Aborigen

“Three more days. That’s fine, I’ve got that noted in your record. I’m glad to hear … yes, a total of eight days. We’ve got your card on file. May I talk to our agent for a moment? Thanks.”

Mariah straightened up in her chair, staring at the screen without really seeing it. “Hi, Charlie, how’re you holding up? Anything to report? No, good, that’s what we like to hear. And you know the deal: do you consent to three additional days to the contract? Sounds like it’s going really well. Oh and hey, Charlie: What do you like on your pizza?”

This was a coded question, and Charlie’s response would determine whether the contract would go through or an extraction team would be dispatched. “Italian sausage” meant that he was safe, he felt safe, and his responses were not coerced. “Excellent, please put Mr. Garcia back on the phone.” With a few more formalities and some data entry, Charlie was approved to remain with Mr. Garcia and be returned to ShrinkTeam in the middle of the week. Mariah smiled to herself, trying but not-trying to picture what that little white guy was doing on this assignment. Whatever it was, it made him popular and therefore profitable.

She flexed her shoulders, logged out, and pulled off her headset to head back to the break room. This room was an aseptic white, with smooth Ikea cabinets and a small brushed-steel sink, a K-cup brewer and a toaster beside a capacious fridge. Everyone back here, large and small, was wearing the slightly faded purple Polos with the embroidered ShrinkTeam wordmark over their heart. Mariah (5′ 5″) greeted Hana (5′ 2″) and Yasmin (5′ 8″) chatting with Ridwan (6″) over a low-budget charcuterie. She retrieved her lunch bag—jalapeño hummus, pita chips, and black cherries—from the fridge and joined her coworkers.

Ridwan, in the shadow of Hana’s sports bottle, was talking about his third week with the company. “I am … nice to find how gentle everyone is being. They said so in training, there would be no meanness, but,” he faltered, and his tiny head wobbled. “How do you say, surprise, nice surprise. Very kind and soft, lots of talking. Why do I need to be so small for her to be talking?”

Yasmin grinned. “Sometimes that’s what helps them open up. They need to feel safe, so maybe that’s all they want to do with you, is just talk.” She rolled a raspberry to the tiny man. He tore the drupelets apart easily, enjoyed doing so, sucking the seeds clean, and she rested on her elbows, watching him with fascination. “Sorry if I’m staring, I just never get tired of watching a tiny person eating big-person food.”

His tiny face broke into a broad, bright grin. “I can do more-tiny, if you like,” he hollered. He wiped his little hands on a pristine mountain of paper napkin and opened up a small plastic case behind him. To the women, it looked like it could’ve held earplugs, but it contained his dosages. Before Yasmin could say this wasn’t necessary (and she wasn’t trying very hard to speak up), he poked through the grains of powdered medicine and found a purple one that he liked. He brought this over to the raspberry, plunged it into a drupelet, and when it mostly dissolved he ate the whole thing down with a grimace. In a moment his long, lanky body reduced from 6″ to 4″, slowly leveling off at 3″. Too late, the new employee remembered that his clothes wouldn’t shrink with him, and the women giggled to see him shuffle back, like a child in his father’s clothes, to finish the raspberry.

“Did you think it was going to be frightening, Ridwan?” Mariah asked, scooping some hummus. “What made you want to get into this?”

He struggled to pull his miniature Polo about his shoulders, now more like a serape. “My family, they needs the money, you know? I’m not so good at maths or building things. My father, he fixes engines for cars, very good work, but I can’t do. But everyone knows that I’m very friendly, you know? I like people, people like me, so I think this is a very, very good job for someone who likes people. What is scary”—he looked up thoughtfully, unmindful of red juice running down his forearms—”I think, is that I get hurt. Maybe an accident, or maybe not a good person. They’re very big, you know, and I am not strong in this way. So I think maybe someone tries to … take advantage, you know? But they don’t do this.”

Hana tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and nodded. “I don’t want to scare you with horror stories, but when I first started, there was a guy named Casey.” Mariah and Yasmin nodded, recalling. “Sometimes you just can’t tell. We don’t have a way of screening for someone who’s going to be dangerous, we can only mark it in their record. After the fact.”

Yasmin frowned. “I could never do this. I don’t know how you do it, Hana. How do you feel safe when you’re like that?”

“We just do the best we can. You know, you talk to them when they come in the clinic, and you talk to them when you go out for coffee, and you have to do all your reading then. You have to figure them out quickly, get a sense for them, make them talk about a lot of different things.” She looked up and smiled at Mike when he walked into the room to warm up some toaster pastries. “But, I mean, four hours isn’t enough, sometimes. Like in Casey’s case. He wasn’t naive, he’d been doing this for three years, but sometimes the client puts up a good front and what can you do.”

The women scooted over for Mike and he slid a chair to the table, greeting everyone. With one hand he rested his plate of too-hot pastries, and with the other he carefully set a Plexiglas case some distance from Ridwan, who was looking for a blue grain by which to fit into his clothes again.

The case was designed to at least resemble a room, with two bent strips of Plexiglas serving as chairs, another like a flattened capital-C for a table, and a door with a long steel pin for the hinge. The case also had six clasps around the base, so the walls could be lifted free, and that’s what Mike did. Slumped in a transparent chair at the transparent table was a very somber little man at 3″ in height, a little too small for the all-purpose furniture.

“Hey, Sebastian.” “Hi, Sebastian, how’s it going?” “Looks like you’re not having a good day.”

The little man looked up and struggled to smile and wave at the large women’s faces around him. “Yeah, you could say that. Not a great day.”

Miriam’s brow creased in confusion, but before she could ask, Hana spoke up. “You mind if I tell them, Sebastian?” The tiny man waved dejectedly; Ridwan stepped onto the base and shared a couple drupelets, towering over him. “It’s policy. Mr. Weeks put it off as long as he felt comfortable with, but rules are rules. No one’s requested Sebastian for two weeks, so he has to get big again.”

Sebastian held his head in his hands and stared through the table at his tiny feet, not quite reaching the floor of the base. Hana slowly reached out and caressed his back with a large, smooth fingertip. “It doesn’t mean you’re undesirable, Sebastian. We’ve just got a large rotation of workers right now. It’s like … putting your song in at karaoke when the bar’s at capacity. Your turn’s coming, just not soon enough. And you can get small again when someone requests you.”

Mariah’s customer service routine kicked in. “Not for a month, though. You have to convalesce for a month at least, build your strength back up after a week at this size.” She frowned at herself for the less-than-compassionate tone.

“Two weeks,” said Yasmin quietly, “so four months.” Hana reluctantly amended that Sebastian’s time had been expanded to a total of 15 days. Mariah winced at the tiny man’s moan.

“I just want to be small! I like it! This is how I was meant to be! Is that so wrong?” Sebastian turned and hollered up to his coworkers. “Hana, why can’t you take me home? I’ll pay you back. I just need to stay in circulation so I don’t have to get big again.”

Her black bobbed hair swung as she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t. Policy.”

He turned to Mariah. “Mariah? Come on, I won’t do anything. I’ll just hang out, you won’t even notice me. Just one night.” Yet even in this earnest plea he couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting to her (relatively) large breasts beneath her shirt, and she had no problem declining the offer.

He shifted again. “Yasmin—sorry, that’s against your beliefs, isn’t it.”

“It’s not,” she murmured, fingering her hijab, “but let’s say it is.”

He threw his tiny arms up, he sighed dramatically, and he slumped onto the Plexiglas C. The women found interesting things to look at, around the room.

“Guess my break’s over,” Mike muttered. “C’mon, buddy. Time for your medicine.” Sebastian hollered in anguish and clutched at Ridwan, who easily shook him off and stepped off the base. Making sure not to get the tiny man’s limbs caught mid-flail, Mike secured the walls to the base, wished everyone an easy afternoon, and carefully lifted Sebastian away.

Hana looked at her coworkers. “I wouldn’t even if I could! I can understand wanting to be tiny. I like it when my boyfriend makes little treats for me. Like, he bakes? with a tiny little oven, like in those videos? They’re the wrong size for me, but it’s just so much fun. But something about him …”

Yasmin nodded. “Wanting it that badly is not a good look. It’s like an orange rolling around behind you, screaming ‘Eat me, baby! Eat me!’ Doesn’t matter how good the orange looks, just doing that like that makes me not-want to eat it. Makes me want to kick it away.” She was surprised to find her hand by Ridwan, almost done with the raspberry, her fingertips thoughtfully running up and down his back. The expression on his face told her she didn’t need to stop.

“My girlfriend wouldn’t be pleased if I brought him home.” Mariah felt it would be rude not to contribute the conversation. “Or rather, she’d enjoy it too much. In the wrong way. I’d be out of a job and possibly in jail,” she added, grinning. “So many reasons not to, but yeah, begging and whining like that? Doesn’t help.”

Hana rested on her elbows, idly sliding the straw of her sports bottle up and down. “It’s like I can’t even have a normal conversation with him. I’ve tried, whether he’s big or small, but all he wants to talk about is being small. He wants me to hold him, and I used to at first, but I don’t anymore.”

“He used to ask me to let him ride on my shoulder.” Yasmin frowned, glancing at her shoulder. “Same thing. After a while it got annoying, and then he got demanding. I’m like, little dude, you’re in no position to demand anything from me. But I had to report him to Mr. Weeks.”

Hana nodded. “He asks me questions, but they’re never really questions: they’re framed to lead straight to the destination he already has in mind.” They wanted to know like what. “Like: hey Hana, what would you do if you found me on the street? Would you take me home or would you step on me? Or, what would you do if you found me in your shoe? Shit like that.”

Yasmin smirked. “And what would you do if you found him on the street?”

Hana snorted a brief laugh. “Him? I’d probably pick him up by the collar of his shirt, like a bag of dog doo, and look for the nearest trash receptacle.” Her coworkers laughed, picturing it. “How about you?”

“If I found him on the street … I don’t know. I guess I’d act like I didn’t notice. Maybe kick him aside into the grass, or the gutter.”

“You wouldn’t step on him?”

“Girl, if you knew how much these shoes cost.”

Hana leaned over to check them out as Yasmin showed one off, and she nodded. “Mariah?”

“I don’t like to think about it.” She drew a long breath. A pita chip snapped between her fingers. “I don’t like to think about being tiny, either, but I think about it a lot. The job makes me. Every time I assign an agent, or every time a client checks in, I can’t stop myself from picturing what’s been going on with them.”

“Yeah, you didn’t consent to shrinking in your contract. I mean, that’s cool, lots of people don’t, but can I ask why?” Hana tucked the stray lock behind her ear again.

“I guess I have a hard time trusting people. Like what happened to Casey. I don’t think a week of casual interviews would be enough for me to feel safe enough to put myself in someone else’s hands.”

“Not even Lauren’s?” Yasmin referred to Mariah’s partner.

Mariah flinched. “Definitely not. I mean, she’d never kill me, but she … has … a specific sense of humor,” she said guardedly. “I’d have to go into therapy for a year, probably.”

Yasmin’s smile spread across her face, and everyone knew what was coming next. “Who would you like to shrink and have for yourself for a night?” Hana needed to know if this was limited to ShrinkTeam or could be expanded to celebrities; Yasmin considered this but restricted it to coworkers. She saw the other women looking at her hand, now stroking a purring Ridwan with all four fingertips, and she jerked back abruptly. “That’s not my answer,” she said, setting off a round of giggles.

“I haven’t had enough soju to answer that question.” Hana paused for a long time, eyeing Ridwan. Then, quietly: “What’re you guys doing tonight?”

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Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash