The Reveries of Aaron Cooper, Chapter 22 (Patreon)

One more update coming in a couple hours! <3

Oh, and I attached a pdf of the complete story so far to the end of this post -- enjoy! <3

Chapter 22Aaron instantly obeyed, his brain in awestruck disarray as he timidly approached the gargantuan, redheaded muscle amazon standing before him. He was being thrown for so many loops that he hardly knew what was happening anymore. For one thing, he hadn’t even realized that he was soaking wet until Avani had pointed it out to him…had that been because of Neera? Had she somehow soaked him through his clothes without him even noticing? How could that even be possible!? And where was he in the park, actually?? He had walked through the park by his apartment many times, and he never remembered it being this big, or having a strange, secretive clearing in the middle with all this outdoor workout equipment. And, perhaps most ominously, how had that giant hole appeared in the earth, close to where Avani was standing in front of the power rack? The rich brown loam heaped up around the sides of this hole was still steaming in the soft light of the streetlamps that rounded the clearing…almost like the hole had been made very recently, by some intensely kinetic force that had risen up from the very bowels of the Earth itself.But Aaron could barely spare any mental energy wondering about this, because he was too overwhelmed by the sheer size of Avani. Neera had been enormous, nearly twice the height of his puny 4’10. But Avani was colossal, and, as he approached her, Aaron could tell that he was eye-level with the top of her knees. And while Neera had sported lavishly ample, voluptuous curves, Avani’s femininity was displayed in a far more aggressive, intimidating way: her muscles. Aaron knew that she could have effortlessly dominated him with a single finger, much less a single hand or arm or leg. Her powerful wrist alone looked thicker than his thigh, and her robust, vigorous forearm was undoubtedly larger than his torso. The rest of her body, from her insanely huge calves and thighs, to the muscular swerve of her thick hips and the eye-popping chisel of her 8-pack abs, to the looming double-hills of her traps on either side of her head, was all the same: just as muscular, just as impressive. She had no weak points. And that sheer muscle power, combined with her stunning height, and that intense, penetrative force of her red eyes, made Aaron’s legs turn to jelly as he got closer.“Uh-oh, you’re tottering,” Avani said matter-of-factly, and she bent swiftly down, still holding the white towel that she had taken from the waistband of her shorts as she stretched out a powerful limb to him. “Here, take my arm.”Aaron didn’t “take” it as much as he “fell into” it, and the next moment he found himself clutching the huge, hot pillar of Avani’s forearm as she deftly sank down into a cross-legged position, showing off her flexibility and dexterity. It was incredible that such a huge, muscled body could move so easily and fluidly as that. But Avani seemed intent on her task at hand, and immediately went to work toweling Aaron off. He was briefly thrust into the confused jumble of a warm, cotton vortex, his sight and hearing obscured as this muscle goddess dried him off. Avani certainly wasn’t shy about getting the job done. In his discombobulation within the huge towel, Aaron had a funny little thought – if Neera had been the one drying him off, she would have probably been all playful and teasing, dabbing it around different parts of his body with her thumb and forefinger. Not Avani. She was far more practical and business-like…almost rough…but not quite. She wasn’t exactly in a hurry, but she also didn’t have any time for messing around. In less than a minute, Aaron was fully dry, with his hair standing on-end and jutting out in crazy directions.“There we go, dry as a bone,” Avani nodded down at him, slipping the towel back into her waistband. Aaron realized that this “huge towel” was actually more of a small “workout towel” for Avani, and he would have marveled at the comparison more if he had been able to see out of the towel itself while she had been busily drying him off. Even sitting cross-legged like she was right now, Aaron’s head barely even came up to the middle of her breasts, and, turning around in awe to face her, he realized that he actually had to look UP a little to see the highest parts of her cleavage. He felt very warm and safe this close to such a gargantuan amazon, but he also felt cowed and intimidated, to the point where his mind went completely blank. Avani seemed to be used to this kind of reaction, though, and tilted her head slightly, her eyes going slowly over his body.“Well you certainly haven’t been overeating, that’s for sure,” she said, reaching out and taking his arm in her hand, wrapping her fingers all the way around it. Her brow furrowed and she did the same with his other arm, holding them both up as she studied them, almost disbelieving.“My goodness you’re tiny!” she breathed down at him. “You’re obviously an adult, but…such a miniscule little thing! How did you get so small?”“I-It’s, uh…it’s complicated,” Aaron managed to say.“Mhm, well…” nodded Avani slowly, as she gently kneaded her hands into his forearms, then his upper arms, as her hands slid past his elbow, completely encompassing the girth of his limbs, “I don’t want to be bossy and tell you what to do – my younger sister always complains that I can be overbearing…but then again, she complains about everything – but anyway, I’d say you could use a little meat on your bones.”“Yeah, I’m…I’m pretty small, no doubt about that!” Aaron squeaked out, feeling pitifully tiny in the hands of this muscle amazon. The way Avani talked was so measured and self-assured, so adult and matter-of-fact, that Aaron felt some sense of safety returning to him. Unlike Neera, he didn’t think that Avani was going to suddenly do anything crazy. She was much more tethered, more grounded.“Pretty small?” Avani hummed, letting his arms drop as she planted a gigantic hand right in the middle of his chest, “Sweetheart…don’t take this the wrong way, but…you’re absolutely puny.”Aaron didn’t feel like he could argue this point either, and he simply stood there, gaping down at Avani’s gigantic hand splayed across his chest. The comparison was ridiculous, beyond what he had ever experienced before. Her palm was flat against his sternum, and it completely covered the entirety of his chest, with plenty of room to spare. Her long, powerful fingers extended up well past his shoulder blades, to the point where, when she flexed them down, they stretched all the way down to the middle of his back. Her thumb and pinkie finger wrapped effortlessly around his ribs, joining her other three fingers around the middle of his back. She was effectively “palming” his entire body. Aaron could feel the powerful, driving thud of Avani’s heartbeat through her hand as she held him there for a few long seconds, and the thud was so powerful, even so far from her heart, that Aaron could feel his entire body shaking with each rhythmic “thoom…thoom…thoom” of her blood pumping through her mighty hand. Aaron realized that his heart was racing, probably three or four times faster, just as Avani’s was slow, calm, collected, and measured.A funny little detail popped into Aaron’s head; he remembered that while tiny mammals like shrews and mice had rapid heartbeats to compensate for extreme metabolic heat loss, while huge mammals like whales had much slower heartbeats, since their huge bodies retained heat more effectively. The size difference between himself and Avani wasn’t anywhere close to THAT extreme…but it was extreme enough to where he had actually noticed the difference in heartbeats.“Your tiny heart is thumping away like a little drum,” Avani hummed, apparently on Aaron’s wavelength, as she gently squeezed her fingers around him a few times, before letting him go, “Poor little guy – am I scaring you?”“N-Not, uh…not too much,” Aaron replied, taking a couple deep breaths as he stood there before the sitting amazon, “I just…yeah, a lot’s been happening, and it’s kind of hard to take it all in.”“Plus I’m probably not helping, am I?” Avani asked simply, slowly raising her huge arms up above her head, on either side, and flexing them. Aaron gaped up as he watched them slowly, inexorably harden into the densest, thickest, most vascular muscle he had ever seen. Even though she was sitting down, Aaron had to crane his neck way up to look at her exploding biceps. He didn’t know her exact measurements, but he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that Avani was 16’8 tall – so her biceps were sitting pretty at 7’10, a full 3 feet above his head.“I…your…” Aaron blurted out stupidly, his mind seeming to melt in the wake of those insane pillars of muscle so high above his head. For the first time, a slight hint of a smile inched its way onto Avani’s face as a cool night breeze kicked up, weaving its way through the soft, strange light of the lamps circling the clearing.“I’m sorry, I just played a little trick on you, sweetie,” Avani declared, with an indication of a chuckle behind her matter-of-fact delivery, “I already knew that you get excited by the thought of women being taller and bigger and stronger than you, and I’ve been teasing you ever since you came here. Because it’s fun. And because it’s cute to watch your little chest rise and fall as you struggle to keep calm.”“Oh it’s…it’s totally all right,” Aaron laughed, feeling a bit of relief from the act of laughing itself, “I don’t mind the teasing. You and Neera both, uhm…yeah…I don’t…I don’t mind.”“Mmm you don’t mind that I’m taking advantage of you for my own amusement?” Avani asked point-blank, now bouncing her biceps up and down, going back and forth between her left and right arm.“No…” Aaron replied, after swallowing a few times to try and keep his throat from going totally dry, “Not at all.”He admired Avani’s incredible arms for a couple more seconds before something she had just said flashed back to him.“Wait,” he added belatedly, holding up his finger, as Avani switched to flexing her fingers, springing her forearms to life high above him, “You said…you just said…that you already knew that I got excited by the thought of women being, uh, you know, bigger and taller and stronger than me?!”“Mhm,” Avani nodded, flexing her fingers, her face expressionless as her forearms rippled above his head.“But…h-how?” Aaron asked bluntly, “How did you know!?”He was obviously quite aroused (his cock hadn’t gone down completely, ever since he had laid eyes on Neera, which seemed like ages ago at this point) but his pants were baggy enough to where his erection wasn’t blatantly obvious. Did Avani have some special sensory power, in addition to her otherworldly size and strength?“Simple,” she replied nonchalantly, “My sister told me.”“Neera?” asked Aaron, his brow furrowing, “Neera told you?”“Sure did,” Avani nodded again, now extending her arms out straight on either side of her, so that the curving bulge of her forearms and biceps were impressively outlined in their relaxed contours, only to bring her arms back up into that same crushingly sexy double-biceps pose. Even though he was trying to figure out what was going on, Aaron felt himself starting to get even harder.“How could…she tell you, though?” Aaron persisted, not understanding, “She couldn’t have passed me – I would have noticed her.” He began to wonder if the two could somehow communicate telepathically. In the back of his mind, he knew that everything he had been encountering on this little “walk in the park” was somehow supernatural, but he didn’t have the mental bandwidth to truly process it all, or to wonder where it all came from. His arousal was making it difficult to wrap his mind around everything, but that didn’t stop him from trying. He figured that the puzzle could somehow distract himself from getting too hard and embarrassing himself any further in front of Avani.“Well, she certainly passed UNDERNEATH you,” Avani declared definitively, dropping her arms down, splaying her hands out on the grass, so that her arms were now 7-foot-tall, sculpted, muscular pillars flanking both sides of her enormous body.“Underneath?” asked Aaron, perplexed. Avani sounded like she was just speaking the flat, simple truth. Even her “little trick” hadn’t even really been a “trick” – unlike Neera, she wasn’t very flirty or devious or mercurial. She seemed to be a “straight shot,” so to speak. So why were her answers still not making any sense?“Uh-huh, underneath,” nodded Avani simply, leaning forward slightly on her hands, as her huge arms flexed under the weight of her torso, “Is it really so hard to imagine the two of us mingling together, communicating beneath the surface, in the pitch-dark, where everything is always changing, very, very slowly?”This time, Aaron couldn’t bring himself to find an answer. Avani’s words were far too cryptic, far too strange…and yet she was speaking them plainly, like they were the most obvious thing in the world.“After all,” she added, her mouth suddenly morphing into a crooked smile as she raised her arms up again and flexed them, “Neera and I aren’t so different, are we?”“You’re…um…you’re pretty different,” Aaron replied, figuring that he may as well abandon his detective work and just enjoy the muscular behemoth before him. Those bouncing biceps…those rippling forearms…good grief. And now she was flexing her chest, making her big breasts bounce in opposite tandem to her biceps. He could see everything moving and flexing, since she was only wearing those tight workout shorts and that black sports bra. Her body had come alive, and it was turning Aaron on far quicker than he could hope to exert some kind of control.“Oh are we?” Avani challenged, arching an eyebrow down at him, “I know that she’s a big flirt, with all those dripping, luscious curves, but I can tease you just as good, you know!”“I…y-yeah, I can see that,” Aaron panted. Avani was still bouncing her biceps, billowing her forearms, and flexing her pecs, and she had just added a fourth dimension to her flex-show: she had started rippling and flexing her 8-pack abdominal muscles, which were all starkly chiseled even without her flexing. But Avani somehow had the crazy ability to flex each ab on its own, and the result was that Aaron was treated to the most impressive, ridiculous display of muscle coordination that he had ever seen. Her abs were literally rippling like a current, made to look like they were moving up and down in a rolling motion. She was so huge compared to Aaron that, sitting on the grass, her lower abs began at his shins, her mid-abs were at his waist, and her upper abs reached all the way up to his lower chest.“All I’m doing is sitting in front of you and flexing,” Avani said in her inimitable matter-of-fact voice, (though it was now tinged with that underlying, humorous enjoyment), “and you can barely keep it together.”“W-Wow…!” was all Aaron could manage, in an-almost-desperate-sounding little squeak, as he watched Avani’s abs ripple and flex before him. Once again, just as it had been with Neera, his cock was now painfully hard, pressing into his baggy shorts with a renewed urgency.“Going back to my earlier observation,” Avani continued coolly, like she was discussing the weather, “I think that you could use a tad more exercise, little guy. I mean, look…I know you’re never going to be as big as me or any of my other sisters, but, like I said, it might be good for you to put on a few pounds.”Aaron had peripherally registered something Avani had just said – she had OTHER sisters? Besides Neera!? He couldn’t even begin to wonder what THEY were like, but he didn’t have time in any case, because Avani was talking again.“Tell you what,” she was saying, still holding her arms aloft, still bouncing her biceps, “Why don’t we start you off with a fun little challenge. You up for it?”“I’m…I’m ready!” Aaron exclaimed determinedly, nodding and balling up his fists in eager anticipation. His posture seemed to amuse Avani even more, and she even started chuckling a little.“I can see that you are,” she said, that distant humor underlying her voice and expression, “Okay then – all you have to do…is touch my biceps.”Her words didn’t seem to flow and gush like Neera’s did, nor did they hang on the air – they just had a way of dropping straight down into Aaron’s body, like they were a weight that had been suddenly lowered onto his chest. Maybe it was the deadpan way she spoke, or maybe it was the fact that she was just so huge and down-to-earth that it sort of threw him for a loop. Whatever it was, Aaron had to take a few seconds to actually let Avani’s words sink in. His eyes flitted up to her biceps. They sure looked high up there…and they were – a full 3 feet above his head.“All I have to do is touch them, huh?” he said, finally finding his voice.“That’s all,” Avani nodded, her eyes watching him steadily as he stepped up closer to her, staring straight up at her arm. Silently, he raised his arm up as high as it could go, stretching his fingers up, up, up…and he wasn’t even close. His standing reach was only around 6’4, and her bicep looked to be a good foot-and-a-half higher than the tips of his fingers. He rose up on his tiptoes, but this only gave him a couple-inch boost, nowhere close enough to reach.“I think,” Avani suggested, with dry mirth, “That you might have to jump.”“Yeah, I think you’re right,” said Aaron, lowering his arm in wonder. It was crazy just how huge this amazon was, and, in a strange way, having her sitting like this in front of him somehow made her seem even huger. Of course, when Avani had been towering over him (by almost 12 whole feet!), she had seemed gargantuan enough, but now, with her sitting before him, the enormous bulk of her arms and torso were that much closer, so Aaron could get a true taste of their actual size. And, not to be forgotten, the colossal twin tree trunks of her giant legs were folded cross-legged underneath her torso, her upper and lower legs pressed together in an impressive display of flexibility, so that their muscular bulk was even more exaggerated than when she was standing straight up.“Well get a move-on, sweetie,” Avani urged, snapping Aaron out of another one of his size reveries, “I’d love to put you through a more comprehensive workout, what with all this equipment we have here, but my time here is short – and it ends soon.”“Soon!?” Aaron exclaimed, suddenly alarmed at the thought of Avani vanishing just as abruptly as Neera.“Very soon,” Avani nodded, glancing up at the sky for a moment, like she was checking something, before lowering those big, steady brown eyes back down to him.‘Wait…’ thought Aaron suddenly, ‘Weren’t her eyes kind of…red? Just a few minutes ago?’But he saw that Avani was bouncing her bicep expectantly, and so he shook off this last thought, bent his knees, and jumped, trying his best to reach up with his hand. This first effort, though, fell short, and his fingers swished through thin air, a good five or six inches too short.“Mmm, good effort,” said Avani encouragingly, nodding slowly, “But not quite – try again.”Aaron took a couple deep breaths, wiggling his body a bit in expectation, and then gave it another go, this time taking a few extra steps to try and get some momentum. This effort was closer, but he still came up a little short, his fingers getting within three inches of the underside of her bicep.“Even better!” Avani nodded, raising her voice slightly, like she was getting more excited by the prospect of him achieving his goal, “Give it one more shot – except this time, I want you to take a long, running start. You can do it. I know you can.”Encouraged by Avani’s tone, Aaron eagerly jogged back a good way, about twenty paces, and then turned. Even this far away, she looked absolutely massive, though, in a strange moment, the lamplight caught her figure in a certain way that made her look almost like…some sort of huge bush, or tree, or something. Aaron actually glanced up at the sky, wondering what was going on, and he saw, from the growing glow of silver to the east, that the moon was about to rise up above the trees. Feeling a peculiar, primal pang in his chest, like he had to hurry up, Aaron turned back to Avani, who was still sitting there, arms raised, waiting for him. Aaron took another deep breath, grit his teeth, and went for it, taking as good a running start as he possibly could. Avani’s huge, muscular body seemed to rush up at him, and he jumped, stretching his arm up as high as it could go. He wasn’t going to make it…he was too short! But just then, Avani swiftly lowered her bicep and “caught” Aaron right as he was about to descend back down to earth. His hands reached around its gigantic rounded top, which, at over 50 inches in circumference, was far too big for him to wrap his arms around. Instead, both of his arms were latched firmly around the curve of her bicep peak, gripping it like a rock climber holding onto a rounded “sloper” hold. And as Avani sat back up straight, Aaron’s feet dangled 20 inches off the ground.“You made it!” she exclaimed warmly, her voice vibrating through his entire body.“You helped me!” Aaron protested through a sheepish grin.“I only gave you what you needed,” she answered straight back, “You did most of the work, little guy.”Now that he was touching her again, Aaron felt an intense, earthy warmth permeate his body, almost like he was getting some kind of infusion straight through her muscle, through her warm skin. The feeling was profound, a kind of stark, vivid energy that was somehow also steady and controlled and pensive…like it had been slowly charging itself up over millions and millions of years to reach this exact point. Aaron would have felt overwhelmed, but he had come to so trust this amazon that he wasn’t even afraid. Struggling to maintain his hold, with his feet dangling, he glanced over at her face, and his heart caught in his chest. Avani’s eyes had turned red again, and they were looking once more up at the sky, towards the east, in the direction of the growing glow of silver on the horizon beyond the trees.“Well…” she said, sighing wistfully, in a rare moment of emotion, “The time has come for me to leave you, Aaron.”“Leave!?” he exclaimed, still hanging from her bicep, which suddenly seemed like it was getting hotter. “You’re going to leave me??”“Oh yes,” she said simply, lowering her eyes back down to him. They were burning red now, a deep, fiery, magma red. The effect was striking, and her burning eyes made her look even more beautiful and impressive than before. “The moon is rising, so I must be off. Another will have to lead you…the rest of the way.”“Another?” asked Aaron, growing suddenly afraid. Avani’s eyes had suddenly flared when she had said that word, “another,” almost like they were spitting fire, and her bicep had gotten so hot that Aaron tried to let go. But he found that his hands were stuck, and that he couldn’t.“Please,” Aaron begged her, “Please don’t leave me!” In their short time together, he had grown so fond of her directness and her gentle humor, and, of course, he had been transfixed by her body the moment he had seen it. He had never seen someone so strong, so steady, so sturdy and powerful, and now, the thought of her suddenly departing, to leave him in this strange park, all alone, was intolerable.“I’ll never really be gone, sweetie,” Avani said, her voice suddenly stiff and wooden, “Just keep your feet…firmly on the ground…and I’ll be there, supporting you.”The flaming, painful heat of her skin suddenly cooled, and Aaron watched in stunned amazement as the burning red of her eyes went out, like two candles suddenly extinguished. A group of birds…maybe crows, but deeper, throatier, more foreboding, abruptly squawked out a hoarse call from the tops of the trees, and Aaron looked up at the sky as a thin cloud passed away from in front of the moon. The whole park was now bathed in the quiet, reflected silver of the moon’s light…soft, mysterious, and deathly silent.Aaron turned to look at Avani again, but she wasn’t there. In her place was a huge, thick, sturdy tree. Aaron blinked, incredulous, and saw that he was actually holding onto a large tree branch. He immediately let go, and he dropped down 20 inches to the grass. Taking a few steps back, he stared up at the tree, not quite believing what had just happened. Had Avani…just turned into this tree!? It was certainly shaped, in some vague sense, the exact way she had been sitting before. But the longer Aaron stared at the tree, the less it looked like her. An overwhelming sense of sadness welled up in him, threatening to crush his spirit. He missed her…he missed her so much already. But then he felt it: a deep, dull rumble beneath the earth, almost like there was something moving deep down below, something huge…something elemental.Aaron turned to look back at where the giant pile of dirt had been steaming only minutes before, and saw that it had vanished, along with the big hole. Had he just imagined that it had been there? Or had it somehow been filled without him realizing? Once again, as with his encounter with Neera, Aaron found himself wondering if it had been real at all. But that deep rumbling beneath his feet, almost a mini-earthquake, had somehow lifted that crushing sadness off his chest and vaporized it, letting it flit away on the light breeze that had kicked up again.The strange, throaty squawks sounded out again, coming from the treetops behind Aaron. He turned around, trying to see where the sounds were coming from. He could make out, high in the trees, some huge shapes of shrouded black. Giant crows? Vultures…? He didn’t know. But all he did know was that it had suddenly gotten colder, and that, quite apart from Avani’s departure, a strange, chilly fear was beginning to set in his chest. There was a path ahead of him, a path that he hadn’t remembered being there before – it was a narrow, tree-lined path that led out of the clearing, lined with those same soft lamps. Aaron turned to look around. The clearing was completely abandoned. All the exercise equipment was gone, and a slow, cool mist was beginning to creep across the ground. His fear grew, and he felt like he needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. The only way that didn’t involve him plowing through the thick underbrush of the forest was down the lamp-lined path, so that’s the way Aaron took.As he walked, he did his best not to look up in the trees; he could feel the huge, birdlike shapes, high above in the branches, silently watching him. All around, the mist was growing, so much so that, looking back, Aaron couldn’t even see the clearing he had just left. Shivering, he put his hands in his pockets and turned back around, only to find that his way forward was similarly shrouded in the same mist. He picked up his pace, jogging a little, hoping that he’d somehow emerge out of this unnatural fog into some kind of recognizable landmark. But the night seemed to deepen around him, and, as he rounded a bend in the path, he came upon a park bench that was just barely visible through the mist.For a third time, the creatures squawked high above in the trees, a kind of retort, or warning…and Aaron turned around, quite scared of the sound now. The full moon was shining brightly down on him, and actually seemed to melt away the mist that had grown thick around him. Aaron took a deep breath, steadying himself, reassured by the quiet, silver light, and turned back around. His heart stopped.The park bench wasn’t empty anymore. Sitting in it now was the tallest, hugest woman he had ever seen. She was dressed in a long white gown that went all the way down to her ankles, gathered up in gossamer tatters around her bare feet. Her arms were bare from her mid-forearms down, and they were deathly pale, glistening like cold marble in the moonlight. Aaron could tell that she was huge from her sheer height, but also from the way that her gown was pulled especially tight around her hips, thighs, and breasts, and where her rear burgeoned out from where she sat. Avani had been huge…but nothing like this. This woman – for that’s what she must have been – was at least 20 feet tall. But her long, jet-black hair, which spilled all the way down over her breasts and shoulders, completely hid her face.How long Aaron stood there, he had no idea. This woman, this figure, filled him with such fear, such dread, that he hardly even dared to move a muscle. He was terrified that if he turned his back and fled, this…this thing…would chase him down and…do what to him? Capture him? Crush him?? Eat him!? He didn’t even want to imagine what she would do to him. But then again, he couldn’t stay like this forever, could he? The thought of getting any closer seemed out of the question. And so he kept standing there, scared stiff, not knowing what to do.A long, thin finger, barbed at the end with a sharp black nail, suddenly issued forth from the woman’s white gown. It pointed towards Aaron, turned upside down, and curved upward, slowly, silently. She was beckoning him to her. Aaron’s heart was beating faster than it had all night, but he felt like he had to obey. He came closer and stopped. The finger continued to curve upward, and so he came a little closer, and a little closer…and still a little closer, until finally, her finger dropped back down into her lap. Aaron was standing directly before her, and it was only now that he realized that the park bench itself was far bigger than he had initially realized – the whole bench was over 20 feet long, the seat was almost a foot above his head, and the backrest, which the Woman in White rose far above in her sitting position, was well over 9 feet tall.But Aaron only subliminally noticed these things, because he was utterly focused on the woman’s head…on the inscrutable black mass of hair that was poised there, slightly crooked, high above him. He could discern nothing whatsoever of her face…no eyes, no nose, no mouth…no nothing…only that silent black mass of long hair. Her huge, pale hands were folded in her lap above his head, and Aaron could see the contours of her forearms flexing and unflexing slightly as she squeezed her hands into each other, then relaxed them, then squeezed them again. She wasn’t as curvy as Neera, or as muscular as Avani, but she was far, far bigger than either of them…effortlessly huge. And as Aaron continued to stare up at her, he saw that the long black strands of her hair were stirring, seemingly on their own accord, for there was no wind or breeze to flutter them. He thought he heard whispers all around, strange hallucinations of eager whispers, like they were from an invisible, onlooking gallery high above. But no sound came from the woman; she remained completely silent.“I…I’m Aaron,” he breathed out suddenly, hardly believing that he had the courage to speak to such an entity. The woman didn’t move…didn’t make a sound.“I’m…I think…I think I met a couple of your sisters earlier,” he continued. The whispers all around him stirred again, muttering formless things. But still, the woman said nothing. Aaron could feel the deadly chill icing through his heart, and he felt like he needed to keep talking, otherwise it would freeze over completely.“I’m afraid of you,” he blurted out, “I-I mean, I was kind of afraid of Neera at first too, and Avani…but they…I realized I didn’t have anything to be afraid of. But I…fear you…more than any of the others. And I don’t know why. Do you…do you think you could speak to me?”He held a shaking hand out to the woman, hoping that she would answer him. But a few seconds later he was lowering his hand and putting it back in his pocket. The woman remained as still and silent as ever. The breeze suddenly kicked up again, fluttering the tatters of her lower dress around her bare white feet, which looked cold as ice. The whispers seemed to coalesce around him, and Aaron became intensely aware of the quiet strands of her black hair flapping in the breeze. He badly wanted to see her face, to be reassured, to at least know what was behind all that blackness…but it just seemed like a void into nothingness.“Wh-What do you want with me!?” he cried, his voice rising into a desperate plea, “You…y-you told me to come over here! What do you want!?”The deep-throated birds squawked a final time from the tops of the trees, with the breeze stirring up into a sudden gust. From the black depths of the void in the middle of her head, Aaron saw two eyes open – silver eyes, flashing eyes, cold, pitiless eyes, with pits deeper and blacker than the void around them. They illuminated, with an austere and terrifying majesty, the curve of a sharp nose, and the grinning contour of a hidden mouth, which glinted wickedly in the moonlight. Teeth…sharp teeth…pressed together…preparing to open.Aaron gasped out, utterly terrified, and, tripping back several halting steps, he turned and ran. He wasn’t thinking about the danger of the Woman in White pursuing him, nor was he thinking about the eerie bird-like creatures watching him from high above in the trees. He just needed to run…and run…and RUN. He turned and saw that she had risen up from the park bench, towering a full 23 feet in the air, and was slowly floating towards him, the tips of her toes dragging along the cool dew of the soft grass. Aaron turned back to continue running, and then abruptly tripped over a tree root that hadn’t been there a moment before. His face splashed down in a puddle…wait, a puddle!? That hadn’t been there either! Aaron was gasping, breathing out hard, trying to regain his footing, but the next moment, looking down in the puddle, he saw the reflection of her…the Woman in White…peering down above him with those terrible eyes. The full moon was shining above her shoulder, and Aaron felt a wind whipping up around them both, chilling him to the bone. Her long, thin hand was reaching down, down towards him, her black claws flashing in the moonlight…and he felt, though he couldn’t see it, that she was opening up a huge, gaping mouth from behind the jet-black spill of her hair.He curled himself up in the fetal position, numb with fear, accepting his fate as he shut his eyes tightly.And then, he felt his pocket vibrate. Aaron paused, his eyes still shut tight. What was that!? He didn’t understand. And then, it buzzed again, and he realized it was his phone. His eyes shot open, and he sat up. The Woman in White was gone. The puddle was gone. The tree root he had tripped over was gone. He was sitting in the grass of the park, directly across the street from his apartment building, the windows dotted all around, pockets of warm, friendly light. The full moon was still out, though, and the stars were twinkling happily in the sky.Breathless, hardly believing what was happening, Aaron dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Two texts from Courtney, the second sent directly after the first:Hey there cutie – had a nice walk? This diary is funnnnn. Anyway, you can come on back now – the girls are all here, waiting for you!