Laurel is Dead

"Hey, hey, Melissa, what's wrong?" Laurel softly and sweetly inquired, though her broad grin somewhat undermined her sincerity. She scrutinized the tiny girl closely, holding her up to her eyes and looking over the graceful feminine curves that she'd been so jealous of for so many years. Melissa had been gifted with this spectacular feminine form and the graceful girlish charm that had opened so many doors for her. Nobody had likely ever called her scrawny and she'd never had to carefully search for bras with the best padding to fill out her form.

Laurel had been jealous, sure, but there was never any sort of deep, consuming bitterness. Just, sitting there and holding the tiny girl between her fingertips... it was somehow kind of funny. She started to laugh a little and after a moment more she realized she hadn't been listening to her very little sister's response to her question.

"...gone, just gone! Just, like, a stain, and you don't even feel anything! You can't do this, Laur, you just can't be like this, you have to stop and think about what you're doing... you can let us go, you have to! You just, just..."

Laurel narrowed her eyes and started to squeeze her thumb and forefinger together, halting her sister's panicked rant and letting it give way to a few whimpers and squeals. "Oh, Mel, I feel something. I feel a whole lot of something when I look down at you writhing in my grasp or when I splattered my boss across the floor or when I felt Dad slowly squish. I feel an incredible rush of something that no other person could ever understand without experiencing it."

She didn't really plan on killing Melissa, but it was really hard to resist the urge to just keep squeezing. It was an exercise in delicate restraint to just add a little and then a little more pressure, pushing her thumb into her sister's side. Something popped and Laurel could only assume it was a rib or two giving way.

"I'm a killer now, Melissa. Maybe you think it's not your fault, but I still blame you." It wasn't likely that the tiny girl was hearing much of what Laurel had to say at this point, but that didn't stop her from saying what she had to say. She felt another little muted pop beneath her thumb and paused for a moment to sigh with the unexpected pleasure that breaking tiny bones brought her before she continued.

"You, Mom, Dad, teachers, friends..." Laurel continued to murmur, her voice growing softer, growing colder the more she spoke. "They're all part of this fucked up world, and it took me this long to get it."

Melissa was really screaming now. Every second was greater agony than the last and the merciless, crushing pressure of Laurel's fingers just slowly and horribly and inexorably smashing into her body never relented. This was how she was going to die, with every torturously long moment more horrible than the last. She managed to force out a "please!" among all of her wordless cries, but Laurel ignored her with tremendous ease.

"I know how to be happy now, Mel." Laurel's voice was cold and terribly soft as she continued to squeeze the life from her sister. The tiny girl's screams were starting to fade to choking, rasping gurgles as her body started to give way, bones snapping and crunching left and right under the unbearable pressure of her sister's fingertips. "You have to take what you want, and not give a fuck about anyone else."

The only sound Melissa was making by now was a faint wet gurgling and squelching. Laurel's fingertips touched each other with only the thinnest layer of pulverized flesh and bone between them. "Me and Ryan," she continued while starting to rub her fingertips together, smearing and squishing what was left of her sister between them while a few messy bits dribbled down and landed on her silky white blouse. "We're just going to take and take and take, and there's nobody who can stop us."

Several of the tiny people scattered across Laurel's torso had been unable to do anything but stare and watch Melissa slowly collapse and crumple to a gory mess in the gigantic woman's grasp. Laurel took a deep, settling breath once she realized that her sister simply was no more and looked out over her collection, sneering a little as she let the reality of what she'd just done sink in for everyone, herself included. They were hers. She'd made a snap decision and taken their very lives from them in an instant, just because it was something she wanted to do. Some sort of emptiness gnawed at her insides briefly, like some reminder that all of this really shouldn't feel so good, that these people loved her or had loved her and maybe they'd really done their best for her.

Laurel had always done her best, though. Look where it had gotten her. "You'd so better get to work," she flatly declared to her tiny possessions, and they took her point well, going back to the buttons and closures and doing their best to free her from her garments and prepare her for her lover.

Whatever didn't make sense now would be completely clear once Ryan was here, with his sweet face hovering just above hers and his strong hands exploring the curves of her body, his wonderful cock filling her and driving her to the heights of absolute ecstasy she'd been longing for ever since her boot had splattered Norman Fitch across his office floor.

Laurel softly sighed as she wiped Melissa's remains off on the front of her blouse and watched her mother, uncle and neighbor working together to roll one of her stockings down along her leg. Everything was going to be okay. She was in control and everything was going to work out just fine.

*****

Ryan slammed the car door shut behind him and twirled about, humming to himself and bounding up the stairs to the apartment he shared with the love of his life. There was no mistaking the spring in his step as he fiddled with his keys, all too eager to get home and see the woman who was going to be his wife.

He didn't get texts like that often, that was sure. Actually, he'd pretty much never gotten a message like that from Laurel. The two of them were plenty passionate, of course. Maybe not as much as when they started dating a couple years ago, but with Laurel's headaches and all the stress with planning the wedding and work, work, work they'd been falling asleep on the couch or going to bed quietly more often than not in recent days. He kicked his shoes off before the door was even shut behind him.

"Hey, I'm home, babe!" Ryan called out after his belt was undone. He fiddled with the buttons on his shirt while shimmying his pants down over his knees and hopping out of them. Laurel didn't call back, but his instructions had been pretty clear. He hustled down the hallway and pushed the door to their bedroom open, and there she was.

Laurel was as seductive as she'd ever been, spread out on their bed and staring directly into Ryan's eyes as he entered the room. Her long dark hair was spread out, radiating from her head across the pillow. Her blouse and bra were open and laying beneath her back, exposing her small, sweet breasts that rose and fell with her slow, even breath. Her slender bare legs were slightly spread, inviting with one bent at the knee, her foot flat on the bed while the other stretched out towards him, toes slowly flexing as if they too were inviting him in.

"Oh my God..." Ryan softly murmured as he approached, his hand reaching out and sliding over Laurel's raised knee.

"I need you so fucking bad, Ry," Laurel whispered, her voice low and throaty and soft. His hand glided past her knee and along her thigh as he mounted the bed, moving over her and shivering faintly when she reached out and ran her hand between his his legs, encouraging his already stirring manhood to rigid firmness in her grasp. "Come on," she demanded, pulling him towards her.

Ryan pushed his briefs over his hips and kicked them down past his ankles as he shifted and scooted forward, letting his soon-to-be wife guide him.

"We're forever, Ryan. No matter what, right?" Laurel murmured, the first hint of her familiar timidness creeping back into her voice.

Ryan let out a low groan as he started to slide into his lover. She was so hot, so eagerly warm and wet and ready for him, and as his eyes drifted shut and his hips pressed into hers he whispered, "Mnn, forever, Laurel. Forever..."

"I love you," she shakily declared as they found their rhythm and he slid and pumped within her. Laurel took his hand, guiding it along her body, running his fingers across her red-hot flesh.

"I love you, babe," he replied, his voice almost inaudibly low and smooth. They shuddered together and moaned as his fingers meandered about the curve of her breast.

"For.. forever.." Laurel gasped. Her other hand moved along the back of Ryan's neck, fingers sliding through his hair while her body responded to his every touch. His hand curled around and cradled her breast, palm brushing across its firm peak and she pulled it closer, encouraging him to grasp and squeeze like she loved.

Ryan paused, the movement of his hips slowing. There was something under there, something that shouldn't have been there and that in and of itself wouldn't have concerned him much, but it was moving.

"C'mon," Laurel murmured, her body still surging against his, desperate for his attention. "Fuck me, Ryan," she hoarsely demanded, pulling him firmly against her.

"No, just, there's something..." he whispered while starting to pull his hand away, but she seized it and smashed it back to her breast, curling her fingers around his hand and squeezing.

"It's nothing," she purred, even as he felt the thing crumple between her tender, sensitive flesh and his hand. "She's nothing and she doesn't matter," Laurel dreamily continued, trailing into a wordless, ecstatic cry and bucking against his hips, her thighs tightening around his body as she rode out the long, breathtaking waves of her culminating pleasure.

"Laurel, what the fuck was that?" Ryan quietly questioned. He pulled his hand away from the wetness beneath it, scrutinizing the reddish spot on his palm and the matching one on the curve of his lover's breast. "You called it 'she'?"

He leaned in closer, but Laurel was still wrapped up in the fruition of her long-lasting lusts, stroking Ryan's hair and murmuring in his ear. "We can do anything now, Ry. We can do anything we want to anyone at all. Nothing's going to stop us..."

Her eyes slowly opened and when she looked up at her love, she saw his eyes impossibly wide, head slowly shaking back and forth in evidence of his sudden terror. He stammered as he tried to speak. "Th-that... Jesus Christ, that's your mom!"

Laurel reached out for him as he pulled back, leaping from the bed and backing up against the wall. She started to rise up and a bit of that suddenly familiar reddish shade drew Ryan's eyes to where her foot lifted from the sheets, and there were three more stains, three more tiny people she must have smothered and crushed while the two of them made love.

Ryan shrieked, frozen to the spot as he watched Laurel move towards him. "Ryan, it's okay," she assured him. Her nude form glistened in the twilight, but all he could see were those tiny splotches of red, and now that he was looking for them, Ryan could see more and more. Two on her shirt. One on the mattress. Little smears on her fingertips.

"You're a murderer," he managed to choke out. His fingers were grasping for something behind him, maybe something to defend himself or a doorknob to give him a way out, he wasn't quite sure yet, but there had to be something. "You made me kill your own mother!"

"Ryan," she whispered, her voice still low and sultry as she slipped up against him, her fingertips gliding across his heaving chest and her warm, bare body sliding up against his own. "They don't matter at all. They were little useless people that failed me. They don't understand what it is to have power, Ryan, but I do. We do, don't we?"

It was more of a declaration than a question. Laurel was still hungry for more, more of everything, but right now she wanted more of her man. She pressed against him, her bare thigh grinding between his legs and her eager mouth dancing along his neck, teeth grazing his skin as she panted in his ear. Now that he knew, now that he understood what she'd done, she wanted him that much more.

The panic gradually left Ryan. He was still horrified, still frightened, but he wasn't paralyzed and helpless. A fierce growl rose in his throat and he shoved Laurel away with all of his strength. Her little frame went tumbling back from him, leaving her laying in a heap at the foot of the bed. She looked up at the man she loved, the only person that still meant something in her life, and absolute devastation overtook her.

"This is fucked," Ryan hastily declared, still wide-eyed and shaking his head. "You, this, everything... just... fucking... fucked!"

"No," Laurel whispered, her mouth parted and her lower lip trembling with terrible distress, with the fear that she was losing the last thing in her life that mattered. "Ry, no, it's okay, we're okay, we can fix this!" Hot tears gathered in her eyes as she watched him set his jaw and shake his head one more time, and they rushed down her cheeks as he resolutely turned and marched through the door.

It took a moment, but Laurel managed to push herself up and chase after him. "Ryan, please," she called out, but he was already fishing his phone out of the pants laying by the door.

"Ryan, don't do this," she wailed, grabbing at his arm and trying to pull it away from dialing the numbers. "You said you loved me! You said forever, no matter what. You promised!"

He was almost twice her size, and it wasn't hard to push her away. The operator picked up, and though tears of his own blurred his vision when he looked Laurel in the eye, his voice didn't break when he spoke. "There's a killer in my apartment. Please send someone right away."

Every twist and turn this day had taken had left Laurel freshly shattered; broken her time and again to the point where there was nothing left. She had been reaching out to Ryan, pleading with him, professing her desperate love, but when he said those words everything in her simply stopped. For a moment she even froze, arm stretched out towards him, lips still forming the shape that her next sound was going to take, but then it all just stopped. She stared at him, really looked him over, and as frightened and horrified as Ryan was, seeing her so hollow and destroyed still tore at his heart.

"Laurel, I had to," he whispered, but she was already turning away, already turning her back on him. "This isn't you, I don't know what happened, but..."

She was already at the table, turning the knobs and flicking the switches on some strange device he'd never seen before. It hummed to life before he could even piece together that it might have something to do with the inexplicably tiny people he'd seen. Laurel looked up at the last moment as the gathering brilliant light started to build around her shimmering feminine form, meeting his pained stare for just a moment but not saying a word.

Then, everything exploded.

*****

She wasn't surrounded by complete silence, but everything was still wonderfully, beautifully quiet. The warm glow that had surrounded Laurel started to wear away after another moment,, and as she began to feel the cool air moving across her bare flesh, her eyes slowly opened.

The world around her was gone. Ryan. Fitch. Work. Love. Fear. None of that existed anymore. Laurel's head rolled back on her shoulders and she took a deep breath, staring into the deep, clear beautiful blue that surrounded her as she wiped away her tears. She wasn't part of that world anymore. Those weren't things that mattered to her anymore.

Another deep breath steadied her somewhat, and her eyes slowly turned back down towards the ground. That world wasn't gone, all of it was all still there. The countless minuscule matchbox houses spreading out at her feet were interspersed with a spider web of pavement that spread towards larger concrete veins and led out into the city itself, and slowly Laurel began to recognize and understand everything for what it is. She could see the streets she drove day after day to take her to work. She could even see the recognizable cluster of tall buildings in the distance that surrounded her workplace itself, though the smaller, squat structure where her company kept its less-important offices wasn't visible in the shadows of those greater buildings.

Suddenly, she knew what she was going to do next. She still had a purpose, and she was going to see it through. First, though, she needed to do one more thing. The apartment building she'd burst forth from as she grew and ascended into the heavens lay in ruins, more than half of it reduced to rubble from her rapid expansion. Still, somewhere inside there were the last bits of Laurel, the timid secretary and frail little woman. Somewhere inside there was the MARTI. Somewhere inside there Ryan might still be alive, calling out for help or even stammering his betrayal of her love and trust to a 9-1-1 operator.

Laurel's colossal foot slowly shifted and steadily rose from the rubble, but she didn't have to raise it far. There was no trace of hesitation as she began to lower it back onto the building, shifting the slightest bit to cover the entire structure.

For all the sorrow she anticipated in ending the life of the one man she had ever truly loved, Laurel was wholly unprepared for the electric rush that sent a shiver through her core and danced across her skin once she started to feel the wood and concrete crumbling and collapsing beneath her bare sole. An entire building, more than a dozen people, she was sure, and now they were all being erased because she'd decided to just fucking step on them.

A soft moan passed unbidden from her lips as her heel rose and her toes spread and she twisted her foot, relishing the idea as much as the sensation of grinding everything beneath it to a pulverized mess at the bottom of a crater. They were gone, just gone, along with Ryan and along with the old, weak, powerless Laurel.

She raised her foot after a moment more and turned it across her knee, examining the unrecognizable powder clinging to the ball of her foot. A faint, playful chuckle erupted from her lips as she brushed what she could from her sole and set her foot back to the ground, aiming for the street and carelessly crumpling a few cars beneath it as her weight shifted forward. Her other leg swung through the air and kicked a few more vehicles out of the way, sending the half-smashed metallic hunks and their instantly shattered occupants careening through the air and crashing into the apartment buildings lining the other side of the street.

Laurel had nothing against the cars or the people in them or really anyone who lived out here, but they did happen to be in her way. After all, it was time to go to work.

*****

Every city and town of note had to be prepared for catastrophes, emergencies and threats. Reports circulated swiftly, and first responders came rushing to their posts. Sirens screeched through every corner of the city's streets, and the choppy buzzing of several circling helicopters, both news and police, helped fill the air in the moments between the sirens' wails.

There were no guidelines, however, that prepared anyone for the presence of a nude skyscraping goddess purposefully striding towards the metropolitan center. Fortunately she had chosen to stick to the streets, though they weren't nearly wide enough to accommodate her colossal feet, and casualties were starting to pile up as buildings and people unlucky enough to be on or near the road vanished and flattened beneath each of her dispassionate steps.