Anomus - Stalkers
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Anomus: Stalkers Disclaimer: yes, there is squishing… Candiedinia, or Candi, as she was known to her friends had a vermin problem. It wasn’t the first time. Large, ancient castles tend to be drafty, and anyplace there is a hole some damned critter is going to find its way in. She wasn’t sure at first, not until the peanut butter. But she didn’t get really angry until they got into her unopened box of Vampire Cocoa Goodies. That was the final straw. She declared war. The full magnitude of the problem dawned on her slowly. Traps laden with rancid cheese were left untouched. Fresh cheese fared no better. She tried peanut butter, but when she checked the trap she found the peanut butter gone, as if scraped away. So, in a final, desperate bid Candi used some of her precious Cocoa Goodies in the trap. When she checked it later she found the bait gone, and in its place was a itty-bitty scrap of paper. Using her magnifying glass she discerned the following words written upon it. “thank you very much. please leave more.” Obviously, dealing with these vermin called for sterner measures. _-^-_-^-_ Chaz’s heart beat within his chest. Stealing food from a stall in the market is work for thieves of daring and stealth. Stealing food from a giantess is a major campaign, since it takes upwards of six men to carry one Bing cherry. Scouts scurried ahead in the vanguard, checking mostly for spiders and mice. None of them wore armor or weapons or anything that might accidently clink or clank. Each man came laden with sacks. Some of the bigger men, like Chaz, carried nets for the larger items. They moved quietly in the still of the night, silent as ants. First the scouts scurried across a section of floor. After they reconnoitered the main force followed, hugging the walls, skirting the torchlight. Every man stood in awe of this place. Chaz’s heart beat so hard in his chest he feared others could hear him. The castle halls were vast as meadows. The stone walls rose like sea cliffs to vaulted ceilings soaring higher than the clouds. Word travelled fast down the ranks. The scouts reported spilled food in a room half the distance to the pantry. It wasn’t ideal, but beggars can’t afford to be choosers, and neither can thieves. Chaz breathed a sigh of relief, for the night promised to be the easiest in months. The force of nearly two hundred men proceeded swiftly, led to the promised bounty by the eager scouts. And there it was. A discarded box of the sugary treat they favored most. The box lay atilt like a barn tossed and tumbled by a tornado. A mound of the dark brown cereal lay frozen in the act of pouring from it. Scattered crumbs covered the floor some distance away. With a hushed cheer the men moved forward. Chaz stopped by a succulent piece and had a nibble, licking his lips at the taste. Then he got out his net and helped two other men look for clusters of the cereal that he and others could carry away. The sound of creaking took them all by surprise. _-^-_-^-_ Candi gave the door to the room a hard shove. It swung around on its hinges, squealing ominously until it slammed shut. She stood there in the flickering torchlight looking wickedly cute, utterly gigantic and totally pissed off in soft, white socks and a green nightshirt with the words “Good Girls Are Bad Girls That Never Get Caught" written on it in cursive. She flipped her long black hair over her shoulders and took a stance in front of the door, blocking any hope of escape, looking down at the tiny men with her fists on her hips. For a moment the tableau remained frozen in time, the men standing still wherever they were, staring up at her, scarcely breathing. She never wavered, never moved. And finally, one of the men lost his nerve and began to run. Her blue eyes flicked in his direction, she took two steps and covered him with her huge right foot, pressing down until she felt a moist little crunch through the sole of her white cotton sock. It was a signal for all out chaos. The men broke and ran in all directions. Candi watched them for a moment before she moved. She took her time, walking slowly, making sure that none of them made it to the door. Her left foot came down heavily on two fleeing men. One vanished under her gigantic toes, his cries turning to a gurgling shriek as she pressed his guts out of his little body. The second man howled as her huge heel landed on his left leg, pressing it against the unyielding stone floor with incalculable weight. He struggled wildly to free himself from his jellied appendage. She paused and glanced down at him with disdain, and left him there, squirming in agony as she sought out more of the frightened little men. At first she treated them like vermin, intent on slaughtering them. But the frantic way they ran around, and a few comical collisions brought a grin to her lovely face. As her humor improved she became more playful. She had no intention of leaving any survivors, but it was no long pure eradication that occupied her, she began to tease and to torture them. She deliberately missed the next man, her huge foot landing a hair’s breadth away from his puny body. He picked himself up off the floor, but before he could take a single step she spun her foot on her heel. He held out his arms, as if that could do anything, and an instant later he was plowed over by the side of her gigantic foot. His back arched and his head tipped back as his internal organs fountained up from his screaming mouth before Candi finished smearing him across the hard floor. Then she spotted one lone man running for the door. _-^-_-^-_ Chaz screamed with the rest of them, he dropped his net and ran towards the wall, throwing terrified glances over his shoulder as the giantess began her killing spree. The floor trembled and shook with every step she took, each quake conveying something of the awful power of her size. He saw her step on Tavor and Bren. Bren was crushed instantly, but Tavor howled and cried out, clutching at his leg. His shrill wails of agony sent chills through Chaz. But that was only the beginning. She passed close by him once. Duloc was running for his life, his eyes wide and white with terror as she closed the distance to him. Chaz and the others yelled for him to run faster, but there was no hope. The giantess took another step and her massive foot came down upon him. They had a brief glimpse of the blood staining the sole of her white sock, stringy bits of raw meat and splintered bone testifying to her ruthless power. The next moment Duloc was struck by the ball of her foot. Because he was looking up he was bent backwards by the impact, dropping to his knees as she pressed down upon him. They saw as her lowering foot bent him in half, snapping his back, his belly bursting, his intestines spilling out, then he vanished from sight, her toes spreading a little as she stepped fully onto him with a moist crunch, causing the floor vibrate under the tiny terrified men. She twisted her huge foot once, and then continued walking. Chaz retched at the sight of Duloc’s body on the stone floor, pressed flat by the hideous weight of the giantess. Men were yelling, jostling him. A roaring filled his ears, and his vision dwindled to a tunnel vision. It was too much, and he broke away, running for his life, sprinting across the floor. He felt the eyes of the giantess swing his way, but he was lost in his own panic, unable to do anything other than run. The door beckoned to him, urged him on, and he hurled himself at it. After what seemed an eternity, he made it. He squirmed under the gap between it and the floor, and kept running. _-^-_-^-_ Candi watch the tiny man flee. He was so slow, and it was so tempting to go after him. But she let him go, and when he was gone she turned her attention to the men by the wall, grinning down at them, digging her toes into the crevice and sliding them back and forth, until she squished every last one into paste. A quick survey showed that more than two-thirds of the men were squished. The soles of her socks were moist and sticky with all of the blood of her victims. So she paused for a moment, leaning back against the door, and she slowly worked off her right sock, slipping it down her ankle and over her heel, before grasping it by the toe and pulling it off. She looked at the sole, at the mangled little bodies, and she grinned. She tossed the sock towards the surviving men, giggling as they scattered. She repeated the same with her left sock off, tossing it after the first. Standing back to her full, colossal height she curled her toes on the cool stone floor, crouched down and jumped. A group of men gawked at her as her nightshift billowed around her thighs. They started to run, but too late. She landed on them, her giant bare feet slapping the floor, their fragile little bodies exploding messily, squirting blood and guts in all directions. It was the start of a real crush fest. The floor shook as she stomped on the tiny men, her breasts jiggling under her nightshirt, her hair flying as she spun on her toes and pounced on more of her screaming prey, sliding her bare feet over them, giggling at the pleasant way they burst. She was merciless and cruel, flicking at the men with her toes so she could feel more then one of them under the soul of her foot, curling her toes in the pulpy bodies, feeling them ooze. Finally, after a few minutes of unrestrained squishing she paused and looked around. The room was a blood soaked mess, littered with the mangled bodies of scores of tiny men. She playfully poked at a few, smearing some of them, drawing hearts and smiling faces on the cold stone with their red blood. There was one man left alive, Tavor. He was still writhing on the floor, still clutching at his smashed little leg. Candi walked slowly towards him, smiling as he flinched, his bloodshot eyes looking up and up and up until meeting her smiling, blue regard. She blew him a little kiss, and slowly brought her bare foot over him, letting him see the flattened bodies of his comrades as she covered his insignificant little body. She did it gently, until she felt the warmth of him against her sole. Leaning forward she gave him her weight, felt his body squirm one last time before turning to a warm, creamy mess that oozed against her bare flesh. She stood on him for a moment, her heart beating, and she licked her lips. Then she stepped to the door, ignoring the crushed remains she trod upon. She opened the door and went into the hallway, padding softly on her bare feet, leaving a trail of bloody prints. _-^-_-^-_ Chaz ran as a wild deer. He sped down the hallway, the sounds of screaming fading behind him, the vibrations in the floor lessening with distance. He was blind to everything, knowing only the need to flee from this place. The hall was horribly, endlessly long. But eventually he neared the end of it. But it was too late. _-^-_-^-_ She spotted him. He was ridiculously small, but the motion was unmistakable. She waited a moment before following. He slipped under a side door of the castle and she skipped after him as lightly as she could, pausing at the door, bending down to look out the keyhole. At first Candi saw nothing, but the moon was full and bright, and after a minute she spotted him sprinting down the path. She waited as long as she dared, then she slowly and carefully eased the door open and stepped out into the warm summer night. The dirt path felt warmer against her bare feet than the floor of the castle. When a turn in the path hid him from sight she pursued him, holding her breath, peering this way and that, glad that the moon was before her, lest her shadow give her away. _-^-_-^-_ Chaz sobbed with exhaustion, his legs were leaden, but he kept them moving, stumbling along the worn dirt until he saw curling plant tendrils reaching up from a bank of fog clinging to the ground. With a glad cry he stumbled forward. At that instant a colossal bare foot planted itself in his path. He rebounded off the wall of warm flesh, rolling on the dirt, his mouth twisting in a scream he looked up at her. She loomed over him like a mountain, her eyes dark and unfathomable, but her grinning teeth gleaming in the reflected moonlight. She moved her bare foot and slowly brought her heel down over him. Chaz howled in an extremity of fear, his arms up to avert his fate. He might as well have tried to hold up the world. Her heel pressed down onto his puny hands, bending his arms back, dislocating his shoulders, bending his left elbow inwards until it snapped, and still she lowered her heel onto him. He squirmed and tried to roll, but the weight of her heel pin him in place, grinding his face into her flesh breaking his nose, breaking his teeth, shattering his jaw. He jerked and spasmed as she pressed down harder, his tormented body flattening out until his flesh burst, spilling his warm guts onto the dirt. An instant later her heel touched the dirt path, sinking down a little into it. And some of Chaz’s body oozed up between her flesh and the ground. _-^-_-^-_ Candi grinned as she felt his little body break. Then she turned her attention to the goal of his panic. Squatting down she waved at the curling mist, dispelling some of it, revealing the uppermost tendrils of a solid looking beanstalk. The fog obscured her sight too much, so she knelt down, and then laid upon the ground, her fingers reaching over the edge of this magical hole, and she leaned forward, until her face cleared the bottom of the fog. The beanstalk was thick in girth, reaching down an improbable height to the ground far below. She saw flickering lights and fires, and in the illumination of the moon she spotted tiny farmhouses and barns, and further away a cluster of buildings marking a little village. Lifting her head she rolled over and looked up at the stars, and thought about all those people inside of her castle. There was no help for it, they had to go. So she turned around and slowly began to ease herself down the beanstalk, gripping it with her toes and fingers, cautiously climbing down until her head vanished beneath the swirling wisps of fog. After a long while a faint sound of shrill screams wafted up into the summer night… …end… __________________
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