I saw him first. I know how that sounds. It sounds childish, but it’s the truth. Olive and I had known each other nearly all our lives and had been friends from the moment we met in first grade. She’d always felt more like a sister to me and I thought she felt the same way, but when it came to boys she always went for the ones I liked; I’m sure not intentionally, because I was never open about my crushes. But that night I was drunk, and she was as wasted as I was, and I told her. I saw him and I said to her, “He’s the one. He’s the one I want to shrink” and I left her side. I took two steps in his direction when she moved past me with quick strides, and breached the couple of dozen feet across the dance floor to where he stood. She then grabbed handfuls of his shirt to pull his face to hers, and kissed him for what felt like a century.
She brought this upon herself. I saw him first. He was mine. He was supposed to be mine. She left me alone that night, disappearing with him into the light and leaving me in darkness. I didn’t hear from her for days, until she called me to tell me she had met someone. It turned out they had been together since that night she stole him from me. She never said she was sorry for doing what she did when she asked me to come over for dinner. He was there, of course. How odd it felt when he introduced himself. I almost told him there was no need, because I felt I’d always known him. I’d always known who he was, without having seen him before that night.
Maybe she saved me the trouble of going back to the club every night to try to find him. In the beginning I often said that to myself, especially when I was angry enough to stab her in the heart a thousand times. I tried to be “rational” about it because they looked happy together. She started smiling all the time, and we were never just the two of us anymore. He was always there, and every time I saw him I felt the same way. He was mine, and I needed to shrink him for myself. That’s why when she told me they were getting married and he was going to go through the shrinking process so he could be tiny for her, I felt I’d lost my mind. That’s the moment I knew that not only I was going to take him, but that she was going to pay for stealing him from me.
I plastered a smile on my face that went on for months and miles. I was the maid of honor, I helped her plan every party, every event. I took time off from work to go to shops and try on bridesmaids dresses and taste cakes. When she called me on Friday nights to tell me they were leaving town for the weekend, I’d go over and water her plants and feed and walk her dog. I also studied her home, which I knew as well as I knew my own, but now I explored every inch from living room to bedroom, counted every step from each window to each room, opening and shutting each as I studied the best angle from the street and from inside for a person to climb in and out unseen. I studied neighbor habits, and formulated my plan. I also came in his underwear drawer. He had to get used to me, after all.
The day of the wedding came and went, and when they left for their honeymoon I knew it was time. She had asked me to stay at their place so I could keep an eye on her mutt, who had been acting strangely lately, barking at nothing and pissing on the floor. Maybe it was the chocolate I’d been feeding it, or maybe it just knew I was going to kill it. I wasn’t going to risk it barking when I broke into their house to take what was mine. Alone in the house with it, I put antifreeze in its water bowl, and rat poison in its food. I also procured a rat I’d killed with the same poison. My story was simple: the rat had squeezed into an undiscovered hole to die inside the house, and when her dog found it, it decided to use it as a chew toy, poisoning itself.
I love animals, but it was no longer an animal in my eyes the same way she was no longer a friend to me, when she had once been dearer than any of my sisters. They were only obstacles in my way, but I cried like my heart was broken when I took its body to the vet to “see if anything could be done”. I brought the rat with me for good measure. I wanted a record that showed I’d tried to do the right thing. I thought of them in bed together; I thought of how she had rushed past me to get to him; I thought of the love she had stolen from me, and I cried so hard I made the vet tear up.
I no longer had an excuse to go to their home when they were not there, but it didn’t matter. I had made a copy of the house key and I knew how to turn off the house alarm, but I wasn’t going to count on her not changing the security code without telling me. I had plans A, B, and C. I then had alternate versions of each plan. I started going to the gym to gain upper-body strength so as to carry his body to my car trunk, and stopped going to the gym when she called me one afternoon and told me they had gone through with it. They had gone to one of those labs popping up everywhere now, and he had gotten himself shrunk. They invited everyone over that night, and I had to watch her pick up his already half-sized body as though he was a child. It should have been me. It was going to be me. I swallowed my fury and I smiled and made jokes about his bald head and hairless body (a temporary side effect) the way the rest of them did.
Days later I heard he had reached his final height. They had decided on a few inches, but no one knew with certainty as she had told no one the intensity of the treatment they had chosen. I knew. I’d always told her two inches in height seemed perfect, so she had stolen that idea from me too. That night I sat in a rented car with fake plates half a block away from their home listening remotely to their conversation which now consisted of her voice, his responses too diminutive to be picked up by the bugs I had installed in every room. I listened and went down my checklist, knowing I’d have to undo everything I had done when the time came. I’d have to reintegrate the alarm circuit that now bypassed an upstairs window, and I’d have to collect all listening devices. I’d leave no trace she could find.
I stopped everything, even breathing when I heard her open a bottle of something she started drinking. They were celebrating. Tonight was the night. They had been drinking less now that they were married, but I’d been waiting for this. I knew her, and true to form, she stole my sex plans too. I’d told her many times that one night I’d shrink the man I loved, and get us really drunk, and I’d do unspeakable things to him. I’d ram him up my ass head first, and send him bouncing back into my panties with a fart like a whale’s blowhole. I told her I’d put him deep inside me and eject him with a gushing orgasm. I told her all my fantasies, and how she’d laughed and hugged me and made fun of me. Bitch. Now she wanted to make my dreams to come true for herself.
I braced myself for a nightmare. I got ready to listen to my fantasies broadcast into my headphones as I waited for their night to end. As it turned out she kept drinking until she passed out in bed. I didn’t know exactly where he was, and while I hoped I wouldn’t have to pull him out of her asshole, I was prepared for anything. I drove closer to their home and parked under the canopy of a tree that cloaked the car from the closest street light. I untied a new ladder from the roof of the car, and carried it to the side of the house where the rigged window waited for me. I listened to the soft snoring of the real thief inside, and I felt calm when I slipped inside. I never felt my heart speed up as I went through the motions, or when I loaded my untraceable gun in case she woke up, or as I stood over her naked body, aiming my flashlight’s beam to the apex of her pussy. I only felt my heart dance when I saw him standing there, fully awake, slapping her inner thigh, trying to wake her up.
He must have been drunk too because he kept losing his footing, and when I reached for him I saw him throw up, draping my finger pads in vomit that wet his chest and face when I closed them around him, and took what was mine. I felt him squirm in my grip as I stood over her slumbering body, tempted to kill her right away. I smiled, truly smiled for the first time in a year, and I removed all traces of ever having been there. I tucked his little body inside my bra when I climbed down the ladder, and didn’t look around to make sure neighbors weren’t looking. Even if someone saw me, no one could see my face, and my shape was disguised by loose clothing. I felt high. I was finally happy. I took him where she could never find him.
The next few days were a nightmare for her. Oh, how the tables had turned. How hard I had to feign shock and grief. How I cried for the detectives looking for him. How I wept with her as I held her in my arms, thinking not of her grief now, but of what mine had been. How I helped them look for him everywhere. How warm I was when she showed up at my apartment and started going through my things. How friendly and understanding I behaved when she did it a second time, tearing through everything while screaming his name, begging him to come out. Of course she didn’t know about the other place.
That’s where he was when I told him she had gotten a length of rope, and had hanged herself in her bedroom. They’d found her swollen, rotting body after the neighbors caught a whiff of it. I wish I’d found a way to take a picture, but I’m not sure he’d have looked at it anyway. He wasn’t looking at anything, or talking much. I explained to him he’d always belonged to me, and I told him how she had stolen him from me. I don’t know if he understands. My main concern right now is getting him to eat. I take care of him every day. I love him. He’s mine, and he’s with me, and all is finally right in the world.