Chapter 16

The drive was a few hours long, so it gave both Emma and Daniel time to decompress from the craziness of what had just happened. For Daniel, having a hole cut out of their roof so his 12-foot-plus girlfriend could get out was wild enough, but he found himself even more shaken by the reaction of the gathered crowd of people. It made him feel so bad for Emma that he literally felt sick to his stomach. The way all those people had looked at her, shouted at her, ran away from her…it reminded him of those angry, frightened crowds of people with pitchforks in the movies. Deep down, he knew that their reactions were totally based on fear and a lack of understanding surrounding Emma’s condition. But it still didn’t make him feel much different about her being treated like some gigantic animal at the zoo. The firefighters and police had all been wonderfully professional about the whole thing, but Daniel was happy to be rid of the city. Every second that passed, he was driving Emma — and himself — closer to sanctuary, where she wouldn’t have to deal with all those horrible crowds of anxious, fearful people. 

For her part, Emma was lounging in the back of the special truck, her face up close to a hole in the wall that allowed her to communicate directly with Daniel. Whereas Daniel was going through a complex and anxious recovery, Emma didn’t feel much of anything at all. She was fully aware that what had just happened was insane, just as she was fully aware that there had been a huge crowd gathered to watch her, a crowd that hadn’t reacted particularly pleasantly to seeing or hearing her. But Emma had to a large extent managed to shut herself off from all of that. She was feeling a strange sense of distance from everything and everyone, whether they be the little cops who had gathered awkwardly in her house, the tiny firefighters with their miniature fire truck, or the confused and retreating mass of people that she had vaguely seen move backward when she stepped out of the hole in the roof. Emma knew that she should be feeling more of something, more relief or anger or gratitude or…just…anything. But she wasn’t. As she stretched her huge legs out in the truck, she felt almost…bored. 

She didn’t enjoy feeling this way, since it felt so completely at odds with her current situation, and so she inclined her head towards the hole in the truck wall, pressing up her face a little playfully in the hole.

“Heya!” she chirped humorously at her boyfriend. “How’s it going up there?” 

When she spoke, she felt the truck veer a little to the side, quickly righting itself a moment later. 

“Oh! God Emma, you scared me there!” said Daniel, shaking his head as he regained control of the truck’s trajectory. 

“What? Scared you?” laughed Emma, determined to fight her boredom with some self-imposed lightness of spirit. “I literally just asked how it was going.” 

“Yeah, well…your voice is a little…uh, louder than it’s been in the past,” said Daniel, knowing that he needed to tread carefully. 

“My voice is normal — I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Emma genuinely, looking down at her fingernails.

Daniel knew that this was not a good argument to be getting into right now, so he let it drop. “I’m…uh, I’m doing ok,” he answered. The silence seemed to build up quickly after he finished speaking, and Daniel realized that his answer sounded too negative, and too serious. 

“I mean, hehe, everything’s fine and all,” he continued, making an effort to sprinkle his words with a chuckle, “It’s just…that was a little crazy back there, wasn’t it? With all those people? God I’m glad to get away from them.” 

“Yeah I wasn’t really paying too much attention to them,” said Emma into the hole. “You just looked too cute, pulling up there in this little truck.” 

“I’m glad you still think I’m cute,” laughed Daniel, feeling his spirits rise from Emma’s compliment. 

“Still!?” came Emma’s blunt question. “What do you mean “still?””

“I…I mean, uh,” floundered Daniel, his spirits dampening almost as soon as they had begun to rise. “I mean, with everything that’s happened and all…I just…uh, I’m just glad that you’re still attracted to me…even though…well, you know.”

“Even though what, Daniel?” asked Emma. She was starting to get annoyed again. All she was trying to do was shoot the shit and act like a normal person for once, and Daniel had to pull her condition back into everything. 

“Well…e-even though you’re a lot bigger than me now,” answered Daniel, hoping that he could stave off another one of her mood swings. 

“Why should that matter?” Emma asked expressionlessly. “You’re not the one who’s been changing, Daniel. So why would I not be attracted to you?”

“Just…forget it, ok Emma?” laughed Daniel nervously. “I’m glad that you think I’m cute, alright?” 

Several seconds passed by, and then Daniel heard Emma sigh into the hole. He thought that maybe she was sighing out of annoyance at him, but in actuality, it was out of annoyance at herself. She knew that she was acting bitchy and irritable, and she wished that Daniel didn’t have to deal with it. But she didn’t quite know how to prevent herself from jumping on his words and taking them too far in her head. It felt volatile inside her head…dangerous, even, to the point where she sometimes wondered if she was losing her mind. 

‘There I go again,’ she thought to herself irritatedly, ‘Making a huge deal out of nothing.’

She sighed again and decided that she would try and take another nap to pass the time. She hated these long car rides in these huge containers. They made her feel like a caged animal, but even worse, she wasn’t able to see Daniel, to touch him. She felt reassured that he was in the driver’s seat, steering her this way and that, but it was a poor substitute to actually seeing and feeling him. Emma had always been a tactile person, but ever since her growth condition, she felt like this aspect of herself had only become more prominent. 

She sighed out again and pivoted her body away from the hole, doing a quick 180-degree turn as she curled up into a ball. She was surprised, then, when she felt the truck swaying back and forth, with an indistinct yell coming from Daniel through the hole in the wall. 

“Emma!!” he was crying. “Don’t….aaauughhh!! Don’t….!!” 

“Don’t what, Daniel!?” she asked loudly, sitting up and blinking in puzzlement. She felt the truck gradually stop swerving…but strangely, she hadn’t been afraid. Daniel, though, was clearly frazzled, and she could hear the fear in his voice when he spoke. 

“Don’t move around like that!” he exclaimed. “You’re…you’re too heavy, Emma! To be moving around like that back there! I almost lost control of the whole damn truck just now!” 

Emma knew that the situation had really gotten to Daniel — he almost never cursed. But even though she knew that he was being serious, she found herself making light of the whole thing. 

“What? Heheh, are you kidding me?” she laughed. 

“No! I’m not kidding!” he responded immediately. “Seriously, Emma, please…no sudden movements, alright? I need to get us to your parents’ in one piece.” 

“Oh don’t be such a drama queen,” said Emma flippantly, and then kept talking over the protests that she already heard coming from her boyfriend, “And ok, ok, fine, I get it. No sudden movements. Geez, I was just trying to go to sleep.” 

The rest of the trip was spent in silence. Daniel felt a little put-out at Emma’s casual attitude to having almost caused a major wreck, and Emma was annoyed at Daniel for once again calling attention to the fact that she was enormous. She lay curled up in a ball for the remainder of the ride, but she wasn’t able to fall asleep. It didn’t help that her entire body was feeling sore…the kind of telltale bone-deep soreness that she knew meant that she was growing more. She adjusted the white sheet a little more around her thick hips…she could have sworn that it had felt looser, even as late as that morning. She tried to take her mind off everything by listening to the road rushing by down beneath her, but inevitably, her mind returned to that aching soreness that wasn’t going away. 

Emma knew it was bizarre that she wasn’t even thinking about seeing her parents and her sister again, but at this point, she was too mentally tired to worry about it. They would see her and they would react and that would be that. There wasn’t really anything else to it. 

A couple hours later, Emma heard the truck slow down, exiting off the highway, and a few minutes later, she heard the sound of its wheels crunching over the long driveways of crushed rock…her parents’ driveway. She felt the truck come to a stop and she closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. She heard the little sounds of Daniel’s feet crunching the gravel as he came around to the back of the truck, but before he had a chance to unlatch it, she heard the voice of her father. 

“Hi Daniel…Is…is Emma in there?” Emma felt a shuddering wave of emotion pass through her, but almost as soon as it was there, it was gone again. 

“Haha hi Jim!” she heard Daniel say pleasantly as he patted the truck door with his hand. “Yep, she’s in here!”

“Oh my god,” Emma heard another voice say…her sister. “It’s so big! You really needed all of that!?”

“You’ll see why, Daisy,” answered Daniel, starting to mess with the truck lock. 

“And she’s ok in there?” came her mother’s anxious voice. “Was she wearing a seatbelt on the highway?” 

“I, uh…no I don’t think so Maisy,” replied Daniel. “But…I, uh, I made sure I was driving very carefully and…and slowly. Haha, you should’ve seen those cars ripping by me on the interstate, left and right. People drive like maniacs nowadays, haha.” 

Silence greeted Daniel’s attempt at small talk, and Emma couldn’t help but smile to herself as she lay there, curled up in a ball, with her big ass facing the back door. Her family, particularly her parents, weren’t big talkers, and it didn’t matter what the situation was — her sweet, conversational boyfriend had tied himself up in verbal knots on multiple occasions around her parents, talking himself into corners. Her parents were country folk, and they weren’t really in the habit of saying much that didn’t need to be said. 

But her smile dropped and she again mimed being asleep as she heard the heavy clunk of Daniel undoing the lock, and then the subtle, almost eerie sound of the door opening. Emma heard something…a bit like a little gasp…but she couldn’t really be sure what it was. She suddenly felt exposed. 

“Uh, Emma? Emmmma?” came Daniel’s voice gently. “We’re here. Time to wake up.”

“Hmmm,” moaned Emma sleepily as she peeked around her shoulder at Daniel. She could see her family standing indistinctly behind, but she didn’t focus on them. She realized that she actually enjoyed pretending to be woken up. It somehow took the edge off this first initial exchange. She extended her legs out, stretching them all the way out, one on either side of Daniel, who backed up a little in response. Emma, though, wasn’t having any of that, and as she reached her arms up to the truck’s ceiling to stretch, she intercepted Daniel’s retreating body with her bare feet, one clamping around either side of his hips, as she effortlessly pulled him toward her. 

“Emma…e-easy there,” he said immediately, stumbling into the back of the truck from the beckoning force of her feet. 

“Mmmmm, thanks for driving, honey,” Emma murmured groggily. “Sorry I made it a little hard on you there.”

“It’s…it’s no problem Emma,” said Daniel. But he was suddenly aware that Emma was doing something to him with her toes. She wasn’t…actually doing that…was she!? There was no denying it — she was massaging his butt with her toes, right in front of her parents. Daniel tried to escape, but Emma held him firmly with her feet, digging her toes in harder.

“Mmmm, you’re so good to me,” she cooed at him, looking at him from over the tops of her large, perky breasts. “Putting up with all of my shit…you’re soooo sweet, Daniel.” 

“Emma…ok, uh, Emma?!” Daniel whispered to her, turning back around to flash a smile at her family before turning back to her in earnest. But Emma wasn’t letting him go. She was just pulling him towards her, more and more, until he actually felt his feet start to lift off the ground. He fought as much as he could without it being obvious, but he had absolutely no power to control the situation. He could do nothing but hang there helplessly as his feet left the ground. As they did, to his shock and dismay, he felt Emma’s big toe start to make inroads towards the waistband of his pants, testing its boundary, before actually burrowing down the backside of his jeans. 

“Emma!! Emma stop it…stop it!” he hissed at her in a panicked whisper. “They’re seeing everything!” 

“Haha, you look funny kicking around like that!” giggled Emma. 

“Please Emma…please!” Daniel implored in the same desperate whisper. 

Emma just looked at him for a few more moments, moments that felt like ages to Daniel as he hung there in the air between her bare feet, with her huge toe touching his bare ass. She was smiling at him girlishly, with her tongue stuck into the side of her cheek. It was too bizarre for Daniel; he didn’t know why she was behaving this way, and he was really starting to worry. But Emma didn’t really care about how she was coming across. This fun little play with Daniel was a lot more enjoyable than being all serious and quiet around her parents. She knew that she was acting strangely, but it was more important for her to feel cozy and comfortable than anything else. 

“Heheh, wow — didn’t know I could lift you like this!” Emma giggled as she moved her feet back and forth, back and forth, massaging his torso. Daniel couldn’t even speak now. He was just looking at her with that same helpless desperation…desperation that Emma suddenly found extremely cute.

“Heheh, sorry,” she said sheepishly, lowering her feet and putting him back down on the ground. “I just get carried away sometimes.”

“That’s…that’s ok, Emma, haha!” laughed Daniel, turning back around to her family to let them know that it was a light, humorous situation. Emma noticed this gesture, and felt a stab of irritation. Why did he have to worry so much about what her family thought? They would think whatever they thought, regardless of whatever he did. 

“And here’s…here’s Emma!” Daniel announced, stepping aside and extending his arm out. 

“Geez, you sound like you're a circus announcer or something,” muttered Emma as she put her legs down on the ground and started stepping out of the truck. She wasn’t hiding the irritation in her voice. 

“Sorry babe,” whispered Daniel, his face blushing. Emma looked at him for a couple seconds and shook her head slightly. She had felt so kindly towards him…sappy…just moments before. But his little announcement had gotten under her skin. Her eyebrows went up and she sighed at him. Another second or two went by before she realized that she was stalling…that she was using her irritation at Daniel as a way to avoid standing up and looking at her family. Daniel’s eyebrows went up in turn, as if to say, ‘Well? Aren’t you gonna say hi to them?’ 

Emma suddenly felt nervous. She stood up and looked down at her parents and sister. She had always been the tallest in the family at 5’8, an inch taller than her dad, and three inches taller than her mom and Daisy. But now…well, it was very different. She had a crazy moment where she was convinced that this was all a joke, and that those tiny people so far down there weren’t her mom and dad…weren’t Daisy. She blinked down at them and then looked around. They were back at the old home, alright — the two-story farmhouse, the old satellite dish, the big barn off to the side, the pond out a little farther in the distance, and closer, her old childhood swing set, slightly rusted, standing there stolidly in the light breeze.

Emma turned back to her family, actually narrowing her eyes a little as she peered at them closer. It was them alright, but they looked unbelievably small to Emma — their heads didn’t even come up to the middle of her thighs. Her knees were just about as tall as their shoulders. They were…smaller than little kids to her. They were like toddlers. Emma felt her brow coming together as she straightened herself back up, blinking in bewilderment. She felt a slight smile start to crawl across her face. They all looked so shocked…and so serious, with their little mouths open, and their little eyes wide with disbelief. It was like a game…a joke. Emma couldn’t help but giggle a little. 

“Heheh, uh…hey,” she laughed, feeling her bulk shake slightly with her humor. “Um…how’s it going?”

Her family shrank back from her voice, evidently surprised by how loud it was. Emma felt puzzled — she was just speaking normally. Why did they have to all be so dramatic about it? No one was saying anything, so Emma looked around, a bit airily, determined to keep everything normal. 

“Well!” she said brightly, “Things haven’t changed too much around here, huh? Haha, but then again, what more did I expect, right? You guys always liked doing things…well, hehe, the same way you always did them.” 

“Emma…” came her mother’s cautious, trembling voice as she stepped forward. “H-How…how do you feel?” 

“How do I…feel?” asked Emma, turning her head a little sideways. “Haha, what are you talking about? I feel fine! Well, pretty hungry, actually, now that you mention it…but fine.” 

Maisy nodded, blinking blankly at her enormous daughter. Emma looked to the side, at her father and sister, who were both staring up at her with evident trepidation, like they weren’t even sure if they knew her. 

“Hey dad!” smiled Emma, biting her lower lip slightly after she spoke. “How’s everything going? How’re the horses?” 

“They’re…they’re fine, Emma,” answered Jim. Emma could feel herself beginning to get emotional, but she fought to keep it down. She wished that her dad…that everyone, really, would just drop the whole awkwardness business and act normal and casual. Maybe her sister would help move things along; she turned her eyes to Daisy, whose face was as white as a sheet. 

“What’s up, big sis?” Emma chuckled. “Heheh, I know I was taller than you when I left, but…not compared to now, huh?”

“E-Emma,” squeaked Daisy, finally locating her voice, “Wh-what…what’s happening to you?”

Daniel made a movement forward, holding out his hand in a calming gesture toward Daisy. It was suddenly obvious to Emma that Daniel had instructed her family not to bring up certain things, but Daisy had already broken with the protocol. It made Emma feel irritated — why did there have to be all this red tape around her!? Why couldn’t all these little people just treat her like a normal person?? It was like the smaller everyone got around her, the less capable they were of behaving like actual adults. Was Emma really the only grown-up here?! 

“Well if I knew what was happening to me,” said Emma, trying to keep her tone light as she grinned, “I don’t think we’d be here right now, do you?”

Daisy didn’t even react, and so Emma kept talking.

“We have no freaking clue what’s going on with me, haha! Why I’ve gotten this big…and why I’m still growing. But I feel totally fine, except for some, uh, you know…growing pains and things like that.”

“So…uh, so you’re still growing, huh?” came her father’s voice. No one there had ever seen Jim so shocked. He was the strong, silent type, a man of few words and heavy practicality. But even he couldn’t hide his astonishment. 

“Sure am dad,” said Emma, reaching her hands far up above her head, until they were 15 feet in the air. Her family’s eyes got even wider as they watched her stretch. To them, it literally looked like she was touching the sky. 

‘Geez, all I have to do is move around a little and they get flabbergasted all over again,’ thought Emma humorously to herself. ‘These little people are so sensitive!’ 

“And it…it hurts you, dear?” asked Maisy.

“Huh? Hurts…? Oh, oh you mean the growing?” asked Emma. “Uh, haha not really, no. Just makes me kinda sore all the time. But when you’re growing, you know, like a few inches a day, you’re gonna feel it everywhere in your body, right?”

“A f-few inches a day!?” cried Daisy. “Emma! Wh-what!? I mean…uhh…how much do you eat!?” 

Once again, Emma noticed Daniel gesturing to Daisy with his hand, as if to tell her to lay off her questions, and once again, Emma felt the irritation bubbling up in her. She had the sudden urge to swipe her leg over and knock Daniel over. Not to hurt him, but just to knock a little sense into him, to make him chill out a little. 

“Hahah, well, you’ll see soon enough,” chuckled Emma. Right on cue, spurred on by the thought of food, her stomach grumbled loudly, making her whole family stagger back again a little. Emma couldn’t help but laugh, her belly shaking and jiggling with mirth. 

“Hahaha, oh my god! Your faces!” she giggled. 

“Emma, was that…?” asked Maisy. 

“My tummy! Yes!” laughed Emma. “Like I said, I’m hungry!” 

“W-Well…maybe let’s go in and eat, then,” said Maisy in a shaky voice. Emma hadn’t realized it, but to her family, her stomach had literally sounded like a large, growling lion. 

“Go in, Maise?” asked Jim, inclining his head up to his giant daughter. 

“Yeah I don’t think she can fit in the house mom,” said Daisy, looking up at her younger sister. “I m-mean…no offense, Emma.” 

“What do you mean?” asked Emma suddenly. “I’m gonna sleep in my old room with Daniel.”

“Uh, Emma?” said Daniel in a small voice beside her thigh. “I…I don’t think that’s gonna work.”

“What? Of course it’ll work,” responded Emma, taking a step back so that she could see her boyfriend more clearly. “I have all my old stuff in there. It’ll be nice and cosy with you in there. We can cuddle up, and it’ll be just like when you first came over, years ago.” 

But Daniel was just shaking his head. Her eyebrows went down, and she looked over at her parents. Had they already spoken to Daniel about this…without her? 

“I’m sorry Gracie,” said Maisy apologetically, “But you’re just…too big to fit inside the house. We…we heard about how they had to bring in the fire department to get you out, and…well, we can’t have them just cutting holes in our roof like that.”

“But…but where am I gonna sleep?” asked Emma blankly. She could feel the tears starting to well up behind her eyes. 

Maisy slowly turned to her husband, who nodded slightly at her and stepped forward a little, averting his head far upward to address his daughter. 

“I made sure to prep the barn with plenty of…um, soft hay and blankets and pillows for you, honey,” he said. Emma’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes went wide.

“The…barn!?!” she cried.