Once disturbed, it wasn't long until Gwen was fully awake.  Physically, she felt pretty good.  Her body ached here and there, she was tired, but she'd live.  Her emotional state was another matter.  The stress of her rage and fear and shock had been released but she wasn't calm, she was wired up, strung out.  Additionally, she was ashamed of herself, both for getting inflamed as her husband had sex with another woman and for participating from the sidelines with them.  She could deal with it all though; she'd have to.  She'd have to deal with worse than that.  Curiously, she wasn't particularly afraid any more.  The world she was now in was as unreal as ever but the sense of dread was gone.  She knew she could cope, somehow.  She peeked out from under the jacket again to assess her surroundings and predicament.

Surroundings:  room empty of people, lights still on, clothes strewn all over along with sofa pillows and the contents of the overturned coffee table.
Situation:  size of a doll, stuck on a shelf halfway up a bookcase.  No clothes, no personal possessions, no objects usable by someone her size.

Gwen had things to think about, things to consider in making a plan.  She had to have a plan, a way to take some sort of charge of her new life, a way of dealing with Bryan and his damn bitch girlfriend.  Certainly they'd have to pay.  One question, of course, overrode all else: was she stuck this way?  She stood next to one of the books on the shelf and found it reached her eye level; she was a bit taller than an average book.  How tall was that?  She didn't know exactly, ten inches maybe.  That would make her something over ten inches tall, at the most a foot.  Was that the same or bigger than she had been?  Gwen had no idea.  Certainly she hadn't been a lot smaller but quite possibly she was the same size she had been when she shrunk.  Shrunk.  Shrank.  To shrink.  To have shrunk.  Her reality shifted slightly while she thought about her novel situation and accepted it a little more.  The phone message was burned into her brain as well as ever.

'The first will surely be temporary.  The second might be temporary for your subject but it wasn't here...  It wasn't temporary here.'

Gwen knew  that she was the was the second, the maybe-temporary subject.  In her head, she could hear the shaking, frightened phone girl's voice clearly and wondered for a second who the other victims were and what was happening to them.  Only for a second.  She wasn't the sort to worry overmuch about other people's problems, especially when she had her own to deal with.  Her immediate problem was clothing herself, she decided, then getting down from here.  The Other Woman's jacket was ludicrously large to her  but a check of the pockets turned up a pair of thin gloves and, good news at last, a real find, a scarf.  Not silk, just cheap cotton, she thought derisively, but still very welcome.  She contrived a passable sort of wrap-around shift and felt better as soon as she had it on.  Not only was she warmer but she felt more confident, less helpless.  Now to get down from the shelf.

Gwen peered from her perch to the floor.  It was a long way down there.  She thought she might possibly jump that far and survive the landing without serious injury but she wasn't sure of it.  A look around gave her another option.  She could surely hang onto one of the wood posts between the shelves, lower herself over the edge and swing down over the next shelf before letting go.  She'd have to try.  She made a final check of the shelf she was on, more from reflex than need.  There wasn't likely to be much for her to leave behind.

It turned out to be absurdly easy.  There hadn't been a lot of doubt in her mind that she could do it but she had expected it to be a challenge, a struggle.  Instead she found that she could easily support her weight with her hands and arms, could easily swing well over the next lower shelf before she let go.  The landing was of no consequence at all; she hardly felt it.  Puzzled slightly but greatly encouraged, she swung confidently to the next lower shelf and from there, rather than swing to the next shelf, jumped nonchalantly to the floor.  That had been too easy, she thought.  She wasn't in bad shape but she was certainly no star athlete while those maneuvers would have been difficult for her back in her gymnast days in high school.

That was just something else to file away though.  Right now she had other problems, like what to do next.  Call for help?  Given her new agility, she could almost certainly get to one of the phones in the apartment and dial 911.  She could claim that Bryan and his girlfriend had done this to her; it was almost the truth.  Let them have some fun explaining things to the police.    She fleetingly considered it  but knew she had to try something else.  For one thing, she would be well and truly trapped if the rest of the world knew of her present shrunken state.  Kindly treated, no doubt, but a lonely, helpless freak, a pitiable sort of celebrity at best, the subject of unpleasant scientific investigations at worst.  Calling for help would be a last resort.  Better to see what she could do for herself first.

What else could she do?  Her clothing worries were over, at least.  Bryan's and That Woman's clothes were scattered all over the place, some of them a bit the worse for wear but there was plenty of material to contrive a different costume.  Now that it was available, however, she found she didn't need anything different in that line.  Her wrap-around was warm enough, it gave her adequate covering, it didn't hinder her movements.  Her real need was for some sort of weapon.  She knew there weren't any guns in the place and she didn't think any edged weapon would be of much use.  She might rummage around and find a pocketknife as big as a sword to her but it would still be a pocketknife to anyone she  might threaten or use it on.

One weapon, of course, would be of real use.  If she could find her shrinking device, the advantage would once again be hers.  It was small enough and she was strong enough that she could lift it, aim it, fire it.  There should be one charge left, she knew.  She could threaten Bryan with it, if necessary she could shrink him after all and maybe his friend too.  That might not solve her personal problem but it wouldn't do her any harm either; at least she wouldn't have to worry about them menacing her.  Once he was her size, she could deal with him, control him like she always had.  If there was a way out of this mess, she could get him to find it and give it to her.

The problem with that theory was that she couldn't find the device.  She carefully and thoroughly went  through all the clothes scattered about, searched every inch of the floor, squinted up at every surface she could reach or see but there was no sign of the thing.  The only interesting information she came up with was from the girlfriend's handbag.  From the driver's license learned at least the identity of the adulteress.  Patrice Alting.  34.  Height, weight, yeah, yeah.  Address in this same building.  Did she meet Bryan in the parking garage?  In the hallway?  It was somewhere in the building and it didn't matter and she still didn't know where the device had gotten to.  Finally  Gwen concluded that Bryan had taken it with him to the bedroom.  Fine.  She'd go get it there.

She stayed close to walls as she crept to the bedroom and was keenly aware of hiding places she could use: counters to crawl under and cabinets to creep into.   She had no fear of any animals since they had never owned a cat and the place was too new and too clean to have a population of small animals or large insects.  It was Bryan she was worried about or maybe the hated woman, Patrice, damn her eyes, with him.  Either of them could blunder out looking for her at any moment and caution was her only friend.   But when she got there, the bedroom door was half open and the two lovers proved to be out cold.  Unfortunately, so was the light and Gwen didn't dare go groping around there in the dark. The device would have to wait.

As she was retreating to the living room to consider her options, her vision unexpectedly blurred and she felt weak, legs rubbery.  She leaned against the wall to recover.  Involuntarily, her hands rose to her breasts, to fondle and massage them.  The sensation was warm, sensual, pleasurable.  Almost, she let out a moan of pleasure.  She stopped herself at the last second and forced herself back to alertness as the dizziness passed.  She found that her hands had reached under her improvised dress and the end of the scarf that formed it had slid off her breasts.  Her brow furrowed when she tried to rewrap it the way it had been and found a difficulty.  It was too short.  She could improvise a shift from it well enough but not with the same wraps she had used earlier.  The scarf was too short for that now.  She was growing after all.  A wave of relief swept over her.  She wouldn't be this size the rest of her life after all.  She'd be full-sized soon; normal again.  She slumped against the hallway wall again, grateful for the promise of a return to her old life.

Now her immediate goal snapped into focus.  All she had to do was to stay alive and free while she reenlarged.  Stay out of the hands of Bryan and that loathsome Patrice.  Stay out of the way of the shrinking device, where ever it was.  It would be too cruel to be shrunken again, after all this.  The phone message had been definite about that; the third use of the device would be permanent.

Where to hide, where to hide, where to hide.  It would be easy enough to creep into some hidden corner now and evade Bryan and Patrice whenever they awoke and set to looking for her but she had to plan farther ahead.  She was doll-sized still but wouldn't be for long, she hoped.  Any place she chose would have to be large enough to allow for at least some expansion.  As she crept back to the living room, she reflected that at some point she would need more clothing than her trusty scarf.   There was an obvious solution to that.  Either Bryan's shirt or that bitch's blouse would serve her well enough.  She checked the blouse first but found that, besides being ripped, it was liberally doused in some brown fluid.  She sniffed: brandy.  The toppled and mostly emptied spilled Calvados told the rest of the story.  The creep had never bought anything for her like that, not lately at least.  Another thing that Bryan would have to be called to account for.

As she retrieved Bryan's shirt, an idea took root in brain and grew.  Let's see...she could do that...that might work.  She finished folding the shirt and set off.

************* **************** **************

'What the...'

Patrice awoke with a start.  She was alone in the bed; Bryan's shout from the living room had awakened her.  She jumped to her feet and ran out to find him scuttling around the room, peeking into corners, ducking down to look under furniture.  'What's wrong?' she asked.

'Damned bitch is gone, that's what's wrong,' he growled.  'She got down by herself, somehow, and now she's hiding somewhere.'  He rifled through the clothing scattered on the floor before rising to face her.  'She's here somewhere, though.  We'll have to find her.'  His expression softened as he took a slow, appreciative look at Patrice's  nude body.  She came to him, to be embraced and kissed briefly.  'You better get something on,' he told her.  'Look in the bedroom closet.  You can use something of hers.'  His tone grew harsher.  'She won't be needing any of it.'

He inspected the bookcase as she left, trying to see if he could puzzle anything out.  Patrice's jacket was still on the shelf where she had deposited Gwen last night.  Nothing else, he found, shaking out the jacket one last time before tossing it aside.  Suddenly he remembered the shrinking device and grabbed at the top shelf where it still rested.  Heart thudding in relief, he inspected it.  The trigger button was blinking but the two status displays on the other side of the base were blank.  He brought the device close to his eye and held the base at an angle to the light.  From this perspective, he could see a spiderweb of fine lines traced across a quarter of the base.  The fall must have been harder than he thought.  The status displays were tripped, out of action until they could be reset in the charger

He didn't need the displays anyway.  The trigger button was flashing: the device had a charge.  He knew it had been used on Gwen and she had acted like she knew what it could do.  Had she used it on someone before he came here?  He pored through his memories of the night before, realizing now what the call from the police was about.  Gwen must have shrunk someone down there before coming to find him, he realized.  But the shrinking device was still charged; it could be used again if he wanted to.  When he wanted to.  He cautiously returned it to the top shelf.

He jerked his hand away from it and whirled in alarm when he heard Patrice's cry.  Looking down the hallway to the apartment door, he saw what had caused it.  The door was ajar but still fastened with the security chain.  Next to the door stood a chair.  He silently dragged the chair away from the door and unhooked the chain, stuck his head outside to look futilely up and down the empty public hall.

'Is she gone?' wondered Patrice.

'Gone,' he said.  'Must have stood on the chair to unlock the knob but she couldn't reach the chain.  She didn't need to anyway.'  He reattached the chain and held the door open as far as it would let him.  'She could squeeze through that easy.'  He turned and looked into Patrice's worried face.

'Where can she go?' she asked.

'I have no idea,'he answered.  'She couldn't very well use the elevator or open the stairway doors, not at her size.  She couldn't reach the bell on somebody else's door, either.'  He closed his eyes for a moment.  'But anybody could have found her.'  He was quiet another second.  'I'd better go look for her.  You stay here.  We'll leave the door open like this.  She might decide to come back.'  He returned to the living room, put on his shoes and got a jacket out of the hall closet.  At the door, he kissed Patrice briefly.  'I'll be back soon,' he told her, pushed the chair further out of the way and unlatched the chain again.

'Wait a minute,' Patrice demanded.  'You can't leave me here alone like this.  What's going on?  What happened to, to your wife last night?'

Bryan sopped cold and turned around to look into her face.  She was frightened, puzzled, on the verge of tears.  He walked back and held her close.  'I don't have time to explain right now,' he told her.  'I had a machine, it was supposed to shrink things and Gwen found it somehow, I don't know how.  And it shrunk her, she didn't know how to use it right.'  A faint smile flickered across his face.  'Now I've got to go find her, before anything happens to her.  You wait here for me.  Okay?'  He gave he a brief kiss.

She surprised him by suddenly responding,  returning the kiss and throwing her arms around his neck.  After a moment she broke off the kiss to ask, 'Can you use it again?  Can we shrink somebody else?'  The tears glinting in her eyes were less of fear now than of excitement.

He unwrapped her arms from his neck and stepped back, hands on her shoulders.  'We'll have to see.  Maybe we can.  Now don't answer the phone or talk to anybody while I'm gone.  Just hook the chain after me and wait here.  Okay?'  At her nod, he turned back to the door and was gone.

Patrice nervously relatched the door chain, making sure the door was as wide open as it would allow, then tugged the chair down the hallway, wondering where it belonged.  It looked like a desk chair, and a heavy one at that.  She checked out the nearest doorway and decided that it must have come from the little study in there.  There was a desk there but no chair and this one looked to be a match.  She tugged the chair into place and wondered how Gwen had moved it out.  Granted that she wasn't a very strong person but Gwen was now tiny, really tiny, and the chair was heavy.  Did she have help?  Who?  And if she'd had someone to help her, why had they bothered with the chair at all?  Patrice decided ask Bryan; in the meantime, she'd clean up a bit and wait.

A few minutes later, face washed and hair combed, she paced through the apartment, waiting.  She'd considered a shower but didn't feel totally safe with the front door partly open so she made do with a quick freshen-up.  Her blouse and bra were half-soaked with brandy spilled during their frantic scuffle last night but she'd found an adequate blouse among Gwen's things and her pants and shoes were fine.  She felt guilty, and not a little creepy, rummaging through the other woman's things, but she needed to wear something and, as Bryan said, Gwen wouldn't be needing them now.  She felt a slight, guilty  thrill at the thought of the shrunken wife.  She hoped Gwen was okay.

Thoughts of Gwen, of the silken smoothness of her skin as she'd trembled in her hands last night, aroused her and Patrice didn't fully understand why.  Women didn't interest her, she wasn't wired that way, but the bizarre transformation of the other woman, her new, miniature dimensions, her helplessness, had an erotic effect on Patrice.  Bryan had answered that effect last night, both in their first wild passion and later, after he had led her to bed.  But that was then and this was now.  She wondered how long he'd be gone.

She was still pacing, still waiting, a few minutes later when the phone rang, startling her.  She hesitated while it rang a few times, listened to Bryan's voice on the message answering tape and then heard his voice again.  'Patrice, go ahead and pick up.  I need to talk to you.'

She hesitated another moment and picked up the handset.  'Hello.  Bryan.'

'Hi.  No sign of her and I checked every floor.  I'm down in the garage now, on the cell phone in my car.  Look, you  remember last night I promised to go talk to that police officer this morning?  Well, it's already past ten.  I ëm pretty sure I know what's going on with him and it shouldn't be a problem if I go right now.  Otherwise, he might get irritated.  Can you stay there and hold the fort?  She still might come back and I don't want to just leave the door open with nobody there.  Okay?'

'I guess so,' she agreed reluctantly.  'You won't be too long, will you?'

'Couple of hours, most likely.  Look, I know all this must be scary but, trust me, it'll be fine.  I'll be back in a couple of hours, three at the most and we'll figure out what to do.  I'll take care of you.  Okay?'

'Okay,' she agreed and hung up the phone.  He'd take care of her.  She wondered exactly what he meant by that.

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