Cleaning House (Chapter 3) (Patreon)

Kathryn, a reporter for BBC News, grasped her mic and leaned against the Tower Bridge guardrail, smiling for her cameraman. They were just supposed to film routine live coverage for the anniversary of the bridge’s construction. Just before Kathryn could begin dictating her lines, however, she noticed a shadow overtaking herself and the equipment.

“What’s that? I thought it wasn’t supposed to be overcast today. Damn clouds,” Kathryn groaned. She shifted position. “Here, try angling from the other side so you can still see my face, before the sun gets covered up.”

“I don’t think that’s the weather,” her cameraman uttered, barely able to speak. His eyes bugged out of his skull.

“What are you talking about? The whole sky is dark. How could it not be weather? Seriously, do your job, and-” Kathryn’s words caught in her throat as she turned in the same direction as her coworker and realized that, indeed, the cause of the vast shadow was not oncoming storm clouds, but rather a single living structure, which just so happened to stand at seventy miles tall, though as so much of that astronomic body stretched toward the stratosphere, the visage for Kathryn was reduced to a pair of lovely tanned legs that vanished into the clouds somewhere around the ample thighs. Gawking, speechless, the reporter peered over the edge of the bridge at the water tremoring from the effect of the unknown being’s slight movements from dozens of miles away. Remembering the camera, Kathryn fought for a place alongside the operator to zoom in through the lens for a closer look.

Those mythically tremendous legs, each rooted miles apart, gradually lurched forth, one at a time. Attached to the ends of those pillar-like limbs, thick enough to cover up small villages just behind the sculpted calves alone, Kathryn spotted something that seemed obvious in retrospect, but while staring up at a creature of such immense strength and destructive capability, it was difficult to imagine it as a humanoid: a pair of soft feminine feet, ten miles long and three miles wide across the thickest expanse of the sole. When next one of the mysterious giant legs charged forth, albeit slowly, Kathryn spied through the camera again and watched in startling, exquisite detail as the entire frame filled in with the peachy, puffy, divoted texture of that weary sole’s underbelly that stretched so infinitely in all directions.

“My God,” Kathryn mumbled. Peeking out from around the camera now, she realized the zoom function was no longer necessary to get a detailed glimpse of the apparent giantess’s dizzying legs and doom-bringing bare feet, because she was walking right towards the Tower Bridge. In another two steps, the leviathan would be upon them. “Are you recording this? We need to get back to the helicopter for a better shot.”

While everyone else around them stood in a wild stupor, some stunned to quiet and others screaming for their lives, Kathryn and the cameraman bolted for their ride near the edge of the structure. They hopped aboard, as the pilot was already preparing to leave without them at the first sight of the giant feet trampling across the distant landscape and coming ever-nearer. The chopper blades spun and they lifted into the air just as tidal waves from the rising and descending of those meteor-sized toes splashed across the bridge.

Kathryn quickly rewrote her dialogue for the breaking news, while the cameraman captured every horrific frame of the chaos. The right foot, so tall even by itself that the water couldn’t fully submerge the pinky toe, landed hard in the Thames, fully covering the harbor while the remainder of the broad appendage slumped over the coastal boroughs. Then the left foot, still so deceptively far away, arched off the ground. Buildings, greenery, and seawater all tumbled down the back-tilted slope of that foot and its beefy sole; the toes curled on the final ascent, clutching up another helping of architecture and humanity in the pudgy crevices between them.

“If you’re just joining us now,” Kathryn gasped to the camera. “This is raw, undoctored footage you are seeing now. Our celebration for the anniversary of the Tower Bridge was interrupted by a-”

“The feed just cut out,” her cameraman said.

“Well, get it back! We can’t let them miss this!” Kathryn snapped.

“I don’t think it’s a problem with the camera,” he replied, then pointed to the fringes of London far below. As the helicopter had flown high enough now, the passengers had a clear view of the smoking ruins of the city’s edge and, more importantly, a blurry yet undeniable vantage point to view the BBC building. Kathryn’s jaw dropped at the realization that the site of the network HQ had been leveled into a bowl-shaped crater which perfectly matched the planetary scale of that “petite” pinky toe. All it took was the enigmatic giantess’s smallest, most insignificant digit to squash the building and everyone inside to a two-dimensional graveyard.

“Oh, no…” Kathryn uttered, breaking into tears. She pressed her face to the helicopter window, witnessing as the giant left foot arced through the air. Just like it had to the BBC, the pinky toe crashed cleanly through the famous river crossing structure, sending brick and concrete spraying into the Thames under the weight of that bulbous toe alone. However, there was still more foot to come down, and when Kathyrn re-examined the sky, she realized she wasn’t looking at the clouds again, but the familiar shadow of before, no longer cast by an entire body, but just the foot alone. The helicopter, flying high as it was, still hovered beneath the massive surface area of that sole, which was currently still in the process of settling down.

“GO! HURRY!” Kathryn screeched to the pilot. Their aircraft took an evasive maneuver, but the giantess was already crashing all five of those toes to earth again in a ripple pattern, like falling dominoes, only each object was the side of an apocalyptic asteroid and capable of liquefying a square mile of civilization per-toe per-step. Shutting her eyes, Kathryn felt the helicopter blades harmlessly catching against the unstoppable underside of that creamy, monolithic foot, followed by a swift drive toward the ground as the news crew and everything else was swallowed beneath Lucy’s deadly stride.