When the front door closes, I feel the vibrations like they’re deep below the Earth’s surface. I’m one floor up in the bedroom I still want to call ours, though I haven’t been in the bed in months. She must have brought my habitat—the glass aquarium where I’ve been living since the incident—here. Talk about an earthquake, though I’m sure she transports it as carefully as possible. How could she know what even the slightest shift in motion feels like at my size? How could anyone know?
With the black fabric draped around and above me, it’s difficult to tell where in the house she leaves me sometimes. The thin mesh filters air in and out, but it’s dark so no one can see inside. That was part of the arrangement with my former engineering firm when I was exposed to their prototype miniaturization ray. It wasn’t ready to be tested on organic matter, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Only a few people at work knew what happened, and a shrewd corporate lawyer drew up the non-disclosure agreements and hefty severance package to keep the facts from leaking out. In exchange, I was left in the care of my devoted wife while the company fast-tracked a reversal process.
It was her decision to house me in here, with an odd assortment of plastic doll furniture and Roman-style togas made from frayed scraps of fabric. Despite my disapproval, I couldn’t stop her. I easily fit in the palm of her hand, so she scooped me up and plopped me inside. “It’s for your own safety,” she said. “Nobody sees you, and you won’t fall off a counter or into a drawer. Won’t be stepped on.”
Though I’m technically not trapped, I certainly can’t escape. I’ve tried and failed. The glass isn’t scalable, the toy furniture isn’t stably stackable, and the screen above me isn’t openable on my end.
Downstairs, she laughs loudly and heartily, and I hear another voice. A deep voice. A male voice. Their words are unintelligible beyond the glass, beyond the sheet, and beyond the walls and floor between us, but I detect a flirtatious tone.
I wonder if I know him. Is he a friend or neighbor curious about my fabricated job transfer to another city? A former coworker of mine visiting to console her? Or maybe the company lawyer unexpectedly dropping by to check up on our end of the agreement? Any of these possibilities I can live with. Whoever the man is, he’s not here to make a move on her. She wouldn’t let that happen, right?
Their voices get louder, closer. I recognize the cadence of her heels clicking on the stairs—heels that could accidentally impale me if I ever left my habitat without her knowing and wound up underfoot without her saying. That’s why I’m kept inside, safe.
“Where can I freshen up first?” he asks playfully.
“In there,” she replies, presumably pointing toward the bathroom. “Come on in when you’re ready.”
Come on in? Before I wrap my undersized brain around her invitation, I sense gravity shift my attention toward her looming form. She’s looking down at me.
“I know you’re listening.” Her commanding voice echoes as if from the heavens, like she’s my personal goddess—powerful, fearful, yet hopefully loving. “He doesn’t know about you. It would be wise if you kept it that way.”
The implication is obvious. I’m not to make any noise or other signal that I exist. Why wouldn’t she have moved me somewhere else in the house if she knew he was coming over? Unless she didn’t know he was coming. Did she go out and pick up some random guy in a bar or somewhere? Why would she do that?
The room beyond the glass abruptly darkens, and then a burst of diffuse light appears in the distance. Then another and another, like stars in the night sky shining with varying intensities.
I’m struck by a whiff of chamomile lavender—her favorite scented candle, the one she’d light to get in the mood. I wasn’t fond of the smell at my normal size, and now, it makes me retch.
“Keep quiet if you know what’s best for you,” she commands from the void above me, her voice curt and raspy. My instinct is to cower.
“What’d you say?” asks the man. Between the fabric muffling the sound and the perception shift from my miniaturization, I don’t recognize his voice.
“I said I’m gonna be the best for you.” Her voice is sultry. Seductive. I can picture the shape of her lips as she puckers out the words; I can remember the way she’d raise an eyebrow to beckon me to take her in my arms. She doesn’t look at me that way anymore, now that I’m a fraction of my former self, and I try to suppress memories of how she stopped giving me that look long before I shrank. “Let me turn on some music first.”
Instrumental jazz fills the air, slow and smooth. I’m not sure if she’s playing it to fully create a romantic mood or to ensure that I can’t be heard. It doesn’t matter; I’m powerless to prevent any imminent infidelity.
I may be just under five inches tall, but I’m still a man, so I’m not going to cry. They’re just innocently flirting; she hasn’t cheated on me yet. I could crawl into the folded up silk handkerchief I use for a blanket, cover myself with it, and go to sleep pretending this is all a bad dream.
But I know my insecurities too well. I walk up to the wall and press my palms against the glass. I can’t see colors out there, but I see shapes passing in front of the distant flickering candlelight—two giant figures swaying in rhythm with the music. When was the last time she and I danced? Definitely at our wedding, though I don’t remember the song. After that, I have no recollection.
They’re both enormous, but I’m more struck by the difference in their heights. I know my wife’s affinity for heels, and when she wore them, she was on even footing with my former five-ten stature, but the top of her head is level with his chin. Even at my normal height, I’d be dwarfed by this guy.
Her arms are around his neck, and she tugs on him, guiding his mouth toward hers. Because he’s so much taller, he bends forward as she tilts her head back, her long hair cascading straight down as he kisses her. Her hands reach up for his temples, and she runs her fingers through his hair—if he even has hair. Their shapes merge into one as they draw closer.
He starts kissing her neck, and she purrs, “I want you so badly.” With his ear so close to her mouth, she speaks louder than needed, and it’s with dismay that I realize that she’s not fully saying it for his benefit. She wants me to hear everything.
Their silhouettes separate, and she turns around, collecting her hair in her hands as she raises them above her neck. “Could you unzip me, please?” she says, and I perceive a slight turn of her head toward me.
He probably finds her voice enticing as he slowly removes her dress, but she’s spiteful. How could she do this to me after all we’d been through? In sickness and in health—and my condition must be included there—for better or for worse. Those were our vows. Why is she tossing them aside? It’s only been a few months since I’ve been this way, I think. The days and weeks have been a blur in my solitary confinement, but certainly the company will find a way to restore me. Can’t she hold out until then, pleasing herself with the vibrator in her nightstand drawer? Why with another guy, especially one so much taller than me?
I watch them undress each other, and though I can’t see the tint of her dress, I recognize the shape: a short and sexy red one she’d occasionally wear for a night out. I loved the way it hugged her curves, but when we stopped going out, she stopped wearing it for me.
When they get on the bed, it feels like a punch to my stomach. I fight back tears, trying to convince myself I’m a normal guy watching porn, but I collapse to the floor as she starts narrating their foreplay.
“Nibble my ear.”
I close my eyes.
“Squeeze my ass.”
I fall onto my side.
“Stroke my wet pussy.”
I pull my knees to my chest
“Fuck me with that stiff cock of yours.”
I cover my ears, but I can’t block out the squeaking bed springs. I shudder, not only because I’m much more sensitive to high pitched sounds than before the incident, but because I’m picturing him mounting her. The squeaks get louder as their pace quickens, and my own procrastination torments me. How many times had she asked me to buy a new mattress?
“So… fucking… huge!” She moans. Again and again and again. “Much bigger than my last lay.” She releases a long sigh of unmitigated pleasure, the likes I’d never heard from her in the bedroom.
I assume I’m the last guy she was with, but there are days I don’t see or hear her at all, so I have no idea what—or who?—she’s doing. I know my dick, even when erect, is pathetic right now, but I must have been at least average-sized before. Now, my whole body’s smaller than that.
At my pleading, we tried lovemaking after the incident. I walked around her hills and valleys, but that bored her, so she grabbed me and plunged me inside her. I was sore for days, and she complained that when I went in head first and passed out, my flaccid full-sized dick was better. When I went in feet first, she said my legs kicked around aimlessly, and she faked it to get it over with.
“That last guy didn’t know what to do.” She moans. “You’re hundreds of times the man he is.”
And she’s right. After their panting intensifies, I feel her climactic screams vibrate the glass surrounding me. I never brought her to an Earth-shattering orgasm like that—or maybe any orgasm. If I couldn’t please her then, and I certainly can’t please her now, how can I blame her for desiring some sexual satisfaction?
“So this other guy?” he asks, his deep voice somewhat hoarse. “Who was he?”
“My ex-husband.”
My eyes pop open, and I can make out the contours of their entwined mountain ranges atop the distant plateau. Did she really call me that?
“Not only did he suck in bed,” she says, “but he barely noticed me. He never helped around the house and always put his career ahead of me, practically disappearing at work.”
The man grunts. “Sounds like a total douche to me.”
“He was, but I got all the money.”
Does she mean the settlement from the company? The one in exchange for keeping me under wraps?
“Good for you,” he cheers.
“One day I decided I had to put my foot down.” She pauses, and a long, drawn-out squeak breaks the silence as she rolls herself on top of him. “Maybe sometime in the future, I’ll do it for real.”
I shiver on the cold floor of my prison, which was meant to keep me safe from accidents, though she can hurt me without warning. The pain I feel right now is deeper than physical, as I realize not only how inadequate I was as a lover but as a husband too. When the springs start bouncing and she starts moaning again, I wince, realizing I’m not merely inadequate to her now.
I’m insignificant.