He just stared as fingers, three foot long, glided toward his prone form; all he could think about was how neatly kept her fingernails were considering her chosen profession. One of them flicked Ethel out of their way, she shrieked as she tumbled backward into a chair and broke it with her bulk.

  Laura felt her fingertips touch the greasy apron that was wrapped over Roy's stained t-shirt. She lurched her arm forward and siezed him roughly before pulling him out of the building. She looked down at the tiny figure in her palm; he was about the size of her outstretched hand from wrist to the tip of her middle finger; just small enough for her to get a good and commanding grip upon. He was on the verge of having a heart attack as he clutched an old spatula to his fluttering chest. She just sneered.

  "So you thought you could just push me around my whole life and I would never be able to push back. WELL HOW ABOUT THIS FOR A PUSH!" Laura put her other hand against the top of one of the diner's walls and began to apply pressure.

  Greg, still on the other side of that hand, had his eyes closed and was silently praying to himself. In a matter of seconds, the wall began to crack and give way. People inside screamed as the whole building began rumbling around them.

  Laura frowned before she stopped. She bent back down and looked at everyone huddled together in the kitchen.

  "I suggest that all of you get out of there while you can. I couldn't care less about any of you, but I'm not a heartless killer."

  People quickly began streaming out, scrambling over each other to save their own skins; Laura scoffed.

  "And why should I care? None of you cared about me. All you wanted was someone to clean up your messes whenever you spilled something. You never gave me a thank you, never a nod or a glance, NOT EVEN A MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

  Orville Smith jumped at her sudden raise in voice; he dashed ahead with arms outstrecthed after pushing his wife out of his way.

  "I OUGHT TO STEP ON EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!" Her outburst sent what was left of the broken window down in glittering shards; it also made the Varney brothers jump three feet into the air. She leaned back onto her bent legs.

  "As for you, YOU MISERABLE LITTLE PUKE!" Laura shook Roy violently. His head spun about on his feeble neck and he saw bright starbursts dance in his vision. She squeezed him so hard it was becoming painful to draw in any breath. "I can't believe I put up with all of your crude jokes, your greasy diner, YOUR SLEAZY COME-ONS!" Laura stood up to her full height. "Well no more."

  Her dominating stature sent a huge shadow over the crowd of people below; they panicked and scattered in all different directions, tripping and pushing who they needed to escape.

  Laura brought up one of her long legs and set it against the side of Roy's Diner; she began to push. A few of the support beams split immediately; all of the others cracked, the timber splintering with the rumbling thunder of a violent tempest. The roof began to collapse under it's own weight and caved inward, it gave a loud and anguished groan as it cumbled. Clouds of dust spewed out of the doorway and shattered windows. One of the walls tumbled backward as in broke into three large pieces that could no longer maintain their shape. In moments, there was nothing was more of the diner than a scrap pile. Laura laughed triumphantly.

  "HA! I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel a hell-of-a-lot better." She looked back down at her raised hand, "how about you Roy?"

  He struggled to look up at her. His body was in pain and his head felt like it weighed two hundred pounds.

  "Pl ... plea ... please let me down."

  "And why should I do such a charitable thing like that?" She frowned, "did you let me have the day off from cleaning your putrid soup vats when I broke my arm last spring? Or have a few hours to myself when my sister came to visit. No! NO! A RESOUNDING NO!" Laura turned around and addressed those with the courage or curiousity to have stayed put.

  "None of you gave me an inch of appreciation or gratitude. It was just Laura clean this, or Laura scrub that, or Laura climb up on my roof and gut out my rain gutters." Laura lifted up a long leg and kicked the ceiling off of Mr. Gradisher's clothing store. It flew away in one large, wooden, chunk and it hit the ground with a crash before breaking into numerous pieces; the largest crashing into Roy's pile of rubble. Greg started crying again. Roy was desperately trying to pry her giant fingers apart with his badly bent spatula. The leftover crowd gave into chaos as they began scrambling away as fast as they could. She shook her head and began to shake a clenched fist in the air; no one could hear Greg screaming from his chair as she began to shout.

  "NONE OF YOU CAN GET AWAY! I WON'T LET YOU! NONE OF YOU DESERVE TO GO!" Laura began to laugh again, "on the way over here I crushed a few of your precious little trucks. You'd be surprised how easily metal folds under feet like these. All it takes is a few well-placed steps." She looked down at one of the few bystanders left in the street. "Mr. Jones, your little Ford looks like a flattened Coke can now."

  "My new, cherry red 4-runner?"

  "Uh huh."

  Dazed by the tragic news, Bonidle Jones began to wander aimlessly down the road.

  Laura, giddy with her own power, began to prance around the near empty street. A stray cat lept out of the way as her foot came crashing down on the post-box it was resting on. The blue metal crunched loudly and was as compressed into something that resembled a large pie plate in less than a second. She skipped back over to Wilbur's general store and kicked over a thin lamp post that was innocently standing next to a garbage can that was next to be tipped over.

  "This is my town now, I've had to put up with too much crap from all of you and this is universe's idea of my reward. All of y ... OWW!"

  Laura's finger was swelling red from where a desparate Roy had bitten deeply. The look of disgust that crossed her face sent him into panic as he started kicking wildly.

  "WHY YOU LITTLE!" She swung her arm downward in a wide arc and tossed the fat short-order cook into the soft dirt. It didn't break his fall in the slightest and he impacted with a dull, wet thud.

  Roy couldn't move. There was a sharp pain that shot through his chest and arms with each beat of his heart. He thought about standing but he soon realized that he couldn't feel his legs. He just lay there and gazed at the cloudless sky overhead; half of it was turning a bright pink as blood leaked into one of his eyes. Laura said something else but a high-pitched whine was drowning out her words. Suddenly, it grew dark. It took him a few seconds for his vision to focus on the object that blocked out the sun. It was long; a light red in color, though that may have been the false tint that was expanding through his view. It was also decending at a terrifying speed. Roy never had the chance to cry out.

  Laura ground her foot into the dirt for a moment; it had a slightly moist consistency and her heel glided over it with ease. She stopped and lifted it up to view what she had done. Nothing was left of her victim but a juicy, reddish paste dotted with chunks of unground, pale flesh, his mangled outfit, and part of an arm that she couldn't quite fit under her foot. She had to admit, it was quite a grusome sight. Laura smiled.

  "Laura! For god's sake! That was Roy, we've known him for years! How could you do that?"

  Laura turned over her hand to look at Greg in his chair.

  "Pretty easily I have to say," her head snapped up triumphantly. "DID YOU HEAR THAT EVERYONE!?!" She glared about, a woman hiding in the local bank feinted. "I OWN ALL OF YOU LITTLE PIECES OF SHIT NOW! YOU ARE ALL MINE TO TOY WITH!" She laughed again, "if any of you fail to please me, you will share that pig's fate. Please me, and I will be greatly rewarded. UNDERSTAND!?!" Her booming voice reached out to everyone who was cringing in the alleys and buildings. "And right now I'm in a little bit of a bitchy mood so stay away from me."

  Laura perked her ears as a low whirring sound caught her attention. She cocked her head to figure out the direction it was coming from. She tip-toed towards the small library and peeked over it. Behind the building was an old, yellow Volkswagon Bettle that was starting to scuttle it's way up the road. It turned onto a side street that led towards the outskirts of Paradise.

  Laura crouched down slightly, feeling the lean muscles in her legs tense, then pounced. She cleared the library and made a clean landing in front of the escaping vehicle. The driver felt the ground shake at her arrival and he swerved to miss her giant foot, failing miserably. She watched it swing around and smash into her heel; the impact of it hurting for a few seconds, but faded quickly. To her, it was about ten or eleven inches long and it didn't make it past her shin in height. She listened as the engine putted a bit, then died.

  The driver tried to turn it over a few times, but failed. He panicked and banged on the wheel in desperation. The car bagen to shake violently and he looked up to see long fingers drape around his windows and clamp down. The glass was beginning to crack under the pressure when his car was suddenly lifted into the air with frightening quickness. The ground dwindled away beneath him and his ears popped. Two huge, blue orbs and the top of a smooth nose filled his windshield; the pupils dialated as they focused on it's captive.

  "Hello Barry. Saving your own skin I see. You didn't even bother to try and help your wife and kid."

  Barry began to shiver under her piercing gaze.

  "You miserable excuse of a man." Laura pinched her right thumb and fingers together and pulled. The top of the little bug tore off easily in her hand, like aluminum foil. Glass showered down into the street and Barry cringed in his seat, holding his seatbelt like a crucafix. She dropped his roof and then reached for him, easily plucking him out of the metallic shell. She let it drop and it rolled a few times before coming to rest against another car parked below.

  Barry lay atop her hand and cried, not knowing what else to do. Laura just shook her head in disgust.

  "How could you just run away without even a thought about them?" Laura curled her fingers around him, he managed to keep one arm free and used it to beat against the smooth contours of one of her nails. "I'm doing her a favor by doing this."

  Slowly, she bagan to squeeze.

  At first, Barry just had trouble breathing. Then a cramp began to form in his stomach, steaidily growing worse. Blood pounded in his temples as it rushed out from everywhere else in his body. Pain surged in his sides; a rib cracked, quickly followed by another. He let out a short scream, then grew silent as he could no longer draw a breath. He shuddered, his left leg twitching with uncontrollable spasams. Each vertabrae in his neck screamed in torment as he struggled to look up. The face of his beautiful captor was contorted in rage, her eyes wide and teeth clenched. His right arm snapped, breaking in two places. A third rib split and he could feel the sharp end of the bone piercing one of his lungs. A red trickle dripped out of one nostril. His vision blurred, his eyes rolling back into his skull. The sky grew dim, and suddenly went black at the same instant a purplish mixture of blood, mucous, and bile streamed out of his mouth and ears.

  Laura squeezed for a few more seconds, to be sure Barry was dead. One of his eyes had popped from of it's socket; forced out by the pressure of the escaping fluid behind. She slowly opened her hand and tilted it. The doll-sized remains slid off her palm and fell to the ground far below. He landed awkwardly, his broken body bent in half with his legs dangling askew. She squinted and scrutinized her handywork; the volkswagon was slowly burning nearby She looked up.

  "TOWN MEETING! I WANT EVERYONE BY THE WATER TOWER! RIGHT NOW!"

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