Like many of its kind, the pawn shop was dingy and dark, as though the proprietor was trying to take focus away from the merchandise.  It was the fourth one I had visited that day, and I was used to it.  In front of me the wall displayed a series of firearms ranging from pistols to assault rifles, and the glass counter had jewelry arranged in a grid with a reference on top.  The owner may as well have been copied from a template with the others – barrel-chested and wearing dark sunglasses and a bandana, he had his arms crossed while watching me.

I stepped forward and carefully withdrew a locket from my jacket, moving slowly so he knew it was not a threat.  Holding it by the chain I held it forward for him to inspect.  “How much can I get for this?” I asked.  It was small but old, and from my amateur appraisal I figured it was at least 18 karat gold while the chain was silver.  Tiny amethysts set in the front were arranged in a circle, and there was an inscription on the inside that, while I could not read it, had peculiar l’s with horizontal lines through them.  There was an old black and white picture behind the glass, but those were common in objects like this.

“Let me see what you got,” he replied, holding out his hand.  I dropped the locket into his palm, and he reached to the side and picked up his loupe.  He gripped it more daintily than his sausage fingers would suggest and held the loupe against his eye.  His fingers slightly turned the locket so it would catch the dim light better, and he rotated the eye piece to get a better focus on the gemstones.

While he inspected the locket, the door opened with the ring of a bell, and a woman who looked lost walked in.  She was a good deal taller than me, though that was hardly an accomplishment, and looked solidly built.  Her peroxide blond hair showed dark roots and was drawn back in a ponytail, Round, thick frames rested on her bulbous nose, circling her light brown eyes, and some of her makeup had run.  A black Adidas tracksuit rested loosely on her broad shoulders, and her clean white sneakers had three green slashes on each side.  Someone with brand loyalty as strong as hers rarely came to places like this, and I wondered what she could be looking for.

“I’ll give you a hundred for it,” the store owner said, and set the locket down so it gently clinked against glass.  “Unless you can tell me who this lady is, I gotta assume it’s a lost and found sort of thing.”

“No, I’ll take the hundred,” I responded.  One reason I loved these places was their hesitance to ask questions.  He knew it was stolen just like I knew at least three of the weapons behind him were illegally modified, and the less we dug about either the better.

He handed me five 20-dollar bills, and I slipped it into my pocket before moved to the side to make way for the woman.  Her hand clamped down on my shoulder as she stepped forward.  At first I thought it was for support, but when her long fingers dug into my skin it became apparent she was holding me there.  She was a lot stronger than she looked, and trying to get away made her fingertips dig deeper.  Whatever she wanted with me, I was there until it was done.

“That’s my locket!” she proclaimed, pointing at the one I had just sold.  Her voice was a strong baritone, and she spoke with a light accent that clearly marked her as non-local.  “It was stolen from my apartment this afternoon!”

“Do you have any proof of that?” the store owner asked.  I thought I had gone far enough away there was no chance of this happening, but she must have been moving quickly.  The odds of her being here at the exact moment I tried to fence her stuff were astronomical, but not impossible.

“Yes, I have a copy of the police report right here.”  She started digging around in her pocket, but the owner held up his hand.

“I’m gonna stop you right there, ma’am,” he said, and she froze with the paper halfway out of her pocket.  “Police reports are for insurance purposes, not proof of ownership.  I’ll need to see something more substantial.”

She groaned and pulled her phone out of her other pocket, then pulled up her photos.  After tapping around a bit she turned it around to show the owner.  “See?” she asked, gesturing at the locket in a picture.  “That’s me two weeks ago wearing it.  And here,” she paused to tap around again, then showed it to him, “is a picture of the inside.  That’s the only picture of my great-grandmother, and she wore this when she immigrated from Poland.”

“You make a compelling case,” the owner began, “but this all seems pretty circumstantial to me.  “When I say something substantial, I mean something green.  You got me?”

The woman looked furious and gave my shoulder a hard squeeze, making me lean away from the pain.  She held me tight though, and all I did was dip away from her.  “Fine.  I’ll pay you a hundred dollars to get my priceless family heirloom back.”

“Seven.”  She looked shocked, and the surprise rendered her speechless.  “It’s a nice piece!  You’re getting a bargain on it, really.”

She looked down at me, and her brown eyes burned with malice.  “Why don’t you give me all the money you made from selling my stuff and we’ll call it even?” she said, giving my shoulder another tight squeeze.  I yelped in pain and tried to get away, but her grip was like iron.

“Hey!” the owner cried out.  “I’m not gonna let you mug a customer in my store!  You can settle whatever differences you have outside, away from the cameras, but if you want this locket back you’ve gotta cough up seven hundred bucks yourself.  Credit’s fine, as long as you’re fine with a 5% surcharge.”

Furiously she pulled out her wallet and slid a card out with her thumb.  She plopped it onto the glass countertop, and the owner swiped it through his machine.  While it ran, he looked it over and said, “Hey, the back’s not signed, I can’t take this!”  I thought she was going to break my shoulder she squeezed so hard, but the owner laughed and continued, “Nah, just kidding.  Long as it goes through, I don’t care.”  Her hand relaxed a little, but not enough to stop her bony fingers from jabbing into my skin.

The woman signed the receipt, then the owner returned her card and pushed the locket toward her.  “Pleasure doing business with you, ma’am,” he said, and she glared daggers at him.  She pocketed the card, then carefully slipped the locket’s chain over her head.  After taking a moment to position it prominently on her chest, she walked toward the door, dragging me along with her.

When we were outside, she pulled me away from the windows and swung me against the wall.  Before I could scramble away, she placed a hand on my chest to pin me against the bricks and stepped forward so she could stare down at me.  Up close like this, she was bigger than I first estimated, with my eyes not even reaching the base of her breasts.  I had to look straight up to meet her gaze, and the rage in them made me wish I hadn’t.

“You owe me seven hundred dollars for this,” she growled, “not to mention all the other stuff you stole.  If you don’t pay up right now there’ll be hell to pay.”

My voice caught in my throat while I looked up at her, dreading what she would do to me.  She looked like she could take me apart with her bare hands if properly motivated, and right now she had more than enough motivation.  “I- I only have six right now,” I stammered.  I reached into my pocket and grabbed it, then held it at waist level.  “That’s all I have on me, I swear!”

She snatched the money out of my hand and tucked it away in her shirt.  “Six is not quite seven,” she said, leaning forward.  Her hand pushed harder on my chest, and rays of pain emanated from where she put the most pressure.  “It’s not about the money, though.  It’s the disrespect and sheer disregard for my feelings that upsets me the most.”

Her hand released me, but something still held me in place.  She seemed to grow before my eyes, and in an instant I was looking up at her waist.  The woman seemed to rapidly grow larger, growing more quickly the bigger she got.  In no time I was past her knees, and I realized that rather than her growing to the size of a skyscraper, I was shrinking.  I continued dwindling while she loomed larger in my view, slipping past her ankles until her shoes were taller than I was.  By the time I stopped diminishing, the white toes of her shoes towered over me, and I must have been incredibly puny.

In the space of a second, she had gone from merely looming over me to a towering colossus standing astride me.  Getting onto her shoes would require scrambling up the toes, and then I would have to sprint up the laces to reach her ankle.  The base of her knees was as high as many apartment buildings, and her thighs were towers on their own supporting a megastructure.  Her hands rested on her hips while she glared down at me, somehow making her look even more imposing, and her impossibly gigantic body continued a while beyond that.  While her chest blocked a significant part of my view, I could still see her eyes at the height of a skyscraper.  That meant, despite my size, she could see me, and it looked like she wanted vengeance.

I did not want to stick around for her to exact it and started running.  The sidewalk’s pavement was uneven, with a deep crack running through it, and I had to hop over the deep pits in the surface.  When I reached the crack I had to hop up and grab the top, climbing over it as though it were an obstacle.  After clambering to the top, I saw I had not even moved beyond her left shoe.  Desperately I started running again, hoping I could get to the outside of it before she reacted.

A titanic white wall slammed down in front of me, and I ran into the hard rubber.  The concrete absorbed most of the shock from her titanic stomp, but it still made my knees go weak.  I pushed off from her shoe and started running the other way, and saw there was no shoe to get around in that direction.  She had expended so little effort in stopping me that it did not even take half a step to completely block my path.

I hopped over the crack again, and my weakened knees buckled when I landed.  While I splayed out on the pavement I thought I heard her laughing, though the deep, primal rumble could have come from many other things.  After crawling on all fours for a few paces I got back up and started running again, though my legs were still uneasy.  The unique pressure of running for my life drove me, and I moved my legs faster than I ever had before.

It was not enough, and her shoe slammed back down in front of me, closer this time.  The force of its impact made me start stumbling, and I ran face-first into the toe of her shoe.  I fell backward and landed hard on the concrete, leaving my helpless for a moment.  My legs would not support my weight when I tried to get up, and I was left at her mercy.

She withdrew her foot, but I was unable to capitalize on the brief window of freedom.  The immense tower collapsed while she squatted over me, and I noticed her heels remained firmly on the ground.  Her thighs formed a bold frame for her face, and her hands rested on her knees with her hands dangling over her shins.  From her grin, it was obvious she knew she had won, and I could hardly dispute it.

One of her hands reached down and slipped behind my neck, shoving my head forward.  Her thumb closed in like a pincer, and she firmly grasped the back of my collar.  As though I were nothing, she plucked me up from the sidewalk, letting me dangle from her fingers.  She watched me swing, suspended helplessly from her hand, while she raised me to her gigantic face.

She stood, and the sudden acceleration upward made it feel like my stomach fell through my feet.  The movement stopped my hapless swinging, but it felt like no blood was reaching my brain, and spots began to appear on the edges of my vision.  Suddenly she stopped, and all the blood suddenly rushed to my head along with my insides.  I wanted to puke, but nothing came up, and I simply dangled helplessly in front of her face.

She held me before her eyes, about six inches from her face, smirking while she watched me swing.  There was nothing that could stop me, and she seemed to watch with delight as I swayed in her grip.  Her finger drew close, and she struck me hard with the tip.  While I raced back and forth like a pendulum she smiled a big, toothy smile while I screamed from the fast movement and rapid changes of direction.

“You liked my locket enough to steal it,” she began, “so why don’t you spend some more time with it?”  Her voice was a terrifying boom, and sounded like thunder was speaking.  The very sound of it horrified me, and though they took some effort to understand I knew her words would have dire consequences for me.

With her free hand she undid the locket’s clasp, and she began lowering me toward it.  I pleaded for her to stop, begging her to reconsider, but if she could even hear me she ignored my pleas.  She set me inside the gold fixture, then moved it so it was horizontal.  Her fingers released their grip on my collar and withdrew, then she closed the lid on top of me.  With a final, resonating click it closed, sealing me inside.

She let it go, and I went lightheaded while the locket swung down onto her chest.  The landing was cushioned by her breasts, but I was still trapped inside the metal.  Small slivers of light peeked in from the edges, just enough for me to see that my face was pressed against an l with a horizontal line though it.  As she walked the locket bounced, tossing me around inside, though I always came back to rest against that same letter.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not escape the cycle, and her gait was now the pace of my life.