Picked On (2025) (Patreon)

The story is written by the incredible author Mysterion1800.

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Christopher was in immense pain when he awoke. The back of his head all the way down to the balls of his feet felt as if someone had attempted to cleave him in two. The hardwood floor beneath his aching body wasn’t any more welcoming either.

Christopher wasn’t even sure how it had happened. One moment, he was walking past the dining room table on his way to the kitchen to make himself some breakfast before school when he suddenly felt gravely ill in a matter of seconds, his consciousness fading out immediately after. The only logical explanation he could presently think of was that he must suddenly become narcoleptic, but that didn’t make much sense either.

Opening his eyes with great difficulty, Christopher was greeted by the familiar sight of the dining room ceiling, something he had seen almost every day of his life, though not from this angle since he was a kid. Lifting himself by his elbows, he was ready to call out to his father for help. He supposed he might have to go to the emergency room for something as random as this, which did not make Christopher happy, as he had a math exam he had been dreading. 

However, by the time Christopher had successfully lifted himself off the floor, his math exam was immediately forgotten.

The dining room wasn’t right. Everything looked bigger. The chandelier, the framed artwork on the walls, the china cabinet–everything now looked as if it were built for a giant.

Christopher blinked a few times, hoping for something, anything to change. However, the room remained the same.

Panicking now, Christopher looked down at the floor and was startled to realize that the hardwood he was lying on was not the dining room floor, but the dining room table itself.

Everything began to click inside Christopher’s head. The room wasn’t different. It was the same. It was himself that had shrunk.

Exactly how small he had gotten, Christopher did not know, but he had to have been miniscule. The backs of the chairs, visible over the edge of the table, stretched over him like towering spires, and all of the silverware, often left on the table in case of guests, were now the size of yachts to poor, diminutive Christopher.

Besides wondering how he would get back to his normal size, one thought dominated Christopher’s mind. If everything in the dining room looked this big at his new size, what on Earth would his own father look like?

He soon got his answer.

The dining room table began to shudder. Subtle at first, but increasingly violent as hurried footsteps drew nearer. Christopher had been knocked off his feet by the time the source walked into the room. 

Standing on the other side of the table was a shirtless, muscular god. A god Christopher previously knew as Dad. 

Nicholas had a worried expression on his face, clearly on the alert for something distressing he may have heard. Christopher had seen that face often growing up, like when he fell off the back of the couch as a kid, or when he accidentally dropped a large glass plate when he was a young teenager. He wondered if his father had heard him collapse before he shrank. 

The tremors produced by his father’s massive bare feet, however, were nothing compared to the thunder of his father’s concerned voice.

“CHRISTOPHER? WHERE ARE YOU? ARE YOU OKAY?”

Christopher’s hands flung to his ears. Not only did his father’s voice threaten to blow out his eardrums, but it awakened every pain in his body he had forgotten about whilst taking in his predicament.

“D-dad. Dad, I’m h-here,” Christopher tried to reply, but his own voice trembled and died out as his body continued to ache.

Not even so much as looking at the tabletop where his bug of a son was, Nicholas began to walk past the dining room table towards the kitchen, clearly curious to see if his son was in there instead.

Fear and adrenaline getting the best of him, Christopher fought the tremors produced by his father’s feet and his own protesting body, standing back up and trying to run after his father on legs not prepared for such a feat.

“Dad! No, wait! Come back! I’m here! I’m down here!”

But Christopher’s legs soon gave out, and he collapsed again. Not that it mattered anyhow, as his father, who rounded the corner and entered  into the kitchen, had clearly not heard him.

Christopher began to cry and sniffle. The combination of his beaten body, his shrinkage straight out of a science fiction novel, and his own father snubbing him were all too much to handle at once. As he sobbed, however, he suddenly heard something that made his blood run cold. Not something as loud as his gargantuan father. But something around his size. Something close by. Something that sounded as if it had many, many legs.

Christopher looked up, and through his tears, saw that a house spider had crawled onto the table. At Christopher's normal size, the spider wouldn’t have been anything to raise an alarm over. At his current size, however, it was the size of a compact car, and by the longing look in its many eyes, Chistopher did not have to guess what the spider’s intent was.

His sadness forgotten, Christopher stood up and ran in the opposite direction, praying his adrenaline would not fail him this time. He didn’t even have to look behind his shoulder to know that the spider had given chase, nor did he have to know that his two legs were being outpaced by the spider’s eight. 

The tabletop beneath Christopher and the spider, however, suddenly shook again. Nicholas had stepped out from the kitchen, still nonplussed about the whereabouts of his son.

The earthquakes generated by his father caused Christopher to lose his footing and collapse again, sliding several feet across the hardwood table. The spider, however, continued to close in.

Turning away from the spider, Christopher screamed into the aether with every ounce of energy he had left, 

“DAD! HELP ME!”

For a moment, nothing happened. No intervention came. All Christopher felt was the spider’s breath as it went in for the kill. However, through his closed eyelids, he saw that a shadow had passed over him. He opened his eyes and looked up. 

There was his father Nicholas, staring down at his shrunken son and the spider harassing him with a grimace of annoyance and disgust. 

“FUCKING ASSHOLE. PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE, HUH?”

Nicholas’s gigantic fist, thumb extended, suddenly came crashing down onto the dining room table. The spider in front of Christopher folded under its weight and burst, his father grinding its remains into the surface of the table for good measure. 

Christopher’s entire body shook as his father eradicated the spider. There were a few seconds when he was unsure if he would ever be capable of speaking again, that his cry for his father’s help would be his last words. However, his voice still stuttering, Christopher managed to let out a croak as he slowly looked away from the mushed remains of the spider beneath the massive thumb and up at his Adonis of a father, who smiled down at him warmly.

“D-d-d-d-dad?”

 Nicholas retracted his thumb in response, his fist opening then turning to reveal his palm. His fingers flexed twice as if egging his tiny son to climb aboard.

Still shaking, Christopher got to his feet and began climbing up the side of his father’s pinkie. His situation, already so surreal, felt even more unworldly as he stepped onto his father’s massive palm, his father’s skin cracked and calloused in places from decades of hard work predating his conception. He then looked up expectantly at his father’s face, which still looked at him tenderly.

“THERE YOU GO, DUDE.”

The thunderous words preceded his father lifting his palm to chest height, bringing his tiny son level with one of his nipples, which dwarfed Christoper several times over. 

Although there was something nurturing about his father’s demeanor and speech, something also didn’t feel quite right to Christopher. It didn’t feel as sincere as when his father addressed him the same way affectionately. It felt like he was speaking to a pet, not his own hapless son.

‘LET’S TAKE YOU BACK OUTSIDE WHERE YOU BELONG.”

For the third time that morning, adrenaline was once again injected straight into Christopher’s veins. His father hadn’t noticed him for himself. He had thought his son was some easily bullied bug. An easily bullied bug that had no business being inside the house.

Panic set in further as Nicholas lowered his hand away from his bare chest and started walking towards the dining room window.

“DAD! NO! DON’T PUT ME OUT THERE!”

Not sure what else to do, Christopher jumped up and down with great vigor, hoping this would stop his father dead in his tracks.

At first, Nicholas pressed on, not paying further mind to the insect he would soon be free of, convinced what he was doing was just another part of his good deed for the day. However, the bug’s movement became incessant, forcing him to stop and look down, his brow furrowing.

Christopher was relieved his father had froze, but he knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He continued to jump up and down repeatedly, trying to make it clear to his father that he was not a bug, but a small human being, let alone his own flesh and blood.

Nicholas, his curiosity piqued, lifted his palm up again, this time much closer to his face to examine the bug more carefully. 

The momentum of his father’s hand rising caused Christopher to fall backwards onto his rear, which was fine by him, as his body could do no more. He instead waited with bated breath for his father to judge him worthy as his son, or unworthy as a bug whose fate was doomed to be dumped in the front yard where more hungry insects awaited him.

Christopher’s heart then skipped a beat as his father’s eyes widened in utter shock, a loud gasp escaping his father’s lungs.

“C-CHRISTOPHER? IS THAT… IS THAT YOU, KIDDO?”

Christopher, tears now flooding his eyes out of pure joy, immediately broke out in explanation. After around thirty seconds, however, his father cut him off with his earsplitting voice..

“LOOK, KIDDO. I CAN’T MAKE OUT A WORD YOU’RE SAYING.”

Christopher’s heart sank. Though he had been saved and found, that sentence still pierced him like a knife. How was his father going to help now if he still couldn’t be heard?

Despite the insurmountable size difference, however, Nicholas must’ve still been able to tell that his son’s demeanor had deflated.

“BUT DON’T WORRY, CHRISTOPHER. WE’LL FIX THIS,” spoke his father softly. “AND IF WE CAN’T… WE’LL STILL MAKE THIS WORK.”

The idea of being stuck at this size for the rest of his life did not sound promising to Christopher whatsoever. However, whether he grew back or remained the size of an ant forever, at least he was still inside the house with his father, where he belonged.