“Whoah.”

The young woman’s voice rumbles like thunder overhead, completely drowning out the sound of my own ragged breathing. I struggle to catch my breath as my whole body shakes with adrenaline. I feel hysterical. I can barely process what had just happened. A part of me still doesn’t believe it. It’s impossible.

“This is so cool.”

I was daydreaming. Maybe I fell asleep. Hopefully this is all a dream. It was a long day. Lots of paperwork, little stimulation. I was feeling drowsy on the walk home and found myself mesmerized by this random girl. Well, not totally random. I was drawn to her because she was extremely hot. Vibrant red hair, big chest, generous neckline, and a butt so plump and firm that it could even give sweatpants a workout. Of course, she wasn’t wearing sweatpants, though, and her booty shorts were as alluring as…

“Everything is so tiny.”

Her booming voice disrupts my thoughts, so loud and powerful that it physically shakes my body and mind. It feels like the ground might be shaking, too, but I’m trembling so much that it’s impossible to tell. Everything is so surreal. My perspective is warped by the immensity of the being standing over me. Or am I small? What if she’s right and everything just shrunk?

“Or I’m, like, really big.”

This explanation feels more realistic to me, but perhaps it’s just more comfortable. It’s not like an entire city shrinking is any more or less plausible than a girl ballooning to thousands of feet tall. And how big is she anyway? The sneaker in front of me is too close for reference, but its sole definitely surpasses the height of the nearby office buildings. Gazing higher, her legs are seemingly endless. Without a cloud in the sky, it’s practically impossible to determine her current height. It probably ranges in the miles, but how many miles? One? Two? Ten? A hundred?

BRRRING! BRRRING! BRRRING!

A blaring ringing sound storms down from the heavens, interrupting my musings once more. At such a high pitch with such great volume, the sonic discharge is as deafening as it is devastating. Windows shatter as everyone around me is instantly snapped from their bewildered stupors, futilely covering their ears in a desperate attempt to preserve their hearing. The noise is certainly inhuman, but still utterly unidentifiable due to its tremendous volume. Thankfully, it only goes off once before being supplanted by the familiar booming of the behemoth above.

“Oh my God, Stacy! You won’t believe what just happened!”

It takes all of two seconds for me to realize that the sonic bomb that just shattered every window in the city was the giant girl’s cell phone. This development puzzles me, for while I was consciously aware of the fact that the giant’s clothing grew with her, it seems especially bizarre that her phone would grow, too. The fact that it’s still functional is even stranger. One would think that the magnification of such a device would render it inoperable, given the alteration of its components. Then again, this whole situation is so ludicrous that I don’t know what to make of anything anymore. Her ability to receive calls probably places her height below cruising altitude for most airliners, but at this point I’m just guessing. Maybe she has a satellite link. Maybe this is all magic. I’m still hoping it’s a dream, but no dream has ever been this physically oppressive before. Surely the ringing of her phone would have woken me up…

“Oh, you can see me?”

I imagine that if ‘Stacy’ is within one hundred miles of here, she’d be able to see this monstrous beauty. I wish that I had such a buffer. I estimate my current proximity to the monumental sneakers looming over me to be about three hundred feet, give or take. It’s a minor miracle that I’m alive at all, considering how close I had been when this whole thing started…

“I don’t know! I was just walking through the city and then ‘boom!’ Now I’m big.”

Thanks to my earlier gawking, I saw everything as it unfolded. The ravishing redhead was indeed walking on the sidewalk, her face giggling and her chest jiggling. She looked to be in good spirits, nothing particularly unusual about her aside from her extraordinarily good looks. Her outfit was bold, but not scandalous. Her body was buxom, but well-proportioned. Her stature was unremarkable, too. If anything, she was a little on the petite side.

“Really big…” her voice trails off, echoing over the stagnant cityscape.

This feels like an understatement, though I’m beginning to gather that the titanic entity above me doesn’t have the most extensive vocabulary. She isn’t just “big.” Or even “really big.” She’s absolutely humongous. Mountainous. Colossal. Ironically, many big words like “brobdingnagian” actually understate the scope of her scale.

“I know. It’s so random, right?”

I would probably find her callousness offensive if I weren’t so shocked. I vividly remember the onset of her growth. It was an uncanny sight at first, watching her balloon so perfectly proportionately. Initially I'd hardly noticed. If I had only glanced at her, I probably wouldn’t have detected the change until it was too late. Fortunately, I had been watching her quite intently.

I was so intrigued by her swelling breasts that I hardly perceived her surging stature. It was only when her cleavage rose above my eyeline that I truly registered the magnitude of her transformation. She swiftly surpassed any human height. Then any giraffe’s height. Then any building’s height.

I ran. At first I was just racing her shadow, but that quickly became hopeless. The ground around me darkened in the shade of her eclipse and the outline of her shadow crept up and over distant buildings as she grew and grew and grew. Soon I found myself competing with the edge of her shoes in the footrace of a lifetime, but she wasn’t even moving. I ran faster than I ever had before, the sounds of crumbling buildings and screeching cars driving me beyond what my lungs could sustain in the absence of terror and adrenaline. Still, I would have lost if she hadn’t taken that fateful step…

“Yeah, I guess I’m just lucky.”

“Lucky” is a quirky characterization. Her explosive expansion had probably destroyed dozens of buildings and killed thousands of people, at least. That doesn’t seem like a stroke of good fortune to me. And yet, in a sense, I am lucky. My life was spared by her casual, incidental step in the opposite direction. I don’t know what compelled her to make such a cataclysmic stride, but it saved me. I could hear the pursuit of her shoes behind me. I could practically feel the tide of her sneaker threatening to swallow me in the next instant.

Instead, she raised her foot and plopped it down on some other unfortunate section of the city. I don’t know why she did it. I’m not even sure if she knows why she did it. Such a movement was probably so casual to her that she didn’t even think about it. But it was quite consequential for me. And the rest of the city.

The resulting earthquake knocked me to the ground, which was fortunate because the ensuing shockwave sent anyone standing upright flying through the air. Still, her shoes didn’t stop advancing on me. The giant girl had stopped moving, but she was still getting bigger. I could only watch as her white soles rushed toward me like a tsunami, rising higher and higher as they got closer and closer. I waited for them to crash into me, too petrified to move. But then, mercifully, they stopped about a football field’s distance away.

“Lucky.” I suppose she’s lucky that her life hadn’t been in danger. I suppose she’s lucky that she wasn’t crushed like all of the people I ran past to escape her. As I gaze up at the white wall of canvas before me, I try not to imagine what lies beneath it. There’s no telling how many poor souls lie beneath those soles.

“No, I feel fine. In fact, I feel great! Like I could conquer the world!”

The comment sends ice through my veins, freezing me in place again. I can picture it now: the busty girl from the sidewalk giggling joyfully as she swats planes from the sky and tramples cities underfoot. It’s a terrifying prospect, but I can’t help but get a little turned on by it. A playful young redhead having her way with the world…

“No, Stacy. Like, metaphorically.”

A sigh of relief escapes my mouth. As momentarily gratifying as my brief erotic fantasy was, I’m relieved to learn that the gigantic girl isn’t malevolent. I suppose this is little consolation to me right now, lying in the shadow of her shoe's lip. She wouldn’t have to be malicious to flatten me, but I guess my brain finds some comfort in the idea that humanity may survive her even if I don’t. The idea of the world being under the thumb of some behemoth bimbo is about as terrifying as my own imminent demise.

“Mmmm, there you go putting naughty ideas in my head.”

The ground quivers as the titaness shifts her weight and purrs. I can’t see any real movement in her feet, so my eyes instinctively wander up to the sky for a glimpse at what she’s doing. To my surprise and horror, she leans forward just enough for her eyes to peer past her sizable breasts and stare at the metropolis beneath her. It feels as though her gargantuan green irises are staring right at me, but she's probably just inspecting her toes. I’m less than an insect to her. Even if I were the size of an ant, I would be but one of many thousands. Unremarkable. Insignificant.

“Ooh, that does sound like fun. I can’t imagine what he’ll think when he sees me like this.”

The initiation of this gossip stirs up an abrupt sense of jealousy in me. Who is “he” and what history does he have with this gorgeous giant? Until this moment, I had been able to somewhat connect the dots in the conversation, but now I find the absence of Stacy’s voice irritating. I’ve never wanted to hear what a random twenty-something is saying so much in my life. My irritation graduates to indignation as I mentally challenge this unfair reality. Why is everything about this girl so loud, but her phone call is the one thing I can’t hear? As if to answer me, she brushes her voluminous scarlet hair behind her ear, revealing that her earpods have grown with her, too.

“Oh, wow. So I guess he’s probably already seen me, then, huh?”

At this point, I imagine that the amount of people that have seen this enormous vixen outnumbers those who haven’t. She’s likely on every news channel and trending on every website. On top of being utterly ginormous, she’s also extremely gorgeous. And once again I feel left out. Half of the world probably knows this statuesque sensation’s name already, but I haven’t the faintest idea despite being the first to observe her meteoric rise to celebrity.

“Oh, so I’m like a really ‘big deal,’ huh?”

I find her obliviousness offensive. I recognize that her ascension wasn’t nearly as traumatic for her as it was for the rest of us, but surely even a person of subpar intelligence would be able to understand the implications of her magnification. Has she not noticed the blocks of city beneath her feet? Can she not comprehend how each one of her footsteps is an earth-shaking cataclysm? How stupid can she be?

“Shut up! No way! I can’t be that big!”

The gargantuan girl’s giddiness only serves to further torment me. How big is she? Was my estimate at least in the ballpark? So much information flows from the answer to this one question and my mind runs wild with the ramifications. Can she really swat planes from the sky? Can she traverse the oceans? And if so, how the hell is her phone working?

“Watch it, tiny. This ‘big bitch’ can still squish you like a bug.”

By my estimates, we’re much less than bugs to her. Fortunately, even with her booming, domineering voice I can surmise that she’s teasing, although the thunderous giggle that follows her taunt probably sounds much more malevolent to the rest of the world than herself. The joke is so casual, yet so sinister. An uncanny combination of apocalyptic threat and lighthearted banter.

“Ugh.”

Irritation flashes across her immense face as she holds her phone outstretched below her eyes, still untold miles above me. While I can’t be sure of her exact height, I find myself increasingly confident in my belief that she is at least multiple miles tall. Whether that figure ends up being one, two, or three digits is beyond me, but the scale of her hands, face, and other parts of her body that I can observe from an appreciable distance assure me of my assertion.

“You have no idea, Stacy. I have so many unknown numbers calling me right now. I’ve already activated ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, but they keep getting through somehow.”

I assume these are various government agencies trying to make first contact with the extraordinary terrestrial looming over one of the world’s largest population centers. It seems that Stacy beat them to the punch, and now she’s monopolizing the immense invader’s attention.

“I don’t care. They can wait.”

I hope that Stacy can convey the importance of the pending calls, but her formidable friend’s abundant ditziness offers little reassurance. Imbeciles tend to come in packs, and the fact that Stacy’s first instinct was to taunt the towering behemoth isn’t promising.

“I don’t know, what do you think I should do?”

The ground trembles violently as the face above me seems to expand in all directions. My surroundings further darken at her countenance’s approach, confirming that the colossus is only growing nearer, not larger. I notice her bent knees next, recognizing that she’s crouching. Then I observe her prodigious gluteus maximus, straining her alluring booty shorts once more as it dominates half the skyline.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Everything is so small and, like, fragile.”

I shudder at the sound of the giant’s speech again. Her mouth is much closer to the ground now and her head is angled down to further amplify the volume of her voice. The vibrations of the soundwaves alone shake the earth and rattle my body, but my mind is preoccupied with the content of the conversation rather than the force of its words.

Did Stacy just try to kill me? It seems ridiculous when I remember that Stacy has no idea who I am, but if her advice consisted of anything other than “stay perfectly still,” then she had effectively just advocated for my death. That’s it. Stacy is officially the dumber of the duo.

“Won’t that, like, cause an earthquake or something?”

What is Stacy telling her? How did it come to this? Why does my life – nay, every life in this city come down to the intelligence and logical reasoning of this giant twit? Rather than being fearful about the looming probability of my death, I’m outraged. I look around to see if anyone else is as indignant as I am, only to find the street thoroughly depopulated. It seems that everyone else had the good sense to put as much distance between themselves and the monstrous maiden as possible. I suppose it’s a humbling reminder for me. I’m foolish, too.

“I don’t know, maybe this will wear off or something.”

It’s wishful thinking, but I’m grateful for it. Pushing myself up from the asphalt and unsteadily walking away from the giant woman, I wonder how far I can possibly get before her impatience gets the better of her. She seems like the type to get bored easily, and I don’t want to be around when her attention span is exhausted. Girls of her generation – particularly the ones that live on their phones – are hardly renowned for their ability to go long periods of time without stimulation.

So once again my life is in Stacy’s hands. It falls to her to keep her colossal friend engaged, lest she turn to more catastrophic means to amuse herself. I don’t think that the city and its residents would make for decent toys at our present scale. Nevertheless, I doubt this would stop our new goliath overlord from playing games with us.

“I told you: I have no idea. It just happened out of nowhere.”

Quickly deducing that she is discussing the cause of her tremendous growth again, I concur with her assessment. As far as I can tell, there was no cause for her abrupt ascension. Of course, I don’t even know this strange woman’s name, let alone the happenings of her life. Maybe she was abducted by aliens or participated in some bold experimental trial. I can’t conceive of any plausible explanation for her magnification, let alone that of her accessories. It’s impossible. And yet the evidence of it happening is right before my eyes, looming over my entire existence.

“Well, you know that Mythbusters episode we watched the other week? No, the other one.”

The world around me brightens as the giant returns to her standing posture. Her words are relatively quieter now, though they still boom down from the heavens as though God Himself is addressing our forsaken city. I’m making better progress in my retreat, even beginning to encounter some of the slower-moving people making their exodus from the colossus’ soles.

“No, the uh… what’s it called? Spontaneous human- yeah, that’s it! Spontaneous human combustion!”

I had seen the very same episode. It’s eerie to think that we were once watching the same program at the same time in the same city. I wasn’t a regular viewer of the show, but the concept was too intriguing for me to ignore. I had never heard of such a phenomenon before and the idea of spontaneously catching fire or exploding tickled my curiosity.

“Ok, but like… what if that’s what happened to me? Like, ‘spontaneous human expansion’ or something. Think about it. Like, instead of, blowing up… I blew up.”

The change in her tone conveys the semantic nuance adequately enough. I can imagine her hands gesturing in the sky above me to simulate an expanding explosion, though she’s far too massive for me to properly view her arms stretching out from her body. Honestly, the idea isn’t all that far-fetched based on my observations today. The show had concluded that spontaneous human combustion was a myth, much to my relief. In light of recent events, however, I’m not sure that I believe in myths anymore.

“Shut up. It’s not like you have any better ideas.”

I roll my eyes and trudge onward. Stacy is taunting her again. I’ve been aware of these girls’ existence for less than half an hour and I feel as though I already know them intimately. The childish antics, the playful teasing; it all reminds me of the sorority types from my college days. I thought they were annoying then and I still think that they’re annoying now, but at least their banter is keeping me alive.

“Oh yeah? Don’t make me come over there.”

The earth shakes, knocking me off balance. Then a gale of wind knocks me off my feet. My hands break my fall to the pavement and I turn myself over to stare up at the woman filling the sky above me. She’s still standing where she was before, but she must have stomped her foot or something. Somehow I didn’t hear the impact, but as I rise to my feet again I reckon that I have much more pressing concerns at the moment…

“Yeah, you would like to see that, wouldn’t you?”

All I can do is pray that this is a joke. That this ditzy colossus doesn’t forget herself and wipe me off the face of the planet. Her words sound increasingly threatening; her tone increasingly serious. Girls play these games with one another all the time, but despite my earlier musings I recognize that I don’t actually know these girls. Furthermore, I can’t actually hear what Stacy is saying. What if she is goading her friend to visit her? And even if it’s just a joke, what if the giant calls her bluff? What if she takes the bait?

“What the-?”

The colossus booms over the city once more, but her tone is unfamiliar. It proves difficult to discern at such an extreme register and volume, but it sounds vaguely flustered; even surprised. A short silence follows as she listens and the rest of the city halts in a futile attempt to hear. This quiet doesn’t feel like the brief gaps in the conversation with Stacy. It feels different somehow. Ominous.

“Excuse me, I was talking to my friend!”

There’s petulance in her voice. Like a bratty adolescent throwing a tantrum. The young woman above the city looks to be in her early twenties, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to learn that she acts less mature than her age.

“I don’t care if you’re my own mother! That was rude!”

Someone important is on the other end. Hopefully a seasoned diplomat or somebody who can communicate more competently than Stacy. Initial feedback isn’t looking too good, though…

The giant girl stands still for a while as she listens intently to whatever the person on the other line has to say. Threats, pleas, plans, negotiations; I can only hope for the best as I push myself forward. All I know is that whatever they’re saying is making the catty colossus quite upset and I want to be as far away as possible if she decides to lash out. Even though she isn’t consciously moving, the ground shakes as her body vibrates increasingly violently. Rage, anxiety, or impatience; once again I am powerless to know. But I have a bad feeling about this…

“Oh, there’s no need for that, Mr. President. You know what? I think I’d like to discuss this further in-person. Don’t bother making any travel arrangements; I'll come to you!”

I barely have time to process what she said, but I readily discern the caustic tone of her voice. Before I know it, I’m knocked off of my feet again. This time the fall is too violent for me to catch myself and my nose collides with the street, followed succinctly by my forehead. My body involuntarily ricochets from the impact, rolling me onto my side to look out at the city.

The sky is black now.
And it’s getting closer.