Jennifer's eyes fluttered open. She felt as if she was too tired to move. Then, she became more fully awake and realized some heavy cloth was over her face. It wasn't pressed down to suffocate, but it was heavy, and it was resting on her. She tried to pull it down and off, but she couldn't seem to find the edge of it anywhere. It was very coarse, and there were many small holes in it. She could feel the bumps and holes rubbing against her skin. This was decidedly odd, so she looked down-only to discover she was completely naked. She tried to remember where she was, how she had gotten there, and where here clothes had gone in the process.
After some further shuffling of the cloth, she finally decided to stand up and see if she could get something done. The heavy fabric resisted, weighing her down as she rose. Finally, as she stood up completely, she thought she could see light at an edge. She started to pull the edge of the cloth toward her...and then realized the floor she was on was somewhat springy and unstable. It felt almost...spongy. She decided to deal with her more immediate problem-that of getting the cloth off of her head so she could see her surroundings. She tugged at the fabric until she finally pulled the edge over her head.
She realized she was standing on more of the same cloth, and it was spread around her for some distance, although she could see the edges of it. It was a light bluish color, and was somehow familiar to her. She noticed that the fabric didn't go down very far and the ground UNDER it was what was bouncy. She currently stood in the middle of a large slit running down the length of the fabric. A short distance from her, some large, flat, white object lay under the cloth, visible through the wide gap. She proceeded toward the white area.
Standing on top of it, she found it was fuzzy and covered in intricate patterns. It felt like cloth, as well, but a different kind than the large blue patch that she had awakened beneath. The white cloth was as familiar as the blue to her. She couldn't quite place them...then she looked at the end of the white area and recognized how it was cut. Her memory suddenly flew back to her and she realized exactly where she was-she was standing on her robe (now MASSIVE by comparison) and she was situated right beside her bra, which, at this point, could serve her much better as a tent. Judging by scale, she couldn't be more than 3 inches tall. She wondered if the shrinking had at least stopped...and then she felt the strange tingle again. She screamed loud and long until she again collapsed.
Her eyes again fluttered open-only this time, she was looking up at her ceiling, with her head on her pillow and her body in her robe, with her underwear in the right place. She blinked in surprise, running her hands down her body, first in confusion, then in relief. She WASN'T 3 inches tall. As she started to sit up, though, she felt a drag on the pillow. Turning her head and looking back, she realized her hair had been spread like a fan on her pillow. Did that mean...?
She stood up quickly. The robe's hem now sagged onto the floor by at least four inches. The sleeves fell past her hands, their ends hanging loosely just beyond the ends of her stretched fingers. The panties, which she distinctly remembered as fitting near-perfect, slid just a bit down her hips. She immediately grabbed the tape measure again, trying not to think of how it felt larger in her hands, and re-measured herself. No, she wasn't 3 inches tall...but she was now only 4 feet even. She remembered being 4'4'' before the tingle hit her again and she went out cold. That meant that she had shrunk 4 inches. No, wait, she thought, that can't be right, because I shrank more after hitting the pillow. So, assuming the two shrinks had been equal, she had shrunk 2 inches twice.
Craig couldn't believe how well the imaging process was going. He had yet to encounter any major difficulties. Evidently, his programming was better than he'd thought. The 2-inch shrinks all turned out beautifully, each only needing minor touch-ups to preserve video continuity and image quality. He also hadn't eaten a sizable chunk of his computer's RAM yet, either-a sure sign of an efficient program. He was thoroughly enjoying working with his editor, and since it was running so well, he decided to again try to increase the shrinkage to 3 inches. If he could get that to work, he could conceivably finish the whole image sequence and video in one day! He set the 3-inch reduction and clicked "Apply," waiting eagerly to monitor the results.
Jennifer had been rummaging in her closet, trying to find something she could still wear. As she grabbed for a hanger, she got shocked again. "Ouch! Damn, that's getting annoying." She trailed off as the rod at the top of the closet seemed to slowly slide upward, in sync with the peculiar tingling she was feeling throughout her body. The robe sleeves sagged a bit more, crawling down her arms toward her elbows. The bottom of the robe piled up a little more on the floor below her. Her panties again slid down her hips briefly. She reached down to tug them back up and found that her fingertips no longer even reached the near end of the robe's wrist cuffs. She pushed the sleeves up and tugged on the panties, wondering if she had shrunk 2 inches again, or possibly more. She had to figure out what was causing this, and she had to do it before she got too small to do anything about it! She measured herself again, discovering that she was now 3 feet 9 inches tall. So, it's gone to 3 inches at a time now, has it? She thought in dismay. I may have less time than I thought.
She opened the door to the hall and found a bowl of soup, slowly getting cold. She thought of calling Mariana, but realized there was no way her housekeeper would believe her. Jennifer herself hadn't believed the obvious at first--it was just too Sci-fi B-movie to be real. Yet, it was happening. Here. Now. To her. She was suddenly smaller than the most petite size made, slowly approaching child size. She had no idea who was doing it or why, and she certainly didn't know how to stop it. She knew that she had to, though, because one persistent thought had been echoing in the back of her head, despite her best efforts to silence it, since she had thought about shrinking 2 inches at a time: What would happen if she hit zero?
