Shrink-Wrap – pt. 10 – Reductionist

CW: Police abuse of authority.

Keg’s face was indecipherable. He gazed at Jake for a long moment, and Jake was sure he was about to be arrested. Or maybe Keg would prefer to give him a beatdown just like the good old days. He watched the big man warily as the silence dragged on. Liam was still clutched in Keg’s hand. He looked as anxious as Jake felt.

Keg turned his gaze to the little man in his fist. Jake held his breath as he waited to see what the tyrant would do. An unfriendly smile creaked onto Keg’s mouth.

“Alright, Harris. Show me.”

Jake exhaled in relief. This would be alright. He could get them through this.

“Wait here,” he said.

He headed to his room to grab a roll of shrink-wrap and the heat gun. Keg’s heavy footsteps followed him down the hall. He was hoping to keep Keg out of his room, he didn’t want the cop to see how many rolls he had, but Keg followed him right inside like he owned the place.

“Is that Cody Turner?” said Keg, looking at the jar on Jake’s desk. “That’s hilarious.”

He went over to it and flicked his fingers against the glass. Inside, Cody jumped to his feet, alarmed. He clearly remembered Keg, too. Unsurprising, the guy had casually tormented nearly everyone in the lower grades. Everyone in Jake’s class had at least one bad memory of the bully.

“Well, come on, I don’t have all night,” said Keg.

Jake started to get the shrink-wrap and the heat gun when suddenly Keg barked at him to freeze. He stopped dead and held his hands up. He turned around slowly on Keg’s command. The cop’s free hand sat on the butt of his pistol and he was looking at Jake suspicioulsy.

“Put that shit down, and back away slowly.”

Jake did as he was told. His heart was pounding, almost painful in his chest. Of course Keg was just toying with him! Now he was about to be arrested, or something even worse.

“First,” said Keg, “you’re going to tell me exactly how this works, understand? I don’t want to see one unexpected move from you, got it?”

He’s worried, thought Jake. He thinks I might try to shrink him. If only, asshole. Jake was able to relax a little once he understood what was happening. He talked Keg through the process, explaining the shrink-wrap and how it would shrink when heated and take whatever it was wrapped around with it. Keg nodded along and grunted. He seemed to get less tense as Jake explained. Hopefully he’d see there was no danger to him, not that night at least. Jake didn’t want to know what Keg was like when he was actually afraid of something.

When Jake was done explaining, Keg agreed to let him demonstrate. Jake grabbed an old stuffed monkey he’d won at a fair years ago, wrapped it up and shrank it down smaller than Liam. When he finished he held it out for Keg to see. Keg’s eyes were alight as he took the shrunken toy and inspected it.

“Jesus. And it works on people?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Hand it over. That one too.” Keg gestured at an unopened box of shrink-wrap on the floor.

“I give you this stuff and you’re going to forget what you saw here tonight, right?” said Jake.

Keg wrinkled his nose and looked at Jake like something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

“I’m not making a deal with you, Harris,” Keg sneered. “I got you by the short ones and you’re going to do exactly what I say, and you better hope it’s good enough to keep me from throwing you in lockup.” He grinned unpleasantly. “I own you now, Harris. You’re not getting out of anything.”

Shit. Well, at least it would buy Jake some time to figure out a plan to deal with Keg. He nodded and gave Keg the heat gun and the rolls of shrink-wrap. He could see the edges of the other boxes under his bed behind some dirty laundry. They weren’t too obvious, hopefully Keg wouldn’t notice them.

“I’m taking these guys too,” said Keg. He nodded at Liam.

“What?” said Jake. “Come on, they’re mine! You’ve got the wrap, you can make your own!”

Keg’s eyes flashed angrily.

“You don’t tell me what I can do, Harris. You’re lucky I don’t shrink you down to a flea and flatten you right here and now.”

Jake shut his mouth. He knew that Keg could do it and wouldn’t hesitate to if it served his purposes.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But what if I could get you more wrap instead?”

“You got more stashed away somewhere?” snapped Keg.

“No! But, I can get more, through work. A supplier. It’s an industrial product, you know, they won’t give it to just anybody, but we can order it, we’re licensed for it.”

He was thinking on his feet, hoping his improvised bullshit would be convincing. Keg looked at him with hard eyes.

“You better not lie to me, Harris.”

“I swear that’s all I’ve got. I was going to put in an order for more. I can order it for you instead. So, maybe, instead of taking my guys, you’ll take that? You can shrink down so many more people with that wrap.”

“I’m taking them,” said Keg. “And you’re going to get me more. And maybe if I’m happy with how fast and how much you get me, I’ll think about letting you have these little turds back.”

“But–“

“I told you Harris, You don’t get to bargain with me!”

Jake saw Liam squirming unhappily in Keg’s fist which had tightened around him. Liam’s eyes met his, and they looked more frightened than Jake had ever seen them.

“Yeah,” said Jake. “Alright, I’ll get as much as I can, right away.”

Keg opened the door of the mouse cage and shoved Liam inside, letting him drop a couple inches to the floor. Liam yelped and curled up on the floor of the cage, like he’d been hurt. Jake couldn’t see how bad it was. Keg grabbed Cody’s jar, uncapped it and poured Cody out into the cage as well. Cody grunted, but he managed to catch himself as he fell inside. He crawled over to Liam and started checking him over. Keg snapped the door shut and got a little pad of paper off his belt which he slapped down on top of the cage.

“Number,” said Keg.

“Huh?” said Jake.

“What’s your number, dumbass?”

Jake gave Keg his phone number. Keg scribbled it down and shoved the pad back in his belt.

“You don’t contact me, I contact you, got it?”

“Yeah,” said Jake.

He tried to think of some way he could get Keg to leave Liam and Cody, but he was out of ideas. Keg took the cage and gestured at the door to the hall.

“You first.”

Jake walked out ahead of him. He hoped Keg would ignore Brandon’s room, but the big cop stopped and looked inside. Jake stood next to him and his eyes went right to Brandon’s packaging on the wall where his shrunken roommmate had spent the day.

Brandon turned to look at them, puzzled. Keg didn’t seem to notice though, as he scanned the rows of action figures. Jake caught Brandon’s eyes and shook his head slightly, hoping Brandon would understand that he shouldn’t try to get Keg’s attention. Whether Brandon understood or not, he didn’t say anything.

Keg turned back to Jake and gestured at the rows of action figures on the wall.

“Nice toys, you nerdy little bitch.”

He turned away from Brandon’s room and Jake led him back to the front door, relieved that Brandon had gone unnoticed. He opened the door for Keg, watching the little guys in the cage as they passed. They looked back at him. Even Cody looked scared.

Keg paused in the doorway on his way out.

“Hey Harris?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll call you in a week, and you better hope for these guy’s sake you got something for me.”

Keg looked down at Jake smugly and got that arrogant sneer on his face again.

“I always knew you were a little cocksucker, Harris, but this is some fucked up shit you pulled.”

Keg turned and left the apartment with the heat gun, the rolls of shrink-wrap and the cage with Cody and Liam inside. Jake watched him lumber down the hall. He got in the elevator and gave Jake one last contemptuous look as the doors closed in front of him.

Keg sat in his cruiser staring at the little men in the cage on the seat next to him. He thought about all the people he could use this on, and the things he could do to them. He gave the cage a shake. The guys inside yelped and fell over. Keg laughed.

He sat there for a while as he came up with a plan. He had a little over an hour until his shift started. He could make it two hours if he got his buddy to clock him in. He needed time to find what he was looking for, and he needed to make a stop first.

Keg shoved the cage on the floor of the passenger seat. The guys inside yelped again and Keg snapped at them to keep it down. He pulled out of the lot and headed for the turnpike, flipping on his lights to cruise through the intersections because he didn’t feel like wasting time. He drove a ways down the road and pulled into the Walmart lot, parking next to the curb. Inside, he picked up a battery-powered heat gun and a couple rolls of duct tape. He threw these in the trunk, activated his lights again and sped away.

He drove out to the west end of town, near the corporate park. The interstate wasn’t far from there and a lot of people took a shortcut through there to pick up route eighteen. He was looking for something specific and this was the best place to find it.

Keg backed the cruiser in behind a copse of trees where it would be hard to see and flipped off the lights. It could be a while before he saw what he wanted, so he put the mouse cage up on the passenger seat. He slapped the top of it, startling both its little occupants, laughing at the way they jumped. They were fascinating. Completely helpless. He could use or dispose of them however he wanted and there was nothing they could do.

“Cody Turner,” said Keg. “How the mighty have fallen.”

Cody glared up at him at him a second and then looked away. The other one watched him fearfully. He seemed ready to bolt in an instant. Where did he think he would go?

“What about you runt?” He read the smaller guy’s name tag. “Liam, huh? Sounds gay. You go to school here too?”

Liam huddled by the side of the bed. He didn’t respond, just stared at Keg, terrified.

“I asked you a question, shit stain!” Keg growled.

“He didn’t go to school with us,” said Cody.

Keg looked Cody over as he stood between Liam and himself. He studied the weird contraption Cody wore over his dick.

“Looks like Harris was doing some pervert shit with you little fucks. What’s he got you wearing that thing for?”

Cody glanced down at at the weird device.

“He thought it would be funny.”

“Bet you wish you could get out of that thing,” said Keg.

Cody shrugged.

“What about this one?” Keg gestured at Liam. “I don’t see any lock on you, why you still wearing that collar? You like being Harris’s little fuck toy?”

“Hey Keg,” said Cody stepping in front of Liam. “You know what, I do want this thing off, how about you help me out with that?” He tugged on the chain at his waist.

“Why should I do that?”

“Come on, dude. I’m tired of wearing this, give me a hand.”

Keg thought about it.

“Tell you what, Turner. Let’s wrestle for it. You versus my hand. I’ll even make it fair, all you got to do is go five minutes without getting pinned and I’ll help you out.”

Cody looked uneasy.

“I don’t think that’s–“

“You’re doing it,” said Keg.

He popped the cage door open and yanked Cody out, setting him down on the console. Keg lay his wrist there, his hand angled upward, fingers pointing at Cody. He set his phone on the dashboard and looked at the time.

“Ten fourteen. Stay on your feet until ten nineteen and you win. Ready? Go.”

It was no contest. Cody was far too weak to hold even a single finger off, but Keg wanted him to think he had a chance, so he acted like he was having trouble as Cody grappled with his fingers and tried to keep them from closing around him. He kept an eye on the clock. At ten eighteen, Keg feinted with his hand, jabbing upward before thrusting it down and sweeping Cody’s legs out from under him. Cody went down with a groan. He tried to roll away, but Keg pressed his palm against the little guy, pinning him hard to the console.

“You lose, runt,” Keg laughed, keeping Cody pinned there. “Guess you didn’t really want that thing off after all. Never would have figured you for such a homo freak. Who was that chick you dated back in high school, Melissa something? I should track her down on Facebook and show her what what you look like now. Maybe I should–“

“He can’t breathe!”

It was the first thing Liam had said to him. Keg glanced down and saw that Cody’s face was bright red and he was clawing at the console in a panic. Keg kept his hand in place and sneered at Liam.

“So? Get this into your head you little shit. I own your asses and I can do what I want. I could crush him into pulp or tear his arms and legs off or just cruise over to the interstate and chuck him out the window at eighty miles an hour like the little piece of garbage he is. Got it?”

Liam looked horrified. His legs trembled. Keg wondered if he might actually piss himself, that would be funny. He held his hand in place a moment longer before lifting it up. Cody lay where he was, gasping and coughing.

“I’m not done with you two yet,” said Keg. “But you’re both gonna wish I was.”

He shoved Cody in the cage. Cody crouched on the floor coughing and sputtering. Keg was about to reach for Liam when he spotted the beams of headlights stretching along the road in front of him.

He watched the lights on the road grow brighter until the vehicle came into view. It was a Jeep Wrangler, older but good condition. He watched the vehicle approach. It had out-of-state plates. A pair of young guys sat in the front seat, and Keg could hear the bass of the radio they were blasting as the car passed.

Perfect.

He snapped the cage door shut, stuck it back on the floor and pulled the cruiser out of his hiding spot, activating his lights.

Jake spent a long time standing there, staring at the closed door. He’d lost them. Just like that, they were gone. Keg’s to torment. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even Cody, certainly not Liam.

He had to get them back. He’d been such an idiot, wasting all his free time the past few days screwing around with them when he should have been working on how to get Keg. He knew someone would come for him, he was the only one there the night Cody and Liam disappeared. Of course they came for him. Of course it was Keg. He probably saw Jake’s name on a report or something and volunteered just for the opportunity to be an asshole.

Get Keg shrunk. Get them back. Get out of town. That’s what he had to do, he just didn’t know how.

He started for his room, but he heard Brandon calling to him from his blister pack as he passed. Jake did not want to face his questions. He was going to just leave Brandon in there, but a voice in the back of his head told him Brandon might be able to help. He couldn’t really afford to be picky about who helped him, not with the mess he’d made for himself. Brandon was smart about some stuff and he’d certainly be motivated to get Liam back. Jake forced himself to go into the room and face his roommate.

“What happened?” said Brandon. “Where’s Liam?”

Jake took the packaging off the wall.

“Gone. He took them.”

“Fuck! Who was that guy? He seemed like he knew you.”

Jake carried the blister pack into his room and didn’t say anything. He took the front off the packaging and freed Brandon from the twist-ties. The sight of the bonds he’d made for Brandon, which he’d been so happy with before, rankled now. He put Brandon on the desk and stuck the blister pack up on the shelf out of sight.

“Jake?” said Brandon. “Who was that cop, do you know him?”

“We went to high school together.”

Brandon’s eyes went wide.

“Wait, he’s not your.. uh, you know, the guy who always gave you a hard time, is he?”

Jake looked at him sharply, surprised he knew anything about it. Brady, he realized. Brady must have told him. God damn Brady.

“Yeah,” said Jake, “that’s him. Brian Kagle. Goes by ‘Keg,’ beause he always won the keg toss at Gavin Miller’s parties. So I heard, anyway.”

“Shit,” said Brandon. “And now he has Liam and Cody? You have to get them back!”

“Yeah, I know!” said Jake. “I’ve got to think. Somehow I’ve got to shrink him, but fuck if I know how to do that.” He kicked one of the boxes that sat under the bed. “I wish these came with a manual or something. Maybe there’s some way to use it on Keg without him knowing.”

He pulled a box out and turned it around in his hands.

“I guess I could call the number tomorrow and see if I can get any info from them, but I don’t want to wait too long. I don’t trust Keg with Cody and Liam for any amount of time.”

“What about the website?” said Brandon, pointing at the web address on the box.

“Tried it,” said Jake. He opened his laptop and put the site into his browser, clicking to the product info page. “See? Nothing.”

As he looked at it, he noticed something in the browser he couldn’t see when he checked it on his phone before. The address of the product page ended with “temp.html”. Jake was no computer whiz but he’d taken a web design class in college. He wondered if there was more information that wasn’t linked on the site. He replaced “temp.html” with “index.html” and hit return. The page that came up said “404 Not Found.” Disappointed, he started to close his laptop, and then he had another idea. He erased “index.html” and just left the slash at the end of the address, and pressed enter.

A directory listing appeared in the browser. it showed “temp.html” and one other file, a video named “demo_v1FINAL-revised.mp4”. His heartbeat quickened as he clicked on the video and it started to play.

The screen showed a palette of boxes sitting in some kind of warehouse. A man walked into frame. He had a white lab coat on and looked like he was in his mid thirties. He was slim and had a dark beard with a few white hairs on the chin and a head that was shaved smooth.

The man looked into the camera and said something but Jake couldn’t hear him. He played with the volume settings and checked that his audio was working, but it was all set correctly. It appeared the video had no audio.

Jake glanced at Brandon. He was sitting on the desk, watching the giant screen intently, like a kid sitting in the front row at the movies.

The man in the video talked for a while, holding up a roll of the shrink-wrap, and occasionally gesturing to the palette behind him. Jake hoped there would be more to the video than just a guy saying things they couldn’t hear. After a moment, the man started to wrap the palette with the shrink-wrap. He picked up a heat gun and pointed it at the wrap and the palette began to shrink down. The man shrank the palette until it was just inches tall, then he picked it up and held it in his palm in front of the camera. He spoke some more as the camera focused on the palette. Then the video faded to black.

“Dammit, that was useless!” Jake banged rhe desk with his fist in frustration.

“Look,” said Brandon, pointing at the screen.

Jake saw that the video player timeline was only half done. There was more. The picture came back up after a moment. It showed the same man. He had another palette. Or maybe the same one, regrown? This time he cut two lengths of shrink-wrap about a couple of feet each. He pressed each strip to opposite sides of the stacked boxes. He was careful to make sure it touched every box, at least a little, then he pointed a heat gun to one of the sides.

The palette began to shrink, just like before. It seemed to shrink slower than the first one had. The man stopped when it was still a couple feet tall, spoke to the camera more, and then the video went black again. Jake shared a look with Brandon.

The next sequence showed the man putting just a single small square of wrap on one side of a large box. This time the shrinking was very slow, but sure enough the whole thing shrank with just a bit of wrap stuck to it. The man stopped after it had only lost about a foot.

“Okay,” said Jake. “So you don’t have to completely wrap things up to shrink them. That’s something. Not sure how we’d use that, but…”

He trailed off as the video came up once more. Now the man had a tiny palette in his hands and he was standing in front of a big gray box that looked kind of like one of those old-time refrigerators with no separate door for the freezer. The man opened the fridge thing and took several boxes off the palette, stacking them up inside. He closed the door and waited. The lights in the room flickered for a couple minutes and then he opened the door again.

There sat several normal-sized boxes, stacked up. The fridge thing, whatever it was, had grown them back. The man opened one of the boxes and the camera focused in on it. It was full of wine glasses. The man took one out and held it in front of the camera. He seemed to be demonstrating that the objects inside were unharmed.

“It’s not permanent,” said Brandon, sounding very relieved.

Yesterday Jake would have told Brandon he wasn’t growing back, permanent or not. He would have enjoyed teasing Brandon with it. Now, Liam and Cody’s abduction had soured his enjoyment and he said nothing.

A white screen came up on the video, with black text in the middle that read “Other Administration Routes.” The man appeared again. He started to say something and then froze as the video stopped. Jake scrubbed the timeline around and refreshed the video, but it appeared the file ended like that, mid-sentence.

“Administration routes? The hell does that mean?” said Jake.

“I dunno,” said Brandon.

“Hmmm,” said Jake. “Did you notice those other clips? You don’t have to wrap something all the way to make it shrink. Maybe I can do something with that?”

“If you could get a piece of it on him, like stuck to his back or something…” said Brandon.

“How do I do that without him noticing though? And heat it up long enough to shrink him? It takes longer when you do it like that, did you notice?”

“Does he live in a house or an apartment? Maybe you could put it on his house, if he has one. Shrink the whole thing.”

“Would that even work? We’d have to use a lot of wrap or it would take forever. Anyways thats probably where Cody and Liam are going to be. Unless he just decides to…” Jake trailed off. He didn’t want to finish that thought.

Brandon turned away, frowning.

“Maybe don’t try and shrink him?” he said after a moment. “Maybe just see if you can break in and get them back? Can you find out where he lives?”

“I bet I can find out from Facebook. His buddy used to hang out with Brady and they’re still friends, so I can probably see his info. I’ll just log in as Brady, he uses the same password for everything. But I only get one shot at this, you know? If Keg catches me, I’m history.”

Brandon nodded. He looked troubled, like he was considering something he didn’t like, and then he seemed to make a decision.

“Not just you, though,” he said. “I’ll help. I might be able to something you can’t.”

“Is that a good idea? At your size…”

Brandon looked at him sternly.

“I want Liam back.”

“Right. Okay. So you can get into small places. We only need a single strip of wrap stuck to him to do the job, and we’ve got to apply heat to at least part of it.”

“Stuck to him, or to someplace he’s in,” said Brandon. “The stuff inside the boxes on the palette shrank too.”

“The house thing isn’t going to work, Bran, I’ll get caught” Jake said. “And it’s not like I can shrink the whole police station. The only other place we know for sure he’ll be is–“

An idea suddenly came to him. Brandon’s seemed to have the same thought, and he finished Jake’s sentence.

“His cruiser!”

Keg stepped out of the cruiser and approached the other vehicle slowly. He liked to make drivers wait, it gave them time to worry about what was coming. He hitched his belt up slightly as he ambled along, knowing how the uniform enhanced his imposing figure.

He rapped on the window with his knuckle. The driver took his time rolling it down. He was young, maybe nineteen or twenty and his passenger didn’t look any older. The driver had pale skin and dark hair sticking out from his backwards baseball cap. The other guy had darker skin, maybe Mexican or an Arab. Something not American.

“What’s the problem, officer?”

The kid in the driver’s seat had this amused little smirk on his face that made Keg want to backhand him. There was a small pin attached to the kid’s gray cap. It was intricately shaped and had some Greek letters inscribed on it.

Frat boys.

“License and registration,” Keg said.

The driver shrugged and reached into his pocket to pull his wallet out. The kid in the passenger seat started to open the glove box.

“Stop,” Keg ordered.

They both looked at him.

“You,” he looked at the driver, “take your wallet out, slowly, then reach across and get your registration. You,” he looked at the passenger, “stay still and keep your hands where I can see them.”

The darker-skinned kid’s mouth dropped open. He pulled his hands back, holding them halfway up. The pale one slipped his wallet out of his pocket. He thrust his license toward the open window.

“There.”

Keg looked at it but didn’t take it.

“Get your registration, then hand them both to me.”

The kid rolled his eyes and reached for the glove box. His friend watched nervously while he pulled a folded, wrinkled piece of paper out. He held his license on top of it as he handed them to Keg.

“Here you go. Officer.”

The way he said “officer” made it clear he didn’t think much of Keg’s position. The friend frowned. He didn’t seem to think the attitude was such a good idea.

He was right.

Keg took the paperwork from the kid, making sure to let his big, blunt fingers bump the kid’s smaller, softer hand. He examined the license. Daniel Brancatella, age twenty. It was an Ohio license. They were a long way from Ohio. Probably coming from one of the universities just north of the state line.

“Stay put,” said Keg.

He made his way slowly around the back of the car to the passenger side. He rapped on that window and the other guy rolled it down, looking up at him in confusion.

“Got your license?” said Keg.

“Why do you need–“

“Do. You have. Your license,” Keg growled.

The kid got it out and handed it to him. Aaron Saleh. Twenty. Illinois license.

“Aaron. That your real name?”

“Yeah.” The kid frowned and glanced at the driver.

“Where you from Aaron?”

“Chicago.”

“I mean before that.”

The kid gave him a funny look.

“I was born in Chicago,” he said, after a pause.

“And your parents?”

“Mom’s from Chicago, Dad moved there from Minneapolis.”

“Hmmph,” said Keg.

“If you’re asking what’s our family origin, we’re Yemeni.” The kid nodded at his friend. “And Dan’s came from Italy. How about yours, officer Kagle?”

“Step out of the vehicle. Now.”

“What the hell did he do?” said Dan.

“Both of you. Out of the vehicle.”

Aaron looked resigned as he opened the door and stepped out.

“Are you fucking shitting me?” said Dan.

“Just get out of the car, dude,” said Aaron.

“You should listen to your friend, hot shot.” Keg smirked.

Daniel stared at both of them reproachfully, then he opened his door and got out.

“My dad’s a lawyer,” he said.

“In Ohio,” said Keg. “Out here he’s diddly-shit. Put your hands on top of the vehicle and keep them there. Both of you.”

Aaron complied quickly, Dan took his time. Keg patted Aaron down first, taking his phone and wallet. He put the kid in cuffs and told him to stay put, then walked around to the mouthy one.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” said Dan.

“Spread your legs.”

The kid groaned but he did it. Keg patted him down, taking his phone, wallet, keys and a vape pen. Keg held the vape up and smirked.

“I guess you’re gonna tell me this is just tobacco?”

“It is!” said Daniel.

“Hold out your hands.”

“This is so fucked up!” said Dan as he put his hands out and Keg cuffed him.

“Shut up, dude!” said Aaron.

Dan scowled, but he shut his mouth. Keg ordered them into the cruiser. Dan looked like he wanted to say something, but he glanced at Aaron and kept quiet.

Keg marched them to his cruiser and locked them in the back. He glanced at them in the mirror as he slid into the driver’s seat. Aaron was staring wide-eyed at the cage on the floor of the passenger seat. He nudged his friend and gestured at it. Dan craned his neck to look.

“What the fuck?” he said.

“Settle in, boys,” said Keg.

He pulled the cruiser away from the curb as he called in an abandoned vehicle report.

Jake knew from his traffic stop that Keg’s cruiser was an SUV, so they decided to test the feasibility of their plan on Brandon’s RAV4.

“There’s a debris shield underneath the engine, so you’re not going to be able to get your arms up in there,” said Brandon. “I think I should be able to squeeze around it near the wheels and get to the radiator.”

But they discovered a problem right away.

“I can barely squeeze under there. No way I’ll be able to do my part,” said Jake, laying on the ground next to the RAV4. “Fuck!”

Brandon was sitting on the curb nearby, watching.

“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” he said.

“Maybe Keg’s cruiser is higher up off the ground?”

“Maybe. What if it’s not though?”

“Dammit!” said Jake. “I really thought we were on to something.”

“Well,” said Brandon slowly, “you know there’s a solution here.”

Jake looked at him. He realized what Brandon was thinking. He started to shake his head, but stopped. He looked back at the gap under the RAV4. It wouldn’t take much for him to squeeze in there. And he knew he could be restored again, he’d seen it in the video. It wasn’t permanent. And every extra moment Liam and Cody spent with Keg was a moment too many.

“Alright,” said Jake. “Yeah. I’ll do it.”

“Wait, really?” Brandon looked surprised.

“Yeah dude,” said Jake. “This is the best idea we’ve come up with and it’s all my–” He cut himself off. “We need to get them back. The sooner the better.”

Brandon studied him a moment and nodded.

“Yeah.”

Jake picked Brandon up and trudged back into the apartment. He got a box of shrink-wrap out from under his bed. Keg had taken the heat gun, so they had to improvise. A hair-dryer seemed like the next obvious choice, but neither owned one. Then Brandon had an idea.

“Use the oven,” he said. “That will be another good test for this plan.”

“Won’t that make the oven shrink?”

“Maybe? But Cody didn’t shrink when he was touching the shrink-wrap around me. Or maybe he did, but so little we couldn’t tell? Anyway, who cares if the stove shrinks a little?”

Jake nodded. He took Brandon and the wrap to the kitchen. He googled how hot a car radiator gets and settled on two hundred degrees. While they waited for the oven to get up to temperature, he got out the tape measure and marked five feet on the wall next to the stove. He didn’t want to go any smaller than that. Once the oven beeped, he pulled a sheet of the wrap off the roll. He stuck it on his back from shoulder to waist, and then stuck the tail into the oven and closed the door. As he stood looking at the mark he’d made on the wall, it started to rise.

“Whoa,” said Jake.

“Yeah, it’s a trip,” said Brandon. He sounded reproachful.

Jake watched the room slowly grow. As soon as the mark on the wall slid just above his eye line, he yanked the wrap off and pulled it out of the oven. When he went to turn the oven off he had to reach noticeably further for the knob.

“This is so weird,” he said.

“Try being just a few inches,” said Brandon.

Jake ignored that. He examined the height of the stove compared to the counter next to it.

“It might have shrunk a bit? I can’t really tell.”

He turned to Brandon, who stood on the counter watching him.

“Ready to give it another try?”

Brandon nodded.

Jake took Brandon back out to the RAV4. He had to conceal the little guy under his shirt as he saw a couple of his neighbors on the way. The looked at him strangely as they passed, but he just smiled and tried to look like everything was normal. They were a young couple from down the hall, and Jake could remember looking down at the wife when they spoke in the past. Now he was chin-high to her.

It was still a tight squeeze getting under the car, and the pavement scraped along his back, but he was able to maneuver himself beneath the RAV4 and he had just enough clearance to move his arms a bit. He got near the wheel as Brandon came to meet him there. They both looked up at the debris shield above them.

“There,” said Brandon. “See there’s kind of a gap there? I think I can squeeze through it into the engine. Give me a boost?”

Jake lifted him to the spot he’d indicated. Brandon put his hands in the gap and pulled himself up inside it. It was very tight, and the edges forced his loincloth down to his knees, where it slipped the rest of the way off and landed on Jake’s hand. Brandon disappeared into the gap.

“You alright?” said Jake.

“Yeah,” he called back through the gap. “Didn’t plan on doing this naked, but it would just get in the way anyway, I guess. Stick the end of the wrap up here for me?”

Jake did, and a second later the wrap started to slide into the gap. Jake waited a while for Brandon to complete his task. He could faintly hear the little guy climbing around on the other side of the debris shield.

At one point a car pulled into the spot next to them. Jake watched a pair of blue sneakers step out onto the pavement and walk past. He imagined what it would be like to always see people from that perspective. It made him shudder.

Brandon was gone a while. Jake called to him a couple times. The first time he heard Brandon respond, though he couldn’t understand it. The second, there was no response. Jake started to get worried, but eventually Brandon’s head popped out of the gap. Jake helped him get out. As he emerged, Jake saw that he was covered in dark smudges.

“Guess you’re getting a bath when we get back in,” Jake chuckled. “How’d it go?”

“Couldn’t reach the radiator,” said Brandon, wiping his sweaty face with his hand. “Too much shit in the way. I ended up wrapping it on the exhaust manifold. Took some climbing, but that should get nice and hot.”

“Will you be able to do that in Keg’s cruiser?”

“Maybe? As long as he hasn’t driven it recently. If he has, it will be too hot for me to touch.”

“Shit,” said Jake. “I didn’t think of that. If the engine is hot, the car will shrink before he even gets inside. And it will take you with it. And me too. Maybe. Or it will crush me on its way down.”

“It will probably shrink pretty slowly until you stick the rest of the wrap on it. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell if it’s hot. We’ll just have to hope for the best.”

“Unless we have a stakeout,” said Jake.

Brandon thought about that and nodded.

“Sure. It’s not like I have anything else going on.”

The two frat boys in the back of the cruiser kept peeking through the divider and then whispering together in urgent tones. In the front, the little guys in the cage seemed to notice the scrutiny and huddled together behind the bed, keeping out of view. Everyone around him was tense and scared, which is how Keg liked it.

He drove a couple miles down the road, outside the city limits, and turned onto an old gravel utility road. Years ago, when Keg was just a kid, the electric company abandoned these lines when the new housing developments spurred an upgrade to the grid. Keg and his buddies used to drive out there to drink back in high school. There were no houses around for miles. No one to hear you.

“Dude, where are you taking us?” said Dan.

“The woods.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“You’ll see.”

“I want an attorney.”

“Then get one.”

In the mirror, Keg saw the kid looked pissed and dropped back into the seat with a huff.

Keg pulled into a small clearing and got out. Traces of the old fire pit still lingered there, and a few brown glass bottles were scattered around, their labels long gone. He hadn’t been there in years, but the memories came rushing back. Keg holding court as his buddies jockeyed for his attention. Sometimes they’d bring girls out there and after a few beers everybody would get loose and dumb and it was easy to talk your way into a chick’s pants.

Someday Keg would rule this town the way he’d ruled his high school. He’d gone straight into the academy after graduation, expecting to rise to the top just like he had in school. It wasn’t quite as easy as he’d expected. The force was welcoming and all, but he was constantly reminded of his low position. They gave him all the crap jobs and made him take the overnight shift. The only reason he’d gotten the Interceptor instead of a Crown Vic was because he didn’t really fit in most sedans.

He’d get back on top, he didn’t doubt it, but the waiting was frustrating. If this stuff he got from Harris was as good as it seemed, maybe he could move things along faster. Remove a couple guys in key positions, make a couple openings and wait for the promotions to drop into his lap. And he could have some fun along the way.

He opened the back door of the cruiser. The pair inside looked at him uncomfortably.

“You. Out.” He pointed at Dan.

The kid didn’t move. Keg pounded the roof of the cruiser hard with his open palm and made the frat boys jump.

“I said get out you little cocksucker!”

Dan scrambled out the door. Keg grabbed the chain of Dan’s cuffs and held him, shutting Aaron in the cruiser.

“Let go of me!” said Dan.

He tugged and struggled but Keg had about eight inches and fifty pounds on him and it was no use. Keg brought him around to the back of the cruiser and opened the trunk. He pulled the shrink-wrap out, pressed the end into the back of Dan’s t-shirt and started to wrap the roll around him. The kid tried to get free but he couldn’t break Keg’s grip on the cuffs. Every time he would struggle, Keg would hold him down with a thick knee to his back and wait for him to tire out. Then he’d start wrapping again.

Keg made several revolutions, covering Dan from chest to mid-thigh. When he was finished, he forced the kid to lay on the floor of the trunk with his legs hanging out the back. He held the kid down with one knee while he got the heat gun ready.

“What are you doing?” Dan grunted with his face pressed against the floor.

Keg pointed the heat gun at the kid’s back and activated it. For a moment he thought nothing was going to happen, but then he could see the kid slowly contract in on himself. Keg laughed as he felt Dan’s body get smaller under his hand.

Dan didn’t seem to notice right away. He kept trying to twist out of Keg’s grip. When his legs no longer reached the ground he seemed to realize something was wrong. He went still for a moment. Keg could see his head sliding along the trunk floor as he shrank.

“What’s going on? What are you doing to me?” said Dan. The fear made his voice catch in his throat.

“What do you think I’m doing, boy? You saw what’s in the front seat. You tell me.”

“No! You can’t do that! Aaron, help me! He’s trying to shrink me!”

Dan thrashed harder than ever. Aaron was watching through the metal cage that separated the back seat from the trunk, mouth hanging open in shock.

“Stop!” he said. “Dude, stop! Let him go!”

He leaned back and started kicking at the vehicle door. Keg felt the car shift a little, but he knew the kid would never get the door opened.

“No one’s gonna hear you out here, now settle down and wait your turn,” Keg told him.

When he had Dan down to a couple feet tall, he held the kid squirming in the air in front of him. He laughed as Dan kicked his legs, red-faced and bellowing.

“Where’s your lawyer daddy now you little punk?” said Keg.

Dan stopped kicking and looked at him pitifully.

“What do you want from me?” he said in almost a sob.

“I don’t want nothing from you,” said Keg. “I just want you to know what a little bitch you are.”

He looped the chain of Dan’s cuffs over a utility hook embedded in the door frame. He activated the heat gun again. Dan began to shrink more, dangling by his cuffed arms and bawling, his feet rising higher and higher. Keg watched fascinated as Dan got small as an action figure, smaller even than the guys in the cage, until he was just a few inches tall.

Keg was rock hard. It was a weird time to get a boner, but it was just the thrill of asserting his dominance, Keg figured. The shrunken frat boy was crying and pleading. The other kid was staring at what had become of his friend, not making a sound. He met Keg’s eyes and his shock turned to apprehension.

“What are you going to do with him?” said Aaron.

Keg hadn’t really thought about what he would do past this, but now he had an idea. He lifted the shrunken guy off the hook, holding him with one finger curled under the chain of his cuffs. He carried him around the side of the car, opening the back door.

“Get out here,” said Keg.

Aaron hesitated, but he seemed to realize he had no choice. He scooted along the seat and stumbled out awkwardly with his hands still cuffed. He stood next to the car. Keg dangled Dan in his face.

“You two, you’re frat boys, right?”

Aaron looked confused at the question, but he nodded.

“You frat boys do all kinds of stuff to each other, yeah?”

“Uh, what do you mean?”

“Hazing,” said Keg. “Making pledges do humiliating shit.”

“A little,” said Aaron. “The school cracks down pretty hard on that stuff.”

“Here’s the deal,” said Keg as they watched tiny Dan hanging in the air between them, looking back and forth at them desperately. “I’m going to let you go. Take you back to your car and you can be on your way. You just got to do one thing for me.”

“What’s that?” said Aaron warily.

“Ever swallow a goldfish?”

Jake was pleased with how their test had gone. They could actually pull this off! But his happiness wore off some as they got back to the empty apartment and faced the absence of Cody and Liam. There were plenty of things that could go wrong. The two Keg took were in danger every moment they were in his possession. Jake hoped their usefulness as leverage against him would keep them safe for a while, but Keg’s instincts to hurt them would win out eventually, he didn’t doubt it. They had to get to him first.

He had a new problem too. He had to grow himself back again. He knew it was possible, they’d seen it in the video, but it took some kind of specialized device. Jake would have to get in touch with Dynamatter to get access to that. There would probably be questions. Jake was pretty sure that however the shrink wrap had found its way to the store, he wasn’t supposed to have it. And once Dynamatter knew he did have it, how long before someone connected it to Jake’s missing coworkers and roommate?

Maybe he could just stay five feet tall for the rest of his life? It was pretty short, especially for a guy, but he could still live a normal life. People he knew might have questions about his change, but he could just say he didn’t know what happened. It might not be so bad, especially if he had the little guys around to make him feel big.

But he’d had his fill of looking up at everyone around him in high school and he didn’t care to repeat it. He would call Dynamatter the next day, he just wouldn’t give them any personal details. He’d try and feel them out first. No harm in that.

It only took Jake about twenty minutes of Facebook sleuthing to figure out where Keg lived. His profile was mostly open to the world. He had a small house on the other side of town.

Their first thought had been to do it in the morning when Keg was sleeping. He seemed to work the overnight shift, so Jake figured he probably slept pretty late, and the cruiser was likely to be cold by then. But when Jake checked out the house on Google Maps he saw that it was pretty close to the street and the neighbors. Lots of people could notice him screwing around with Keg’s cruiser in the daylight. After dark, before Keg’s shift started, would be better. Unfortunately, that would give Keg all day to take the cruiser out and get the engine hot. Who knew if he would even be home before his shift? But they couldn’t risk getting caught.

Figuring out the timing of Keg’s shift was tough until Jake noticed Keg’s Spotify stream published all his activity with his location included. Scrolling through it, Jake could see updates from the police station most nights around nine p.m. To be cautious, they should try and have the job done by eight. With sunset at close to seven, they had about an hour window to get it done. More time would be better, but it was workable.

Satisfied the plan was in place, Jake took Brandon into the bathroom to wash him off. He realized he was a bit smudged up himself when he saw his reflection in the mirror, so he turned on the shower and stripped his clothes off and took Brandon in with him. He set his roommate down in the unused soap dish attached to the wall and washed himself off first, then he put some shower gel on Brandon and scrubbed him too. Jake got a little distracted rubbing his fingers over Brandon’s muscles, and soon he was playing with them and they both got hard.

Jake turned off the water, quickly toweled himself and Brandon off, and took the little guy back to his room. He tried not to look at the empty jar on his desk as he lay down on the bed with Brandon. He started to swirl his fingers over Brandon’s rounded chest and rippled abs. Brandon lay back in Jake’s palm and toyed with his own dick as he let Jake feel him up.

“I’ve always wanted to play with these,” said Jake, as he used his thumbs to rub Brandon’s hefty pecs.

“How come you never said anything?” Brandon asked.

“I didn’t even know you were into guys until I… You know, until recently. Brady always made you sound like such a ladies man.”

Brandon shrugged as he stroked his dick and Jake’s fingers slid over his body.

“Yeah, well, sometimes Brady only sees what he wants to see.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” said Jake. He sounded a little more bitter than he meant to.

Jake started to squeeze Brandon’s thick thighs gently, rolling the muscles around between his fingers. Brandon let his head roll back and he pinched his nipples, moaning softly.

“Did you know?” said Jake.

Brandon lifted his head.

“Know what?”

“That you were, uh, into little dudes. You have all those action figures…”

“I didn’t know until I had Liam in my hands.”

Jake nodded. He stroked his own dick as he cupped Brandon’s beefy little body in his other hand and watched the tiny man playing with himself.

“What about you?” said Brandon.

Jake thought about how much to reveal. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.

“I used to fantasize about people getting smaller, back in high school,” Jake said slowly, in a quiet voice. “All the guys who were bigger than me and treated me like shit, suddenly only knee-high to me. I only pictured guys, and in my fantasy they shrank out of their clothes and they were all naked, trying to cover their dicks, trying to get away from me. They weren’t fast enough at that size, and I could just grab them and do whatever I wanted with them.”

Brandon was watching intently as Jake spoke, still toying with his own body. He kind of resembled the shrunken jocks in Jake’s fantasy. Jake had his hand around his own dick and he stroked slowly.

“I never thought it was a sexual thing, though,” Jake laughed. “That sounds crazy right? But I really didn’t. I didn’t even know I liked guys at that point. Or, I guess I kind of knew but I didn’t, you know, say it to myself.”

He brought Brandon closer to his face, so he could see the little body in detail.

“I thought I was done with that fantasy after I had my growth spurt and stopped being the shrimp everyone picked on. Then I saw Cody shrinking and it was like, whoa.”

Brandon didn’t say anything. He had a weird look on his face as he watched Jake. Jake felt his face flush. He wasn’t used to confiding in people. Liam a little bit, maybe. Certainly not his brother’s jacked buddy, Brandon.

Brandon had stopped touching himself and was looking at Jake strangely. Jake started to rub Brandon’s dick with his thumb, hoping to just move past this weird moment quickly, but Brandon pushed the finger away.

“Is that how you saw me? A bigger guy who treats you like shit?”

“Huh?” said Jake. “Just forget it, I don’t know why I said that.”

“Is that why you shrank me?”

Jake frowned and shook his head.

“I just wanted to keep Cody and Liam.”

Brandon was still looking at him with this odd, scrutinizing expression and Jake didn’t like how it made him feel.

“Let’s just get off and go to sleep,” he said. “This day has been shit.”

Brandon was quiet a moment, and then he got a determined look on his face.

“Put me on your dick.”

Relieved that he was dropping it, Jake lowered Brandon onto his twitching boner. It dribbled a small stream of precum when the muscled body touched it. Brandon wrapped his arms and legs around it and squeezed. His grip was surprisingly strong and it made Jake moan. Brandon used his body to jerk Jake off for a while as Jake ran his fingers over Brandon’s wide back and muscular ass. When Jake started to get close, Brandon suddenly climbed off.

“What are you doing?” said Jake, frustrated that Brandon had stopped.

“Trying something,” said Brandon.

He walked around to the head of Jake’s dick. It lay red and swollen on Jake’s flat belly. Brandon got down on his knees and pressed the tip of his own dick up against Jake’s.

“Hang on,” said Jake. “What are you–“

Brandon pushed his dick into the slit of Jake’s, burying himself balls deep. Jake gasped.

“Fuck!”

Brandon glanced over his shoulder. He had a look of satisfaction on his face. He pulled his hips back and then thrust again.

“Oh fuck!” Jake moaned.

Brandon started pounding it, slapping his hips against the tip of Jake’s dick. The entire length began to tingle as Jake watched Brandon’s beefy body fucking his dick, the little muscles shaking with the motion. Jake threw his head back and clawed at the bedspread as his moans turned into whimpers. The sensation was almost too intense and Brandon was relentless. Jake was half relieved, half disappointed when Brandon finally slammed his hips against the head, bent forward and started shooting hot jizz into Jake’s dick.

Brandon held still for a moment, breathing heavily, then pulled himself out and gave his dick a shake.

“Fuck,” said Jake, panting. “That was–“

He didn’t finish because Brandon pushed his fist into Jake’s dick. Jake howled. He squeezed the bedspread in his hands and slammed his head against the pillow. Brandon slid his arm further in as Jake whined and whimpered, kicking his heels against the bed. He felt Brandon make a few more slow thrusts with his arm and then he started moving faster, fisting Jake’s piss slit. Jake writhed and squirmed as Brandon pumped his dick. He could feel he was getting very close. As he approached the edge, Brandon plunged his arm forward, all the way to his shoulder, and then deftly pulled it back out and hopped up onto the underside of Jake’s dick just as it started to spray jizz everywhere. Brandon squeezed tight as Jake shot so hard he heard cum spattering on the wall behind him. He came all over his face and chest and when it was done he lay shaking and breathing heavy.

Neither moved for a few moments. Then the feel of Brandon’s footsteps on his belly made Jake lift his head weakly. Brandon was walking up Jake’s body, a triumphant smile on his face as he approached. He stopped at Jake’s chest, standing in the puddles of cum and crossing his arms.

“I’m not going back in that blister pack.”

He said it like an order. His expression dared Jake to contradict him. Jake frowned, but he was too overwhelmed by his dick, which still tingled, and the intensity of the orgasm Brandon had just given him.

“Yeah, fine… Whatever…”

He let his head drop back on the pillow and sleep overtook him quickly.

Aaron watched his tiny fraternity brother squirming and dangling in front of him. Keg’s question hung there between them. He shook his head, not taking his eyes off Dan.

“What, your frat never made you swallow anything weird?”

“I told you, the school cracks down pretty hard on that stuff.”

Sure, thought Keg. Typical woke college bullshit.

“Time you got the full experience then.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can go free, if you swallow little goldie here.”

He shook Dan in the air. Dan started whining even harder. Aaron was quiet. He looked at Keg.

“If I refuse?”

“Ever see a boa constrictor eat a live mouse?”

“I seen one eat a frozen mouse.”

“I’ve got a boa. I feed him live. He likes it better. Bet he’d enjoy having the pair of you for supper. That’s what happens if you refuse. Your buddy here is going down a gullet either way. Why throw yourself in with him?”

Dan was shaking his head and sobbing.

“No, please Aaron, no…”

Aaron remained calm and shook his head.

“You won’t let me go, no matter what I do.”

“Sure I will,” said Keg. “What, you think I’m worried you’ll rat on me? Won’t be any evidence, just your word. Which one of us do you think they’ll believe? Wouldn’t matter anyway, I’d find you and turn you into snake food if you tried it.” Keg grinned at the kid. “Nothing to lose if you do it, everything to lose if you don’t.”

He put an arm around Aaron’s shoulders. He felt the kid flinch. Keg softened his voice and tried to sound friendly.

“Don’t you kind of wonder what it’s like? How this little runt would feel sliding down your throat? It’s too late for him, so why not just do it? How many times you think you’ll have the chance to try this?”

Aaron looked at Dan again. Dan’s face was all red and wet and he was shaking his head, convulsing with an occasional sob. Aaron stared at the tiny man for a long moment. When he looked back at Keg, his face was grim.

“No.”

Keg pulled his arm back.

“Really. You’re gonna throw away your life for this little shit?”

He shook Dan again and Dan screamed. Aaron set his jaw in defiance.

“I won’t do it.”

Keg frowned. He shoved Aaron back into cruiser and shut him in. He thought about swallowing Dan himself right there, but he knew his boa would draw it out nice and long, and he wanted to make Aaron watch.

He went to the passenger side door and tossed Dan into the cage with the others, then he went back for Aaron. The kid looked resigned. He didn’t resist when Keg ordered him back out of the car.

When the shrinking started, Aaron managed to hold it together for the first foot or so. Then he started yelling for help and struggling, just like his friend, his stoic shell crumbling away. Keg shrunk Aaron down small as his friend. He thought about seeing how small he could make a guy, but he wanted Aaron to be a decent meal for the boa. Hell, maybe he’d stop buying mice altogether and just feed the snake a diet of unlucky out-of-staters.

The thought made Keg smile as he slid back into the driver’s seat. He’d chucked Aaron into the cage with the others. They could all cool their shrunken heels in the cage for a while thinking about their fates before they became snake food. Tomorrow he’d see about getting his own supply line going on the shrink-wrap, and then he didn’t need to keep the two he’d grabbed from Harris around either.

Harris. Once Keg was certain he didn’t need him, Harris was next. He’d shrink him down, smallest of all. Make him watch each of his friends go into the belly of the snake. Make sure he knew it was all his fault. Then he’d feed Harris to the boa last. God that would be satisfying.

First things first, though. There was some unhappy business that needed his attention, and now he had the means to make that problem go away easy. He pulled his burner phone out of the console and tapped out a message: “Meet at house tomorrow. Bring him. Time to deal with it.” A reply came back a moment later, just a terse “k.”

He tossed the phone aside and adjusted the raging hard-on in his uniform pants. He hadn’t lost it since he started shrinking Dan. In the cage on the floor of the passenger seat, two tiny college kids huddled together sobbing softly as a slightly larger pair of guys tried to console them. Keg pulled the cruiser back onto the utility road and hit the gas, spraying dirt and gravel in his wake as he left the woods behind to head back into town.