Jim laughed. The sensation of shrinking felt oddly intoxicating, like getting dizzy after spinning around. He wanted more. "Let's keep going," he said.
He let more air seep out of the balloon and giggled with his little boy voice as he felt his height diminish even more. His room seemed to grow larger around him. Stopping there, he checked out his reflection. In the mirror was a young, round-faced boy in a too large T-shirt, probably not even old enough for kindergarten.
"Wow," he squeaked. "I'm, like, five now. Cool." Not wanting to take the chance of getting to be too small to use the balloon, he said, "Release." Then, he carefully let the remaining air out and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn't grown any younger.
Jim put the balloon down on his bed, which now came up to just above his belly button, and went to examine himself more closely in the mirror. He was less than half his normal age now, just barely older than a toddler, and he looked it. At his best guess, he was only about three and a half feet tall now. He rubbed his little hands over the smooth features of his face: his little button nose, his round cheeks, his shrunken chin. He smiled at himself, and giggled at what a kid he'd become. Then, he lifted his shirt to peek at his boyhood. It was even smaller, hardly even noticeable, just a little bit of flesh only useful for peeing. Below, but surprisingly close, where his little feet. Five years old... Thinking back, he could just barely remember fragments of memories from when he was actually five.
"This could be fun," he said to himself, enjoying his squeaky voice. "I need to do something I would have done at this age."
He looked around his now seemingly enormous room.
"There's got to be something fun I can play with in here," he said and thought a moment. "Or, maybe I could go play downstairs." He hesitated at that last thought. Going downstairs meant leaving the relative safety of his room. Would he dare to try that? Would he just play in there where he felt safe?