Instead of a 16 year old body staring at you its an 8 year old body.
All of that maturity and growth you had gained deflated in moments right before your eyes. Your height suddenly dipped to just over 4 feet tall, while your muscles vanished into baby fat. You found yourself suddenly hairless from the neck down with only a little nubbin of a penis below. How had this happened?
"Trey?" It's your father outside the door.
You open the door to see him looming above you now, much taller seeming now than before.
"Look at me!" you peep in your little voice. "I'm tiny!"
"Oh, no," he says. "The doctors were afraid this might happen after they double checked your dosage."
"What?" you cry in disbelief. "They knew this could happen, but they gave it to me anyway?"
"Apparently it only happens if the dose is too high. They just underestimated your metabolism at first... 'a bad calculation,' they said. They called as soon as they checked their numbers again."
You look down at your soft, small, weak hands. You are a child. No doubt about that now. Even if you had felt that way before as a late blooming teen, now there was absolutely no doubt about it. You were a kid, plain and simple.
"It's rare, very rare, they said, but it seems that in cases like yours the treatment can make a person half their regular age."
"I'm 8 years old?"
Your father nods.
"8 years old..." The words drip out of your young lips. They seem right. They sound 8 years old.
You start to cry.
Your father immediately embraces you in a hug holding you to his chest. "It's okay," he says. "Let it out. It's okay."
You sob like a child. You are a sobbing child. It's miserable. You want to disappear. You want your old life back. You want out.
"It'll be alright," your father says consolingly. "The doctors think they might have a way of reversing the process."
You stop sobbing. There's hope?
"It might be risky. There might be other side effects even. There's no telling what will happen now if we do nothing. They think you probably will grow up normally again if they do nothing."
"'They think?'" you say. "What does that mean? Do they mean that I might never grow up now?"
"They're not sure. The treatment is new. There's no information yet on just what the side effects will be like as time goes on."
"So, if I do nothing, I might be stuck like this forever?"
"Maybe."
"And, if I try to reverse it, it might help me or it might get worse."
Your father sighs. "Yes."
You are out of tears at this point. You feel exhausted in fact. "I think I need to lie down and think about this," you say. You let go of each other and then walk to your room without another word.