Harold sat in his little boat of about seven feet in length, hull painted white with a polished interior made of the highest quality cedar wood. To him, time spent in the boat was time away from the humdrum of the world; the still blue waters of Palmer’s Lake never failed to calm him down after a distressful day.
It was miles away from most of the residential parts of Palm Creek , away from the noise and bustle of civilization; one would require a forty minute drive just to get to the lake.
The lake had a tranquil feel to it, extending for at least a mile or two in all directions and going down to a depth of approximately one hundred and fifty feet. It was foreboding yet calming all at once.
With a fishing rod in his hand,the end of which was submerged into the water, he could spend the entire day out here. Right now, he needed it.
He glanced briefly at the river that fed it, it's name unknown to him; he didn’t bother with learning it, it served no purpose in his life.
A soft click of disapproval escaped Harold’s lips when his mind drifted to current affairs. He remembered the day she showed up, with Jack on her shoulders like something out of a B-grade monster movie. The next day, he saw the damage she had wrought. An entire road destroyed thanks to the imprints left by her feet, a shophouse having part of it's roof damaged due to a stray swing of her broad hips. What vexed him most was her apathy towards all of this. That carefree smile as she and Jack joked about something likely to be trivial irked him even more.
“ Freak,” he muttered. She didn’t belong here, that he knew. He couldn’t understand why the government hadn’t arrested her and Jack yet, letting her go was a definite fubar on their part.
His rod started to jerk in the water , once forward and then twice back . Harold gripped it tightly with both hands to steady it but the waters around him started to churn violently and this made him lose balance .He would have gone overboard but thankfully managed to steady himself by holding onto the edge of the boat.
He scanned the water, spotting a dark shape in the water; and it was approaching him with great haste.. Whatever it was, it was easily the size of a whale, perhaps larger. He turned on the motor, roaring into life and sped away from it.
Seconds after he heard a huge crash as a large humanoid broke the surface, throwing up a white mist of foam and water. Harold’s heart was in his mouth when he thought of how he had just been under there, a moment too late and he would be smashed to bits. As the waters calmed, it revealed the identity of the leviathan and he knew who it was and she very nearly killed him. Her skin was more tanned than it had been a week ago but her bare breasts, topped by brown nipples stiff from the cold water glistened under the afternoon sun.
She let out a sigh of immense satisfaction before shaking her entire torso, the water falling off her as her hair flailed about. Harold could not but stare at her breasts, two globes wobbling due to the momentum Jessica had imparted. The fact that her physical body had a very pleasing aesthetic was just about the only thing he’d accept about her.
When she did stop, her hair fell back down, the water gluing them to her breasts. Harold resolved to confront her about the whole near death incident.He set the boat in reverse as the motor tutted itself, something which Jessica had heard and seen.
She wasn’t pleased with another intruder at her bathing site. It wasn’t even easy finding a body of water to bathe in, the water either smelled like manure or was too murky. Despite the greenish colouration, this stretch of river was clean enough and also deep enough for her to use.
“ I thought I told everyone not to come here, especially during my baths,” Jessica hissed at him. She waded through the waist high water, stopping when she felt Harold’s boat bump against her stomach. She chuckled when the impact sent him flat on to his back. She knew him as an annoying twerp who made daily complaints about her so seeing him like this didn’t get any sympathy from her.
“ This is public space, anyone can come here and use it. You don’t get to play bouncer.”
Ticked off by his answer, Jessica folded her arms across her chest, “ I held a meeting in town on my first day here. We discussed it, you guys agreed to let me have access to this stretch as a place to clean myself; or would you rather I smell like really old cheese?”
“I’d rather you go back to the lab you were made in,” Harold said, he wasn’t going to hold back when dealing with a bully like her.
Jessica giggled, he may have been a little pest but sometimes he was fun to have around when he tried to throw savage insults. Like Jack was, but not nearly as attractive or kind.
“ I wasn’t made in a lab, I was born to parents like you. The only difference is my parents are proud of me.”
“ Well no one here is so we’d love it if you leave and went back to wherever it is you came from.”
Jessica snorted, the blast of air from her nostrils slamming into Harold, eliciting a grunt as he endured the hit.
“That was deliberate,” he accused her.
“ Well I definitely intended to keep breathing, it's not my fault if you’re too light to stand up against a breeze.”
She bent over, her pendulous breasts swaying as her shadow covered Harold and his boat. He watched as she lowered herself until her hair was nearly touching the boat. Harold began to shiver, his natural instinct taking over with the
“ That’s a really nice boat,” Jessica complimented him. She reached over with a hand only to see Harold try to push it back; it didn’t do anything.
“Don’t you touch it! This thing is worth more than you’ll ever make in your life!”He beat on her log sized finger with his fists but like his earlier effort, it didn’t anything except further irritate the giantess.
“ Oh come on, I’m not going to break it,” she huffed. She considered puffing but somehow that would lead to more complaints directed at Jack.
“ Yes you will, your godzilla hands wreck everything they touch!” He reached into his pouch and pulled out a can of Mace, holding it in front of him like a gun.
“ I’ve got protection and I’m not afraid to use it!” He waved the can around franticly. Jessica sighed, her attempt at niceties didn’t work out well. She assumed he loved his boat and a conversation over it should have put him at ease.
“ My skin stops bullets, I can lift a tank with one hand and throw it like a shotput and I run faster than a train. A little can of pepper isn’t going to affect me; which shouldn’t scare you because I’m not here to hurt you. So put it away,” she asked Harold nicely.
Harold didn’t listen, he still held the can in front of him, intent on protecting himself, the can itself just feet away from her face.
“ You.Touch.The.Boat.You.Get.It,” he uttered through gritted teeth, anger surging through his body.
Jessica shook her head, disappointed in his idiocy.
“ I got to finish my bath, you need to be somewhere else so I’m going to move this boat.”
She placed her hand under the boat,Harold’s whole body shaking with fear as she prepared to lift it.
“ Back off!” He shouted but Jessica responded with a derisive rolls of her eyes, clicking her tongue in further disapproval.
“ Whatever, as if that thing will hurt me,” Jessica called his bluff.
Jessica pulled the boat up but as she did, Harold pressed down on the can and a fine spray filled the air in front of her; Jessica inhaled the entire spray but Harold did not stop and let off a few more.
“ I told you-” Jessica dropped the boat back into the water, the few feet it fell managed to leave Harold flat on his ass.
“ What...the...hell…” Jessica’s nose itched and tickled as the spray filled her airways. She felt the heat, no worse than mild itch but enough to affect her. Her breathing grew laboured, breaths coming in short intervals.
Harold watched , surprised it worked but as her head leaned back, mouth gaping and nose wrinkling, he began to recognise what it was leading up to: Jessica was going to sneeze. Instinctively he backed away but there was only so far he could retreat on a seven foot long boat.
“ Oh GOODNE-AHHHHH CHOO!” Jessica sneezed right in front of Harold, sending forth winds on par with a tropical storm right at him.Harold was pelted with saliva and mucus, the experience similar to being trapped in a wind tunnel; a wind tunnel full of saliva and other bodily fluids. His body was thrown overboard with the boat which itself was overturned.
Jessica sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her finger.
“Oh my god!” she cried out at the sight of Harold’s overturned boat, sans Harold himself.
Below, Harold struggled in the greenish waters, narrowly avoiding the boat.
What kind of power is that, he thought to himself. A mild sneeze had nearly destroyed him. He looked around, spotting a pair of tanned pillars as thick as redwoods to his left and a dark triangular patch where they met.
Nope, just nope,he thought to himself. It was just another freakish part of a woman who didn’t deserve to live among the rest of society. His thoughts were broken by something large grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and yanking him up. Harold screamed, his baritone cry for help ignored by Jessica who silently held him up in the air. She dropped him into her hand, Harold coughing up greenish water. He stood up, expecting to see Jessica’s furious visage staring down at him.
He didn’t get that, Jessica’s face had worry written all over it. Her brow furrowed and she appeared to sigh, relieved by the lack of physical trauma on him.
“ Lets get you back,” Jessica spoke calmly. Harold found it unsettling, was she planning something else.
“You nearly killed me!”
“ Only after you sent that spray up my nose!” Jessica protested, offended by his lack of gratitude.
“ I don’t know what you thought you would achieve but I’m taking you back home. If you’ve broken something,I don’t want you blaming me for not getting you help.”
Jessica looked down at her bare body, nearly forgetting about the fact that she was stark naked. She turned to the little twit in her hand, he would probably try to run if she ever put him back in the boat. Where he would run to wasn’t known to her but if he behaved like Jack, then she had a problem.
“ You wait here while I put on my clothes,” Jessica instructed him. Harold grunted, folding his arms in frustration.
Jessica waded closer to shore, the gradual incline of the lake pushing her body up as the depth diminished with each earth shattering step.
There, on the grassy shoreline were her clothes, dark green tarps she had fashioned into a makeshift bra and panties. Jessica’s gut churned at the thought of letting him watch her change but given how he had seen every inch of her now, it didn’t matter as much.
Harold felt her arm move and he looked around , spotting a nearby tree with thick branches and trunk coming up on his view. Jessica’s equally thick fingers prodded and pushed through a few thin ones before pushing him on to a branch.
“Are you leaving me here? Right now, after you nearly killed me,” Harold accused her. Jessica turned her back to him, her toned shoulders rolling down as she bent over, her shapely buttocks coming into view. Harold shut his mouth briefly to enjoy the view, that wasn’t something he saw everyday.
“ Dayum.” That was all Harold could say.
*********
“I presume you’re fine,” Jack commented. He didn’t want to hear the story but he had to give Harold credit, it seemed grounded in reality and less fantasy than he expected. He thought it’d start with Jessica breathing fire and eating a small village; that was Harold’s style of storytelling: A lot of fiction and little facts.
“I will be when you deal with her,” Harold replied.
“ It seems to me you’re the one who intruded on her privacy, you then tried to pepper spray. I’m glad Jessica wasn’t hurt by it. You’re fine as it is.”
“Could have been worse.” Harold’s eyes narrowed, he felt nothing but disdain for Jack, the man stood by Jessica for every single mistake she made. What did see in her? She wasn’t worth defending at all; unless….
“ You’re fucking her aren’t you?”
Jack slammed his fist on the table, rattling their mugs and anything not firmly nailed down to the table.
“ Get out,” he pointed at the door.
“Hang on now, I’m the victim here…”
“I heard your sob story now get the hell out of here before I actually make you a victim.”
Harold stood up, eyes shooting daggers at Jack.
“Alright, I guess I hit a nerve there. Does Caitlin know?”
“ I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”
Harold shrugged his shoulders, a smug grin on him.
“Whatever works for you,” he turned and left.
Jack didn’t wait long before going back upstairs where Caitlin lay in bed reading her phone.
“ Harold’s gone. I’m going to see Jessica about it. Want to come?”
Caitlin smiled sweetly before shaking her head, she had no wish to interact with Jessica unless necessary.
“ Nope, you wanted her here, you clean up her mess.”
Jack nodded, it would be worse to persuade her otherwise.
“ I’ll be back soon,” he replied before trudging down the stairs. Maybe Jessica would at least make him feel welcome in his own house.