Careful What You Wish For (Chapter 28)

            Because Cody’s guard was down, just accepting the daily torture and truly believing that Kayla couldn’t imagine any new ways to screw with him after a full year of sadistic toying, it was easier than ever for her to spring this astonishing turnabout. In the early months of his captivity, he’d made several pitiful attempts to escape her and get the attention of his girlfriend, who was so often in the same house. Yet as close as rescue felt by that logic, the fact that Kayla could transform him into any disguised object at will, and the fact that her wish power granted her total omnipotence over Cody, meant that even after what felt like a few close calls, he had zero chance of salvation from Ashley unless his dark-hearted slave-driver chose on her own to reveal his shrunken malleable fetish-accursed existence to her sister. Which was exactly what happened today, utterly out of the blue.

            “Hey! So, I’ve got some good news, and some bad news,” Kayla said suddenly to Ashley, while casually clenching her favorite semi-human plaything down in her pocket like a stress ball.

            “What is it?”

            “The good news is, I found Cody.”

            “You found… wait, what?” Ashley croaked, neither in joy nor disbelief, since the sheer absurdity of what Kayla had just simply locked up her brain. It would’ve been just as shocking to have said Elvis was found alive.

Cody heard this, while Kayla’s fist ruthlessly squeezed his pliable miniature body like ever-reforming clay, but didn’t think anything of it. Yes, it was strange that she would make such an insane statement to Ashley, but he also wasn’t fooled for an instant into thinking she would actually reveal him. Yet that was exactly what happened when Kayla’s hand whipped out of her pocket, still gripping the foamy amorphous stress-ball blob of shrunken humanity featuring what was quite obviously Cody’s depressed face poking out between her fingers. For the first time in a year, albeit in unexpected circumstances, his gaze met Ashley’s, and she actually recognized him. The psychological explosion of thrill and denial that Cody felt from this reunion was so overwhelming that he could only sputter and burst into tears, which must have looked ridiculous coming from a misshapen face-decorated lump held in his owner’s fist, but it was all he could manage.

            Ashley, in contrast, looked appropriately surprised and unnerved by this surreal revelation that Kayla had just pulled off like a magic trick, but otherwise didn’t react with either a shout or a sob. She must have been in shock, Cody decided, like people who wandered quietly out of deadly car crashes like they’d forgotten to close the refrigerator door. Regardless of whether Kayla meant all this as a cruel joke or not, though, he was immediately vindicated by the knowledge that she couldn’t take it back. She could basically rewrite his reality for her own amusement, but Cody alone was under her control: she couldn’t erase her sister’s memories or make her believe whatever she wanted. The secret was out now, officially. Breathless, Cody wasn’t sure whether he should start by telling Ashley he loved her or by telling Kayla to go walk into traffic.

            “The bad news is, this is what he wants,” Kayla finished at last, having given Cody and his girlfriend plenty of time to silently stare at one another in shell-shocked amazement.

            “I… who… h-how did…” Ashley hazily stuttered. She reached out with a look of peculiar uncertainty and even revulsion in her eyes, then jabbed her thumb against Cody’s mushy stress-ball body. Even such forceful contact was comforting to him, since it came from the woman he’d been yearning so badly to return to all year, but Cody was unsettled by the emotional distance in his beloved’s expression. Like she was being haunted by a ghost, rather than brought back together with her assumed-dead soulmate.

            “I know, it’s a lot to take in. But honestly, for how weird this whole situation is, and believe me when I say it’s WEIRD with a capital W, it probably wouldn’t have been any easier for you if I’d tried to explain it first. You might not have believed me, anyway. Heck, I wouldn’t have believed me. Seeing it for yourself is way better,” Kayla calmly replied. She opened her palm, willed Cody to transform, and suddenly he was three inches tall, back in a fragile anatomically-ordinary human form upon her cupped hand. “Like that.”

            “Wow,” Ashley uttered, still bizarrely stoic, considering the bombshell her sister had just dropped. She stared curiously at the naked instantly-transformed shape of her puny sprawled boyfriend. “Just… tell me what happened, Kayla.”

            “Better buckle up, then,” her sibling chuckled, and then proceeded to tell a callously abbreviated version of the events which had led to a miniscule Cody crouching in her hand and ready to be made into anything she wished. Much to the shrinker’s blood-curdling horror, however, his owner carefully omitted from the story the true extent of her power over Cody to make him say or do whatever she wanted, in addition to taking any form she wished. Kayla also conveniently left out the crucial part of the tale where, shortly after making his idiotic wish thanks to his masochistic fetish, Cody had deeply regretted his choices and desperately wanted to back out of the mind-warping body-twisting torture fest life at the gargantuan feet of his least-favorite person on Earth had turned out to be. Instead, she described every disturbing event as something totally consensual, with Cody’s dark fantasies being indulged by Kayla in secret so as not to hurt Ashley’s feelings. And while, throughout this long recounting, the little victim tried to scream that his captor was lying, she’d invisibly willed him to stay obediently stock-still in her palm with a straight somewhat-guilty look on his face.

            “You’re right. That’s… a lot,” Ashley said when her sister finished speaking, remarkably contented even now. “All of that stuff is, well, insane. And I wouldn’t believe it was possible if I couldn’t actually see it happening right here, so you’re right about that part too. But, as much as I hate to say it, there is one thing that isn’t hard for me to believe.”

            “And what’s that?” Kayla asked with a grin.

            “…he always did have a thing for you.”

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THE END (but expect to see alt-universe variations on these characters return)