A Tale of Little Cities (Chapter 9) (Patreon)

Down belong, amongst the gritty fibers of Dr. Weaver’s laboratory rug, his last prediction had come true. With buildings shorter than the sprigs of floor fluff, the newly transported city was unfortunately camouflaged; only Big Ben really stood out against the smoky hue of the carpeting. London was sprawled in the rug, right in front of the doctor’s terminal, and unknown to anyone except for the panicked British citizens within city limits. Dr. Weaver had no idea, nor did Laura, and certainly neither did the tanned, scantily clad, golden-highlighted brunette in island-length flip-flops walking straight toward them.

Unlike Paris and Berlin, London saw its destroyer coming plain as day. Though no one in the hapless city could explain the grimy jungle of rug which surrounded them, they could at least identify the oncoming leviathan Tara as a human woman. A girl, really, probably not older than eighteen. It was debatable whether having this information made the inevitable calamity any less upsetting.

Unaware of anything except her need for answers, Tara stepped cautiously toward Dr. Weaver’s work station. Her flip-flop made contact with only the southern border of the city. Its crunch wasn’t even audible when silenced by the rug fibers. The rubbery edge of the footwear plowed directly through the English bedrock, and into the carpet underneath. In seconds, hundreds of homes and businesses disappeared under the worn-out treads of Tara’s bright-red flip-flop. Smoke from the wreckage plumed to the sky and concealed the bronze-tan pillars of her legs, but most of the shrunken people could make her curvy form out even above the miles-high cloudy spires.

In the yet-untouched city quadrants north of the destruction, people rushed through the streets. Cars roared onto sidewalks in a desperate attempt to flee. Most people simply mobbed, trampling over one another to reach safety. In reality, there was no such thing here. Tara’s entire foot was double the length of London. It was dumb luck that the girl’s shoe only took out a single border on that first step

Tara’s flip-flop crested forward again. She’d made up her mind, and was stepping closer to the keyboard. Compressed rug sprigs sprung back up from under her sandal, but the demolished cities, crushed flat beneath the rubber sole, did no such thing. They stayed as powdered grains in the carpet: indistinguishable from dirt. A few stray flecks of metal and glass measured by the ton were ground into the very tip of Tara’s shoe, but as she stepped, these city blocks of debris came loose and rained down on the rest of the modern metropolis. Another quadrant of the city was buried under the refuse from falling buildings, but even if they were lucky enough to dodge that storm, they would only be treated to the rearing shadow of the girl’s red sole swallowing them up.

Tara set her flip-flop down on all of London, though she didn’t sift her full weight into that foot; she was idly balanced on her opposite leg instead, without even thinking about it. This was simply a casual carry-over from her background in dance lessons. As a result, the English capital was spared an absolute liquefying under Tara and into darkness; rather, they were made to savor their oncoming destruction in slow stages. As her flip-flop merely hovered overhead, the tallest buildings were the first casualties.

These skyscrapers bowed like dead flower stems under the crushing might of the bobbing flip-flop sole. Coincidentally, Tara was scrunching her toes around the plastic thong of the shoe, which was causing the rubber platform to bounce from her sole and back to the rug. It was a movement of no more than half an inch. For the helpless British citizens, this meant that the red unidentified flying object of Tara’s flop was continually waving up and down, blasting gale force winds across the streets. Cars ping-ponged through storefronts; fleeing crowds of citizens rolled over one another in a human sea. Even several more buildings came crashing down merely from the act of Tara slapping the rubber again and again off her sole flesh.

Up above, the girl was making little progress in finding explanations for all this strangeness. She found a bunch of calculations she didn’t understand, some computer code which made no sense, and some poorly scribbled notes detailing the actual purpose of the transportation device. There was no notation on the fascinating side effects of sending shrunken cities into random women’s shoes. That was the part which had piqued Tara’s intrigue most of all, and she had no intention of leaving until she found a clue. Deciding to get a little comfier, seeing as she was now standing on a rug, Tara separated her toes and flicked her foot forward, which allowed the flip-flop to come flying off. It landed against the desk legs, at which point the celestial brunette dipped her newly naked sole back toward the carpet.

The screams of thousands of people filled the air as they watched the heralded doom of Tara’s elegant arch lowering. Within a half second, nothing else filled the visible sky but those peachy river-length creases wrinkling the sole: as if Tara’s soft foot had become the blue sky, the drifting clouds, and even outer space itself. These victims and their horrified voices went utterly unheard by the preoccupied teen, though, and she at last settled her weight into the ball of her foot, which planted firmly in the carpet.

The square miles of terrain under the rounded hill of the ball received a quick end. Rotund and beefy, briefly holding the balletic weight of Tara’s whole body, that pinnacle patch of flesh just below the girl’s toes was ruthless in its grind. A much larger crater than before was molded into London in the shape of the ball of Tara’s foot, and only widened as she pivoted on that spot. Her full mass sunk for just a second into the capital, then gave her pause. Tara picked her foot up again.

Only now, when Tara had direct contact with the oddly familiar texture on the bottom of her foot, did she pause in her search. She’d certainly found some interesting tidbits about miniaturization in the computer log, which made for good reading, but there was a serious itch infecting her foot now. Something had to be done. Without thinking, Tara scraped her ped backwards along the ground and examined the inversion of her ruddy, flexed sole.