Brianna sighed as she looked at the termination notice. She has been serving in the same company for over five years, and now she was "downsized". Not that this came as any shock to her. Brianna was short...really short. Five feet tall and under a hundred pounds, there was little place in a office for a woman whose feet couldn’t touch the ground when she sat in the standard chair. It was a stigma from her coworkers. It was the story of her life.
Not that Brianna wasn’t attractive by any stretch of the imagination. She had long, brown hair that was straight and glossy, a cute face with blue eyes and even a modestly sized bust for her height. Some guys would go crazy for a cute little girl like her. But there was the problem...her height always portrayed her as many years younger than she actually was. Brianna was the only 26 year old going on 16! Bad news in hand, Brianna walked forlorn through the main lobby, her high heels clicking on the floor. The security guards watched her leave with a glare that suspected her to attack at any moment, or steal a computer system. She waved at them with a smile, they frowned back.
She was outside people now to them. The sky had gone gray outside, and the air felt like it wanted to turn into rain in a few hours. Brianna was off work (out of work) several hours early, and the company shuttle was a five hour wait. Her house was a four hour walk, so she started for home.
Two hours later she was in James Park, sitting on a bench waiting out the rain. She was going to be stuck here for a while by the looks of it, and was seriously considering taking a cab rather than waiting for nature to drop the clichŽ. A man walked by and tossed a newspaper into a nearby rubbish bin, trying to avoid getting rain on his London Fog coat as if the water were a strange acid that fell from the heavens. Bored, and alone, Brianna felt no shame in fishing the newspaper from the garbage and sitting down to read it.
The newspaper was open by irritating coincidence to the want ads. The man had circled a few jobs, most of them in the computer industry. Being a simple clerk, Brianna ignored them and scanned for more basic prospects. That’s when she came to one that looked not only possible, but intriguing.
WANTED - Accounts Clerk at Local Orphanage. Must be professional, polite and courteous. Appearance must be pleasant and non-intimidating to children. Box number 348.
Brianna smiled and decided to brave the rain. She has a good feeling about the job...after all, what child would be intimidated by a woman who looked like a teenager? She ran into the rain, trying her best not to slip in her heels, heading for the pay phone at the edge of the park.
She called the paper and dialed through to the want ad message boxes. To her surprise the box redirected her to a line which rang once, then was answered by a soft, feminine voice.
"Good afternoon, Sunnybrook Adoptions, Diana speaking!" said the voice.
Brianna was a little overwhelmed. Diana has liked the sound of Brianna over the phone so much, she had sent a cab to pick her up. She understood that Brianna would be a little wet, and promised a coffee and lunch if she would come immediately. Diana had placed the ad two weeks ago, and only found out yesterday that the ad had not been run by accident. She needed help very badly, especially since she was going on vacation in three days. Brianna sympathized with the haste over the phone, actually overjoyed and jumping up and down in delight at the misfortune!
A yellow cab arrived in 10 minutes and drove her to a small building uptown. It looked like nothing more than an office block, and Brianna was a little confused until she came to the door. It "Sunnybrook Adoptions Office". This must be the off site office, she reasoned. When she opened the door, suddenly very conscious of her wet hair and sodden shoes, she saw a small room with a desk, computer, filing cabinet and side table. A plump woman, red haired and blue dressed sat behind the desk looking at the computer like she was reading her credit card bill. She looked up at Brianna when she came in and smiled warmly.
"Brianna! I’m Diana! Come in please, take off your shoes!"
Diana seemed genuinely undeterred by Brianna’s presentation, so she kicked the shoes off as gingerly as she could and toed them to the side of the door. Diana rose and poured a cup of steaming java from the coffee pot on top of the filing cabinet. She handed the mug to Brianna and pulled back a chair for her to sit in.
"When can you start?"
She has a boyfriend or two since her hiring, but couldn’t find a man who wanted her for a person, rather than a demure and defenseless little girl. Diana would ask her about her love life often...she had been a wild girl when she was Brianna’s age, apparently.
And so it was on another rainy day when Diana walked in the office, this time accompanied by a lanky looking, oriental teen. She was shorter than Brianna, if that was possible...maybe four feet eight inches at most. Her clothes were poor and old, and the girl looked like she might fall apart into apathy at a moments notice. Only the unfamiliarity of her surroundings seemed to be holding her interest. Diana shut the door behind her, putting a cup tray down on Brianna’s desk. Three coffees were in the tray, one marked Diana, one marked Brianna and another marked Ai on the lid.
"Please sit, Ai. This is Brianna, our office clerk. Brianna, this is Ai."
Brianna rose from her desk and offered her hand to Ai. "Hello!" she chirped to the bored teen.
Ai shook her hand mechanically. Her eyes shifted to the window, watching the rain. Diana sighed.
"Ai is what we call a no hoper. She had been through over a dozen homes with no success, and is beginning to show signs of behavioral maladjustment," Diana reported conversationally to Brianna, as if she were discussing a problem automobile. She dispensed the coffees to the respective owners and sat down on the edge of the desk.
"Ah," replied Brianna. She was very unsure what this meant, or why Diana was here telling her this, be she suspected it was some ruse to encourage Ai to cheer up.
She opened the coffee and sniffed...it smelled great!
Sipping the coffee, she looked over to Diana for a clue.
Diana smiled, differently than usual. This smile was a conniving sort of smile, and Brianna felt in confirmed her suspicions that this was a scare tactic for the young girl.
"Well, I know what that means, Diana. Shame she couldn’t find a home good enough for her tastes. I hate to see these cases," she played along, sipping at the coffee. A strange warmth flooded through her. Diana must have slipped a shot in... still the wild woman.
Diana chuckled and went over to the door, locking it. "They are a shame indeed. Forces me to resort to older methods. You see, every case like this is a bad stain on the record of Sunnybrook. Bad stains mean less funding. We can’t have that! Less funding means our children suffer, the staff starves and we all do more work!"
Brianna felt a flash of fear. Was Diana here to terminate her? Her stomach grumbled in agitation.
"So I cook up a little witchcraft in these situations, solve the problem."
Brianna looked over at Diana confused. She had never heard Diana talk this strange before. Diana was smiling, sipping on her coffee. Suddenly Ai sat up straight in her chair, her eyes wide open and afraid! Her whole body was taut like she was being electrocuted.
"What the hell is going on?!?" Brianna demanded...Diana shrugged.
"You’ll see in a few moments."
Ai was taut, then she relaxed. As she slumped into the chair, her face a mix of relief and pain, Brianna noticed something very odd about the asian teen. When she had entered the office with Diana, Brianna had clearly identified her as over 16 years of age. Now the teen looked more like a tween, softer cheeks, brighter eyes and clothes that hung loose and baggy. Ai stood up in fear and stumbled in her own sneakers, the too big shoes slipping off her feet with ease.
"Holy shit!" Brianna yelled.
Diana laughed. She sipped on her coffee again, unalarmed by the impossible. Ai stood up and her jeans fell to the floor, revealing a prepubescent pair of legs and a smooth crotch, devoid of hair. The girl now looked to be around 8 years of age, and as Brianna watched she slipped back to 5 or so. Ai began to scream. Brianna could only watch in horror and wonder.
Diana put her coffee down and began stripping the child effortlessly, just like any other child. The asian girl became a toddler, naked and shaking. That’s when Brianna noticed something else.
Brianna was changing too.
She had worn a simple white blouse and a blue skirt to work, hose and high heels. The blouse was stretching around the bust line, and Brianna could feel her bra digging into her back. In alarm she pulled open the blouse to see her pert breasts swelling right out of the bra. The nipples began to leak a clear, milky fluid...
She looked back up at Diana in anger and shock to see that Ai was now an infant. Diana looked over at Brianna now and smiled again...a very warm, motherly kind of smile. "Sorry, Brianna, there was no other way. It was either this or you would have been laid off, and I would rather lose your trust for a while than your services."
Brianna’s dress was too tight now as her hips swelled and expanded. The dress tore down the hemline, the hose were stretching. Her feet were swelling in her shoes, and Brianna kicked off the heels before her feet got stuck! She stared in apt fury at the transgressions against her body before she felt the next change. The worst so far.
A snake like tube slithered out from her vaginal area and shot over to Ai, now a tiny newborn, connecting with the little girl’s belly button. Diana brought little Ai close to Brianna, and seemed very pleased with herself.
"You had better lie down, Brianna."
Though Brianna had never been a fan of either horror or science fiction, she began to understand what was to transpire here. In mute terror she lay back on the desk and spread her legs. Diana put the baby on Brianna’s now flabby belly and pulled Brianna’s underwear and hose off. She then picked up the infant...
Brianna felt the legs enter her body, and horrid muscle spasms began to feed the baby into her. Each pull fed more baby inside, each pull swelled her once firm belly until she looked as a mother about to give birth. Finally the spasms stopped and Brianna lay there crying, her entire lower body throbbing in pain.
Diana sat down next to her, tracing the milk oozing out of Brianna’s nipples and tasting some. "Most nutritious milk on the face of the planet," she commented.
"Why?!?!" was all Brianna could choke out.
Diana didn’t answer, and Brianna knew why. It wasn’t over. The swelled belly began to shrink until her stomach was flat once more. The thighs and feet returned to normal, then the breasts...Brianna noted with some alarm that the breasts were smaller than before.
The pain and weirdness stopped as if it had never been. Brianna rose from the desk, confused and hurt, but in no pain. She looked down at a very girlish figure. Dark hair spilled over her shoulders. She jumped down from the desk and ran across the carpet to the office door, staring at the reflection of Ai in the glass.
"Sorry to say, AI, that Brianna seems to have left the company. I am pleased to tell you that we have found a new placement for you, and I am sure you will more than cooperate with your new parents this time..."
Brianna looked over to Diana in horror. "No..." she whispered.
Diana grinned. "And one word about anything weird, and I am sure your parents will tell me about your strange delusions. Then we would have to take you back, maybe feed you a cheer up coffee...after you meet Brianna’s replacement of course."
Brianna saw it all fall into place. She was very trapped, and young, and asian, and an orphan with no rights. She walked over to the pile of clothes that had once housed the real Ai and began to dress.
Diana gathered up Brianna’s things and put them in a box marked "Rubbish". She placed both coffees into the box with care, and closed the lid. "Ai" looked out the window at the falling rain and sighed.
Suddenly a smile crossed her face and she chuckled.
"Guess I really was downsized this time."
Diana laughed after a moment and held out her hand. Ai took it obediently, and they left for her new life.
Finish.