Chapter #1What has gone before by: Sage   You can't believe it. You have to spend yet another summer with Aunt Fiona and Uncle Harvey. Last summer was nearly the death of you thanks to a little trip into the basement of your Aunt and Uncle's home. They told you not to go down there, that they avoided the basement because the last owner of their house had been slightly eccentric, but like any normal twelve-year-old you ignored them and went down anyway
Down in their basement you found loads of old furniture, stuff neither of them had bothered to get rid of in the three years they'd owned the house. You went down there to avoid your cousins, Barney and Dora, two of the worst human beings on the planet, at least to you. While down there you discovered an old fridge, like something out of the nineteen-fifties. You hadn't eaten anything that day except a bag of stale peanuts on the plane. Your stomach rumbling you opened the fridge
Inside were two food items you hadn't expected to find. One was an average thing that just looked to be out of place, the other was like nothing you'd ever seen before. The first was a piece of chocolate cake from a place called Effy's Bakery in a nearby town. Considering the layer of dust covering everything you were amazed that the cake still looks moist, despite the fact that it must have been sitting in that basement fridge for years.
The other item was something that looked like peanut butter, yet had a purple color to it. Placing your finger inside you found that this purple peanut butter was just like regular peanut butter in texture, though the smell was an odd mixture of aromas you couldn't place. Your stomach growling so loud your afraid your cousins will hear it and come down, you decided that one of these items will fill you belly.
A moment of indecision later you were sitting on a dusty armchair with the jar of purple goo in your hand. Cautiously you stuck you finger in again and brought out a large wad of the stuff. You sniffed it again just to make sure that it wasn't rotten or spoiled or something, and then you slowly stuck the tip of you tongue into the purple goo. To your utter amazement the stuff tasted awesome. Like a mixture of peanut butter, jelly, and chocolate. Quickly you scraped the jar clean with your finger, and found that you felt as if you'd eaten an entire meal.
The next twenty-four or so hours of your life sucked. After a brief run in with Dora in the basement you were forced to play dolls with her, and you got your first suspicions that something was wrong with you. That night at dinner you found the table seemed to be getting bigger as you were sitting in your seat, and you were finding dozens of other things in the house, especially the people, seemed to be growing too.
You went to bed that night hoping that you were hallucinating. That maybe this feeling that you were getting smaller was just a reaction of being near Barney, who, despite being only a year older than you, was almost twice your size. You slept fitfully, waking up twice in the night covered in sweat, but somehow you managed to keep yourself calm both times and get back to sleep. That morning you groggily got out of your bed, and then were startled when the bottom of you pajamas fell to the floor, you'd become so small that they didn't fit at all any more, none of your clothes did.
Except for the shirt and jeans you'd worn the day before. It didn't take your panic stricken mind to realize that something from the day before must have caused your size problems, though it took you over fifteen minutes to realize what it must have been. You'd been so worried about the feeling of shrinking that you'd forgotten all about the purple peanut butter you'd found in that strange fridge in the basement.
Like a cannonball out of a cannon you raced through the house to the basement door, and as you did so you noticed that it was almost ten in the morning, you'd slept much later than usual thanks to the bad night. Still you got to the basement in record time and threw the door open to find something that chilled you to you soul. The basement, which had been like a junk heap the day before, was empty today, and the fridge with the purple peanut butter jar was gone.
Your heart pounding you searched the house until you found your Aunt by the front door. You found out two things from her. One was that you should not trust Dora. Despite the fact that you'd played dolls with her she'd still tattled on you and told her mother that you were in the basement. The second, and far more import piece of information was that the fridge and supposedly the purple peanut butter were now at the local dump, having been picked up that morning by two of you aunt and uncle's friends.
Leaning down to kiss you on your head your aunt didn't notice that you were more than a foot shorter than you were when you'd arrived yesterday, and she rushed out he door and left to her job at a university nearby. You just stood there for a long while, staring at the door, it was when you realized that you could actually see the door knob getting higher as compared to your head that you sprang into action.
First you tried calling a doctor, but they were quick to decide that it was a prank call and the lady at the other end hung up on you. Your next action was to try and catch a bush to you aunt's university, which proved problematic, but you did it anyway. You were lucky that there were people getting off at the university themselves, because by the time the bus had arrived at that stop you were only about six inches tall, and still shrinking.
Once on campus you decided to try for something closer than the administration building across the way, the place where your aunt worked, and instead rushed to the scientific research building. Inside you were nearly killed for being a mouse, and then ended up in the lab of a Doctor Abbot, a nutty professor who's attempts to help you resulted in his own shrinking, and forced you to find a route back to your aunt and uncle's home.
After hitching a ride with a girl who lived next door you were again inside the home where your problems had started, and breathed a quick sigh of relief that Dora's cat had apparently run away for the day, or your one inch high body would have looked like a very yummy treat to her. Still you had to get someone to notice you, and then help you, and the only two available people were Dora and Barney. You were quick to decide to get Dora's attention, though ended up nearly getting squished under her shoe as she walked through the house.
You tried to get her attention by climbing onto a makeup pencil she was using, something from her mother's makeup kit that the eleven year old girl probably shouldn't have been touching. Unfortunately for you Dora panicked at the sight of you, and decided you were a bug without a second thought. Shaking you off her pencil, caused you to fall right into a nearby sink, and then washed you down the drain.
So it was that you found yourself in the sewers. This would have been the lowest point of an extremely low day, except for the fact that you found a ride in the form of a water beetle, and were soon soaring over the city, and in short order found the dump, and the fridge. With a kick you sent the beetle down towards the fridge, but it refused to land so you were forced to jump off its back and roll to a landing a ways away from your target.
After a brief run in with a lizard that was probably only a few inches long in which you almost got up close and personal with the food chain from the wrong side, you at last got to the fridge, which had luckily lost its front door. Looking up you saw that the upper shelf did not hold the jar of purple peanut butter anymore, but it did still hold the box of chocolate cake, and you had a small glimmer of hope that maybe the two items had been in the fridge together for a reason. Such as a poison and antidote thing.
Working your way up to the shelf you were disappointed to find the box empty of everything save a single crumb and a smear of icing, but you decided to try your theory anyway and quickly downed the last bits of cake. Feeling odd and disoriented you discovered that the cake box, which had been an enormous airplane hanger a moment ago, was now about the size of a house, and still shrinking. You were right. The cake had been the antidote to the purple peanut butter.
Once restored to your original height you made your way back to your aunt and uncle's house, and found Barney waiting to beat you up in the lawn. A brief confrontation left Barney with a sore wrist, and you staring at your own hands. You were faster and stronger than you'd ever been before, probably as a result of your adventure. You were also quite hungry as a result of your escapades and went inside to the fridge. Upon opening the door you got two more surprises.
The first you should have expected, after all you aunt is a bit of a pack rat and the chocolate cake still at least looked good. Siting on a plate in the back of the fridge it looked perfectly ordinary. The second was the jar of purple peanut butter, the same jar you'd licked clean the day before. You were sure it was empty when you left the basement, but when you pulled it out of your aunt's fridge, you found that the jar is almost twice as full as when you'd found it the day before.
Quickly, and stealthily you grabbed the two items. You didn't know why, but you just couldn't stand the thought of Barney or Dora figuring out what they do, so with a thief-like grace you snuck back up to the guest room you were sleeping in, and then hid the two things in your luggage. At the time it had seemed the right thing to do, though really you wouldn't have been able to keep them hidden for the rest of the summer.
Luckily your parents never got to Europe. Their business trip was canceled before they even got on their flight thanks to a hostile takeover, and they came for you as quick as they could, getting you away from Dora and Barney. One the long flight home your thoughts constantly went to the plastic wrapped cake and the strange unmarked jar stuffed among you clothes. Their power was under your control then, and is now as you pull back up to the house of your aunt and uncle.
Once again your parents are off to do business overseas, and you are again dumped on your closest relatives for the summer while they are away. Only this time you have two items that you have kept carefully hidden all year. Somewhere buried deep within your socks is a jar of purple peanut butter, and nearby is the piece of chocolate cake. As you lug the suitcase up the stairs to the guest room you can't help but smile. This is gonna be a fun summer.
Packing your clothes away in the dresser near your new bed you stare at the cake and jar. You have so many ideas as to what to do with them, yet you have to choose one. Somewhere below you hear the door close again as your aunt and uncle rush off to their jobs, having taken a little time off to get you at the airport. Down in the living room you can hear the TV blaring as Barney and Dora watch something loud and obnoxious, probably looking for tips on how to annoy you. Alone with those two, what do you do?  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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