"Wh..wh...what's...ha...happ...ened to ever..ry..thing?" Sean sputtered, now totally confused, feeling a growing terror arise in his gut.
Hearing this, Ric uttered the fourth and final part of the spell:
"Shrunken forever to puny size
Your fate you will now realize."
As Sean heard these words from the top of the stairs above, he noticed the skinniness of his body for the first time. And it also began to dawn on him that it was not the rest of the world that had grown, but he who had shrunk.
Sean stopped dead in his tracks and looked up to see the two huge teens looming above him. Terrified, he then turned around and bolted into the huge yard, looking for a place to hide. He soon sighted the
three-foot-high bushes.
At his former size, the bushes had been an annoyance, since the once-huge Sean had to bend over to trim them. Now, however, they were well above his head. Sean tried to make a bee-line for the bushes, but before he could reach them, Ric caught up with him.
Ric grabbed hold of the tiny man's scrawny shoulders, immediately immobilizing him. "Hold it right there, shorty," Ric said, but Sean still struggled to get away.
Ric then easily hoisted tiny Sean up and looked him in the eye. "Stop it, NOW...or you're going to be sorry," Ric said with a wicked smile, echoing Sean's own threat of just a few minutes earlier.
Sean paused a moment and then resumed his struggling. He had to get free.
"OK, if that's the way you want it," Ric said, smiling again, striding quickly to the edge of the pool. He held the squirming Sean out over the water. "Maybe you'd like another dip?"
Horrified, Sean immediately stopped struggling. He couldn't risk what might happen if he was plunged into the pool again.
"That's a good little guy," Ric said, smiling, as he placed Sean down gently onto the sidewalk. At first Sean crouched and cowered into a ball, afraid to stand or even look up.
"Don't be afraid," Ric said, not very convincingly. "You've got nothing to fear - as long as you do as I say."
"Now stand up, and let's take a look at you."
Sean heard the order, but was still too afraid to move.
"Come on, now, MOVE" Ric said firmly. "Or it's pool-time for little Seanie."
At this, Sean uncurled himself and hesitantly rose to his feet. He then looked up, way up, at the 5'2" boy. Sean shuddered visibly as he realized that he was now less than waist high to the figure in front of him, who appeared more like a malicious giant than a boy just entering his teens.
As Sean took in the oversized world, the words of Ric's last incantation echoed in his mind:
"Shrunken forever to puny size."
Sean looked up and softly, fearfully asked, "Forever?"
Ric squatted down, lowering himself as far as he could toward the tiny man's level. He then patted Sean on the head, nodded, and then repeated decisively, "Forever."