The Great Awakening (Chapter 8)

Knowing he was so near now to the end of the line, just a change in pressure by a few measly megatons in either direction away, whether the girl let the building plummet to the distant Earth or demolished it between her fingerpads, Sam was just foolish enough to let himself feel a twinge of hope. Surely the giant’s destruction of Chicago and assuredly every other location leading there wouldn’t go unanswered forever. And now someone had come; someone was speaking for the hundreds and thousands lost under the girl’s sneakers and amidst her curious fingers. They were bombing her. Fast as anything, yet strangely visible to Sam in his drunkenly consciousness-slowing state of being, a fighter jet whizzed by, followed by two more. They circled around, further out this time, where they were easier to see as they changed direction. Sam could spot their metallic arrowhead shapes outlined against the pearlescent backdrop of the giantess’s oblivious countenance. For one last moment he was heartened, feeling assured that whether or not Willis or anyone inside it could be saved, there would be justice, or at least the fiery appeal for justice, courtesy of the best airborne military hardware available.

            Simultaneously, seeing those incredibly tiny planes decorating the horizon of the sky-spanning young lady’s beautiful face as though they had always been there, yet smaller than birthmarks or even the minutest of freckles, Sam understood that there was no more hope to be had than before the planes had arrived. They could’ve sent double the force. Ten or even one hundredfold. These machines of death, which could’ve struck terror into the hearts of civilization below with just a few of them zipping by at Mach-whatever-speed while raining atomic flame, were less a nuisance to the girl than the most benign of insects. Perhaps even less than that, since she didn’t appear to have noticed them, though the pools of her irises and pitch-pupils darted feverishly in search. The fighters were so miniscule as to be invisible to her burning hazel gaze, and the same went for those explosive blows from their missiles, which apparently hadn’t imprinted on her skin with more than just enough effect to make her eyes wander inquisitively away from her captured skyscraper-sized souvenir. Otherwise, no mark was left; no force was imparted.

            Then, in the heat of his despair and probably-concussed brain, Sam threw his head back and started to laugh. The sound came out with a sickly submarine-gun-like rapidity, uncontrolled. He just couldn’t help it. The idea of those pilots in their previously unchallenged demolition-craft flitting in orbit around her, dropping bombs powerful enough to clean whole towns off the map in one sizzling strike, and yet couldn’t even singe a single skin cell on her cheek, was just too absurd. It was a cosmic joke. They were nothing to her. Less than nothing. And so was the rest of the world.

            Even as the storied building was eventually handed back to gravity, surrendering itself from the giantess’s parted fingers with the effect of a falling elevator sans emergency brakes, Sam continued to cackle all the way down to the ground floor.

###

            Lilly crouched over Chicago, the precious little prize lodged between her fingertips, still recognizable as an actual skyscraper when held up very close to her eye, as she was doing now. True, it was just a building, roughly the length of a syringe’s business-end in her newfound scale, but the girl was drawn to study it, trying to pick out as many fine details as her eyes could discern. She couldn’t see much more than a shiny speckled tube that might have had individual windows and edifices dotted intricately up the walls, though she couldn’t tell if these were actual things her eyes had perceived, or just what she hoped and expected to find. Frankly, visible features or not, Lilly was still reeling with pride and joy at her ability to finally pick up a building at all without breaking it, and would like to have cheered aloud, if she wasn’t so certain that the skyscraper would crack in half the moment she reacted with any real enthusiasm.

            “Wow,” she whispered into the sky. She couldn’t repress a smile, the feeling that she’d finally lured one of the butterflies to alight on her fingertip instead of merely surviving her earnest touch. “Just look at you.”

            Right then, the girl’s peaceful reverie was rudely interrupted by an annoying prickle she felt on the back of her neck and shoulders. In two more places, she felt the skin-irritating tickle traveling slowly along a stretch of her arm, like that of mosquito legs tapping along and choosing a place to stab. It certainly didn’t hurt at all, but touched just delicately enough in a brushing motion that she couldn’t help but feel an itch forming, in those locations and now in several more all at once, mostly along her neck now, but several higher up on her jawline and even cheeks as well.

            Lilly wrinkled her nose, batting her eyelashes in annoyance, and exhaled. She supposed it was naïve to think there would be no irritations to deal with as she savored her newfound status in such a public way, but it nonetheless irked her to the core to think of anything disturbing her hike, especially so recently after her personal victory in picking up the tower whole between her fingers. Though, with her attention re-centered, she’d since almost entirely forgotten that she had a building clutched in-hand at all. The girl frowned, peeking over one shoulder then the other, and searched the blurry emptiness above Chicago’s half-savaged land for whatever microbial entities were brave enough to come so close and poke the beast.

            Squinting, she scanned the miles of air between her lofty perch and the ground. Nothing was immediately visible, certainly nothing small enough to catch her attention with the stealthy impact of a flea, especially while wisps of smoke like the remnants of blown-out birthday candles still lingered over the city from her visit. Though she couldn’t see the source of the disturbance just yet, Lilly abruptly heard buzzing, at first just zipping past her ears, then sticking closer, reminding her of a dying housefly that had lost its survival instinct and chosen to hang around bigger and far more powerful beings. The sound was taking residence now in the lower bowl of her ear, and she felt the same tickle on her lobe and around the rim. Moving faster than she had since enlarging in her sleep, Lilly’s index finger rocketed through the air. She plunged the tip right at the owner of the buglike hum, and the moment her digit touched the concave shelf of her ear, the sound was thankfully muted. It was tough to say, but she was fairly certain she felt one last little tingle on her skin. Upon examination of her fingerprint, searching for remnants of whatever-it-was, Lilly had some trouble distinguishing the glittery debris of this pest control problem she’d just squished from her earlier dusty efforts to pick up the Chicago skyline, but at last identified on her fingerpad what she thought to be freshly smoking wreckage that glowed like a single ember.

            “Gotcha,” she declared in whisper.

            Lilly rubbed her thumb in circles over her finger to clean off the last particles, scattering them to the wind, then immediately caught sight of an eye-strainingly miniscule yet unmistakable speck-sized series of dark objects whizzing past her face. These were the culprits. They must have been jets, the kind used by the military, though Lilly was unversed in such things other than the fact that they could fly very fast. At her scale, however, with a ten-mile-long wingspan, they weren’t quite quick enough to avoid being seen by her forever; there was no other explanation for machines that could be so very small and yet move with the blinding speed of hard-to-catch insects on the level of ordinary humanity. As well, she now had an explanation for the mildly vexing sensation like a pine needle being caressed along her legs and ears: they were strafing her with the heaviest artillery they could hold, guns and missiles firing on all cylinders, and doing little more than making Lilly aware of their presence. Considering she was having such a lovely time before they showed up, their interjection was something they would come to see as a mistake, the giantess decided.

            The same hand she’d just used to quash an ear-dweller she now swooped in front of her face, just as she heard the first humming purr of the fleet coming around her head for another round of fruitless firepower. Palm open, fingers spread wide, she swatted through seemingly blank void, yet this time felt the telltale micro-crunches of insignificant, nigh-weightless objects smacking into the flying wall of her hand.