Sally anticipated her eighteenth birthday with dread. She knew that everything would start to change once she was eighteen. She looked at the wall calendar. Two more days of the life she had grown accustomed to. She glanced at her alarm clock. 3:45 P.M. Only two days and fifteen minutes exactly till it was over, again.

It happened every eighteen years, exactly. Starting in 1947, the fist time she had been eighteen. The first time she had just barely tasted adulthood and freedom and the first time all that had been cruelly taken away. She could remember so clearly the horror in her Mother's eyes and in the eyes of the other party guest when she had begun to shrink. Sally had no idea what was happening, only that everyone around her had suddenly began to back away. Someone had crossed their fingers in a cross and pointed it at Sally. When she looked down to see what was going on she began to shriek and cry wildly. That first time, she cried for almost three hours, before she stopped.

It always happened fast and without warning. She never knew the exact moment when it would begin. Once it did it only lasted a couple minutes. At the end she was a pinkish crying infant. Only a few days old. All this was of course a secret. How to explain it?

Sally always retained most of her previous memories. She only lost those memories that had anything to do with all the facts and skills she had learned. Like the ability to walk, talk and pee in the toilet. Or the ability to say the alphabet or drive a car. She had to learn everything over again. Yet, she was often frustrated by how she could remember once knowing these things. She tried hard to put her previous two decades behind her and move on. Start over and enjoy everything and she had grown over the years increasingly better at doing that. She succeeded in being a normal, growing little girl for months or years at a time. But, the truth was never completely out of her mind. If she had grown normally she should an old lady of seventy-two, with grown children and grandchildren. She despised the unfairness of it all! She was cursed.

The next two days passed as they had the last three times she had been about to turn eighteen. With preparation. Trips were made to the Mall to by a new layette for Sally along with various baby supplies, diapers and bottles and tiny pieces of soft clothing. She always helped pick out her new stuff, for it was the last time she would have any control over her life. At least she reassured herself, if she had to sleep in a crib and wear infant's clothing, they would be in a style she liked. The bought enough clothing for at least a year, so Sally could wear what she liked for as long as possible.

Every time she regressed she had to have a new Mommy and new Daddy. This was necessary so as to keep the public from guessing the secret. The new parent's were always someone close to the family who was aware of Sally's plight and wanted a child and to help. As much as possible Sally got veto power over who her new parent's would be. At the end of the eighteen years, Sally's disappearance was always explained as a car accident or mysterious abduction with the body never being found. People never suspected the lie, as long as it was probable enough. Sally had attended her 'funeral' twice and they were sincerely sorrowful affairs, with dozens of mourners and heartbreaking elegies. *************************

The day had come, she was eighteen. No party this year, she had nothing to celebrate. How could she celebrate when she knew potty training was more than two years away?! Moping in her bedroom, Sally felt more depressed about this returned to babyhood than any of the previous times.

Then it started. At first it was a slight tingle. Then a buzz around her ears and feet. Then: Boom! She was shrinking. Her body lost mass as well as muscle and gained flexibility. She lost her hard earned breasts and her long slender legs. She stopped being capable of driving or having a period. Her face and skin youthened. Her voice became more squeaky. Before it was over and she couldn't run any more she hopped off her bed and ran as fast as her little girl legs could manage into the doorway of the kitchen. Her YMCA sweatshirt now covered her like a circus tent. Her arms didn't even poke out the end of the sleeves anymore. With a sad resignation she held up her arms and stood in the doorway, legs and feet bare and whined:

" Mommma, lookit.. I don't wanna grow down...anymore...."



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