SLAM. SLAM. SLAM.
The buildings of Las Vegas barely withstood the rhythmic tremors of the city’s captor’s steps, her flip flops smacking pavement drowned out any other sound as she traversed what Carlos could only surmise was a typical-looking college campus. Old buildings. Lots of grass. So many pedestrians. Feels like I’m back at Stanford. He felt it imperative to fixate on the past, because his present was such a nightmare. Being held up in front of the other women, displayed like they were nothing more than a souvenir was humiliating. The blonde woman’s nerves from presenting caused her to shake uncontrollably, and the city felt all of it, bits of debris and shattered glass from broken windows had kept the hospital busy. Most of the seriously injured from their initial capture were now either treated or dead. That grim fact meant he could take a step back, and let the surviving medical staff organize care on their own from here.
Instead of relaxing, however, Carlos spent his time outside, gazing at the campus, trying to convince himself he was dreaming. It wasn’t working: the tremors, the ash, the screams of the dying all were far too real to be conjured up by his mind. I never did have realistic dreams, he thought. He would at least feel better about his fate if he knew what it was. But the intentions of their captor were an enigma. They were some kind of project for her, obviously, but that project seems over now. She was smaller than before, maybe 20 miles tall by Carlos’s estimate, but still big enough to wipe them out if she wanted.What will she do with us now?
Carlos pondered this the entire trip back to the woman’s apartment. The tremors finally stopped when she placed the city on a massive desk. The few minutes of peace when she left the room were all they would get as she walked back to them. She just stood there, looming over Las Vegas, her black athletic shorts casting a shadow over the entire dish. After a minute, she pulled out a phone and started typing. I guess texting is a thing here, too. Why is everything in this dimension the same as ours? Suddenly, she put her phone on the desk and opened the lid. Cool air rushed in, feeling rather pleasant on Carlos’s skin. The relief he felt disappeared as he saw a massive thumb careening down towards him! Sprinting down the street, he heard a crashing sound as the woman crushed the hospital, dust flushing out to envelop him. He fell to his knees, watching helplessly. She retracted her thumb, then snapped her fingers. What happened next stunned Carlos: the hospital reappeared, unharmed! What? Did she just-
SMASH. She destroyed the hospital again, this time slicing it in two with the edge of her fingernail. The dust rushed out again, but before it hit Carlos, it disappeared, and the hospital was back. Carlos rushed into the building, now a sea of screaming, panicked people. He was shocked by who was there: Julia, and all the workers he saw dead back on Earth were now alive, cowering on the floor of the ED lobby!
“Julia? Are you okay? What happened?” Despite all that he had witnessed, Carlos was still in disbelief as he rushed up to the nurse.
Julia shook uncontrollably, “Where are we? Who are you?”
“Ma’am we’re still with the woman. She took us from Earth. We seem to be in her apartment now. She destroyed the hospital and then… brought it back somehow.”
“What woman? What the fuck is going on?”
Carlos’s heart sank. She doesn’t remember. The giant resurrected them, but erased their memories. He began to explain where they were, but stopped as a series of screams rang out from the street. Carlos rushed out, and when he saw what transpired outside, he could do nothing else but laugh, as his sanity began to break.
It was another woman. Kissing their blonde captor.
--
Samantha was ecstatic to hear of Olivia’s successful presentation, knowing how stressful it was to her. The two college students were just friends with benefits, but they had met during their first week orientation as freshwomen and had been close ever since. Full commitment was neither of these students’ style, so this arrangement worked well. Sam kissed her friend, excited to see what Olivia wanted to show her.
Olivia, meanwhile, was spending their greeting holding back a flood of compliments about Samantha, because in Olivia’s eyes she looked absolutely stunning today. Her dark brown hair flowed straight back to under her shoulder blades. Her white tube top and tattered jean shorts showed off her strong thighs and toned arms. She accented her look with some bright earrings and a necklace Olivia had gotten her for the winter holidays, all of which brought out the color in her deep green eyes. Olivia wanted to get lost in the gaze of the short woman in front of her, but she kept her brain out of her crotch just enough to actually talk, “So… it’s in here. The reason I’m passing ecology! Right there!” She pointed at the dish on her desk. Sam walked up, wearing a frown of confusion, “So, you got a bunch of bugs? And you’re just keeping them now?”
Olivia shrugged, “Well, yeah I guess. Can’t think of anything to do with them, but they’re the last of their kind, so I figured maybe give them some more time.”
“Last of their kind? And I’m sure you had nothing to do with that?” Sam shot her eyes back at Olivia. Olivia giggled, “Uhh, totally not! Their planet just kinda, died by itself…”
Her friend clearly didn’t believe her, “Well, that makes this a little fucked up. But they are lesser life. We can do whatever we want to them.”
Olivia started to talked excitedly, “Yeah, that’s really what I want to show you. It looks like when I went to their dimension I picked up some residual power over them. Watch…” Olivia opened the lid to the city and summoned an electrical storm over some of the buildings, “Now, the bugs here call themselves ‘human’. They’re really backwards, but still sentient. Can you feel them?” Sam nodded. “Good,” Olivia watched as the storm burned the city, feeling thousands of humans die out. She continued, “Now I’ll think about the city being repaired-” Suddenly, the storm stopped and a flash of light covered the petri dish. Once it cleared, the section of burned city was fully fixed! Samantha’s eyes widened in surprise, “Huh. I can feel the humans again. You can resurrect them, that’s cool.” Olivia smiled, “Yeah, and I can give them their old memories, take them away, or even give them new ones. Here,” Olivia snapped her fingers, and the humans in the city suddenly began fighting, each person savagely assaulting anyone nearby in a frenzy of animalistic rage. “I just made them think all the other humans are really demons. Look how weak minded these things are!” She snapped her fingers again, and the humans returned to where they were seconds ago, docile and scared.
“Let me try!” Sam asked, wanting to try this city bullying for herself. Olivia nodded and stepped back as Sam brought her face up close to the humans. She took a moment to take her victims in a bit, and then blew right at the city. The gale force winds she made with her breath toppled the weak buildings and blew away anyone outside. Their fragile bodies exploded on the tossed over buildings. Their fear and anguish was wonderfully amusing to the massive girl. Half the city was turned to ruin by her breath. Sam concentrated on the mental image of the city before she destroyed it, trying to resurrect them. Something happened, but not what she wanted. The rubble and destroyed bodies began to shake in place, shuffling back and forth. The shaking reduced everything to a fine sand. Sam concentrated harder, trying to force the debris to take shape again. Suddenly, the sand fused together and expanded, exploding and congealing into a spiky amalgam double or triple the height of the dish. Sam sighed, “Wow. Can’t resurrect them. That took a lot of effort for… whatever that was.”
Olivia frowned, contemplating what this meant, “Maybe I can remake them because I was there, in their dimension. I’ve got some more fine control over their existence from that.” She shrugged, not totally sure of her hypothesis.
Sam seemed satisfied with it, “Makes sense. So, you can make repairs and resurrect humans… can you make new buildings or people?”
“Dunno. Let’s try!” Olivia was so glad Sam was here, she always had that creative spark. Olivia repaired the city, and then imagined a cluster of buildings, remembering what the buildings of the humans on Earth looked like, and pointed at the desk, next to the dish. Instantly, a whole city, roughly half the size of Las Vegas, appeared. Devoid of humans, Olivia felt the minds of the captives in the dish for inspiration. A moment passed and the new city was full of the screaming things. Samantha’s mouth was stuck open, “Wow! That’s so cool!” She grabbed a large building, ripping it from its foundation. Holding it between her fingers, she examined it like it was an interesting geode, “I can feel these ones, too. You must be able to make real humans with your thoughts,” Sam focused her energy on spawning her own humans, but all she could do was warp the new copies, their buildings’ structures and their own bodies bending on themselves into impossible shapes. She gave up, and the new city shattered into pieces from the focused psionic energy. Olivia simply pointed again and spawned a new city. “Well, now we can play with them all we want. We don’t really need the original now,” She said, eyeing Sam with a sly grin. Sam knew what that particular look meant. She rubbed her fingers together, turning the building she held between them into blood-stained dust, and sat down on the new city, the fresh inhabitants seeing the bright denim crashing towards them. Her ass flattened the city and erased the humans in an instant as she teased her friend, “Oh? So that’s why you called? You did good on your final, and now you want your reward?” She got up from the desk and walked right up to Olivia, watching in amusement as the taller girl’s face turned red, “Ah- I mean, that’s not the reason. But my roommate’s out for the night, sooo…” Olivia looked away. Sam held Olivia’s hand, and used the other to caress her hair, “I’d love to. Do you want this?”
Olivia looked back into Sam’s shining eyes, “Yes.”
“Do you want to try the humans, too?”
Olivia smiled, nodding at her friend, as Sam looked over at Las Vegas, feeling the humans’ unease skyrocket. Guess they do this, too. Well, you all get a new perspective on sex today. Gently, Olivia plucked up the city’s dish and felt herself get ready as Sam led her by the hand to her inviting bed.
--
Samantha shuddered; flooded with satisfaction at their session. She enjoyed Olivia by herself, but the unspeakable acts they did to the captive humans enhanced her pleasure tenfold. Both she and her partner had felt the buildings and the bodies smash, drown, dissolve, and burn on and inside them. The sensation of their annihilation on the skin of the women mixed with the unceasing anguish of the humans fully melted the giants. “Mhh… they’re just bugs,” Sam was spooning Olivia, gently rubbing her partner’s belly, “Why is abusing them like that so… satisfying?”
Olivia gazed at the petri dish by her side, now nearly totally destroyed. She had needed to replenish it several times for their session, but she wanted to leave this copy by itself because the damage made a funny looking pattern of rubble. “I think it’s because they look like us,” She responded to her cuddle partner, “At least, half of them do. And you can feel their thoughts, so you know they thought they were the most important, most interesting, most powerful species in existence. Now, they know they aren’t.”
Sam licked her lips, “Yeah, it’s fun to put them in their place. And it’s fun to watch you humiliate them like that…” Sam squeezed Olivia a bit harder, eliciting a giggle from the blonde. Olivia read the minds of the surviving humans, experiencing their memories and lives before they became her toy. Very social species. So many connections and friends and lovers!
She hovered her finger over the dish, spawning a new set of cowering humans. Sam asked, “What are those for?”
“Giving them some company. I’m gonna give them one last little gift then I’ll toss this city. I’ll just get a fresh one later.”
--
I am alive. I am alive. I. Am. Alive.
Carlos wandered aimlessly, as most humans now did, through the streets that were still traversible; this amounted to around two city blocks. There was no point leading or responding to crises. The humans were playthings of their captors, nothing will change that. All anyone can do now is learn to accept this. He had died at least three times from what he could remember. Assuming, of course, the giant woman hadn’t erased his memory at any point during their… fun.
That was fucked up. From this angle, seeing that is… horrifying. Some men and women likely enjoyed the show, at least until the lovers decided to rope the humans along and involve them. The experience of dying for a giant alien’s pleasure erased any voyeuristic enjoyment that a person who liked women could get.
Death, for the record, is actually quite boring in hindsight. Each time Carlos died, heexperienced resurrection immediately. One moment he is… somewhere on the brunette’s body and the next he is back in Vegas, alive and stable. There is no perception in between. Not darkness, not some void where only consciousness exists, no rest. All Carlos gets is life, and the infinite horrors it brings.
One such horror was the gaze. The women were now staring at the city, their eyes seemed to focus on the surviving specks. Their expression was one of passive disinterest, which angered Carlos to no end. Are we not even entertaining to you anymore!? Are we just suffering for no reason!? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!? He had screamed all that out loud before, but by now he simply let the words ring inside his mind. He passed a woman laid out on the sidewalk, taking her last breath as she stared up at the ceiling, hundreds of miles above them. Carlos felt no pity or sorrow for the woman, only jealousy. He wished they’d throw them in the trash and let him die for good.
Suddenly, the blonde woman brought her massive index finger over them. Again? Alright, just do it. He sat on the sidewalk next to the dead woman, readying himself. But death did not come. Instead, he heard screams. Fresh screams, the kind a person makes when seeing some novel terror. No one has screamed like that since we left Earth. He looked around and saw a mass of humans who had not been there before. Oh fuck. She makes more people!? He watched in horror as the new people ran wildly in all directions, confused by their surroundings. He noted that many seemed to know each other, particular groups seemed to embrace for comfort. Are these people… real? Do they--
His brain stopped as he saw a thin, short man with an earring in his left ear and a uniquely bad haircut. The man was standing 10 feet from Carlos, staring at him. “J-John?” Carlos walked towards his ex-husband, a man he had not seen for years, who Carlos had loved and still loved. The man he had spent ten years of his life with was frozen in fear, unable to process where he was. “Carlos? Where am I? What’s going on!?” Carlos just stood there. He didn’t know how to start or what to say. All he could muster was, “We’re… lost. We’re stuck in this city.”
John stammered, “W-what? Are we safe?”
“No. I don’t know why, but we’re going to die here. I’m so sorry,” Carlos wanted to say nothing and just throw himself into his arms. But John walked back, wearing the expression of unease he wore constantly towards the end of their marriage, “Oh my God. Who are they!?” He turned to see the women, the rumbling of their voices shook the ground slightly. “Our owners,” Carlos replied flatly.
They were interrupted by the brunette’s hand reaching to grab the city. John steadied himself, not expecting the rocking motion as they were brought to the stomach of the other woman. He screamed, and embraced his ex-husband, as tears began streaming down Carlos’s face. He was utterly helpless, now forced to watch the love of his life die along with him. Carlos focused on the man, spending what he prayed were his true last moments comforting someone as the pair approached death. “It’s going to be okay,” he lied to John. As the woman loomed over them, Carlos braced himself, knowing the end was near. He thought of John, and his family, and his coworkers, picturing each face to attain one last spark of human joy.
He closed his eyes.
I’m ready.
--
Olivia motioned for Sam to let her roll onto her back. Placing the petri dish on her stomach, Sam towered over the remaining buildings, understanding what Olivia wanted, and forcefully spat at the intact part of the city. Olivia giggled, shaking the embattled settlement, “Hah! Poor things thought they could get away unscathed!” Sam brought her fingers, her nails painted a clean white color, down onto the drenched buildings, gently collapsing them and mopping the humans up onto the pads. She rubbed her fingers together to homogenize the mess, keeping the humans alive by forcing them to be unnaturally resilient. She then stuck her fingers into Olivia’s mouth. The two women felt the humans break and drown on the woman’s lips and tongue as Sam stopped protecting them. Quickly, the last remnants of Las Vegas trickled down Olivia’s throat, into oblivion. Samantha made a wicked grin, “Ahh… fuck that was good. Let’s get you cleaned up, muffin.”
The two women cleaned each other and dressed. The drenched city was unceremoniously dumped in the garbage, all the humans now dead from either drowning or collapsed buildings from the movements of the women. The sun was down, and Sam had a club meeting that night, so she and Olivia said their goodbyes. Walking into the kitchen, Sam filled her water bottle from the sink and went to put her sneakers on. Suddenly, she turned and asked Olivia, “Hey. Can you make some copies in my shoe? I wanna see if they can massage me while I walk.”
Olivia grinned, “Oooh. Sure! Just humans? No buildings?”
“Just humans. Can it be only that subspecies? More of them seemed to like watching us than the apex species…”
Sam’s partner nodded and snapped her fingers. Staring into the sneakers, Sam could see fresh, terrified humans, reacting to the dark and humid prison of her shoe. Slipping her bare feet in, she felt a good number flatten under her sole. Oddly, none of them popped, “Did you make these guys more durable? They aren’t squishing.”
“Yeah, I figure if they last longer it’ll be a better massage.”
Sam smiled, “You’re so considerate. Take care, Olivia,” and with a wink she opened the door and left the apartment. Olivia sighed with satisfaction, happy with her session. She got some soda from the fridge and returned to her room. Without her little city, the desk by her window looked so… lonely. Getting out another dish, she summoned a new Las Vegas, with fresh memories. The city panicked as if she had just plucked them from their planet. Willing each human to instantly understand her terms of survival, the lights of the city all turned on, filling the desk with a canvas of pretty blue and purple lights. Just to make sure they understood she was serious, she gently plucked an unlit building up and dropped it into her soda can, the little insects inside drowning in the cold, bubbling ocean. She sat at her desk and drank, watching the humans react to their new lives. I’m the only one who can make more… but any woman can have total control over these things. And it’s so fun to play with them. I wonder who might pay for some little toy cities? Her mind began to turn, and she started writing out a business plan next to her little domain, whose inhabitants were unaware of their owner’s plan to make them a commodity. After writing out initial ideas, Olivia felt her exhaustion from the day hit her like a truck. She tapped on the sides of the city, shaking the buildings and kicking up dust from the desert. “Goodnight, my little moneymakers.” She crawled into bed, staring at the little light show as sleep overtook her.