“NOOOOO!” screams Brian at the top of his lungs, rushing forward toward the computer screen.  “JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST, NO!  PLEASE, GOD, NO!” he roars, smashing his fists so hard against the screen it looks like a couple of the pixels are crackling out.  His arms shaking, his body convulsing, Brian collapses to his knees.  Anna rushes forward, wrapping her arms around Brian, but he isn’t looking like he’s going to be consoled anytime soon.

                “Oh my God…” mumbles Kelly weakly, her eyes as wide as dinner plates.  I look over at Gina, who looks similarly frozen in place.

                Few times, I think, have any of us felt this helpless.  We watch, our hearts pounding wildly in our chests, as Julia calmly packs the matter reduction device back into its case, then stands up and strides over to the couch, where Beth’s tiny form is still sprawled so vulnerably.  Reaching down with a smug grin on her face, the teen snatches up her personal trainer in her palm, wrapping her fingers roughly around her body, and stands back up before exiting the living room.

                “OH, FUCK, NO… NO… IT’S… IT’S GOTTA BE A DREAM!” shouts Brian hysterically, unable to contain himself.  “A GODDAMN NIGHTMARE!  NO, NO, NO, NO…”

                I can already feel the dread building up like pressure inside my brain, clouding my vision with fear and unknown.  At this moment, a cold void seems to have opened up.  Any amount of time into the future we had planned out was literally just cut off.  Now, we’re in uncharted territory.  The ball was just put squarely back in Julia’s court, and I don’t think she’s ever going to give it back to us.

                The door opens slowly with an ominous creek as Julia re-enters the bedroom, striding powerfully over the desk, where she sits down and opens her palm over us, allowing Beth to topple downward with a terrified scream.

                Brian leaps to her, helping her up and wrapping his arms around her in a hug.

                “BRIAN… Oh, Jesus Christ, Brian… it was real… it was real,” cries Beth, her eyes welling with tears, her voice choking off.  “The email.  I wasn’t crazy…”

                “Yes, Beth, it was real.  I’m alive.  I’m still here.”

                “I’m so sorry,” wheezes Beth, the rush of emotions understandably too much to handle at the moment.  The reunion of the siblings doesn’t last long, though, as Julia’s hand lowers back down toward the table, palm up.

                “Get in, Beth,” orders Julia coldly.

                “You keep your FUCKING HANDS AWAY FROM HER!” screams Brian, throwing himself in front of Beth, who shrieks as Julia’s monumental fingers slide forward toward them on the table.  Julia’s eyes narrow, her brow furrowing.

                “I’ll deal with you later, you stupid little shit,” growls Julia, flicking her fingers out at Brian once again, sending him flinging backward like a human pinball.  The force of Julia’s fingers looks much more powerful than the last time, though, and Brian lands at the back of the classroom under a desk, moaning in agony.  “Now.  I’ll say it one more time… you little fucking liar, you,” hisses Julia at Beth, who can do nothing but tremble violently at the knees.  “I want your stupid little body in the palm of my hand in three seconds.  Three… two…”

                Bursting into heavy tears, Beth forces herself somehow to move forward despite what I would assume is soul-bending, piss-dribbling terror she’s experiencing right now, and climbs over the fleshy step of Julia’s fingers toward her palm.

                “Beth… no… don’t do it…” mumbles Brian, scrambling dizzily to his feet as he regains awareness.

                “Don’t listen to him, Beth, just listen to me.  Trust me.  I’m the IMPORTANT one to you right now, got it?” threatens Julia through bared teeth, her fingers snaking around Beth’s body and squeezing.  Brian’s sister shrieks in pain, squirming fruitlessly against the sixteen-year-old’s iron grip.  Through the tears and heavy breathing, Beth manages to enthusiastically shake her head “yes.”

                “Good.  Now.  I have some questions for you, and you’re going to answer them all honestly, or I swear to God, I will peel your skin off with a fucking butter knife.”

                “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” screams Beth.

                “Who knows you’re here?”

                “NOBODY!”

                “Don’t lie to me,” hisses Julia, her fingers contracting tighter around Beth’s tiny body.  “You’re working today, you must’ve told someone you were coming.”

                “OKAY, OKAY, JUST MY BOSS!” relents Beth.  “I TOLD HIM I WAS SEEING A NEW CLIENT IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!  NOT YOUR ADDRESS!”

                “Where’s your car?”

                “BACK AT THE CENTER!  I TOLD HIM I WAS TAKING THE BUS OVER HERE!”

                “Stop shouting,” orders Julia resolutely, giving her captive an extra squeeze that causes Beth to moan as her sore body receives another beating.  “Do you have a phone?  Your car keys?”

                “The COFFEE table, downstairs!  All in my purse!” she shrieks, fighting back the urge to scream again.  Her words seem almost to be faltering, as if she’s ready to faint.

                “Don’t give out on me yet, little bitch.  We’re not done here,” says Julia icily, nothing but cold indifference to Beth’s existence in her eyes.  “If anything you just said isn’t true, I…”

                “IT’S THE TRUTH, I SWEAR!  JUST… PLEASE DON’T HURT ME, OR THEM, OR…”

                “I think that’s enough out of you for now, Beth,” comments Julia casually, placing a thumb firmly over the tiny woman’s face, silencing her for the moment.  She looks down upon us, glaring, daggers practically firing from her eyes.  “It’s shame, really, you know,” she says quietly near Beth’s ear.  “If things had been different, I bet I would’ve loved training with you.  You seem really nice.”

                “JULIA, SHE’S NOT INVOLVED WITH THIS, JUST LET HER GO!” cries Brian, by now having dragged himself nearer to Julia’s towering torso at the edge of the desk.

                “Of course she’s involved,” responds Julia simply with a shrug.  “And guess what?  You involved her, Brian.  You were the ones who contacted her… I’m guessing by email…  and dragged her here yourselves.  She came here to try and take MY property,” growls Julia authoritatively.  “And by rights, then, she forfeits herself to me.  Now… she’s mine, too.”

                “NO!  GODDAMN IT, LET HER GO!” cries Brian.

                “Brian, you’re going to run out of places for me to bruise reeeeeeal quickly if you don’t shut up soon,” snarls Julia down at him, but he seems undeterred, standing his ground and raising a fist up toward Julia.   

                “Do whatever you want with me.  Anything.  I’ll be quiet and take it,” pleads Brian, his voice becoming more desperate.
                “Oh, I know you will.  Believe me.  Don’t worry, we’re getting there, Brian,” insists Julia with a devilish grin on her moist lips, still twiddling Beth idly like a toy between her fingers, pushing her tiny body against her wide palm.  “Starting right now.”

                “Please, just let her go, I’ll do anything… anything, I…”

                “Yes.  I know you’ll do anything, Brian.  All of you will,” the giant teen says darkly, casting a glare over all of us.  “And that’s the problem.  You don’t understand yet.  Somehow, I’ve failed you all.  I haven’t made myself clear enough.  You do things like this, and it’s going to come back and hurt you in the end because you still haven’t accepted that you belong to me.”

                “I’ll accept it.  Whatever you fucking want, Julia, just please… please, I’m begging you,” gasps Brian, falling to his knees and clasping his hands together as if in prayer.  The tears are still flowing down his face, although for a different reason now.

                “There’s nothing you can really do, Brian, because like I said, it’s my fault for not making it clear, and so, I’m inclined to give you one more chance.  One more chance to prove to me that you’re willing to give up all this bullshit about getting away from me and just accept it once and for all.”

                “Oh… oh, thank you, Julia,” sighs Brian, sounding more relieved than I’ve ever heard him before.

                “But,” sighs Julia sadly, glancing back at Beth still clasped powerlessly in her hand.  “I already have the perfect family here.  I love all of you and want you to learn to be good, obedient little pets.  But… Beth here is… well, she’s an outsider.”

                “No… she’s not… she can be here, too, Julia, just please… leave her alone,” bargains Beth’s brother in desperation, at this point willing to settle for any alternative to what’s being implied.

                “I’m sorry about this, Beth,” says Julia, shrugging and ignoring Brian as she finally removes her thumb from Beth’s face, who proceeds to continue screaming incoherently.  “One girl to another, I am really sorry. You’re beautiful, and sweet, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of friends… probably a boyfriend, too.  A life out there.  You can thank your brother and all these other little worms for getting you into this.  But what I want is them, and to make myself clear to them, I’m afraid I have a tough call to make here.”

                Without another word to any of us, Julia begins plucking at Beth’s clothes, snatching them off in her giant fingertips and flinging them onto the desk, leaving the cold, naked, terrified woman sprawled in her soft palm a moment later.

                “HEY!  STOP IT!” screams Brian, becoming louder again, but his cries go completely ignored.

                “You really are well-endowed, aren’t you, girl?” giggles Julia, poking playfully at Beth’s breasts.  “I really am sorry that you got pulled into my business, Beth.  I hope you can forgive me someday, wherever you are,” sighs Julia, allowing the hand holding Beth to slide to the side of the chair, roughly two stories above the ground for someone our size.  Then, her gargantuan fingers release, letting the screaming, nude Beth topple out of the fleshy palm and fly toward the carpet at an alarming rate.

                “NO!  OH MY GOD, NO!  JESUS CHRIST, YOU… YOU…” roars Brian, the rage and angst mixing, running toward the edge of the desk and peering over the side.  The rest of us, our faces all a pale ghostly white, quickly follow suit, seeing Beth’s body sprawled painfully at the bottom, quivering slightly.  “BETH!  SAY SOMETHING!”

                “I don’t think that’d be a good idea, Brian,” comments Julia, leaning over toward the ground for a better look.  “She might’ve broken something and talking would probably hurt then.”

                Slowly, we see Beth, crying meekly, pulling herself into a crouching position, but she topples over on her ankle, screaming and clutching it in pain.  Resolved, she begins crawling at a snail’s pace along the carpet, dragging herself along, her legs seemingly broken, cries of agony escaping her tiny lips.

                Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I see Julia’s fingers slipping into her silver sequined flats behind the heel, allowing her smooth bare foot to emerge from the shoe.  Wriggling her mighty toes a few times to air them out, she arches her titanic foot, raising it off the ground, and then slowly starts moving it closer and closer to Beth, like a shark closing in on a guppy.

                A shadow of Julia’s massive foot, each individual toe squirming in gleeful expectation, casts itself over Beth as she desperately crawls forward at a hopelessly slow pace.