THE SW CASINO
By Minimizer

Chapter 27

I couldn't get to sleep right away, so I lay there thinking about what Lori had told me about her meditations. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself running around my apartment at tiny size, but it didn't seem to help. Then I thought about the stars and how big the universe really was, and while trying to wrap my mind around that, I drifted off.

I woke up the next day at a decent hour, feeling much better than I had the previous morning. I didn't have any nightmares, either, which I took to be a good sign.

Since I didn't expect to go out today, I didn't shower, but just put on a T-shirt and sweatpants and ate some breakfast. Then I went back to the computer and turned it on. I wanted to do some more exploring online, but not in the Virtual Shrinking Center, at least not at first. Yesterday, when I'd stopped there, I hadn't really finished the rest of my search, just interrupted it. I was sure there was more about shrinking on the Internet than that.

After surfing around for a bit, I found there were literally hundreds of web sites available that had to do with shrinking. There were places with stories, pictures, drawings, comics, movie clips, scripts, computer-generated art and films, roleplaying adventures, interactive events, online games, and even SW merchandise like calendars and T-shirts.

I even learned there was an annual convention in Las Vegas where fans of the genre could get together and meet face to face. Last year, apparently, it had drawn a couple hundred people, which didn't sound like all that much, but was a far cry from earlier years when only a couple dozen had made the trip. The SW Casino had apparently been the focus of the event, and probably accounted for the higher attendance. This year, I noted, the "Altered Scale Fantasy Conference" was in June, a couple of months away. If I were still here--which I hoped I wouldn't be--I might drop by.

One thing that really surprised me as I wandered around was the sheer number of pictures of women from the SW Casino. Many of them were actual real-life photos, which was odd, since cameras weren't allowed in the building. Someone must have gone out of their way to smuggle one in, which didn't say very good things about the Sidewinder's security.

I studied the pictures carefully, but none of them were of myself, to my relief. I didn't see any of Heather or Lori, either, or anyone else I recognized. The snapshots probably hadn't been taken recently, I imagined, fortunately for me. I probably would have died of embarrassment if I saw my own face staring back at me from one of those sites!

Among the photographs were a good number of staged shots, probably postcards that had been scanned in and then posted on the 'net. I was looking over some of these and came across one of Beth, taken a year ago when the miniaturizer had just been put in the Sidewinder. It was an advertisement to show off the new look of the casino. She was three inches tall and sitting atop a couple of casino chips, which were being held in someone's hand. The ad urged the reader to visit the Sidewinder Casino: "Where the women are as small as the cards!"

I had to chuckle at that. Beth had told me she'd been one of the first to be shrunk, and this had probably been one of her earliest experiences at such a small size. She wore a seductive expression in the picture, but there was something about the image, a slight twist of the eyebrows perhaps, that suggested she really wasn't having all that good a time.

I wonder what she'd say if she knew this picture was still floating around the Internet, I thought. Perhaps I'd ask her sometime.

I continued to play around on the 'net for a bit, looking through some of the various stories I found. These were, by far, the most numerous contributions out there to the SW fantasy. While some of the stories were illustrated or contained VR enhancements, the vast majority were just plain text. Generally, they had some kind of description on the main site, telling you what they were about, and were presented in a series of chapters you could click through in sequence. Some were very short and to the point, while others were huge, almost novel-length. Many were unfinished, and I avoided those like the plague.

Naturally, the vast majority of these tales had adult themes. Sex was involved in almost every case. I found this disturbing and not all that promising towards solving my shrinking phobia, but I forced myself to read anyway, just to get an idea of what I might be facing down the road. In general, the shrinking woman had to endure all sorts of rude treatment, such as being fondled or tickled by giant fingers, or worse, being forced to pleasure her captor by rubbing her tiny body up against his manhood. While I fantasize about well-endowed men as much as the next girl, I preferred my male members where they belonged, not so monstrous they could crush me under their weight!

Dropping that distasteful subject for now, another main focus of the stories I saw was the obvious pain and humiliation forced on the tiny woman. In only a few cases did the girl enjoy what had happened to her. Usually she was required to put up with her captor's roughhousing against her will. Curiously, she often became aroused anyway, despite her desires to the contrary, a fact I found very interesting. It definitely said something about the male SW fan's mind, I thought.

As I read the various stories I came across, it turned out there were more different ways to handle the SW theme than I had ever imagined possible. The ladies went down to sizes from three or four feet to less than an inch high, sometimes with clothes on but usually without. Sometimes the shrinking happened instantly, while in others, it was barely noticeable at first, and sometimes took days or weeks to complete. It even happened in spurts sometimes, by a few inches or a set percentage. The possibilities, it seemed, were endless.

I also discovered that some of the sites I came across were hosted by people I'd met the day before in the SW Clubhouse. Lorekeep, for example, had a huge archive of stories, art, pictures, and clips, which gave me a better idea why he'd selected that particular handle. Cloudwalker, who publicly admitted to being a computer game designer in real life, had a massive site full of software, games and virtual modules. Crystal's site had a lot of fiction, almost all of it devoted to the fairy folk, which wasn't surprising considering her online avatar. Starhawk was into pictures, apparently called "collages," and had produced thousands of them, many of which were computer-generated. TrekkerTDL had a variety of stories, which focused more on the adventurous side of shrinking than the sex. As it turned out, he'd actually published (under a pen name, of course) a couple of novels containing shrinking themes, and I took note of their names. If I had a chance, I'd pick one up later.

Surprisingly, I saw nothing operated by Talon, but maybe I just wasn't looking closely enough. Or, perhaps, he was just a fan, and contributed to the genre by acting as leader of the Clubhouse.

I went back to reading stories, but after coming across something by someone named InkVenom, I stopped cold. The tale he wove was so horrifying and cruel, I wanted to tear the main character's heart out myself. The thing was, the story was so well written, I couldn't look away. I wanted to see if the tiny, mutilated, humiliated captives could turn the tables on the evil giant. Unfortunately, they didn't, and in the story's conclusion, they were baked into a pie and eaten.

Now THAT didn't do ANYTHING to help cure my phobia! I gave up on the Internet for a bit and did some things around the house, including having lunch, trying to put that monstrous story out of my mind. What kind of person would write such a thing? And why the hell had I read it?

As the day wore on, I realized I didn't have much else to do, so I went back to reading, and this time looked only for the tamer stuff. Someone named The Professor had written a bunch of G-rated stories aimed at younger readers, so I amused myself checking out his stories about teens trying to go to school while shrinking, and similar themes. Unfortunately, while this helped me forget about the aptly named InkVenom's nastiness, it didn't do much else. I went over to Crystal's site and read a couple of her stories, which were charming in a fairy-tale kind of way, but again, didn't do much to help me with my problem, so I moved on.

I came across a large site posted by someone named Minimizer, who I vaguely recalled hearing someone mention yesterday. He had apparently managed to turn SW into a career, first by publishing E-books and comics and then writing scripts for television and movies. In fact, "Honey, I Shrunk the Babysitter" had been his first Hollywood sale. Damn, what a small world, I thought! I'd just seen that film the other day. A lot of his stories were LONG, especially the one about the casino, which looked like it went on forever. I wanted to read a lot of different things today, not just a single novel or two!

So, I was in the middle of one of TrekkerTDL's adventures when the phone rang. At first I thought about ignoring it, figuring it was Mark, but in the end I picked it up. "Hello?" I asked, wincing as I prepared to hear his voice on the line.

"Ashley?" a woman asked. After an instant, I realize it was Beth.

"Yes?" I asked curiously, wondering why she would be calling me on a Sunday, and realizing almost at once that there was only one real possibility.

"Hey, sorry to bother you," said Beth. "I was wondering if you'd be available to work this evening. We had a girl quit earlier today, and I need a warm body."

"Sure," I answered without thinking. A few moments later, I would regret my hasty response.

"Good," she answered. "I don't need you until eight, but you should be here by six-thirty. You need to do some training first."

"Why's that?" I asked, my heart sinking.

"Well, the girl who quit was working roulette," Beth replied, "so it looks like we need you on that station earlier than I'd thought. Sorry about that. I guess I'll see you in an hour or so, then."

"Uh, sure...okay," I replied vacantly.

Beth said goodbye and hung up, leaving me standing there, almost shaking. Roulette! I was going to be working roulette! That meant I'd be only ten inches tall! I wasn't ready for that!

But it was too late to back out now.

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