164. Amy the Pinhead
“I've already seen all sorts of magical stuff in this place,” Amy reasons, “why shouldn't this be magic, too?” But as she starts to put the pouch in her pocket she has second thoughts. “I'm just assuming this is some kind of head-shrinking powder or something. No telling what's inside unless I open it... And I'd rather not open it for the first time in front of Boswell. I don't want to throw it at him and discover it's full of, I don't know, jelly beans or something.”
After a few moments' internal argument, Amy convinces herself to open the pouch. As she does so, about a hundred and forty years of accumulated dust flies off the string, some of it settling in Amy's nose. She ignores it for a moment, but soon autonomic reflexes take over.
“Ah..... CHOO!”
Amy sneezes straight into the now-open leather pouch, sending the contents, a mysterious white powder, flying straight up. Amy's face is coated in the strange substance. Amy blinks in surprise.
Nothing appears to happen. “Oh well,” thinks Amy, “Nothing ventured nothing gained, I guess. I wonder what else-”
Amy is interrupted by a pounding headache. She drops the pouch and clutches her head with both hands, but the pain only grows worse. She's so distracted by the pulsating waves of pain that she doesn't notice her head actually getting smaller, until, to her surprise, she finds that the tips of the fingers of her right and left hand are now touching each other. Amy gets a sinking feeling in her stomach. She rushes around the room until she finds a small mirror. As she runs, she feels her vision getting blurry and her mouth puckering.
The mirror confirms Amy's fear. Her head has now shrunk to the size of a baseball. Her eyes are dried out and wide by comparison to her now tiny head. Her mouth has puckered up to a tiny point, and her oversized hair puffs out of her small head like a Texas beauty queen.
Amy finds it difficult to think with her now golf ball-sized brain. “Bad... thing....do...find... make...not... bad?” is all the thought she can muster toward her attempt to reverse her condition. Finally, her brain shrinks to a point where it can no longer manage the functions that sustain her life, and Amy falls backwards, dead.
Amy is discovered and her shrunken head added to the repaired display. The plaque beneath her reads “Amy Shaw – Shrunk her own head. Perhaps she was tired of her tiny brain rattling about all that empty space in her skull.”
Amy is in no condition to continue this adventure or her life.