GRIND

     Life was grinding me down.
        Whittling away at me.
      Shaving off an inch here, a pound there.
      Hair. Muscle. The spare tire I’d been wishing away for months.
      Hour to hour, bit by bit, I was losing ground on all fronts.  By midday Friday I was probably six inches shorter than when I’d clocked in.
      The boss mentioned it.
      “You look like hell,” she said.
      “I’m a little under the weather,” I told her. “It’s nothing.”
      But I knew better. My clothes hung on me. I had to roll my pants legs up. My shoes flopped around, wearing blisters on my feet through my socks.
      “Well, I hate to do this to you, but I’m going to have to write you up over that Smith thing.” Her tone was flat. Personally addressing an employee regarding a screw up was called “job counseling” and was company policy. Otherwise, she’d likely not have nodded hello if she saw me in the hall. “You’re going to have to learn to cross your t’s and dot your i’s if you’re going to keep your job. These new computers don’t lie.”
      She handed me the chit on which my infraction was detailed. I signed without reading it, handed it back, and turned to my work.
      “This won’t look good on your yearly eval,” she continued. “I’m afraid it’ll effect any potential you might have had for a raise.”
      It didn’t matter. I had more to worry about than ten cents on the hour. I’d lost at least another foot by the time I hit the clock that evening. I searched the trunk of my car for something to sit on so that I might see over the wheel on my drive home. There was a garbage bag full of clothes I’d been meaning to drop off at Goodwill. It made a soft cushion, but I was barely able to reach the pedals.
      I rested all weekend, though a storm had blown some branches down in the front yard. The grass needed mowing. It looked shabby compared to the neighbors’. I knew the neighborhood association would leave a nasty note tacked to the front door soon. We’d signed on when we bought the place. We were obligated to mow and trim.
      By Monday I was a little less than four feet tall. I decided to call in sick. I couldn’t reach the phone. My wife handed me the cordless receiver.
      “This has got to stop,” she said. “I didn’t marry a damned midget.”
      “I can’t help it,” I told her, dialing. “You think I like shrinking?”
      “Well, if you’re going to lay out today the least you can do is clean this pig sty up.”
      Adeline, the receptionist, answered the phone.
      “You can’t just call in like this,” she said. “The policy has changed. You need a doctor’s excuse.”
      But I wasn’t up to a doctor’s visit. I was depressed.  I couldn’t find anything small enough to wear. I lay on the sofa, naked and anxious.
      That night I couldn’t manage to climb up onto the bed.
      “Give me a hand,” I said. But my wife ignored me.
      I shimmied up into a basket of clean laundry. It smelled like sunshine, but I knew those clothes hadn’t seen the light of day since they were worn many days prior. It was the fabric softener. I wondered if perhaps some chemical in one of the products we used had reacted with my body chemistry. Could fabric softener be the culprit?
      But then it didn’t matter anymore.
      I could feel it happening -- could feel my body contracting.
      Receding.
      Eroding?
      The next morning I peered over the edge of that basket and thought that, if I were to jump, I might break something.
      “Get me down from here,” I hollered. I sounded like a cartoon.
      “Get down yourself,” my wife said. “I’ve got to get to work. I’m late.”
      “But I’ve got to take a leak,” I squeaked.
      But she was gone, huffing through the door as she tucked her shirt tail in.
      By the afternoon that pile of clothes might have been a snow capped mountain range or an endless sea of stark white sand. A fly buzzed like a low flying plane. I knew I didn’t want to go that way, so I lay very still and, snuggled deep in that sea of fabric, dozed off.
      And when I woke it seemed the fabric had become a massive grid of cable like fibers. Hideous creatures roamed like giant, bloated buffalo. I knelt and peered over the edge of a thread into an endless chasm of whites and soft grays and, feeling as though I had nothing to lose, I let my tiny body slip off into that abyss.
      And as I tumbled and rolled feather like the very air became alive with ricocheting balls of light that danced and vibrated all around me. By then I was so small as to be only a flicker of thought.
      And soon, I know, even that will be gone.