Steve watched helplessly as Melissa's "finger person" seemed to grow to towering heights above him. It was only a minute before that Melissa's middle knuckle on her index finger had come up to his chest, and Steve had been hoping that, soon after ingesting Melissa's milk, her "finger person" would have seemed less and less imposing as he grew in height from 3 inches up to...maybe 5...maybe even 6 inches!? Of course, the opposite was happening now. As Melissa "strutted" her fingers back and forth in front of him, taking obvious pleasure in his predicament, Steve had started shrinking rapidly, made all the more alarming with how suddenly it had come on. One moment Melissa had been giving him what she thought was a "lap dance" with her fingers, and the next, Steve was shrinking so fast that it actually made him dizzy.
Her biggest knuckle had already been far above his head before, out of reach even if he had stretched his arms up as high as they could go. But now, he was looking straight up at her middle knuckle, even when Melissa was doing a series of "deep knee bends" right and left in a mocking dance in front of him as he continued to shrink.
"Ohhhh yessss, he chose the left nipple!" she laughed in her high-pitched voice that was meant to come from her "finger person." She did a little celebratory "kick" with her index finger. "Whooo! Yeah! Beryllium copper alloy! It's doing its job, Steve! Haha wowwwww, even faster than I thought it would work!"
Far above him, Steve saw that Melissa's huge face abruptly shifted from pure elation to her "research" expression, which involved her eyebrows dropping and coming together as her expression morphed into a pondering grimace. From his perspective, this sudden change in expression was quite alarming, since it was as if his entire sky had rapidly morphed from sunshine to dark clouds.
"Actually...that's very interesting," Melissa mused out loud, her voice verging on incomprehensibility for Steve since she had abandoned her high-pitched "finger person" voice. A sudden ear-splitting crack sound out that made Steve's heart jump into his mouth, and it was only a few moments after he had recovered from the sonic shock that he realized it had come from Melissa's voice recorder; she had just pressed the "record" button...that had been the "crack." Even as Steve was struggling to comprehend how Melissa's middle knuckle was high above his head, the fact that her simply pressing a button had sounded that loud...it truly hit home how small he had become...and he was still shrinking!
"That the beryllium copper alloy seems to be particularly aggressive -- beyond my predictions -- in expediting the cell cluster diminution might have some connection to the fact that it migrated to my left breast instead of my right," Melissa was saying into her recorder. Steve couldn't even understand what she was saying. To him, all her words were now jumbled together in one big, thunderous rumble, which sounded even huger and more earthshaking than before. He knew that she was just speaking in her normal voice, probably even softer, but the mighty sound waves of her voice jolted and shook through his entire body, seeming to jiggle every atom.
"H-Hey!" Steve called up to her, somehow finding the strength in his shrinking limbs to stumble up to Melissa's index finger, which was standing inert on her desk next to her middle finger. They had been the "finger person" moments before, but when Melissa had started recording her research notes, they had gone "offline," and were simply standing there. Steve realized with horror that Melissa's third knuckle was now chest-height...now chin-height...now directly in his line of vision. He was still shrinking, and fast!
"Heeeyyyyyy!" he yelled even louder, now truly beginning to panic. If she didn't do something quick, then he'd shrink down to a millimeter...maybe even smaller...! Maybe down to a microscopic level! How would she find him!? How would she not accidentally smush him!? He needed to get her attention as soon as possible before any of that happened.
"Now it could be that the axillary lymph nodes on the left have a more direct influence on the lactiferous ducts," Melissa was musing, "Which would explain why the copper alloy rather than the cobalt aluminate migrated there..."
"Melisssaaaaa!" cried Steve, wrapping his arms and legs around the third knuckle of her index finger as he squeezed and squeezed with all his might, trying to get her attention.
"But I can't forget about the beryllium," Melissa went on, apparently not noticing Steve's desperate entreaties, "And seeing how its predominant oxidation state is plus-two...but no, no...lower oxidation states for beryllium are extremely rare..."
"Pleeeeease!!" Steve yelled, but he quickly realized that nothing he could say would possibly be heard over the thunder of her muttering words. Truly in dire straits now, he reverted to animal instinct and bit her as hard as he could, directly on the knuckle.
"But no, that's the ionic bonds that we'd be talking ab..." Melissa's voice trailed off as she glanced down at her fingers.
*CRACK*
She pressed the "off" button on her recorder and put it down, taking care not to move her hand as she lowered her head down close to see how small Steve was getting. He was immensely relieved to have her attention again, even though the spectacle of her huge, descending face was more than a little disconcerting. At 3 inches tall, her face had been gigantic to him; but now...well...he didn't know how small he was, but her face looked a LOT bigger than it had before.
"Oh my...!" Melissa smirked, obviously quite amused as she switched back to her "special" voice so that Steve could understand her. "Look at you, just wrapped around my finger! Haha! Oh...oh wait! It's like that song! "Wrapped Around Your Finger." That song by that guy...ohhh, what's his name? That British guy...sort of a weird-sounding voice...but I kinda like him...oh damn, what is it? It's a mononym."
"Sting!" cried Steve, who had figured that the sooner she remembered the name, the sooner she could get busy growing him back.
"Huh?" Melissa grinned down at him, turning her head and bringing her ear very close, so that it was directly next to him, as big as a cave. "You're gonna have to speak up Steve, now that you're almost ant-sized."
"Sting!!" bellowed Steve into her ear, which immediately whisked itself away as Melissa sat back up straight and nodded at him cheerfully.
"Yes! Yes! That's it!" she smiled. She screwed up her mouth, and the next moment, to Steve's disbelief, she was singing out a quite bad, out-of-tune version of the song: "You will be...wrapped around my fingerrrrr, fingerrrrr..."
"Okay, okay...look..." said Steve, deciding that now was a good time to "unwrap" himself from Melissa's knuckle. "But when he turned to look down, he found, to his shock, that he actually had to jump down from where he was. He had shrunk down so much that when his feet finally hit the desk, he was turning around to look up at the arch of her cuticle...he was smaller than her fingernail.
"Sorry, that's all I remember from that song," Melissa giggled. Steve noticed that she had slowly, carefully moved her hand away from him, and that, despite her terrible singing, she had kept her voice in that special register so that he could understand her, and so that she wouldn't hurt his ears.
'She's in control,' he thought to himself, breathing a little easier. 'She's klutzy and silly but...she'd never let something happen to me.'
"Mmmm, you should be about done shrinking now," Melissa mused, gingerly putting a ruler down next to his body. From Thomas's perspective, as he stared up at the ruler, it may as well have been a skyscraper. All the "little" dash marks that designated millimeters looked thick to him, thicker than his arms...and he realized that he was staring way up at a huge "1."
'That's...an inch!?' he thought desperately.
