Coming Up Short (Chapter 2) (Patreon)

Thousands were buried dead or alive beneath the muted debris of two cities and sixteen entire subdivisions. That dark brunette hair whipped in the form of a burst damn and its gushing contents, drowning every district it touched in the silky, churning madness of thousands of hair strands barreling through the streets. Multiple neighborhoods, complete with shorn rock foundation and powdered houses, slid down the dizzying incline of Nerea’s flip-flop sole. Before any of it could reach the earth again, the girl’s instep, sticky with night-sweat, slapped back to the foam platform. Whole communities disappeared into the writhing, furrowing wrinkles of the girl’s petite pink soles.

The very earth groaned beneath Nerea’s thirty mile body. Thankfully for the surrounding territories of farmland and populous urban sprawl, the girl’s growth had mercifully leveled off. She was, evidently, ceasing her spurt upward. Nevertheless, there was no reason to celebrate. Though those lucky cities surrounding the girl’s prone, sleeping form had missed disaster by the breadth of the giantess’ brunette locks, they were still in very real peril. If Nerea were to perceive an itch on her nose or the top of her head, a single scratch of her finger and the drop of her wrist could total another three towns at least, just within the unaware college student’s creamy palm alone.

Cities were evacuated en masse as the sky glowed with pre-dawn light. Nerea had not yet stirred again in her dreams, save for her left foot, which occasionally rubbed along the back of her opposite calf. This simple act dragged her bulbous heel through the wasteland between her legs which had somehow avoided destruction up to now, though by sleepily pawing at herself, Nerea excavated the land and wiped out another two hundred personal farms. Literal barns dripped like crumbs down the curved cliffside of her cresting bare sole before slapping loudly back to the black monolithic wall of her flip-flop.

The humanoid mold of Nerea’s body had sunken partially into the mushy earth as though she’d laid herself across a frosted cake. Forests and greenery ripped and swept about in the carnage dotting the front of her shirt, rising a quarter mile into the air every time the girl took a breath. Tidal waves of her billowing purple blouse sent the surviving granite-clusters of neighborhoods and city chunks on a rock-shattering ride. Those pieces of wind-blown towns which made it to Nerea’s flat stomach were either brushed away by the scratching spires of her fingers, marooned in her belly button, or simply lost to the darkness of her occasionally yawning maw.

Those especially unfortunate souls inside her mouth were left to drown amongst the hot, tossing sea of gooey spit, or the rippling mythical beast of her tongue. Any and all houses and skyscrapers alike which found their way to Nerea’s mouth were easily swallowed as a reflex, never even threatening the flow of oxygen or saliva through her gullet.

Sunrise came happily as it always did over the horizon. A new morning which, as far as the natural world was concerned, wasn’t any different than the last. However, for many of the poor fleeing populations surrounding Nerea’s thirty-mile body, they couldn’t see the light until it appeared overtop of her chest or legs. Their sister cities had been demolished somewhere beneath the anonymous mass of the giant young woman, her busy fingers, and curiously clamping toes. Seeing the world past the impeccable slab that was her shapely, deific body was impossible for any except those in military helicopters hovering in disbelief overhead. As it was, Nerea’s torso from back to navel, narrow though it was, still stretched up well over a mile into the sky. Past even the overhanging cloud cover drifting above.

Smacking her lips, the innocent twenty-year-old cheerleading hopeful awakened. As she always did when she arose from sleep, she extended her arms and legs to their full span. Nerea’s palms flattened to the ground, spreading over what she thought to be her usual cottony bedsheets, clasping in waggled revolutions for grip. Those willowy fingers sunk deep into the planetary crust, ripping away complete subterranean networks in her fist, as easily as though she was reaching for the tufted corner of her pillow. Her soles arched and flexed, pivoting at the ankles, and blustering unknowingly through the same earthly rubble she’d stirred up into a blood and dust soup through the night.

Nerea yawned again, then smiled.

The sun was brighter than she usually anticipated through the cheap curtains of her dormitory bedroom. Even for this season. She shielded a cupped palm over her eyes, squinting into the sky. Despite the searing glow, it wasn’t quite its usual crystal-blue tapestry. Swirls of darkness, like those seen through a telescope, also painted Nerea’s view. Even when she squinted, however, her vision didn’t much improve; she normally wore contacts, but without them in this morning, distinguishing the inanimate blurs was a challenge.

It was a peculiar set of circumstances in which to awaken. Not to mention the thick waft of white, odorless smoke wet on her cheeks. The girl couldn’t help but wonder if she’d blacked out on the grassy hill beside one of the late-night parties, where one of the overzealous frat boys with a dry ice machine had left the motor running into the morning.

She shook her head from side to side, working out a kink in her neck. A soft scrunching echoed from below in Nerea’s ears, like the sensation of a dripping sponge scraping over grease. The mealy matter of earth smeared through her tangled dark-chocolate hair, but she put the concern aside. It was obvious she’d need a shower later this morning; there was no cause to get fussy when she’d obviously blacked out with so little propriety in the great outdoors. She was just glad to awaken without animal urine in her clothes.

Palms punched back through the plush ground. The shape of Nerea’s two-mile hands sculpted themselves into the planet while she propped herself up. Idly, as she regained full consciousness and sensory use, the girl playfully propped her heels up and bounced her flip-flop lips back and forth. The swinging arc of her destructive peds and accompanying footwear was a refreshing airing of cool breeze along her dirty sole; unknown to her, of course, swaths of surviving humanity were crushed beneath the meteoric plunge of her heel and flip-flop. Not to mention the rampage of her toes as she swam her foot side-long into hundreds of acres of undisturbed forest, staining her skin green with moss and broken ecosystem.

Nerea giggled, feeling calm and peaceful in her own skin.

Ordinarily upon rising, she had to look back up at that pencil mark she’d made on the bedroom wall calendar above, where’d she’d scratched the unreachable pipe dream of being a cheer captain, let alone on the team at all. For some reason today, though, despite her initially troubling nightmares involving the giant cheerleading squad, she found herself soothed on waking. The girl couldn’t even feel nervous about the prospect of running into Angelica again today. She might be small, she decided, but she was a fighter. She had the spunk. Nerea could take on Angelica easily, with that spitfire spirit Marcus had jokingly referenced.

Marcus. The visit to the lab. The little green pill.

Maybe that was the explanation for why Nerea had blacked out, without the aid of alcohol. It might also explain the headache she had, which in reality was the result of helicopter missiles from the army firing tactical complements into her hair, though these came off as little more than ticklish annoyance.

She had no one to blame but herself for being in this position, she supposed. Stealing an untested pharmaceutical and popping it like candy, without a second thought to the consequences. Nerea was lucky to even be conscious. Weary in her bones, she launched herself off the heels of her propped hands and staggered up to full, squat height. Holding out the length of her arm, Nerea could tell she hadn’t stretched out at all, at least not relative to the rest of her dwarfish form. No taller.

As usual. Marcus was a kid with big dreams, but he couldn’t quite follow through on the science. Oh well.