Bea is a twenty-eight-year-old accountant who works at the fifth largest firm in Valesville, Ohio, which is a city that exists now. She's youthful, if professional looking. The big blonde locks she rocked as a popular girl in high school are swapped out for simpler short bangs, the short shorts and crop top for casual Saturday jogging sweats. She has a condo in the suburbs, in a neighborhood going through a bit of a population boom for whatever reason. It is in this neighborhood where Bea is walking her dog when I find her.

She stops, of course, because I'm the most beautiful thing she's ever met. She finds this strange because I'm not all that different from any other dorky girl she's ever met. Same rough brown unkept hair, some big round dweebish glasses, an oversized tshirt with some memorabilia from an anime she definitely wouldn't recognize that's drowned out by an even more oversized sweatshirt... no nothing screams different. My chest's a reasonable size, maybe a little on the low end really, I'm a little tall for a girl maybe, I have a dopey tired smile, lackluster hips... its only when Bea realizes that she's been totally checking me out for two uncut minutes that she remembers that she is still, unexplainably, absolutely enamored with my looks. It's almost as if I've arbitrarily declared myself the definition of a "10", without having changed a single hair on my head. That's totally what's happened, but Bea doesn't need to know that part.

Hey, I say. What's up?

"Are you, I, you, new?" Bea stumbles out, finally.

Tears are welling in her eyes a little bit from the sheer platonic perfection of my form. Wait, no, these are droplets of blood, because a little bit of her mind is quite literally bursting, unable to comprehend how something so divine, so heavily as a shlubby girl in an anime tee shirt could ever possibly exist before her eyes. Oh. Oh no that won't do at all.

Hey, I say. What's up?

"I haven't seen you around here before, are you new here?" Bea says. This time she's not overcome by the majesty of my presence. Still hopelessly enamored, but maybe not quite so soulbound. Little steps, little steps.

I guess you could say that, I answer. My name's Holiday, though I guess most people call me Holly.

"That's a pretty name."

 Bea is having a lot of critical reevaluations right now. Namely, she's reevaluating how straight she really could be when there's a girl so (conceivably) hot right before her very eyes. Naturally politeness and common decency win out here, so she tries to keep going.

"I'm Bea, I live just down by Rally Ave," she says.

Rally Ave? Sounds nice.

"Are you moving in or just visiting the neighborhood?"

Me? Oh no, I'm just here to eat this city.

"Huh?"

Y'know, like swallow up, I say. Devour. Consume.

"That's, a weird thing to, I'm sorry I think I'm misunderstanding you here, what do you mean eat the city?" she asks, pretending like she doesn't know. As if I don't know that three hours ago, she got off to the thought of some snide greasy prick of a dude licking her entire state off the map with a tongue dozens of miles wide and so much longer still.

I mean, everything you see, everything you can see, is going to go right down my throat. And then I'm gonna swallow it, digest it, and some other things too.

Bea nervously laughs like this is a joke. "Alright, you have fun with that, maybe we'll see each other around!"

She tries to turn to leave but she doesn't. She doesn't even know why she doesn't. It's not like she can't, it's as if even completing the thought of turning away from me is utterly impossible. The neurons refuse to fire. Her nervous smile grows, which is the tic she gets whenever she starts falling into a fight or flight response.

I don't think you're going anywhere, I say. Because I want you to watch me do this.

"W- whats, I," Bea says.

Eat the city, duhhhhh.

"You, you cant just, okay please just let me go please..." Bea stammers out.

I wasn't expecting her to be this nervous, but I also wasn't expecting her to connect the dots so quickly either. I suppose that I probably shouldn't have gone in so hard so soon but, it's ever so hard when the prey's this enticing. Ah well, you win some they lose everything. It happens.

I can't? I ask, a sort of inescapable smugness literally radiating out from me and turning her blood cold metaphorically. I caaaaan't?

"I, I," Bea says, trying to scream for help but finding herself just as theoretically incapable of the action, of even conceptualizing how she'd do that, unable to even focus on the surrounding houses and sidewalk and lawns and road or anything that isn't my beautiful perfect figure.

Say it, Bea. Say I can't eat the city. I won't force you, just say it!

"Why are you doing this."

Say it.

Her eyes go wide, her pupils to near dots. "You can't... eat... the city."

I eat her dog. She screams.

"What did you, what are you, oh god oh god oh god..." she shouts again.

She's having a hard time even understanding what just happened, what I just did. I haven't moved any closer to her, her hand's been gripping the leash, my figure hasn't morphed or warped. In a single, smooth instance I just... ate her dog, leaving nothing but an empty leash, and the smell of my warm, overwhelming breath in the air. Bea's eyes are starting to water into tears. I will them back.

Yknow Bea, when I made this city up I was kiiiinda always hoping that there'd be someone like you in it. Someone pretty and beautiful, living a boring life at a decently paying job, who goes home every day to water some plants or binge watch some bland tv show on a lame streaming service. The kinda person who wouldn't give someone like me the time of day if I were normal!

Bea blusters something incomprehensible out. I keep talking.

That's the fun of this, see. I can do anything. So, things only get interesting because of the things you can't do, or the things you won't do.

I let her go. She starts running but gets nowhere. Her legs keep moving but the ground acts as a treadmill, pulling back the faster she moves. Space and time contort to keep her in the same place... no, they contort to bring her ever so slightly closer to me.

So I make a city, sure, but I don't know everyone in it. I don't know the street names. I can figure that out, sure, but I figure it out slowly, let the story tell itself. If I just write every single word into your mouth it comes out lifeless, but if I let you speak,

"Help! Help! Somebody please, I-" she shouts, before I delete her mouth, leaving the lower half of her face a grown over mass of soft cream flesh.

Okay maybe not letting you speak all the time is a good idea. But the sentiment of it, the idea that it's real? That's the good shit. I guess I only regret that I only went so fast, ell oh ell, just staying in circle panic mode all the time isn't fun. I mean I guess I could always, just, fix that.

So I do, and she collapses to the ground from the shock. She gets up slowly, carefully, overtaken with a sort of collected calm that lets her gather her jumbled thoughts and speak through newborn lips.

"Is this all you do? Make little worlds to make people like me to torture, like you're some kinda god?"

My eyebrows furrow. Hm, god speak. Interesting. I make a mental note to look into that one when I'm done.

I mean, I am God? Or, a god? I mean you should definitely capitalize My Name whenever you write it but I'm also not really much of a grammar nazi. Do, did I remember to invent nazis in this world? I always change my mind on the morality of that.

"You're a monster."

I thought I was a god?

"Die."

Okay enough of that, I say before removing the calm. She's at least quiet now but she's far less snappy. Perhaps she's accepted what's about to happen.

I eat the neighborhood. One bite, then a long-exaggerated chew of metal and dirt and so many wonderful people. It would be disgusting, maybe, except for the fact that I've decided it tastes like strawberries in cream but twenty times better. I can even make out a little bit of hardened chocolate dip. Bea's to her feet now. She hopelessly stares as a little bit of mailbox trickles from my mouth. Every chew I make sounds eight hundred times louder. It's as if she's being forced right up against my mouth to watch my lips in perfect 4k resolution, except it's more like 4M where the M stands for a million raised to the millionth power. She sees this and comprehends every follicle of it because I want her to.

And then I swallow and it is as if a thousand nukes went off at once. She screams, helplessly, knowing I wouldn't be so careless as to let it kill her. I let her try and claw her ears out anyways.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" she keeps shouting, over and over again as if it means literally anything. As if anything in her universe has ever meant anything but for these current moments of my own passing fascination. Characters can be so silly like that. But I oblige.

Okay.

And then it's done. And she has enough time to get up and lunge for me like an idiot. She has her hands around my throat when I start to melt down into a viscous substance. It's a weird feeling all over. It's not hard to feel my consciousness start to melt and split amidst so many disparate copies of me, droplets that start pouring down every orifice of her, it's just uncomfortable. The effect is worth it though. Her jaw's too clenched with me to move it, her vision too full of me, her ears too clogged with me to even hear the inaudible noises her voice box makes, that don't make it up her throat as it gets blocked by, you guessed it, me. Me and me and me, every subset making tiny, microscopic laughter that builds to an audible crescendo as I finally merge into her.

She has a second of pure horror as her body comes to herself. She's aware that there aren't really words for the horribleness that's just happened to her. She's also aware that it's nothing compared to what's about to happen. I see all this from the outside, but I also sense it as an omnipresence in her body that has functionally replaced all the existing liquids in her body. In my defense, if she wasn't so busy having the usual Lovecraftian meltdown she would probably appreciate how my presence has turned her into a being healthier than any human being that has ever, would ever, and could ever exist in her reality or any other. She'd be a god, if I wasn't around.

And then I'm tired of the bit so I'm back in front of her. Well, I'm still in her and of her and in a sense literally her, but she stops actively thinking about it so it's not a huge difference in my mind. She has a moment to take in the surroundings, except she can't, because though she can still see the city in the backdrop and the blue sky ahead, her immediate surroundings don't exist. I ate them, after all.

And that's when it clicks for her. When I eat something it's not literal. I mean, it is to an extent, I do like to swallow my food, but it's more than that. It's conceptual, an idea. I can eat a bite or in twenty or in two trillion. I could eat her (though I make sure to not accidentally eat her while reading the thought) just as easily as I could eat the president, which I do, or every president who's ever lived, which I proceed to do, or every president who will ever live, which I also do, and finally every president who could ever live and god dammit I made a singularity in my mouth again. I swallow it resentfully. At least it cleaned up the blood well.

The point is, I say, finishing up Bea's thoughts for her out loud, is that when I eat something, it's gone. I didn't just eat up the buildings and the people and the street and the road and the earth, no no I didn't even do something so childish as eat up the fundamental forces in that immediate vicinity. I ate the location itself. And what's left of it, whatever could be left of it, can't be considered anywhere at all. Sure, where I stand and where you stand are still here, but it goes nowhere. The whole place around it's gone, so this place doesn't go anywhere. It's a place out of place, a nothing place.

And this is what breaks her. She backs away from me, her primal instincts overriding even my soft gentle mental pressure, as she breaks into a run. Ah well, first fight then flight I suppose. Or flight then fight then flight again? Something like that. It doesn't matter because she steps exactly three meters away from me until her next step lands on my tongue. She stops, then looks up to see my teeth, each one easily at least twice the size of her body. She looks back. I wave back at her. She looks forward, down the gapping abyss of my mouth, then in a panic jumps back onto the safety of sidewalk.

"What was that?"

Oh, crap, I forgot to mention. I technically never stopped eating the neighborhood so, uh, anywhere that this noplace would ordinarily go to now connects to my mouth. So I guess, in a way, I already am eating you?

This doesn't click with her, because though she can't see anything where the neighborhood would have been, she can see the distance, the city skyline, the wilderness far from town now that there's no neighborhood blocking the view, the core of the earth. She doesn't see what she just saw, which is to say my mouth. It vibes with her so badly that her next move is to run in another direction, which she stops right as she feels a fraction of a fraction of my tongue taste her. It takes all my self-control to not lick her up as the smallest of microbes. She backs away, soaking wet with my saliva as her mind begins to collapse.

In time, I warn her, you'll come running in there. And then I'll eat you.

She backs away, this time to where some lawn grass thinly stands, supported by nothingness. The second she jumps on it, the grass gives in, letting her fall far, far into my mouth, which is larger than she can understand, larger than the city, larger than the state, larger than the country even, so large that my teeth appear as just thin blurs as they shrink out of sight, as her freefall takes her deeper and deeper down my endless throat. The ambient rumbling of my throat, the schlicks and glorps and other such wet sounds my body automatically makes overwhelm her senses. In this moment she understands herself as I see her, and she accepts it. And then, in the nick of time, I teleport her out.

Any other clever ideas or...

Her eyes are dark.

Ordinarily at this point, you know, people would try to say something like "this isn't real" or "let me wake up".

"This is real. I know. Just kill me."

I frown. These types are always the most boring.

Ah well, I say, if you insist. But before I grant you that, I want you to see this.

And then I eat everything. I was going to eat the city but, man, at this point wouldn't that just be a let down? No, nothing less than seeing literally all of existence and eternity outside of our little bubble of safety rendered a little snack for my amusement would really pay this off. And she watches it, watches the little specks she knew as stars...

No, not stars, I correct. Multiverses. Entire collections of universes are my sprinkles, my toppings to the globs of conceptual density that Everything entails.

She doesn't understand. I make her. I make her comprehend it, the density, the ideas, the things seeable and unseeable, the multiverses and the universes, the universes and the clusters, clusters and galaxies, galaxies and systems, systems and stars, stars and planets, planets and civilizations, civilizations and providence and history and truth and beauty and hope and despair and ideas her species, what was once our species, would never ever ever bear a tenth of. I forced her to understand, sewed her mind together from the unthinkable paradox of it all, just so she could grasp the unthinking unending tragedy that all of everything had just undergone so I could prove a point.

And then I take a small, understated gulp, and it is gone in a single bite. I stick out my tongue. Cleaned right off the plate.

All gone! I say.

There are no words to explain her feelings. So she says none. She's despondent. I know what she wants me to do, and I grin and the rest of the bubble. And then it's just us, nothing to even be called nothing, purely me and her. And then I eat her and chew her forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. I recreate eternity, just so I can lock her in it and throw away the key. And then, finally, I swallow, feeling the bulge go down into my stomach, where her essence will doubtlessly be melted away by a process even I dread to consider.

I blink, and then reality's back, same as it ever was, minus one city.

A polite burp escapes my lips.

Aw, I really need to stop playing with my food.