“Jungle Prince,” Mason replied with a smirk.
Janette let out a laugh and batted Mason in the chest. “Jungle Prince? I used to love that movie as a kid!”
“Yeah they just released a remake of it, I was gonna watch it and see how bad they screwed it up,” Mason chuckled as they walked to the theatre in question.
“Oh man, when I was a kid I watched our copy so much it stopped working,” Janette laughed while clutching her forehead.
“I watched it every day when I was five,” Mason explained with a cheeky grin. “It was one of the few movies I owned in English.”
“Think it holds up?” Janette asked while elbowing Mason in the ribs.
“Absolutely not, and that’ll just make it better,” Mason chuckled in reply.
They entered the theatre in question and sat down in the back, rows upon rows of kids and put upon parents sat before them and both Mason and Janette snickered at all the overtired faces on the moms and screaming children who couldn’t sit still in their seats.
“Can you believe we were once like this?” Janette asked with a laugh.
“Nope,” Mason replied while shaking his head.
The kids didn’t stop screaming even when the movie started and both Mason and Janette held their breath as the film started, trying to see who would laugh first. It was awful, the original film had been a kiddie romp but the remake was just uncanny. There was this unfinished CGI, the voice acting was ear grating, and it burst into a horrible song ten seconds in.
Janette couldn’t take it and burst out laughing first, a year rolling down from her eye as laughed hysterically. Mason quickly joined her.
She didn’t notice and the changes were pretty minor, but her body began to rewind itself, she went from twenty one years old to eighteen with just a few changes to how she was filled out. She lost that womanly look to her body with proper curves and took on a scrawnier fresh adult frame.
The second she calmed down and opened her eyes she blinked in confusion and Mason seemed to be experiencing the same confusion. They weren’t watching Jungle King any longer, instead a film played on the screen about girls riding horses. It was marginally better but all the human designs were copy pasted so they all had the same figure and face shape just with different hair and skin tones.
“Huh?” Mason asked in utter confusion.
“I guess we’re watching a horseback riding movie for little girls now,” Janette shrugged. “Maybe a glitch in the reel.”
“Maybe,” Mason replied with a scratch of his chin.
“I would have been all over this movie when I was a kid, I was crazy about horses,” Janette admitted with an out of place voice crack. She lost a little bit of height but the drastic changes were to her hips, breasts, and shoulders. They shrunk down to awkward pubescent levels while braces attached themselves to her teeth and acne exploded across her face. She looked to be about fifteen and her clothing shifted to match, becoming the stylish type girls her age wore out. A pair of short shorts, a sleeveless top, and flip-flops. Her mom had always told her when she was an awkward teenager that people would look pst the braces and acne if she dressed like the popular girls, it had never worked.
The screen turned to static and suddenly they were watching a documentary about giant pandas meant for kids and Mason stood up at the very sight of it.
“I’m gonna go complain about this, you sit tight,” he ordered before jogging off while she stared at the pandas on screen.
“They’re so... cute!” She squeed as she stared up at the animals. Her body rewound again, her braces becoming even worse, a splatting of freckles crossing her nose, and her hair being cut into bangs that looked awkward on a fifteen year old but began to look more at home on a twelve year old. She could feel the awkwardness and pain of her first period, her left breast had budded but her right one was smooth on her chest, not yet stimulated by hormones. She was a lanky beanpole of a girl and her clothing shifted into a pair of jeans and a long sleeve shirt despite the heat, she hated her body and didn’t want anyone to see it. Why couldn’t she be pretty as she entered puberty? Instead she was just awkward and weird looking. The pandas were cute though and she knew everything about them. That’s what you did when all the girls your age teased you, you read books and watched nature documentaries.
“Okay, something is seriously wrong here,” Mason commented as he returned from outside and nearly jumped out of his skin. The movie being played was about a bunch of nine year olds in a dance school and Janette wasn’t an attractive university student anymore. Before him sat a girl who looked like Janette but was rapidly aging backwards until she was nine years old too.
“I love dancing, I wish I knew how to,” Janette sighed in a squeaky voice, her body that of a child, small, unable to reach the ground, and getting kind of pudgy. “All the cool girls know how to dance.”
“What’s happening to you?” Mason demanded and Janette turned towards him with bright eyes, she shrunk again until she was six and the same age as all the kids running around and screaming and she began to bounce up and down in her seat like she couldn’t sit still. The film changed again, now an animated princess film that looked like money and effort had been poured into it and Janette grinned from ear to ear.
“I wanna be a princess, I love dresses and dancing and this place smells funny, why can’t we watch this at home? I need to pee! Is this what movie theatres are like? I’m excited for my first movie!” Janette rambled without seeming to need to breathe, her excited voice merging with all the kids running around and screaming. Her clothes changed into a little blue dress and she swung her little feet back and forth contained in slip on shoes while her hair tied back in a ponytail and her concessions changed into children’s versions, a tiny title box of popcorn and a XS sofa. She looked hyperactive and cheerful.
Mason stared at what his date had become, she’d gone from an adult woman to a six year old girl in the course of ten minutes and he was kind of freaking out. What had made her shrink? Was he a criminal now for dating a six year old? Would she turn back? We’re all the kids in that theatre just adults turned children? He wanted to scream and he did but the sound was drowned out by the army of kids occupying that theatre.