When It Rains, It Pours

Chapter 4
IV (The Office)

Once, and only once, I worked in an office. I can’t remember what exactly the company I worked for did, just that I did a lot of monotonous paperwork. One thing I do remember is this story.

I walked down the hall of cubicles, still yawning. It was eleven, still too early. On my way to my cubicle, I saw Misty walking towards me. Misty was a good girl, nice body, but more than a little ditzy. I always knew that Misty was attracted to me, because a girl like that doesn’t do a good job of hiding it. I couldn’t reciprocate her affections, on account of the curse. Dates (and whatever else) have too much a chance of me contacting water.

“Hey Dameon!” she bubbled. I noticed that she had an object that resembled a pan. “I’m going to cook some popcorn! Want to come with?”

Ah, it was popcorn. One of those stovetop kinds. I looked into those big, sweet blue eyes. I studied her bright red hair. I glanced at her ripe breasts. I looked back at her pleading face and said: “No thanks, Misty. Lots of work today.”

She frowned a bit, but left without a word. I continued to my cubicle and got to work. It was about five minutes later that I remembered that the office didn’t have a stove. It was about three seconds later that I smelled burnt popcorn. Another second later I was on my feet. A second after that, the fire alarms had already gone off, and I was at my cubicle “door”. Just a second after that, they started: the sprinkler system sent water spewing everywhere, soaking everyone. My neighbors groaned and headed for the exits, but they didn’t have anything to complain about.

As the sprinklers drenched me, I frantically thought of what to do. The exits were too far away; I’d be a baby by the time I got there. Thinking quick, I ducked and tumbled under my desk. It was nice and dry in there, but I had already gotten very wet. Already I was a teenager, but that wasn’t going to last long. I could feel that my belt had become loose around my waist, and that my soaked office shirt was a size or two too large. I helplessly watched my arms thin and bald, and saw my feet shrink out of my shoes.

My clothes seemed to grow around my shrinking body as I reentered puberty. I started humming, seeing if I could detect the change in my voice. As expected, the note I was humming abruptly went from a low pitch to a much squeakier one. This change was accompanied by all the other curious sensations I went through when losing my pubescence: my underarms becoming jarringly smooth, the weird feeling like a plane’s turbulence as I shrink rapidly, and the altogether bizarre feeling I get in my groin as my genitals descend into boyhood.

Suddenly the underside of my desk was much less cramped. My clothes were drowning my shrunken body, so I wrestled myself out of my damp pants and waited for the regression to end. I stopped around age seven. I huddled under the desk, wrapping my shirt around me for warmth. The sprinklers ceased to spray a few moments afterward, and I knew I had to hide somewhere before people charged back up here.

I came out from under the desk, put my massive pants on, and rolled up my floppy sleeves. I decided that my best bet would be the bathroom. Stealthily, I climbed atop my desk and looked over the wall of my cubicle. I couldn’t see anybody, so I slipped out of my cubicle and darted down the hall. I heard some voices, so I pressed myself up against the flimsy wall of another cubicle and tried to listen.

“It was an accident! I thought it was microwave popcorn!” came the familiar voice. Misty, obviously. She was in the break room, and I also heard a man’s voice.

“Don’t worry about it - Misty, was it? Everything’s being taken care of, so just relax here until we get this sorted out.”

Misty tearfully thanked the man, and he continued with some more reassurances. I didn’t recognize his voice, I figured he might have been someone with the fire department or something. I waited for him to break off his conversation with Misty, so that he might leave and I would have a better chance of sneaking past to the janitor’s closet. However, he kept talking to her. It was a few moments before I realized he was hitting on her. This made me kind of mad, even when I didn’t consider that he was getting in my way. Misty ignorantly disregarded his advances, still sobbing.

The man’s attempts continued, and I grew tired of waiting. I quickly went the other way down the hall, away from the break room. There was another way to the bathroom, but it went through the lobby. It was risky, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time. I could hear the sound of people coming back to the floor. I surreptitiously skirted around the edge of the lobby, making sure nobody was there. All the while I had to hold up, with both hands, my oversized slacks. This made any stealth work difficult. I made it to the hall that the bathroom was in; I could see the male/female signs. Feeling that my goal was within reach, I ran down the hall as best I could toward the restroom.

Just then, someone emerged from the room right across from the bathroom. It was Misty. She saw me, and her eyes widened with surprise. I couldn’t say anything; I just stood there, gaping. Her tear-soaked face broke into a smile.

“Hi there! What are you doing here?” she said in a cheery tone, approaching me.

I looked up at her, at a loss for words. I said the first stupid lie that came to me: “Um, I’m looking for my dad.”

“Really?” she said, leaning down to look at me face-to-face. This is an example of the one thing I like about the curse. Women like to look at kids in the eye, so they’ll lean down to do so. In this case, like many others, I was afforded a nice view of her cleavage. “What’s your daddy’s name?”

“Err, it’s Henry.”

“Henry? I don’t think I know a Henry.”

“Uh, he doesn’t work in this department. He’s a few floors up.”

She blinked with confusion, but seemed to accept this. “Hey, why are you wearing grown-up clothes?”

I stalled for a bit. I had no idea what to tell her, so I told her something so ridiculous she couldn’t believe it. “I’m actually an adult. I was turned into a little boy by the R&D labs here, and I was looking for my father. You see, he’s the manager of the project, and the engineers wanted to surprise him by sending me, his thirty year old son, back to him as a child.”

Misty looked even more confused than I had ever seen her. She seemed to be switching back and forth between believing me and laughing. “Re-, really?” she said with a little giggle.

“No, not really. I’m just pretending.”

Misty was visibly relieved. “You’re a cute kid.” She rubbed my chin. I detested this, but smiled anyway. I’ve gotten pretty good at acting like a child. “Your name’s Dameon?”

I froze again. “Ha- how did you know that?”

“It’s on your name tag, silly,” she said, pointing to the company identification card on my shirt. I inwardly kicked myself. And I thought she was the dumb one.

“Yeah, Dameon,” I said back shakily. I was glad that the name tag only had my first name.

“I know a Dameon who works here. He even spells it the same way as you. Come to think of it, you look a lot like him. Except you’re even cuter!”

“Huh,” was all I could say. “Um, I’ve got to pee.” I pointed at the door to the men’s room. “Bye.”

She smiled, and ruffled my hair. I hate that too. I shuffled off to the bathroom with my ungainly clothes, and locked myself in a stall. While I grew back into fitting my clothes, no other unexpected things happened, so I was able to get back to work without any trouble. Misty did stop by and tell a very obnoxious story about “Little Dameon”. That wasn’t the last time I heard that story, though. She repeated it several times during her employment there, both to me and my coworkers. Mostly to me. I never did go out with her.