Practical Effects - Chapter 3

It was well after midnight by the time we finally made it home. We’d needed the fire department to cut Megan out of my car with the Jaws of Life, and had to get what remained of it towed while a fireman used an industrial pickup truck to drive us back to my apartment., Megan riding in the bed. The entire way, he’d tried to convince me that we should be going to the hospital instead, but Megan had been resolute: she just wanted to go home.

I opened the building’s front door for her and she slowly, gingerly wormed her way through the too-small doorframe, trying and failing to use the blankets the fireman had lent us to cover her modesty. She was almost twice as tall as me at this point, and had to practically double over to keep from hitting her head on the ceiling.

Megan had to get on her knees and crawl to get into the elevator, and had to pull her knees up to her chest to make room for me. I hit the button for my floor, but in response all I got was a loud BZZZT, followed by a pre-recorded voice: “Weight limit exceeded.”

We shared a tired, despairing look. I stepped back off the elevator, and blessedly, that was enough to get it under the limit. I sent her up alone and followed on the next elevator I could. It was a lucky thing that it was so late at night, and there was no one milling around in the hall to gawk at the naked giant slumping around.

Megan had to crawl again to get through my apartment door, and as soon as she did, she stretched out, filling my entire living room floor with her massive body, pressing her face into my rug. I studied her backside, frowning in sympathy as I looked at all the little cuts and bruises she had from getting trapped in my car.

“I think…” Megan said, her voice carrying loudly even as it was muffled by my rug, “that I screwed up. I think I took this too far.”

I kneeled down beside her, setting a hand against an unmarred part of her back. “Maybe the clinic can reverse it?”

“They don’t even know how I’m growing! Not really, anyway. Their drug’s only ever worked on one person, and it was supposed to stop working on me months ago. You don’t see them during those visits. They’re horrified, just like those rescue workers were. And this whole time I’ve just felt like, like, everyone was just babying me. Getting big has been so cool, and it feels so good. But… Everything’s too small now. I didn’t think about how… I mean, I can’t even fit in a car now! What if I have another big spurt like that tonight and I can’t even leave your apartment?” She was getting more and more emotional, and swung her arm without thinking, smashing into my coffee table and turning half of it into splinters.

And then, she started sobbing.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay! It’s okay!” I did my best to calm her down, both out of concern for her and because her enlarged vocal cords were deafening me with each wail, and undoubtedly waking up my neighbors. Sure enough, after only a moment or two, there came a banging at my door.

“Sorry! I’m really sorry!” I shouted, hoping I could be heard over Megan’s sobs. “It’s uh, my TV! I’m trying to find the remote!” I turned back to Megan, lowering my voice. “Please, you’ve gotta keep your voice down, hon.” 

My plea had the opposite of the intended effect. “I can’t even cry anymore!” she shrieked, and the glass windows of my kitchen cabinets exploded in response. All the while, whoever was on the opposite side of my door continued banging away. 

I ran over to the kitchen to survey the damage, and in my panic I knocked Megan’s purse off the counter, where I’d set it after carrying it in for her. Her phone slid out across the floor, and my eyes were immediately drawn to a push notification showing three thousand new messages. Megan curled up in a ball, wrapping my rug around her like a blanket, and I decided that was as covered-up as she was going to get, so I steeled myself and answered the door.

What was waiting for me on the other side wasn’t an irate neighbor, or even a cop. 

It was a crowd of news reporters, shoving me aside to film the giant woman in my living room and shoving microphones into my face, asking too many questions for me to keep track of.

While we’d been stranded in that parking lot, waiting for the fire department to free Megan from my car, she’d been going viral. I’d noticed a few people filming us, but to be honest I was so worried about her that I hadn’t given it much thought. I guess it was enough time for the local news to not only get wind of the story, but identify her and track us down. By the next day, Megan was the only thing anyone in the country, probably the world, could talk about.

Life rapidly became a blur, days turning into minutes. Megan was suddenly on talk show circuits, signing book deals. The agency that called the cops on us was quick to offer a modeling contract, but it was immediately topped by another offer, which was itself topped by two more. Megan’s presence was suddenly dominating every social media site, even though her experiences as a giant woman were about the least #relatable thing that anyone could imagine. Money had started flowing in faster than we could count it, which was lucky, because Megan was right to be worried that night: she was still continuing to grow, and the bigger she got, the more expensive her life became. The grocery bills alone would have bankrupted us both after only a few short weeks. Clothes, housing, transportation, furniture, even little things like toiletries and eating utensils, everything had to be customized for her unreal size and weight. Only two things were growing faster than the bills: Megan’s fame, and Megan herself.

And the bigger she got, the harder she was to escape.

Some months later, I was lying in bed, longer than I should’ve been, studying her face. It was plastered outside my apartment bedroom window on a fourteen foot billboard. She was wearing professional business attire, looking unsure and awkward as she hunched down to fit into the normal-sized office around her. A caption read, OUTGROWING YOUR JOB? TRY INDEED TODAY!

Suddenly, my phone buzzed with a text notification. It was her: where are you????

I sighed and dragged myself out of bed. That night she outgrew my car was the last time she slept over here. She kept trying to pressure me into moving into her new place, and I didn’t really have a good reason to say no… except that keeping my own apartment felt like the last shred of independence I still had from my giant superstar girlfriend.

And boss. Girlfriend and boss. 

I cursed as something sharp bit into my foot, a tiny splinter of wood from my old coffee table, which had somehow escaped all my cleaning efforts in the time since. With a grumble, I plucked it out of my foot, got dressed for the day, and headed out to my car. I pulled into the parking lot of Megan’s agency and swapped over into the dump truck we kept parked there. Picking up her groceries was just one of my many, many duties these days. I drove around town, hitting all the usual spots, waiting as workers loaded more and more pallets of food into the back.

Sometimes, I wondered if Megan even still considered me her boyfriend, or if I was just another lackey to her now. Any errand she needed running, any blow-up she needed smoothed over, my job was to be there to take care of it. We still had moments of intimacy… when she wasn’t busy. She was usually busy; as I drove,  another billboard, bus ad or video screen sported her smiling face anywhere I looked. I turned on the radio, only to be greeted by her voice on a talk show.

“You know, it’s so funny, I don’t really think of myself as a ‘giant!’ It’s almost like, I mean, I kind of feel like Dorothy, y’know? Like I just got swept off into Munchkinland! All you tiny, lovely, adorable people…”

The host of the show gave a polite, awkward laugh, and I shut the radio back off.

As I approached her building and began pulling the truck into the loading dock, workers gathering to start unloading everything into the industrial refrigerator inside, a thought crossed my mind. One that had crossed my mind plenty of times before. Why stick around? What was I getting out of this relationship anymore? She didn’t appreciate me or see me as an equal—she just said it herself, Megan didn’t see anyone as an equal anymore. I mean, sure, I was getting paid pretty damn well. The Megan Lambert business was a lucrative business to be in. But was that really the only thing keeping me here? Everything about our relationship just made me feel irritated and tired. 

That night… that had been the last time she’d shown any kind of vulnerability or remorse. As soon as the world started rewarding her for growing, she never questioned what she’d done ever again, and she’d made it abundantly clear that I shouldn’t question it either. The bigger and more famous she became, the more callous and unkind. She never apologized anymore, no matter what she did. She never did anything for anyone else. She took it for granted that everybody was thinking about her… and she was usually right. Even when we did have moments of privacy together, she just made me feel… used. And the longer things went, the more a realization slowly dawned on me: Megan’s growth wasn’t changing her. Neither was her fame. This is just who she always was. At her core she was a selfish, inconsiderate brat, and the only reason she ever behaved differently was that she didn’t have enough literal or figurative weight to throw around.

So… why not leave?

I got my answer as I opened the large rolling door leading inside. Megan was standing on the other side of it, all fifteen glorious feet of her. Her dirty-blond hair spilled down her shoulders in meticulously crafted waves, her immaculate body wrapped in scaled-up versions of all the hottest spring fashions, her shirt short enough to show off just a tease of her toned and tanned stomach. She was smiling down on me with the kind of smile that takes an entire squad of dentists to produce, and before I could say a word she’d lifted me up and greedily kissed me all over, her giant lips almost feeling like they might consume me.

I was dating the hottest, most famous woman on the planet. There are people who spend thousands of dollars just for the opportunity to shake her hand. And I was seriously thinking about dumping her? It was the obvious course of action when I was alone, but when I was with her, the idea seemed ludicrous, the radiance of her size and star power melting away the more rational parts of my mind.

“Where have you been all morning?! I’ve been waiting for you!”

“S-sorry, I overslept.”

After a few more kisses, she set me down and led me inside. Megan was living in a converted apartment building, the interior walls torn down and the second floor removed entirely, converting the space into a single massive apartment, one that was big even for her; she already owned the entire third floor, and would tear it apart too if she ever needed more headspace. The floor was exposed concrete and the space was sparsely decorated with giant-sized furniture and decorations, feeling less like a living space and more like a weird art installation, some postmodern exhibit of “furniture from the world of giants” or something. Megan’s staff, a small army, were all over the place, cleaning, cooking, photographing, hauling, and more.

“I’ve been telling you, you should just move in, babe! There’s more than enough space for you here.”

I sighed. I’d been trying to hold on to that little scrap of independence, but honestly, who was I kidding? What independence? Besides, I could also tell that Megan’s suggestion wasn’t really a suggestion.

“Yeah. Maybe I should.”

“Yay!!” Megan scooped me up once more, hugging me tight. “Hey! Everyone clear out! I need some peace and quiet!”

“But, Ms. Lambert, we’re…” One of the dockworkers gestured to the pallet of frozen food he was unloading.

“I said OUT!” My ears rang at the immensity of her voice, echoing against the concrete and exposed beams all around us. The apartment was empty in seconds.

Megan flopped down on her bed—making a mattress that could properly support her weight while still being comfortable had cost more money than the apartment building—and squished me against her even more tightly.

“Mine,” she said, giggling girlishly.

I couldn’t really disagree. “Yours.”

  *

“I bought the company.”

“You what?”

“I mean, sure! Why not?” Megan put her glass to her lips, throwing back several gallons and several thousand dollars worth of wine in a single gulp. “They were going bankrupt anyway, I got ‘em for a song. Now, I’m the exclusive owner of the rights to the growth drug. No sense in letting them potentially find someone else it works on, right? My size is the key to my success; why run the risk of ever having competition?” She shifted her weight slightly, soapy waves sloshing over me. She was lounging in her bath—really a luxury heated swimming pool—and I was nestled between her breasts. Relative to her size, Megan was pretty modestly-endowed, possessing the slim, svelte body of a model. But as big as she was overall, each of her tits were still more massive than I was.

“Y-... you’re not going to use more of the drug, right?”

Megan laughed, the rising and falling of her soap-slick chest sending me gliding down into the water. “I could if I wanted to, y’know? Not like anyone could stop me. Twenty-five feet’s nice and all… but twenty-five hundred feet would be even better. Or twenty-five thousand.”

She stared down at me, gigantic eyes half-lidded. I had a hard time believing that she could really read my expression from that far away, but at the same time I was certain she could sense the terror her words were invoking. Suddenly, I was sent rolling away on another small wave as she laughed again, harder this time.

“Oh, relax. I’m not gonna take any more. Like I said, I’m just buying the rights to suppress them.” She carefully scooped me up and deposited me back in her cleavage.

“Besides, I don’t need to. I haven’t stopped growing.”

I froze, eyes widening. “You haven’t?! But I thought—”

“Medical team confirmed it for me this morning. It’s harder to notice now, because each inch I gain is smaller proportionately. But I was 25’3” last week, and I’m 25’6” now.”

“You um. You sound happy.”

“Of course! Oh, listen, I wasn’t kidding before. Being twenty-five hundred feet tall sounds awesome. I’m just, you know,” she swirled the wine around her two-foot-wide glass. “I’m just content taking the scenic route to that size.

“Don’t you think… I don’t know, aren’t you big enough already?”

She said nothing, but I could feel her chest expanding all around me as she breathed in. Suddenly, she was moving, water sloshing out all around the pool as she rose to her feet, sending me sprawling into the waves. I coughed and sputtered as bitter, soapy water flooded my mouth, flailing for anything to grab onto, until I felt the bottom of the pool beneath me; Megan had taken up so much space that the water was only knee-deep without her.

Looking up, I saw her glistening, naked body towering high above me, equal parts beautiful and terrifying. Each of her massive feet was nearly as long as I was tall. It would be utterly trivial for her to kill me, a fact that was impossible to ignore when she loomed over me like this.

“I need you to listen to me, and I need you to listen good. I don’t ever fucking want to hear you say that again. Never. Do you understand?”

“I, I, uh, I—”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes! Yes! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“Good!” And just like that, she was all smiles again.

Before I could get my bearings, her hand was around me. She wasn’t quite big enough to close her fingers around my body, but she could easily grip me well enough to lift me up one-handed, a fact that she abused constantly; when we were together, I hardly ever got the privilege of walking on my own two feet. She grabbed a towel the size of a circus tent, drying me off with a corner of it before setting me on her shoulder and wrapping it around herself.

“Oh! I forgot to tell you!” I braced against her shoulder to keep myself steady as Megan walked over to the other side of the yard, picking up her custom “phone,” really a converted big-screen TV. “My talent agent sent me a really cool project earlier today. They want me to do a movie! See?” 

On her phone, she pulled up what appeared to be some concept art: Megan, so huge that it made her current size look puny, barely covered by a few stray shreds of cloth, standing over a city skyline the way she’d just stood over me, her mere presence causing buildings to topple and crumble, bathing the city in dust and flames. I swallowed, realizing that the full-screen image of her on her giant phone was about as tall relative to me as the real Megan had been before she’d started growing.

“Is that… is that a great move publicity-wise?”

“What do you mean?”

I was treading carefully, not wanting to upset her again. “Well, just that… if people see you rampaging around like that, they might get scared of you doing that in real life. That might hurt your image a little bit, don’t you think?”

Megan laughed, nearly sending me flying off of her as her shoulder shook beneath me. She reached up with her free hand and plucked me off her shoulder, holding me right in front of her face.

“Don’t you get it? That’s exactly what I want people to think.”

“...Huh? Why?”

She planted her enormous lips on me, enveloping my head and chest all at once. “Because, silly… if they see me do it in a movie, then I don’t have to do it in real life. Everyone will realize exactly how dangerous I am, how easily I could crush them… and they’ll have a long, hard think about how they’d better keep me happy.”

  *

We were on set, Megan clutching the director in her hand, fuming that he was trying to tell her what to do. I backed away as she slowly expanded, her fingers gradually swallowing up more and more of the director’s body, her angry face inspiring more and more terror the larger it got.

“Do you get it, stupid? I’m still growing. We have to do the movie in order, or I’m going to be too big to do the earlier scenes.”

The director opened his mouth, but a single massive finger immediately covered it. “Hold on. I want you to understand something. There are exactly two ways this conversation ends. The first, is that I remove my finger, you say ‘yes, Ms. Lambert,’ and I gently set you down so you can go make the arrangements for us to film the thirty-foot scenes tonight. Not next week, not tomorrow, tonight. The other option is you say anything else, anything at all, in which case they’ll be cleaning you up off the floor after I drop you. Okay? We on the same page?”

Slowly she removed her finger. The director silently quivered in her hand for a moment or two, before finally speaking.

“Y-yes, Ms. Lambert.”

“Great!” With the same million-watt smile that shone from every billboard, television, and phone screen in town, Megan knelt down and deposited the director on the ground, where he immediately collapsed to his knees.

“Alright, everyone!” Megan called out. “That’s lunch!”