Story arc #2

The Doctor and The Fairy

A start to a Choose Your Own Adventure story

You have had it rough for the last five weeks. First, you were heading home from work one day, a respected brain surgeon who could never harm a fly… pardon the cliche. The moment you walked through the front door, however, you see that your wife and children had been murdered, and a one-armed man was holding your three-month-old son. How you could tell he only had one arm, well… it was hidden, but there was a prosthetic arm with a hidden knife attached to it that had just run the baby through the heart.

Now, if anyone told you that you’d be in this situation even a day beforehand, you’d probably have laughed it off as crazy. After all, it only happened to Harrison Ford’s character in that early 1990s movie with a similar premise, right? What were the odds of it happening to you?

Apparently, the odds were so high that it was not even a matter of if this would ever happen to you… but when instead. Much like Harrison Ford’s character, you fought the killer, and you forced him to retreat. However, that was when the trouble started for you. That was the exact moment when the police arrived, the moment when you got the phone to call the police about this whole matter.

Now, you’re sitting in a maximum-security prison in the middle of the Continental United States, awaiting the time when you can convince the judge and jury of your innocence. After all, you don’t have it in you to take a life, especially not the lives of your family members. Why would you? It would also violate the Hippocratic Oath you swore to uphold.

Fortunately, the guards assigned to you did everything they could to keep you safe, but only by so much. They wouldn’t turn a blind eye to your needs, but they did not stop the random injuries on your person most of the time. For instance, there was a time when a rapist thought you’d be an easy recruit for his schemes, but you naturally refused to bend your knee to him. He gave you a black eye for your integrity.

Finally, you’re sitting down in your cell, waiting for your time to see the judge and jury in your preferred courtroom. You figured that, if anyone were to give you justice, it’d be someone who knows the real you better than someone who has to “please the masses”. Your brother was a judge in your hometown, so he’d have to be the one who would give you justice.

Before you could contemplate more about the matter, however, the prison warden stood in front of your cell. “I have good news and bad news for you, I’m afraid,” he said. “Which would you like to hear first?”

“Give me the bad news first,” you say.

“Okay, then,” the warden said. He lowers his head for a brief moment. “Someone murdered the judge you wanted to stand in front of, leaving us with no choice but to take you to DC.”

You suddenly feel faint. As soon as the words had fully registered in your mind, you fell to the ground behind you, knocking you out of it.

With a long fluttering of your eyes, you wake up in what has to be the prison’s infirmary. The warden sits beside you, holding onto a clipboard that had to have some information about you. What it said, you don’t know, but you wish to know if it had anything bad about you.

“You’re awake, I see,” the warden says. “Which part of what I said before caused you to lose consciousness for the last five hours?”

You blink in surprise.

It’d been five hours since you fainted?

“The judge… he was my brother,” you reply. “I wanted to stand in front of family, if possible, sir.”

The warden looks you in the eye for a few seconds, before he pulls out a handkerchief. “You might want to dry your eyes,” he says, giving you the cloth. “I can believe your innocence now, based on how you reacted to your brother’s death.”

You take the opportunity to dry your eyes. It takes a bit of work, but you finally calm down. “Thank you,” you say.

“No problem,” the warden replies. “Now, you have a new inmate to talk with, which was the good news I was going to tell you. I hope you get along with him.”

“Thank you, I guess,” you say.

A few minutes later, you return to the cell you were assigned to, seeing a boy no older than your eldest (if he were still alive). The boy wears a prison jumpsuit that is way too large for him, but nobody seems to give him any odd looks.

You enter the cell, expecting the boy to do something strange, like rush his way out of the cell before the guards could close the door. Instead, he just sits there, unfazed by your entry. Odd…

“Hey,” you say. “What are you in here for?”

The boy doesn’t respond.

“Personally, I’m here for a charge that I never committed,” you say. “I fought the man who did it, though, but everyone back there thinks I was the one who killed my wife and children.”

The boy still doesn’t reply.

“How old are you, son?” you ask.

“How about you say how old you are, first, mister?” the boy asked, though the voice sounded a bit… off to you. It sounded more than a little feminine.

“I’m 39, going on 40 this July,” you say.

“I see,” the boy says. “I’ll be 21 tomorrow, so that means I’m not young enough to be your daughter.”

You gape. The person you thought was a boy your eldest’s age… is a woman?

“As for what I’m in here for, my brother pranked me, saying that I’d meet a special guest today for the Summer Courts,” she says. “Why am I even still here? I can leave just fine without anyone the wiser.”

“By Summer Courts, what do you mean?” you ask.

“I mean, my brother is Oberon, the Prince of the Fairies of the Summer Court,” she says. “That makes me Titania, the Princess of the Fairies of the Summer Court.”

You stand up and walk over to the woman. “Are you sure your name is Titania?” you ask.

“Yes,” she says. “My position is that of princess because I’m not married to anyone right now.”

“But — ”

“Well, do you want to get out of here?” Titania asks. “I only have another minute before I leave for the Summer Courts.”

You stop momentarily before you make a choice.

What will you do next?

• “I’ll go with you,” you say, to humor her.
• “I’m sorry, but I have to abide by the laws of the land,” you say.

Samuel Kauffman, AKA Xamusel, is an indie game developer and novelist in training. His main exploits in the realm of fiction, much to his dismay, are the use of fanfic works. This includes fan games, which he’s also hoping to grow past, among so many other things.

To support him in his journey to being one of the better game devs and novelists in the world, and if you haven’t already joined the site, please consider supporting him by using his referral link to become a member of Medium:

If you want to support his fiction writing on platforms that work much like the Medium Platform, then please consider reading his stuff on Simily:

If you wish to support him in his writing over on Substack, the newsletter service that he’s started getting to use for his fiction serialization, then please click here:

I hope everyone enjoys what’s coming their way.