Mason - Chapter 3 (Patreon)

There weren’t a lot of benefits to being tiny, but Mason tried his best to look at the silver linings. For example, because he couldn’t realistically get a job, he got to stay home all day. There also were a ton of things he couldn’t do at his size either, so he was more prone to boredom than the average 19 year old. But he told himself that it was better to be home alone with a plethora of possible ways to spend his time, than to have to work all day at a job he didn’t like just to survive. Burdened by size, but unencumbered from responsibility.

Which meant he watched TV a lot, so much so that he didn’t even bother having a watch list on any streaming apps. Today he’d been binging the newest season of an offbeat comedy he liked on Hulu. His favorite spot to sit whenever he watched TV was in the center of the couch, because it made him feel like he sat on a massive throne, with endless plushiness all for him. But the giants of the house weren’t huge fans of a 3-inch boy sitting smack dab in the middle of a three seat sofa.

He heard the front door suddenly swing open, knowing that it would be Mikayla coming home from her shift. He hoped she wouldn’t interrupt him and take over the TV, but after hearing how big her sigh was after kicking off her shoes and tossing her keys on the table, he knew she’d be in the mood to just vedge for a while.

“Hey, I wanna watch my show,” she yawned, sauntering into the family room. It looked like the couch was empty, but she knew that just meant there was a little guy hidden somewhere on the cushions. As the walked around to the front of it, she saw her brother laying on the remote, using one of the thicker buttons to prop his head up. Normally he’d use his own miniature remote to control the TV, but it had accidentally gotten stepped on for the twentieth time after he left it out in the open. His mom had warned him, both joking and annoyed, that he was limited to one new remote a month; she didn’t want to waste her money on anything more. So he had to use the big one, the one that made him jump on the buttons every time he needed to press them. It was slow, and tedious. He hadn’t even bothered trying to use the search bar.

“I’m on the last episode, it’s the season finale,” he told her, hoping she’d at least let him finish.

“Welp, that means you’ve got to watch the last however many episodes for a few hours, so I get a turn now,” came Mikayla’s retort, leaning over to pick the remote up before he’d even hopped off.

“Wait, you need to lemme get off befoAAAGH!” She smirked as he lost his balance as soon as the device shot into the sky, and scrambled to dive off the side as fast as he could. It was a free fall to the cushion below, something he did on a regular basis and wasn’t very dangerous—as long as he landed right. He’d learned from cats to stretch his arms and legs out below him to absorb the impact. The adrenaline thrill of a free fall was another benefit to his size, since it was pretty fun as long as there was something properly set up below him to catch his fall (a loosely bundled-up blanket was best). Or sometimes one of his sisters would tie a rubber band around his waist so he could bungie jump off the kitchen table. But whenever his free falls were impromptu or accidental, the thrill evolved into fear for the split second he was in mid-air.

He landed safely on one of the end cushions as her own body crashed into the middle one, right where Mason had been sitting. Mikayla put her feet up on the coffee table and exited his show to go browse her own profile, provoking a fit of anger out of her brother since she hadn’t even apologized. With the adrenaline still coursing through his body, he ran towards her and began using the of her thigh as a punching bag. “Mom told you not to let me fall like that!” he yelled, pummeling her black jeans with his fists. Attacking her wasn’t about trying to hurt her though (how could it be at his size?), it was more the principle of it. Just like a real punching bag couldn’t be hurt, but is still a good way to get out your aggression, Mason was only using his sister as an outlet for his anger. She didn’t take too kindly to that though.

She raised an eyebrow and stopped browsing to look down at her side. Even if she couldn’t be hurt, but he was still acting like a nuisance. He saw her head turn to him in his upper peripheral vision, and the gigantic motion made him look up, immediately stopping as she stared down at him. He was filled with instant regret, which only doubled as he saw her grin mischievously and lean her body away from him. She lifted the leg he’d been punching so that her butt was pointed at him instead, and he turned to run.

Mikayla didn’t even bother trying to stop him, since she knew she wouldn’t need to. She squeezed out a fart, puffing a blast of noxious smells right into her brother’s path. Years of experience had made her able to aim with so much precision that she knew Mason would always be at the center of her smelly storm. He had heard the rumble behind him, and within a few seconds, the wave of his sister’s digestive miasma had caught up to him, swirling around him and enveloping him in an invisible cloud of her gas.

He still tried running away so he could reach somewhere with fresher air, but that was a much harder ask at his size. For regular people, a big enough fart can disseminate throughout a room. But for someone like Mason, every time a person passed gas, it had the potential to creep a hundred feet out in every direction. Finding fresher air was possible, but it took way more than merely side-stepping or leaning away from the offender.

He started coughing as the smell filled his lungs, which slowed him down since he had to pant for breath. But Mikayla only laughed. “If you’d just let me watch my show, after I’d been on my feet for 8 hours while you got to lounge around all day, then maybe I won’t get annoyed with you next time and do something like that.”

Mason didn’t respond, knowing she had a right to want to use the TV. He just sighed instead, and took a seat on the cushion to try and get into whatever it is his older sister wanted to watch.