The door to Melanie’s bedroom creaked open, the light from the hallway splitting apart the shell of darkness that painted the inside. To greet Juniper as she entered was the lingering of alcohol in the air, a scent that was common through the apartment, but was normally polluted with the smell of smoke. Within Melanie’s room, that smell was accompanied only by the girl’s faint scent, a fading warmth that was getting lost in the cold seclusion.

Nervously, Juniper poked her head through the crack just big enough for her. Shivers ran over her body as the air touched her, but it wasn’t because of the low temperature. Up ahead, supposedly, was the cryptic secret Melanie had been keeping away from everyone. Somewhere, in that messy room, were possibly tiny people -- just like the one she held, impossible as it felt.

“She isn’t here,” Nicky urged, “just go in!”

Juniper rolled her eyes, her expression safely unobserved by the woman she held. “I’m going,” she said. “I don’t know, man, she might have this place trapped or something.”

“Sh-She doesn’t,” Nicky said. “I don’t think so.” No confidence backed her words, but Juniper moved forward anyway. She had already promised to take Nicky this far and would at least see it to the end. She glanced down at her, to confirm just how anxious the tiny woman had to be. It wasn’t a proud look for Nicky, draped inside a pink ankle sock and wearing it like a sack over her body, but it was the best Juniper could find on short notice. For the time being, Nicky certainly looked to be on edge, her fingers tightly clutched along the edge of the sock as the two entered.

Both were seeped in the blackness that the curtained-off windows created, but a flick of the lights revealed every detail of the room. A scene had definitely played out at some point, Juniper had deduced. The smell suddenly made sense when she felt a slight bit of moisture under her bare foot, revealing a red stain; a splash of wine, no doubt. She then looked to the desk, but instead of a collection of imprisoned, shrunken women, what she instead saw was a wrecked anime figure, a person made of plastic left in pieces. Nothing else of the room looked very clean or organized, but it wasn’t particularly clustered or filthy, despite what looked like a fight having broken out at some point.

“We are not getting that deposit back at this rate, Mel,” Juniper grumbled. It was a bit of a joke, and a bit of a real worry. She wished the investigation could have ended there, but Nicky was rocking against her fingers, pushing her to move and concentrate on what really mattered.

Each step ahead felt as though the floorboards could have whined under Juniper’s weight, and each wall could potentially spin around and reveal a hidden chamber. A haunted house had been existing in this corner of the apartment she lived in, and it was time now to swallow her fears. Melanie’s desk was the center of attention, dim with inactivity, but supposedly the place where several women were held hostage. Somewhere, at least.

Juniper leaned over the desk, hesitant to touch anything lest it burst into flames -- if the Illuminati was capable of that, anyway. “Wh-Where am I searching?” she asked, lowering Nicky closer to the desk.

“She usually kept us in the cabinets here,” Nicky answered. She hobbled out of Juniper’s palm, cautious to not trip over the robe-like sock, and onto the desk she dreamed she’d never have to return to. It was eerie to come back again with a new person looming overhead, but even more unsettling was the silence. She remembered having deep slumbers here, in her own prison cell, only for that peace to be bombarded by Melanie’s thirst for entertainment. A quiet night could flash into blood curdling screams without a moment’s notice.

Nicky focused herself and trekked forward, beyond the wreckage of the anime monument and towards the multi-colored cabinets. She did this despite seeing through the transparent walls to find nothing, no one. The women had always been kept in the same cubbies every time they were put away, but the whole lot was empty, without a trace of Kimberly, Scarlet, or even Adrian.

Just to be sure, Juniper opened up a pair of the cabinets and looked inside. The result was the same. “A-Are you sure it’s these cabinets?”

“Yes! Yes I am sure!” Nicky snapped. She breathed, startled by her own whip-like reaction. “S-Sorry, but… seriously, where the hell are they…? Don’t tell me she took them!”

“I don’t know,” Juniper mumbled, trying to help how she could. “M-Maybe she did?”

“Or maybe… she moved them!” Nicky hopped about on the desk, frantically looking for any other hiding places. “Sh-She knew I’d come back! She knew I went missing, s-so it makes sense she’d move them. Maybe in the desk drawer? Or the dresser! Ah, th-the nightstand, or…”

Juniper rolled her shoulders while surveying the room. Nicky’s suggestions of where to look had no limits. Flipping the room upside-down seemed like the best option, but that had its flaws, too. “I… don’t really want Melanie to know I was here, Nicky. She’s gonna come after me next if she finds out.”

“I know, I get it,” Nicky groaned, looking to both sides in search of any hints. “B-But they… they could be here! Somewhere! We can’t leave them, we can’t!”

Juniper took a position in the middle of the room, hands on her hips. While trying to find the missing women, she mentally placed herself into Melanie’s shoes, and regretted it seconds later. A swirling in her stomach made each step feel misplaced and heavy, like she was walking over something, like a giant. Shuddering at the thought, she ended up looking to Nicky again. To her, that actually was the case, that she was standing above a carpeted wasteland as a giantess.

How can Mel live like this? Juniper wondered. She’s usually so shy. How does she enjoy feeling like this? Being looked at, feeling so… big…

Juniper twisted her foot to move, intending to stoop down to the nightstand, but a slippery texture under her foot made her flinch in surprise. Her first instinct was unpleasant; “Oh shit,” she gasped, believing that a loose tiny person had been crushed beneath her.

That hadn’t been the case, providing Juniper a pinch of relief. What was beneath her was almost as mysterious, her curiosity piqued as she raised her foot up. “What’s with all these papers?” she asked Nicky. Using her toe, she pointed at the littered sheets, scattered randomly across the floor around Melanie’s bed. “It looks like a notebook exploded or somethin’.”

“Umm, I don’t know, actually,” Nicky admitted while approaching the corner of the desk. “Can I take a look?”

Juniper turned around and softly collected Nicky into her hands. She knelt close to the ground then, allowing Juniper out to examine the papers, and doing the same herself. They found strange symbols and bizarre sketches, promises of power and cautions of corruption. There were recipes and lists and charts and tables, sometimes mundane but more likely sinister and arcane. Neither girl doubted that these were remnants of that spellbook, ripped out by Melanie sometime ago, but even before that realization, both had a faint itch of something wicked creeping up on them. Silently, they understood that the other had come to the same conclusion.

“Is there anything we can do with these?” Juniper asked, lifting a pair of sheets off the floor. “God, they feel old… This is kinda legit!”

The tiny girl wasn’t enough to convince you? Nicky thought sarcastically. “There could be something helpful in here,” she said, “maybe hints for a cure, or we could learn something about the curse…” She chuckled, knowing herself to be too hopeful. Chances were high that if Melanie decided to throw these pages out, there probably wasn’t anything helpful to find within them.

Juniper shifted into a partial crawl, looming over the papers as much as she did Nicky, who craned her neck back to look up at the massive woman. A few sheets were waded through, but nothing was immediately sticking out. “I’m just afraid of touching her shit, man,” Juniper explained. “The room’s kinda messy, but don’t you think she’ll notice these go missing?”

“Ergh, well... “ Nicky looked down at the paper she stood on, each letter as big as her footprints would be. “N-Nevermind about this. We didn’t come here for the book, we came to find--”

Juniper kicked up, a move that stunned Nicky mid-speech. The giantess was alert, looking back to the door left ajar with the posture of a startled prey animal. Nicky had been too absorbed to notice, but Juniper heard it distinctly, the clicking of a lock being fiddled with. The front door was being opened, and it couldn’t have been anyone else but the person Juniper feared would arrive to ruin things.

In that next moment, Nicky had understood what was happening, but while she was going through that same state of shock, Juniper was responding. Nicky flinched and fell backwards in the sock as the papers covering the ground were being moved, collected into one spot. Juniper was frantically gathering every paper she could find and bundling them into one uneven stack of a dozen or so yellowed sheets.

“W-What are you gonna do with those?! What are you doing?!” Nicky squeaked. “Sh-She’ll see you, j-just leave them!”

Juniper refused, because she had a terrible plan -- terrible by her own admission. Her options for smuggling the papers out were limited, it would be obnoxiously obvious to Melanie what was happening if she strolled out with the spellbook’s pages out in the open. Yet, Juniper’s reflexes were on point, speeding her into making a decision.

Nicky stood up and watched, embarrassed and perplexed, as Juniper pulled open the back of her pajama pants. The stack she held was then folded in half and shoved back behind her into the makeshift pocket. From Nicky’s angle, the scene looked ridiculous, it would have made her laugh had there not been so much to stress over. But any humor Nicky saw in this method was instantly lost when Juniper glanced to her, then the back of her pants, then back to Nicky, and back again.

Nicky stepped back, hiding meekly behind the ankle sock. Juniper’s lips morphed into an apology, but Nicky shook her head. “No. Nope. No--”

The door was unlocked, and immediately Melanie fell through the door, balanced only enough to shut it back closed right away. The refreshing touch of the cool air conditioner was greatly appreciated by her sweat-soaked skin. She was panting, having rushed all the way from Anders Library to her apartment -- no time to wait for a bus. Even now, she felt pressed on time, her security hardly improved just because she had made it to her home.

Melanie stepped into the living room, looking down at her messenger bag. The desire to pull out Adrian for emotional support was intense, her emotions flaring up with seemingly no end without her obsession right there to quell her anxieties. Perhaps I can squeeze in a little peek, she thought to herself, twitching to want to open her bag. I just want to see her… For just a second...

Melanie looked up and jumped back in surprise. She hadn’t been looking, and thus didn’t notice her roommate directly ahead of her, standing at the hallway leading to her bedroom. Her hand abandoned the prospect of opening the bag, instead gripping the strap over her shoulder, close to her racing heart. “J-Juniper,” she coughed.

“Oh, hey, Melanie,” Juniper said. She inhaled a steep breath. “Uh. You’re home early.”

“A-A little bit, y-yeah,” Melanie replied. A weak finger pointed to the hallway, more precisely in the direction of her room. “Uh, w-what were you…?”

Juniper laughed part way through Melanie’s question, a part of why Melanie trailed off. “Heh, I-I had to use your bathroom,” she lied. Her thumb pointed back to it, the door just up ahead of Melanie’s. “Mine isn’t flushing right.”

“Ah, th-that sucks,” Melanie swallowed, her eyes tracking Juniper up and down.

“I’d maybe steer clear of it for a minute,” Juniper joked, idly sliding into the living room with her back turned away. “I took a huge shit, dude, I won’t deny it.”

Nicky winced under those words, for her predicament was insulted by Juniper’s rambled lie. Just like the spellbook remains, Nicky, too, had only way option for being escorted out. Against her wishes, she had been lifted up, sock and all, and deposited into the seat of Juniper’s pants. The position was tight, as Juniper’s ass left little room for a shrunken person, let alone her plus the papers she was stealing. As such, Nicky was cramped, embedded into the soft fat of Juniper’s panty-clad ass with the harrowing feeling of a one-hundred foot drop vaguely below her. For now, however, this ridiculing situation was her sanctuary; Juniper’s butt was her savior, and in a sense, for the second time that day.

Juniper, however, still had to sneak Nicky back to her room. The longer she stood there in front of Melanie, the more likely it was that she would be suspected of something. Fortunately, there wasn’t much more of a discussion to be had, despite both women appearing on edge to the other. Juniper used this awkward encounter to her advantage, and quietly kept strolling to her room, making sure that her rear-end wasn’t easily viewed while she did so.

“A-Actually,” Melanie rose her voice, just as Juniper got close to leaving, “I’m glad I could b-bump into you. Uhh, I had a… Th-There’s a favor I wanted to ask…”

Juniper remained cool. “Um, shoot? What’s up?”

“It’s…” Melanie bit her lip. There was so much she felt she would have to explain, and in her rush to get in and out, she hadn’t decided how to word things to Juniper. She cracked a grin, “I-It’s a little complex, but, I’m… I’m going out of the house. I might be gone for awhile. So, you won’t see me…”

“Yeah?” Juniper nodded, curious as to where this was going. “So, what’s this favor you need?”

“I just… C-Can you tell people, err, a-anyone that asks, that is, that if they ask where I am… tell them I’ve been gone, a-and that you haven’t heard from me since, like, last night? C-Could you?”

Juniper played with her hair while she listened, feeling nervous about these implications. She didn’t have an honest answer for her, especially after what she had learned, but she worked up a response, a shake of her head that turned into a nod, “No, yeah, I can do that. I’ll just say you headed out without a word. I mean, if anyone… asks.”

Melanie studied Juniper. There was a tiny bit of relief to having her agree, but she sensed something peculiar about Juniper’s confidence. She worried about what her roommate must be thinking, having to ask of this not even a full day after a detective came searching for her. Surely, Melanie thought, that Juniper would be more suspicious than this.

Yet, the lack of questions was a pleasure, and Melanie knew Juniper well enough that she didn’t play nicely with the police. Although the two had no deep relationship, there was certainly some strong trust when it came to each others’ privacy. “Thank you, Juniper,” Melanie said. She turned down the corner, continuing off in a hurry, and leaving Juniper to do much the same.

Melanie opened the door and leaned into it closed. She flicked on the lights, not knowing they had just been flicked off seconds ago, and marveled at the mess once again. There was barely any time for her to afford being here, much less time to consider cleaning. She pulled back her chair and gently placed her messenger back onto the seat. Afterwards, she surveyed her desk for anything she required. She wasn’t sure how long she would be on the run, but it was best now to claim anything she could. After this, she predicted it would be unlikely that she could casually show up again to her own apartment.

A few stray items made their way into the side pockets of the bag, with a few having to be placed carefully into the main section. When peeking in, she allowed herself a glimpse of Adrian, to inspire motivation, but what she saw instead discouraged her and slowed her pace. Adrian was unreactive, stationary in her corner, one leg brought to her chest while the other stretched out. She ignored everything, unaffected by the items being stashed within, not even blinking in response to the light making it inside her chamber.

“Adrian…?” Melanie spoke softly, not just for Adrian’s comfort but to ensure she wasn’t being overheard. “A-Are you awake? You’re not sick, are you?”

There was no reply, not even a glance in her direction. Adrian was stoic, so controlled that even her breathing was difficult to notice.

Melanie closed her eyes, waiting just one extra second for an answer, then went right back to packing. A few more small items were stowed away before she took to looking for the most important item, the very thing she came back to grab. If she didn’t have the missing pieces to the spellbook, she would be caught without a cure to provide Adrian. All this running around would be just short of a waste, a risk for something she couldn’t uphold.

One critical look at the bedroom floor, however, was proof that such could very well be the case. “Where are…?” She bit her fingers, hoping she had been mistaken. The last time she was here, the pages were scattered about on the floor -- so she had thought, anyway, but she was apparently wrong. The floor, aside from some dirty laundry, was clean. Not a shred of parchment caught her eye, as if the papers had just vanished.

“Did I put them away…?” she wondered aloud, growing more anxious. She dropped to her knees and sorted through her dresser, but nothing. She checked the nightstand and even behind it, but nothing. When checking these locations, she realized that she hadn’t been wrong. Before now, those torn-out pages had been there on the floor, stepped on and kicked away but never completely moved.

There was no space for other emotions. Melanie was desperate, and so her anger, her fear, everything fell to the back of her mind. I need those papers, she told herself. There’s literally no other way. I need those papers!

“Ah, fucking god,” Melanie complained. They weren’t popping up, no matter how much she hoped they would each time she glanced somewhere. “Just one,” she muttered, “at least just one…”

With a heavy sigh, she decided on one last look around the bed, crouching down onto the floor and looking underneath it. The light of her phone pushed away the darkness, revealing clusters of clothes, an empty soda bottle, a hair tie, and one sheet of yellowed paper. No hesitation, she lunged out and nabbed the sheet that had been pushed aside after all this time.

In her fingers was a page right out of the spellbook, creased aimlessly along its face and one side riddled with jagged tears, but completely legible. That’s all that mattered, even if it was just a single paper of the set she needed, it would at least be something to take back. Her eyes lit up just as luck itself did; “This is about the cure!”

Frantically, her eyes scanned the page in pursuit of a revived hope, but instead welcoming her was a newer understanding of her despair. She hadn’t been wrong, the page had indeed detailed some aspects of making a cure to her shrinking curse, but it was unhelpful information. It listed measurements for the chemicals she would need to balance, but just as she had assumed, all the proportions were the same as when making the curse. Worse yet was the only bit of information that was new to her, vital for making the cure. At the end of the page, it explained the final ingredient, a chant to conclude the ritual and to finalize the cure. Just the same as the potion required repeating a mantra, so too did the cure need Melanie to sing its tune, the lyrics of which she could easily read directly from the next page.

That next page, however, didn’t exist. That was the end of what remnants she could find of the spellbook. The paper slid from her loose fingers and swirled to the floor, unnecessary to have now. What little it had to say had made an impression on Melanie she was bound to have memorized, a fact she was aware of as she looked to the messenger bag in defeat.

A singular, uncomfortable thought dwelled harsh on her mind. She would sooner close her eyes and keep forward on the bag containing Adrian than she would turn an angered gaze out the door, in the direction of her roommate. It pained her to know, that without a doubt, without any excuse, her privacy had been violated. She had been stolen from, and she knew it had to be Juniper. Maybe Nicky did this, she argued, remembering that one of her victims was on the loose. She hoped that, perhaps, it was Nicky that gathered up the papers and hid them somewhere, as an act of retaliation.

No, she thought, it was Juniper.

Melanie stared forward at a blank space on her wall. Those papers were vital to all of her plans. Her rage from so long ago had been an error, a spontaneous mistake, but she had never imagined that it would curse her like this. Where was that rage now? She asked herself that, wanting to feel the adrenaline of madness take over like she was used to -- as a goddess. She daydreamed of destroying Juniper for betraying her, punishments including broken limbs, cruel tests of endurance, mental torture, anything she could think of, all while walking away with the spellbook’s pages in their rightful possession.

The bedroom door opened, and Melanie was hot on her feet in exiting. Behind her was the dimmed room, leaving behind everything shut down and inactive. She adjusted her messenger bag, made one last dash into the kitchen to add some simple food items to her inventory, and then was out of the apartment in that next moment with the slam of a door.

At her leave, Juniper peeked outside of her bedroom and into the vacant space. All things looked clear, yet she wouldn’t step outside right away to confirm. She instead scuttled back inside, locking her door and quietly returning to her bed. It wasn’t worth the risk; poking her head could leave her open to a surprise shrink attack, and she would sooner bunker into her bedroom for the rest of the day than succumb to that.

A sigh of relief came first before she remembered that in the bag of her pants were papers of a spellbook, and also a shrunken person. She was neither proud nor disgraced to unpack, reaching behind her to pull out the stack of papers, and along with them, Nicky, desperately clinging onto a corner while she was lifted out. Juniper gently set them onto her mattress, to which Nicky was grateful for.

“A-Are we safe?” Nicky immediately asked, shuddering where she sat.

“I think so,” Juniper replied, snooping out the blinds of her window. “She’s gone. Thank god.”

“Thank fucking god,” Nicky groaned, halfway slid out of Juniper’s sock. “What the fuck was that?! Wh-What were you thinking?!”

“Huh?” Juniper was surprised to hear such a sour squeak. “About what? Shit, I thought you’d be happy.”

“Y-You… You put me in your pants! The butt of your pants!” Nicky threw her arm out, pointing towards Juniper’s ass. “That’s how you decided to sneak me out?!”

“Ha! Consider it a stoner’s reflex,” Juniper joked, making light of Nicky’s peril. “I’ve had to hide all sorts of things at the last minute like that. My bad.”

Nicky hated that she understood that. “I think I’ve had enough face-full-of-ass today.”

“At least I didn’t sit on you this time.” Juniper turned, stroking one buttcheek as it was above Nicky. It wasn’t on show for long before it fell onto the bed a fair distance from Nicky, enough of a collapse to pop the small woman into the air with a bounce. “Alright,” Juniper began, “is there anything these papers can do for you? I grabbed ‘em, but it all looked like a science project to me.”

Nicky looked over the one sheet she could, but the magnitude of every word was too much to comprehend, not without making it a whole task. “I never liked reading,” she groaned, walking along a stretch of a sentence like each letter was a floor tile. “I dunno, man. I’m too small for this.”

Juniper leaned back; it slowly dawned on her how her movements were making waves for Nicky. “Melanie said she’d be gone for awhile,” she explained, “so if any of those other women were in that room, she probably took them away. It kinda sounds like she’s not planning on coming back. So… what do we do now?”

Nicky shook her head, one hand swiping at her brow while the other kept the hem of the sock up at her chest. “I don’t know.”

Juniper nodded, looking aimlessly around the room for a silent few seconds. “Do you wanna try smoking?”

“Yes,” Nicky said, “yes please.”

Although many faces passed her by both outside and within the faculty building, not one bat an eye at Paige, with her concentrated march and her red-filled spray bottle. She was a well-regarded teacher assistant, a senior with great potential and the drive to make the most on that. Among teachers, she fit right in, not once looking out of place; if anything, her serious demeanor implied it was them getting in her way. Nothing looked suspicious as she rode the elevator up to the top floor where quiet and clean halls of cool gray phased out everyone but her, and her companion.

Paige walked alongside a long window of a wall, a divide between two halves of the floor. Beyond one of several glass doors was a restricted area, limited only to exclusive staff. It was fortunate for Paige that there were few security cameras throughout the building, with security relying heavily on authorizations and special passes to track occupants. Although teacher assistants were not among those exclusive, she wouldn’t need a proper ID badge to gain access. The key she would use was unpocketed, revealing Professor Bradz out into the lonesome open.

“Where are we?!” Bradz demanded to know, blinding by the light and disoriented by being jerked so suddenly.

“Exactly where I said we’d be,” Paige said, hinting at her dwindling patience. She was willing to wait for Bradz to comprehend her immediate surroundings, but she was urged to hurry. She shook Bradz lightly and aimed her at a keypad adjacent to the door handle. “Does this look familiar?” she asked bitterly. “Tell me the passcode.”

Bradz squinted at the keypad, but she wanted to know where she was, to know what she was aiding in. She looked up the glossy surface of the door, looking for a sign. Printed on the glass itself were the words, Dean’s Quarters. “Y-You’re… really going through with this,” Bradz remarked. Her vision on the label faded, and in its place was Paige’s reflection, staring down at her threateningly.

“That doesn’t sound like a passcode you muttered,” Paige warned. She squeezed Bradz, feeling the women squirm in her tight grip. “Punch it in. Now.”

Submission came quick, and Bradz reached out to the large, numbered buttons. Each press required a firm push, but she put in her personal code as quickly as her depleted stamina would allow her. As she did, she announced each number for Paige’s convenience, “3… 3… 7…”

“Neat,” Paige chuckled, delighted by the flash of green on the indicator. An audible click further confirmed that she was allowed entrance, under the guise of Professor Bradz, and so she continued inside. The path immediately branched into three hallways, but despite never coming here before, the maze ahead of her was navigated effortlessly. She didn’t need any signs or directions, she simply knew where her objective awaited.

“Why are you doing this?!” Bradz yelled. The guilt was tearing at her, driving her more to try and break free out of the impossibly powerful hand as it swayed with Paige’s gait. “What has gotten into you, Paige?! Th-This is the dean of students! Why--”

“Something is broken, so I’m fixing it,” Paige interrupted with a strong answer. Her confidence shut Bradz up instantly. “I finally have the opportunity I wanted, to clean up this college, from the top-down. It all starts with one little change.” Her smile didn’t gleam with wickedness, even as she eyed the sloshing liquid of the spray bottle. Bradz studied her, searching for some hidden answers in her expression, but she found nothing but a force that she certainly couldn’t stop.

Paige’s march had taken her to a corner of the building, an isolated section devoted to no one else but the dean of students. It wasn’t just the location that she had planned, but the timing as well. At the tail end of the day, as pink and purple hues touched the far horizon out the long windows, Paige knew that Dean Coatler would be in her office, escaped into loneliness. Her smile aimed at Bradz once, just before dropping her back into her inner pocket.

The door into the luxurious office was opened without a beat of hesitation. Paige walked right in, turning a small corner and spotting her prey, perched at her desk but turned the opposite way. The older woman was observing the outside, enjoying the approach of twilight in a tall, leather seat, as if the prizes decorating her office -- awards and photographs mixed with fine arts, statues and paintings, cultural heirlooms -- were too boring for her to look at. As such, Coatler had to turn when she heard her door open so abruptly, partially revealing a glass of champagne in one hand.

“Pardon?” Coatler inquired, releasing the sensitive glass onto a ledge hidden behind her desk, just next to the champagne bottle itself. She did this only when realizing who her visitor was, someone she welcomed with a cold, dismissive expression. “Hm. Aren’t you Bradz’s assistant?” she asked, assuming then that’s how a student could have made it here. “Tell her I’m already out the door--”

“It isn’t about her,” Paige said, keeping her approach constant and steady. She lifted the spray bottle into both hands, cradling it while she showed the dean. “I found this item laying out by the quads. Could you look at it?”

Coatler closed her eyes and began twisting her chair back. “It looks like something from the janitors,” she said, “just give it to one of them. I’m busy--”

“Could you please take a look, ma’am?” Paige pressed, reaching the opposite side of the long desk.

Coatler sighed as she turned back around, her eyes freshly rolled as she leaned in closer. As she did, Paige’s fingers twitched. She saw how everything was perfectly in place. She thought back to Melanie and her confrontation with Bradz, and she felt in sync with her in that past. She stood where she did, looking down onto an older woman of authority, knowing well how their dynamic was going to drastically change with one squeeze of her finger. Just like Bradz, Coatler was none the wiser. Paige’s expression had become drained, focused entirely on mimicking Melanie from that memory.

Paige adjusted the bottle, just as Coatler’s face was close, and with it aimed, she fired. A splash of wine sprayed from the nozzle and over Coatler’s face. The dean raised her hands in a last second defense, guarding most of the liquid from hitting her, but missing key splatters that would pass through her fingers and onto her hair and eyes.

Coatler swung aimlessly, part-blinded by the attack. An attempt to grab or smack the bottle away failed, and so she kicked back in her chair and knocked hard into the window behind her. “You little shit,” she spat in a low tone. “Is this a game?!”

The dean had risen to her feet in a jump. She was on the offensive, limited only by her disorientation, but Paige was much nimbler. She moved to meet Coatler right at her chair, where she assaulted the woman with both hands, dropping the bottle onto the carpet below without a care. She wouldn’t let a variable like Coatler’s panic disrupt her plan, and so, she had to restrict her -- two hands wrapped over her neck and squeezing tightly, like wringing out a wet cloth.

“Shhh, shhh,” Paige forcefully whispered, trying to counteract Coatler’s desperate gagging. Her head dodged left and right, avoiding wild blows that the dean threw. Coatler was older, bigger, and had more to fight for, but her energy was on the decline. She grew furious at how easily she was becoming overpowered, and even shouts for help were cut off by Paige’s strangle.

Before long, there wasn’t a fight to speak of. Coatler’s face was a bleak purple, her movements belittled to twitches, spasms, little motions that begged for mercy. Paige was merciful, loosening her grip strategically so that she wouldn’t kill the dean like this. Besides that, she noted, there was no reason to keep her pinned so hard. Coatler was shrinking, succumbing to a faintness that made her even weaker, and the transformation enthralled Paige. The sensation of her victim becoming smaller in her grip tickled her, and she never let go of her entirely, ensuring the dean would inevitably shrink right into her hands.

“You have ruined this school,” Paige whispered slowly into her palms. She held Coatler completely, observing the slow, dizzy movements she made while laid out on her back. Every breath was a cough or a groan, but poking her made it worse, so Paige made sure to pester her.

“Ch-Change me…!” Coatler begged, recoiling away from an intrusive finger, despite knowing there was no escape. “M-Make me normal…! I’ll… pay anything…--”

“Of course!” Paige laughed. “So predictable! Of course you’d try to bribe your way out of this, just like everything else. And that’s,” she giggled, “just one of your problems, Miss Coatler, that we’re going to address.

“But today’s lesson is going to be about alcoholism,” she continued, eyeing the beverage that had been set aside. “A pool of champagne to swim in sounds like something you’d waste budget on. How about a dip?”

“No, n-no, please P-Paige--” Coalter tried to speak to Paige, but it was useless. She was already being carried to the tall glass she had been drinking from, a glass that was now several times her height and flooded with her favorite after-hours spirit. The dreamy description would be lived as horror and shock -- she gasped, a painful inhale as she was dropped into the pit of alcohol with no remorse.

Coatler rose to the surface. She could stand above the champagne, if she had the energy and balance for that. Instead, her weary self was at the mercy of the glass’s bobbing, smacked by waves of champagne as Paige lifted the glass and gave it a swirl. Coatler begged for her to cease, crying out for her but ultimately drowned out as she spun around in a vortex.

When the swirling ended, no peace followed. A beat of silence separated that from the glass being tilted forward, and thus threatening to drag Coatler with it. She looked up, and to her dismay and disgust, a gigantic pair of lips was waiting for her at the glass’s rim. As she shivered in suspense, a thick tongue teasingly left behind a gloss of saliva to announce the opening of her mouth.

Those lips sparked into an innocent smile before breaking open wide into a craving fissure. The glass tipped forward again, and Coatler screamed, resisting gravity with a reservoir of might. She paddled, she stroked, but no power in her swimming was enough to truly stop herself from being washed into that monstrous mouth, just as no words of reason were seemingly reaching Paige.

The sparkling liquid fizzed as it seeped over the bottom lip and ran like a river into the mouth. It was such a natural sound, Coatler noted, over top the groaning of an open maw, the clicking of saliva and the calling of a bottomless throat. “Paige!! No!!” Coatler yelled, her legs sucked past the precipice of the glass--

--and she flushed forward, the tilt of the glass reversing and tossing Coatler about. She threw herself back past the surface, coughing up mouthfuls of sour flavor. She had been spared, further indicated by the belittling giggle hummed overhead.

“You were really scared,” Paige said. “Don’t worry so much. I don’t have the stomach for something spoiled like you.” Two connected fingers pointed directly down at Coatler. “Take a deep breath,” was her only warning before forcing those fingers down onto the dean, forcing her to sink to the bottom.

Coatler panicked appropriately, swinging her limbs wildly in attempts to fidget out from the fingers’ push. She jerked hard to her left and right, all of her might used to push up against the crippling weight on her back, but nothing was working. She opened her mouth, a gurgle that was desperate enough to give anything for some air. And yet, seconds passed dreadfully with no relief in sight, even as her spasms became twitches and all fight had been pressed out of her.

The fingers shifted off of Coatler’s back. They pinched at her sides and lifted her, removing from the champagne a motionless, sopping wet thing. Coatler hardly looked the part of a college dean, observed by Paige more as an insect, a well-dressed vermin that fell into a pristine beverage. The image tickled Paige while she cherished it to memory.

Paige peered closely at the fragile figure, her round-rimmed glasses reflecting a faint picture for the exhausted woman to see herself in. There was life in her eyes, a flicker, and Paige fanned the flames with a hard blow of air. The wind crashed into Coatler’s tiny body, turning the wetness into a stinging frost that made her shiver and coil up for warmth. It was proof to Paige that she hadn’t killed her, as intended.

Entertained more than enough, Paige refocused herself onto her objective. Her grin persisted as she inserted a flash drive into Coatler’s computer, seemingly enjoying all aspects of her stunt while dropping her weight into the dean’s chair. She kept Coatler pinched as she were, raising her above her head to study her and her miserable, purple-faced expression. There was a temptation to drop her onto the floor, to see if she would splatter against the tile, but she instead dropped her into her vest pocket, sealing her away alongside Bradz.

Satisfaction had time to settle in as Paige waited for her flash drive to do her work. All the while, she could feel the two women in her pocket wrestling. The occasional pat against her breast would settle them down, like keeping two pets tamed. She looked to the source, that potion she had stolen from the library and had since been dropped to the floor, and admired its quiet presence. With it in hand, she would be unstoppable, capable of much more than merely rescuing a college from corruption. The potential seemed endless, and with only one last obstacle in her path from drawing that power out.

Reminded of that errand, she brought her attention back to the computer, eager to see it complete. The monitor’s bright image crashed into a black screen of white code, signalling her success. Paige withdrew the flash drive, grabbed the potion, and quickly cleaned after herself to leave behind no tracks. Minutes later, she would be passing through the front doors of the faculty building as casually as she had entered, no one but her knowing of the two women kidnapped in her pocket.