Best posts made by Kisupure

Because I do more of these than any kind of finished work I should be proud of.

I don’t have hair nearly this luxurious, or sunglasses nearly this cool.

@Olo

I’m no stranger to the macro community, but I thought I’d introduce myself here. I’m Kisupure (yes, a nod to the infamy of Kiss Players!), I’m a FTM and sizeswitch, though I lean more towards the giant end of things.

The good lord above put me on this earth to bring a little more Heavy Metal Magazine to macro/micro world, so here I am, with guns and engine grease in tow. Oh, the gravel truck’s here? Tell 'em to dump it just out back.

I like realistic size difference, and wildly unrealistic size difference. I like gun play that involves stuffing tinies down the barrel of a nice, loaded M4. I like giants with their boots on, muscles bulging behind their body armor. I like daddies in dusty kevlar. I like giants who are cyborgs, robots, and machines that are designed to have people sit inside of them. Giants who are large and in charge, but also giants who are soft and kind and scared of losing their little lovers or allies or fuckbuddies, giants who have flaws as well as sexy things they’re really really good at. Giants that are unapologetically dominant, and giants that are good at faking it. Vore and endosoma are A+ too.

I’m also an objectum sexual (as in orientation), so to me, “male” can mean flesh and blood as well as axles and ailerons. An A-10 warthog is just as much a lovable giant to me as the guy on your bag of frozen peas. OS representation all the way.

I write, I draw, and I’ve got some long-form stuff in the works including a “graphic novel” that I hope tickles somebody’s fancy (other than my own, of course). So howdy!

CHAPTER 2: DISCOVERED

Later that evening the man ordered pizza and Dawn could smell it when it arrived. He had neglected to check under the couch earlier, and out of sheer terror she hadn’t dared leave her sanctuary all day, but the fatigue, thirst, and hunger were finally getting to her.

She had woken up that morning to find herself in a most impossible and horrifying situation: shrunk down to the size of a Barbie doll, and taken into some stranger’s apartment. She’d spent all day trying to figure out how it all happened, and where she’d wound up. By the street noise outside, she knew she was at least still in New York City. Good. That was a good start.

The owner of the apartment–she only knew it was a man by his voice–thanked the delivery driver and drew nearer to where she hid in the under-structure of the sofa. Dawn bit back a yelp when he sat down right above her, but she resolved to stay hidden. When he went to bed, she’d come out to find the phone. That’s it. She’d call the firm, let them know something terrible happened…

The man clicked the TV on. It was one of those older ones that didn’t have a remote. She’d think he was some bohemian if the rest of his apartment wasn’t so clean and white and spartan, and judging by what she could see from under the couch, she guessed that he was an artist of some sort. There were a few paintings on the walls and there were interesting wooden or plaster carvings in various corners of the loft. She recognized an elephant-headed god from India, as well as some other hyper-intellectual pieces, that resembled… well, they didn’t resemble anything that she could think of. Those were probably from just across town. Hmph. Art was such a waste of time and money.

The woman made a face as her stomach growled, hoping he wouldn’t hear–he didn’t–and tried to take her mind off her misery when he put on the news. God the pizza smelled good. She imagined the phone ringing and the man getting stuck talking long enough for her to slip out and make off with a gob of cheese…

But that didn’t happen, and the anchorman continued droning on and Dawn felt more and more scared and sorry for herself. The segment ended, though, and she froze when she heard her name.

“A Manhattan lawyer has been missing since Thursday night, a police spokesman said. Thirty-two year old Dawn Cooper, a defense attorney with the firm Raymond Thurlow, was last seen leaving the Bistro Les Amis in SoHo at about 9:30 that night, when eyewitnesses say they they saw the victim get into a taxi cab. If you have any information regarding Dawn’s whereabouts, police have opened their tipline…”

A sob wracked her body, she couldn’t help it.

The exhaustion, the fear, the hunger, it was all too much. She’d been hoping that this was all somehow just a bad dream, but any lingering doubts were now gone. It was real.

The crying wasn’t stopping, and she didn’t have the energy to try and fight it anymore. Dawn shakily released herself from her uncomfortable and precarious perch under the couch and sunk to the floor, where she let the tears flow. Who did this and why? Was there any hope in going back to normal? What would the police say when they found her like this? She’d make headlines all right, and not the good kind.

She was so tired that she didn’t notice that the man had gotten up from the couch and was in the process of getting down on hands and knees to see what that sound was. It was when he gave a startled yell that she screamed and darted out into the open.

Looking wildly around, she finally grasped just how small she was. The back of the couch loomed above her, and behind it, standing even taller, was the man. His face was slackened in pure shock and he kept a finger pointed at her.

“Y-y-you’re… real…”

"What did you do to me! Change me back!"she hollered at him through the tears.

“I-I didn’t do anything!”

“Bullshit!”

“I found you in the trash! I-I thought you were a-an art piece or something!”

Dawn’s frustration just made her cry more; it didn’t happen often, and she hated when it did. She started at him as he took his eyes off her to pace.

“I’m calling the police.”

“No!”

“No? You’re a lawyer, give me one good reason not to!”

“Please! I have a reputation!”

“And you know what? That’s not my problem.”

He sped over to a side table and grabbed the receiver. Dawn found herself sprinting over to him.

“Please, please. Just give me time to process things. I don’t even know what day it is! I’m starving and thirsty and I have to pee!”

He looked down at her with thoughtfully panicked brown eyes for a moment, fingers hovering over the keypad. Eventually, he set the phone down.

“Alright. Let me get you some water. And, uhm, something to cover up with,” he muttered.

As he dashed up the stairs to the kitchen area, Dawn looked down at herself and remembered that she was completely naked. A blush reddened her from head to toe and she sat down on the floor to hug her knees to her chest while she waited. She was surprised that he hadn’t seemed distracted by her body.

He returned with a shot glass and a tea towel, which she snatched from him with a sniffle. He turned around while she wrapped it around herself.

“I’m Keith Morgan, by the way,” he said, peeking over his shoulder after a few moments. “It’s Saturday night and you’re in Flatbush.”

Dawn lifted the glass and gulped half of it down.

“Nice to meet you, Keith.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

"And why should I be?"she snapped.

He frowned. “I’m trying to help, remember? Now come on, you said you were hungry. I’m not going to eat this whole pizza myself.”

Keeping their distance, they both went back to the couch. It quickly became apparent that she would need help to get to the food.

“Do you… want a lift?” he asked awkwardly, holding out his hand.

“No! I can get up there myself.”

Both the coffee table and couch were several inches taller than she was, which was something she hadn’t thought through. The tiny woman tried to see if she could hoist herself up–maybe she had some kind of bug strength now–but to no avail. She growled in exasperation.

Keith sighed. “Here.” He reached under the glass table and pulled out a few large books. Each of them had an artists’ name on the front in big letters, with a photo of their work. They looked expensive. Out of them, though, he managed to create something of a staircase for her, and when Dawn stepped up to the top, she was much closer to the table, and she was able to climb up the last few inches without too much trouble.

“Thank you.”

Keith circled around to turn the volume on the TV set down, presumably so they could talk.

He watched her warily as she went for the smallest slice of the pie and began to wolf it down.

“So… what was the last thing you remember?”

Chewing mozzarella cheese with a mouth this small was strange and difficult, while at the same time the flavors seemed just that much more pronounced. It was… fascinating.

“I remember leaving the restaurant and hailing a cab home.”

“Do you remember getting out of the cab?”

She nodded and took another bite. “I remember pulling my keys out of my purse to go inside…”

“…And?”

Dawn thought about it. Things were hazy. “There was a… man behind me. He pulled something out of his pocket, I thought it was a gun.”

“What did he look like?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. His face was covered.”

Keith nodded, reaching for another slice for himself. Dawn watched as his enormous hand drew near, grabbing it by the crust, and she couldn’t help but compare it to a piece of construction equipment grabbing a tree or chunk of concrete and dragging it away. It was… incredible.

They sat in silence like that for a little while, and it occurred to her that she was technically an uninvited guest in this man’s home. He deserved to have her hold up her end of the social contract, at least.

"So… are you an artist or something?"she asked.

“I’m a sculptor and furniture designer,” he said. Well that explained it. “The coffee table’s one of mine.”

The tiny woman looked around at the expanse of table under her. It was a big piece of glass held up by some kind of contrived shape in wood. She didn’t like it.

“Very nice. Could you show me the restroom, please?”

“Oh! Uh, yeah.”

Keith stood up, towering over her again as he brushed passed, and it was almost enough to give her vertigo. His long strides devoured the floor and on his way to the bathroom he grabbed another armful of books from a stack on the floor. By the time Dawn caught up to him, he had already had them arranged into stairs next to the commode.

“Try not to fall in,” he joked with a little chuckle, and eased the door shut. “I’m just outside, give me a knock when you’re ready to come out.”

She did almost fall in. Almost. Reaching for a scrap of toilet paper had thrown off her careful balance, but in the end she succeeded at doing her business.

“I’ll leave the books there for you I guess.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

Dawn looked at the wood grain in the floor and worried her now very small lip. She was not calling the police, that was for sure. This story didn’t need to get any bigger than it already was–she just need to call her firm, the people who probably reported her missing when she didn’t show up to work Friday, let them know she was still alive. There was just a medical emergency that came up, and she’d be taking some time off work. They could shift her caseload to Tim and Joyce in the meantime.

The worrying turned into full-on chewing. Keith seemed to sense her anxiety because he crouched down to get a little closer as he waited for her reply.

“Can I… can I stay through Monday?”

Stupid, stupid! What a stupid thing to ask! He was going to say no, she knew he was. But there was nowhere else to go. Not home, not even to her friend’s. Not yet.

He studied her with expressive eyes and thought for a moment.

“Why the hell not,” he sighed, and stood up again.

“Great! I-I’ll call the firm first thing in the morning. Crystal’s usually there at 8:30 sharp, she’ll answer. She may not recognize my voice, but one of the partners will, they have to… Thank you Keith. I owe you, I really do.”

“It’s, ah, no big deal, really. It’s not like you can eat me out of house and home,” he laughed nervously.

“As soon as I get back to normal, I’ll cut you a check to cover expenses.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“Surely your time is worth something?”

“Yeah, if you were wasting it,” he retorted. “Frankly, Miss Cooper, this whole thing has been quite a trip. What’s a couple more days?”

Keith let her watch TV as he put the pizza away upstairs, and mentioned that he would cut one of the slices up for her into more manageable pieces. He asked if there was anything else she wanted, and Dawn knew that her usual routine of slimming shakes and freshly pressed carrot juice was probably out of the question. Maybe he could run down to a video store and rent her an aerobics tape tomorrow. Staying fit helped her stay focused. She liked getting the blood pumping.

Before Dawn knew it, it was ten o’clock and Keith said he was ready to head to bed. He brought out a clean pillowcase for her to sleep in if she wanted, but it was still so warm that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to sleep under anything. Still, she took it with thanks and he went to shower off before disappearing behind the closed door of his bedroom.

Clambering onto the coffee table and from there jumping onto the couch, the little lady realized that the pillowcase would be cooler than the tea towel, and quickly she slipped out of the one and into the other.

Feeling much less panicked than earlier, Dawn gave into her exhaustion and fell asleep.

Late to the topic, but it’s been something I’ve been thinking on as well as I get further along in my transition and as my tastes… metamorphosize lol. I think I have a unique perspective to bring in that regard, especially as the more I become myself, the “straighter” my orientation gets. (I put that in scare quotes because I still am absolutely queer as all fuck, including being primarily asexual and aromantic. That is, I don’t experience primary sexual attraction or desire to romance people. But I still experience “physical attraction”, which for me is most aligned with the desire to do kink and other physical activity, even if it’s not explicitly sexual/orgasmic in nature.)

Some of yall who’ve been following me for years have seen my struggles, and seen the lengths I went to explain away my dysphoria. For those unfamiliar with me, I went from SW to giant. In my personal life, the dominants I met were never dominant enough, or dominant in exactly the way I was looking for; I kept wanting to tell them what to do to me. Turns out I’m a shit sub and wanted to call the shots the whole time!

But even now, even as a straight-passing, cis-passing male in my day to day life, I am extremely comfortable with writing from the female sub POV, and I enjoy it. In my years trying to be a woman, I learned to enjoy parts of it, I learned the play the part I wanted to see in someone else, so when I write from a woman’s perspective, I don’t half-ass it, I throw my whole being into it all over again. I get into her mind, I don’t think “OK I’m a chick”, I think “OK, I’m a human”. The vast, vast majority of men don’t understand that because they’re fucking narcisstistic idiots. Except it’s worse, because they don’t even enjoy themselves! They don’t even insert their whole selves into the works they make, and enjoy all of who they are as men - they reduce the whole of their own humanity down to dick-n-ball, just enough to have the fully-rendered recipient to interact with.

As I start looking at straight porn more from the male perspective too, I’m super underwhelmed for this reason. I remember something an internet rando said once regarding futa porn and why it’s so popular, and it haunts me a little. They said that you could do stuff with futa you couldn’t do with straight porn. You could have intimacy, you could show the penis-haver’s pleasure. It wasn’t always about dick-in-hole and violence. The futa could have a face. It frustrates me to no end to see faceless dude-shaped thing after faceless dude-shaped thing in porn. Men, stop doing this to yourselves. Fucking enjoy yourself for once!

I try to avoid this at all costs, which is easy because I don’t get off on it. Everyone’s real person in everything in write, that’s always my #1 goal. If that means that what I write is chick-lit, that’s OK by me. It’s much more gratifying to write everyone as complicated people and women who are sometimes at odds with their male counterparts. As a character in one of my non-size short stories said about why he bothers to spend time pleasuring the sex workers he hired: “If I wanted to just stick my dick into something, I could make a fist. What I’m here for is sex.”

For real though, imagining myself as a giant makes me feel confident and attractive like I never was as a SW. Being small allowed me to hide. Being a GT feels transgressive, to be honest, because I’m on display, the subject of the gaze. Feeling sexy as opposed to just sexual as a man is a big source of shame and internalized homophobia. Even being clean and well-dressed is enough to make a man feel effeminate - or why did society need to come up with “metrosexual”? Like seriously, men, interrogate yourselves about why you’re uncomfortable with the things you are. Because I guarantee you, it’s not natural and it’s not how it’s always been.

@olo

holy shit I’m tired now, goodnight

I think the problem with topics like this is that there is always going to be the implication, however small, of entitlement. It’s never “I wish more people were into the thing I’m into”, but always some kind of “I wish creators would make things for me for free”. Creators make all kinds of free things already, the internet is full of them. That none of it, or enough of it, is your favorite thing isn’t anyone’s problem but yours. Creators don’t owe you their time, skill, money, resources. It’s kind of a slap in the face to creators who make things for free already, like myself (and I even take requests!), because it’s not the thing you want to see.

But that’s what commissions, trades, and financially supporting creators who make things you like are for. The more you actually pay people to make things, the more your interest is going to be noticed and acknowledged.

Griping like this is not a good look, especially when there are creators reading and posting here.

“But I wanna sleep HERE tonight!”

A Brooklyn artist stumbles across an interesting find in the trash and brings it home. Turns out “it” is a curt and demanding Manhattan lawyer who has been mysteriously and maliciously shrunk down to 12 inches tall. Will she ever get her hyperproductive, busy life back, or will the artist have time to show her how much sweeter things taste when you slow down to enjoy them?

Giving that idea a go, @tiny-ivy !

========

CHAPTER 1: THE MAIL KEY

Keith Morgan hauled himself up the 100 year-old stairs of his Flatbush loft. They creaked louder than a setpiece in the Haunted Mansion ride, and he winced. It was almost 3am, and seventy-year-old lady on the first floor always seemed to notice when he was coming home by the noise. She liked sticking her head out to mention it when he was grabbing his mail, and would sometimes ask when he was getting a real job. Wait–mail!

“Ah, shit,” he hissed, louder than intended, and spun back around on the third-floor landing. Keith had realized, while out to dinner with some friends, that he’d accidentally thrown out his mail key that morning–it had gotten swept into the trash along with some old magazines and taken out. Being five glasses of wine in, however, would make it a nearly impossible task to find it. He was going to try, though.

Nearly stumbling down the last few stairs, he surged outside and toward the pile of garbage bags on the sidewalk. His would have been the one right on top. Street trash was already accumulating on it, though, and with a wince he brushed away banana peels, pop cans, and other whatnot.

Underneath a bag of Lays, though, was something that distracted him from his mission. It looked like an arm. Not a person’s arm, of course, but a doll’s arm. He lifted his bag of garbage away from the pile, then, and saw, bathed in the buzzing orange light of a Brooklyn streetlamp, what looked like the most lifelike toy he had ever seen.

“Weird,” he said. Grinning, Keith grabbed it gently by the waist and lifted it free. When he could see it better, he realized that it was so lifelike that it had perfectly sculpted breasts and genitals. He gasped before bursting into laughter. This was so fucking bizarre! As an artist himself, he could tell that a lot of work went into this. There was an inner structure he could feel through the skin, but it didn’t seem able to hold a pose. Why include one if it was going remain limp? He imagined the artist’s statement already: a feminist piece about how women are required to be strong but punished for exercising agency. Maybe someone doing sculpture at Cooper Union made it. But why would it be thrown away? It probably cost a fortune in materials.

Keith was fascinated by the find in his drunken state, and with a sloppy grin he brought it upstairs, hoping to learn more about it in the morning and forgetting altogether about the mail key. If nothing else, she’d make an interesting coffee table piece. Maybe he could have some people over for life drawing with it.

The doll weighed maybe three or four pounds and seemed to be about a foot tall, just big enough to be slung over his shoulder. Soon he’d climbed the stairs back up to the third floor without dropping her. Inside the loft, he flicked a switch and a long line of Christmas lights lit up along the whitewashed brick walls. He swayed across the open floor and put her down on the couch. Something about the way she felt made him want to be very careful… she seemed very fragile.

“Jesus,” he murmured as he pushed and pulled the doll into laying prone on her back. It was, um… it was an attractive little thing. Through the wine he could see that there was a slit between her legs, small enough to be able to cover with the pad of his thumb. A blush reddened his cheeks at the thought. It’s just a doll, he reminded himself. This wasn’t a person, there was nothing wrong with looking. He lifted one leg a askew so he could satisfy his curiosity, but scowled deeply and let go when he thought he saw a clitoral hood. “Oh come on, it didn’t need to be this real,” he said to the cavernous loft, as if the walls themselves were judging him.

He hoped to god that it was a feminist piece, and left it there as he crossed the floor to his room on the other side of the building. He collapsed into bed and thought about the strange piece of art until he drifted off to sleep.

Keith’s head was pounding when he woke up the next day around noon. His hands smelled like the garbage he’d been digging through, so he shambled into the adjacent bathroom and washed up in a porcelain sink older than his great aunt. The tile work beneath his feet was charming and old, just like most other things in the building, and everywhere the high ceilings were covered in pressed tin. He loved the old loft, and rent was good for someone like him because he didn’t need to have a separate studio and clients could meet him here.

The summer sun was blasting through the windows. Keith winced as he shed last night’s clothes on his way back to the bedroom. His hands weren’t the only things that smelled funny. Finally down to his underpants to cool off in what was sure to be another sweltering summer day, he went about his next task.

“Coffee,” he grunted. “Coffee, coffee, coff–”

Keith froze when he passed by the couch and the doll was no longer there. For a brief moment, he wondered if it happened at all, if maybe he hadn’t dreamt up the whole thing. No, no, the smell on his hands had been real.

The man glanced wildly around the space, expecting to see it anywhere, at any moment. He’d never believed in things like ghosts and demons, but maybe it was time to start.

Sweat prickled on the back of his neck as he thought up his next move. That’s when he decided to go get coffee somewhere else. Buy himself some time. In record speed he was dressed again, key held in a shaking hand as he bee-lined out the door.

“Something’s in my apartment,” he muttered to himself, and headed for the diner a few blocks away. “M-maybe it’ll let itself out while I’m gone…”

He sat at the counter at Ray’s for over three hours. At some point he’d ordered food, one more coffee, a Coke, and gotten through two different newspapers.

“Hey buddy, you can’t sit here all day. I got other payin’ customers that want that spot.”

Keith glanced around. “There’s only six people in here, Ray.”

“Get goin’, Picasso.”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“Go? Go home, buddy.”

“I-I can’t go home.”

“Then go see a movie or somethin’. All I know is you’re not staying here all night.”

A movie. Yeah, yeah he’d go see a movie. Theaters were nice and cool, too, and he’d save on water by not sitting in the bath like he did every day when it got too hot.

“Fine.”

Keith paid his bill and left. A movie was perfect. There was no way he was going home now. Not with that thing there. He had to buy his time until he thought of some way to deal with it, somehow. Was there a chance that he maybe brought home a squirrel or something? Keith balked. No way, that was the most realistic human vagina he’d ever seen on a sculpture.

Maybe he could go to animal control, or the police. Or maybe they’d laugh him out of the building if he said anything about what they could be looking for.

In the meantime, Keith resolved to go see a movie. With subway token in hand, he headed for the station across the street from his building to take himself to Manhattan. Then afterwards, maybe he could have a nice stroll through the botanic garden, go out to dinner again, maybe call up one of his friends to meet up for a late-night game of pool…

No. Keith pocketed the token. From where he stood with his hand on the brass handrail leading down to the station, he looked up at his loft and its tall windows, expecting to see something, but he didn’t. He couldn’t avoid this forever, that was ridiculous. Setting his jaw, the man crossed the street and returned to figure out what was going on once and for all.

He paused on his doorstep after making that damned creaky climb up the stairs, listening through the door. There was nothing for a long time, and Keith finally let himself in. He groped for the umbrella stand, grabbing one and wielding it like a sword as he stalked through the loft. He started on the main floor, carefully winding his way around the foyer, to the living area, then around to his partitioned 600 square foot studio.

It was a mess, as all good studios should be, with plaster and wood and unfinished pieces strewn about. He held still, eyes darting around, looking for movement before slowly circling through the space. He poked at a few things with the end of the umbrella, things where a small creature might hide, but there was nothing. He headed toward the guest room next.

“I know you’re here,” he said, trying to sound commanding and fearless. Another section of the ancient wooden floor creaked as he passed over it. “I know… you’re… here…”

He stood in the doorway of the guest room, did his initial survey of the space, then ventured further in. He stood in front of a wardrobe and flung it open, but it was empty. There was nothing under the bed.

“Damn,” he said, and stroked his chin. He was now more baffled than before. Maybe he had just imagined all of it.

Moving with a little less tension now, he headed back out and to the stairs that would take him to the kitchen. There was nothing up there either. Last place to check was his own bedroom.

He crossed the floor again, more confidently this time, and went through the same motions as before. He poked and prodded at the curtains, checked under the bed, looked through the closet. He even went through his pile of dirty clothes on the floor. Nothing.

“Christ, I must be going crazy.”

Male renders are finally starting to look good! This is fantastic

CHAPTER 8: THE SKYLINE

Dawn wished that she could say that the kiss caught her by surprise, but she knew that look in his eyes, and even this small it was obvious his eyes were flicking down to linger at her mouth.

What did surprise her, though was the sheer thrill of it. His face was enormous, the size of a sedan to her, and it came close with such precision. Instinctively she held out her hands and they came to rest on his stubble-shadowed cheeks just before his lips pressed to the bottom half of her face.

She kissed him back, or tried to–Dawn wasn’t entirely sure he could feel her, so she made sure to throw her back into it. Keith’s hot, wine-cooler-flavored mouth found purchase along her jaw, and she supposed that was some geometry that he could settle on without swallowing up her nose.

Warm breath flowed over her and she felt like she were kissing some mythical beast. When he pulled clumsily away, the lawyer felt altogether like she was 16 years old again. How did that happen?

Dawn had been turned around and backed up his leg, and she couldn’t tell if she’d slid up herself up the fuzzy limb of if he’d pushed her that way, but in a calculated move she let her derriere come back down to rest in the crook of his thigh, making sure to keep her dainty legs away from the second brain surely smoldering away in those silly technicolor shorts of his.

This was a game of wills, she wanted to make him repeat for her. But somehow the idea of losing didn’t sound so bad. Not at twelve inches tall, at least. She didn’t have as far to fall at this size, and felt easier to catch.

“You’re drunk,” she said with a grin.

“I’m not the only one.”

Peter Gabriel played softly in the background, but it wasn’t exactly a soft song. “I wanna be… your sledgehammer…!”

Keith beamed in the long New York summer twilight. “Each of those shotglasses must’ve been like a fishbowl’s worth of drink for you.”

“I can hold my liquor,” she insisted.

He chuckled. “Sure, at 140 pounds, maybe. But three? C’mon, Dawn, do the math. The numbers don’t lie. You’re hammered.”

She found herself sticking out her tongue. “Are you always this much of a tease?”

“Oh, so now I’m a tease because I haven’t rushed you off to the bedroom yet, is that it?”

She watched him stretch and put his arms behind his head, well out of her reach. It was all the same to her, though, because his lean frame looked much broader this way and she could clearly see the outline of his biceps.

Dawn kept wanting to push him, goad him into acting out, but it was looking like the kiss was all she was going to get for now. She experimentally pressed her foot into his belly button and felt his abs tighten in response. It was like pushing a lever on a great, powerful machine and seeing what would happen.

“That’s not how all of my dates end,” she added with a little haughty defiance.

The song continued: “I kicked the habit… shed my skin… this is the new stuff… I go dancing in…”

“You should trying dating more artists,” Keith decided, returning his gaze to the view. “We can tease you for weeks.”

“And let me guess, “artists do it with style” or something.”

“No, we do it with longer strokes,” he said with a hint of bedroom voice she hadn’t heard before. It sent tingles down into her toes. When she looked up, he was looking at her with a bit of a self-satisfied smirk that she wanted to wipe off his face with a taste of her own sexual prowess.

Instead, she wiggled her toes among the dark hairs on his belly. “Don’t shorten them for me now, darling. I like 'em long.”

He just laughed, and it shook her in a pleasant way. Dawn decided that she liked playing with a giant like this. It was fun pulling his strings and feeling him tug back. A game of wills indeed!

“C’mon, turn around and enjoy this view with me.”

“I’m enjoying the view just fine from here.”

Keith rolled his eyes and leaned forward to adjust the beach chair further backward as she balanced on his activated rectus femoris. Then, not appearing to hesitate at all this time, he wrapped his thick fingers around her middle, tearing her away from her perch, spun her around, and set her in the crook of his arm. A relaxed pectoralis major was underneath her butt this time, and her view was of his long legs stretching out before her, the expanse of roof, still radiating heat, and beyond the river, the World Trade Center loomed and twinkled against a great backdrop of pink and orange sky. A plane hit a waypoint overhead, its engine dropping to a lower note as it prepared to circle around to JFK, and a siren wailed in the distance. The radio began playing Papa Don’t Preach.

“There. Let’s just enjoy this for a little while, alright?” He took another slurp of 7-up and held the can to his cheek, forcing a sigh of contentment.

Dawn brushed a lock of hair behind his ear, but it was too short to stay there. “What’s this about, now?”

“I don’t like to rush things, that’s all.”

“You don’t like to follow your passion while it’s sizzling hot? C’mon Keith, don’t tell me you prefer lunchmeat over a filet mignon right off the grill.”

“You’re not sober.”

“And it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I’m not sober.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time either.”

“This doesn’t bother you? Like, at all?”

He gestured with the can to her and then to himself, looking at her expectantly. Dawn grinned and leaned in toward his ear.

“I like a challenge.” When he made a frustrated sound, she doubled down. “Have you ever had one-night-stand?”

“Yes, I have. But that’s besides the point. The point is…” He made a handsomely befuddled face for a moment. “That you’re, frankly, barely bigger than my swack, and necking a drunk girl is bad enough without her being small enough to stuff in my pants while I’m at it.”

Oh, Keith, she thought. Those were the words of a very interested but very conflicted man.

He continued. “Look, I have no idea what this week is going to bring for either of us. But let’s not do anything that can make stuff worse for you. You’ll have enough on your plate tomorrow as it is.”

“I guess you’re not wrong,” she conceded with a huff.

“Do you know what you’ll do after you make that phone call?”

Dawn sighed and reclined against him, her head not even reaching his collarbone. It must’ve been more comfortable than his own sun-bleached beach chair, though. “I was going to call up one of my girlfriends, have her stop by. I can’t hide from everyone forever.”

“Could you stay with her?”

“No can do. She has three Great Danes.”

Keith’s chest swelled underneath her. “You can stay with me as long as you need to, I guess. You’ll need to hide when I have anyone over, though.”

“How often is that?”

“Couple times a week. I usually see clients on Thursdays.” A pause. “You’ll have to cooperate with police eventually, you know. There’s going to be an investigation.”

Dawn just groaned. She knew exactly how long and how stupid police investigations were, and she was not looking forward to getting caught up in one like this. Sure, she’d filed a half-dozen restraining orders in her time against unhinged clients who…

A little light went off in her head, then. Dawn remembered now a man she defended back in '82 who had killed a neighbor’s dog with some odd machine, and was found to be quite the all-around nutter. He was up for parole last year, and when he didn’t make any appearances around the firm, Dawn thought nothing of it and got on with her life. Looking back, though, he was an extremely difficult client. When she tried talking to him about the purpose of the machine, he said nothing. He’d taken no notes, wrote in no journals. The only details they could get out of him were what they could find in the stacks of loose papers he referred to as “the plans”, full of schematics and nonsense math that not even forensics could make heads or tails of.

“Dawn?”

She jumped up and turned around, planting a big wet one on his lower lip. His hand flew to where she was in case she fell. “Keith, you’ve just reminded me that I might have a lead after all.”

I would hope to god I could still use my phone so I could start calling up everyone in my rolodex that I’ve been interested in to see if they want to “meet me for beers”.

Then, while I waited for the first of my dates to show up, I would take the opportunity to severely punish all of the fuckers who make illegal turns onto my street at rush hour. Because what’s a growth spurt without some car stomping?

CHAPTER 10: THE VISIT

The artist was very apologetic when he had to excuse himself to get at least a little work done, but Dawn assured him she would have done the same thing if she could.

He left her on the couch to play the Price is Right while he disappeared into the studio to make phone calls. She tried paying attention to the tired old game show, but found her ears wandering instead. Dawn listened to him as he spoke with a customs broker of some sort, and liked the way that he was firmly instructing them to get to the bottom of some misplaced shipment of KEMO commercial pieces on their way to Paris from the woodshop.

His next phone call was to someone who dealt in lumber, it seemed, and Dawn was amazed that he didn’t have an assistant to make all these calls for him. She would try to remember suggesting it later, and go through her Rolodex to see who might know someone to suggest for the job.

Otherwise, the minutes ticked by with grueling slowness and Dawn couldn’t stand it. She paced in front of the TV until the buzzer sounded by the door on the wall. It was so loud and so sudden that she couldn’t help the yelp of surprise. Keith came bounding out of the studio

“Yello!” he said into the speaker.

“It’s Beverly, is this the right place?”

“It is, come on up.”

“I brought mace, so don’t try nothin’!”

Keith just buzzed her in and stood with his back against the door as they both listened to her climb the stairs. When the creaking stopped, he counted down from three and after one, Beverly knocked.

Dawn dashed behind something, wanting to give Keith a chance to butter her up before revealing herself.

“Hi there, mornin’,” Keith said as he opened the door. “Welcome to, uh, Studio KEMO.”

“Yeah, yeah. Where the hell’s my friend?” She started walking around. “Dawn? You here?”

“I’ll show you in just a minute but I-I have to just… reiterate what she told you, alright?”

“Whaddya mean, reiterate?”

“No screaming, OK?”

“Why the hell would I scream? What’s wrong with her, she disfigured or somethin’?”

“Oh no,” she heard Keith chuckle. “She’s still figured alright. She’s just um… you know.”

“I don’t understand what that means with the hands.”

“She’s, uh…”

“Would you stop gesturing and tell me so I can hurry up and see her?”

“Dawn’s been shrunk, alright?”

“Shrunk? What kinda shrunk, like in the dryer?”

“No, like like in the Incredible Shrinking Woman!”

Beverly gasped. “But that was a harrible movie.”

Dawn took the opportunity to step out of her refuge behind the big statue of Ganesh, and much to her chagrin, Beverly did scream. Keith grabbed her by the arm to keep her from running out the door.

“DAWN?”

“Yes, it’s me!”

“Holy shit, girl, w-what happened to you?” The platinum blonde got down onto the floor to gawk, and Dawn dared creep a little closer. “What on Earth are you wearin’?”

“Keith got me a Cabbage Patch dress. Look, I have no idea what happened. I-I was about to let myself into my apartment Thursday night after grabbing a bite with a client, someone comes up behind me and bam. Next thing I know I wake up on his couch Saturday morning all the way out here.”

Dawn looked to Keith and he shrugged. “I found her in the trash outside.” In fact, they all took a moment to listen to the rumble and hiss of the garbage truck a block away. Monday was trash day. “Glad they didn’t dump you last night.”

“Wait, I thought you two knew each other?”

“Yeah, that was to keep you from hanging up on me.”

“This guy’s treatin’ you right, right?”

“He’s been a perfect gentleman. I’d be dead without him!”

“Good, because otherwise I’d have to send over my cousin Frankie to check up on you. Oh! I almost forgot.” The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a water bottle filled with something that wasn’t water. “Brought you some of your favorite juice, hun. It’s carrot and celery, made it just before I left.”

“Oh thank god!” Dawn cried, running over to twist the cap off and tilt it carefully over so she could take a sip. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed these kinds of creature comforts.”

“She was going to ask you to bring her juicer,” Keith said with a shake of his head.

Beverly laughed in that nasally, tittering way of hers. “What are you, movin’ in?”

Dawn’s cheeks turned red and she looked away. “About that…”

“Would you like to sit down, Beverly?” Keith offered with his outstretched hand. In a few moments they were all seated on the big red sectional.

The artist spoke first, raising his brows at Dawn. “I guess this is a good a time as any to figure out how long you needed to stay here.”

“Yeah, where were you gonna go?”

“Well it’s obvious I can’t get along by myself, I need help. I’m like a geriatric, guys. I… I haven’t thought about it too much, I’ll be honest…”

“What if you got like, a seein’-eye dog?” Beverly said.

Dawn blinked. She hadn’t considered a service animal. They could be trained to do all kinds of things nowadays, why not this? All she’d need then is maybe a housekeeper to keep the apartment in order, prepare her little meals…

“Wait, no. No, the goal here is to get back to normal. I have to. I’m not staying like this forever. I can’t.”

“Well your next step should be to see the doctor, then,” her friend shrugged. “Maybe he could tell ya what to do.”

The doctor… doctor. That was… surprisingly actionable. Yes. Yes, she’d make an appointment, explain everything. Her case was so unusual that she’d surely get the best care possible, be treated by the world’s leading experts on whatever the hell this was. Maybe she’d get to be someone’s Nobel Prize-winning research.

“Beverly, you’re brilliant.”

“Nah. If I was smart, I’d have gotten out of the restaurant biz years ago.”

The two women laughed at that. Beverly owned a small chain of Italian restaurants and was making just as much money as the lawyer. She was probably putting in fewer hours, too.

“And what about you, huh?” The New Jersey girl cocked her head at Keith. “Who, exactly, is Keith Morgan?”

“Well,” he said, “Let me tell you.”

The trio chatted for a little while, but Beverly had to leave before too long. She and Keith exchanged numbers, and she promised to keep in touch. Dawn gave her a list of things that she needed from her own apartment, and later that evening, she came by to drop off the small box.

“You know I talked to my aunt–the one who collects dolls–and she gave me the number of the lady that makes all her outfits. That’s all she does, you know, is doll outfits. I can probably get her to whip you up some clothes in a jiffy.”

“Oh could you!”

“Sure thing, hun.”

Keith quickly found a tape measure and they began to collect a few measurements.

“I’d like some shorts and a sleeveless shirt for this weather. And some linen slacks… and maybe a tee-shirt. Oh, do you think she could make me a suit, too? Navy. A pencil skirt should be fine. Don’t know where I’ll get hose, though… Does she do shoes?”

“No, but did you want any panties? Not sure if she can do anything but bloomers but I’ll ask.”

“I know a bra is out of the question but what about something to, you know, keep the girls tidy?”

The man cleared his throat but they ignored him.

“Honey, you’ve got the world’s smallest A cups. I hardly think you’ll look like Jane Fonda.”

“I’m not putting a suit on without a bra.”

“I donno, sounds like a power move to me.”

In the end Beverly could only sort of promise a single outfit by the next day on a rush basis, and Dawn gave her a blank check for it, which she folded up and put carefully away in her wallet.

“I’ll be calling my bank to make sure you didn’t go to Atlantic City with that!”

After she left, the pair finished up the leftover pizza, and in small celebration cracked open a couple wine coolers again. Keith limited himself to two tonight, and swore up and down that that would be all.

After eating they both lounged on the couch together and listened to the sounds of the city coming in through his big open windows. They were bathed in the bright orange light of the streelamp outside; he tried keeping the place dark in the summer because the hot bulbs only made things worse.

Eventually Dawn rolled over onto her stomach and propped her chin up with the heel of her hand. “How cool is your room at night?” she asked.

“It’s not awful,” he mumbled lazily. She liked the way he looked when he was lazy. Like a sleeping animal she wanted to give him a poke. “I’ve got a couple fans in there.”

“Fans!” she exclaimed. “There’s no fans out here. The air flow is terrible.”

He opened one eye and looked at her.

“Could I stay in your room tonight? This sofa is hell on my back, too. I’m sure you’ve got something much softer in there.”

“We’re doing this again, eh?”

“What do you mean?” Dawn rolled over onto her back and looked at him upside down with her spine arched. “We never stopped.”

He leaned over her and god she loved being able to see nothing but his face and shoulders. “It’s 'cause you’re nervous, isn’t it. You do this when you’re nervous.”

“Actually, Michelangelo, I do this when I know I have something to look forward to.”

He studied her for a beat before sliding his great big hand under her and lifting them both away from the couch. “I guess that’s what I was hoping you would say,” he said and crossed the floor to the last room of the apartment she hadn’t caught a glimpse of yet.

I would totally be the mysterious, mythic figure living in the mountains and minding my own business, Big Lebowski style. People would seek me out to complete their manhood initiation rituals, to cut a lock of my hair in my sleep or something and bring it back to town. Of course the “battle” that they have to do with me to get it would involve more cum and less blood!

There’d be stories about capturing maidens and things too, but mostly it would just be unmarried farmgirls or unhappy princesses coming to me to ask if I could eat their betrotheds and save them from a life of misery. For especially horrible arranged marriages I’d probably be down for a little murder, but I might have more fun helping fake the girls’ deaths so they could go off and be happier somewhere else. My services wouldn’t be free, though…

I’m more interested in being an immortal and modestly-sized giant (20-30 feet) with generations of folklore surrounding me, a slew of villages that would defend me and my territory to the death because my existence is a backbone of their local culture, than a tyrant. Because let’s face it, at the end of the day I’m lazy!

@nyx said in A challenger has appeared!:

@kisupure I’m a huge fan of your work

Yours too! Thank you

@i-am-insane said in A challenger has appeared!:

Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen you last. How’s things? Good to have more people from before show up!

Yeah, it’s been a bit! I basically gave up after SW Realm went down, and was processing my identity stuff for a while so I took a step back from the community because I wasn’t sure how I really fit into it. Slowly finding my way in again, though I’ve been doing tons of writing in the meantime. It’s nice seeing you here too!

Camp Fox was currently located in a wide, shallow granite canyon, its floor carpeted in fine sand and dotted with fire ants. It was only a few hectares in size, but it was enough: Corps leadership preferred to limit contact between the camps in its broad, diffuse network, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge Alpine ran 22 camps like this, each staffed by around a thousand. The logic was that it was harder to take out the whole resistance when you could only hit one or two outposts at a time. And so far, the strategy worked. It’d been over a decade since the Anakim were able to mobilize enough bodies to launch a full–scale assault on even a dozen camps, let alone hit Base Camp far, far in the mountains.

Visits between camps were reserved for officers and toons borrowed to bolster numbers on the rare occasion when an attack was anticipated in advance, but transfers happened often enough. Once or twice a year a camp’s weakest soldiers were rounded up and marched off to other parts of the Corps, never to be seen again. Problem corpsmen were also usually sent off to be Retrained—that is, to work Corps quarries and ammo-packing lines, where afterward they were said to be given another chance at Freedom at some other camp. Gray had met transfers but not any retrained corpsman. Fox was a well-oiled machine, however, and Hitch made quick work of malcontents in his own way. Supposedly their camp had one of the highest morale rates in the Corps. Hitch made sure to keep it that way, and Gray actually managed to find a little pride in it.

When Exercises were done, she was filthy. But it was also Friday, and she lined up outside of Captain Burke’s office to receive her two weekly liquor vouchers because truthfully, she wanted a drink more than she wanted a shower. A minute or so later and she was already walking out, little while slips in hand, each embossed with the seal of the Western Human Defense Corps. Though they felt like sturdy paper, they weren’t, and melted when held to a flame.

On her way out, Gray checked the bulletin board, and her heart sank when she saw that this month’s movie had been canceled. The projector was broken, and they were waiting on some replacement parts form Alpine. And who knew when that would be. A pair of corpsmen came up beside her to check it too, and grumbled loudly at the news.

“And it was gonna be a Henry Fonda!”

Gray made a face and sulked away. She liked westies. Movies (when Camp Fox could get them), books (when she could get them), it didn’t matter. She liked them for being simple. She liked that even in a gunfight, nobody ever had their brains shot out, or their throats cut open. Nobody took 3 days to die of a gangrenous leg. The action was exciting, the stakes were high, and it resembled life as she knew it in the Disrupted world, but there was an ease to it all, a cleanliness, that helped her forget the dirt under her fingernails and the ever-present preoccupied hum of fear in the air that you could very well die out here before earning Freedom.

Moreover, Henry Fonda was handsome. Errol Flynn wasn’t so bad either.

The broken projector was going to be the least of her worries that evening, though. As the sun was getting low on the horizon, she sensed tension in the camp, even freshly showered and with a shot of ‘shine in her belly. A few clerks were running between officers’ tents with that look in their eyes. Slowing to an amble near Green Fox’s captain’s tent, Gray trained her ears and through the canvas heard that they’d lost contact with the first checkpoint.

“Reroute the outgoing B patrol to see what happened. Tell them to use the cable box to check-in, and if they don’t, we assume the worst.”

“Yes, sir. Should I inform the Commander?”

“No, I’ll do that. Dismissed.”

Gray made sure to keep walking by the time the clerk rushed out again, then as soon as she was a little ways away, picked up the speed herself. She rushed past corpsmen at work in the fading light, past a group gathered around a badly-tuned guitar, looking for Harper and Finch; Wesson was still out on Exercises.

She ran into Harper first, but the wireman already seemed to know what she was about to tell him.

“Look alive, Gray,” he said, grabbing her shoulder. “Somebody’s gone and dusted our-”

“First checkpoint, I know.”

“Second now, too,” he said. “Berg’s just been ordered off the box to go get his gun.”

“Fuck. Where’s Finch?”

“She wasn’t with you grabbing her Fridays?”

“No.”

“Must be at the showers, then.”

“I’ll go get her.”

Gray was only halfway there when she heard shots report at the edge of camp. And worse, it was an all-too familiar kind of sound: deep, loud, brutal. These were no brigand weapons. They were ‘Nak guns.

And ‘Nak guns hit harder than anything else she knew: their standard-issues used fifty–fucking–caliber rounds, and could blow a corpman’s head clear off their shoulders. It had been eight months since she last heard one. Gray swallowed a ragged gulp of air and turned to beeline for her tent to grab her gear. Finch could get herself to the muster point.

“’Naks!” came the call from around camp. “’Naks incoming!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Gray spotted Harrison, the resident Corps chemist and almighty bartender who had just served her, hefting the camp’s only submachine gun as he moved like a thunderhead out of the bar and cellars dug out of the canyon wall. He closed a camouflaged door behind him to protect some of the their most precious resources: not just liquor, but solvents, ethanols, combustion fuels and rare chemicals, all prime targets for both human and ‘Nak raiding parties.

The shouting and exchange of gunfire was drawing closer, and Gray sprinted over to the muster point outside of her toon’s captain’s office where about sixty other Brown Fox corpsmen were already anxiously gathering, with more pouring in every minute.

“We think there’s only about nine or ten dozen of the bastards, so this should be easy!” Burke shouted. “Form ranks at the southern end and maintain cover! Break into your fireteams if you have to, but do not, I repeat, do not go solo! Get going, move, move!”

Gray ran, not knowing where any of her close friends were, so she clumped together with some other corpsmen she knew and let both her training and adrenaline work their magic. She began to wonder why the ‘Naks were sending such a small force against an entire camp. They weren’t dumb. But it wasn’t long before her ears were ringing with the sound of battle, and there were suddenly more important things to think about, like the fact that it appeared that ranks were already being broken.

This was a deadly embarrassment to both sides. Not that Corpsmen weren’t gifted survivalists, but there were too many fuckers running around without clear orders. Out of the small handful of engagements they had with the ‘Naks each year, most of them were lethargic, and rarely did they get this close to home. Neither side could afford to lose so many soldiers so often, but they still needed to exchange fire and make a bunch of noise. Worse than losing men was losing morale, and going soft on the enemy was out of the question. There’s no telling what the ‘Naks would try if they knew just how threadbare the Corps could be some days. This, however, was not one of those days. Eleven-hundred corpsmen against one hundred of the giant bastards on Corps turf was going to be far from lethargic.

Gray knew something was different when the smell hit her. She paused just long enough to scowl as it sank in. This was the pheromone, she noticed, and her body reacted. Her heart raced and her muscles wanted to pull her in the opposite direction. She was supposed to run, this was it, this was the unthinkable thing. But the seventh-year steeled herself and dove down behind a water drum to remember her discipline.

“It’s strong,” she said to herself, panting. Stronger than usual.

Was this a new cocktail from The Algo?

When she glanced up, the evidence was all around her. The chaos, the cries of panic, the sound of someone puking, someone else sobbing. It was amazing what a chemical could do, the suggestion of predation, the thought that you could have a hundred exit routes and still be cornered. It was evil. Gray swallowed and knew what she had to do. Against all animal logic, she turned the safety off on her kicker and prepared to fight. It was her or them. As much as she hated it, this was her life, and she was going to defend it.

“They’re advancing!” someone yelled from across the road as they turned on their heel to take cover further up the path. They were made quick work of. Gray had to do something. The ‘Naks were moving quickly, hunched like big, bloodthirsty beasts as they popped off thundering blasts from their even bigger guns. Down the road someone’s chest exploded, spraying canvas with red.

She got down low, peeking out from behind her cover, and got off a few shots at one of the ‘Naks’ feet, crippling him. She gave the same treatment to another who watched his comrade fall, but a third noticed her muzzle flash in the growing twilight and she pulled back.

“Shit, shit, shit…” Gray’s brown eyes darted around, looking for a window of opportunity to make her retreat, but her water drum cover was quickly turning into a deathtrap. She couldn’t help the scream when the metal suddenly filled with holes and precious water poured out onto the dusty ground.

The ‘Nak’s guns grew louder and louder, and Gray knew she was going to get shot. Which was all the more reason to at least attempt falling back.

“It’s working! Spread out!” she heard one of the giants bark, and they broke formation.

Someone had managed to re-man one of the heavy guns and a dusky ‘Nak was knocked to the ground with the force of his own bullets, moaning in the dirt like any other wounded creature on god’s green earth, then a few more went down. Gray was about to take this opportunity to get away from the drum, maybe duck into a tent, when a ‘Nak soldier suddenly loomed overhead. He glanced down, and through the thin strip of face she could see between his helmet and the cloth covering his nose and mouth, their eyes briefly met.

Through the haze of panic that his proximity was inducing in her, Gray managed to notice his face soften, and turn to acute concern. And the squeeze… was not so oppressive.

But then there was pain. A 50-cal bullet hit him in the chest, clearing his armor and ammo pouches to land a bloody blow near his armpit. Her face was spattered with his living heat as he collapsed over the drum and on top of her, cloth torn away from his face. Gray suddenly found herself pinned under a pair of three–hundred pound legs with something stabbing her in the side. She hissed, barely able to breathe.

“F–fuck…” she wheezed, and then fell deathly still when she realized that it was the muzzle of her own kicker sticking her in the ribs. One wrong move and it could go off at any minute. She tried pushing against that weakening body on top of her, pushing against the fear. “G-get off me, you giant piece of shit…”

He was wheezing too, and she could now hear a wetness in his lungs. But he reached out with a massive hand, big enough to palm her skull, and touched her cheek. Gray froze.

“Signy…”

Signy? Who was Signy?

“I didn’t know you came… back.” Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth and he tried licking his lips. The ‘Nak’s brown eyes were glazing over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… know…”

His hand fell away from her face and Gray just laid there, fighting for breath, unable to do anything but watch the fire disappear from those strangely human eyes as he gave his last gasping death rattle.