by grapehyacinth

Part 2: Nelly

As Nelly made her way back to her office, her heart was beating wildly. She was trying to hold back her tears, but after experiencing some kind of power fluctuation in the power plant she worked at, she was concerned that something horrible was about to happen. Sylvie, her co-worker, was having a strange skin reaction, but Nelly herself didn't notice anything odd about her appearance – her skin and face looked fine when she glanced in the mirror. Her hair looked particularly healthy, in fact.

Yet her clothes were falling off of her. What could that possibly mean?

She shuffled down the dark hall, struggling to keep her feet inside her ill-fitting shoes. Nearly tripping around the corner, she gave a yelp as her pants suddenly fell to the floor. She gathered them up and fled into her office. Thankfully, it being not quite four in the morning, only she, Sylvie, Angela, and Drusilla were the only ones in the building. So hopefully no one got a glimpse of her in her underwear...

She slammed the door behind her and locked it, staring down at herself. “What is this? What is this?” she cried. “My clothes! My...” she stopped as a wave of near-pain radiated down her back.

“What's that now? Oh, my God, I'm irradiated! I'm going to die...What the hell?”

With a great lurch, she shrank a half foot.

“Oh my God,” she moaned, now realizing why her clothes were falling off. “The clothes aren't getting bigger. I'm getting smaller.”

Her body lost another few inches, and she looked up at the ceiling that was swiftly getting farther and farther away. Her back was itchy, her ears were itchy... “The power fluctuation is having an effect on me too...”

Strangely, her hair was not shrinking as much as the rest of her, so it seemed as if it was longer than ever. It fell into her face, obscuring her vision. “Stop it! Stop it!” she yelled in annoyance. Pushing it away, her finger brushed her ear, and she pulled her hand back in shock.

Her ear was pointy on the top.

In a panic, she thought of her family's favorite old show... “Oh, my God I'm turning into Spock!” she exclaimed. “I'm turning into a Vulcan...from Star Trek...No, that's not real, and Spock wasn't small...Oh, God, how small will I get? Will I shrink away into nothing? Or the size of an atom, or...” She was now getting hysterical, which seemed to be making her change even more rapidly. “No one will ever know I'm here because I'm so small! I gotta call Sylvie and tell her...I have to warn her real fast before I can't even–”

She was rendered speechless. As she had been talking, she had meant to go across the room to retrieve the phone. But she had done this at nearly the speed of sound, it seemed.

She drew in her breath, yet she was not even remotely winded.

“Oh my God! Super speed!” she blurted out with the first smile she had summoned since before the power event. She streaked back and forth across the room several times, exhilarated by the immense rush of speed. “I'm totally like a superhero!” she cried gleefully, then she blushed. “Okay, that's goofy, but, seriously, all I need is a cape, which I kind of have...” She tugged at her shirt, which now hung from her like a dress, and the gravity of the shrinking situation hit her once again.

“I gotta call Sylvie,” she muttered. Picking up the phone in her strangely-smaller hand, the itchiness in her spine became so irritating that she tossed the receiver back down and removed her shirt to investigate. Right then and there, two diaphanous wings popped out of her back.

She groaned at the strange pressure. “What the hell are these?”

Gingerly she flapped the new appendages, which lifted her several feet into the air.

“Oh, shit,” she murmured in realization. The elfin ears, the wings... “I'm a goddamn fairy.”

Her shoes flopped to the floor, her pants slid off, and she completed her descent into fairy-height.

Nelly's feelings ran the gamut from elation as she flitted about, to deep fear as she wondered if she would ever return to normal. The sensation of darting through the air at lightning speed was beyond words, but how could she live like this? How could she ever interact with any normal human beings again?

Yes, she was a goddamned fairy.

A rumble sounded below her, and she fluttered towards the ceiling in alarm as the floor began to creak and splinter. For a moment she blinked at the pile of clothes that she had shed. They lay on the floor, looking like a deflated tent.

“Those were mine,” she whispered. Then she looked down at herself.

“Oh, no! I'm naked!” she gasped in embarrassment. “I gotta cover up.” She pulled her knee-length hair over her. It was bizarre that it had remained so lengthy as opposed to shrinking proportionately with the rest of her. But it was kind of nice to be draped with one's own silky locks.

Yet her own hair would not be sufficient to cover up with. What was she to use for clothing?

Spying the tissue box on her desk, she struggled to yank one out. Surprised how heavy it was, she twisted it around her body so it resembled a pale-pink taffeta ball gown. “Could look worse,” she giggled in approval of her work.

Suddenly the floorboards exploded outward, and the top part of a giant woman pushed her way in.

“Angela!” Nelly gasped in horror.

But her co-worker did not seem to hear her; she merely stared around Nelly's office in confusion.

Nelly descended towards her now-enormous friend, flitting around her and trying to catch her attention, but the woman merely swatted at her and ducked back into the office below.

Nelly started to cry.

She was not sure what time it was; possibly noon or so of the next day. Nelly had fallen asleep on the top of the bookshelf. Her wings were creased from lying on them, and she pumped them a bit to get the blood flowing. When she looked down from her high vantage point, she felt a wave of nausea at how far below the floor was.

But she could fly...

Taking a deep breath, she dove off the top, gliding to the floor. “Weeeee!” she cried in delight.

“Well look at that. All that fairy talk made you a fairy!”

Dr. Simon Vance, her boss, now stood in the doorway, a coffee cup in hand.

She flew at him. “Dr. Vance! I can't believe you're here! Please help me! Can you hear me?”

The newly-attractive scientist leaned closer to her, and Nelly again wondered what he had done to improve his appearance so drastically.

“Can you hear me?” she shrieked again.

“Almost.” He chuckled and held out his hand. “Come on over here.”

Nelly giggled. She had always secretly liked Simon, despite his continued flirting with Angela. She alighted on his hand and curtsied.

Her cute display did not faze him, however. He merely examined her with a scientist's eye. “Amazing. It's like I thought. Your personality and thoughts determine how and what you'll be... You're flitty, and you were talking about your daughter saying there were fairies...And you became one, Nelly. You like it?”

“Like?” she looked down at herself. Her feelings were admittedly mixed. She loved the way she felt – energetic, light, spritely...and she had somehow acquired two physically impossible abilities... “I can fly, and I'm really fast, which is awesome, but, will I be like this forever?”

Simon ran a finger down her hair with an appreciative moan. “Nice. And nice tissue dress, too,” he commented. “Height of fashion.”

He chortled at his own joke. Nelly did not. “So far all the changes seem to be reversible,” he added in a more sober voice.

“All?”

“Everyone here was affected. Well, hopefully they were.”

Nelly grew slightly irritated. She thought of the giant Angela bursting through the floor, and wondered what had befallen Drusilla and Sylvie, if anything. “Hopefully? Was this not an accident?”

“Sure wasn't. I did this to you!”

Nelly scratched her head. Was he serious? Had he really done some kind of experiment on them? “What? How dare you!” She darted away, angry and extremely disturbed. Who did he think he was, possibly playing with their lives? Was he aware of any side effects?

Simon's face twisted. “Come back here, Nelly. I'm not done checking you out!”

“Checking me out? What the hell does that mean? Go check Angela out!”

“Nelly, I'm checking you to see if you're okay,” he snarled. “Now get over here or I'll keep you as a pet or something!”

Nelly landed on his shoulder. “You jerk. You horrible, awful, jerk! Does Angie know this was your fault?”

He smiled. “Sure does.”

“I'm going to tell her to smash you!”

He merely shook his head in amusement, popping the cover off his coffee cup. “You'll all be fine. It's not like I'd want to kill or hurt you girls. You mean a lot to me. You keep my establishment running.”

“You bastard! You can't just...do this...stuff...to people...without asking!” she began to kick at his shoulder.

“Hey! That hurts! Stop it or I'll flick you off!”

She pinched him, which didn't seem to do much but leave a tiny red pinpoint, so she kicked him again. “You can't...”

“I warned you!”

Suddenly everything was dark. Simon had plunked down his coffee cup over her and slid the cover underneath, clicking it in place.

“Don't worry. There's an air hole on the cover where the straw would go,” he chuckled.

Simon flipped the cup right side up, bathing the girl in the few drops of coffee that clung to the inside. The liquid dripped off her wings, and she couldn't flap them much to shake them off as there was very little room to maneuver.

Her jail was dark except for the spot of light that the hole left on the top. “Simon, let me out of here or I'll kill you!” she threatened.

Through the hole, she could see his eye peer into the cup. “Right. You'll swarm me or bat me with your little fairy-wings, right? Come on, Nelly, you're so cute like this! Don't be so bitter!”

“You let me out!”

Simon shook the cup so hard that she yelped in pain.

“Cut it out, Nelly. Quit whining. You're bothering me. I need to check on your friends. You'll be accompanying me. In close beverage quarters, of course.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“I don't know, get you a nice bird cage?” he shook her again, laughing.

Finally she had had enough. “Simon!” she shrieked, anger running through every bit of her slight form. “I mean it! I'm going to kill you!”

With that, the cup exploded, and Nelly rapidly grew to her full height. She was very surprised at this new development, but Simon merely smirked, “Reversible, you see?” and he walked towards the door to leave.

“Wait! You're not getting away with this!” Nelly shrieked. A blur streaked across the room, and suddenly she was blocking the scientist's way.

“Hmm,” he said, hardly even bothered by this. “The speed is a nice touch. I do hope you'll explore that with me at one point.” Winking, he looked her up and down. He pulled at her wing, which she snatched away. “Interestingly, even at normal size, you seem to have retained your wings and pointy ears.”

She gazed at him in anger. She wasn't even sure what to do to him, but a good nasty stare always helped...

Wait....if she was a fairy...

She raised her arms and concentrated on the man, who merely watched, semi-interested. “Nelly, what are you trying to do?”

“Well,” she threw down her hands in frustration. “If I'm a fairy, shouldn't I have, like...magic, fairy powers?”

He chuckled as she made several more futile gestures.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” she screamed, slamming her fists into the wall. “Shouldn't I be able to do awesome stuff?”

“I'm going with no on that,” Simon uttered, obviously suppressing another laugh. “You're just in fairy form. You don't have cool magic-y powers.” As she leaped toward him in a fury, he suddenly transformed into a bird. “But I kinda do!” he winked again and flew off.

Nelly blinked after him.