Kat grabbed her drink and rose from her chair, apparently eager to begin circulating the room as their parents were.
"Now, I'll check back on you over time, but before I go, I want you to think about something."
"Um, what?" Dan asked, nervous.
Kat leaned in, smiling like a predator.
"Don't the other lobsters still seem a bit nervous? It's because you're so big, Dan, unnaturally big. You want to be a proper lobster...lobsters are a lot smaller...If you were regular lobster size, we could return the tank to normal...you'd be just...like...them...if you were only to shrink down to their size...think about that for me, ok, little brother?"
Dan gulped as she walked away. She was trying to get him to change faster. She wanted him on the menu as fast as possible. He had to resist! He just needed to think about something else. Think about...about...
Gosh, this tank was cramped though. They'd enlarged it so he could be submerged, but he couldn't really scuttle around. And the other lobsters kept having to move around him...
'GAH!' thought Dan. 'I can't think like that, I can't think-'
He looked to the end of the tank. Was it farther away than before? The other lobsters, did they look bigger? He looked around, desperately trying to convince himself otherwise, but it was true. He had nearly an extra foot of space in the tank already. He was shrinking! Soon he'd be no bigger than these other lobsters!
'OTHER lobsters! When did I start thinking that way? It's become so natural!'
Bit by bit he watched the tank and other lobsters seem to grow, knowing that he himself was shrinking. A tall boy at 5'10", he watched as that became 4'10"...then 3'10"...he was losing weight rapidly too. He'd started at 160lbs, or thereabouts. Looking over himself, he wasn't sure how much he weighed now, but didn't like his odds.
'Oh God, people are starting to notice, people are starting to *notice!*' he thought to himself in mixed delight and distress. And it was true - the other witches and their families, as they circulated the room, noticed him and gestured towards him. Distantly he heard one of the closer ones describing him in almost clinical detachment.
"See there," said the elderly woman to her apparent granddaughter, "he's almost to normal lobster size now. Once his face finishes he'll be indistinguishable from last night's supper. It's really quite fascinating."
"How small will he get?"
"Well, from the coloration he looks like a Maine lobster. Now, those have legal size requirements for harvesting, so his body will naturally conform to those assuming Kat has done her magic right."
'Harvesting!' Dan thought. 'Oh, no, I'm being reshaped to...to...commercial size!' He tried to convince himself that he hated that idea. Tried very hard indeed...
"So it says here," the girl said while looking at her phone, "that the maximum Maine Lobster size is 5 inches of carapace length, which works out to 10 inches overall, and anywhere from 3 to 4 pounds. That's if he's a jumbo."
2'10"...Dan felt mortified, but he was now able to scuttle and swim freely. The old woman and her granddaughter had wandered away, now, leaving him to his thoughts and fellow crustaceans. The tank seemed so empty, now that he wasn't taking up space, he thought...
1'10", suddenly, sharply. Dan gasped.
'No! Thinking of that must have made it happen faster! I've got to stop before I'm lobster-'
And again, another drop. 10", now, from head to tail tip. He stood on the floor of the tank, eye level with another lobster staring back at him and his freakishly human face.
'Oh no!'
Suddenly the tank shrank down. He'd not seen it before, but he knew it was at normal size now. Normal size for normal lobsters...like him. He looked around and saw Kat nearby, a smirk on her face. She grabbed a waiter, and whispered something. The waiter attempted to wave her off, but she seemed to insist. He grinned, and then vanished into the kitchens. A moment later he returned with one of his coworkers, wearing the rubber gloves and carrying tongs. The other waiter seemed to have a small kitchen scale. Dan was filled with dread as they approached and too frightened to speak.
"What are we doing, Jed?"
"Ok, hear me out. He's in the tank, so he's part of our inventory."
"Yeah, but he'll leave with the party-"
"Exactly! They're taking inventory away."
He reached into the tank with the tongs, grabbing Dan. Dan squeaked, and was hauled out of the water and placed on the scale.
"Five pounds, nice, he's a fat one."
"I still don't..."
"They're taking inventory away. They have to pay for him," the first waiter added slyly, grabbing Dan again and chucking him unceremoniously into the tank.
"Add him to the bill!"
The waiters grinned at each other and returned to the kitchen, unobserved by anyone but Dan, who was mortified that he was about to be paid for just like the chicken and salmon dishes, and Kat, who was watching it all with undisguised glee.
'Almost there, little brother...'