Little Brother in the Big City (Chapter 1)

            Now with some time to himself while Gabby was out and about, Jacob gazed in continuing amazement around his big sister’s new Midtown apartment – though ‘palatial penthouse’ might’ve been a more accurate term. The spacious tastefully-furnished space was astonishing to behold, especially as it claimed such a prime spot at the heart of civilization. Living upstate and successfully climbing the corporate ladder, Jacob had been doing quite well for himself lately, or so he thought, but by comparison to his well-off model influencer sibling, he practically felt like a pauper. Not that he was jealous of her prosperity. In fact, he felt nothing but proud and happy for Gabby, always knowing that her smarts, charm, confidence, and showstopping beauty would help carry her wherever she wanted to go in life. Having made such a name for herself online just by looking gorgeous in her idyllic day-to-day NYC life, the twenty-seven-year-old had developed a well-deserved ego, and came off to certain people as something of a bratty loudmouthed domineering princess.

            Of course, Jacob knew better than that. His sister may have put up a bold self-centered veneer as part of her brand, and had plenty of fans who loved seeing her revel in that internet limelight, but at her core, he knew she was still the same good-hearted girl who cared deeply for her loved ones – and perhaps Jacob most of all, since they’d been one another’s best friends through much of childhood. For that reason, he made sure to visit her as often as he could, and they always fell right back into that playful familial dynamic like when they were kids, no matter how illustrious her new abode or how high her follower count climbed. In a way, he knew Gabby better than probably anyone else in the world. Their bond was sacred, and he was certain it would never change.

            Just before she’d headed out for a couple hours to film a sponsored ad for her Instagram in Times Square, Gabby told Jacob to make himself at home. There was a cool café just down the block, she told him, and also some illicit “treats” she kept in a box on the coffee table that he was welcome to partake from. Being the less extravagant and rebellious of the two siblings, Jacob tended to keep to himself and avoided even the risk of trouble wherever he could. His plan was just to watch TV, snacking on chips and salsa until she returned. But after some friendly teasing from Gabby that he didn’t know how to have “fun,” he’d agreed to try out some of her stash.

Picking out a few of what he incorrectly presumed were just weed gummies, Jacob couldn’t quite understand what the fuss was all about, since he felt nothing after taking them. With a shrug, he decided a little more couldn’t hurt, just so Gabby’s supply didn’t go to waste, and so he swallowed a whole handful. This time he indeed felt something: a rush of warmth that curdled to a chill, racing through his veins and making his head swim. He rose from the couch, preparing to stagger to the bathroom so he could purge it out. If this was the intended high, Jacob wasn’t a fan. But in fact, this was only the buzzy precursor to the apparent cataclysmic side-effect of taking such a heavy overdose. The edges of his vision blurred, his body went numb, and then everything faded to crunchy blackness.

            When Jacob came to again, bleary but otherwise feeling fine, he immediately resolved not to touch Gabby’s drugs again. He was better off sticking to his instincts, even while visiting in his sister’s flashy world. And while he was glad to find that all that mystery substance hadn’t outright poisoned him dead, he was troubled by how unfamiliar his surroundings seemed, dark and crumpled like the inside of a massive collapsed tent, not to mention the fact that he was inexplicably naked. How long was he out, and where had he gone? Trying not to panic, Jacob trekked through the shadowy cloth cavern toward the only source of light he could see. After what felt like a quarter-mile hike, he emerged into the light, and discovered that he apparently hadn’t gone anywhere after all: he was still in Gabby’s apartment, and from the look of the clock, only minutes had elapsed since he fainted. Yet still Jacob was brought staggering to his knees in a state of eye-popping panic-drenched freakout.

            Because while he technically had only ended up a few steps away from where he’d begun, the whole world around him may as well have been terraformed into a breathtakingly vast almost-alien landscape. Intellectually, he recognized this environment as his sister’s same chic penthouse. Yet inside five minutes, and upon crawling out of what had turned out to be his own overgrown t-shirt, Jacob found that her cozy well-monied home had exponentially grown into a gallingly enormous ecosystem the size of NYC itself, with miles between skyscraping furniture and ceilings that should’ve been in the clouds. Or more accurately, as he slowly realized with a creeping shock of unreal dread, the apartment itself hadn’t gotten any bigger: he’d just gotten smaller. Much smaller. So small that Jacob had to doubt his body would even register on a yardstick. At most, he stood a single millimeter high: not much larger than a grain of coarse sand.

            Overwhelmed beyond measure, still quaking in speechless astonishment on his knees, Jacob feebly tried in vain to convince himself that this was all just a drug trip that had gone too far. He tried pinching himself, slapping his face, and taking deep breaths until he nearly passed out. Yet this was no hallucination or bad dream. Jacob felt perfectly coherent and in-touch with his bodily perceptions, feeling no sign that anything had gone wrong, except for the gut-wrenching mind-blowing calamity of his ultra-miniaturized stature. Even now, out of desperation that he might soon groggily awaken with everything returned back to normal, he fiercely denied what his senses were telling him. This wasn’t happening, Jacob repeatedly vowed, as he hunkered in the fluffy white jungle of plush carpet sprigs the size of trees all around him. It couldn’t. There was no goddamn way. It was impossible. And so, afraid and verging on frenzy as he felt, Jacob held tight, making no sounds or sudden moves. He just had to sit still and wait, he decided, until whatever-this-was wore off and reality started making sense again.

            Unfortunately, staying put wasn’t going to remain an option for long. Jacob was startled by a familiar yet deafening cacophony, as the door of Gabby’s apartment creaked open, following the jangle of her keys scraping the lock outside. She was back. Even from what felt like many miles away, just the simple view of that plain apartment door casually swinging open was enough to leave Jacob in blanched awe, since he was watching by far the largest singular object he’d ever seen launch into motion. Though as momentous an effect as that sight had on him, it was still nothing compared to the inevitable topper as his big sister returned home. And indeed “big” had never been a more correct term for Gabby, because even from afar, her sheer comparative scope left Jacob reeling with vertigo like he’d tried staring down at the globe from up in the stratosphere. It was tough for him to estimate while sprawled on the floor small as a dropped food crumb with his blithely unaware sibling looming overhead like some mythic titaness descended from the heavens, but he guessed that relative to his current millimeter size, she had to be well over ten thousand feet tall – like the Empire State Building, stacked on top of itself seven times.

Much like Jacob before he’d taken that size-changing dosage, in all other ways except her new godlike enormity, Gabby still appeared like her normal extraordinarily-pretty self. That ravishing raven-black hair cascaded stylishly around her shoulders; those intoxicating golden-hazel eyes glowed, even from afar; her pouty full pink lips were spread in a seemingly never-ending smile; her tattoos and piercings were on prominent display, adding artsy punk flair to her classic allure. As always, her supple well-endowed figure was perfectly complimented by her choice of a midriff-bearing scarlet top, thigh-hugging jean shorts, and her favorite chunky-treaded obsidian-hued leather Reign boots. Most strangers, when passing Gabby on the street, were automatically hypnotized by her natural stunning looks and the aura of supreme confidence she constantly exuded. Jacob’s focus was now similarly drawn in as his jaw-dropping giantess of a sibling marched forth into her apartment with earthquaking strides: not because he was magnetized by his own sister’s beauty, of course, but because his shrinkage had turned her into an absolute force of nature. And as much as he still loved her, he’d also never been more terrified of anything in his life than Gabby right now.

“Oh my God, THAT could have definitely gone better! People just would not stop walking into the shot to try and talk to me. What can I say, guess I’m more popular than I thought. But, hey, we still got it in the end! They’re seriously going to looooooove these shots, once I post ‘em tonight,” Gabby triumphantly sighed, shaking her head, but still beaming all the same as she lumbered across the living room. Her voice, usually loud to begin with, roiled like thunder in her shrunken brother’s eardrums. Each powerful lunge forth she took seemed to cover a whole half mile, and every subsequent impact between those thick-heeled black boots and the floor set off a seismic chain reaction that vibrated all the way to Jacob so far away, though the distance between them was rapidly closing now.

THWOOOOOMP! THWOOOOOMP! THWOOOOOOMP!