The Great Awakening (Chapter 24) (Patreon)

            Satisfied with the toe-written “signature” she’d stamped on the former Madison Square Garden, Lilly resumed hunting for patches of Manhattan streets as-yet virginal to the brutal cleansing power of her colossal soles and hands. Finding a peculiarly intact portion of urban sprawl along the opposite coastline from where she’d first arrived, the girl stooped again to partake in more of the distractions this adorable place had to offer.

            Rather than cruising her bare peds through the buildings again, though, she waved hello to her public, wagging her pointer and middle fingers especially in a kind of flowing dance, which continued while she reached for the widest streets she could find. Fully extending both digits, Lilly set down her two longest fingers on the ground like a pair of half-mile-long legs, each fingertip settling into parallel streets, though even with just one of the girl’s fingers sidling between city blocks, buildings were instantly bulldozed to make room for the fifty-story girth of her slender extremities shoving their way into place. Then, humming a jaunty tune that pervaded the streets crowded with tragic listeners, Lilly commenced “walking” her fingers down the streets. She did so slowly at first, only lifting her index fingertip out of its impact crater and stretching just far enough for it to “step” into the next gridlocked intersection, whereupon dozens of civilian vehicles and armored Humvees alike were squelched thinner than tin foil in the grooves of Lilly’s fingerprints. As though her makeshift hand-person was dancing a groovy jig, the giantess mischievously twisted her finger back and forth on the divot of the street, toppling more buildings while grinding the traffic jam deep underground.

            With the walking “legs” of her hand now separated like open scissor blades, Lilly let her middle finger follow. It was shuffled along the street at first, collecting cars and screaming denizens that registered as little more than stray dust to the girl, and when she finally did launch her fingertip out of the cracked concrete for a full stride, anything trapped by centrifugal forces against her fingernail, whether vehicular or humanoid, was “kicked” high into the air. Sailing nearly a mile ahead, cars crashed back to earth, as did the bodies of victims raining like confetti, and no sooner had they all returned to the ground, when Lilly’s middle finger found its “footing,” and pile-drove them all into the bedrock. She repeatedly stomped the pad of her lengthiest digit down on the intersection, until it and all surrounding buildings had folded into the ground. After enough trouncings, the act became like a spiritual flipping-off at everyone and everything weak enough to be so completely destroyed by a simple thrust from her sashaying fingers.

            “Now, be honest with me…” Lilly cooed as her fingers strolled several more streets down, block by block, massacre by massacre. “…does anyone down there wish these were my actual legs instead of just… y’know… my fingers? Wow, I can hardly even imagine being that small now, even though it would still make me a little bit, okay a lot a bit, above average height. But I guess if I was that small, it’d be easier to see you. Then again, with legs that short, it would’ve taken me a lot longer to visit you all that way. That would mean so many more steps. I mean, I love to hike, but even I might’ve gotten tuckered out. This is much better, I think. Don’t you? Well, for me, anyway. I don’t mean to burst anyone’s bubble down there, but I think all the noise and commotion awakened something from its slumber. A big ol’ monster. Like a pretty Godzilla with a manicure. Not anywhere near as big as me, obviously, but monsters don’t have to be this tall to show their teeth. Or their giant stompy feet. Watch out, now!”

            With this playful warning laid out, Lilly’s omnipotent fingertips halted their leisurely pace. When next they lurched forward again, it was as though her hand had transformed. Tensing her forearm and bending her digits like claws, the girl began to march that same middle and pointer finger with considerably more violent emphasis, if such a thing was possible, when even a gentle tapping before from either “leg” was enough to sweep tanks high above the once-proud skyscrapers.

            The monster formed by her two soft-tipped fingers clomped its way along the streets, smashing through apartment complexes and office parks, casually exploding fueling stations, and flicking dozens of cars at once across Manhattan with the keratin nailbed edge of its “foot.” Lilly plowed her fingers again and again back to earth with such force that the surrounding city blocks began to shudder much in the way they had when the girl’s actual mile and-a-half-long feet were breaching and stamping new canyons all along the seaboard earlier. Fleeing civilians were bounced so high by the force of the giantess’s digits striking ground, many of them flew up past where Lilly’s fingers ended and smoothed over into the low mountains of her knuckles. Some were fortunate enough to land in the broad valley between her fingers here, but most were simply treated to a rapid half-mile descent back toward whatever spot on the ground Lilly’s lovely kaiju-legged hand was preparing to trample into dust next.

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            Commander Baker sat in the armored hull of the tank alongside his silently terrified subordinates, feel more than ever like he was stationed in a paper boat ready to be shorn down at any moment. In short, even a tank ten times as thick with military-grade plating would count for as little as wearing a cotton t-shirt in terms of offering protection from what was to come. This enemy was different, and no amount of bravado would defend them once the brawny peach-ringed pad of a toe dozens upon dozens of stories wide came careening down on top of their bullet-proof monster of a vehicle and buried it in the bedrock deeper than dinosaur bones.

            Known for his rage-spitting attitude as well as his tactical smarts, Commander Baker wasn’t used to getting spooked while on the job, but much like every other stiff-upper-lipped military man for Uncle Sam emergently stationed in New York this morning, it was tough not to let a hint of horror shine through the grit. He’d been in charge of this battalion of tanks for close to ten years now, and had yet to enter a fray with anything less than a can-do snarl and the perfect plan to pick apart their bunkered foes, usually knowing even before he caught sight of an insurgent just what was required to blow apart their defenses.

            However, the one-sided “battle” with Manhattan’s miles-high visitor had lasted long enough now into the morning that those troops on the ground at least had some guerilla footage of the intruder’s colossal earthquake-ripping feet, both while exquisitely bare and clad in thunder sneakers, to work with. Yet even that unbelievable proof, seeing her toes carve out new geographic features where once stood skyscrapers, her soles pancaking whole boroughs, and her heel caving in stadiums easier than candy shells, meant next to nothing compared to seeing her in action.

            And now that the impassible ash-cloud was finally dissipating enough to see further than a few blocks away, ironically only by the girl’s doing while her fingers waved to clear the smoke, Commander Baker finally saw her with his own eyes through the tank’s porthole, or at least part of her. Still he was entirely unprepared.