"Come on Ty, drop your cock and grab your socks! I want to see you out in that yard in five minutes."
Ty glared at the door. Mark was always spouting that military crap like he was some kinda bad ass drill Sargent. The closest he ever got to the army was selling the crappy used vehicles on his car lot to the guys off the army base outside town. He'd been captain of his football team and coached Dustin and the other neighborhood kids from little-league to Jr high--not that he ever let Tyler on the field during games.
When Ty had found out in sixth grade that he was being placed with the Prestons he was overjoyed, certain that this time his foster parents would treat him like one of their own. It had only taken a few months to discover that 'Coach Mark' had very little time for the new kid in the house, and that 'Mother June' was only interested in milking the sympathy she got from her friends for taking in a "problem child".
She never had time for him, and Mark always used his stupid coaching persona when talking to Tyler. As if being a foster kid made him some sort of convict to be ordered around. Not that the social workers cared, they pointed out it was the Prestons or Juvie since Tyler was too old to be placed in another family.
Tyler rolled off the bed and looked around his room. He swayed a bit trying to figure out what was wrong before he realized he was looking at the top shelf of his bookcase. The shelf he used to have to peer up at. Ty glanced at his closet and hoped he could find something to fit. He was just finishing getting dressed when his door burst open.
"I thought I told you to get your ass outside!" Mark loomed in the doorway. Before Tyler had shrunk him down to size Dustin had been a chip off Mark's block. Tyler looked at his foster-father and tried not to glare. Dustin had the big bedroom with a lock on his door. Mark had decided they couldn't trust Tyler and had once removed his doorknob entirely. He was always bursting in hoping to catch Tyler doing something he wasn't supposed to.
"I heard you, Mark." Tyler gestured at his clothes, all resized to fit his new body. "Look, all ready to slave-away in your back 40." Tyler snarled.
Mark stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. He grabbed a fistfull of Ty's shirt and backhanded him before jerking him nose to nose.
"Now you listen to me you punk-assed little weasel. You wanna be a slave I'll beat you bloody like a slave. You think just 'cause you grew some hair on your pecker you're big enough to give me lip? Huh?" He shook Ty and shoved him across the room where he feel onto his bed. "It is my fucking generosity that puts a roof over your head and food in your belly and by god you're going to earn it."
Tyler sniffed at the blood running out of his nose and focused his hatred at his foster father, willing Mark down to size. Not younger, like Dustin, but older, weaker, flabbier; an athlete gone to seed early and old before his time. Tyler smiled as he saw Mark's shoulders begin to slump, his gut swell, and a pair of black horn-rimed glasses appear in front of his now near-sighted squint. Mark had lost several inches in height, and gained a flabby, out of shape physique with a receding hairline. Tyler couldn't tell, but he wished fervently that Mark's package was so tiny that even erect, his fingers would be longer than his dick.
"The fuck you smiling at you little freak? You like being beat up? That get you hard you fucking pervert?" Mark's face was beet red, he was shaking with sweat and anger and every word he choked out was accompanied by a spray of saliva.
"Me?" Tyler said. "I'm just watching an old has-been sputter." He got off the bed and this time blocked Mark's punch easily, twisting his arm around into a half-nelson. He slammed Mark against the bookcase face-first and pressed his head and huge flabby belly against the shelves. "You ever decide to take another swing at me? I will break both your arms and knock your fucking teeth in. Do you understand me?"
Ty waited. Mark was panting, wheezing really and blowing snot all across Ty's Hardy Boys books. He pulled Mark's arm higher behind his back. "I said do you fucking understand me, 'foster dad'?"
"Yes! you're breaking my arm!" Mark's voice had a high-pitched whine to it. Tyler flashed back to all the times Dustin and the other boys messed with him, teased him, put him in a submission hold like he'd just done to Mark. Was that what his voice had sounded like when he'd plead to be let go? Tyler let go of his foster father and stepped back. "I'm going to go mow the yard. Clean up my bookcase before you leave."
He headed down the stairs and was through the kitchen before June even looked up from her ipad. Ty felt numb as he got the mower out of the shed and fueled it up. He'd become the same kind of bully he'd always hated. Sure, he'd gotten even, sort-of. Mark hadn't even noticed his transformation. He looked at his hands, and the speckles of drying blood on his shirt from where Mark had struck him.
Ty glanced at the house. He hadn't been hit like that since before he was put in foster care. Even as much of an asshole as he'd been to him, Mark had never hit him... "Until I was his size," Ty said numbly "until he didn't think he could intimidate me any more." He started mowing the yard, not even noticing as the loose grass and weeds vanished after he walked past, and the mower bag never needed emptying.
Being more mature hadn't worked out quite the way he'd intended. Tyler tried to think of some better changes he could make.