Scarier Than Fiction (Chapter 3) (Patreon)

“NOW what’s he doing, shooting out lasers at all the buildings in the middle of the town?” Delilah cried next at the movie. “How long was he able to do that? Whatever, I don’t even care. Big old pink lasers are so boring. It’s so… impersonal, you know? Like, if you’re going to come in to destroy a city, you need to do it yourself, with your own two hands… or tentacles… and make everything count. Turn it into something nobody will forget, or at least whoever’s left in one piece after you’re done. See, just picture if it was me in there…”

The audience was already put back on edge the moment Delilah resumed talking, but there was a special kind of panicked electricity in the area right as the girl suggested re-inserting herself into the horrific narrative. Chris noticed this too, and just had to bury his face in his hands, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop Delilah from having mid-movie story-time, just as there was nothing the helpless populace would be able to do to stop her from crushing the city into mincemeat during this imaginary scenario: a scenario which, for every other miniature mortal present except for Chris, was anything but imaginary now. The girl’s enthusiasm was a force of nature, with momentum as unstoppable as her titanic body itself, which despite her good nature, was fully capable of carrying out each and every atrocity she was describing.

“…if it was me in that city, after I’d had all my fun messing with them, ripping down the skyscrapers and getting cars stuck in my teeth, but not actually wrecking anything real good yet…” Delilah carried on with great zeal. “…I’d have people really fired up and scared, probably all out in the streets just hoping I spared them. See, a good horror movie would make you think they have a chance first, then bam, I’d jump up and stand on a building. Then I’d hop onto the next one, like stepping stones in a creek. They’d all fall down, obviously, like houses of cards, since they’re so small and breakable, not cuz I’m too heavy, and suddenly the whole town would be up in smoke while I just danced across them. The last thing everybody would see was me flying through the air, like the boring tentacle-guy did, except it wouldn’t just be some generic pink laser taking them out. They’d get to watch the bottom of my boot come crashing down, getting bigger and bigger… see, picture it, that’s way more cinematic… then SMASH, the building would disappear and so would they, right under my foot.”

Chris heard a few people flop over unconscious from melodramatic shock at the booming punctuation of Delilah’s last words.

“Probably a few little tinker-people would get stuck in the treads, so they’d have one last hope to get away, but I’d already be jumping to the next building, sort of like a game of the floor-is-lava, except here, it’s the streets-and-the-itty-bitty-people are lava,” Delilah railroaded right on. “I’d go around the whole town, stomping and dancing at the same time, until everything that used to be standing was in pieces under me. And finally, just to make absolutely-positively-sure that I really did destroy the entire city, I’d lay down and do a few snow-angels! You know, make a shape with my arms and legs in all the rubble and just… swoop, swoop, swoop. Since everything would be all cracked and dusty then, like just a pile of ashes, rolling around in it would just be kind of my way of claiming the city and all the fragile little people in it as mine, y’know, like leaving a signature on artwork. I mean, that sounds so spooky, doesn’t it? If that was the last thing you saw in the movie, or at least you thought it was, then the camera turns around, and I look right into it, like I’m looking at all the people watching the movie, and I smile real big…”

To help illustrate her point, the looming giantess propped herself up on her elbows and curled her humongous lips into a theatrical yet cruel grin, bearing her teeth and rivaling the moon in their radiance. At this juncture, Delilah was also speaking with such heat and passion, it was totally impossible to hear the actual movie. The audience members, at least those who hadn’t fainted yet, were paralyzed in place by terror, unable to move their legs or muster more than a pathetic squeal. Chris, knowing there was no way to stop the disaster train unless the girl just got it out of her system, shrugged again and let it play, making a mental note not to bring Delilah to anymore horror movies.

“…and then you’d see my big scary boot lift up one more time. I’d wave goodbye to the camera, then POW! One step, and the screen goes black!”

Right at the moment of fictitious impact, Delilah didn’t actually slam her astronomic boot into the ground, a feat which would’ve sent the whole audience hurtling skyward with atomic force, but by way of substitute, the girl instead raised her hand and brought it careening down toward the earth, stopping just inches above the grass. Her last-second pause meant there was no deafening smack or seismic impact, but the motion alone was enough to generate a chorus of screams from every man, woman, and child watching the true horror show of the night.

“The end,” she snickered, losing herself quickly to another yawn. Delilah, oblivious to everyone else, nodded off again shortly after, just as the credits rolled. Chris was left to smile and awkwardly wave to each patron slinking back into the safety of their cars and peeping skittishly through their tinted windows at the beautiful slumbering monolith who had given them far more than their nightly money’s worth of chills and thrills.

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THE END