I had no recollection of the night before, but since I woke up on the floor of my frat house’s foyer it must have been a good one.  Thankfully I was not in a pile of my own puke, and everything seemed reasonably clean.  By the dim light coming in through the windows I could tell I had already missed all my classes today, and with how quiet everything was I figured my frat brothers were out.  This was the perfect opportunity to get a head start.

Groaning, I got up and flicked the light switch, but the room stayed dark.  Upon closer inspection, there was no switch there at all and I had simply swiped where it should have been.  I looked into the living room and saw it was completely empty; even the rug that came with the place was gone.  Was in the wrong house?  Maybe I was the butt of an elaborate practical joke.

The ground shook, breaking my train of thought, and I rushed to take shelter under the nearest doorway.  Another quake came a second later, stronger this time, then a third.  Tremors kept coming at the same interval, increasing in power until it felt like the epicenter was right below me.  Something blocked the sun, making the house totally dark, and a final quake came, just as strong as the previous.  Common sense told me earthquakes didn’t act like that, but I had no idea what else could shake the ground so much.

“Hello down there!” boomed a menacing, powerful voice from above.  “Looked like you had quite a night last night!  Why don’t you come out so we can talk about what happens to people who pass out in our bushes?”  My head spun.  That sounded like a person, but their voice was louder and deeper than any I had heard before.  There was a rumbling quality to it too, which made the glass panes shake in their frames.  If this was a practical joke, they were really selling it.

Outside the far window, instead of a shadow I saw a white wall with a with a black stripe around head level.  I turned around and saw the exact same thing outside the living room’s window.  Before I could think about it the voice sounded again, pounding its way into my skull.  “If you don’t come out, I’ll have to get you out myself,” it declared.  “Please don’t be annoying like that.”  I was still trying to come to terms with a situation I wasn’t even clear on, there was no way I’d be going outside into almost certain danger.

A minute passed without any further calamity, though the white walls stayed in place around the house.  The sky moaned, ruining the most serenity I’d had since waking up.  “Fine,” the voice came again.  “We’ll do this your way.”  A second later the remaining windows blacked out and the house tilted to the side, sending me sliding into the living room.  It felt like I was suddenly on an amusement park ride that was out of control.  I looked through the nearest window and saw the rubber wall had been replaced by a light brown one textured to look like it was moving.  The sensation was making me dizzy and I forced my eyes shut.

When the house finally leveled out and the weird feeling of movement stopped I opened them again, though I could not believe what I saw.  The house had been moved to a wide, peach-colored plain crossed by a series of curved ditches.  Just after the plain dropped off into nothing a gigantic blue orb floated in the air, set inside a bronze-colored wall with a red arc above it.  The orb was surrounded with white and had thousands of small, darker flecks in it, with a large black circle in the middle.  Except for the size, it looked exactly like an eye.

A loud scrape was accompanied by the house shaking, and a moment later the roof appeared on the ground outside, completely undamaged.  A thud came from either side before the house started rattling, and with a great squeal the ceiling was torn away, revealing another much larger ceiling far above it.  The house’s second story dropped beside the roof without so much as a cracked window, looking like it had been painted just a few days before.  

Something hit the far wall hard enough to knock the house on its side and I fell onto the wall, which was now the floor for me.  Whatever it was hit again, turning it onto where the roof should be and tossing me onto the ground.  It was much softer than expected and warmed from the inside, with a surprising smoothness.  The house was lifted off me, and when it got far enough away it looked like it was grasped between two fingers much larger than they had any right to be.

A second later it was gone, and the finger-like crane came back for the rest of the house.  Those pieces were cast away too, and now it was just me on the immense plain.  I looked back and saw four long, narrow platforms cut with many horizontal ditches extending away.  These also bore a striking resemblance to fingers, except they were twice as wide as me.  When I looked forward again, I gasped: not only were there two orbs, but the smaller black circles were turned toward me, and a large, rounded slope was between them.  A pair of thin, pink waves that seemed to glisten were set below the slope, and long, stringy red curtains had been carefully pulled aside at the top.

I assured myself this wasn’t possible, then the waves parted and a great, teeth-rattling boom emanated from them.  “Welcome to the Gamma Tau Sigma sorority house,” it announced.  No, it couldn’t be.  “I’m sorority president, Fulda Stein.”  There was no way.  “And you are my newest shrink!”  She was lying to me.  My senses were lying to me.  Nothing about this made sense, and it was the most elaborate practical joke ever executed.

The withering gaze of her cold blue eyes was unnerving, and I ran away from them.  No sooner had I taken two steps than the fingers swung up, forming an impenetrable wall.  I ran face-first into the base and staggered backward, glad that it was soft.  “Just saving us both some time,” Fulda said, and I spun to face her.  “There’s a long drop at the end, and I didn’t want to wait until you reached it.”  She looked very self-satisfied, like she was playing with me.

“What did you do to me?” I demanded.  “Why are you so big?”

“I ate my veggies and drank a lot of milk growing up,” Fulda answered.  “Clearly, I grew up a lot, and to be honest I think I’m still growing!”  I rolled my eyes.  Lame jokes hardly seemed appropriate right now.  “Now you tell me why I found you passed out in the bushes in front of the house last night?”

“I don’t need to answer any of your questions,” I replied.  “You’re not a cop.”

“Oh, I think you do,” she shot back.  “I’m much worse than a cop.  I’m a woman who’s very annoyed by a shrink in her hand after she caught him trespassing last night, and if you don’t start answering my questions, I’m going to stop being nice.”

“I partied a little too hard and couldn’t make it back to the house,” I said, not wanting to push her further.  “Your bushes looked soft enough, so I crashed in them.  Why do you keep calling me ‘shrink?’”

“On a Wednesday night?”  She did not sound impressed, nor did she try to answer me.  “Leaving aside the shameless alcoholism, why didn’t your friends take you with them instead of leaving you on our lawn?”

“Hey, I answered your question, now you answer mine!”

Fulda closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.  “How are you not getting this?”  She pursed her lips and blew a powerful stream of cold air over me, knocking me onto my back.  “This isn’t some quid pro quo thing where we trade answers, shrink.”  There it was again.  “I’m so much bigger and stronger than you that it’s not even worth comparing, so you’re going to answer my questions, got it?”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll fucking smash you.”  I gulped nervously.  It didn’t seem like this was a joke anymore.  “And since your friends abandoned you last night, I don’t think they’ll particularly care when you go missing.”

“They didn’t abandon me,” I offered sheepishly.

“What was that?” Fulda asked, turning her head.  “Sorry, it’s just that you’re so much smaller than me it can be hard to hear you, so you’ll have to speak up.”

“They didn’t abandon me,” I repeated.  “They wanted to stop a couple hours before me, so I let them go while I stayed at the bar.  I must’ve gotten turned around on the way back or something and ended up at your place.”

“Interesting.  And you didn’t think that maybe you should’ve called it a night with them so you could make it to your classes today?”

“I could’ve made it to my classes if you didn’t hold me up for this inquisition!” I protested. 

“It’s three in the afternoon,” Fulda said, matter-of-factly.  “So you wouldn’t have made it to those classes, and you won’t be making it to any others now, either.”

“Um, what do you mean by that?”

Fulda rolled over my question and continued berating me.  “You’re clearly one of those kids who had everything handed to them, their parents bought their way in here, and they didn’t have to work very hard in high school.  I can relate, because I’m the same way!  But you have so little appreciation for what you’ve been given that it pisses me off.”

“Do you have a point?”

Fulda didn’t even refuse to answer.  Instead she turned her hand sideways, and though I scrambled for something to grab onto, I slid out of her palm.  It looked like a long way down from her hand, but the fall was over much quicker than I expected for such a height.  I bounced off the carpet, and before I could stand the floor quaked from the impact of her butt hitting the ground.  Two more tremors spread through the ground when she extended her legs, and I found myself between a pair of titanic Converse shoes.

“Tell you what, shrink born with a silver spoon,” Fulda began, “if you can crawl through the carpet, up my shorts, and make it to my waist, I’ll answer all of your questions and then some.  Sound fair?”  She paused a second before answering her own question.  “Of course it does, because the only alternative is that I smash you.  Now get moving.”

With no room to negotiate, I agreed to her terms.  I started the long path between her legs while she leaned back on her hands, only occasionally glancing down toward me.  Her feet looked enormous with her toes pointing into the air, and I had no doubt that she could have simply smashed my house and skipped this whole thing.  Despite their size I soon made it past her shoes, marked by the ankle bones protruding from above her socks.

The carpet here was less mashed down, coming up to at least my knees, and I had to step over it.  Passing between her calves almost felt like an honor, and I was glad to have them lining my procession.  They were long and magnificently toned, to the point that the muscle popped out even while relaxing.  It was obvious she played a sport that involved a lot of jumping, which her immense height and general fitness would have only helped.

It took several minutes for me to reach her knees, and I was starting to sweat.  Going between her thighs was even more of a treat than her calves.  They showed the same amount of attention and had been developed until they nearly bulged through her shorts.  Not only that, but the closer I got to her the more intimate it felt.  As I progressed, I noticed that her deep tan was uniform, like she spent most of her free time soaking up the sun.  As far as I was concerned, she had no right to judge me just because I did the same with drinking.

At last I reached the cuffs of her shorts, leaving just a short climb between me and some answers.  Unfortunately, one of her hands set down in front of me, blocking my path, then she cocked her index finger behind her thumb.  With a soft pop the tension released, sending her finger forward.  The tip smashed into me hard enough to lift me off my feet and send me flying back, and I continued rolling backwards after I hit the ground.  I came to a stop against her shoe, dazed and reeling from the blow.

“Did you really think I’d answer the questions of a pathetic little shrink like you?” Fulda asked, her voice dripping with contempt.  “If you had cooperated, I might’ve been nice to you, but you took every chance to be difficult.”  Her shoe rolled toward me on its heel, nearly eclipsing me, and I felt its pressure all along my side.  It moved back before rolling over me, however, and Fulda pulled it away from me.

It did not improve my position, though, since she just moved it far enough away that her sole could hang over me.  My vision was dominated by an enormous, brown rubber diamond twice my size before she lifted her shoe away.  She feinted moving it to the side before bringing it back, lowering it until it touched my nose.  Just before it pressed down on me, however, she moved it to the side again before bringing it back to extend over me.  When she raised it again I was just able to see the grin plastered on her face, as though she were having the time of her life threatening to crush me.

Fulda began pumping her foot over me like she was hitting the brakes, always bringing it a few millimeters away from obliterating me before pulling back.  She seemed to become more amused each time she did it, her smile growing with every pump.  I wanted to back away but didn’t: no doubt if I did, she’d finally smash me.  Instead I laid there, watching her foot advance toward me and retreat with the regularity of a metronome.

Finally, and with such force that it could not have been an accident, Fulda brought her foot all the way down.  My body compressed under the rubber sole and pain spread throughout my body, then there was nothing.  In an instant I had been reduced to a red smear that she would wash away without a thought.  Fulda stood and ground her Converse back and forth where I had been.  She fell back onto her bed and slid a hand downward against her tummy, and I would be forgotten about soon enough.