The Subject Pt. 02

Cassie was well aware that she was shrinking as well. Her body seemed to be more attuned to itself than it would be had she been a normal woman. She could feel the insignificant shift of the cells of her matter as they dwindled even now. However, that didn't matter to her much, now. She didn't deny that she did not want to disappear from existence; the thought terrified her, to be sure. But in the light of what she was... a poor copy of someone that no one missed... not even a human being... she was unable to be her own person, she knew that now. She would forever be in the shadow of Cassandra Willover... not really an individual, yet not what she was created to be...

She wasn't really anything, was she? Her own existence was a moot point.

Tanya, however, was a different story. The world needed her. Her mind, her heart, her intellect had destined her for great things... things that would help people, things that would bring about change. All that Cassie... Willover had ever done with her gifts was try to make money, even at the expense of her own soul...

Cassie slumped against the cold bars of the cage. A second death would be a blessing compared to the non-life she was living now...

"Cass..." Tanya's voice cut weakly through the darkness. "Cassie? Are you there?" Her voice was far off, groggily fighting back to consciousness.

"I'm here, Tanya." Relief flooded through Cassie, dampening her eyes, and making her chest feel heavy.

"I..." Tanya groaned, "I can see... things... Where are we?"

Cassie realized that Tanya's miniaturized retinas were far more sensitive to the ambient radiations than her own were. "Just close your eyes, honey," Cassie suggested, "Your eyes are picking up infra-red and ultra-violet radiation." Cassie could feel Tanya's palpable confusion. "You've been shrunk, Tanya." She reminded her lover, "Rita shrank you again... your eyes are more sensitive now, but you'll get used to it."

She kept babbling in order to keep her lover, as well as herself from filling with panic, Cassie went on, "You need to adjust yourself to not see the excess light... It's kinda like looking at one of those optical illusions of the two faces and the vase. It's not so much a matter of focusing on one as it is ignoring the other."

She was about to go into a detailed theory of the sensitivity of retina shrunk to a miniature state, but Tanya cut her off, "How small am I, Cassie?" She asked.

Cassie didn't know how to answer. She wanted to reassure Tanya, but at the same time, she didn't want to lie to her. Telling her how small she was would be a shock, to be sure, but she needed to tell her without sending her into a horror. It was too late when she realized that her own hesitation had already started panicking Tanya, so she blurted it out, "You're about four inches tall." She said, quickly, and was disheartened to hear Tanya begin to sob.

Not thinking, Cassie immediately shrank herself, the collar around her neck slipping off easily. She rushed to Tanya's side, returning to her 'normal' height of ten inches, and knelt beside the smaller woman. "It's okay, hon... It's okay..." Cassie cooed, stroking Tanya's hair. She would have liked to shrink down to Tanya's size, but found herself afraid to... imminent disappearance loomed. "We'll get out of this. Promise. We'll find a way to get you back to normal..."

Tanya threw herself into Cassie, her small head pillowing against Cassie's naked breast. Sobs racked her body as she tried to explain, "I-It isn't that..." she cried, "Oh, Cass...! I'm SO sorry that I doubted you!"

Cassie's heart melted at the words. The anger that she might have felt at Tanya washed away, replaced by love unmatched by any other. "Oh, Tanya..." Cassie felt her tears pattering the top of Tanya's head. "It's okay... fear makes us do strange things... you don't have to..."

Light, brilliant, white and blinding filled the universe. The delicate sound of thunder filled the ears of the two tiny women. It was the sound of the voice of a giant, and as the light began to dull, she came into view.

Rita stood over the cage, her hand even now retracting from the table lamp that she had lit. Her head crooked, she cradled a phone against her shoulder, and spoke now. "Yes... I know...." She said, then frowned hard, attempting to swallow her words. She spoke carefully, as if repressing great rage. "Just let him know that despite any previous complications, this time he will receive what we agreed to."

She looked down into the cage, the two tiny women looking up at her in anticipation and fear. She wrinkled her nose at them, winked, and then returned to her call. "No! It won't happen again, I assure you!" She said, turning from the cage. Cassie and Tanya shrugged at one another.

Rita's behavior was so odd. Rita continued on the phone. "Yes, this time I will be giving him a...sample of the product before any more negotiations." There was a silence, then, a smile that sent chills through Tanya and Cassie with its familiarity crossed Rita's face. It was a cold, mad smile. It was...

"Thank you!" Rita bowed slightly with the phone in her ear. "Yes. I'll be in touch, soon."

She turned the phone off with a beep, and tossed it onto the table next to the cage. She hummed to herself tunelessly as she worked open the latch of the cage.

Her hand entered the cage, and Tanya could think of nothing more than a giant snake. Fingers longer than her legs unhooked the collar around her neck. Terrified by her own tinyness, Tanya was unable to breathe, finding enough air to scream only when the hand brushed Cassie out of the way effortlessly and enclosed Tanya in it's grip.

She felt herself rising. Her eyes squeezed shut to avoid the vertigo feeling of nausea in her stomach. Rita's voice, amplified to the sound of a jet aircraft, shook Tanya's bones. "My goodness!" She boomed, "That shrink ray of yours does the trick, doesn't it?" Tanya felt herself roughly pushed onto her back. She denied the feeling of Rita's giant finger rolling her back and forth, prodding her, mashing her breasts, and opening her thighs as if Tanya wasn't fighting with every ounce of her strength. "Well... Everything seems to be in order, doesn't it?" Rita laughed. "You certainly must have learned quite a bit working with me, Tanya." She laughed. "I'm ALMOST impressed." She pressed her finger against Tanya's open vagina, and Tanya cried out in pain. Rita added, "Well, I would be if you hadn't been stupid enough to get shrunk by your own invention."

Anger borne of fear rose in Tanya, and she screeched at her torturer, "Let GO of me, you psychotic bitch!" Her answer came in the form of her body being flipped over, and a fingernail the size of a two-by-four spread the cheeks of her ass roughly. She screeched every expletive she could think of, then invented some new ones, and was about to start repeating herself when she realized that Rita wasn't listening.

"Oh... Are you saying something to me?" She laughed, turning the tiny woman over in her palm, and Tanya came to the conclusion that at her size, her voice was almost inaudible. "Gee, I guess I can't hear you." She smiled, that same cold smile that made Tanya's spine ice over, "But then again, you never really had anything important to say, do you?"

Tanya was stunned into silence. From far off, she could hear Cassie's voice rising up from far below. "Why are you doing this?!!" She called out, and her voice, although high pitched, was still within the range of hearing. Rita cocked an eyebrow, looked down into the cage, a look of distaste on her face.

"And what do YOU want, you lil'reject?" She sneered down at the doll size woman in the cage.

"I want to know why the hell you are doing this, Rita!" Cassie snarled back through clenched teeth, her tiny fist balled tightly as she tried to look as imposing as she could while being ten inches tall and naked.

There was a look of confusion, then dawning realization on Rita's face. She smiled, "Rita..." she whispered, and then laughter shook her. "Oops! Ha! Haaaa!" She nearly dropped Tanya from her palm, catching her at the last minute by the leg, and flipping her back into her palm. "Ohhhh! I see now..." Rita said, giggling signaling the end of her laughing fit.

"What the FUCK is so funny?!" Cassie screeched, angered more at the mishandling of Tanya than the situation.

"What's SO funny is that you're both SO fucking clueless!" Rita laughed, "YOU I would expect it from." She nodded down at the tiny brunette cowering in her hand, "You never-were-too bright. Were you?" She cooed fondly to the pet in her hand as she flicked her around. She then turned her gaze to Cassie. "But YOU..." She said, sneering, "I would think that YOU would have figured it all out by now, seeing as..." she trailed off, then, and sighed, "I guess the process was far from perfect after all..." Rita said cryptically. "Oh well..." She dumped Tanya from her palm back into the thick cedar bedding lining the bottom of the cage, and relocked the cage door.

Cassie threw herself at the bars, shaking the small cage. "You crazy bitch!!! Tell us what the fuck is going on!!!" She screamed at Rita's back.

Rita spun so suddenly that it caused Cassie to fall backwards into the cedar chips in surprise. Rita moved in close and her face quickly loomed beyond the width of the cage, and Tanya gasped at the look in Rita's eyes. "Her eyes..." she whispered. They were completely devoid of life, or goodness. They looked like the eyes of the dead... or the mad.

They were eyes that she had seen before, had seen in many nightmares in the past few years. "Her EYES, Cassie! Omigawd... They're... They're..." She trailed off, shock taking over her mind as she struggled weakly through the shavings to crawl away from those eyes.

Rita smiled. And an icy wind seemed to emanate from her gaze. Cassie sat where she had fallen, too stunned to move by what she convinced herself she could not possibly be seeing. Rita spoke at last, and it was a voice from the grave that came out of that once innocent face. "I think you should start calling me by my proper title, little ones." Rita said in that impossible voice.

"From now on, you are to address me as DOCTOR Willover."

Chapter Six

"It's not possible..." Cassie whispered, stumbling backwards through the thick carpet of wood chunks. The wood chips that lined the bottom of their hamster-cage prison cut into her ankles and tore at the soles of her naked feet, but she ignored it. Her mind swam with the possibility that the young woman staring through the bars of the cage at her and Tanya was not who she seemed to be.

Blue eyes glinted menacingly down at Cassie, who was unable to look away, even though she now had to crane her neck upward to see into the woman's face. Cassie continued to back away from the malicious grin that spread like a plague across an otherwise pleasant countenance. A grin that gave credit to the outrageous claim that she had made.

Cassie suddenly lost her balance, and fell backwards into the foul smelling cedar carpet. She had tripped over Tanya's legs. Tanya didn't notice, and for a second, where they were, the position that they were in, and the person who was claiming to have been responsible for putting them there was of no matter at all. All the world became strangely dim compared to the look on Tanya's face.

"TANYA?" Cassie cried, putting her hand out to touch her lover's. There was no response, neither physical, nor vocal. Tanya's eyes were fixed at some point far into herself. It was as if the light behind her eyes had been switched off. "Tanya...? Can you hear me, honey?" Cassie tried again, swallowing the rising gorge of panic that threatened to choke her. Tanya made no move, gave no indication that she had heard.

"Well ISN'T that just swell..." The voice boomed over the cage like a clap of feminine thunder. "Y'know I figured it wouldn't take much to break her." A cackle split the air, and goose bumps rose on Cassie's skin. "Disappointing, really..." The voice continued, "...I had SO much fun planned for her, too." The tormenting voice sighed, "Well... she DID always fall short of my expectations. I guess some things never change."

Cassie spun around, coiled and flung herself into the bars of the cage. They rattled only slightly. She minded not that the one she was attacking was out of reach, nor that even with all her strength, she could not hope to harm the cold-hearted bitch. Her body was driven by sheer rage, and she ignored the fact that she was only the size of a doll. She was going tokill this woman, no matter what! When she open her mouth to speak it was practically a growl, "I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!! YOU BITCH!!!"

"MY... MY... Now aren't WE sensitive?" The woman snickered, and with a sneer, thumped her index finger directly against the cage bar between her breasts. The shockwave of the giant finger slamming into the metal rod carried instantaneously into Cassie, slamming her back like a punch to the chest. Again, she fell into the huge chunks of cedar, feeling them gouge and slice skin from her buttocks and back as she tumbled. Her head spun, and dark shapes crowded around the edges of her vision, intermingled with bright explosions of color.

The giant voice cracked into her skull. "Don't FUCK with me, you little wannabe..." It echoed, "You have NO IDEA who you're dealing with."

"I... I know... EXACTLY... who I'm dealing with..."Cassie replied drunkenly, her voice weak, but full of as much defiance as she could muster. She struggled to get to her feet but fell back into the chips, landing painfully on her damaged little rump, and like a curse, she spat that impossible name, "...Cassandra Willover."

The woman smiled, "Ohhh... so you've decided to wise up, then..." She said. Leaning on her elbows, with her nose just inches from the bars, she asked, "So what convinced you that I was telling the truth, then?"

Cassie ignored the question as she rubbed the tender spot between her breasts, "Never mind that..." She muttered, "Mmmn! ...What I want to know is... how did you manage to become Rita?" Cassie knew that Willover could never resist spouting off about her own accomplishments, and in the interim, Cassie could let her head clear enough to plan an escape. She had to get Tanya out of here, back to her normal size.

The shock of being trapped in a 4-inch tall body was enough to push her lover to the limits of her sanity. The idea that Rita, her trusted friend and assistant of over two years, reduced her was more than she could bear. And then, for Rita to capture and torment her and then announce that she was not who she appeared to be but, in fact, the crazed, evil sociopath that Tanya had watched shrink to a subatomic oblivion... that revelation obviously had been the final blow to her tenuous grasp on sanity. Cassie needed Tanya to find a way to bring them both back to normal, and Tanya needed Cassie to get her out of here, which was going to be difficult, at the least, given their present tiny size.

"When you two were so kind as to cause me to shrink from EXISTENCE..." 'Willover' began. In fact, it was her murderous attack on Tanya that had caused her to begin dwindling, "...I suppose you thought that it would mean the end of me. Hmm?" The woman paced the room, lecturing. Cassie was chilled by the mannerisms in her voice, and movements. If she wasn't Cassandra Willover, then she was one hell of an impressionist.

"...However," Willover went on, "...it would seem that you had forgotten one of the primary principles of physics. That being, matter cannot be destroyed, only changed from one form to another." She expounded on this matter, showing how intelligent she was, giving examples from Einstein and Hawking... basically being the blowhard she was legendary for.

"When I reached the sub-atomic state, I found myself changed by the event horizon of the gravitational flux that I had created..." Cassie remembered the black hole that had suddenly and impossible opened in the laboratory as Willover disappeared. Tanya and herself had barely escaped when the incredible gravity of the spatial disturbance completely obliterated the hall of sciences.

"My theory is this..." Willover postured, "...as my atoms shrank beyond the sum of their components, bluons, electrons and quarks, and they transformed into pure energy. It was that energy that caused the black hole that I now found myself sliding into."

She paused for effect, and mused, "My OWN personal energy, what theologians would call a 'SOUL' expanded at the destruction of my body, and changed this energy into a harmonic replication of itself."

Like a virus replicates itself in healthy cells, Cassie found herself thinking.

"However... instead of my energies being swept into the gravity well, I found that in this new state, I could actually sense the vibrations of the universe around me, and adapt to them as well. I was able to change the frequency of my own energy to allow me to pass, unharmed through the gravity well and out the other side. Much in the same way, that glass is polarized to allow light to pass through only of a specific wavelength. *Sigh* It was INCREDIBLE..."

Cassie rolled her eyes at the posturing and proud explanation. She was well aware of all of the theories that Willover was describing, but still Cassandra insisted on speaking as if she were the only one on the planet with such knowledge. She supposed that the woman would take on the same condescending tone with Steven Hawking, if given the chance to speak with the man.

"After that..." the woman went on to explain how she had existed in a temporal distortion beyond time, or rather in the absence of it in a pure energy state, yet still able to contain her consciousness enough to observe her environment. She theorized that it would be impossible for the 'average' mind to stay cohesive in such a state.

She made it very clear that she did not consider herself of an 'average' mind, and for the first time, Cassie found herself seeing not Rita speaking as Willover, but Willover herself. The thought of the woman actually being alive chilled her to her very soul. Cassie had spent so much of her energy not just forgetting Cassandra Willover, but also erasing her completely from her life.

To know that she was right HERE... in front of her... ALIVE (well sort of) made Cassie's stomach knot in terror. Cassandra was Cassie's greatest nightmare. Her return from the grave to hers and Tanya's life was as if the very gates of Hell had opened up and sucked her in. She was only half listened to what the woman was saying now, fearful and sickened by the mannerisms and inflections that reminded her of not only Willover, but her own speech also.

"...I don't know how long I existed in that realm of energy," Willover mused, "but I do know that I had enough time to experiment with the limits of my new bodiless consciousness." She looked down her nose at the tiny woman in the cage, possibly to see if she were still listening.

"Anyway I found, rather easily, that I could alter the frequency of my wavelength and travel between the walls of one reality to another. Finding my way back to this reality, the one that you and that littleSLUT of yours evicted me from... well... that was sheer luck."

Cassie couldn't say a word. She found that her tongue was clay, her throat a parchment. Faced with a dark reflection of herself, Cass was paralyzed.

"See... I began to notice fluctuations in the energies around me." Willover continued, oblivious to anything but her own pomposity. "They were like these ripples of power that came at random intervals. So I decided to uncover the source, to see where they would lead me..." She stopped, and stared down at her tiny captives with a smirk curling her lips like a coiled rattlesnake.