I closed my eyes, and tried to picture Candice's growth slowing down, gradually coming to a stop. But somehow this just didn't feel right – like attempting to hammer a nail with a toothbrush. I tried again, more forcefully this time, but got the same result. It was getting harder and harder not to lose myself to panic – why wasn't this working?

Above the sound of splintering plywood and cries of ecstasy, I heard another noise. It was rasping and hollow, and it chilled me to my core. Laughter. The creature was laughing at me. Its form was wispy and insubstantial, like heat rising off blacktop on a hot summer day, but there was no question that it was still very real. Was this its final revenge – a withdraw of support at this most critical moment? Was it trying to doom me with my own desire?

In a rare flash of insight, I understood. No, the creature was not doing this to me – I was doing it to myself. Some part of me still wanted Candice to keep growing, even if it threatened my life. Watching her get bigger satisfied some deep, primal urge in me, and any attempt I made to stop it was met with resistance not from without, but from within.

Only seconds left now. Three tons of girl-flesh barreling at me, expanding in every direction to seal my fate. “Candice!” I screamed. She ignored me, too far gone to listen. I screamed again, summoning my will, my voice augmented by every last drop of my desire to live. “CANDICE! DO SOMETHING!”

At once her eyes snapped open. She looked down at me, her expression dazed. “Seth...what...?” Candice blinked once, twice, and then her face lit with understanding. “You're...oh my God! We've got to get you out of here!” She reached down, her arms surging longer even as she moved toward me. My girlfriend lifted me easily, as if I weighed nothing at all, and cradled me protectively against her bosom. Her body was hot and fragrant, and even in this moment of crisis I was struck by how wonderful it was to feel her body surrounding me.

“Hang on!” she cried in a voice like a thunderclap. She lurched forward, and my stomach dropped into my toes with the sudden acceleration. There was a sound that might have been the apocalypse – tearing of brick from mortar. The shattering of glass. And then, the smell of silica and sawdust.

Daylight. Candice was putting me down in the soft grass. I sat there, my head swimming, trying not to vomit. After a long moment I wiped a streak of dust away from my eyes, and surveyed the scene around me.

The entire western wall of our house was utterly destroyed. A hole, the size of a Mack truck and roughly Candice-shaped, stood in its side. The backyard was littered with debris, and a huge cloud of pulverized wood and stone was rising into the afternoon sky.

“I wonder if our insurance is going to cover this,” I muttered wryly.

My girlfriend chuckled. I turned to look at her, and almost passed out from the vertigo. It hurt my brain just to look at her – how could a human being possibly be so large? Resting on her knees as she was, her face filled my entire field of vision. Donning her now-famous condescending smirk she gradually stood up to her full height, like a monster rising out of the ocean. She was easily twenty feet tall, her torso thicker than a tree trunk, her breasts as big and round as a pair of beach balls. Striking a pose that might've been fatal to someone with a weak heart condition, she looked down at me.

“Seth, tell me the truth: do you think I'm fat?”

“I think, for someone of your stature, a better word is 'majestic.'”

She grinned evilly. “You...are you gonna get REALLY lucky little man. Too bad you're gonna need a ladder to get any pussy from now on.”

“Very funny.”

By this time the creature had joined us outside, its form so weak that it was almost invisible. The thing appeared to be resigned to its fate, ready to be relieved of the burden of existence. “What do you want to do about this guy?” I asked, gesturing toward it.

“Second verse, same as the first,” she answered, pointing one gigantic finger skyward.

“Really? You actually want to be BIGGER? STILL?”

“Why stop now when we're having so much fun?” she laughed. “In all honesty babe, you can get rid of it any way you want. But let me ask you...can you think of anything you'd rather have than more of ME?”

It was a rhetorical question. Nodding, I clenched my fists in concentration, and watched as Candice began to inch upward again. She let out a deep moan of pleasure, looking on as the world shrank around her. I pushed harder...if we were really going through with this, then I wanted her to be impossibly huge. Thirty feet tall – no, fifty! Her feet sank into the soil with her increasing weight, her head crested the roof of our house....

There was a sudden popping noise, and Candice was gone. I had time for the briefest moment of confusion, and then I heard a scream. It was a decidedly high-pitched, girly scream, and it was coming from high above me. I glanced up, and before I was even aware of what I was doing I rushed forward to catch my girlfriend as she hurtled toward the ground. The force of her impact was enough to send me spinning into the dirt, but then I was sitting, with what seemed like an impossibly tiny Candice cradled in my arms.

“What...what happened?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Mini-Candice – or actually, I realized, normal-sized Candice – shrugged. “This must be what happens when you use up the last of the energy. It...ahh...wore off...I guess?” She rolled to her feet, trying to scrape some of the muck from her naked body. “Yeah look, here's your proof,” she said, pinching a lock of her hair. It was perfectly white, the whitest white I had ever seen.

“Game over then?” I asked, pushing myself up off the ground. “Everything's back to normal?”

“Well....” she said, pointing toward the house. As she did, a few more bricks tumbled down from the arch her sudden exit had created. “Not everything.”

I sighed mournfully. “Alright. You wait here. I'm going to go get the phone book, and call a construction company. Or the police. Maybe my parents. Or...God, I don't even know.”

“Actually, I've got a better idea,” she said, licking her lips thoughtfully. Before I could reply she was running back into the house, vaulting like a gazelle over the piles of concrete and broken glass. Not knowing what else to do, I followed.

She was in the kitchen when I found her, waiting for me by the refrigerator. Still wearing her patented smirk, she opened the door wide. The power was out, but in the dim light filtering in from outside I could see four large mason jars full of a mysterious, oily liquid. “Do you know what these are?” she asked, her voice full of unrestrained glee.

I shook my head.

“I'll give you one hint,” she said, and lifted one of the jars to her lips. Candice let two tiny drops fall onto her tongue, and set the jar back in the fridge. The room was silent. And then, in the blink of an eye, her hair had turned pink. Hot, vibrant, terrifying pink.

Before I could react she was tackling me. She wrapped her arms around me, her hot, amorous breath upon my neck. “Now if you'll just be a good catalyst, I'll take care of our little construction problem.” She grinned at me hungrily. “And who knows. Maybe after that, you'll want to have some more fun. I know I will.”

Candice looked up into my eyes, and seeing the horror there, she giggled. “Oh don't be such a worry wart. As someone once said...what's the worst that can happen?”