Poor little people, staring back at her through the clear walls of their prison.

They had freaked-out badly when she had squashed the woman in front of them, especially the spear-thrower. Even now he glowered at her, his mouth trembling with barely-suppressed rage. Melissa paused in washing the gore from her fingers and raised her hand, waving at him, mocking him. Wyatt blinked, his cheeks reddening with fury. His impotent rage made her giggle.

Once her hands were clean, she found a plastic cup that had come with the cabin and reached down into the cage, snatching up a fistful of people. By now, they understood that her intentions were far from benevolent and they fought with all their might, some wiggling desperately, others kicking and punching her fingers. It was difficult not to just clench her fist and reduce them to hamburger. No, she needed to interrogate them first. The entire handful went into the cup.

Melissa carried the panicking ImMen into the bathroom, flicking on the light as she entered. She knelt down and upended the cup into the bathtub, insect-sized people tumbling down near the rusted drain. This was the best place to do what she had planned; after all, clean-up would be much easier than if she put them down on the floor.

Her shadow fell over them as she leaned forward, elbows propped up on the side of the tub.

“Listen up, you little bastards. You’re going to tell me where the other colony is located or I’m going to kill each and every one of you,” she declared cheerfully. The ImMen looked up at her, clustered together in the center of the tub as if for solidarity. She remained crouched beside the tub, waiting for a response. When one didn’t come, she stood up and swung one leg into the tub. The little people fled as her other leg came down.

“Are you fucking deaf?” Her voice sounded less angry than she would have liked. Melissa wasn’t mad, not really. Instead, she felt a vicious thrill as she stood with her legs wide apart, her tiny victims trying to climb up out of the tub. She eyed one young man who was dressed in scraps of emerald green fabric. His attempts to scale the sides of the tub were pitiful but he was obviously trying his best, searching for a foothold in the porcelain. Good God, they’re all so pathetic, she thought.

“Hey there, Peter Pan. Where the hell are you going?” She demanded.

The ImMan stopped trying to climb the wall and reluctantly glanced over his shoulder when he heard her remark. He really did resemble a little Peter Pan, with his boyish face and green outfit. It was too bad for him that he had caught her attention. When she lifted her right foot and brought it toward him, he made a shrill bleat of terror and raised both arms. She took her time lowering her foot onto him, feeling the tickle of his minuscule hands against her arch. The laughter that bubbled up from her throat quickly drowned out the man’s cries. With deft precision, Melissa pinned the ImMan against the wall of the tub, his body squirming against her sole. Although she couldn’t see his face, she imagined that he was scared out of his mind. The realization that she held complete control over his very life made her shiver with cruel delight.

Melissa applied just enough pressure to make him shriek in animalistic agony before she crushed him against the tub wall. The ImMan’s delicate body simply collapsed beneath her weight, like soft Play-Doh, bright red streamers of blood spraying outward. She drew her breath in sharply, aware of the pleasant warmth that was spreading from her lower belly to the junction of her thighs. It felt so wrong and yet so right as she touched herself through her shorts, the pleasure increasing as her fingers lightly pressed against her clit.

She lifted her foot, the smashed body landing with a wet plop on the porcelain. The other ImMen squealed and ran, but she was far too quick for them. Her blood-smeared foot lashed out, crushing a scrawny brunette against the side of the tub. When Melissa dragged her foot away, it left a small streak of blood, and her mouth twitched with impatience. They weren’t talking, she could see that. They were panicking like the stupid little animals that they were.

“You know what? I think I’m just going to kill you all anyway,” she said in a voice husky with desire.

That sent the surviving ImMen into a complete frenzy, and they fought each other as they tried to get away. Melissa ignored them for the moment, taking a step or two across the tub and leaving behind crimson footprints. She turned on the shower radio, where “Dream A Little Dream of Me” was playing on one of the satellite stations.

Predatory lust filled her as she faced her little victims and then began to stomp on them one by one, sending their insides out through various openings in their bodies. The sound of fragile bones snapping and crunching rose over Mama Cass’ singing. Soon most of the ImMen were reduced to reddish-purple mush, the inside of the tub littered with their flattened bodies. Their blood contrasted starkly with her pale skin, splashes of gore reaching her ankles. With a terrible deliberation, she pursued the survivors, unzipping her shorts as she did so. As she stepped on yet another wailing ImMan, the woman’s organs erupting through her side with shocking violence, Melissa began to stroke her clit in languid, circular motions.

She felt huge and powerful and unstoppable, a living goddess standing amongst her tribute.

Her moans of pleasure reverberated throughout the bathroom as the gory remains of the ImMen smeared beneath her. The orgasm ripped through her a few seconds later, and she arched her body, her head thrown back. Eventually the pleasure wore away, leaving her feeling tired but satisfied. Glancing down, she spotted movement amidst the carnage in the tub. Oh, look, one had survived. Melissa watched the tiny woman crawling through the pulverized remnants of her friends for awhile. Then she grabbed her, nearly dropping the slimy, bloody creature.

As the ImMan squeaked and wiggled, Melissa sat down on the edge of the tub. Another song had come on the radio, but she wasn’t listening to it. Her focus was on the woman in her hand.

“This is what happens when you don’t answer my questions,” she said, waving her free hand toward the smashed corpses dotting the porcelain. “I mean, I told them that I’d kill them.”

The little creature in her fist gasped.

“Now, are you going to tell me where the others are?” Melissa asked, bringing the ImMan so close to her face that her every breath stirred the woman’s hair.

Of course, the ImMan wouldn’t tell her, so with a single squeeze, she ended her life. Opening her hand, she allowed the broken body to plummet to the tub.

***

The next morning Melissa sat outside on one of the cabin steps, watching the sun rise behind the pine trees and contemplating the fate of the remaining people in the kitchen. She could just kill them all at once, but that wouldn’t help her find the other colony. No, what she needed to do was gain their trust. One of them would blab the location of their fellows eventually. She hoped it would be the spear-thrower, Wyatt. He intrigued her with his bravado, and the thought of slowly breaking his mind and body brought a tingle of pleasure to the area between her legs. Idly, she imagined how it would feel to have him lick at her breasts, at her swollen clit. Although she usually never thought of ImMen in that way, she found herself dwelling on that idea.

She was replaying the fantasy in her mind when her cell phone rang. A quick glance showed her that it was her friend, Heidi. At first, she was reluctant to answer it. She had known Heidi since they had been roommates in college and although she was a kind-hearted person, she had a unconscious habit of pointing out the flaws in others. The last time that they had spoken she had gone on and on about Melissa’s job, how it was awful that the government actually paid exterminators to kill tiny people. Melissa had pointed out ImMen were not people; they were a step up from talking lab rats. Of course, that had angered Heidi, who had countered that only monsters would think that way. Melissa had allowed the insult to pass, although she had silently resented Heidi and her morality and her high-paying attorney job and her handsome husband.

And here she was again, calling at six o’clock in the morning.

Melissa sighed and answered the phone. “Hey, Heidi.”

“Melissa! I didn’t think that you’d be up!”

“Yeah, I’m up. How’ve you been?”

“Oh, you know. Jack’s away on travel and I’ve been so lonely the past few days. Honestly, I don’t know how you do that, living in that cabin all by yourself,” Heidi said.

“It’s not so bad.”

“It’d drive me crazy. And that job—,”

Melissa interrupted her friend by clearing her throat. There was no way that she was going to let Heidi go off on one of her tirades again. For some reason, her mind drifted back to what she had done yesterday. Her friend would probably never speak to her again if she knew about that little adventure.

“Well, I do worry about you. How’d you feel about me visiting sometime? Just you and me and a nice bottle of merlot? It’ll be like college again,” Heidi said. But Melissa wasn’t paying much attention. She was thinking of Wyatt and trying to decide whether he would have screamed like some of those ImMen had in the tub.

“So?” Heidi asked.

“So what?”

“So how’d you feel about me visiting?”

“That’s be great,” Melissa heard herself say, although her mind was still on the little spear-thrower.

***

By the time that the human came for him, Wyatt felt nothing more more than a reluctant acceptance. With the exception of Mark and Deirdre and a few others, many of the ImMan had disappeared with the giantess. Deep down, he knew what she had done with them and what she would eventually do to him. When he saw Melissa approach the cage, he just watched her face, moving from one eye to the other. For some reason, her eyes reminded him more of a bobcat’s than a human’s. There was intelligence there, yes, but something else. Something cold and predatory and utterly lacking in mercy.

The human dipped her hand into the cage and picked him up. Surprisingly, she was gentle as she carried him into the sparsely furnished living room. There was an old blue couch that had probably been in style twenty-five years ago, a well-used coffee table and a bookcase with sagging shelves. Melissa dropped Wyatt on the table and settled down on the couch, facing him. On one side of the table was an immense device which Wyatt assumed was a computer (although this was based solely upon vague descriptions that Mark and others had provided).

A platter with some sort of food was on the other side and as Wyatt watched, the giantess reached over and grabbed it. He was accustomed to eating seeds and mushrooms and whatever else the forest provided, and the whitish foodstuff looked vaguely disgusting to him. Still, it had been quite some time since he had last eaten and he watched with hungry eyes as she took a bite big enough to feed him for a month.

As Melissa chewed, he thought about running. But to where? He was too high off the ground to get very far. Perhaps he could just jump off the table and end his life quickly. As he was considering this, the human finally addressed him.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot, Wyatt.”

He remained silent.

Melissa smiled, a seemingly benevolent expression, and tore off the corner of the strange white food. Instinctively he backed away as she laid it before her. The chunk of whatever it was awful looking, brownish and purplish paste between two spongey slabs. A cloying, sweet smell, vaguely nutty, drifted off from it.

“Go ahead. It’s not like it’s poisoned,” Melissa said when Wyatt didn’t touch the offering. The smile expanded and she showed far too much teeth as she continued, “There are more amusing ways to kill ImMen.”

As much as he didn’t want to, he ripped off a handful of the food, noticing how repulsively sticky the brownish goo was. He purposely averted his eyes as he ate, painfully aware that Melissa was staring at him the entire time.

“See? I’m not such a bad person,” the giantess said, and Wyatt didn’t dare to argue with her. No, she wasn’t a bad person…she was a horrible one. The saccharine-sweetness of her voice couldn’t change this. She had murdered countless people, which he supposed that he could understand in a way, especially since humans viewed ImMen as vermin. But she had done it in a way that suggested that she relished every second of their agony. That was what sickened him.

The only question left was why she hadn’t killed him, and Wyatt already knew the answer. He stopped eating when she spoke again.

“So, Wyatt…have you seen the other colony? I’m sure that you have,” Melissa said.

It took all of his courage to meet her inhuman gaze. “No, I haven’t. I-I didn’t go outside of my own colony much. It was too dangerous.”

He truly expected her to simply kill him then and there. Every muscle in his body tensed, anticipating a lethal blow from above. But Melissa just leaned back, still wearing that chilling smile.

“Well, that’s just too bad.” She tapped on her chin with one finger, scrutinizing him thoughtfully. There was something else in her eyes, something that he had seen before. Wyatt was aware that he was young and attractive and so he had never lacked for female attention. He recognized the attraction in her eyes, similar to that of the women with whom he had shared a bed. Except the human's gaze was so much more intense.

Melissa moved her hand from her chin, sweeping it down toward him. He thought she would grab him, but she just ran her finger down the length of his body, beginning at the top of his head and ending around his knees. The giantess’ touch was gentle but it repulsed him nonetheless. The naked lust in her eyes was terrible to behold and he tried to back away, but she caught him around the middle. His reaction was instantaneous. Frantically he pummeled her fingers with both fists, his blows ineffective. Still, he continued to beat at the giantess’ flesh until she chuckled at him.

“Really? You think that’s going to stop me, you little pissant?” Melissa shook Wyatt in her fingers like a dog with a chewtoy. His entire body flopped bonelessly in her grip, his teeth clacking together hard enough that he feared they would shatter. When she finally stopped, his mind continued to reel with dizziness. He was too disoriented at first to notice that she was eagerly undressing him, yanking at his clothing. One of her plum-painted fingernails, as large as his torso and tougher than steel to him, tore at his skin. Wyatt shrieked in pain and rage, fighting her again as she nonchalantly stripped him.

When the human succeeded in pulling down his pants, exposing him before her, Wyatt stopped punching the massive fingers. Instead he sank his teeth down into the digit closest to his head, biting down so hard that his jaw ached. He tasted salty sweat and flesh but no blood; his teeth were too tiny to puncture her skin.

But she certainly saw what he was doing. Annoyance deformed her face, and then her finger lashed out, flicking him. There was a moment of agony and displacement as Wyatt went flying backward. He must have blacked-out, since he didn’t remember landing. The next thing that he knew, his entire body was pulsating with pain and he was sprawled out on a fabric plateau. The ground beneath him was warm and quite alive; he could hear a powerful, rhythmic pulse as he lay in a fetal position. Wyatt understood that Melissa was now spread out across the couch and he was atop her abdomen, just above her navel. He didn’t dare to stand up; only his eyes moved, drifting upwards toward the massive face that watched him contemptuously.

“I’m willing to bet that you’re one of those tough guys who can take a beating. But there’s more than just physical torture. I bet it’d absolutely tear you apart if I killed all of your friends in front of you,” Melissa told him. Something in his expression betrayed him because she gave a short, delighted chuckle.

“I could do that, you know. There was one ImMan leader, this bitch who thought that she could defy me. I could tell that there wasn’t much I could do to break her…I could have twisted-off one of her legs and she probably still would have spat in my face. Anyway, I realized that she had a lover amongst the other prisoners and so I decided to show her how the French prepare Ortolan.”

Wyatt felt the blood draining rapidly from his face.

“So I bought some Armagnac and after I drowned him in it, I roasted him right in front of that little bitch. My goodness, how she screamed! And she screamed even louder when I chewed him up,” Melissa said with maniacal glee. Somehow, he knew that she wasn’t lying. Perhaps it was the way that her mouth contorted into a sadistic smile, or the merciless gleam in her eyes. His stomach churned but he refused to give her the satisfaction of being sick in front of her.

“I wonder what your girlfriend would taste like,” the human mused aloud. Deirdre, he realized with increasing dread, she was talking about Deirdre…Wyatt quivered as she continued, “But if you cooperate with me, I’ll go easy on them. Understand?”

“Y-yes,” Wyatt agreed reluctantly.

“‘Yes, Mistress,’ because that’s what I am to you, you little creep.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

This time, when she began to stroke his curled body, he didn’t resist.

***

Once Wyatt was back in the cage with the rest of his ImMen friends, Melissa went into the bedroom and stretched out on the twin bed. She’d type up her report later. It wasn’t like the daily reports mattered much, just the ones that actually involved the extermination of colonies. Her boss probably didn’t even look at them, just automatically saved them into some folder on her desktop. All of Melissa’s statistics, including time spent researching, time spent exterminating, time spent creating reports, were added to a vast and incomprehensible database that someone in Washington, D.C., may or may not read someday in the future.

Sometimes, she idly wondered if she should choose another career. Perhaps she could apply for another job, become a zookeeper or researcher or something like that. But in all honesty, she loved what she did. And she could still pinpoint the moment when she had chosen her path in life.

Melissa had been a biology major in college and one of the special electives had been ImMen anatomy. She had heard about the tiny creatures, especially since they seemed to be all over the news on a recurring basis. Once, when she was by herself, she had watched a politician place an ImMan on the table before him and explain how the little being wasn’t a human at all. Melissa had leaned closer to the television, studying the petrified woman and wondering how it would feel to hold her in the palm of her hand. The thought had made her shudder with excitement.

So of course she had signed up for the anatomy course and she had half-listened as the professor droned on about the physical differences between the two species. There weren’t many; ImMen tended to be hardier than humans, which made sense for organisms that were created for the sole purpose of being test subjects.

The best part of the class had been when she had dissected one of the tiny creatures. With exquisite precision, the scalpel had sliced through the screaming ImMan’s soft flesh. His insides had been revealed to her, his minuscule torso opened up to show a collection of glistening maroon organs. As she had looked down at her glassy-eyed victim, ruby droplets of his blood sparkling on the knife, she decided that she wanted to become an exterminator.

And so here she was, lying on a hard mattress, putting off her report so that she could daydream for awhile. Her mind went back to the remaining ImMen in the kitchen, Wyatt in particular. For a moment, she imagined him normal-sized, gently holding her breasts in his hands, his thick fingers curved around them. Then she pictured him tiny again, so small and fragile, his life now in her hands. She alternated between the two images as she lay there, her eyes closed but her eyelids fluttering slightly.