Mary Zhou was having the mother of all bad days.  She had had a massive fight with her boyfriend in the morning over some suspicious text messages he found on her phone.  Her boss had been a colossal bitch to her all day at work as well.  Mary was tired, angry, and barely keeping herself together emotionally.

She was in a terrible mood as she walked home under an overcast mid-autumn sky.  “At least it’s stopped raining…”  She thought as she tried not to step in any dirty puddles with her expensive black knee-high leather boots.  

Mary could see her own reflection in the windows of shops as she passed by.  No one could have described her as anything but beautiful.  She had a face that would not have looked out of place on a pop star, framed by a mane of gorgeous shoulder-length hair.  Her body dispelled any notion that Chinese women were all “flat”.  She was dressed in a light grey skirt-and-jacket outfit, with a dark red blouse.  

Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks.  She had almost walked past her favourite bakery without noticing the lone cronut in the display window.  To Mary, it was like a ray of happiness and contentment in a sea of grey misery.  She quickly ducked inside and bought the last pastry.  She left giddy as a school girl, her worries forgotten, as she strode home clutching the brown paper bag.  It was stupid, she knew that, but it was as if this one desert could bring at least a little joy into her day.

She waited patiently at the intersection across from her apartment as cars hurtled by.  She could almost taste the delicious pastry in her mouth.  She thought of the nice long bath that she would take, and how she’d eat her treat as she watched her favourite TV show.  Maybe, just maybe, she could salvage this day after all.

All of a sudden, she was cold.  And wet.  It took her a split second to process what was going on.  Her clothes, her bag, her cronut, all ruined. 

A car hurtled by her, barely a blur in her vision.  The driver had intentionally sped up as he crossed the muddy puddle in front of her, splashing foul gutter water all over Mary.  As if that wasn’t enough, a face leaned out of the passenger side of the car and yelled at her.
“Go home to your own country you chink!”  

That was the last straw for Mary.  She couldn’t contain it any longer.  Years of suppressing her power, controlling her emotion, living a normal life were about to be undone.  She no longer gave a fuck about this world or the people in it.  She was angry, and the world was going to suffer for it.

As the car sped off into the distance, Mary started running after it.  As she did so, the impossible happened – she started growing.

It was slow at first, barely noticeable to the bemused people she ran past.  After a few seconds, she was barely a few centimetres taller than her original height.  A few seconds later, she was two metres tall.  Then, three meters.  Five.  Ten.  Twenty.   Her growth sped up, and as it did she began to gain on the fleeing vehicle.

Startled people were first brushed aside, then knocked aside, then crushed underfoot as Mary’s growth continued.  Soon, she was impaling unlucky people under the high heel of her boots.  Then, entire cars and trucks were crushed beneath her feet as she continued to increase in size.  People screamed and ran from her, but she ran much faster.

Mary didn’t care about the carnage taking place at her feet.  She had one singular goal – to make those fuckers pay for what they did to her.  She was almost a hundred meters tall now; her head reached up past most of the apartment buildings she ran past.  The terrified driver of the car she was chasing tried to swerve and turn to lose her, but she kept her terrifying gaze fixated on her prey.

The little car took a hard left, and Mary followed.  Her inertia and heels caused her to temporarily lose balance and barrel into a brickwork apartment building.  The building’s façade turned to dust almost instantly and fragments of rubble rained down on the people below.  Mary didn’t even notice the dozens of deaths she had caused in that brief moment as she straightened herself and ran after the car.

Her chase had led her into the down town business district, where the buildings were still taller than her despite her now two hundred-metre height.  Her strides lengthened as she grew.  She gained more and more speed, despite the fact that she was running in six inch heels that were now almost two meters tall.  The sole of her boots were now caked with shattered bits of road, crushed cars, and red smears that used to be people.

She shoulder checked a few buildings as she passed.  At first it was by accident and she barely noticed.  Then, she realized she was doing it more and more.  The pathetic structures barely put up any resistance as she ploughed into them.  Tempered glass windows shattered and steel-reinforced concrete crumbled as the Asian colossus smashed into them.

She finally overtook the fleeing vehicle.  She slammed down her foot in front of it, and its driver had no time to brake or avoid it.  The tiny car slammed into the side of her boot’s platform.  Mary reached down and carefully picked up the wrecked vehicle and set it down on her palm.  She didn’t want to kill them just yet, not until she had said her piece.

Mary slowly and dramatically raised her hand up to her eye-level.  Her ample chest was still heaving from the physical exertion of chasing the car through the city.  She imagined that the men inside must being seeing one hell of a sight… if they were still alive.  She focused her eyes on the bug sized car and saw two people scrambling out of the wreck.  They weren’t dead quite yet.
“So, you racist fucks think I should go back to my own country?”  Mary spat in rage.  She was sure that the two men were desperately trying to say something, but they were too insignificant for her to hear them.

“This is my country you little shits!”  Mary continued to yell at the doubtlessly deafened men in her palm.

All of a sudden, she paused.  The rage seemed to drain from her, as if an emotional plug had been cleared.  She was filled with a sense of freedom, of dominance, of power.  She stopped breathing hard and a cruel smile formed on her lips.

“This is my country.”  She repeated, in a tone somewhere between sultry and contemplative.
Mary curled her hand around the tiny people and their vehicle.  She didn’t even notice the fact that they were both on their knees begging for forgiveness.  She tossed the remains of the vehicle off into the distance, barely aware of how it sailed through the air and destroyed an entire building upon landing.

By now, Mary was the tallest thing in the city – her city.  She realized that there was no going back now.  There was no way to put this cat back into its bag.  No one was going to forget the face of the Chinese goddess that trampled her way through the business district.  She looked around, surveying the fleeing crowds and trail of destruction that she had wrought in mere minutes.  This was it, the culmination of years of restraint and self-denial.  She wouldn’t have to pretend to be one of those puny bugs at her feet anymore.  She wouldn’t have to live her life without exploiting the power that she was born to.  

She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on growing.  She was going to show these insects the full extent of her power.  Mary’s body shot up in size once again.  She lashed out with one of her fists into a nearby building, as if to punctuate her growth.  This time, the entire office building collapsed into rubble.  

Her boots expanded until they burst out of the streets, brushing aside people, cars and eventually buildings with contemptuous ease.   The tallest buildings brushed briefly against her shapely hips until her expanding frame pushed them aside like toys.  They came tumbling down on the city below them, inflicting devastation on a scale never seen before.  

Entire blocks met their dooms under her boots as she grew.  Soon entire districts were crushed beneath her feet. Mary bit her lower lip as she felt the death cries of an entire city reverberate through her.  This was just a fraction of her power and she so looked forward to showing the world what she was capable of.

Finally she stopped.

Mary looked down at the grey mass below her.  It was as if she was looking at an overhead map on her phone, but it was all real.  She was about 16 kilometres tall now, ten thousand times her “normal” size.  Even the tallest buildings barely came up to the level of her toes over the platform of her boots.  She could grow more if she wanted to, but this was good enough for now. 

Mary grinned wickedly as she saw the devastation that she had caused just by growing.  Entire swathes of the city had been reduced to rubble, and fires had broken out all over.  Droplets of water from her still soaked hair and outfit were adding to the chaos, landing with the force of bombs on people and buildings alike. 

The gargantuan woman lifted up one shapely leg and took a step forward onto a patch of relatively unscathed city.  Her foot came down with horrific destructive force.  Buildings were crushed flat without her even having to stomp down.  When she lifted up her foot again, there was nothing left but a sole and heel shaped crater full of rubble.

“Listen up you little shits.”  She announced in a commanding tone.  She couldn’t tell if the people below were listening, but she was pretty sure they didn’t have a choice.

“This is my country… no, my world now.  You will know me as Goddess Mary.  You live because it pleases me, and you will die if it pleases me.  You have no purpose now other than to serve me.  If you defy me, well this is only an iota of my power.  I can snuff you out in ways that you can only dream of… and I look forward to doing it.”

An eerie, almost impossible silence descended over the city.  Mary knew that she had a captive audience – a perfect opportunity to issue her first command.

“Well, it looks like my outfit is ruined.”  She continued, looking down at her wet, dusty, and blood-caked clothes.  “Make me a new one, slaves.  Something… in leather.”