For Richer, For Smaller (Chapter 15) (Patreon)

Per usual in his post-shrinkage life, Tony’s reach had ever so slightly exceeded his grasp this time. He had every intention of taking his wife to task the very instant the yoga tape woman said goodbye, and with ever-more rabid fury for each additional minute he spent cooped down here as her living six-inch pedestal. Lillian’s imaginary reign was through.

But those first poses were followed by uninterrupted repetitions of forward folds, then a triangle pose, next variations on the warrior pose, lunges, squats, and finally a single-footed tree pose that made that initial mountain iteration feel like sweet muscle-assuaging chiropractic therapy by comparison. Any other day of their lives together, Tony was supremely grateful for his spouse’s dedication to her yoga, since that ritualistic practice had magnificently toned and sculpted the athletic brawn-structure under her kissably dove-elegant skin. Today, though, he would’ve given anything for her to get bored in the middle and call it quits. So when at last they’d reached the video’s end, the giantess had successfully emptied every last drop of tension out from her own relaxed now-perspiring body, and instead crammed it all down into a man-shape far too small to safely contain this magnitude of burly-soled substance. The TV switched off, and the undeservingly mighty woman marched away again like nothing had happened. And Tony couldn’t even part his numbed-shut lips to wheeze a quivery rebuttal as she left him there, twitchily razed on the sweat-dribbled mat like an oozy egg dropped and cooked on scalding city pavement.

Prior to now, the longest time Lillian had ever spent consecutively standing on her dangerously resized husband was eighteen minutes, and even that was an unusual one-off. Lately, it only required a five-minute maximum of boldly giving him her all to leave the put-upon CEO achily deflated, half-suffocated and wincing from every contused angle, thanks to the diabolical skin-thinning skeleton-threatening pressurization she could enact by the most pedestrian of undersole pivots. Today’s copious slow-footed yoga calamity, by galling contrast, had lasted exactly one entire hour: something Tony only knew because that bubble gum-voiced bitch onscreen had congratulated her students for spending this obscene length of time to find their center and let all the world’s stresses pass through their soles. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he’d be able to withstand an undersized trample session that long, yoga-themed or not, without conking out cold. Having just been trounced stupid for more than triple their previous record, the Lillian’s tormented little one didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of standing right up and confronting her.

It wasn’t so much that the squeezing agony, airlessness, and all-around constriction were miles worse than ever before, because they technically weren’t, but rather the fact that the whole bouquet of obliterating sensations all lingered so throbbingly for long minutes on end, and even a full hour, after the woman had stepped off of Tony and left him to pitifully reinflate on the floor. The depth of head-shrinking chest-collapsing body-length pain imparted seemed to be going absolutely nowhere for quite a while, as though permanently tattooed into his psyche, and his lungs also flatly refused to accept more than a raspy hiccup’s worth of oxygen at a time. For a hysterical but thankfully silent few minutes, since the last thing he needed was more lost dignity, Tony irrationally pondered if this welting hurt was ever going to subside, or if his respiratory system was so irreparably squished that he’d need a G.I. Joe-sized nasal cannula for the rest of his shrunken existence. Another full hour later, the unseen wound-sensation did begin to roll back like hundreds of impaled acupuncture needles being ripped out, and the shrinker’s capacity to inhale normally without choking returned. This was good news, all things considered, but only now, at the chronological point following a hard-hitting stomp treatment that Tony usually felt like himself again, there was still an anguishing volume of recuperation left to go.

For a second whole hour, having not moved of his own bodily volition since Lillian scooped him off her tits in the bedroom this morning, the spread-eagle little victim wretchedly waited in the center of the colored mat for his rosy-flushed yoga-mashed form to heal. The pangs had indeed started to alleviate, but the giantess had done such a thorough job of wresting in those destructive sensory illusions of Tony’s organs readying to rupture and his ribcage having its natural curvature ironed out flat, he couldn’t dream of trying to crawl away in his condition and address his wife just yet for the aggressive heart-to-heart they’d been dancing around for weeks now. Not until he could stand on his own without keeling forward in abject weakness. Despite the endless spasm-influencing discomfort of this longest-yet cooldown period, though, the six-incher didn’t allow himself the luxury of squirming or moaning while still openly laid on the yoga mat, knowing even with his eyes shut that Lillian was likely strutting past the doorway every now and then to check on him, perhaps hoping to see him sucking his thumb and sobbing for mercy as a de-sexualized new man. And he’d rather have her repeat the goddamn yoga video three more times in a row on top of him than ever give the woman that satisfaction.

“Okay. That’s… fucking… it,” Tony croaked to himself with steely resolve, just when the third hour of recovery was creeping up. Lillian had enjoyed her temporary victory for long enough already. Balling his fists and gritting his teeth, the shrinker pep-talked himself into rising suddenly and marching with a purpose, sleeping extremities and lingering soreness be damned, toward the hall: “Who’s the boss? You’re the boss. The goddamn boss. Nobody tells you what the fuck to do. Now let her know it, too.”

For once, Tony didn’t find her in the middle of some pointlessly repeated housekeeping or hygienic care routine that she then might’ve used as a thinly-veiled excuse to employ him underfoot for some multitasked mid-beautification trampling. Instead, after searching every downstairs room in a pint-sized furor, he rode his personal elevator to the top floor and found the blonde scheme-happy titaness out on the balcony overlooking the property’s swimming pool, sitting cross-legged in a lounge chair and reading some corny romance novel over the brim of her sunglasses. When he stepped through the door, which she’d left open by just enough of a crack for any passing six-inch CEOs to sidle through like a rat caught in the walls, Lillian didn’t even tilt her head in his direction, let alone divert her gaze from that damn book. Not that Tony expected her to respectfully leap up to her feet like royalty had just entered, now that he was onto her game here of not-so-innocent authority undermining, but even if she didn’t look upon him as king of the house by the time they’d sorted out this moronic business, she would at least see him as the undisputed captain. Of that he was sure.

With his fists on his hips and his three-inch-long legs spread in the most dominant stance he could muster, the shrinker defiantly stood just far enough from Lillian’s chair that she wouldn’t have to look over the spine of her book to belittlingly behold him so far beneath her sunny throne. Tony knew he’d be slightly disadvantaged by no longer holding the tactical high ground, as when he’d awoken her by virtually boosting himself atop her bosom, but that hardly mattered. He’d quickly make her forget his stature, and remember her place, here and now. Sick to death of so much beating around the bush, the little one cleared his throat loudly enough for the harrumph to echo across the backyard.

“Lillian,” he groused. “Look at me. We’re having a conversation. Now.”