Time-Out: The Maggie of All Problems (Chapter 3) (Patreon)

Scott still had no idea where his sister was headed with this, nor did he especially want to know, but he had the foresight now, after seeing her enslave a group of strangers with just one calculated underfoot homicide, to put literally nothing past her. Maggie had carried him, Kyle, and Judy aloft in her grasp into the heart of downtown, with the reporters and construction workers swiftly following after her mighty heels. By now, the footage of the new leader’s rise to power, and her first “hiring,” was on every screen in the city, enrapturing a helpless audience split between the benefits of trying stupidly to flee, or offering themselves up on a platter in hopes of getting a useful job. As it turned out, Scott found, the latter option was rather close to Maggie’s desires.

“Hiiiii, everyone!” Maggie cheekily roared to the masses traffic-jammed across the urban sprawl. “It’s so great everybody’s already outside and listening! I think we’re gonna get along real well because of that, only… there’s just a couple important ground rules to go over, especially because I’m getting super-hungry.”

Maggie gazed across a sea of thousands, each and every person showing the same stupefied zombie-aesthetic the workers had wisely adopted. It was a look Scott recognized well from the few times he had access to a mirror during his shrunken tenure, but to see it instead reflected in a whole city population, while his sister cheesed at them like the popular girl on school picture day, made his insides twist worse than the vertigo caused by being held close to a hundred feet in the air in the possessive palm of his little sister’s newly-omnipotent hand.

Scott glanced a final time to his mother, who was looking with meaningful anticipation toward her daughter. Judy already knew what was coming, and it made her glow with parental pride, which only told her sons to brace themselves for anguish. Yet all the car-squishings and forced tooth-brushings in the world couldn’t have prepared Scott for what came out of his sister’s mouth.

“As you can all probably tell, I’ve been an athlete most of my life, pretty much as soon as I could walk, and my coaches have always taught me how important it is to put in the right kind of energy to any task so you can get an equal amount of reward back,” Maggie explained. “Train hard, and you score in games. Practice what you’re bad at, and you improve. Eat right, and you have the endurance to do everything well. For me, that used to mean being the soccer team captain and getting good grades, but it means a lot more now, and I don’t just mean because there’s a lot more of me here to be in charge of you. If I’m going to be all that I can be for this city and all the little people I’m responsible for now, it means I’m gonna have to “put in” a LOT more. Meaning… food. Which is what I’m here to talk to you all about now. Three times a day at least, I’ll have to eat one of you.”

Maggie slipped in this last fact so naturally, it went unnoticed by most of the crowd for a few seconds, Scott included. Then everyone fell into an even deadlier hush.

“Like my coaches always said: no pain, no gain,” Maggie said with a creeping smile. “Which doesn’t mean it’s gonna hurt when I eat you. I mean, it could if people aren’t being good team players, but it doesn’t have to. Especially if you cooperate, or even give yourselves up for me, I’ll swallow you nice and soft, and you’ll barely feel it, plus you’ll be helping everybody else out by keeping me good and strong, and isn’t that what living in a community is all about? So. Who’s gonna go down in history as my first lunch?”

Hysteria swept downtown in a flash. Bickering and trampling settled in while many rushed for nearby buildings, others screaming at one another, and some just standing petrified amongst the chaos.

“HEY!” Maggie barked, shattering the din once again with the authority she was born to. “That’s not how we’re gonna do things around here. Sure, sometimes we’ll have some fun with it if you want, like maybe I can chase you around and it’ll be like a little contest to see who doesn’t have to be my lunch for the day because you ran away faster, but right now, I’m just hungry. Here, listen up.”

Bundling her family into one clawed hand, Maggie proceeded to roll her shirt up the flat tanned wall of her not-quite-six-pack but nonetheless conditioned abdomen. Pressing her palm to the firm flesh, she proceeded to swab her palm in circles around the divot of her belly button, and indeed, in the respectful silence, a yawning gurgle of acidic yearning from the girl’s needful belly echoed over the city canyons.

“Boys?” Maggie sternly addressed her small army of dutiful workers below. She pointed to nearby clusters of potential victims. “If you don’t wanna be my lunch, find me some, please. Let’s see here… oh, let’s just be fair. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe, catch a tiger by its toe… how about her?”

Scott was all but delirious at just how immediately the workers followed the cavalier order. They charged after the chosen, a woman at least ten years older than Maggie. The shrieking stranger was powerless as the workers guiltily but efficiently dragged her back toward the altar of the giantess’s sandals. Surrounding civilians of course appeared remorseful, but none did anything to resist, too afraid of becoming replacement appetizers.

“I’m not eating her clothes. Especially cuz they’re kinda ugly,” Maggie declared. “Hurry up, please. My stomach’s getting a little loud. I can barely hear myself think.”

Even faster, the weeping stranger was forcibly stripped naked and left strewn on the ground before Maggie.

“Oh, don’t be too upset, little one. Shhh, it’s all right,” Maggie cooed with eerie empathy as she crouched to collect her snack. “This is for a good cause. Now, c’mon up, and show them all there’s nothing to be afraid of, really.”

The young queen’s fingers closed around the woman, who flailed and cried even more bitterly as she was clamped in place. Perhaps trying to give the woman time to grieve, or simply to grant a preview of her destination, Maggie paused the ascent of her hand so the lady could observe the smooth sun-kissed stomach wall from an intimate distance. For a second, likely more due to a body-locking stupor, the woman stopped fighting, and Scott saw her expression glaze with morbid understanding as Maggie’s cushy yet toned belly gently flexed inward and outward, serenely piping air. Another growl emanated from inside, and the giantess made sure her meal heard it by pressing the woman’s tiny head into her stomach until the soft skin depressed slightly and then vibrated her victim’s soon-to-be-digested body at the same awful gut-churning frequency.

Scott watched all this just as breathlessly as everyone else who wasn’t currently fifteen stories tall, with the exception of Judy. Of course he wanted to have the fortitude to speak up on the woman’s behalf, no matter the consequences, because it was the right thing to do, but in that moment he understood that though he’d been in his sister’s possession countless times before and survived, it was not the same to be her one shrunken subject, while Maggie herself had no other way to get her kicks in an ordinary-sized world; today, she’d been handed the whole city on a plate, and it was clear that it wasn’t enough for her to treat her lessers like prized toys. They were something lower now, something edible, and Scott couldn’t say for certain his sister wouldn’t gulp him down next if he so much as cleared his throat the wrong way.

“Bon appetit,” Maggie whispered to herself as she held the woman at last over her lips. Head tilted back and eyes luxuriously shut, the colossal girl passed the pleading screamer into the wet void, tubing her tongue toward the center and pinning the woman still for a last hot swish before a painless swallow. When Maggie gulped, the gloopy waterfall-effect down her gullet was heard just as clearly by all as her riotous stomach-grumbles.

Sighing with rare contentment, the giantess patted her stomach, the fleshy slaps tolling like a death knell for the woman currently sliding down an esophagus toward the burning sauna below, as well as every other potential meal-citizen in attendance. While Scott tried to stave off a mental breakdown, he watched his mother swell with ultimate admiration for this final step in Maggie’s growth. Everything she’d wished for, grooming her daughter over the years, had come perfectly to fruition, and it was just the beginning.

“She hit the spot!” Maggie boomed, then just as quickly turned her hungry gaze back on the masses. “So… who’s for dessert? First come, first served!”

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THE END?