Chapter 26

Four days later, Jim was pulling his truck out of the parking lot of a local hotel. Daniel sat in the front seat and Maisy and Daisy sat together in the back — everyone was staring stonily ahead, not saying much. The last two days had passed by in a kind of weirdly protracted blur. Everything seemed to be moving by so quickly, too fast for processing, and yet at the same time, coming to grips with the reality of what had just happened was proving to be a slow and agonizing process, with the government serving as their only real connection to the events they had witnessed around Emma and her…relocation.

The government had been tight-lipped about where they had taken her, and, despite heartfelt pleadings form both Daniel and Maisy, they were quite firm on that point: Emma had been moved to an “ undisclosed and secure location,” and was being well-taken-care-of by the best possible team of professionals who were dedicated to her case. At least, that was what the government had said. Daniel in particular was finding it hard to accept that he wasn’t even allowed to know where she was.

“But…but she’s my partner!” he had responded indignantly to Captain Casey’s refusal to say where they had taken Emma. “I…I have legal rights to know where she is!”

“Are the two of you married?” asked Casey dryly, already knowing the answer.

“W-well…no, but that doesn’t matter!” Daniel countered.

“It does, actually,” responded Casey, as the government men behind him began assessing the damage to the farm house. “Your partnership doesn’t have the legal protections that it would if the two of you were married, so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to entrust her to our care for the time being.”

Daniel had not been happy about this state of affairs at all, but there was nothing he could do about it. Before Casey could turn away, though, Daniel had one more question for him:

“But if she had said I could come…” he began, “…then, I could’ve come?”

Casey stood there looking at Daniel, not quite understanding. The young captain had to mentally remind himself that this family was and had been going through a lot, so it was reasonable to assume they would ask some pretty nonsensical questions.

“I mean…uh, yeah,” Casey answered, shrugging his shoulders a bit. “That was the whole point of asking her, right? We thought it would help her to have someone along who she trusted, who was family…but apparently she didn’t want that, so…yeah.”

Casey shrugged again and walked away, leaving Daniel all alone with the awful reality. He didn’t know what he had been trying to get at, asking that question, and felt empty and stupid as he slinked back toward Jim, Maisy, and Daisy, who were being calmed down by some more government men. Subconsciously, Daniel had been somehow hoping for Casey to tell him that there would have been no way that he could have come with Emma, even if she had wanted him to. But, of course, the reality of the situation was that Emma had rejected him, and that fact, and that fact alone, was why he wasn’t with her now…why he wasn’t allowed to even know where she was.

It had not gotten any easier for Daniel after two days. The government had put the family up in a hotel close by as they continued to assess the extensive damage to the farmhouse. Emma had punched multiple holes straight through the ceilings, destroyed about half of the east-facing wall, and, most conspicuously, torn the entire roof in half. At first, the family was still shell-shocked, and just content to have a hotel room to sleep in, but after two days, they began to question why the government would want to spend all this time evaluating the damage.

“They’re up to something,” Jim had declared after a continental breakfast in the hotel lobby, as the family sat on the beds in their cramped hotel room. “I know it.”

“But…up to what, dear?” asked Maisy, blinking with tired concern at her husband.

“I don’t know,” Jim answered, holding out his hands in a rare moment of gesticulation. “I have no idea. I just don’t really believe that they’re — what did they say — getting an insurance estimate, or whatever it was.”

“Then what do you think they’re doing?” asked Daniel, who was sitting next to Daisy on the bed that they had both shared the past two nights. They hadn’t even touched body parts, and had slept facing away from each other. Emma catching them together in their shared moment of weakness, and her subsequent violent reaction, had driven a hard wedge between them. Both of them were numb with all of the mental processing that had taken place over the past two days, and all the agonized, frantic thoughts and regrets had gotten them nowhere. They had not told Jim and Maisy what they had been doing before Emma found them; they had not even discussed it themselves.

“I think they’re taking samples,” Jim answered, looking seriously at Daniel. “I think they’re studying something…like, taking notes about…you know, about Emma’s strength, and what she’s capable of.”

The family had sat together in silence for a few moments, contemplating what Jim was saying. It certainly seemed plausible. And, of course, considering that the government had obviously been monitoring Emma for some time now, it didn’t seem too farfetched that they were carefully researching the damage she had done to the house.

“I just hope…hope that she’s ok,” said Maisy in a quiet voice, staring out the window. “I hope they’re telling the truth when they said they’re taking care of her.”

Again, there was silence. They had all been talking so much the past two days about everything — Emma’s abrupt “psychosis” (which Daniel and Daisy knew wasn’t true), the government people, what they had injected her with, the fact that the government appeared to have had a plan that they acted out, where they had taken her, and on and on and on. The long, exhausted silences that the family now found themselves in was the end result of two frenetic days of endless questions with no answers.

Just then, Daniel’s phone had rung out into the hotel room, and he saw that the number was restricted. He had known that this was the government calling him, and so he had answered, his heart pattering with expectation. Maybe now they would tell him where Emma was, and perhaps even that she had changed her mind and wanted to see him.

“Hello?” he had begun, answering the call as he stared at Jim and Maisy.

“Hello Daniel!” came the sound of Captain Casey’s voice on the other end. Daniel was heartened to hear the young man’s bright voice — it was a familiar voice, and one that heightened his expectations that he was about to hear some good news.

“How’s the hotel?” asked Casey amiably. “You guys doing alright over there?”

“Uhh…I — I mean,” said Daniel, caught off-guard by the strange conversationality of his tone, “It’s…you know, a hotel, haha. Kinda cramped, to be honest, but…but I…uh, we’re…we appreciate you all helping us out here.”

“Well you know, that’s just what I was about to get at,” Casey continued pleasantly. “We set you all up in that hotel strictly as a temporary measure, you know, while we sorted some things out, but we know that you’re all probably eager to get back to somewhere more permanent.”

“Uhm, y-yes…yes I think so,” nodded Daniel. He was hoping to get all of this fluff conversation out of the way so he could hear about Emma.

“So we were thinking,” said Casey, “That we could relocate you all back to your house — the one you and Emma stayed in before coming to the farmhouse weeks ago.”

“I…how do you…” began Daniel, but he stopped himself. He certainly had not been expecting this.

“Emma told us,” Casey answered Daniel’s implied question, shaking his head to himself. Of course, they had known where the house was all along. “She gave us the address and everything.”

“Oh! She…she did!?” Daniel asked, his heart skipping a beat at the mention of Emma’s name. “So she’s —”

“Yes, so we know that the local fire department had cut a hole cut in the living room ceiling,” continued Casey, talking over Daniel’s next question. “But that’s a simple fix, really, and we’d be happy to provide that for you. It shouldn’t take more than a few days for us to repair.”

“Well…uhm, that’s…that’s nice of you,” muttered Daniel, looking around at no one in particular.

“Yeah, the structural damage to the farmhouse is a lot more extensive,” Casey continued, “And it’s gonna take a lot more time to fix up. But we thought that you all might not want to stay in a hotel for months, and might appreciate going back to somewhere familiar?”

“….Yes…I…think that we would, yeah,” responded Daniel, nodding again. “Can I…can I just talk to everyone first, just to get the “ok,” before I give you a full answer on that?”

“Of course, Daniel!” answered Casey. “I’ll call back in ten minutes.”

“W-wait…wait!” stammered Daniel, before Casey could hang up.

“Yes?” The young captain’s voice hung on the line.

“So…how is Emma?” Daniel asked, feeling slightly stupid and lame asking such a basic, casual-sounding question.

“She’s fine,” said Casey lightly, with almost flippant bluntness. “Eating a lot, of course, haha. But that’s not surprising, is it?”

“N-no…no it’s not,” Daniel laughed, his face flushing as his heart sped up even faster. They were talking about her! “So…so do you think that I c-could, uhhhh, maybe sp—”

“Ok Daniel, so you talk over my proposal with the rest of the family,” interrupted Casey pleasantly, “And I’ll call you right back, mmk?”

The call had ended, leaving Daniel feeling like he had been slapped in the face. He just sat there on the bed with the phone still up to his ear. He could feel the awful, sinking weight of the reality plunging down through him, even as he continued to resist: he couldn’t get to her…through her own wishes, he was being denied access to her. Access in all forms. At least…at least she was still eating a lot. That meant that she was ok, right!?

“So…who was that, Daniel?” came Daisy’s voice, knocking at his ear. In that moment, Daniel felt such a vicious and intense antipathy toward Daisy that he very nearly snapped his head up and glared at her in front of Jim and Maisy. As it was, however, he had enough self control to stare wide-eyed at his thighs for a couple seconds before putting the phone down and turning to her with a calm and measured expression.

They didn’t need to talk it over for too long — everyone wanted to be able to just relax, which they couldn’t really do in the cramped hotel room. Daniel and Emma’s old house was large enough that everyone could have their own bedroom: Jim and Maisy could sleep in the master suite, Daisy could stay in the guest bedroom, and Daniel could make do with sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the living room. Ten minutes later on the dot, Captain Casey had called back, and Daniel had told him that they all had accepted the offer.

“Excellent!” Casey replied warmly. “Now you all just give us a couple days to fix everything up over there, and then you can move back in…take a nice little breather, you know?”

“Ahaha, yeah,” said Daniel, already jostling to try and sneak in a question about Emma. “So my girlfriend…c-can she…can she speak to me?”

“I’m afraid not,” answered Casey. His voice seemed infused with a kind of genuine regret, but this aspect was rendered unpalatable by the authority with which he was speaking.

“But…but why not?” asked Daniel, now making no secret of his displeasure. He didn’t care that he was in front of the rest of the family. He didn’t really care about anything else except speaking to Emma at this point. His agonizing guilt felt like it was a boulder on top of him, slowly crushing out the life, and he was becoming more and more panicked by the hour. A deep bubble of emotion welled up in him, threatening to rise up to his face and pop. He felt like he was about to burst into tears.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” said Casey simply.

A dagger through the heart. His brain processed everything immediately. Implied in the captain’s words was the fact that they had tried to get Emma to talk to Daniel…and that she had rebuffed these offers. Once again, try as he might to chalk the chasm between him and Emma down to the product of outside forces, Daniel had to face the reality that Emma was the one continuously refusing interaction.

“And…I’m sorry, but we’re really trying to avoid doing anything that would upset her,” Casey continued after a short pause. “When we mentioned you she got agitated and bent one of our…aaaanyway, look, like I said, you’re just going to have to trust us right now, ok?”

Daniel was staring forward into space, seeing nothing.

“Ohhh-kay,” finished Casey smartly, “Well you all just sit tight for a couple more days and you’ll be settling down before you know it. We’ll be in touch.”

But since then, the government had really not been in touch. Two more days passed, and, despite Daniel’s repeated attempts to call the restricted number back, all he got was an “error” recording that the line he was calling was no longer in service. He tried all the tricks, dialing “*69” and the like before calling, but none of it worked. The only way he could talk to the people who had Emma was if they called him. And they weren’t calling, until a couple days later, when someone did call to say that the house was nearly finished, and that they could all go ahead and start moving in. But it wasn’t Casey, and whoever it was seemed a lot less amiable, and a lot more blunt, than the young captain.

“Can I speak to my girlfriend please?” Daniel had asked urgently.

“No,” the gruff voice had answered on the other end. “Access is restricted. Have a nice day.”

And now the whole family was in the car, pulling away from the hotel, silent and exhausted, Jim driving, Daniel beside him, and Maisy and Daisy in the back seat. The tension between them all had been building in the little hotel room, especially between Daniel and Daisy. The only thing uniting them at this point was their mutual and unspoken pact that Jim and Maisy would never know what they had been doing before Emma caught them. Aside from this pact, they had barely interacted with each other…barely spoken…barely even looked at each other. It was a strange and cruel irony that they had been forced to sleep in the same bed together for the past four nights. Daniel thought he had spied Daisy trying to catch his eye a few times, but he was in no mood to look at her. He knew that he was unfairly heaping the anger at himself onto Daisy, but the agony of Emma’s rejection was still so raw that he simply didn’t care if he was being distant. In any case, Daisy herself seemed to be grappling with her own issues and regrets, and had been mostly keeping to herself as well. Both of them knew that they shared the blame.

A few hours later, Jim was pulling up to the old house. Daniel blinked at it a few times; he was surprised by the intensity of the memories that were flooding back now. A blue tarp covered the living room roof, but aside from that, everything looked as it had before. Daniel’s mind jumped back to weeks and weeks before — it seemed an eternity ago — when he had driven Emma away after the fire department had cut the hole in the roof to let her out. A crowd had gathered, loud and scared and unruly…it was all so muddled in Daniel’s head, and yet, at the same time, so clear. He had been dead-set on getting Emma out of there. She had just woken up from a nap, and had been upset by all the people gathered, looking at her. She had tried to step out of the hole in the roof carefully, but had accidentally bashed her leg up against the front wall, taking a good chunk of brick and drywall with it.

‘And there it is, still,’ Daniel thought to himself, looking out at the bricks scattered on the lawn.

He could see her desperate face looking at him as he pulled his truck around, with the trailer behind it for her to crawl into. He had felt so bad…so terrible for her…she had looked like a poor, cornered animal, desperate to get away from all those prying eyes. How big had she been at that point? Just over 12 feet…12 feet!? She had seemed so impossibly huge then…but she was over twice that tall now.

“I thought they said they were almost done fixing it up,” muttered Jim, pulling the car into the driveway. “Looks like they’ve got a ways to go.”

Daniel had to agree — it certainly didn’t seem like the government had done too much, but he couldn’t focus too hard on being irritated because he had gotten out of the car and was staring hard at the grass. He hadn’t realized it before, since he had been in such a rush to drive away, but Emma had left noticeable footprints in the grass as she ran to him after stepping out of the house. It had been weeks since then, but he could still see the large indentations, where her huge feet had crushed the grass, grinding it into the dirt. He counted one, two, three of them, not quite foot-shaped, but clear enough to show that they were indeed her footprints.

‘She only needed three steps,’ thought Daniel as he stared down at the tracks, ‘Three steps to cross the yard…’ He put his foot in one of the dirt indentations and blinked down at the comparison…the print was over twice the length and width of his own foot, with his shoe on.

“So Daniel,” Maisy was saying. He looked up and saw the whole family standing there with their bags, staring at him expectantly. “You think we should go in through the front or the back?”

“I, uhh…” he answered, stumbling over himself a little. How long had he been looking around the yard at Emma’s footprints? “Let’s…uhm, let’s try the side door, I think.” As they walked toward the door, Daniel looked up at the big oak tree by the driveway. His mind shot back again to a time weeks…or months…before, and he saw Emma crouching down, wrapping her huge arms all the way around the tree’s trunk. She had been so happy, so thrilled, that she had been able to go all the way around it. He could see her beautiful eyes dancing down at him. God, that had been the day she had been wearing those huge black platform heels…he had forgotten about those! The way she had been playing around with him, pushing him down in the grass and then putting that enormous heel on his chest. Was that the day that he had really started to worry she was losing it!? Her eyes, far, far above, just looking down on him curiously, studying him…

“It’s locked, honey.” Maisy’s voice again cut through Daniel’s flashback.

“Oh! Uhhh, heheh, sorry,” he chuckled sheepishly, fumbling for the keys in his pocket. “I just…uhmm…yeah…”

“A lot of memories coming back, huh?” Maisy asked, smiling gently at him, her voice understanding.

Daniel had not been prepared for the smell that hit him as he walked into the house. It didn’t matter that there had been a hole in the living room roof for weeks — the fire department had apparently covered it with the tarp fairly quickly, keeping out the elements, and preserving the integrity of the house’s interior. It smelled like Emma…it smelled like their old life. Daniel exhaled out a labored breath, and he had to pause and put his hand on the kitchen counter, leaning into it as he tried not to cry. Her slightly sweet, heavy scent still permeated the house as he looked around. Everything seemed like it had been before, and it all came flooding back to him as he looked around. The sofa, the coffee table, the entertainment station, and the love seat were all bunched into the far corner of the living room.

‘Of course!’ Daniel remembered to himself. ‘Emma had moved all that stuff…in like…a minute…so I could measure her.’

“God, so they just…sliced right through the roof, then?” Jim was saying, staring up at the large hole in the ceiling, covered by the tight blue tarp. “And Emma…she was small enough to fit through it then, I guess?”

“What?” asked Daniel blankly, turning to Jim. “Oh…oh, yeah. Yeah she was only like…uh…12 feet then…maybe a little taller…so she, uhm…yeah, fit right through the hole there.”

Daniel was now looking up at the hole in the roof, and it was truly unnerving how different it looked now. When the fire department had made the hole, it had seemed too big, like they were making sure that Emma had more than enough room to navigate. But now, looking up at the hole, it looked tiny. Just thinking of Emma trying to fit through that hole now was ridiculous. Maybe she could fit her leg through…but that was about it. The terrifying image suddenly came bashing into his mind, of Emma’s angry, devastated face staring down at him, lit up by the lurid light below, with blackness all around her as she clenched her teeth and ripped the farmhouse roof in half with her bare hands. He shook his head, trying to clear it of that awful memory.

“Looks like we need to make a grocery store run,” announced Daisy, who stood by the open fridge, indicating to everyone that it was completely empty.

“Oh…ahaha, yeah,” said Daniel moving over to the kitchen as he started opening cabinets. “Emma had eaten up everything before we left…like, everything…heheh, yeah, there’s nothing here.”

“Well Maise, let’s you and me take a trip out and get some food for the house,” Jim said. He seemed a little uncomfortable in the house. “Just, before we go — where’s your trash can, Daniel?” He brandished the wrapper of a granola bar he had eaten in the car on the way.

“Oh, uh, right here,” answered Daniel, sliding out the large trash can drawer next to the dishwasher. A slightly acrid smell met his nostrils, and he glanced down. The trash can was piled to the brim with crushed, empty boxes of Chinese food. Daniel froze, and his mouth opened slightly as he stared down at the discarded boxes. That night…that night he had gone out and brought back the huge order…the order he thought would be more than adequate for her appetite. And she had been waiting for him, sitting in the corner with her knees up to her chest with that deer-in-the-headlights look on her face, her new specially-made clothes all in tatters around her after a sudden growth spurt.

‘Babe,’ he could hear her say, in a voice that had shocked him with its deep, quiet power at the time, even though she had been speaking softly, ‘I don’t think that’s gonna be enough.’ He could hear her saying those words like she was in the room with him now.

“Aw, honey, that’s ok,” Maisy was saying next to him, putting a kind hand on his shoulder. It was the second time Maisy had used the sympathetic word “honey” to refer to him in a matter of minutes, and Daniel subconsciously understood that she was tacitly acknowledging that a lot was going on in his head. “You left in a rush…you weren’t thinking about things like taking out the trash.”

“Oh…oh, yeah,” Daniel replied, shaking himself out of yet another memory. “I, uhm…heheh, yeah, I guess I forgot about all that stuff.”

“Well of course you did,” Maisy said gently.

“Here, tie that off,” Jim said, pointing down at the trash can. “I’ll take it out for you.”

Daniel watched silently as Jim trudged out of the house, the bulging trash bag slung over his back, with Masiy following in tow. He didn’t know why it was so bizarre for him, just watching Emma’s dad strain a little under the weight of the garbage…he knew that he probably shouldn’t have let Jim volunteer for the chore, but before he realized, it was only him and Daisy left in the kitchen. Daniel put his head in his hands and shut his eyes tightly, trying to get control of himself. Just seeing those empty boxes of Chinese food had thrust him disorientingly back in time…a time when Emma was still there with him, still herself.

‘She’s still herself…she still is…’ he repeated to himself over and over. ‘She’s having trouble…so much trouble, just like anyone would…’

He saw her eyes flashing down at him in the low, threatening lamp light in the barn, and he felt her huge fingers increasing the pressure on his midsection as she brought him up towards her grinning mouth. She had lost it, totally lost it…she was gone…no…no, she was still in there somewhere…if he could only get to her…if he could only sit with her, speak with her…

“So…” came Daisy’s voice through the darkness of his closed eyelids. Daniel’s eyes shot open, and for a second he thought that Emma was standing right there in front of him, staring down at him from the ceiling, wrapped in that white sheet she used after her growing body shredded all of her clothes. He breathed out in a kind of gasp, but his vision quickly faded, dwindling down to Daisy’s much smaller form, standing there awkwardly, with her hands folded in front of her white dress. Daniel felt another intense flash of antipathy towards Daisy — why had she decided to wear that white dress today, anyway? What, did she think they were coming here to celebrate something?

“Are you…are you ok?” Daisy ventured with cautious anxiety. She had caught the aggressive glint in Daniel’s eyes, but she also could tell that his mind really was somewhere else.

“This is just…uhhh…I mean…really tripping me out,” Daniel mumbled, blinking rapidly as he put his hand on the counter and leaned a little into it. There didn’t seem to be anything he could do to stave off the deluge of feelings…the unwelcome procession of memories that was inundating his brain. He looked at the cabinets and he remembered how Emma had walked around in her underwear, her big ass bulging out from underneath the tight fabric as she easily reached up to the top shelf…she had been around 6’8 then. His eyes travelled down to the sink and he suddenly heard the “rrrrrip” sound of Emma tearing her khaki pants as she bent down, putting her cereal bowl in the sink before work…before work…that had been a lifetime ago! Back when Emma had still been going to her job! They had fought that morning — it had been the breaking point for them both, and he had stormed out of the house and flown off on a business trip…that had been the worst time spent in an airport in his life…but they had made up, and she had cried and apologized and…and it had all been ok. Daniel shook his head and looked somewhere, anywhere, for a little relief, but as he glanced down the hallway, towards their bedroom, he could hear her laughter echoing off the walls…and he could almost see her red hair bobbing up and down as it peeked out at him from around the corner of their bedroom.

“Maybe you should just…uhm…sit down and…relax, hmmm?” suggested Daisy, trying to keep her voice light and casual. “You’re still limping, I’ve noticed…and…uhh…maybe take it easy?”

Daniel turned away from the hallway to look at Daisy, and for a moment he gave himself away. He simply didn’t have the will or inclination left to keep up any facade with her anymore. His stare didn’t carry the weight of the animosity that he felt, but its blankness nonetheless made Daisy feel like, in trying to comfort him, she was crossing a line. But she didn’t know where the line was anymore, at this point…and not knowing was beginning to annoy her.

“Ok, so…obviously you’re not happy with me,” Daisy began, her voice shaking a little. “So let’s just have it out.”

“It’s not…Daisy, it’s…” sighed Daniel, looking up at the ceiling for a few moments before adjusting back to her. “Whatever you think it is, I…I can promise that it’s just a lot more complicated, ok?”

Daniel thought he had done a pretty good job keeping a measured voice just then, while also making it clear that he really wasn’t in the mood to talk about things. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t really anything to talk about. They had both suffered a mutual moment of weakness that could not have come at a worse time. Daniel was upset with himself…upset with Daisy…but most of all, he was upset at the inexorable thought that the universe had conspired against him, to deprive him of Emma in the cruelest and most painful way. He wasn’t even thinking about the anxious, creeping horror of living with her on the farm for the past few weeks…what she had done to the farmhouse…to those police officers…to him. He just wanted her back so badly.

“So let’s just…” replied Daisy, shaking her head, “Let’s just talk about it, ok? I can listen. I wanna hear what’s going on.”

“Well…” said Daniel quickly, sighing more impatiently this time, “You can’t, Daisy. Ok? I…look, this isn’t anything against you. I’m just working through a lot right now, and…and I don’t know how I feel or what’s really going on at all.”

Daisy breathed out in a frustrated huff and shook her head again. She didn’t think he was being fair at all — it had been four days since everything had happened…four days of both of them awkwardly avoiding each other…and he literally had nothing to say about it all, still!? She was starting to feel like Daniel was somehow blaming her for everything that had gone wrong…and, of course, the hard thing was that she knew it was definitely all partially her fault. But she hadn’t made him do anything! There had been a real connection there between them…something organic and tender…and what — now he was trying to pretend that it had never even existed!?

“So we’re never gonna talk about what happened?” she asked, challenging him as she stuck out her chin a little. She knew she was being a hard-nosed bitch right now, but she wasn’t going to let him just float around the issue, ignoring reality.

“There’s nothing to talk about!” Daniel shouted suddenly, slamming his hand down on the counter and jerking his head up at Daisy, who looked stunned. “I made a mistake, you made a mistake, we both made a huge, terrible mistake, ok!?” He took several deep breaths and kept going, maintaining the same intensity, though without the raised voice. “We’ve all been…uhh, uhh, emotionally fragile recently, right? And, and…the…you and me…we just…just took refuge in each other and then it got out of hand, and I’m sorry that it did, ok, Daisy? I’m so, so sorry it did. It should never have happened.”

“I know,” Daisy answered in a small voice, her lower lip quivering as the big tears gathered in her eyes. “You’re right, it should never, ever have happened.” She broke down and started sobbing, and Daniel felt something wash over him. She had never been conniving, or mean-spirited. Daisy was no schemer. She had just felt sorry for him, then wanted to take care of him, wanted to protect him…and it had all gotten away from them. But behind it all was Emma, and everyone having to deal with her in their own complex way.

Daniel went over and hugged Daisy, apologizing to her for shouting. She gladly received his embrace, even as her tears continued to flow. The truth was that Daniel still harbored a strong degree of irritation toward Daisy, but he didn’t want to act on it, much less let her know where it came from. He knew that she had her own problems and anxieties around everything that had happened, but he was mainly trying to assuage her so that she could stop distracting him from thinking about Emma. Her rejection of him, and his being back in their old house, had set loose something in his mind, and he desperately sought the psychic space to ruminate on her.

“Ok, Daisy…alright, uhhh…” he said distractedly after a few long seconds of hugging. “I’m gonna go…uh take a shower.”

He just needed some time and space to himself, and a shower seemed the best way to try and clear his head. But going back into the master suite did nothing to settle his thoughts. The first thing he saw, coming into the bedroom, was the gigantic Alaskan-sized bed frame that he had ordered long ago, split down the middle. He stood there staring at the bed, almost unbelieving. Had it really only been a few days after Emma broke the bed that they had gone to the farm!? All the time blended together crazily in his head. He’d have to somehow clear the frame out and have Jim and Maisy sleep on the mattress, which was still intact. His mind tried to jump to these ordinary, real-life concerns, but he wasn’t able to keep it there for long. Daniel was looking around the bedroom, and he felt the strangest sense of unease. Something unseen was hanging in the air. Daniel looked over at the wall and saw little tic marks going up towards the ceiling. He walked over to them.

6’1…6’3…6’4.5 

‘God,’ Daniel breathed to himself, ‘That’s right…she was so unhappy about getting bigger back then…she even drew a little frowny face…Jesus…’

He felt his head starting to crane upward as he continued looking at the progression of Emma’s self-measurements. Once they got past 7’4 he couldn’t even really read them anymore. They were farther away from his eyes, and it seemed like Emma had become more haphazard with her handwriting. Daniel wondered about this for a moment, before remembering:

‘Oh yeah…after she got past the mid-7-foot range she started having trouble holding stuff. Forks, knives, pencils…it was all really getting to her.’

He could see her pouting face as she pulled her huge legs up to her chest on the sofa, right after it became clear that her fingers had become too big for her laptop. Her laptop…her laptop!!

Daniel quickly began rummaging around in the bedroom, looking for Emma’s laptop. He was sure she had left it there, especially considering that she wasn’t even able to use it the last few days they had stayed there. Sure enough, after looking in a few of the obvious places first, he pulled open a drawer and found it sitting there, closed and forgotten.

Daniel felt his heart quicken. He knew that Emma had never used a password for her laptop, and had always kept her password for her email and social media saved. The thought of snooping on her had never occurred to him before, but now things were completely different. Maybe she had new resources at whatever government center she was at now…maybe they had given her a giant computer, and she had sent emails to some people! He thought of those “giantess forums” she had been fond of before — maybe she was posting things on them now!

His skin pricked with nervous excitement as he pulled the laptop out, set it on the dresser, and opened it up. So far so good…no password, and the screen came back to life. Daniel didn’t have time to be surprised at how heavily he was breathing, or how fast his heart was beating, as he got on the internet and went straight to Emma’s email. He didn’t have the time or will to feel guilty about snooping, either — he was on a completely different plane, now…desperate to read anything new from her.

But his heart sank a little as he looked through her “Sent” tab — there had been nothing for a month-and-a-half. Had it seriously only been that long since Emma’s fingers were small enough to use a keyboard!? Daniel felt the past turning inward, like a vortex on the present; it was impossible to appropriately gauge time anymore. Just out of sheer curiosity, he clicked on the last email she had sent, to Miss Bisset…that sweet older French lady who had hand-tailored Emma’s clothes for her:

“so this is geting ridiculous. i have spent ten min trying to type thss list for you and i can barely use key pad. no caps or apostrophes. fingers too big. will call instead -, love Emma”

Daniel felt his heart go out to her all over again. She really had a tough time of it. And this was so many weeks ago, before her really huge spurts, even! Before she had started to lose her mind…but Daniel wasn’t going to dwell on that now. There were other places he could go to look for signs of activity. Maybe she had been posting on those weird forums — those horny size-fetish guys had been a source of comfort to her before…maybe they were now.

Feeling more than a little uneasy now, he logged onto the “giantesscity” forum, and found, to his relief, that Emma had saved her password for this site as well. It only took him a few seconds of acclimating to the site’s appearance before he realized, with wide eyes, that Emma had 487 unread messages in her inbox. Daniel gulped, blinking at the screen for a few seconds. So many…but all of them unread?! He quickly clicked on the “Sent” tab, and his heart sank as he saw, yet again, that Emma hadn’t sent anything in almost two months. A similar search of her social media accounts turned up no new activity, and Daniel found himself forcing himself to look away from old pictures of the two of them smiling together, back when Emma was “only” 5’8…5 inches shorter than him. They had been so happy, so normal…but it was impossible to look at their faces in those pictures now without a sense of tragedy. Their joy in those photos was about to come crashing down around them, and they had no idea.

Daniel found himself clicking back to the “giantess” forum. He had some experience with this site, since he had scrolled through it a few times, at Emma’s insistence, after her fingers got too big. But he had never really paid attention to her interactions with the other people on the forum itself. He found himself drawn in, wanting to read through her posts, but just then, he heard Jim and Maisy pull back up to the house, so he closed the laptop and escaped off to the sanctuary of the shower to be alone. But he couldn’t even really relax during his shower. He had to adjust the shower head, which had been aimed straight downward, rather than pointing out…and Daniel remembered how, during her last days at the house, Emma had to actually take showers sitting down. The image of her sitting there, with the water flowing over hear head as she bowed it forward sadly, suddenly bubbled up to the top of his mind, and looking down, he even saw some of her long red hairs still on the shower floor. Emma had been about 12 feet tall at this point, and her hair had only reached a little past her shoulders. Daniel picked one of her hairs up, staring at it with barely-contained emotion as he held it up to his face. It was about half as long as his entire body.

Absent any current correspondence from Emma, Daniel was eager to immerse himself in all the things Emma had posted on the giantess forums in the past. In a strange way, they were the only way he felt he could connect with her…but before that, he had to deal with making sure the family was settled comfortably. Jim and Maisy had picked up a fair amount of food at the grocery store, but Daisy had the idea that they should just order in for the night, since no one really felt like cooking.

“Ooooh, you guys will love El Camino!” Daniel had exclaimed, taking a strange, surreal enjoyment in behaving normally. The truth was that he was counting the minutes before he could be alone with Emma’s laptop. The rest of the family agreed that Mexican sounded good, and Daniel got their order and made the call.

“Hello, El Camino,” said the familiar voice of the employee who always answered the phone.

“Uh, hi!” said Daniel, remembering that, as far as this guy was concerned, life had just been going on normally. “Uhm, order for delivery, please.”

The man verified Daniel’s number, and then started chuckling.

“Haven’t heard from you in a bit!” the man laughed. “We were all starting to think something had happened!”

“Oh! Uh, ahaha, well, um…nope! Nothing’s happened!” replied Daniel, returning the man’s laughter. “Just…uh, you know…life gets busy and all.”

“Don’t I know it,” chuckled the man. “Ok so you’ll be having what you ordered last time?”

“Uh…what was the, uhm…the last order?” asked Daniel, having no clue. He knew that the order this time would be different, but his responses to the man were reflexive — he was realizing now that, aside from the government people, he hadn’t spoken to anyone outside of Emma’s family for weeks. Normal conversation didn’t really come naturally anymore.

“Three verde burritos, twelve chicken tacos, twelve beans and rice, two large chimichangas, supreme, twelve beef tostitos, three large cheese quesadillas.” The man rattled off the order, and Daniel’s mouth opened a little. Aside from the verde burrito for himself, the rest of that had been for Emma alone…and that was back when she was, what? 8-and-a-half feet? Or something like that…? It had been right after he had brought her back from the Institute. They had been feeling in such a light, happy mood, after being away from each other for weeks. Even then, though, Daniel remembered how he was starting to feel nervous with Emma in the house. But they had been happy times, happy times…

“Sir?” inquired the man after a long pause. “Did you get all that? Haha, or maybe you’re not having a party this time?”

“Uh eheheh, yes…um…things are a little different,” was all Daniel could say, sinking down in place.

Later on that night, after Jim and Maisy had settled into the master suite as best they could, and Daisy had cloistered herself away in the guest bedroom, Daniel stretched himself out of the sofa bed and opened Emma’s laptop. He glanced upward briefly, at the tight blue tarp, looking black now in the low light, covering the huge hole in the roof above him. It was so odd, just looking at it…remembering how Emma had just stepped through it…and how she couldn’t even begin to fit through it now.

Daniel began scrolling through Emma’s posts on giantesscity. They had started months before, and she had given herself the username “GrowingEmma.” Daniel quickly found, even without opening up a single one of her unread messages, that Emma was a dominant presence on the forum. There were at least a dozen separate threads devoted to her, with titles like “Emma is a Goddess” and “Our Dreams Have Come True” and “Can This Be Real!?!?” Daniel saw that some of the more recent topic posts, however, were a little different. “Has Anyone Heard From Emma?” one of them read…“She’s Gone, Guys, Get Over It” read another one. Daniel felt his heart fluttering oddly; it was surreal to remind himself how obsessed this whole subset of the internet was about Emma. Even as early as a couple hours ago, people had posted comments on thread after thread having to do with her. At the moment, though, he was only interested in looking at what Emma had posted. He knew that she hadn’t been active for a while, but he just wanted to read something that she had written.

He clicked on her username and quickly read her profile.

“Hi! My name’s Emma and I’m 10’7!” chirped her bio. Daniel could actually hear her saying these words, in that bright, chipper voice of hers when she had been happy.

‘Geez,’ he thought, shaking his head as he sat with these thoughts, ‘She stopped updating her bio a while ago.’ She had grown more than two-and-a-half times bigger since her last update.

“That might sound huge to all of you guys,” her bio continued, “But I’m just getting started, haha! I’m still getting taller and bigger all around, so don’t get too comfortable with me, or I’m gonna outgrow you!”

Daniel felt a wrenching in his chest. She had certainly outgrown him.

“I don’t want him,” her words repeated in his head, as he saw her staring straight into his face, all wrapped up in that horrible net, with the government lights shining painfully through the night. “He can’t come with me. He doesn’t deserve me.”

Daniel blinked and swallowed the lump in his throat down. He very nearly closed Emma’s laptop right then and there. Why was he insisting on torturing himself in this way? But as he moved to close it, he reminded himself that he didn’t really have any other options right now. What else was he going to do!? Sleep?? And have Emma’s flat, dead voice of rejection soaking into his brain? No, no he had to…had to distract himself somehow…had to remind himself of happier times…or at least, just different times. Maybe encouraging these memories would give him hope that things at present could somehow turn around. But seeing the last sentence of Emma’s bio didn’t do much to help him feel better:

“And just so all you guys know, I’ve got a boyfriend and he’s WONDERFUL and all I will ever need. So don’t get any funny ideas!”

Daniel knew that his stomach would drop out of his body if he focused on that last bit, so he clicked on the “Most Active Topic” tab on Emma’s profile, which was titled “Growing Girl Compares with Her Boyfriend.” He didn’t have much of a reaction to the title itself, since he had helped Emma post images on the thread towards the end, when her fingers had gotten too big. But as soon as he saw the first pictures Emma had posted, months before, he felt an emotional exhale get pushed from his diaphragm as his jaw went slightly slack.

This single picture had elicited an enormous number of responses from people, most of them positive. “OMG UNREAL” said one…“This is the greatest day of my life — an actual tall woman…a REAL LIFE TALL WOMAN, posting on THIS forum!?!?!” yelled another. Daniel couldn’t help but smile a little; he had enough experience with online forums to know when something noteworthy was happening, and this thread was such an example. The responses from all these men were overwhelming. Dozens and dozens of them, most of them singing Emma’s praises, flooded the screen. Every once in a while, someone posted something negative, like “Yeahhh, I don’t buy it. Photoshop all the way,” or “She’s got a boyfriend ya’ll, she’s jst teasing us to mke us feel like Sh*t so why don’t we just all quit giving her the attention she wants,” and a few others like it, but these people were quickly shot down by the others. Daniel felt an odd kind of warmth, reading through these laudatory comments; in a strange way, he was actually enjoying himself, pretending like Emma didn’t know him, and that he was just admiring her from afar. This mindset served to assuage his awful guilt, and to paradoxically reassure himself that, in fact, he was far closer to Emma than any of these other men could hope to be.

And this was only the beginning of the thread. After all these responses, he came upon another batch of pictures that he had never seen. Apparently, Emma had taken her phone and snapped a few pictures of him from her perspective. Daniel hadn’t remembered any of this, but there they were, posted up there on the forum:

“Here’s what I look down at, now that I’m 7’2,” read one caption. “Top of his head barely reaches my shoulders. Oh, and the boyfriend is 6’1, by the way, so….yeah ”

Daniel had to smile as he read the responses to this series of pictures. The men on the forum were really losing it: “oh my god i am literally shaking right now i’m only 5’5 i’d be looking at your STOMACH” said one user. “Pls show us a picture of your hand next to his!” begged another. “Impressive, but fake,” declared another user confidently. “You can see the photoshop shadows on his head there.”

“No you can’t, idiot,” muttered Daniel out loud. “That’s literally the shadow of her hand on my head.” Suddenly, there was a loud rustling above him, and Daniel’s eyes shot up, aimed directly in the hole in the ceiling above his head. The bright light of the laptop made it so that his eyes needed to adjust to the dark, and right then, Daniel was seized with fear. He saw Emma’s huge body standing up over him, over the hole, over the entire house, with the stars in the night sky behind her. She was hovering her huge foot up over the hole, wavering it back and forth a little, as if she was trying to decide where to insert her foot so that her leg wouldn’t get stuck. Far above, Daniel could see the burning coals of her eyes, shining brighter than Venus on the eastern edge of the horizon. Was she angry!? Or was that just how she looked now!? Daniel opened his mouth as his whole body shook, and he tried to cry out, but he was paralyzed with fear. The government had done something to her — she was different — her eyes were different — she was at least 50 feet tall now — and she was something other than human. Her foot came down lower, lower…and then, suddenly, everything stopped. Daniel breathed in and out, in and out, in violent inhales and exhales of breath, as he realized that it had all been a hallucination. Some wind had disturbed the tight blue tarp over his head, and it had tricked his brain into thinking that he had seen…that he had seen her.

“Oh my god,” he breathed, shaking his head at himself, at how terrible that vision had been, “This is…this is ridiculous.” He shut the laptop, resolving to put it all out of his mind, at least for tonight. He covered himself up and eventually managed to fall into an uneasy, disturbed sleep. Emma’s burning eyes were fixed in his mind.

But Daniel could not stay away from the forum for too long. Try as he might to resist thinking about it all, he kept coming back to it again and again, simply because it remained the only way he could somehow access Emma, even though the posts he was reading had been from months before, when things had been so different. At first, he looked forward to reading through her posts at the end of the day, but eventually, he found himself taking the trouble to steal away during the day to look at them. There were so many that he was able to lose himself in them, fixating on Emma as he found himself strangely drawn into the story of her growth on the forum.

“You asked for it!” Emma had posted gleefully. “Here they are! Hand comparisons, height comparisons, and I even got creative with some of them, hahaha!”

What followed were a whole series of pictures of Emma comparing her body with his in all manner of ways. Daniel remembered that day — Emma had been acting weird for a while at this point, but it was when she had bought those gigantic black platform heels that he had really started to…to…

Daniel looked up from his laptop. Those heels! They were still somewhere in the house, weren’t they!? He found himself starting to get up to look for them excitedly, but he was able to keep himself from moving. He had no idea why he had gotten so excited about the prospect of finding those heels — what was the big deal, anyway? So they were still here…so what? He couldn’t really explain his excitement, but was able to shrug it off as he kept scrolling through Emma’s post. The pictures were incredible. Emma had been just a little over 10 feet tall at this point, totally dwarfing him in every conceivable way. Daniel had never really studied these pictures before, since they had made him uncomfortable back then. But now he was looking at them in a new way. A picture of Emma’s hand swallowing up his own, making him look like a kid…Daniel wearing her shoes, making him look like a ridiculous clown…Daniel wearing one of those long-sleeve shirts Miss Bisset had custom-made for her, with Emma kneeling next to him with the same shirt on, towering over a foot above him despite being on her knees. The shirt looked like a huge blanket on Daniel, covering him in its ocean of folds…but Emma’s body filled the shirt completely, stretching it tight along the contours of her curves.

“Same shirt,” read the simple caption. Daniel felt a little prick in his groin. What was going on?! Was he actually getting…turned on by the thought of Emma being bigger than him?? He had never been like this before. He kept scrolling. More comparisons…and this time it was again pictures that Daniel hadn’t realized Emma had taken. One was her huge bare foot pushed up against his chest as she lounged on the sofa; another was her gigantic hand petting his face as he slept…god she was huge compared to him…it was truly a sight to behold.

‘And that’s nothing,’ thought Daniel, with a kind of sweet, pained helplessness. ‘She’s over 26 feet tall now…and probably more, since she’s still growing…could she be 30 feet now?! No, no way…it’s only been…how long has it been…a week since we came back here…there’s no way she’d have another huge spurt that soon…or could she!?

He was tormented by his inability to know. Day after day, he waited for the government to call with an update, a report…anything. But no call came. Maisy and Jim were doing their best to keep up the house, with Maisy busying herself with a deep clean of the entire house, and Jim taking on a variety of projects in the yard to spruce everything up. Daisy had gotten a job at the local drugstore, just to occupy herself, since she endeavored not to be alone with Daniel in the house as much as possible. Daniel was the only one not doing anything; he wasn’t working…wasn’t looking for work, wasn’t cooking, wasn’t cleaning. Daisy had offered him the guest bedroom for some privacy, just so he could be alone with himself for a bit, and at Jim and Maisy’s urging, he had agreed. This arrangement ended with him spending most of his time alone in this room with the door shut, looking at pictures of him and Emma, and reading through all the messages she had sent to her admirers.

At first, she had responded to the effusively praising procession of emails with only a sentence or two, and he could feel the insecurity and bashfulness behind her words:

“Haha yes I like being a tall woman, even if I feel like a giant freak sometimes. My boyfriend is doing a nice job bearing with me!”

“Heh, I don’t know what I’d do if I saw you in the real world. Probably just wave and say hi, haha, I don’t know what you want me to say <3”

“No, I’m sorry I don’t do videochat sessions, especially not saying that kind of stuff! I’m a nice girl, I don’t think you’re worse than me, even if I’m two feet taller than you!”

“Wow, that’s really nice of you to say, haha. Yes, I like being very tall, but I’m still getting used to it. Clothes are hard to find! Thanks for your kind words!”

Daniel was shaking his head to himself, even as he found himself grinning a little ruefully. She really had been so awkward and unhappy about her growth spurt, hadn’t she? At the time she had sent these messages, she was around, what, like 7 feet? 8 feet maybe? Tiny compared to what she would become. And her anxiety, her latent fears, and her discomfort with her situation all came through in these early messages.

He looked up briefly from the laptop screen, blinking his eyes blearily at the closed blinds of the guest bedroom. A dull orange glowed from behind them. But wait, it couldn’t be evening already! He had only just woken up…or had he!? Daniel didn’t really know any more. The days had started blending together seamlessly; he was losing track of everything as he sunk deeper and deeper into his desperate obsession with somehow holding onto these “ghost” aspects of Emma in her online messages, and in things he found around the house. One day the previous week, Daisy had uttered a startled cry and jumped back from a storage closet she had just opened. Daniel had staggered out of the bedroom, only to see Daisy standing next to the pair of Emma’s gigantic platform heels, which went all the way up to the underside of her breasts.

“Daniel! A-are…are these the heels that she…” stammered Daisy.

“Yeah, that she had, uhm…custom-made,” completed Daniel, marveling at how huge the heels looked. Daisy seemed to be going through a kind of surreal crisis, and she waved her hand in front of her face, which was reddening. Daniel didn’t really understand what was going on, but it was clear that all of this was a little too much for her to handle.

“I just…I just need to…to go somewhere else for a bit,” Daisy muttered, and promptly left the house. Daniel had watched her go, and then, without thinking too much, had taken the heels back with him into the guest bedroom and closed the door. A few minutes later, he was stepping into the boots, amazing himself how each one could have accommodated two or more of his legs and still had extra room. And knowing that Emma’s calves had easily filled these out, when she had been “only” around 12 feet tall…just fixating on that fact alone gave him an erection. He really had no idea why, but his mind had become a little too feverish to dwell on it too much. He looked up towards the window…nighttime was falling…again!?

The days wove in and out of each other, and still Daniel hardly ventured out of the bedroom. A few times, Maisy and Daisy knocked to check on him, but Daniel wasn’t really in the mood to socialize much with anyone. They gave him his space, and he sank deeper and deeper into his obsessed depression. He thought he heard Emma…the old Emma…walking through the house at night, and more than a few times he stalked through the silent rooms, looking for her. He thought he heard her laugh through the hallways; he thought he smelled her sweet scent at random times, but it always dissipated before he could latch onto the source, and he was forced to admit to himself, over and over, that he was just hallucinating again. Still no one called from the government, and Daniel honed in more intensely to Emma’s more recent messages online

As he read on to the last messages Emma had sent, only a few days before they left for the farm, he detected a change in her demeanor. For one thing, in her public comments, she no longer referred to the community of men as “guys.” She had started saying “my little ones” or “little guys” or even “little boys” a couple times. And in her private messages, she had become more forceful and intense, to the point where Daniel no longer believed that she was simply “roleplaying” anymore:

“Oh you’d like me to tower over you, huh? Well you say that, but I honestly don’t even think you could handle it. My boyfriend’s 6’1 and his head doesn’t even come close to my hips. I think you’re just a little man in front of a keyboard who thinks he could take it. I bet you couldn’t even stay on your feet if I was looming over you.”

“I told you before, I already have a boyfriend. I just reported you to the mods for harassment. And I dare you to come to my house. I fucking dare you. It’s not going to end well for you, but I’ll enjoy it. And it’ll be self-defense.”

“Hahaha, I’ve hear that a million times before. You could “show me” a good time. What doe that even mean, little pipsqueak? I’m literally tping this message with a pencil because my fingers are too big for the keys. What could you “show me,” exactly, hmmm?”

“I know my boyfrind is lucky but im lucky too bc hes so patient with me and i know i can be a handful sometimes but your praise is accepted tonite i want you to look at the picture of me leaning on the car and make yourself cum imagining that ur inside. don disappoint me”

“its nice off u to invite me to the caribean but i cant come toomuch hapening righ now grew a whole bunch lass nigh an dont know wha ot do”

Daniel didn’t know why, but he had reread that last message from Emma, which she had sent the night before the fire department came, over and over and over again. He read through it, fixated on it, and obsessed over it endlessly. It was like he was reliving her losing her mind, even as he wasn’t quite sure if he could properly remember how Emma spent that final night in the house. He knew that she had been profoundly unhappy, but he had thought that she had just gone to sleep there in the living room. Apparently she had taken out her laptop while he had slept and responded to a message.

‘Poor Emma,’ thought Daniel despairingly, hearing her loud, doleful roars in his ears as he covered his face with his hands. ‘Poor, poor sweetheart…she didn’t mean it…she didn’t mean any of it…she just…she just wanted me…she didn’t know how dangerous she was…she meant me no harm…she couldn’t understand…couldn’t understand why I was so scared…she wasn’t right in the head…and I betrayed her…I betrayed her…and now she never wants to see me, ever again!’

Daniel spent many nights quietly crying to himself, dwelling on these horrible thoughts, made all the more terrible by the reality that he could do nothing to set things right. He was stuck in a hellish limbo, a terrain where he could do nothing but sink further and further into what held him fast. He cried, he masturbated, he smelled her old clothes that he kept stashed with him in the guest bedroom. He wasn’t even trying anything of hers on anymore, to take masochistic enjoyment in how much bigger she had been than him. He was hardly doing anything anymore. The days, or weeks — either way, it didn’t matter to him — stacked on top of each other, and still, no word from the government.

Daniel had taken to reading the new posts that users posted on giantesscity every day. Even though it had been many weeks since Daniel and the family had moved back into the house, and months since Emma had posted anything, the forum users were still all chattering about Emma, and what could have become of her. They had a lot to say:

“Where are you, Goddess?? Eagerly waiting day and night for your return…”

“She wasn’t doing too well before — her growth got out of control and I heard she went to live in the country. No idea where, though. She hasn’t logged in since last month, so things might be serious.”

“I’m worried about you Emma! We all are! This isn’t even a fetish thing anymore! Please, if you can read this, let us all know you’re ok!”

“She’s abandoned us. Got tired of all the mewling, I guess. Oh well, that’s the way it goes…time for us to go back to your regular lives, gents. The dream is gone.”

“Just read this news article — eyewitnesses in the rural area close to where she lives reported a severe disturbance. Lots of police cars and ambulances. Dozens of officers injured. But they aren’t saying why. They’re keeping it all under wraps. Has to be her.”

“OMG, look! Another article, like, a week later! More eyewitness accounts of some kind of black-ops operation. Lots of helicopters in the night, carrying something huge away. Lots of loud booming, yelling, and crashing, eyewitness said it sounded like an angry giantess screaming and punching things!”

“But look, it’s just a screenshot of the article — can’t find it anymore if you go to the website. Google search turns up nothing. She went off the rails and the government’s got her! It’s all being hushed up!”

“Geez...aren’t we EVER going to hear about WHY she’s growing in the FIRST place!? I mean, come ON!”

“How disappointing…haven’t we all heard this story before? Girl grows into a giantess and then gets angry…what a shame…thought she was actually going somewhere with her persona, but oh well…next please”

‘What the fuck!?’ thought Daniel after reading this most recent post. This was an actual person he was talking about, yet all he was worried about was her stupid “character arc!?” It made him furious, but he kept reading the comments.

“Yes! Bloodstone! Guns! Flesh! Cannons! Perhaps a hint of a tincture of sarin as well, to soothe the nerves? Yes, the fall enthralls us…back to the whetstone with this one. Water parasites, blood, and the gore will suffice.”

‘Ok seriously,’ thought Daniel, shaking his head at the last comment, ‘That just makes no fucking sense. What is it about Emma that attracts people like this!?’

He only briefly dwelled on this strange and nonsensical comment, though, because it was lost in the midst of so many more, all of them energetically talking about the government’s apparent kidnapping of Emma, and what was to be done about it. A lot of them had outlandish, hopeful ideas, but none of them were realistic. A few of them even talked openly about getting in touch with Daniel personally…and at this point, Daniel himself wondered why he hadn’t been found. Didn’t these people know where this house was? Why hadn’t they shown up?

‘The government’s probably watching the house,’ he thought immediately, ‘And they’re somehow discouraging people from finding me.’

Daniel didn’t even have the strength or the energy to be angry. He was just so tired, so terribly exhausted, in mind and spirit. He had no idea how long he had been in this bedroom. Maisy had been leaving his food for him by the door, and at this point it had been days…or had it been weeks…since he had even bothered to go outside. He was floating in the ether, aimless, hopeless…a devastated soul who had lost its true companion. The sweetest, most innocent girl in the world, who had been struck by a terrible disease, and who was off somewhere, how far away he had no idea, being subjected to god only knows what kind of tests or treatment or whatever. And he wasn’t there with her, and it was all his fault.

Daniel fell into a kind of long, slow doze that was typical of his daily or nightly patterns now. He came to hours later, and there was light poking through the blinds. He saw that he had left Emma’s laptop open, and it had run out of battery. Sighing, and not even paying attention to the unrequited hunger pains that now gnawed at his stomach daily, he leaned over in the bed and plugged the laptop into the wall. Before he could refresh the forum page, he happened to check the date. It had been almost two months since they had moved back into the house…two months…

He heard voices coming from the living room. Atypically, he pulled himself out of bed and crept across the floor to eavesdrop at the door. Maisy and Jim…Daisy must have been at work.

“It’s been so long, Jim…too long. He’s got to get out of there.”

“Well I agree Maise, but what are we gonna do? The poor guy had his heart broken.”

“We need to think of something — I can’t live another day in this house letting him waste away like that. Have you seen him recently?! He’s lost weight, got bags under his eyes, pale skin…he doesn’t look well, Jim. Either we think of something or I’m calling that doctor again.”

Daniel slunk back to bed. He knew he had to snap himself out of this somehow. It hurt him to know he was causing so much worry, but he was stuck at a dead end. He didn’t know what to do. Acting out of habit, he refreshed the forum and looked for new user posts on Emma. And then, he saw it:

“SHE’S BACK!!! SHE’S BACK!!!! OUR QUEEN IS BACKK!!!”

His heart stopped. A posted link. He clicked it. A new thread on the forum. “I’m Back.” From a new user named “QueenEmma.” And there she was. An HD picture...a new picture...of Emma wearing a tight black leather dress, showing off her oozing curves, standing next to a telephone pole, somewhere with a desert backdrop, leaning on it with her hand touching the very top of it. Her head was even with the top of the pole, and she was barefoot. Her face looked fresher and brighter than ever…her figure was even bigger, curvier, and more powerful than Daniel could have ever imagined…her hair was somehow brighter, redder…her lips plusher…everything seemed accentuated. She was wearing alluring make-up, like she had prepared for the photoshoot. And she was winking at the camera, sticking her tongue sexily into the inside of her cheek. Daniel was instantly hard.

“35 feet, bitches!” was the only thing she had written under the single posted photograph, and then Daniel saw the link that she had posted under the photo. His entire body went numb with pure arousal, and his heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest.

An Onlyfans link…