Coming Up Short (Chapter 5) (Patreon)

Yet again, everything below looked so real that Nerea could almost convince herself they really were. But not quite. This, in all logical likelihood, was still a winding dream.

“Hey there, cuties,” she crooned. Puckering her lips, she blew them an air kiss and winked. Odds were, at least a couple hundred fell in love with her that very instant, even realizing this same flirty giantess would be their deliverer to the great beyond.

Taking a deep breath, Nerea thrust her palms upward. As cleanly as she’d hoped, two ovular segments of the city of Chicago came undone from the rest of the land, leaving a pair of wave-crashing craters in the coast where they’d once been. The girl hoisted each portion of Chicago in her full hands up to chest height, beaming down upon them in contest with the sun.

With her experiments secured, Nerea took the remaining paces forward. Out of the water and onto the land. The entire bay was drowned almost instantly as her black flip-flops stirred mile-high tidal waves upon the populace. Downtown didn’t do so well, either, as the girl’s megaton foot collided with the greasy insole of the shoe and slammed down to earth. Central Chicago flattened like a deflated cake, the once-immense cityscape reduced to scraps of metal and grit in the dark treads of the flip-flops. Nerea made The Great Fire of history look like a glass of spilled milk.

“Now for that little something I told you I wanted to try out,” Nerea announced to the twin handfuls of Chicago she still held like serving trays. She savored the whiny cries of the hundreds of stranded civilians within the model town samples. In her heart of hearts, she hoped she’d be able to feel them when she stood.

Stooping down again, Nerea’s petite weight made the whole city audibly creak like an ancient rocking chair. Her heels arched up on the black strips of her shoes, revealing her wrinkled soles and worn-down base to the open air. Then, cupping each chunk of Chicago and summoning her center of balance from cheerleading tryouts, Nerea circled her hands around her ankles, holding the pieces beneath the arc of foot. Shadow swallowed the cities and silenced most of the shouts.

The girl smirked to herself at her own creativity. A little tip of her palms, and each of the city slices crashed down upon her shoe, one piece per flip-flop, still mostly intact, save for a few more felled buildings. They fit perfectly upon the rubbery foundations of her favorite footwear.

“Hold still down there, everyone. I haven’t tried using a city as an insole before, after all,” Nerea warned them. Then again, no one else had, either.

She wagged a finger, even knowing no one could see it. Next, hands squeezed to her powerful hips and flexing thighs, she arose back to her highest height: what she believed to be a meager four-foot-nine, when in reality, her head stretched through the highest rings of Earth’s atmosphere. Her heel met the flip-flop.

Simultaneously, the two portions of preserved Chicago met the feet of their new goddess. Her two soles reduced the once-proud urban terrain to jagged mulch, though her skin was far too tough to be cut or even tickled by the widespread carnage. Foot flesh filled in every nook and cranny of the crumbling districts. There came a profound crunch, mostly muted by the fleshy barriers of Nerea’s naked feet; yet she still managed to hear, even so far above.

“All right, that’s more like it. Now let’s see how you guys can move.”

This was fun; almost like trying on new shoes at the store and taking a practice lap around to see how they fit. Nerea’s left foot lifted from the ground. Her bronzed toes snatched the thong of the shoe, dragging its immense mass back into the sky. The pulpy remains of Chicago spread like butter into the earthy basin of the shoe via centrifugal force, only to be instantly catapulted back up toward Nerea’s expansive, furrowed sole. Those flecks of skyscrapers not yet collected into the divots of her soft wrinkles were kidnapped within the grimy flesh, ever-deepening as she arched with greater intensity. Finally the city slab united back together amongst a mythic pressure-sandwich of crushing black foam flip-flop and Nerea’s unblemished skin.

That was one step.

“Yep, I think this is going to work out well,” the girl whispered to herself with a self-assured nod. Her second foot followed suit. The same dance of shattering stone and far-flung crowds took place, first painting the city down against the insole, then gluing it to her rising appendage, and at last liquefying the remains under Nerea’s universal body weight. Another step, then another. Humming a catchy pop song she’d had stuck in her head for the last week, the girl marched well-timed circuits over the whole of Chicago.

At last Nerea planted her hands on her hips and overlooked the rest of the city not selected to be her insoles, most of it ravaged from her prancing, musical steps. Smoke and swirled dust arose like steam from beneath her flip-flops and from the wrinkles of her sole, painted with buildings and people. The smote landscape had since reshaped as though by the hands of a deity into the hexagonal heel treads of her flip-flops and the contours of her loping instep.

“Marcus knows how to make a hell of a drug, doesn’t he?” Nerea boomed at the smoldering remains of the city.

She pivoted the ball of her foot, grinding firmly into the molded foam, and felt the last remnants of the buildings and city blocks beneath her sole pulverized into a mealy residue of glass and humanity. While Chicago definitely made a comfortable insole, it surely wasn’t going to last long for her purposes.

“Now let’s see…” Nerea sighed, cupping her fingers above her eyes and peering over the slope of the globe. She arched her adorable pink sole in its black cradle for all the countryside to see. “Who else would like to go for a little ride with me?”