Scarier Than Fiction (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

“Wait, wait… wait… that’s the monster?” Delilah gawked, pointing right at the outdoor theater screen. Her booming groan carried across the entire moonlit drive-in grass lot which lay just ahead of them, and her accusing finger very nearly touched the film projection itself, despite the girl occupying a back-row seat. “You’ve GOT to be kidding me. It’s just a flying ball of tentacles and goo. And this is supposed to be a horror movie?”

“It’s an eldritch abomination. That’s just what they look like,” Chris informed his gargantuan friend with a wave of his hand. He’d caught the brunt of her high-volume disappointment, upon getting the first glimpse of the monster onscreen, though the relatively-small man was used to this. Despite being perched on the roof of a car parked right in front of where Delilah lay flat on her stomach to watch the movie, he was unfazed at her ear-splitting gripe or the wind generated by her wild hand gestures: an enthusiastic set of unconscious conversational instincts the giantess never seemed to notice in herself.

“Ughhh…” The heat of Delilah’s disappointed sigh from above wafted down on Chris like a muggy fog, which at least wasn’t unpleasant, since the night air had otherwise turned cool. She shook her head vigorously from side to side, inadvertently whipping her honey-locks in sweeping streams and generating more breeze. “You said this was going to be good.”

“It is! It’s barely started,” Chris insisted. He nervously eyed the field of vehicles parked ahead of them. Many passengers poked their heads out the windows at Delilah’s thunderous complaint, and those sitting on their own car rooftops spun around in surprise, some nearly tumbling into the grass.

If he and Delilah were normal theater patrons, this is probably when people would’ve started grunting and telling them to pipe down. As it happened, though, they were anything but normal patrons, or at least Delilah was, seeing how the surface area of her mighty towering citadel of a body grossly outmatched the surface area of the entire outdoor theater, and so the comparatively dinky audience kept their opinions to themselves.

“But look at how small the monster is. How’s something like THAT supposed to terrorize an entire city?” Delilah commented again, when the onscreen creature floated above the town. Sure enough, the fictional monstrosity was hovering now over the black-and-white metropolis, and casting a shadow that covered a few dozen city blocks at once.

“By using those tentacles and that goo you hate so much, obviously,” Chris countered in a hushed voice, hoping Delilah would catch his drift and lower her volume too.

“So you’re telling me that a thing that’s barely bigger than one of my shoes is supposed to wreck the whole city?” Delilah crowed back. If anything, she’d grown louder now. She flattened both her palms to the grass and dug her fingers in, uprooting whole patch-worked swaths of green terrain without noticing.

“Um, I’m pretty sure it’s a lot bigger than your shoe. Also, you know how big your shoes are, right?”

“Oh, whatever. I don’t buy it.”

“C’mon, just give it a chance,” he pleaded in whisper.

Again Delilah harrumphed, but went silent, sticking out her lower lip and crossing her arms. She managed to keep quiet for a while longer, and in turn, the rest of the audience relaxed and even seemed to forget about the colossal individual behind them who was scrutinizing the movie and getting severely bored. The people’s attention was captured again, however, when a droning roar sounding from deep in Delilah’s throat, followed by a phlegmy snort, started overpowering the film’s volume again. Moviegoers turned around in annoyance, while others just covered their ears.

“Hey. Wake up,” Chris shouted at Delilah. “You’re snoring!”

He hopped from his car and started punching and kicking his snoozing friend’s pinky finger where it rested in the grass. Though Chris was throwing all his effort into this attack, it would register as little more than a polite tap to Delilah, whose fingertip pads alone were capable of wholly engulfing a regular-sized human being when squeezed together. She sputtered back to consciousness, this time resting her cheek on her upturned palm and looking very much like a sleep-deprived student about to nod off in math class.

“You’re missing the best parts. It’s just getting good now,” Chris said, clambering back up on his car.

“Oh, now it’s getting good, is it?” Delilah mocked. “Fine. Okay, what, it’s… swinging its tentacle things around at the skyscraper. Big whoop.”

“You think you could do better?” Chris fired back, forgetting for a moment who he was talking to. He immediately regretted opening his mouth.

“Do I think?” Delilah chortled. “Uh, yeah, I think I could! All he’s doing is dragging his gooey legs over the building until it just kinda falls over. That’s no way to take out a skyscraper. Like, that’s the tallest building in their city, probably. If that abominable-whatever thing really wants to send a message, he should fly around next to it for a little while, so they can see just how much bigger he is than their tallest thing. Y’know? Just intimidate them a little bit first. Show them who’s boss, without even having to flick a tentacle.”

“I don’t think eldritch abominations think that hard about it,” Chris said. “They just do their thing.”

“Well, then it’s his fault he’s in a boring scary movie. See, if it was me, I’d march right up next to the skyscraper and put my back to it. Maybe lean on it for a little while with my arms crossed. Just to let them see I’ve got some attitude, or at least a personality. Then, after I’ve done that, I wouldn’t just touch the top of the building a million times until it comes off like him. No way. That’s when you show them what you can do. I’d grab hold of the whole top chunk of the tower, give it a squeeze, and rip it right off. Then, I could just chuck the thing at the rest of the city and watch it fly. Can you imagine how freaked out everybody would be, to see the top of their tallest and probably strongest building just going whoooosh! Right over there heads, until…”