Walking Softly

***

Liz made her way through downtown Los Angeles, trying hard not to hurt anyone. But this was Liz, and it was rush hour in LA, so this was easier said then done. Surrounding the princess was terror and gridlock. As soon as drivers could saw her, they'd try to speed away any way they could. The cars swerved and accelerated as fast as they could, plowing through pedestrians and fire hydrants, until they inevitably crashed into another car that was also trying to speed away. The result was complete chaos. The streets around Liz were littered with huge pileups and high speed crashes. 

People from surrounding buildings fled onto the streets, hoping to escape the doom that was shashaying towards them. Pedestrians tried to push their way through the dense wreckage, but there were too many of them. The crowds of panicked people ran this way and that, bumping into each other, and all too often trampling over each other. Cars plowed through entire crowds of people, desperately trying to get away. Yet in the end, whether they lived or died came down entirely to chance.

Liz looked down at Ted. He was wedged between her cleavage, safetly nestled between her impossibly huge C-cup breasts and the front of her bra. Liz had purposefully ripped the top of her T-shirt in half to give Ted a view so he could see what was going on below. "I'm doing pretty good, right? I feel like I'm not killing too many people."

Ted looked up at Liz from between her cleavage. "I haven't been paying that close of attention, Liz, but I think you're doing pretty good. If we're talking in terms of actual deaths you directly caused, by stepping on people, I'd say that at most you've caused a few thousand deaths, and maybe even less! Of course, if you count indirect deaths, the total's got to be way, way higher. In the tens of thousands, at least. Car crashes, buildings collapsing from structural damage, people trampling each other, fires... it's easy to forget about, but all that stuff adds up fast. Then again, I've never counted indirect deaths in your total; it always felt like cheating. It would artificially inflate your total kill count, and I know how much you like to brag about your count. Or did, at least."

"Guess who's technically only killing a few thousand people today! Everyone, say hello to the kinder, gentler Liz! Woo!"

Liz jumped in the air with joy, leaping as high as she could and throwing her hands up into the sky. When she landed, she came down with incredible force. A shockwave rippled along the ground, rupturing the pavement into jagged, spiky formations. Dozens of nearby office buildings collapsed without warning, causing bricks and concrete to rain down upon the panicked crowds. A natural gas pipeline below the road snapped, sending a jet of fire through the cracked pavement and roasting a crowd of people. The mass of people tried to flee, even as the very earth erupted around them. The upturned pavement slanted around chaotically, sending cars rolling this way and that, until the slammed into the ground or onto pedestrians. Cars and people alike were wedged between the earth, never to be seen again. In a moment, thousands surely perished.

"Oopsie... Those deaths were all indirect, right? So they don't count, right?"

"Lets say you're still at about three thousand. Don't worry so much about the tally, though, Liz. Just worry about having fun, and remember that the sooner you get to the docks, the sooner you can find out what your new present is!"


***

Liz made her way towards the shipping yards, weaving around crowded streets, trying not to step on too many people. But everywhere she went, there were countless people and cars and buildings. One of her high heels was wide enough to take out two lanes of traffic, and long enough to take out a full-size bus. She tried to step in the gaps between the cars and crowds, but few of the gaps were as big as the bottom of her heels. Here, she skewered a man like a shish kabob on the rail-thin tip of her heel; there, she squashed a crowd of fleeing pedestrians under her toe. Here, she flattened a bus full of NFL players; there, an ethnic food truck, along with the ever-polite Vietnamese couple inside. And so it went, until she came onto a street that was very much unlike the ones before. 

The street was cordoned off, with a tall barbed-wire fence running along each side. It was easy to see why. On either side, as far as one could see, it looked like a disaster area, destroyed and deserted. Cars littered the broken streets, barely recognizable sedans and sports cars and buses, crumpled up like tissue paper. Debris was scattered about, bricks and signage and trash. Buildings had toppled into arbitrary piles of concrete and broken girders. There may have still been bodies there, or not; if so, they were destroyed beyond recognition, scattered with the rest of the debris. The city hadn't even tried to close the street off. They were too tired, too desperate to bother, so they just put up a wall on either side and hoped that the city would forget about those who were lost.

"Oh. My. God."

"What is it, Liz?"

Liz stared at the single building that was left standing It was a strip club, with a giant sign that read 'Cheetah's.' It was somehow untouched by all the carnage, as if some mad god of destruction had decided that Cheetah's, of all places, was worth saving.

"I... I did this... All this destruction... It was the night of the Emmy's." Liz stared out into the distance for a moment, deep in her memories.

"Ted, I remember that night like it just happened. Me and Christina Hendricks rampaged drunk through the streets. All that chaos, all that death, all that destruction..."

"Liz, it's okay. I know you're trying to put that part of your life behind you now."

"Best night ever!"

"Huh?"

"We got so schwasted that night! Christina is a blast to get crunk with. There's a Bacardi rum factory down the street--well, there used to be--and me and Christina were doing shots from all these tanks of Bacardi Gold. And then we tried to walk down the street, but we were stumbling everywhere, back and forth, taking out buildings left and right. 

'We had a contest to see how many people we could swallow at once. I won that one, easy, got like thirty in one gulp. Christie's tiny, she's not even a hundred feet tall, so she couldn't swallow more than a few at once. Then we played this hilarious game where we stuffed a bunch of people between each others cleavage, and then saw how many people we could squish all at once. Christie destroyed me at that one. She's... Umm..."

"Absurdly well-endowed?"

"Heh, yeah. That." Liz blushed. "And then we played this prank where Christina destroyed part of a building, and everyone came running out the front entrance. But there I was, lying on the ground, with my tongue right under the front porch. So a bunch of them run out, right into my mouth, running up my tongue like its a ramp. And I roll up my tongue and swallow like ten of them at once! It was awesome! And then the stupid army comes up and starts shooting at us, and we just went crazy and stomped the hell out of everyone. It was awesome. And then we finally went down to the waterfront together, and then we... Well... Yeah. What an amazing night...

'Hey, look at that!" Liz pointed at an object near her feet. On top of a flattened 1070s VW Bug was a dull, dirty lump, nearly as big as the car itself. The lump was covered with dirt, but underneath you could still tell it was a pale red. "That was Christina's gum... The piece she was chewing that night. She kept playing with it... She'd put a few people in her mouth, and roll them around with her tongue, until they were all caught in the giant ball of gum! And then when they were all stuck inside the gum, and they couldn't get out, she would bite down and chew the gum, and squish all the little people into goo! It was so funny! And then, I bet her that she couldn't spit the gum out and have it land on that VW bug, and, well, she won.

Liz bent down to pick up the gum. She pried off the VW bug, and picked up the gum in her hand. "Ted, is it weird... Would it be weird if I kept this? Like, as a memento?"

"Liz, you can keep whatever you want, but it is a piece of gum."

"Whatever. I'm keeping it." Liz opened her left pocked and gently placed the gum inside.

Liz's attention returned to the world around her. For miles around it was chaos, pandemonium, carnage. Honking horns and sirens and screams rang out in the distance. The carnage reminded her of that night. It reminded her of Christina.

Liz continued towards the docks, making her way to her new present.