KALI CORP.
PART 1
Prologue
It has been 3 days since I was born, and I am about to die.
I hit the ground hard, and hear things in my legs snap. My head spins, but I can't feel a damn thing. Adrenaline is surging through my body and my mind is desperately trying to focus on everything at once. I look up and see angels exploding in mid air.
Keyla claps her hands and a man with wings bursts between them. Silhouetted in the low orange evening sun I see chunks of him go flying. My own angel is now a red smear on the wall of the building behind me. We are tiny.
A man falls from beneath Keyla's hands. The late angel's passenger tumbles through the air before landing hard on the oversized pavement, several hundred miniature feet from where I lie. Keyla lifts her shoe, a dark green and black platform heel. She brings her god-like foot down hard and the little man with no chance goes spraying all over the blacktop. Keyla starts twisting her foot, grinding the remains. I look away.
I see another angel touch earth as he deposits his passenger. The angel's wings buzz and he lifts into the again quickly. The passenger starts running. I can see that it's Zero. I hope the fucker makes it.
In the sky, Keyla is a colossus. Her shining black hair is framed against the sun, a burning halo. She steps forward and I watch her powerful legs swing with each step.
The angel is fluttering and pumping his insect-like wings as hard as he can, but it's too late. As he climbs through the air along the wall of the building behind, Keyla reaches her long arm forward, fingers slightly bent, and cups it against the flying man and the wall. She closes her slender fingers into a loose fist, and brings her hand in front of her. I can see the tiny wings buzzing against her fingers, but the angel is trapped. I watch as Keyla uses her other hand, thumb and forefinger outstretched like tweezers, to rip the wings off of his back. They flutter in the air like twin leaves, and as Keyla opens her palm, the broken angel plummets past them to the ground. His tiny body hits ground hard, and he writhes slowly in agony. Keyla brings her foot to the man, and rests her tall heel on the ground, sole hovering over him in imminent death. I tear my eyes away from the spectacle.
Someone behind me is screaming. "Alpha! Alpha!" she screams. Her voice is wrenched with fear and sorrow. I realize she's calling my name.
I turn. It's Beta, of course. Beautiful Beta. Tears streaming down her agonized face, she's screaming and stretching her hand out to me, and in that moment I fall in love.
She's on her hands and knees, hidden in a crack in the wall at the base of the building. It's a good place, I realize. Keyla will probably never see her if she stays there, and I hope to fucking Christ, please please stay there. Don't come to me. Don't waste yourself on me. Just stay alive.
I look back at Keyla and it's just my cruel luck to see the angel with no wings disappear beneath her crushing sole. She drags her shoe slowly backwards, scraping his squashed flat liquid remains across the pavement.
Beta is shouting out to me still, through her tears. I don't quite make it out as I'm distracted by Keyla as she turns and swings her massive legs. She's walking straight towards me, her legs like pendulums of death. I see the blood-stained sole of each foot briefly as it is brought forward in turn, and then rested on the ground. My chest tightens as I see my own death. She's going to step on me, and I'm going to die. I try to drag my broken body backwards with my elbows, but it's more of an automatic response by my body. A reflex, my body hopelessly hoping to live even though my mind knows its over. I'm going to be crushed to death, flattened under the shoe of this giantess's immeasurable weight. I'm completely helpless, and completely afraid. I watch as each pendulous? step brings the murderous goddess closer and closer to my demise. Her weapons of death casually pound the earth as she walks towards me, growing and growing.
Everything is moving in slow motion. Everything is silent, except for the dull heavy beat of my heart in my head. Beta is wailing silently, her eyes are terrified, her little fists are bloody as she pounds the ground in hopeless frustration. Keyla is already above me, a massive and terrifying black silhouette. Her shoe is rises slowly into the air, blocking out the dying sun.
I look one last time at Beta.
She's saying, "It's going to be okay."
Chapter 1: Alpha Beta
I stir. I realize I've been asleep. I open my eyes and peer groggily out at the world.
My world is bright and appears to have no end. Eventually I figure out that my world is a square room with walls made of glass, or something like glass, maybe as big as an apartment. The ceiling is high above me, opaque, and is a light shade of green. Underneath the glass floor is another floor, but solid, like looking at a hockey rink. It is also green, the kind of green you see in hospitals. Through the clear walls, the world seems to stretch on and on into a blur of reflections. Bright white light streams through them from a hundred blurry suns.
On the other side of one wall is a naked body. Curled on the floor, back towards me, the body is pale, slender and delicate. A woman. On her curved back is a tattoo of bright red letters and numbers, kind of like a sports jersey, but they remind me more of a bar-code. They read X-I/98(BETA).
I notice movement behind her, and realize I've been staring at her body for some time. In the distance is the blurry figure of a naked man, walking slowly. There must be a series of these glass rooms, all in a row. I watch the man in the distance, and see him pass by some other naked figures. His world is more populated than mine. He happens to turn, and look at me.
It hits me that I'm naked as well. I look around, but there's nothing in this barren glass world I can use to cover myself up. I notice that behind me, opposite the tattooed girl, is yet another naked man, this one standing and facing directly towards me. He's short, lean, and has blond bristling hair. His arms are pressed up against the glass wall, and he waves at me. I wave back. He jabs a finger at his own back, and then points at mine.
I turn my head over my shoulder and see the edge of the same bright red markings on my own back. I face away from one wall and look over my shoulder again, trying to read my spine in the ghostlike reflection. Read backwards, the symbols on my back say X-R/99(ALPHA). I look at the other man, confused, and he merely shrugs. Then he turns around and shows me his back.
I'm shocked to see bare red flesh where his tattoo would be. It looks like he scraped the numbers off by himself. I can't imagine how he would have accomplished that, but it looks extremely painful: his skin is raw and flayed.
He turns around again, a big grin on his face. He flashes me an Okay sign, thumb and index finger touching to form an O shape. Or perhaps a Zero. I get the feeling he must be a little out of his mind, but I give him a speechless thumbs up in return.
Then he points behind me.
In the other room, the body on the floor stirs. Beta stirs, stretches, and props herself up with one arm. I glance back at Zero, but he's just staring at her.
Beta stands up on graceful legs. Her hair is long and dark. She looks around her room, turns to see us, and I see her face for the first time. Her eyes are pale and bright, framed by dark lashes. Her mouth is full and pouty, and her cheeks are high and freckled. I follow her neck down to her naked body. Her breasts are round and natural. Her stomach leads me down past her navel to a dark v-shaped tuft of hair. Her legs and arms point down to her bare feet. There is something perfect about Beta, like she has just emerged from a freshly opened package, and has yet to receive any scratches or smudges. Gazing on her as she stands there, I am for some reason reminded of the android from Metropolis.
Beta lifts one arm and gives me a little wave with just her fingers, accompanies it with a soft little smile. She's looking right at me.
I catch movement in a reflection and look back at Zero. He's looking at me with his mouth round and making a pumping motion with his fist in front of his flopping genitals. His face is scrunched up in mock concentration and resembles a big ass hole.
Beta looks disgusted. I can't help but grin a little. Eventually she just rolls her eyes and pretends to be really offended. I flip Zero off and share a grin with Beta.
Chapter 2: Hi There
I can't remember my name. I can't remember what I was doing before I woke up a couple hours ago. I can't remember if I had a house or a girlfriend. I can't remember a childhood, a family. I can't remember a life. As far as I can tell, I have just been born, and yet I have total cognition. How do I remember Metropolis, a film, but I can't remember my own name?
The walls between us are thick. My world sits between Beta's and Zero's, and I alternate communicating between them. I'm playin Rock Paper Scissors with Zero as Beta sits and watches us serenely. Sometimes she interacts with the people on her other wall.
Zero stops mid-gesture and stares up into the distance, head tilted. I give him a quizzical look, but then I hear it too. I stand up and look out through the walls. Beta's getting up and looking through her own wall. And I see it.
Through the wall adjacent to her and Zero, a white shape moves. It's massive.
Suddenly there's a huge cracking noise, and the ceiling moves. The whole damn thing just lifts up and seems to fly away, and the influx of light hits me hard, blinding me. I squint my eyes and look up.
And my mind goes blank with what I see.
In the sky, silhouetted by a halo of bright light, is a gigantic, beautiful face.
This massive goddess looks down at me, inspecting me like a bug. And I feel like one.
She smiles down at me and says, "HI THERE."
I gape. My mind starts to race, but it's stuck in neutral.
She has glossy, ink black hair, neck-length with bangs. Her skin is contrastingly pale, as are her pupils. Her grin reveals sharp white teeth behind blood red lipstick. She is menacingly beautiful. She chuckles softly.
I'm still gaping. My legs have gone all wobbly. I slowly fall over backward but don't really feel it - my eyes remain fixated on hers.
"YOU'RE NEW HERE, AREN'T YOU?" she says. She holds up a gigantic clipboard and reads it.
Auhh.
Still reading, she looks slightly puzzled, and casts her gaze onto me again. Then she reaches into my room.
The enormous hand speeds toward me and I almost piss myself as I scramble wildly away on my back.
"RELAX," she says, "I JUST NEED TO READ YOUR NUMBER". And with that, her hand engulfs me and suddenly my heart is stuck in my throat as I rush upwards and gasp for air. Wind whips my face and the walls of my little world disappear behind me in a second while her face grows even larger as I come hurtling closer. I feel like screaming but I can't get any air out of my chest as it's crushed by momentum.
Then suddenly, its over. Her palm is open and her face is hovering above me, bigger than my range of vision. I stare into one big, galaxy-like eye.
And I am lost.
It's beautiful. I've never seen an eye this... big before. I can see every tiny strand of muscle, every little pockmark in the shining, pale expanse of her eye. It's like floating in another dimension.
I'm not sure how long I stay like this, but suddenly she pushes me onto my stomach with her massive thumb. I look down over the edge of her hand and feel like screaming again as I see how high up I am, nestled in the palm of a giantess. Below me is a strip of green, stretching on to my left and right. There are other rows in the distance, and I don't understand what the fuck I'm looking at. I spot a square hole in the row of green closest to me, and I realize that it's my room, my glass world, from above. I see my roof laying haphazardly on top of where Beta's would be, and I realize.
My world was a glass box.
Or perhaps a Tupperware container I realize, as I look closer. My ceiling was the lid. My room, Beta's and Zero's, all just — plastic boxes. Which means that I'm about 2 inches high. And I'm lying in a normal woman's hand. There are rows and rows of containers sitting on tables, each holding tiny people. What the fuck kind of place is this? Is this the weirdest dream I've ever had?
I bite my tongue to test if I'm dreaming. It hurts. I try to push my thumb through my own palm, but it's solid. I feel the flesh of the woman's hand that my entire body is lying on, and I can feel how firm it is, feel the lines of her skin. Feel her blood pumping leisurely underneath the surface.
Her fingers are long and slender, and smooth. Her nails are perfect ovals, lacquered black and shining.
She's looking down at her clipboard when she says softly to herself, "HMM. INTERESTING". Then pushes me onto my back with her thumb. She lifts me up to her face and my breath catches in my throat again as her gigantic face fills my vision.
Her huge pupils move back and forth minutely as she studies my tiny face. It feels like God is staring straight into my heart and soul. I feel extremely overwhelmed and vulnerable. I want to just shrink forever and disappear, but at the same time I feel like getting lost in her eyes and floating in their space for the rest of my life. My heart is beating way too fast.
The giant woman's eyes narrow slightly, and I feel a twinge of fear.
She laughs softly to herself. I realize the narrowing of her eyes was just her smiling.
"WELL DON'T YOU LOOK FAMILIAR."
Suddenly I'm falling and my stomach lurches as her hand descends. I'm still lying there in her vast palm, but it feels like I'm falling through the sky. I get a brief glimpse of her white lab coat as I plummet. A tag on her breast says "Keyla".
And I find myself deposited softly back into my box. Shaken, I look up and watch as Keyla replaces the lid.
Chapter 3: Run a Few Tests
We are fed water and some kind of dark sludge. It comes in a plastic package that Keyla places in our boxes. Surprisingly, the porridge or whatever it is doesn't taste that bad.
I play Hangman with Beta. Using the porridge and her finger, she's drawn the letter slots and noose on her wall facing me. It's a tough one; seven words. She tells me it's a phrase.
As far as I can tell, it's been almost a day since the encounter with Keyla. She appeared to have been doing rounds, inspecting all the little people in each box and giving them food and water. Neither Beta nor Zero seem to be especially surprised by the fact that we are all only a couple of inches high.
The last thing that Keyla said to me - I'm still trying to make sense of it. The whole memory of the occurrence seems so unreal. I'm not even sure of what I thought I heard her say anymore. If I get the chance, I should ask her about it.
If I get the balls, more like.
My roof is ripped off with a deafening snap, and Keyla towers above me once more. I'm still scared of her — my heart is beating harder and my body is ready to bolt — but I wait apprehensively.
She reaches into my box and snaps me up. I gasp and try to remain calm, but it's really hard. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest as I surge up into the air again. My jaw is clenched and my eyes squint hard.
And I'm sitting in her hand again. Her fingers are slightly curled, and in the soft cup of her palm, I have a surprisingly small fear of tumbling to my death. To my left and right, the world moves by, miles away. It appears to be a very large room, filled with various medical equipment and boxes upon boxes of shrunken human specimens. Looking up past Keyla's magnificent features, I see the ceiling lights pass regularly over head. I wonder where she's taking me.
I feel a lurch in my stomach and I drop again. All of a sudden I'm rolling, and then I bump hard onto a solid surface. I look up, and a white floor stretches all around. Giant-sized tools and implements are scattered in the distance. I realize I'm just lying on a table. I also suddenly feel especially naked, and cover up my bits with my hands.
Keyla's huge form descends beside the table as she sits down. The table is about stomach height to her. She's wearing a short black dress underneath her open white lab coat. She reaches to her side and brings up a clipboard and a pen. She flips the pen upside down in her hand and clicks it open on the table. It sounds as loud and sharp as a car crash to me. Keyla notices me jump, and smiles to herself. "DON'T WORRY," she says, as she starts writing something on her clipboard. "I'M JUST GOING TO RUN A FEW SIMPLE TESTS. I NEED YOU TO RELAX."
Tests? I try to convince myself it's going to be as easy as she makes it sound. Why am I being tested anyway?
I pluck up the courage to ask. It's the first time I've spoken to her. Still writing, she replies, "IT'S JUST A FEW LAST MINUTE CHECKS, BEFORE I SET YOU FREE."
So I'm going to be set free. I wonder where I'm going to go.
I'm about to ask when she pulls a small, round circular object from a box in a drawer. Her hand rushes towards me and in my panic I try to crawl away, but her massive fingers rest on my legs and I'm trapped in place. One huge pillar-like finger presses down on my chest. I try to struggle, but before I can do anything the pressure is gone, and her finger lifts away. On my chest is attached a round white disc, about the size of a frisbee. It's stuck on good, but not painfully. A lump in the centre suggests some kind of mechanism inside.
Keyla rests her elbow on the table and holds a differant device in front of her face. It looks like an Ipod to me, small and rectangular, with a screen. She presses a few buttons with her thumb, reading the screen. I don't know what the fuck is on my chest, but it doesn't hurt. It's a very unsettling sensation, having this thing on me.
"THAT DEVICE IS JUST GOING TO GIVE ME YOUR READINGS," she says. "LET'S JUST START WITH SOME BREATHING, SHALL WE? INHALE FOR ME."
I hesitate for a second as things are still jumbled in my mind. Then I take a deep breath.
"AND EXHALE."
Whew.
"GOOD," she says, eyes still fixed on her Ipod thing. "AGAIN."
I start to notice that she hasn't really looked at me. She's seen me, seen my body, but ever since the first time she picked me up and read my number, she's never really looked at me.
I breathe in and out a few more times, and she jots something down in her clipboard. From here it looks like a big black checkmark. I suppose that's reassuring, but I don't really feel that way.
"THIS IS A STRENGTH EXCERCISE," she says, meaning the one coming up. She rests her arm on the table with her hand upraised, and before I can react, uses her fingers to shove the button end of her pen onto my chest, right above her little frisbee device. "TRY TO GET UP," she says.
I'm struck. Not just by the pen, but by the whole attitude of this operation. I feel like just an object or a bug as Keyla performs this ritual. She's cold and aloof, just doing her job. She still hasn't really made eye contact with me. Even animals get more humane treatment than this.
Still though. Looking up the length of her pen, and seeing her manicured fingers casually holding me helpless. It's kind of exciting.
I struggle. I try to sit up, but she carefully applies just enough pressure that I can't get up. I try to roll out from underneath, but she presses harder and keeps me on my back. I try as hard as I can, strain my muscles until I can't hold it anymore, and I collapse again, breathing hard. I can't do it. Keyla observes detachedly from above.
"GOOD," she says, lifting the pen up and writing down notes while consulting her little electronic man-reader. I lay huffing and puffing.
Suddenly she rolls me onto my stomach with her fingers, and the places one firmly on my back.
"AGAIN," she says.
This time I actually make it. I manage to get my arms and legs under my body and push hard up into a crawling pose, all hunkered and squashed on the ground. Then, with all my strength, I push up and manage to get onto one knee. In one final effort, shaking, I force myself up onto both feet underneath the crushing weight of her single index finger. I gasp and suck in air, realizing I was holding it for the final push. I duck out to the side from underneath her crushing finger.
Standing there hunched over, hands on hips gasping for air, I realize Keyla must have barely been trying to hold me down. Her giant finger rests lazily on the floor where I had lain as she jots stuff down in her note pad. Maybe she held me down with the weight of her finger alone. I stare at my reflection in her shining black nail polish.
"VERY GOOD," she says.
Yeah, I thought so.
She reaches into her drawer again. "NOW THIS TIME," she says, suddenly bowling me over with her fingers and placing one firmly over my prone body, "DON'T TRY TO GET
UP".
I'm perfectly incapacitated. Her finger covers almost my entire body including my head, except for most of my limbs. My arm is held down by her thumb. Suddenly I'm shocked a by a sharp pain in the exposed shoulder of my arm. I can't see what's happening, and frantically I wonder if the pain is ever going to stop.
Finally it does stop, and Keyla raises her hand. I gasp for air and look over at my shoulder — it has a tiny spot of blood on it. Looking up I see she's holding a small device carefully between the thumb and fore finger of her other hand. The thing has a needle on the end. Jesus, she's just taken a sample of my blood. She must really do this a lot.
Keyla squirts the infinitesimally small amount of blood into a tube on some kind of medical apparatus. She presses a button on the machine and the tube recedes from my view.
"NOW WHILE THIS IS SCANNING," she says, "DO SOME LAPS."
With her pen Keyla makes a twirling motion at the table where I'm lying, and looks at her watch.
She says, "STARTING NOW."
Something in her voice makes me jump up and start jogging. The table top is like a big football field made of solid white glass. With huge and unrecognizable machinery looming around me on all sides, illuminated by glaring white light, it feels like I'm moving in a science-fiction world. A bright pillar of reflected light follows ahead of me on the shining table as I pace through this exquisite landscape. Looking up I catch a glimpse of Keyla's computer. I see my own blood at a microscopic level, huge and daunting, displayed on a massive screen. My own cells are projected at ten times the size of my own body. It's bizarre. I catch sight of the bulbous red blood cells, smaller white cells, and some spiky silvery things that I don't recognize.
I keep jogging in a wide circle. Keyla takes notes from some kind of readings she's getting from my blood, and I wonder what she's looking for. I'm starting to get tired, but she didn't say stop, so I keep going.
She never looks at me. Her eyes are fixed to her task at hand. I kind of try to get her attention, to see if I can stop. My tired feet start slapping the ground harder. I breathe loudly and hoarsely. The edge of my running track keeps expanding on one side, getting closer to her. But it's no use. Eventually I come to a stop, breath coming in haggard gasps, hands on knees. Keyla looks at her watch, and jots down a quick note.
"VERY GOOD," she says. I collapse onto my back and watch my chest heave. "THAT WAS AN ENDURANCE TEST," she says, and glances at her hand held reader. "YOU'RE DOING WELL. JUST A COUPLE MORE TESTS FOR YOU, AND THEN YOU WILL BE FREE TO GO."
I catch my breath as Keyla finishes taking her notes. She flips forward a page on her clipboard, and studies it. I'm getting to my knees when I glance up at her.
She's smiling. It's a bemused smile, almost a smirk. For the first time this encounter, her eyes shift to look right at me. It's unsettling, like having a skyscraper suddenly wink at you. I stop, frozen on one knee, and suddenly she reaches towards me. The smiling giantess snatches me up in one huge hand, and all the breath I just got back is forced out of me again. The world rushes up past me as I plummet.
Keyla's grip releases and I tumble onto my back on a hard surface. I look up and realize I'm on the floor, because I see Keyla's huge shins towering into the sky above me, ending at her knees - she's sitting on an office chair that's all shadows and black plastic. Her legs are bare and her feet rest in black high-heel shoes, peep toed with 2-inch platforms. They loom around me like dark and shining leviathans. I must only be about face-to-face with her toes. When I'm standing.
She smiles down at me from above her knees. I lie between the shadow of her and the shadow cast by her desk, and looking up she seems like a huge and menacing, silhouetted against the glare of those lights. She lifts one huge shoe, and as I catch a glimpse of her green sole, she sets it down right beside me, almost on top of me. I resist the urge to shriek, but I think I already did. On my back, I look up past the gleaming black wall of her shoe and follow the curving line of her foot, up around her ankle and along her calf to her knee. Slowly, Keyla raises her other leg, and I'm cast into shadow by her shoe as she gently crosses her leg. I stare up at the green and black sole hovering above me like a storm cloud. "I JUST NEED TO MONITOR YOUR BODY READINGS FOR A FEW MINUTES," she says, and sits back where I can't see her face anymore, but I can hear the smile in Keyla's voice.
I watch from beneath as her shoe slowly bobs up and down above me. I watch as she turns her ankle, watch her foot make those slow rotations in her sexy shoes. My stomach flutters slightly in excitement, and I feel my dick start to inch up towards an erection. Fuck, what a view. I don't think I even realized I had such an attraction to feet and shoes. There's a lot of things I don't remember. In the hours since I became conscious, I don't think I've had a single erection. Beta is a beautiful woman, and naked too, but she never really struck me sexually. Maybe because we were all naked and confused. Odd that the first time my dick stands up it's for a woman fully dressed. But Jesus, what a woman.
I'm enjoying the view intently when Keyla suddenly leans forward and looks down at me. I realize I've been stroking myself and scramble to cover my erection with my hands, but Keyla's massive hand swoops down on me from above and this time I'm sure I shriek, because it's so huge and fast I think it's just going to smash me into the ground.
This time my stomach lurches, the world blurs down past me, and then all is still except for Keyla's huge face in front of me like a human wall. In the palm of her hand, I'm breathing hard, and she's smiling. Her lips are stretched back in a huge smirk, and suddenly they reveal huge shining white teeth. Keyla's eyes bore into me like twin moons. Her thumb moves over me and I instinctively try to roll over into the fetal position, but she's too fast and the thumb pushes me flat onto my stomach and holds me there. Her smile widens.That's when I realize what she's got under her thumb.
"INTERESTING," she says, grinning wide. She starts writing down notes again. "I LIKE THAT," she says. Her voice drips of barely contained laughter, and I've never been so embarrassed in my life. Or at least, not that I can remember.
I try not to think about my erection, but it's no use. Under the soft pressure of her huge thumb, I can feel her warmth, feel her blood moving. Feel helpless. She casually holds me at her complete mercy, completely naked and humiliated. Under her thumb. The more I think about it, the more turned on I get.
Keyla is still writing, looking at her pad. She probably hasn't even noticed that my dick just grew another inch. Maybe she won't notice if I move my pelvis a bit too.
I start humping her thumb very softly. I suck in my gut and press up with my pelvis, sliding my cock up along her thumb pad. I feel the lines of her thumb print as each ridge rubs past the sensitive head of my dick. It feels fucking good, and I slide it down again.
"OOH."
I've done this a few times when Keyla looks back at me and grins harder. I snap back to sanity. Jesus fuck, what was I thinking? My face flushes hot and red again.
Keyla's grin recedes to a smirk as she turns to her notes again, but her thumb starts moving slightly in an up and down motion. To her this must be an almost imperceptible movement, but to me her overpowering thumb is a big impact. She's jacking me off with minute motions of her thumb. I gasp, and the realization gets my blood racing. I start humping again, harder this time. Fuck this is amazing, me getting totally dominated and worked by her thumb. I quickly start to lose myself. I'm starting to feel an orgasm start to build up, when Keyla suddenly says "JUST ONE MORE ENDURANCE TEST FOR YOU, LITTLE GUY." I almost laugh.
Her thumb moves down and presses hard on my knee as a finger from her other hand pushes my calf straight up. There's a sharp cracking noise. The pain is unbelievable, and as she lifts her thumb, I see the bottom half of my leg sticking upwards at a heart-stopping angle, spurting blood. I scream.
Chapter 4: Wings
It's blurry. A white haze passes by overhead.
I hear a voice. A female voices. I can make out only a few words here and there. She's talking about wings. Maybe I'm in heaven.
She says, "WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE WANT TO GIVE WINGS TO AN INSECT?"
I'm falling now, tumbling. I hit something hard and black out again.
Chapter 5: Angel Wings
There is a circle of faces looking down at me. I'm lying on my back. I try to get up, but they murmur and put their hands on me. They're telling me to relax. So I do.
Until I remember what happened to my leg. I sit up with a start and look at my leg. I suddenly feel really dizzy, and what I see doesn't help me much. I feel my gorge rise quickly, and I turn to the side and hurl.
Maybe I just dreamed that whole fucking occurance, because as I look down at it, I can't see a damn thing wrong with my leg. There's no break, no blood. Not even a single fucking misplaced hair. I run my hand up and down my knee, but nothing feels out of the ordinary. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.
People all around me are asking whats wrong. I take a deep breath, and lie back down again. That's when I see their wings.
Some of these guys have translucent, veined wings on their back. At first it looks like maybe they're wearing costume pieces, but they're all naked. I follow their napes down to their shoulder blades, each from which protrudes an unnatural lump of muscle that morphs into a large insectoid wing. They flutter softly. Underneath each pair of wings, red code is printed on their backs.
We're in another glass box. I notice this ceiling is black.
Chapter 6: The Origin of Angels
I ask them why they have wings. I ask them why we're all so small. I ask them why we're here. And they tell me.
There are five of them. They tell me how roughly a few months back, each of them was living happily in their own little home. They didn't have wings. They were nothing special. They had been born and raised in a complex, with about a hundred other men. They got fed daily by a giant woman, and for entertainment, they did sports. They were made to exercise every day, and be in perfect health. And every so often, Keyla would appear and take some of them away, never to be seen again. Apparently this was their entire life. Maybe it had been mine, too.
Anyway, one day these five guys and a handful of others were picked. Keyla brought them to strange place full of huge machines and implements. She injected them all with some kind of liquid, and from then things got blurry. The five men remember blood, pain, and agony. They remember being paralyzed and helpless on their stomachs as someone, presumably Keyla, operated on their backs with huge needles and tweezers. They remember bizarre images of huge hairy beasts with wings whose descriptions remind of ordinary house flies, but they don't seem to understand me when I inquire. The next thing they remember is waking up and having wings on their backs. The extremely painful and tender red muscle mass was healing on their shoulder blades, but they could move their wings slightly. Some had died in the operations. After healing, they spent the rest of their time learning how to use them, under Keyla's tutelage. Learning how to fly. Still more of them died from biological complications or in training, and each one was noted by Keyla, and then removed. After they had perfected flight, they had had blood samples taken from them and had been run through a gamut of tests, where even more had perished until only these four remained. The best of the best. Now they are here.
Now why am I here? I still have no idea. I don't remember anything that happened before I woke up several hours ago, and none of this is ringing any bells. I don't even remember being this small.
All the men turn and look. I follow their gaze and see Keyla outside the glass. The black roof is lifted and she lowers her hand into our box. She opens her fingers palm-down and Zero crashes face first onto the floor. I get to my feet as the dark ceiling is replaced, and rush over to him. My eyes dart all over his body, searching for mangled limbs, but I don't see anything wrong.
He groans, and says "What a bitch."
Chapter 7: Tic Tac Toe
I breathe on the glass again and draw another X in the condensation. As distracted as I am, Zero somehow manages to lose every single game of Tic Tac Toe we play. He's a good guy though, I think. I'm guessing Zero is trying to distract us both from worrying. But there's nothing we can do, so we play X's and O's with our breath.
Through the transparent walls of all the glass boxes, I see Keyla approaching from the distance again, her white lab coat refracted over and over again through the multiple layers of glass. We all look up and watch as the black ceiling is wrenched aside, and Keyla lowers her closed hand into our room.
Her palm opens and her fingers lower, and Beta slides feet-first onto her floor, falling forward onto her hands and knees. My heart skips a beat. I look all over her, frantically, but she appears unscathed. Her mouth is open and breathing hard, and she brushes the hair from her face. I think she's fine. Keyla's hand recedes out of the room. Beta looks up, eyes wide. I help her slowly climb to her feet, her face flushed. Standing naked, Beta's clearly unharmed. No legs broken in half, no nothing. I breathe a sigh of relief.
Then she hugs me. Beta just leans forward and wraps her arms around me, and I can feel her naked body against mine. She's shaking slightly. I can't think of anything to do but hug her back.
Chapter 8: Meant To Be Free
The man slides off Keyla's hand and lands in our midst, crumpling to the floor. This is the second one to arrive after Beta. The two new guys don't have wings, but they definitely have something wrong with them.
The first guy, he just keeps biting himself. His arms are a mess, chewed up beyond belief, and now he's working on his legs as best he can. He doesn't talk much - he must have bit his own tongue off long ago. The biting isn't the weirdest part though - it's his blood. His blood is yellow, and oozes out of him like honey. He even smells sweet.
The other guy, the new guy, well we haven't had a good look at him yet - he just got here. Keyla's hand retreats, and then her voice booms softly overhead: "WELL BOYS, THAT'S ALL OF YOU FOR TODAY. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING?" she asks as she fills out some papers. Nobody says anything.
"I'M TAKING YOU OUTSIDE. I'M SETTING YOU FREE," she says with a smile. "DO YOU KNOW WHY I'M SETTING YOU FREE?" Keyla says from above as she carries us. Again, nobody says anything.
"WELL," she begins, "BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS YOU. YOU WINGED ONES, FOR EXAMPLE, ARE OBSOLETE. WE CAN BREED LITTLE WINGED MEN LIKE YOU IN MASS NUMBERS, THOUGH WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT THAT ELUDES ME. AND THE POOR LITTLE BITER THERE, WELL, IT'S OBVIOUS WHY NOBODY WOULD WANT HIM. SOMETHING MUST HAVE SNAPPED IN HIS TINY HEAD.
"MOST OF THE ONES I SET FREE ARE EITHER FAILED MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS, OR HAVE SOME KIND OF DISABILITY, MENTAL OR PHSYICAL. ANY TROUBLE-MAKERS ARE TYPICALLY REMOVED FROM THE OTHERS".
As she says this last part, I hear Zero's dubious chuckle. "IT SEEMS WE HAVE A COUPLE OF YOU THIS TIME," Keyla says. I look at our newest arrival for the first real time. There is something differant about him. He has long, shaggy hair and a thick beard, and looks rail thin. His eyes are wide and white, deep-set above dark bags on his gaunt face. He reminds me of a feral dog in a cage. Then I realize he doesn't have any markings on his back - it's not like they've been scratched off like Zero's, but looks more like he never had any in the first place.
"AND SOME OF YOU," Keyla continues, "WELL, MAYBE YOU'RE JUST MEANT TO BE FREE".
With this last word, she looks directly at me.
Her eyes seem to bore right through me. I know at this size, she could actually be looking at any one of us, but it doesn't feel like that - it feels like like I'm in a huge spotlight and my chest is lying right open for her to see, although I don't know why. I think I start to sweat.
Then she smirks slightly, and puts down her papers. She lifts up the large black lid of our box, our ceiling, and places it over us, replacing her face. Her hands rise to the walls of our box, and suddenly all our legs give out from underneath us as Keyla easily lifts the entire container. Through the glass walls, the world spins dizzyingly past between her fingers.
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" someone screams, and I see that it's the new guy. His face is held in clawed hands as he emits agonized yelps from between clenched teeth. We ask him what his problem is.
"What my problem is?!" he yells, raising his head. "We're all about to fucking die is what my problem is! You know what she does? Do you know what that woman fucking does to people like us?!"
Who, we ask, Keyla?
"Keyla? You call her Keyla?! My god, you people don't have a clue do you?! Fuck!"
We ask the guy why he thinks she's going to kill us, but I already have a sick feeling of dread in my gut.
"Because I've seen her do it! I've fucking seen her murder you people! I'm from out there! Do you understand that? I'm not from here, I wasn't born here like you! I've seen her fucking do it, goddammit! Set us free? She's going to kill us like she killed all the rest! We're doomed!"
Something grips my arm tightly. It's beta - she looks pale, and her eyes stare ahead frightenedlyanother one for the not technically a real adverb club.
"My God," she whispers, "What if he's right?"
Zero pipes in: "If she's just going to kill us, where is she taking us now? She said she was going to set us free".
"Yeah," new guy says, "She'll set you free, alright. She takes this little box of rejects outside and opens it up, and you're all free to run around, right in this little back alley. You can run anywhere and as far as you can, right up until the point where she brings her foot down right on top of you. Right until she crushes you to death, just for fun. You're fucking free!" he says, cackling with laughter.
One of the angels grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. "You've seen this?" he asks, "You've seen her do this?" New guy just laughs. "Yeah I've fuckin' seen it," he says between laughs, " How the fuck do you think I got into this hell hole? She saw me watching, and instead of killing me like the rest, the damn dirty bitch, she took me in to be experimented on! A new lab rat, fresh from the wild! I guess I wasn't good enough, cause now I'm here. Ha! She probably put me here just for laughs! That fucking bitch!"
New Guy devolves into maniacal laughter again. Beta whimpers. "What are we going to do?"
I look out the glass walls and see an unfamiliar world fly past. If we're going to do something, we have to do it fast. I realize I'm talking out loud, because everyone is staring at me. They look scared.
So that guy said Keyla brings us outside. In a back alley. That means there's a whole other, giant-sized world out there. He said she opens the box and lets us out. If that's true, that means we do have a chance to escape. And these guys even have fucking wings. I wonder how strong they are.
"We can carry another person," one of them says, "but it will slow us down." Are they willing to lift us out of the box, and fly us to safety? I look around, and see that we have an equal number of winged men to non-winged - ten souls altogether.
"Hold on," one of the angels says, "We'll be slower, heavier. A larger target. Why do we have to bring these people, if it means our own death?" I instantly dislike him, and feel the grip on my arm tighten as Beta becomes even more fearful. Thankfully one of the other angels speaks.
"These are all human lives at stake here, Gene! We can't just leave them here to die! Do you want them to go through what we went through? Nobody should ever have to experience that."
Gene scowls. "Well what about that one, Francis?" he says, pointing to the man trying to eat himself in the corner. Francis sighs.
"He's a human being," he says. After a moment's hesitation, he says "I'll carry him. You take someone else. We're all human here." His wings twitch. He looks at me and says, "It's a good plan. Everyone grab a partner. I'll see to Teeth over there", and heads over to the cannibal. It takes me a second to realize that I had come up with the plan. Some plan, I think to myself and laugh softly. Sounds like suicide. I look down at my hands and see that they're cold and sweating. And shaking. There's a palpable sense of fear in this box. I think maybe this is something like what soldiers feel before entering a battle. I notice Beta looking up at me, eyes big and afraid.
"What are you laughing at?" she asks, bewildered. I just hug her hard. I see Zero stare at me for a moment, before nodding his head and finding a partner.
Chapter 9: Fight Or Flight
The lid lifts off our box, and the worst plan I've ever thought of begins badly.
But what can I expect, a little voice tells me through the chaos. There's nothing else we can do, not with the spare few minutes we had in which to formulate an escape.
There's a flutter of wings, and as we rise into the air we are blinded by an orange sun. A great shadow passes by, accompanied by a rush of wind. The first thing I see after my eyes adjust to the light is the massive silhouette of Keyla's hand as it instantly engulfs an escaping couplet.
The ascent is much smoother the ones previously experienced in Keyla's hand. Gene's strong arms are hooked underneath my armpits, and we glide by Keyla's huge hand as the floor of our box shrinks behind it.
"A DARING ESCAPE PLAN," Keyla says, "I HAVEN'T HAD ONE OF THESE IN A LONG TIME". I watch her hand tighten around her captive, tighten into a fist. I hear a brief scream and muffled crunch. She lifts her fist over her mouth, and hanging from her clenched fingers dangles another man. I recognize him as the nutcase who tries to eat himself. That means it was Francis who just got crushed to death in her hand, but I can't quite believe it. I think I'm going into shock or something, because my mind just won't focus on anything. Fight or Flight Reaction passes through my head. I almost laugh.
Keyla's hand loosens slightly and the madman plunges into the dark moist cavern of her mouth. She closes and chews slowly. "MMM," she says to herself, eyes closed, "HONEY".
I stare at her face, trying to comprehend the evil I've just seen through my adrenaline haze. Luckily I can't, nor can I imagine what it must have been like to be eaten alive.
Keyla's eyes open looking directly at me. My heart skips a beat and I start to panic, but there's nothing I can do - I'm hundreds of feet from the ground at this point. I think I start to flail, and I can vaguely hear Gene yelling at me. I see Keyla reach forward in slow motion, her hand opened up to reveal a bloodstained palm. It hurtles towards us, seemingly in slow motion yet still inescapably fast. The crumpled lump of flesh in the middle of her hand registers in the back of my head as the body of Francis. There is nothing behind us except the huge, endless wall of the building. This is when I really start flailing.
As Keyla's palm invades my entire field of vision, and as I'm sure I'm about to die, I suddenly see it rush by overhead. It takes me a shocked second to realize I'm falling. I look down and see the pavement hundreds of feet below me. As I start to tumble in mid-air, I look up to see Keyla's hand remove itself from the wall and reveal a perfect bloody palm-print, the splattered remains of Gene.
The wall is flowing up past me in a massive blur, and only now do I truly realize that I'm falling. From the frying pan to the fire, I watch as the pavement below rapidly grows towards me. My chest is tight, I can't breath as the wind whips my face, and I just wonder if Beta got out alright.
Chapter 10: Briefly
I briefly feel the sole of Keyla's shoe on my body, hard, wet with blood, and unforgiving. I briefly feel my legs before they are destroyed, briefly feel my chest as it starts to implode. I briefly hear my ribs start to crack, briefly hear the scrunching remains of my lower body between shoe and pavement. I briefly taste blood, mine and that of my comrades, and briefly taste my guts as they all force themselves up through my throat at the same time, before my jaw breaks. I briefly smell the stench of human gore, but it is almost overpowered by the brief smell of leather.
I briefly see Beta in the distance, before my eyeballs burst.
I briefly feel death.
Chapter 11: The World
I stir. I realize I've been asleep. I open my eyes and peer groggily out at the world. My world is dark and appears to have no end. Eventually I figure out that my world is a hundred times larger than I am. I am where I last remember I was. I haven't been asleep after all. I lie where I died, crushed to death beneath Keyla's foot. And yet I live.
I tilt my head up and look at my body. Naked, cold, and entirely intact.
"Look! Look, he's awake! Oh my god!" It's Beta's voice. I look up and her face hovers above mine. Her eyes are wide, alarmed, and about to start crying. Zero comes up beside her, mystified. I'm about to ask something when instead I curl over and try to throw up, but nothing comes out. My dry heaves go on a little longer, and I start shaking uncontrollably. Beta is stroking my side and back. She doesn't know what to do. I don't know what to do either, but I do know I'm starting to feel better. I turn and lie on my back again and stare into the night sky. Through the haze of city lights, I can barely make out stars. Beta has my head cradled in her lap, and is crying. I smile, and start to cry as well.
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
Part 1