Part Three
Above me, the girl gasped. Falling back against the car seat, I gasped. I hadn’t put this much effort into things in a long time. I think it was that whole thing about not being able to pop her cherry – I’d taken it as a challenge. You think I’m just a small fry? I’ll show you who’s boss.
“Is that it?” She asked, staring down at me.
So much for that. I just couldn’t win tonight. “Yeah, that’s all folks,” I said, stretching backwards. Truth was, I was totally tuckered out. Dollface: two, Max: zip.
“Well, it was nice while it lasted,” she says, and looks back at the road. I’m such a shrimp that I can’t really climb over her thigh, so I just curl up between her legs and watch as she drives. She’s a looker, but I’ve got a job to do.
“Can you take me down to the docks?” I call up to her.
“What are you going to do down at the docks, sweetie?” She says, big brown peepers staring at the road. “Lots of big, bad men down there. You should come on home with me instead.”
For a second, I can’t help but smirk to myself – so I did do somethin’ after all! – but I don’t like where the conversation’s going. I may be a midget, but I’m still a man, and this whole mother-knows-best act ain’t gonna cut it. Now, to put my powers of persuasion to work. “Honey, I really, really gotta get to the docks tonight. I’ve got work to do.”
Her lips seal together so tight it’d take a crowbar to open them. Not a good sign.
“Please, lady? I did everything you wanted me to, it’s only fair.”
She takes one huge finger and shoves it in my face. “Shhh,” she says, “We’re going home.”
Now, under any other circumstances I might not mind playing sex slave for a pretty twenty-year old gal, but I had a job to do. Plus, if I didn’t get to the bottom of this mess, I might never make it back to my normal height. So I did the only thing I could in my situation. I wrapped my arms around her finger, opened wide and bit down.
“Ouch!” The girl shrieked, waving her hand up and down and tossing me about like a ragdoll. Distracted, she swerved left and right down the road while I was tossed about like a tugboat in a typhoon. I heard the squeal of brakes. “Get it off, get off, get off!” She screamed. Then, with one huge wave of her arm, I found myself flying out into space. She’d tossed me right out the window.
I hit the pavement like a ton of bricks, then roll to the side as her massive tires squeal off into the night. Crazy broad. She had it coming to her, treating me like a toy. I spit in the grass as I make my way off the road.
I scramble up a small hill which is the size of a mountain to me, and look out into the dark, steamy city night. Just off to my right, I can see the water rippling, the overhead lights and warehouses of the Docks. For once, a bit of luck comes my way. I’m just a block over from the waterfront. Of course, with my newly stubby legs, it’ll take me a while to get there. I sigh as I start walking, and hope that I’m on the right track.
***
Two minutes have passed before Grace is able to talk to the little man cowering in her palm. “H-hello there,” She says hesitantly. “Who are you?”
The tiny person takes his head out of his hands and looks up at her meekly. “What are you going to do with me?” he asks.
“I asked you first,” she says gently.
“My name… my name is Ritchie Nichols, and I used to be an insurance salesman. Well, I’d only had my job for a day when this happened to me. I thought I had everything all figured out: other people aim low, head out to suburbia. Me, I thought I’d go door to door at the Hollywood mansions. If you sucker one of the rich and powerful, think about how big a commission you’d get!”
As the little man got more absorbed in his story, he became more confident. “So I came up to Dodgson’s house, thinking she’d be a good target. Rich widow, probably paranoid. I could nail her for a huge coverage plan. The butler opens the door, and I ask to see Miss Elizabeth. He says that I certainly can, sits me down in a chair. Suddenly, I feel really drowsy, and I can’t help it, I fall asleep.
“Next thing you know, I’m three feet tall, and that – crazy – bitch…”
Without any warning, the man bursts into tears. Grace feels a sudden urge to comfort the poor thing; he looks like he’s been through a lot. She raises a hand to stroke him, and he doesn’t flinch away. “You don’t have to tell me any more, Ritchie. It’s okay…”
Suddenly, the little man looks straight at the door. “She’s coming. Quick, hide!”
Grace hastily lowers Ritchie to the floor, then clumsily scuttles under the massive bed. She flattens herself out, tries to slow her heartbeat and quiet her loud, panicked breathing. She positions herself so she can see out into the room beyond.
A pair of dark leather high heels stride confidently out into the room. She hears a woman’s voice, arch and aristocratic. “How’s our newest little one doing?”
Ritchie doesn’t respond. He slowly walks out into Grace’s field of vision, hanging his head and staring at the carpet.
The woman walks forward until she is standing directly over the little guy. Grace, having an almost identical viewpoint two inches off the ground, can sympathize with the poor man. The woman towers over him, utterly dominating. When she kneels down, Grace almost gasps, imagining the scene from Ritchie’s perspective. Those huge thighs plunging down from the sky…
“Come on, little bug, you’ve got a job to do,” the woman says imperiously.
She extends her hand, and the little man climbs on. Then, without any warning, the woman plunges her hand into the crotch of her silk stockings, rubbing herself violently. With a shock, Grace realizes the little man is still in her palm. She’s using him as she masturbates. Grace closes her eyes, but she can still hear the woman moan with pleasure. She imagines she can hear Ritchie’s screams.
After what seems like an eternity, it’s over, and Grace opens her eyes to see Ritchie, sopping wet and bedraggled, kneeling on the woman’s hand, which is once more just above her lap, within Grace’s sight.
“Wasn’t that fun?” The woman says. “Now, what do you say afterwards, little bug?”
“Thank you, Elizabeth.”
“Good pet.” She pats him on the head with a finger. It looks like it’s enough to cause a concussion. Then she places Ritchie back on the ground, and stands up, walking to the exit.
“James, have we heard from Marilyn yet? I do hope she returns soon, she hasn’t been back in ages…”
The door shuts softly, and Grace can breathe once more.
***
By the time I’ve reached the docks, I feel like I’ve run a mile or two, which in fact is probably pretty close to the mark. I lean on the rusty corrugated metal of a boathouse, and take a minute to catch my breath. That’s when it hits me again, that old familiar feeling.
When I look around now, I barely come up to the boathouse’s doorstep. I must be six inches tall. At this height, I won’t even be able to save myself, much less handle any dangerous circumstances. Lucky for me, I’m not a cop, I’m a detective. All I’ve got to do is snoop around, and at my present height that should be easy. Provided some alley cat doesn’t decide to make me his lunch, first.
I hear noises coming from the door behind me. Nobody should be out this late. Then again, it is the docks. Still, on a hunch, I look around for a way in. There it is, a gap the size of Kansas between two sheets of rust-covered siding. I carefully crawl my way in, and take a hiding spot behind a large shipping crate.
There, in the middle of the room, are my two old friends, Loretta and Katya. They don’t look too good – Katie’s got a nasty cut above her eye, and some bruises. Loretta, well Loretta’s had the tables turned on her. She’s been tied with duct tape to a chair, and someone’s kicked a fair bit of the snot outta her. My bet is that the Russian broad saw to it personally.
“Don’t make me ask you again,” Katya says in a tone of voice that suggests that she’s willing to rough her up a good deal more if she has to. Or maybe even if she doesn’t have to. “Where the hell is the shrinking potion?”
“I told you, I don’t have it any more,” Loretta says bitterly. She doesn’t seem to be happy to be on the receiving end of punishment.
“I shipped you two dozen cases of it,” says Katya, baring her teeth in a vicious grimace. “Did they suddenly vanish?”
“I don’t have them.” That’s all she says.
Katya pauses a moment before whipping her hand backwards, smacking Loretta so hard that blood wells up in the corner of her lip. “Then tell me who does.”
“I do,” says a woman’s voice off to the right. I can’t see her from this angle, but her voice sounds awfully familiar.
“You?” Katya asks, surprised. “What the hell are you two doing here?”
***
Grace rushes out of her hiding place on her hands and knees, almost on top of the little guy, (and probably, she realizes, scaring him half to death) before she gently sweeps him to her cheek.
“You poor man,” she says, nuzzling him. “You must have been through so much.”
He strokes her much larger cheek. “I’m okay,” he says, “You learn to deal with it.”
She kisses him quietly, feeling an immense desire to comfort the miserable thing. She whispers to him, “I’ll get you out of here. We’ll tell the police about her, and she’ll be arrested, and I’ll keep you safe.” She doesn’t know how she’ll do it, but she’s sure going to try.
“That won’t work,” Ritchie says, shaking his tiny head. “People like her, they don’t function within the same society we do. They’re above the law. If we accused her, she’d either pay her way out or use her lawyers. Sure, we’d cause a scandal, but she’d come back and get us in the end.”
“There has to be some way,” Grace says desperately, as she takes out a clean kerchief and begins to wipe away some of the mess that the little man is covered in. “I won’t let her keep you here like this.”
“I’m not the only one. She’s got more of them spread around the house. In fact, I’m not normally even hers…”
“We’ll free the others too,” Grace says with absolute determination and certainty. “All we have to do… What we really need is some concrete evidence.”
She watches him closely as he drums his fingers on his chin, a cute miniature pantomime of thought. Then he suddenly waves his arms in excitement. “I’ve got it!” he says. “Her diary. She keeps a record of everything she does, or so I’ve heard. It’s lying on the desk in her bedroom. All we’ll have to do is snatch it, and we’ll have all the evidence we’ll need! If we released it to the press, they’d be crawling all over the story, and then we’ve got a good shot of getting all the men released…”
“Where’s the bedroom?” Grace asks.
Just as Ritchie begins to explain, they both hear the noise, and turn to see the bedroom door open…
***
Loretta looks towards whoever is off to the right, and smiles cruelly. “They’re the ones you want, Katya. They took everything I had.”
“Is this true?” Asks Katya, her voice perfectly neutral.
“Quite frankly,” the third woman says airily, “Neither of you were using the shrinking potion to the correct ends. Shrinking your enemies may be your tactic, Katya, and selling the potion at a premium may be yours, Loretta. But both of you miss the point. The point is in the simple pleasures that can be derived from its use. So, yes, we took the potion. We had to; we were the only ones who knew the right way to distribute it.”
Right now, the thing I want most is to leap around the crate’s edge and see who this third woman is. Her voice is so familiar that her identity is itching at the back of my mind, like a mosquito bite that I’ve gotta scratch. She’s the key to the case…
Unfortunately, Katya takes this moment to pull out her hand cannon. “Stupid American cow,” she sneers, “You can talk all the philosophy you want. Unless you hand over every last canister of the potion, I’ll pump you so full of lead they’ll have to keep the casket closed at your funeral.”
“If that’s the way you want it,” the woman says, and I hear the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. Katya begins firing all over the place, her lip trembling with rage, eyes burning like lit newspaper from her fury.
Firefights always make me start shitting bricks; the fact that the fighters were about twelve times my size didn’t help too much either. The loud noises make it hard for me to think straight, so I duck between crates and start running around like a confused rodent trying to escape an exterminator. Running blindly away from the shooting, there’s a sudden motion in front of me, and I turn to see Loretta’s immense face come crashing down right in my path. “Holy shit!” she screams, the wind from that big mouth of hers almost knocking me over.
I turn and run as she heaves herself towards me, still bound to the chair. Bullets continue to fly through the air and I can’t tell if anybody’s winning, and suddenly I hear sirens in the distance.
“The police!” The familiar voice cries out.
“Let’s finish this right now,” Katya says, her tone murderous.
“Have it your way,” The third woman says, and fires two shots. I hear Katya groan behind me, dark liquid leaking down the front of her black jumpsuit. I see her slump, then turn back again and keep running.
Suddenly, I round a bend and can’t see any cover. There, standing at the doorway, are the other two who had entered the room. And now I see why they were so familiar. With the summer moonlight shining on her face, Marilyn Dodgson looks even more beautiful than she did in my office. And right next to her is the guy in the gray fedora and trenchcoat.
“The cops are here,” Marilyn says quietly. Somewhere behind us, Loretta is still ranting and raving.
“Do you think we have time to get away?” Trenchcoat asks. And the thing is, although his voice is towards the deeper side, it sure as hell ain’t deep enough.
“Not without them seeing us,” Marilyn says. She takes Trenchcoat’s hand. And each hand has nails polished a different color.
“Let’s do it, babe,” Trenchcoat says, taking off the fedora. Long, silky brown hair flows loose down to her (yes, her) shoulders.
I stand speechless for a minute as each pull out huge Tommy guns, and head for the door. Then, I realize that by the time they’re gone, it’ll be just me and the police.
Well, she wanted me to tail the one in the trenchcoat. It’s time for me to do my job.
From the moment Grace laid eyes on her, she could tell that Elizabeth Dodgson was a glamorous woman, the kind used to getting what she wanted – no matter what she had to do in order to accomplish it. She was blonde, roughly 45 although certainly not showing it, and from the width of her eyes she was about to have a heart attack.
“Who the hell are you?” she growls.
Grace responds by clasping Ritchie to her chest with one hand, sticking the other hand out and pushing right past Marilyn like a football player. Marilyn falls back against the doorjamb, shocked by this sudden onslaught, giving Grace just enough time to brush past her and out into the hallway, running as fast as she can in high heels on carpet.
As she runs, Grace carefully wraps her fingers around Ritchie and lifts him to her ear. “Where does she keep the diary?” she asks.
“When I saw her writing in it, it was in her study, on the first floor,” Ritchie says hurriedly. “We have to move quickly, if she catches you she’ll kill you.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Grace asks, feet flying down a set of extravagantly polished wooden stairs, trying not to trip. She rounds the corner onto the first floor, and finds herself in a long hallway. “Which door?” she asks.
“Last one on the left,” Ritchie shouts. “I think…”
Grace bursts through the last door on the left, only to find herself surrounded by hundreds of vials filled with clear purple liquid. “The shrinking solution,” she gasps. “She must have enough to shrink all of Los Angeles…”
“Leave this as evidence for the cops,” Ritchie says. “We’ve gotta find the diary. Try the door opposite this.” Grace nods, and runs to the next room. “There it is! The desk, open it!”
She opens the desk drawer, and snatches a leather-bound book inside. “Got it. Now lets get out of here.” She dashes back to where she thinks the lobby will be, then stops short.
Directly in front of the exit stands Elizabeth. “You’re not going anywhere,” she says. In her hand is a vial of purple liquid.
***
I’m running after the ladies as fast as my stubby legs can carry me, but they manage to outrace me anyway. They’ve got legs like skyscrapers though, so I suppose I can’t beat myself up too bad about it. And hey, being so short makes it pretty easy to keep out of sight, so I’m not a target for the ten cop cars that pull up, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
At least twenty cops get out, and without breaking a sweat the ladies unload on ’em, gats banging like firecrackers. They aren’t actually aiming at the coppers, just their cars – trying to scare the boys in blue so they can make a clean getaway. And it seems to be working. I stick with them as close as I can as they hustle to their car.
It’s an old soft-top with a leaky oil tank and rust obscuring the paint, but it looks like it’ll get us all far away from there, even if the two ladies don’t know about their third passenger. Marilyn opens the driver door and I jump up and pull myself in right before she closes it. She slips off her high heels in order to drive, leaving her feet covered by her silk stockings.
“Drive!” yells Trenchcoat as she hops in the passenger seat, and I narrowly avoid being squashed under Marilyn’s huge foot as she shoves it onto the pedal, flooring the car. We take off like a cat running from a blowtorch, the cops piling into their cars behind us.
Just seconds after we’re rolling, it hits me like a punch in the gut. Shrinking again. And this time more than usual. When I look up, it seems like I’m in a huge cavern, with two huge legs coming down from God knows where. I duck under Marilyn’s left foot, which is on the pedal, and dash over to one of her high heels, trying to avoid falling over due to the car’s motion.
I’m about as tall as the spike on the high heel, which by comparison looks like two inches. Ladies, meet Max Salem, bug-sized private investigator. When Grace hears about this, it’ll crack her up.
I have to get the girls’ attention somehow, or I risk getting trapped in their car. If that happens, either they find me, the cops do, or I starve to death, so it’s best to get it over with now.
Running around the moving car feels like standing on a tugboat in the middle of a hurricane, but I’ve got to get over to Trenchcoat and get her attention. Lucky for me (hell, I’ve been real lucky so far tonight, right?), she’s slipped off her shoes also, and I’m able to tap on her foot. For a second, I think the big doll’s gonna squash me flat, but she looks down, notices me, and slips me a big five round my whole body.
“What’s that you got your paws on, Jessie?” Marilyn asks, keeping her peepers on the road.
The babe gives me a thorough lookover. “Well, look who we got here? It’s Max Salem, gumshoe extraordinaire. He almost ended up as gum on the bottom of my shoe!”
“Pleased to meetcha,” I say. “Now, do you mind explaining what the hell’s goin’ on? Cuz I think I’m missing somethin’, if not everything. F’r instance, who’s your husband here?”
Marilyn glances at me, a big grin on her sweet puss. “Max, you really should do background checks more often. I’m single. Jessica’s my lover.”
“Ah,” I say, finally putting the pieces together. Two broads in forbidden love. Her mother probably didn’t approve, so the two didn’t get hitched. I bet the trenchcoat was so they could be seen together without getting dirty looks. “But I still don’t see how the shrinker cults fit in the picture. Or me, for that matter.”
“Well, me and Marilyn are wacky about each other,” Jessica says. “And we’re not too keen on guys at full size. But it’s nice to have a man involved too – especially when he’s so cute and little.”
“So you two got involved with buying from the shrinker cults – that’s how you know Loretta.”
“Close, but not quite,” Marilyn cuts in. “That’s why we used Loretta to get our hands on shrinking solution.”
“A hundred gallons of it,” Jessica smirks.
“And that’s what made the Ruskies mad,” I finish. “But how do I fit into all of this?”
“You don’t,” says Marilyn abruptly.
“You’ve been had,” Jessica adds, still showing all her pearly whites.
“We just were looking for a new little guy – all our old ones kept getting lost. And we don’t like the ones Loretta supplies – there’s no fun in them unless they’re fresh and surprised. You looked like an easy lure. All we had to do was offer you some dough, and then we could fool you into anything.”
“Of course, you wound up being a little trickier to get than we thought. Still, all’s well that ends well, right?”
“It hasn’t all ended well yet, babe,” Marilyn says, looking over her shoulder. “The coppers are right on our tails!”
Jessica drops me in her lap and gets out one of those Chicago Typewriters, turning in her seat and propping it against the back of the car. Marilyn revs the engine as Jess starts throwing lead at the sirens behind us…
***
Rebecca Laughton had been feeling pretty proud of herself. All three of the major players in the shrinker cults cooped up in a house on the docks, surrounded by squad cars. It looked like she’d finally nailed the big one, the case that would make her a star.
Then those two Dodgson girls had popped out with Thompsons, drilled holes in all the cars and took off.
Now, driving furiously in her own Cadillac, she heard them shooting at the cop cars in the distance. This was getting too messy. If she got unlucky, a cop or two would die.
But she was still going to nab those two. She knew right where they were headed, back to the Dodgson estate. Those two thought they were only being chased by the police. Little did they know the FBI was also on to them, just on a different route…
***
Grace takes a deep breath. She knows she’s cornered. There’s got to be a way to think herself out of this.
“You’ve got my journal, huh?” Elizabeth Dodgson says. “So many secrets in there you could blab to others. You’d be famous, and I’d be in jail. All the little men would go free. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Too bad I’ve got this little vial right here. This baby is full of the most concentrated shrinking solution around.”
Grace gulps, and searches her brain for anything that can get her out of this. Rush Elizabeth and try to tackle her? No, then the woman could spill the solution all over her. Talk her way out? Grace was too much of a liability for Elizabeth to let go. There was no window to jump out, no exit except the one Elizabeth blocked.
“Tell you what,” Elizabeth says, “That journal has… sentimental value. Give it to me and I’ll let you live after I shrink you, instead of squashing you like the little pest you are. Maybe you could be my personal pet.”
She takes another step forward…
***
Jessica sprays bullets one more time, then calls out, “That’s the last one.”
I wipe the sweat off my brow and focus on holding onto the trenchcoat. One slip from this height and I’d wind up floor putty. And the two dames are so dizzy for each other that they probably wouldn’t even notice I was gone.
The soft-top pulls into a garage that would be gigantic even if I wasn’t a pipsqueak. “Let’s go!” Marilyn shouts. “We’ve got to get inside before they see us and the car!”
Without warning, I’m being swept up in Jessica’s mits again, as she leaps out of the car. We burst through the door and into a mansion.
Marilyn turns back to Jessica, and then gets real close and spreads her arms to give her lover a big bear hug. I find myself getting intimate with the doll’s neckline as they embrace. And for the first time tonight, I feel my luck’s changing.
Of course, that all changes when we hear a scream from upstairs…
***
“You want the journal?” Grace asks. “Take it!”
