CONTAINS SHRINKING/DEFLATION

It was a lazy Sunday. She was waiting for her boyfriend to come by. They didn't really have any plans, just hanging out at her place. That was her favorite way to spend a Saturday. For one thing, it meant she could just lounge around in her pajamas. But he was taking forever. She sighed and slouched on the couch, trying to figure out something to keep herself busy.

She tugged up her shirt a little and scratched her belly. In doing so, she noticed her belly button. He remembered when she was younger that her mother always told her not to play with her belly button "or else." It wasn't a threat, just a warning. But she was a little girl at the time, so she'd taken the warning very seriously. She believed implicitly that something terrible would happen if she poked at the innocuous bit of anatomy, so she'd never done so. Not even once, despite the fact she was in her mid-twenties now.

"Heh. What Mom doesn't know won't hurt her," she said.

She gave her navel an experimental poke. As she suspected, nothing happened. She didn't burst into flames, she didn't grow hair on her palms. She just felt an oddly pleasant tickling sensation. She probed it a bit more. Maybe it was because she'd avoided it so religiously, but it felt particularly sensitive. Every little nudge sent tingles through her spine. She shut her eyes and relaxed a bit more, idly fiddling with her navel in the same way one might twiddle one's thumbs. It was a harmless distraction until her boyfriend arrived.

As the minutes ticked on, she relaxed a bit more. She was feeling good, more relaxed than she had in ages. So relaxed, in fact, she didn't notice the odd hissing noise. Eventually, she snapped out of the reverie when she noticed a strange draft on her finger as she continued her poking and nudging.

She furrowed her brow and glanced around, looking for a draft. The window was shut. Her air conditioning was off. There wasn't even a fan on. And yet, when she glanced down, she saw her pajama shirt fluttering in the breeze.

"What the?"

She reached forward, no noticing that her sleeve was halfway down her hand. These PJs had always fit perfectly. She set that oddness aside for a moment and pulled up her shirt. Though it didn't make any sense at all, she quickly ascertained the source of the breeze. There was wind blowing out of her belly button.

"What in the world?" she muttered.

She stuck her finger in her belly button, and instantly the wind stopped.

"Well that's just... This isn't right at all."

Rather than sit there with her index finger dug into her navel, she decided to tug it out again to try to work out just what was really happening.

This turned out to be a mistake.

The moment she removed her finger, the wind came back with a vengeance. Rather than just hissing and fluttering, it rushed out with a windy whistle. She felt the skin across her entire body tingle and, to her shock, watched as her arm started to slide up along her sleeve. She tried to shake it free of the sleeve to plug her navel again, but in seconds the hand had fully retreated into her cuff. She could feel her skin sliding against the soft fabric of her PJs. Her legs shrunk up into the legs. The neck became loose on her shoulders. Her view of the world gradually receded toward the couch. She tried to stand, but she was hopelessly tangled in her once perfectly fitting outfit. In her struggles, she flopped back. Her head vanished into the neck hole and she was entirely tucked into her own pajama shirt as it fluttered and rippled around her. Now the force of the rushing air combined with her drastically decreased size meant she was actually sliding backward from the force of her deflation.

In spite of her concern, she started to giggle at the tickle-y feeling of the air coming out. The pitch of the whistle was increasing, and though she was now bouncing around inside her pajamas like a released balloon, she could tell that the worst of it was over. After a few seconds, she flipped down into the warm, soft cup of her sports bra. A few seconds more and the rush of wind sputtered to a stop. She blinked in the dim light filtering through the flannel of her pajamas and tried to get her bearings. Judging from the size of her bra and panties, and comparing against the pattern of the pajama pattern, she was four inches tall, tops. She also felt a bit tight and sluggish, as though her body had become less pliable after deflating to this size. She, to her relief, could still move just fine. It could have been worse. She could have been reduced to a flippy, limp, empty balloon.

The door to her apartment creaked open.

"Sweety?" called her boyfriend.

"In here!" she called, relieved to have some help arrive.

He heard him thump around, confused. Then a huge hand rummaged through the pile of clothes and fetched her. He held her tiny, naked body up to his face.

"Let me guess. You played with your belly button."

"Yeah..." she said, sheepishly.

"Didn't your parents ever warn you?"

"They didn't tell me I'd deflate!" she said. "I didn't even know that was possible!"

He sighed, then carefully brought his lips to her belly.

"What are you... ohhh..." she purred.

She felt him purse his lips and then felt a warm puff of air enter her body. She plumped up a bit in his grip, but an instant later the breath went *fweep* right back out of her and she launched from his grip. Her body plinked into a glass vase on her end table. He picked it up and dumped her back into his hand.

"I guess we're going to the mall to get you a belly button ring," he said.

"Really?"

"Sure. To hold the air in," he explained, turning to the door. "Why else do you think people get them?"

He tugged open his side pocket, plopped her inside and gave her a light tap against his thigh to make sure she was safely inside before heading back out the door.