Paul's eyes went wide, first with fury, then with alarm.  He hunched over as a shudder passed through him.  Toni continued to glare at him, all pity burned away.  Then Paul began to emit a drawn-out grunt, and Toni struggled to keep her composure as he unmistakably began to shrink.

Toni's lips curled into a sneer as Paul dropped below her height and dwindled more and more rapidly.  The holdout skeptic in her tried to cavil that she, too, might begin to shrink, but Toni's awakening sense of self -divinity dismissed this possibility, as if her simple denial was sufficient to prevent it.

Whatever the cause, Toni stood as tall as ever, hands on her hips, as Paul fell beneath her ankles and rejoined the ranks of mortals.  Squatting down once again, Toni saw that Paul's excavation had revealed an intact corner of the cathedral where several guests had sheltered relatively unharmed.  Her heart sang when among the survivors she spotted her father.

She reached down in to the alley behind the church.  In turn, she plucked out two dumpsters, broke through the securing chains with her fingernail, then emptied their contents onto the street.  Then she turned back to the wedding party, grinning.

Paul was still mired in Toni's loogie, which hadn't diminished any more than she had.  She collected Paul and the other guests in her -sized hand, then tumbled them all into the dumpsters.  All except her father, whom she pinched between the tips of her thumb and forefinger.

Standing up, she placed both dumpsters on the roof of a nearby office building.  Then, just so she wouldn't have to worry about any distractions, she bent forward and found the limo that was supposed to take them to the reception and placed it atop the adjacent dumpsters, one axle on each lid.

Folding her arms in front of her chest, Toni brought her squirming father up to her face for her consideration.  She had imagined this scene many times, but she had never taken into account the fact that she would be under world-wide scrutiny.  Her rehearsed lines seemed at that moment wretchedly personal and almost petty.  She wondered if she shouldn't save her father and other select guests for a more private delectation.

Looking down at the wrecked cathedral and the growing audience of emergency vehicles, she drew a deep breath.  She glanced at the dumpsters awaiting her pleasure while her father buzzed in her pinch.  She decided that if this day had proven anything it was the folly of relying on best-laid plans.

She brought her father closer to her ears.  "What's that, Daddy?" she bellowed, then looked down at her towering nude form in mock inspection.  "Why, yes, I am going out dressed like this, if that's alright with you."

Toni swung her bug-sized father around close under her gaze, close enough so that she could savor his expression of rage and confusion and fear.  "This is for Mother," she hissed, bring her curled forefinger next to his head.  It was the softest flick she could manage, but the impact of her nine-foot-long fingernail nearly rendered him unconscious.

Rolling her father's limp form between her fingertips, Toni wondered what it would feel like to crush his body.  She knew she would have several such opportunities—as many as she liked—but the experience of squeezing her first victim to death with her bare fingers would stay would with her forever.

Her father's eyes blinked open, and she recognized the cloud of indignation that had preceded so many of his tantrums.  Recalling all the times she had looked up into that cloud hoping for a sunbreak of love or mercy, Toni knew how she would dissipate it for good.

"You're done, Daddy," she said with a murderous scowl.  She squatted down and set her father in the middle of the street, then stood back up and looked down on him, her hands perched on her hips.  He got unsteadily to his feet, then shielded his eyes from the sun as he craned his neck back to look up at Toni.  For several moments, she stared down at him, tottering between her feet, a grin slowly spreading across her face.

She saw her father's arms reflexively lift up, as if they could ward her off, then drop halfway down again.  Never taking his eyes off her, he cringed then tried to assert his dignity by stiffening his spine.  Finally, exquisitely, she saw the fear consume his posture and he turned to flee as fast as his battered, bewildered, late-middle-aged body could propel him.  Succumbing to raw instinct, she raised her foot and brought it down on him fast and hard, grinding him out of this world as she had so many furtive backyard cigarettes.

A wave of warmth spread up from the ball of Toni's foot, racing along the tendons in her arch, calf, and thigh until it reached her crotch where it blossomed into giddy ecstasy.  She embraced the realization that Grandmother's prophecy didn't require her to share her power with a loved one; her self-love was sufficient.

She deserved it all.  She deserved to take the world she had known and dispose of it as she willed.  She deserved to take her pleasure from anyone she chose.  And she was going to celebrate her omnipotence in the most spectacular way imaginable.

Turning back to her imprisoned guests, she lifted the limo off the dumpsters and flipped one lid open.  Reaching two fingertips inside, she plucked a guest at random.  She held him by his head as his tiny arms scrabbled to find purchase on her slick nails.  She couldn't make out his face, but from his suit she thought she recognized someone who had been introduced to her as "Bob."  Whatever.

Toni slowly started to flick her wrist in a circular motion, and Bob's dangling body began to twirl in wider and wider arcs.  His hands grappled even more frantically, and she could feel his screams against her fingertips.  A short giggle escaped her, then she accelerated her wrist movement, almost immediately Bob's head detached from the rest of his body, which flew all the way to the other side of Brookline Street.  She rolled the head around like a peppercorn, then flicked it in no particular direction.  She couldn't stop grinning.

Out of the corner of her eye, Toni noticed someone trying to escape from a dumpster.  "Uh-uh-uh," she tutted, grabbing him by the leg and dangling him in front of her face.  She gave contented sigh when she recognized Frank, the Acura dealer.  His eyes bugged out, staring at the ground spinning seven hundred feet below.

Toni tossed Frank up twenty feet, and she again focused her attention so she could hear his cries of terror as he tumbled through the air.  She whipped her palm underneath him so she could enjoy his startled grunt as she caught him, only to scream again when she tossed him back up into the sky.

She caught Frank again and held him between her fingertips.  Eyeing the distant river on the other side of the freeway, she brought Frank close.  "Whaddaya think?" she taunted.  "You think I could hit the water from here?  I'm only a girl, after all.  You should probably make like a ball; less wind resistance."

Whether he ultimately doubted her throwing arm or the cushioning effect of the river, Frank failed to maximize his aerodynamics and didn't even make it across the freeway.  He bounced off an apartment building and fell into the street below, not even leaving a satisfactory splatter of blood on the building facade.

As she gazed at the distant site of Frank's demise, Toni noticed an unexpected movement and sound from the top of a building less than half the distance away.  Many of the surrounding buildings had people on their roofs watching her, but unlike the others the person standing in this condo rooftop garden wasn't pointing a camera or a weapon at her.  Instead, he was clapping and cheering.

Leaving the block of the ruined cathedral for the first time, Toni's legs snapped utility wires and collapsed signal poles, and her heedless feet broke through the police cordon, crushing dozens of first-responders and journalists.  She didn't pause to enjoy any of these atrocities, however, so curious was she about her new acolyte.

As her attention on him became obvious, the man stopped clapping and let his arms fall to his sides, but he stood his ground as she advanced upon him.  The condo building only came up to about mid-thigh on Toni, but she refused to kneel or bend, instead looming over the building and looking down past her breasts upon the puny man, whose view of Toni now significantly consisted of staring up at her yawning pussy.

He could not fail to note, however, the flash in her eyes when she recognized his tuxedo.  He had somehow survived the cathedral collapse and escaped the footfalls of the titanic bride and groom, but rather than flee to the hills or spill his guts to the National Guard, Paul's best man Tom had simply walked seven blocks and found a spot with a good view of the action.

Without preamble Toni reached down toward Tom, who took an immediate step backward, but only one.  He stiffened as her fingers approached, but then she lay her hand flat on the rooftop, her palm open next to him.  He shook his head wryly, then threw himself forward and pulled himself up into her hand.  He didn't try to stand up, but instead crawled to the center of her palm.  Toni curled her fingers into a fist around Tom, then stood back up.

She looked at her fist and wondered at her capacity for mercy.  Tom wasn't moving within the narrow confines of her fingers, but neither was he limp with terror.  If she spared Tom, would that unleash remorse for the crimes she had already committed?  Would she have to kill him to keep her resolve?

She turned and looked back towards the demolished cathedral.  The emergency workers had abandoned their perimeter, and while a few were trying to locate survivors in the rubble, most had devoted themselves to simply aiding the evacuation of the rest of the city.  Disdaining this exercise of frantic and futile urgency, Toni understood that questions of mercy and resolve were no longer her concern.

She walked back to the office building where she had perched the surviving guests.  A platoon from the SWAT unit fired a volley at her swaying ankle, which didn't break her stride but did divert her footfall far enough to crush them like kevlar-coated cockroaches.

As Toni approached her ad hoc dumpster prison cells, she spotted yet another guest trying to flee.  She easily identified Noreen exploiting lifeboat ethics, being helped out of the dumpster by one gentleman while another handed her the brat.  Toni took no small amount of pleasure from Noreen's white eyes when she stopped next to the building and cast them all into her shadow.

None of the escapees moved as Toni brought her fist right under her face and uncurled her fingers, concentrating her immense gaze on Tom, lying on her palm.  He didn't try to sit up, but rather propped himself up on one elbow to return her regard.

"I'm a little disappointed in you, Tom," she said, enjoying his blanched reaction to her enormous and inescapable judgment.  "Deserting the wedding before fulfilling all of your duties.  I had been looking forward to your toast."

Tom swallowed and found his nerve.  "It wasn't much, just a funny story about Paul making a fool of himself.  Compared to today's fuck-up, it doesn't even rate."

Toni drew a deep breath, but only Tom seemed to enjoy the effect it had on her chest.

"What 'fuck-up' are you referring to?" she asked intently.  The vicinity of Toni's eruption was still a cacophony of sorrow and terror, but to her ears only Tom's voice carried any force.  Her palm formed a swaying platform twenty feet above the office building roof, and her pliant skin made for unsure footing.  Tom nevertheless got to his feet, squared his shoulders, and faced her godlike scrutiny.

"Dumping you, of course," he said.  "He coulda had you and the world, and the threw it all away."

Tom flinched as Toni let out a sharp snort.  "I take it, then" she said, "that you approve of my...new world order?"

"Fuck, yeah!"

She looked into his tiny face and saw nothing but awe and enthusiasm.  One more detail nagged at her.  "Did Paul ever tell you how we met?"

Tom shook his head.  "Nope.  I asked him a few weeks ago, but he kept it mysterious, like he was onto something too good to let me in on."

"He never talked to you about...macrophilia?"

Tom's face curdled in disgust.  "He's into fucking dead chicks?" he said.

Toni scrutinized Tom's face for several intense moments, but she couldn't conclude that his misapprehension was anything other than genuine.

"No," she said, "but pretty soon it won't matter what he's into."

Toni lowered her hand to the rooftop, and Tom gamely vaulted out of her palm.  "Tom," Toni said, "if you don't mind, go ahead and grab Noreen there."

Toni herself plucked the tiny infant between her fingertips, but the man who had been holding her refused to let go.  Toni raised her hand thirty feet above the dumpster, then with the slightest jostle shook the man free.  She remembered to pause and enjoy both the screams of the man as he fell as well as those on whom he landed.

She turned to Noreen, who was standing in front of Tom, held by both her arms.  Her defeated sobs were becoming less enjoyable with every passing heave.

Toni held the squalling infant under her mother's face. "Tom," she said, "what do you think I should do with this?"

Noreen tried to turn and face Tom.  "Please," she whispered, "tell her to let us go."

Tom guffawed in her face.  He shook his head and looked up at Toni.  "I'd get rid of it."

"No!" cried Noreen, furiously trying to wriggle out of Tom's grip.

"Hey, Noreen," Toni said innocently.  "What's her name, again?  I forgot."

"Ayvellin," sobbed Noreen.

"Hmmm," said Toni.  "I don't think that sounds right.  I think it should be something more like...'Smear.'"

With less effort than it took to crush a pea, Toni's fingertips pressed together and sprayed Noreen and Tom with blood and gore.  As she watched Noreen collapse and Tom wipe his eyes, Toni licked her fingers clean.  She tingled all over.

Noreen's wails punctuated the moment, but quickly got tiresome.  "God, that's worse than the brat," said Toni, reaching for the distraught woman.  She plucked Noreen by the ankle and dangled her in front of her contemptuous sneer.  With an impatient shake of her hand, Toni opened her mouth and tossed Noreen inside, tucking her between her gum and her cheek with her tongue.  Keeping her eyes on Tom, Toni closed her mouth and began swishing Noreen over her teeth and under her palate and against her cheek.

Tom had forgotten about the relatively modest amount of blood on his face and was now staring up at Toni in awe.  Toni couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw Tom's jaw twitching.  She puckered her lips and pushed Noreen's head out into the daylight.  The smaller woman managed a sputter and a quickly muffled yelp as Toni sucked her back inside.

Impatient to make her point, Toni shoved Noreen between her molars and crunched down.  There was barely anything to swallow, but Toni expected there was still some of Noreen staining her teeth when she grinned down on Tom.

Tom held each of his hands to the sides of his head, fingers pressed against his temples.  "That was fucking in-TENSE, man!" he chortled.  He walked to the edge of the roof and looked down the street and over the city.  Then he craned his neck back to look up at Toni's triumphant face three hundred feet above.

"I guess that's the way it's going to be from now on," he said, gesturing helplessly at Toni and grinning.

Toni had expected (and looked forward to) abject submission from those with functioning survival instincts, but Tom's mellow endorsement of her dominating cruelty was surprising and, well, touching.  She knew she couldn't have a peer-relationship with anyone so puny and vulnerable, but it irked her to think that she should have to restrain herself in any way, that she couldn't simply acknowledge that she found his gesture charming.

She reached down and plucked Tom from the rooftop, his chest, arms, and head protruding up from between her fingertips.  She held him high, as if appraising the coloration of a vintage Burgundy.  She noted his trembling with indulgence.

"Thank you, Tom," she said gently.  "We could not have asked for a better Best Man."  She brought him under her nose and, with the lips behind which Noreen had so permanently disappeared, enclosed Tom's head in warmth and affection.  She could not see his expression, but she felt his tiny arms on her upper lip return her embrace.

Feeling more liberated than ever, Toni set Tom back on the rooftop, inclined her head with a coquettish smile, then indelicately swept both dumpsters into her fist before any more escapes could be attempted.

"Now let me see," she said, peering into the rancid steel pens, "where was I?"  A gratifying chorus of panic rang up out of her clutch.

A dull rumble interrupted Toni's reverie.  Has the Army arrived already? she wondered, looking in the direction of the freeway.

But the sound was larger than any armada of vehicles could generate.  It was a building collapsing, the very office building from which she had just removed the dumpsters.  Did I do that? Toni thought carelessly.  Oops.

Then her face fell in amazement as she saw an enormous torso and limbs extending out of the dust cloud.  A person—a man—was rapidly expanding in size, destroying the office building and invading her world.