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 Deborah's heart raced as she watched the numbers rapidly ascend, growing ever closer to the dreaded count of one billion.

“It's almost your turn!” Jillian, the gigantic teenager who had captured a few dozen people only a week before, happily cheered. She took the tiny woman down from the side of the computer case onto which she had been taped, setting her down on the floor. “Are you ready to go?”

“N-no... no, please! Please! I'll do anything you want, please!”

“I know you will!” Jillian said the line with such mirth that Deborah wondered if the giantess even understood the concept of death. “There it is! One billion cookies!”

“Please, Jill! Please! Please!” she screamed up to deaf ears. The teenager rested her bare sole on the helpless woman and pressed down. The tiny body cracked and crunched underneath the unforgiving sole, the blood bursting out of her like a fat beetle. She wiped her foot off on the already-stained carpet of her room, mixing the fresh blood in with other bloodstains of various ages.

Her eyes then settled on Tony. “You're the last man standing,” she said softly, her eyes flicking to the screen. The second-to-last threshold had been met. Tony's count, at one trillion, was all that was left, and he had no doubt in his mind that she would end him for something so arbitrary.

“I won't go out like this! I won't die because of some... some fucked-up bullshit game of yours!” His voice, once impressive and commanding, now squeaked across the distance from his mouth to her ears, and she giggled in response.

“You'll die when I say you will. Now hang on, I gotta buy more stuff.” She turned her attention to the monitor, interacting with the game. A big picture of a cookie dominated one quadrant of the screen, behind which cascaded innumerably more. And... as far as Tony could see, that was the game. Getting cookies, and having cookies, and spending cookies to get more cookies.

Only a psychopath like Jillian could make it deadly.

She had taped five of them to the computer case before bringing up the game, then wrote in marker a small number on the tape that held each of them in place. One unlucky soul had gotten “1.” She was a sweet girl. Young, with short blonde hair and eyes that seemed to constantly produce tears as she stared up at her murderess. She had screamed and pleaded, just like the rest of them, but after a single click on the big cookie brought the count to one, Jillian had taken her down and crushed her.

That had been all the explanation of the rules that they had been given. Jillian had begun playing in earnest, quickly accumulating a higher and higher score. The next to die had been at one thousand, within a minute of the first girl. Then another at a million, which had come a little further still. It was only once Deborah and Tony were there alone that they had been given a breather. Each successive point total took longer to reach, but the cookies inexorably accumulated towards their death.

And now Tony hung alone. Jillian seemed to have forgotten about him for the time being, focusing on maximizing her returns. She was doing her best to expedite his death within the confines of the game she herself had made up. She could kill him at any time, something of which Tony was keenly aware, but she held herself to the game. As if playing by the rules made his life – or maybe just his death – more meaningful.

“Please! Jillian, we can talk! I'm an important person, I can get you things! I can get you games! D-dozens of games, just like this... this cookie thing, I swear! Please! Listen to me! I have money, influence! Whatever you want, it's yours! Just don't fucking kill me!”

“Oh shush, little man,” Jillian chided. “Look, check out my score! I'm only two hundred billion away from killing you!” She started clicking on the big cookie, manually increasing her score even faster. Tony could see his death rushing faster and faster towards him with every click.

“No! Th-think about it, you don't want to kill me at a trillion! That's way too easy! You... you should kill me at a... at a quintillion! That would be truly impressive, s-something you could really brag to your friends about!”

Jillian seemed to think it over, looking between the number on the tape and her screen. Even as she did, her hand autonomously clicked away at the cookie, bringing her closer to her goal. Tony's heart plummeted.

Only a hundred billion away now.

“You can't just kill me over points in a game! That's... that's not why people die! That's not fair! My life has more meaning than that!”

Jillian shrugged. “I think little miss 'One' would disagree. I think she'd think she got the raw end of the deal between the two of you.” A slight smirk pulled the right side of her mouth up her cheek. She glanced over at the screen. “Fifty billion away, little guy.”

“YOU CAN'T DO THIS!” he shrieked, his voice rising in pitch as well as urgency. “Nobody's this unreasonable! There has to be something you want, something you need! You can't just kill me without negotiating! This isn't fair!” He raged even as she pulled him down from the computer. Briefly, before he was dropped to the floor, he caught a glimpse of a '1' in the trillions column. He landed hard on his back, the air rushing out of his lungs as he stared up at Jillian.

“Yeah I didn't really catch all that, but I bet it wasn't really that important, was it?”

“How is it not important!? Please, no, this is my li-” Tony's words were cut off as the messy sole came down, violently compressing him into the ground. Jillian smeared him off her foot against various semi-clean portions of the carpet before sitting back down in her chair, turning her attention to the screen.

 

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