Beginning Untitled Babysitting Story (Yes That is the Real Name, Deal With it) chapter 1 by 2kfsk

Riiing, riiing!

 

Click!

 

“Yeah, what’s up?” A very conspicuous crunching sound.

 

“Hi, yes, hi, Jason… I was—”

 

PPFFTT. Pwah, pwah.

 

“Mrs. Jones! Hi—I, uh, I mean, good evening! How has the opera been?”

 

“Ahem…” A nervous chuckle. “Long,” she said, with little irony. “I just wanted to check in, see how you’re doing. Franky isn’t giving you any trouble now, is she?”

 

Jason shook his head. “Oh, no, none at all. She’s just an angel, no trouble here. Well behaved, patient, funny? We’re having a great time here, Mrs. Jones.”

 

A muted sigh of relief. “I’m glad. Is she nearby? I’d love to hear her voice for a bit.”

 

At this, Jason blanched. He looked down at the bowl of cereal in his lap, along with the half-inch figure doing backflips in the milk amidst the Cheerios. Jason glanced from it, back to his phone, and then to the shrink ray sinking between the couch cushions, and he wondered how this was going to work.

 

“Ahm… one sec.” Jason muted the call, and he addressed his bowl of cereal. “Dude. It’s your mom.”

 

“Was that my mom?” Franky called up, oblivious. Jason rolled his eyes, face massive up above the pool of cold milk, and nodded.

 

“Great!” Franky cheered. “Lemme talk to her!” She performed the breaststroke, pushing aside a soggy Honey Nut Cheerio as she neared the gently sloping wall of the bowl, planting her hands on the surface and trying in vain to pull herself to higher ground. “A little help?”

 

Jason rolled his eyes again, and he dipped his spoon underneath Franky as her bare legs and feet continued to tread milk, pushing her from beneath up along the wall of the bowl. The sound of metal on ceramic scraped Jason’s ears, but as Franky was lifted up to the rim of the vessel she couldn’t stop giggling. The preteen girl straddled it, and Jason would’ve been treated to quite the view of her rear in her one piece bathing suit had she been any close to normal sized. As it was, Franky had no indication of precisely how alluring her pose would’ve been had her body been anywhere close to mature enough to match—all she cared about was avoiding falling down either edge. Too far to the right and she’d be sliding back into the milk—which wouldn’t have been an entirely bad thing. The milk was sweet and comfy and thick with crumbs that made it both tasty and an easy medium for her to swim. Too far to the left however, and she’d end up in the crotch area of Jason’s pants, and what girl would ever want to end up inside a college boy’s pants?! Bleh.

 

Jason wrestled with himself over whether it was worth growing Franky back to height for the call, before deciding against it. Instead, he simply shoved the speaker of his phone as close to Franky as possible, and hit the Unmute button.

 

“Hiii, Mom!!”

 

“F-Franky? Are you yelling? That’s strange, I can barely hear you…”

 

“Ummm, Jason and I are playing a new game! Where, um, I’m only allowed to talk to him from twenty feet away or more!! If I come any closer, I’ll lose the game!”

 

Jason let out a sigh of relief. Thankfully, the incredibly strict set of guidelines Jason gave Franky before letting her use the shrink ray still held sway in the girl’s head. She understood the assignment.

 

“Well… I just hope you finish that game before I get home. So, everything’s going well? You haven’t burned down the house I take it?”

 

“Not yet!” Franky cheered. Even Jason chuckled at that one.

 

Finally, Mrs. Jones seemed able to relax. “Thank you. I’ll be back around 1 AM so just make sure she eats and gets to bed at a reasonable hour. Feel free to grab something from the fridge if you like, Jason.”

 

Franky aimed a playful, accusatory glance at Jason before letting go of the rim and sliding back into the bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with a wet plop!

 

“Will do, Mrs. Jay—er, Jones. See you tonight.” Click.

 

Thank God. Jason cast another look down at the lukewarm bowl of cereal. Anything Franky’s mom said had likely gone in through one ear and out the other—Franky was currently clambering atop yet another waterlogged (milklogged?) Cheerio and shoving her face into the doughnut like a rabid dog. Satisfied, Jason relaxed back into the couch, stretching his legs onto the ottoman as he crossed his socked feet atop one another, and hit Play. The flat screen TV continued its rendition of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on Disney Plus.

 

“Did you know that Grievous’s ship is called The Invisible Hand?” Jason asked, scraping some of the bobbing Cheerios off the surface of his bowl with his spoon and affording only a brief glance to ensure Franky wasn’t amongst them before stuffing it into his mouth. He savored the sweet flavor, if a bit tepid from the milk reaching room temperature. After reducing the mush to even mushier mush and swallowing, he finally said, “You’re not even paying attention, are you?”

 

Right on cue, Franky surfaced from the ivory-colored pool and spurted some milk out of her mouth. “What was that?” The girl’s pixie-cut hair adhered to her crown, flecked by bits of brown sugar and cinnamon dust. Without waiting for a response, she dived back beneath the surface, kicking her legs like an Olympic swimmer as she tested how long she could hold her breath.

 

Jason’s heart soared watching the girl work, and he once again thanked the Gods above at managing to get his hands on the device. The technology for shrinking had been cracked for almost half a decade now, and better yet, it was somehow way easier and cheaper to do than anyone would’ve guessed. But the risks associated with human shrinking meant that consumer devices were still a long way off. Luckily for him, his university not only had a surplus, but they were also ridiculously easy to use. But the best thing of all?

 

His clients loved them.

 

Jason had been babysitting for several months, and it started out as mind-numbingly boring work, needing to be attentive to a rugrat to ensure they didn’t bounce all over the walls in their parents’ absence. But when Jason accidentally let his spare shrink ray slip from his pack, he was instantly met with a barrage of questions. Not everybody reacted with interest—Jason still remembered showing one of them the device and remarking that the little dude nodded, said “Cool”, then immediately got a double kill in Fortnite. But for most of his charges, they were eager to see just what the device can do on apples, furniture, pets, and eventually, for the more brave among them, the clients themselves. Most were disoriented and soon begged to be regrown, to which Jason would oblige, not wanting a negative Yelp review. A few took advantage of their reduced scale to have experiences they would never otherwise be able to get, such as making an IMAX theater screen out of their regular TV, or having a literal mountain’s worth of ice cream into a ski slope. Even in those cases though, the shrinking was just the means to the end rather than an end in itself.

 

Franky was different.

 

As soon as Jason pulled the device out of his bag while searching for his sandwich, Franky shrieked from across the room, “A shrink ray?!”

 

She was so loud that Jason was briefly concerned her parents could hear from all the way across town. He jumped, and the device went flying out of his hands before landing on a couch cushion.

 

“I wanna use it, can you shrink me, please, please, please!?” Franky begged.

 

Jason was flummoxed as he scrambled to regain control of the device. “I mean… wouldn’t you want to see it used on, like, an apple or—”

 

A shake of the head. “No. I want you to use it on me.” Franky grabbed Jason’s hand and aimed his hand—and the ray in it—at her forehead. “Right. Now.”

 

Jason saw no reason to say no. What followed was the greatest six hours of the girl’s life. She did everything the other girls her age loved to do, and more. The house—already quite massive for one girl—became an alien world, with Franky as its intrepid conqueror followed closely behind by her eagle-eyed giant protector, thundering in her wake. In truth, it was more of a slow shuffle, but Jason didn’t want to risk overtaking Franky’s pace and smushing her by accident. She pushed her way through the bristles of their living room rug like they were the bamboo forests of Laos and Vietnam; she took hold of the curtains and scaled their heights like they were the cascading sides of mountains; she’d tangled with creepy crawlies on more than one occasion, inevitably driving her sewing needle through their carapaces and howling with primal satisfaction at her victory. Her bushcraft skills only increased, and more than once Franky insisted on being left at the opposite end of the house while Jason went to sleep. Every time, Jason would wake up to a minuscule girl bouncing incessantly on his shut eyelid or pulling at the wall between his nostrils. Any concerns Jason had about her ability to survive were unfounded—the girl was practically made for being small. This made appeasing her extremely easy, resulting in glowing reviews week after week, resulting in the Jones family being one of Jason’s most reliable sources of income.

 

In the ensuing months, Jason’s concerns about Franky’s safety had all but been assuaged. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t toy with her once in a while.

 

Jason scanned the bowl, now bereft of any full-sized bits of cereal. Franky was nowhere to be seen, but the smooth milky surface did ripple in a regular pattern beneath, giving Jason a decent indicator of where Franky was swimming.

 

Just as Anakin and Obi-Wan were boarding the hangar of the Invisible Hand, Jason lifted the rim of the bowl to his lips and tilted his head backward. The sweet soup spilled past his lips and tongue before continuing down to fill his uncharacteristically empty stomach, and Franky had only a moment’s warning before she was along for the ride. Her heart raced, and she suddenly swam with all her might, trying in vain to race against the cascade like a trout before the deluge brought her into Jason’s mouth.