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The first thing Toni noticed was the putrid stench, permeating his precious breathing space with an alarming intensity that had him clamping his fingers around his nose within the span of two seconds. Judging by various niffy nuances attacking his muted sense of smell, he deduced that he must have fallen asleep in the locker room after the match, although it was strange enough that he had been allowed to wake up on his own. It was dark around him, hinting at the fact that nobody had moved through the room in some time to trigger the motion sensors.
Toni sat up, dimly wondering whether he should have put more insistence on his previous offer to educate his colleagues about the sacred concept of regular Lüften, an endeavour on which none of the others had been particulary keen and which, thusly, had been abandoned once Toni had realised that he would not make many friends with a well-meaning attitude.
The German pushed himself off the floor, grimacing when his muscles screamed in protest. Resting in the locker room he shared with his Real Madrid teammates was a bad idea at the best of times, not least because the room contained a rather limited set of cushions. Flashlights were also in short supply, something that Toni found himself pondering sadly when he took a few steps into the room and the ceiling failed to flare up.
He knew something was up when his attempts to guide himself along the wall were met with a distinct lack of wall. “Was zum-...” He knew he should have hit something by now, but the strange sensation of being lost in territory that he should have been able to navigate blindly stuck with him through the following minutes of helplessly stumbling around. At last, the reflex to check his pockets provided him with his phone, and he held up the glowing screen in an attempt to regain his bearings.
Shadows rose around the midfielder, stretching towards a ceiling that seemed impossibly far above his head. Toni´s gut churned with the awful suspicion that he was missing something that should have been obvious from the start, but he forced himself to stumble forward in search for further evidence.
Scuffling noises towards his left prompted him to change his course, approaching the sign of life with cautious steps. The further he walked, the louder the sounds became until he was able to distinguish two agitated voices in the dark. They stopped abruptly just before he reached their owners. Then somebody hesitantly called out his name.
“Toni?”
“Uh, yeah” the German confirmed automatically, his brain working feverishly to identify the speaker. “Lucas, is that you?”
“Yes” the voice hurried to answer, followed shortly by his companion´s relieved curse. Casemiro, Toni´s brain supplied, and he rushed forward as fast as he dared until the weak light of his display danced across his colleagues´ drawn faces. Lucas´ teeth twinkled beneath his wide eyes when he greeted the German with a smile, but his eyes were screaming for an explanation. “Power-out, am I right? Have you found the exit yet? We were just about to take a look around-...”
Toni pointed over his shoulder. “It should´ve been over there. I mean, this must be our locker room, but I´ve been walking around for minutes.”
“Then it can´t be” Casemiro deduced shortly. A big hand shot out, clamping around Toni´s wrist to lift the man´s phone further up. “We´ve been here for-... Fuck, it´s late.”
“I don´t know about you guys” Lucas announced as they picked a direction at random and set out, “but I´m having trouble remembering what happened after the game.”
“You´re not the only one” muttered his Brazilian teammate before he froze in place, grunting when Toni bumped into his back. “You hearing what I´m hearing?”
The players held their collective breath when long steps echoed against distant walls like thunder crackling through a vast canyon. “We need to-...” was all Toni got out before cold light flooded the room and a giant shape appeared against the luminous rectangle of an entrance. The giant moved across the floor, each step thrumming through the terrified trio´s bones. The room lit up in response, finally granting them an unimpeded view of their surroundings, but it took all Toni had to make himself take a closer look. What he saw sent a shiver through him that had nothing with the virtual earthquake turning their legs to jelly.
“Ach du Scheiße.”
The humongous figure thumped across the room until its business had been conducted and the door slammed shut behind him, leaving the frightened players behind. Casemiro was the first to recover from his shock.
“I´m dreaming” he muttered. “This is a dream. There´s no way that just happened. Somebody punch me. Don´t go overboard, though, if you wanna keep all of your fingers.”
“I don´t know” Lucas quipped nervously, “it felt pretty real to me.” Toni saw him inching closer in the corner of his eye, evidently in need of physical reassurance, and he automatically lifted an arm to accommodate his friend. “We all saw the same thing, right? I mean, it´s hard to identify a person by their nostrils, but I know that was Dani just now. Wait, what if he got spliced with Godzilla or something-... We´ve already got cloning down, right? Doesn´t seem like too much of a stretch-...” He babbled a few more incoherent sentences before Toni cut him off.
“Lucas has a point” he agreed. “Not about the Godzilla thing” he added when Casemiro raised a dubious brow at him. “But this doesn´t feel like a dream. We should-...” Concentrating was hard above the waves of adrenaline pulsing through him, but he clung to an indisputable fact. “We should find a way out of here before the lights go out again.”
They wobbled forward on shaky legs, exhausted by the time they had reached the door.
“You know” Lucas panted, leaning forward to catch his breath, “we still haven´t addressed the elephant in the room.” He gestured around, sweeping the artificial landscape of their locker room adventure up in a frantic wave. “How the hell did everything grow so fucking huge without us noticing?”
“I hate to burst your bubble” Casemiro planted his hands against the door as if he could push it open with the power of his mind alone, “but I think you might have that backwards.”
“How?”
“I think-... it´s just us.” The Brazilian eyed them for a moment before turning his glance towards his own feet. “No clue how it happened, but it looks like we got shrunk or something.”
Lucas snorted, but his amusement faded when the midfielder´s expression remained vaguely sullen. “Wait, really? No way. How would that even happen-...”
“Beats me.” When the door refused to yield against Casemiro´s next shove, he turned around, propping himself up against the smooth surface. “Anybody remember anything unusual lately? Anything that might have to do something with this?”
Toni shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary for me.”
“Same here” Lucas began to agree, but he cut himself off when a memory crept towards the forefront of his mind. “Well, there´s-... No, but it couldn´t be.”
“What?”
The Spaniard rubbed at his cheek, trying to summon his recollection of the previous day. “Yesterday, I was-... But it was just-...”
“Just say it” Casemiro grouched. Patience had never been one of his strong suits. Lucas shot him a disgruntled look before he went on.
“I was feeling a bit down yesterday. Wasn´t that bad, just... You know how I´m always saying that people in our business ought to have their mid-life crisis earlier than others? Because we retire when we´re still young in comparison? Yeah, it was a bit like that. So, there I was, minding my own business, trying to cheer myself up with videos of cute cats and stuff, business like usual. Anyway, I somehow ended up on this weird website with tons of online games, and I was like, why not? I found one where you had to shake a phone booth with your cursor for coins-...”
“Get to the point, kid.” Casemiro crossed his arms, not impressed with Lucas´ indignant huff.
“I´m older than you, so-...”
“Lucas” their German colleague interrupted their impending argument, effectively guiding the Spaniard back to his narration.
“Okay, this website. Once you had coins, you could drop them off in some sort of ‘wishing well’. Like, think of something and it´ll come true, that style of thing. They didn´t have an online shop or a cash-out option, so that´s what I did. And...” His voice had gotten smaller as the seconds passed, and he finished in a whisper, “I made a wish.”
Casemiro´s expression was hard to read as he pressed for details. “What wish?”
“I wasn´t-...” Lucas lifted his hands helplessly. “I was thinking that, sometimes it´s all so-... pointless, like, all we do is kick a ball day in, day out. What if that´s all we´re good for? Sometimes I can´t help wondering how other people feel. People who are making the world a better place, I mean. Are they happier than us? Do they get more out of life? I mean, I´ve got all I could want, right? Money, fame, all that stuff that´s supposed to be so great.” His strained chuckle unsettled the two midfielders at his side, but they did not dare to cut in. “I know, I probably sound like an asshole, complaining like that. But that´s how I felt at the time. So... I dropped those stupid coins into the well and I thought, if I could just know what it´d be like-... Well, I just wanted-... a different perspective, that´s all.”
“A different-...” Casemiro finally found his voice again, filtering the key statement from Lucas´ downtrodden recollection. “Okay, answer me this. Did you-... Did you, maybe, use those exact words?”
“I... might have” Lucas admitted sheepishly, ducking when Casemiro bristled at the implication.
“A-... different perspective.” He shook his head slowly, disbelief turning into anger with lightning speed. “So you-...”
“Leave it, man” Toni snapped, causing the surprised Brazilian to settle back down. “Before you start blaming him for this, do you realise how that would sound? Are you actually saying he caused all of this by playing a game?” Casemiro´s mouth snapped shut. “Yeah. That´s what I thought. Now, whatever happened to us, it´s got to be reversible. Hell, maybe all we need to do is wait it out. We´ll figure this out, okay? And we´ll do it together. None of that ‘blame each other’ business.”
The German´s blunt voice left his colleagues unable to do anything but nod in agreement. “Good” he said, barely managing to keep his voice free from condescension. “You do realise that we still need to find a way to open this door, right?”
“How? Even if we could reach the handle, we´d never be able to turn it.” Lucas trudged towards the fuzzy heap of fabric lying nearby, prodding it with a look of abject fascination. “That´s-... yeah, that´s a sock! I could use that sock as a sleeping bag! It´d be disgusting, but I could do it!”
Casemiro pushed himself upright so suddenly that Toni jerked away from him, but the Brazilian had better things in mind than late revenge for his colleague´s earlier reprimand. “Your phone! We can call somebody, explain the situation to them.”
Toni was tempted to slap himself on the forehead when he realised how long it had taken them to arrive at the conclusion. “Guess we´re lucky our stuff got shrunk with us. Can you imagine-...” He trailed off meaningfully, watching as Casemiro shuddered at the thought of having to walk around with nothing but their skin and a few shaky theories.
Quickly selecting a number from his contacts, he waited for his call to get through. “Dani? Dani, thank God. Can you hear me? Are you still at the training centre?”
“Hey, man.Yeah, just leaving” came the man´s tinny voice through the speaker, “Forgot my wallet earlier. How´d you know? I didn´t see you-...”
“Never mind that” the German said quickly. “Can you meet us at the locker room? We´re, uh...” He glanced towards Casemiro who merely shrugged. “We could use some help.”
“Sure, I´ll be there. Ten minutes, okay?”
“Thanks” Toni told him, relieved at his friend´s easy acquiescence. “Oh, and make sure to open the door carefully.”
“... Is this a prank? Wait, you´ve never played a prank on any of us. As far as I know, at least. Did you finally get some lessons from Marce-...”
Toni sighed. “It´s not a prank. Just-... get over here as soon as you can.” He hung up on the suspicious defender. “You heard him, he´s gonna be here in ten minutes. We should get out of the way before he arrives. He might accidentally step on one of us if we don´t get to higher ground.”
“Yeah, becoming a pancake isn´t exactly on my bucket list” Lucas joked, already turning to look for a decent waiting spot.
By unanimous agreement, they made off towards the nearest bench, swinging themselves up on the rails connecting its short legs. Lucas yelped, nearly losing his grip when his hand sank into something lumpy and pliable. “Urgh-... Gum? This place could really use a clean-up.” He wiped his fingers on the nearest available surface, shuddering when some of the sticky residue clumped under his nails.
“I think they wipe the place down every other day” Toni reminded him, twisting to get a better grip on his rail. “You guys just have disgusting habits.”
“And I suppose you don´t, Mr. Roboto?” Casemiro´s disembodied voice floated down from somewhere above their heads. He had already reached the top and was now watching their cautious progress with smug satisfaction.
“I don´t even like the stuff” Toni declared, wisely omitting to mention years of experimenting with the chewy treat back at the Munich Academy and his subsequent struggle to leave his bubble-blowing past behind him. “Anymore” he therefore muttered in deference to the truth, quietly enough not to be overheard by his midfield colleague. Lucas, however, threw him a conspiratory glance before the younger man swung his leg across the edge and hauled himself up next to Casemiro.
Somebody shuffled along the corridor on the other side of the door, causing the Brazilian to reach down to grab Toni by the shoulder and give him a boost to the top. The German scrambled up just as the door was flung open and Dani´s head inched through the door.
“Toni? You here, buddy? Man, I knew it was a prank.”
To his teammates´ horror, he began to retreat, no matter how much they shouted. Lucas slapped a hand against the wood beneath him when he finally connected the dots. “He can´t hear us. What do we do now?”
The German quickly fumbled out his phone again. “C´mon, Dani” he mumbled, “pick up.”
They watched Dani reaching for his buzzing pocket, cheering when the man took a look at the display and recognised the caller. “Toni” he said, glancing around the locker room, “where the fuck are you? I thought you said you needed help.”
“We do-...”
“We?”
“Yeah, I´ve got Case and Lucas with me.” The midfielder lifted a hand, acutely aware of the futility of his gesture. “Look over. No, further to the left. We´re on the bench. Warmer, warmer-... No, on the bench, I said-... Bingo” he said when Dani froze on his knees, gaping at him with eyes the size of tents.
“Guys” Dani said slowly, reverently. “What. The hell.”
His eyes flickered between his three tiny colleagues, making Toni dizzy with the effort to keep track. He lifted his phone back to his mouth, trying to snap the man out of his stupor. “Listen, I know you probably have questions. Trust me, we do, too. But frankly, I´m sick of being stuck in here, so if you could get us out-...”
“Of course, of course” Dani replied distractedly. “Gimme a second. Wait-...” His right hand swept upwards, stopping an inch before his face. “Tiny high five?”
Warily, Toni obeyed, rolling his eyes when the Spaniard cheered high above their heads. “I think we broke him.”
“That´s so awesome” the defender gushed, holding out his hand once more until the others got the hint and slowly clambered onto the proffered palm. “How´d you do it? Can I have a go?”
Casemiro cursed when their normal-sized teammate sprang to his feet, throwing himself at the closest finger and clamping his arms around it to avoid falling off. “Dani” he roared, “are you an idiot? Wait, I said that wrong. You´re a fucking idiot! Slow down, asshole!”
Toni repeated the instruction into his phone until Dani got the hint, slowing his motions to a gentle trot. “So. Where to?” He listened politely until Casemiro was finished with his instructions. “Can you say that again? But louder this time? Hang on-...” He lifted his palm at a snail´s pace until they were hovering next to his face.
“You do realise what´s happening, right? I mean, why aren´t you freaking out?” Lucas shouted once they were inches away from the man´s ear. “Shouldn´t you be all-... weirded out by this?”
“Listen, buddy. This is a dream. Anything goes. Why, just last week I had this creepy-ass nightmare where I was a pumpkin made of glass, and then some kid came and-...” Dani rambled on, unconcerned by his friends´ growing frustration.
Casemiro cut right to the core of their concerns. “He´s not gonna be much help if he keeps spazzing out like that.”
“Give him a minute. This is a lot to take in.”
“This is my fault.”
Toni looked up from his perch on Dani´s left shoulder, manfully enduring the sea-saw motions of his normal-sized colleague´s measured walk. Something in Lucas´ tone had rang an internal alarm. “You don´t know that.”
But Lucas was not so easily deterred from his righteous self-incrimination. “What else could it have been? If only I hadn´t been so...” He trailed off, but Toni could fill in the gap on his own. Stupid. Selfish. Insecure.
“Look” the German said slowly, carefully placing each word into the void between them. “I don´t know what brought this on. Maybe there doesn´t need to be a reason. In fact-... Yeah, I´m pretty sure everybody feels like this at some point.”
Lucas´ face fell further, evidently expecting to be ridiculed for his display of self-doubt, but Toni did not allow him the chance to backtrack.
“So, here´s the thing. You said something about helping people? If you think you aren´t doing enough, just think of something and then ask somebody how to get it done. There are-... infinite ways of doing that. It´s not all about rescuing puppies in your spare time and working hospital shifts. Sure, those things are great, but I think what you´ve got to do is find something that works for you.”
“Like what?” The young Spaniard leaned forward, his eager expression quickly transforming into temporary terror when he felt himself slipping, but he found purchase against Dani´s collar. “Oh sh-... Okay. Okay. Like what?”
Toni took a deep breath, trying to blend out his pounding heart. Hitching a ride on their colleague´s shoulder had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, all he could do was hold on and pray that the other two miniaturised players had the presence of mind to look out for themselves. “Like-... I mean, donations are a thing, right? They´re practically expected of us at this point. It´s a good way for us to help out in a way that doesn´t take away from the demands of our profession, and you´d get to find out if you´ve been missing out on fulfilling experiences. Let´s say you pick a charity that you think could benefit from a little extra attention and, I don´t know, give them a shout-out. Maybe pay them a visit at some point. We get a lot of public attention. Why not put it to use?”
“You sound like my agent” Lucas mumbled, but his half-hearted complaint was infused with a smile. “Yeah, I´ve been meaning to do that, actually. There´s this-...” As he kept talking, his posture straightened almost imperceptibly, as if an invisible load was slipping off his shoulders. Toni had just enough time to bask in his own sense of accomplishment before gravity shifted around him and his mind flared out for a long moment.
When he blinked himself awake, the world had shrunk back to its rightful size.
The midfielder extracted himself from the tangle of limbs around him, taking in his teammates´ prone figures just as Casemiro began to stir, his face scrunching up with all the indignation of someone who had been greatly inconvenienced and expected adequate compensation in the near future. Lucas followed suit shortly afterwards.
“Did we-...” The Brazilian hastily patted himself down with relief. “Are we back? We´re back, right? Tell me we´re back. Actually, tell me that this just happened and I didn´t hallucinate the whole thing, because otherwise I´ll have to go see a shrink.”
“I-... think it did?” Toni knew he did not sound entirely convinced, but Casemiro did not seem to care. “Did it just-... wear off? Maybe all we had to do was wait-...”
“Whatever. I´m out of here.” His midfield colleague pushed himself up in pursuit of his bag. “See you guys tomorrow.” His hurried farewell told the remaining duo that he was determined to leave the matter behind him, although Toni privately came to the conclusion that the man was, just as himself, worried about a potential repeat if they chose to dwell on the madness that had just found an end.
He turned to Lucas with a question burning on his tongue, but his foot caught on something on the ground between them. “Oh. Right.” Dani was still out cold, a circumstance that had most likely been brought on by about 450 additional pounds weighing down on him without warning. When the man remained oblivious to various prods and pats on his cheeks, Toni gave up.“Should we-...”
“Right. Yeah.”
Ten minutes of grunting and shuffling later, they had managed to drag Dani to the parking lot, manoeuvring him into the backseat of Lucas´ slick Audi. The Spaniard had agreed to drop him off at their doctor´s, leaving his German teammate to return home on his own where he spent the rest of the day trying to purge all memories of the supernatural from his weary mind.
The next morning prefaced what seemed like any other ordinary day. Toni got ready for work, followed his usual route to the training facilities and joined his teammates with the usual amount of awkward pleasantries. He had almost convinced himself that he had imagined the events of the past evening, but then he noticed Dani grinning at him, suspiciously upbeat for the early hour when the German stepped up to him.
“You´re awfully chipper” he said cautiously, frowning when the Spaniard snorted, lifting an arm over his head to start stretching.
“Man, I had the craziest dream about you. Not just you, though, that´d be really weird” he added hastily when he noticed his friend´s frozen expression. “You see, you called me and told me to find you ‘cause you needed my help – weird, right? It´s not like we´re that close, anyway – and when I got to you-...”
“Yeah, I´ve got a pretty good idea, actually.” Before Dani could call him out on his suspicious behaviour, the German jerked a finger across his shoulder. “I think Nacho had something to tell you earlier, so...”
Dani fell for the improvised bait, leaving Toni to glance around until he spotted Casemiro a few feet away, warming up with the non-plussed face of a man whose world had recently fallen apart only to be rebuilt with the special kind of super glue that dissolved beneath the first probing touch. He held Toni´s gaze for a full second before turning away, his expression clearly indicating that they would not be talking about anything stranger than Cadíz´s unprecedented league debut that day.
He listened with half an ear as the coach delivered his usual greetings in front of the group, reminding them to check their e-mails for some updated data security forms that they were supposed to read and sign at their earliest convenience. Lulled back into a state of pleasant boredom by the sheer familiarity of bureaucratic procedures, Toni made a decision. Nothing he had seen so far had hinted at a repeat of the previous day, and he would not provoke fate by acknowledging the inexplicable. It seemed like good business to let sleeping dogs lie.
In fact, Lucas had arrived at the same conclusion, and sleeping was just what he had intended to do as soon as the exhaustion of their gruesome training session had settled in his bones, before his coach´s thunderous visage flashed across his face like a prophecy. He had all but forgotten about the extra task, but a sudden burst of productivity made him stumble towards the wide black monitor in the corner of his vision in pursuit of any message in need of his input.
Clicking through the junk mail collection clogging his inbox, he paused when his eyes caught a few words that sent a jolt through his spine.
EE.R.IE.GAMES.net - Rate your wishing well experi...
His cursor twitched over the delete button for a full minute. Then he sighed and typed a quick review into the indicated box before saving the e-mail in a separate folder.
You never knew.
Lucas V. (Madrid)
★★★★☆
actually works!?! hwat the hell. got some good advice out of it tho. 8/10, would probably do again. points deducted for bubble gum trauma. never gonna un-feel that