even still, her hips gained size and shape, as they transformed from looking like a teenager’s to looking like a grown woman’s. And the ground itself, beneath her sandaled feet, flew farther and farther away from him; she was growing in size too. He lifted his head back up to meet her eyes, still fixed on him with unflinching tenderness, as her body seemed to slow back down its transformation. Where once before him stood the vast body of his 13-year-old daughter in angelic form, now stood an even larger body of the beautiful, grown woman she would one day turn into, unmistakably older yet impossibly youthful. “You’re… bigger too,” he gasped, his eyes marveling at the sight of his daughter.
The great being nodded and laughed, just like his daughter always had, but seemingly more regal now. “Of course I’m bigger, Marcus, I grew up. Just like your daughter will, with time.” As she spoke, he noticed that her voice was deeper now too. “But you are not meant to grow any more, Marcus. That part of your life already happened. Your genetics determined the size you were meant to be throughout your whole life before you were even born, and now that size will never change.”
“It won’t?” Marcus asked, hints of sadness and fear creeping into his mind for the first time since he arrived here. He already knew that he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. But having the image of his daughter confirm it for him made it feel like he was learning the news for the first time.
“How could it? Your condition is permanent, and adults like you don’t grow up anyways. They stay the same size. Unless of course, they get unlucky, as you did, and then they get smaller, and smaller, and smaller…” Marcus collapsed onto his knees and hung his head, knowing that everything she was saying was true, yet feeling hopelessly lost because of it. His angel took notice of his sadness though, and reached her other hand up to gently stroke his back with her finger. “Oh, don’t cry little one, I did not mean to bring you such feelings. There will be no need for worry anymore, because your daughter is extraordinary and special, and you’ll always be safe with her.”
Marcus lifted his head up, once more gazing upon the comforting smile of his angel. “Huh? Wh-what do you mean, I’ll ‘always be safe?’”
“Just as you were always meant to shrink one day, so too was your daughter always meant to be your protector, watching over you until the end of your days,” she explained. Yet this notion only served to scare Marcus even further, and the angel took on a look of pity towards the small father as she saw that he was still worried. “Here, I’ll show you,” she said, and suddenly he felt her hand pull out from under him, sending him falling towards the ground. But he landed painlessly, miraculously unhurt from falling hundreds of feet at once.
He watched as the angel stepped backwards, her body mutated once again into the 13-year-old girl that he always knew, as the world around them transformed into a familiar scene: their living room. And there, sitting in the kitchen, was Marcus, all two feet and seven inches of him. He looked back at Jessie and saw that she was standing by the door, wearing regular clothes again and a backpack. She waved across the house and mouthed out a goodbye, as Marcus’ body double smiled and waved back. Except their voices sounded as if they were thousands of feet away, and echoed all around him with a dreamlike resonance. It was clear to Marcus that they couldn’t see him, and he was having some kind of out of body experience, but was this a memory, or a depiction of the near future? Suddenly his guardian angel’s familiar, bold voice echoed all around him, evidently no longer being spoken by the girl she was embodied. “As time goes on in your lives, you never end up finding a new job at your size,” she explained, and he watched as Jessie headed out the front door, apparently on her way to school, as the door slammed shut and its boom echoed throughout their void. Marcus turned to see his clone on his phone, and then transport to the couch where he was watched the news, and then transport once more to lying asleep on the couch, lazily sprawled out on the cushions. “But there’s no cause for concern, because your daughter’s love for you never diminishes one bit.”
The front door exploded open again, but instead of the familiar image of his daughter walking through, he watched as an older, taller, and much curvier version of Jessie sauntered through the door. Much like the angel’s preview transformation, her hips were much wider, and her breasts had grown considerably, with long, flowing hair cascading down behind her. But unlike the angel’s figure, who seemed to be an angelic soul merely possessing the body of his daughter, this person before him was the real thing. The way she smiled, the way she walked and carried herself; it was definitely the true Jessie, which made him even more awestruck at how much she had grown. “Here she is, years later,” the angel said, completely unheard by the two people Marcus was watching. “She’s just entered her sophomore year.”
“My little girl is in college?” Marcus asked, although there was nothing little about her anymore. He somehow felt overcome with emotion in this dream, full of pride for Jessie’s accomplishments.
“Not yet. It’s her second year of high school by this time,” the angel explained. Marcus’ sense of pride was overtaken with one of astonishment, that this… woman… could somehow be his daughter. If she had just started 10th grade, that meant she was only 15 years old, yet she looked like she could pass as someone in their 20’s. He remembered his encounter with Veronica, but it seemed that his daughter wasn’t far behind in her footsteps.
“Daaaaaaddy, guess who’s hooooooome!” she exclaimed, as full of life as ever. Marcus’ other self woke up startled from the couch, before relaxing as he realized it was just Jessie.
“Hey sweetie,” he said, smiling at her as she bounced her way to the front of the couch, always so full of energy. She opened her arms up wide, and Marcus stood up on the couch in response, before Jessie swooped in and wrapped him in a tight hug that seemed to squash his body within her giant breasts. He didn’t seem to be as reluctant or weirded out as the real Marcus was just from watching, and it occurred to him that years of such behavior between the two of them must have made his future self grown accustomed to being handled that way.
“You know, I had the most random memory today in class, back from when I was still in middle school,” Jessie said, releasing Marcus’ double from their bear hug and setting him back down on the couch, “It was from just around when you first shrunk. I’d been feeling self conscious about my body, but you had reassured me that I was still young so I had nothing to worry about. And that one day when I grew up, the rest of me would too,” she giggled. “And you were right!” She reached out her hand for a high five, and Marcus—completely undeterred by what she had just said—slapped his little palm right against hers.
“I don’t even remember that, to be honest,” he laughed, and jumped down off the couch. Jessie took his place, turning around and crashing into the couch with so much force that it budged backwards by an inch. “How was practice?” Marcus asked, as he walked to the front of their ottoman as Jessie pried off her shoes and socks, swinging them up onto the footrest.
“It was fine I guess,” she sighed, crossing her bare feet as Marcus grabbed the top one, immediately getting to work with rubbing at her soles and massaging her tired muscles. A second thought occurred to the Marcus who was watching all this unfold, that the years that had passed had cultivated their routine to the point where her foot rubs had become a regular, daily occurrence, that both of them treated with normalcy and indifference. Without a job of his own to occupy his day, it seemed that the least his future self could do was tend to his daughter after her long, hard day at school.
But as Marcus held Jessie’s feet in his hands, his other self observed as Jessie continued to change again, growing older, bigger, and bustier even still. The hair on Marcus’ head started to thin slightly, and a few of his black hairs turned to gray as he reached his 40’s. The space around them changed too, morphing into that of a dormitory. Now she really was in college, it seemed. And Marcus was still by her feet, giving them a thorough massage while she relaxed on her bed, busy scrolling through her phone. “Even with your disability checks, your finances were growing thin by the time Jessie started university,” the angel’s voice boomed out, returning to explain this new chapter in the Tilden’s lives. “So you ended up selling your home and moving into her dorm room with her, using some of the sale from the house to pay for her tuition. It’s a good thing you paid off the loan on your house before you shrunk, because even with her scholarships, you’re paying almost $100,000 for her to go to school.”
Jessie looks up from her phone now, pulling her feet away from her dad’s hands and smiling down at him. “Hey Daddy, I’m gonna be going out with Tyler later today again,” she says. “Do you think you could clean up a bit around here before we get back?”
“Of course, Jess,” he answered, seeming to be just as eager as ever to help her out. The Marcus of the past watched as the two of them teleport again, signifying some time has passed, and Marcus is alone in the dorm room, picking up his daughter’s clothes off the floor while she’s nowhere to be seen. Another time skip by a few hours, and Marcus is climbing into bed just as laughter is heard in the hallway outside, and the door creaks open, a second voice accompanying his daughter’s. Once more, the scene skips time, but only by a little, and suddenly there’s a bundle of motion underneath the covers on Jessie’s bed. A flurry of whispers and giggles, with someone’s body rising up and down beneath the sheets, as future Marcus lays in his small bed with his eyes open, nowhere else to go. A piercing shriek lets loose from Jessie’s bed, as his grown up daughter is unable to contain her feeling of ecstasy. But Marcus only winces; this isn’t the first time, but he knows that neither him nor his daughter have anywhere else to sleep, and it’s just something he has to put up with.
His daughter’s howl echoes through the night as the scene once again shapeshifts, traveling further into the future than ever before. Jessie and her boyfriend disappear, along with the rest of the room, but Marcus stays resting in his bed, its 3 foot frame built especially for his meager body. The grays of his hair multiply even more, and the Marcus of the present can only stand by and watch as his other self develops several wrinkles, and his skin starts to sag, the signs of him becoming an old man. But a third setting takes form around Marcus in bed. It looks like he’s in a room of some kind, and there’s a dresser fit for his size off to the side, yet it also seems too small to be a bedroom. Initially he thinks it’s still night time, until he realizes there aren’t any windows, and the only lightbulb in the room, far above his reach, is turned off. On one side of the wall is a great wooden door, with a handle that seems too high for him to reach. And there’s a light peeking through beneath the crack under the door. “And finally…” the angel calls out, revealing the final stage of their journey.
“Good morning dad,” he hears a voice saying from behind the doorway: his daughter. The door slowly opens, and the first thing he notices is her face, smiling as joyfully as ever, happy to see him. Except while he seems to have aged by 10 or 15 years, his daughter seems only a few years older than when he last saw her in college. But the next thing he knows, the door slams open the rest of the way, and a little boy and girl come barreling through.
“Happy birthday, grandpa!” they yell out in unison, pulling him forcefully out of bed. As Marcus is able to see outside of the door now, he realizes that the outside is a bedroom, and his other self seems to have been sleeping in his daughter’s closet. The boy, who Marcus seems to only be as tall as his chest, grabs ahold of his arm and runs back out into Jessie’s room, dragging him along before Marcus can even get to his feet.
“Hey, be careful with grandpa now, he’s not a toy,” Jessie scolds, and the two kids giggle.
“Morning, Mark,” a man says, stepping into view and throwing his hand around Jessie’s shoulder with a cup of coffee in his hand.
Marcus sighs but laughs at his predicament from his spot on the floor, his leg still held within his grandson’s grasp. “Hey Ty,” he says, rolling his eyes from another day of playing with his grandkids.
“Can we go play with grandpa in our room?” the little girl asks enthusiastically, and the two adults laugh at how eager their children seem to be to play with their grandfather.
“Sure honey, just don’t be too rough with him again,” Jessie laughs, and the kids squeal in excitement as they run out of the bedroom with Marcus’ body trailing behind them.
Still watching from his closet, now with fear and unwillingness on his face, the normal Marcus shakes his head, unable to comprehend the future and what it will turn him into. “No... no!” he whimpers. “Is this my life? Is this all it will be?” he asks. “Always living in Jessie’s shadow?”
“C’mere, you,” Jessie’s husband murmurs, grabbing her butt as she squeals, and they lock lips in a passionate affair as the closet door slams shut, trapping Marcus back into the darkness again.
“This is… what I’ll become?” he asks, as the door drifts further and further away from him, sending him back into the endless, black void.
“Yes, Marcus,” the angel’s voice replied, her face suddenly emerging from the misty darkness to look down on him with pity and care. “But there is no reason that you should worry. As you saw, the years will go on, and the decades will pass, but Jessie will always stay right by your side,” his guardian said, smiling at him as if it was a beautiful, hopeful future that he should be excited for. “And you, little one, will always stay right by hers.”