Superterranean
Homesick Blues
Well,
from the sound of things, this might be the last message I ever
record for you folks out there, the last to get read or heard by a
wide audience anyway. You should give the young scribe recording my
thoughts a commendation for bravery. She sought me out, having heard
tales that I occasionally gave friendly, respectful artists and
writers a chance to capture my likeness, or record my stories. It’s
hardly a fair repayment, but I feel I ought to give the world
something in return for the vast, vast amounts I have taken from it.
I won’t reiterate all the details. According to my little friend
here many of my deeds have passed into legend over these centuries:
the Trampling of Seattle, the Shattering
of Denver, the Grim Feast of Tokyo. However, the young scribe also
tells me that my name has been lost to the mists of history. Not
surprising, considering that no one has spoken to me in the last five
hundred years or so. In any case my name is Alice, and as you may
have guessed by now, I’m the giantess who demolishes your cities
from time to time. You can hold the applause.
I’m
going to dispense with the entire story of my existence, with nearly
three or four (I lose track) thousand years of life it would take my
scribe’s lifetime several times over to record it all. As such this
will be a bit of a highlight reel, or a greatest smash hits album,
whatever you folks call a collection of the most significant works of
an artist nowadays. Not that what I do is generally very artistic. I
will go in a rough chronological order, starting with my origins.
Many of these stories are from what is, for you, the ancient past, so
many of the terms may seem strange to you, if my scribe indicates a
lack of familiarity I will explain something in greater detail.
It
all started millennia ago during the dawn of what we called the 21st
Century. I was a fairly ordinary young woman of the period. I lived
in a smallish big city of the West Coast of the United States of
America. It was Portland in the state of Oregon. This is far across
the ocean and another entire continent from where my brave little
scribe and I sit now. I lived in a house that I shared with three
other people my age. It was a common accommodation arrangement for
young students at the time, which all four of us were. It was about
the noon hour on what we called Saturday. My scribe tells me this is
now called Smasherday due to it being the day of my “ascension”
as she puts it. Anyhoo, I was making myself a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich for lunch. My housemate Cassie came into the kitchen.
“Whatcha
doin’?” She asked.
“Just
makin’ sandwiches.” I answered, “Want one?”
As
I scraped the strawberry jelly onto the bread with a butter knife, I
felt strange warmth filling my belly. I dismissed it as a hungry
tummy, but as I looked around I noticed that I was now naked and
standing on the shattered remains of my own and several neighboring
houses. The city beneath me spread for miles around. I could see the
river separating downtown from the East side. Tiny people nearby
stopped and looked up to see what the people who were already stopped
were staring at. It was me. A gigantic (More than 500 hundred feet
tall if you want units of measurement.) naked woman tends to attract
attention. A bit dazed from the sudden shift in altitude, I gave a
small wave down to the people. I looked down at my feet and saw that
they had plowed through four more
houses during my expansion. Through the shock of surprise, the
thought of my neighbors raced through my head. Without thinking I
stepped from the rubble. I looked down for a clear place to set it
down, but there just wasn’t one. Any place I put my foot down would
smash buildings cars or people. I set my foot down back on the ruble.
My intellect kicked in. Surely Cassie was dead at the very least,
along with anyone else in my house. I squatted down to examine the
ruins beneath me. Picking through the rubble with a forefinger, I
came across bodies. Perfect little inch long dead human bodies.
Jesus!
I
thought. (I know that few reading this will know who or what that
exclamation refers to, but I don’t feel like going into detail,
that would take weeks.)
My
growth spurt had killed my friends and neighbors. An incredible wave
of guilt washed through me. It was about to come out of my eyes in
the form of tears. I felt the sad heat welling up in my chest. A sob
was coming at any moment. I looked back out at the city around me. I
loved cities back then. In my way, I always have. As I looked at the
sprawling carpet of human construction covering the hilly valley
floor, I felt my sadness replaced by strange lust. The little people
were still looking at me. Looking about I could see emergency
vehicles racing through the streets toward what was left of my
neighborhood. I could feel the gaze of hundreds of little people
affixed to me. A sense of power rushed through my whole body. I was
aware of a pleasant breeze caressing my gigantic body. My nipples
began to stiffen. Strange desires crystallized as I stood there. A
burning need for action filled me. Lusty heat filled my entire being
as I stepped from the rubble and toward the downtown area just to the
west, across the river. As I strode ahead, I felt buildings,
vehicles, and people crushed beneath my massive feet. Nothing I
stepped on hurt me; my new size seemed to have come with increased
toughness. Although it didn’t hurt, I could feel everything as it
crumbled to ruin beneath me. I felt the crunch of every rooftop as it
gave way, the crumple of each vehicle I mangled, and the squishy pop
of every human body my massive feet pulverized to wet bony mush. As
grotesque as it may sound, it felt splendid. The slight resistance
before an object inevitably gave way to my sheer physical power gave
each step its own sweetness. After a particularly pleasant crushing,
I would wriggle my toes luxuriating in the havoc my merest step
created.
This
was the beginning of the first ever Giantess Alice rampage. I have to
say, I pretty much covered all the bases I would return to in
subsequent rampages. I ran around smashing anything around me, I
masturbated myself with some of the smaller buildings, and I
intentionally corralled humans into mobs so I could enjoy the feeling
of dozens of people squishing to warm pap beneath my feet. For nearly
two days I played until the city was nearly unlivable. When I got
hungry I would satisfy my hunger by plucking any humans I could find
from the ground and swallowing them whole. None were spared. I
eliminated men, women, and children with delight and intention. The
worse a thing I did was, the better it felt. My biggest thrills came
from catching buses of fleeing survivors and peeling them open to
devour their contents or to use them for rather more lewd pleasures.
It was all pretty awful, I suppose.
I
never suspected that such a sadistic temperament could be within me.
Although I chose how to carry out the business of reducing Portland,
Oregon to slag, I never felt I had a choice about whether or not to
do it, just a strong compulsion to smash and destroy everything I
could in the ways that would gratify me most. I may have tried some
domination stuff with a boyfriend or two over the years, but nothing
approaching the human lives destroyed in my lusty rampage. I used the
populous in every way too. Smashing large mobs into my breasts and
into my vulva gave me pleasure unlike any I had known. Just the
thought of the squirming masses my pussy has devoured gets me hot,
gives
me that urge
to indulge in a nice big rampage, but I know that’s not possible
anymore. Part of it, I’m sure was just me giving into the realities
of the situation, but at the same time I really felt I had no choice
in what I did. My later
experiences lend credence to this.
Having
pulverized my adopted home I walked south leaving a smoldering ruin
of a city behind. Eventually I found myself in a pasture in the
country that was big enough for me to sit in, and I sat there. I knew
the military would be coming for me. The enormity of my actions only
occurred to me then, as I sat, with nothing to do but think. I had
obliterated hundreds, maybe thousands of lives for my own pleasure.
It felt good, I couldn’t deny that. I knew I had murdered innocent
people. In fact, I had particularly enjoyed smashing and devouring
them. In a few instances I had even deliberately targeted children
just to be perverse. I stuffed a school bus partway into my vagina
and felt as the metal crunched and the children’s bodies were
mashed for my pleasure, then ripped off the roof and gobbled up
everything that was inside. Their terrified shrieks delighted me in
the moment. I finally let out my interrupted tears. I sat naked in
the field racked with sobbing despair. I wanted the military to come.
I wanted them to bomb the shit out of me for what I had done. They
did. It didn’t work.
For
days the military threw everything short of an atomic bomb at me.
Artillery shells, columns of tanks, multiple aerial bombardments, all
were deployed against me, and none of them did more than tickle my
skin. I should have known it wouldn’t work. During my rampage, I
managed to punch through buildings (To gather little people to eat
and cram into my cooch.), and stepped over all sorts of rubble
without a single scratch. The attacks confirmed what I suspected. Not
only was I giant, I was nigh-invulnerable, possibly just straight up
invulnerable. I wished in those days that they would obliterate me
for what I had done. Eventually the attack stopped. They sent a
diplomat of sorts out to meet me. She was my mother.
She
stood at the far end of the pasture but I could make out her features
quite easily. My growth seemed to have not only come with great
strength and invulnerability, but some enhanced senses.
“Alice!”
She called up to me with a loudspeaker.
“Hi,
Mom.” I said.
“We’re
all pretty scared about the present situation,” She said.
“I
can imagine.” I said.
“Do
you have some explanation for your behavior? I certainly didn’t
raise you to be some monster that goes around destroying cities.
“I’m
really sorry so many people got hurt,” I sobbed. “I didn’t mean
to, honest. All of a sudden I was gigantic, and at first I was
worried about my housemates and neighbors getting hurt, but,” I
paused trying to compose my thoughts between
sniffles and sobs,
“I looked around and saw the city spread out beneath me like a
miniature model, and I had this strange feeling. It was like a twitch
or a sneeze, and before I knew it I was acting on pure lust. I
couldn’t think about the lives and feelings of the people I was
hurting. All I could think of was my...” I choked up a bit here
from shame and embarrassment, “...my own sadistic pleasure.”
“The
military have already tried to destroy you every way they can think
of short of nuclear or biological weapons. They don’t want to risk
the lives of more people trying to kill you. They sent me because you
haven’t resisted their attempts, and you seem to be genuinely
remorseful. They’d like to take you somewhere where they can study
your condition.”
I
consented and before long I was walking across the country with a
military escort. I tried to be careful, but some smaller buildings
were accidentally flattened along the way. The military evacuated
areas ahead of my path, so no one got hurt. The feeling of the little
buildings as they crunched was just as good as it had been back in
the city, but I tried not to let it show.
I
told myself that I was going to be a good giantess from now on. Maybe
they would be able to cure me, or find me some isolated island to
live on, or something. The important thing was that I resolved not to
hurt anymore people. The “big walk” as the scribes and criers of
that time called it, was not really that far. We traveled through
Oregon heading southeast to the neighboring state of Nevada which was
a land of vast desert and few towns and cities. They took me to a
classified Air
Force base
where cranks of that time believed extra-terrestrial evidence was
held. It took a few days stopping periodically so the army people
could clear the area ahead, or change personal so others could sleep.
I slept a lot, too. As I
drifted off, my mind kept going back to the rampage. It had been such
a terrible thing to do, but it had felt so good at the time. I
wondered what could cause such a change. Was I still me? Was I the
Alice who took social science classes and drank bubble tea, or was I
some new being? Had Alice died back in the city with all the other
little people?
The
military designated a lot on the base where I was supposed to stay
put. It was a large area of flat tarmac cordoned off with
luminescent white painted lines. This set the boundary of my new
home. I received communications indicating that high level generals
and even the leader of our entire country were interested in talking
with me. What I had done could never be made right, they said, but
they also couldn’t kill me, so they wanted to try and figure out
something I could do as restitution.
My
new form didn’t feel any discomfort from cold or heat. This was
lucky since I had no clothes and now had to live exposed to the
elements in a desert that went from baking to freezing over the
course of a day. I didn’t feel any thirst either. I felt a small
amount of hunger, but that was easily satisfied with a few mouthfuls
of livestock everyday. Ten to fifteen cows’ worth of meat seemed to
keep me satisfied for a week or so. I would toss whole sides of beef
into my mouth and crunch them up, bones and all, as if they were
sardines. (Those were a kind of preserved fish that many people ate
in those days.) It was really quite satisfying, but it brought back
sense memories of the people I had eaten during my rampage.
For
hygiene, a fire crew were sent out to me every couple of days to hose
me down. I presume due to my odor than concern for my comfort.
They
did numerous measurements and tests. I had enlarged to exactly 100
times my original size as far as they could tell, from 169
centimeters to 169 meters, that’s a little over 5’ 5” for
anyone still using the other system. Unfortunately, they found no
hint of what could have caused my growth, or any way to shrink me
back down. I knew they were also trying to test whether or not
anything could injure me, could kill me. I’m certain that a lot of
the beef I ate was coated or injected with various things they
thought might poison me. All those tests ended in failure. The
government had no idea what to do with me.
My
mother was there the whole time living on the base. We would talk
about things. My family was doing fairly well. They had become
celebrities of sort, going on shows and being interviewed about me.
(Shows were performances people watched to see entertainments, and to
hear news and debate on important issues of the day.) They apparently
rounded up a few of my ex-boyfriends from high school too. A lot of
people were really mad that nothing was being done to punish me for
my actions.
As
for me, at that point I was getting bored out of my mind. When you’re
a big huge giant, you can’t really do any of the regular things
little folks do to pass the time. Studying and school seemed pretty
much out. Nothing was really stopping me from going out; certainly
the military couldn’t do anything to stop me. Even if I left the
base, there wasn’t much for me to do. Dating, clubbing, pursuing
hobbies and most other normal fun things were things I just couldn’t
do. Then they gave me the offer.
They
would transport me to a remote, uninhabited island. I could live
there with some space to run around and do as I please. I could have
visitors if I wanted, but they didn’t want me to ever leave the
island without their say-so. It seemed better than doing nothing, so
I agreed.
Transport
was arranged much as it had been before. We traveled as a convoy
through the desert, clearing civilians from the travel path as we
went. The island was off the coast of California. No ship or plane
could carry me, but I was an okay swimmer. They said that it should
be easy for me to get there with my size and endurance. I was unsure.
An island was better than a desert, but it still didn’t seem like
there would be much to do besides wait for supply ships to bring me
food and give interviews. That was the point, I supposed, and I
wondered if it wasn’t what I deserved anyway. My doubts turned out
to be pointless, anyway.
I
walked west across the desert along with my escort. The plan was for
me to head west out of Nevada and cross California. The trip was
plotted to give towns and cities a wide berth, not to be wide enough
it turned out.
After
crossing the long hot desert we came to the mountains separating the
two states. We were actually making pretty good progress and they
expected us to reach the California coast by the next morning. We
went all through the night with my escort coming and going in shifts,
all with great military efficiency. My mom was with us the whole way.
Sometimes she even let me pick her up, very carefully I’ll add, and
carry her. It was dizzying for her, but she said that if she was
close to me, she felt like she was protecting me.
We
crossed the mountains without too much trouble, for me anyway.
Despite walking for hundreds of miles for many hours I felt no
tiredness, no need for sleep. It was something I’d noticed when
we’d traveled to Nevada. If I wanted to sleep I had no trouble
doing it, and it was very relaxing, especially when there wasn’t
very much else for me to do. It filled the time between the exams
and tests they ran on me.
Anyway,
as we walked on into California the scene shifted. Barren dessert
mountain was replaced with lightly forested areas. I saw trees and
other green things for the first time since leaving Oregon. It got me
a little wistful, to be honest. We trekked onward, They tried to keep
me largely in the dark about exactly where we were heading, but I
overheard enough to guess that we were traveling
on
a course that would take us almost exactly halfway between San
Francisco and Los Angeles, the two nearest major cities. The hope was
that keeping me as far away as they could from any major population
centers would be enough to prevent any destructive urges I might get.
It was optimistic, but if they’d known what was good for them, they
probably should have just left me in that desert base or some other
wasteland.
What
they hadn’t counted on was a little city by the name of Fresno.
After
a few hours travel beyond the mountains and foothills, the trees
stopped again, replaced by a vast flat area. I wouldn’t exactly
call it desert, there was grass and farmland and things. We traveled
on using highways that had been long cleared of other people in
advance of my passing. As night fell, things changed for me. I was
carrying Mom again, holding her up to my ear, so she could tell me
about ideas she had to keep us occupied once we got to the island. I
kept getting distracted by something off to my right, something way
beyond the barren highway we were traveling on.
Mom
was saying something like, “Maybe they’ll let you finish your
degree remotely, they let prisoners do that, hardened criminals.”
I
turned my head to try and figure out what was distracting me. There
was something over there, something I could sense in the back of my
mind. The smallest sliver of a glow peaking up over the dark horizon
of the night. Without thinking much at all about it, I turned off of
the road and began walking toward whatever it was that had caught my
eye.
Mom,
started screaming, so I took her away from my ear. I still kept hold
of her, though.
Behind
me the Humvees and trucks of the escort screeched to a halt. They
called orders after me, but I could barely hear them at that point.
They fired gun turrets at me. They felt like nothing more than a
water sprinkler, that’s a device we used to use to spray water
around crops and other plants to help them grow, anyway, it felt like
nothing but a little water splashing against my back. I believe they
fired a surface to air missile at me, but it felt like nothing but a
warm wadded up rag hitting the back of my neck. I kept a slow, but
steady pace, and they did their best to follow me. As I walked on,
the glow rose more and more into view. It was a city. My heart
pounded with dread and joy. My mom pounded her fists against the
closed palm of my hand. I was aware of her; aware of who she was. I
actually still felt a strong instinct to protect her. Unfortunately,
I also felt a strong urge to do something about the pretty lights of
the little city I was approaching.
With
a walking speed around 300 miles per hour, I
easily outpaced my escort without even trying. I reached the edge of
the city in less than five minutes.
By
the first night of my Portland rampage, I had knocked out most of the
city’s power grid, so I hadn’t seen it like this. Fresno was like
a beautiful glowing rug covering a nighttime bedroom floor. That glow
entranced me. I lingered for a moment enjoying it. When the moment
was over I stepped forward, intentionally obliterating the outermost
houses under my feet. They felt nice, but my real target was the
glowing downtown core. I wanted to go to those beautiful lights, and
stomp them all out. Anyway, it all descended into another standard
rampage. I tromped around the city, my mother safely in my hand the
entire time. I smashed in buildings. There were none that even came
close to my size, like there had been in Portland. That was a little
disappointing at the time since it had been so satisfying to demolish
the Wells Fargo and Bancorp. (Nicknamed “Big Pink” back then.)
towers slowly, floor by floor until I could push the whole thing over
to fall on to the neighboring blocks like a felled tree. Instead,
there was a lot of kicking and stomping.
Highlights
included: Gathering hundreds of little people into the baseball
stadium, where I could have a super crunchy, super messy, crush-fest,
sitting on buildings until they crumbled delightfully under my bare
ass, and experiments with picking up entire two story family houses,
about the size of a baseball to me, and eating them like apples.
They
crunched between my teeth very nicely, when people were still inside
they tasted pretty good, and they really filled me up. It only took
four or five to make a full satisfying meal, and they were more
interesting than the sides of beef they’d been feeding me.
All
the while I was entirely protective of my mother, not allowing a
single bit of harm to come to her, even as she screamed and screamed
in horror at my atrocities.
About
an hour into my fun the military showed up. It was pointless. If they
were further away than whatever destructive activity caught my ever
changing interest, I ignored them. If they got close, or it seemed
like my mom might get harmed, I slaughtered them without hesitation.
There’s something particularly satisfying about feeling a highly
engineered, highly expensive armored tank crumple like a can under
your foot, especially knowing that there are little soldiers getting
smashed to pulp inside. After a half dozen attempts and a few
pointless airstrikes, they pulled back beyond the city limits. It
seemed they were giving in to practicality, and more or less ceding
the city to me. Although it was only a little smaller than Portland,
it was much faster decimating Fresno. The geography made a big
difference. (Portland
had had a bunch of hills and varying terrain to walk around in. Not
so in Fresno.)
Once it was all rubble I left the city heading West. I had no idea
where I would go, so I figured I’d head toward the coast, following
the original plan. When I came a little more to my senses, I examined
my mom. Physically she seemed perfectly fine, but she was quiet. She
just sat in my palm shuddering and shivering.
I
tried to connect. “I’m so sorry you had to see that.” I said.
She
said nothing; didn’t even look up at me. I loved my mom, still felt
that love for her. But I had traumatized her, exposed her a type of
violence and atrocity that had never been imagined before whatever
changed me. I decided that I wasn’t going to let my actions hurt
her anymore.
As
I walked, I must have veered north, because the next day I could see
that miles ahead was San Francisco Bay and it’s eponymous city. It
was larger still than either Portland or Fresno, and a tide of
anxiety washed through my stomach. Then nothing happened. I looked
out at that big hilly city, and felt no urges, no imperative, no
instinctive desire to smash it and it’s citizens. It was so
strange, that I just sat there for hours.
Eventually
the military caught up with me. I gave my mother over to them, and
told them that unless she explicitly wanted it, they were never to
bring her within 500 miles of me. I didn’t know if I could trust
their promises, but I hoped they would honor it. They informed me
that the casualties in Fresno had been even worse than in Portland,
due to the flatter geography leaving fewer places to shelter from all
the smashing I’d done. I told them how being this close to a much
bigger city wasn’t setting me off, speculating that there may be
some sort of “safety window” immediately after the urges
overwhelm me. They reiterated that if they ever found a way to kill
or destroy me they would. They had only refrained from nuclear
options under the theory that those would actually be deadlier and
more destructive than I was on my own. I told them that if they could
find a way to kill me, they should. I was too dangerous to let live,
my life wasn’t worth thousands of others. If they wanted to nuke
me, I welcomed it. I deserved it for what I’d done to my mom.
They
still wanted me to go to the island, and I agreed to go. I wanted to
leave as fast as I could, before any destructive urges returned.
They
had me walk out into the ocean. Helicopters hovered around to watch
and guide my journey. I was actually able to walk quite a ways out at
my new height, but eventually the sea floor gave way, and I had to
swim. The Coast Guard did a good job keeping the route clear of any
vessels. It was refreshing, swimming and bobbing in the ocean. It was
still so much massively bigger than me, that I almost felt like
regular sized human for a few hours. Before the change I’d get very
tired swimming, but I found I could just keep going and going. There
were so many odd, seemingly impossible things about my new body aside
from just the size difference. I felt like it wasn’t really mine.
The fact that I seemed to lose control over it around cities made it
feel even less like mine. Sometimes I felt like I was just riding a
horse or something, some creature that was mostly under my control,
mostly followed my directions, but if the right or wrong stimulus
came along, it would do whatever came natural, and I was along for
the ride, not just along for it, but participating in it, loving it.
I know it sounds awful, and I know I felt bad about it for a long
time, but I’ll freely admit, as I have for a long
long time now,
I love smashing your cities, I love crushing and devouring you little
folks. Even though it might not be in a way you enjoy very much, I do
love you all.
After
a day of swimming, the island rose into view. After a few hours more
swimming I made landfall. A platoon of military folks were standing
along the beach waiting for me. I call it a beach, but really it was
just a rocky place where the island more or less just started. As I
stepped up out of the water they greeted me, informing me that I was
now on San Miguel Island, that they would prefer me to stay there for
an indefinite amount of time, and that after I was examined and
debriefed further, I would be allowed to explore my new home.
From
where I stood, there didn’t seem to be much to explore. It looked
mostly barren with only the sparsest of plant life, practically a
moss covered rock at my size. It was quite windy, and I suppose I
would have been very cold if not for my change.
The
rest of that day blurs together. I laid down so the scientists could
measure and record data, while a military doctor asked questions
about how I was feeling physically. When all that was done, most of
them left on their boats and helicopters. A small contingent stayed
behind. One of them, Steve I think his name was, was a representative
of the National Park Service, the organization that actually managed
the island under normal circumstances. They had apparently agreed to
lend it, and the neighboring island, Santa Rosa Island, to the
Department of Defense in light of the special circumstances. The
special circumstances being me. Steve informed me that there
were a number of sites on the island associated with the indigenous
Chumash people, and requested that I not go to those areas of the
island. There were two airstrips and a ranger station. The ranger
station was normally manned, but due to my presence it stood empty
until they felt more confidence about my intentions. I promised to be
on my best behavior, and tried to explain that I didn’t want to
harm anybody, it was just that when I saw these big bustling cities I
seemed to get in these weird “city-moods”. Steve actually cracked
half a smile at that and I clearly remember what he said next.
“I’ve
been know to get in a few ‘city-moods’ myself. That’s why I
joined the Park Service.”
Steve
left. One of the remaining military men informed me that he was
charged with supervising my time on San Miguel. He told me that
troops would be stationed around the clock on Santa Rosa, an island
visible to the east of San Miguel. They requested that I never make
any effort to go to Santa Rosa. They would be sending scientists and
technicians to examine me just about everyday. He informed me that
since my time in Nevada they had been working on getting something
I’d be able to wear; that even in the face of the enormity of my
crimes, the U.S. Military was not in the habit of denying prisoners
the basics of human dignity.
I
had taken enough history and political science classes to know that
that was not exactly true, but I let it pass.
He
informed me that shipments of food and other supplies would arrive by
boat and sometimes by plane. The runways were part of the reason
this particular island was chosen. Given the traumatic effects an
experience like mine no doubt had, they would be flying in a
therapist associated with the armed forces to speak with me and help
address any mental health needs I might have.
I
thought that was an odd thing for them to provide me, but I suppose
if you have a 500 foot tall invincible being of sheer destruction in
your custody, you want to have some insight into her mental health
and thought processes.
Having
informed me of all this, he told me that after this day, I would
probably never see him again. He would be on the other island, where
they didn’t want me to go. If he ever did come back, it would be
because either something very bad or something very good had
happened, and he left.
I
was alone. For the first time since Portland, and even before that. I
was living by myself for the very first time in my entire life. I’d
gone from home, to college with roommates, to a rocky island off the
coast of California.
I
walked around the island a bit for the rest of that day. There wasn’t
much to see. It was eight miles long by four miles wide, so even for
a 500 foot gal it wasn’t the worst you could do in terms of space
to roam. A dorm room would have been more claustrophobic. But I knew
the truth. This island was a prison cell; a zoo cage. One that I
could effectively leave anytime if I wanted. I didn’t want though.
At the end of the day I sat on San Miguel Hill, the highest spot on
the island,
near
the very center
of the island, watching the sunset light the sky on fire above the
Pacific Ocean. I tried to pretend I was a normal girl on a normal
camping trip. I was solo, so maybe it was some sort of Outward Bound
thing; something
to build my resilience and self-reliance.
I
tried to tell myself that I hadn’t annihilated two whole cities, I
couldn’t have. Me? Little old Alice? She doesn’t knock over
skyscrapers for fun; she doesn’t squish little people into herself
to have the best orgasms of her life; she doesn’t traumatize her
mother who was only trying to help her; who raised her alone after
her dad died. Alice didn’t do stuff like that, she was a decent
human being who went to school and definitely wasn’t an enormous
stomp monster. Those were the sorts of things I told myself most days
on that island. The blankness made it easy to pretend.
That
night, I slept on that hill, naked and sprawled out under the stars
for all the universe to see. If it was going to judge me, I supposed
that
that’s when it would have judged me.