I swerved to the right only just in time to avoid an incoming surge of panicky traffic. By now I should be used to these public reactions; I've been following her for about a week, ever since she appeared in Newburgh. The first day was just a warning, when she exploded into downtown and tried to hide herself. Even the second day was quiet, but she was still there, huddled in the woods. It wasn't until the third day that she started eating people.

 I can remember it clearly. They had begun evacuating the city, unsure of what else to do in response to her setting camp in the nearby trees. I was refused permission to follow her into the forest for my own safety. But I fought for it. I tried to explain myself, that it was no harm to study this oddity, but they didn't want me to be a liability. I remembered the earth beginning to tremble and I turned to see she had ambushed them; they had directed everyone away from the forest, but she knew this, she was crafty, and somehow managed to creep behind them.

 In those first few days she walked, and holy hell did it show how gigantic she really was. Newburgh's greatest buildings hadn't even scraped her knees. You practically had to lie on your back to see all the way up to her face, only god knows how far up she went. Her feet took up the entire lengths of streets, and in her massive strides it was almost impossible to predict where they would fall: at one time she could stand in two different streets several blocks away. I watched as people pushed and fought to get away, but it was no use. Her feet corralled them into the center of town.

There was a certain horror to it that took me some time to grasp: it wasn't being done intentionally. She was just walking along. While some had perceived that she was crushing people flat as a warning, I saw the truth. They were accidents. They were bugs that she had trodden on without thought or notice. To think that we had become so helpless, so insignificant that an absent-minded footstep was the death of us... it was a feverish terror.

Eventually she lowered herself to her knees and I thanked my stars that she hadn't decided to stop near me. Very slowly, and very carefully, she took a seat and spread out her legs, giving me a rather extensive view of the cavern in between them. I'm sure some would think there would be a certain charm in seeing that familiar sex symbol expanded to such sizes, but it was so mind-bogglingly enormous that it made my stomach turn in cold fear. Her legs were slowly coming around the crowd, trapping a portion of the crowd inside. She was so precise with it, deliberately cutting off a throng of screaming people without so much as a single fatality. But there was no time to appreciate the care she took: those who had brushed past her ran as far as they could, those who had been swept in cried even louder. I remember seeing some police officers and soldiers trying to arrange a way to save them, but I could see even they were scared shitless.

I could see her face at her decreased elevation, but she revealed no emotion. She stared at her catch, her eyes darting from person to person. Her hand rose and then lowered towards those few pour souls. The world watched as they came back out holding someone in two fingers. Two fingers -- a thumb and a pointer -- had someone dangling between them. Even she seemed uncertain of what was next, looking upon the person. From where I stood I could almost see them as she did: nothing. If I weren't a person myself I might think she was holding a crumb or a speck of dust. She diminished everything absolutely.

Then came history. Then came horror. Those same fingers that held life between them were inside her mouth. Slowly they retreated, separated, holding nothing. A resounding wail seemed to come from everywhere as that person became the first ever human being to be eaten by the monster. Fucking hell, she chewed. And she didn't stop: five more people were scooped up and eaten, swallowed by the maw of the giant woman-like creature. I noticed a strange quirk to her feeding patterns; each person she chose was studied carefully before their consumption. Perhaps she was hunting someone, or perhaps she was curious of how such tiny people could exist. Neither explanation really justified then eating said tiny people, but it was something I hoped to learn in due time.

Over the next few days she began to wander, dining on Cornwall, Peekskill, Cortlandt, Chappaqua, Harrison, The Bronx, and Manhattan. Now was the inevitable main course: New York City. And I followed her all the way.

I liked to consider myself a monster hunter. Back in the day I would go hunting for such cryptids as the elusive Bigfoot and the mysterious Jersey Devil. I could sit at my desk for hours, digging up every single piece of information I could find to expose these creatures. There's something strange about the unknown that I can't resist. So when a monster makes itself public, a monster so horrifyingly exotic to us that we can't even begin to understand it, it was no surprise I found myself giving chase.

It was no ordinary monster, I knew that. She was just an enormous young woman; or at least, that's what she appeared to be. That's what made her so horrifying: monsters of fantasy could be dismissed with their gnashing fangs and matted fur, or their grisly scales. When we looked up to this monster, we saw ourselves. We saw green eyes that looked like ours, and looked into us. We saw long brown hair, hanging low towards our cowering position. Her mouth... well, that was the issue, wasn't it? It never smiled or laughed. It never frowned or shouted. It served only to consume us. The only thing that seperated her from someone like me was her tremendous size, but that was enough. Any one of us might have been the monster. But we weren't so fortunate.

The driver in front of me abandons ship and decides to make a run for it -- I'm not exactly sure why, considering she's going in the other direction -- so I drove around him. Expecting everyone to have all their sense with them might have been too much to ask; it was an occupational hazard I had to live with.

I pull off the gas as I see I'm getting closer to her, blocking the road with toes that would put Bigfoot to shame. Interesting, she was still crawling. 

I'm sorry, I've completely forgotten I was explaining myself. Sometimes I get in the zone like that, I guess. When I tracked down cryptids, studying behavior was crucial. If you knew that, and had a little critical thinking skills, you knew everything. Where they went, why they went there, what they did there. Before it was for the sake of a hobby, now it could save lives. One day I could predict her next move, and help people counteract appropriately. 

Already I knew largely what she would do: lumber through the city until she could split off a sizable crowd and entrap them. Always she would crawl; I hadn't seen her walk since the first few days of her reign. Then she would feast, selecting on average eight to ten living little morsels. Each one was inspected before she dealt them their fate, but I had not yet found any reasoning to it: no one passed the test, no one made it out alive once she chose them. Then she would just leave, sparing any leftovers like dinner scraps, losing all interest in them. 

I rode the brake behind her foot, shuffling along. It was surprisingly clean; occasional patches of dirt and asphalt were sprinkled over the ball of her foot and her heel, and into her toes, but there was no blood. Seeing as she had stepped all over a small crowd, this was odd. She must have cleaned it, I suppose. There were so many questions that needed answers, and admittedly, the cleanliness of her soles was of little priority.

For a few more miles we went onward together, into New York City. I sped up and turned around her foot, trying to get a view of her face. It was like a slow-motion tour of the human body as I cruised along, and everytime she made another motion I was put further behind. Buildings and skyscrapers entered my field of vision and I caught glance of a crowd of people a mile or two down, who had ran inside the square. A foolish decision. I knew they were giant monster food even before she followed them inside.

She sat down and I felt a strange sensation as my car was momentarily lifted off the ground. I began to think of a plan. Keeping the car hidden from the chosen ones was critical. They would try to hitch a ride for sure. Don't get me wrong, I would help them if I could, but that would attract her attention, and I don't want to be eaten any more than the next guy.

I quickly and quietly sputtered by her rear and crossed ankles, parking the car in the perfect blind spot: underneath one of her mountainous legs. I had a roof to save me from her vision, and a foot to block away the people. Of course, I had no intention of staying this close. I gathered all my important things and crept inside a nearby building, taking a chair by the window. A few people gave me strange looks, too threatened by her presence to attempt to flee, but I ignored them, taking out my notebook and observing.

Still she was checking each catch, and still no one seemed to be who she was looking for. I looked at the list of traits of the fallen: male, female, brown hair, blonde hair, black hair, red hair, short, tall, skinny, fat, young adults, old adults -- she didn't seem to enjoy the taste of children or the elderly -- entrepeneurs, cashiers, salespeople, unemployed... it was so vast. What was she looking for in them?

Oh, shit. My phone's ringing. And it's her. Who else would it be? I answer it,

"Hello?"

"Micheal, where are you?" my wife demanded.

"I'm on the job," I told her.

"Please don't tell me you're in New York right now, Micheal."

I finished the line I was writing and looked up just in time to see her hand snatch up another victim. 

"Uh, yeah, I am in New York."

"God dammit, this is serious, Micheal! You need to come home! It's not safe for you to follow around that... thing."

"I need to do this, Carrie. What I learn could stop this one day."

"What you're doing is not hero work, Micheal! It's suicide!"

"My only other option is to wait around 'til she catches the three of us, and I'm not not about to let that happen. She's moving south from Newburgh, you should be safe for a while."

"Don't you think you should be spending time with your family when the world goes to shit like this?" As she berated me I held my breath and watched the monster's foot twitch and begin to press down onto my car. I could see the glass crack, but she readjusted herself before it was completely lost. "We may not have a lot of time, Micheal. We should spend it wisely."

"This is the wisest way I can use my time. We'll never be able to save ourselves just by waiting for some saving grace or something. I'm doing what no one else will."

"There's a good reason other people aren't following the people-eating monster," Carrie replied quietly. I could tell from the tone in her voice she was tearing up. "Don't do this to me, Micheal. Please, come home." I watched the monster eat the same person I had watched it grab and found my eyes dampening as well.

"I'll come home soon. I promise. Put Jared on the phone."

"But..."

"Please, let me talk to Jared. You can take the phone from him after," I reassured her, and I faintly heard her call my son's name, and some static noises as they exchanged the phone.

"Dad?"

"Hey, Jared. How's it going?"

"Who's that lady, daddy?"

"The lady on TV?"

"Yeah, she's on all the channels. I can't watch Spongebob anymore." I couldn't help but laugh, despite myself.

"Yeah, I don't know who she is. That's why I'm gone, I'm gonna figure out who she is."

"Do you see her, daddy? Have you met her yet?"

"I've seen her a few times, but I haven't introduced myself yet."

"You should say hi! When I talk to new people, I say: 'Hi, my name's Jared! What's yours?'" I leaned over the table and saw as she used her palm to shove two people into her mouth; something I had never seen her do before.

"I'll have to try that, thanks for the tip, champ."

"When are you coming home?" Something was wrong. I froze. It was as if something had snapped inside of her. She was taking them two at a time, stuffing her face with them greedily, not even bothering to look them over. I was almost sick; I had seen her eat a fair amount of people and had grown somewhat insensitive to it, but now she had unleashed some twisted, savage hunger. My stomach twisted in knots. A crippling weakness ran through me.

"Daddy?" Jared's voice brought me back to our phone call, in a cold sweat. 

"Um, I don't know, champ. As soon as I'm done with the lady, ok?"

"When is that?"

"I don't know, Jared. Hopefully soon."

"Ok. I'll give you back to mummy now. Bye, dad!"

"Bye, Jared," I choked, hoping he wouldn't notice my tears. 

"Micheal?"

"Yeah?"

"What did you tell him?"

"Just that I'm coming home as soon as I can." Carrie said nothing for a few moments until I heard her take a deep, watery breath.

"Micheal. I want you to really think about this. You can come home. You can be with me and Jared to the very end. Or, you can chase after the monster like you're some kind of... superhero or something. What can you do to stop this? What can anyone do?"

"That's what I'm gonna figure out," I said. My bones trembled as I watched her seize upon the lone survivor in the crowd. She stuck out her tongue, playing with her food. It was as if I was studying an entirely different monster; she never did anything like this. "Once I've gathered enough information, I'll try to contact the military. We'll devise a plan, a path of action, anything to--" my voice was interrupted by the shattering of glass. I looked out the window and turned pale as I saw she had broken into the building across the way, picking out its inhabitants. This was ruthless. Her average people per day was around ten. That man was the nineteenth.

"What was that?" Carrie asked, noticably worried.

"Nothing, I'm fine, I'm fine."

"Don't lie to me, Micheal."

"I'm really okay, it's not me. I'm going to keep doing this for just a little while longer. I have to keep you and Jared safe. What would I do if she got you? If she got him?" There was no response, so I added, "I'll be home soon."

"Promise me," she said, sobbing. I wiped my eyes and promised her, bidding her goodbye and closing the phone as she hung up. I looked over my recordings in disbelief. Nineteen people in a single day, bringing her up to the grim total of ninety-two. Staring out the window, I waited for her to clear away, when I would climb back in the car, still hot on the trail.