Incognito

Stephanie Neale, all of twenty-nine and five feet and ten inches, had tried all of the weight loss and diet fads over the last three years. Despite the insistence from her friends that she was one of the last people that needed to worry about such things, her time in high school as a heavier girl had instilled her several unhealthy attitudes around her body image. She had become far better at navigating them as she got older, especially as she had lost many kilos over the years but was still a victim in her more insecure moments.

She had been facing one of those very moments last night in her apartment after a dress she ordered online refused to fit her, it was nothing more than a poorly made garment, but Stephanie fell prey to the teenage voices in her head. She groaned loudly, aware there was no one else at home. Her currently absent roommate and good friend of the last three years, Hana, was a pharmaceutical scientist who had found her forte in research and development. What was more, the younger woman had a tendency to talk about her work to anyone who would listen. So, when Stephanie had the apartment to herself and felt her old anxieties rising, she remembered her roommate talking about some new-fangled pills she was developing for rapid weight loss. Hana was working late, so she wasn't to know when Stephanie snuck into her room - where the scientist kept a lot of her work - and found these new tablets. Stephanie only half listened to Hana's many rambles, and so missed the part when she said they hadn't yet been cleared for human testing.

In the grips of her insecurity, that ill-made dress taunting her from the other room, Stephanie pocketed the pills into her purse, deciding she'd take them sometime tomorrow.

So it was that the older woman went to her job where she served as a pre-school teacher, as the day was wrapping up, she found herself alone in her classroom and tentatively reached into her bag to retrieve her friend's invention.

How many should she take? There were no labels or instructions. She turned the bottle upside and four tiny tablets spilled into her palm. With a shrug, the teacher downed them and flushed them away with water.

Feeling no worse, she continued her administrative and class planning work into the afternoon. Idly, Stephanie fiddled with the strap of her bra through her attire, shifting in her chair - none the wiser to what was coming. The first sign of something different was felt beneath her outfit, a vague sensation of her bra loosening against her bust. This was followed by a strange pooling of her underwear against her waist. Stephanie sat back, her hands pressing to her chest as she felt her undergarment sag on her chest. 

She blinked. Was it already working? If so, Hana was far more the genius than Stephanie realized.

There was a tinge of excitement as the teacher could feel her outfit loosen ever so slightly across her form! However, her rising glee was halted by the sound of something heavy landing on the plastic tiled floor. Suddenly, cool air drifted across one of her feet as she looked down to see her feet rising off the ground! She had changed dress sizes over the years but rarely her shoe size needed re-examining...

Stephanie shifted on her seat, and her outfit pulled awkwardly on her body. Her brow furrowed as she looked at the lip of her own desk, which now sat much higher on her chest! She swallowed nervously as another glance down saw her feet rising further from the floor, her other shoe yielding its grip on her. A worried glance took in her surroundings and with a sudden panic, Stephanie realized the entire room seemed much, much bigger!

No, it wasn't bigger - and she wasn't lighter or thinner... she was smaller!

Something was very wrong. In a panic, she reached across the desk and lifted her suddenly much larger phone into her smaller hands. She gasped at the sight, and quickly called her friend.

It was the longest ten seconds of her life.

"Steph? You rarely call..." Came the sound of Hana, a joking tone on her voice.

"Hana! Those pills you made! The weight loss ones!"

The friend sounded confused. "Uh, what about them? You sound weird, are you okay?"

"I took them and... and something is happening!"

Hana gasped. "You did what?!"

Stephanie could feel the phone grow heavier in her hand, her outfit was feeling more absurd on her every minute. "I took them and... and something is happening to me! Everything is getting bigger! My clothes don't fit and... I'm... I'm..."

Hana lowered her voice. "Where are you?!"

Stephanie's voice was rising in panic. "I'm at work, can you... you need to get here right now!"

"I'll... Yes, okay I'll get an uber or a bus or something." Hana said, both of them understanding the scientist didn't drive.

"Just hurry!" Stephanie said, sounding shrill.

The phone call ended, and the teacher continued to dwindle. She awkwardly slipped off her chair, keeping her phone with her and waited as patiently as she could for her friend. She knew if she ventured out into the rest of the building she'd risk being discovered and she couldn't let anyone see her like this. So it was that Stephanie shrunk and shrunk, ending up even smaller than the kids she looked after in her work. Her clothes became more and more unwieldly until when Hana arrived, she found her friend half naked. 

"Oh my god." Said the scientist.

"Shut the door!" Cried the shrunken woman.

"How did this... why did you take those pills?" She said, bending down to regard her friend.

"You said they were for weight loss!"

Hana swallowed nervously. "Yes, but... they aren't even cleared for human testing! I told you that!"

Stephanie clutched her remaining attire to her body. "You didn't mention that it fucking... shrinks things!"

Hana considered that. "You know, a quarter portion did actually have a somewhat similar effect on a rat, yet the change was so subtle we thought it had just lost weight, not size... This is incredible, do you know what this means? We could actually be on the cusp of..."

Stephanie stomped her feet. "Would you stop being amazed by the science! You've got to fix this! I'm smaller than a freaking kid!"

Hana was shaken from her reverie. "Uh, right. Yes. Well, uhm... I have a theory, but I can't fix it here... We've got to get you home and... you can't drive your car like that..."

Stephanie realized with embarrassment that that was true. She could barely reach door handles at this size... 

"Well, I'm not going outside looking like this!" Said Stephanie, barely clothed, and sounding more petulant than she intended.

Hana considered their options, before snapping her fingers and kneeling down to eye level with her dwindled friend. "What you need is a disguise!"

Stephanie's lips curled at that. "You can't mean..."

Hana nodded emphatically. "There's got to be a lost and found here, right?"

Stephanie sighed deeply, giving her friend directions and eventually she returned with a crate in hand. "Let's get you dressed, Steph!"

So it was that Stephanie's disguise was put together. All of her adult attire was discarded, and instead she stepped into the closest thing that fit. It was a very strange moment as the women understood that Stephanie had been literally 'scaled down' which meant her adult physique couldn't make use of most of the items made for kids. The best she could do was don a pair of overalls made for a toddler, she hid her feet inside a very roomy pair of infant's shoes and decided to hide her adult features with a seemingly enormous hat. 

Hana deduced that even looking like this, people would see the shrunken woman for what she was. 

"We can't walk you out of her like this, and we can't get an uber or a bus. It's like a fifteen or twenty-minute walk home, yeah?"

Stephanie awkwardly pulled a strap of the overall onto her shoulder. "Yeah but... people will see!"

Hana remembered another discarded item and quickly returned with it. Stephanie was aghast but understood it may be their best option. 

"Fucking hell." She muttered, looking at Hana standing there with a stroller.

"Language, sweetie!" Chirped Hana.

Stephanie groaned. "Don't you dare..."

So it was that the teacher awkwardly climbed into the stroller, the restraints were made for figures much chubbier and wider than her and so simply wouldn't function. Hana gathered up her friend's discarded clothes and stashed them beneath the pram.

Stephanie couldn't believe it as she settled into the confines of her new mode of transport. She asked her friend to retrieve her sunglasses for a bit of extra discretion but realized they were almost useless on her shrunken head. 

"Ready to go?" Hana said with a hint of suppressed amusement, her hands gripping the stroller.

"Yes." Came the glum reply. Hana began as discreetly as she could, thinking to herself that she was lucky her tiny friend had only had as many pills as she did, otherwise she might not have found her at all...

And so the friends left the pre-school. Stephanie made herself as small as she could, hidden beneath the shade of the pram she could only glimpse how enormous the world had become. It was not a long trip home, but every minute felt like a year to the terrified, embarrassed Stephanie. The pram ride was rickety, and both Hana and her shrunken friend quietly felt the item may have been left behind at the pre-school simply because it was old. The scientist knew the quickest way home was to go through the nearby park and swallowed nervously as she turned into the more crowded area.

Soon though, the pram's front wheel shifted in such a way that the stroller came to an awkward halt. Stephanie yelped as her sunglasses tumbled from her hands. Hana winced and moved to the front, kneeling down to retrieve her friend's lost item. She nervously handed them back and began fiddling with the wheel.

"Hurry up..." Stephanie urged, her voice hushed and impatient.

"Don't start." Hana replied firmly.

Then, a voice nearly made Hana jump out of her skin. 

"Those things can be so tricky, right?"

Hana turned and saw an older woman standing over her. "Oh! Uh. Yes! Sure can..."

"Did the brake come on suddenly perhaps?" She said, clearly trying to be helpful.

Hana grinned through her nerves. "Oh, you're probably-exactly right, yes. The brake. Silly me."

The older woman smiled. "Your bub seems very quiet though, not fussed at all."

Stephanie leaned away, trying to be as still and small as possible. Suddenly, through her fear, she recognized the voice. That was the pre-school's director!

Hana laughed awkwardly. "Yes, she's... sleeping, actually."

The older woman peered down with a smile. "They're so cute at this age - you're a young mother, is this your first then?"

Hana was beginning to sweat. Stephanie was growing angry. She knew her friend rambled at the best of times, and it was worse when she was nervous. 

She couldn't let her boss see her like this! They needed to leave... now!