Well Wishes

Chapter 8
Dark Dream

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Chapter Description: Shane's Fourth of July starts with a bang and ends with a whimper. By the time it's over, he still no closer to returning to the park and making a wish to grow up.

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When he woke the next morning and leaned his head over the top bunk, Shane noticed instantly how much more distant the floor looked.

"Robbie?" Shane called out. In the stillness of the room, his voice sounded strange. If anything, it recalled a time in college at a party when someone had brought a tank of helium to the festivities. Partygoers had taken turns breathing the helium and speaking in strange, shrill voices.

When he didn’t get a response, he called out again. "Robbie? Where are you?"

Sunlight streaming through the window in the room provided plenty of illumination. He gazed over the edge of the top bunk again. He could have sworn the drop to the floor looked like it was at least 12 feet.

He felt nervous as he climbed over the edge and found the ladder. Making sure his bare feet were secure before he left the safety of the bed, he found the rungs of the ladder spaced awkwardly.

Finally reaching the floor, he gazed up at the top bunk. "Something’s wrong," he said aloud. Again, his childish, shrill voice unnerved him immensely.

As he stood gazing up at the distant bunk, he felt his briefs and pajama bottoms sliding off his waist and down his legs. The clothes had fit perfectly last night when he went to bed.

"What the hell’s happened?" Shane said fearfully.

He walked to the door, but clutched the waistband of the briefs and pajamas to prevent them from slipping off. Opening the door, he peered into the hallway. Seeing no activity, he made a dash for the bathroom. Stopping to open that door, he let go of his clothing, which produced an immediate slide south. He felt a breeze on his privates and his little bare butt, but he turned the door knob and then quickly pulled his briefs and pajamas back around his waist.

He stepped into the bathroom and walked to the big sink with the double basin and the wide mirror. He immediately noticed how much less of his body he saw in the mirror. He must have gotten more than a foot shorter overnight. His brown hair had even gotten lighter in color and was quite out of control. He gasped, and with his mouth open wide he saw that his teeth looked almost too big for his mouth.

He raised a hand, touched his face. He had a small button nose and a severe, pixie-like chin. Any hint of his ruggedly handsome adult features had been thoroughly erased. The neck of his pajama top plunged midway down his scrawny chest, although all four buttons on the front of the shirt were buttoned. The hem of the pajama top extended almost to his knees. When he let go of his briefs and the pajama bottoms again, he let them drop all the way to the bathroom tiles. He couldn’t see his lower half in the mirror (perhaps a blessing) but he couldn’t help but peek down. He was just as smooth as he had been as a 9-year-old, but his little dick had gotten even littler. Clutching it in one of his equally small hands, he whimpered. "God, no," he felt like crying.

In his fear, he felt his little dick go instantly hard, but even then the immature erection looked no more than an inch in length, a humiliating little nub. He had his tiny hard-on still clutched in his hand when he heard a very unwelcome voice.

"Well, look at the little baby playing with his little wee-wee," Keith said, stepping into the bathroom.

Shane felt shame bring a crimson flush to his peaked features. He reached down for his briefs and pajama bottoms, but they had disappeared.

"Where are my clothes?" Shane cried.

"Who do you think you are, anyway, coming here and thinking you are big enough to even be a friend to my shrimpo little brother?" Keith looked down at him with a smirk twisted onto his face.

Shane felt embarrassed even more when his tiny dick remained stubbornly hard. "Please, go away," he pleaded with a little boy’s lisp. As he gazed up at Keith, he realized the larger boy looked eight feet tall from his diminished perspective.

"Not before I teach you a lesson," Keith said. As the larger boy advanced on him, Shane tried desperately to dash past him.

Instead, Keith grabbed him before he could escape the bathroom and dragged him across the floor toward the toilet. "I think the baby forgot to wash himself last night," Keith said, putting his hands hard on Shane’s shoulders and pushing him onto his bare knees.

Shane struggled in vain as Keith pushed his face forward toward the toilet bowl. "No," he screamed. "Let me go! Help!"

Keith pushed Shane’s head into the bowl. His face plunged into the blue-tinted water. He was trying to breathe and scream, which only sucked the water in the bowl down his throat and into his lungs.

He surfaced, spluttering, but Keith had vanished. Shane, water dripping from his wet hair and from his soaked pajama top, ran from the bathroom and would have ducked back into Robbie’s room, but he encountered a giant in the hallway.

When he rubbed the water from his eyes and glanced up again at the 12-foot-tall giant, he recognized Steve’s burly form. The shirtless man wore only a pair of confining boxer-briefs.

"Come here, boy," Steve ordered in a gruff, masculine voice.

"Please, help me," Shane begged as he stumbled closer. He found himself looking right ahead at the bulge of Steve’s huge crotch beneath the thin fabric of the white boxer-briefs.

"What’s happened to me?" Shane asked. He blinked, and his eyes once again fastened on the grown man’s huge bulge.

The giant man reached down and swooped him off his feet. Steve crushed him against his chest as he cradled him in his thick, muscular arms. The man’s chest hair tickled Shane’s bare skin. "Please, give Robbie some dimes," Shane begged. "I have to fix this."

"There, there," Steve said, patting him on the head with one of his massive hands. "Everything will be OK."

"No, it won’t!" Shane exclaimed. His voice had become even more childish. "I’m not supposed to be a little boy. I’m a man!"

Steve laughed, producing a deep, rumbling sound that careened through Shane’s small body. "What an imagination!"

"No," Shane cried. "It’s true. I’m a man...I’m a man!"

Then, still screaming, he woke up, again!

The room was dim, and he heard commotion from the bunk below. Robbie’s head soon appeared as he stood on the lower rungs of the bunk-bed ladder.

"Shane! What’s wrong?" The boy’s voice showed his concerned.

Shane tried to calm his breathing. He was still trapped as a 9-year-old boy, but as he examined himself, he realized the nightmare of being trapped as a 5-year-old boy had simply been a very bad dream.

He took a deep breath. "Just a dream," he whispered, extremely relieved.

He was also, much to his dismay, still extremely hard. He pulled the covers around him to shield himself and his pitiful two-inch-long erection from his young friend. "Robbie, I think I’ve made a big mistake," he said. "We need to go to the park! Now!"

Robbie laughed. "Don’t be silly. We can’t go to the park now," he said.

"Why not?" Shane asked, finding himself on the verge of panic.

"We haven’t even had breakfast," Robbie said. "Besides, I don’t think my dad would want us leaving the house without telling him."

"Then tell him!" Shane said in a shrill tone. "Make up some excuse."

"All right," Robbie said. "After breakfast, I will ask him if we can go to the park."

"And get some dimes," Shane said. "Don’t forget the damn dimes."

Robbie gasped. "Don’t let Dad hear you say bad words!"

Shane clinched his small hands into fists, but then he took a deep, cleansing breath. He felt some better. "Robbie, I’m not a little boy. If I want to say damn, I am going to say it!"

"If you want to go to the park, I wouldn’t let Dad hear you," Robbie said. He added another unpleasant reminder. "He’s already mad that you’ve been staying home alone."

"But I’m not a real kid," he objected. "I can stay alone in my own damn house!"

Robbie rolled his eyes. "You better listen to me," he warned in a sing-song voice.

"I’m not a prisoner, you know," Shane said, but in a voice that betrayed he had little confidence in his statement.

When he showed up at the breakfast table a short time later, he found Robbie and his big brother already seated with Steve working on pancakes at the stove.

"Well, look who finally decided to join us," Steve teased in a booming voice. "I thought I might need to bring you breakfast in bed."

"I...I would have been here sooner," Shane said. "But..." His voice trailed off when he couldn’t think of a feasible excuse. Then, Robbie made matters worse.

"He had a bad dream," Robbie said.

Shane groaned inwardly, especially after Keith laughed. "What was it?" The teenager asked. "Some big, bad monster out to get you?"

Shane felt a chill of fear as he glanced across the table at Keith. He knew the encounter with Keith in the bathroom had only been part of a nightmare, but the 13-year-old boy, so brazen and confident, still intimidated him.

"Cut that out," Steve warned Keith, who sullenly followed his father’s order.

Shane pulled out a chair and sat himself at the kitchen table next to Robbie. Since waking up from the dream, everything had felt off-kilter to him.

To his confused delight, Steve approached holding two plates, each with a stack of three pancakes. "There’s syrup and butter there," he said, gesturing toward a tall bottle of maple syrup.

Keith used his fork to swirl the past of his pancakes in the remaining syrup on his plate. He shoved the last bite into his mouth and, with still chewing, asked if he could be excused to check his email.

"Sure, but don’t get too involved with anything," Steve said. "We have to head out to the lake in about a half hour."

Shane watched as Robbie poured a huge amount of syrup on his pancakes. Steve, noticing, grinned down at Shane and said, "Robbie likes a little pancake with his syrup."

Robbie laughed and handed the syrup to his friend. Shane took the bottle awkwardly.

"Dig in," Steve urged. "We do have to leave soon. It’s about an hour’s drive to the lake."

Robbie must have awoken quite hungry. He soon polished off his three pancakes, leaving Shane struggling to finish. The bad dream had robbed him of any appetite. He ate about half of the breakfast when he pushed the plate back. "That’s all I can eat," he said.

"No worries," Steve said, collecting Robbie’s empty plate and then Shane’s. "You two get out of my way while I clean the kitchen, and then it’s off to the lake."

Robbie raced from the kitchen, but Shane held back. He looked up at the huge man, remembering the much larger version of Steve from his bizarre dream.

"Could I help?" Shane asked.

Steve laughed. "No need for that. You run along and have some fun with Robbie."

As he left the kitchen, Steve reached down and swatted his butt. The simple action started new tingling in Shane’s over-active little dick.

He tried to forget about anything that would increase his arousal when he joined Robbie in the den for another round of video games. They had become so immersed in their game that Steve had to repeat his order a second time when he came for them.

"Boys, it’s time to go!" He said. "Robbie, turn off the game."

"Yeah," Keith said, suddenly re-appearing. "Let’s hit the road."

Shane and Robbie followed them out of the house to Steve SUV in the driveway. He and Robbie took seats in the back while Keith rode in the front passenger seat.

Before he got into the vehicle, Steve checked on both Shane and Robbie to make sure they had fastened their safety belts correctly. Satisfied, he got behind the wheel and the family, plus one guest, headed toward the lake.

The ride seemed to take forever. Robbie, even less patient than Shane, raised Steve’s ire with not one but two sessions of "Are we there yet?"

After Steve reprimanded his son for a second time, Keith snickered in the back seat.

Shane found himself hoping that Keith wouldn’t ruin his day of fun as a kid.

He had visited the lake on his own, but that had been before he had magically transformed himself into his second boyhood. Now, everything looked bigger, of course, as well as much more fun and exciting.

They arrived shortly before noon. Steve staked a claim to a parking space near a picnic site with a good view of the lake.

After the long drive, Shane felt fit to burst from an excess of nervous energy. He and Robbie must have spent the first 10 minutes running and shouting, producing irritable scowls from Keith but some good-natured laughter from Steve, who found their boyish antics quite amusing.

Finding himself an object of amusement from Robbie’s huge father temporarily deflated Shane’s sense of fun, but only for a short time. Soon enough, working in conjunction with Robbie, they won permission to visit the playground, but he forbid them to visit the lake without him.

When they returned to the picnic site, they found food waiting for them. The pattern of playing and eating, then repeating the cycle, thus became established at once.

After a long day of games, of playing tag and running around with Robbie, drinking several sodas, eating chips, and hotdogs and burgers, Shane found himself exhausted when Steve announced they should make their way toward the lakeside area designated for the fireworks display.

He’s all too ready to settle down on the blanket that Steve spread on the grass on the freshly-mown field near the lake.

Robbie, his body fairly quivering from his own anticipation, settled onto the blanket next to him. "I can’t wait until they start shooting the fireworks!"

Shane yawned. "Me, too," he said, but without the unbridled enthusiasm.

"You’re going to last that long, right?" Steve asked when he saw the boy yawn again.

"Sure, Mr. Williams," Steve said. He had tried to be unfailingly polite all day. He knew he would need to win the big man’s permission in order to visit the park in the morning, and he remained convinced that he wanted to regain his adult life.

"Dad," Keith interrupted. "I saw some of my friends down closer to the lake. Can I watch the fireworks with them?"

Steve hesitated, but then nodded. "Be sure to meet back at the car as soon as the fireworks display is over," he said. "Clear?"

"Clear," Keith said. "See you two shrimpos later."

Shane bristled, but then felt promptly embarrassed that an involuntary blush covered his face.

"Forget him," Robbie said. "Look!"

A rocket burst into a shower of colorful sparks in the dimming sky. Shane remembered the start of the fireworks show, but the next thing he knew he was being carried back to the car in Mr. Williams huge, muscular arms. He felt quite groggy and completely out of it.

His head lolled about. "What’s going on?"

"Wow, Shane," Robbie complained. "You missed almost the whole fireworks."

"Hey...what?" Shane said. He perked up, looking around for the fireworks, but the entire pyrotechnic display has been over for several minutes. The dense crowd has started thinning.

Shane looked around, but he still felt very drowsy. "Sorry," he said. His heavy head dropped on the big guy’s shoulder.

Robbie’s father patted his head. "That’s OK. It has been a big day for a little guy. Right, partner?"

Shane mused that over, but the car engine made him fall asleep yet again before getting home. He didn’t mind too much, because he got carried again into the house in the big, muscular arms of Robbie’s dad. He inhaled, enjoying the smell of the big man’s cologne.

"I can’t believe you can’t stay awake," Robbie said from his position near his dad’s shoulder.

"I can so stay awake," Shane objected, but he promptly yawned.

"It’s right up to bed for you guys," Steve said.

He carried Shane upstairs and into his son’s room.

"He’s in top bunk, dad!" Robbie said.

Steve swung Shane’s boy’s body into the top bunk, which strangely enough put him on the same level with Shane’s face.

Shane laughed as he was dropped onto the ruffled covers in the top bunk. He took in a sharp intake of air when he noticed Steve’s face so close to his. It was funny to see him like that. Shane experienced a flashback of his last work week encounter with the big man.

As Steve told him good night, he also gives Shane a strange look, almost like a look of recognition. It was sort of a shock of almost getting caught. Shane held his breath for a second, wondering if Robbie’s dad was going to accuse him of being a shrunk-down dude that worked in his office. Shane felt a spark as the handsome man stared at him. He would really like to get to know Steve, man to man, too. Spending time at a bar with him sounded like a lot of fun.

"Well, you sleep well," Steve said. "I think Robbie has a big weekend planned."

"Yes, we have to go to the park tomorrow," Shane said, already starting to drift toward sleep.

He started to yawn, but midway the action changed into a sneeze. "Ah-choo," he said.

Steve grinned. "I hope someone’s not catching a cold."

Shane would like nothing better than to stay awake. He is still excited...

But, steadily, things sort of go... zzzzzzzzzz

 

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