When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


0 - Introduction

Hello. My name is Dameon. I have a “gift”, more like a curse, really, that I am told will interest you. You see, I fear water. A lot. I didn’t use to, not before I was cursed like this. When I get wet, when any amount of water touches my flesh, I become younger. Yes, my body literally regresses to a younger state. It’s kind of like a bizarre fountain of youth, if you will.

Except it’s not that romantic. People looking for the fountain of youth are always old, so they don’t mind getting younger. Me, I’m twenty-four. That’s a pretty good age to be, so losing a few years is not a good thing. If I get a little moist, I suddenly have trouble buying beer. If I get more water on me, I start blending in with the high school kids. Beyond that, it gets real embarrassing.

You’re probably wondering exactly how this curse works. Well, even I’m not sure about all the details, but I’ll try to describe it. Whenever water comes into contact with my skin (only water, other liquids don’t do it), I grow physically younger. I retain all of my adult mind, all my memories, etc., but I get a younger body. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how much it affects me, but the more water, the younger I get. It doesn’t last forever, of course. I slowly regain my maturity after drying off. Unfortunately, there’s no limit to how little I can get with the curse. I’ve been a grade-school child, a toddler, even an infant.

Try to imagine what it’s like for me. You might not think you get wet very often, but you most definitely do. Think about it. You’re reaching for some drink in a cooler full of half-melted ice; you get your hand wet. Some jackass has his sprinklers on, and it’s shooting out to the sidewalk. You’re drinking a cool glass of water and the water gets on your lips (just drinking water doesn’t affect me). Your buddy spills his water bottle all over your pants. That wet dog decides to dry himself off in front of you. You slip on a puddle. These are all very real problems for me.

Rain, I hate rain like you wouldn’t believe. I used to live in Bellevue, but I had to move to Arizona on account of this curse. Even so, I carry an umbrella with me almost all the time. Another big thing is bathing. I don’t use public restrooms if I can help it. Washing my hands afterwards will usually put me into my late teens. I can’t take a normal shower: if I do, I’ll be about five years old when I’m done. If I took a bath, I’d be a baby before I knew it. What I have to do is take sponge baths, real slow. Even that way, I look forward to recelebrating my tenth birthday every morning. Sometimes, if I do it just right, I can finish up with most of puberty still intact. I only wash my hair about once a week. Yeah, I know, that’s kind of gross. Of course, when I do wash my hair, it’s quite a hassle. The amount of water I need to wash and rinse sends me dangerously close to toddlerhood. After that, I have to wait an intolerable amount of time to grow back up.

Okay, I think I’ve imparted enough of the details of the curse onto you. How about I tell you a bit about myself? I’m pretty much just your average guy, nothing too outrageous. I did pretty good in school, was on the football team. I went to college for a few years, was going to major in economics. I dropped out a year before graduating because of some dumb politics. Well, I guess you could more accurately say I was kicked out, on account of some choices I made. I’ve been working part time jobs here and there. My condition makes it a little difficult to do anything else right now.

A physical description: I’m about 6'1'’, I weigh about 180 pounds. I have brown hair, which I keep cut short (due to the aforementioned difficulty I have washing it). I like to think that I’m in pretty good shape.

I’ve been told that the crowd that will be reading this little discourse of mine would be quite interested in hearing about my experiences with this, so I have prepared a series of anecdotes that highlight some of my best (actually worst) moments. I hope you enjoy them more than I did.


When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


Part I (The Festival)

A few months ago, I was at a large rock and roll festival. They put on this festival once every summer, and I always make time to go to it. However, since it’s during the very peak of the summer, the weather is incredibly hot and dry. I was sitting in a lawn chair, waiting for the next group to take the stage. The way they have the festival set up is this: they have two different stages, one very large and elaborate, and the other smaller and more low-key. The plan is to have one stage setting up the next act while a group performs at the other stage. I was at the smaller stage waiting for a rather obscure band, and the larger stage had a more well-known band currently performing. Naturally, there weren’t a whole lot of people around, so I had a pretty good view. I was wearing the T-shirt I had recently bought (it was a lousy, cheap shirt, but the proceeds went to charity), and a pair of jean shorts. I was also briskly fanning myself, but I was still pretty damn hot. As I sat there, fanning myself, a slightly pudgy young woman in a two-piece walked by me, turned, and pointed something at me. It was one of those water bottles with the sprayer handle and fan on it, designed for a hot day like that day. I flinched, but she didn’t seem to notice, and gave me a liberal spraying with it. I sat upright as though I had been shocked.

“You looked hot,” she said, smiling. She was oblivious. I began to feel the familiar tingling as I watched her turn and walk away. I knew the amount she had doused me with was enough to leave me a third-grader. I stood up, looking for somewhere to hide. Already I could feel my chest hairs disappearing and my muscles thinning. I quickly took off toward the gate, hoping to get back to my campsite. My sandals pounded on the dry, sandy ground as my body slimmed and my facial hair became smoother. I rushed by the sweet-smelling food vendors, feeling lighter and more energetic with each step. As I jogged to hailing distance of the gate, I felt the elastic band of my briefs loosening from my hips. I looked down at my soaked T-shirt and saw it clinging to a skinny torso; I estimated that I was fifteen again.

My point of view was slowly dipping as I reentered my youth. As I walked through the gate, dripping slightly, I grazed a hand across my face. It was as smooth as any girl’s. The arm that just passed by my sight was thin, weak. The arm of a barely-pubescent boy. When I got out of the gate, I quickly looked myself over as I continued to hurry towards my campsite and the privacy of my tent. The meaty chest that had previously stretched my cheap charity shirt out was gone, leaving the shirt’s American flag design to lazily hang on the pole of my thin frame. The shirt’s hem hung past my trunk, while my “shorts” were covering my knees and brushing against my hairless shins. As I pulled my sagging pants and underwear up, I calculated my age to be about thirteen.

I started jogging even faster, hoping I would reach my campsite before I became too conspicuous. Though I was hurrying, my pace was slowing as my shrinking was accelerating. I lost several inches of height in the span of a few moments, and I almost tripped as my sandals became awkwardly large for my feet. My situation was looking dire. I was still a good ways away from my campsite, and puberty had all but left me. I stepped out of my sandals and broke into a full-blown run, holding my pants up with both hands. I must have been quite the sight: a wet young boy dressed in an adult’s summer clothes, rushing madly toward an unknown destination, lacking the mirth with which a child usually undertakes such an action.

I was about eleven years old now, and I was running as fast as I could while still hanging on to my clothes. My goal was within sight. I kept my gaze on it: my truck and the bright blue tent next to it. The only privacy I had here. It moved closer and closer as everything looked taller and taller, and my shrinking legs helped to gradually slow my pace. I had almost made it, then I tripped. I don’t know if it was the giant clothes I had draped over me, my unuse to running in that childish body, or if there was a beer bottle I slipped on. I went down hard, scraping my arm fiercely as I rolled several feet. I just lay there, nursing the pain as I regressed even further. After a little bit, I dimly realized that the regression had stopped. With tears starting to well in my eyes (hey, don’t laugh; kids cry for a reason: everything hurts at least four times as much when your body’s so small and weak), I pulled myself to a sitting position and looked around. My shorts were lying a few feet away, but my shirt was still engulfing my body and I could feel my moist underpants still clinging to my hips.

I wiped my eyes with a chubby arm and looked down at myself. My arm suffered quite a scrape; it was showing a bright red chafe. My cheap shirt, which was like a baggy nightshirt on me, was muddy and torn in a couple areas. My round little arms and legs were also smeared with mud. If I had to guess, I’d say I was about eight. I got to my feet, tugging up my oversized underpants. As I started to make my way to my campsite again, I saw the shadow of a large man looming over me, and I looked up.

He was a large, bearded, biker-looking guy. He was wearing a leather jacket festooned with various patches and insignias, and has his long, dark hair tied in a ponytail. Even if I was normal-sized, he would be huge, so he looked positively gargantuan to me then. He also had a girlfriend, a willowsome, attractive blonde. I didn’t see her at first because she was obscured by this giant.

“Hey there, little guy,” he said to me, in a voice that was as deep as he was huge. “I saw that you took a li’l spill back thar, you alright naw?”

He leaned down to me and cupped a hand around his ear as I replied. “Yes, I’m fine.” I winced a bit when I spoke. You never get used to having such a high voice.

“Where’s yer mommy and daddy?” He asked, looking around as if he might spot them.

“Um, they’re over there,” I lied, gesturing towards my nearby campsite.

“Yeh?” He said, squinting in the offered direction. “Don’t look like they’re there no more; let’s go see.”

He stood back up and held his hand out to mine. “No, no, that’s okay,” I squeaked. “I’ll be fine, thanks.”

“Naw, naw, they’d be mighty upset with us if we left you all alone, son. We’ll just take care of ya till they get back, okay?”

I nodded, seeing no way out. Maybe I can convince them to leave me alone while I grow back up, I thought. The biker extended his hefty paw toward me and I tentatively placed my soft hand in it. Unexpectedly, in one swift motion, he lifted me clean off the ground and onto his shoulder. He took off at a brisk pace, his girlfriend following behind.

“I’m Dante, and this is Jennifer,” he said. “What’s yer name?”

“Uh, Henry,” I said. Henry was my fake name I gave in situations like this. I always thought I look like a Henry.

“Hi, Henry,” Jennifer said in a sweet voice, waving at me.

Soon we were at my campsite, and Dante let me down. He looked around briefly, and tapped on my tent to see if anyone was in it.

“Well, I guess we’ll just wait till they get back then,” Dante said, taking a seat on the tailgate of my truck. The truck visibly lowered under his weight. He looked me over, his gaze resting on my bare feet, my muddy limbs, and my ill-fitting shirt. “Why you wearin’ that? And where are ya shoes?”

“Uh,” I stammered, fidgeting a bit. “It keeps me cool.”

He nodded, but then said: “It’s all torn up, and it’s mighty dirty too. Let’s get you something else to wear.”

“No, I’m fine,” I protested, unconsciously pulling my underwear back up.

“Yer parent’s’d be mad at us if we let you wear that dirty thing while they was gone. Jennifer! Go look and see if you can find the boy some clothes!”

Jennifer replied an affirmative, and started looking in my tent. Dante grabbed the shoulders of my shirt and started to pull upward. I gave a little yelp and gripped onto it. He smiled, and quickly forced the thing off of me in an instant. I instantly flung my hands down to my briefs, and held them to hide my private parts. Dante looked quizzically at my inappropriate underwear, then turned to Jennifer.

“Found any clothes fer ?im yet, Jen?”

There was a faint rustling noise, then Jennifer’s voice. “No, it’s the darndest thing. There’s a duffel bag full of clothes, but they’re all men’s clothes.”

She stepped out of the tent and towards me. She squatted down so her face was level with mine. “Where are your parents keeping your extra clothes, honey?”

“Uh, well,” I said, fishing for a story. “They didn’t bring any.” I suddenly felt very self-conscious with this beautiful woman leaning down to talk to me, a little boy dressed in nothing but a pair of moist men’s briefs. I turned red and averted my eyes from hers.

“None?” She said sweetly. “Just that big ol' shirt and some underpants?”

I nodded meekly. She seemed confused, but stood back up and looked to Dante.

“I guess yer parent’s got their reasons. Anyways, you’re all muddy, Henry. Let’s go get you washed off.”

The red on my face turned to white. I backed away quickly. “No!”

“Oh, it’s okay. There’s nothing to be scared of,” Jennifer said in a honeyed voice. She advanced towards me, holding out a hand. I continued to back up, until I ran into the side of my truck. She grabbed my forearm, putting it in the soft but firm grip of her hand. I tried to free myself, but it was no use. I felt a little embarrassed, realizing that this wispy girl, who couldn’t have weighed more than 120 pounds, was easily overpowering me. She started walking, pulling on my arm for me to follow. I followed, but the movement made my underpants slip down my legs, forcing me to pull them back up with one hand. I quickly looked to see if Jennifer saw. I’m kind of sensitive about my private parts when I’m a little kid.

As Jennifer led me towards the showers, I knew I couldn’t let her wash me. I had probably gained back almost a year of age since the couple had found me, but that progress would be lost if she hosed me down.

We arrived at the public showers. They were simple affairs, really, just a few stalls with a showerhead and a green plastic curtain. She herded me into one and stepped in herself.

“Take off your underwear, Henry. We don’t want to get them any wetter than they are.”

I turned red again. She was still holding my hand, but I held onto my underpants even tighter with my other hand.

“Please?” She said, bending over to look at me eye-to-eye. I saw her impressive cleavage through her top right then, and was glad for the curse for the first time in my life. With my gaze focused on that, I didn’t notice when she reached over and yanked my underwear straight down. I gasped, and put my free hand over my crotch.

“Oh my God, that is so cute,” she cooed, patting me on the head. She flashed a smile at me and turned her attention to the showerhead. It was then that I ran for it: when she was distracted, pulling down the showerhead and pulling hard on the rusted valve. It was a few moments until she noticed I had left, and by then it was too late. I dashed off and hid in various places in the campsite until I could sneak back to my campsite to get some clothes. Strangely, the only thing my nude scramblings elicited were a few turned heads, some laughing, and a bit of fodder for onlookers’ conversations. Fortunately, by the time I got to my campsite, Dante had left and there was no sign of Jennifer. I assumed they had gone to look for me, and that was the truth.

And they didn’t come back to the campsite for another hour or so, and by then I was fully grown and ready to fabricate a story about the strange little kid who was there earlier. But that’s a rather boring story, and I won’t detail it here.



When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


Part II (The Job)

Like I said earlier, I do a lot of different part time jobs. I don’t usually keep them for very long, because my curse will often mess things up for me. That’s how it was with this one job.

The job was with one of those summer camps, the ones that collect large sums of money from rich parents who want to send their kids into the wilderness for a few days. One of my least favorite tasks was filling up the water tubs. You see, these camps out there are so primitive that they don’t have plumbing, not even a well. They just fill up these giant tanks of water and haul them on trucks. Normally, this isn’t that dangerous a task, because we just have to stuff a hose into the tank and let it fill. However, that day the hose was broken. The only hose they had, broken. They could have gotten another one, but the tubs just had to be filled right then.

Sorry, it just makes me a little mad, considering the consequences. The best method my boss proposed was to fill up some smaller (but still very large) tubs with water and haul them to the trucks. Naturally, I objected. But actions speak louder than words, especially when those words are “do it, or I’ll fire you.”

I had no choice but to go along with it. These tubs were very large, about five or so feet in diameter. They’re also round, and unwieldy. Once filled with water, they were also very heavy, but not heavy enough that it would take two people to carry them. I was in the kitchen, filling up this container in the sink, trying very hard not to get wet. For the most part, I succeeded, and silently congratulated myself. However, I still had to carry this thing all the way outside, to the truck.

With a careful heave, I lifted the tub and battled with its inertia. It tilted and swayed, and the water threatened to slosh over the sides. I eventually got a firm hold on it. I breathed a sigh of relief, and tentatively walked forward. I staggered onward, carefully planting each step slowly to avoid any mishaps. All was going well until my left foot pressed down on something firm but kind of rubbery. I hesitated for a second, then took a step back. However, this motion upset my already precarious balance and I stumbled backward a bit. I froze, and watched the liquid in the tub violently swirl back and forth. Fortunately, it didn’t spill over, and I relaxed. Looking down, I silently cursed the discarded shoe.

After taking a deep breath, I continued on. My journey was almost half over, the main obstacle that remained was the short staircase descending into the garage. I slowly approached the staircase, growing more optimistic with each slow step. Just as my hope for an accident-free day climbed, I heard the distressing sounds of a pair of feet hurriedly pounding on the ground toward me. Fearing the worst, I turned and saw another employee, Jake, rushing toward me. My eyes widened and I tried to say “stop”, but my mouth only moved.

“Move it, Dameon!” He shouted, brushing past me. My blood ran cold, and I gripped the tub as steady as I could manage. It wobbled, tilted, and swayed to and fro, the contents thrashing about like a seastorm. For the most part, the water stayed in the tub - except for a small bit that splashed out and soaked into my shoe.

“Christ, Jake! What’s the hurry?” I shouted, quite irate. He didn’t respond and kept dashing down the hall. I just shook my head and steeled myself for the staircase. I peered down it and made sure that no one would threaten to come up and pull a Jake on me.

Like some sort of movie spy, I tensely crept down the stairs, watching the balance of the deadly (to me) fluid in the tub. Miraculously, I made it down the staircase without screwing myself over. I relaxed and casually started off toward the water truck. Then, I felt it: the unique tingling that accompanied each and every regression this condition has given me. I stopped, and looked at the tub wide-eyed. A leak? No. I felt the moisture in my right foot, so I quickly peered down there and saw that it was from earlier, when Jake assaulted me. I smiled in relief, then saw that the water in the bucket had become heavily unbalanced in my distraction.

“Shit!” I shouted, struggling to correct the balance. But I overcorrected, and a few gallons of water poured from the tub’s side and onto my leg. Instinctually, I moved my leg away, causing more water to slip from the container. It poured down the sides, soaking my hands. I could already feel the tingling setting in, several times stronger than before. In panic, I tried to salvage what dryness I had left and attempted to toss the bucket away. My hands were wet, though, and was not thrown, it was merely dropped. The remaining water cascaded from the tub and splashed down my front, drenching me.

The rational thing to do would have been to hide somewhere and wait. But at the time, I was kind of in shock. I numbly sat down in the puddle that had formed in the garage’s floor, dimly aware that I had just become so moist that I would regress to infancy.

Already I was a teenager; my three-day stubble (my shaving habits mirror my bathing habits) was gone. My muscles were softening and diminishing, while my skin was becoming smooth again. A little tickle indicated that my leg hairs had started to depopulate. Then I started to get shorter: I felt a sensation not unlike sitting down or kneeling slowly, but without actually moving. The fabric of my clothes seemed to expand on my body. I was a wimpy fourteen-year-old, my soaked clothes (a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of work jeans) felt appreciably heavy to me. I felt my leg hairs vanish completely, and my underarm and pubic hairs were becoming a thing of the past as well.

As my shirt sleeves crept down my smooth, delicate hands, my genitals were taking on a more juvenile constitution. The rest of my body hair vanished completely when I was about twelve and a half. With most of the accomplishments of puberty robbed from me, I was left a skinny, hairless-bodied kid sitting in a puddle with sopping clothes overshadowing my slight frame. The process wasn’t about to end, either.

My feet shrunk right out of my shoes and were retreating up the legs of my pants. My shirt, already huge in comparison to my body, was reaching tent-like proportions. I continued to slip backwards into the folds of boyhood, becoming smaller and more childish. The modest two-car garage, normally cramped-looking to me, suddenly seemed awfully roomy.

My pants became so roomy for my dwindling size that it felt like I was naked. I tried to hold up a hand so that I could guess how old I had become, but my dripping sleeve completely covered it. I rolled up the substantial sleeve and saw my soft, stubby hand. I guessed I was maybe seven now. Understanding that I was about to become too young to walk, I stood up to find somewhere to hide. I slithered out of my pants and underwear with ease; my waist was ludicrously undersized compared to that of my pants.

I started to stand, but slipped on the puddle at my feet. I landed hard on my ass, with only my shirt to cushion the blow. It hurt, but I steeled myself and tried to get up again. My shirt reached to my knees, and was heading down to my feet as I shrunk. I noticed with some horror that baby fat was beginning to appear on my person, and my sense of balance was starting to go. I struggled to my feet, hampered by the sodden weight of my shirt.

I looked around the cavernous room for somewhere to hide. I saw a tool cabinet that had some space behind it, and pattered toward it. Normally it would have taken me a few strides to reach it, but in a five-year-old and shrinking body it was quite a trek. I pushed my pudgy little legs as fast as they would go, but my gait deteriorated into an unsure wobble as I got younger. As I neared my chosen hiding place, I got too short for my dress-like shirt, and tripped on the hem of it. I fell to the ground with a gentle crash, but didn’t lose sight of my goal. I kept crawling forward, dragging the garment with me.

I crawled as I reached four years, three and a half, three, two and a half, until I just didn’t have the physical strength to pull the shirt along any more. I attempted to extricate myself from the moist expanse of my shirt, weakly pawing away folds of cloth with my reduced limbs. Eventually, I tumbled out of that wet prison and tried to stand. I got up on my two feet, but quickly found that I lacked the necessary proportions to walk. The tool cabinet was very close, so I again started to crawl toward it. I made it to what I deemed a satisfactory hiding place and managed myself into a sitting position.

A few moments later the regression process stopped. I was left an infant at barely one year old. This marks the first time I’ve ever been so young. Everything looked positively gigantic to me! The garage seemed like an auditorium, while the toolshed was a mountainous structure that towered over me. I was extremely cold, sitting naked on a concrete floor, still wet, no less. Another problem I had: I had to pee. Like I said earlier, I retain all mental functions when I’m regressed, so I still knew how to keep it in. However, my bladder was quite a bit smaller than it was, so it was painfully full now. I didn’t want to just go right there, fearing that someone might notice. Thinking back, that was a rather silly thought, considering that there was already a huge puddle of water, not to mention my discarded clothing. I also didn’t want to wet myself because the smell would be awful, however. I damned that second cup of coffee and clenched my legs together.

I thought I could wait there until I grew to a size that allowed me to get to a better hiding place, but I was wrong. About five minutes later, I heard someone stomping down the stairs to the garage. I watched from my hiding position and saw that it was Jake again, no doubt sent to see what had taken me so long.

Damn! I thought to myself. Of course someone would go down into the garage. I can’t ever get a break. Jake looked around the garage, then spotted the wet pair of shoes and pants that sat in the puddle.

“What the-“ he said, looking at them. He spied my shirt lying a few feet away, near me. He scooped up my pants and shoes and started toward the shirt. Bending down to pick it up, he paused. My heart beat quickened, hoping that he hadn’t seen me. Jake walked closer to me, looking around like he knew something was amiss. Then he spotted me. A peculiar look of shock came over his face, then one of confusion. He didn’t seem to know what to do for a moment.

“Wha- a baby?” He said intelligently, reaching over to pick me up. I squirmed, not wanting to be handled in such a humiliating manner. His massive (to me) hands clamped around my naked sides and he easily and quickly lifted me into the air. I felt a breeze hit all of my naked, wet body and shivered. Jake brought me level to his face, and I tried not to look down. I was always afraid of heights.

I fidgeted some more, hoping he’d let me down. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep my reservoir of urine contained. Jake just ignored me, and looked to the pile of clothes he had dropped at his feet. He seemed to be trying to figure something out, trying to put two and two together.

But then, I couldn’t take it anymore. I began urinating, projecting a healthy stream of fluid toward Jake’s chest. It seemed to shock him, and I was afraid he was going to drop me. He scrambled around, looking for a place to set me. He settled on plopping me down on my clothes, but I had almost finished peeing by then.

“Ugh, sick,” he said, gingerly brushing his shirt. He then ran off, presumably to clean his shirt. Jerk. I was glad I got him messy. Besides that, my pissing on Jake was a blessing. With him gone, I had some time to find another hiding spot. I had grown a little by then, and was over two again. I slowly got to my feet and toddled around the room, searching for a better spot. I saw a towel hanging from a hook, and I walked under it. It was a little high off the ground, so I had to make feeble little jumps at it. I managed to pull it down, and it fell on me, enveloping me. I decided this was an adequate method of hiding. I waited like that for a while, enjoying the warmth and dryness the towel afforded me.

Soon I heard Jake coming back in. I heard him thud down the stairs, quickly walk over to where I was, shout “what? Where is he?”, then I heard him worriedly stepping around, looking. Fortunately, Jake isn’t very bright and he didn’t catch on to my hiding spot. A few minutes later I heard him head back up the stairs.

It was then that I decided to make a break for my truck. I had grown to almost five years old already, so I was able to walk at a decent pace. Wrapping the towel around my nude form like a cloak, I got up and headed to the door. With some effort, I reached up, turned the handle, and pushed the door open. I made sure the coast was clear, and darted to my truck. I climbed in and retreated to the back seat, and got down on the floor, where no one could see me. I waited there for almost an hour while I grew back up.

It’s always a strange feeling, let me tell you. It’s like you’re in a world that’s shrinking. It’s almost a claustrophobic feeling. And that’s just the growing part. Going through puberty in twenty minutes cannot be described.

After I had matured to a respectable seventeen, I found the keys I had hidden for just such an emergency and drove away from there. I had to quit that job, of course. But I did hear that Jake got fired after that whole incident. The mysteriously vanishing baby story apparently got around, and for a few months afterward I was seeing missing persons posters about it. I guess some people were pretty shaken up over the thing, even though nobody came forward and said they lost their baby.

It’s almost enough to make me feel guilty, but then I remember that a world that gave me this curse deserves what it gets.



When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


Part III (The Kid)

About a week ago, I woke up to what I thought would be another day. I sat up on my futon, throwing the sheets to the side. I rubbed my face in an attempt to wake myself. Looking over at the clock, I saw that it was 9:20. Still forty minutes to get to work. I fell asleep again.

I woke up twenty minutes later and lied still for another five minutes. Finally I stood up, got dressed, and went to the bathroom. I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower, then felt that horrible tingle as I set my foot down on the shower’s floor. I stepped back out rubbed my face again. I do this almost every morning. I looked in the mirror. My face was getting pretty scratchy; I considered shaving. But then I remembered how long I had to get to work and I just took a piss instead.

I quickly put on my black dress pants, my white button-up shirt, and my tie. I was working as a clerk in a department store then, so I had to dress somewhat professionally. I picked up my umbrella and ran out the door, pausing to grab a roll in the kitchen. I don’t have much of an appetite these days, so that’s all the breakfast I need. I gnawed on the roll as I walked down my apartment building’s halls, and down the stairs.

The place where I worked was only a few blocks away, so I thought I was going to make good time. Just as I thought that, though, I saw my most hated enemy: water. A great puddle of it on the sidewalk, spilling onto the street and into the drain. In the center of it was a little boy, about eight years old or so, wearing a pair of blue swimming trunks. He held in his hands a garden hose from the house next to my apartment building. A steady stream of water was gurgling forth from the hose, and the kid seemed to be having a grand time getting the sidewalk wet with it. If I was thinking prudently, I would have just taken a different route to work. But I didn’t.

As I approached the kid on the sidewalk, I looked down the street. It’s a fairly quiet, small street, so I didn’t see anybody coming for a long time. I stepped off the sidewalk and hoped I could just walk around the kid and his damned pool. Then he saw me.

“Hey mister,” he piped up, causing my blood to go cold. “Where ya goin’?”

I noticed then that the kid was wearing a folded-up paper hat, like in Calvin & Hobbes. “Work,” I replied simply.

“You should play pirates with me,” the kid said.

“?Fraid not, matey. I have to get to work.”

“I’ll squirt you,” he said. He said it innocently enough, but the mere threat of it scared the hell out of me.

“You better not squirt me with that thing, kid,” I said, walking around the edge of his puddle. I kept a close eye on that hose he had. He raised it at me, the hose dripping water to splash in the puddle at his feet. I didn’t actually think he was going to spray it at me; most kids don’t know how to get those things to shoot straight anyway. “I’m warning you,” I said, putting some edge into my voice.

But he wasn’t intimidated. He pointed the spout of the hose at me, and pressed a finger down on the stream, causing it to spray me liberally. Seems someone had taught him the secrets of the hose.

“Dammit,” I grunted, wading through his assault and swiping the hose away from him. I looked down at the boy and gave him an angry look. What was I going to do? He only splashed me with enough water to take about ten years off, but I couldn’t go to work like that. I felt it was a good idea to give the kid a mild scolding, and I felt I should do that before I became too young to be properly intimidating.

Already I could feel that my chin had lost the scratchiness I was mulling over earlier. “Listen, kid,” I said, trying to sound as frightening as I could. “You don’t do stuff like that to people. Understand? Are your parents home?” I didn’t have any intention of contacting his parents, I just said that to scare him.

“Uh, they’re not here right now.”

Just as I expected. They wouldn’t let their kid play on the sidewalk like that if they were home. I started to think up some mean stuff to say to the kid, but I noticed my current status. I had handily reentered teenagerhood; my face was smooth, and I was starting to lose weight. I decided to keep it short. “Okay, fine. You get off easy this time. But don’t ever spray me with that hose again. If you do, I’ll tell your parents.”

My pants were starting to feel a little loose, so I elected to end the lecture there. I made to walk away to my apartment, but the kid spoke up again. “Wait, mister.”

“What?” I snarled back at him. I was just under sixteen by then, and quite eager to leave before somebody I knew noticed me like that.

“You’re shrinking,” he said, in all of his childlike conviction. He was right, though. I must have lost an inch or two, and I was quickly becoming shorter. My clothes suited for my older body contrasting with my thinned frame also added to the “shrinking” illustration.

“That’s ridiculous,” I bluffed, as I stepped away. “I-,” I started to say something, but I stopped. My voice cracked conspicuously, and I was afraid to continue speaking. I hiked up my falling pants, then looked down at myself. My pant legs were bunched up at my feet, while my shirt and tie hung down past my groin. I was barely thirteen, and only debatably pubescent. I was still getting younger, even though I didn’t think I’d regress past fourteen. Maybe I had miscalculated slightly.

“No,” the kid said in awe. “You’re turning into a kid!”

And again he was right. With puberty stripped from me, I was starting to gain a more childlike appearance. I was losing height fast; that kid started to look a little more my size. I desperately tried to think up a way to explain what was happening. But nothing came. So I told the truth, which turned out to be a mistake.

I cleared my throat, hoping I could simulate my usual deep voice. But, of course, everything came out in a child’s squeaky voice. “Yeah, I get younger when I get wet,” I said indignantly. “You see what you’ve done?” I held up my gigantic pants for effect. I was about eleven then, so I still had some leverage in the size department.

I was hoping to make the kid think he’d done something terribly wrong, but he just smiled. “Wow, cool! That means you can play with me!”

“What? What makes you think that?” I said. I had regressed to ten years old, but the speed of the reversal seemed to have drastically slowed. I had to drop my umbrella to have both hands free to hold up my pants. I was intent on keeping them there to preserve some dignity in front of this little brat.

“Because if you don’t,” he said, bending over to pick up the spewing hose, “I’ll squirt you again. Then you’ll get even littler.”

“Okay, okay,” I said hastily. I still felt the curse’s tingling, but I was shrinking at a very slow rate. I wondered what could be making me regress, then I looked down: the still-growing puddle at my feet was soaking into the bunched-up legs of my pants, in turn moistening my legs and feet. “I’ll play with you, sure. But first let me get out of this puddle,” I said, lifting up my massive slacks, stepping out of my roomy shoes and quickly darting across the puddle and onto the kid’s parents’ lawn. As I felt my bare feet splash into the water, I knew I would pay for it I a moment.

The kid dropped the hose back into the puddle, and walked over to the lawn. He came and stood in front of me, and began looking me over. He must have found my floppy clothing amusing, because he chuckled a little bit. “Hey, you’re shrinking again!” he said with mirth, pointing at me.

I was still a good few inches taller than the kid, but I was losing that bragging right fast. The familiar tingling and sinking feeling overtook me as my clothes got even looser on me and I took a trip back through gradeschool. My stomach churned as my point of view sunk to meet the kid’s, then went even lower. Do you know what it’s like to look up to meet the eyes of a child? When you’re standing straight up? It’s unusual, to say the least.

“You’re smaller than me now!” the kid said gleefully. I knew this was one of this kid’s biggest dreams: seeing one of those villainous adults reduced to a status below his.

I might have been a couple inches shorter than the kid, and probably a few pounds lighter, but I refused to admit it to this punk. “That’s not true. I’m still bigger.”

He seemed to take this as a challenge, because he walked up closer to me to compare. I stood up on the tips of my toes, giving me a slight advantage in height. He couldn’t see me cheating because my feet were quite cloaked by the puddle of fabric down there. He scowled, and reached into the pocket of his swimming trunks. His hand emerged gripping a toy water pistol. Before I could react, he shot off a couple jets of water at me.

I wailed in surprise as I shrunk even smaller into my mountain of clothes. While I was still standing on my toes, it was clear that he had just won the advantage in height. He cracked a childish grin and stuffed the squirt gun back into his pocket.

“Now we can play. Come with me, we can get some clothes for you,” the kid said with a giggle. My clothes were absolutely enormous on my kindergartener frame; I easily stepped out of the shell of my pants. My shirt fit me like a dress would, and my tie hung loosely around my neck and almost extended to the ground.

I followed him, already planning to take his squirt gun once I’d grown a bit, then take off for my apartment.

“I’m Wade. What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Henry.”

Wade and I went in the back door to his house and up the stairs to his room. The house looked a lot larger inside than it did on the outside, but that might have been because I was under four feet tall at the time. Wade pawed through his closet for something, while I looked around at the childish decor of his room. My eyes resting briefly over each spaceship, toy dinosaur, and storm trooper, I realized I didn’t at all miss that period of my life. Unfortunately, I was unfairly thrust back into it for the time being. I sighed, and threw out my chubby arms as Wade tossed a pair of swimming trunks at me.

“These are my swim trunks from when I was littler,” he said, gesturing for me to try them on. I stripped off my shirt and paused to look at my immature body before trying the trunks. My limbs were round and lacked any sort of muscular definition, while I had a fat little belly that stuck out from my otherwise featureless torso. I tried not to think about that humiliating little thing that rested between my legs.

The swimming trunks were a little too big; I tied the drawstring as tight as I could but still had to hold them up with one hand. Wade was kind of a pudgy little kid, so he apparently needed extra-large clothes.

“Okay, let’s play!” Wade said, grabbing my arm and rushing down the stairs. I held on to my trunks and tried my best to keep up with him. When we were outside, Wade enthusiastically began describing the terms of his game. “We’re playing pirates. I’m First Mate Zoro and you can be Luffy.”

I had little idea what he was talking about, but I played along to keep him happy. I must have gotten so involved in helping him with his little fantasies that I didn’t notice I had grown into a nine-year-old until the swimming trunks started to constrict my waist painfully. And, to my delight, neither did Wade. As he was pointing out some fictitious treasure, he turned his back to me. I pounced on him, and easily outwrestled him with my superior size and experience. I slipped the water gun from his pocket, and hurled it with all my preadolescent might, aiming for the next yard over. I noted with some disappointment that it hardly even made it over the fence.

I didn’t even look back at Wade as I walked away to my apartment, until I heard a sob. Wade was almost crying, even though I knew I had only hurt him a little bit when we were wrestling.

“No, no fair...” he bawled. “You said you were going to play with me.”

I looked back at him, and felt pity for a couple of seconds. Then the memory of twenty minutes ago came back, and I said, “Kid, don’t you ever do that again.”

His soft wailings continued. I breathed deep, and continued. “Okay, I’m sorry. But I can’t be your friend. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

He weakly nodded, and I gave him a little smile.

I didn’t get fired or anything for missing that day of work, but I got quite a reaming and a little pay cut. The worst part of the whole ordeal is that whenever I walk by that house, that fucking little kid is out there, and he always gives me this little knowing smile.



When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


IV (The Office)

Once, and only once, I worked in an office. I can’t remember what exactly the company I worked for did, just that I did a lot of monotonous paperwork. One thing I do remember is this story.

I walked down the hall of cubicles, still yawning. It was eleven, still too early. On my way to my cubicle, I saw Misty walking towards me. Misty was a good girl, nice body, but more than a little ditzy. I always knew that Misty was attracted to me, because a girl like that doesn’t do a good job of hiding it. I couldn’t reciprocate her affections, on account of the curse. Dates (and whatever else) have too much a chance of me contacting water.

“Hey Dameon!” she bubbled. I noticed that she had an object that resembled a pan. “I’m going to cook some popcorn! Want to come with?”

Ah, it was popcorn. One of those stovetop kinds. I looked into those big, sweet blue eyes. I studied her bright red hair. I glanced at her ripe breasts. I looked back at her pleading face and said: “No thanks, Misty. Lots of work today.”

She frowned a bit, but left without a word. I continued to my cubicle and got to work. It was about five minutes later that I remembered that the office didn’t have a stove. It was about three seconds later that I smelled burnt popcorn. Another second later I was on my feet. A second after that, the fire alarms had already gone off, and I was at my cubicle “door”. Just a second after that, they started: the sprinkler system sent water spewing everywhere, soaking everyone. My neighbors groaned and headed for the exits, but they didn’t have anything to complain about.

As the sprinklers drenched me, I frantically thought of what to do. The exits were too far away; I’d be a baby by the time I got there. Thinking quick, I ducked and tumbled under my desk. It was nice and dry in there, but I had already gotten very wet. Already I was a teenager, but that wasn’t going to last long. I could feel that my belt had become loose around my waist, and that my soaked office shirt was a size or two too large. I helplessly watched my arms thin and bald, and saw my feet shrink out of my shoes.

My clothes seemed to grow around my shrinking body as I reentered puberty. I started humming, seeing if I could detect the change in my voice. As expected, the note I was humming abruptly went from a low pitch to a much squeakier one. This change was accompanied by all the other curious sensations I went through when losing my pubescence: my underarms becoming jarringly smooth, the weird feeling like a plane’s turbulence as I shrink rapidly, and the altogether bizarre feeling I get in my groin as my genitals descend into boyhood.

Suddenly the underside of my desk was much less cramped. My clothes were drowning my shrunken body, so I wrestled myself out of my damp pants and waited for the regression to end. I stopped around age seven. I huddled under the desk, wrapping my shirt around me for warmth. The sprinklers ceased to spray a few moments afterward, and I knew I had to hide somewhere before people charged back up here.

I came out from under the desk, put my massive pants on, and rolled up my floppy sleeves. I decided that my best bet would be the bathroom. Stealthily, I climbed atop my desk and looked over the wall of my cubicle. I couldn’t see anybody, so I slipped out of my cubicle and darted down the hall. I heard some voices, so I pressed myself up against the flimsy wall of another cubicle and tried to listen.

“It was an accident! I thought it was microwave popcorn!” came the familiar voice. Misty, obviously. She was in the break room, and I also heard a man’s voice.

“Don’t worry about it - Misty, was it? Everything’s being taken care of, so just relax here until we get this sorted out.”

Misty tearfully thanked the man, and he continued with some more reassurances. I didn’t recognize his voice, I figured he might have been someone with the fire department or something. I waited for him to break off his conversation with Misty, so that he might leave and I would have a better chance of sneaking past to the janitor’s closet. However, he kept talking to her. It was a few moments before I realized he was hitting on her. This made me kind of mad, even when I didn’t consider that he was getting in my way. Misty ignorantly disregarded his advances, still sobbing.

The man’s attempts continued, and I grew tired of waiting. I quickly went the other way down the hall, away from the break room. There was another way to the bathroom, but it went through the lobby. It was risky, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time. I could hear the sound of people coming back to the floor. I surreptitiously skirted around the edge of the lobby, making sure nobody was there. All the while I had to hold up, with both hands, my oversized slacks. This made any stealth work difficult. I made it to the hall that the bathroom was in; I could see the male/female signs. Feeling that my goal was within reach, I ran down the hall as best I could toward the restroom.

Just then, someone emerged from the room right across from the bathroom. It was Misty. She saw me, and her eyes widened with surprise. I couldn’t say anything; I just stood there, gaping. Her tear-soaked face broke into a smile.

“Hi there! What are you doing here?” she said in a cheery tone, approaching me.

I looked up at her, at a loss for words. I said the first stupid lie that came to me: “Um, I’m looking for my dad.”

“Really?” she said, leaning down to look at me face-to-face. This is an example of the one thing I like about the curse. Women like to look at kids in the eye, so they’ll lean down to do so. In this case, like many others, I was afforded a nice view of her cleavage. “What’s your daddy’s name?”

“Err, it’s Henry.”

“Henry? I don’t think I know a Henry.”

“Uh, he doesn’t work in this department. He’s a few floors up.”

She blinked with confusion, but seemed to accept this. “Hey, why are you wearing grown-up clothes?”

I stalled for a bit. I had no idea what to tell her, so I told her something so ridiculous she couldn’t believe it. “I’m actually an adult. I was turned into a little boy by the R&D labs here, and I was looking for my father. You see, he’s the manager of the project, and the engineers wanted to surprise him by sending me, his thirty year old son, back to him as a child.”

Misty looked even more confused than I had ever seen her. She seemed to be switching back and forth between believing me and laughing. “Re-, really?” she said with a little giggle.

“No, not really. I’m just pretending.”

Misty was visibly relieved. “You’re a cute kid.” She rubbed my chin. I detested this, but smiled anyway. I’ve gotten pretty good at acting like a child. “Your name’s Dameon?”

I froze again. “Ha- how did you know that?”

“It’s on your name tag, silly,” she said, pointing to the company identification card on my shirt. I inwardly kicked myself. And I thought she was the dumb one.

“Yeah, Dameon,” I said back shakily. I was glad that the name tag only had my first name.

“I know a Dameon who works here. He even spells it the same way as you. Come to think of it, you look a lot like him. Except you’re even cuter!”

“Huh,” was all I could say. “Um, I’ve got to pee.” I pointed at the door to the men’s room. “Bye.”

She smiled, and ruffled my hair. I hate that too. I shuffled off to the bathroom with my ungainly clothes, and locked myself in a stall. While I grew back into fitting my clothes, no other unexpected things happened, so I was able to get back to work without any trouble. Misty did stop by and tell a very obnoxious story about “Little Dameon”. That wasn’t the last time I heard that story, though. She repeated it several times during her employment there, both to me and my coworkers. Mostly to me. I never did go out with her.


When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


V (The Gym)

I stood in front of my mirror, just thinking. Something lurked just below the surface of my conscious thoughts, something big, something important, and most of all, something very strange. I thought maybe it was some half-remembered dream I had just woken up from, or some drunken indiscretion that was coming back to me.

I ran a hand through my hair (I had long hair back then) and desperately tried to remember what it was that gnawed at the back of my mind. Then I suddenly remembered: something horrifying had happened to me.

The night before, something very unusual had happened. Somehow, I had become younger, my body had traveled back in time. I vividly remembered it: reverting back into a little kid, looking up in fright at the growing world. I dismissed it as a dream, but simultaneously realized that such lucid memories could not be the product of any dream. As I thought about it, the experience came back to me with increased detail.

I was at her place, then I left, then she followed, then it rained...

Just to make sure, I pulled up my undershirt and checked my body. My chest was normal, with a full complement of curling hairs and well-developed pectorals. I rubbed my face, taking note of the rough hairs that bristled on all the familiar spots.

It’s strange how easily one gets over something so outlandish. Within an hour I was dressed and ready to head to the gym. I opted to skip my morning shower and instead bathe after working out. I thought that some activity was the first thing I needed.

My workout was short; I just couldn’t concentrate on my squats and presses with the previous night’s events on my mind. I retired to the locker room and got ready for a shower. While on my way to the stalls with only a towel around my waist, I noticed that the gym’s sauna was unoccupied (a rare occasion). I blessed my luck; a relaxing steam bath was just the thing I needed.

I pulled open the heavy door to the steam room and hung up my towel. I stepped inside and closed the door with a clang, and twisted the handle to the closed position. The sauna in that gym was one of the weird ones you hardly see anymore. There’s a big steel door with a massive handle that’s a real bitch to open. I guess they’re supposed to make real sure that the humidity stays in the bath. Or something, I don’t know.

After setting all the knobs and things to my preferred settings (this was one of those new kinds of saunas, it didn’t have a stove in it), I sat down on a bench and got ready to relax. As the first of the humidity trickled in, I felt a bizarre tingling sensation apart from the relative cold. I shrugged it off and waited for it to get warmer.

It heated up and became moister, but the faint prickling feeling didn’t subside, and actually escalated as more moisture was introduced into the chamber. I stopped thinking about it and instead enjoyed the comfort of the sauna. The unknown sensation felt kind of good, anyway. I relaxed and savored the cleansing steam. I dozed off for a few moments, and awoke with a twitch. I started to recognize the tingly feeling, I recognized it as something very bad.

I looked down, with some trepidation, at my body. Sure enough, it was an unfamiliar sight, one hailing from half a decade ago. My chest wasn’t nearly as defined as it was when I stepped into the bath. Without its hairs, it was smooth apart from the sheen of moisture on it. My legs looked trimmer and my arms looked skinnier. Thankfully, my penis hadn’t changed, except for maybe a missing pubic hair or two. Overall, my body looked slimmer, softer, more adolescent.

Unfortunately, my unexpected rejuvenation wasn’t stopping. I rubbed my hands around my face and felt hairs in certain locations only, and they were quickly disappearing from those. Peering down at my body again, I watched in wonder as it slowly went backward through its development. Muscles shrank and softened, hairs were abolished, and skin lost its rough texture. In confusion, I tried to figure out what was triggering this transformation.

As I looked around the room and saw the steam rise up, I realized the obvious: it was moisture. I damned my stupidity and glanced at my regressing physique. All of my body hairs were gone, except for my underarm, pubic, and leg hairs. A far cry from my normally attractive musculature, my build was approaching the beanpole shape of my early high school years. I knew I had to leave the sauna to keep my pubescence intact, but I was drawn to my dematuring form like one would be to a train wreck.

The sound of footsteps outside the door brought my attention back to where it was needed. I sprang to the door and tried to turn the handle to the door. The heavy iron mechanism was always difficult to operate, even more so when I had the body of a high school freshman. I desperately pulled on the handle with all of my skinny body’s might, but then heard a faint thunk noise. Suddenly, the slow progress I was making with the handle ceased. The handle would not budge. I wiped away the steam on the door’s window and looked outside. A janitor’s mop had somehow fell onto the door’s circular handle, threaded itself through a couple of its bars, and had jammed itself up against one of the nearby towel racks. I looked, dumbstruck, at this impossible occurrence.

Thinking quickly, I dashed to the controls for the sauna and turned off all the moisture. Fearing the worst, I glanced down at my body. Whatever was doing this had taken its toll; I was undoubtedly younger, barely into puberty. My scrawny legs only had a modest spread of hair over them, and as I watched, they were made smooth as if they were sheared by a dozen invisible razors. My pubic hair was a trim, velvety patch. As I reached down to feel it, it too faded away into a spare collection, and then into little more than peach fuzz. I gingerly felt my genitals. My proud, thick member had degenerated into a comical, unrecognizable little thing. But it wasn’t over: I actually felt my testicles retract, signaling the absolute end of puberty for me. It was a bizarre feeling, let me tell you.

I noted that I must have shrunk considerably, as the sauna suddenly looked quite unfamiliar. Everything seemed to be in a higher position. I would guess that I was a foot shorter. Studying my hands, I marveled at their stubby fingers and narrow palms. I thought and decided that I couldn’t have been older than twelve at that moment. Twelve! How old were the Plympton kids? Fourteen? If they could have seen me then...

The flow of steam into the room was stanched, and my regression started to slow. I shrunk steadily to ten, losing height and whatever vague traces of maturity I had left. I tried the door again, it was still jammed. Actually, I couldn’t tell, as I could barely see out the window even on the tips of my toes, and I probably couldn’t have moved the handle in my present state anyway.

I sat down and considered my situation. I was a little boy in a locked sauna, gradually becoming younger. I worriedly wondered if I would get back to normal. I ran my little hands through my hair, trying to remember the night before. I was unable to remember anything about growing back up, just that I was normal when I woke up. I lied down on the bench and thought some more, thought about this whole messed up experience.

I must have dozed off again, because I awoke to a much larger sauna than before. I quickly looked down at myself. My skinny ten-year-old form had given way to a round six-year-old’s body. I sat up and padded over to where a puddle had formed. I looked into it. I couldn’t see much in the shallow puddle, but I saw enough of the round face and light hair to know I had regressed significantly.

I then noticed that the chamber wasn’t humid anymore, and that the persistent tingling feeling had gone. It didn’t take much to figure out that this meant that I had stopped regressing. I nervously paced around the room, hoping that someone would notice the stuck door and let me out. Then I came across another problem: how would people react to an unattended child in the sauna? They might try to take me to find my “mommy”, or put me in a similarly awkward position. Or, I wondered with horror, would someone connect the lone man who went into the sauna to the kid who emerged?

As these thoughts played through my mind, I didn’t notice that I was gradually becoming older again. When I reached up to scratch an itch on my smooth face, I found that it seemed vaguely different from before, as if the proportions of my body had changed again. A quick inspection of my body revealed that I had indeed grown a year or two. I then discovered that I was still progressing, though gradually.

I was hardly over the excitement of finding that I was again aging when I heard a voice outside the door. It was a man, saying something about the mop handle stuck on the door. Sounds that resembled what could only be that person removing the mop handle followed. I waited tensely, hoping that the person wouldn’t decide to come in and see if anyone inside was all right. Strangely, he didn’t.

I went over to the door, ready to put this whole ordeal behind me. But as I came to the door handle, I again realized how difficult it would be for my tiny body to manipulate it. Even so, I had to try. I pulled on the handle with all the strength I could muster, and managed to turn it ever so slightly. I continued, and eventually turned it open. I slowly pushed the heavy door open and went out into the relative chill of the locker room. Remembering that I was completely naked, I pulled down my towel from the rack and wrapped it around my body. I hurried off towards the toilet stalls, hoping to find some privacy. As I scurried off, I stepped in a puddle of water with a wet splash. The years I had regained in the sauna quickly disappeared from me again, and I felt the towel grow and shift around me.

I made my way to one of the restroom stalls in the locker room and climbed up on the toilet. I noticed, with a grimace, that my feet dangled off the ground. After waiting in that stall for what seemed like ages, I regrew to a semblance of my normal age. I quietly went to my locker, put my clothes back on, cancelled my subscription to the gym, and left for my home.



When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


VI (Angelica)

As you might have guessed, I was not always like this. I’m talking about the curse, of course. In fact, my being cursed is a rather new thing. It happened a little over a year ago...

Her name was Angelica. I might be called “crude” on occasion, but even I could appreciate the beauty in Angelica. She had a figure that was thin, fine, and well-proportioned all at the same time. I could detect no flaws on her smooth skin. She had thick, long hair that reached to her waist, and it was completely snow white in color. That’s the part of her that I noticed first.

I was sitting at the bar, the same bar I had been frequenting ever since I dropped out of college. I was content to spend that evening drinking and going home, but that was before I saw that head of hair. There it was: gleaming, looking perfect, waves running through it whenever she moved her head to drink or talk. She just sat at the bar, occasionally sipping from a glass, all the while entertaining the various men that approached her. One by one, she terminated the conversation and sent each man away.

Due to my slight intoxication, I was not daunted by the previous mens’ failures. When she was alone, I took my turn and sat next to her.

“Hello. I’m Dameon.” I could never credit myself with being too smooth.

She smiled slightly and looked at me. Her eyes were another peculiar thing about her. You know how some people have eyes that seem to change color depending on how far away they are? Hers were like that, but they seemed to cycle through every color of the rainbow as she was nearer or farther. “I’m Angelica. You come here often?”

“Yeah, I’ve been coming here for a month or two.” She nodded, and I didn’t have anything to say. “Err, your hair is very nice,” I said truthfully.

“Oh, thanks,” she said, brushing it with one of her perfect hands.

“So, what do you do for a living?” I asked.

“Odd jobs, this and that, you know.”

“Yeah, say no more. That’s the kind of thing I have going now.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Say, you into sports?”

“No, not really.” Damn. I needed to find a topic to talk to her about, because the conversation was going nowhere fast.

“Well, what are you into?”

“Hmm, let me think... I practice calligraphy. I also like art films. Oh yeah, and I draw.”

The first two things she said made me queasy, but I was interested by the last one. “You draw? Really? How long have you been doing it?”

She answered, revealing that she had been drawing for three years or so. I replied that I had been taking some classes recently. The rest of the evening’s conversation was dominated by discussions on techniques, favorite subjects, and by doodling on the bar’s napkins. I wasn’t as into the conversation as she was, but I feigned interest. I was trying to get her in a good mood, hoping that I might sleep with her later.

Soon the barstools were being placed on the counter, and some guy was sweeping the floor. “Closing time! You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” said the bartender, strolling by us. I thought of that revolting Semisonic song and cringed inwardly. Angelica cast a scornful look at the bartender, but I got the feeling that she wasn’t just irritated by the trite saying.

We did as we were told and left the bar. It was a nice night, warm but breezy.

“So, what are your plans now?” Angelica asked, beating me to it.

“Oh, I didn’t have anything planned.”

“Why don’t you come with me to my apartment? I can show you some of the sketches I’ve been working on.”

I smiled, and agreed. One taxi ride and two flights of stairs later, we were at her apartment. The first thing I noticed about the place was the innumerable books. They were everywhere; in stacks, lying around randomly, some filling enormous shelves. They were all hardcovers, and none of them featured a title. Besides the books, the apartment was very tidy.

“What are all these books?” I asked, perplexed.

“Oh yeah, reading’s my other hobby,” she said.

She led me to a room which I took to be her drawing room. A slanted desk with drawing supplies around it dominated the small chamber. There were several books here as well. Angelica showed me some sketches, all sharing the smooth lines and mastery of shapes her doodles had. I said some words of praise, and she thanked me. She led me back to her living room, cleared some books off the couch, and invited me to sit. She left to her kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses. I smiled to myself: finally, things were looking up.

We drank the whole bottle, getting considerably more intoxicated than we did at the bar. Before we knew it, we were shedding our clothes and feeling each other’s bodies. Soon we were rolling around on the floor, scattering books from their tall piles. We performed the act, climaxing together. I passed out shortly afterwards.

Waking up, I noticed that I was still naked and on the floor. I listened to find out if Angelica was awake or not. I heard the turning of pages, and opened an eye to see her browsing through one of her books. She was sitting on the couch, and she was in her underwear only. I closed my eye, feigning sleep. I wanted to wake up before her and leave without much of a fuss, but that didn’t seem to be an option anymore. The best I could hope for was to leave when she was in another room or something. Angelica was a very attractive woman, and gave me some of the best sex of my life, but I found her to be far too weird.

After a few minutes of lying still, a sharp and sudden pain went off in my head. My head was hurting before from being hung over, but this was above and beyond any headache. I gritted my teeth, not stirring. The pain left as quickly as it had appeared. After a moment, I heard Angelica walk away to her kitchen.

I snapped up, and put on my scattered clothes. Just as I was done putting my shirt back on, Angelica came back, also fully clothed.

She gave me an unreadable look. “You should go now,” she said.

I didn’t want to argue, but I thought this highly unusual. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m going,” I said, bewildered. I headed out the door and down the two sets of stairs. It was a nice, if overly bright, morning. As I went to the curb to hail a taxi, someone called out to me.

“Hello, Dameon,” said the voice. I looked to the right, and saw Angelica looking back at me with the same indecipherable expression.

“Uh, hi, Angelica,” I said awkwardly. I had no idea how she had gotten there so fast. Almost as strangely, she was wearing a black plastic poncho. A slight wind picked up, blowing her magnificent white hair in enchanting patterns.

“I have to thank you for the sex, but I also have an apology.”

“What?”

“It’s not really your fault, but you fucked up pretty bad just now.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, so I just stared at her blankly.

She pulled out one of those books from inside her poncho, and studied a page for a moment. She traced something onto the page, then closed her eyes. I felt a strange feeling in my stomach: like a combination between airplane turbulence and that “butterflies in the stomach” sensation you get when you anticipate something big. “I never answered your question about the books. It’s like this: I’m a witch. These are spellbooks, I guess you could call them that.”

“Are you joking? You’re nuts!”

I bet you felt a severe headache this morning, didn’t you?” “No,” I lied. “Besides being hung over, no.”

She smiled. “Yes you did. That was me looking into your mind. I saw every detail that I wanted to know - everything you didn’t want me to know.”

I was done talking to this madwoman. “Please. Excuse me, I have to get a taxi.”

“I’ve screwed a lot of guys who were only interested in me because of my body,” she continued. “But you were definitely the most manipulative. I had to use my powers to see your shallowness. Also, I have to admit that you’re the first guy I’ve read that has listened to an entire Yo-Yo Ma album.”

She knew about my weakness for the cello, that concerned me. I still wasn’t convinced, however. “Not buying it, sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. I’m still very, very cross with you.”

“Yeah? Well, why don’t you do something about it, if you’re really a witch?”

She smiled. “Actually, I already have.”

I snorted contemptuously. “And what’s that?”

“Find out for yourself.” She took a quick look at another one of her books, and clenched her fist. “What’s that phrase? When it rains, it pours?”

Suddenly, a great mass of dark clouds appeared overhead, blotting out the sunshine. A light drizzle started to pour down. I looked up, shocked. It was a cloudless sky only seconds ago. Angelica just smiled more and pulled the hood of her poncho up.

“I did that, if you can’t tell. This is just the beginning. Pay close attention now.”

As the raindrops splattered against my skin and soaked into my hair, the third unusual feeling of the day came to me. My skin tingled, it felt like my entire body was asleep. “What is this? I feel...”

“That’s the curse,” she said proudly. “You’ll start to notice some changes in a moment.”

I still didn’t believe her completely, but I was starting to come around. “What changes?” I asked, my voice betraying my mounting fear.

“How does your belt fit now?”

I hurriedly checked the waist of my jeans. It was strangely loose.

“You’ve gained weight since you dropped out of school.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I was starting to get a little mad. The rain was still pelting me, and the tingling feeling was not subsiding.

“Haven’t you figured it out? Another hint: do you remember shaving this morning?”

I was perplexed for a moment, then felt my jaw. It was almost completely smooth, although I hadn’t shaved for over three days. “Wha...” I murmured as I absorbed this fact.

“Hmm, it’s really taking effect now.”

“What did you do? What is happening to me?” I said, panicking.

“If you want me to spoil the surprise, so be it. This is what we call the ?hex of baleful rejuvenation’. When it is active, you will regress to a younger state.” .

“Y-younger?” I said incredulously, glancing down at myself. I definitely didn’t feel younger.

“Indeed,” she said coolly. “How does it feel to be seventeen again?”

“You’re crazy,” I said, trying to sound dismissive.

“Feh, deny it if you want. Even from here, I can see the more apparent changes.” She took a few steps forward, and examined me. “Your muscle mass and tone has decreased, your facial hair is almost completely gone, your facial structure is beginning to look more juvenile, and if I’m not mistaken, you’ve lost more than a few centimeters in height.”

I began thinking up another retort to her claims, but paused as I absentmindedly reached up to scratch my face. The sleeve of my shirt was long, much too long. I was used to the cuff resting at my wrist, but it now came all the way to my knuckles. I rolled up my sleeve out of annoyance, but paused at another disturbing revelation. Everything didn’t seem... right. My hand might have looked different, perhaps smoother or slimmer. I could have noticed that my arm wasn’t nearly as thick as it was minutes ago. Whatever it was, I knew at that point that something was going on.

As if she had sensed my newfound discoveries, Angelica stepped even closer to me and said, “Hmm, the adult sizes don’t fit as well anymore, do they, Mr. Fifteen-year-old?”

“What did you do to me?” I asked, horrified. I was more than convinced that she was a witch then.

“Oh, I could just pinch your cheek,” Angelica said in a fakely sweet way. She continued to advance toward me. “What’s happening to you? I’ve told you, you just won’t accept it. It’s so cute when they don’t admit it!”

I barely heard what she said. I was busy looking down at my torso, watching the transformation. It was like my body’s muscles were melting away: my shirt wrinkled and sagged as the body underneath reverted to a teenager’s scrawniness. “Oh my God...” I murmured. My voice had risen in pitch just enough for me to notice. “Help! You’ve got to stop this!” I pleaded.

Angelica grinned. “I’m afraid not, kiddo. You messed with the wrong lady, and your punishment is permanent.”

My pant legs bunched at my feet, and I could feel the waist slipping. I realized then that I was getting shorter. Everything seemed subtly different: higher up, even larger. My feet had plenty of room in my shoes now, a fact I discovered after I began to step away from the ever-approaching Angelica. “Permanent? No! You’ve got to change me back!”

She came to a halt, and stood a couple of feet before me. “You don’t deserve to be a man, Dameon. I’m making it so you don’t always have that priviledge.”

Everything appeared to stretch and expand before me, especially Angelica. My already outsize clothing washed over my dematuring body, giving me the impression that I was wearing clothing-shaped drapery. I gaped at her, shocked that I had to glance up to see her face.

She rested a hand on my shoulder. It felt large to my new size, and it seemed to grow as she held it there. “Do you understand now? Have you learned a lesson about women?”

“Yes! Now-“ I started, but halted when I heard my unnacceptably prepubescent voice. The rain poured on more thickly now, matting my hair and dampening my clothes. The droplets splattered off of Angelica’s poncho as she grinned down at me. In shocked silence, I did nothing as my viewpoint sank lower and Angelica became more like a giant before me. I went from being level with her chin, then to her chest, then down to her stomach before she acted.

“That’s enough,” she said as she slipped her hands underneath my arms. She half dragged, half lifted me from where I was standing to a dry place by her apartment building, leaving my pants and shoes behind. I thought: how light I must be, that she can haul me about with such ease. I looked down at myself, but my body was cloaked by the excess of my shirt. I could see some of my little arms poking out through the folds of my shirt, and my feet and hairless shins could be viewed, dangling in the air as they currently were.

She lifted me up to her face and pressed me against the wall. “I must thank you. You were the perfect subject for this hex I had to complete. Oh, and the sex was nice.” She kissed me on the cheek quickly, and began to mutter some phrase. “Good luck,” she said, and I remember nothing after that.



When It Rains, It Pours by Ouroboros aka Ozzie Astaroth
0 - Introduction
1 - Part I (The Festival)
2 - Part II (The Job)
3 - Part III (The Kid)
4 - IV (The Office)
5 - V (The Gym)
6 - VI (Angelica)
7 - VII (Rebecca)


VII (Rebecca)

I’ve now exhausted my supply of cute little stories to tell you. Actually, there is one more, but it’s not finished. Enjoy:

As you might imagine, I haven’t been doing a lot of dating since I got this curse. A date doesn’t tend to go so smoothly when a spilled glass of water turns you into a middle-schooler. No, I was getting most of my jollies from magazines, bars (the strip kind), and whatever other outlets I could find.

That changed when I met Rebecca. I won’t tell you the details of our meeting and the subsequent series of events that led to us to have dinner together because of two reasons. One: you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. Two: it’s none of your God damn business.

That said, we did have dinner, at a fancy restaurant no less. And, a week after that, we went and saw a movie. Another week after that, we went on a stroll through the park. After yet another week, we decided to have dinner again, at my place.

Honestly, I found it a wonder that our first three dates didn’t involve some kind of mishap. I knew something was going to happen when we were together, but I didn’t really care. I was so infatuated with her that I kept accepting her invitations without regard to the consequences.

She arrived promptly at 6:00, like she said she would. This was unfortunate for me, because I hadn’t completely finished preparing our dinner.

“Err, hi there. Glad you’re here. Come in, have a seat. I have to finish setting the table real quick.”

“Okay,” she said, quite sweetly. I retreated to the dining room (usually my TV room, but I had made accommodations) and finished preparing everything. I thought I did quite well: I had a pasta dish prepared, some salads. I even bought a thing of champagne and put it in the little ice bucket and everything.

I ushered Rebecca into my makeshift dining room and seated her. Rebecca is a very attractive woman, and I don’t say that just because she’s with me. She’s a little on the short side, but makes up for that by being large in other areas. Her hair is a rather brilliant shade of red, and is complemented by the red-framed glasses she wears. That night she was wearing a blue dress that showed off her cleavage and tan legs quite well.

“Ooh, this looks delicious,” she said.

“Eh, I wouldn’t say that. I’d wait until you try it.”

She giggled, and we began eating. I could tell from the look on her face that she was incorrect in her “delicious” assumption. We chatted, talked about all the normal things we talk about (again, none of your damn business). As we concluded the meal, I poured us some champagne and suggested we go sit on my couch and talk.

And we did. We continued our conversation from where we left off, but only got halfway through our drinks before talking turned to more physical acts (the exact sequence of conversation that led to this is between me and her). We started with just kissing, but soon I was on top of her, caressing and undressing. She wrapped her arms around me, and I could feel her spill her drink on my back. No matter, I thought, we were drinking champagne.

Later I learned that she isn’t particularly fond of champagne, and decided to bring her glass of water with her instead.

We continued groping and kissing, and I felt that too-familiar sensation again. It didn’t really occur to me that I was regressing; all I cared about was being with her. You have to remember, I was denied anything like this for the past year or so.

I did start to recognize that something was happening as I slipped past my twenties and into my teens. I shrugged it off, thinking that she wouldn’t notice. My back didn’t feel that wet, after all. Unfortunately, she did start to notice when my lip started to feel more fine, then absolutely smooth. Her tongue paused for a moment, then continued.

I opened my eyes, checking to see if she had found anything else amiss yet. Her eyes were still closed, however. I nervously continued, praying that the regression would wear off soon and that she wouldn’t figure anything out. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed. The regression continued, and I began to shrink as I reentered my mid-teens. Rebecca, being a smart girl, caught on that I suddenly didn’t weigh as much, my hands didn’t reach as far, and the mouth she was kissing moments ago wasn’t the same as this one.

She opened her eyes, and saw a thirteen-year-old staring back at her.

I thought she was going to scream. Instead, she fumbled around for her glasses, put them on, looked at me again, then screamed.

I clamped my hands around her mouth. “Shh, shh. Let me explain,” I said, my voice revealing me as a twelve-year-old in body.

She tore my arms away with a bit of effort. “What the hell is this? Some kind of trick? Who are you?”

“It’s me, Dameon.”

“You’re a little kid! Where’s Dameon?” she asked, frantically looking around.

“No, listen! Let me explain. I am Dameon.” She looked at me incredulously, but allowed me to continue. “Let me explain,” I repeated. Rolling off of her, I took a seat on the couch. She followed, taking a seat beside me. Sitting together like that, I saw that we were of about equal height.

“This isn’t a joke, right?” she said, sounding like she desperately wanted it to be.

I shook my head to signal a negative.

“How did this happen...” she asked, trailing off as she ran a hand along my face. “Oh my God, it is you. Same face, same hair, same eyes, but... you’re little.” She glanced down at my body, and I had to cover up a bit. My pants had been lost earlier: I was halfway done removing them before I regressed, then shrunk right out of them. I was left with an unbuttoned shirt and an oversized pair of briefs. Normally I wouldn’t have any qualms about revealing myself to my girlfriend, but I was a little uncomfortable with it when in a pre-teen’s body.

“The water you were drinking splashed on me,” I explained, trying to force my voice away from its girly soprano. “This happens whenever I get wet.”

“What? Why?”

“Err, it’s kind of a curse, I guess.”

“Uh, kind of like a Jusenkyou curse?”

“What the hell is a Jusenkyou curse?”

“Oh, it’s from this comic called ?Ranma ?'. Some characters in it are cursed to change when they get splashed with cold water.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I thought not.”

There was a moment of silence, then she started talking again.

“This would explain a few things about you, though.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like... I’ve never seen you drink water, you even stay away from drinking fountains and water coolers and stuff. And you always have that umbrella with you. Oh, and the time you didn’t want to go swimming with me. That’s the one date you’ve declined, right?”

“I had to pick someone up from the airport, remember?”

She saw through that lie just like she did before. “No you didn’t.”

Another silence. “So, how did you get this curse, anyway?”

I sighed, and told her the whole deal: how my curse worked, how I got it. She was fairly patient through the whole thing. I didn’t really have a problem getting her to believe me. I mean, she didn’t have much of a choice. After I was done, I was prepared for her to share some awkward dialogue with me and leave. She didn’t, however. Instead, she reached out and hugged me. It was then that I knew I loved her, and would love her for the rest of my screwed-up life.

Yeah, it’s corny. I know you’re rolling your eyes right now. I would too, if our positions were switched. But it doesn’t really matter to me. All that matters to me is I have something approaching a happy ending. Yeah, I know that was corny as well.

Rebecca and I have been together ever since. For some mysterious reason, she has accepted my condition. In fact, it’s more realistic to say she enjoys it. I’d have to take my shoes off to count the number of times she’s regressed me to younger than ten for no good reason. The number of times she’s deliberately doused me with water... I cannot count.

Usually she does it just to be playful or fun, but there have been a couple of times that she’s dumped a glass of water on me and stormed out of the room after a bad argument. She’s too gentle to take advantage of me or whatever using it. Some short examples:

The other week, I was minding my own business, reading the paper and reclining on my La-Z-Boy. I heard the door open, and assumed it was Rebecca coming to visit.

“Hi honey, what’s up?” Not two seconds after I said that, a water balloon came lobbing my way, splattering all over me and my chair (not to mention destroying my paper).

“Hey! This chair is new... ish!” I shouted at her as she entered the living room, clad in a revealing summer costume.

“Mmm, and you will be too, in a sec,” she said, holding my hand as her face lit up in reaction to my transformation.

“Oh, yes, right,” I replied, squeezing back. “Why?”

“Why what?” she pretended to ask.

“Did you splash me?” My arm hairs were gone by now, a fact Rebecca celebrated by stroking my arm.

“Oh, I dunno. But, I was thinking...” She rubbed my cheek. I could tell by the way she did that it was getting rounder as I ran through my teens.

“What was it this time?” I pulled my hand back and wiped the excess moisture from my face. I guessed from the feel of it that I was fourteen now (I’ve gotten quite good at this).

“How about we drive down to California this weekend and go to the beach or something? You could shrink down to, say, tenish, and we could pass you off as my little brother.”

She knew I wouldn’t go to the beach or pool with her on account of my curse. It was just too much of a risk.

“I’ve told you before,” my voice squeaked as I exited puberty. She giggled. “That wouldn’t be much fun for either of us. I’d have to moisten myself every so often to keep myself at sixteen-“

“Tenish, you mean. Nobody would recognize you then.”

“Twelve, and it’s likely that I’ll get wet and turn into a toddler or something. Then someone would see, get freaked out, or something-“

I was interrupted by her pinching of my chubby ten-year-old cheeks.

“Not to mention that I couldn’t really do anything down there,” I continued. “And, well...”

“Well what, Dameon?” she said, grabbing my hands again. She gripped my hands into fists, then started raising my miniature digits until they counted nine.

Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t say what was my biggest fear of going to a beach with Rebecca. The truth was, I would be greatly uncomfortable hanging around her as a preteen, while fully-grown men in swimming trunks took glances at her. Instead, I told her this: “Well, uh, I’m just really not comfortable with it. I mean, being this small for that long, in any situation.”

“Is that right?” she said, curling another of my fingers into a fist. Eight.

“Right,” I said, making a halfhearted attempt to divorce my hands from hers.

“Ah well, at least I tried. But now I got a cute little mini-Dameon to play with!”

“Cute? Why don’t you ever call me cute when I’m myself?”

She balled another finger into my little palm. Seven. “You know I think big Dameon’s cute too.”

“Fair enough.” I started to remove myself from the heap of clothing “big Dameon” left behind, but Rebecca did it for me. She chucked clothes left and right, and lifted me up with a bit of effort.

“So cute!” She pressed me close to her in an embrace, then held me up high as she spun around in circles. To be honest, it was kind of fun. Kind of like one of those carnival rides, except not as fast, and I was naked. She then plopped me down on the ground and kneeled close to me. “How was that?”

“Not bad. I think I’m going to throw up those eggs you made this morning, though.”

“You,” she smiled, mussing my hair.

Yeah, things like that happen. I swear, she likes me better as a little boy than anything.

A couple days after I revealed my condition to her, Rebecca went out and purchased a variety of squirt guns. She has quite a few, but there’s a little Super Soaker that she really likes. It’s not very big, so she can keep it around, and it squirts quite a bit. Also, her favorite part: it holds more than enough water to make me a preschooler. On occasion, she’ll make up these little “drinking games” with me, and squirt me whenever I do something or something happens on the TV or whatever.

Sometimes, she goes a little too far.

We were hanging out at her place, watching a movie. Suddenly, she stopped cuddling with me and reached out to grab that damnable squirt gun. She laid it on my lap and looked at me.

“Not tonight, baby. Today was rough.”

“Oh, come on,” she said in a honeyed voice.

I didn’t really have that rough of a day. I could not say no. “Alright. But let’s stop at thirteen, alright?”

“You just don’t want to be shorter than me!” she teased.

She was mostly right. “So is that a ?yes’?”

“That’s a ?maybe’. So, here’s the deal: every time she says she doesn’t like him, or he says he likes her, I pull the trigger.”

“Aww!” It was one of those sappy romantic comedies. The outlook was not good.

“And every time you complain about it, that’s a squirt.”

“Hey, be fair now. I’ll be in diapers by the end of the night.”

She picked up the toy, pumped it a couple times, and delivered a hearty spraying. “Keep it up, and you will be!”

“Remember,” I said. I had told her, as one of the ground rules, she could not regress me to infancy. I had explained my reasons to her, and she respected them.

“Yes, I know,” she said, quite seriously. “Oh look, he just said he loves her!” She doused me again. I could tell it was going to be a long night.

I had just recovered from the first two sprayings (leaving me at eighteen), and we had resumed cuddling. She slipped an arm up my semi-loose shirt and started feeling around.

“You should shave your chest, you know that? It feels much better this way.”

“I’ll consider it,” I grunted.

We kept watching the movie, me tensely waiting for our dull protagonists to say their chosen lines.

“Oh, is it really that bad?” she asked, probably noticing my discomfort.

“Yes it is.”

“Ha! Got you!” She let go of me and hosed me down again.

“Dammit!”

“Come on, this is too easy.”

“You cheated! I just answered your question, I wasn’t complaining.”

“Hey! That, just now, was complaining. But I won’t count it, because you kind of have a point.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she started pumping the colorful gun again. I shuddered, already hurting from the changes wrought by the last blast. My muscles were slimming away fast, and I saw the legs poking out from my shorts pale as the hair on them became no more.

Rebecca turned to kiss me, and said: “Why don’t you like doing this? Don’t you like having no stubble and all that?”

“But there’s more to it than that. I also don’t have any hair in my armpits, arms, legs, chest... it just feels wrong. How would you like turning into a little girl when you got wet? I don’t think you’d like it. Hell, I don’t think I’d like it.”

“That’s just because you wouldn’t get these to fool around with.” She pushed her breasts into me and guided one of my hands to cup one. I gave it a little squeeze. “Well, how do you think I like having my boobs felt up by a high school freshman?”

I quickly glanced down at myself to see if her assessment was correct. It was. My skinny body had lost all traces of its earlier manliness, and my clothing fit awkwardly. I was somewhat surprised she was still letting me play with her assets as much as I was. I would think the “ick” factor would be too much. “Huh. I never really thought about that. Well, you brought it on yourself.”

She made a vague shrugging motion, and kissed me on the lips. We went back to watching the movie. Not much later, the guy in the show stated that he loved the girl. I heard that familiar pumping sound, and soon my leg was quite damp.

“Aww... it was fun while it lasted,” I said, getting a quick kiss out of her. She nodded, and smiled.

“The fun is just starting, love.”

Not for me, it wasn’t. I got that strange shrinking feeling as my clothes and partner magnified around me. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see my sleeves gobble up my elbows, my socks become loose, or my pants’ waist make my belt trivial. After it was all done, I opened my eyes to see Rebecca’s bright ones staring back at me.

“I’ll have to ask you what that’s like sometime.”

“It’s not what you’d expect.” I gave her breast another squeeze, and found myself surprised at how little flesh I could grope with those little hands.

“That’s enough of that,” she said, gently moving my hands off of her body and sitting up. I sat up as well.

“Hey, come on! I’ve got to have some fun, too!” My voice cracked audibly, and I coughed to mask it.

“That sounds a lot like complaining to me. You want another squirt, squirt?”

“No, no more. I’m done for tonight. You’re already taller than me, what else do you want?”

“Hmm, I don’t know if you’re shorter yet. You could stand another blasting.”

“No, I mean it. Please, I’d rather not get younger than this.” I was lucky to make it through Rebecca’s little game with one foot still in the pool of puberty, and wasn’t anxious to sacrifice that little victory.

“Please... I promise I’ll make it up to you later,” she said suggestively, sliding one hand under my voluminous shirt and stroking my thin belly. She took the Super Soaker and inserted it into the crotch of my loose pants. I swallowed hard, trying to figure out if she meant what I thought she was suggesting. Yes, I did have sex with her a few times before that, but coaxing it out of her was a mighty chore. Would I sacrifice all of my manhood for a short while for sex with my sweetheart? Yes. As I was about to agree, she let loose with the squirt gun, drenching my loins with it. “Ack! That’s cold! I didn’t even say ?yes’ yet!”

“But you were going to,” she stated, removing the gun and rubbing my undeveloping face.

“Does this mean we can have sex tomorrow?” I squeaked, now having to look up at her.

“Of course.” She messed up my hair and kissed me on my forehead as I sank lower into the couch and into my clothes. This was always the hardest part: regressing past puberty with Rebecca around. I cringed inwardly as every trace of my manhood was erased. All my body hair degenerated to peach fuzz, and my proud member became nothing but an unthreatening peeing tool.

“Hee hee, I never get over how funny you look in your grown-up clothes,” Rebecca teased as I shrunk shorter and my limbs became chubby and unrecognizable.

“Yeah, it’s a real laugh riot,” I said, somewhat bitterly. I tried to tighten my belt to make my shorts stay on, but it wouldn’t go tight enough. I sighed, and left it.

“Complaining...” Rebecca reminded me, twirling the water pistol.

“Alright, alright.” My regression stopped just then. I held up my hands and looked them over.

“What do you think?” she asked. She was aware of my ability to estimate my own age.

“Eight, give or take.”

She chuckled. “How’s the view down there, shorty?”

I glanced to my side, noticing that I was boob-high to her. “Pretty good, thanks.”

She stood up. Suddenly I was a bit more intimidated by her. “Come on, let’s have some fun,” she said, hoisting me up by one arm. I lost my pants and underwear in the process, a fact she didn’t seem to be too bothered by.

“What are we doing?” I had to crane my neck to look up at her, a fact I could never get used to. She didn’t answer; she just guided me through her house by one hand. “Oh, hurry up. I don’t want to drag you. Wait, I wonder. Are you too heavy to give a piggyback ride to? Screw it. Come on, in this room.”

She yanked me into her bedroom, and she let me go as she rummaged around in her desk. “Ah, here it is!” She emerged with a digital camera.

“Wait, don’t!”

“Nobody will know it’s you. They’ll just think it’s a cute nephew or something who I let try on your clothes. Besides, I’m not going to show them to anybody.” With that, she started clicking away. I tried to shield myself with my hands, as if that would stop it.

“Ooh, I bet this would be just adorable!” Rebecca said, seizing a fisherman-style hat from her dresser. Without another word, she jammed it on my head. It obscured my vision, and I peeked out from under it just to see her kneel down and start snapping more pictures.

“Rebecca, stop! Please!”

“Ooh, this is just too cute!”

“Rebecca, I mean it! Stop taking pictures!” I shouted, stomping a foot down as hard as I could (which turned out to be not very hard).

She stopped, and moved in close to me. “And what are you going to do about it?”

I made a futile grab for the camera in her hands, but she was too fast. “No more pictures. Please?”

“Fine, no more pictures.” After saying that, I relaxed. She then pulled up the camera and took one, blinding me with the flash. “Except for one more, because you tried to take it from me.”

“Give me that camera!” I yelled, blindly grabbing for it. She easily caught my arms and pinned me to the ground. “Let go of me!” I said angrily, thrashing about.

“Not until you apologize, little man.”

“Rebecca, I’m serious! You’re taking this way too far!”

“No, you just take it too personally. Just lighten up, have some fun.”

“This isn’t my idea of fun!” I tried to break my arms free, and started kicking at her. I struck her good a couple of times, so she just sat on my knees and held my arms down.

She must have seen the fury in my face. “You don’t like being the one not in control. You want to have the power. You hate being helpless.”

She took my seething look as a yes.

“But if you’re stuck with this curse, you’re going to have to learn that you’re not always going to have the power, you’re going to be helpless sometimes.”

“Enough bullshit! Just let me go!”

“I’m not going to let you go until you calm down. Look, I love you. I’m not trying to be mean; I never am. You have a very unique gift, and I’m not going to let you waste it.”

She didn’t talk for a while, and I kind of calmed down. I realized my struggle was pointless, anyway. “It’s not a gift at all. You don’t understand. You don’t have to live with it. You only see the ?cute’ parts of it.”

“I think you make it out to be a lot worse than it is.”

“No, I haven’t told you all the bad parts yet, just the inconvenient bits.”

“What are the bad parts, then?”

“Do you have any idea how often I have to change jobs? I’m absent or late so often because of this, they tend to can me in a month or two. I can’t get a ?real job’ because of my poor work history, my limited education, and that bad luck thing.”

“Bad luck? Like the witch gave you? I thought you made that up.”

“It would be more likely that she made that up. I can guarantee that it’s pretty real, though.”

“So it’s terrible because you have to change jobs often? So?”

“I change jobs so much I make minimum wage when I can’t find anything better, which is often. I have very little money. In fact, I’m a few thousand dollars in debt right now.”

“But-“

“And that’s not the whole story. That’s just a side effect of this condition. I have to deal with being helpless, humiliated, and awkward on a regular basis.”

She took a few moments to let it sink in, and let go of my arms.

“I- I guess I didn’t consider all of that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I imagine it would be hard to understand for anybody else.”

She nodded.

“Could you get off of me, please?”

She stood up, and helped me to my feet. “I’m sorry to hear all that. But, don’t worry, we’ll make it through together.” She picked me up and held me close, kneeling again and cradling me for a good minute.

We sat in silence for a long time, long enough for me to grow back to seventeen or thereabouts.

“I should go,” I said, throwing her hat back at her. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

She just nodded, and I collected my clothing and left.

Things were rather different between us after that. They weren’t any worse, and they weren’t particularly better. She was just more respectful of my dislike for the curse, and I was more sympathetic to her desire to play with it. I learned after a while that she has quite a motherly streak, and I was the simplest and most logical way for her to indulge it.

Less than a week ago, I was sitting in Rebecca’s living room, talking to her (she was seated on the couch).

“You’re sure you want to go through with this?” she asked.

“If it is what you want, yes.”

“You won’t hold it against me? And you’ll cooperate?”

“I’ve told you, yes. Who knows? It might even be fun.”

She smiled. “Will this be enough?” She gestured toward a large jug of water.

“I think so. Less is better, of course. I never found out how young I can get.”

“Do you... think it could kill you?”

I looked away darkly. “It’s possible, but I don’t think it will be a risk with that much.”

“I have this dropper. I can use that to test after you dump that.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

“Shall we?” She stood up and extended her arm. I stood and hooked my arm with hers.

“To your porch?”

“Yeah.”

She grabbed the jug with her other arm, and we proceeded to her deck.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready.” I confirmed.

“I love you.” She kissed me on the lips, lifted the jug over my head, and removed the cork. The contents of the jug came splashing down on my head, soaking every part of me. The tingling sensation overtook me, so powerful that I noticed it again. I had grown almost numb to it lately.

“Come inside, quickly.”

I paused to dry myself and my clothes off before entering her home, but Rebecca hastily pulled me through the door.

“It’s going quick this time! You look almost sixteen already.”

She was wrong. It felt like I was fifteen at most. The regression had been so swift this time that I hardly noticed missing the good part of a decade, but I paid careful attention to the changes that followed.

Within seconds the vestiges of teenaged maturity remaining on my body vanished. A moment after that, I went from a lad on the cusp of puberty to a cherubic gradeschooler. I could feel my muscles eroding away, sense the baby fat coming to replace them. My drenched clothing quickly became like a falling parachute around me. Most dramatic was my change in height. In the span of about ten seconds, I went from being a head taller than Rebecca to being eye-level with her belly button.

I looked up at her, seeing a distressed expression on her face. She bent down and tried to grab my shoulder, but only ended up with a handful of damp shirt as I shrunk even further into youth. A moment after that, I sunk from her view as I crossed the threshold into toddlerhood. If I had any time to inspect myself, I would have seen my limbs dwindle into pudgy little things, and my belly grow chubby as I approached infancy. Instead, all I saw was the folds of my clothing expand and collapse around me.

In another moment, it was all over. I had stopped regressing. I no longer felt the overpowering tingling feel that had accompanied me seconds ago. I tried to move, but my body was too weak to budge the moist folds of fabric around me. Fortunately, Rebecca lifted me out of my own clothes before I could become too claustrophobic.

“Dameon! Are you okay?” she asked gently, holding me close to her chest.

I was very cold. I crossed my tiny arms over my pudgy chest, or at least tried to. The actual motion I executed was more of an uncoordinated swinging of my arms toward my chest. “C.. Cowd,” I managed to say.

“Oh! You’re cold! Just a second, baby,” Rebecca said, rushing me over to the table where she had laid out several items in preparation of this event. She grabbed a blue blanket and wrapped me in it, drying and warming me. “How’s that, honey?”

I played with my mouth a bit before responding, trying to get used to speaking with it. Carefully, I said: “Good.”

She held me tighter to her and sat down on the couch. I was vaguely aware that she was staring at me, but I was too busy looking around and inwardly marveling at everything. Rebecca’s house, a modest-sized dwelling, seemed to be of cavernous proportions to me. The couch she was sitting on, which I normally could stretch out on and find myself cramped, was absolutely sprawling.

I didn’t get the feeling that everything was enormous, but that I was incredibly tiny. Nobody remembers what being a baby is like, so it’s difficult to describe exactly how it is. The biggest aspect of it, in my experience, is an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Not only was I small enough to be carried around by my girlfriend in one arm, but I had very limited control over my limbs. Moving my arms or legs was like trying to do so on one of those carnival rides where you’re in the thing that spins around and you are pinned to the walls. Everything was uncoordinated and clumsy, and it was next to impossible to lift anything except things of inconsequential weight.

Rebecca, who I normally viewed as my petite girlfriend (even though I had seen her from other “angles”), was absolutely gargantuan to me. Her delicate hands didn’t seem so small when they were wrapping around my body and lifting me with little effort.

“What’s it like?”

“Everwything’s so... big,” I responded in my squeaking baby voice.

“Mmm, I’ll bet. You warm enough now?”

“Yeaw.”

She stripped the moist blanket off of me, exposing my nude form to the warm breeze. Slowly, she lifted me up above her head. “Oh my God, you’re absolutely adorable!”

I looked down, and regretted it. I swung my little legs around, and said, “Hey, put me down.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, placing me in her lap. “Are you afraid of heights?”

“A wittle. I mean, little.”

She giggled. “I’m going to put you down on the floor, see if you can walk.”

She planted me on the floor. I was familiar with her house, but it seemed like a completely different world at that perspective. Furniture became like buildings, and her carpet was like a park’s grassy fields. I stood up easily enough, and tried to take a few steps. I stumbled around for a few in a kind of unsure waddle, then quickly fell on my behind. Ignoring Rebecca’s stifled giggle, I got to my feet and tried again. I made it a little farther that time before losing my balance and falling into a sitting position again.

Rebecca lied down on the floor and beckoned to me. “Try to walk over to me.”

I accepted her challenge, and started waddling her way. I only fell down three times before making it to her. She grabbed me, rolled over on her back, and placed me on her stomach. “What should we do now?”

I crawled along her body, resting on the hills of her breasts. “Um, maybe I can get some cwothes?”

“Sure. I have to get you in some diapers soon anyway.”

“Diapews? I thought we agweed, agreed, no diapers.”

“I don’t remember that. I can’t have you peeing all over my stuff.”

“Can’t we just...”

“No, diapers are the easiest way. Come on, you’re already a baby. How embarrassing can diapers be?”

I didn’t say anything as she picked me up and carried me back to the table with all the baby stuff. She set me down, and picked up a water dropper. “I want to see, real quick, if you can get any smaller than this. Don’t worry, I’ll only use a bit.”

She dripped a couple of drops on me, and looked at me in anticipation of a change. “Anything?”

“I don’t feew, feel, anyfing,” I responded. And I hadn’t: there was no telltale tingling feeling, and I couldn’t sense that my body was changing. She dropped a few more on me, and I shook my head. After that, she squeezed out the rest of the contents of the dropper on me. Still nothing.

“This must be the youngest you can go.”

“Must be.”

“I’d say you look about one year old, but I could be wrong.”

“That would be logical,” I admitted.

“Well, that’s something of a relief. I was wondering something, though. Why did you regress so fast when I poured the jug on you? It took, like, twenty seconds.”

“I was wondewing, wondering, that myself,” I said. “I guess it’s because I got so much on me; I’ve never gotten that wet at once befowe.”

“What about that other time you turned into a baby?”

“Oh yeaw, that’s right. It wasn’t nearwy, nearly, that fast before... maybe because this time it was all at once, probabwy.”

“Makes sense, I guess. Wait here, I’ll go get the diapers.”

“Wait!” I said, reaching out with a tiny hand. “There’s something I want you to do fiwst.”

“What’s that, sweety?” she asked, gripping my hands with her thumbs and forefingers.

“I want... I want you to give me a bath.”

She smiled, and picked me up. “I bet you do. I couldn’t imagine not having a real bath for a year.”

I just nodded as best I could. In a few minutes, she had filled the sink with warm water, and had soap and shampoo ready. She gripped me and held me over the sink. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

She dipped me in the pool, and I felt the tingling again. “Ooh!”

“Is it too hot?” she asked, concerned.

“No, just fine,” I replied.

The tingling stopped shortly after it began. I knew it was just me losing the time I had gotten back after being dry for a bit. For the first time in almost a year, I was submerged in water and wasn’t alarmed. It felt good. Rebecca rubbed me down with soap, shampooed what little hair I had, and playfully splashed me the whole time. After pronouncing me clean, she pulled me back out and gave me a thorough drying.

“How was that?”

“Wonderful,” I said truthfully.

“Good. Now, let’s get you in that diaper.”

“Aww, do we haff to?” I whined, lying on the fluffy towel, allowing the last bits of moisture to dry off me.

“Oh, come on. You said you’d play along.”

“Awright, alright.”

She scooped me up and took me back to the table.

“I had a baby sister, so I know how to do this. I think.”

She started slathering my body with lotion, turning me over and paying special attention to my buttocks and groin. As I might have mentioned before, I maintain all of my adult sexual instincts no matter what form I’m in. It would come at no surprise, then, that my infant tool suddenly stood erect.

Rebecca stared at it for a second, then pointed. “Aww, isn’t that cute?”

I feebly tried to move my arms to cover it somehow, but was unable.

She just smiled, and started powdering me. After she was finished with that, she lifted my legs up and inserted the diaper beneath me, fastened it, and sat me on my bottom.

“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Wearing a diaper was just like I expected. It was a bulky, crinkly, plastic and clothish thing around my trunk. It was bad. “This is absowute- absolutely humiliating.”

“Oh, it’s just us. Nothing to worry about.”

“Fine, fine. What now?”

We spent the next half hour indulging Rebecca’s motherly instincts. We played, she cared for me. Pretty boring stuff. After a while, though, I had to pee.

The urge came on suddenly. One moment, I was fine. The next, I really had to go. I held it in, but it was painful. “Rebecca, stop. I have to pee.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Take me to the baffwoom. Bathroom.”

“You’re the one wearing a diaper,” she said lightly.

“Rebecca, pwease! I can’t hold it-“ at that moment, I couldn’t. I let it all go in my diaper, soaking it and myself in warm urine.

“You just went, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” I replied meekly. “Ugh, this feews, feels gross.”

“That’s why I’m going to change you,” she said, lifting me up and taking me to our makeshift changing table. She quickly removed my soiled diaper, cleaned me, and fitted me with a fresh one.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, honey.”

I paused for a second, noticing something was a bit wrong. This diapering was too similar to the last. Frantically, I looked down at myself, looking at my arms.

“What’s wrong?” Rebecca asked.

“Somefing’s wrong... I haven’t grown up at all yet.”

“Are you sure?”

“How long since you gave me a baff?”

“Uh, half an hour maybe.”

“I haven’t changed a bit since then! Somefing’s wrong.”

She lifted me a bit, and put me down. “You don’t seem any heavier to me.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked, panicking. I couldn’t stay a baby forever, not even a day.

“I... I don’t know. Just calm down, wait a bit.”

She radiated such calm that I was forced to stop freaking out. And so we waited.

“You know, if you don’t change back, I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

She was quiet after that. We passed the tense minutes not doing much. She stroked me, trying to comfort me. It worked.

About twenty minutes later, I detected a change. The band of my diaper was slightly tighter, which confirmed my suspicions that I had been maturing again over the past few minutes.

“I’m getting biggew again! I can tell!”

“Oh, thank God!” Rebecca said, lifting me to her chest and embracing me. I could tell she was honestly relieved. I knew she wouldn’t mind caring for me as a baby for however long it took, but she prized my happiness more.

We didn’t do any other playing around that day. I told her that I’d rather grow back up, considering what happened. Later we figured out that if I get wet when I’m already a one-year-old, it locks me in that state for a period of time proportionate to the amount of water I’m doused with. It was kind of scary at first, but it helps whenever Rebecca feels like being my mom like that.

That’s how it’s been since then. Rebecca has been my girlfriend, my confidante, my best friend, and occasional mother. Recently I asked her to marry me, and she agreed, on one condition. She wanted a baby. I didn’t. This wasn’t just because of the complications from my curse, but just my preference. I had to accept her terms, of course.

“What’s it say?” I said anxiously, as Rebecca exited the bathroom.

“Negative.”

“Again...”

She extended her arms to me. I embraced her.

“I’m sorry.”

“We have to go the doctor.”

Two weeks later, we got the results back from the fertility clinic.

“They say there’s nothing wrong with me. All my stuff is working fine.”

I leafed through the report. The contents made me cringe, but not because of the prognosis. “So there must be something wrong on my end, I guess.”

She nodded. Another couple of weeks later, I got my results back.

“Well, it’s like this. They say I’m almost completely sterile.”

“What? No, there has to be a mistake.”

“No, I believe them. They say there’s nothing in my medical history or in their tests that would explain it. They were quite stumped, actually. They wanted to send me to another clinic for some more tests, but I declined.”

“But why?”

“I know it has something to do with this curse. I don’t know why, but I can feel it.”

She wrapped her arms around me, and I could feel tears on my shoulder. I rubbed her back, and said, “Will we adopt? Or something else?”

“No, you know I would never adopt.” We had discussed that before. She was against adoption and artificial insemination, and so was I.

“We’ll never have a child, then.”

She looked up at me with a tear-soaked face. “Yes we will.” She squeezed me tighter.

I squeezed back. “Yes. We will.”