A Wish Too Far

Chapter 3
That Shrinking Feeling

Chapter Description: It starts with increased energy, strength, agility. But where it leads is a whole other matter.

The next day Liam woke up feeling unusually refreshed. In fact that seemed to set the tone for the day. He was filled with energy from the start and he made good use of it, getting a lot of stuff done. He cleaned up the garage, made major progress on his book, even did all the laundry. By the time the sun went down Liam was feeling entitled to a little fun.

He set out for the CBD a bit early, nine o’clock, but he wasn’t looking for a late evening. He parked his car in the central car park, not planning on getting drunk or anything. Dressed in his best shirt and dress pants set out to find himself a little company for the evening.

He started out at Hannigan’s, an Irish pub styled place with a young crowd. He nodded to the bouncer as he headed it, surprised to have a thick arm snap out in front of him, blocking his entry. “ID please,” the man ordered.

Liam found that a little odd, but then they did sometimes have crackdowns on the underage drinkers. Maybe they were carding everyone tonight. He showed his ID and the bouncer shrugged and let him in. From there though the night only got stranger. He had to show his ID at the bar again and this time the barkeep spent half a minute examining it and then asked him some questions about it as though it might be fake or borrowed. After a few questions the barman shrugged and served him his drink though not too happily. Liam was at a loss for what was wrong. Sure his picture was a bit old and he’d had a different haircut, but to think that was a fake was ridiculous, especially since he didn’t even look that young.

The next club went the same way and it was really starting to annoy him. There were a lot of girls willing to chat with him but none of the chats amounted to anything. A couple even giggled and walked off when he introduced himself. Liam was shocked at their rudeness. So he wasn’t Brad Pitt, so what? How high could their standards be if they expected to meet anyone?

It wasn’t just the girls that proved to be a problem, it was the drinking. On a normal night Liam knocked back a half-dozen beers without feeling a thing. Tonight he was feeling tipsy after just two. By the time he’d downed four beers he was slurring his words and having trouble remembering who’d he’d just been talking to. After the fifth beer the barman actually cut him off! That was the height of ridiculous, to be cut off after only five beers!

Liam turned to the barman in exasperation and declared, “Fine buddy! You don’ wanna serve a payin’ customer that’s your loss! I’ll... I’ll take my bunisess elsewhere!” and pulled out his car keys.

“Hold it just a sec there kid,” the barman interrupted, snatching the keys right out of his hand before he could pull them away.

“Hey, those are my keys! And who the fuck are you callin’ a kid?”

“You’re in no state to drive a car, you can barely walk buddy,” the barman retorted.

“Fine, I’ll take a cab, but you better not fuck with my car dude!” Liam yelled as he headed out the door.

The last hour of the night was a total blur until the taxi dropped him off at home and he managed to crawl down the corridor to his bedroom and drop onto the bed, out like a light.

**

By the time Liam began to awaken from his deep sleep the sun had been up a long time. The first thing he was aware of as he began to slowly come around was how comfy the sheets of his bed felt slipping across his skin. He rolled over, luxuriating in their silky softness and trying to get a little more sleep. It only barely registered in his mind that he’d gone to bed fully dressed and yet now seemed to feel the sheets across his whole body. No, he was too tired, too comfy to worry about such things.

It was only when he began to come around a bit more that he realised that he’d somehow slipped out of his clothes in his sleep. Liam could feel his shirt and pants bunched around him under the sheets but he didn’t let that worry him. Instead he stretched his arms out, realising he didn’t have even the slightest headache. That was quite a pleasant surprise to him, given how drunk he’d been when he passed out last night. He’d expected to be repaid for his night of fun with a terrible hangover. But then he hadn’t really tied one on in quite some time, not since his days at uni. So maybe he’d thought he was much drunker than he actually was.

After lying in bed for another twenty minutes Liam finally decided he’d best drag himself out from under the covers and get cleaned up. The last hours of the night before were a bit hazy so he was worried about what he might find in the bathroom. Liam swung his feet off the edge of the bed and dropped to the carpet, letting out a slight gasp as he didn’t immediately feel the floor beneath his feet. Instead he experienced a quick but frightening drop to the floor. Liam recovered from the shock, wondering if he wasn’t hung over after all. Looking over at the bed beside him he was certain it seemed higher up than before. After all, he’d slept here every night for the past couple years, he was sure he knew how high his bed was.

It was then that Liam looked down at his feet, down over his naked body. Instantly he felt a wave of nausea sweep over him. There was something terribly, terribly wrong here. His chest hair was gone, completely gone. In fact his chest and stomach looked smooth, his skin pale and soft in appearance. Worse than that though, his muscles seemed to have disappeared. He’d spent hours at the gym every week since he was in high school, ever since he’d become interested in impressing girls. He’d worked very hard to get those toned muscles and now they were completely gone! As he felt his soft chest he got a better look at his arms. They were so skinny! It wasn’t just that his muscles were gone, but of course they were too, it was that they looked so thin and hairless, like they were before he’d bulked up a bit in his late teens.

Each new revelation was pushing Liam’s pulse higher. He was beginning to sweat and shake with nervous chills at the same time. Yet the worst was still to come. He’d barely taken in his skinny arms when his eyes caught a glance of what was between his legs. His manhood, the part of his body about which he was proudest, was nothing to be proud of anymore. It looked shrunken, deflated, not quite the innocent pee-pee of a little boy, but it certainly belong to a man. There were a few squiggly hairs about his balls, but it was mostly bare down there. He saw that his legs had become skinny and boyishly smooth as well, but that hardly registered given his preoccupation with the apparent loss of his manhood.

“What...what...Jesus, what the hell!?” Liam stammered in shock and disbelief.

Liam’s body seemed paralyzed by the shock, his legs too shaky to move, but he needed to see a mirror. He had to see what had happened to him. Forcing his legs to move Liam grabbed his glasses off the bed stand and hurried around his bed to the closet, swinging open the door so he could look in the full length mirror within. As he clumsily slipped the glasses on the sight that greeted him was beyond his wildest dreams. The glasses barely fit on his nose and he had to hold them in place, but what he saw in the mirror explained why. Staring back at him with a horrified look was a boy of about twelve or thirteen.

Liam tried to rationalise what he was seeing right now. Somebody must have slipped something in his drink the night before, some ecstasy or a roofie or something like that. That explained why he’d gotten so drunk so quickly, it wasn’t the alcohol it was the drug! Now he was hallucinating because of it. Of course he’d never heard of ecstasy causing such vivid hallucinations, so maybe he’d been given something much stronger like LSD. That was known to cause psychotic episodes, that had to be it!

The idea that he was having a psychotic break truly frightened Liam, but not as much as the alternative, that this was really happening. He just needed to call 111 and get an ambulance sent over right away. Maybe they had some kind of antidote. He just had to keep telling himself that this wasn’t real, it was all in his mind. He left the mirror and hurried over to his bed to find his cell phone. As he climbed up on it his glasses slipped off his nose and dropped to the bed, forcing him to put them back on and hold them in place.

As he pulled back the covers to find his clothes he was distracted by a sudden tingle down below. He looked down just in time to see half the curly little hairs around his pubes retract into his skin, leaving him even smoother down there. Liam let out a little gurgle of shock and despair. Whatever hope he’d had that this wasn’t real seemed to leave him at once. This was all too vivid and real to be a hallucination. Something was really very wrong with him and whatever it was he doubted a doctor was going to be able to do much about it.

Abandoning his search for the phone Liam stood again, pushing his oversized glasses back up as they threatened to drop from his button nose again. He needed to take stock of this situation. Liam forced himself to take deep breaths, stopping his hyperventilation. After a moment he felt sufficiently calm to consider what to do next.

From what he’d seen in the mirror he looked just as he had at the age of twelve or thirteen. When he went to bed he was six feet tall, but now he estimated himself to be only a little over five feet. He was clearly on the wrong side of the growth spurt he had when he was fourteen. There was no doubt that he wasn’t just shrinking, he was actually getting younger. Yet he still felt like an adult, his mind didn’t seem too affected at all. Not that it really helped matters since he had no idea just how young he was going to end up, if this stopped at all.

“What’s happening to me?” Liam asked himself, feeling angry and powerless.

Turning his mind back to what caused this he had to admit it couldn’t be a drug slipped to him last night. In fact he was certain now that whatever this was the process had begun well before he went out on the town. In fact it must have begun early the previous day when he’d noticed he didn’t need to shave! So if that was when it started, what could have been the trigger?

Liam had only been pondering this for a moment when it hit him like a ton of bricks. The wish! He’d told little Lucy to wish for him to be little like her! Of course it was absurd. How could some child’s wish actually come true? There was no such thing as magic after all. And yet there was no such thing as people growing younger until now either. So if it was possible for him to grow younger it had to be possible that Lucy’s wish was the thing that did it.

Once Liam had settled the cause in his mind there was only one thing to do about it. He had to get Lucy to undo that wish and he had to do it fast. Liam climbed back onto his bed and set about searching for the phone again. His glasses slipped off his nose and onto the bed this time but Liam ignored them, digging through his now oversized clothes until he emerged victorious, cell phone in hand. He quickly flipped through the address book until he came to Ben’s number then thumbed the call button.

Liam sat on the edge of the bed praying for his friend to pick up. After what surely had to have been an eternity the phone clicked and connected. “Hello,” chirped Ben’s voice.

“Oh thank God! Ben, it’s me Liam!”

“I’m sorry, who is this?” Ben replied, sounding confused.

“It’s Liam, mate. Y’know, I watched Lucy for you the other night.”

“What is this some kind of joke?” Ben now asked, sounding annoyed.

“No Ben, it’s really me. I know I sound weird, I’ve...um...I’ve gotta cold,” Liam tried to explain his cracking adolescent sounding voice.

“A cold?” Ben scoffed, sounding incredulous. “Look kid, that’s the oldest one in the book. I don’t have time for silly games.”

“No! Ben this really is me, Liam! I don’t really have a cold, I’ve got something much more serious wrong with me, you wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it. But this is not a joke! This is deadly serious, I need to talk to Lucy right away!”

There was a long silence on the other end as Liam finished his plea. He hoped that meant Ben was reconsidering his dismissal. But when Ben’s voice came back it wasn’t apologetic, it was angry. “Okay that’s enough kid. Joking with me is one thing, but don’t drag my little girl into this. You tell Liam this isn’t funny at all and the next time he calls me it better be to apologise!”

As the line went dead Liam felt a sickening drop in his stomach. Ben had been his only hope. Now what was he going to do?