Old NaOH_r stories

[NaOH_r2]

Many years ago, I wrote a few stories on an old SW board; there are a few members of that board still active here so maybe somebody remembers me. I plan to repost a couple of my old stories here so here is the first.

This one is based on Shrinking Machine, an illustration by the great Toyogub. Hence, the story has the same title: Shrinking Macine.

I am attempting to include the illustration but I don't know if I'll succeed.

Shrinking Machine
by
NaOH_r

Joan awoke completely disoriented.  She had dozed off during the late night van ride to the hotel, as had the other two women riding with her.  She wasn't sprawled back in a passenger seat now, though; she was laying flat on her back on what felt to be a cold metal surface.  Particularly cold because the clothes had been stripped from her body, leaving her wearing only a pair of panties that weren't even hers.
She groggily tried to raise her arms from her sides, to get up off this table, but found her arms and legs were bound, held motionless by metal bands.  She came to full wakefulness, her heart pounding,  realizing she was trapped and helpless.  When she turned her head to the side, she found she was not alone in her predicament.  Lying next to her was Nori, the young woman she had spoken to on the flight and gotten into the van with.  Nori, now revealed to be really more a girl than an adult woman, was similarly unclad and bound.  Beyond her was Jill, the third passenger on the van, the tall blond stewardess from the flight who had barely caught the ride as it was leaving the terminal.  She also was stripped except for panties, her lush body bound to the table by the same metal bands on her arms and legs.
Nori's eyes were wide with terror as she twisted her head back and forth.  'Where.  Are.  We?' she whimpered.  'Who.  Is doing.  This?'
Beyond her, Jill was threatening the air.  'I don't know who you are but you better let us go.  Release me from these bonds!'
An amused voice came from loudspeakers hanging in the room.  'You'll be free from your bonds soon.  Very soon.'  The voice continued on in a language Joan didn't know or even recognize.  Nori grew quiet as she listened to it finish and then burst into screams and sobs.
'What is it?'  Jill demanded.  'What did he say?'
'He said he was going to shrink us.  He said he was going to shrink us and keep us here.  We will never leave alive!'
'No!' Jill wailed.  'It can't happen to me, too.  I got away from that.'  Her face collapsed into starker fear than even Nori's.  'You can't shrink me!  You can't!'  she screamed at the empty air.
As Joan watched, a pale green mechanical assembly rolled on tracks into place above them.  It clicked and squeaked on its rails as it moved ominously above her but then it passed her by and seemed to pause for an instant above Nori, who was frantically trying to free herself, raising anguished pleas.

Finally the assembly moved to a stop above Jill, who was now motionless, frozen by her fear.  'Please,'  she whispered.  'Please, no.'
The voice made no answer and the machine did not grow still.  A collection of tapering cylinders rotated down from the main assembly,  the two connected by a web of  wires and cables.   Joan recognized the device as some sort of gun while it continued its rotation until it was pointed at Jill's paralyzed, near nude body.  ìNo,î  she pleaded one last time.
An alarm siren briefly shrieked through the air, before a spreading beam of white light appeared at the end of the gun and slowly, slowly spread through the air toward the helpless girl.  When it finally contacted her skin, a faint white glow enveloped all of her body that Joan could see.  'Cold.  That's so cold.' Jill breathed but Joan didn't know if she meant some chill of the beam or the cruelty of its operator.
Now Joan saw what she had feared she'd see.  The stewardess' body was shrinking, her arms growing shorter, her face drifting lower on the table.  She seemed to gather a final surge of  energy at this for she snapped out of her fear-induced stupor and desperately strained against her bonds, trying to slip out of the metal bands holding her down while she shrank.  At last one of her legs slipped free and swung up off the table, where Joan could see it was half the length it should have been, half the size it used to be.  Then Jill freed an arm, then the other one and finally her other leg as she shrunk further, her limbs no longer imprisoned but her whole body still the victim of the ghastly white ray playing upon her.
Jill planted her feet and hands and tried to rise from the table, or at least roll off her back, but still she was pinned.  It seemed her panties, her only remaining shred of decency, were her captors too.  They held her body to the table despite her desperate effort.  She continued to shrink, crying out, pleading for mercy but the beam remained on her.  Not until she was so diminished as to be entirely within its field did she stop shrinking as the beam finally died out.  She gave a final scream and her miniaturized body  shook as she broke into uncontrollable sobbing, bemoaning her awful fate.  A harsh, mocking laugh filled the room and the unseen voice spoke again in the language only it and Nori shared.
'He says I'm next,'  she wailed.  She shouted back in the same language but there was no response.  She cried out in English.  'I beg you, don't.  Don't do this.'  But the gun only swiveled back to its traveling position and the pale green assembly moved once again over the quivering, pleading girl.  Again the gun pivoted down, again the siren shrieked, again the white beam slowly came forth,  illuminating a circle a few inches across on Nori's immobilized body.
She wiggled as wildly as she could, trying to avoid the beam even though she was trapped in its path, but the same faint glow spread across her and she too began to shrink.  Her eyes made contact with Joan's and she begged, 'Help me.  You must help me.'  But Joan could not help her; she could only watch in horror as Nori shrank just as Jill had shrunk, her body becoming smaller and her limbs ever shorter as the remorseless beam continued to shine on her.  As with Jill, her tortured struggles freed  first both her legs and then her arms but to no avail.  She was trapped on the table too, held in place somehow by the panties she still wore.  Panic seized her totally and she looked pleadingly at Joan again, begging for release.  But this only increased Joan's terror as she watched Nori continue to writhe as finally she dwindled to less than the beam's diameter, to finally stop shrinking as the beam died out once again.
Peals of laughter filled the room and went on and on, the unseen architect of this macabre scene not only delighting in his deeds but adding to Jill's and Nori's misery and to Joan's mounting terror.  The laughter would die down so that Joan could hear Jill's sobs and Nori's incoherent babbling but then it would pick up again, ringing in Joan's ears as the merciless gun swiveled up and the shrinking machine moved inexorably to its new position over her.
Now she looked directly into its mouth, the mouth of metal coils that would soon send her to her fate, shrinking until she was no larger than a child's toy.  As she heard the alarm sound, she suddenly resolved that she would be brave.  This unseen lunatic might shrink her, might imprison her, might even kill her, but she would withhold her fear from him.  She would deny him that at least.  She did her best to stop her limbs from shaking and her lips from quavering but she could not hold back the few small tears that greeted the initial glow of the gun's mouth as it sent its beam to her, slowly pulsing across the gap between  machine and table.  Neither could she stop the convulsive jerk her whole body gave as the beam reached her and she moaned in anguish as she began to shrink.

[Kara Dollgirl]

I really enjoyed the atmosphere and drama and the palpable fear you created in this short opening. You accomplished a lot in a short space of time. You really had me in the palm of your hand (pun intended!)

I hope you will consider writing a continuation sometime. I would love to know what happens after the women are shrunk. (Of course I know in a general way, but would love to read more specifics).

Thank you!
Kara