The Witches of Kappa Gamma Delta, 11

John wasn't really seeing anything as he walked down the sidewalk -- for twenty minutes he just kept his feet moving, putting one foot in front of the other, as he wandered aimlessly. He felt like he was floating on air, like he was a ghost who was passing through a different world. His brain was almost completely numb, and his recently-shrunken body didn't even feel like his own. An uncanny sense of unreality had permeated his entire person, but through it all, John could see Harper's face, smiling sweetly at him from the back of his brain, her dark auburn hair lushly framing her shining hazel eyes, her cute little nose, and her full red lips.

So he had to choose. Nora, Vera, and Ariel had made that very clear... and even though John had briefly struggled with the negative thought that he had been tricked, that he had been somehow misled into this debacle, he couldn't really pursue those feelings very far. After all, the witches had told him, in no uncertain terms, what was going on -- he couldn't rightly claim that they were trying to trap or trick him. On the contrary, they had told him everything he needed to know to make his decision. And it was like Nora had said: it was not an easy decision that he was faced with, but it was simple: either he gave up his size (and, if he was being honest, his entire concept of his own masculinity), or he could never, ever see Harper again. At least, not in an intimate way. It was a terrible choice.

As John continued to float down the sidewalk, oblivious to the plethora of afternoon campus activities around him, he heard voices in his head... voices of past friends... voices of his parents... voices of everyone pleading with him that it was insane to keep seeing this girl.

'Did you SEE those tiny, scrawny men at the party!?' the voices all said. 'Did you SEE that gross, shrunken guy that got jacked off into the freaking cauldron!? Is THAT what you really want to be???'

John thought about the guys in his dorm, and how he would be ostracized if he decided to enter into this relationship full-time. He imagined the looks of shock on the faces of his parents if they saw him in a grotesquely-shrunken state; he imagined his ex-girlfriend Sabrina (who had been 6'0) laughing at him along with her friends at how tiny and weak he had become, as she mirthfully declared that she had dodged a bullet by breaking up with him. All of these voices combined into a ubiquitous wall of psychic sound in his head: anyone in his world would absolutely and unequivocally say that it would be crazy to go through with this relationship. And John had to admit that, if he was approaching this rationally, he had to agree with them.

But it was not so simple. Harper's laughing, smiling face cut through the voices, and even though they resounded in his ears, the image of Harper was more prominent still. He was completely smitten with her -- he had never met anyone so cute, so unbelievably sexy, and so alluring... in his entire life. And she liked him. He thought of her tears right as they had parted just a little while before, and his heart swelled. She liked him so much that she had become emotional at the thought that he would choose never to see her again. She hadn't tricked him or trapped him -- this was literally the only way that she could try and date people. If she had told him upfront about bing a witch, and about the whole size thing, John knew full well that he would not have gone to that Kappa Gamma Delta party... no guy would have.

But now that he had gone, and had been exposed to this new world, he felt like something had changed in him. He was a different person from the young man who had approached the sorority house the night before. A seed had been planted in his brain, and whether it would sprout or not depended on what he decided. John suddenly felt terribly sorry for Harper -- she was... at a movie with some of her sorority sisters... probably trying not to think about him, holding back the prospect in her mind that he would reject her. John chastised himself briefly as he realized that he was assuming a lot, by thinking this way.

'You can't just assume that she's thinking about you all the time, the way you are about her,' he told himself, but he quickly turned back around, as he recalled her crying and rushing away. He wasn't going out on a limb to think that she cared about him and wanted to be with him! She obviously did!

Ignoring the looseness of his clothes, John whipped his phone out and started texting Harper. He paused midway, and thought about going to the movie theater himself, but then he realized hat he had no idea which movie Harper was in, or if it would be weird if he somehow bought a ticket just to find her. He would probably just have to wait another hour or two. He finished his text and sent it, which had taken him a full five minutes to craft. It simply read:

"Nora told me everything. I'm not upset, and I want to talk. Hit me up as soon as you can