Dustin stared from his elephantine perspective in the corner as Ty shook his head in bewilderment and began to walk out of the kitchen to steal money from his mother’s purse. His now feline mother with his tiny mousey father on her back.
As utterly confused as he was in his new body, Dustin realized he had great strength. As this realization occurred, the giant pachyderm felt a simmering rage at what was happening to them boil over in his mind. Ty couldn’t just ruin their lives like this and expect to get away with it.
Dustin stood up confidently – if shakily – on the four solid trunks of his legs, and pushed his long nose forward. He trumpeted an ungodly earth-rattling howl that shook the crumbling walls and reared his mighty tusks down in a defensive posture while he scratched at the ground with his front leg.
Ty turned around, wide eyed, realized what was happening too late, and was suddenly swung up in the powerfully muscular trunk of an angry charging elephant. His foster brother.
Dustin trumpeted again and growled the elephantine equivalent of “change us back! Now!” Ty squirmed in the tight grasp of Dustin’s unquestionably powerful trunk and gasped for breath. Dustin squeezed harder, perfectly willing to crush the life from Ty for dooming them to the lives of freakish human animals.
Between gasps, Dustin’s large ears heard Ty’s voice plaintively cry he couldn’t breathe. Dustin bellowed again, this time with more force, and clenched his trunk harder. Ty began to change from a healthy pink to a stressed red, air being crushed from his lungs.
From their tiny view below, June and Mark watched helplessly in horror. June mewed desperately and flailed her front legs in a ceasing gesture, hoping that somehow Dustin would understand that Ty was their only means of being changed back. Mark, ever the one in charge, was trembling in fear on June’s back and close to fainting. “No! Stop, boy! Stop!” But the mousey squeaks were for nothing, as nobody could understand or hear them amidst the chaos.
Dustin began to squeeze harder, but for some reason it was getting more difficult to hold his tight grip on Ty’s body. He was shaking all over, the adrenaline pumping through his body. The elephant concentrated, tried to hold on, but his trunk was slowly slipping off Ty’s body, unable to envelop him and barely hanging on. Suddenly Ty felt very heavy to the pachyderm, and Dustin’s eyes widened in disbelief.
His perspective was getting lower and lower, his mighty body was shrinking! Ty was shrinking him down! As Dustin’s grip loosened, Ty fell to the ruined floor with a thud, gasping for breath. In a panic, Dustin reared up on his hind legs and trumpeted, as if that would stop his quickening dwindling.
It did not, of course, and Ty rolled over on his side with a satisfied grin as he watched the giant elephant lessen, the great form of the animal melting away by the second. Dustin made one last charge against Ty, stepping over him and planting a great big front foot down on the boy’s chest. It would have been a murdering blow, except that Dustin had become four feet tall. The heavy foot slamming down on Ty’s chest winded him for a second, but did little else.
As Ty recovered, Dustin stared in disbelief, his world rapidly getting larger and larger around him as he halved to two feet tall and continued to shrink into a tinier and tinier elephant. Ty sat up, on his knees, and even still towered over Dustin.
The elephant took several horrified steps backwards, still shrinking, watching the soaking wet floor getting closer and closer to his eyes, before finally he stopped shrinking, just a little over three inches tall and staring at an enormous Ty.
Dustin let out a tiny almost comically high pitched trumpet and skittered backwards, turning tail and trying to run away from his giant tormentor. Ty’s enormous hand was on the elephant in a heartbeat, giant fingers plucking the animal off the ground and raising him in the air. Dustin kicked, bit, and stabbed the air with his tusks, but to no avail. He has held between Ty’s thumb and index finger, hovering what must have been several stories in the air from his tiny perspective.
Ty raised the tiny elephant to his gaze and turned him around so that their eyes met. Ty was grinning rather mavolently, which made Dustin even more frantic to escape, twisting his body this way and that for several long seconds before Ty laughed.
“Poor Dustin the elephant.” Ty giggled. “You’re almost the size of an animal cracker. Oh well. That’ll teach you.”
And with that, Ty set the toy like Dustin back on the floor and stood up, rubbing his chest and resuming his mission of going out for breakfast, leaving his transformed foster family standing in an increasingly flooded kitchen.
“See you all later!” Ty mocked, and with $150.00 in his pocket, the most money he’d ever had, the boy left through the front door, whistling happily as the neighbors on the street all stared at the house wondering what the hell was making all the noise. More than one was calling the police.