The Sunshine Project Pt. 05

Chapter 12

Cora

This old car is a fucking death trap. The brakes hardly slow it down. I have to pump the gas pedal fifty fucking times to get it to start. Every bump in the road is like a roller coaster, bouncing around. At least the seatbelts work, otherwise I'd be in the roof, which is only canvas and metal framing so that's encouraging. Gus definitely did not maintain it very well at all. Maybe that's why he gave it to Jess instead of me to begin with. Those guns are worth more than this car and now that Jess and her friend are being bitches, I feel no remorse at the thought of taking them.

I park the damn thing in our driveway and slam the door when I get out. I'm surprised when nothing falls off of it. I have no clue why Glenda honestly thinks that she's getting anything out of this heap of metal and rubber. It's ugly and worn out. I don't even feel safe driving it, but until I buy something different it's all I have. The minute they put it in my name Glenda took her LYRIQ back.

Thankful I made it home alive, I head into the house. I don't see Glenda's car, but she might have parked in the garage. Dean's, however, is right next to mine. Which is odd because this time of day on a Saturday afternoon, he's usually showing homes. In fact, I thought he had an open house across town in the Bruns addition, but I could be wrong. Regardless, I'm going to have to face the music when I see them anyway, now or later. They'll be pissed at Jess's response, and that means I have to go back over there prepared to steal, or at least scope the place out so I know how to get in. She has a dog too, so that means even more risk.

I push the door open and instantly I'm met with sex sounds. Glenda is cool with walking in on me fucking Danny, but the idea of me walking in on my parents having sex doesn't appeal to me. It makes me cringe and plug my ears, racing for the steps.

"Oh shit, Dean..."

I barely hear the woman's voice. It's muffled, but I know well enough to know it's not Glenda's voice. I stop at the bottom step and listen again, this time with my hands clenched at my sides.

"Fuck, do it... Harder..." The voice is distinctly not my mother's, and I am livid.

I march around the corner into the kitchen where Dean has the bitch on the counter. His pants are around his ankles, and she is groping him with her legs wrapped around his hips. Her head is back, mouth agape, eyes closed. It's the ugliest sight I've seen in my life, and I've seen some disgusting porn before.

"What the actual fuck are you doing?" I don't even shy away from it.

Dean's body jolts, and he bends, yanking his pants up hastily as I move closer. I get an up close and personal view of his hairy ass as he does so, then a pussy shot of the skank he was fucking.

"Oh shit," she hisses, slapping her thighs together and sliding off the counter. "Oh God." It's not even his secretary. How many women is he fucking?

"Cora, get out," Dean snaps, his voice raised and booming loud.

"I won't. Who is that?" I glare at her. "Who are you?" I may not respect Glenda much, but she's still my mother. She doesn't deserve this.

"Oh God," she whimpers and fusses with her skirt. Her panties dangle around her left ankle but she doesn't seem to notice it as she scrambles around the kitchen for what I can only assume is her purse, which is draped over the back of a chair in the attached dining room.

"Cora, out!" Dean shouts, but I remain planted.

"Fuck you, Dean."

"I am your father. You will listen to me." He fiddles with zipping his fly around his boner, which is also disgusting that he can stay so hard for so long after being exposed to his daughter like that.

"You aren't my father. You're a cheap fucking whore. You're cheating on her? I knew it. I assumed it was the secretary. How many are there, Dean?"

"I'm gonna go," the woman whispers and dashes out the front door. I didn't see an extra car, so that probably means she's walking the walk of shame with panties around her ankle, but I don't give a fuck.

Dean spins around and watches her scamper to the door as he glares at me. "You were supposed to be at Jess's getting those guns."

"And you were supposed to be at an open house." I hold my ground, going toe to toe with the man who could make me an orphan at the drop of a hat. I hate him. I hate him more than anything at this moment, and I am going to tell Glenda exactly why he is trash, and she should take him to the curb. "What's wrong? Embarrassed your daughter caught you?"

His lips are drawn into a tight line and his nose twitches. "Where are the guns?"

"Where is your decency?"

"I'm not playing, Cora. Where are the guns?" He tucks his shirt in as he speaks, clearly not planning to address what just happened, and I hate him more.

"I'm telling Mom." It's the first time in months that I've used that word to describe her, and I say it in a very distinct manner, so he knows I'm not playing.

"What do you want?"

I have him in a noose now. He's going to hang himself.

"I want my money," I start. "And I want my car." I take a step toward him. "And I want you out of our lives. For good. And you pay the bills to make sure Mom can keep living the lifestyle she is comfortable with."

"Not going to happen. Don't you realize she knows?" He seems flustered now.

"So why are you nervous about me telling her? Huh? Because she knows you fuck your secretary but not other woman too?"

Dean rubs his forehead and sighs angrily. "You can keep the car, but the money is already spent." He shakes his head and grits his teeth.

"And who is going to fix the car? Because it's going to cost thousands of dollars to make it safe enough to actually drive daily." I cross my arms over my chest. I still plan to tell her, but I'm milking this for every fucking cent I can get.

"Fine. Steal the guns and sell them. I'll get the car fixed." He is panicking now. He deserves to panic. He's an asshole in the lowest regard. "Just don't tell her."

I thrust my hand forward and he shakes it. "And I want an allowance while at college of one thousand dollars a week."

"No." He drops my hand and shakes his head. "You're not getting a fucking cent. You tell her, and you're cut off. Got it? Nothing. I'll cancel your tuition, get the money back, and sell the car, and you'll be on the street with her."

"What? We have a deal. You shook on it."

He turns and walks toward the back door, and I follow on his heels. As he turns over his shoulder I nearly bump into him I'm so close. "Steal the guns. She can't have them. You do that, and we'll talk. But you know what? Just consider yourself cut off already because I don't see how you're getting those guns."

Dean walks out the back door and slams it in my face, and I stand there in shock. I knew they were evil people; I just didn't realize the level to which they would stoop to make a buck.

"Ahhhh!" I scream at the top of my lungs and feel like pounding the door. Instead I stomp up the steps and lock myself into my room. If I come out again before I have to be at OSU it will be a miracle.

Chapter 13

Allie

"Get the fuck off me, Shep!" The damn mutt keeps licking my face, and Jess has to pick him up and lock him in his kennel to get him off me. I sit up and wipe the slobber from my cheek. My hands are shaking, knees too. I sit in the pile of my clothing with my legs curled to my chest. It's freezing in here, and I'm naked. This is terrifying and humiliating.

Jess rushes back to me and drops to her knees again, covering her mouth. Tears stream down her cheeks, and she shakes her head in as much disbelief as me. "Oh God, Allie. I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened. What happened?"

We are both freaking out, and that isn't a good thing. I'm usually the one who snaps her out of it and gets her to a place where she can think coherently again, but my mind is a whir of scary thoughts. That gun shrank me. Why? And how do I get back to normal? We have scoured the internet for nearly ten days trying to figure out the damn gun to make Shep normal again. What if there are lasting side effects?

"Oh God...." She rocks back and forth over me.

"Jess, you're not helping!" I shiver and close my eyes, trying to focus. If I let the emotion overwhelm me, I'll pass out. My blood pressure has to be through the roof. "We have to stop freaking out and think about this logically."

"Oh God," she whimpers again, and all I can do is shiver. It's the shock more than the temperature--I know that. It's not good. In fact, that's scarier than the idea of being small, because a person can die of shock following a trauma. I take deep breaths to ground myself and blow them out slowly.

"Allie..." Jess is sobbing. "Oh God. I need to call someone. Who do I call?"

I shoot to my feet, suddenly sobered enough to think. "Are you fucking kidding me!" I pound my tiny fist onto her knee. "Look at me. Just fucking look at me, Jess. What do you think will happen when you call someone? The first thing they do is haul me in for all sorts of testing. I'll be violated in every sense of the word. You are not fucking calling anyone."

"Oh God, Allie. What are we going to do?" She flops her legs to the side, landing on her ass and leans against the cupboard. I'm not quite as tall as her shoulder as she sits there. "Oh shit..."

"Get ahold of yourself." I grab a strand of her hair and pull hard, and she whimpers and leans toward me.

"Hey, ow!" she yelps as I smack her cheek. I can't actually smack any sense into her because she's way bigger than me, but she gets the point. She holds her head where I pulled her hair as I release it, and she sits back up. "Why did you do that?"

"Because I'm shrunken, not dead. Now fucking calm down." I swipe at my eyes wiping away the tears. Jess has no ability to self-regulate her emotions. I shiver again, not as violently, but know if I don't warm myself up I'm going to head back into shock. The dark blue t-shirt I was wearing is wadded up next to me. I lift the hem of it up and wrap it around my shoulders and it helps. "I'm freezing. I need a blanket or something."

Jess grimaces and looks around. She whimpers again and crawls toward the stove where a hand towel hangs from the oven handle. It's perfect, albeit a little scratchy, and I use it like it's a giant comforter.

"What are we going to do?" She curls up, hugging her knees to her chest, and looks down at me for answers. This entire thing is fucked up. First Shep, now me. I have no clue what to do.

"We're obviously going to figure out a way to reverse this." The shivering is beginning to subside, but the way my mind races probably won't stop for days. Even if we manage to figure out how to reverse this.

Jess's eyes are filled with fear. I'm certain she sees the same thing in my eyes as I sink down beside her and lean against her hip. Shep has been tiny like this for more than a week. It doesn't seem to have affected him at all, except the amount of food he eats and the size of his poop.

"Oh God..." I moan.

"What?"

"Where will I poop?" I start laughing. Not just a small chuckle. I laugh a deep belly laugh that has me lying on my side crying and ready to piss myself. Jess looks down at me through tears and shakes her head. Her expression shows confusion, as if she can't see the humor in this. "Where will I poop?" I say again, laughing harder, and Jess titters. Then chuckles. Then bursts out laughing too.

She's crying and laughing with me now, and the entire atmosphere of the room changes. The shock seems to be lifting from both of us, which is good. We'll never figure this thing out if all we're doing is freaking out. I right myself and wipe the laughter tears from my face.

"Okay, well we have major things to discuss. That is a given." I sigh. "I need clothes of some kind. I need a way to do more research. Not sure if I can even lift my phone." I stand, leaving the hand towel lay and sort through the heavy clothing to find my phone. I shoved it in my pocket when that bitch Cora showed up. I can barely lift it as I squeeze it out of the jean shorts.

"Here," Jess says, helping me pull it loose. She lays it on the ground by me, and I lean over it, typing in the passcode.

"If we don't figure this out, I'm going to have to call in sick." I think of Beck and what she'll say when I don't show up. "This isn't good. If I lose my job, I can't pay rent or keep the lights on, and oh God, why am I even worried about this? If I can't get back to my normal size, I have no life anyway."

"Hey, we're going to fix it." Jess takes a deep breath and wipes her face clean. "I'm uncomfortable on the floor. Let's go up to the bar with my computer." Jess picks up my phone and stands and then grabs the towel. "Uh..." She peers down at me with a grimace. She's huge. So large I feel like she could step on me and crush me.

I roll my eyes at her and raise my arms like a toddler. There is no way I'm getting up there without help, and I'm not a dog who needs to stay off the counter. Jess reaches down and wraps her hand around my waist and squirms before letting go.

"What?"

"You're squishy." She shakes her hand, and her grimace deepens.

"Oh God, Jess." I chuckle at her.

"And you're naked."

"We fuck for fun. You like me naked." I shake my head at her. "Pick me up already."

Jess huffs and wraps her hand around my waist, hoisting me up to the counter. "Wow..."

"What?"

"You're heavier than I thought." She sets me next to her laptop, and I take the towel and wrap it around my body again.

"Makes sense... An atom weighs the same amount no matter its size is right?" I sit cross-legged and watch as she walks around the end of the peninsula and opens her laptop. From this position everything looks huge. I know it's all normal size, and I'm the one that changed, but I feel like I'm in a weird movie set or something. Fear of never being normal again starts to creep in as Jess pecks away at the keyboard.

"I don't even know what to search." Her eyes dart around the screen, and she uses the trackpad like a pro. I hate those things. I always touch them with my hand and mess stuff up. I guess my hands wouldn't have that problem now.

"Try Wikipedia." I scoot closer, so I can see the screen better, and she angles the computer toward me.

"That's just crowd-sourced knowledge. It's not actually factual." She types in a different search about shrink rays, which I know will be futile.

"Jess, you just use the references section to find articles on the topic. You don't actually use Wikipedia."

"I knew that," she says defensively and searches for the page.

"Yeah, type in shrinking."

Jess obediently does as I ask and a page pops up. After skimming the page she clicks on miniaturization, which is nothing more than a history of manufacturing and how products have gradually become smaller over time. It's frustrating, and she clicks back to the first page.

"There, resizing... Click that," I tell her, crawling closer. I sit so close to the computer I can feel the heat, and it helps me stay warmer. Jess scrolls down the page and clicks "resizing" but that page is even less helpful. They're talking about fiction writing.

"It says you can eat mushrooms or toadstools," she says, snickering. "Want me to go get some shrooms?"

"Fuck you," I snicker. "They're talking about Alice in Wonderland."

"There, shrink ray. Click that." I point at the highlighted blue word. When the page loads, I feel more dread sink into my gut. It's just more about shrink rays in fiction, except a quote by Asimov.

"This guy says it's impossible." Jess shakes her head. "He says you'll be no more intelligent than an ant."

"Does it look impossible?" I snap, sitting back on my feet. The towel drops, and I feel anger rising again. "Clearly, I'm not stupid."

"Ants are pretty smart, you know they--"

"Jess! Pay attention." My chest is heaving now.

"Okay, Al, please stay calm. Look, they said teleportation was impossible too--only science fiction--so they're wrong... And look here. There is something called a growth ray." She points at the screen, and I notice the words written in bolded font. She's right. It says the antidote in these sci-fi books and movies is actually a growth ray.

Jess and I both look at the guns at the same time. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she asks.

"Yep..."

There's only one way to know for sure. We have to fire every single one of those guns and find out which one is the growth ray. And we need to do it quickly. But first I need clothes. I can't sit here naked all the time.

"This is going to be scary." She turns back to me, and I have to restrain myself from being angry with her.

"Being ten inches tall is scary."

"You're way bigger than ten inches." Jess stands and walks down the hallway.

"Where are you going!"

"Hold on..." I hear her open a door, and Shep whines. She's gone into her laundry room for something. I hear more howling from the dog and some rustling around, and when she returns, she holds a tape measure in hand.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"I'm going to measure you." She shrugs and pulls the end of the tape measure out. "Don't you want to know how tall you are?"

"Just stand me by the doorway and make a mark on the wall." Folding my arms over my chest I stand and let her measure my height. It's humiliating. I'm not shy, especially not around Jess, but being naked when we aren't doing "naked person" things feels too vulnerable.

"Seventeen and a half inches tall. Wow... that's like a fourth my height." She lets the tape measure whip back into the case and sets it down.

"I'm sure that fact will be so helpful. Tiny is tiny."

She shuts her laptop and sits down again and sighs. "I'm trying my hardest to hold it together, okay? So stop taking this out on me." Her hurt expression makes me feel guilty.

"I'm sorry." I step toward her, wanting to take her hand and I realize I can't do that. Her hand is the size of Alaska compared to mine.

"If it's any consolation, you're still just as hot." Jess snickers, and I cover my tits.

"I need clothes." The only thing that even comes to mind is a trip to Walmart for some doll clothes. Jess isn't a seamstress, and I can't go around naked either. "You need to go buy me doll clothes. When I have something to wear, we can start testing the guns. But at least put me on the couch with my phone or something. I don't want to sit here on this counter the whole time you're gone."

Jess's head drops. "I am really sorry, Allie. I'm not going to stop until we figure out how to make you and Shep normal again."

"It's okay." I wrap the towel around myself tightly and walk to the edge of the counter, and Jess picks me up. "I know we'll figure it out. One of them is a growth ray. I know it. Okay?"

"How can you be suffering like this, but you're still encouraging me?" She stands and carries me and my phone to the couch and sets me down with it.

"Because you need me. And I'm your best friend, and that's what best friends do. Now, get my debit card out of my wallet. Pick me something cute... probably black. Okay?"

She smiles and walks away. The calm expression on my face is a façade. The moment she's out the door I'm curled into a ball crying. This isn't supposed to be happening. I'm not supposed to be shrunken. I have college courses to finish and work to do. Jess needs me to comfort her and help her grieve Gus. There's the issue with Glenda and the property bullshit, and not to mention Beck and the budding relationship.

All I can do is cry because it's all out of my control. How do I do it, Jess? How do I hold it all together?

Chapter 14

Jess

Allie isn't going to be happy with the selection Walmart had as far as clothing goes, but she's not getting a choice. When you're eighteen inches tall you just get what you get and you don't throw a fit. God, I have to get my mind off of this, or I'm going to have an accident. I can't believe my dog and my best friend are one fourth their normal size, sitting at my house, waiting on me to come home and fix them. Don't they know I'm literally a seven-year-old girl trapped in a twenty-three-year-old's body? I'm not cut out for this shit.