Megan and Her Shrink Ray Gun

Chapter 8: The Hunt Is On!

Chapter 8: The Hunt Is On!

Two of the shrunken men hid beneath Shelly's bed, standing behind the leg of the bed closest to the wall, at the corner of the room. They didn't know where the others were. Bobby was one of the two shrunken predators hiding behind the leg of the bed. The two shrunken men could see the shoes and lower legs of the three girls. Three of the other captives were hiding behind the dresser. From his vantage point, Bobby could see the unobscured figures of the three gluttonous goddesses, from the top of their heads to their shoes. The sixth captive was hiding behind the door of the closet, but Leila saw him and knelt down and retrieved him.

Leila stood with her back to the door of the bedroom, while Megan and Shelly faced her with their backs to the desk. The bed was on Megan's left, and the dresser was on her right.

"I've captured one of them," said Leila. "One way or another, these six captives are going to find their way into my belly!" Leila turned and looked around the room. "Do you hear that, tiny ones? You might as well surrender to us now, because we're about to have a swallowing contest!"

Megan and Shelly laughed.

Leila addressed the captive in her hand. "Do you know where the other captives are?" Leila rubbed her bare stomach. "Don't you want me and my friends to have a good time? You can have the privilege of being swallowed by the Peruvian Princess! There are three cannibalistic conquerors waiting to devour all of you!"

"I think you're taking the wrong approach," Megan told Leila.

"How?" Leila asked. "If you were a shrunken man, wouldn't you want to get swallowed by a girl dressed up like me?"

"I wouldn't know, because I'm a girl," said Megan. "But we need to re-assure them that we aren't going to kill them. You probably have them thinking we're going to digest them! Telling them we're hungry hellions and other alliterative terms describing us as evil goddesses isn't going to convince them to surrender to us, it's gonna scare them!"

"Megan's right," said Shelly, as she grabbed the syrup of Ipecac on the desk. "Tiny ones, your mistresses have thought of your safety. We have a vomiting agent so we can puke you back up after we swallow you!"

"Not only that," said Leila, "but we sealed off all of the exits, so there's no escape!"

"Even if you get outside this house," said Shelly, "you would just get eaten by animals! At least with us, you're relatively safe."

Bobby weighed his options. He knew it might be riskier hiding from the towering teens, and if they tried to capture him, he could get squashed accidentally. He whispered to the guy hiding with him, "It might be safer to just surrender!"

Bobby came out of his hiding spot and waved his arms in the air.

"There's another one!" said Leila, the first to spot him. Leila knelt down and captured Bobby, while Shelly got down on her hands and knees and searched under the bed. She spotted Bobby's partner, and grabbed him.

"That makes three!" said Shelly. "Three more to go!"

Shelly stood up and gave the captive she just caught to Leila. "You hold onto them while I get a jar!"

Shelly raced into the kitchen and looked under the sink. She found an old Mason jar, so she plugged the drain and ran water with dish soap and cleaned the jar. When she was done, she dried it as best as she could, then returned to her bedroom.

"Put them inside this jar!" said Shelly, holding the jar aloft. Leila dumped the three captives inside.

"Can't we have a swallowing contest with just three of them?" Leila asked, licking her lips.

"We need to capture the other three," said Megan. "I don't want them to escape from us. Once we have them, we can swallow them as we please!"

"Look," said Leila to the unseen remaining captives who were still at large, "we don't have time for this, I know someone with a cat, and I'll bring it over here to catch you guys if you don't surrender to my hand immediately!"

One of the remaining three captives ran out from his hiding place, and Leila caught him. "He came out from under the dresser!" Leila shouted.

Megan and Shelly reached under the dresser, but the remaining two captives were still out of reach.

"I'll give you to the count of thirty to come out," said Leila. "If you don't, and we capture you, I really will digest you!"

As Leila began counting down, the remaining two captives emerged before she reached ten. Leila knelt down and captured them, then stood up and dropped them into the Mason jar with the others.

Megan took out the loaded dice from her backpack, and her stopwatch.

"I think we should toss dice to see who goes first," said Megan, as she shook the dice around in her cupped hands. "Whoever gets 7 or 11 wins!"

Megan tossed the dice, and got 11, a five and a six. Megan scooped up the dice, then did a switch, replacing the loaded dice with regular dice, and handed them to Leila. The regular dice looked just like the loaded dice.

Leila shook the dice, and said, "7 or 11?"

"Yeah," said Megan.

Leila tossed the dice, and got 7, a five and a two. "It looks like I got 7!"

"That can't be possible!" said Megan, looking at the dice. After looking them over, she saw that they were the regular dice. Leila had just gotten lucky.

"What are you so concerned about?" Leila asked. "Are you using trick dice?"

Leila checked Megan's other hand, and found the loaded dice.

"Hey!" said Leila. "You cheated, these are fake dice! That means I get to go first!"

Megan and Shelly backed up from Leila.

"Hey, I'm not going to beat you up, I wouldn't pick a fight with a girl who has a shrink ray gun!"

"Just let her go first, Megan!" said Shelly. "I'll time her on the stopwatch. I have a pad of paper and a pen to keep track of our scores."

Holly took the stopwatch while Megan took out a CD player. "Can I hook these up to your speakers? Megan asked.

"Sure," Shelly replied.

Megan turned on the music, it was Judas Priest's Defenders of the Faith album, and the song "Eat me alive" came on.

Leila took the six captives in her hand, and told Shelly to start the stopwatch. Shelly pressed the button that started the stopwatch, and said, "Go!"

Leila took took two of the captives and tossed them back in her mouth. She swallowed them, then grabbed two more from the four remaining captives in her left hand, and tossed them into her mouth and swallowed. She did the same with the remaining two, and swallowed. She threw her arms up to symbolize victory, and shouted, "Time!"

Shelly pressed the button that stopped the stopwatch. "Twenty-eight seconds! Megan, you can go next, I'll time you."

Megan took the syrup of Ipecac and gave it to Leila. "This will make you vomit."

"I'm not drinking that!" said Leila.

"We had an agreement," said Megan. "Each one of us swallows the captives, then pukes them up for the other girls to swallow!"

"Why can't we just get more of them?" Leila asked.

"They're immortal," said Megan. "They can't die in your stomach, they'll just swim around in there, doing who knows what!"

"Okay, you convinced me!" said Leila. "Give me that stuff!"

Leila took the syrup of Ipecac and took the cap off. She took a swig. Holly had a large plastic bowl for her to vomit into. Within a minute, Leila vomited, and all six captives fell into the bowl, along with a large quantity of vomit.

"Shelly can you go rinse them off?" Megan asked.

Shelly took the bowl to the kitchen. "So what's the story with this shrink ray device of yours?" Leila asked.

"Astronauts from the year 3321 got attacked by space pirates while hauling a new miniaturization prototype through the asteroid belt," said Megan. "They got caught in a temporal flux pattern, so they were stuck in temporal space. They jettisoned their reactor, and used the shrink ray to shrink their space ship, themselves, and the shrink ray so their decreased mass would be small enough for the normal sized reactor to get them back to normal space. Are you with me so far?"

Leila nodded her head, indicating that she understood.

Megan continued: "They crash-landed not far from here, and I took Shelly with me to go look, thinking it was a meteorite. We found the shrunken space freighter, Shelly captured the shrunken astronauts, and I retrieved the shrink ray gun. The shrunken astronauts programmed the shrink ray so it will only work when it detects my unique chromosome pattern."

"What happened to the space pirates?" Leila asked.

"One of them used a mind control device on my summer school teacher, and took his place. I have to attend class tomorrow, and interact with him."

"If he's after the shrink ray, you should hide it somewhere." said Leila. "Don't take it to school with you."

Shelly returned with the plastic bowl, which was now clean, and the six rinsed off captives.

"It's your turn, Megan!" said Shelly, handing her the six captives.

Megan held the captives in her left hand, while Shelly got ready with the stopwatch.

"Ready?" Holly asked, and after Megan nodded, Shelly pressed the button and said, "Go!"

Megan tossed three captives at a time into her mouth, and swallowed them in one gulp. She tossed the other three, and swallowed them, as well. Megan raised her arms in victory, as Leila had done.

"I'm done!" Megan shouted, and Shelly pressed the stop button.

"Thirteen seconds, a new record!" said Shelly.

Leila handed her the syrup of Ipecac. Megan took a swallow, and a minute later puked into the large bowl. All six captives were swimming around in her vomit.

"Okay Shelly,” said Megan, "it's your turn!"

"Let me clean off the captives first," said Shelly. Megan took the stopwatch from her.

When Shelly returned with the clean bowl and captives, Megan timed her and she beat Leila's time, but lost to Megan.

"I'm the champion!" said Megan. "I have to go home soon, Leila says I should leave the shrink ray here since I will be seeing that space pirate at school tomorrow."

"Good idea," said Shelly.

Meanwhile, in Shelly’s garage, Captain Vargas and his shrunken crew members were making progress.

"We've got the main circuits functioning," said Sergeant Diego. "Now we just need to figure out what to do from here on out."

"The way I see it," said Captain Vargas, "we can get ourselves and the shrink ray weapon back to normal size, or fix the communications system and send a signal to the 34th century, and hope that someone comes back for us."

"We can't do both," said Sergeant Diego, "so which do you want us to concentrate on?"

Captain Vargas thought about it, then said, "It makes more sense to repair the communications system and transmit a signal to the future. We can't let Megan or her friends know what we're up to, or they might try to stop us."

Just then, the three girls entered the garage. "How are you doing?" Megan asked.

"We got our equipment working," Captain Vargas replied. "Under normal conditions, miniaturized electrical or electronic devices don't function. The equipment we're using has been specially adapted to still function when miniaturized."

Megan turned toward Shelly. "I'll leave all the captives here with you, don't swallow them!"

"See you at school tomorrow, Megan!" said Shelly.

When Megan returned home, her mother had made dinner.

"I made your favorite," said Margaret, "organic mac and cheese with ground turkey and Marinara sauce."

"Mom, that's my favorite regular food. I like pizza and spaghetti the most!"

Megan ate two helpings of food, and her mother noticed.

"I've never seen you this hungry before, Megan!" said Margaret.

"This is really good!" said Megan. "I must've worked up an appetite at Shelly’s!”

Megan smiled, not wanting to admit that she had vomited her lunch up at Shelly’s house after swallowing shrunken captives.

To Be Continued!