Melissa blinked, her eyes weary from summarizing too many reports for her boss, Jerry. She twisted to the left in her office chair, then to her right, noting the unsatisfactorily faint cracking from her spine. She focused on the clock in the corner of her screen: 2:50pm. Not quite time for her afternoon snack. Fuck it, she thought, reaching down to open the bottom drawer of her desk.
Surveying the half-dozen partially consumed bags of drug store snacks, she wished for something to snag her appetite, but despite the high sodium and fructose content in each bag, nothing inspired her. She was about to reach for the red licorice when another bag rustled by itself. Mice?
She paused a few more seconds to identify which bag was occupied, then plucked the package of pretzel sticks from the back corner. Peering inside, Melissa was astonished to see a tiny nude man, about one and half inches tall, covered in pretzel dust and staring up at her helplessly.
She emptied the bag into her palm, then pinched the man by his ankle and lifted him to her face. “What have we here?” She looked more closely. “Jerry?”
Her shrunken, naked, upside-down boss waved half-heartedly. “Hi, Melissa,” he squeaked. “I could use some help here.”
She burst out laughing, her tremors shaking Jerry to-and-fro.
“This isn’t funny!” he protested, provoking another wave of giggles from Melissa.
“Oh, but it is,” she said when she had recovered. “Do you mind telling me what you were doing in my snack drawer?”
“I’ve been trapped at the office all weekend,” he wailed. “I was starving, and I knew you kept some food in there. It was the only food I could reach.”
Melissa shook her head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen this side of you before, Jerry. Are you in the habit of raiding your employees’ personal food items?”
Jerry managed to look even more awkward. “Not . . . not all the time.”
She studied his tiny expression, then realization dawned on her face. “Don’t tell me you took one of Zabrina’s sweet corn cakes. They’re clearly labeled in the office fridge.”
He said nothing, just twisted uncomfortably in her pinch.
“You know her aunt made them, right?” she prodded. “Her aunt, the bruja?”
“I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
Jerry coughed as pretzel dust fell from his chest to his face. Most of his tiny body was coated in the salty powder.
Melissa’s eyes narrowed and her grin widened. She lifted the shrunken man above her face, opened her mouth, and lowered him screaming between her jaws. Closing her lips about his leg still pinched between her fingers, she let her tongue roam all over his thrashing body, snaking between his limbs and probing every nook and cranny, greedily sucking wherever any crumbs might have been hidden.
When she was satisfied she had licked him clean, she opened her lips and drew him out, slick and trembling into the chill air.
“I think that’ll tide me over until quitting time, Jerry,” she said, lowering him into her purse, “but we’ll pick this up later when I get home. I’m still curious what other flavors you might be able to produce.”
El Amante Menguante 