Roommates! - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

The day after Trish measured Ryan’s height, he was forced to stay later than usual at his job and work overtime. It was his manager’s opinion that he’d been “slacking off even more than usual” that day, despite the fact that Ryan had felt like he was working even harder than he normally did. In a manic fit of both panic and paranoia, he wondered if it could be related to his shrinking. None of his coworkers had seemed to notice anything—was it all in his head? Maybe having his height measured the day before had just been a wildly vivid dream. He’d hoped that he could get another measurement when he got home that day, but his overtime kept him from getting back until close to midnight, at which point Trish was already in bed. After spending too much time trying to find her tape measure (did she hide it or something? he wondered, since it wasn’t with the rest of her sewing equipment), he reluctantly went to bed, deciding that he could measure tomorrow.

By the time he got home from work the next day, he felt like a little kid who was giddy about spring break, or a weekend sleepover, or a visit from their cousins. The day flew by so quickly that Ryan thought he might’ve accidentally worked half his regular shift. For the whole drive home, he felt unnaturally eager to see his roommate, desperate to get a new measurement in and see if he really was shrinking down somehow. He was worried she might not even be at the apartment, but when he burst through the door, she was waiting for him at the kitchen table with her tape measure nearby, just as curious as him to see how short he was now.

“Alright, up against the wall,” she nodded, a smug expression on her face. While Ryan wanted to measure to see if he’d gotten any shorter, it was clear that Trish wanted to see how much shorter. The “if” was already a foregone conclusion to her. As she walked up to him, her eyes excitedly scorching every bit of his body, he could already tell he’d shrunk by a significant amount. The woman who was supposed to be 6 inches shorter than him now looked about eye level with Ryan instead, and it hadn’t even been a week. “I think we’re the same height!” she remarked, echoing his thoughts, and dropped the end of her ruler towards the floor. He watched it lightly touch the ground, ensuring that she wasn’t cheating, and then held his hand against the top of his head, feeling his fingers press against the measuring tape. Before he even turned around, Trish had already started chuckling, and when he looked to see for himself, his heart skipped a beat: 5 feet and 6 inches, just like he’d feared.

Upon seeing the older woman’s reaction, Ryan’s pent-up aggression and fear-invoked fragility started to show. “What the fuck are you laughing about?” he demanded. “This shit isn’t funny, I have no what the hell is going on with me! How common this is. If it’s permanent. I’ll have to… I dunno, schedule a doctor’s appointment or something, but I don’t even have a doctor, I don’t have insurance and my parents booted me off their plan.”

His worry just made Trish laugh even harder though, although she tried a little bit to apologize. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why it’s so funny to me.” She’d seen Ryan angry before, and it had made her a bit nervous, but now that he was so much smaller than her it didn’t give her the same trepidatious feeling. He was still probably stronger than her, and she didn’t want to make him mad, but she didn’t feel as close-guarded about herself when he was this size. If she was honest, she didn’t see why his shrinking would slow down any time soon; if anything, his loss of 3 inches over the past two days might’ve been even been a faster rate than the days before his last measurement. But she didn’t see the need to point that fact out right now. She also hoped that he would continue to shrink; it wasn’t clear to her whether or not he’d try to move back in with his parents anytime soon, or just how small he might get (she didn’t know how small she wanted to see him get either, but her curiosity over the subject easily transformed into morbid fantasizing that saw him at a height of only a few inches, like some kind of fairy or other impossible creature). She sincerely hoped he’d continue to live with her for as long as possible though. And when she heard him start to ramble about moving out, she felt inclined to try and sway his opinion in the other direction.

“I’m gonna need to move out soon, I-I’ve gotta talk, I mean I need to move out and talk with my parents, I need to show them what’s happening to me.” He was obviously scared, so she assumed a friendlier expression and placed her hands on his shoulders, looking him directly in the eyes and stealing his focus away from his fearful blathering.

“Hey, look honey, just calm down. First of all, you just paid your rent for the month three or four days ago, right? The landlord’s an asshole, we both know he wouldn’t give you your money back if you asked him about it. Do you really wanna have wasted all that money?” She shook her head as they looked at each other, leading his feelings on the subject for him. “And I know I haven’t known you that long, but just in the month or so that we’ve been roommates, I’ve heard you go on and on and on about how miserable you were with your parents. How you were only living with them because it was free. Since you’ve already paid to live here for the rest of the month, do you really wanna go back there and be miserable again? You should at least wait til the end of the month, or maybe a smaller size if you keep getting smaller. That’s what I’d do at least.”

Ryan didn’t say anything, thinking about what she said. She had a point; his next few weeks of expenses were already paid for, and he had plenty of food already, so he wouldn’t be saving any money by trying to move back home just yet. Besides, he was still five and a half feet. An obvious height difference, but even his mom wasn’t that tall. If he came back later at like, four feet? Or maybe even three feet? He shuddered at the thought of ending up half of his original size, but it was obviously a scary possibility now. But at least at that size his parents would be a lot more likely to take him in, just on the off chance that they’d turn him away as he was now.

“Well I still need to go to the doctor then,” he thought out loud. “Maybe I should even go to a hospital, like the emergency room or something.”

Trish laughed again, but tried to control herself since she didn’t want Ryan getting too upset with her again. “That’s not really what the ER is for. Your life isn’t in danger, you’re not about to lose your arm or something dangerous.”

“Yeah, but I need to stop this as quickly as I can!”

Trish hesitated before her next comment, but as far-fetched as it sounded, it was one of the few things she thought that she truly believed. She wanted Ryan to stick around, sure, but she also genuinely believed in what she said next. “Ryan, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard about someone shrinking like you’ve been doing. And I’ve been around a lot longer than you, I’ve probably heard about a lot more diseases and sicknesses than you. I’m not saying you’re the first person in all of human history that this has happened to, but… shrinking, like at the speed that’s happening to you, it’s clearly nothing that’s anywhere close to normal or well documented. Honestly, if you went to a hospital and let them know what was going on, and then they actually kept you for a few days and saw that you weren’t lying to them… do you really think they’d just let you go?”

“They’d have to, they can’t keep me there if I didn’t wanna be there.”

She sighed, and shrugged, “I dunno, they shouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t. The government’s done tons of messed up things to people before, you’d be far from the first person that’s been experimented on like a lab rat.” Trish gave him a moment to let him think about what she’d said, and let her words sink in. “Besides, what would they really do to help you anyways? Sure, there might be some sort of treatment they could give you that’d help you out, but how could they cure something they’ve never even seen before?”

“They might have some ideas,” he weakly insisted, feebly hoping that she might be wrong. But she could hear in his voice that he pretty much all but agreed with her too at that point.

“I think if people shrinking was more common, we’d have at least heard something by now. There’s how many conspiracy theories about aliens, or the loch ness monster, or people with telekinetic powers. When was the last time you saw someone online claim to have shrunken? Especially nowadays, with all these phones around and stuff to take videos and pictures. But there’s nothing. Even if you’re not the only person alive who this has happened to, it’s gotta be like, a tiny little handful of people out there… no pun intended.”

Trish stepped back, rolling her tape measure back up as she slowly meandered around the room, imagining what she’d do in his shoes. “Obviously I’m not stopping you from going to the hospital if you really want. I just think that the risk of the government or a bunch of scientists doing experiments and tests on you is way higher than the likelihood that they’ll be able to do anything to help.”

Ryan watched her head to the other room to put the measuring tape back. He didn’t know what to do, or what to say, or even what to think. But he knew that she was right. She had him; hook, line, and sinker. His best course of action for now, he decided, would be to stay put, with Trish hopefully willing to help take care of him if need be, and hope for the best.