“This is ALL your FAULT!” Ryan bellowed at the top of his piping little boy voice. “I have to start over and grow up all over again because you made some stupid machine because you couldn’t eat your fucking bananas before they turned brown!”
“Serves you right,” said Mr. Dirksen, “for playing with equipment you don’t understand. So… I guess congratulations to the class of 2030, or maybe 2031. I’m sure you’ll love middle school in a couple of years!”
Ryan, incensed, looked at Jake and cocked one eyebrow at him. Jake nodded almost imperceptibly. Mr. Dirksen turned to examine the machine, and the two boys rushed him and shoved him into the table.
“Now you’ve done it!” screamed the science teacher. “I don’t care if you’re little boys, I’m gonna get you!” He lunged at Ryan with his arms outstretched, but Jake stuck out his longer leg and caught the science teacher at the ankle. There was an audible crunch as Mr. Dirksen hit the ground. He grabbed his leg and started howling in pain. He tried to get up but rolled backwards onto a metal object and then grabbed his shoulder. “Ow!!” He looked down and realized besides his leg being broken, his upper arm was also bleeding profusely. Desperate, he shucked off his blue polo shirt and attempted to make a tourniquet of it, showing off a sizable and very furry paunch.
Jake looked at Mr. Dirksen, then ran over to Ryan and whispered urgently in his ear. “Look where he is,” hissed Jake. “Now’s out chance!”
Ryan, with lightning-quick reflexes and strength brought on by a surge of adrenaline, smashed the slider of the machine together. The machine beeped and a familiar beam of blue light emitted from it. Mr. Dirksen looked up at the sound and caught the blue light right in his face, blinding him for a second.
“NOOOOOOO!” screamed the science teacher. He then buckled in pain as a second audible snap reset his broken ankle. He stared down at himself in a daze. The science teacher’s copious chest hair turned from salt-and-pepper to dark brown, and his gut started to shrink. The boys laughed as his glasses slumped on his face. Dirksen’s thick beard started to retreat and become patchy. He scrambled to his feet as his body started its descent through teenhood. He became extremely skinny, and his adult-size khakis slipped down around his ankles. As his waist retreated to 30, then 28, then 26 inches, his size 44 boxers gave up the ghost too, revealing a surprisingly long penis. Mr. Dirksen looked down at it and stared in horror as it became erect, then slowly started to get shorter and thinner. “ThIs isnT HAPpeNiNg to meEeeeEeee!” whined the teen teacher as his height tumbled.
Ryan went to go turn off the machine, and the newly rejuvenated Dirksen snarled as his voice cracked, “It doeSnT hAve an OfF sWitCh!”
“WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?” boomed a stentorian voice from the doorway. A huge, muscular figure blocked the light. Coach Carlson, the head football coach, folded his arms across his massive pecs as he stalked into the room. The boys stared up at the 6’6” former NFL player.
Dirksen, now just a little boy of 12, scrambled to stand next to the other two boys, and the beam reflected off the shiny dais, into the mirrors behind the ballet barre, and directly into the coach’s pathway.
“Well?” boomed Coach Carlson. “Nobody wants to explain why there’s a naked middle schooler and two small kids in here?”
All three boys stared at the enormous coach, whose tight Under Armour shirt was starting to wrinkle.
“It’s this beam,” said Ryan quietly. “It undoes puberty. I’m actually Ryan Krebs. And that’s Pete Dirksen. And Jake Sherman from the junior class.”
“Oh, bullshit,” chortled the coach as his pants started to droop and his hairline started to sprout hair further forward on his head. “Whoever heard of anything like that? An age ray? Your parents let you watch too much TV. Now I want a real expla—OOP!”
The boys stared in fascination as the coach started to lose muscle and height. “What the f—!” Carlson yelled as his voice cut out. “What’s happening to me?”
“You’re going through puberty in reverse,” explained Pete as the coach’s hard-earned muscles dissipated and a constellation of acne appeared on his face, mingling with the downy remains of his mustache.
“What?!” Carlson screamed. “No! I have worked my entire lifetime to be in the shape I’m in!” He stared in abject misery as his view of the room descended the better part of a foot. “How young will I get?”
“Six months to a few years before puberty,” replied Ryan.
“SHIT! NO! MAKE IT STOP!” begged Coach Carlson. “I was a disaster of a kid!” Just then he grabbed his stomach. “No! No! I swore I’d never be like this again!”
Jake just pointed silently as fat blossomed all around the coach’s midsection, pressing his now sausage-like fingers apart as the last vestiges of adult hair and maturity disappeared. Carlson’s cheeks popped out with fat and a second chin appeared on his neck as he moved toward the mirror.
The beam refracted again and struck Ryan Krebs, who shrank another few inches as what precious little evidence of maturity he had was robbed from him, returning him to a cherubic fourth grader with a couple of gaping holes where permanent teeth had yet to finish growing in. The little boy’s shoulders just slumped in defeat as he looked into Jake’s chest.
Carlson, horrified, looked down at his short, soft, hairless, obese body and burst into high-pitched tears. “They used to call me Planet Michael,” he moaned. “It took me ten years of weight training and strict dieting to lose it, and now it’s back. Why? Why would you invent something like this?”
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” snapped Ryan. “At least you’re like 13 years old. Look at me. I’m, like, nine. I might not get a hard on for years!”
“And I wasn’t even done with puberty but now I get to start it alllll over again,” added Jake.