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Chapter 23

A pleasant gust of cool breeze blew through the top opening of the barn, washing through the rafters and gently touching Emma’s face as it barely ruffled her red hair. It smelled so sweet, so delicious, that Emma unconsciously let out a little sigh of pleasure. She definitely wanted to go out in the open to get some fresh air. She looked back down at the assembled mass of police officers who were gathered and crouched tensely at the barn’s entrance, with their little toy guns trained on her. Emma blew out another exhale of quiet laughter down at them, and they backed up again as a massed unit, even tenser, some of them visibly shaking. She knew that these were real cops, and that their uniforms weren’t costumes, and that the guns and tasers in their hands weren’t toys…but it was just hard, SO hard, for her to take them seriously. They looked like little action figures, none of them coming up less than a foot below her knees. She put her tongue in between her teeth and looked up at the bird’s nest in the barn rafters.

‘Come on Em,’ she laughed to herself, ‘Get with it…this is…heheh…this isn’t a game. These little men are for real, hahaha!’

“Come…WITH you?” asked Emma, bending herself down towards them, resting her hands on her knees. She couldn’t suppress a giggle as she saw them all backing away from her again, just because of this simple action. “THAT doesn’t make sense, mister…uhhh…mister police officer man, haha! Come with you WHERE?”

“W-we’re taking you down to the station,” came the lieutenant’s reply, his taser trembling in his hand as he pointed up towards Emma’s exposed naked belly.

“The station? Haha, you’re just trying to be funny, aren’t you?” Emma knew, somewhere in her mind, that the officer wasn’t doing anything of the sort. She knew that, from the perspective of the police, and of the little gathering of her family watching anxiously from behind, that this was a very serious situation. But it didn’t make any sense! Why would they be arresting her right now!? She had literally just been sleeping, and then Daniel had come in to check on her, and then they had had a nice little intimate time that had been maybe a little too much for him, and…that was it! The cops had come to break it all up. They couldn’t have possibly known anything about her unless…

Emma turned her gaze slowly past the police to her family, and then, specifically, at Daisy. She felt her brain darken as she began to put the pieces together. So Daisy had called the cops on her. Who else would have done such a thing!? Not her dad — he had never much cared for the police. And her mom surely wouldn’t have wanted the situation to escalate like this. Only Daisy…her sister…the one who had been angry at her, yelling at her, calling her names…SHE had been the one, and Emma knew it.

Emma exhaled through her nose as she looked up at the barn rafters again. Her mind was awash in all kinds of conflicting emotions, but right now, as she stared away from all the people beneath her, she allowed her anger to really come through. She couldn’t believe it! Her own sister…betraying her like this! Of all the…

But Emma felt her mouth open a little, and she let out a little exhale of a laugh. What did it matter, what Daisy was TRYING to do? Whatever it was, it’s not like it was going to work! Emma marveled at how quickly she was able to recover from that dark flash of anger, and she again noticed the bird’s nest in the rafters. She smiled at it fondly before looking down again at the ridiculous little gaggle of people beneath her.

“Th-there’s nothing funny about what we just saw, ma’m!” responded the lieutenant. “Now come on…slowly…with us…out of the barn…”

“What did you just see?” asked Emma, genuinely puzzled as she put her hands on her hips. She was so big now, though, that one of her elbows went through the upper portion of the barn wall, smashing a large hole in it with a loud crash. The police officers backed away in alarm, and one of them actually fired his taser from sheer instinct. Luckily for him, the barb missed Emma’s thigh, and the clicking sound of the taser was drowned out by Emma’s voice, which shook the foundations of the barn even though she was speaking normally.

“Oh wait…WAIT!” she exclaimed, starting to laugh. Everyone down below covered their ears. “Are you, like…are you saying that you little people were SPYING on me and him!?” She pointed down to Daniel’s unconscious body in the hay. “While we were having our PRIVATE time!?”

“That is not what I saw happening, ma’m!” called up the lieutenant, nodding at his team. “We were called about a possible crime taking place, and what I saw definitely looked like r—”

“You’re actually serious, aren’t you?” laughed Emma, putting up a colossal hand to interrupt. She looked over at her family. “Do they even know? Daisy? Did you tell them what’s actually going on? You know…with me and everything.” She looked straight down at the lieutenant and gave him a bright smile. “Because this little man wouldn’t be talking to me like this, all serious-like, if he knew…”

“Last warning ma’m!” shouted the lieutenant, bracing himself along with the rest of his crew, their tasers drawn. A few of the cops were pointing with real guns as well.

“Don’t shoot her!!” screamed Maisy suddenly from behind. “Not like this!! This isn’t what we wanted!!”

“Shoot me!?” chuckled Emma, her eyebrows going up. “Haha, mom, come on, when these guys are done playing we can all…we can all, ummm…”

But Emma trailed off there, because she had suddenly felt a series of slightly stinging sensations in the area of her upper thighs and hips. A series of loud, aggressive-sounding clicks filled the air, and Emma realized that several of the officers, the lieutenant included, had fired their tasers at her. They didn’t even feel like insect bites — after the initial sting, the flesh of her thighs and hips absorbed the voltage, soaking it up like it was nothing.

A whirl of emotions flashed through her mind, and for an instant, Emma actually reverted back to her old office-worker self, someone who would have been positively petrified to have been the focus of so many cops, let alone tased by them. But this was only one streak of emotion rifling through her brain — she was irritated that they had actually been bold enough to SHOOT her with those little toys they were holding, though, of course, they hadn’t done much good. She was also confused; why were the police taking all of this so seriously? What on earth was their problem!? But quickly, one dominant emotion swallowed up all the others; Emma simply couldn’t stifle her laughter. They all looked so absurd down there, with those little wires attached to their guns, staring up at her with growing fear, as they realized their plan had fallen flat.

“Haha, you actually thought those little things would DO something to me?!” she laughed. “Get real! And get out of my way — I’m gonna get some fresh air. You better leave Daniel alone — let him sleep. I tuckerd him out, haha!”

Emma stepped toward the cops, fully intending on dipping her head and walking out of the barn, but very quickly, everything changed. Emma’s size, combined with her flippant attitude, was positively menacing for the cops there, and when she had stepped towards them, a few of the ones who had their actual guns drawn panicked…and fired up at her.

“NO!! STOPPP!!” cried Maisy, rushing forward with her hands raised up. Daisy had started forward too in horror, and Jim was yelling something as well. But Emma couldn’t really hear much of all that down there. What she felt was a sudden sharp pain, a bit more intense than the tasers, in her lower stomach, and most pointedly, right on the inside of her groin, directly to the left of her sensitive labia. The bullets penetrated through the upper layer of her skin, but no further, and when Emma moved her body, her skin flexed and stretched, and bullets fell out onto the ground. They had barely drawn any blood. But they HAD hurt a little, most particularly the one close to her labia. That one had smarted fiercely, like someone her own size had flicked that spot with their finger. The loud pops of the guns told Emma that they had actually started firing live ammunition at her, and that knowledge, combined with the sharp, stinging pain in her groin, made something snap in her. Now she was actually angry, and remained so.

“The FUCK are you doing?” she burst out. She wasn’t actually raising her voice much, but it still vibrated with the energy of her anger. At the word “FUCK,” she had swiftly bent down towards the two cops closer to her who had fired, far faster than any of them could have expected, and swung the back of her right hand down toward them. There was no possible way they could have gotten out of the way. Emma felt their bodies give way like little dolls against her backhanded motion, and they both went flying backward, hitting the side of the barn wall and crumpling down motionless in a heap together.

As she had bent down, Emma felt another series of stings, this time up and around her neck and face. They were actually firing at her again! Only this time, the bullets were actually hitting thinner skin, closer to her eyes. They hurt more, but just like the previous ones, once Emma swiftly moved, the bullets dropped out of the top layer of her skin and fell to the ground. To Emma, though, the added shots made her even angrier. It felt like a little swarm of bees was suddenly stinging her face and neck…and the thought that one of these bullets might actually hit her in the eye and permanently damage her vision pushed Emma over the edge.

“Ok…stop…STOP it!” she snapped, swinging her hand again towards the front line of cops. This time, they had all already gone scurrying into a retreat, and they managed to avoid Emma’s initial sideswipe at them. But she was already moving in their direction, and before they could get any farther, she swung out her leg, tripping all four of them, and making them face-plant down in the dirt, right outside the barn. Emma was shaking her head and blinking rapidly, to try and get over the stinging in her face, but even now, there was something humorous to her about the line of policemen, all lying face-down in the dirt next to each other. She was too high up to notice that two of the cops she had tripped had actually suffered broken legs from the contact with her foot. The two other ones tried to get up, but very quickly, Emma put her foot down over them, hardly even pressing into them at all. But they screamed out nonetheless:

“Nooooo!!! Pleeeeease!!! Don’t!!! Don’t step on us!!!”

“Well don’t shoot me then!” countered Emma, putting her hands on her hips as she continued shaking her head down at them.

“Here…here, guns…there they are…no guns!!” they both cried, tossing their weapons out at her feet. Emma bent down and picked one of the handguns up, bringing it up to her eye level as she pointed it away from herself, marveling at how tiny it was in her fingers. She could barely even keep hold of it.

“Huh…better get rid of this thing before I accidentally shoot it off,” muttered Emma to herself, and she simply squeezed it in between her fingers, crushing the gun instantly into a flat sheet of metal. She admired the shiny little disk for a moment, turning it around between her fingers, before casually flicking it away onto the ground. There was a lot of indistinct shouting going on below her, but so far up, it was hard for Emma to understand what was being said. She vaguely understood that some of the police officers on the ground were yelling out…sounding like they were in pain or something. She looked down and saw that the two beneath her feet were flailing their little arms under her toes. Seeing their movements, she was able to register that their movements did actually feel like something…just the slightest bit of a tickle on the bottom of her foot. Her cheek and neck still stung a little from the bullets, and Emma put her hand up to her face and felt the slightly-raised beginnings of small welts. Her mind alighted on her anger again.

“Hey! Now my face hurts!” she said irately down to the two cops pinned under her foot, as she gestured to her cheek. “What were you even thinking!?”

“We’re s-sorry!! We’re sorry!!” yelled the officers from between her toes. “Just please…let us get up!!!”

“Well if I DO that,” mused Emma, lolling her head to the side as she continued to look down at them, “Will you promise to just go away and leave me alone?”

The two men were about to offer their most sincere promises to that exact effect, but they were interrupted by the loud voice of their lieutenant, who was now speaking through a megaphone.

“Step away from the officers!” blared the lieutenant through the loudspeaker. “Take your foot off them…NOW!”

Emma looked with curiosity on the scene below. More cops seemed to have arrived, and they now numbered around 15 or 20. All of them seemed to have their guns drawn now, and were pointing them directly up at Emma’s face. For the first time in the encounter, she had a flash of fear — what if they all shot at once, up at her eyes? She had always had excellent vision — her eyesight had been something she was proud of. And here all these ridiculous tiny men were, threatening her like this. Her fear quickly morphed into real rage, and she very nearly decided to simply increase her weight on her foot, just to show all these silly puffed-up men who they were dealing with. But she glanced down at the trapped officers beneath her feet, and caught sight of the wide-eyed terror in their faces, in between her toes. They were so tiny…so completely helpless…like the little squirrels she had caught in traps in the forest when she was a kid. And just like the squirrels, these men were acting on pure instinct now. They wanted to get away from her.

Without even thinking, she took her foot off them, and watched as they scampered away, falling on their faces several times, as they ran in behind the line of armed officers. The other two cops she had tripped hadn’t moved. But Emma wasn’t much worried about them. She frowned at the assembled crowd, and noticed that her family behind them seemed to be restrained. It was like they were being prevented from interfering. Another surge of a different kind of anger went through Emma as she looked at Daisy.

‘Is this what you wanted?’ she thought as she looked at her sister. ‘Well, this is what you asked for, anyway.’

Emma started turning away from the whole crowd, and she looked out past the plowed fields to the pond in the distance. In the west, the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, signaling the end of the day…The afternoon was late, and the sky was beginning to glow red. Emma sighed out pleasantly, conveniently forgetting everything behind her. It might be nice to take another little dip in the pond...the nice cool water…she could submerge again completely and block out all the sound from the outside world. It would be so nice, so peaceful.

‘Yeah…let’s do it!’ she thought to herself happily, and she started swinging her legs out towards the pond. She didn’t even realize how much her movements made the ground shake. She hadn’t gone more than a single pace when she felt the stinging little bees again, this time all over her back. Her eyes widened, not in pain but in renewed rage, and she whirled back around.

“WHAT!?!” she bellowed down at the officers. “WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME, HUH!?!”

She was feeling the little stings on her front now, but she didn’t care. She held up a hand over her eyes to protect them as she angrily stomped forward, leaving footprints that were well over twelve inches deep in the hard dirt. The lieutenant was shouting something at her in his pathetic little megaphone, but Emma’s voice easily drowned him out.

“YOU WANNA TAKE ME IN!?” she yelled down at them. “YOU WANNA ARREST ME?? WELL GUESS WHAT!? YOU CAN’T!!! YOU CAN”T MAKE ME DO ANYTHING!!! I JUST WANT YOU TO GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”

She went straight for the lieutenant himself, swooping her hand down and catching him up, her fingers easily going all the way around his waist as she yanked him up to her face, nearly breaking his back from the sudden whiplash. He found himself face to face with the glowering face of the giantess, her face contorted into an angry frown, as she held him close to her face, so that there was only a few feet in between them. The lieutenant’s megaphone had fallen out of his hand on the way up, but he was still holding his gun. Emma quickly pinched it away with her thumb and forefinger, effortlessly flattening it into another shiny disk in front of his eyes as she continued to scowl down at him.

“THERE!” she boomed in his face, rupturing one of his eardrums, “That’s what I think of your STUPID little toys!” She let the disk drop to the ground as she looked into his eyes, gauging his reaction. She wanted to see his fear, and she wasn’t disappointed. The lieutenant was totally red in the face, and looked like he was about to pop. Emma realized that she was maybe squeezing him a little too tight, and eased up on him. She needed him to be able to speak to his little team down below, who were still shooting at her, but lower. Her lower legs stung with their gunfire. Emma took a deep breath to steady herself, closing her eyes for a moment before opening them again.

“Look,” she said, the anger still trembling in her huge voice, “I’m about to lose it here, ok!? Tell your little…people…to stop shooting me.”

Emma suddenly got an idea, and whipped the lieutenant around, displaying him to the crowd of cops down below. His legs dangled fruitlessly in her grasp.

“QUIT IT!” she shouted. “STOP SHOOTING ME…OR ELSE…I’LL…I’LL SQUEEZE HIM…RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!”

It hadn’t occurred to Emma how terrifying this threat actually was, to everyone listening. The idea had just popped into her mind, and she went with it. Wasn’t that how they did it in the movies? Threaten to do something bad to get other bad stuff to stop happening? And anyway, it seemed to work. The cops had all put down their guns and were holding their hands up, yelling up at her and gesturing adamantly. The lieutenant was also yelling something down at them, although Emma couldn’t quite hear him…something like “Stop!” or “Stand down!” But Emma couldn’t really be sure.

In any case, her plan seemed to be working. She brought the cop back around to face her, and she was struck by the sudden impression that this man in her hand was not actually…a man…but instead, he was a kind of doll…a large action figure that she could play with. He was just WAY too small to be anything else. Her hand easily wrapped all the way around him, with plenty of spare room left for her fingers, each of which were thicker than his arms. Emma frowned slightly as her brow creased, although this time, it wasn’t in anger. She was simply studying him. She gently pinched his little hand in her fingers, lifting it up and letting it fall, lifting it up, and letting it fall again. She blew out a bemused exhale as she blinked at him, shaking her head. It was just too surreal. Before, when she had been playing with Daniel, this same strange thought had occurred to her…the thought that she had awoken from her nap into some kind of alternate universe, where all the “people” around her were extra small…but then again, as she looked around at the barn, the farm, and beyond, SHE was the one who was definitely out of place.

She held up the man, slightly above her head, looking closely at his dangling little feet, with their shiny little boots. Emma heard a little commotion below her, but she didn’t pay too much attention. She was too busy marveling at how tiny the cops’s little boots were.

“Heh! So cute!” she murmured, feeling an odd sense of lightness suddenly pervade her mind. She was going to have that little dip in the pond…yes…but she’d tell this cop to take his friends and go home first…but…before that…these little boots! They were precious, so much so that they were a little ridiculous

“Lemme see one of those,” she muttered to herself, and she pinched his boot in between her fingers and popped it right off his foot, eliciting a pained howl from the lieutenant as his tendons stretched unnaturally.

“Oh what?” teased Emma, shaking her head at him. “Stop whining. I’m just getting a closer look at your little —”

But right then, the cops below started shooting again. They had seen Emma yanking off their lieutenant’s boot, and they thought that she was about to do to him what she had done to Daniel. And so, naturally, they reverted to their only defensive option. Emma felt the little stings on her legs again, and her calm evaporated instantly.

“I TOLD them….to STOP!!” she yelled at the lieutenant, who was now barely conscious in her hand. Between Emma’s shouting, and her painful manipulation of his body with her fingers, he was barely in control of his faculties. She brandished his body at them again, shaking him violently in her hand, back and forth, so that his head and limbs lolled all over the place, like he was a marionette.

“YOU WANT ME TO SQUEEZE HIM, HUH!?” she thundered down at them, and without waiting for an answer, she whipped him back around, so he was looking straight into her face, and started squeezing him slowly. Almost instantly, the man’s face turned a dark red, and then purple, as his cheeks puffed up with blood, and his eyes grew bloodshot. Emma bore down on him, frowning under glowering eyes as she kept going. She was going to show him how big of a mistake he had made, coming to the farm, and bringing all this…nonsense along. But when blood started trickling out of the man’s nose, and his left ear, Emma stopped herself. She wasn’t really trying to…to KILL the man. That was going way too far, of course.

‘But you’re about to, Em,’ she suddenly thought to herself. ‘You’re about to kill him.’

She softened her grip, and the man gasped out in relief. Just then, though, a sharpshooter from the back of the cop crowd fired a sniper shot from a powerful rifle, and it would have hit Emma in the eye if she hadn’t shifted a little at the last second. Even still, the bullet hit the side of her orbital bone, penetrating deep enough into the skin to stay lodged in there. It was ultimately a relatively harmless shot, but it sure hurt more than anything else they had shot at her.

“OUCH!!” she growled, baring her teeth in pain. “FUCK!! OK, THAT’S IT!!!”

She held the lieutenant up close to her face one more time, and for an instant, she was about to crush him right then and there, in front of everyone. But Emma knew she didn’t actually want this to happen, so she instead did the next thing that came into her mind. She reared back and threw him. As soon as he left his hand, the little stings on her lower legs stopped. The cops had all stopped shooting their weapons, and were watching in horror as their lieutenant flew through the air. Emma was watching him too.

‘Ohhhhh shit….shitshitshit!!,’ she thought immediately as she watched his body hurtle far out over the plowed field. ‘Fuckkkk...no, no! I hope I didn’t BREAK him…I mean, uhhh…hurt him…or…’

It was obvious that the man wasn’t going to survive. Emma hadn’t intended on it at all, but she had thrown him in an arc reaching almost 60 feet up into the air, in a long, long trajectory that was sure to end in a violent, deadly collision with the ground. Unless…

Emma didn’t realize it, but she was skipping after the lieutenant anxiously, trying to get a closer look where he would fall. She knew that she had just done something…bad…or at least, in her mind, she was registering that there would be consequences to what she had just done. But right now, she was just locked on the man’s downward path, hoping that somehow, he would end up landing in a soft pile of mud or a stray bale of hay or maybe…

The pond glittered in the dying red light of the sunset. Emma felt her heart leap a little. His fall seemed to be perfectly coordinated…could it be!? Could he really be going straight for it?? Emma felt herself inhale expectantly as she continued her anxious skipping after him. She saw his little arms and legs waving and gesturing wildly as he flew through the air, and it occurred to her that, in the act of throwing him, she might have actually hurt him a little. The way he was tumbling through the air reminded her of someone falling down a steep hill, and who can’t stop their momentum. She knew that she couldn’t possibly catch up to him, but maybe, just maybe…he’d end up landing in the pond.

And he did. Emma cracked into an open-mouthed smile as she blew out her breath in relief. By sheer luck, the lieutenant had fallen almost exactly into the middle of the pond, where the water was deep enough to accommodate his fall. A moment later, the sound of the splash arrived in Emma’s ears. She was already rushing up to the pond, the cool twilight air rushing pleasantly over her bare skin as she ran. She didn’t realize how much she was shaking the ground with her long, powerful strides; she didn’t hear the ambulances behind her, or the paramedics tending to the scores of injured cops she had left in her wake. All she was focused on was making sure that she got this lieutenant out of the water safely, and apologized to him.

She was encouraged to see his body struggling and floundering in the water when she came to the pond’s edge and, without even thinking, she waded into the water, going up to her mid-thighs at the 10-foot mark as she reached down and plucked the coughing, spitting, stunned man out of the water. The lieutenant seemed to have lost about half his clothing in the ordeal of being thrown; his uniform was torn diagonally down the side, and his chest was bare. Both of his feet were bootless now, and one of his feet hung limply in the air; unwittingly, Emma had snapped his ankle, taking off his boot a minute before.

“Oh my god…heheh, I’m soooo sorry,” Emma chuckled contritely, laughing a little in embarrassment. “I, uhh…wow, yeah, totally didn’t mean to throw you that far.”

“It’s…*huhhuhhuh* it’s…o-okay…m-ma’m,” panted the lieutenant. There was no more following protocol now, for him or his officers. He knew he was lucky to be alive, and that the most pressing matter now, for him and his team, was to get out of there as quickly as possible.

“God, you sure you’re alright?” asked Emma kindly, petting the man’s wet head with the tip of her finger. “I just threw you across the farm, haha! I mean, hey…it’s ok to take a little deep breath and just, you know…relax for a minute.”

The cop shuddered at the giantess’s touch, but even in his disoriented, fearful state, he knew better than to try and squirm away from her now. This woman was seriously ill in her mind, and the best thing that he could think to do was just to play along with her when she was being gentle, like she was now.

“Ok…*huhhuh*…ok,” he breathed, nodding his head. Emma watched him silently for a few moments, her hand now cradling half of his body as she continued to gently pet him with her finger. The adrenaline of having just avoided a horrible mistake was still coursing through her, but she was making sure to take deep breaths herself, along with the officer. A cheerful lightness came over her, as can often happen when a catastrophe is avoided, and she started probing the cop’s body a little with her finger. She felt a strange, fascinating sense of childlike curiosity, now that she was free to simply admire how small this man was. There weren’t any annoying hordes of cops shooting at her now, and she could be free to explore at will. She drew her huge finger over his heaving little chest, tracing his tiny arms, and going down to his legs. She thought of tearing off the cop’s pants, just to get a look at his little cock, but just then, she remembered that she had left Daniel sleeping in the hay. After all that commotion in the barn, surely he had woken up! She wanted to see if he was ok.

Emma looked up towards the barn, and for the first time noticed the assembly of ambulances flashing their red lights into the gathering gloom. A nasty twinge ate at the back of her mind, but she brushed it away.

“I th-think…m-ma’m…” heaved the lieutenant, “I think I need…an ambulance too.”

“What? An ambulance?” asked Emma, distracted. “What for? You landed in the pond.”

“I…I th-think…my insides…uhhh…got all jumbled up, ma’m…uh…n-not your fault, of…of course.” Emma peered down closer at him and saw that he had gone pale. She started to worry about him, and her legs began moving back towards the barn.

“Well no, but…all you cops, coming in with your little guns,” Emma muttered, half to herself. “You shouldn’t have been shooting at me.” She peered down at the lieutenant again in her hand, slightly tightening her fingers around him. “Right? You shouldn’t have shot me, you know?”

“I know, I know, m-ma’m!” exclaimed the lieutenant quickly, nodding his head as energetically as he could. “We were…we were wrong! We made a mistake!!”

“Well alright,” said Emma, frowning slightly, “I’m bringing you back. But they better not shoot at me again, ok? Or else I’m…uhhh.” Emma shook her head as she stared off into the distance. She actually didn’t know what she would do…but she knew that it wouldn’t be pleasant.

“W-wait…wait!” cried the lieutenant, holding his hands up. “L-let me…let me make sure that they’re, uhh…that they’re not going to do that, o-ok!?”

“Do what?” asked Emma, distracted by the hullabaloo she was approaching. Sirens, flashing red lights, people dashing all around…people lying on stretchers…little things on their faces…things that Emma realized were oxygen masks after puzzling over it for a moment. Everyone was hurrying, like they were trying to get out of there as fast as possible, and every step she took, they became more and more frantic.

“Shoot at you!” yelled the lieutenant. “I want to make sure…they won’t shoot at you!! So c-could you…stop for a second, please? Ma’m?!” Quite sensibly, he was afraid for his life, and was terrified that even a single shot would send Emma back on her rampage, which would likely leave him torn in half.

“Uh, ok, sure,” said Emma, stopping for a second. She was still distracted by the commotion. When had all this happened!? She knew in the back of her mind that it was to do with her, but for the moment she was just confused, seeing it all.

“Don’t shoot!! I’m ok!!” shouted the lieutenant, cupping his mouth in his hands as he called down to the people on the ground. “I repeat — do NOT shoot!! Do NOT engage!!” Emma was slightly taken aback by how wild and uncanny the man’s voice sounded.

‘Gosh, he’s totally freaked out,’ she thought to herself bemusedly.

“Lieutenant!?” called up one of the officers, who still had his weapon drawn. “Lieutenant? Talk to me! Are you —”

“Shut the fuck up and put your gun away!!” yelled the lieutenant, his voice cracking. “Everyone!! Get in the cruisers and GO!! LEAVE!!!”

The other officers seemed to understand the direness of their boss’s warning, and they immediately obeyed, turning to run to their cars, crossing into the paramedics, and some of them colliding with each other. Emma watched all of this with a kind of distracted, distant interest…but really, she felt gratified. They were all leaving, and she could be free to go check on Daniel.

“Ma’m?” came the lieutenant’s voice, sounding hoarse and strained. “Do you think you c-could…uhhh…I mean, if you’d be so kind…?”

“Huh?” asked Emma, blinking as she looked down on him. For a second, she had wondered how this thing in her hand could be talking, but then she of course remembered that it was, in fact, a living man.

“Could y-you…uhm…p-put me down, please?” he asked, as pleasantly and gently as he could.

“Down? Oh…Oh! Yeah, sure…sorry,” said Emma, and she bent down immediately, depositing the lieutenant on the ground. Wincing with pain, he nonetheless wasted no time in crawling into a cruiser, and moments later, it was speeding away, along with the rest of the police cars and ambulances. Away from Emma’s attention, a duo of cops had just given up trying to persuade Maisy and Jim to get into the car with them. Both of Emma’s parents had refused to leave her there, even though a substantial part of them wanted to flee too.

All of a sudden, everything had gone quiet. All the activity had ceased, the flashing red and blue lights disappearing into the distance at a rapid pace. The sun had now totally set, and the light-sensitive farm lights had switched on around the farm, flooding the front of the barn in a haze of dull orange light. Emma looked down at her parents, and suddenly felt a little chilly. They were huddled close to each other, looking up at her with wide, concerned eyes. Emma couldn’t tell if they were afraid OF her, FOR her, or both, both either way, she didn’t feel like dealing with them at the moment. She still wasn’t sure who had called the cops, and didn’t want to think about it too hard. The corner of her eye was hurting, and the right side of her face, her lower stomach, and the skin up and down her legs was starting to itch and burn a little uncomfortably. She glanced down at her body and saw masses of little red and purple welts beginning to form all over, like she had just been stung by a swarm of bees.

“Fuck!” she whispered frustratedly, itching herself all over. She brought her hand up to the corner of her eye, which was hurting the most and touched it, squeezing the little welt that had formed there, like a little pimple. A second later, she felt a little something pop out, and she held it up to her face in the light on the top of the barn. A little pebble…no…a bullet, she suddenly realized. She felt a little flash of anger, but it died away quickly as she flicked the bullet far out into the gathering night. She really wanted to see Daniel now.

Emma dipped her head under the barn entrance and came inside. An orange kerosene lamp filled the interior with soft light that clashed strangely with the disorder around. The hay, normally kept neat, was everywhere, and some of it was still drifting through the air in lazy wisps. If Emma hadn’t been so high up, she would have noticed the bloodstains on the walls. but she wasn’t looking at any of that. Daisy was there, kneeling down over something…Daniel…who looked like he was just now waking up. Emma bent down to brush Daisy aside, but she didn’t need to — her sister had heard her enter, and had staggered backward, eyes as big as saucers, until her back hit the wall. Emma didn’t pay her much attention; she was focused on her little boyfriend, who was blinking and coughing out in to the barn air.

“Heyyyyy there!” Emma murmured, feeling immediately happy that he was waking up. She gently knelt down and tucked her legs underneath her, reaching out to Daniel to scoop him up and cuddle. But Daniel seemed to come to his senses rapidly and, seeing her hands incoming, his eyes got big and he spasmed backward in the hay, crawling backward in desperation away from her.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” chuckled Emma, thinking that he must have been having a bad dream. “It’s just me! Just me!”

But that didn’t seem to help. Daniel just crawled away from her even more frantically. He spotted Daisy plastered up against the wall, and he staggered to his feet, totally naked, and rushed straight over to her. She opened her arms to him and received him, and together they rushed out of the barn, leaving Emma there alone, her arms extended after them.

Emma wasn’t even angry. Not yet. She was just totally and utterly confused…perplexed. None of it made any sense. She started to rise up to follow them, but then she suddenly sank back into her kneeling position. She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand any of it…but more than anything, she felt hurt. Daniel had just run away from her, and she had no idea why. And even worse, Daisy seemed to be in on the whole thing, acting like Emma was about to do something terrible as soon as she saw her.

Emma felt an awful load sinking down into her brain, and she wanted to cry…of all the moments, she thought, now was definitely one of those times to cry. But the tears wouldn’t come. Even though her lip trembled as she watched her family retreating into their house, her mind couldn’t focus itself enough for her to cry. She would have welcomed the release, but she couldn’t have it right now. Blinking rapidly, and her heart beating quickly, she gathered up the chaotically-strewn hay around her, creating a makeshift bed, and lay down on her side, staring forlornly at the little flickering flame in the kerosene lamp, trying to make sense of everything that had just happened.

Hundreds of miles away, the group of stony-faced men were watching live drone footage of what had just happened. The dark room was thick with tension, and several of the men were shaking their heads.

“My god…” breathed the young Captain Casey as he stared at the screen. “It’s happening…it’s finally happening.”

“And sooner than we thought,” came the gruff voice of General Garrick, who was sitting at the head of the table.

“Sooner than YOU thought, actually,” said Casey angrily, turning on the general. “Now look what’s happened! A dozen officers in the hospital, if not KILLED, just because you didn’t think it was time to —”

“I will not,” cut in Garrick, “Be lectured right now, Casey. You know why we had to wait. Maybe you were right in overestimating her instability.”

“Overestimating!?” exclaimed Casey, looking around the room. “I think that what we just saw shows that —”

“It shows that her family…or the local police, or both…are utter fools,” said Garrick, his voice rising above the captain’s. “What we just saw is a convenient lesson for us all in how NOT to deal with her. Barring any fatalities, I think we’ll actually find this footage highly beneficial and instructional for the future.”

“So,” said Casey, shaking his head as he smiled sarcastically to himself, “So…all that aside, general…are we on now? Please tell me that we’re finally on.”

General Garrick looked around the table and folded his hands in front of him. His jaw hardened as he stared back at the screen.

“We’re on.”

 

Chapter End Notes:

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