Field Research - Chapter 8

hey

not trying to avoid you, but i really don’t have it in me to talk about this rn

call you tomorrow?

I laid in bed, staring morosely at the three lines of texts I’d sent my girlfriend. It had already been twenty minutes with no reply. Despite what I’d written, I was starting to get antsy, and began to wonder if I should send another message, or call.

Before I could, my phone finally beeped.

ok

I sighed and rolled over, setting the phone down on the nightstand and pulling my sheet up over myself. It was early still, only 7:30 or so, but I didn’t want to do anything but just lay there.

God. What the fuck was I going to do? I hadn’t bothered to measure myself, but Jenny’s estimation of five feet seemed about right. I had taken a step on the scale after working up the nerve for the better part of an hour, and shuddered at what I’d seen: I’d lost over 70 pounds since this morning. I could tell too that my shrunken muscles had lost a lot of strength, everything felt just a little bit heavier in my grasp. So much for always being able to fall back on manual labor. 

And the worst part was… when I wasn’t fixating on the ways that shrinking had fucked up my life, when I just let myself exist in the moment, feel the way my apartment loomed higher around me, the way every day objects felt larger and more awkward in my grasp… I was wildly turned on. I mean, Jenny had been right about one thing: this was a fantasy I’d had since… well, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t fantasize about this. The feeling of it coming true, of me really and truly shrinking, something I would’ve called fundamentally impossible less than a month ago… it was electrifying. Lying there in bed, I felt myself growing hard as a voice in the back of my mind tried to convince me that even my thin bedsheet felt just a little heavier spread across my naked body.

I resisted the urge to give in and indulge my baser impulses. I didn’t want to enjoy this. I wanted to sulk. It didn’t matter how good it felt. It didn’t matter that the check the university had cut me this morning was more than the last three months of pay I’d gotten at the bar, or that Jenny was probably right that I could leverage this whole thing into making myself rich, especially if I agreed to keep shrinking (oh God, I’m supposed to keep shrinking). None of that mattered. What had happened to me was a bad thing, and I couldn’t continue down this road. I just couldn’t.

And I was certain that after a good night’s sleep, I would be able to think of a convincing reason why not.

I woke up way too early, my windows still pitch-black. I reached for my phone, and felt a simultaneous jolt of excitement and frustration when I realized that it was too far to reach. Scooting over I grabbed it and hit the power button, flinching away from the too-bright screen. 3:30 AM. Well, that’s what happens when you’re in bed before the sun’s even finished setting.

Any hope of a “good night’s sleep” had been in vain, my subconscious determined to punish me for not embracing the fulfillment of my deepest desires. I’d no sooner closed my eyes than I was flooded with visions of Jenny looming over me, of shrinking small enough that she could straddle me as I stretched up to eat her out, of her holding me upside-down, one leg pinched between her fingers as her massive tongue lapped at my cock. In one dream, a 15-foot tall Jenny had been invited to a talk show to discuss her work. They’d prepared a special jumbo-sized sofa for her, but had underestimated her size; it snapped under her enormous ass like a twig. She’d laughed it off and launched into explaining her research, my brain inventing nonsense words to fill in for the technical jargon that I didn’t know. Eventually she reached a hand into the endless expanse of her cleavage and pulled out a tiny pendant she wore on a necklace, my miniscule, naked form splayed out and tied down to a little golden disk. She beckoned the cameras to zoom in on me, my entire body smaller than the tip of her finger. That didn’t stop her from managing to rub and tease my microscopic dick in front of the studio audience.

Back in my bed, I was rock hard, my body aching for release, my tip damp with pre-cum. I inhaled deeply and willed myself to remain still, lying motionless until my erection slowly faded.

Fucking hell.

When I’d finally calmed down, I threw off my sheet and jumped out of bed, immediately feeling another little thrill of arousal as I felt the ever-so-slightly longer time it took for my feet to reach the floor. I stormed into my bathroom, turned the shower head to the coldest setting, and opened the valve, throwing myself under the freezing water, my loins shriveling as I felt goosebumps break out all over my body. I forced myself to stand there for so long that I was shivering in violent spasms when I finally turned the water off. I threw a towel around me, more for warmth than because I cared about getting dry, and immediately winced as the realization hit me that my bath towel felt more like a beach towel. 

God dammit. I couldn’t let every little thing turn me on!

Frustrated and still shivering, I padded out of the bathroom and toward my closet. Nothing in here was going to come close to fitting me, but at least it wouldn’t be quite as ridiculous as the oversized clothes from yesterday. I settled on a pair of sweats with a drawstring I could pull taut enough to at least make them stay up, and a once tight-fitting t-shirt that now hung halfway down my thighs. It would have to do.

With that settled, I wandered into the kitchen and got a pot of coffee going. I didn’t bother with the light switch; the little LEDs on the fridge and coffee maker were enough to guide me, and at least in the dark I didn’t have to confront how alien and oversized everything looked. I went to hop up on the counter and sit next to it while I waited for it to brew, but came up short, my bare feet hitting the tiled floor with a light slap.

Grumbling, I instead turned to my phone. I thought about killing some time on the day’s Wordle or something… but instead I immediately navigated to my messaging app, staring in frustrated silence at the short, clipped conversation Jenny and I had the night before.

It was still way too early. I shouldn’t bother her yet. 

are you awake?

A response came back before I could set my phone down.

yeah 

I hung my head and ran my free hand through my hair. Did I really want to do this right now?

Fuck it. I switched to the phone app and tapped on her number.

“Hey,” came a soft, very tired-sounding voice after just one ring.

“Hey.” A million different sentences queued up in the back of my throat, and I struggled to pick which one to start with. “Um… I uh. Fuck. I don’t know if I want to do this over the phone.”

“We could meet up for coffee somewhere?” Jenny suggested. “Probably some all-night places open, or we could wait til more stuff opens up in a couple hours.”

“I uh… I don’t, really, want to go out in public. Even if I did, I don’t have any clothes that fit me.”

“Oh, yeah. Uh. This might um… Well. I knew what was going to happen yesterday, and… I did go ahead and buy you a couple outfits in advance. I had to make guesses on the sizes, but. They almost certainly fit better than anything you’ve got.” Right, of course she’d prepare like that. “I could… I could bring them over, and we could talk at your place?”

I shrugged, my eyes wandering around the darkened room. “Sure, okay.”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

I shrugged again. “I don’t really remember. Breakfast yesterday, I guess? But I ate a lot, so—”

“That’s no good, Sean. I’ll grab something on my way over.”

“‘I’m not really hungry.”

“Sean. You have to eat. I can’t cook like you, but I can grab some sausage biscuits from a drive-through.”

I said nothing.

“Please?”

“...Yeah, ok. Fine. The door will be un—” I stopped myself, realizing that if a burglar decided to make my day even worse and showed up before Jenny did, I’d be powerless to fend them off. “Just knock when you get here.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in 30.”

“Wait. Are you sure? I mean… don’t you need to be at the university in an hour or two? It’s not like I’m going anywhere, I can wait.”

“Well, uh… Strictly speaking, speaking with my uh. My star test subject. That’s probably the most essential task I could be performing right now.” The shame in her voice was palpable.

“...Right. Yeah.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

I set the phone down on the counter and sighed. Guess I had to turn the lights on now; wouldn’t do to let her see me sulking in the dark like this.

I sat curled up on my couch, coffee mug in hand and lost in thought while I waited for her to get here. “Speak with her star test subject…” Right. We needed to have a personal conversation about all this, but there was a professional aspect to it, too. I thought back to the brief shouting match Jennifer had with Dr. Walker yesterday. She’d said that she could keep the university off her back as long as she continued to turn in results… and then her test subject had run away with a disgruntled professor. Walker had probably been right yesterday; I most likely had the power to end Jenny’s entire career.

Dr. Walker seemed like the kind of guy who’d savor that kind of power. Me, it just made me feel sick to my stomach.

It wasn’t long before I heard a knock at the door. Steeling myself, I set down my coffee mug and moved to unlock it.

I gasped, eyes wide as I took in the sight of Jenny Miller filling my entire door frame. Her most recent growth spurt was still only a few days old, and I’d only spent a few short minutes with her after I’d shrunk. I thought I was ready to see just how gigantic she’d appear to me now, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Stunned, I wordlessly stepped back to make space while she awkwardly squeezed her way inside, bowing her head to fit it through the door. She had a shopping bag in one hand, and a fast-food bag in the other. Setting the clothes on the floor, she gave me a sympathetic, guilty smile as she offered me the food. I took it, and immediately dropped it; it had been heavier than I’d anticipated. She kneeled down to help pick up the breakfast sandwiches that had scattered across the floor, but I was frankly a lot closer to the ground than she was, and had them gathered up before she could get onto one knee. I rose up, and nearly dropped the sandwiches all over again as I realized that even kneeling, she had a few inches on me.

My shock—and… yeah, my arousal—were quickly overridden. Her face was so close now that I had the opportunity to really look at it for the first time. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot, with dark rings around them.

“Jenny… have you slept at all?”

She looked down and to the side as she rose back to her feet, forcing me to take a few steps back to be able to look up at her. “No. I haven’t.”

“Oh, Jenny…” I instinctively moved to hug her, then stopped myself. Were… were we even on hugging terms anymore? Wasn’t I still mad at her? Was she still mad at me? I froze awkwardly for a moment, before offering her one of the sandwiches.

“How about I get you some coffee?”

A few minutes later, I was sitting on the couch while Jenny was on the floor—she was insistent that she didn’t want to risk breaking any of my furniture. We ate and sipped our coffee in silence, Jenny putting away sandwich after sandwich while I struggled to find the room to finish one.

Even with the extra time I’d bought myself, I still wasn’t sure where to start.

“Jenny, I… I love you.”

“Still?”

“Yeah, still, but… that doesn’t make this okay. You betrayed my trust, in a really big way. And I want to forgive you for it, because you… well, because you’re you, and I already lost you once and I don’t want to lose you again. But I’m not sure how I can let this go.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I get that. It wasn’t… All that stuff you said, about this being a set-up, that I’ve been stringing you along just to do this to you. That’s not true.”

I paused for a long, tense moment. “...I know. I… I think I knew that yesterday, too. I was just, upset, I was mad, and I guess I wanted to say something hurtful. Which maybe wasn’t the best impulse to give in to. Sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize, Sean. I get it, and I’m the only one here who needs to be sorry.” Another long, quiet moment as Jenny stared out the window at the first hints of dawn. “Not to change the subject, but. What did Dr. Walker tell you after you left?”

“That guy’s… Christ. He’s kind of got it out for you. He thinks you’re trying to steal his life’s work.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “His ‘life’s work’ was a chalkboard full of equations. I’m the one that figured out all the practical application. He’s just bitter because—sorry. This isn’t what we should be talking about right now.”

“He’s planning to file a lawsuit against you, Jenny. And he wants me to join it.”

Jenny’s face sagged a little as she took a long pull of coffee, my mug looking more like playhouse dishware in her enlarged hand. “And… what are you going to do?”

“I’m not gonna sue you, Jenny. I don’t, I’m not… I don’t see how that would help anything.”

“Would get you a pretty big payout from the university. Probably a good bit more than you’d get staying on as a test subject. Honestly… it’s probably what you should do.”

I stared at her, lips drawn into a line. She avoided eye contact, continuing to sip at her coffee as she unwrapped yet another breakfast sandwich. Eventually, she heaved a heavy sigh.

“I… I’m not always the best, at taking other people’s feelings into account.” She shot a few trepidatious glances my way, but largely kept her eyes focused on the window. “I think, and I plan, and I figure out the right answers to hard problems… and when I’ve put that much mental work into something, I feel confident barrelling ahead without explaining myself to anyone else. And… Listen, I mean, I know what you like. I still have old chatlogs saved when we used to stay up all night IMing each other where we role-played out all kinds of elaborate fantasies. So, I figured, you know… why waste time telling you what I had in mind? Why not surprise you?”

“Jenny…”

“I know, I thought about the real-world aspects of it too. I thought about how… how shrinking might make it a little harder for you to get by on your own. Or… okay, a lot harder, depending on how far we took it. But, I just thought, you know… you’d just quit your job, you were strapped for cash, and like… God, I don’t mean this in a mean way, I hope you believe me when I say that. It’s not like… it’s not like you were really pursuing any kind of, I don’t know, big career or life goals or anything, you know? I mean frankly I don’t know why you aren’t, seems to me like you could be running the best restaurant in town, but, y’know, clearly that’s not something you’re interested in.”

“The overhead on a restaurant is insane. Not to mention the hours. I don’t even want to work in a kitchen, let alone run one.” She smiled at me and I gave her a sad smirk in return. “Sorry, now I’m the one getting us off-track.”

“But, no, I just… it really didn’t seem like shrinking you would interfere with much. And I wasn’t kidding about this being a really big deal, this is going to lead to a crazy amount of opportunities. Even if not for you, definitely for me, and… well… I guess I. I guess I just assumed that…” Jenny’s face was flushing. “I guess I just assumed that as long as we’re together, then an opportunity for me is an opportunity for the both of us, you know? But… you were completely right. I should’ve talked to you about this first. It doesn’t matter how well-reasoned my thinking was, you deserved a say in what happened to your body. I did something…” she sniffled. “I did something really terrible to someone I love. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…” She went quiet as she began rubbing tears from her eyes. “If… if I crossed a line that I can’t un-cross, if this is… if you want to b-break up with me…” her voice was reducing down to a pained whisper. “...I understand.”

I stared, shuddering as my own eyes began to mist up. I struggled to find my voice.

“I don’t want to break up with you. I told you. I love you.”

She finally turned and looked me in the eye, tears flowing even more freely now. “I love you too,” she whispered. Her gaze broke away from me as she cast her eyes downward.

“I can figure out how to get you out of the clinical trial. Or, well. More like, I can figure out how to get the whole project shut down.”

“...What would that mean? For you, I mean?”

“Well… All those ethics violations Dr. Walker’s been holding over my head will finally catch up to me. I’ll probably be expelled, and I doubt there’d be too many other graduate programs around that would have me. But that’s… that’s not the end of the world.” I could tell from her expression that it absolutely was. “I can just find a job, start paying off my student debt.”

My heart ached as I saw her struggling to maintain her composure as she came to terms with what she was saying. She was going to sacrifice everything she’d ever worked for for my sake.

I couldn’t exactly offer her any less than that in return, could I? 

“Or,” I said, voice trembling a little. “Or… I could just stay in the trial. We could… We could keep shrinking me.” Jenny’s eyes, wide with shock, darted to meet mine. “If I’m an enthusiastic part of the project, then that’s going to hurt the credibility of Dr. Walker’s lawsuit. If he wants to say you’re unethical or manipulative, well… it’d be his word against mine.”

“Sean, you can’t. It was wrong of me to—”

“It was wrong of you to do this without talking to me first. Well, now you’ve talked to me. And… And you’ve convinced me. Let’s do it. Let’s…” I was trembling, filled with a mix of fear and anticipation. “Let’s make me smaller.”

Jenny was crying again.

“But! I’m not doing this for free. I want something from you, too.”

“Anything.”

“First, you’re gonna keep taking the growth pill. We’re doing this together or we’re not doing it at all.”

She laughed, which led to a small sob escaping her throat. “Please. You couldn’t stop me from growing if you wanted to, little guy.”

“Good. Second… Come sit next to me.”

“Sean, I don’t think—”

“You’re not that big, not yet anyway. Besides, if you do break the couch it’ll give me an excuse to replace it with something that’s not from IKEA. Get up here.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Jenny rose to her feet and gingerly eased her weight onto the couch. The springs creaked and the wood groaned, but it held firm.

I climbed into her lap and nuzzled my head into the crook of her neck, sighing in contentment as her gigantic arms encircled me. We sat there like that and watched the sun rise through my window, and every now and then I turned to plant a shrunken kiss on her neck.