Rick rambled off a few four letter expletives and pulled at the collar of his shirt. Loosing the top button, he took a deep breath. A sudden constriction of cloth around his chest made him blurt out a few more words, “What the hell?”
He rubbed the cloth of his shirt between the index and thumb of his right hand, wondering what chemically was happening to his shirt to make it shrink so quickly. Feeling angry with his stepson, he belted out, “Brenden, turn off the fucking music now!” The music suddenly became quieter, but Rick could still here a low methodical bump from Brenden’s room.
Brenden had bent, but the boy still didn’t break to Rick’s will. Rick felt consumed with fierce anger. The kid never listened, never respected him. Rick was the person who brought back the bigger pay. His money went into getting Brenden a new car. His wife didn’t want anymore kids because Brenden was already, “too much to handle.” He was about ready to finally teach the kid some respect with the pain brought by his fists.
Rick noticed the shoes around his feet were becoming tight as well. He was told they were leather, pure. Whatever chemicals that were shrinking his synthetic shirt and pants couldn’t possibly work so quickly on organic materials as well. He thought to himself that the bastards at the store either lied or were incompetent. He guessed incompetent. Everyone seemed incompetent, even his wife sometimes. Blank faces on all of them, from his lecture to his conscripted son. Out there a whole species of fools, barely living through the moment without the weight of their stupidity crushing them.
Bits of thread snapped apart and patches of leather spread from each other revealing the black sock beneath. Rick tried to bend down, but the legs of his pants gripped too tightly to his thighs and calves. He hovered, his hand still greater then a foot away from the shoe he wanted to inspect. Spitting out the modern day mantra, “fuck it,” he pushed his weight down and split the legs of his pants in half. Grabbing the shoe, he fumed over how cheaply made they must have been.
As he stood back up, shoe in hand, he felt the shirt around his chest constrict his chest. As he straightened his shoulders, two buttons broke free and shot a couple feet and down. “That’s fucking it! Someone’s got to pay.” Rick yelled, walking briskly towards stairs to Brenden’s ‘floor.’
As he began up the stairs, he felt disorientated. The coridor was misshapen. Only the front of his foot fit on a step. As he moved up the stairs the hall got smaller, like a room in a funhouse. About a third of the way up his head bumped the slanted ceiling. When he was half the way, the step board cracked, and he slid down the miniscule steps back to main floor.
Standing quickly, his head dented the ceiling. His house wasn’t large, but he knew the ceilings were ten feet high. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He looked around him, at his home; he was bigger than all of it. His shirt was riding up around his waist, his pants tattered shorts, shoes in pieces, and his whole home becoming a doll house. Everything was shrinking, he marveled.
Crouching his way through the living room, breaking down the sliding glass door into his back yard, like a cardboard cover, he retreated into the expanse of his backyard. His living room was now three-quarters his size now; he could practically see eye level into Brenden’s room.
Sudden anger swelled. He hoped Brenden was crushed in his cluttered crap-hole of a room. If Brenden hadn’t been such an ass, Rick reasoned, he might still have a home. Maybe if Brenden was gone, his wife would want another kid, one of his. It might just be better if Brenden was Crushed.
Filled with malicious curiosity, Rick stood up on his tiptoes and stared into the room. Brenden was lying in his bed, as he always seemed to be doing, but with one hand probing beneath his beltline. Rick sneered; he always suspected Brenden was a jerk off.
Rick then noticed Brenden was the right size for his room, his room in Rick’s house, which was now too small for Rick. Brenden’s feet didn’t even hang over the end of the bed. Rick wondered if maybe Brenden was shrinking, too. Rick looked down at his own body. The seam on the outside of his right leg broke apart, the sheets of cloth fell off his right hip and now hung from bellow his crotch and left hip. His boxer’s bulged obscenely, too tight to fit both around his hips and groin. He then knew it wasn’t the house getting too small for him. Rick straightened his chest, and the last half-dozen buttons snapped and flew, pelting the plastic shingles on the side of his home. Beneath his shirt, he saw a mass of rolling dark muscle, not thin like a swimmer but bulky like an ape. For the moment he felt impressed. He’d always been skinny. Now he felt he could rend the legs from a horse with his arms, arms thick as oak trees attached to a chest wide as a Chevy. Another rolling rip, and he felt the bare breeze roll up along the crack of his ass and between his legs along his balls. Reaching down he felt that some things had grown a bit faster then others.
A woman screamed from Behind Rick. He spun to see all four hundred pounds of his neighbor, Miss Elison, in blue night-gown, pink rollers, and brown face mask, clenching her fingers to her face and screaming witlessly. She was nearly half his size now, a woman no one could call small.
Rick looked to his hands. They no longer looked proportional to his body, they were bigger, thicker. He clenched his hands shut, bold boney knuckles jutted from the distorted mass. He looked back to Miss Elison and opened his hands facing down. He took a step toward Miss Elison, waving his hands downward to motion her to quiet. Rick’s foot bumped against a young tree, kicking it from its rooted spot and through the seven foot tall fence divider. Miss Elison suddenly became quiet, only she didn’t stop consciously, she fainted.
Lights began flickering on throughout the neighborhood. Silhouettes moved to their windows and shades became drawn. One by one people began expressing surprise, horror, amazement, or some variant of, “look a monster.” A familiar voice joined the chorus from behind Rick. One he knew to belong to his stepson, the cause of this mess.