“P-please. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do. J-just make this easy, okay? I’ll try to make it as quick as p-possible!” Cara said with a sob filled voice. Her heart was pounding. Sweat oozed from every pore. All color had been drained from her face. Her blonde hair was filthy, matted and totally disheveled. Her blue eyes were wide with anxiety and terror; tears flowing freely from them as they streamed down her face.
Her arms trembled with sheer adrenaline; shaky hands clutching the makeshift weapon: a pencil that was like a unwieldy polearm in the arms of her shrunken form. Attached to the end of it was a section of a box cutter blade. It was a meticulous piece of work; the whole thing properly reinforced to make sure it could be handled properly.
“Cara! Wait! There has to be another way, right?” Tyler stood across from his girlfriend with his hands raised in defensive protest. His back was trapped against the wall of the makeshift arena: a corral made of playing cards, tape and cardboard. His brown eyes glanced to the face cards lining the ‘walls’ in particular; kings, queens, jacks, and even a few jokers; a whole royal family laughing at the predicament he was in; calling for entertainment and blood.
Cara held the weapon even tighter; her knuckles going white. “S-stop talking, please. There’s no other way. Two of them are already dead! She ate Denise and crushed Brittney like—like she was some kind of insect! Stop moving! Put down your arms. I’ll make this quick! Just stop resisting!” She screamed.
“C-Cara! C’mon, there’s no guarantee she’ll let you go back to normal after this! If she’s evil enough to do this, what makes you think you can believe her?” Tyler pleaded.
“Tyler, Tyler, Tyler,” a sultry voice spoke calmly from above the pair. High above the arena was a cute face grinning down at them. Her hair was long and as dark as night, her dark eyes burned with an intensity behind those large black frames. Her full lips were decorated with a shiny, black gloss and freckles adorned her pale face. “Making the poor girl choose you, someone she’s known for less than a year, over her closest friends? Long time childhood friends even? I’m the cruel one?” Sarah laughed gleefully while waving her fist back and forth over the arena. Trapped within said fist was another man and woman, screaming and struggling for their lives.
“Cara dear. You don’t want to lose any more, do you? Is this one guy worth losing all that? Lovers are replaceable, but good friends? Not so much. A fair trade, wouldn’t you say?” Sarah laughed while slowly tightening her fingers, grinning wider as the ones in her clutches screamed in pain, “What good is living without good friends?”
“You bitch! You can’t do this!” Tyler screamed at Sarah before looking back to the approaching Cara, “Please, Cara, don’t. There’s no way she’ll let any of us out of this.”
“WHY WON’T YOU MAKE THIS EASY?!” Cara screeched desperately before lunging forward and thrusting the blade at poor Tyler.
Tyler gasped and dove to side to narrowly avoid the worst of being gouged. Alas, he wasn’t fast enough to evade unscathed; the blade having cut effortlessly through his shirt and slashed along his side. He tumbled across the surface before quickly standing to his feet, clutching his side as blood seeped through his fingers, over his hand and down onto the floor. “That’s really sharp.” He winced.
“Oooh, good moves from Tyler!” Sarah cheered, “Your old sports days are really paying off for you, huh?”
Tyler hissed from the pain, holding himself even more as he backed up against another wall. He really couldn’t believe it. Cara, the one he loved so dearly, had actually attempted to kill him! And it was all Sarah’s fault! He glared up at her, and she just grinned down at him in return. “Why?! Why are you doing this?”
“Oh?” Sarah pursed her lips in thought, “Why, you ask? What an interesting question. The kind of question humans ask when they’re at their most desperate. Why are you in this situation? Why did I put you in this situation? What do I get out of this?” She laughed delightfully. “Maybe I have a bone to pick, an axe to grind, a grudge to settle. Maybe I loathe you. Or maybe I’m just jealous of you two,” Sarah said while bringing a finger over to harshly pet the tinies in her fist. “Or maybe just because I could,” She pressed down firmly on their heads, nearly on the verge of breaking their necks, “Because I feel like it. Because it’s fun. Because I want to know how you insects would act if you only have your most desperate of feelings and instincts to rely on,” She laughed again, giving her tortured captives a reprieve as she lifted that finger to tap at her chin. “Your social status, your successes, your riches, your normal lives mean nothing in a situation like this. How will you act now with so much on the line?”
Tyler trembled. Between him and Cara being manipulated like this to being shrunk and thrown into this twisted game just for fun and revenge he didn’t know how to feel. Cara was slowly approaching, and he had no ideas. Sarah was right, he was in a desperate position. “You’re absolutely sick! This isn’t fair! You’re crazy!”
“Mmm?” Sarah tilted her head and pressed a finger to her cheek in thought, “Oh gosh Tyler, you’re right. This is unfair isn’t it? Just like life. Just how you made me fall in love with you, only for you to just take it away like I was some joke. You used me as a stepping stone. I thought about literally returning the favor, but this was MUCH more fun.” Her eyes then shifted to Cara, narrowing them down towards her, “Hey you! What’s the hold up? Don’t you care about your friends?”
“I—I cut him pretty good. Th-that’s enough right? He might—he might bleed to death or something,” Cara choked out a reply, still shakily pointing the blade at Tyler.
“Oh sorry honey, no, that’s not enough. You need to finish him off. Unless you don’t care about poor Dan here,” Sarah said separating the two in her grip; depositing the male into her other hand. “He had some choice words to say to me, y’know. I almost popped him like a grape. I really, really didn’t like his tone,” She curled three of her fingers around him, while pinching his head between her thumb and index finger while facing him down toward the ‘arena’. “I don’t care for his dumb face either, but he’s important to you, isn’t he? Your emotional bedrock. Your shoulder to cry on?” She started squeezing his head; her lips pulling back to reveal a devious grin once he started choking out in pain.
“S-Sarah! Don’t! P-please!” Cara pleaded.
“The human skull is pretty tough, you know. I’d need a lot more force to crush his head like this, but it’d be SO agonizing for him. I might crack his jaw in the process, or damage an orbital. It’d be extremely painful, really. Or I could twist and snap his neck, or maybe sever his spine with a quick turn of my wrist. He’d suffer far worse than Tyler is now, that’s for certain,” Sarah threatened.
“Fucking HELL, Tyler!” Cara screamed as she rushed in toward him and jabbed the blade at his neck.
With his life flashing before his eyes, Tyler quickly ducked into a charging stance to narrowly avoid getting decapitated. He then threw himself at Cara, tackling into her with all his weight to take her down to the ground; forcing her to drop the weapon as she was thrown onto her back with a pained grunt. Hissing from the pain, he took hold of her wrists and pinned her down, pressing his weight and size advantage down on her as she frantically squirmed underneath him. “Damn it, Cara! Why won’t you listen to me?”
“Get! Off of me!” Cara snapped back, thrashing underneath him in trying to do her best to escape, “My FRIENDS are dying because of you! This is your fault and the only way this situation can be helped is if you DIE!” she screeched at him.
Suddenly, there was a loud *THUMP* as Dan’s body came crashing down onto the floor nearby. His body fell prone with a pained groan; the sadistic Sarah glowering down at him.
“Daniel?” Tyler asked, the distraction giving Cara an opening to wrest an arm free and belt Tyler in the face with her elbow. The blow weakened his leverage, allowing Cara to kick him off of her. She then bolted to her feet and tried to run over to Dan’s side, but before she could even move, Sarah brought her thumb down harshly onto his back.
“This little fucker bit me,” Sarah growled; twisting her thumb back and forth, digging it into his back and applying untold pressure onto his spine. “Never liked you, you little shit. I was gonna take my time with you, but you went and pissed me off.”
“Sarah! Stop it!” Cara cried out desperately, “Don’t do this!”
Sarah cut her eyes to Cara, smirking slightly, “Sorry, honey. This is also on your hands. Maybe if you were faster, little tiny pathetic bitch boy Dan here might not have thrown his life away,” said the larger woman as she pressed her thumb down harder and gave it a sharp twist; a loud, audible, sickening wet snap was heard as she severed the poor boy’s spine.
Dan’s deafening screams were silenced by him gargling up a large amount of blood and bile; his body trashing underneath the Sarah’s thumb until he ceased moving. Breathing. And living.
“Tch. I really wanted to take my time too,” Sarah said before settling her eyes on Cara, who already took up the weapon once more.
Cara stared at Tyler who had backed up against one of the walls; nursing his bleeding mouth and side. He looked back at Cara with wide, fear filled eyes as she approached. The look in her eyes was hard for him to process, but it was one of pure fury and determination. She had been broken.
“Cara, I’m sorry for everything,” his voice cracked, tears now flowing down his face.
Cara huffed and jammed the razor-sharp blade into his torso. “Don’t talk anymore. You owe me that for making this harder than it needed to be.” She pulled back the weapon and stabbed him again, and again, then one final thrust into his neck.
Tyler fell silent. The life fading from his eyes while tears streamed down the unflinching girl’s face.
“Damn, girl, you’re ruthless! Well a deal’s a deal and with one friend to spare,” Sarah snickered while lowering the remaining girl into the ‘arena’, who quickly ran over and threw her arms around the blood drenched Cara to comfort her. “Aww, how touching,” Sarah remarked.
“S-so that’s it then right?” The girl glanced up at Sarah while holding broken Cara to her, “You’ll turn us back to normal and let us go? W-we don’t go to the cops or anything, we just wanna get some rest. We’re cool… yeah?”
“Sure, I’ve had my fun,” Sarah replied with a warm smile, slowly standing up to her full height and towering over the arena more so than she was sitting down, “There’s just one thing,” She said while slowly lifting her foot, revealing the thick, sturdy, leather sole of her gothic boot. “I don’t really care for bugs in my room,” She sneered and slammed her foot down on the pair, crushing them mercilessly underneath her boot with a loud, squishy crunch.