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Sunday, October 18
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Marcus’ first few days of unemployment were going better than he initially thought they would. The presence of his daughter had really been helping his emotional well being; he almost felt like he was on a vacation, getting to spend so much time with her. And he was lucky that due to his disabled status, the checks he’d continue getting from the government would help stave off his need for a job by a little extra time, meaning more time that he could spend with Jessie. But he also knew he couldn’t keep putting things off forever. Eventually, he’d need to find a new way to make money, one way or the other.
He didn’t even have a copy of his resume, since it had been so many years since he’d needed one. His job at the television station had lasted years, a position he got before the modern job application ecosystem became a mostly-online process. He planned to worry about his resume and his formal recommendations on another day though; for Sunday, he just planned on taking a few hours to research possible jobs at his new size, and look for openings that he could begin tailoring applications for over the next week.
The first thing he did was simply google ‘good jobs for people with DSD.’ There didn’t seem to be many relevant results, but there was one article title that caught his attention. Although a quick scroll through it revealed the list was actually about standout cases, and not things suggestible for the everyday person. An F1 driver with a specially modified car, an actor who’s starred in some major movies. Cool. Great. Thanks BuzzFeed. As if those are careers I can just hop right into. The only thing he’d been able to think of on his own was answering phones for customer service, or some other kind of desk job. Customer service didn’t require any special knowledge, but a lot of desk jobs like accounting or coding or journalism, they all required a formal knowledge that he just didn’t have. So it was either answer phones for the rest of his life, or spending tens of thousands of dollars getting a degree so that he could re-enter the job market and risk not even getting hired anywhere.
It was all so demoralizing, but he returned back to the search results anyways in hopes that he might come up with more ideas.
* * * * * *
Marcus had fallen asleep at his miniature laptop, slouched on his miniature couch, when Jessie came into the kitchen and spotted her dad over on the side table in the living room. She came around to where he was and knelt down behind the table, looking over his shoulder at what he was doing. “Applying for jobs? Already?”
He awoke with a jump, the sound of her voice sounding like a speaker over his head, and she giggled at her dad’s reaction. “Oh, hey. Um… yeah well, I’m not really applying yet, just looking for what’s out there. Trying to get an idea for some of the kinds of jobs I’d still be good at at my new size.” She nodded understandingly, trying to read his mini screen, before standing back up to grab herself a cup of water. “But yeah, I’ll be applying to things pretty soon,” he continued. “Looking for a new job can take people months sometimes, and it’s definitely gonna be harder now that I’m less than a foot tall.” He sighed as he said the last few words. He’d have to get used to it eventually, but it tired him out just as much then as it did when he first got the news. “Not to mention all the companies that wouldn’t want to hire me.”
“Isn’t that illegal though? Wouldn’t that be discrimination?” she asked, coming back around to the living room and sitting criss cross on the floor in front of him, so that she could be eye level with him on the his table. Oh Jess, he thought with a chuckle, you’ve still got a lot to learn about the world.
“Yeah, it’s technically illegal. But it still happens all the time. Discrimination is what people think about you, and it’s hard to prove in a court of law what was going on in someone’s head. Unless there’s a clear pattern of evidence, or if the person hiring you explicitly told a coworker why you were being rejected. And most people are smart enough not to do that.” He leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms. Saying it out loud, it was really starting to get to him. He knew it’d be an uphill battle, but there just wasn’t anything he’d be able to do to make it easier on himself.
“Oh.” Jessie saw her dad’s change in demeanor and felt bad about asking. Meanwhile, Marcus saw his daughter look guilty after broaching the subject, and figured they switch topics.
“Hey, remember when I used to french braid your hair when you were little?” he asked, sitting up again with renewed spirit.
“Yeah,” she said cautiously, a smile creeping onto her lips, giving Marcus more encouragement.
“Well… if it’s even possible for me to do at my size,” he chuckled, “then I can try braiding it for you again, if you’d like. I don’t know if you still—“
“Sure!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together in excitement. “Of course I still like getting my hair braided. I could even wear it to school tomorrow."
“Well, I don’t know if it’ll look that good,” he said, as she turned around and scooted back to the side table his couch was on. “I’ll probably have to use my whole arms instead of just my fingers, and it’ll take a while.”
“That’s OK Daddy! If you can’t do it, you can’t do it, but if you can then that’d be pretty cool of you,” she responded excitedly. She shook her hair in preparation, running her fingers through the long strands as he gazed upon the wall of golden brown in front of him. Her hair was a little wavy, but not technically curly, and it came down to around her midsection. Probably three times as long as I am, at least, he figured. He couldn’t help it, nearly everything he looked at down was a comparison to his own height and size. But at least I’m not too small to braid it, he thought confidently, grabbing ahold of a section of her hair. He was glad that it wasn’t too heavy; all her strands felt like thousands of lengths of string. They were still thin enough compared to him that he could weave his little fingers through her long, silk-like hair. So he began overlapping bunches of strands, one over the other, doing his best to interlace her gorgeous locks and raise both of their spirits.
* * * * * *
Marcus was proud of the fact that he’d been successfully able to give his daughter french braids, and Jessie was even more excited that her dad was still able to too. In a world where he needed help with so many things now, or flat out couldn’t do them at all, they’d been able to find an activity that he could still do all on his own, which would be great for his confidence and self esteem.
Another activity they’d realized a few weeks ago could be done just as easily at Marcus’ new size was playing video games. Marcus had gotten his daughter a Nintendo Switch for Christmas last year so she could play Animal Crossing and a few other games with her friends, and being the angel that she was, Jessie had found a pair of specially designed controllers on Etsy that her dad could use. So after their hair braiding session, the two of them found themselves on the couch, yelling back and forth as they leaned in towards the TV, racing against each other in Mario Kart. Marcus was in his usual position whenever they sat together on the couch, nestled in a blanket that Jessie had set up on her lap. There were four races in a cup, and they’d just started the fourth race. Jessie was leading Marcus by several points on the scoreboard, but he was close enough behind that a 1st place victory could secure him the win over her. Neither of them played video games enough to be really good at them, but it still piqued their interest enough that they’d get fairly competitive whenever they did play.
The beginning of their final race was hectic for both of them, as the computer-controlled players barraged the father daughter duo with banana peels and red shells that kept tripping them up. Towards the end of the first lap, Jessie threw a green shell at her dad, but not only did she miss him by a matter of inches, the shell ended up bouncing off the wall and hitting her instead. “NAAA!” she screamed, a mixture of surprise, frustration, and laughter. She practically jumped up in her seat, causing her legs to spread apart, and the blanket that Marcus had been sitting on on her lap sunk down a few inches. Marcus was vaguely aware that his blanket had fallen a little bit, but it hadn’t affected his ability to keep playing, and without any immediate danger to interrupt his one-track mind, he ignored his minor change in positioning. And Jessie was so intensely focused on the game and trying to close the gap with her dad, that she hadn’t even realized anything had happened in the first place. So they continued racing, both dangerously quiet as they focused.
By the start of the third lap, Jessie was only a few seconds behind her dad—and gaining closer with every second. Her dad just kept getting bananas from the item boxes, while Jessie had gotten a few mushrooms, helping her speed ever closer to her dad. They slammed into some more item boxes as they turned onto a straight section of the track near the end of the course, and since Jessie’s top speed was better than her dad’s the two of them watched as she slowly gained on him, with nothing he could do to stop her. She was practically bouncing in her seat from the anticipation, while Marcus just ignored her and stayed focused on the screen, knowing it wasn’t over for him yet. But then their item wheels stopped, and Jessie saw she’d been given a green shell. Knowing she had almost no time to use it, but wanting to restore her honor after completely blowing it in the second lap, she let loose the shell. Marcus saw what she’d picked up, but there wasn’t enough time for him to react because of how close he was. He tried veering away, but the shell slammed into him before he could escape in time. “YES!” Jessie exclaimed as her character zoomed past her dad’s, as she slammed her legs together in excitement, almost jumping up out of her seat.
In a second, Marcus went from realizing that he hadn’t dodged the shell in time, to being squished by his daughter’s legs. The texture of her jeans felt less than stellar as they rubbed against the side of his face, although at least his other side was cushioned by the soft familiarity of the fuzzy blanket. “Uhnnn… Jess!” he managed to yell out, but she couldn’t hear him over the mix of her cheers and the sound from the TV.
“C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon coooome oooooon,” she chanted to herself, urging herself to win. Marcus’ character was still going forward although he kept bumping into obstacles, so nothing out of the ordinary registered with the excited young girl as she sped towards the finish line unopposed. “YEAAAHHH!” she squealed, throwing her arms up in the air and collapsing backwards onto the couch, a wide grin on her face.
“Jessie!” Marcus yelled again, except this time she actually heard him and looked down. The expression fell from her face as she saw him pressed between her thighs, only the top of his head visible as her denim rubbed against his arm and cheek. She immediately stretched her legs wide open, allowing him to collapse on the couch cushion, and a look of fear and worry overcame her.
“Daddy, are you OK?” she asked, her big blue eyes reigning overhead. Her instincts wanting to just scoop him right up and hold him up close to her so she could inspect him and make sure he was fine, but she knew he didn’t like being grabbed. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even feel you. Did I hurt you?” The truth was he was completely fine; getting squished had obviously been annoying, but his body was a bit more resilient so it hadn’t actually hurt. But he could tell there was a significant amount of concern in her voice.
“Yeah, I’m pretty hurt,” he lied, rubbing his neck like it was sore. He could hear her sharply breathe in, and for a few moments she felt like the worst daughter in the world. “Pretty hurt that you beat me at the Last. Second!”
She rolled her eyes and collapsed back against the couch again, deeply inhaling as she let her heart rate calm down. “Oh my GOD, I was so scared there for a second,” she groaned, as he laughed heartily at her reaction. His best way of getting payback for making him lose at the very end. “I was literally like about to cry honestly,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. She sat back up and looked down at him, smirking in respect to how good he’d fooled her. “That was pretty good though. I guess we’re even.”
He climbed on top of the mound of blanket and hoisted himself up onto her leg, before jumping off the other side onto the couch so he could make his way over to the side table. “I think I’m all gamed out for today though,” he said. “I don’t think my heart would be able to handle another loss like that.”
She shrugged, accepting that at least she was able to say they went out on a high note. “That’s fine,” she said, looking down at her thighs as she thought about what had happened. She stuck out her pointer finger and poked the top of her thigh; her jeans created some resistance, but she was still able to indent the fatty area of her body. She poked around at various parts of her legs, like a curious kid who’d never seen one before, as she imagined what it was like for her dad to be trapped between something that seemed so big from his perspective, but was still kind of squishy at least. Then she flexed her quads, years of playing volleyball having toned them more than most girls her age, and poked at the front of her thighs again to feel the difference; a lot more firm this time.
Marcus noticed what she was doing. “Thinking about what it might’ve felt like?”
“Yeah actually,” she replied, unflexing, then poke. Flex again, poke some more. Unflex. Flex. “I feel like my muscles are pretty firm, I know you said it didn’t hurt but I wonder if it might’ve if I had been flexing my legs or something, cuz then there’s not as much like, leg for you to get squished into or whatever.”
“I probably would’ve still been alright,” he said, turning back to his computer.
All the thinking about muscles and her tiny dad gave Jessie an idea. “You know that actually reminds me of something,” she said, grabbing her phone from beside her and heading to her photos. 10 seconds of scrolling and she’d found what she was looking for, opening up a picture. She turned to her dad and fell onto her stomach, kicking her feet up behind her as she held out the phone for him to see, resting her head onto the armrest. She wanted to be a bit closer so she could study his reaction. “These are from one of the guys in my class, he went through like this major like, body change or whatever, I guess just puberty really hit him over the summer or something. But anyways this is from the end of last school year,” she said, glancing sideways at her phone to make sure it was the right picture. It was a picture of her classmate’s arm, held in a bicep curl position.
Marcus could tell the boy was flexing, although his arm was rather skinny and his muscles didn’t look very developed, to be frank. “OK, and… I’m assuming you wanna show me what they look like now?” he asked.
Jessie turned the phone back around to her and swiped to the next picture, zooming into the arm area again, just showing the boy’s muscles against the plain backdrop, and turned the screen back around to show her dad. “Yeah, so that was like 6 months ago give or take, and then this is a few weeks ago.” The arm in the second picture looked so different, Marcus would’ve believed if Jessie said they weren’t the same person. Now, the boy’s muscles were much more pronounced. Their biceps and triceps were a lot bigger; the top side of their arm looked like two large hills, leading to a forearm that was surprisingly thick, all ending in the curled fist. “What do you think?” Jessie asked, glancing back and forth between the picture and her dad’s reaction.
She tended to do this a lot: ask her dad for opinions on seemingly random things, or see what he thought about various songs or pictures or even memes. She was just a curious soul, and with her dad being the closest person in her life, she relied on him for a lot of validation of some of her feelings on things. So even though Marcus had no idea why she was bringing it up or what she wanted him to say, he was used to it, and did his best to just speak his mind. “Well, I’m definitely surprised,” he said, and she could tell from his initial reaction that he was telling the truth too. “And he’s your age right?” he asked, and she nodded. “I know kids your age get a lot of super fast growth spurts, but even with that in mind it’s like looking at a normal teenager vs the arm of an adult athlete or something.”
“Really?” Jessie asked, smirking with how candid he was being, but also how flattering his comments were.
“Yeah, definitely. Definitely got some big muscles.” He paused, thinking about what the arm would look like in person: unsettling, disconcerting even. “Honestly it’d be pretty unnerving being around someone that strong. Even though everyone’s bigger than me anyways, it’s not like I need to be reminded of it,” he laughed, scratching his neck.
“Really…” she whispered now, sounding fascinated with his reply, as if his response alone was some kind of verbal zoo exhibit.
“Yeah, for sure. He’d be pretty, uh… intimidating, I guess.” He looked from the phone to his daughter, her giant, luminous face as tall as he was, her unwavering eyes intensely focused on what he had to say. “Is he on some kind of special diet or workout program that you wanna follow, why’d you want my opinion?” he asked.
“Because…” She looked to her phone’s screen, reaching across with her other hand to zoom out of the picture. “He is a she, and she is a me!” she exclaimed with a giggle, expanding the photo to full size. Sure enough, the arm had never belonged to any sort of boy from her class. It was a picture of Jessie in her school’s locker room, dressed in her volleyball uniform, as she flexed both of her arms with a bold and confident smile on her face. “So I’m intimidating huh?” she teased, and the arm that she’d used to reach over to her phone suddenly flared to life in front of her dad, her muscles bursting out.
He rolled his eyes, but took a step backwards as Jessie smiled with a smug look, sitting up on her knees and curling her arms on either side, showing off the muscles that she’d developed so quickly over the last few months, the ones that apparently were ‘unnerving’ to her dad. “What was that you said Daddy? Big muscles, huh?” she asked, and turned to kiss one of her biceps. He crossed his arms but looked up at her towering figure, as she flexed her arms back and forth, showering them in kisses as she admired the strength and musculature of her own body.
“You’re such a goofball,” he sighed, shaking his head with a smile, as turned back to his laptop while she continued to flex and tease her dad about how strong and scary he said she was.
* * * * * *
Before the day drew to a close, there was a chore that Jessie had to do that she’d forgotten to do all weekend but was fairly important: mowing the lawn. Marcus was obviously nowhere close to being able to cut their yard anymore, so Jessie had had to take up the mantle, cutting it for the first time in her life a few weeks ago, and now for the second time today. After Jessie had had her fun gloating about how strong she was, Marcus told her that it shouldn’t be a problem then for her to mow the lawn. She dropped her act and groaned, but knew that he had a point, it had to get done and she had to be the one to do it.
After watching her first few passes on the backyard, Marcus decided she was doing a good job and wouldn’t have to worry, so he went and continued about his day while the motor hummed outside. Eventually the sound stopped, and after a few minutes, the door to the garage swung open as Jessie trudged inside. Marcus was in his bedroom and had just stepped out of his room to head to the kitchen when he saw her come inside, her head bobbing along to some music she was listening to through her earphones. She slipped her black working shoes off and left them by the door, before starting to walk across the house on her way towards her room. As she walked along, she realized her socks had gotten way dirtier than she’d expected; they were tinted green all over from the recent grass stains. And she could feel they were soggy too as she walked along, from all the dew on the grass seeping through her cheap shoes and soaking the socks.
Realizing she was probably heading to her room, Marcus had moved to the side of the hall as he continued making his way along, at his much slower, 9 inch speed. Jessie had become pretty good with watching where she was going to make sure she didn’t accidentally kick or step on her dad while she was walking. But him being shrunken was still a relatively new dynamic in their family, so her tendencies weren’t quite habitual yet. So for his own safety, Marcus would walk along the sides of a hallway if she was ever around, just for the sake of safety.
Feeling grossed out by her socks, Jessie stood on one foot while she bent her leg up and pried one of the socks off her foot, and then clumsily switched her balance to her bare foot so she could remove the other one. After taking them off, she continued walking towards the hallway, but hadn’t yet noticed her dad along the side of the wall. Feeling morbidly curious, the teenager slowly lifted the socks up, around 6 inches from her face, and lightly sniffed the air. Even with them being held a few inches back, she immediately wrinkled her nose in disgust at the foul smell, feeling stupid for even wanting to know in the first place. “Ugh,” she muttered, instinctively turning her head away as she recoiled her arm, before dropping the soiled garments so she wouldn’t have to deal with them any further.
Always being conscious of his surroundings, Marcus watched it all unfold: her taking her shoes off to her taking her socks off, as she entered into the hallway. For a moment, he chuckled as he saw her get grossed out by the smell of her socks, but then the color drained from his face as he watched the arm far above him move outwards before letting go of the nasty pair. The conjunction of her shooing her arm away at the same time she dropped them caused the socks to have a bit of diagonal momentum. In other words, instead of just falling straight downwards, they flew slightly forward and to the side. Right in his direction.
He yelled out to get her attention, but she couldn’t hear him because of the music playing in her ears, and completely ignored his quick cry for help. Just like the green shell she’d thrown that he hadn’t been able to dodge, he was too late in dodging the pair of green and graying socks. They were simply too big, each one both wider than his body and longer too, and they struck him, taking him down with them. Because of his size, everything in his life now weighed around 400 times as much as it used to. With everything being seven and a half times as tall and seven and a half times as wide and seven and a half times as long, the resultant burden of every single object was magnitudes bigger for him. So what would normally just be a pair of socks, that weighed maybe more than a quarter pound because of their dampness, now felt like a 150 pounds slamming into him from above.
Luckily for him, and everyone else with his condition, his body was a lot tougher at his small size. And he could lift more relative weight compared to what he used to be able to, like an ant or other bug. But a hundred and fifty pounds was still a hundred and fifty pounds, so his daughter’s pair of post-lawn mowing attire knocked him right off his feet. Not only that, but it knocked the wind out of him too since he was caught by surprise.
He fell against the carpeted floor, her dirty socks on top of him like some kind of demented blanket. The toe section of her left one had landed right around his upper body, so the very tip of it was around where his face was. With his breath taken away by the sudden impact, his first priority was getting his breathing back to normal, so his breaths were spaced out and sporadic. But every gasp of breath sent a miasma of grassy grime right into his mouth, filling his lungs with the young girl’s potent mixture of sweat and dirt. It was a horrid, revolting stench, and for a moment the thought crossed his mind that maybe he hadn’t had his breath knocked out of him, maybe his daughter’s socks were simply so putrid that his body wouldn’t let him breathe. But slowly his diaphragm returned to normal, and his heart rate slowed as he found himself able to breathe again. Except the air was still moist, humid, and foul; they were still slightly warm from having been worn for the past half hour, so he also started to sweat himself from the warm and damp layers of cotton that held him down like a weighted blanket. Adding insult to injury, he heard the sound of his daughter’s door closing, reminding him that she hadn’t even realized what she’d just done, and was completely unavailable to help him. He’d have to get out of this one himself.
With his strength returning, he tried dragging his body out from under the stinking pair of socks, but with them resting on so much of his body, it just caused the socks to get dragged along with him, seemingly anchored to him. Deciding upon a new solution, he tried to push the socks off his body, and he cringed as his hands sunk into the wet fabric, staining his hands with its grassy remains. But he was able to make progress, aided by his heightened sense of strength, and slowly shoved the garment off of his chest. Now he was able to sit up at least, causing the process to go faster, and he panted as he got each leg out from underneath. Breathing a sight of relief, he stood up all the way, backing up from the discolored pile of filth like he’d discovered a dead body, horrified but unable to look away out of amazement from what just happened. The smell from the socks faded, and he turned to finish heading towards the kitchen.
But as he took a deep breath to soothe himself, glad that he hadn’t gotten stuck under Jessie’s socks for hours until she found him, he could still smell the mixture of grass and dirt and cotton and sweat. It had rubbed onto his clothes and body, so while it wasn’t as strong, it was still unmistakable, no matter how far away he continued to walk. He grumbled and hung his head low, simply having to accept that he’d probably have the putrid smell of the 13-year-old’s dirty socks follow him wherever he went for the rest of the night. And she wouldn’t even know.