#6 - Monster

Robin had chosen the chair, she could have laid down on the stereotypical couch that served as the centerpiece of the room, but she felt it would leave her too open, exposed. She didn’t like being open.

It was years before she would attend college, years before The Omen Glow would shrink its first victim. It was years after she was finally free from that special boarding school for violent youth, the one that kept its rooms locked and had guards on staff.

She was doing better now. Robin had managed to limit her outbursts and the execution of her intrusive thoughts to the ones she felt deserved it. The high school she attended clearly didn’t agree with what she deemed to be an improvement, and had urged her parents to change to a psychologist they’d recommended.

“Why don’t you start by telling me a little bit about yourself?” Dr. Loomweiss said, as he sat across from her, with that fake friendly visage all her doctors had.

“I’m Robin.”

The doctor waited a bit, peering above his glasses, as he waited for more.

“I like music, TV and video games,” Robin continued with a sarcastic tone, “and my favorite color is blue, no, orange.”

The doctor made a small note. Robin was pretty sure her favorite color hadn’t been that noteworthy.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Loomweiss asked.

“Cause I tried to stab Max Peterson in the ear with my pencil.”

“And why did you do that?”

Robin tried to peer out the window, but it was blocked by translucent blinds, “He’d said things about my friend Sophie, posted them online, shaming her in front of the entire school.”

“It sounds like you were angry about what he did to your friend?”

Robin shrugged, her answer only surfacing after a noticeable pause, “Yeah.”

The doctor had picked up on it, “Are you sure, that’s the only reason? You know you can tell me. You’ve talked to annoying doctors like me enough to know I can’t tell anyone what we discuss here.”

“Unless I’m a threat to myself or others.”

“Are you?”

Robin leaned back, waiting, if she could drag on the conversation enough, this hour would end without Loomweiss prodding too deeply into her thoughts. The doctor waited with her, until the silence finally broke her into saying something.

“I just wanted to try it,” she said

“Try what?”

“The pencil,” Robin said. “I wanted to see what would happen if something like that went into someone’s ear. What Max had done to Sophie just gave me the excuse I needed. That what you wanna hear?”

Dr. Loomweiss took another note. “Do you think about hurting people often?”

“That’s what I do, right? Cause I’m some sort of psychopath, or sociopath, whatever the difference is.”

“Did someone call you that?”

“Sophie,” Robin answered. “Thought she’d appreciate it. She didn’t. I’ve gotten better at making friends, yet every time the real me slips, it just ruins things.”

“When you say ‘the real you,’ what do you mean by that?”

Robin began to wrap her hand around her lower arm, choking out her wrist, “the monster.”

“People aren’t monsters, Robin.” Loomweiss said. “There are people who sometimes have thoughts or impulses they don’t like.”

“But I like them,” Robin said. “I love the thoughts, the idea of feeling Max’s brain squish through the pencil. If I ever wanna keep a friendship, I can’t ever be my real self around people.”

“You call yourself a monster.” The doctor said, as leaned back slightly. “But monsters don’t worry about losing their friends.”

Robin shifted her attention to the clock on the wall, which ticked by too slowly.

The psychologist continued, “So, this monster, as you call it, makes you feel like you can’t open up to others.”

Robin frowned, “Being the anti-Christ is not the type of thing you just open up about.”

Dr. Loomweiss leaned forward, and with that same calm, comforting tone asked, “What do you think would happen if people saw that side of you?”

Elias let out a blood curdling scream, clawing at his own face in horror, as his vision returned, Robin’s room looked huge. His attempt to sprint past his friend had only left him closer to the feet which had already snuffed out a tiny life like his, closer to the woman who had enjoyed doing so. His mind could only produce one thought; he was going to die here.

From Robin’s point of view, it was a pathetic display. His screams were more akin to an adorable little squeak from her height. She was prepared to beat her friend to the ground if he had tried to run past her. Luckily for him, the glow had overtaken his body and shrunk him mid-dash, else she would have had to humiliate and hurt him at full size.

She knew how cruel it was for her to amplify his fear enough to trigger the size change, but the look on his face, the way she made a full-grown man squirm even at his regular size, it had been exhilarating. Now she had him exactly the way she wanted him; weak, defenseless, too small for anyone in the bathroom to hear, and if she were to choose it so, easy to clean up.

Elias had been her friend for years, but what was he now that he knew too much? Someone who had gotten a glimpse at the monster lurking underneath, and had discovered who she really was. Someone who would never look at her the same again, and could infect the others with that knowledge, with that painful view of her.

He was a problem, which she was only one step away from solving.

The choice was hers now, the bug in her court. Whatever would she do? Her expression remained vacant, her lips parting ever so slightly to let out a breath of morbid excitement.

On each side, her toes curled inside her sneakers, like little henchmen begging for the honor to be the ones chosen for the task. Left or right, whichever should she choose? Right had experience, proven its effectiveness, but left had never had the opportunity to feel a human being give way. Wouldn’t it be fair to feed both feet and equal share of death?

Beneath her, on her bedroom floor, Elias was shouting something she could hardly make out from that height, likely crying and begging for his life, the poor thing. All he could see was a giantess silently staring down at him. Robin wondered if the hunger was showing in her eyes.

Her left foot lifted, with a shaky, uncertain movement, as it slowly hovered closer to where a tiny Elias had fallen to his knees in prayer to his new god. She stopped right above him, leaning her upper body to the side, to keep an eye on the tiny beneath her shoe, crying in its shadow.

All Elias could do was beg her to stop, beg her to spare him, as he looked up at the worn and faded tread pattern beneath her sneaker, one of its grooves filled with dirt and tiny pebbles. Robin, one of his best friends, was about to end him like a bug on the sidewalk.

Robin held it there, for almost twenty seconds, as she lingered on the superb squish she imagined she would feel if she lowered it, until her legs became tired of holding the position, and her balance began to get shakier.

Her foot came down, only a few inches away from her friend, who she could hear squeak in surprise. It was the first in a series of steps, as she stepped over Elias and turned to sit down on the side of her bed.

Elias had a difficult time even moving to look at her, he had narrowly avoided death. He could see by the look on her face; she hadn’t been holding her foot over him as an empty threat or a playful tease, she had been pondering his fate for the entirety of those twenty seconds, with the same vacant look she had when choosing the flavor of ice cream she wanted.

The rusty haired woman leaned forward, and her long fingers pulled at her laces to untie them, after which, she kicked off both sneakers, sending them crashing across the floor like meteoric debris, making her friend cower at the heavy floor-shaking thuds.

Her feet, now clad in grimy white socks, still discolored by the post-work humidity of them, released a foul odor, which Elias would have to run a mile to escape. As he reached a hand in front of his nose, Robin grew her first smile across those giant, thin lips of her.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I know.”

She dug her thumb into the ankle of her left sock, before pulling it across her heel, slowly revealing her sole; pale and pink, with hints of yellow. It was an enormous sculpture of a life-like human marble, long, elegant, high arched, with long toes that had an ever so slightly masculine squareness to them. She dug her thumb into the other sock, revealing yet another horrific leviathan like it.

She threw her socks on top of one of the scattered sneakers, as she lowered her feet, and pressed them flat against the floor, before scrunching and flexing her toes, releasing another whiff of their disgusting scent, straight from the source.

“Maybe this way is more personal,” she said, with cold detachment. “You’re a friend after all. I bet it will feel even nicer for me too, the feeling of your warm guts bursting against my bare skin.”

Now, that she was sitting down and leaning close enough to the floor, she could hear Elias scream, “No, no! Please don’t say fucked up shit like that! Will you please just talk to me like normal!”

“Why?” she said, her voice carrying a feminine softness that was unlike her at all. “Now that you know I’m not normal, what’s the point in pretending.”

“Is this what you’ve been planning the entire time?” Elias sniffled. “Were we ever your friends to begin with?”

“You were,” she said.

“Were? Until what?” Elias grabbed on to the back of his head with both hands. “Until we got marked?”

“Until you found that box and looked at me, the way you’re looking at me right now.”

“Bullshit!” he squeaked. “What about your murder party?”

“My what?”

“Your friend, that chained wraith chick in you friends list told me everything!”

Robin’s eyes widened her calm dominance fading as he could hear the panic in her voice, “What did she tell you? Did she talk to the others?”

“No,” Elias’ fingers spread across his forehead, “I should’ve told them. I should’ve warned them.”

“What did she say?”

“That you were gonna do things to us, bite us in half, put us in your shoes.”

Robin whispered an expletive under her breath, as she looked at her own feet, “She’s lying, I wouldn’t have hurt you. I won’t hurt the others.”

“But you’ll hurt me,” Elias said, a every muscle in his body gave up, his shoulder sinking as he could barely stay upright.

The giant tomboy swallowed, as her tone darkened, “Yeah, I wanna hurt you a lot. Take my time with it too.”

“What the fuck!” he shrieked. “Why?!”

“Because I want to have fun breaking you apart slowly, hearing what once was a friend cry for mercy between my toes. Because I want to feel every bone in your body give way against my skin as I suffocate you in the stink of an honest day’s work. Because that’s the person I really am.”

All Elias could do was collapse in terror at the callous tone of the woman he’d fallen for, as she listed her fantasies, her sadistic plans for him, devoid of any sense that she had ever really cared.

“Because,” Robin paused. “Because you’ll never see me the same way again. When the mask slips, it’s over. You’ll always see me as a monster. I can’t let you infect the others with that.”

The giantess raised her left foot, slowly reaching towards him. Elias scrambled into a sprint, trying to get as far away from her as possible, but at his size and speed, there was nowhere to run.

Robin’s massive toes hit the ground in front of him, with an intimidating thud, before she pulled her foot back towards her, raking them across the floor, straight towards Elias, who got swept up, and dragged across the ground.

Robin let out a small sigh of comfort, the feeling of her foot making contact with his powerless little body was delightful, a welcome distraction from the anxiety she felt around the entire situation. All these mixed feelings, all the moral arguing that went on in her own head, if she just let go, and did what felt right to her, it would all be ok.

Elias gagged and squirmed, as his glasses got knocked sideways and the smell completely overwhelmed him. His body got coated in the tiny layer of sweat on her sole. It was warm. It was sticky. It was disgustingly intimate.

The toes came to a stand-still. Satisfied with the position it had dragged him to, her foot lifted a few inches above him, keeping him in its shadow. He was laying right where Robin had originally planted her foot down, and she clearly intended to do so again.

Elias, coated in her sweat rolled onto his back and raised his hands to her, “You don’t want the others to find out? Then what will you tell them happened to me?”

“That our little alcoholic ran out to get his milk,” Robin said. “Never came back.”

Her foot began to lower again, the ceiling of death rushing towards him.

“Wait,” he shouted. “Just wait.”

Elias took another foot-poisoned breath, as he remembered her smile, not the sadistic one, the sweet one.

“Are you sure they won’t ask questions?” he shouted. “Think about it. I’m smart enough to not go out on my own, even as I dry up. And you! You wouldn’t just let me walk out. You’d beat the snot out of me and tie me up.”

Robin sighed, “I can’t let you near them.”

“I wouldn’t tell them, if this is what you do to people who know, why would I curse them by telling?”

“After all this, I won’t be able to take the way you look at me,” Robin said, her toes curling beside Elias.

“Fine, no problem,” Elias shouted. “After all this, I won’t be able to look at you anyway.”

Robin expression floated between emotions, shock, pain, anger.

“Bad choice of words, Elias,” Robin said as she lifted her heel.

“No,” Elias barked. “You need me! You need me alive!”

Robin opened the bathroom door, seeing her friends stand up out of their bored imprisonment to wave at her. They looked relieved to see someone who could finally free them from their glass prison. The look on her face made Theo worry a bit.

As Oscar explained what Elias had done, Theo asked, “Everything ok?”

“It’s been a rough day,” Robin said

“Where is Elias?” Jade said. “I swear when he shrinks I’m gonna-”

“He already did,” Robin said. “He’s on the table, and don’t worry, I already gave him a piece of my mind, in case you’re wondering why he smells like my feet.”

Oscar shivered, “The fuck did you do to him?”

Robin carried her friends to the table, where a disheveled Elias was taking a couple of deep breaths, preparing for the performance he was about to put on. All he’d have to do was be himself; a version of himself from before he knew what really went on inside his friend’s mind. If he failed, everyone would die. No pressure.

Robin slowly tilted the glass on its side, letting the rest of the group climb out. Oscar was the first on his feet, ready to throw down with Elias, until he saw the state he was in. His clothes had been through the ringer, and it was surprising the guy’s tiny glasses were still intact.

Jade’s anger turned to the same surprise and shock, “What happened.”

“Robin sorta,” Elias shrugged, “gave me a firm talking to, I guess.”

He couldn’t contain himself anymore, and broke down in tears, “I’m really sorry guys. I fucked up. I got scared and freaked out. I just want things to go back to the way they used to be.”

Robin hung on every word he said, making sure he wouldn’t slip up, as she nodded along, “Me too, Elias. Me too.”

Theo ran up to hug him, “It’s ok Elias. I freaked out at first too. But we’re going to be alright, we’re safe with Robin.”

At those words, Elias went rigid in his arms, staring off into the void.

Theo let go, “Damn, you really do smell like feet.”

Robin stared down at Elias, this tiny powerless man who had taken control of the situation. The monster hated him for it. It had won the argument in her head, took control, shoved all those silly little principles she claimed to have down a hole. It should’ve been able to have its pleasures, yet Elias had made a counterargument.

The line remained uncrossed.

Not because of Robin’s own ability to stick to her principles, but because Elias had talked his way out of certain death, and now, as her mind sobered, and the monster was back on its leash, that scared her. It was her fight, her animal to keep in check, not his.