Coming Up Short (Chapter 4) (Patreon)

“This is TBC1, your news source for… what appears to be the most catastrophic event to have occurred in all of human history,” the reporter coughed into the microphone. Her knobbly knees shook as she averted her gaze away from the horizon. “Thank you for trusting us with coverage of the impending doom of the entire world.”

“That’s not the line,” the cameraman whispered, lowering the rig over his shoulder.

“Do I look like I give a damn?” she snapped. A cigarette slid between her teeth. Her thumbs fumbled with the lighter. “You see what’s out there, right?”

The cameraman peeked again to the bleary sunlit skyscape. From the news crew’s position atop the Chicago corporate office of the station, it was almost too windy to stare straight ahead without watering eyes, but he made do. Over miles of crystalline bay, through a haze of mist intermingled with apocalyptic ash rising from half a state away, were the pillared legs of a being. Something gargantuan. Something so cosmically, laughably humongous that the union of its shapely limbs couldn’t even be seen; all anyone could witness was a shroud, formed far above the clouds and well into space, but unmistakably a human form.

A girl, thirty miles tall, with mighty fingers and flowing dark hair illuminated by starlight. Her every delicate footstep rattled dozens of tristate areas at a time. Black foam flip-flops larger than most island nations continually peeled and unpeeled from the graceful, doughy soles of her tanned feet. With every sweeping stride over half a dozen miles, her burly toes and radiant nails churned up waters high enough to cast a typhoon in every direction for dozens of leagues. An ominous thoom reverberated in the eardrums of every comparative speck of a human being in range, again and again, with her every step.

“Yes,” the cameraman sighed. “Yes, I see it. I see her.”

“You sound awfully damn calm,” the reporter balked. She practically inhaled the entire cigarette as she buckled to a fetal position on the gravelly roof.

“It is bad, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s fucking bad. We’re all going to be dead soon, you know?”

“You know I’m still recording this live, right?”

“Good! You’re all going to die, everyone!” the woman screamed into the camera lens.

“And I think that’s probably enough coverage for now,” he groaned, snapping to black.

“Aren’t you going to explain how you’re just standing there like everything’s okay?”

“I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“Try, damn it!”

“Well…” the cameraman shrugged. He let the hefty camera tumble from his shoulder, its glass lens shattering on impact with the pebbled roof. Another yearning glance cast to the giant girl walking steadily toward Chicago. “She’s kinda hot, isn’t she?”

Nerea brought her gentle heels to a crashing halt in the bay before she even came within punting distance of Chicago. Wind whistled through her brunette locks as she dipped the multi-mile journey down from her full height to a crouch, her hands splayed on her thighs. A coy smirk toyed on her lips. She’d been to Chicago twice before on family vacations, and the beauty of the cityscape hadn’t been lost on her then, either, but then again, she had never seen it from quite so staggering a stature.

It almost looked real.

At more than two hundred square miles, the city in its entirety was large enough to serve as a bed for Nerea, if she so chose. Of course, she had much more fascinating and possibly stimulating plans for the city within the safe confines of this bizarre chemically-drunken dream.

“Marcus definitely knows how to put someone on a trip,” Nerea giggled.

She twisted her pinky against the corner of her lip. With her opposite hand, she waved in wide, shadowy arcs over as much of the land as she could reach. It was a joy watching the geometry of darkness shaped by her fingers casting through the concrete valleys and gleaming urban canyons. There wasn’t a thing anyone down there, existent or not, could do to stop her from stealing their light.

“All right, little Chicagoans,” Nerea declared loudly. Her voice echoed through every street and side alley of downtown. “Today we’re going to try something a little… odd. An experiment, if you will. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not, but I do know that I’m dying to find out. I’m sure you’ll be… dying… to find out, too.”

Recalling bygone days as a child helping her mother in the kitchen lay cookie batter on the tray, Nerea channeled every ounce of delicacy a thirty-mile girl could muster. Scooping both hands, upturned to the sky, the girl eased her fingernails beneath the coastline of Chicago. With a little needling, she easily forced her fingers through the rocky foundations which held the city aloft. Once she had some momentum going through her driving fingers and tensed forearms, the hardy earth beneath yielded to her fingers as easily as old styrofoam.

The entire city quaked, but in particular, those few square miles on the bay unlucky enough to exist above Nerea’s digging hands looked ready to crumble there and then. Wincing, the girl was nervous she’d topple the entire metropolis before she even got a chance to try her idea. However, by steadying her fingers and flattening her palms as broad as possible under the slabs of quavering city, Nerea found it was possible to preserve most of it, even if a building or two tumbled down.

In short order, Nerea felt the weight of the two chunks of city in her hands softening, meaning the pieces were almost separated from the rest of the silver landscape. With a little more effort, she would actually be able to hold two distinct slices of Chicago in her own hands.

Nerea gritted her teeth and redoubled her efforts. In the panicked streets, she noticed throngs of crumb-sized humanity gathering. They would’ve been difficult to make out individually, but as there were now literally hundreds of living things pouring out to the ground to get a sight of their beautiful damnation, Nerea had no trouble seeing them.