-A story route requested by another user-
Phoenix had never been happier than he was with Dahlia Hawthorne, the most caring and beautiful young woman at Ivy University. Ever since the day the two of them had first met in the courthouse library, four months ago, he hadn't had even a single unhappy day to speak of. He hadn't ever imagined finding himself with a girlfriend as kind, smart, patient, and all-around wonderful as Dahlia, but now that she'd come into his life, he never wanted to let her go.
This devotion of his was the reason that today, on a Saturday much like every other since they'd met, he was waiting around for his girlfriend's arrival in a disused classroom, accompanied only by the quiet of the vacant university wing while most anyone else who might have been around was off enjoying the weekend elsewhere or studying intently for their impending finals.
Wearing a pale-blue turtleneck and jeans, and idly doodling in a sketchpad, Phoenix was thinking over guesses as to why Dahlia had asked him to wait here for her. She had seemed a bit worried, somehow. Hopefully she hadn't somehow gotten into any kind of trouble, but if she had, he would do everything he possibly could to get her back out of it.
A creak sounded from behind him, and he blinked, surprised. The moment he turned around, he saw a small object flying into the room, like it had been tossed upward through an open window, and now that he looked, there was a slightly opened window straight ahead. Had someone just opened it?
The object clacked against the floor. It was a silvery ball of some kind. It rolled for a moment before stopping. Phoenix had a second or two to look it over curiously before a sudden hissing noise sounded. A billowing stream of some kind of smoke or gas burst out of the sphere on the floor, and he stumbled back in surprise, dropping his sketchpad. Before he could move away any further or pick the sketchpad back up, he was coughing, the smoke getting into his lungs instantly.
He felt lightheaded within seconds, and before he could hope to guess what was happening, he was unconscious, slumping to the floor.
A young woman rushed down the vacant hall, her footfalls echoing hollowly. The classroom was just up ahead. She quickly opened the door and slipped inside.
Scanning the dimly-lit room, she spotted what she was looking for.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Feenie..."
Right in the middle of the room, she saw two things. The first was a necklace with a small bottle hanging from it like a charm. The second was a very small, human-shaped figure lying on the floor in the middle of the necklace's chain.
The young woman approached, her dyed-red hair drooping close to the floor as she crouched down to retrieve both the necklace and the young man who had been wearing it until just a minute or two ago.
Gathering both up, she turned to leave the room, remembering at the last second that she needed to pick up the spent gas ball lying on the floor as well. It was something she could still hardly believe was even real - a gas that could shrink a person? She never would've believed it if she hadn't just picked up the very real and very small figure she could instantly identify as her boyfriend off the floor, newly reduced in size by the gas ball after she'd tossed it into the room through the window.
She tucked the necklace and the ball into her bag, then took extreme care in slipping Phoenix's puny and unconscious body into a separate pouch. She would've preferred something much safer to transport him in, but she didn't have anything else.
Leaving the room in a hurry, she made a beeline for the meeting place she and Dahlia had arranged. Her sister didn't like waiting.
Dahlia drummed her fingertips against the concrete wall at her back, getting impatient. Iris was taking forever.
Currently disguised in an oversized hoodie that mostly covered her face, Dahlia was feeling about ready to treat this as her twin sister's very last chance. If she couldn't get the necklace back from that lovesick idiot Phoenix, he was dead.
At last, her sister appeared at the end of the lane. Dahlia had been waiting on the concrete ramp of one of the university's vehicle entrances, and she watched as her sister hurriedly made her way down to meet her.
"Well?" she prompted Iris, not in the mood to waste any more time. To her considerable surprise, Iris immediately produced the necklace. She hadn't really expected to finally see it not hanging from the neck of the stupid art student she'd passed it off to on that day in the courthouse library, months ago.
Dahlia grabbed the necklace immediately and stuffed it into one of the pockets of her hoodie. "We're leaving." she said, starting past her sister. Iris didn't move, and she turned back to glare at her. "What?"
"... D-Dahlia..."
Dahlia gave an irritated growl. "Say whatever you're waiting to or get moving now."
Instead, Iris carefully reached into her bag again and pulled something else out. Dahlia blinked in confusion, looking on as her sister opened her palm to reveal a very small, human figure in her hand.
"Y-you brought him here...!? I told you to get rid of him!"
"I know, but he's..."
Dahlia took a step toward her sister, who shifted back, her hand still open before her. Phoenix was still lying in her palm, clearly unconscious.
"If you get us caught, you won't live long enough for the police to ask you what you're doing, understand?" Dahlia said, giving her sister a dangerous look.
"I-I couldn't hurt him, or just leave him there..." Iris said quietly. "The shrinking worked, and nobody else knows about it, so couldn't he just stay with us...?"
Dahlia paused, barely believing what she was hearing. She laughed after a moment.
"First you lie to him about who you are for months, and now what? You want to keep him around as your little pet? You really are messed up." she said.
"It's not... Feenie's a good person, Dahlia. He didn't deserve to get caught up in any of this." Iris said. "If we bring him home with us, I can finally tell him the truth. Besides, you got the necklace back..."
Phoenix groaned. His head hurt, and it felt like he'd been rolling down a hill.
He sat up, wondering what had happened.
(Let's see... I was waiting for Dollie, and then... there was that sound...)
Something suddenly appeared above him, and he gasped. His throat felt dry. Scrambling back, he found himself looking up at a very familiar face. The sight of his girlfriend would have been instantly soothing to him if she hadn't been several times larger than she was supposed to be.
"D-Dollie...!?" he stammered, his voice sounding a little scratchy.
It was clearly Dahlia Hawthorne he was seeing, but why was she so huge...? And where was he, anyway? This didn't look like the classroom...
Another face appeared, and Phoenix almost passed out in shock. His eyes snapped wildly back and forth. To the right, he was seeing Dahlia, but on the left, there was another Dahlia.
"Feenie, please don't be scared..." the Dahlia on his right said. He blinked a few times, still barely able to believe what he was seeing.
"So... Iris? That's your name?"
The last few minutes hadn't been any less confusing, that was for sure. Phoenix had found himself listening to what appeared to be two different versions of his girlfriend speaking, one exactly as he knew her and the other sounding more apathetic and irritated about the situation.
From what his fragmented mind had put together, he had shrunk to a very small size (just a few inches tall, in fact), and the Dahlia on his right wasn't "Dahlia" at all. Her real name was Iris, and she was Dahlia's twin sister. Dahlia was on his left, and though he could barely believe it, this was apparently only his second time ever meeting her. For the months he had known "Dahlia Hawthorne", he had really been dating her sister Iris, in disguise.
"This story's getting boring." Dahlia - the real Dahlia - said, brushing a hand through her lengthy red hair.
Phoenix was apparently sitting on the edge of a bed, both Dahlia and Iris on the floor in front of him, though their sitting positions left them still tall enough to loom over him a short ways. "Sis here couldn't stand just killing you while you were taking a nap, so she whined and begged until I let her bring you here to our place."
Phoenix's heart skipped a beat. Had Dahlia really just mentioned the idea of killing him...?
"Um... I don't think there's any way to return you to your normal size," Iris said next, "... And Dahlia says it's too much risk to let you go home after all of this, so..."
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author