The Wrecking Crew

“This traffic sucks,” said the man who was driving the car, “but that’s the 101 for ya. At least we’re heading South. Northbound traffic is gridlocked like crazy.”

“You should try driving faster.” said the man in the baseball hat. “The party starts in like five minutes. I’m ready to throw down, just like the good old days. The official reunion of the Wrecking Crew, right?” Witness the ‘Wrecking Crew.’ Three friends, once inseperable in high school, but life had scattered them to the four winds. Here they were, together for the first time in years. Here they were, stuffed together in a cramped budget sedan, on their way to what they hoped would be a memorable night. And indeed, it would be... though perhaps not in the way they would expect. Because things don’t always go how you expect in... The Giantess Zone.

“Oh, goddamn it. Really?” The driver slammed onto the breaks just in time. In a moment, the semi-truck in front of them had suddenly stopped. In an instant, traffic all around them came to a complete halt. Ahead of them was a sea of stationary cars, stretching on as far as the eye could see. Not that they could see much of it, though, with a wide semi-truck stopped right in front of them. Above them was an overpass, which at least provided some protection from the heat. The overpass bridge crossed above the highway, carrying cars across the 101. “Damn it,” said the driver, “there must be a wreck ahead. Probably a bad one, judging from this mess. Well, so much for getting there on time.”

“You’re always so negative, man,” said the fat one in the stained shirt. “This is an adventure. This is an excuse to get to know each other, have some fun… *crack* Pop open a few beers…”

“Goddamn it,” said the driver, “did you just open a beer in my car? You know that’s a felony, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, like the cops are going to pull us over now. Just relax. Chill. Enjoy life for a change. Come on, this is the official reunion tour of The Wrecking Crew.”

***

“Whatever, just… hold on. I’m going to see what’s going on up ahead.” The driver opened his door and got out of the car. He looked ahead. Nothing but waves of tightly-packed immobile cars, stretching up ahead past the bend in the road. Traffic had come to a dead stop in both directions. He got back in the car.

“See anything?”

“Cars, lots of them. Not much else.”

“See, you need to stop worrying so much. Just take it easy. At least we’re under the overpass, so the car should stay nice and cool. Sit back, relax, breathe in the glorious fresh air, and the wonderful… hey, what’s that guy doing? Is he trying to climb the concrete wall?”

They looked out through the window. The highway was fenced in on either side by twelve foot high concrete walls. They were tall and thick, built to keep the highway noise out of nearby neighborhoods, and stop drunk drivers from plowing into backyards. They were sheer walls, not something you could expect to climb. And yet there somebody was, jumping and clawing at the wall like a drunken squirrel.

“Crazies. L.A. is like a vortex for them. Just sucks them in like a black hole. Just last week, I… Wait, what the hell? Look at all these people walking on the goddamn highway. Like I was saying, crazies. Hey, get back in your cars, assholes!”

***

There were just a few of them at first, doing their best to squeeze between the tightly-packed cars. Most were walking at a hurried, almost frantic pace. Here and there more people stepped out of their cars, and started to walk or run away. 

“Okay, this is weird. I’ve never seen people run like that. Like rats from a fire…”

“’Rats from a fire?’ Are you serious? Who talks like that?”

“I do, apparently. This is creeping me out. I’m going to get out and see what the hell is going on.”

“This is weird,” said the one in the hat. “Something’s going down. I’m recording this on my new iPhone, This shit is going on youtube!”

The driver stepped out of the car. Hundreds of people were running along the highway, some moving with stoic determination, others frantic and half-crazed. “Does anyone know what the hell is going on?”

“It’s her!” yelled a man as he ran past.

“’Her’? What do you mean ‘her’?” He backed up against his car as another man ran past him. He felt the car vibrating, and then he remembered something: The keys were in his pocket. The car was turned off.

The highway was awash with noise, even with the cars stopped: horns honking, engines rumbling, people yelling. But over the noise, he heard something else in the distance, slow and rhythmic. Each time it was a boom, followed by a deep rumble, like some distant colossus taking a step. Then another, a second later. And another. And another. Each time he could feel the ground shake ever so slightly.

***

He looked ahead, to the South, but he couldn’t see very far: the road curved not too far ahead, and there were tall buildings to the side. And then he saw her, emerging from behind a distant skyscraper. It was a woman—no, a giantess. She wore a short black strapless dress. She was young and blonde and beautiful, and utterly immense, in a way that made it difficult for him to grasp the sheer enormity of her scale.

She was on the highway, he realized, and she was walking towards them. She towered over the highway, making the cars below her look like small children’s toys. He could see her feet now, clad in high heels. Each of her feet was nearly two lanes wide. The scale of the destruction soon became apparent. One step, and the front of her shoes flattened two small cars, her heel piercing through a third. Another step, and she crushed the back of a semi-truck. The cars crinkled as if they were made of tinfoil; the people, he imagined, didn’t fare much better. Even the concrete sank and cracked below her. 

A panicked mob ran between the cars, doing their best to flee away from her. There must have been hundreds of them, maybe more. They were trying to outrun her, but it was little use. The giantess was making little effort to hurry. Her pace was relaxed, yet, her long legs gave her an enormous stride, letting her easily outrun the crowd. Soon she had nearly caught up with the bulk of them. The giantess paid the tiny people little heed. She merely kept walking, each footstep crushing people and cars together, as indiscriminately as some force of nature. With each step, and a dozen people were pounded into the pavement. With each step, more metal was crushed and twisted, more bodies eviscerated. 


***

The driver ran back to his car, waiting where he left it under the overpass. He opened the car door and looked at his friends. “Well, it’s a fucking giantess.”

“What?” said the hat, “On the highway? You gotta be kidding. You know they have a special path made for them and everything, right?” 

“Hey man,” said the fat one, “enough of this separate but equal crap. A giantess has every bit as much right to use the highway as you or I do.” 

“Sure,” said the driver, “except when I use the highway, I don’t crush semis into pancakes.”

“Good point. So what are we talkin’ anyway? A twenty footer, a thirty footer...” 

“Bigger.”

“Fifty? A hundred?”

“Bigger.”

“How big are we talking?”

“Two hundred feet tall from the sight of it. At least.”

“What?” said the guy in the baseball cap, who was busy recording the back of a truck with his iphone. “No one’s that big. Even Angelina isn’t that big. Kim Kardashian is out of town doing some kind of a traditional medicine coffee enema thing. Heard it on E!. And I really don’t see Julia Roberts or Jennifer Aniston rampaging through downtown L.A. Are you messing with us?”

“Just get out of the car and look for yourselves.”

***

They opened the door. The fat one stared at her in disbelief. “Oh. Well Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Who is that? I can almost place her... Wait! Oh my god that’s Liz! Princess Liz! From the show!”

A man who was running past came to a sudden stop upon hearing the name. “Princess Liz? From the Big Life? I watch that show every day! Hey everyone, turn around! Princess Liz is here!”

A few more people stopped running. “Oh my God,” said a short blonde woman, “really? She’s like my inspiration. I never thought I’d see her in person. This is awesome. I’ll just get out my camera phone.”

“Princess Liz?” said another. “Oh my god I’m livetweeting this whole thing! Guess who I saw I.R.L.,” he said out loud to himself, “Princess Liz! Crushng cars now n coming 2 us! ”

Even more people stopped and stared. A congregation was starting to form under the overpass. 

***

“She’s even more beautiful in person,” said one man. “I remember the first time I ever saw her, after she stepped on the statue of liberty. It was just... so... beautiful...”

“It’s so inspiring,” said the blonde woman, “seeing her like this. It just reminds every woman that they could be like that someday. I may only be five foot three. But some day, if I hit it big, maybe won the Powerball... I could be the one stepping on tiny people. Pathetic, poor tiny people, like future giant me used to be.” The short woman’s eyes were closed; she made exaggerated stomping motions with her feet.

“Enough,” said the driver, “we need to get out of here. She’s getting closer. Look!”

The giantess was staring down, seemingly at her own breasts; she said something, too quietly to hear so far away, then started again. She looked at the ground. She looked at a dense group of people, then stomped down hard, sending a shockwave that knocked over cars thirty feet away. She found another dense group nearby, and brought her foot down upon them. Then another, and another. She was no longer indifferent to the destruction around her; she was actively seeking to cause it. She kicked a semi-truck, effortlessly throwing it thirty feet into the air. It rolled sideways along the ground, crushing cars and crowds before it tumbled to a stop.

The giantess stopped, bringing her hands up to her face. For a moment he thought she was going to throw her hands out wildly and let out some terrible roar. Instead, she did something completely unexpected: she giggled playfully, covering her face with embarrassment. Then she continued on. She was almost to the overpass. She was almost to them.

“Take me, Liz! Take me!” said an overweight man under the overpass.

“Eat me!” said a hispanic man. “I love you princess! Eat me!” 

“Okay,” the driver said with a sideways glance, “let’s just ignore those guys. We need to go. Any second now, she’s going to crush this overpass.”

“Maybe we’ll be safe under here,” said his friend in the baseball hat, looking up at the overpass.

“Nah, no way. Did you see what she did to those cars? Come on, we need to go!”

***

She approached the overpass, which was empty save for a single abandoned tanker truck sitting on top. To her, the bridge was scarcely above ankle-high. She could have stepped over it easily. Instead, after hesitating for a moment, she brought her foot down upon the bridge. 

“Eat me!” the fat man and the hispanic man called out in unison.

A voice came down from above, beautiful as an angel, powerful as a goddess. “Eww! I’m not eating you, you perverts! You’re fat, and you’re a Mexican! Gross!”

“Take me,” said the crazy blonde woman, “take me! I want to be you! I want to be--”

“You’re all weird!” screamed Liz. “Get away from me!” 

Liz’s enormous foot came down on the overpass, knocking over the support structure in the middle. In an instant the entire bridge fell in, a hundred tons of concrete and rebar falling down upon the dozens of people below. “I love you Elizab--” the blonde woman yelled, before a concrete slab the size of an elephant came down upon her. “Eat me! Eat muu--aah!” screamed the fat man. Liz’s huge foot slammed down, the toe of her shoe coming down against the concrete with the force of a bomb. The man’s body burst like a blood-filled water balloon. 

The driver managed to avoid the worst of it. He was standing almost to the side of the overpass. A small slab of concrete, the size of a baseball, hit him in the face, knocking him down. A larger slab, the size of a soccer ball, landed on his right leg. He was too shocked to feel the pain, but he realized the significance of it in an instant; his right leg would never work again. Lying flat on his back, he looked up and saw the giantess stepped over the remains of the overpass; the overpass that Liz could have easily stepped over. She continued on, her monumental legs reaching far into the sky. After a moment she was all but out of sight, her long strides carrying her far off into the distance.

***

He remembered the cadillac. “Guys!” he called out, pushing the rubble off his leg and forcing himself up. “Guys!” he called out again, making his way towards the car. He didn’t see it at first. The car was covered by rubble, small and large. It wasn’t smashed, at least, not completely. “Guys!” he called out again, limping his way to the driver’s seat of the car. 

He opened the car door, shaking off dust and bits of concrete. “Guys!” he threw open the door and looked inside. In the passenger side he saw his fat friend, or what was left of him. The right side of the car had caved in completely, crushing his upper body. His lower body, on the other hand, looked as if nothing had happened. The man’s left hand still clutched an unopened beer. 

“Hey,” said a voice from the backseat. “I’m... I’m alive. Back... back here.”

“Gary!”

“Dave...” 

“Are you okay?” He looked back, and immediately knew the answer. A piece of rebar stuck diagonally through his torso, pinning his stomach and right arm to the seat. 

“Oh Jesus Christ oh god oh god oh god...” said Dave.

“Hey,” said Gary, handing his iPhone to Dave with his left hand. ”it’s okay... Just... tell my wife... that I love her...”

“Gary... you don’t have a wife anymore, remember?”

“Oh, right... Well tell my ex that... she can fucking die, for all I care...”

“Can do, Gary,” he said, choking back tears. “Can do.”

“I... I recorded everything... Put it online... I always wanted to be... internet famous...”

“Of course, Gary.”

“Dave?”

“Yeah?” 

“I don’t think I’m going to live. I... This is weird, but... Will you just... hold my hand?” They looked into each others’ tear-filled eyes.

“Of course. I love you, bro.”

“Bro, I love you too.” 

“Yo... Yo... Yo... Yolo... You... You only live once, right bro? I... This hasn’t been bad, but... there was so much I still wanted to do... Have kids, have a real family...”

“Hey, it’s been real, yo.” 

Dave stared into Gary’s eyes. His friend’s eyes never closed, never looked away from him, but after a minute he realized something had changed. They were whiter somehow, and the hand felt colder. Dave held his hand tight for a minute, so tight that it almost hurt. Then he said goodbye to both his friends. 

Dave looked down the highway. The wreckage stretched on for miles; broken pavement, crushed cars, bodies scattered about by the hundreds. He stood there for a second, taking it all in. What was the meaning of this? What could possibly justify all this destruction? He started down the road, doing his best to limp along with a right-leg that would never work again.

***

“Oh my god this is so much fun! We should do this more often!” She walked along the highway. Crowds of people tried to flee away from her. The smart ones ran towards the edge of the highway, where they would have a good chance of surviving, while the dumb ones ran in the center, trying in vain to outrun her. As it turns out, to no one’s surprise, most L.A. drivers are the latter. They did their best to outrun the giantess, but it took them a hundred paces to match one of hers. With each step, another dozen or so people were crushed under foot. Many were lucky enough to escape her feet, though many were not.

“Hey,” asked Liz, “was that good earlier?”

“Was what good?” responded Ted. He was wedged between her enormous breasts, his arms hanging over the top of her low-cut dress.

“The whole ‘angry giantess’ thing. I’m trying to play it up a bit. Knocking down bridges, stomping on people, you know... Let’s see, let me do something rampage-y... Rawr!” She let out a long roar. It was incredibly loud, given her size, and perhaps almost fearsome, but it sounded very much like an eighteen-year old girl pretending to be a monster.

“Pretty scary, right?” 

“That roar was... uh... good? We’ll have to work on that one.” He paused for a second. “You know, you can be pretty terrifying when you’re upset. Hey, see the people cowering behind that car? Pretend they did something terrible. Something that fills your heart with deep and all-consuming rage.”

“Okay... Hey, you idiots,” she said with genuine anger, “how dare you use that fake lime stuff in MY Mojito!” Half a dozen people stared up at her from behind a small car. The people looked up at her, then at each other, with a mix of fear and confusion. She stomped down on them, her giant foot making a deep crater in the cement. The car was flattened into a thin layer of twisted metal. The people she crushed stuck to the bottom of her shoe, with a gooey consistency not unlike chewed gum.

“Not bad, Liz! I bought that! You can be quite the wrecking crew when you want to be!”

“Thanks! I try. How many people do you think I’ve killed so far? Five hundred? A thousand?” She started walking again, quickly catching up to the screaming crowds. She crushed more cars and people with each footstep.

“Don’t sell yourself short, I’m sure you’re at at least two thousand now. Just keep at it, and the body count will only get higher! Don’t stress about the numbers, though. The important thing is that you’re enjoying yourself. You are enjoying yourself, right?”

“Of course!” she said, as her next couple crushed an elderly couple, holding hands in the front seat of their Cadillac as her huge foot came down upon them. “Rampaging is fun. It’s such a good way to relieve stress.” She stepped again. Her foot came down along a trailer, crushing the dozens of illegal immigrants who were hiding fearfully in the back. 

***

“Ted?” She stopped in her tracks. “Can I tell you something? Something... personal?”

“Of course... umm... what is it?”

“It’s just that... You know how it feels when you’re about to step on someone, and you realize just how easy it would be to crush their tiny little body into goo?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t know that feeling personally, but...”

“You know what I mean, though, right? It’s makes you feel so powerful... like I’m a goddess, like Oprah or something, and they’re just a tiny, insignificant speck...”

Ted paused for a moment. “You know, I think I can relate. Sometimes when I fire someone, I’ll really tell them off: make them think they messed up big time, tell them how they’ll never work again in this town... even though we’re just laying them off for budgetary reasons... Or when I yell at a waitress for messing up my order, even though I know she’s new, and she actually got the order right... Or when I cut my employees’ wages, even though my company’s profits are at a record high... Just knowing that you can fuck over someone’s life for no good reason, without any personal repercussions... Best. Feeling. In. The. World.”

“Exactly. Just knowing you have complete control over someone, it makes you feel so powerful. Sometimes I’d just hold someone under my baby toe--my baby toe!--so that the tiniest, most innocent part of my body decides whether they’ll live or die. And then I’ll press down, just a little, and they’ll yell and scream at me to stop... And then I’ll let off, and pretend like I’m about to set them free... and then bam! Dead,” she laughed, “Squashed like a bug!”

“That sounds great... Just like when I take some hot-shot 20-something who’s been working for me for years, and tell them their position is being turned into an unpaid internship... but then,” he laughed, “they keep working the job anyway, without any pay, just because they can’t find anything better!”

Elizabeth laughed. “I love taking advantage of my power over little people. I love hurting them. I love killing them. It used to just be something I did on accident, or because they made me mad, or because they got in my way, but I... I like it. Like, I really like it. Like... it feels makes me feel all tingly...”

“Woah, woah, woah, I don’t need to hear all this. My wife would kill me if she knew I was having this conversation with the famously nubile Princess Elizabeth. It’s enough that I’m wedged between your tits--sorry, breasts. But, anyway...” he said, looking at his feet, “I think that kind of homicidal urges are healthy and normal, for a woman that uses the Red Spice. And I’m sure you use plenty of the Red Spice, right?”

***

Liz looked off into the distance. “Oh, yeah... of course, all the time. I just... swallow tons of it. On the reg. Definitely. I’m really experienced. That’s why I’m so big! Of course it is. Why else would I be this big? But... it’s just that, that feeling, when I eat someone, or feel them crushed underneath my foot? It makes me feel like I need to rub myself, between my--”

Ted looked up at Liz. “okay, okay, let’s stop the conversation right there. I want to maintain a professional relationship, Liz.”

She looked into Ted’s small, bespectacled eyes. “I don’t.Ted, you’re the first person I’ve ever known who gets me. Which is why, I just wondered if you would...”

“Liz, I’m sorry. If I was ten years younger, I’d say yes in a heartbeat. But I’m thirty-two, and I’m married, and, you’re so much taller than me. I’d ignore all that if I was still 22. You’re an incredibly beautiful woman. But when you get older, you start to think more about the long-term. And I know there’s no way this relationship would end that doesn’t involve someone trying to squeegee my crushed remains out of one of your orifices... And you’re young, and beautiful, and rich, and famous. Don’t you have some kind of a boyfriend or something?”

“No... When I was younger, my mom was really protective of me. She didn’t want me to make the same mistakes she did when she was younger. Oh, she was a stupid, spoiled slut when she was my age. Everyone knows it. So any time some boy got close to me, she’d kill them. And then I moved over here, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to, except for my stupid employees, and I kept stepping on them. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, except... except for you.”

“Okay, wow. I just, I don’t even know what to say, except... you realize this wouldn’t work, right?”

“Yeah? Maybe not.” she paused for a second, then the expression on her face changed. She placed her hands on her breasts, pressing them together. “What if I said that you didn’t have any choice? That if you said no, I’d just squish you like a bug between my tits?”

“I’d say, you couldn’t do it.”

***

She squeezed tighter. Ted struggled to breathe, her breasts pushing hard against his stomach. “I’ve done it before. One time, one of my servants was putting tanning oil on my breasts, and I felt his dick touching me... Just like that. I squeezed them together, pressed my tits against him, until I felt his little eyes popping out of his skull. I kept pressing these huge tits together, tighter and tighter, until his skull popped like a zit. And then I had a cleaning crew come along and clean his blood off my tits, and I thought I felt one of them feeling me up, so I did the same thing to him. And then I had to get another cleaning crew, and one of those guys... Well, let’s just say it was a long night. So how is this any different?”

He paused for a moment. “Because you like me.”

She paused as well. “I do like you.” She released her grip. Her breasts fell back, and Ted breathed a sigh of relief. 

“You know, the Emmy’s start in like twenty minutes. We’re running late. There’s a junior college over that way, you can take a shortcut through there. We can still make it on time. Hey, Liz?”

“What?”

“I like you too.”

She stepped over the barricade, walking onto a side-street. The crowds screamed and from her in terror.