Chapter 1: The Kiss and the Shrink
The neon sign of the Big Sky Diner buzzed and flickered, casting a sickly pink glow across the cracked asphalt. Tyler killed the engine of his green Ford Torino, and the sudden silence was louder than the rumble had been. His palms were slick on the steering wheel.
“This is it?” Daniel asked, his voice soft in the dark.
“It’s quiet,” Tyler managed, his own voice tight. He stared straight ahead at the lone oak tree, its branches like claws against the indigo sky. Anywhere public was a risk. A quiet park on the edge of town at nearly midnight felt like the only option.
He could feel Daniel looking at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just… nobody ever sees this car with anyone else in it.”
A warm hand covered his on the gearshift. “It’s just me.”
Tyler finally turned his head. The ambient glow from the diner caught the gentle planes of Daniel’s face, his sandy hair, the quiet concern in his hazel eyes. He was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made Tyler’s chest ache with a confusing mix of longing and terror. They’d talked for two hours at the bar, a miraculous, stumbling conversation that hadn’t ended in disaster. Daniel was from two towns over, visiting a cousin. He was passing through. That somehow made it safer.
The car felt impossibly small, the bench seat a vast continent suddenly narrowed to a treacherous inch of space between them. The air grew thick, humming with the distant jukebox melody and something else, something electric and terrifying.
Tyler’s heart was a frantic bird against his ribs. He’d never done this. All the secret wants, the stolen glances at Star Trek where he’d imagine a different kind of boldness, the silent rehearsals in the mirror—none of it prepared him for the dizzying reality of another person so close.
He leaned in. It was an awkward, halting motion, all angles and hesitation.
Daniel met him halfway.
The kiss was soft. Chaste, at first. Just a press of lips, dry and tentative. Then Daniel’s hand came up, cupping the side of Tyler’s neck, his thumb stroking just below his ear. A shockwave of sensation tore through Tyler, dissolving the tension in his shoulders, melting the cold fear in his gut. He sighed into it, his own hand fluttering up to rest on Daniel’s chest, feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart. It was sweet, and desperate, and perfect. For ten seconds, the world was just warm breath and the scent of Daniel’s soap and the incredible, solid reality of him.
A white beam of light slashed through the fogged windshield, blazing directly into Tyler’s eyes.
He jerked back, blinking away blazing afterimages. The horn of the Torino let out a short, startled bleat as his elbow hit it.
“Well, well. What do we have here? A couple of fairies looking for a garden?”
The voice was a familiar, grating baritone. Coach Miller.
Panic, cold and absolute, drenched Tyler in an instant. He fumbled for the ignition key.
Too late.
The driver’s side door was wrenched open. A meaty hand closed around the front of Tyler’s jacket and hauled him out onto the asphalt. He stumbled, his shoes scraping gravel. The world tilted.
“Get the other one,” Miller snapped.
Two other shapes—Ronnie and a guy they called Hutch—yanked open the passenger door. Daniel emerged, hands raised. “Hey, take it easy. We’re just talking.”
“Looked like more than talking,” Ronnie giggled, his weaselly face lit with cruel delight.
Miller shoved Tyler hard against the cool sheet metal of the Torino. The door handle dug into his spine. The coach’s face, broad and perpetually flushed, was inches from his own. He reeked of cheap beer and cheaper aftershave.
“Yamato. I knew there was something off about you. Quiet little guy. Never looked at the cheerleaders.” Miller’s lip curled. “You’re a disgrace. Your father know what you do in parked cars?”
“Please,” Tyler whispered, the word barely audible. Shame burned his cheeks hotter than any slap. Daniel was seeing this. The one good thing was curdling into his worst nightmare.
“Please what?” Miller mocked. He drew his fist back, a thick, powerful thing that had thrown a thousand spirals. “Need me to knock some sense into you?”
This was it. The beating he’d always feared. The exposure. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact, a silent scream trapped in his throat.
It never came.
Instead, a sharp, collective gasp cut the night air.
Tyler’s eyes flew open.
Miller was staggering back, his raised fist falling. His other hand clutched at the center of his chest. His face, illuminated by the headlights they’d left on, was a mask of pure, uncomprehending agony. Not the pain of a punch, but something deep, something internal.
“Coach?” Ronnie’s nervous giggle died. He too stumbled, grabbing his own chest. “What’s… what’s happening? It hurts…”
Hutch made a wet, gurgling sound and dropped to his knees.
A strange, high-pitched whine filled the air, a sound that seemed to vibrate in Tyler’s molars. The three bulky figures began to… waver. Like a film losing focus.
They were shrinking.
It wasn’t a slow melt. It was a violent, rapid compression. Their bodies contorted, bones creaking audibly, clothes collapsing and dissolving with them in a bizarre, seamless transition. Their screams ratcheted up in pitch as they diminished, from roars of pain to shrill, mouse-like squeals.
In less than five seconds, it was over.
Three six-inch-tall figures lay twitching on the asphalt amidst small piles of dust that might have been their discarded size. Their tiny clothes—perfectly tailored miniatures of their jeans and jackets—were intact. Coach Miller, now a barrel-chested homunculus, rolled onto his side, moaning. Ronnie was curled in a fetal position, sobbing. Hutch lay still, unconscious.
The world was utterly silent save for the distant jukebox.
Tyler stared, his mind white, static, empty. His breath sawed in and out of his lungs.
“Tyler.”
Daniel’s voice. He was standing perfectly still by the open passenger door, his face pale, his eyes wide with a horror that wasn’t fear of the bullies. He was looking at Tyler.
“What… what did you do?”
“I didn’t…” Tyler’s voice cracked. He looked from the shrunken men to his own hands, turning them over as if they might hold an answer. They were just his hands. Small. Useless. “I didn’t do anything.”
But he had felt it. In that moment of Miller’s threat, of his own absolute terror and fury, something in him had… reached. A silent, instinctual lash of self-preservation from a place he never knew existed.
He had to move. Someone could drive by.
Acting on a numb, surreal instinct, he knelt. He peeled off his lightweight jacket. With trembling fingers, he scooped up the tiny, groaning form of Coach Miller. The man weighed almost nothing, less than a hamster. His tiny hands pushed weakly at Tyler’s thumb. Tyler dumped him into the right pocket of his jacket. He did the same with the weeping Ronnie, placing him in the left pocket. Finally, he picked up the unconscious Hutch and slid him into the breast pocket. The tiny bodies were warm, disturbingly real.
He stood, the jacket now heavy with its impossible burden. He felt their slight movements against his hip.
Daniel hadn’t moved. He was just staring.
Daniel was astonished. This was incredible! They were now safe from the bullies! They had the opportunity to turn the tables on these perks!
The silence stretched, thin and brittle. The only sounds were the distant, tinny music and a faint, high-pitched whimpering from Tyler’s left jacket pocket.
Daniel’s question hung in the air, toxic and unavoidable. What did you do?
Tyler looked from his own hands to Daniel’s shocked face, then down to the crumpled jacket in his arms. He could feel the slight, squirming weight. "I don’t know," he said, and it was the truth. It was a prayer. "They just… did that."
"They didn’t just do that, Tyler." Daniel’s voice was low, urgent. He took a careful step forward, as if approaching a strange animal. "He was about to hit you. You looked at him. And then…" He gestured vaguely at the empty asphalt where three full-grown men had been standing seconds before.
A wild, hysterical thought burst in Tyler’s mind. He shoved it down. It was impossible. He was Tyler Yamato, five-foot-two, 108 pounds. He got pushed into lockers. He memorized Klingon phrases for fun. He didn’t do… this.
But the proof was wriggling in his pockets.
"We have to go," Daniel said, the practical part of him overtaking the shock. "Now. Before anyone else comes."
Tyler nodded, a jerky, mechanical motion. He slid back into the driver’s seat, carefully laying the bundled jacket on his lap. Daniel got in and slammed his door. The sound was enormously loud.
The Torino’s engine roared to life. Tyler reversed so fast the tires squealed, then aimed the car toward the darker, emptier roads on the outskirts of town. He drove without thinking, guided by pure instinct away from streetlights and windows.
After ten minutes of silence, broken only by the thrum of the engine, Daniel spoke. "You should pull over."
"Where? Someone will see—"
"Out here. No one’s here." Daniel’s voice was calmer now, analytical. "We have to look. We have to… understand."
Tyler saw a gravel turnout leading into a patch of scrub pine. He guided the car onto it, the tires crunching, and killed the lights and engine. Darkness enveloped them, deep and quiet.
The whimpering from the jacket was clearer now.
With shaking fingers, Tyler unfolded the jacket on the bench seat between them. He reached slowly into the right pocket.
His fingers closed around something that thrashed. He pulled his hand out, his heart hammering against his ribs.
In the dim green glow of the dashboard lights, Coach Miller stood on his palm, six inches of perfect, furious detail. His tiny face was purple with rage. He shook a minuscule fist, his voice a barely audible buzz.
"...kill you... freak... put me down..."
Tyler’s breath caught. It was real. Undeniably, impossibly real. He felt a dizzying rush of power, immediately followed by a wave of nausea.
Daniel leaned close, his hazel eyes wide. "Holy hell."
"He’s talking," Tyler whispered.
"Of course he’s talking! He’s just small!" Daniel let out a short, disbelieving laugh. "His clothes… look at the stitching on his jacket. It’s all there."
Miller took a running start and threw himself at the wall of Tyler’s thumb, bouncing off harmlessly. The impact was a tiny, pathetic tickle.
"Check the others," Daniel said, his curiosity overriding his horror.
Tyler reached into the left pocket. Ronnie was sitting with his head in his hands, his shoulders shuddering with silent sobs. He looked up as Tyler lifted him out, his weaselly face streaked with microscopic tears.
"Please," Ronnie’s tiny voice squeaked. "Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. Make me big again. Please."
The breast pocket held Hutch, still unconscious, his tiny chest rising and falling in slow, even breaths.
Tyler placed Ronnie next to the raging Miller on his open palm. The two tiny men stared at each other, then back up at the giant faces of their captors.
"You’re monsters," Miller buzzed.
"You tried to beat me up for kissing someone," Tyler said, and hearing his own voice, steady and cold, surprised him.
"And this is better?" Miller screamed, his arms spread wide.
Tyler didn’t have an answer. He looked at Daniel, a silent plea for help.
Daniel’s gaze was fixed on the tiny figures. A strange, focused intensity had replaced his initial shock. "Can you… control it?" he asked quietly.
"I don’t even know what it is."
"You stopped them. You made them small. Can you change them back?"
The question slammed into Tyler. He hadn’t even considered it. The power—if it was a power—felt like a sneeze. A violent, involuntary reaction. Could you un-sneeze?
He focused on the squirming Miller. He concentrated with every fiber of his being, wishing, wanting, willing him to be big again. To be normal. To make this nightmare stop.
Nothing happened. Miller continued to shout soundless curses.
"I don’t think so," Tyler said, despair creeping into his voice.
"Okay," Daniel said, thinking aloud. "Okay. What about something else? Is it only people? Can you… aim it?"
TYLER EXPERIMENTS.
The words formed in his mind, a dark and irresistible command. He had to know. The not-knowing was worse than the fear.
He looked around the dark car. His gaze fell on a empty soda bottle on the floor by Daniel’s feet. A glass bottle.
"Hand me that," he said.
Daniel followed his look, understood, and passed it over. It was small, about six inches tall itself.
Tyler held it in his left hand. He stared at it. He focused on the same feeling he’d had in the parking lot—that lash of defensive terror, the pure, focused desire for a threat to be gone, to be rendered harmless. He channeled that intent at the inanimate bottle.
A faint tremor passed through his fingers. The glass seemed to shiver for a split-second. But it remained a bottle.
"Maybe only living things," Daniel murmured.
Tyler’s eyes then drifted to a fat June bug that had been buzzing against the windshield. It clung to the glass, dormant. Without a word, he reached over, carefully captured it, and held it pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Its legs paddled the air.
He focused again. That sharp, protective want. But this time, not for himself. A different wish: Be small.
The high-pitched whine, fainter than before, vibrated in the air for a fraction of a second.
The June bug vanished from his fingers.
A second later, a spec of dust, a near-microscopic black dot, tumbled through the beam of the dashboard light and landed on the seat.
Daniel exhaled sharply. "You can aim it. And you can choose the target."
A new, more disturbing realization dawned on Tyler. He looked from the spec that was once a bug to the six-inch-tall men on his palm. "I didn’t choose that time. With them. It just… happened. It was like a reflex."
"So it’s automatic when you’re scared? Or threatened?" Daniel’s mind was racing, putting pieces together. "But you can also do it on purpose. If you concentrate."
On Tyler’s hand, Miller had stopped yelling. He and Ronnie were staring, listening, their tiny faces etched with a new kind of dread. They had understood the experiment.
Tyler looked at the terror in their minuscule eyes. He felt the weight of the power in his mind, a strange new muscle he’d never known he had. It was terrifying.
It was also, a dark part of him whispered, the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him.
He carefully deposited Miller and Ronnie back into his jacket pocket, then scooped up the unconscious Hutch. He folded the jacket gently, sealing them in soft, dark cloth.
"Now what?" Daniel asked. The question wasn’t about the bullies. It was about them. About this.
Tyler looked at him, really looked at him, in the quiet dark of the car. The boy he’d kissed. The only witness to the impossible. He wasn’t running. He was here, trying to solve the puzzle.
"I don’t know," Tyler said again. But for the first time, the words weren’t filled with sheer panic. They were filled with a dreadful, burgeoning curiosity. He started the car. "But I need to get them somewhere safe. And then… we need to figure out exactly what this is."
The Torino’s headlights cut a weak path through the deeper darkness of the old service road. Tyler drove on autopilot, one hand on the wheel, the other resting protectively over the folded jacket on the seat. The warm, squirming weight beneath the denim was a constant, horrifying reminder.
Daniel had been quiet for miles. Finally, he spoke, his voice cutting through the static of the radio Tyler hadn’t realized was on. “Your place?”
“My dad’s place,” Tyler corrected, the words bitter. “He’s on the night shift. Won’t be home ‘til seven.”
“Good.”
It wasn’t good. It just was. The silence returned, thicker now, filled with the unsaid things screaming in Tyler’s head. Freak. Monster. What are you?
He turned into the driveway of a small, box-like house, its white paint peeling under the moon. The garage was detached, a dark squat shape at the end of the drive. He killed the engine and the lights, plunging them into a silence that felt heavy and watchful.
“Garage,” he said, grabbing the jacket.
Inside, the air smelled of oil and cut grass. Tyler flicked a switch, and a single bare bulb buzzed to life, casting long, jumping shadows from the lawnmower and rusting tools. He cleared a space on a rough workbench, scattering nails and a dried-out paintbrush.
With a reverence that felt absurd, he unfolded the jacket.
The three tiny men lay in the fabric folds. Hutch was stirring now, sitting up and clutching his head. Miller was on his feet, pacing a tight, furious circle on the denim. Ronnie had backed himself into a seam, just watching.
“Alright,” Tyler said, more to himself than to Daniel. His heart was doing that frantic bird thing again. “We figure this out.”
“How?” Daniel asked. He leaned against the workbench, keeping his distance from the jacket.
“I start small. Literally.” Tyler’s eyes scanned the cluttered garage. A fat garden spider had built a web in the corner of a window. He found an empty mason jar, scooped the spider inside, and screwed on the lid. It was a ugly thing, hairy and purposeful as it scrambled against the glass.
He set the jar on the bench next to the jacket. Miller stopped pacing to stare.
“What are you doing, Yamato?” The tiny voice was sharp with disdain, but a new thread of fear ran beneath it.
Tyler ignored him. He focused on the spider. Not a threat. Not really. Just a subject. He recalled the feeling from the parking lot—that white-hot surge of no, stop, be gone—and tried to replicate it, directing the thought at the jar.
Nothing.
The spider continued its frantic climbing.
“It’s not working,” Daniel observed.
“I know.” Tyler gritted his teeth. He tried again, concentrating until a headache bloomed behind his eyes. The spider remained resolutely spider-sized.
“Maybe you have to be scared,” Daniel suggested quietly. “Or angry. It happened when Miller was about to hit you. It was an emotional reaction, not an intellectual one.”
Tyler looked at Miller. The tiny coach sneered up at him. “That’s right, you little queer. You need to be scared to do your trick. Pathetic.”
A hot needle of anger pricked Tyler’s gut. The shame of the parking lot, the terror, the years of hiding—it all condensed into a single, bright point of fury aimed at that smug, six-inch face. His hand clenched at his side.
A familiar, high-pitched whine filled the garage, sharp and painful in their ears.
But it wasn’t coming from Miller.
On the workbench, the mason jar was now empty. Where the spider had been, a grain-of-sand-sized speck of black dust drifted down to settle on the bottom of the glass.
Tyler and Daniel stared.
“You were angry at Miller,” Daniel said slowly, piecing it together. “But you were looking at the spider. Your anger… it went there.”
So it was emotional. But it could be aimed. His focus was the conduit, but his emotion was the trigger.
“Alright,” Tyler breathed. This was a data point. Control was possible. He turned his attention to a dry oak leaf that had blown into the corner of the garage. He concentrated on it, and then deliberately called up the memory of Ronnie’s nervous giggle as the car door opened. The feeling of exposure. The violation.
The leaf vanished. A microscopic brown flake twirled in the air where it had been.
“Fascinating,” Daniel whispered, the scientist in him overtaking the fear.
“It’s not fascinating,” Tyler snapped, a sudden tremble in his hands. “It’s horrifying. I just… erased a leaf. Because I thought about being mad.”
“You didn’t erase it. You shrank it. To the point it’s practically nothing.” Daniel stepped closer, his eyes alight. “What’s the limit? How small can something go?”
The question hung in the oily air. Tyler looked from the jar to the leaf-dust to the three tiny, living men on his jacket. A dark, terrible curiosity uncoiled within him, cold and slick.
He needed a non-living test. Something with clear markers.
His eyes landed on a leftover segment of his father’s two-by-four, about a foot long. He picked it up. He focused on a single, specific knot in the wood grain. He didn’t summon a grand emotion. Instead, he conjured a simple, powerful desire: Make this knot smaller.
The whine was softer this time, a brief dental vibration.
The knot, a dark, eye-shaped whorl about an inch across, was now the size of a pinprick. The board itself was unchanged, but that one specific feature had been minimized.
“Precision,” Daniel murmured, astonished. “You can target a single part of something.”
A new idea, cold and clinical, formed in Tyler’s mind. What about enlargement? The opposite vector? If the power was about altering scale, could it go both ways?
He reached for a single, discarded nail on the bench. A common three-inch nail. He held it in his palm. He focused on it, and instead of fear or anger, he tried to summon a sense of need, of expansion. He wanted it to be bigger. To be more.
Nothing. The nail lay inert.
He tried again, pouring a desperate want into the thought. The nail remained stubbornly, unchangeably normal.
“Can’t do it,” he reported, a strange disappointment mixing with his relief. “Only one direction. Only smaller.”
A tiny, choked sound came from the jacket. Ronnie was crying again, his whole body shuddering. Miller had gone very still, his bravado finally cracking as he witnessed the scope of the power that had caught him. He wasn’t just dealing with a victim anymore. He was a specimen.
Tyler looked at them, then at his own hands. The trembling was worse now. The adrenaline was bleeding away, leaving a cavernous hollow inside him. He had done this. He had this in him. A tool of absolute, irreversible diminishment. A single strong emotion could turn a man into a trinket.
The enormity of it crashed down. He leaned back against the workbench, feeling dizzy.
“I’m a monster,” he said, the words barely audible.
“You’re a guy who didn’t want to get his teeth knocked out,” Daniel said. There was no comfort in his tone, just fact. “They shrank. They’re alive. You didn’t kill them.”
“But I could. Without even meaning to. If I got scared by a dog, or surprised by a cop….” The thought made his stomach lurch. He looked at Daniel, true fear in his eyes. “You should go. Get far away from me.”
Daniel didn’t move. He just looked at Tyler, then down at the shrunken men, his expression unreadable. “And leave you with this? Alone?”
“It’s my problem.”
“I was in the car,” Daniel said softly. “I kissed you. That makes it our problem.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We have to understand the rules. The real rules. Is it permanent? Does it wear off? What’s the energy cost? You look pale.”
Tyler felt pale. Drained. A deep fatigue was settling into his bones, the kind that follows a high fever. Using the power had a cost. It was pulling from somewhere inside him.
He needed to sit. He slid down the side of the workbench to sit on the concrete floor, his back against the wood. The jacket lay beside him. Daniel slid down to sit next to him, not touching, but present. The bare bulb above them hummed.
“What now?” Tyler asked the quiet garage.
“Now,” Daniel said, staring at the opposite wall, “we figure out what to do with them.” He nodded toward the jacket. “And you figure out how to live with this. Without letting it break you.”
Tyler closed his eyes. The images flashed: Miller’s fist, the shrinking, the speck of spider-dust. A power born from fear and self-loathing. A cage of his own making.
He felt a strange, specific warmth against his chest. He’d barely noticed it before, a subtle heat seeping through his t-shirt. He frowned, fumbling at his neckline.
His fingers closed around a thin metal chain. He pulled it out. Hanging from it was a simple, polished disc of a dark, non-reflective metal. His grandfather’s amulet. A trinket he’d worn since the old man died, a piece of his mother’s side he never thought much about. It was usually cool to the touch.
Now, it throbbed with a gentle, persistent heat.
He held it out on his palm, staring. The metal seemed to drink the light from the bulb above.
Daniel looked over. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler whispered. But for the first time since the parking lot, the unknown didn’t feel like sheer terror. It felt like a clue. The warmth pulsed in time with his heartbeat, a silent, rhythmic confirmation that nothing would ever be the same.
Tyler stared at the amulet, its surface giving off no visible glow—just a faint, sickly green hue in the garage’s harsh light, as if it were absorbing something from the air itself.
Daniel’s voice cut through the silence. “That’s not normal.” His hazel eyes flicked from the amulet to Tyler’s face, then down to the jacket where three tiny men shifted inside, restless and terrified.
Tyler swallowed hard, then tucked the amulet back under his shirt. “I think it’s connected.” His fingers lingered on the chain. The heat was strangely comforting—like a small, reckless promise that everything might not be lost.
“Connected to what?