A Little Romance

“I don’t know what could have happened”, said Dr Mills, sitting in the chair of the doll house kitchen and shaking his head, despondently.

“That’s ok”, said Irene, a lab technician, pouring an imaginary cup of tea from a plastic teapot and pretending to sip from a toy teacup. “I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland. It’s going to wear off eventually, right? And then we’ll both be normal sized again”.

“Hypothetically”, said Dr Mills, looking round about him at the life-size doll room, “Thank goodness, this doll house was in the laboratory. I’d bought it for my daughter’s birthday. I was planning on taking it home to her after work”.

“In a way, I’m kind of glad this happened”, said Irene, gazing, longingly, into Dr Mills’s deep brown eyes, “Ever since I came to work at the lab. I’ve been hoping to have a moment alone with you”.

“I had no idea”, said Dr Mills, getting slightly flustered as Irene put her delicate, manicured hand upon his.

He took a plastic doll-sized rose from a doll vase on the kitchen table.

“I hope you’ll except this, even though it’s not a real rose and really only an inch big and… you can call me Malcom if you want”, he said.

“It’s not the size that matters, Malcom”, said Irene, clutching the plastic rose to her heart.

All of a sudden, there was a loud scratching outside the doll house and, looking through the plastic kitchen window, they saw that one of the lab mice had escaped from its cage and its giant twitching face was glaring at them hungrily through the window.

“Usually, I’m not afraid of mice but that one is enormous”, said Irene, shaking.

“Don’t worry, Irene. I’ll protect you”, said Malcom, taking her hand and leading her into the doll sized living room where he had earlier seen a standard lamp.

Malcom lifted up the lamp and moved infront of Irene to guard her. Then they heard the sound of that giant mouse loose in the house, knocking over plastic doll furniture as it sniffed them out with its twitching pink nose and he told her, “I won’t let it near you, Irene. I promise”.

Irene wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and held him close noticing that, underneath his white coat, he was not thin and weedy but tall and muscular with broad shoulders.

Even if this was her moment to die, she thought, she had found love.

But, just then, she noticed that the floor was starting to get further away.

“Malcom?”, she said, “I think we’re starting to grow again”.

Suddenly, there was a loud crashing sound around her ears and, the next thing she knew, she and her new boyfriend were entangled on the floor of their laboratory and a little white mouse was scurrying away across the floor.

“Are you alright, Irene?”, asked Dr Mills, getting to his feet and bending down to help her up.

“Yes”, she said, clinging tightly to him again, this time, to support her unsteady legs.

Malcom looked down at the shattered doll’s house on the laboratory floor.

“My goodness. It looks like an earthquakes hit it”, he said, “My daughter, Karen, won’t be happy”.

But, just then, Irene bent over and started rummaging through the broken pieces of the doll’s house.

“What are you looking for?”, asked Malcom.

“My plastic rose”, giggled Irene, picking up the pin sized plastic flower between her thumb and forefinger and holding it up to the light, “It’s the first gift that you’ve ever given me. I’ll cherish it always”.

Then she kissed him. Just a peck on the cheek, at first, and she hugged him and he hugged her back
but, before long, their lips were locked together in a full blown passionate kiss and she could, from the intensity in that kiss, tell that this was no flash in the pan but the beginning of something big.