5At Phillip Mindel's house, his fam

5
At Phillip Mindel's house, his family was amazed at what had happened to their ten, almost 11 year old. He had to duck to avoid hitting the top of the doorways with his head. He weighed almost 300 pounds and his hands and feet were massive, but he still looked like a kid. A bit of a deeper voice, though. Obviously he was stronger now and he still had the energy and hyperactivity of childhood. His parents figured they would need special clothes for him--
for a heavyset 6'8" male, but even they may be too small as his body proportions were not exact to those for
adults of a similar height. His feet were also unexpectedly big--over 13 inches long, and rather wide.

That night his feet dangled off the end of his twin bed.
Nobody knew how it happened, and why so sudden. It actually would make the news the next night. There also
were newspaper reports of a Mr. Chase and a Ms. Lynne who seemed to be missing.

The next day (after shrinking Cora and growing Phillip), Matt was in the living room with the two of them when suddenly their dad came home. Matt dashed into his room and put Scott into a dresser drawer, and...but where
was Cora?

It dawned on him that the 7/10ths of an inch woman had somehow fallen off his hand. She had bounced off the sofa and landed on the floor, not really hurt due to her small mass. However she soon saw a massive figure heading her way. She started to run but soon found she'd collided against a huge rubber structure that was moving. It was 100 feet long--one of the sneakers of their father. She was sprawled on the floor and tried to get up; at that moment, their dad had stopped and swiveled his feet around.

"Matt? Jeff?"

One of the man's sneakers started to come down right on top of her--but it just missed, landing one third of an inch next to her. She let out a quick scream, then tried to muffle it. Far above, the man wondered what the noise was but concluded it was a bat-squeak of one of his sneakers on the wood floor.

She started to run away and tried to dash under the sofa. A projectile fell from what seemed like 300 feet up and fell to within an inch of her. The round object, seemingly eight feet in diameter, landed on its edge and spun around before finally settling flat on the floor.

Heads.

It was a quarter.

Matt rushed into the living room and talked with his father for a moment. Jeff wasn't around, he was saying,
but would be back shortly.

"We'll grab some pizza tonight. Maybe text him and say...," said his father.

The door opened then shut and yet another giant entered. It was Jeff. Matt went over to him, held his thumb and forefinger a short distance apart, and nodded "no". Jeff looked puzzled but then it dawned on him: The little woman was missing.
Matt went over to where he had been and tried to look for her without being thought of being strange. He saw a quarter on the floor. "Dad, you dropped this."

"Thanks! Your mother is at a meeting tonight. We'll go to the pizza place and maybe eat there. Less of a mess to clean up here later, right?"

A few moments later they went and Cora, who had made it under the sofa, came back out. She had heard the tremendously loud closing of the front door. Cora walked from the living room into the hall; there was a wooden strip in between the two, a bit taller than she was. She walked over it, over the top, then across a metal
strip on the other side. It was a bit of a distance across the linoleum-covered hall where had to do the same thing to get into Matt's room. Some time later, she stood next to the dresser and noticed a shoelace had been hanging down from the bottom drawer. It took some effort but she climbed up quite a distance and went over the edge of the drawer's side; the shoelace had been wrapped around a balled-up set of socks. And there was Scott in there.

She sat down in exhaustion and let out a long sigh. Scott, as big to her as an adult is to a toddler, went over to her.
"I'd offer you a drink but the 'giants' have gone out for pizza, I hear. It'd be a little tough for me to keep up
with them..."

She laughed. "Oh my God. I almost thought that was the end."

He nodded. "You have it worse off than me, being smaller, but I know what you mean. I think we can be surprisingly fast though and dash out of the way."

She pointed down at her bare feet. "On legs and feet THIS small? How can we get anywhere when we're this small?"

She's a bit smaller than some flies, he thought. Not that he was much bigger of course.

"Maybe we can get them to make us the same size at least," Scott said. "Or better yet make us six inches, or a foot or...anything but this small."

"Why can't they just bring us back to normal? We wouldn't tell on them or anything..just to get back to normal."

Scott nodded. "You heard them talking about how they made a kid into a giant, and Matt grew a bit--people may get suspicious of them, though Jeff's keeping it secret pretty well. Maybe if he does it in a crowd and someone sees him with that zapper..."

She looked up at him and said, "They say kids will be kids and they do goofy things, but there isn't one thing funny about what they did to you or me. I have--or had--a job in a store. Friends and family, worried sick about me now. They probably have a Facebook group with people trying to find me."

"Same here, I have, or had, a job...maybe they'll give it back to me if we grow back...family, and friends." He thought for a moment. "Maybe we can grow? There was an old movie about a scientist who shrank people
to a foot tall but eventually they grew back to normal."

"If we grew at all they'd just zap us again to tininess."

"And not just us. You heard them," Scott said. "They want to shrink more people, bring them in here to play with. Collecting whomever they can. We're lucky we're still alive, but they don't want us to die. They want to have us."

"You remember what it was like as a kid..we had dolls, action figures, model trains, dollhouses..."

"So we live in a drawer like The Indian in the Cupboard...?"

"I suppose if they got enough of us we could revolt."

They looked at each other and, despite the horror of their situation, burst out laughing. Yes, it was a grim
thought but funny in a way, too. They each pictured Jeff and Matt being tied down by Lilliputian sized people they had shrunk, as Gulliver was. Tiny people shooting at them with mite-sized guns (not that it would have much of an effect, it would be like a paper cut at worst).

"So we get the zapper, that 'SAM', and figure out how to use it--grow back to normal, then shrink them?"

"Good suggestion, there, Cora." Scott looked a bit more serious. "We have to do something."

As they talked, the gigantic father and his sons were eating at a nearby pizza place. Amazingly huge portions of sausage, pepperoni, and onion pizza. Millions of gallons of cola or root beer. Gargantuan little kids running around, as their even-bigger parents yelled at them to calm down and stopped them with a firm outstretched
arm and hand.

Scott stood up then climbed up onto one rolled-up sock and stood on the top of it, then gazed up toward the top of the dresser drawer.

"I'm mad enough to want those kids to be punished," he said. "But right now I'd waive that--I'd do anything--
just to be back to normal."

"I'd be happy to be as tall as the doorknob," said Cora.

Scott thought about getting up in the middle of the night, turning on Jeff's smartphone, then finding a way to go on Facebook or something and contact someone with what seemed preposterous.

Knowing Jeff though, it would be password protected.