Melissas Breakthrough Ch 02

Chapter 2

The rest of the day passed by without any further mention of Steve's height, and both he and Melissa seemed perfectly comfortable acting like everything was normal. Melissa worked diligently away in her home office, reading through medical journals, emailing colleagues about upcoming joint projects, and so on...like she normally did. Steve played some video games, met a college friend for coffee down the street, and leisurely surfed the web when he got back home, enjoying the free time he had before he started his internship the upcoming week. In the evening, Melissa ordered a large pizza for them both (they both liked pineapples and Canadian bacon on their pizza), and they sat around the table, engaging in small talk about their respective days. Melissa asked Steve about how he was feeling about his internship. On the surface, everything appeared normal.

The truth was, however, that ever since Melissa had mentioned how he looked shorter, Steve had been especially cognizant of his size as the day went on...and the more he paid attention to it, the more worried he became. There wasn't any way around it -- his clothes felt a little looser on him, and, conspicuously, he noticed that his jeans were bunching up a little around his ankles. The steadily growing sense that something was amiss didn't stop; everything Steve did seemed to add to it. When he played his video games, certain moves that would have been effortless before were not as easy. His hands seemed smaller, which meant that he had to strain his fingers more to perform the complicated moves that had been easy before. When he went to go see his friend for coffee, he found that he had to adjust the car seat, moving it forward and slightly up, so that he could comfortably grasp the steering wheel. He even had to adjust the car mirrors. And when he saw his friend, Dave, Steve thought that he saw Dave looking sidelong at him a couple times, like he was noticing something too, but not saying anything about it.

By the time he sat down to dinner with his stepmother, Steve felt on edge. He was worried that Melissa was going to ask him again about his height, and, even worse, that she might insist on measuring him. The thought had occurred to Steve on his way back from seeing Dave...that he could just measure himself and put the growing fear out of his mind. But he hadn't done it, and the reason why is because the prospect of seeing anything less than 6'1 on the measuring tape was too much to handle. He would go on assuming that everything was fine, and that he was just being paranoid.

Throughout dinner, Melissa made a point not to mention anything about her stepson's height. When she had decided to drop the topic as they both stood in front of the fridge, she had done so with the expectation that soon, Steve wouldn't have any other choice but to talk about it. Already, something strange was beginning to form within her brain, something that she couldn't quite define, or even think about. It was just a vague feeling, a kind of preparatory winding-up of her thoughts and emotions...before something happened. A kind of giddy tenderness, a mixed desire to cuddle Steve, and to tease him, was beginning to take shape within her. And this odd mixture of feelings was joined with something foreboding and inevitable, like the deep breath before the plunge. She didn't know why she was feeling this way, but as a scientist, and as a researcher, she had already learned to listen to her instincts...and right now, her instincts were telling her to just sit there and wait.

Right at the end of the meal, however, when they both stood up, she couldn't help herself. Standing there with her empty plate, she made a point of passing her eyes over his body, looking him closely up and down, as he stood there in tandem with her, watching her take stock of him. Steve knew what she was doing, and it irritated him. If she wanted to ask him about it, why didn't she just ask!? Why didn't she just get it over with?? But his irritation masked something more pressing: Melissa looked even taller to him now. The top of her head was now just a little over his eye-level. And not only that, but Steve again found himself noticing how curvy his stepmother was...how her hips bulged in her jeans, and how her butt blended in with the thickness of her thighs, swelling outward into two cheeks that surely looked bigger to Steve than they had before. Once again, Steve was saddled with the creeping truth: his mother only looked bigger because he was getting smaller. A sense of helplessness flared up in him, and he reacted angrily.

"What!?" he snapped, a little sharper than he had meant to sound. Melissa blinked and creased her brow a little, taken aback by his tone.

"Sorry," Steve immediately followed, shaking his head a little as he tried to stand up as tall as he could. "Just...you were, uhh..." His voice trailed away. He knew he had already betrayed his paranoia, and now Melissa was starting to smirk a little again.

"I was what?" she asked quietly.

"...you were just...looking at me weird, is all," Steve finished, halfheartedly shrugging. He was trying to hide how much her gaze had been bothering him, but he knew the damage had been done.

"Aw, well I'm sorry, Steve," Melissa replied. "I didn't mean to make you feel...uncomfortable."

She paused, and looked up and down his body again, obviously negating her words with her action. Steve was already on the defensive, so he didn't feel like he had anything to stand on anymore. He had to just stand there and take it, or walk away.

"Still feeling ok?" Melissa ventured mildly, cocking her head to the side.

"Mmhmm," nodded Steve. He felt a cold wave of fear wash over him. She was giving him another chance to bring up his concerns, his fears about his height. Was it that obvious that he looked different!?

"Still nothing else to report?" Melissa pressed on. "No strange symptoms? Or anything else out of the ordinary."

"Uhhh...nope!" Steve answered definitely, his eyebrows going up as he feigned cheerfulness. Melissa kept staring at him for a couple more seconds before inhaling a deep breath and picking up the pizza box.

"Well alright!" she said cheerfully. "Just thought I'd check."

It took Steve longer than usual to fall asleep later on that night. The myriad possibilities of his condition continued to torment him, but he still balked at actually measuring himself. He kept thinking, over and over, how he just needed to get to sleep, and how everything would be different in the morning. He was more right than he could have imagined.

The next morning, Steve woke up later than usual. He hadn't needed to set an alarm, since he was on break, but even still, from the heat of the sun on his face as he opened his eyes, he could tell that he had slept in a lot more than he usually did. He checked the clock. 11:13.

'Jesus, that late?' he thought. Reminding himself that he didn't have anywhere to be, he sighed out and stretched, his foggy mind blissfully forgetful of the previous day's anxieties. That is...until he got down off his bed and tried to take a step.

"What the --!?" Steve exclaimed as he stumbled forward, and only his outstretched hands prevented him from running headlong into the wall. He managed to catch himself without doing too much damage, even though he did knock over his nightstand in the process. His lamp clattered to the floor, thankfully remaining intact.

"Steve!?" came Melissa's voice from the kitchen. "Are you ok??"

"Yeah!" he grimaced, still braced against the wall. "Yeah I'm...I'm fine! Just tripped, is all!"

"Okaaaaay!" she called back. Was there a hint of wry suspicion in her voice? Steve couldn't tell. He looked down at his legs, and felt the now-familiar cold fear wash over him. He had tripped over his pajama pants, which were so bunched up around his feet now that it was hard for him to walk. Steve pushed himself off the wall and stood up straight. He tried to pull his pajamas up, but found that they were already pulled up all the way.

"This...this can't be happening,' he thought, as the slow panic grew within him. 'It isn't possible...I can't be shrinking!'

He tried to distract himself by fixing his nightstand and lamp, by going to the bathroom, by washing his face...by doing all the little things in his usual morning routine. But everything he did confirmed the awful truth; everything looked notably out of place, even more so than the day before, and especially when he was washing his face, Steve could clearly see that he was shorter. The little spots on the mirror that he hadn't cleaned -- which had been right around his chin-level before -- were now even with his forehead. He had to look UP at them.

'Ok...ok, so this...oh god, what do I...what do I do!?' thought Steve in a whirl of panic. It felt like his mind was starting to spiral in on itself, and his heart rate increased rapidly as a cold sweat broke out against his forehead. For a few seconds, he actually started hyperventilating, but he leaned forward and splashed some cold water on his face, staring at himself dripping in the mirror. It wasn't like he was...dying or anything. Aside from the frenzy of fear at getting shorter, he felt fine. No fever, no body aches, no chills...no nothing. It wasn't like he was sick -- he was just...well, shrinking.

Steve took a series of deep breaths, calming himself down. He would take this in stride. He certainly wasn't looking forward to having Melissa notice his diminished stature, but there wasn't much he could do about that. All he could do was act normally, and maybe she would just follow suit. He was still in such a state of shock that he hadn't even considered blaming his stepmother's experimental supplement for his shrinking. Obviously, the supplement was the culprit, but Steve was trying so hard to normalize what was happening to him that he wasn't even ready to start pointing fingers.

He put on a pair of smaller shorts that were in the bottom of his drawer, shorts that he hadn't worn in years, and, as casually as he could, made his way out of his room and into the kitchen. He wanted to avoid Melissa, but his shrinking apparently hadn't affected his appetite.

"Well gooood morning," Melissa intoned as he came into the kitchen. "Boy, to be on break, huh?" She was sitting at the table, reading one of her scientific journals. She had been up since dawn, and was having an early lunch. Her heart was fluttering out in expectation, and, like Steve (but for different reasons), she was determined to play it cool during their interactions. She figured that his appearance would speak for itself. Glancing sideways at him, she noticed his shorts. A shot of hot excitement infused her -- he had gotten smaller, and he was trying to hide it!

"Woah, those are a throwback, huh?" she chuckled lightly, looking back at her journal, even as her cheeks blushed red. "Haven't seen those in a while."

"Y-yeah, I, uhh...I guess I need to do my laundry," Steve quipped. He opened the fridge and grabbed a yogurt cup; the cool burst of air from the fridge blew across his forehead, and Steve could tell from the refreshing gust that he was sweating nervously. The prospect of Melissa mentioning something about his reduced stature was terrifying, paradoxically more scary than the fact of his diminishment itself. He turned around and quickly went over to sit down at the kitchen table, reasoning that his reduced height wouldn't be as obvious when he was sitting down.

It was too late for Steve to disguise what had happened, though. Melissa already knew that her stepson was shorter, and a quick but penetrating glance at his backside when he was at the fridge confirmed her initial impression: not only was Steve shorter, but he was proportionally smaller all around. She remembered him wearing those shorts in high school, right around when she had joined the family...Steve had to be at least as small now as he was back then, and perhaps even a little smaller.

Part of Melissa wanted to stand up, while Steve had his back to her, so that when he turned around she would be standing right there with her hands on her hips, staring at him...she wanted to make it so that her stepson couldn't try and talk his way out of the truth. But she didn't act fast enough; Steve had already turned around and was sitting down.

'No matter,' she thought, squirming a little in expectation. 'I'll just stand up whenever he does, and then it'll be obvious.' Melissa was proud of herself for having such self-control in this situation -- she knew that she could become overly animated and spirited sometimes, especially when her research was involved. At the same time, though, she was realizing something about herself...that same strange and giddy urge to tease Steve was emerging again in her mind. Shouldn't she be feeling concerned instead!? Her stepson was shrinking because of an experimental supplement she had given him -- shouldn't that be cause for alarm, rather than the odd, tender playfulness she was feeling instead?

'Oh but he's fine,' she told herself, stealing glances over at him as he ate his yogurt. 'He looks perfectly healthy...still has an appetite...has good color in his face...sleeping well...haha, he's just...smaller.'

The two exchanged some casual small talk for the next ten minutes, and an outside observer wouldn't have noticed anything unusual. For both Steve and Melissa, though, the "causal talk" felt tense and charged with electricity. Steve had been hoping for Melissa to get up from the table and go back to her office, so he could escape back to his room, but she just kept sitting there, flipping through her journals. Melissa had been waiting for Steve to finish his yogurt and stand up, so she too could rise with him and see how short he had really gotten...but he had finished his yogurt five minutes ago, and hadn't budged. It was a standoff...or more accurately, a "sit-off."

Suddenly, Melissa got an idea that caused her to smile down at her journals. She took a deep breath, feeling that these were the last few moments before...well, before the big shift. Then she raised her gaze up to Steve, who was sitting there awkwardly, studying the wood grains in the table.

"Hey Steve!" she said brightly.

"Hmm?" he replied, doing his best to look up at her with mild curiosity.

"I was thinking of sending your father a tie for father's day," Melissa continued, "But, heheh, you know me...not too "up" on the latest trends in male fashion. I finally found this one I thought he would like, but I don't know. Can you take a look at it and tell me what you think?"

"Sure, yeah, uh...hand me your phone and lemme see," said Steve. Inwardly he was breathing a sigh of relief.

"Here, toss that yogurt cup and come into my office," said Melissa, standing up. "My phone's in there."

"Uhh...I..." responded Steve, unmoving. "I'm still...heheh, uhm, waking up, you know...can you just bring your phone in here?"

"Steve, what!?" laughed Melissa, stacking and straightening her journals. "No, come on -- once you take a look I gotta start working again. Just pop in there real quick; it'll only take a second."

Steve knew Melissa had caught him. Her request was totally normal, and if he continued to balk, it would be obvious that something was wrong. One way or another, she was going to find out what was going on. Steve set his teeth behind his closed lips. He had to get this over with. Taking in a breath through his nose, he put his feet down on the floor and stood up. Melissa's eyes followed his rising form, and when he had reached his full height, they both just stood there, blinking at each other.

They were nearly the same height.

After a few stunned seconds, Melissa was the first to respond.

"Oh my GOD!" she cried, putting her hand up to her mouth to hide her ecstatic smile. "I was RIGHT!! You WERE getting smaller!!"

"Ok, ok," sighed Steve, rolling his eyes, even as he felt the hot flush of red in his neck and the bottom of his face. "Yeah, I got shorter...but...but..."

There was nothing else he could say, though. Melissa was already circling him, looking his body up and down, taking in the changes with unabashed astonishment. She made sure to keep her hand over her mouth as she circled him, more out of consideration for him than anything else. She knew that her wide grin was not exactly the proper way to respond to what was going on, but that's what her face was doing right now.

"Oh my god, ok...ok Steve," she declared, taking a deep breath as she held her hands up in a self-steadying motion, "We've gotta measure you now."

"But Melissa...I mean...uh, is that...is that really necessary?" complained Steve. He knew he sounded whiny, but the last thing he wanted was to know exactly how much he had shrunk by. His mind was still reeling from the shock of what was actually happening, and, bizarrely, he just wanted to go back to bed and fall asleep, hoping that this was all some kind of bad dream.

"What are you talking about!?" asked Melissa in genuine bewilderment, moving forward and seizing him by the hand. "No, no, we've gotta document all this stuff, Steve! Come on, I had told you how important it was that you report everything to me!"

"L-look, I...I know, Melissa, ok?" Steve sighed irritably, stumbling along after his stepmother as she marched him over to the pantry. "I just wasn't, uhhh...wasn't sure if I was, I don't know...seeing things, or what."

"What do you mean?" asked Melissa quickly. She was motioning for Steve to stand with his back to the wall as she pulled a measuring tape out of one of the top kitchen drawers (a measuring tape she had specifically found the night before, and placed there in the expectation of using it). "Are you seeing things? Hearing things? Having any kind of hallucinations?"

Steve paused for a second, not quite understanding, and shook his head. "N-no! No, nothing...nothing like that."

"And no fever?" asked Melissa again, sticking a thermometer in his mouth, even as she unfurled the measuring tape next to him. "No cramps? No malaise?"

"Melissa...no! I...look, I'm fine, ok!?" Steve insisted, with the thermometer in his mouth.

"Well forgive me if I'm just covering all the bases real quick, ok?" Melissa said, looking up at the measurement as she pulled the tape taut. "Because this kind of dramatic...size change is...it's unprecedented, Steve."

"Oh come on," Steve sighed, again rolling his eyes as the thermometer beeped. "I'm...look, it says 98.4...totally normal"

"Hold still!" Melissa ordered, carefully peering up at the measurement. Her heart was beating so fast she almost had to sit down and steady herself.

"I don't even know what the big deal is," Steve continued, even as he was inwardly panicking. The words that came out of his mouth were exactly the opposite of what he was thinking. "I don't even...pssh, I don't even think I'm that much smaller."

"Well you are, Steve," came Melissa's voice, suddenly authoritative. Steve froze and looked down at her...barely down, that is. The top of his stepmother's head was taller than his eyes.

"Wh-what...what do you mean?" he asked. The unadulterated fear was now bleeding through in his voice. "What's...it say?"

"It says," Melissa intoned, "That you're 5'8, Steve."

A long pause ensued; both of them thought they could hear the other's heart pounding.

"I'm what?" Steve asked, deadpan.

"You're 5'8, Steve," Melissa repeated. "You...you've shrunk...5 inches."

"Th-that's...impossible," Steve replied. shaking his head. "I...th-that can't...that's can't even --"

"Well that's what the measurement says," interrupted Melissa, "See for yourself." Steve turned around, and wasn't even surprised at this point to see the truth. His stepmother's manicured thumb held the measuring tape against the wall, right against the 5'8 mark.