Cleaning House (Chapter 5) (Patreon)

The one-hundred-twenty-mile-tall maid stood amongst the dusty ruins of the country which she’d called a temporary yet unwanted home for so long. For once she didn’t mind the grit and grime of a hard day’s working caking on her bare feet, as instead of earning it through back-breaking minimum-wage labor, she’d achieved this effect by trampling most of London into smithereens, stomping and crumbling every untouched piece of real estate she could spot. The capital’s bridges had already gone down under Lucy’s toes, ensuring none of the speck-sized citizens far below had any chance of fleeing. Before she’d grown the second time, she couldn’t help but notice the packed traffic on the thoroughfares splashing into the waterways and getting caught between her slippery toes.

“Now, why did everyone want to leave so soon? We’re just getting started,” Lucy announced to the metropolis below. “It’s time everyone in this city knew exactly what I think of it!”

Surveying the lands beyond, the giantess made a decision, smiling to herself in anticipation of the fun to come. She wished to go “abroad” soon, to visit her native land, but first decided to have the last laugh on London by crushing it and every one of its pitiful inhabitants into a smoldering stain. The legacy of these up-tight Brits, people who’d used and abused Lucy for years, never allowing her to climb higher up the social ladder, would soon only amount to a messy blotch smeared through the doughy creases in Lucy’s naked sole, or mass graves in the form of lint between her toes. She didn’t have to keep waiting for them to let her climb a ladder anymore; she’d grown tall enough not to need one.

Lucy had taken her time before, gradually stepping and dragging her heels through civilization like a lethargic living tidal wave of foot flesh and flip-flop foam. However, she was done delaying her gratification. Now with a substantial portion of London smote, but still much of the heart of the city waiting to feel her wrath, there was no need to hold off in her true power now. Adjusting her glasses to ensure she didn’t miss a single landmark to crush, and tying back her silky black locks into a ponytail, Lucy lifted her mighty foot over a pristine stretch of London.

“Hello down there! Is everyone ready for the finale?” Lucy shouted, an ear-to-ear grin on her cute face.

It was difficult for her to see detail now at over one hundred miles above the landscape, but the girl was content in knowing that even though it looked like little more than a garden patch of green moss and beige toy building blocks to her, in reality it represented the highest level of sophistication in the country, and was crowded with citizens too small to distinguish now, but who no-doubt had all stopped in their tracks to look up in apocalyptic horror at the wrinkly, meaty, destruction-crusted bare foot hovering over them like a seventeen-mile-long alien spaceship. Glorified in this thought, Lucy clamped her foot down on the helpless city sprawl, enjoying every powdery crunch of the buildings, every snap of the twig-like forests, and every infinitesimal pop of civilians squishing by the thousands as though she’d stomped on a mosquito nest. Indeed, the Londoners below were nothing to Lucy now but pests to be cleansed from her new plaything world, and if Lucy knew one thing, it was how to clean a place well.

The endeavor tickled, feeling a bit like stepping on stray cereal bites, and made Lucy laugh. Satisfied with the sensory tapestry printed under her bare foot, until she could feel demolished woodland, urban development, and micro-citizenry tattooed into her every ruddy skin cell from oily toe-tips to callus-ridden pink heel, she decided to give her poor tired feet a another break and rely instead on her favorite tools. Slipping the plastic thongs of her flip-flops back into her toe crevices for support, Lucy stood over the smoking ruin of London in her shoes once again, and started hunting for the last remaining pockets of civilization she’d neglected to stampede just yet.

Again it was tough spot the small refuges where a few buildings and trees still stood unharmed, like islands surrounded by a sea of fiery demolition stamped in the exact geometric shapes of Lucy’s bulbed toepads, deep lush sole arch, and even her sweat-greased spiraled skin-texture prints. Still, the giantess was determined, and sought out the last bastions where the doomed citizens could hide from her. Her flip-flops hammered the countryside again and again, double-stepping on every site just to ensure a total wipeout, even though even the lightest application of weight from her puffy summer shoes was more than sufficient for Lucy to reduce the living population of any given footprint-sized radius to zero. Each time she slammed her flops down, letting her feet sink into the pleasant foam slab of the insole, she could feel everything below her, from homes to skyscrapers, reducing to flat ash, the very crust of the earth buckling under the treads of her oncoming flip-flops.

“I think that will do it!” Lucy said, marveling at her work. London, or rather the rampaged chaos that was left of it, really was a piece of art now, crafted by the world’s most powerful being herself. Her footprint, literally, was upon it. “Now… I wonder how everyone back in Russia has been doing without me? Maybe they’ve missed me, after they sent me away all those years ago to live in squalor and work my fingers to the bone. Now they’ll see just how far I’ve come, and how high I’ve gone.”