A flash of sunlight glinting off metal caught Sherri's eye as she fumbled with the car door. Something bright was lying in the street behind her car. She got the door
open and dumped the box she was carrying into the passenger seat before walking over to see what it was.
It looked like junk. Round, yellow metal, shiny. She knew better than to think she'd find a piece of gold in the street but a small hope flared still. Whatever it was,
the thing might be worth something, a little money so she bent down to retrieve it. It seemed to be some sort of medal or charm, old and worn but bright, like it had
been polished recently. A fine gold chain was attached. She turned it over in her hands, inspecting it as she walked back and climbed into the car.
She could ask down at the consignment shop; maybe somebody there could tell her if it was worth anything. In the meantime, she had no place to put it so she
slipped the chain around her neck. Now that she had it on, she had to check herself out in the rear-view mirror. It didn't look so bad on her, certainly not as gaudy
as she'd thought it would be. She let her gaze linger on her face. A pretty face looked back at her, pretty but plump. She knew all too well that her body matched
the face. She'd been a looker about 40 pounds ago, 40 pounds that she'd desperately love to lose but couldn't, not in a world of macaroni and cheese dinners and
corn chips.
Sighing, she positioned the box of doll clothes more securely on the seat next to her. The shop had called and said they were ready for a new batch. That meant
they'd sold most of the last lot and there'd be a much-needed check waiting. Sales went in spurts; her handmade Barbie clothes would sit unwanted for months on
the shelf and then some grandma would come in and buy half the stock for her little favorite.
The medallion swung out into her view as Sherri leaned over the seat and she spotted a smudge on one side. For some reason she found that annoying so she
reached over to pick out a tiny flannel shirt from the box and lightly polish the metal surface with a miniature sleeve. As she did, a quick charge surged through her,
like a mild, not painful electric shock. Startled, she dropped the shirt. When she reached down to get it, she was startled again to see that her nails were now red.
They hadn't been painted a minute ago: nail polish cost money.
Sherri felt fear rise in her throat as she inspected her hands. They were different, much different, fingers longer, more delicate. She brushed her long hair back in a
unconscious motion. Long hair? Long blond hair? She'd had dark hair all her life, cut shoulder length for years. Her fear was transforming to terror. Choking down
a sob, she grabbed her box of doll clothes, crawled out of the car and stumbled back into the house.
Once inside the door, she realized she was still carrying the box. Feeling like a fool, she dropped it on the floor and made her way to her bedroom, to look in the
full-length mirror hanging on the door.
A stranger stared back at her. Not a total stranger, the face was recognizably hers, although younger, slimmer. Her eyes were wider than they had been and deep
blue, not their former brown. But the big changes were to her body.
She was taller by several inches. Her pants and sleeves were much too short. Although too small, her clothes fit loosely now, at least most places. They hung
baggily around her newly slender frame. The only place where the fabric clung tightly was around her bust. Everything had slimmed, it seemed, except her breasts.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another. This is a crazy dream, she told herself, you're imagining this. But when she open her eyes, the same
blue-eyed blond woman looked back from the mirror.
Sherri's heart pounded. What had happened to her? Or maybe, what was still happening to her? It seemed to her that her shirt sleeve was crawling down her arm.
Her pants legs were dropping down her legs. The fabric of her shirt was not as tight around her breasts. As she watched in horror, her feet disappeared beneath
the pants legs, then the pants themselves slipped from her waist, tumbling into a heap around her bare legs. Her shirt was grotesquely large now, reaching to her
knees, then starting to pile up on the collapsed pants.
A wail escaped her lips as the stranger in the mirror shrank before her eyes. The stranger looked back at her with a terrified expression, her eyes locked onto
Sherri's at an even level even as she shrank and Sherri knew that the stranger was her.
In less than a minute it was over. Only her head peeked out of the pile of clothes heaped on the floor by the mirror. She clambered out and numbly gazed at what
she had become. Thin, pretty, blond; legs astonishingly long and slender, waist impossibly small. And tiny. If it weren't for the heap of discarded clothing she was
standing on, she wouldn't be able to see herself entirely: the few inches below the bottom of the mirror would have been that significant.
Sherri looked away, looked up and around at her suddenly new surroundings, her own bedroom magnified out of recognition. Over and over she asked herself
what had happened, what had she become? She clamped her teeth shut, not daring to moan, to sob, not daring to make a sound that would turn into a scream that
she knew wouldn't stop.
She looked in the mirror a final time. The stranger there was a little less strange; she was a little more comfortable with her new self. She was even a little familiar
with her new self; she recognized her face and even her altered body. She knew that body, she abruptly realized. She knew its proportions, its sizes, its
measurements, all too well. She'd made clothes for that body, all sorts of outfits, fancy and everyday outfits, sewing them by hand and by machine, making tiny
costumes for sale in the consignment shop. A box of clothes just her size lay just where she had dropped it inside her front door, a long walk away.
As the living doll stared into her own eyes, they reddened, and she began to silently weep.