Stand Your Ground - Part One (Patreon)

Enjoy the first chapter in what should become a monthly episodic story! Including many of my favorite things--supernatural evil, big black boots, and lots of tiny victims to enjoy.

Thanks to RogueDragon for the concept and support. Let me know what you think. lovelies!

 

As revolting as being banished to this realm of self-important and self-absorbed mortals could be, at least the Floridian climate was often agreeable to my nature, though I much preferred my time in California and regretted the circumstances that forced me to relocate.

The population of Miami could sustain me, and I didn’t even have to seek my prey some nights. I’d already removed the blood from my boots and fingernails on my way home, but even before I reached my door, I could sense the wards had been triggered. More than that, I could sense the rich, intense, exquisite fear.

The night had just progressed from pleasing--to something special.

*****

There’s always one of them in a town like ours. That weird house on the outskirts, the one kids tell stories about. They said four people disappeared there in the 80’s, but Meghan said she’d checked and there wasn’t anything about it online. There was just one woman who lived there, but they said she fed the bodies to the alligator in her backyard.

We were going to break a window, but Derek tried the front door and it was actually unlocked. I don’t know what our plan was--we were just going to look around, maybe take some stuff if there was anything interesting. We were there for all of three or four minutes before everything went black.

I could hear distant shouts when my eyes opened--my friends’ voices, calling out or screaming somewhere far away. Nothing made sense. I was someplace immense, just this incredibly vast field of beige. It felt like we were indoors, but if there were walls I couldn’t see them. There was one source of light, something bright and huge, but it was focused and left so much in darkness.

All those crazy rumors were true. They had to be. She was a witch or a monster or something worse, and we’d all been taken somewhere. There was space, though. I wasn’t restrained, and that meant I could run.

My eyes slowly adjusted and I kept getting drawn back towards that light. It seemed like the only thing here, so it just made sense to try and move towards it. The ground was soft and uneven, and I kept stumbling and crawling here and there.

At some point I figured it out. I stopped and stared. I couldn’t even keep my feet, falling back onto that difficult ground as I slowly shook my head.

Ryan’s flashlight. It was thousands of times bigger than my entire body, but there was no mistaking it. We hadn’t been taken anywhere. I was right where I’d been, mired in the fibers of her pristine carpet, so impossibly tiny that her ceiling and walls were too distant to even see.

Then came the pounding. Jarring impacts in the unseeable distance. Heavy heels on the front porch stairs followed swiftly by a burst of air and sound and faint light. Now that I knew where I was, that I was tiny on the floor of her house, I could recognize the explosions of sound and reconcile the mammoth opening as the front door we’d walked through moments ago.

I could vaguely reconcile the mile-high shapes coming through it as a woman, wrapped in vast swaths of black leather, her colossal boots sending shudders through the ground with each subtle shift and movement while the door shut behind her with a powerful click and thud.

Her hand moved slowly through the air, her bare, pale skin standing out in the moonlight, and the snap of her fingers left me clutching my ears and wincing in pain.

Light and heat filled the air as candles roared to life all around the room. Now I could see the huge, cream-colored expanses of walls in the distance, the huge curves and shapes that made up her sofas and chairs and tables.

Now I could see her, too. The angle was so severe that everything above her knees was distorted and hard to understand. Her corset top and skin-tight leather pants shone in the candlelight, and her head slowly started to turn downwards so I could see her face for the first time.

I sat rooted to the spot and stared. Stared at her dark, painted lips curling into a twisted smile. Stared back into her wide, bright eyes as they shifted towards the floor and settled directly on me.

“You’ve invaded my home.” The words blasted into my brain, but her lips hadn’t moved. “By the custom of your land, I have the right to execute you.” She was in my thoughts. She was speaking directly into my mind.

One of her tremendous, high-heeled boots started to rise from the ground. We’d just gone out for a prank, thought maybe we’d have to run from the cops a little at the worst, but now we were all the size of tiny insects on the floor. All the crazy rumors were true. She was a witch and a killer and we were all going to die and nobody would ever know. Nobody would ever find us and we’d all just disappear forever.

Her boot was barely in the air before the screams started to rip from my throat. I didn’t move, didn’t even stand up. She had seemed so far away, but her boot just came closer and closer, spreading out, filling up everything I could see as it grew nearer. It was like a whole building, like a house with a pointed toe. The glossy red sole was all I could see. The grooves of her tread were my sky.

Her boot fell towards me and I only screamed more. My hands shot out at the last second and smacked into her sole, desperate to hold it off, but it smashed me down onto my back instantly, crushing me in total darkness and pressure and pain.

*****

I had already consumed some measure of their essence in the process of reducing these foolish home invaders to a more appropriate size, but it was their constant, delicious fear that both pleased and nourished me now. They were nearly impossible to spot with vision alone, but I could sense their terror and it made their tiny bodies like little beacons simply begging for my attention.

They needed to know that they were going to suffer. They needed to know they were going to die. They were insects--stupid vermin at my feet, and it was only natural to treat the nearest one of them as such. I raised my foot and let it slowly move through the air, reaching out with my senses to let myself savor his building screams. Then, I stepped on him.

He was so tiny that the pressure of my boot on his body only mashed him into the carpet. I could feel his life as he surely thrashed and flailed beneath my foot, and while I was in no hurry to put a stop to that exquisite mortal dread, the moment when I ended their existence, the feel of snuffing out their pointless little lives was what I relished and what truly sustained me.

I twisted my toes back and forth, but still he hadn’t broken. I could feel his suffering, the agony in him as my grinding boot started to tear him apart, but still he clung to life. I could feel their eyes on me, all of them watching me smash him under my foot--watching me slowly crush the life out of their friend.

A soft moan passed my lips as I decided to end it. I pushed down with all my strength, dragging my boot back and forth through the carpet, and what was left of him broke apart completely. I had already sated myself tonight, but his extinguished little life flowed through me, the most wonderful, pleasing warmth creeping up through my body.

And there were more. Several other tiny lives for me to take--helpless little things to use and break and end. Such a special, sublime evening for a superior being like me.