A Tale of Little Cities (Chapter 10) (Patreon)

At the unmistakable visage of ruined city smeared in thick chunks across her plush, sun-kissed skin, Tara quietly yelped.

Yet in the same breath, she parted her legs and examined the crash site of London with an earnest desire in her eyes. Her lips curved at the corners and, withholding a guilty smile, the girl let her foot descend back toward the urban mess. Toes leading the charge, she aimed for the English capital beneath her shadow and, next, the gigantic isle of her sensitive sole skin.

As Tara comfortably fitted her foot back over London and smothered it into her sole for keeps this time, she was comforted by the reasoning she heard earlier. After all, it wasn’t like she put the city there. How could she be expected to keep a lookout everywhere she walked for potential shrunken populations? And Dr. Weaver did say there was nothing to be done once a place was reduced and damaged. And, assuredly, London was already smashed beyond repair. Was it reallyso great a crime for Tara to polish off the job, when they’d have to hide the evidence anyway? Just for this one chance to know precisely what it felt like to step on a city and know beyond a doubt how much life and human advancement was at the mercy of her pretty toes?

Indeed, it wasn’t a bad feeling at all. Not particularly spa-like in terms of its prickly texture, but for the surge of adrenaline and liquid hormones bubbling up Tara’s veins, it was a worthy experiment. She rocked her foot to and fro on the wreckage. In no time, any buildings preserved during her lightweight dangle were bowled down under the barreling blockage of long-shafted, mile-wide toes, not to mention the ocean of sweat-glossed sole which followed them. Houses came up glued to the valleys of her sticky sole; the riding slopes of her never-ending arch shaved down increasingly low-to-the ground structures. Like a meteoric wrecking ball, Tara’s shapely heel came through to clean up any standing objects left afterward. The rest of London was in fiery decline, thanks to the intruder’s happily wriggling ped. Maybe Dr. Weaver’s accidents weren’t such terrible things after all.

“Tara?”

Startled, the brunette spun her foot around on London and creamed its remnants thoroughly into the carpet. At the top of the stairs stood Laura, her blue eyes boggled.

“Hey, Laura,” Tara said sheepishly. She clicked the computer screen off as innocently as she could.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The blonde was coming down the stairs two at a time now, with purpose in her gait. Her voice was deathly serious.

“I was… trying to see what I could do to help?” Tara offered, knowing there was no real answer she could give to explain her presence. Hoping to distract Laura, the young woman covered London again with her sole. By curling her toes and letting a few more buildings crunch into the fleshy crevices, Tara succeeded in hiding the place underneath her foot.

“Yeah, right,” Laura snarked. She stepped onto the rug and cautiously approached her friend. “You… know about this, don’t you?”

“I might, a little bit,” Tara shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

“What?”

“I just heard you and your dad talking. I’m sorry, but I was worried about how you were acting back at my house, so I had to follow and figure it out. Then I heard about this, all of this, and your shoe and my shoe, so I… I just had to-”

“What’s THAT!” Laura screamed in interruption. She was no longer looking her friend in the eye, but instead at her foot, and pointing at a conspicuous detail. Specifically, the cluster of crushed buildings spilling out from between Tara’s nude toes.

Out of instinct, the brunette tried to cover her tracks, and squished her wormy digits closer together, but the damage was done.

“Lift your foot!” Laura cried. The tears were pouring down again. She stooped and snatched at her friend’s ankle, forcing her off balance.

Tara’s warm sole peeled back from the carpet fibers, revealing the shriveled graveyard of London, its stone and metal foundations twisted into the exact shape of a certain overly-inquisitive girly-girl’s foot underbelly. Some of the distinctive lines creasing Tara’s skin were even easily identified by Laura amongst the carnage.

“You… y-you did this… on… on p-purpose…” Laura wept. Delicately, she swept over the streets of London with her fingertips, including stroking the site of Buckingham Palace with her thumb. Yet not a single item had gone unmolested by Tara’s godlike foot and its curious judgments. “You did this on PURPOSE! How could you?”

“Because I had to know,” Tara answered truthfully. She was going for broke now; why try to lie any further? She flicked her toes together, cleaning out the toe crevices of buildings so they fell into Laura’s waiting palm. Then the girl scooped up her red flip-flops and took off running toward the stairs. Before she could even set foot on the first rung, though, Laura was behind her and tackled them both to the ground.

The girls, tussling awkwardly for supremacy, fell into the mess of wires and cables which ran in a mad tapestry from Dr. Weaver’s machine. Plugs came undone as they rolled about, one trying to pin the other and squealing all the while. Though the device had only been humming softly this whole time, at this rupturing of its protocols and power sources, the great metal monstrosity was now singing. Lights flashed across all surfaces.

Too surprised by the new development to continue fighting, both Laura and Tara took their hands off one another and looked in wide-eyed disbelief at the origin of the commotion. Crackling energy pulsed like a heartbeat inside the transportation cradle, then surged outward with the speed of a nuclear explosion. Both girls were flung back into blinding white, felt the cracking of paltry rock and earth at their backs, and then everything went dark.