Okay, I know exactly what you're thinking.
Oh look, another revenge tale...as if we don't already have enough of those on the forum.
But no, what I'm about to share with you isn't your run-of-the-mill Hollywood style revenge scenario.
It's actually quite a bit more hardcore than that. And considering what my high school bully had been putting me through all these years, I'm not gonna apologise for what I did.
As far as I'm concerned, those two days of hell I ended up putting him through were well deserved.
But before I get to the revenge part, a quick introduction is in order.
My name's Ethan, as I'm sure you've guessed from the title of the story (duh).
I'm seventeen and just a few months away from my high school graduation.
I live at home with my mom, Cynthia, my stepfather, James, and my stepbrother, Kyle.
My mom was away visiting my grandparents when this happened, so she's not really important to the story.
I never got to know my father, but for all intents and purposes, James was the closest thing I had to a dad, and he quickly took me in as his own son after he and my mom decided to move in together three years ago.
Now to the more important stuff.
You know how in movies stepbrothers and unrelated siblings tend to hate each other?
Well, this really wasn't the case with Kyle and I.
Aside from being twenty one, Kyle was every bit the opposite of me.
I was relatively short and a bit nerdy.
He was built like a brick shithouse, loaded with tattoos, and seriously into cars, sports and working out.
Our rooms were also totally different.
Mine was clean and tidy. His was filthy and smelled worst than a gym locker-room.
Kyle was never up to any good, but at least his heart was in the right place.
My big brother, Kyle
To this day, I'm still not sure why the hunk had taken a liking to me. But whatever his reasons, he quickly ended up adopting me as his baby brother.
All in all, things at home were pretty good.
School was another matter though.
My grades were okay, and I thought of myself as being relatively easy to get along with.
I never got into any fights and was relatively successful with the girls.
I did have one major thorn in my life though.
It's name was Hunter.
Hunter was one of the biggest and baddest jocks in school.
Having previously failed 11th grade, he was a year older than everyone and had terrible grades, save for gym class.
Still, that didn't stop him from being one of the most popular kids in school.
In short, he was your typical dumb highschool jock and every teenage girl's dream.
The thing that made him stand out from the lot was that he took a rather perverse pleasure in bullying and humiliating me, causing my popularity with the girls to plummet and causing my grades to drop as well.
Even though this was spring break and I only had a few months of school left before graduation, it was a pain getting out of bed every morning and going to school.
Every time I looked at my agenda, my stomach would knot up in apprehension at the knowledge that I'd have to face Hunter in history, math and gym class.
This was my third year of getting picked on by him and I was really tired of it.
It even went to the point where I wanted to drop out of school and finish my final year at an adult education center...just to be away from him.
Being a private kid, I didn't wanna talk to my mom about it.
She was sweet, but I was seventeen and I didn't want her making a scene and taking the issue up with school directors.
No seventeen year old wants to involve their mom in this sorta thing. You understand, right?
Yeah, I thought you would.
My stepdad was a nice guy, but he wasn't my real dad, so I didn't feel that comfortable opening up to him.
Strangely enough, the only person I felt comfortable confiding in was my stepbrother, Kyle.
Kyle would see how down I was and offered to beat the kid up for me, several times.
While part of me would have liked that, I knew he'd get into major trouble afterwards.
He already had a criminal record for vandalism, attempted robbery and getting into fistfights.
Beating up an eighteen year old kid, which he would've easily been able to do, would've landed him in jail, or worse.
His dad would be really pissed off if he ended up having to bail his son out of jail again, and I had no doubt it would've caused some problems at home. Asking Kyle to beat my high school bully up was NOT an option.
Anyways, enough about that.
Time to get to the revenge part.
Having a week off in the middle of March was pretty nice, but with barely four days left before I had to go back to school, my mood was souring and my stomach was already tensing up in apprehension.
My mom was away, my stepdad was working, and Kyle was either hanging out at the basketball court, working out at the gym or getting into trouble somewhere in town.
I, on the other hand, spent the day waiting for my paycheck to cash in and kept checking my bank account for the money I was expecting. It wasn't much, but for my seventeen-year-old self, the sum in my account was HUGE considering I'd been saving up all the money from my weekend job for months now.
"I have your money : )" I texted Kyle, as soon as I saw my account balance reach 1500$ late on Thursday night.
Eager to seal our deal, I instantly transferred my entire account balance over to Kyle's account and went to sleep knowing that my revenge on big, bad Hunter was close at hand.
Being the total bum that he was, I wasn't sure Kyle would hold his end of the bargain.
But once again, I was pleasantly surprised when he delivered the promised merchandise and demonstrated what an awesome big brother he could be.
For the sum of 1500$, Kyle told me he'd be able to acquire a small amount of the highly illegal drug called NANOix05 from one of his shady connections outside of town.
And sure enough, he had a small vial of the serum ready for me by Friday morning.
Now here's the crazy part.
Past a certain amount, NANOix05 was able to actually shrink the consumer for a period of time, before slowly allowing his or her body to regain it's former height and weight. It didn't take an abnormally bright mind to understand how a drug that enforced temporary nanism on it's victims would be of use to gangs that dealt in illegal stuff like human trafficking and slavery.
I know this sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, but it's true.
Kyle somehow knew that this experimental drug worked, and even had the connections to get it!
Part of me was sceptical about the supposed potency of NANOix05, but the thought of miniaturising my arch-nemesis for a few days and giving him a taste of his own medicine was too good for me to resist.
So when the time came to transfer all my hard-earned cash over to Kyle, my hesitation didn't even last a second.
Kyle didn't really know how the serum worked.
The only thing he could tell me was that the severity of the effect was directly linked to the amount of the drug consumed by the victim.
I kept that in mind while preparing Hunter's special cocktail and quickly emptied the entire contents of the small vial into the beer I planned on serving him once he got here.
Kyle left the house at around noon that day, but not before telling me that he'd be back to help me deal with my "guest" later this afternoon.
I actually thought that inviting the bully over would be the hard part, but when I found him on Facebook and told him about the new holo-game console I'd managed to get my hands on, Hunter practically invited himself.
My revenge plan was working out even better than I thought!
You should've seen the smug look on the stupid jock's face when he plopped himself down on the living room couch and asked me where my super expensive holo-console was.
There was no holo-console of course, but I just lied and told him it was still in it's box and that I was gonna go fetch it from my room and plug it up so we could play.
Apparently, Hunter was too stupid to ask himself why on earth I'd invite him over to play video games with me. Either that, or he thought I was trying to suck up to him in the hopes of getting on his good side.
Getting him to drink that special beer mix I'd prepared for him was a piece of cake.
By that point, my stomach was in knots and my limbs were shaking almost uncontrollably at the sheer amount of adrenaline running through my veins.
The game console I'd promised wasn't in my room and I knew that if the drug didn't work like Kyle said it would, I'd be in major trouble.
Stupid Hunter guzzled half of his beer down in one gulp, and I just stood there...waiting.
You should've seen the look on his face when everything around him started getting bigger and bigger.
In a matter of seconds, big, bad hunter was reduced to a miniature ten-centimeter tall version of himself.
Sweet, sweet justice at long last!
The puny bully was finally about to find out just how much I despised him. And being the size of a coffee cup, he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.