[Eelskin]

13

?Veronica!? I yelled, but I don?t think she even heard me. Her eyes were glazed over and she wasn?t moving, but still rising higher. What the hell do I do now? I thought to myself.

The angry motorist was standing up, next to me, blood staining his suit. He seemed to have a difficult time deciding whether he was more angry at me for breaking his nose or more awed at Veronica towering above him. For the moment, it seemed, awe was winning out, but he occasionally shot me murderous glances.

?Veronica!? I yelled again, but got no response. People were getting out of their cars, beginning to crowd around, but keeping a safe distance at the same time. Windows were opening from buildings in every direction. I ran up and began tapping her thigh, which was right in front of my face.

That got her attention. She looked down at me and grinned drunkenly. ?Hey, David. I? feel? amazing.?

Uh oh. ?Pick me up!? I shouted back. I did not want her wandering away without me.

She cocked her head and leaned down to grab me in both hands. This wasn?t the biggest I had seen her at, but she still could pick me up in both hands without much difficulty. She held me to her like a baby, with my chest pressed against her shoulder. My legs flailed as I tried to get a grip on her belly with my feet, but it was just a bit too high for me to find any purchase. I just had to grip her shoulder with my arms and hope that she held on to me. She looked away again, in through the open second-story window of a building where there was a wide-eyed young man, dressed only in his underpants, staring at her and smoking a cigarette with an unashamed erection poking out of his boxers. She looked him in the eye and pressed her lips together, blowing him a kiss. His eyes widened even more than they had been, and he started, clutching at his pants as he came just from the sight of her. She giggled.

Correction: this is a worst-case scenario. She?s not thinking rationally. ?Veronica!? I said, into her ear. She smiled down at me. ?We have to get out of here! You need to get away from all of these people!?

She laughed. ?Oh, don?t worry, David. Don?t be jealous. I?m just enjoying this.?

What? ?I?m not jealous! Veronica, look at your car!?

She bowed her head to examine the destroyed bits of metal and glass that littered the pavement around her feet. ?I did that, didn?t I??

?Yes, Veronica, you did that! And if you don?t get out of here right now, you are going to get so big that you are going to destroy a lot more than your car!?

She moaned. ?Just a bit longer, David?? she held me out from her shoulder and looked me in the eyes. ?I wish you could know how this feels? there are so many people out there.?

She?s not just thinking irrationally? she?s drunk. This is very, very bad. I had not even considered this as a worst-case scenario. ?They?ll still be able to see you, Veronica, but you need to get away from these buildings! And all of this traffic!?

Slowly, carefully, she looked around at the pieces of her car around her feet, then at all of the cars gridlocked around her in every direction. ?Okay,? she conceded, finally.

Oh thank Christ, I thought. Now: where do we go? But it didn?t matter what suggestions I might have come up with, because Veronica pressed me back to her shoulder and shifted into motion, walking down the sidewalk, which was still wide enough to accommodate her- for the moment. Ahead of us, people screamed and ran out of her way, into alleys and doorways and into the street, between stationary cars. She paid them no mind, just walking down the street slowly, nonchalantly, as though she had just decided to go for a walk on an otherwise uneventful day. I held on to her shoulder for dear life, noticing that my feet could now rest comfortably on her stomach, and that her ear was just a bit further away from me than it had been a moment ago. I looked to my left and could see the second-story windows as we walked by them getting slowly, gradually, lower and lower, until we approached the third-story windows. On nearby buildings that didn?t have three stories, residents were congregating on the rooftops to witness the spectacle. Veronica waved at them. They didn?t wave back.

At this point, Veronica yelped in pain and stumbled. I grabbed hold of her shoulder in panic, digging my fingers into her flesh. I?m sure most people would have yelped in pain at that, but Veronica didn?t even feel it. From below me I could hear a CLANG of metal on concrete and a rush of pressure, and suddenly I was being sprayed from below with ice-cold water. I realised that Veronica had stubbed her toe on a fire hydrant and knocked the whole thing off the sidewalk- without even trying. She fell forward slightly and tried to steady herself on a lamppost, but it collapsed instantly under her enormous weight. It fell into the street, denting the roof of one car and smashing the windshield of another. The alarm in one of them began wailing.

She covered her mouth with her hands, nearly dropping me. ?Sorry! Oh my god, I really didn?t mean to do that!?

It was at this point that people began to realise how much of a danger she was. With every passing minute, she swelled larger and wider, and with every new meter of height, she became that much clumsier- and, as a direct result, that much more destructive. I could see people running away from her now, though many were still gawking.

She looked into the street and saw that traffic was only jammed in one direction- two of the lanes were almost totally empty. She stepped over the parked cars to get to the empty lanes, where she could walk more comfortably. As she did so, I could hear a number of people underneath us cry out in fear that she was going to step on their cars, while they were inside. Luckily, she did no such thing. She just stepped over them and continued walking down the street, passing by people?s homes and shops, getting taller and heavier with every footfall.

As she continued down the street, I could see her feet slowly taking up more and more of the lane as she walked down it, and noticed that we were moving perceptibly faster and faster. She was walking casually, but someone running alongside her would not be able to keep up. Occasionally, she would pick up on some particularly intense emotion radiating from someone, and look around playfully to see if she could find the source. When she could, she would pause and spend some time basking in it. From my vantage point, I was just about able to see the rooftops of the three-story buildings, and since there were no four-story buildings in this part of town, that essentially meant that Veronica was now visible from blocks away in every direction. Wonderful. The number of people who can see her just multiplied.

At one point, she looked down at a group of two men and two women on the roof of their two-story apartment building, and she must have detected something particularly special emanating from them, because she turned and focused on them. They got nervous and took a couple of steps back, even though she was in the middle of the street. But when she stepped toward them, two of them actually ran away. Of the two who remained, one stood, transfixed, and the other stepped forward. Veronica leaned her arms down on the roof of the building and I cringed as I could hear the structure groan under her incredible weight. I?m sure the architects did not have this in mind when testing the stability of this building, I thought. She rested her gigantic breasts on top of her forearms, directly in front of the man and woman on the rooftop. She didn?t say anything. Nothing was necessary. All she wanted was to be adored. She grinned at them and they stared back.

From behind, she began to sway her bum back and forth for the benefit of everyone behind her and across the street. My god, I thought. She?s posing. She?s putting on a show for the entire city. I was terrified to think of how big she was going to get as a result of this. I heard a CRUNCH and looked down to see that her protruding belly had collided with someone?s second-floor balcony, ripped it off the side of the building and sent it tumbling down to the sidewalk. It is actually getting impossible for her to not destroy everything around her, I thought to myself as I listened to the tenants of the second floor screaming at their wall being pulled apart by this titanic person. I climbed up onto her shoulder and turned around, sitting, facing the same direction as she was. I held on a few strands of her hair to keep my balance. Her ear was at my chest level, which meant I could speak to her quite easily.

?Veronica,? I spoke into her ear, ?How about going to the lake? There?s lots of open space there.?

She turned her head from her adoring spectators and turned back to me. The enormity of her face shocked me as she smiled a huge, toothy grin that was wide enough for me to fit my entire head inside. Okay? now she is bigger than she?s ever been. And she?s still growing. I no longer felt horror or terror at the situation. Just numbness.

?David, you are so cute down there!? Her voice boomed at me and I had to fight my reflexes to block my ears, because that would mean letting go of her hair.

?I?m serious, Veronica. If you stay here you?re going to keep causing damage!?

One of the two people on the roof began to climb onto Veronica?s breast, trying to sit on her other shoulder like I was. He grabbed some of her hair and began to climb up it like a rope.

?Ouch!? Veronica cried as the weight of this man pulled on her hair. She jerked her head back reflexively and he was pulled away from the building. He began screaming as he held on for his life to my girlfriend?s hair, swinging wildly back and forth, bumping against her chest, two floors above street level. ?Oh no!? Veronica gasped, and grabbed him in one hand. I could hear people screaming from a distance at the sight of this man being held aloft. He cried out as well, in pain this time, and she placed him back down on the roof, where he fell down onto his knees and gasped for breath.

She looked down at him with concern, still rising higher. ?Veronica,? I said again. I need to keep her focused. ?Veronica, we need to keep going.?

?I know, I know.? She was responding like a child. ?I?m going. I think the lake would be nice? it?s so hot out today.? And she stepped back into the empty lane, following it south.

I looked out toward the horizon to try to gauge how long it would take us, but it was then that I realised something awful. My heart sank when I realised that getting to the lake would be far, far more problematic than I had hoped it would be.

This street will bring us to the lake? but first, we're going to have to go through downtown.